How to Grow a GOOD Network, Not Just a Large One

A strong network doesn’t have to be a big one—it just has to be built right.

In this episode, Josiah Wright of Optrivo breaks down what actually works when it comes to networking as a founder. Spoiler: it’s not about cold DMs or handing out business cards to strangers.

Josiah shares how building real relationships, doing consistently great work, and showing up as a trusted expert can open the door to massive opportunities—without all the gimmicks. From turning a $50 blog gig into a thriving copywriting career to landing high-paying clients through reputation alone, this conversation is packed with real talk and actionable takeaways for anyone trying to grow their business the smart way.

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Transcript

0:47

Alright, so today I'm gonna talk about networking and you know, kind of what it is, what it's not, why you should do it, why you should not not do it, and how it's a ton easier than a lot of people make it seem to be. So, um, I'll talk about what is not first. So a lot of people out there, um, gurus, course creators, book writers, you know, maybe not so much book writers, but you know, people trying to make money quickly will try to sell you on the idea that. You need to establish yourself on LinkedIn. You need to be doing a lot of, you know, cold messaging at events. You need to be doing things a certain way to get into people's minds in a certain way. And while that will drive more deals and. Create a pretty large network of people that know what you do. It's not really the most dependable and it takes a lot of work. And so there is a more natural way to build a good network. So I would call that kind of a network that I just described, a network, but I wanna talk about how to build a good network, a healthy network that's going to really boost your business and just skyrocket it to the moon. And I can speak from experience on this, so I'll give you a few of my own personal experiences and, and they line up perfectly with other people's experience as well. Is building a network based off relationship and based off prevent presenting yourself as a professional in your area of expertise. So I'll start with relationship first. That relationship kind of goes into both categories, but. I'll, I'll talk about your customers first, and then people that you meet that are not your customer, but they are part of your network. So with your customer is really, really, really important. It's just vital to build up a really good relationship with your customer. Don't just do a good job. Built up a really good relationship. The best way to do that is just to communicate. Communicate frequently. Communicate often. Uh, daily, depending on what you do, because most people aren't good at that. And so if you have a business owner or a client that you know that their experience is that people just don't communicate and it's very frustrating. And so when you come in and you just communicate a lot, it's going to massively boost your relationship with that client. When you come across things where maybe they overpaid you for something accidentally and you return some of the money, you know, things like that, you just do the right thing in every situation that you come across, especially with your first clients, and you're gonna build up a good, solid reputation with them. This does several things for one, that it's possible that they will just talk about your business, about your service, or your products to other people without you even asking. The second thing is. When you do ask, it's going to, the way is already paved for them to say, yes, let me give you this person's number. Or Yes, let's hop in a meeting together with this other guy that I know. And so the personal story that I'll tell you for this, I have lots of different customers, but one of them is a copywriting customer. So I'm a professional copywriter. And I started out early or late last year doing some SEO blogging for one of my customers. I found him on Upwork. Uh, it was just 50 bucks a blog, you know, not very much money, but I did a very, very good job for him. I did a very good job better than anybody else that he had had before. And on top of that, I built up a very good relationship with him. So I was communicating often. I was making sure that if he threw me something last minute, I knew that he normally wouldn't do that. But if he threw something with me last minute, I didn't, you know, kind of sit back and say, no, it's the weekend. No, I pumped it out. You know, I just did a really good job for him. Built up a solid relationship through lots of communication and openness and clarifying things, making sure I was getting everything just right so that his. Work that he presented, the work that I did, that he, that basically white labeled for him, he could present it to his clients and it performed very well. So he got good results from my work and felt really good about our relationship. Fast forward to this month. I, you know, now getting into more different kinds of copy. One of the ones that I'm getting into is e-commerce, uh, email marketing. And so I, I noticed that one of the e-commerce brands that I was writing blogs for didn't have any kind of emailing. And I was like, oh, well this is money left on the table. Shot'em an email. I said, Hey, would your client be interested in some email marketing? Uh, there's really money left on the table, and he was very excited. We hopped on a call. He said, absolutely. I also want you to do it for my own personal brand and another e-commerce brand that I know of. And so I got three new opportunities from One Call just because I had a really good reputation with him and did a very good job, very good relationship. Plus very good job is a high reputation, is very valuable. Way more valuable than a thousand dms to people you don't know on LinkedIn. So, hey, that's a good line. You should use that. Um. Now. So the, that's one example of, you know, building up a good relationship with your customers and how valuable that is. And that it, it really boosts your healthy, uh, network. And so the, the other type of person is not your customer. There's someone that you meet out and about and the most important. Uh, most important thing to keep in mind with these people is to establish yourself as an expert or a person of authority in your area of expertise. So this could be someone, uh, I'll give an example. Somebody reached out to me on LinkedIn and wanted to help me grow my MSP. Well, I don't have an MSP, I'm just listed as a CMO on a few different MSPs. So. We got on the call, I was like, Hey, you know, I, I would like to know how to grow an MSP if you know more than I do. But we really found out we kind of do the same thing. And so, you know, just kind of saved each other's, you know, numbers. And I talked a lot about copywriting on in that call because he has some expertise in some areas. I had some expertise in other areas and we talked about those things. And so I didn't hear from him for several months. Didn't really expect to, but, you know, out of the blue, he just messaged me on LinkedIn one day and said, Hey, um, I've got this MSP client. They have a lot of money, but they really, you know, they're doing some different things now. They really need their site to be redone. The content needs to be updated. The SEO needs to be updated, and they need a complete revamp. They're willing to pay a lot for it. So hopped on a call with them and landed a very large deal. Because I established myself as someone who knew what they were talking about, someone who presented themselves as a professional. And so I got the, I got my foot in the door because of that, but also because of the personal relationship I have with the SEO agency owner. I know someone who's going to do a very good job in this new deal. So he got also another deal out of it. I, because he kept a good relationship with me, it does go both ways, and I kept a good relationship with him. So not only because I was, uh, seen as a professional in the eyes of somebody who was not one of my customers, but also because I have a good relationship with one of my customers. We landed a very large deal. And that is true for so many entrepreneurs. They can, you can hear story after story of when you really do a good job of keeping up your reputation, not burning any bridges ever, unless you absolutely have to. You're going to have many opportunities that you wouldn't have with just, you know, sending a lot of cold messages out or just going to networking events. Those things are not inherently bad, but they're not nearly as impactful as having very good relationships and having a very high reputation in the marketplace. So that's kind of it on networking. I know maybe you were expecting to know some tips on how to go to events and what to do, what not to do. Those things are important to know in different use cases. So that's why I'm not going into all the details of exactly how to do this kind of thing. If you do want to know more about it, the first thing I always recommend is if you're not already sign up for Market Fit Lab, it's gonna give you a lot of different value. Um, way more than I could back into the short video is gonna be absolutely amazing. But one of the things is it's gonna teach you how to talk about what you do in a way that's very persuasive to everybody around you. It definitely builds up that authority aspect in other people's minds. The second thing you should do is book some calls with some mentors on the mentor deck. There's myself, there's a lot of other people that can really help you hone your messaging to other people and the way that you talk to other people depending on what you do, because it's gonna be different for everybody. So I hope that you're having a fantastic day so far, and I wish you luck on your entrepreneurial journey, and I hope to see you on some calls. Have a good day. Bye.