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Networking Unleashed: S1E10 An Interview with Llance Kezner and Michael A Forman · Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Networking Unleashed, a new type of game.
• 0:22
  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.
• 0:35
  But here's the question, is an art and how do I get this to work?
• 0:40
  Yes, even if you're the person hiding in the corner at every event pretending to check email.
• 0:47
  This is for you.
• 0:49
  Now, working isn't just a skill to have it go under one, have it started sooner.
• 0:55
  More connections or opportunities, more profits.
• 0:59
  It's like unlocking a cheat code for life.
• 1:03
  So whether you're the like of the party or just a let me just stay in the corner in text.
• 1:10
  We've got something for you.
• 1:12
  Stick around and let's turn those awkward small test moments into big wins.
• 1:19
  Now, I've got a guest today and his name is Lance Kessner.
• 1:24
  And he's got really quite a story to tell.
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  He created a consumer product and it's right from his kitchen and it went viral.
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  It's now selling in Walmart and I can't really do it justice.
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  But if you just let me introduce Lance, then he'll be more than happy to share it with you.
• 1:45
  Lance, how are you doing this morning?
• 1:48
  I'm fine, Michael.
• 1:49
  Thank you so much for the opportunity.
• 1:52
  My pleasure.
• 1:53
  Tell me a little about your product.
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  To kind of boil it down to just a couple of sentences.
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  What we've done is created a product that helps people kind of reduce their stress and anxiety
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  and to help them with their wellness programs.
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  It's broth and a tea bag.
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  It's a simple idea that we brought to market 12 years ago.
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  But what it did do is during COVID, we went viral because we were discovered by Weight Watchers.
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  And that raised the awareness of this new kind of crazy idea of combining a tea bag with broth.
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  And we ended up a year ago getting a commitment from Walmart to be in half of their stores.
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  And that just happened about a month ago.
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  And so you could say we're a 12-year overnight success.
• 3:00
  That's great.
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  So I guess could you share with me a personal experience where networking itself impacted your career or your business?
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  I'd say with that, as it relates to the story, we won an award for our product.
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  It's a very prestigious award that is given out by the fancy food show in New York.
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  And we won an outstanding hot beverage of the year.
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  And so it was the first time a broth had ever won that award.
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  Normally it's tea or coffee or cider or something like that.
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  So we got the award in New York.
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  And after that meeting, somebody I had met years before was in the food business.
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  And he always said to me, if you ever need my help with something, let me know.
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  And so I called him up and said, I think I need your help.
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  Can we meet for lunch?
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  And he said, absolutely.
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  Right away we met for lunch.
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  And I told him that we won the award.
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  And he said, yeah, you know what?
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  You're right.
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  This is a pretty big deal.
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  Let me see what I can do.
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  He took it to a couple of his customers and came back and said, this is a big deal.
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  We'd like to participate with you in building this brand.
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  And right now he and his partner are partners of ours.
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  And that all came from networking.
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  It's crazy.
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  That's good.
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  That's great.
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  You know, trust is such a crucial component of networking.
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  Right.
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  So with that in mind, how do you maintain your professional networking contacts?
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  With even people in your profession, how do you maintain those contacts?
• 5:16
  You know, a lot of it has to do with being comfortable with putting yourself out there.
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  One of the things I learned really early on in sales is that you kind of have to make
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  yourself a little uncomfortable in a lot of situations.
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  I think the only person that knows you're uncomfortable is you.
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  Other people don't realize that you're uncomfortable.
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  And once you get over that, then it's easier to kind of connect with new people.
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  Staying connected with people, it does require some effort.
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  As an example today, I am having lunch later on with a person I met probably 20 years ago
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  and helped him sell his business.
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  And I just called him out of the blue because I had seen an interview that he was on.
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  And I just called him and I said, hey, I saw that interview.
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  You did a great job.
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  Don't need to call me back.
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  And then a week later, he calls me.
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  He says, I'm taking you out to lunch.
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  So, you know, it's those little things, I think, that are kind of fun.
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  I'm a pretty social person.
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  And so that really kind of fits my personality.
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  I think another thing is that LinkedIn, those types of networking sites are so easy to stay
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  connected with people and share.
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  Now, sharing stories, sharing experiences, again, putting yourself out there, letting
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  people see a little bit of a vulnerable side to you is also a great way to connect.
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  Because they may be connecting with you and not saying anything.
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  And the next time you see them, they'll kind of go back and go, oh, how was that trip?
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  Did you ever get that client, that kind of thing?
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  So yeah.
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  Well, you know, networking is so very important if you own a company or if you're doing the
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  sales for the company, but that trust you is such a major factor in networking and everything
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  you're telling me that trust factor is so important, you know, because even if you put
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  some people on a drip campaign and you forget about them, about eight months later, you
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  realize that they're going to call you and say, you know, how about that product or how
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  about the sale or whatever?
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  But that's because you've already established that trust factor.
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  And it's very, very important.
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  And if you go to large scale networking events, I'm sure that you've done a few of those and
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  you walk in and you see a huge amount of people with tables and everything with people around
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  them.
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  How do you, you know, usually there is a kind of a secret sauce sort of sort of speak about
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  when you approach a table and what you listen for and everything else.
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  How do you do that?
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  You know, I usually am at the table at those events, but I'll tell you how the most effective
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  ways people have approached me and they're very good.
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  And I actually don't mind it because they instantly want to know about me, my product,
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  what was the inspiration.
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  They will take some time to ask me questions without talking about themselves.
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  And they're really thoughtful questions.
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  You know, they're really asked, they're very interested in knowing what I want to do.
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  The people who I instantly turn off are the ones who introduce themselves and what they
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  do.
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  And if they're not a buyer, which I'm there for, I really don't want to talk to them.
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  But if I think that they can add value or if they present themselves in a way that that
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  shows that they can add value to what I'm doing, I'll listen.
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  And so, yeah, that's usually the way in which I advise people, find something that you can
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  connect with and express a sincere interest.
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  And you will get, you know, very positive results because the people at those boot,
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  they pay a lot of money to be there.
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  They're there to sell.
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  They may be there to network too, but that's secondary.
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  It's true.
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  Whenever you go to a networking event, you're always looking to give.
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  You never look to get, okay, because that is exactly what you said.
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  Everybody is aware that everybody is there to sell something or they have a service or
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  something else.
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  But if you can show the other people that you have something that you are truly interested,
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  I have something called for F.O.R.M.
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  Family, occupation, recreation and a message that you can get onto the same level as them.
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  And if you can talk to them, speak about their family, their husband and their wife, their
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  sister, brother, son, daughter, doesn't make a difference.
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  Or the occupation or recreation, do they like to snow ski or snowboard or boating or something
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  else like that?
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  Get out to the same level and talk about it because people love to talk about themselves.
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  They love it.
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  So if you can get that so you you're building up that trust value.
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  Okay.
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  So trust here it is coming back into the fold.
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  So you're lowering their wall and you're building your trust value.
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  So it's so very important.
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  Let me ask you a question.
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  What is your vision right now?
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  For the company, we're basically, so we've kind of created a new category as a consumer
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  packaged good company.
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  And we've taken two different ideas, broth and tea categories.
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  And we've mixed them together and we sell it as broth.
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  You go to the soup aisle, you go to Walmart, you look in the soup aisle for a product.
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  Our vision is to let as many people know about that as possible that, hey, there's this new
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  thing that you can reach for instead of coffee, tea or cider that is savory and oh, by the
• 12:00
  way, your mom probably served it to you when you weren't feeling good.
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  And oh, by the way, we've been drinking broth for thousands of years.
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  Yeah, we just happened to put it in a more convenient format and make it very affordable.
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  So our vision is that and that encompasses talking to people like yourself, being in
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  the press, social media, and then also getting our product into as many places as people
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  can taste it as possible.
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  That includes break rooms, hospitals.
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  We would love to be in an airline beverage cart.
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  Can you imagine that they have on the cart?
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  And if they said, oh, how about some wonderful Thai lemongrass broth that you could just basically
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  ... I'll take a cup of that, absolutely.
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  So that's kind of our vision.
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  I put it very simply, but I'll tell you, it takes a lot of effort to do all that.
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  Now, what you've said to me was the grand scheme of things, but I'm sure you've faced some
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  challenges.
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  Okay?
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  So can you give me an idea of a challenge that you've faced and how you overcame it?
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  In our business, there are daily challenges that affect the manufacturing of the product
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  or getting into a customer or keeping a customer.
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  And I think I'd like to speak about the challenge of manufacturing a product.
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  When you create a product like ours, my wife and I were not experts in making something
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  like this.
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  Nobody was.
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  In fact, when we came to the market, nobody had ever done this before.
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  We were the first ones to do this.
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  Our challenge was finding someone who was crazy enough to work with us, who knew what they
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  were doing and could grow with us.
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  So that original challenge did take a while, but we did find a company, but we quickly
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  realized that we outgrew their capabilities.
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  And I think that was the second challenge, is realizing that our expectations were going
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  to be different than our partners.
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  And we needed to be able to kind of lift ourselves away and look for different opportunities.
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  And that was really hard because there's a comfort level when you're working with a
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  partner like that.
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  And you don't want, you know, you don't know what's next.
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  There are continual challenges when it comes to growing.
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  And we expect that there are going to be other kinds of things that come along that we didn't
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  really expect.
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  Yeah, there's always challenges and everything that you do.
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  But if I'm to ask you, for my viewers, what is one essential networking tip that you would
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  give them that you found to be successful?
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  I think that I just attended a holiday networking event a week and a half ago.
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  And I probably knew four of the hundred people or so.
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  And in this case, I brought something that kind of broke the ice with people.
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  Week three, eight, it's something called the broth sloth.
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  And so I brought this huge backdrop that people could take pictures with and get hugged by
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  the broth sloth.
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  And so I can't tell you how many people came up.
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  They wanted to know what it was.
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  I had a reason to say, hey, you need to get a picture.
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  The sloth has been waiting for you.
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  Come and sit down and take a picture.
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  And the smiles on their faces were just amazing.
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  But I'll tell you, if you have something that can break the ice with somebody in a way that
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  they're not really expecting, you get amazing results very quickly.
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  And it may be asking them, how did they get to the event?
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  You don't say right away, what do you do?
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  How did you get to this event?
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  Like questions that are very kind of sideways.
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  And I'll bet that that will break ice and figure out whether you want to keep talking
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  to that person or not.
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  You hit on so many things that I usually speak about just for general networking guidelines.
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  And you seem to be doing everything the way you should be doing it.
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  So I think you're going to do great.
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  What would your favorite marketing tactic be?
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  Was it this or was it something else?
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  I can tell you that the broth sloth, we actually created it because we were at a very large
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  conference in Minneapolis.
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  And our booth was right in between two multi-billion dollar companies.
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  And I said to my wife, we need to figure out a way to stand out.
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  People are going to just walk by, they're going to look at general mills, which is right
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  in front of them.
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  And they're not going to look at us, a two-person company.
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  So we created the broth sloth.
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  We had the next morning, we had people waiting in line to take pictures with the broth sloth.
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  We got our largest ever customer from that and we're just rolling them out.
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  I can't really talk about them, but basically that ended up being the reason why that organization
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  brought over their executive director to find out about it.
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  Because what happened was if people were walking in front of our booth, I would go out into
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  the aisle and say, the broth sloth is waiting to take a picture with you and totally catch
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  them off guard.
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  They didn't even know what we did.
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  I got them to sit down.
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  They gave me their cell phone.
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  I took a picture with their cell phone.
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  They still didn't know what we did.
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  I gave them back their cell phone and handed them samples of our product and gave them
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  literally a five-second pitch.
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  That was, I think that was the best marketing we've done.
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  And it did prove out to work very well.
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  Okay, so let me just say, because we're going to close things up here a little bit, and
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  I want you to give me and everybody else one takeaway that somebody can use today or tomorrow.
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  They can immediately start to use.
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  One networking takeaway.
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  You know, go on LinkedIn and look at your network and reach out to five people that you haven't
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  talked to in a long time and just ask them how they're doing.
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  Just say, hi, I was thinking about you.
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  Maybe mentioned something that connected you to them in the first place.
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  And I'll bet you that something will come out of that and don't have any expectations.
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  Say, hello, how are you thinking about you?
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  And you might be surprised.
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  That's a great tip.
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  One which I do all the time, but I also recommend to everybody else.
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  So I feel that is a very, very good tip.
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  So Lance, if somebody wanted to get hold of you, ask you a question or ask about your
• 20:20
  product, how would they do it?
• 20:24
  Our website is sipping broths or sipping broth.com.
• 20:30
  You can reach me on LinkedIn, Lance Kesner, or we're on social media at sipping broths
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  plural.
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  So any of those channels are open for communication.
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  If you want to email me from our website, that works too.
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  So yeah, all kinds of ways.
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  Great.
• 20:51
  Lance, this was terrific.
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  You have done wonders with what you have.
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  Your product sounds sensational.
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  And honestly, I can't wait to go out and try it.
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  So I want to wish everybody a happy holidays, Merry Christmas, happy Climax, and we'll get
• 21:09
  back to you soon.
• 21:11
  Thank you, Michael.
• 21:13
  Well, that's a wrap, folks.
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  A huge thank you to our special guests for sharing such incredible insights today.
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  And of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending
• 21:27
  your time with us.
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  Remember, networking isn't about being perfect.
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  It's about being present.
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  So take what you've learned today, get out there, and make some meaningful connections.
• 21:40
  If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share
• 21:45
  it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
• 21:49
  Let's keep the conversation going.
• 21:51
  You can find me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or my website, MichaelAForman.com.
• 21:58
  Remember, until next time, keep practicing, keep connecting, and keep building those relationships.
• 22:05
  This is Michael A. Foreman signing off.
• 22:08
  Take care, and happy networking.