John Corcoran 5:16
isn’t the traditional definition, whether you are energized, being in a room full of people or not, right, whether that it brings you energy or not. But also, you know, I, there also are some people that are very introverted, and that can speak in front of a crowd full of people just fine, but one on one, or in a small group of two or three people, then they freeze up. And then they’re not comfortable with that, which is always strange to me. Given that, you know, at least statistically, it’s kind of the famous statistic that people would rather you know, they’re more afraid of less afraid of death than they are public speaking, according to some, some statistics. So,
Unknown Speaker 5:56
yeah, I heard a funny joke on that, by the way,
John Corcoran 6:00
made a joke about that, I think, was it? Yeah, yeah. That, you know, if people have to be at a funeral, they’d rather be in the casket, then. That’s it?
Unknown Speaker 6:07
Yeah,
John Corcoran 6:09
yeah. So so. But I guess that’s the traditional definition of introversion versus extraversion is getting energy from a room full of people or not. But what do you what do you say to people who say, you know, as far as networking is concerned that I, I’m an introvert, therefore, I can’t do it, or I’m not good at it?
Paul Edwards 6:28
Well, one of the things I say is, if if, if, if your idea of networking is to go and be the life of the party, right, the person in the room that everyone is drawn towards, then I suppose you’re right. But as you and I both know, john, that’s not the that’s not certainly not the only way to do it, it’s one way to do it. It’s not the only way. And the way I have put this, in fact, a while back, I had this, this 30 days a challenge that I created for people. And I specifically told people I knew who were introverted, try this, and see if it doesn’t change the world around you every with with each passing day, as you walk into rooms, and you walk into groups, Chamber of Commerce meetings, whatever the case may be. And the whole precept of it was not talking all that much at all. In fact, if you are doing this correctly, you’re having about 10% of the conversation is coming out of your mouth. And the only time that it’s really gets going coming out of your mouth is if you are talking to another really skilled networker, right, because most people are not skilled at this, most people don’t invest time into thinking about how they’re doing what they’re doing, or why they’re doing what they’re doing, they just do it. So if you are going to approach this strategically, you’re going to make a concerted effort to for the most part, like any good introvert, keep your mouth shut, right? You You don’t have to do much talking, you do have to do much listening and paying attention to what people are saying and making mental or even written notes of it. Because what happens is, as you get people talking with the right questions phrased in the right way place at the right time, is they will begin just talking in and what’s coming out of their mouth is gold, right? Because if you’re making a note of that, and you know people or you yourself can solve that problem, guess what, you have the Beeline to the front of that of the line of people competing to solve that person’s problem in exchange for money. And kudos to you, if you can do it for yourself, if you happen to be the person who can do that kudos even bigger, if you are not the person who can do it. But know the person who can. And over time, you can do this to scale it to the point that you can earn an income by connecting them with the person who can write. So there’s not much being the life of the party to begin with. It’s it’s more about knowing how to shut up, to be honest with you. And I think that that plays to an introvert strengths,
John Corcoran 9:11
right? And now and so another big question that people ask around this is you have a room full of people, and it could be actually online or off. But how do you know who to talk to? How do you know? Who is the right person? For you?
Paul Edwards 9:26
That’s a great question. As a matter of fact, the last chapter of my book is called the curator and it touches on this a little bit. And the reason is, because of the age we live in, and the pace we live at. It’s it’s becoming ever more important that we are able to cut through the noise and all that and and to be quite honest, john, I you might know a better answer to this than I do. I what I always found was it’ll, it may not get to you immediately. But if you are consistent about showing up, eventually you’ll know who those people are just by virtue of the kind of conversation they have with you. And I say I say you know, because there’s three kinds of people, right, there’s there’s there’s takers, we don’t really want to network with people like that, because all they want to do is take take take it right? Yeah, then there’s exchangers now these people, you’ll probably have to do some relating with them, some exchanging with them, but you got to be on your guard because they’re not going to give you anything unless you give them something first. They’re people you really want to connect with are the radically generous entrepreneurs, the people who give without any thought or return, hey, oh, you do this here, meet this person. Oh, here’s a gift. You know, they just they don’t even think about it. They just it comes into their life. It goes out of their life and they don’t they’re not attached to it.
John Corcoran 10:43
Right. Right. Or they’re not keeping track, I guess in a sense to now you. I want to go back in in your career. You mentioned in the book, you mentioned you were you were an apprentice to a retired quadriplegic, multi millionaire.
Paul Edwards 11:01
What was that about? That was an interesting time in my life. So I left home at 17. And I was living in Los Angeles, where I had basically come of age in high school and all that and where are you? Where did you leave? Or originally Edmonton, Alberta. When Wayne Gretzky came to California in 88. We followed him.
John Corcoran 11:26
Literally, like you just followed him you a huge
Paul Edwards 11:30
it was a it was a coincidence of timing. He came in August of 88. And we came in December of 88. We weren’t part of his entourage. I got it. Okay, yeah. But anyway, um, then I grew up the rest of my childhood and teenage years in in LA. And I went out and pretty much made a mess of my life early on. I didn’t go straight into college. I didn’t, I couldn’t really find a job. I didn’t really have a lot of qualifications. But I found an ad in the Los Angeles recycler newspaper. And this, this ad said, I’m looking for it’s free rent in a in a beachfront apartment in Santa Monica, in exchange for assisting and executive. So I answered it, and I went through this lengthy interview process. And right from the get go, I didn’t understand the lingo at the time, like I do. Now. I wouldn’t nowadays, I’d recognize it in an instant. But he was. He was just a person who was so very, very good at sales conversations, that everything for him almost every conversation he had with some type of persuasion, sales conversation. And eventually, by getting this position, what I had to do was assist him with physical tasks he couldn’t perform himself. But it became much more like a Tuesdays with Morrie type of thing I was just so young and inexperienced and naive and rudderless in my life. And when you’re around somebody who has been dealing with people for a career and has made a fortune, in doing sales, training, and motivational speaking, and all of that, you know, you meet with
John Corcoran 13:09
what his business was, he had done motivational speeches and stuff.
Paul Edwards 13:14
Yes, but he had done it so successfully, that he had been able to financially retire at age 39. And move from Texas where he did it to Southern California, because he wanted he despite being quadriplegic, and clearly physically disabled, he wanted to pursue acting. So he was, you know, and he got some parts, he appeared in designing women that TV show they had back in the late 80s and early 90s. And so, you know, he was just one of these people that that physical physical, malady meant nothing to him. And, and, and he overcame all of these, you know, things that most people would consider that handicapped women limitation, it just wasn’t the way he thought. So
John Corcoran 13:57
what did what did you learn from him about relationship building, networking, that sort of thing?
Paul Edwards 14:04
Oh, the first thing I could tell you is I learned just how to talk to people better, I was so inept, and so self absorbed and so self centered before living with him. And not, not two days after leaving, when I when I left, I had decided to go overseas and live in London, I had family in London, who could help me land there. But the transition time was over about a week and I was going to go stop in Pennsylvania and visit my parents where they were living at the time. And literally, the day after I left, I was just, I was just noticing how people were responding to me how I was able to keep asking questions and get people to open up and for lack of a better term, just having eating out of my hand, you know, like a horse whisperer. And I had never had that I had always been I had always offended people at always push them away, I’d always I’d always been isolated because of this. And now I found myself, you know, being able to connect with people and being able to form relationships. And, you know, people would ask me into in to be promoted and asked me into positions of leadership. And, you know, many times it wasn’t even stuff I was necessarily qualified for. But I sounded like I was so
John Corcoran 15:26
thick until you make it right. And so you go from, you might have had a few stops in between. But at some point you unless you joined the US Army, you did two tours of duty in an Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thank you for that. And tell me what you learned from being in in the military a highly regimented, hierarchical type of organization. How did you learn about networking there?
Paul Edwards 15:54
Well, if we go back to the whole extroverted, introverted thing, I actually had some clarity on this recently, by being around Andrew Maiolo, my mentor, I learned a lot of good extroverted qualities. By being in the military, I actually learned a lot of introverted qualities. And the best example I can always point to is what is not ever written or even necessarily verbalized. But it’s understood by any soldier worth is worth assault. And that is, whenever you start with a new units, like you arrive in your new your first platoon or your new unit, you get change station, you go to a different part of the world brand new, nobody knows who you are, doesn’t matter what rank you hold, doesn’t matter if you’re in command, right. But especially if you’re low on the totem pole. Some people will don’t get the memo and they, they show up and they immediately start talking and talking too much. And trying to make friends trying too hard. In other words, and what I learned from this experience was when you were first there, you don’t, you don’t overwhelm people, right? You don’t come on too strong. And so particularly in my case, because I’m coming into I’m I’m working in a very blue collar, Mo s Military Occupational Specialty, which was we were truckers. But I’m this area. White Collar Boy, you know, with the vocabulary and the deep voice and all this. I was already used to offending people and getting them to think I was an egghead and a nerd and picking on me for that. So I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not. I’m not going out there and, and talking, pontificating, if you will, I’m just gonna be quiet, you know, I’m just gonna lay low on that. Yeah. And speak when spoken to and laugh along, when people joke and all that, but I’m not gonna. And it actually worked as it because when I came into networking, I also realized, you know, there’s all different personality types in here. Some people probably wouldn’t mind if you come in with a with a, you know, a big flashing a bang, but a lot of people, particularly here in Western Washington, which is one of the highest concentration of introverts in the world. They’re just not going to go for that, you know, they’re they’re going to be turned off by YouTube boisterous, right.
John Corcoran 18:12
And so you spent six years kind of in the trenches. You don’t you, you become an insurance salesman, and you’re going to networking events, and Chamber of Commerce events, and all those sorts of things. And tell me what that journey was like, because I don’t think anyone listening to this hasn’t experienced going into a large networking event, and kind of the dread that so many people feel and trying to navigate your way around it, how to connect with people. Tell us a little bit about your approach.
Paul Edwards 18:44
Well, as you read in the early chapters, in my book, I started out pretty much like anyone else, right. And and to top it off, I was fresh out of recently separated from the military. So I’m very mission oriented, right. So it’s like, I gotta go sell insurance. And I got to get it done today. Right? Yeah. So I started off not in the same comically caricatured way, but it’s very much like a Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day, you know, just charging straight at it, like mid the bowl. And, you know, and, and it was a bunch of bull. And basically, I but you know, I’m, I’m also a student at observing people to say they’re not reacting to this the way I hoped they would, right. In other words, they don’t want to talk about insurance. In fact, even when I know them very well, they don’t want to talk about insurance. And it was around this time 2013 2014 that ice, I joined a mastermind, the agency Alliance mastermind and I also discovered this website called the smart business revolution, which if you haven’t been to it, you should check out smart business revolution. com right. Thanks for the plug. And I’m, I’m so I’m, I’m having failed at that right. And having failed at being pushy. And all that I’m, I’m saying, Okay, take a step back, learn something for a change. And in this mastermind, was a fellow by the name of Jonathan Garrick. And he said something that’s always stuck with me, which is, you’re either in the business of making relationships or breaking relationships. And I quickly said, Well, if I’m going to be pushy salesman, that’s obviously the quality the category of breaking relationships. So what then is the category of making them? From there, I was able to see Jonathan helped me understand something else. He said, You know, this was when Facebook was going through just to one of its big booms. And but video marketing was still pretty new. And they were encouraging us to do video marketing. So I started off with with a video talking about insurance. And Jonathan quickly, put the kibosh on that, get rid of that video. And I said, why he said, don’t talk about insurance. I said, Okay, well, what should I talk about? He said anything, but they said, talk about that your family, talk about your activities, talk about your hobbies, talk about your passions, talk about your interest, share your sense of humor, but don’t talk about what you do, they can see it on your Facebook profile. They know what you do. That’s, that’s not that’s not like they’re unaware. What they want to know is who you are. They want to understand your relationship they want to get it, it’s it’s like letting them you know, test drive, it’s giving them a chance to get to know you in it. In a small, it’s not the full measure of your personality, but it’s a taste, it’s a glimpse of who you are.
So I started doing that. And I was just very, very consistent about it. I made sure that every day or every other day, I was uploading a video of some kind. And this is when I was still working for Liberty Mutual, which is around the time when you and I first started corresponding by email. And before you could look around, I was getting calls from the National offices back east of Liberty Mutual saying we want you to be on a coaching call for all of our rookie reps, because you’re number three in the entire company and social media engagement. Wow. Because Liberty system was such that every time you got a lead, you tracked where it came from, right. So I would get people pop up on instant messenger and respond to Facebook ads that I was doing and all that. And all of a sudden, I was one of the top three reps in the country and the entire, you know, their workforces gotta be 25 people. That’s not their Salesforce, but their Salesforce, nonetheless, is a lot of people. And they were asking me on coaching calls. And anyway, so yeah, that hopefully that gives you a picture of of how that started. But from there, eventually, I went to an independent agency, and started getting a lot of the business owner clients that I had been trying to get. But I didn’t have a product for them. Now I had now I could offer commercial insurance as well. And so when it always was when it all came to an end in 2018, I was totally 100% referral, I would sit there in my office and the phone would ring my phone would buzz, you know, and my email would go off. So and So referred me to you for insurance. And all I had to do is sit there and wait for it to happen and years of effort, though. So do you stop going to the face to face stuff, the networking events and just doing? Are you just doing Facebook? Finally, by the end there? I’m still doing Facebook, and I still do some I still went to some weekly things, you know, okay, but But increasingly, what was happening was I was also teaching networking in that setting. So I would go and you know, if there was a point where you stood up and said in your name and what company you’re from, yeah, I’m Paul Edwards. I’m from Insurance Services Group. But the main contribution I made was, when it was my turn to speak. You know, you everybody takes a turn doing a presentation, I never presented about insurance, it was always about here’s how to build relation friendships. Here’s how to connect with people. Here’s how to add value without asking anything in return. I like
John Corcoran 24:04
the way you describe it there. It was not so much talking about networking, because networking, that word kind of like insurance or sales is not something that people are drawn to, it’s more of the activity that they are drawn to, wouldn’t you agree?
Paul Edwards 24:18
Yes. And increasingly, what I find john is that people are networking has become somewhat of a devalued word. Because the traditional networking meeting used to be something kind of, you know, almost Exclusive OR kind of hip to be a part of now, there’s so many of them, the markets flooded with them. Yeah. And unfortunately, if it is, if it is explicitly a networking group, a lot of people are turned off by that, because they know that there’s going to be a lot of people there who are just they’re trying to make a buck.
John Corcoran 24:51
Yeah, that’s the hard thing is that balance between high caliber people, but you don’t want to be a bunch of people are just selling at you the whole time.
Exactly. Right. Now,
John Corcoran 25:01
what about I love asking people about transitions from one career to another? And so you are no longer doing insurance anymore? That right? Correct. Okay. And you’re you’re full on speaker, author podcaster. This is the new direction? How do you make that shift? Like, who do you lean on? How do you totally make that change?
Paul Edwards 25:27
Well, I got a bit of a, I like to say, God gave me a bit of a boost in this bike. What what happened first was, everything stopped working, I was still doing networking, I was still on Facebook, I was still showing up on people’s radar. And I was still getting referral business. But I couldn’t close a damn bit of it for six months, I just it didn’t matter what it was something intercepted me something stopped me weird. And I took this as a cue I said, you know, this is, this is not happening by x. This is not stuff that’s beyond my capability. It’s not i’m not lacking at this point in persuasive skill or personal appeal. And these are referrals coming from people who absolutely love me, you know, and many of them are other insurance agents who can’t write that particular piece of business. And they know they can send it to me and I won’t touch if they already hold their personal accounts or whatever. So I said this is this is not an accident, then this get this gets on the radar of my company, and and they and rightfully so six months, no sales. I mean, it’s a What have you done for me lately? game, right. So they fired me. And at that point, I took it as a sign. I had been struggling to get the kind of success that I really felt I should be getting from the insurance business. Because I was sabotaging could have been could have been it’s a good it’s a good question. I’m never thought of it from that angle. Sometimes that happens, you know, people were like, I
John Corcoran 27:03
don’t know how it wasn’t closing anything for six months. And you know, you talk to them. They’re like, you know, there’s no energy or not enthused no doozy as them for it. Or I see what you mean.
Paul Edwards 27:13
Yeah. And and that, yes, not entirely, but there were many times as ice in the spiritual world. I sense the this contracting, right. I sense this shrinking and, and all of that. And so then that, then you begin to wonder, Well, what, you know, what am I doing this for? Right? So there could have been some of that? Yes, yes, it’s since you phrase it that way. Um, but I get to the I get into this. I, I walk away from this, I wasn’t upset that I got fired. I wasn’t demoralized by it. I did not take it as a you know, it’s all over. Instead, I said, I’ve been waiting six years in this business. For a breakthrough that never came. It might be that that was just a season, I was supposed to go through to learn what I learned about relationships and about adding value and about connecting with people. But the real vision for my life doesn’t end there doesn’t stay long term in the insurance business. It’s meant to go much. It’s meant to go much deeper than that. Right. Right. So at that point, I just said, well, then I’m going to I’m going to see I’m going to go down this rabbit hole, you know, red pill kind of thing. Yeah. until until I can’t go any further until, you know, that dries up and up to the moment we’re speaking. It hasn’t. In fact, it’s it went through some some valleys of, you know, hard lessons I had to learn, but it didn’t stay there either. It started and now it’s starting to climb.
John Corcoran 28:53
Right. Right. That’s great. That’s a great story. Well, we’re going to wrap things up here. And I’ll wrap things up with the question that I always was asked, which is, let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars, the Emmys, and you’re receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award for everything you’ve done up until this point, Paul. And so tell me, you know, who are the people that you thank, you know, we always think our family, that’s cool. But beyond that, you know, who are the colleagues who are the friends who are the mentors? Who are the peers? Who are the commanding officers that you would acknowledge in your remarks?
Paul Edwards 29:25
Undoubtedly, Andrew Maiolo, my mentor in Santa Monica Beach, that’s where this all started. That’s where I got a huge big turnaround in my life there. I have a list of noncommissioned officers under whom I served in two different units, active duty units in the army. There would be a too many names to go into. At the moment. For brevity sake, I’ll just say the NCO core of the United States Army. Subsequent to that, people that I trained with, particularly in masterminds and coaching programs, Jonathan Garrick would be one of them, Sean Mathis would be another and especially in departing the insurance business, Alan Shimon modo who was mentoring me during that time. Vince Delmonte who became my business coach when I after I left the business and started going into the online marketing world, Rob cos Berg, who both you and I know who’s now my mentor through bestseller publishing. Aaron Walker, who’s been a guest on my show you who’ve been a guest on my show, john, just I have so many good people, as a result of building relationships, podcasting, networking, reaching out, just got off a great phone call with Ben case who’s on with focused on fundraising on the east coast and fantastic man of God have a great relationship with him. I mean, that the list goes on. But you know that those would be some of the names that would come to mind.
John Corcoran 31:00
That’s great. Well, thank you, Paul. It was a pleasure as always business beyond business how to gain magnetic influence, meaningful connection, and profitable publicity by becoming radically generous entrepreneurs the name of the book where can people learn more about you?
Paul Edwards 31:16
They want to go to the Paul s Edwards, the Paul SS and Simon Edwards, calm and, john, I will say for anybody from your show, who wants a free copy of business beyond business, there’s a digital one available if that if they want to subscribe to my mailing list, which is there on the website. If If you don’t want to subscribe, hey, I’m, I’m a abundance mentality. You can reach out to me on Facebook or some other methods, some other means and I’ll get your copy that way as well.
John Corcoran 31:42
That’s great. And the influencer networking secrets podcast also so you can check that out on iTunes and Stitcher and all those different places. Paul, thanks so much.