888: Building Your Business One Relationship at a Time with Patrick Galvin

Matt: Welcome back. Real Estate Rockstar nation. This is Matt Templeton, your host. Today we have Patrick Galvin. Patrick is the chief galvanizer of the Galvanizing Group. Which is a company that coaches people out of Portland, Oregon. Patrick is the past president of the Oregon chapter of the National Speaker’s Association. More importantly, he’s been working with salespeople, real estate agents, and other high-performance teams like yourselves in building better relationships, in connecting with their consumers.

Lately, I’ve seen Patrick in a number of amazing venues and I was really impressed with his message and the content he had for them, for the people that were there. I wanted to make sure to bring it to you guys. Today we’ve got Patrick Galvin talking about connecting, building businesses around relationships. His book, The Connector’s Way, a story about building business one relationship at a time has sold over 23,000 print, Kindle, and Audible copies. You can actually get that on Amazon Prime right now for free if you hurry on over there.

We’ll talk more about that when we get into this with Patrick. Today, we have Patrick Galvin. Patrick, fill in any holes that I missed and tell me a little bit more about what we’re going to talk about today.

Patrick: I love talking about this topic of building business relationships because I have had to learn it the hard way. I went to business school, got my MBA. I didn’t have a single relationship-building class in business. When I entered the work world, I thought I could buy my way to attention through marketing and advertising. That didn’t work out so well.

What I discovered for myself and for all businesses is that those who really are performing at the highest levels are out there creating deep connections and relationships with people that get them enthusiastic so they keep coming back and they get them spreading the word.

I can go into some of the details if you want my story but that’s just the big picture of why I’m so excited to be here with you today, Matt, talking about this topic.

Matt: I love it. Oftentimes in real estate, there’s always a snake oil. There’s always something that’s being sold to us that says, “This will solve your revenue, your commission problems. If you just buy this, you’ll have all the answers.” I appreciate that because truthfully we’re in a part of our industry and a time in our industry where we have to save every penny we can and if we can make those relationships and turn those relationships into sales, that’s actually making our profitability better, right?

Patrick: Absolutely. Really, when you think about looking forward into the future, we hear about AI and disintermediation, and that technology is going to take out realtors, that realtors won’t be necessary someday, I don’t believe that at all. I think that you all are involved in a very important transaction, the most important transaction for home buyers and sellers that probably they’ll have in their life until they have another real estate transaction.

The comfort level that they need is really difficult to come through just automation. I’m not against technology, we can get into it. I think technology is super important to the extent that it helps you leverage your comparative advantage which is building quality relationships with folks.

Matt: I heard you say that now almost twice that it’s about deep and quality relationships. Oftentimes, when I think of connecting or when I think of relationship-building, I think of this fast network-building type of style. Tell me more what you mean by quality and depth of connection. What does that actually look like in reality?

Patrick: It could take on many forms. It’s going beyond just a transaction and forming an ongoing relationship over time. Just a very brief anecdotal example of that, we bought a home 14 years ago through a Kelly Williams agent, great agent. Every year on my birthday, on my wife’s birthday, on our daughter’s birthday, we get personal cards from him. That doesn’t sound so remarkable. A personal card. Some people say, “I used to do that.” The average American according to the Post Office only gets 10 of these a year.

My wife has told me that she would never refer to another realtor. I asked her why and she said, “Because I feel like our realtor really cares about me.” Her friend will forget her birthday every other year. Our realtor never forgets. It’s a personal– He takes the time. He’s a very successful agent but he sees them as one of his most important activities. He’s doing other things to build those connections. He hasn’t forgotten about us.

We haven’t bought or sold a home in 14 years but we certainly referred him. We feel close to him and there are a lot of other professionals who have done business with us. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you the names of some of those people. Once that deal is done, we’re forgotten. It makes a difference to make you feel important. That’s just a very simple example. There’s a lot of other examples we can talk about in this. I really come back to this notion of how do you build connection and relationship? It’s not just blasting out to an email list, or buying internet leads, and marketing to the millions.

I would argue that if you can find the top people who are really important to your success when you look at where your referrals are coming from when you look at who your key referral partners are, it’s not a huge number. I think it’s important to ask yourself, “What are you doing to support those people who have supported you?” It’s easy to go after the new and the exciting. So often we forget the people who really are enthusiastic about us. That enthusiasm will wane if we don’t take care of it. It’s like you have a beautiful plant and you don’t put water on it, it’s going to die.

Matt: Let’s dig into that. That was such a great example, a personal example. What other anecdotes, tactics, examples are you seeing are really effective at building that depth of connection?

Patrick: One of the things, I am a believer in technology to the extent that it’s used well. In my own business and in the businesses of a lot of people that we speak with, we really suggest that they think about how they could use technology to build deep connections. An example of that would be we all get these notices in our email that someone wants to connect with us on Linkedin. Oftentimes, we don’t even know who the person is because they don’t bother to send a note with that notice. Just taking a moment to introduce yourself personally, maybe it’s someone who you worked with on the buy or sell side, you had a great transaction.

Just take a moment to say, “Hey, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. I’m so glad you’re settled into your new home. I look forward to seeing you again in the real world. In the meantime, let’s stay connected on Linkedin.” That little personal note could almost be something you copy and paste. It took a little bit of effort, maybe 10 seconds more than just sending that generic, “I’d like to add you into my Linkedin network.” That’s a very simple example. If you’re dealing with a professional and they’ve done something for you that impresses you.

Maybe it’s a referral partner. Maybe it’s one of your clients. Maybe it’s a home buyer or seller and they have a business, and you frequent at their business. Why wouldn’t you take a moment to go on to Google and review their business? Or go on to Yelp if they own a restaurant. Or on to Tripadvisor if they are in the hospitality business. Or write them a Linkedin recommendation without them asking for it. It’s really going out there and serving others. The key to relationship-building is really show that you care.

Digital tools can be a great ways to do it. A personal note can be a great way to do it. I’m getting a lot of traction out of sending videos instead of text messages. I’ll do a quick video to someone saying, “Hey, I’ve just had so much fun working with you. It’s been awesome.” That takes me the same amount of time as it does to text something. I call them out by name, they see my face. It makes a difference. You can really I think get a lot of traction using technology. I would argue that anyone who is doing it well is saying to themselves, “Is this helping me build a deep relationship?” If it’s not, you don’t need to do everything.

Social media platforms, I don’t know what the big ones are going to be two or three years from now. I know there are going to be new ones. I know that there’s going to be– The MySpace of the future will be something that is the hot new thing today. The reason why it’s going to become the MySpace of the future is because it’s really not relevant to building deep connection. I think that if you have to make decisions for where you want to spend your time, I’m not saying don’t do social media but just do it wisely.

For that matter, go out and build a connection in your community. I belong to a huge rotary club. We have two realtors in a club of 250 people. Honestly, I think that’s a joke. We should have a lot more. I know the two realtors are not really benefitting from that connection. Whether it’s digital, whether it’s online, how can you go out and serve the people you’re connected with and build real relationships in the communities that are important to you.

Matt: I’m digging for just a second. I hear what you’re saying around technology that it can serve you but be careful because it’s actually not developing deep connection.

Patrick: No. Actually, there’s a lot of traps and pitfalls. Linkedin was bought by Microsoft for $26 billion about two years ago. As soon as that transaction took place, there was a shift that occurred where all of a sudden you started noticing, “Import all your contacts and send out invitations to connect through Linkedin.” Great for Microsoft. Great for the technology company. They want to add as many people to their platform as possible. Really bad for the users because no one should be doing that. You don’t want to invite in hundreds of people with just an import of your database and then a click to send out.

Yes, it’s fast. Fast is not always good. The slow approach works. Unfortunately, with technology, they want fast because they want to show quarterly growth. They want to impress stockholders. You’ve got to be very judicious and think about it’s your brand out there. Technology can support it and it could also kill it. It really can. I just say go with eyes wide open.

Matt: That’s excellent.

Matt: I know that you work with a lot of real estate agents, a lot of insurance agents, a lot of salespeople. You’ve probably seen some of the pitfalls and you’ve already introduced us to a few of them. What do you think that real estate agents are not doing right now that they really should be doing in addition to this?

Patrick: I think one of the things that people are not doing is they are not they’re not keeping the ties close enough with the people who they’ve done business with in the past. Whether it’s on the buy side or the sell side, they’re always moving towards the next transaction. You have these personal cards, these events. There are a couple of realtors I know who people say it’s old school. I went to a knife-sharpening event that a realtor friend of mine put on. This was a cool event. I went to this event. He said, “We’re going to do wine and cheese. Bring your knives. It was at a knife-sharpening shop. Bring three knives and we’ll get them sharpened for you.” I’m thinking, “Wow. This realtor really knows people must like him if he’s inviting them to bring knives to an event.”

[laughter]

Patrick: He’s got a lot of trust and people love him because people are coming armed. It was an awesome event. Your knives were being sharpened and you were wandering around talking with his team members. It was just a great event for creating connection. I had a talk with him. I had not had a deep conversation with him in a long time. I talked to a couple of other team members. He says his ROI and those things is off the charts. It was at a store, a retail store. It was after hours. Basically, they saw it as exposure. They didn’t charge him. He brought in his own wine and cheese.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money. I think what he learned is he’s done events in the past where he’s spent a lot of money. Now he’s more creative about building these opportunities to connect with folks. People don’t care how much money you spend, they just want to know that you care about them. I think that a lot of realtors are moving on to the new. It’s with your existing database. Then it’s actually going out there and serving folks in your community.

There’s a realtor I worked with or got to know him in Columbia, South Carolina, a KW person. He actually went out and talked to people in the community and had his team members do the same. They learned that everyone in that local community was concerned about public schools, that there was not enough support going to public schools. They took that on as their cause. They show up at the events that are fundraisers for the schools. They’re out there doing volunteer activities for the schools. They had a program where if you refer business to them, you could choose your local PTA and they would give a little in-kind gift, a financial gift to that PTA.

They’ve really developed a brand as being the real estate team that cares about the local schools. I think they did it in a really smart way where they picked a cause that’s important to them but they also asked people what was important to the folks in their community. They heard that it was not sectarian, political. Everyone, Republican, Democrat, religious, non-religious, they all believed in that. Find a cause like that and really dig in deep and develop those ties. People see that stuff.

They’re very good at pointing it out in their social media. You’ll see it on their Facebook pages. You’ll see it on Twitter. You want to share the story but first of all, you want to make sure you have a good story to share so something that’s relevant to the people who you want to do business with.

Matt: Wow. I really love this. I want to draw attention to this. I always say that real estate agents should be homeownership experts. They should be economists of choice. Then I’m now adding because I think realtors should be this, community advocates.

Patrick: Absolutely.

Matt: You just triggered in me what I know to be true. I’m curious. What other examples have you seen of real estate agents showing up or of salespeople showing up in a way that advocates for their community that our agents could take away and go apply in their own communities? Working for schools, working in some of these other ways. What are you seeing?

Patrick: I think in whatever someone chooses to do, you need to choose something that you care about so you’re going to show up on a regular basis. Whatever that is, then step up in whatever that is that you care about. In my Rotary Club that only has two realtors in it currently, one of them is brand new, and one of them’s been there for 15 years.

Matt: Wow.

Patrick: Why is he stuck? We’ve had other realtors come in and out of the group. Why has one realtor stuck with us? Why has our network become important for his business? Not just that we buy and sell homes and we’re 250 people in Portland but we also refer business to him. He stepped up into leadership. He served on boards, he served on committees. Rotary’s a service organization. You join for service but here’s the thing. When you join something that you’re passionate about, you show up on a regular basis. People see that it’s a real thing for you. Everyone wants to do business with and refer business to those who they know, like and trust.

If you just show up at a group randomly, you miss half the meetings and when you’re there you hang out with your friends or you don’t really make efforts to network with new people in the group. No one develops those connections of knowing, liking, and trusting enough for them to be comfortable doing business with you. Whether it’s Rotary or for that matter any service organization or any non-profit that you might go out and join, step up. Volunteer to be on the board. They’re going to be thrilled to have you. There’s never enough leadership in any organization.

Usually, they try to arm wrestle people into these positions of leadership. Just volunteering, don’t think you need to do everything. I say go deep as opposed to just spreading yourself across as many activities hoping that you find that needle in the haystack. Really drill down into something that’s important to you and commit, and people will see and appreciate that commitment and want to do business with you.

That’s why we have Fannie Mae as a client. The biggest client that we have is through somebody I met at Rotary who introduced me to somebody, who introduced me to somebody. Now, it’s our most significant client. I didn’t join Rotary to get Fannie Mae as a client. Fannie Mae is a fantastic client. It never would have happened if I had tried to buy some list of Fannie Mae employees. No way. It’s all through relationship and all through connection.

Matt: I want to point what I think you just established as a model for going into a service-based or a community advocate-based model for building a relationship. Find something you’re passionate about. Maybe even something you have relationships already in or something that’s already connected to your community. Build that connection of people liking you, trusting you, and even knowing you through the service that you guys do together and then step up and be a leader in that organization so that then you get both the– Getting to drive the bus but also the benefit of people seeing you because you’re in the front, right?

Patrick: [crosstalk].

Matt: I think that’s an amazing model for community advocating and connecting through that. One of the things that I often talk to real estate agents about and I hear it all the time is, “Yes, I want to connect with people. I want to take care of my clients but I’m just going to wait for them to reach out to me. I’m going to wait for them to come back to me. I don’t want to bug them.” There’s a lot of fear around connecting, or having conversations with people, following-up with people. What do you tell people when they say, “Oh yes, I’ve got this database. They’ll come to me when they’re ready.” Truthfully, they really haven’t connected or communicated at all with their database recently.

Patrick: I struggle with that notion because I think we live in a very impersonal world. I got a call from the realtor in my Rotary Club on my birthday last year. He sang me happy birthday. I’ll tell you the truth, I cut him off after about two stanzas because he’s got a terrible singing voice. We had a good laugh over it. I saw him at Rotary the following week I said, “Hey, was that a thing for me or was that a marketing thing?”

He goes, “Well, here’s the truth. It actually is a marketing thing. I genuinely like you, Patrick, and I like people so I would go into my Facebook and see who’s having a birthday every day. Some days I might call five people, some days it might be one or two and I sing them happy birthday. Usually, like you, they’ll cut me off because I have a terrible singing voice and we’ll have a good laugh and we’ll have a connection point. I’ll wish them a happy birthday. Oftentimes, what they’ll say to me is–” “You know what? You’re the only person who’s called me today on my birthday.”

Here’s the thing. This happens everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are in the country right now. We all have hundreds, thousands of friends of connections on Facebook and on Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever. Name your social media flavor of choice. Ostensibly, we are just feeling just so wired and connected with the world. It’s an illusion for most people. They feel the depths of it when significant things happen in their lives whether it’s a birthday, whether it’s getting a promotion, whether it’s something fantastic happening to them that they’re sharing on social media.

They’re going to get the generic thumbs up that the social media platforms give them to tap on or they’ll click a button and a generic message would fill in. Just go deeper. People love it. I have never called a past client, a current client at a significant event for them in their life that I see on social media and have them say, “Oh, you’re bugging me.” People love it. No one does it. Here’s the great news. The bar is super low. You do that five times a week, you’re a rock star. You’re going to live up to the name of your podcast. [laughs] It is amazing, it’s not hard.

We have one guy in Portland who’s the singing realtor. My challenge out there would be, why don’t you become the singing realtor in your town? Why not? I’m sure the space is open.

Matt: It’s funny because in my world I have my select group of people that I do like to sing on their birthday too. Now I feel like I need to expand that and call more people. Maybe just put yourself out there. The thoughts that I had as you were speaking and it was great connection points was what that realtor was having to do is be vulnerable in order to deepen the relationship.

You said create that depth of connection by going beyond what was expected in tapping on a Facebook button or just sending the quick automatic message. It required him to be okay with looking a little silly, maybe being bad at it, right? But then that vulnerability, that humility that came with singing the song actually is what developed a little bit more of the relationship.

Patrick: Absolutely. After the song, we had about a two-minute conversation. He says, “That’s usually the way it goes.” He says, “Look, on a really busy day I might if I call five people, get two of them. I’ll leave a singing voicemail which they’re going to laugh about and think that’s funny”. You could do this whole thing on a busy day in probably less 20, 25 minutes.

Matt: Exactly.

Patrick: On many days, you might only have a couple of calls. Then challenge yourself to go deeper. Then I would say go into your Linkedin. There’s no realtor who shouldn’t be connected with every single person who he or she has helped buy or sell a home. You should be connected to everyone who you’ve done business with on Linkedin. 85% of all Americans have a Linkedin profile. The end of your transaction, you will put that on there. Connect with that home buyer or home seller.

Then what you can do is when you have some time, and I would say schedule the time, put this on your calendar, build relationships using Linkedin, put a 25-minute block on your calendar every week. Go with the notification section of Linkedin and just see what’s happening with people on your network. When you see that someone’s gotten a job promotion, pick up the phone or text them if you’re more comfortable doing that. Saying, “Hey I just saw on Linkedin that you got promoted. That is fantastic. I know it should have happened for you before and they’re so lucky to have you in this new position. Let’s go out and celebrate.”

You’re going to be the only person probably who they’re connected to who’s doing that for them. When you become this category of one individual who is celebrating the achievements of people in your network, tell me that’s not going to be remembered. it is and it will, and it makes a difference.

Matt: The regular listeners of this podcast will know that I am a champion for experiences especially real estate experiences, customer experiences. We live in an economy where experiences are both more highly valued than services and also more highly rewarded. What’s so great about the examples you’ve given in many of these cases is that it’s actually not that much more work to create an amazing experience. It’s just going beyond the expected and adding a little bit of flair that creates this amazing experience.

People actually remember that. I believe that shared experience is one of the key parts of deepening relationships. If you think about how to make these relationships work, you have to deepen them through shared experiences. The best experiences come from just going a little bit past what they expected, going beyond a little bit more.

Patrick: I want to just point out another thing that realtors been doing for me that’s changed my business life. It was a great business opportunity. He saw someone in his network who he thought I should meet and he created a little one-minute video introduction. “Hey, Patrick. You should meet Chris. You guys definitely are in the same page when it comes to relationship-building. I see some wonderful possibilities for you.” That lead to an amazing business opportunity for me. It took him a minute to do a video introduction way faster than writing an email. He sent it to both of us.

He doesn’t just do that for me, that’s how he’s become one of the most successful realtors. He’s going into his connections and finding people who he should introduce to one another. He’s just setting that up. You can take it to the next level and say, “Hey, I think you should meet this person. Why don’t we all go out to coffee together or lunch?” You could try a little bit of both, see which works better for you, what you have time for.

Just becoming that connector of your connections and providing an experience whether I ended up doing business with this gentleman that he introduced me to or not, that realtor in my eyes has just raised himself to a totally higher level than the vast majority of other realtors I know because he took the time to make that introduction. If someone did that for you, how would you feel? Would you think differently of that person?

Matt: I was reading a book on leadership and on cultures, and tribes, and groups of people recently and I had the– I was actually rereading it and had an aha because it talked about how if you build one-to-one relationships or dyads is what they call them, it actually doesn’t scale. You run out of time to have so many relationships. You can only have so many one-to-one relationships. Whenever you build triads where you’re connecting the other two people and that by connecting those you could actually scale your network exponentially.

Truthfully, that was a big aha for me because I realized that I had so many dyads that I was getting overwhelmed with all the relationships I was trying to manage. One way that you can scale these networks and people still feel that you provided them all this value is when you connect two people to one another and you’re their connection point. They see you as that valuable third piece of the relationship but now they’re creating value with one another without you having to be at the center of it.

It’s funny you mentioned that because it just connected a thought in my head that I’ve been really focused on in my own work is how do we go create more triads, value for other people that doesn’t require us to do all the heavy lifting all the time. I really appreciate that.

Patrick: Just a very useful tip that I’ve been using a lot recently is if I’m connected to two people on Linkedin, I love to do that via Linkedin messaging where I can send a message to the two parties and then what’s great about that is they can just click and see what the other person is all about. It’s all in one platform, one place for them to do it at. Linkedin messaging is really useful for making those connections.

Matt: I love that. That’s like sending their resume without sending their resume.

Patrick: Exactly. It’s so simple.

Matt: I always ask for good tech tips. That’s a great one, sending Linkedin messages. While we’re on that topic, do you have any other technology tidbits like that that are just simple small hacks that are maybe making a difference in connection or ways that you’re being relationship or working with clients?

Patrick: Yes. There’s a lot of really cool ways to do videos. Right now, if I know the person’s an iPhone user, I will just send them a video straight from my phone to them. You know by the color of the message box that comes up if they’re an iPhone user. You don’t have any degradation there. If they’re not, I actually use a product called Loom which is a free technology right now that you can actually create a little video and you get a link that you can either embed in an email or you can copy and paste it into a text message and they click on that and they see that message.

This year I’m going much bigger with video because it really does build a personal connection. BombBomb is also a great paid product that offers some bells and whistles in terms of customization. I think if you’re going to be doing a lot of it I think it’s worth looking into that product too.

Matt: Realtors, Loom. That is a great recommendation. I just discovered, Loom not that long ago. You can do both screen capture and other video. That’s a really quick thing. It’s hosted there. It makes it super easy because efficiency speed in these things is really helpful. Make sure you go check out Loom. That’s a great recommendation from Patrick.

Patrick: Yes, for realtors, I think a really cool thing with Loom is you could take him into one of your listings. There’s a feature where you have your video embedded in the lower left-hand corner and you could say, “Hey, I just saw this house. I think this would be fantastic for you. You want to come take a look at it or just sit down and talk about how your thoughts might have changed in terms of what you’re looking for?” Loom is actually better than anything out there, even some of the paid products, for doing that shared screen with your video appearing at the same time.

Matt: That’s awesome. Thank you for that recommendation. I didn’t tell you I wanted to go here, but I want to ask you a few questions about speaking. I know you’ve got a lot of experience in speaking, you’ve run organizations. A lot of our listeners are starting to think about doing home-buying seminars, home-selling seminars, doing more speaking for national referrals. We’ve been talking to a lot of people and everyone’s talking about getting on more stages. If you got a couple tips you’d recommend to either novice or people that were trying to get better at speaking, what would you recommend to them?

Patrick: One recommendation above all, and that is to become a good speaker, a comfortable speaker, and somebody who enjoys speaking, which is important. If you’re going to be doing speaking, you better enjoy it. According to Gallup, speaking is number four in terms of the biggest fears that Americans have, it’s bigger than death. For a lot of people, it’s a freak-out thing. I think the reason why people freak out is it’s not a normal activity. We’re not going standing on stages. To become comfortable, what I tell a client or anyone who says, “I want to do speaking.” Join Toastmasters.

Toastmasters is a fantastic group. It’s nationwide. Most cities have multiple chapters. It’s super inexpensive. I think their annual dues are about $35 a year. Toastmaster clubs meet weekly. They have a great curriculum about speaking and if you go through it, you become much, much better. They’re really good about making sure everybody who shows up at a meeting has to speak. It’s just wonderful. Speaking, it’s like walking a dog. If you want your dog to be healthy, you’ve got to take it on walks. If you want to be a good speaker, you’ve got to take your speaking on walks. The best way to do that is through Toastmasters, hands down.

Matt: Awesome. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about because you’re an author as well, is what inspired you to write a book or what was the connection point for you in writing The Connector’s Way?

Patrick: Well, we have a company that helps businesses build better relationships, and what we have seen is tremendous demand that we can’t satisfy. I knew that I wanted to share a message with more people. I went out looking at the books that had been written on business relationship building. I said, “I could do better than this.” I started writing a nonfiction business relationship-building handbook about six years ago. It was really boring and dull. I stuck it in the drawer, put it out a couple of years later, and said, “You know what, I can share everything I believe that’s important about building relationships in a parable.”

I’m a big fan of parables. I love Bob Burg’s Go-Giver, the Patrick Lencioni books, the Og Mandino books. I said, “I’m going to put this into a story format and not make it too long,” so my book could be read in 90 minutes. On Audible it’s an hour and forty-five minutes. It doesn’t take a lot of time. I knew that if people could get through the whole thing and then come to these seven rules, the seven essential things about building business relationships, and if they put those into play, they would see a real difference in their business. I’m happy to say, every year we sell more than the year before.

The beauty of a parable is it doesn’t go out of date. The things I’m talking about, I hope, are going to be as true in five years as they are today. Dale Carnegie’s book is constantly one of the top 100 books on Amazon. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Business relationship building, I don’t care, the age of the robot is not going to happen in our lives in which we’re going to be replaced. What is going to allow us to thrive is our ability to build quality relationships and anything I can do to propagate that idea and give people the tools they need to do that. I’m super excited about.

Matt: I say that all the time, especially when people say that real estate’s going to the technologists or going tech wide. I said, “Things are progressing, things are changing, and yet humans are still humans. We still connect with one another.” The people that are amazing at building relationships or connecting on a one-to-one and one-to-many level in the future are going to be the ones that have the skillset that allows them to thrive in the new economy. Relationships won’t go away. They’ll actually become more important in the future because so many of us won’t know how to do it anymore.

Patrick: I am with you 100%. I think that that is going to separate the wheat from the chaff in the real estate industry, is those who understand that and apply it. One thing is to understand and to say it, the other thing is to do it. I think those that do it, those who really double down on their relationship-building activities, they’re going to do just fine. In fact, they’re not only going to survive, but they’re going to thrive.

Matt: I have a couple more questions around that, but first, I want to ask you, back onto this book thing, what did you learn while writing? Obviously, you started the book six years ago, and then you decided to change course completely. What were some of your lessons or your learnings along the way?

Patrick: Well, it’s helpful if you write what you know, so everything in my book is something that either happened to me, usually things that I did wrong. My relationship-building story is not a pretty one. I did a lot of things the wrong way. Draw upon, show humility by drawing upon your failures as much as your success. Then pay attention to what’s happening in the lives of the people you’re connected with. The other stories and elements of my book are things that happen to clients, to friends, because I’m all about relationships.

I changed the names because I didn’t want to mess up any of my relationships. Actually, some of mine didn’t even change that much. People identify themselves who read my book, who know I’m really talking about them and their story. Definitely write what you know and also just make time for it. For me, just committing to spending Friday afternoons and Saturday at the local college library, getting away from technology, getting away from distractions, coffee shops don’t work for me. I think that’s the romantic notion of writing a book.

I think most people need some focus and some time. Libraries, especially college libraries, are awesome places to go because students don’t go there anymore. They’re beautiful. There’s all these wonderful places to sit, they welcome the community. Just go in there and take advantage. It’s just a great, thoughtful spot.

Matt: That’s awesome. You shared with me that this book was very autobiographical or that you even said to our listeners that there’s people in your real life that are in it. Who were you writing the book for? What was the inspiration or who was the audience you wanted to target?

Patrick: Well, in many ways it’s for me of 20 years ago when I was not in the business I’m in. I was in my family’s business, the furniture business, and we hit some rocky patches in the economy and we were freaked out that we were going to go under as a business. I remember buying books and going to seminars where people were going to reveal the truth to me about what I needed to do to be successful. That’s actually how I opened The Connector’s Way. As a guy who’s going through that in this business, he’s going to some seminar thinking, “I can barely afford being here and all these materials are super expensive.”

He just gets really frustrated. Then he comes back after attending the seminar and through some fortuitous events, he meets some great relationship builders who show him a better way. That’s what I needed 20 years ago. Fortunately, it happened, not as beautifully and as easily as it does for the main character. You’ve got to telescope down a little bit. That really was my trajectory, was realizing it wasn’t about what I would buy, but the investment I’d make and the people who were going to support our business, our employees, our customers, our prospective customers.

By really focusing in on creating quality relationships with all those parties, we turned ourselves around and became successful. That’s what inspired the book.

Matt: It’s interesting. Were there mentors and were there people that you could say were the father of this idea in your life?

Patrick: Yes, absolutely. I’m a big believer in mentorship. One of the rules that the main character in The Connector’s Way learns is seek out individuals who expose you to new ways of thinking. It’s very easy to get caught in your industry and just go to people who basically say the same thing because they’re all the same types of people. Look for people outside your sphere, outside your industry, and you could get some great advice. I joined a group called Young Entrepreneurs Organization, which currently exists in a different name. It’s called the Entrepreneurs Organization, and it’s people across industries.

You come together and you share ideas and it’s a very powerful thing. There were many other types of groups out there. I talk about service organizations, I think there are also professional development opportunities where you can get exposed to people who might have more experience in your industry or who might be in a different industry, but have experiences that would be relevant to what you might be struggling with.

Matt: That was really great. Seek out individuals who expose you to new ways of thinking, outside your industry. Obviously, that sounds like something that came straight from your book. What are some of those other maxims or those ideas? Those things that you have from your book, the things we really need to make sure and take away. I love that one. I’m certain you have a few more. What are some other ones our listeners should make sure and take away?

Patrick: People ask my favorite one. There’s seven. Seven rules for building business, one relationship at a time. My favorite rule is serve others without thinking how you’re going to benefit directly. That sets the ground work for super success. There are a lot of people who are tuned into WIFM, What’s In it For Me. When you run across somebody who is genuinely interested in you and how they can help you and they follow through, that person sets themselves up in a very different way from other folks. I have seen it time and time again where people who have that mindset they don’t worry that, “Is that person going to give me something back in return?” Because they know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also grounded in science, this notion of reciprocity.

When you do good things for people, they want to reciprocate. There was a guy named Robert Cialdini who had a book called Influence and he talks about this, reciprocity notion. When you think about the world as a quid pro quo, “What am I going to get out of that relationship?” that is like a recipe for disaster. When you think, “What can I give to support somebody to make them better, whether professionally or personally?” it’s a fun way to live and things come back to you.

When you set a groundwork like that, it leads into the next really important rules. You will get a lot of people reciprocating. They’ll want to have you help them buy or sell a home, but you’ve also created a base of trust, of like, of what we just talked about. Then when you want a referral, or when you want a recommendation on LinkedIn, or when you want some help and you’ve built that base of people who you’ve supported, people want to support you back. You’re going to need to go out and ask them, but if you’re asking people who you’ve done nothing for, well, good luck with that.

It is the right thing to do, serve others without consideration for how you’re going to benefit. Things will flow automatically out of that. Now, you’ve created a little bank account with people because you have been a service-first individual. When you want to do a little withdrawal, or you want to ask for a referral, you want a LinkedIn recommendation, you want a review of your real estate company on Google and you ask them, of course, they’re going to do it for you.

Why wouldn’t they? Because you supported them.

Matt: That’s so good. What do you think, what can I give to support this person instead of-

Patrick: Yes, another rule is don’t be afraid to ask what you can give. You can do the mind-reading thing and actually in many cases, you know there are certain things that everyone would like. Everyone would like a LinkedIn recommendation. Everyone would like to have their business reviewed, but there are very particular things that if you ask– I was talking to a loan officer couple of weeks ago. This loan officer went out to his sphere and asked people, “How could I support you?” One person said, “I really don’t like going to networking events by myself. I’m not socially comfortable and I see that you are. Would you mind being my wingman?”

He said it was an awesome request because this person he had no idea that they had that anxiety and he said he’s been the wingman for this individual a few different times and their relationship has grown so much stronger because he is giving something that they really valued. He didn’t guess, he asked and then he followed through. If you’re going to ask, you have to be willing to then do what it is that they want you to do, and oftentimes what the request is might surprise you.

Matt: -That’s excellent. Don’t be afraid to ask what you can give. There’re some things that are automatic, but many times they’ll come up with something we didn’t even think of.

Patrick: Exactly.

Matt: How would you phrase that? What would be the conversation here? What would you actually say? You’re talking to somebody maybe you had some amount of rapport with them. How would you ask them what you could give them?

Patrick: Well, I think you can ask them in a way that makes them feel it’s like, “You are so successful as an insurance agent and as a loan–,” whoever it is. This might be a conversation you’ll have with a referral partner or might be with a home buyer or seller to say, “I want to provide value to you. I’m not sure when it is. How could I help you?” You can build them up by saying, “You’re kind of Flamex because it seems like they’re firing on all cylinders but you want to add value. What is it that you can do?” That’s a great ask because you’re building them up, you’re pumping up their ego.

It’s also getting them to think maybe, “Wow, this person’s not just giving me. They’re trying to figure out what is it that they can do for me.” A lot of times people don’t have an answer for you and just say, “Look, if you can’t think of it right now, feel free to just mull over that and give me a call or send me an email or text with what it is if you need some time to think about it.” Because people are not being asked that question very much. You will take some people by surprise when you ask that and that’s fine. Then just give them the permission to mull on in a little bit.

Matt: Awesome. This has been amazing. Well, Patrick, one final question. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that I should have asked you? What else we need to know? You really have given so much value. Thank you.

Patrick: Well, that’s great. I love that question. That is a fantastic question that people should be asking people when they’re helping them with a buy or sell transaction. I love that. You just gave your audience a gold nugget there with that question.

Matt: Anything final we should hear from you or is there maybe some places that we, our audience could connect with you online that they should know about?

Patrick: Well, if they go to theconnectorsway.com that’s the website for the book. They can get the seven rules for building business one relationship at a time from that website. Just give me their email. It’s a downloadable beautiful PDF. It’s like a document they can print out and put on their wall. It’s really, really nice. Check that out. Up until mid-March, a Kindle version of my book is available for free on Amazon.

It’s on Amazon Prime read. After that, you can get the audible version, or the print version, or buy the Kindle version right there on Amazon.

Matt: Excellent. Awesome. Any social media places like LinkedIn, Twitter?

Patrick: Yes, I’m on all those. You’ll find Patrick Galvin on all those channels. If someone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, I encourage them do it, but I will not connect with you unless I get a personal note. Fair warning here.

Matt: You guys can follow me on Instagram @templeton.m and also on Facebook. Thank you so much, Patrick. This was amazing. I really appreciated your time today. We hope to connect with you again soon.

Patrick: Look forward to it, Matt. Thank you. Good luck with all you’re doing.