Help Others Help You

We all know the Bible story about “doubting Thomas.”  Until he saw Jesus himself with his own two eyes and saw the nail marks in his hands and put his own hand into his side, Thomas just wasn’t going to believe that Jesus had truly risen from the dead.

Similarly, I can publish blog after blog, Monday after Monday, month after month, year after year – some written by me, others from guests – yet many people still doubt.  “Bruce really overdoes it on the importance of connections,” some probably say.  “I think he overstates the value of what people might do for you.  Isn’t it just a cliché about making a good first impression?  C’mon.”

Fair enough.  After all, perhaps some of you are new to the networking scene and/or the entertainment business and feel that the proof is in the pudding.  So, tie up your bib and I’ll serve you up a half dozen examples of what I’ve done for others who’ve made a good impression on me – without them asking me to do anything for them at all.

In no particular order:

1.    A guest that I interviewed on “Now Hear This Entertainment” has gained a voice student because of me making a connection between the two of them.

2.    A blog has been published on this website every Monday since September 2014.  That’s a lot of material to come up with.  So, a number of times I’ve extended an invitation to different folks to provide a guest blog, with a link in it back to their own website.  (For example, at the beginning of this year a blog about the ten most read guest blogs of 2018 was published.)

3.    Off the top of my head I know of one podcast guest who I secured a performance booking for, and another NHTE guest who I offered to put into a round at a songwriters festival.

4.    Being on “Now Hear This Entertainment” also resulted in someone getting referred by me over to another podcast, who proceeded to both conduct an interview and play that guest’s music (on an ongoing basis, I believe).

5.    Someone who I had interviewed for NHTE showed knowledge in an area that I was able to leverage to put them as a guest on another podcast that I was doing.

6.    For a handful of others (without even trying I’m already thinking of three) it might’ve just been that I bought them breakfast or lunch.

So, before you think someone is annoying, or before you think someone is (in my case) “just an interviewer,” (a) put your best foot forward (always), (b) do your research (in my case you’d find out that I’m much – much – more than “just an interviewer,” as evidenced by everything else here on this site, not to mention on SpeakerBruceW.com and here too), and, (c) be open-minded.  You never know what collaborations/opportunities might come out of what ventures, no matter how small or insignificant or routine you might think they are.

When has someone given you an opportunity that you never saw coming?  Talk about this blog in our Facebook group!