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Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to implement a few new strategies to grow my sphere of influence. One of them grew my mailing list by 500 people. What are you doing to grow your influence?

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

We all know we need to nurture our listener communities. That is how we grow our audience. We find new people to listen to our podcast.

But, what are you doing to nurture the relationships in your peer community? What are you doing to connect with those other people of influence in your niche that can help you grow?

To supercharge your growth, surround yourself with other winners who do what you do. It is critical to your success.

In his book “The Ultimate Sales Machine“, Chet Holmes wrote about the Dream 100. Many people use it and teach it today.

You have probably heard of Pareto’s Principle. It is also known as the 80/20 rule. 80% of your results comes from 20% of your effort. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.

Basically, a very small number of inputs is responsible for a very large percent of the outputs.

Chet tells a story of a magazine that used this principle to double its sales in a year.

A review of their client database showed that 95% of their sales came from 167 of the 2,200 of their clients.

The magazine set out to spend all of their efforts on these particular clients. 28 of these advertisers were enough to double the sales over the previous year.

Rather than using the shotgun approach and hit as many as they could, they used the sniper approach to find the right clients.

That is the way to grow your audience.

If you try to find listeners one by one, it will take you forever to build a big audience. However, if you connect with the influencers who are already talking to your ideal listeners, they can help you reach listeners truckloads at a time.

Partnerships are incredibly powerful.

PARTNERSHIPS

I am in an online group for joint venture partners. We partner with each other to collectively grow.

In the group, I connected with my first partner. She was running a giveaway. You may have received the e-mail giving you the opportunity to get over 40 free gifts.

The giveaway is comprised of multiple content creators. We all offer up something of value, like a course or software of templates. We then all offer the free gifts to our tribe. By doing so, we all grow our e-mail list.

Over the course of 2 weeks, I added 500 new people to my e-mail list. How great would it be for you to be able to have conversations with 500 additional people? That is the power of partnerships.

I am now part of a podcast summit. In this one, a group of podcasters will get together to teach online.We all present for 30 minutes and teach something powerful. At the end, we offer a free resource which helps build our e-mail list.

At the end, the hosts and I had a great time hanging out. Now, they want to do more ventures together. This is how we grow.

I am also in a live joint venture group. In this group, we get on a call every week. We are divided into small groups, so we can share what we are doing and what partnership opportunities we have available. It is networking on steroids.

If you want to see how my joint venture groups work, go to www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/jv.

YOUR GROWTH

Now, who can you connect with? Who is an influencer that would make a great partner for you?

Let’s say there are 2,000 ways you can grow your audience. You could do ads, speak at events, send out e-mail, participate in Facebook groups, appear on podcasts, write a blog, post YouTube videos, write articles for magazines, teach at a community college, hand out flyers at events and so many others.

Or, you could find the few actions that can drive a majority of your growth. You could find the 20% that generates the 80%.

If you could find 100 people who are talking to the audience you want to reach, and you could tap into those resources, you can supercharge your growth. That is the magic of the Dream 100 that Chet taught.

This week, make a list of people who are talking to your ideal listeners.

Make a big list. Don’t stop at 6. Try to get to 100. Big fish and small fish. The top 100 people talking to your ideal listeners.

Next, send an e-mail to them. Include three things.

Tell them what you love about what they do. Be specific.

Ask them what they are working on.

Then, ask them how you can support them.

You are not asking for anything. You are simply offering to help them with their projects. Offer value and help.

This is how you start the relationship. This is how you start to build your Dream 100. By taking these steps, you will begin to supercharge your influence.

Get started this week.

You can find my podcast and other tools to help you create great content at www.PodcastTalentCoach.com.

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