Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. Here with us today, Ronen Olshansky. Did I get that?
Ronen Olshansky: You got it, Brad. Nailed it.
Brad Johnson: There weren’t a lot of Olshanskys rolling around small town Minneapolis, Kansas. So, I wanted to make sure I got it right for you, man.
Ronen Olshansky: No worries. There’s a couple hundred of us in the US. Not that many.
Brad Johnson: There you go. Where was the origin? Was it Brazil? Where originally?
Ronen Olshansky: It’s Eastern European.
Brad Johnson: Eastern European. Okay. Well, I knew you had a business in Brazil, right?
Ronen Olshansky: Oh, yeah. I had a year of adventure in Brazil in my twenties.
Brad Johnson: You need to write a book if you haven’t already. You’ve done a lot based on…
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah, I’m working on it.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Cool. Well, let’s get into it because I know it’s Friday. We’re right here before Memorial Day as we record this. Triad member, Chris, introduced us and what was really cool, one of the books like it’s really well-known in business, one of the I think top business books on many lists, Never Eat Alone by your business partner Keith Ferrazzi. I was talking to Chris, who’s a Triad member. He is like, “Hey, what do you know about this Beyond Connections program?” I was like, “I guess I’m not familiar. Help me understand.” He is like, “Well, basically, if you took the book, Never Eat Alone, and then had a program that kind of infused it into the real world and into your business, that’s basically what it is.”
And so, that’s how we got connected. And then as I got to learn more about really how you were helping create really intentional connections and experiences, that also obviously helped the business side, I was like, “Okay. This is cool. Let’s dive in and let’s have a conversation around it.” So, let’s maybe start there. How did that come to be? How did it go from here’s a book, Never Eat Alone, got into partnership with Keith, and now we have this program and we train people on how to do this?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. Brad, the book changed a lot of people’s lives. It had a lot of great stuff in it. But if you think about it, a book can only get you so far. And so, when Keith and I were sitting down thinking about the opportunity here to help people be better at relationship building, be more strategic about networking, we thought that we need this more as a society than ever. The business world people need it. We’re kind of rusty coming out of the pandemic or going back to the office. But for something like relationship development and networking, this is an action sport. You need to practice these tools. You need to practice them with people who are supportive of you, as Keith likes to say, in a co-elevating community where you’re lifting each other up.
And so, the thought was the way to really shift the way people build relationships and connect to other people is to build a practice-based immersive sort of bootcamp program from the ideas in the book.
Brad Johnson: And how do you go about starting to do that? I love the kind of mutual benefit, lifting everybody up, because I think a lot of people hear networking and they’re like, “Oh, that’s where the person runs around, hands out 50 business cards, and just almost like berates me into a meeting.” So, what’s the different approach that you guys take?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. I mean, look, the word has a terrible connotation, right? So, whether you say networking or cultivating my network or relationship development, what we train is a different approach. Rather than transactional, it’s relational. Rather than, “What can I get from this person?” It’s, “How can I invest in a relationship in the long term such that we build towards being one another’s ambassadors co-elevating with one another?” And that takes time. But it’s a more authentic approach to networking that, by the way, is a lot more fun and feels better and is not just more effective in terms of the results.
Brad Johnson: If you were going to walk me through, pretend I’m in the Beyond Connections, and I know we only have an hour here today and there’s a lot more in the program than that. But let’s say, “Hey, I’m interested in I want to expand my network. I want to create some mutually beneficial relationships.” And obviously our network, our audience is financial advisors, so all of them are like, “Wow, if I could connect with others in my local market, there’s a lot of benefit to that.” So, what would be the first steps you would walk me through in getting that off the ground?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. And by the way, what’s cool here is that I also spent a few years in that world as a financial advisor at a bulge bracket bank. I worked at a hedge fund, so I know and I love the business. It’s a wonderful business. And like many other businesses, your success comes down to the depth and the quality of the relationships, right? You know that old credo, people do business with people they like, especially as a trusted advisor. So, if you were to go through the program, it’s an eight-week program and it is, you know, you’re watching videos, you’re interacting in large format workshops, and either Keith or I or one of the other coaches is hosting. You got smaller mastermind groups.
But effectively the way we tackle it is the first two weeks are mindset, right? And as you know, Brad, with anything, success is driven by the right mindset and mindsets take 30 to 60 days to really take root. So, we set this mindset around a relational approach, around the importance of generosity, vulnerability, leading with generosity, opening up the vulnerability, and being authentic about what you’re looking to get out of someone. That mindset is where we start with. We then go into redesigning how you tell your story in the world, right? So many people, you know, there’s that dreaded question, right? “Brad, what do you do?” They launch into their whole professional career and it’s like, give someone a pillow and put them to sleep here, right?
We kind of work together on redesigning the story to draw people in. And then in the middle of the program, we really attack what I think is the core here, which is the system. We help you design a system that works for your personality type. Whether you lean extrovert or introvert, whether you like technology or not. We build a system and habits so that you can be consistent and keep doing this stuff. Because what we find is a lot of where people fall down is they’re like, “Hey, I went to an event. I met someone, I connected with them. They liked me. I liked them. I said, ‘I would send them an article.’ I sent them the article, and then I faded.”
Relationships have a tendency to decay. And so, what I like to say is you don’t want to be a dot in someone’s perception, coming in hot and then disappearing. You want to be a line, sort of an upward-sloping line with regular touchpoints, regular acts of generosity. And they could be small. It could be just like, “Hey, I’m thinking about you, Brad. That was an awesome meeting we had at that meditation retreat we went on.” Or you’re sharing a resource or you make an introduction. But that continuity where you’re top of mind regularly is what builds over the long run real intimacy.
Brad Johnson: Let’s go on that note because I think what’s interesting, I grew up in the world of cold calling. Like, I remember day one, read this brochure. Day two, make a hundred dials, right? My gut tells me if you were in the finance world, probably your journey wasn’t too different. Maybe it was knocking on doors, maybe it was calling every relative you know. But I feel like starting out, it’s very much the, hey, grind it out mentality and a lot of service-based businesses. So, let’s say you and I are talking and you’re like, “Hey, I’m getting ready to go to London,” which is actually where you’re getting ready to go. And I’m like, “Oh, there’s this great spot in London. I’ve been over there. You’ve got to check out this little pub. It’s right around the corner from your hotel.”
So, there’s a natural connection there just based on this thing you’re getting ready to do. Back to that throughline that you kind of laid out, how do we keep that going? How do we keep the energy alive where we’re continuing to add value in a way you actually want it versus like, “Oh yeah, by the way, when you get back, come in for a meeting. I’d love to review your retirement portfolio”? Like, walk me through that. What’s that look like?
Ronen Olshansky: Great question, Brad. And such a good question. And actually, my mind is working here. I’d include that as an example in one of the sessions in the program because that’s such a good example. So, I’ll tell you how I would think about that. So, you make that offer. You make that suggestion of a pub in London. It’s a small little act of generosity, right? But how many of us a few weeks later would ping that person and say, “Hey, Ronen, just wondering if you checked out that pub and if so, if you liked it? By the way, no harm, no foul if you didn’t. Let me know if you did find anything cool. I’d love to recommend it to my other folks traveling to London.”
How many of us who do that? We wouldn’t, right? Now, that necessarily doesn’t fall into the category of an act of generosity, but it’s a connection. It shows you’re thinking about the person. It gets the dialogue going. It’s so easy to do, right? It closes the loop. Now, let’s say my response is, “You know, Brad, I didn’t have that much time to go out at night because I was actually at a conference for AI and financial services and most of my time was spent networking, having coffee meetings before I’m at the conference.” Now, you just picked up another critical piece of information about what I was doing. You log that in your system, right? You have to be systematic. You have to capture that data. Not going to remember these things.
Now, you’ve got something that a month from now you can double-click on. And maybe now you’re looking around, you’re looking for something about AI and financial services, and you say, “Hey, Ro, I just found this. I thought it’d be interesting to you. I remember you told me that you went to that conference,” right? Now, you’re top of mind a month from now. It’s that type of strategy. It’s that type of strategy.
Brad Johnson: And I just picked up I can call you Ro from now on for the rest of the interview, which makes it a lot easier. So, from now on it’s Ro. We’re just going to go with that.
Ronen Olshansky: You know, path of least resistance. I like to make it easy for you.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, this is interesting. First thing that I picked up there, what I call that, at least in sales, it’s like closing the loop. There was an open loop, “Hey, go check out this pub.” Following up, checking in, and saying, “Hey, by the way, what’d you think? Did you get a chance to check it out?” I mean, just that simple idea by itself is a huge opportunity because I think oftentimes we open loops, but then we don’t close them or follow up.
Ronen Olshansky: A hundred percent. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: So, we got that going. And then you’re kind of like continuing to be like an active listener in the conversation. You’re looking for these little breadcrumbs. And now, “Hey. Oh, you mentioned, okay, finance and AI. You went to this conference.” Now, I see an article. I texted to you, “Hey, I know you were geeking out on financial advisors and AI. Let me know what you think about this. I thought it was pretty intriguing.” So, we’re continuing to add value and show interest. It’s kind of like How to Win Friends and Influence People. Just show interest in the other person, right? What other thoughts do you have or other strategies around that?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. And, look, it’s more than just showing interest, right? It’s trying to be of service. That’s the mindset. And, I mean, Keith is brilliant at this. I’ve observed him. I’ve watched him. He’s obviously written about it. It’s being really, really curious about what makes this person tick, what are their struggles, what are their dreams, what are they trying to accomplish, and trying to figure out how you can be of service. That mindset, again, I go back to mindset of leading with generosity and being systematic about it, is what you want to cultivate. That is the basis for how you approach your relationships.
And, look, generosity is a two-way street, of course. We’re not martyrs in this world. We have our own needs to look after. So, at some point, that generosity does come back and is reciprocated. But in general, as you know, you want to feed that relationship and lead with generosity, at least in the beginning.
Brad Johnson: Let’s go to the archiving of information. So, just in our hypothetical, going to London, interested in checking out a pub, into finance and AI. So, where do you recommend that information is captured? Is it iPhone Notes? Is there a CRM? Like, how do you get it from brain to make sure I don’t forget this a month from now?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. Awesome question. So, look, before I dive into that, Let me go back to sort of the structure of the program, right? When people come to us, the things they’re most often looking for, and we’ve now had thousands of applications. We’ve trained 300 people from 30-plus countries around the world, which by the way, that’s also an interesting conversation, right? Like, this stuff applies to people who live in Singapore, Poland, the US, different industries, which by the way, made me nervous when we first designed it. When I saw the applications coming in, I’m like, “How are we going to teach such different personas stuff that works? And there is commonality in the system that applies pretty broadly.
But the things people are looking for are, “I need a system. I need to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it. I need an organizing structure.” The second thing is, “I need mindsets and strategies. I need to know why I am focusing on that person, not this person. Or how many people should I focus on? I need to improve the quality of my network.” Almost everyone kind of wants a bigger, more powerful network. And then it’s, “I want to be comfortable in my interactions in person and online.” But it’s that system that is the kind of heart of it that most of us can improve on. And so, we introduce core technology tools.
And my point to everyone here is you don’t have to get fancy, right? You need to have something that you stick to and use. And the core of it are two things, two piece, two tools. One is a second brain and the other is a dashboard, right? So, I’ll take them one at a time. So, you mentioned what do you do with the data when it’s in your head. You’ve got to have a place where you can get that information out of your head quickly into a second brain. Now, what I use personally is I use the text messaging app on my iPhone. I’ve pinned myself to the top. You can do that. I figured that out. You know you can pin yourself?
Brad Johnson: Oh, yeah.
Ronen Olshansky: So, I can get to it in two clicks, and then I will either tap out a note to myself. I can record an audio note. I can attach an image. So, if I’m at an event and I’m meeting some great people, I’m not going to wait until after the event. If I met two people and I’ve gotten a lot of data, I’ll walk out of the room, I’ll take that, dump it into my second brain. Do a little bit of meditation, that’s really important. Center myself. Get that cortisol down so I can connect with people. And that text thread to myself will just kind of continue on and then I’ll come back at some point and I have it scheduled in my calendar. It’s called the network activation session, and I will process all of those things and send out the things I need to send out and update data in my database. So, that’s the second brain. You got to have something. I don’t care what it is. It could be a Notepad app. It could be Evernote. It could be some complex, fancy tool. I use text.
Brad Johnson: So, real quick before we get to the dashboard. So, I mean, you’re going, you’re meeting all these people. Let’s say you meet 10 different people. You’re trying to remember names, faces. Which one did I recommend that book to? Which one did I say, “Hey, I’ll send that to you in the mail”? Are you like snapping a selfie with them? Like, “Hey, I want to make sure I don’t…” Because there is a point of, number one, making sure you don’t forget and then, number two, where it gets like crossed the line and starts to get a little awkward or whatever if you’re running around taking selfies with everybody. So, what’s the balance between those two?
Ronen Olshansky: You got to do what feels natural and authentic to you. I don’t use the selfie approach that much. You don’t really need to know what their face is because when you go and you look them up on LinkedIn, you’ll see the association to the face. I have a very good facial recognition memory. That’s the way my memory works. But what’s more important is to know your working memory capacity and be able to dump into the second brain when you need it. So, you capture more rather than less. I’ll sometimes leave a really detailed audio note. “Wife’s name is Brenda. Kids are going to go to college in a few years. He’s really excited, but he’s worried about their path in life.” Like, I will over-capture information. So, that’s the key is all of those beautiful, the tapestry of details, as you know, the personal side, family passions, interests, you got to capture.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, you capture that. It could be a voice memo. It could be hacking out a quick text to yourself. Let’s go to the processing side because then I want to get onto the dashboard stuff. So, okay, I met these five people. Here’s the details. What does that processing look like?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. By the way, before we go to the processing, it’s not just at an event, right? After a meeting, and I use what’s known as a 25, 50-minute calendar, which I think is an awesome productivity app for your listeners. I’ve used it with coaches, CEOs I coach. So, instead of an hour meeting, I have a 50-minute meeting. There’s a 10-minute window. If I don’t have time to put that directly into my database, I’ll tap out. I’ll record that note. I’ll prepare for my next meeting. So, it’s also between meetings you potentially use that second brain.
Brad Johnson: I love that. And I’m going to double down on everybody should do that because when you’re running right up to the minute, it’s like a doctor’s office. You’re like three appointments in and you’re running late already.
Ronen Olshansky: A, you’re not going to run late. B, your cortisol levels go up throughout the day. So, if you think about it, if you’ve had back-to-back meetings, by 2 in the afternoon, I mean, you’re not the same person. So, just being able to breathe a little bit. By the way, it cuts meeting time by 17%. Who doesn’t want less meetings? By the way, Brad, none of the people you’re meeting with will complain and be like, “Hey, that’s a 50-minute meeting, not an hour.” They will thank you for the gift of time back, right?
Brad Johnson: So, another hack on that concept before we get off of it, a lot of these, because now we’re all on Zoom or Teams or whatever, a lot of them actually have plugins where you can have a little timer to where it’ll actually count down. And so, now both of you’re aware, like, “Oh, we’ve got five minutes left. Let’s get to the stuff that matters.” So, just that little visual cue I found to be really helpful as well.
Ronen Olshansky: That’s awesome. I didn’t know that existed. That’s super helpful.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, super helpful. Brooke uses it all the time to keep me on track. I don’t know why. Cool. Okay. So, keep rolling. So, we’re going through this processing in between meetings or whatever. And then where do we go from there?
Ronen Olshansky: So, processing is what we think of as activating our network. So, we have this sort of networking is not just growing your network and meeting people. It’s how you engage with them. It’s how you activate your network. Activating means reaching out, being top of mind, leading with generosity. People have different approaches to this, right? My preferred approach and the way I coach it is batch these things. Put a 45-minute block in your calendar, typically on a Thursday or Friday afternoon. Not just one, depending on how much time you want to devote to your network. It could be two sessions, maybe three sessions. But just like they say it with email, you shouldn’t be answering it throughout the day, right? Because then you’re distracted and you’re multitasking. You’re context-switching. It’s the same concept.
Don’t just say, “Oh, I got to send that thing out.” Block the time in your calendar. Protect that time. That’s the way I do it. And then there’s a routine I have when I sit down. I go to my second brain, bottom to top, and I go through and I activate all those things. And we haven’t gotten to the dashboard yet, but I look at my dashboard. Who am I past due to reach out to? I’ll spend a little bit of time in social media. I’ll time-box that so it’s not a rabbit hole, but a little bit of commenting on people’s posts. So, I’m really structured in that time. Now, you have to have structure, however you do it. That’s the important thing.
Now, some people take a different approach. I know someone, one of the coaches in our program, he goes and walks his dog for an hour a day and that’s when he sends out notes, sends things out on his phone. That’s the way he likes to do it. Some people have time to respond to emails, and they tack the network activation time on the back of that. I just want you to have some degree of structure. Because if you don’t have structure and your audience, especially if they’re financial services, if they’re wealth managers or financial advisors, they probably understand the value of structure. You don’t leave it up to chance. You don’t leave it up to serendipity. You’re intentional. You’re structured about it. The best people in the world, I mean, you know this, they make it look easy. They make it look magical, but behind the scenes, they’re highly intentional.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, for sure. Okay. So, let’s go to dashboard. And is there a specific software or is it just, here’s what needs to be in front of you on the daily, weekly? What are your thoughts around a dashboard system?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. So, when you go through the program, we give you a few options, right? One option is we’ve got a Google sheet that I’ve used for a decade and I’ve refined. That was my dashboard. You can use that in the program. And I’ll come back to why a dashboard is so… Actually, let me start with why a dashboard’s so important. What role does it play? A dashboard does two things. That’s it, just two things. It helps you focus on a smaller subset of people, and that’s critical, Brad, because the mistake a lot of people make is they say, “You know, I know thousands of people,” and it’s not your fault. It’s called filter failure. In a world where data’s coming at you from everywhere, it’s hard to filter out what’s important from what’s not, the signal from the noise.
And so, we spread ourselves too thin and we think we can develop our network of hundreds of people at any one point in time. The reality is, if you think about it, if you need to be aligned in those people’s perceptions, you need to be regularly pinging them. Can you do that with 200 people? Can you do that with 300 people? You can’t. So, in the program, we run through the math. We show you. It would take hours of sitting down and pinging people if you were trying to focus on that many people. So, dashboard does one thing, first and foremost, is it’s a forcing function for getting you to focus on, for me, I think the sweet spot is 30 to 50 of the right people that you need to be focused on. We’ll put aside the question of why those people. But it’s that focus that’s critical. So, that’s number one.
Number two is it tracks when the last touch point was so, again, you can be on that cadence. And the cadence of how often you need to ping someone is very simply a function of how strong the relationship is. That’s it. This was something that Keith wrote in every loan. I thought it was brilliant in its simplicity, right? A lot of us like to over-bucket things. This person’s the friend. This person’s a business associate. I’m not a big fan of buckets. You have to maintain them. The only real category is, is this a RQ1, RQ2, or RQ5? Relationship quality, RQ. And so, from weakest to strongest. So, for someone you just met, who’s an RQ1, you don’t want to wait three months before you ping them, right? You want to be pinging them two to three weeks.
But once they’re an RQ4 and you’re on text terms and it’s a little bit more personal and now you’ve helped one another out and you’ve been there for one another, you can let a month or two go by.
Brad Johnson: Alright. Can we break that down real quick? Because I think that’s super interesting.
Ronen Olshansky: But before we do, let me just summarize. That’s what a dashboard is. And just to close the loop on that, Brad, what I tell people is like, “I don’t care what you use. You could use a stone tablet, you could use a piece of paper. As long as you’re focusing on people and you know when you ping them, that’s all that’s important.” That said, on the other side of the spectrum, there is a tool that we recommend in the program. I don’t get any financial benefit from it. I don’t mind plugging them because we looked out in the market for the best and what they’re called PRM tools. So, you’re familiar with CRM, customer relationship management?
Brad Johnson: Yes.
Ronen Olshansky: CRM is it’s a customer. You’re moving them down the pipeline into a sale. PRM is a personal relationship management system. It’s got some similarities, but it’s designed for you to manage your personal network and they’re very powerful. They bring in data from LinkedIn and from MyMessage and from Facebook and from emails so you know the touch points. And the one we love is one called Dex. Great little company out of San Francisco. I love the founder. They’re a part of our community. We evaluated four or five of them and that’s the one we use. So, if you want to invest…
Brad Johnson: D-E-X?
Ronen Olshansky: Dex, yeah, it’s a play on Rolodex. If you remember, people of our age, we remember. The younger folks won’t remember like the physical Rolodex. But a lot of people, about a third of the people go through the program, want to level up to a tool, and so we help them set up Dex for their own network. Just wanted to wrap that up.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, no, that’s perfect. Thanks for sharing that. So, to rehash kind of the why behind the dashboard, who and how often is really what we’re dealing with there. So, the 30 to 50, I love that kind of narrowing the scope so we can be more intentional. Now, let’s go to the… So, you call it RQ, relationship quality. So, we got RQ1, which is, “Hey, I just met this random person at a random conference.” That would be like a one. Five would be this is one of my tightest friends, like I share everything with them.
Ronen Olshansky: Inner circle, we are co-elevating. They are an ambassador for me in the world. I’m an ambassador for them in the world. If a year passes and we don’t talk to each other, we’ll pick up where we left off.
Brad Johnson: Love it. Okay. So, let’s kind of go through this. So, R1, R2, R3, R4, R5. Like, if I was to say here’s the stair steps like, okay, just met this person warming up every two to three weeks so they’re not like, “Who’s the stranger that I forgot who they were?” but what’s like the progression through that? And on this dashboard, is it like in columns? Like, here’s my R1s, quicker frequency. Here’s my R2s, little more established, don’t have to ping them as much. How does that kind of play out? And I know this is probably a multi-hour conversation, but if you were to give it to me quickly, like, how’s that play out?
Ronen Olshansky: I love it. We’re getting our hands dirty here. Okay. So, breaks down like this, an RQ1, you either met them out of the conference or maybe someone introduced you to them, but you haven’t had a scheduled intentional meeting with them, right? The point at which you say, “Hey, let’s get on a Zoom,” and you have that Zoom, now, they’re an RQ2. So, now the distinction is you know a little bit about their agenda. They know a little bit about your agenda. That’s an RQ2. You’ve had one intentional meeting with them. Now, you’re starting to exchange some generosity in one direction. Maybe it’s coming back to you, but an RQ3 is when you’ve now had multiple meetings and you’ve helped them in some way.
Multiple meetings, you’ve helped them in some way. You’ve got more of a robust picture of their lives. But you haven’t really gotten into the personal stuff, right? RQ4 is when you’ve started to really get into the personal stuff. Maybe you’ve been through some little mini-battles together. You missed that bus at the event that was supposed to take you to dinner. Hung out with them. You’re on text terms. That’s really important. I like to get into the text.
Brad Johnson: So, direct access would be a requirement of RQ4, like I can ping them on demand, almost.
Ronen Olshansky: You can ping them and you wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about that, right? And so, you can sit in RQ4 for an extended period of time. That’s a great place to be. RQ5, again, is sort of that highest level of co-elevation. And then within RQ5, and we’re getting a little more deep here, but there’s this concept of the inner circle that’s, I think, very critical that a lot of people miss. Your board of advisors, so to speak, people who you have refrigerator rights with. If you went to their home, you wouldn’t think twice opening up the fridge and vice versa. And so, you don’t need dozens of these lifeline relationships, but it’s critical that you have a handful to a half a dozen.
There’s great research on this. Even if you have the strongest possible relationship with your spouse, there are some interesting perspectives here that you still really benefit from two, three, four of these really close lifeline relationships.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s interesting. Arthur Brooks has this concept of real friends and deal friends.
Ronen Olshansky: I love Arthur Brooks, by the way.
Brad Johnson: When those cross over, that’s even more magical, where you’re kind of doing deals with them, but you can also do life with them. It’s a little bit of the concept of this whole show, Do Business Do Life, like the integration of that versus the separation. Anything else on just the kind of nobody wants to be put in a bucket, but at the same time, it’s helpful. It’s more, to me, it’s the cadence of how can I add more value to how you frame this to these individuals and where are they kind of falling to where cadence-wise I need to kind of pour into these a little more frequently than others. Any other just thoughts before we get off of that topic?
Ronen Olshansky: Well, let me, first, let me just say, I love that you mentioned Arthur Brooks. I’m a huge fan of all of his work. I think he’s dug into the idea of happiness with more rigor than almost anyone else. And, look, the ethos of Do Business Do Life is beautiful and it shouldn’t be something that is an optional. Like, that should be something that we all aspire to because that’s when life is wonderful when you’re able to do business with people who you actually personally connect with. To me, that’s the default. It has to be the default. That’s why I love the conferences you host. Hopefully, I’ll get an invitation at some point. Looking forward to it. It looks like a blast, but I love that you do that.
Look, without getting into the real kind of boring details, the dashboard flashes red versus green. You’ve got a row where a person sits and you’ve got a drop-down, there’s an RQ1 or an RQ3, an RQ5, and you know when the last touchpoint was. And so, you can scan it and kind of see who you’re in the red with versus in the green with. Now, if you invest in a tool like Dex, there’s a lot more different ways to slice it and dice it, which to your point, are valuable. For example, I’m hosting a dinner in San Francisco. Great. Let me look at the map of who I know in Dex in San Francisco. Also, an RQ1 or a 2, right? Maybe I’ll invite a couple of RQ4s because it’s always good to have a few close associates in the dinner but I want mostly people who I’ve just now met and who I’m really cultivating a new relationship with.
Brad Johnson: So, is that one of the features in Dex is like, hey, anywhere I travel in the country, drop a pin, and here’s my people right in that vicinity?
Ronen Olshansky: It’s one of the cool I think killer features, yeah.
Brad Johnson: I love that.
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. So, I’m going to London now and I was able to just put in London. It shows you a map and you can just see everyone in the map. Really, really helpful.
Brad Johnson: That’s cool. Yeah. That’s wild. I literally just asked Brooke for that exact same thing on past podcast guests because there’s a lot. I’m going to Dallas with my son here in July, and I’m like, “I’ve got three or four connections.” I’m like I don’t want to forget anyone and not do a dinner and like, “Oh, shoot. I completely missed that opportunity.” So, I think Dex is going to have another customer after this podcast.
Ronen Olshansky: Awesome.
Brad Johnson: Really cool. Okay, let’s keep rolling. You were kind of laying out the eight-week program. And I love this concept. Did you ever get a chance to meet a guy named John Ruhlin, by chance? He wrote a book called Giftology.
Ronen Olshansky: No. Sounds interesting though. Yeah, tell me.
Brad Johnson: He would’ve been an R5 guy, for me. And sadly, he passed away just about a year ago. But he was one of the most intentional relationship guys I’ve ever met. And he had this concept of when you gift, don’t gift consumables. Like, hey, I love a great bottle of wine, but the moment you drink it, it’s gone. And you’re like, “Wait, who gave me that bottle?” He talks about gifting artifacts, things that like your kids would fight over if something happened to you. And like high-end cutlery was one of his go-tos because you’re in the kitchen, you’re having these family moments and you’re like, “Oh, that John guy’s a really good dude,” right? Even today, I think of him because he gifted me a nice set when we first met.
But that concept and then the concept of loving on the inner circle, you know, like I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs like they get showered with gifts just because they’re a person of importance, but the people that get forgotten or their significant others or their kids, and if you can show the love to them, then that makes an impact on me. So, what are your thoughts around, back to the connection piece, artifacts, and loving on the inner circle? Any takes or different ideas on that concept?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. So, you can’t imagine how timely this is because last night I went to a wedding, and by the way, I want to carve out a few minutes to talk about weddings and whether you should go to weddings or not. I think it’s something we always have. I went to a wedding and this was an old dear friend from my London days, one of my RQ5s, but I haven’t seen him in a decade plus. And lo and behold, another dear friend from London, his wife came up to me. I kid you not, this happened less than 12 hours ago. And she said to me, “You know, I still use those knives that you got me.”
Brad Johnson: Are you serious?
Ronen Olshansky: Those Global Knives. You know Global? I love Global Knives. I used to be obsessed with them. She says, “I still use them.” And I said, “Do you think about me when you use them?” She says, “I do.” And so, John is your late friend?
Brad Johnson: Yeah, John.
Ronen Olshansky: I didn’t realize this. Based on that, I mean, I’m high-end cutlery. I’m going to focus a little bit more on that. I have a belt. it’s a… Boy, I forget. It’s a high-end English brand that a friend got me decades ago. It’s a $300 belt. And every time I put it on, I think of her. It’s crazy. Not consciously. So, now let’s go to artifacts. A hundred percent, you’re gifting an emotion. You’re gifting an emotion. So, we had someone come through the program and I want to bring this guy back in. We’ll call him Tommy for the time being but he’s an extraordinary guy. And he has a business around helping people close big deals. That’s what you hire him for.
And he will do some crazy stuff like when an amateur league sports team goes out of business, he’ll go in the auctions and buy a bunch of lockers from their locker room and he will deliver to the person’s office if he knows that they love that sports team. One of the lockers. Just crazy stuff. I mean, I even asked him, “Is there a limit to how big something is that you can send some?” “No.” There was one prospect he was working on that wanted to go whale hunting as he called it. He sort of went to Costco, bought a big tub of mayonnaise, replaced the label with tartar sauce with the guy’s logo on it, sent him that and a harpoon and said, “This is what you need when you go whale hunting.”
Brad Johnson: That’s funny.
Ronen Olshansky: Isn’t that amazing?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Ronen Olshansky: Speak it. So, there is an art to that. Not all of us can go to that level, but I think it’s something we should aspire to. What you said about loving on family, that is incredibly important. Especially, a lot of us want to build connections with people above our social standing or above our professional, you know, punch above our weight. But they’re all humans. They all have kids. And so, what Tommy would do is he would buy children’s books, get them signed by the author. And then, I mean, he even went to the level of like, he had some, I remember he was telling me like gymnastics for teenage girls. If he knew that someone had a teenage girl, he would give her that signed copy and say, “Your daughter might appreciate this.” But like he was systematic about it. So, if we can sort of approximate that in our gift-giving, I think it’s very powerful.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. One other thing before we get off this topic, because I feel like we’re both pretty passionate about it, another one of John’s take is if you give somebody something with your logo, like your company logo on it, which by the way happens all the time in finance. I’m sure you experienced that when you were in finance. It’s like every golf shirt had some company’s logo on it. He’s like, “That’s called a marketing item, not a gift.” So, his take was, “If you want it to be a gift for them, don’t put your stuff on their gift.”
Ronen Olshansky: Spot on.
Brad Johnson: Do you have any different takes on that one or any different approaches?
Ronen Olshansky: Look, Brad, I don’t know about you. I don’t like to wear any logo or any brand for that exact reason that John very, very beautifully articulated. I don’t want to advertise someone’s brand. So, if you notice, I will never wear anything that has any logo on it whatsoever. Right?
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Ronen Olshansky: So, I think that’s…
Brad Johnson: Well, you’re dressed like a European because I can say when I went and spent time over in Stockholm, I remember walking around and I think my dad had like something with an NFL logo on it, and I’m like, “That is the only logoed piece of clothing I’ve seen for four straight hours.” Because most Europeans, there’s no branding on the clothes. Is that part of? Is that a throwback to being a European?
Ronen Olshansky: That’s a really good piece of insight. I’m going to be in London soon, so I’ll think about that. You’re probably right. Because the US leads the way in so many things and consumerism in the 60s and brands. I mean, we probably created the branded piece of clothing. Yeah, you’re probably right about that. But you know, also, a lot of times Americans will travel and we like announce our Americanism.
Brad Johnson: Yes. Oh, yeah.
Ronen Olshansky: I remember when I lived there decades ago in London, I was like I didn’t want to do that. Not that I’m not proud to be an American, but like I don’t want to announce it.
Brad Johnson: My favorite thing is when somebody goes to a foreign country and they’re like, “You don’t have Bud Light on tap?” Like, that’s like they should. I’m like, “Yeah, we’re not in America. What do you expect?”
Ronen Olshansky: And they’re like, “We invented Pilsner beer. Why don’t you try it?”
Brad Johnson: I love that. They’re like, “No, we have real pilsner beer. Exactly how it was created.” That’s great. Okay. Any other thoughts on just Beyond Connections? I know this is an eight-week course. We can’t cram it all in one conversation, but any other things we haven’t tapped into yet in this conversation that you think could be helpful for advisors out there?
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. I mean, look, Brad, I want to have the conversation you think is most interesting and helpful. I don’t want to make this all about the program. I do believe in it. I see the outcomes and they’re extraordinary. And the community we’re building is pretty awesome. So, we’ll leave something in the show notes about the program. Basically, you just book a call with someone on our enrollment team. They’re awesome. They get to know you a bit. And frankly, they tell you if it’s a good fit for you, if it could impact your life. If it’s not, we don’t want to put you into it and have you make the investment. But it’s only year one of this. We’ve done this 300 times with different people from around the world.
By the way, it’s a pretty awesome community. It tends to be sort of middle, second, half a career. Although there’s an interesting conversation about young people and I want to actually focus more on young people and people out of college because I wish I had some of these tools when I was young. But that’s a separate topic. But, look, would love to grow this program. I think it’s super effective. I believe in it. Keith really has fallen in love with it, like initially. Because you know Keith, he’s got so much stuff in his life. But now he’s super psyched about it at the end of every cohort. And Chris, by the way, who introduced us absolutely loved this. We all gather in LA at Keith’s home for a graduation dinner and graduation weekend.
So, yeah, I think it’s powerful. I mean, look, I’ll say one more thing. I hear this a lot from people that I work with, that I coach. It’s like AI, I don’t know what it’s going to do to my job, right? It’s going to disrupt a lot. It’s going to change a lot of our jobs. Look, what can you do in the face of the AI onslaught? You can get really, really, really freaking good at the art of relationship building, like connecting with people, building trust, being authentic, building bonds. That’s what you can get great at. And so, if you’re looking to beat someone out for a promotion, if you’re looking to close a sale versus a competitor, getting really freaking good at relationship skills, I think is a great investment.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. We’ve got a couple of things inside of Triad that just echo that. A lot of alignment here. It’s play long-term games with long-term people. And it’s almost looking at the blessing of like, well, in finance, it’s the compounding of interest. I think the way I look at that it is your network is your net worth, but not monetarily. It’s like that relationship equity is far more valuable than any like monetary transactions, and I’ve just found it to be so true. Like, if you show up for other people, they know you care, they know you’re trying to help and serve them. It’s the old Zig Ziglar, like, you’re going to get what you want if you help enough other people get what they want. It just plays out over and over, and the older I get, the more I see it.
Ronen Olshansky: Just do it. Stick to it for six months a year. And by the way, since we’re both finance guys at heart, you nailed it, right? We think about it as social capital. You’re building social capital in the world, in this community. You’re not thinking about how you’re going to accrue dividends back out from it, but you’re building that social capital. And as far as an investment, I’ll tell you the mistake oftentimes people make is they invest in their network when they need it. It’s like, “Oh, I just lost my job. Oh, now I need to rebuild my network.” Well, guess what? It’s kind of a little too late at that point, right? You need to invest in this asset ahead of when you think you might need it because it is a compounding investment. So, do it sooner rather than later I would say, especially if you think you might be nearing a transition point or if you really want to level up in some way.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. One last thought on this, just because you mentioned Chris and it spurred a thought. He’s got a concept and I believe he got it from you guys and it fits perfectly with Never Eat Alone, the concept of a dinner that you’re hosting, almost like a mastermind that you create. There’s another friend of mine, Jayson Gaignard, MastermindTalks. That’s how he built his whole program. He just started hosting dinners when he would go visit places. How powerful is that strategy of just hosting a dinner and inviting some random connections and then they can benefit not just from you, but from others around the table?
Ronen Olshansky: Incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful. And Chris has totally leaned into it, which I love. I hosted a dinner here in New York. I’m going to London. I’ll host two dinners in London. Look, we could spend a lot of time talking about this. We could talk about how there’s research now from the World Happiness Report that shows the direct relationship between how many meals we share and just every level of well-being or every measure of well-being. I can tell you that people who lean more introvert, it’s not that they don’t like events. It’s that it’s hard for them to be in unstructured events. So, if you put some structure to the dinner, introverts absolutely love it. They shine. So, we have a playbook that we coach in the program. We teach you step-by-step how to plan and execute one of these bonding dinners.
And Keith is world famous for these. He’s hosted hundreds if not thousands of them. There’s a specific formula for how you do it. It’s a Jeffersonian format. There’s one conversation, one question, generally, throughout the main portion. You can play around with the agenda in different parts of it, but the main act is one question that everyone goes around and listens to one another, and it is pure magic. The more you can open up with vulnerability and share struggles and challenges, now, everyone at the table has a chance to hear what everyone’s struggling with, what everyone needs. They get to capture that in their head, hopefully put in their second brain, and all figure out how they can be of service.
When you compare that to the sort of default, “Hey, I’m going to go take some clients out to a business dinner. I’ll put my credit card down, and it’s just going to be conversation, conversation. I might say a few words,” you’re getting, I’m sorry to say, if you’ve taken that approach, you’re getting almost no ROI for your time and money spent. So, I go into the details of the playbook, but like it is absolutely a powerful marketing, network-building strategy.
Brad Johnson: Is the Jeffersonian kind of format, is that the one conversation rule? Or are there other pieces to it besides that?
Ronen Olshansky: That’s the core, right? We don’t have time to get into the details, but in the program, you pick a project, a community-building project. It could be a dinner. It could be an online inside session, which is a different format, but we run you through the details, how you fill the room, how you market it, what do you do coming out of the dinner. But the thing that makes it special is you are the facilitator. And by the way, you know who they’re coming for. They’re not coming for you. You’re just the facilitator. You’re just bringing them together. They’re coming for one another, right?
They’re either coming because they want to join their peers and they want to explore a topic that’s important to them, or it’s a personal dinner and they want to meet a collection of wonderful human beings. They’re coming for one another. Now, Chris and I worked on this. There could be an anchor invitee who maybe has a little bit more cache. We use that person to kind of build out the room. So, maybe they’re coming because that one or two people is there, but when they’re there, they’re there for one another. Not for you, not for your company, not for your product.
And the occasional time when you have a partner sponsor it, for example, because it’s going to cost some money and the sponsor says to you, “Brad, can I say a few words about my company?” you very politely and respectfully say, “I have a better idea and I know that this works even better. Rather than pitching your company, be a part of the conversation. Be a part of the conversation and see what happens.”
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, first off, I’ve been involved in many business dinners where there was no one conversation role and it was like 15 conversations. And then it’s like the roar, you’re trying to talk over it. And I’ve been, actually, Michael Hyatt, who I was in a mastermind with, was the one that first introduced me to the one conversation role. And I will tell you the very first time I experienced it, it was spouses. And one of the questions was how did you guys first meet? And you talk about a powerful question where you’re going around tears shed, memories had, the bonding that was created by that format, combined with really intentional questions. It was like, whoa, this is way deeper than any random dinner I’ve ever been invited to in my life. So, I know it works. I’ve seen it work. I’ve participated in it.
And back to your vendor thing. We have a rule at Triad. I mean, in finance, if you’ve been to any financial meetings, like many watchers and listeners have, there’s the expo hall with all the booths, and we have a rule, no booths allowed. Like, we want partnerships, not vendors. And so, we’re like, just come be a part of the experience, be a part of the dinner, be a human just like everybody else. And I will tell you, it completely changes the dynamic as opposed to grab the brochure and then go to the next booth. I mean, who enjoys that process?
Ronen Olshansky: It’s an outdated model.
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Ronen Olshansky: It’s an outdated model. And look, you’re a great community builder and organizer and you know people, and you might work in a reference to one of your partners and say, “By the way, this person is really great at this and this is, they could be really helpful.” You might throw that in, but it’s organic. It’s a part of the conversation. People knew that.
Brad Johnson: Or it’s a thank you of like, hey, by the day, my boy Ro over here, he picked up the tab because he was super excited about getting everybody together and learning and connecting with you all. And now, there’s gratitude, reciprocity baked right into it, so…
Ronen Olshansky: That’s right.
Brad Johnson: Very cool. Well, thanks for diving into that. And I know that was one of the things Chris was really excited about. And I do know like a lot of advisors, they want to work with business owners, other entrepreneurs. And what I know entrepreneurs love is the learning from other successful entrepreneurs. So, it’s a beautiful thing if you can kind of facilitate that and be the matchmaker in those sort of situations.
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah. I’ll say two more things if I can on that.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, please.
Ronen Olshansky: The key there, and this is what I was working with Chris on is figuring out what’s important to that audience and letting them know that that is what you’re going to delve into. So, it’s not your brand. You want to find something that’s sort of brand adjacent, right? So, for wealthy families, oftentimes it’s kids, or for a lot of people, maybe it’s longevity, but finding out what that, what’s interesting to the community that you’re pulling together is what you want to focus on. That’s one thing.
The second thing is there’s another type of engagement that we coach and we train. It’s a little bit more challenging than this, but Keith has really baked a really nice format from this. And it’s an online peer-to-peer session. It’s, hey, we’re going to get together for an hour in an online session with our peers and we’re going to tackle this question or this subject or we’re going to provide insight on this topic that’s really important to us. The reason I mention that is because some people don’t have the money to put together a dinner, which can be a little costly or the logistical challenge of bringing together people in person. You can create similar community by bringing people together and creating psychological safety online using breakout rooms. We use Google Docs where you do a little bit of brainstorming, you come back into the room, you share your brainstorming, and it can be very powerful as well.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I know, I mean, COVID wasn’t that long ago. And I remember just everybody was feeling kind of isolated and stir crazy. I had a couple buddies. They enjoy wine, I enjoy wine. I’m like, let’s do a virtual happy hour. We crack some good bottles.
Ronen Olshansky: Exactly.
Brad Johnson: And I’ll tell you, it wasn’t that far off from an in-person one. We were sitting there. There’s like five bubbles and just having a good time. So, there’s definitely, in today’s day and age with the technology, we have the ability to do it virtually if it’s done right. So, I love that idea.
Brad Johnson: So, as we come to a close here, where I always like to leave it. We’ve talked a ton about doing business and doing life and how to integrate those two, but I would love to hear your definition of what does Do Business, Do Life mean to you?
Ronen Olshansky: Oh, man, well, first of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to do this with you. This was one of the coolest podcasts I’ve done. I felt like you and I were sort of very much along, thinking the same things, inspired by the same things, ideologically very aligned. Look, I love the core philosophy of Do Business, Do Life. I think when we show up in the world as ourselves and the rich human beings that we are, it makes business more successful and it makes it more enjoyable shared experiences. In-person shared experiences bring people together. You do that really well and it’s impressive, and I love that you do it.
You don’t need to have many intense shared experiences, or at least they don’t have to be very frequent, but when they happen in person and you design that experience to be really connective, so you facilitate conversation. Remember we talked about the Jeffersonian format? Facilitate specific interactions rather than leaving it to serendipity. That small amount of time together is indelible and it connects people for months and years to come.
So, intentionality over serendipity as it relates to a lot of things in life, but specifically, as we talked about, Brad, today, as it relates to your relationships and your approach to your network, don’t think about it as something that you’re going to do when time comes up, or I’ll reach out to that person, or maybe I’ll help them with this. If you really want to build a powerful network, you’ve got to build that intentionality around it. You’ve got to build the system. You need to develop the habits. And like you said, you’ve got to do it with the right people over the long run. And when you learn how to do it and you have that system in place, it’s fun as hell. And it’s great.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. It doesn’t feel like business. It feels like just doing life. That’s the beautiful thing. It’s actually a very self-serving approach, to be honest.
Ronen Olshansky: In a way, it is, yeah.
Brad Johnson: But it’s fun for other people too. So, it’s self-serving for all of us. Well, Ro, safe travels to London. Have a blast. And really, really enjoyed getting to know you on a deeper level. I’d say we’re at least in our RQ2 at this point, right? We might have skipped 3.
Ronen Olshansky: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Well, appreciate it, man. Safe travels. Look forward to when we get to do it in person.
Ronen Olshansky: Thank you, brother. Happy Memorial Day weekend. And again, thanks for the opportunity to be here.
Brad Johnson: All right. Take care.
