That is very cool and this kind of is leading into showing who are. I mean that is, you’re well connected in your city and you definitely go out there to help people and make a difference. Is what your goals are from what I hear, does that sound about right?
Yeah I have a little help from monkey, that’s pretty exactly it. That’s, you know what, I’ve got servant’s heart and I don’t know that I always been that and I’m not sure that I’ve always been. But in 2004 I got on LinkedIn and in 2005 I was connecting with people all over the world, that was cool, a great experience. And in 2006 Detroit got hit with the recession long before the rest of the country, right? So we could have fold you up, we got to have it. And as I was connecting with these people around the world, building relationships, the one thing that’s slap a crap in Facebook is none of these people give a shit about Detroit. They don’t care and if anything needs to have somebody cares, it’s the city. Right? Because the city is a living, breathing organism whether we think it is or we think it’s not, it is. And if no one showing it love it’s not going to work. So I started this organization called Motor City Connect back in 2006. And the idea was if we could empower the people and help them grow their business, right, and so if we could do business development by working with people in personal development, what ultimately should happen is some really cool community to grow. It’s truly hard to give them yourself when you don’t have enough to give. So if we could change that a little bit that would be cool. Some already said you cannot have that, we were one of the first in the nation, really, that was a hybrid online and real-world networking. So we were hyper focused in the Detroit area but we could meet online 24/7 and then we have face-to-face meeting. At one point we have like fourteen different meetings at once. And it was really all about getting people connected. We talk about the ask, we don’t do 30-second commercials or elevating pitches. We do ask. When we ask it’s very simple — it’s your name, your business name, your business category. Then who’s the one person or one idea or one company someone in the world could absolutely make you weak. So that’s what we focus on. It’s these people, the more specific you are with that countering two of these would made be, the more specific you are with your x, the more you are likely to find success.
Cool. Yeah, that’s a neat, little different than the typical BNI type group and those type of networking groups, correct?
It is, it is. We don’t have rules and regulations and regiments and all that stuff. Honestly I’m not a real rules, regulations, regiment guy.You know me a long time and if there’s my own drummer I’d be out dancing to that instead of listening to the top forty, you know! I hear my own beat so I follow that.
Yeah, yeah, like our conversation earlier about how the bottom third on our screen was bothering me if you could, so.
You could move that a little bit to the left, by the way.
Oh, okay then. If you see now we’ve got a lot of visuals in here. So people are listening, you know, they might need to turn in the YouTube channel. But it is something good to mention if people are listening to podcast, it’s good to mention this once in a while because I know I had in the past some people had said they don’t even know we were on YouTube and they didn’t know they could watch it, too. So it’s good to mention that we do have both avenues for whatever, you know, reasons people want to hey, look at us with the hashtag sign behind, you know, or listen. You know it’s up to them, whatever avenue they are more comfortable with, we want to help get to that. So way information.
My thought is, my thought is that they should watch you and listen to me. I think that’s probably it. It’s beauty and the significantly less beauty so we’ve got going on. That was a writing for the name, actually.
Oh yeah, there you go.
Speaking of the things that are kind of silly, I forgot my headphones today so I’m sorry if we’re making a little bit of extra noise or if I don’t sound as clear or as good. That’s completely my bad, I’m not, I’m at my office as opposed to my home office so I mix things up a little bit now.
Yeah we’re just kind of training Terry and at this point so you know he’s still learning.
That works! I don’t know what I’m doing people. I can manage my work. I’m focused on this. So I’m looking at this camera.
There you have it. Yeah, we’re learning, we’re all learning. And you know what, you guys could learn with us. So we are, that’s one of the things we’re going to walk thru today and we should probably get into. But you know what, this might be a little bit longer one but that’s okay because we wanted to get, we want to kind of have you learn a little bit more about myself and Terry versus just the normal interviews. And so we will do this from time to time just to get to know us a little better, too.
Sure.
Let’s get into what our main discussion and this won’t take too long. But we have three key questions that we want to cover and these came from our interview last week with Dafna. Do you want to explain a little bit about what we’re going to cover Terry?
Yes, so Dafna’s this awesome, awesome lady who traveled around like country. She hit all fifty states in fifty-two weeks and I would recommend listening to that.
And this will be the show before so before this. So if you missed it, it’s there for you, it’ll be available for you at show number 44.
Right, and this is show 45 that we’re currently doing right now. So perfect! That’s a great thing. So this’ll come after so she’ll allude to this at the very tail-end of our program, it’s one of her takeaways. And because neither Janet or I had done it, we thought maybe we should figure it out for ourselves. So Dafna was talking about social media said you need to figure out three things, right? So you can be authentic. So you can be clear. So you could have purpose and direction in how you do social, you need to answer these three things. And the three things are pretty simple: what do you do, why do you do it and basically from your audience or customers’ perspective, what’s in it for me? Be all everyone’s favorite WIIFM. So I love it. So Janet and I said we’re going to do it and then for some reason we thought it’ll be fun to have a show about it.
Really! So well, the thing is we figured out our brand and Terry and I have had this discussion because it is completely change, I wouldn’t say completely but it is changing from Social Media Hangout Time to Business Growth Time. But now what exactly is Business Growth Time? And we’d love to hear your feedback, too, on what we’re going to discuss and what you’d like to hear but we know what our expertise is and what the people that we know we’d bring on the show expertise is, too. But now we want to say this very easily, so the question what do we do? Let’s, I’ll go ahead and start. I have mine written down, I’m a little more analytical, I guess we’ll put it that way than Terry. Not really but I have a little bit of that to me. So this is what I do and mine’s can be a different than Terry’s, which is fine. But what I do is I and I want the goal of this show, too, is to help businesses grow with specific strategies to be noticed and heard. It is very loud online right now, it’s very noisy and so it’s harder to get noticed and heard. And so that’s one of the things that I try to teach. Help you stand out, help the audience stand out by listening and giving clients the potential of clients what they want. So you want to give your potential clients what they actually want. So you need to listen to them because if you don’t listen, how are you going to have any idea what they want. So I think that’s the other thing we want to teach here, too. And then I always, I come from an elementary education background, that’s what I went to school for and so I tend to break things down to an elementary education level so I want everything in the online world that’s so big and so complicated, I try to simplify that marketing, those in-depth marketing strategies that bring it down to elementary levels. So that’s kind of what I do. So let’s get into what Terry’s, what do you do?
Mine’s pretty simple and straightforward. I connect, select businesses and individuals with the knowledge, resources and opportunities that they need to succeed. That’s my world. Plain as day. So I don’t know, there’s probably three or four words that I could add, one of the buzz words is bingo. So if we need a little degree analysis, I connect, literally.Physically as verb, I connect by part. It’s like take the time to listen and understand what people’s needs and wants and desires really are and then through my network and through whatever memory I have left and some of the tools and technologies, I make physical introductions based on you said you’re trying to accomplish this, this person is a great individual to help you do that, you two need to sit down. What I’m really smart about it I remember to figure out how to get paid in the transaction. What I’m mean exactly who I am, I’ve already sent the email and say, shi* I should have figured out how to get paid on that but it’s okay. I do it and get paid in numerous other ways. So with the knowledge, I do a lot of training, I do a lot of speaking. Favorite thing in the world be in front of an audience. Love it, love it, love it, love it. With the resources, sometimes those resources are employees, I just did a recruiting assignment on two guys, two different people from elite companies. Sometimes those resources are capital. Just met with a guy that’s an investment banker so he can be a resource for some of my clients. And then with the opportunities those normally in strategic partners, business partners, venture partners, where they’re also clients. That’s what I do.
And that’s kind of why you do it, too, correct?
It is. Well why I do it is because I spend a little bit of time in training and trying to figure out what my place was in the universe, right? Why, like everybody, why am I here?And I spend enough time doing that where I got actually connected to who I am and what my purpose was. And when you go that deep you can’t help but realize that we are all connected, right? Like at a universal level we are all part of the same. So part of my role and responsibility is to spread that message, as well, and I do that and sneaking around in business mode even though I’d probably do some DeWitt philosophy at heart.
Little bit, no, just kidding.
Just a little bit.
That’s great! And you’re right, we are all connected, I believe in some way or another. And when you get into the whole social world of things, it’s, you know, LinkedIn, you know what you were just discussing and bringing in the social aspect, looked at what LinkedIn if you look at connections, sorry my cat is in the way.
You got another co-host.
I know, I always have my kitty here. So let’s get into what’s in it for, well actually let’s back up.
You got to do your why!
Why do I do it? Okay, so why I do it because I love seeing the people’s results and it kind of goes back to why you started your Motor City Connect, too. It’s because I see a lot of people struggling and going why should I bother with social media, why should I even bother with this online marketing. But I realize if they can do it and do it the right way, it can get them results and increase their profit. So that’s why I do what I do is because I like to see that business owner succeed. And it makes me feel good. And so that’s a big thing, too. And then the other side of it is why I do what I do is because I’m kind of crazy and you know, it takes crazy #ittakescrazy, there you go. I just have this fun side of me that is entrepreneurial and kind of like we did that test you and I turned out the same on that test. We were most like Donald Trump, crazy enough. So you know we have that kind of side to us that entrepreneurial and so that’s part of the reason I do what I do so I could just, you know, be free to connect with whoever I choose versus whoever somebody helps me, too.
Love it. Love it, love it. So what is in it for your clients? Then bring us on kid!
Okay. Okay, well number one is revenue. I think the bottomline piece of things needs to be a business is not going to sit and listen to this show just for fun. It’s fun, we’re making it fun, believe me.
Oh we’re fun!
You know, but it’s not the reason that, they are listening so that they can simplify. So simplicity is another side to it. Simplify the way they do business so that they can increase their revenue. Bottomline is they need to increase their revenue and that’s why we called this business growth time. And so that’s what’s in it for them but I also want them to laugh, as well as learn because we’ve got to make this about fun. You and I want to have fun but we want to also help the audience have fun, too.
Totally, yeah. I don’t expect that people will listen if it’s not fun.
Exactly.
To me, funny I talk about my speaking and I use the word inspiragetaining and it’s part inspirational, and it’s part educational and it’s part entertaining. I mean if you don’t hit on those three things people sleep. And if they sleep, you know, it’s one thing to watch them sleep in the audience and that would be bad. While here they don’t even have to sleep, they just don’t turn it on. So hopefully we’re somewhere in there and making those things happen. So what’s in it for my clients? My clients find somebody that acts as their partner who’s really, really vested and cares about their success. And that to me is all that I can offer. I am in this with you to make this happen for you. You know it’s almost my original business card, my original, my first actual pool guy designed business card that somebody else did. My buddy Charlie came up with the phrase “you’r secret weapon.” And that’s kind of what I did, right? I’m a guyver. You give me paper clip and a pack of bubble gum and a jack knife, I don’t what a jack knife is to extract those. Buck knife that’s the ck knife and I can get you $50000 in business because that’s just what I do, fun! Did you frame out and freak out on me? I think you did. It’s really cool watching someone on a Google Hangout when there’s video involved because sometimes they just absolutely freeze and so it gives you the opportunity to just make up a bunch random stuff. Now for Janet, who is a little more particular and a little more you-have-to-be-inside-the-lines, it’s going to be kind of fun to see if she goes back and hears this and edits some of these. I’ll try and not swear, we want to do this live and by we I mean me. I want to do this live but she was kind of hoping maybe some kind of taped to let like all of a sudden my nipple like fall out like it’s the Super Bowl. I don’t think that’s going to happen and wearing a sweater it should be okay. But you really never know what’s going to happen and what I may say specially given the opportunity like this.