The Art of Social Selling and Relationship-Building for Home Business Owners
May 01, 2024
Hank Eder / Ben Albert
Ready to unlock the secrets of transforming furlough to fortune? Ben Albert didn't just stumble upon success; he crafted it with the sharp tools of LinkedIn and podcasting, and he's here to divulge how you too can carve out a thriving business from the comfort of your home. Our candid conversation with this entrepreneurial maestro of Real Business Connections and founder of Grow Getters Only will arm you with the guerrilla tactics of social selling and the art of forging authentic relationships that are the bedrock of a booming business. This isn’t your typical business pep talk; it's a treasure map to the gold mines of networking and personal branding that Ben himself has navigated with aplomb.
As an aspiring podcaster or a business owner looking to amplify your voice, you'll be captivated by Ben's journey from launching a podcast with no listeners to establishing a network of invaluable contacts and content that he's passionate about. This episode is not about fast-track formulas to fame but the raw, unfiltered reality of building a steadfast presence through consistency and offering genuine value to your audience. So, tune in and let Ben's story inspire your strategy; his insights just might be the catalyst for your home business breakthrough.
Ready to unlock the secrets of transforming furlough to fortune? Ben Albert didn't just stumble upon success; he crafted it with the sharp tools of LinkedIn and podcasting, and he's here to divulge how you too can carve out a thriving business from the comfort of your home. Our candid conversation with this entrepreneurial maestro of Real Business Connections and founder of Grow Getters Only will arm you with the guerrilla tactics of social selling and the art of forging authentic relationships that are the bedrock of a booming business. This isn’t your typical business pep talk; it's a treasure map to the gold mines of networking and personal branding that Ben himself has navigated with aplomb.
As an aspiring podcaster or a business owner looking to amplify your voice, you'll be captivated by Ben's journey from launching a podcast with no listeners to establishing a network of invaluable contacts and content that he's passionate about. This episode is not about fast-track formulas to fame but the raw, unfiltered reality of building a steadfast presence through consistency and offering genuine value to your audience. So, tune in and let Ben's story inspire your strategy; his insights just might be the catalyst for your home business breakthrough.
This program is brought to you, in part, by: Oxygen America
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Hank:
Welcome to the Home Business Success Show. Join us as we speak to home business entrepreneurs for tips, tricks, do's and even don'ts for running a successful home business. Welcome everyone. I'm Hank Eder, also known as Hank the PR Guy, host of the Home Business Success Show on bizradious. All entrepreneurs, all the time. We'll meet our guests right after my Two Cents Marketing Minute.
Hank:
In today's crowded marketing landscape, podcasts offer a powerful tool to cut through the noise and forge deeper connections with your target audience. Unlike fleeting social media ads or impersonal emails, podcasts allow you to establish a personal rapport with your listeners. The intimate nature of audio fosters a sense of trust, making listeners more susceptible not susceptible. Making listeners more receptive to your branded message. By hosting engaging conversations and interviews with industry experts, you can also position yourself as a thought leader within your niche. Furthermore, podcasts provide a platform to build brand loyalty. That being said, I'd like to introduce today's guest.
Hank:
When COVID hit, ben Albert was furloughed from work, he found himself down and out staring at an empty handle of Jim Beam whiskey. That's pretty hardcore. He was unemployed, depressed and felt unworthy. Hesitantly, he opened his MacBook and started reaching out to strangers on LinkedIn. This spearheaded his entrepreneurial journey. The rest is history. Now Ben hosts a network of five podcasts called Real Business Connections and he runs a massively successful marketing term Balbert Am I saying that right? Balbert Balbert Marketing and has replaced his established sales income in just over a year. Ben found his way Once an underdog, now a successful entrepreneur. Ben is passionate about helping other underdogs find their way and achieve their dreams. Ben says he's on a mission to move the needle on one million lives. Welcome to the show, ben.
Ben:
I'm excited to be here, Love that marketing minute and I appreciate the gracious introduction. This is going to be fun.
Hank:
Oh, you're welcome. It's great to have you here. If you would please tell us about what you do, yeah at the core.
Ben:
The world's very disconnected in a lot of ways and my role as a marketer is to serve as a bridge, and I do it in a lot of different ways. But, to simplify, it's to get the knowledge, the wisdom, the solutions, the services from the people who have it to the people who need it, the folks that need the wisdom, the services to the people that can offer it to them. And I do that with online marketing. I do that with a podcast, which is a free resource where I bring on thought leaders and they can transcend that wisdom and teach others with it. And I do that with a networking group that's both free and has a private community where we can provide peer to peer support. So if I solve any single problem, it's being that bridge to solve that disconnection issue of we want the right clients, we want the right support, we want the right mentors. I help people do that. Get that.
Hank:
The business networking group that you're talking about. Is that real business connections, Connections that I see in the? You've got a sign in your background.
Ben:
Yeah, so Real Business Connections is the podcast.
Hank:
And.
Ben:
Balbert Marketing is actually going to transition to become Real Business Connections, because I don't like that. Balbert Marketing is all about me, it's about other people. Real Business Connections is a better brand name and it's a podcast. We also have podcast services and the networking group is called Grow Getters Only, which is growth-oriented go-getters that want to surround themselves with peers.
Hank:
Right, I remember now that you invited me to one of the meetings and I found it was a great meeting. I met some really, really good people. And I do intend to be back, but it kind of the name Grow Getters kind of went right through my brain and slipped out the other side. There was an old song by Eno where he sings perhaps my brains have turned to sand. Oh me, oh my, I don't know if you know that one.
Ben:
No, but I feel that way, and part of all the brand names and the iterations is I'm learning and I'm changing and I'm focusing better and better as I go.
Hank:
In your origin story there. When you found yourself hitting bottom during COVID, you started reaching out to others on LinkedIn. What would you say are some tips for turning LinkedIn into a social selling tool?
Ben:
Yeah. So, first and foremost, you always want to connect with someone based around some kind of commonality. So I was a Rochester, new York native. I had a Rochester based music podcast that I had started in 2016. And then it was 2020, the pandemic had hit. I got let go from my sales executive role and I was applying for jobs and nothing was landing.
Ben:
And a friend of mine said, ben, you have a laptop, you're a great marketer, why don't you just try this home business thing? Why don't you just try going out on your own? And I said, yeah, I'd love to, but I don't know how. And I took my music podcast background. I don't know how and I took my music podcast background. Music Ben was unemployed and Music Ben was non-essential. There was no music. So I kind of rebranded myself and created Business Ben and Business Ben's an entrepreneur and Business Ben's going to start Balbert Marketing.
Ben:
But I don't know how to start a business or run a business and I don't have great connections. I was not working locally, I was working nationally in my previous firm. So I used LinkedIn. I connected on a commonality. I reached out to Rochester, new York business owners. I specifically used a filter for searching for people that went to SUNY Brockport State University, new York, brockport. I'm a SUNY Brockport alumni, so I looked for business owners that went to the same university as me and I reached out and I said basically, hey, I didn't say I don't know what I'm doing, but I basically didn't know what I was doing. I said, hey, I'm starting a business podcast. I've hosted a music podcast in our great city. We've had everything from musicians to politicians on, and now I want to highlight local leaders in business like yourself. Would you be open to being featured on my podcast? Now, what's funny, hank, is I didn't have listeners, I didn't have a podcast yet, but I got a whole lot of yeses because I was reaching out to people where we had commonalities. We were both business owner entrepreneurs that went to the same school in the same city. So that's what Ben did.
Ben:
But the core lesson is simple Read their profile, do your due diligence and connect on a commonality. Send a message. Detach from outcome. A lot of people said no, a lot of people didn't connect, but send a message and I call it a possibility virus. What if they do say yes? What if they do connect? What if they do work with you and Ben, who was a new entrepreneur that didn't know how to run a business, knew how to market, got to interview people that did and ask them questions about their CRM and ask them questions about leadership and ask them questions about failure, and every single day I learned something new. And without LinkedIn, that would have been difficult because there was no in-person anyways, everything was closed because of the pandemic but LinkedIn was that social tool that allowed me to find the people that became my mentors.
Hank:
That's very cool now, when you say that people can reach out through commonalities, that could be everything from a similar type of business or perhaps a complimentary kind of business, rather than something right in the same niche, or even something to break the ice, like hobbies or sports or something like that.
Ben:
Yeah, I prefer a message like hey, I see you're a roofer, I'm a gutter person, like I don't want something too formulaic. I think a fun icebreaker is better. Same state, same city, same school You're following the same people A great way to connect with people. You know it's good, good to post content. I encourage people to do it. But a lot of people post content but they forget about the beauty of the comment section.
Ben:
And if you see a post you like and comment on it and look at other people that commented in it because maybe you connect based on a mutual friend or a mutual influencer that you both follow, I can reach out and say hey, I saw you were commenting on Hank's post. I've been digging the rhymes as well. I know this is random, but wanted to connect with you because a friend of Hank is a friend of mine. I can, in theory, connect with everybody that's ever commented on Hank's post, ever, one by one, just through a simple strategy like that. So focus on something that's common and creative is better. You know. Show that you took the time to really personalize your message.
Hank:
That's a beautiful strategy and there are a lot of folks who say that if you find an influencer in your niche and start joining those conversations, but not in a way that you try to take over Nobody likes someone who comes in and tries to muscle their way but when you see a conversation going on, if there's some value you can add, add the value to the conversation. Don't ask for anything at that point, but add value to that conversation. Don't ask for anything at that point, but add value to that conversation. And another advantage to that is that that influencer, who may have, you know, 100,000 followers, the information not the information, but the comment that you just shared goes out and is seen by many, many, many of his audience because now you're engaging him in conversation or her in conversation. So it's another LinkedIn strategy.
Ben:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I'm jumping in because the quick example and it doesn't happen every time, but I commented on Neil Patel's post another marketer and I got 44 reactions on my comment.
Hank:
I didn't document how many connection requests, but I got reactions 44 and I got a handful of connection requests that day just by the luck of the luck and the brilliancy of my comment. I presume it helps that he's incredibly brilliant, but he's really built an amazing network over time. But I attended one of his webinars recently and I almost wore my hand out taking notes on the things he was sharing, because he really does have a lot to teach us. He's fantastic. Well, you're the host of a network of five podcasts. These days, a lot of people are turning to podcasts or they're trying their luck at podcasts, and in some cases it is just luck, because they're not following any kind of a formula or a strategy. Some of these really take off and others just limp along. What are some steps that people can take to harness podcasts to become a greater influencer in their own field?
Ben:
Yeah, so we could do 10 hours on just this. So I'm going to simplify this and give you what I believe is the essential Enjoy the heck out of the process. Enjoy what you do. Enjoy your guests, the process. Enjoy what you do. Enjoy your guests. Create the best quality podcast as possible and detach from the metrics and the outcome, because most podcasts don't have 10,000 listens overnight.
Ben:
However, we started with my story. I didn't have any listeners my first couple episodes. The listener was me, my guest and their mom or a co-worker. I was not getting great metrics, but as a host, I was learning so much from my guests. I was building relationships. Those relationships led to friendships that led to mentorship and a lot of guests either became a client or mentorship, and a lot of guests either became a client or they knew someone in their network six degrees of separation that could become a client. So my podcast gets a good amount of listens today, but that's like ancillary, that's icing on the cake, since I was creating content I loved. I enjoyed what I did.
Ben:
If you don't enjoy it and you're just doing it as a marketing strategy, what's the point? I enjoyed what I did. I got to meet and learn from brilliant people. I got to build relationships that led to income far before I even had listeners. So a big mistake I see people make unless you're already Neil Patel, unless you're already a big thought leader, don't just do solo monologues because you haven't built your audience yet.
Ben:
Bring on guests, like you and I are doing today and prior to the call in our discovery session. Build a relationship, form friendships and partnerships, and then whether or not your podcast is successful is actually not that important, because that's not the number one reason you're doing it. You're not doing it for vanity. You're doing it because you enjoy it, you're building relationships and you're speaking to people. That million listens this year too. I'm going to create great content that I love with people I enjoy, and I'm confident it'll lead to friendship and business. If you shift that mindset, you're in the right place, and if you don't have that mindset, I encourage you not to podcast, because it's a lot of work and it's a lot of relationship building.
Ben:
But that's my thought on it. We could go really deep into that one topic, but mindset's important, because if you don't have the right mindset, you're going to quit Right and it'll show, it'll show.
Hank:
And, yeah, there are a lot of folks who started, or they wanted to start, podcasting and they put out three or four episodes and then they didn't go viral, you know. So they moved on to something else. But consistency in all things. I mean I did, you know, one of my MC Biz Boomer raps, if my audience you know I don't talk about this a lot, but I do these raps that are MC Biz Boomer and their business lessons in rap. Just look that up, mc Biz Boomer. But the notion that things don't happen overnight. There is no overnight success, there's not overnight schemes. And when people come to you and say, if you just do this, you're going to be making a million dollars before you know it or you'll have 2 million listeners on your podcast, those are the things that we really should run screaming into the night from, because the only person who's getting rich from that is the person that you're shelling out your money to.
Ben:
And yeah, so, that being said, if you want, if you want overnight results, podcasting is the bottom of the list.
Hank:
Yeah, I don't think there are overnight results with anything. You know you're not going to buy a magic funnel that's suddenly going to bring $600,000 into your bank account in a week. It's not there. You have to do the diligence, you have to do your homework, you have to put in the work or really nothing happens no-transcript.
Ben:
Conviction high energy, be passionate, and that's not wrong. Passion does help. But I think people are sick of people talking about how great they think they are. I believe if you feel uncomfortable talking about yourself which a lot of people do and the science shows it's less persuasive just to talk about how great you are. Talk about other people. If you want to market yourself, market other people. If you want to help yourself, help other people.
Ben:
I can make a post about how I talked to Hank today. He was a gracious radio host. I enjoyed the experience. I love sharing my message and I appreciate Hank giving me the platform to do it.
Ben:
And if anyone's open to a guest that's high energy and cares about their audience, I'd love to be their guest. I could make a post and the call to action is I'd love to be a guest on podcasts, but I don't say listen to how great I am as a guest, it's listen to how great Hank is as a host. And you can do that in anything in life. And the one example I'll give I know you wanted to dive in here is providing just testimonials and storylines of previous successes of your clients. Instead of talking about how cool your gadgets are just say hey, I was working with Mark. He had XYZ problem. We implemented this solution. These are the results they got. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but if you have that problem, I think it's fair to assume that my solution will help you as well. Again, you're not talking about how cool you are. You're talking about marketing and helping somebody else.
Hank:
Exactly You're getting into what I just wanted to bring up in the fact that you know the reason. I shook my head before when you said that people you know go on and they talk about how cool they are and they talk about all their features of their products or their program. And I shook my head. And the reason for that is nobody really cares about how cool you are, nobody cares about all your features. What they care about is what will this do for me?
Hank:
If I get this, if I jump into this program, if I buy this product, if I take on this person as a coach, what kind of transformation will I undergo? Because you're really selling transformation most of the time and these decisions are made through emotions, not through logic. You really can't sell based on logic. You sell based on emotion. When the person goes well, I want some of what he's got and yeah. So that's the main reason I was shaking my head there. You know, this time is just flying by and it does that when I'm really enjoying the show and the guests. If you could give small business owners one bit of advice to grow, what might that be?
Ben:
I'm just going to. I could give a million. I'm going to jump off of what you just said.
Ben:
People don't want a six-month diet plan with exercise routine and accountability and stress. They want six-pack abs. They want to look good in their wedding dress. They want to feel good and confident when they're going into their next event. So stop talking about the nitty gritty behind the scenes that you're an expert at and you're a nerd at and you want to talk about every little detail. Talk about what Hank just said, the solution that you provide, and if you can get clarity on the emotional reason that your clients want to work with you they don't want to go on a diet plan, they just want six-pack abs, they just want to look good in the dress you can say I promise you I will help you look amazing for your wedding. Now, trust me, it's going to be a complicated process. So you need to be engaged, you need to be able to show up and do the work, but if you want to look good in that dress, I can help you.
Ben:
When you speak to that emotional level, when you speak solution oriented rather than every detail of the process, your communication is more concise, it's more succinct and it speaks to the heart of your buyer. How communication is more concise, it's more succinct and it speaks to the heart of your buyer. How do people find your podcast? So what's fun is, if I did my job right, you can find my podcast where you found this. So like this podcast, share it, comment, subscribe, do this while we're talking here and just type in Real Business Connections wherever you found this. And if I failed, you just type Real Business Connections into Google. You'll find me there, but show some love to Hank and then search Real Business Connections.
Hank:
What is the number one best way for our listeners to get in touch with you?
Ben:
one best way for our listeners to get in touch with you the way that you'll do. I'm on a lot of platforms. If you Google Real Business Connections or Real Ben Albert or Ben Albert Marketing, you will find me. But the best way to get in touch is the way that you'll do.
Hank:
All right, well, thank you. Thanks for being with us today, ben, and for our listeners. Thanks for being with us today, ben, and for our listeners. Tune in every Wednesday for the Home Business Success Show here on bizradious. Remember, you can achieve success, freedom and independence in your own home-based business. I've done it, ben has done it, and you can too. I'll see you next Wednesday here on bizradious. This is Hank Eder, wishing all of you a fabulous day of home business success.