Building Genuine Business Relationships with Tom Gay

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the show today.

This is the Creative collaboration show with Chuck Anderson.

And, today, if you we're gonna be

talking with a guest who is an expert

at, lead generation and also, you know, filling

your pipeline full of prospects. And, you know, if you're a

business owner, an entrepreneur, likely, this is something you think

about every day. And, so we're constantly

having to generate leads. We're constantly having to find new

prospects. We're constantly putting them in our pipeline and fill it in

and and then following up everyone that's in that pipeline. That

is the sales cycle. That's how it works. And today, my guest

is Tom Gay, who is a, serial

tech technical, what what are we? Tech technology

entrepreneur has developed several technology platforms

and, and I would say, built

7, companies, and we're gonna talk about a couple of

very important companies today that he has developed. But just Tom you know, there's

so much information that, that he's gonna share with you

on filling your pipeline. So, Tom, welcome to the show.

Glad to have you here. Yes. Thank you so much, Chuck. It's an honor to

be here with you. I've, watched you for a good long while and

and to even be teamed up with you today is is really super. Thank

you. Oh, fantastic. Well, I'm really looking forward Tom,

this deep dive Collaboration. And, you know, I remember when you and

I, you know, first or last met 1 on

1, late last year, we had a really, you know,

good conversation about some of the tech that you that you have built,

and I have, I have clients who use your platforms

and partners who use your platforms. And, you know, so this

conversation's been a long time coming. So now,

my very short and butchered, introduction,

was, the you know, a way to start the episode. I think a

great place to, continue on that, Tom, is have

you share a little bit more of the details about who you are and kind

of the work you do, and and we'll we'll go from there.

Well, thank you. I think the I think the a good way to

characterize it is I've been a technology guy

by accident. I'm really more of a

marketing guy who's found technology,

creates a way to solve a problem. For all

of the companies that I've started, it always started with someone coming to me and

saying, we have a problem. Can can you do something about

it? And we adopted a little mantra that said in, well, anytime

more than one person has a problem, there's an opportunity to build

a system to solve it. And if enough people have

it, then you may have a market and a marketplace and a

company to make. And that's led to 7 companies over the

years. And, a good example, the first one, it kinda

it's a fast story. It was

in the late seventies, early eighties and retail chains and fast

food chains were proliferating across the US. And a lot of the

places they would put them would fail. So they came to

us, small consulting firm that I was a principal, said, can

you build a system to help us tell whether a site will be good if

we build there or not? And we ended up

building mathematical forecasting tools that turned into an

$80,000,000 company, worked for practically every retail and restaurant

chain in in North America, went outside as well

and ended up, selling that, at the end of the

eighties for, a very nice outcome.

And it started with a little problem. We buy a piece of property and

and it fails. And that led to a new

company that I started few weeks later after selling

it. I've got this disease of sarditis. And

and, we all A lot of us have that disease.

It's it's it's really a pandemic in my family.

Mhmm. But, nevertheless, another

company, Chuck, that started right after was,

I'm an insurance company. How do I know if this property that I'm

writing policy on is insurable?

Well, since I knew a little bit about arithmetic and

programming there, 2 people turned it into

800 people inside of 9 years. Look at

the Nasdaq, went public, And

we owned in the course of that, if you say,

property, we ended up owning most of the nation's

multiple listing services because that's where property begins. That's

where insurance begins in terms of property, a transaction.

And we sold that to a big, title insurance

organization, Fidelity National Financial. And on

we go. And over the,

the the big transition point was doing a turnaround for a

gent who was a referral sales trainer.

And when I saw what he trained on and learned and

we then turned this company around, I said, we can take all of

this knowledge and turn it into a software tool. And that

became refer.com with close to 5,000,000

subscribers globally and sold that

into a private equity firm about 6 or 7 years ago.

And there's been lots of little stories in between then, but,

it's it's it's fun. Someone came to me this is a

fun story. Someone came to me, a dear friend of mine. You may you may

have have met Jeff Sheehan from Atlanta.

Big influencer on Internet Anderson

LinkedIn and in social media. He came to me and says, Tom,

I've known you for 10 years. I have a problem. What do I

do with these, saved Zoom chats that I get when I come out of

a a networking meeting? It's it's horrible.

I can't use what we save. I said,

Jeff, let me take a look at it. Few months

later, we have have a program that's you see above called

ChatBridge. We just said, well, there's a

problem that one person has. It's same problem as owned by

tens of 1,000, if not millions more. What could we

do? And, that led to the building of a

exciting product that, is now reaching into global audiences.

Mhmm. Well, it's always been find the problem first, find a way to

solve it efficiently. And if you're lucky,

you may have a company in the in the making.

Exactly. And and that exactly it. And, you know, even in my

journey, we've we've come up with that with that same, you know, that same thing

is learning to recognize the opportunities. And

and what you did was you found a way to solve a problem.

And that problem, it's a huge problem that

exists, I would say, especially post 2020,

because now in in, for the lack of better term,

post pandemic world, where

virtual networking opportunities are

more plentiful than they've ever been and have now

become a normal

way of prospecting or finding partners or whatever. And the

work that I do with affiliates, especially, where we're we're on

networking meetings every single day looking for

partnerships, looking for affiliates. And you're right. Like, the

the the chat that you get, it's it's it's like trying

to take a sip of water from a fire hose. It's so much information. And

then how do you have the patience to go back and go

through it all Anderson so that you can follow-up with

we've both gone to some networking meetings in in common, and

there's one I go to regularly where there's a 130 to a

140 people. And as they go through the process of

how they present that meeting,

everyone gets a chance to speak to everyone else.

And very often, there's a 1,000 chat posts in a

meeting like that. Someone will post 4, 5, or 6, or

7 times. So you take a 130 times

5 or 10, you've got a 1,000 cat posts. What

happens is nothing. People don't do anything with

it. So they just spent an hour and a half on something that was

a waste of valuable time, and

there's enormous gold. I used the title of

the book 3 Feet Tom Gold. The people who are doing

networking today and using virtual

platforms literally are standing

3 feet from gold with what lives inside of

that saved Zoom chat. And the question is,

how do you dig that 3 feet to get into that, gold mine that's

awaiting you? That is such a great

point. And, you know, sometimes all it takes is just one good

connection, and it can it it can exponentially

grow your business. I I've I've lived that numerous times.

And then but, you know, it's it's you're always looking

for those relationships, and you never know which one is

is going to be that one that does turn into gold. And

and like you said, you could have met that person numerous times or

you could have bumped into you're you're you're attending the same meetings

numerous Tom. And unless you're following up really well,

then then you you might miss out on that opportunity.

Yeah. Absolutely. And and and today with the,

Anderson we have in virtual networking, I've created a,

you know, sort of a flowchart or an illustration. I call it

a a, sales ecosystem.

And what I mean by that is we start everywhere

at the networking level, but the

results come by how you follow-up. And

then they require you turning that

suspect that you're following up with into a prospect,

which means communications and relationship building.

And with the view that make it through that filter,

it's sort of like narrowing down.

The ecosystem is is turning you towards

building a relationship, which then creates a real prospect and leads,

to a sale or partner or an affiliate

relationship or whatever it is you're looking for speaking stage. But it

starts here broadly in this networking

ecosystem. And you've Gay to break it down through step by step by

step to get it to the point where you're getting the results that you're looking

for. And it's taken something that

looks pretty, you know, random, if you will,

or disorganized and puts it into an orderly flow so that you can

do the right things at the right point at the right stage in that

process. So, you know,

again, staying on this idea of of the

problem that that is being saw I mean, there's 2 things. 1 is,

I mean, networking and following

up from that networking. And, you know, what you and I were talking about even

before this interview was, you know, filling filling your pipeline

and and and and and following up and all of that.

And so so you've you've got these these two

amazing products that do that. Let's let's talk a little bit about, because

so many people in my audience and in my network, they are

attending these networking meetings all the time. And so Mhmm.

So, you know, tell tell them a little bit about what what

the program does and, you know, you know, what what, you know,

what are some of the steps that they should be taking to make sure that

they are not missing out on these opportunities? Like you said, 3 feet from

gold. Yeah. That's,

thank you. What they should be doing

and, again, obviously, I'm here with the platform, and it

has organized the process. Mhmm. I'll I'll describe

what happens and see if that doesn't,

create an understanding that we both are seeking him. You go to a

networking meeting. You save the chat. Everyone screams there's 2 things we've

learned in our in our language today. Save the chat,

and you're muted. Okay?

So we're not gonna talk about the mute. We're gonna talk about save the chat.

It's now automatically downloaded to your computer to

a documents file with a Zoom brand on it label on

it, and that's usually where it ends up staying

unused. With the

tool that we have, it's called ChatBridge, chat bridge connect.

It's the bridge between Zoom chat and

the opportunity that lies inside of that file.

You get a a you have a a saved, Zoom

chat, and most people are using the the

vanilla save chat. Some people have little AI tools that,

do a little work with it. Zoom has a little AI tool. It doesn't work

with it. We don't care. We we work with all that

we've discovered. In a couple of milliseconds, when

you bring that awful to use dot text file

into ChatBridge, it converts it into a follow-up

database organized by name,

alphabetized by attendee name, if you will.

If they posted once or 17 times, all of those posts

have been brought into their record for that person. So now you

have a way to screen everything that they posted. If

they've added their email address and phone numbers,

it's all displayed there because that's the start of a follow-up.

But before you follow-up, you wanna look at what they

said in ChatBridge click on a little icon and up post

everything they said for the whole day in that meeting.

But if they've added links, like,

oftentimes, you'll see a link to to their LinkedIn profile

or their Calendly calendaring tool or their

website. If they've added that to their chat, we've extracted

that, put it under another icon. You click on that, and you can open up

their profile in LinkedIn or Facebook or Linktree or whatever else

it is that they put there. And now all of a sudden, you've got

the of seeing who they are, seeing

how to contact them, seeing what they said that may

attract you towards them because they could be a prospect

or a speaking opportunity or whatever. Chuck,

and this is important, this next step. Click on their links

to find out what they're all about. Because in

order for you to turn that contact into an opportunity,

you you need Tom pass through the gateway of relationship.

See what they're all about, learn where they what what their

interests are, where they went to school, what their their causes may

be, whatever it is that you're going into. So now you're equipped with

information on how to talk to them.

Give you an example. I got a, one of those introductions

from a friend, Tom meet Charlie.

Charlie meet Tom. The person who introduced me, I have

a a good standing with, so I knew it would be a good introduction.

I I went to Charlie's LinkedIn page, learned that he's a Miami

Dolphins fan, learned that he's a he's a

director of the Little League Youth Baseball

in his city. Now I have two pieces of information

about him. There was more.

I have these two pieces of information that I now bring

over into my follow-up conversation and lead

with that. When I lead with

things about what anyone else

cares about, ChatBridge of

trust starts to be formed. So we become

receptive to communicating when we're talking with people who

Show interest in what it is that we have an interest in.

And that's what ChatBridge enabled

enables, I should say. Mhmm. Now

I could do a few things with that. I take Charlie and I put a

click next to him. I can go through a whole list of a 125,

30 names in 20 minutes and find the 10 that I wanna

follow-up with. Screen quickly, check.

Screen again, check. Go down 5 places till I find another

one. Now with a click of the mouse, those 10

people are set aside into your follow-up system.

I can do more with it. I can export that list of of

people if I wanna work with it in a CRM or or take it

outside somewhere. I can send it over to one of our other tools that we

provide. But it's fast. It's easy.

Simple. Doesn't even need a user guide. We've made it that simple.

And some people I'll give you an example. There's

a, client we have, a raving fan. She had 20

saved Zoom chats. She sent me a a note

saying she was amazed. In 30 minutes, she had

uploaded all 20 into ChatBridge and found 400

people she had not followed up with. I'd simply

missed. Now she had these 400 in a in a

new list of, candidates. I call them suspects.

Suspect versus prospect. And she was just beside

herself at how easy it was.

Amazing. You know, I can't tell you how many times

like I said, I I'm on these networking meetings every single

Gay, and I open up the chat,

and it's overwhelming. It's it's it's first of all,

I I make notes of everybody that I met or that I heard that I

wanna follow-up with. But then to go back later and find

that information in the chat, well,

first of all, it can take a lot more than 20 minutes, especially

we're talking multiple people. And, I think that's where it falls

down when we don't have a lot of time to do that

and, and then to go back and get all that information out of there. I

love what you said, and especially what what I heard you say is you

do your homework, And that is go and learn go and click on

their LinkedIn. Go and click on their social profiles. Learn a few

things about that. That's a key tip. I mean, it's not

about the automation, but, I mean, that's a key tip, that

I I do. Let's talk a little bit about that and the value

of really getting to know who you're following up with.

Well, that's it is vital. And I've spent a, the last 15 years

of my life teaching professionals that that is the key to

getting in the door. You will break through

the gatekeepers. You will break through the barriers

we all put up if you will simply build

a relationship that reaches

over those barriers into the areas of interest of the people that you're

trying to meet. I have a lot of people in my,

my client list who come out of the insurance business. Well, they're in the

insurance business. And they

always face the problem of people not wanting to talk with them

because they know they're going to get offered something

that they don't feel they need or don't know enough about to really recognize the

need. Well, if you're going to sell insurance, you're

not going to, likely make the grade.

If you're going to show them your character and your competence,

showing them that you care, you care about them,

and also you're competent about what it is

that you do. Those two things together are going to create

what we call the trust ChatBridge. And across that trust

ChatBridge, business is done.

Anderson know, I have a

it's it's it's sort of, an amazing story. I have one client that

spent about $300 on a piece of software in my last company

that helped him do that. In his 1st year, he got $32,000,000

in AUM added to the portfolio he was managing.

And, you know, that's $4,000,000 a year

income for a onetime investment such as

it was back then. And, and that'll

that'll keep paying him for as long as he takes good care of his clients.

Relationships always trump

anything in the digital marketing space. I know I may offend some of

your your, viewers, but I don't mean to do that. I just mean to

say, don't leave out the people to

people side of this because when you bring it in, you're gonna stand out

from everybody else.

So Yeah. Well, you're certainly not gonna offend me and and

and, you know, my audience and especially my clients hear me say

all the time, you know, with with our work, with recruiting

affiliates and and doing JV partner deals and

and and such, is that the foundation

of all of this is the r word. Well, I always ask

people like, do you guys remember what I said the r word is

and and and the the r word is relationship. You

you gotta build relationships. And what I I love about

especially as you were describing, you know, that adding that feature

to ChatBridge is going and learning a

few things. It it helps to start the relationship. Like you said, it through

the gatekeepers, and and it brings the filters down for

sure where you can actually it's real connection. And all the time,

I'm spammed on LinkedIn, say, oh, I I I wanna

connect. And and so okay. Okay. Great. And so

you connect. And what's the very first thing they do is they

spew their offer. You know, they and then

and my response is, that's not connection.

Yeah. I call it the, show up and throw up style of marketing.

It it doesn't work. In fact, it's worse now because there are more

automated bots that are doing the, the showing up and

throwing the than than ever.

And, you know, I teach a a a little segment of what I

provide, called an appreciation exercise.

So it's built into one of my software tools.

And it's easy to say you can't go

wrong by being appreciative. Let's just

accept that as a truism. Well, I had

one one, client, and I

struggle with the word client because they become friends pretty quickly. Mhmm.

He he follows this process that I that I gave to

him as a client. On his first

day, I gave him instruction. Go do this with 10 people.

On his very first day, he said sent me an a,

a message back. He said, comma, I had 6 people

respond back to me immediately when I did this.

And one of them gave me a referral to

someone who needs to talk to me about what it it is I do on

my first day. It's because we led with the

r word, which is the subset of

that is appreciation. So,

it's it it's the the best marketing mechanisms

that, I've ever seen. There

and and it requires work in in in

what I I I love about that is and it doesn't have to, you know,

take you a long Tom. And what you described, ChatBridge does, is it

saves you a lot of time in doing that. But just spend a few minutes

on their website. Send us a few minutes on their social media,

learning about the person you're connecting with and have real

connections. And, you know, I I do believe that that's the foundation of

all the affiliate relationships, the collaborations, the joint

venture partnerships that we that we do,

and, you know, it's it's it's building a relationship.

Having a podcast interview like this is relationship building. We get to

spend half an hour together. Yeah. No. It's you're exactly right.

You're exactly right, Chuck. And and as

as as I say it, when you have them

by the relationships, their hearts and minds will follow.

Okay. That's beautiful. Now that's a paraphrase of an old,

Lyndon Johnson statement back in the sixties. There's probably no one listening to

it old enough to remember him. But, nevertheless,

relationships create bonds, and those bonds become the

bridge across which everything we do

or want to do can take place. And it's not gonna

happen inside of a LinkedIn, Spotify community,

or anything that's entirely digital.

Yeah. It really does need to be human to human interaction. You

can't you can't automate relationship building as much as

people try, because it's gonna fall down somewhere, and

and it's just it's not connection. It's just not Even

AI will not deliver it to you. It can equip you,

and it does. And I use it almost every day. However,

it's, incomplete. As I say, it's not incorrect to use it.

It's incomplete to depend on it solely.

And as you know, I have I have

a a software tool that isn't a relationship enablement tool,

referral focused relationship enablement tool.

And someone, knocked me over about a month ago. He came to

me and said, Tom, what you've done

is you've taken the principles of Bob Berg's

Go Giver book series and very famous,

well known. And he says you basically put it into a

systematic tool to build

relationships. And go givers do sell more

as Bob's book title, describes.

Wow. That is that that is so true. And, well,

I I I even forgot that that's where that came from.

But, that that really does, you know,

certainly clarify it for me. I mean, it it's about as close to

automation as a relationship building as as

as you can get. Right? Yep. Yep. Yep. This is

fascinating. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. I was just gonna say, I mean, before we

run out of time, I had 2 things I wanna do. I've got a couple

of follow-up questions for you, but I all I think most importantly, let's give

some people some information on how they can connect with you about

ChatBridge and Engage Pro, and we'll put those

links, in beneath this video Anderson the

podcast. We'll put them all in there so people can can get that from you.

You wanna tell them a little bit more about what

they're clicking on and and, what their next steps should

be? Well, I would say everyone's first step should be to

click on the link that takes them to Tom a chat bridge. If they're

virtual in virtual networking, click on that that

link. You they're gonna find it's easy to understand, very

economical. And it

as some of the people we work with in common

say, it just works. Mhmm. You know, when when it's as

simple as that. And then from there,

the next step will will be, well, do I wanna take these 5

people that I've met into a know, like, and

trust relationship that will lead to our doing something together?

Sell my product, build a joint venture, become a an

affiliate, speak on their stage, whatever it is.

The ChatBridge tool connects with my other tool, the link is below as

well, called Gay. Engage

Pro is, a tool that will help you build a circle of

trusted relationships, your own referral team, your partners,

and they become partners for more than business. They become partners

for life when you focus on what they care about. Show we

we've we've created a couple of tools. We've tied them together,

technically speaking. I won't give you the jargon, but one talks to

the other. And, very simple, very easy, and

and and economical as well. And, you know, one of the

things I'm really proud of, I'll I'll get in before before we run out of

time, is we were approached near the end of the year

by a company that a lot of us are are well familiar with by the

name of Alignable, alignable.com. 8 and a half

1000000 members. When they saw what we

did, they said, we wanna become a partner with you. So now

our products are being offered by them for their audience of 8

and a half 1000000 people. So the best, I

could say from that is we've proven it just by

the the character of what the product does.

I think that that really sells it for me,

and I highly recommend that anyone who is

actively out there networking and prospecting

and generating leads, you'd need to take a look at both of

these products. First of all, if you are on

any sort of virtual networking meetings where you need to go

back through that chat and find the gold in there, find the people you wanna

follow-up with, you need ChatBridge. And then when you

wanna build the relationships with those people, take a look at Gay

pro. We've got the links to both of those programs beneath this video. If you're

watching this on video, if you're listening to this on podcast, all the links

there are there as well. And, you know, Tom,

I think I have to have you back again and maybe even come and speak

to our our group because, you know, in the work that my

clients do with recruiting affiliates and, joint

venture partners, I think every single one of them,

should have this. And, so we'll definitely be chatting more,

about that. Well, this has been

great. I I think we've we've covered a lot of ground, but we've also only

scratched the surface. So, I I

always recommend people, you know, take, you know, you know,

take action on, on what we've, talked about here

today. So before we, before we sign off, I just have to ask because

this has started off as a social experiment for me, in some of

my earlier episodes, and now it's just fascinating. I ask every guest while

they're here, if you could name just one book.

Just one book is a must read book that everybody goes and checks out

or make a difference in their business or their life or whatever it is, or

maybe it's just been really impactful to you, what what

book would that be? Well, thank you.

And and I've been a prolific reader. There is one book that I think

is baked into everything that I am and do today, and

that's a book published about 25 years ago by doctor Robert

Cialdini by the title of influence.

And influence Cialdini is I'll spell it, cialdini,

former professor at Arizona State University. After

studying this, he came up with 5 factors that make you stand

out as person of influence in whatever circles you work

in. Those five factors are

built into what makes my software do what it does for

people. So we married that with what we do.

And I'll just give you one. The one of the

influence factors is the principle of scarcity. When

you stand out by being one of the few who do the

relationship building the right way, guess what?

You grow in influence and you attract people towards you.

So influence is is it it it's goals for

people. We we could do an entire hour just

on that. And, you know, of course, I have not only

read all 3 of doctor Cialdini's books, but I

am, fascinated by everything

that he, has taught, and and influence, I think, is

required reading for anyone who markets themselves

and and and has a product that they sell

and to really understand how those principles work. And

they're game changers. They're absolute game changers. A 100% with

you. We're joined together, hip to hit up on that

one. Wonderful. Tom, this has

been a lot of fun, and I and I and I've really enjoyed, our time

together. Of course, like we said, go get ChatBridge, go

get engage pro, or at least check them out. The links are all there. And,

and connect with Tom. We've got all the links, there,

beneath the video and in the podcast show notes. So, Tom, as we, bring

this episode to a to a close, I'm just gonna ask you if you have

any final, tips or words of wisdom that you

wanna leave our, audience with here today.

Probably the best one is is to Tom,

think about the people you're trying to connect with and build a relationship

with, find out what they're really all about,

and and enter the the conversation through that

doorway. Put your own product aside. Go talk to

them about them. And what happens is the doors

will will open. Talk to

them about them. Yes. And that

is the opposite of what we see so many people doing at these

networking events. We could do another episode all on that. That's so

cool. That's true. Brilliantly said.

Tom, thank you so much. And to our audience, thank you as well. I hope

you've learned something here today, and, make this

meaningful. Take something you've learned here today. Pick one

thing and take action on it. Maybe it's some follow-up

that has been, eluding you for a while. You need to go and do

that today, or maybe it's to go and check

out chat bridge to make it easier for you. That is a good an easy

action step for you to take, here as well. So,

so thank you to Tom. Thank you to our audience. This

has been Chuck Anderson with the Creative Collaboration Show, and we'll see you on the

next one, everybody. Thank you.