IAM2216 – Business Mentor Unveils the Power of Collaboration and Service in Networking

Title: Transcript - Tue, 27 Aug 2024 07:51:22 GMT

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 07:51:22 GMT, Duration: [00:16:49.52]

[00:00:00.16] - Steve Ramona

I brought value to my competitors. If I couldn't help somebody, I would send them to my competitor. Because it's not a competitor, it's collaboration.

[00:00:07.71] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEO's, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the Imceo podcast.

[00:00:35.28] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gretch from the Imceo podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Steve Ramona. Steve, excited to have you on the show.

[00:00:43.60] - Steve Ramona

Thank you. This is going to be a great show. Thanks Gresh.

[00:00:46.09] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Super excited to have you on. And of course, before we jump in and have an awesome interview, I want to read a little bit more about Steve so you can hear about some of the awesome things that he works on. And Steve, a unique super connector, specializes in building partnerships with his personalized introductions. These introductions are emails and include video explanations adding a personal touch to each connection. Steves introductions have been incredibly successful, resulting in $25 million in deals over the past eleven years. And this tracker record speaks volumes about the value he brings to each connection. Steve has a podcast doing business with a servants heart. With an audience of over 40,000 people per episode, Steve is incredibly passionate about teaching people how to network correctly. He focuses on the law of increase is one of his unique parts of his business and one of the things that I love the importance of service and everything that Steve does. I was listening to a previous episode and I think that might have been ingrained when his family opened their health club and that was one of the big things that they talked about. But as you know, being who Steve is, even before we hit the record button on this, he was giving me gems and knowledge and information on how to level up. So super excited to have you on the show. I know it's going to be tremendously valuable. Steve, are you ready to speak to the Imco community?

[00:01:58.84] - Steve Ramona

Let's talk.

[00:02:00.14] - Gresham Harkless

Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:02:07.20] - Steve Ramona

As you said, my family launched a health club when I was 18, back in 79, 78 and stuck me at the front desk. I needed a job in summer, high school, kid just graduated. Want money? Maybe go on dates, go to the beach, go, whatever you do for the summer. And I realized after months and months of meeting 40, 56 years, way above my peers and very successful people, making a lot of money, they started becoming my friends, and I didn't realize it. At 1819, twice building a network, and then eventually I took on a job, was full time, and for 20 years, I met thousands of people. And what I did, that I give myself credit, but anybody could do this. I built relationships. Not with everybody, but you're gonna see, as you go through life, you're gonna have that inner circle or people that you connect with to build a relationship. I tell people all the time, you said, at law of increase, bring value. When you bring value, it could be, hey, great workout today. Great to see you today. As simple as that, to a major introduction to somebody, could really help somebody uplift their business. That all works if universe changes when you do that. But gresh, what I learned was, when I got out of the health club, I had this large network. So my next step was my friend asked me from the club, my network. I wasn't working. I had 20 years, since 18, didn't have a resume. He said, why don't you come work at my restaurant? Well, I came in, he taught me how to cook, and it was a small restaurant. But you know what I did? I brought that network from the health club and said, hey, everybody, I'm here. We blew up. Within months, we were one of the top restaurants in the street. And people would come see me, and my family would come see me, and my buddy's like, dude, what are you doing? I said, I just reached out to my network, not realizing what I was doing. And, you know, one of the things about value, what I did was I said, hey, his name was Jim. I said, jim, I'm gonna do an email every Monday with specials. Just tell me the specials. We're a fish place. And it blew us up again, because the customers I started meeting that kept coming in again. I built a whole network from the restaurant, and then from there, I went to a recycling company that was my own that I launched. What did I do? The health club network, the restaurant network now are together, reached out to all of them. You need help with recycling? I brought value to my competitors. If I couldn't help somebody, I would send them to my competitor, because it's not a competitor, it's collaboration. So he says, you know, you're doing great. You've done all these deals. Are you asking? And I said, what are you talking about? He goes, so when you give those introductions, somebody's going to ask you, how can I help you? What do you do? I said, I put my hands up like this, which I shouldn't do, but I go, oh, I'm good thinking. Hey, I just served you. I just brought you value gresh. He goes, no, no, no, no. You turn gresh into a taker. I said, explain that to me. He goes, they're so excited, the value you brought them. And this is where the Christmas comes in. They, they want to help you, and you tell them, no, you cut them off. Subconsciously, they're taped. They're thinking, oh, man, I just took from Steve. I couldn't bring him value and a great image audience to think about. This is Christmas. We're six years old, me and you, what we do, we got the earliest time we ever got up at six, seven, eight, you know, six or seven in the morning, ran to the Christmas tree, picked up a present open, and we're super excited. But what also happened, my brother got me a gift. My dad got me a gift. You bring a gift to gresh. Gresh brings a gift to Steve. So to relate that, if you think about that, because it truly is, some of the introductions I've done have built a lot of money, but much more than that. I had one lady I did three introductions for, for her business. She came back six weeks later and told me, you've completely changed my life. I'm thinking, oh, man, I helped build her business. It wasn't that she had two disabled kids. The three people I introduced her to solved all her problems that she's had for eight years, how to navigate the medical system with her disabled kids, literally, her family's trajectory has completely changed, and she was in tears when I met her. So when you do service and value, you never know what impact you're going to make. That's why you should do it.

[00:06:27.16] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more on how you're working with and serve your clients. Could you take us through exactly like, what that looks like? And of course, I would love to hear more about your podcast and everything you're doing and all the awesome conversations you're having there.

[00:06:41.22] - Steve Ramona

Great question. Gresh, really appreciate you. Every time I meet somebody, like, before this podcast, how am I going to bring value? That thought about, you know, what I want to do? Make sure my energy's up, make sure I edify you when necessary. So I'm always thinking before I meet somebody, and this is just meeting people. You know, when you're doing your CRM and the tech stuff, that's different. But this is when you're meeting people again. We're a people asset business. How can you bring value to people? And I use this example. Church, this baby, this lady had a beautiful baby with a beautiful bowen. And me and my wife walked up and I said, what a beautiful baby. What a beautiful bow on that baby. Now, that's not helping my business, but that's the practice of serving and bringing value and giving her gratitude. Now, did I affect her life? 5 seconds, five minutes, 5 hours, five days, five months? I don't know. But you know, what you do affect is the energy in the universe. Here's a tip. If you want to grow your energy, remember people's names. You're at a grocery store, hey, Tony, the clerk. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Hey, Tony, use people's names and you're smiling. Aggress. I smile every time I say it because you're right. I go, hey, dude, aka, I need this, or, hey, hey, sir. And that's very professional and cordial, but when you go, hey, Joe, can I get some help here? You just brought value very simply. But Joe could have had a bad day. Work at the Safeway grocery store, give him his worst day ever. And I come up and go, hey, Joe, can I get some help? Hey, Joe, can I thank you?

[00:08:22.55] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Ends up being such a huge thing. Do you feel like being able to bring all those things together as part of your secret sauce?

[00:08:29.02] - Steve Ramona

Absolutely. I think I learned that I'm a super connector. I've got this large network. I mean, I do 25, 50 referrals a week, but because I bring value, I get three to ten referrals a day. Maybe it's for my podcast, maybe you. You know, I like getting really cool introductions. Like, you've got to meet Steve. Oh, my God, he's connected. He's a great guy. That's a legacy I want to leave. I'm sure everybody in the audience would want to leave. And you know what? I tell people this all time, I'm not special, but what I'm special about is I take action, I think about value. I go and do those introductions. I don't say, hey, greshe, here's two. Introduction. And never send them. Somebody sends me introduction, I try to respond within 48 hours. You know, don't wait two or three weeks. And somebody do you, because, again, let's go back to Christmas. If you walk down to the tree as a six, seven, eight year old. And there's a sign there. It says, your gifts aren't here. You got to wait two weeks. Yeah, I just thought of that, and it's. It's actually pretty cool, because that's exactly the feeling, because people are excited. Hey, you know Tony, Steve, Ramona, meet Tony, meet Debbie. Well, they're both excited because I've done a reduction. And let's say Debbie, you know, waits to respond for two or three weeks. I know things happen, and you can explain that if, you know, when it comes up, like this lady, I told you a story about how I changed her life. She waited six weeks, but she explained I had to deal with my disabled kids. Well, the three people were, yeah, understand. Completely understand. So communicate. Communicate.

[00:10:01.37] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's so huge for you to be able to do that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something you feel like you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:15.58] - Steve Ramona

Get better 1% every day. What does that look like? Reading a book, working on your book you're writing. It could be adding two more people to your calendar the next week. I don't know what that looks like, but everybody, in our own unique way, has a way to increase our business. And here's something that you get better. I'll give a tip to everybody. I mentor businesses all the time. Entrepreneurs and business owners meet ten to 15 new people every week. And here's. Let's just use ten. So you meet ten people this week? It's. Today is Friday. Yeah, it is Friday. So you've met ten new people, you're going to get a referral because you're going to bring value to somebody, especially for a servant's heart. Let's say it's five referrals. So now you've met ten new people, and you're going to meet now 15 new people next week. You meet ten new people, you get ten referrals. So that's 20, that's 35 the next week. On and on. It's like compounding interest. Here's a story that I did in January 2020, right before it, digital business card company. I was owner, I was selling, and I woke up on a Monday and somebody introduced me to this networking group that does, you know, ten to 20 meetings a week. I'm like, oh, why do I do two to three meetings a day? That's two, 3 hours. I can meet new people start buildings. One on means get to know them better and let's see what happens. Well, in three and a half months, I met 500 new people. Wow. But the most important thing, I was the top sales guy in our company.

[00:11:45.11] - Gresham Harkless

Nice. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your seal nugget? This is a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, potentially you heard on your podcast or something. You would jump in the time machine and tell your younger business self, be kind.

[00:12:04.82] - Steve Ramona

Be. Kindness is. Is not a word used. I had a gentleman, James Rea, on my podcast. A very successful private equity guy, launched and CEO of companies, and he talks about kindness with a little accounting. He wrote a book called Red Helicopter. Incredible book. And think about it. Audience and grish, think about it. When he told me that, I. Look, think back for the last couple weeks, I never heard the word kind. Now I've heard happy, joyful, positive, excited. Those are our emotions. Kindness is actually the action of those emotions. And a perfect example. Grish, you're very kind to have me on your podcast today, or I was really. I'm really happy to be on your podcast. There's a big difference in that, and there's many more. But be kind to your employees, to your competitors, to your prospects, to everybody, your janitor. So kindness like that is. It's a simple task that's not being done.

[00:13:15.25] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different, quote unquote, CEO's on this show. So, Steve, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:26.53] - Steve Ramona

Leadership. Servant leadership. What does that mean? That means you're gonna be mentoring two part, you know, to your CEO. I mean, excuse me, CFO. You want to spend a little more time with him. He's struggling with something. You're mentoring. You're working together to solve that problem. And I believe that's where a servant leader, as a CEO goes. Yeah, you've got a lot of pressures. You've got money. You know, you have a lot of employees. You're trying to take care of all that. But when I'm learning from people that really teach leadership, the CEO should be at the top, looking down and seeing where they can lead. Where's our problems here? Be kind, mentor, and move on. So here's the other thing a CEO needs to do as a servant leader, and it doesn't happen a lot is say no, let people go. You have an employee you've worked at and your team says it's just not a fit. Well, guess what? It's not a fit for them either. So neither party is growing, not serving each other. So you just part way, shake hand and part ways, and that person might go find another job where they're a super fit, they're super excited, they're super happy. There could be now kind in that company instead of yours. It's a hard concept because of our emotional fears what's going to happen to this person. And if you want to be a real servant leader, a CEO could instruct somebody, hey, we need to let this guy go, but let's help them find another job. That's value at the next level. We can all do value here, but bump it up 1% better. I don't know if every company can do that, but that's how I think outside the box.

[00:15:10.04] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find about all the awesome things. And of course, subscribe to your podcast.

[00:15:22.75] - Steve Ramona

You can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn every day. Steve Ramona s t e v r a m o n a My digital business card, Infone co. Podcast or inphone.com podcast. And to get on my if you click on that digital business card, you can subscribe there or search doing business with a servant's heart on any podcast platform or YouTube. And you can see all the different shows. I have more on YouTube because they go on right away, but I have a bunch on if you want just audible with the podcast platform.

[00:15:59.15] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I appreciate you so much, Steve. And of course, to make that even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can click through, find out about the book on Amazon and of course, subscribe to the podcast and connect with you as well. So thank you so much for doing that.

[00:16:14.79] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the Imceo podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. Imceo is not just a phrase, it's a community. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books and habits to level up your business at Ceohacks Co. This has been the Imceo podcast with Gresham Harkness Juniore. Thank you for listening.

[00:16:49.14] - Steve Ramona

Close.