Hello and welcome to Networking Unleashed, a new type of game.
Welcome to the talks on how to perform it and listen to the podcast where Networking is more than just a book and called Instant Art.
But here's the question, is an art and how do I get this to work?
Yes, even if you're the person hiding in the corner at every event pretending to check email.
This is for you.
Now, working isn't just a skill to have it go under one, have it started sooner.
More connections or opportunities, more profits.
It's like unlocking a cheat code for life.
So whether you're the like of the party or just a let me just stay in the corner in text.
We've got something for you.
Stick around and let's turn those awkward small test moments into big wins.
Now, I've got a guest today and his name is Lance Kessner.
And he's got really quite a story to tell.
He created a consumer product and it's right from his kitchen and it went viral.
It's now selling in Walmart and I can't really do it justice.
But if you just let me introduce Lance, then he'll be more than happy to share it with you.
Lance, how are you doing this morning?
I'm fine, Michael.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
My pleasure.
Tell me a little about your product.
To kind of boil it down to just a couple of sentences.
What we've done is created a product that helps people kind of reduce their stress and anxiety
and to help them with their wellness programs.
It's broth and a tea bag.
It's a simple idea that we brought to market 12 years ago.
But what it did do is during COVID, we went viral because we were discovered by Weight Watchers.
And that raised the awareness of this new kind of crazy idea of combining a tea bag with broth.
And we ended up a year ago getting a commitment from Walmart to be in half of their stores.
And that just happened about a month ago.
And so you could say we're a 12-year overnight success.
That's great.
So I guess could you share with me a personal experience where networking itself impacted your career or your business?
I'd say with that, as it relates to the story, we won an award for our product.
It's a very prestigious award that is given out by the fancy food show in New York.
And we won an outstanding hot beverage of the year.
And so it was the first time a broth had ever won that award.
Normally it's tea or coffee or cider or something like that.
So we got the award in New York.
And after that meeting, somebody I had met years before was in the food business.
And he always said to me, if you ever need my help with something, let me know.
And so I called him up and said, I think I need your help.
Can we meet for lunch?
And he said, absolutely.
Right away we met for lunch.
And I told him that we won the award.
And he said, yeah, you know what?
You're right.
This is a pretty big deal.
Let me see what I can do.
He took it to a couple of his customers and came back and said, this is a big deal.
We'd like to participate with you in building this brand.
And right now he and his partner are partners of ours.
And that all came from networking.
It's crazy.
That's good.
That's great.
You know, trust is such a crucial component of networking.
Right.
So with that in mind, how do you maintain your professional networking contacts?
With even people in your profession, how do you maintain those contacts?
You know, a lot of it has to do with being comfortable with putting yourself out there.
One of the things I learned really early on in sales is that you kind of have to make
yourself a little uncomfortable in a lot of situations.
I think the only person that knows you're uncomfortable is you.
Other people don't realize that you're uncomfortable.
And once you get over that, then it's easier to kind of connect with new people.
Staying connected with people, it does require some effort.
As an example today, I am having lunch later on with a person I met probably 20 years ago
and helped him sell his business.
And I just called him out of the blue because I had seen an interview that he was on.
And I just called him and I said, hey, I saw that interview.
You did a great job.
Don't need to call me back.
And then a week later, he calls me.
He says, I'm taking you out to lunch.
So, you know, it's those little things, I think, that are kind of fun.
I'm a pretty social person.
And so that really kind of fits my personality.
I think another thing is that LinkedIn, those types of networking sites are so easy to stay
connected with people and share.
Now, sharing stories, sharing experiences, again, putting yourself out there, letting
people see a little bit of a vulnerable side to you is also a great way to connect.
Because they may be connecting with you and not saying anything.
And the next time you see them, they'll kind of go back and go, oh, how was that trip?
Did you ever get that client, that kind of thing?
So yeah.
Well, you know, networking is so very important if you own a company or if you're doing the
sales for the company, but that trust you is such a major factor in networking and everything
you're telling me that trust factor is so important, you know, because even if you put
some people on a drip campaign and you forget about them, about eight months later, you
realize that they're going to call you and say, you know, how about that product or how
about the sale or whatever?
But that's because you've already established that trust factor.
And it's very, very important.
And if you go to large scale networking events, I'm sure that you've done a few of those and
you walk in and you see a huge amount of people with tables and everything with people around
them.
How do you, you know, usually there is a kind of a secret sauce sort of sort of speak about
when you approach a table and what you listen for and everything else.
How do you do that?
You know, I usually am at the table at those events, but I'll tell you how the most effective
ways people have approached me and they're very good.
And I actually don't mind it because they instantly want to know about me, my product,
what was the inspiration.
They will take some time to ask me questions without talking about themselves.
And they're really thoughtful questions.
You know, they're really asked, they're very interested in knowing what I want to do.
The people who I instantly turn off are the ones who introduce themselves and what they
do.
And if they're not a buyer, which I'm there for, I really don't want to talk to them.
But if I think that they can add value or if they present themselves in a way that that
shows that they can add value to what I'm doing, I'll listen.
And so, yeah, that's usually the way in which I advise people, find something that you can
connect with and express a sincere interest.
And you will get, you know, very positive results because the people at those boot,
they pay a lot of money to be there.
They're there to sell.
They may be there to network too, but that's secondary.
It's true.
Whenever you go to a networking event, you're always looking to give.
You never look to get, okay, because that is exactly what you said.
Everybody is aware that everybody is there to sell something or they have a service or
something else.
But if you can show the other people that you have something that you are truly interested,
I have something called for F.O.R.M.
Family, occupation, recreation and a message that you can get onto the same level as them.
And if you can talk to them, speak about their family, their husband and their wife, their
sister, brother, son, daughter, doesn't make a difference.
Or the occupation or recreation, do they like to snow ski or snowboard or boating or something
else like that?
Get out to the same level and talk about it because people love to talk about themselves.
They love it.
So if you can get that so you you're building up that trust value.
Okay.
So trust here it is coming back into the fold.
So you're lowering their wall and you're building your trust value.
So it's so very important.
Let me ask you a question.
What is your vision right now?
For the company, we're basically, so we've kind of created a new category as a consumer
packaged good company.
And we've taken two different ideas, broth and tea categories.
And we've mixed them together and we sell it as broth.
You go to the soup aisle, you go to Walmart, you look in the soup aisle for a product.
Our vision is to let as many people know about that as possible that, hey, there's this new
thing that you can reach for instead of coffee, tea or cider that is savory and oh, by the
way, your mom probably served it to you when you weren't feeling good.
And oh, by the way, we've been drinking broth for thousands of years.
Yeah, we just happened to put it in a more convenient format and make it very affordable.
So our vision is that and that encompasses talking to people like yourself, being in
the press, social media, and then also getting our product into as many places as people
can taste it as possible.
That includes break rooms, hospitals.
We would love to be in an airline beverage cart.
Can you imagine that they have on the cart?
And if they said, oh, how about some wonderful Thai lemongrass broth that you could just basically
... I'll take a cup of that, absolutely.
So that's kind of our vision.
I put it very simply, but I'll tell you, it takes a lot of effort to do all that.
Now, what you've said to me was the grand scheme of things, but I'm sure you've faced some
challenges.
Okay?
So can you give me an idea of a challenge that you've faced and how you overcame it?
In our business, there are daily challenges that affect the manufacturing of the product
or getting into a customer or keeping a customer.
And I think I'd like to speak about the challenge of manufacturing a product.
When you create a product like ours, my wife and I were not experts in making something
like this.
Nobody was.
In fact, when we came to the market, nobody had ever done this before.
We were the first ones to do this.
Our challenge was finding someone who was crazy enough to work with us, who knew what they
were doing and could grow with us.
So that original challenge did take a while, but we did find a company, but we quickly
realized that we outgrew their capabilities.
And I think that was the second challenge, is realizing that our expectations were going
to be different than our partners.
And we needed to be able to kind of lift ourselves away and look for different opportunities.
And that was really hard because there's a comfort level when you're working with a
partner like that.
And you don't want, you know, you don't know what's next.
There are continual challenges when it comes to growing.
And we expect that there are going to be other kinds of things that come along that we didn't
really expect.
Yeah, there's always challenges and everything that you do.
But if I'm to ask you, for my viewers, what is one essential networking tip that you would
give them that you found to be successful?
I think that I just attended a holiday networking event a week and a half ago.
And I probably knew four of the hundred people or so.
And in this case, I brought something that kind of broke the ice with people.
Week three, eight, it's something called the broth sloth.
And so I brought this huge backdrop that people could take pictures with and get hugged by
the broth sloth.
And so I can't tell you how many people came up.
They wanted to know what it was.
I had a reason to say, hey, you need to get a picture.
The sloth has been waiting for you.
Come and sit down and take a picture.
And the smiles on their faces were just amazing.
But I'll tell you, if you have something that can break the ice with somebody in a way that
they're not really expecting, you get amazing results very quickly.
And it may be asking them, how did they get to the event?
You don't say right away, what do you do?
How did you get to this event?
Like questions that are very kind of sideways.
And I'll bet that that will break ice and figure out whether you want to keep talking
to that person or not.
You hit on so many things that I usually speak about just for general networking guidelines.
And you seem to be doing everything the way you should be doing it.
So I think you're going to do great.
What would your favorite marketing tactic be?
Was it this or was it something else?
I can tell you that the broth sloth, we actually created it because we were at a very large
conference in Minneapolis.
And our booth was right in between two multi-billion dollar companies.
And I said to my wife, we need to figure out a way to stand out.
People are going to just walk by, they're going to look at general mills, which is right
in front of them.
And they're not going to look at us, a two-person company.
So we created the broth sloth.
We had the next morning, we had people waiting in line to take pictures with the broth sloth.
We got our largest ever customer from that and we're just rolling them out.
I can't really talk about them, but basically that ended up being the reason why that organization
brought over their executive director to find out about it.
Because what happened was if people were walking in front of our booth, I would go out into
the aisle and say, the broth sloth is waiting to take a picture with you and totally catch
them off guard.
They didn't even know what we did.
I got them to sit down.
They gave me their cell phone.
I took a picture with their cell phone.
They still didn't know what we did.
I gave them back their cell phone and handed them samples of our product and gave them
literally a five-second pitch.
That was, I think that was the best marketing we've done.
And it did prove out to work very well.
Okay, so let me just say, because we're going to close things up here a little bit, and
I want you to give me and everybody else one takeaway that somebody can use today or tomorrow.
They can immediately start to use.
One networking takeaway.
You know, go on LinkedIn and look at your network and reach out to five people that you haven't
talked to in a long time and just ask them how they're doing.
Just say, hi, I was thinking about you.
Maybe mentioned something that connected you to them in the first place.
And I'll bet you that something will come out of that and don't have any expectations.
Say, hello, how are you thinking about you?
And you might be surprised.
That's a great tip.
One which I do all the time, but I also recommend to everybody else.
So I feel that is a very, very good tip.
So Lance, if somebody wanted to get hold of you, ask you a question or ask about your
product, how would they do it?
Our website is sipping broths or sipping broth.com.
You can reach me on LinkedIn, Lance Kesner, or we're on social media at sipping broths
plural.
So any of those channels are open for communication.
If you want to email me from our website, that works too.
So yeah, all kinds of ways.
Great.
Lance, this was terrific.
You have done wonders with what you have.
Your product sounds sensational.
And honestly, I can't wait to go out and try it.
So I want to wish everybody a happy holidays, Merry Christmas, happy Climax, and we'll get
back to you soon.
Thank you, Michael.
Well, that's a wrap, folks.
A huge thank you to our special guests for sharing such incredible insights today.
And of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending
your time with us.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect.
It's about being present.
So take what you've learned today, get out there, and make some meaningful connections.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share
it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can find me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or my website, MichaelAForman.com.
Remember, until next time, keep practicing, keep connecting, and keep building those relationships.
This is Michael A. Foreman signing off.
Take care, and happy networking.