ResearchGoddess

Keith Ferrazzi says “Never Eat Alone”….so since most nights I do, I decided to follow that advice and meet a new friend for dinner tonight. For those of you who don’t know who Joel Cheesman is, I recommend doing so! I have been reading his blog, Cheezhead, for several months now without even realizing that he was virtually in my backyard. Upon discovering this, I asked if he would be willing to meet with me and graciously he accepted.

Backing up a bit, Joel’s blog is what inspired me to start my own in the first place, so I called him up one day to see if he would be willing to share some knowledge and make some recommendations to me on how to make mine half as good as his. Being a giving person as he is, he took about 30 minutes of his day to give me some pointers and make some suggestions to best target my audience.
So….this evening, spending only about 2 hours at dinner with Joel gave me an insight to his thought process and the way he runs his businesses. First off I will say that I always enjoy picking the brains of entrepreneurs, as they tend to have a great deal of wisdom and know that the way to get ahead in life is by helping others achieve their goals. Joel is no exception! I found out through getting to know him that he and his wife just had a baby boy about 8 weeks ago. For him to spend some time telling me about his business and how he thinks and take time away from the people he loves was incredibly generous.
Joel surprised me! His ideas on marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) intrigued me as he believes in ‘pull’ as opposed to ‘push’. As a professional in the recruiting area, I am most familiar with ‘push’ marketing – sending out mass emails, cold calling, the whole ‘hunter’ mentality. Joel’s philosophy revolves around being there when people need you, or ‘pull’ing people to you by name recognition. Strategic advertising based on researching where your target audience will end up when they conduct a search. Giving first, and receiving later. The whole ‘delayed gratification’ way of doing things.
Given the example of sending out 100 emails and getting one interested response, Joel’s take on that is “Yeah, but you probably ticked off the other 99 people in the process by spamming them.”
Joel also shared something with me that was a little shocking: he told me that he doesn’t make sales calls! His business comes strictly from word-of-mouth referrals and name recognition. His blog is, as he said, an unexpected success, and people recognize his talent and contact him when their interest in SEO is great enough. I found this fact fascinating – is this the recruiting wave of the future? Quite possibly – after all, word-of-mouth is the oldest, and most effective, method of marketing out there. Plus look at the growing popularity of professional networking sites….
I would encourage anyone out there to seek out people in your industry or similar ones who are at the top of their game and find out what makes them tick! I’ve always been told when you get around someone who is successful to find out two things:

1. What their principles on success are
2. What book(s) they are currently reading (Joel I forgot to ask you this!!)

So here is a short list of people that I have yet to do this with (if any of you read my blog, thank you first of all, and please accept this as an open invitation!) This list grows daily so your name will probably end up here soon!

• Jim Stroud
• Shally Steckerl
• Keith Ferrazzi
• Dave Mendoza
• Maureen Sharib (Maureen, I live in Cincinnati…)
• Jeremy Langhans (I want to know how you found the dog…)
• “The Recruiter Guy”
• Karen Mattonen (because Jim speaks so highly of you!)
• Jim Gano
• Yvonne Hallman
• Jason Davis – thanks for the post!

So Joel – since I know you’ll be reading this – thank you for your time this evening! Thanks for sharing with me whatcha want along with some freaky tales and keepin’ it real, yo. I’m going back to Cali now.

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