PP 235: Building Real Relationships

Quick Show Notes – Building Real Relationships

Are you building relationships with the intention of seeing what you can provide to the relationship? Or are you entering them to see what you can gain? Listen to hear my thoughts about building real relationships.

Are you building relationships to see what you can provide? Or are trying to see what you can gain? Listen to hear @thekimsutton's thoughts about building real relationships: https://thekimsutton.com/pp235Click To Tweet

Episode Transcription

Transcription not yet cleaned up but thanks for checking it out!

Today’s episode may offend some people, but I hope that I don’t offend people too often on the Positive Productivity podcast so I’m just gonna go with what my gut is telling me to talk about.

I want to talk to you about creating fake relationships.

Building Real Relationships

Over the course of growing my businesses, I have seen so many people who are out there and are creating relationships with people purely to see what they can get out of them. Maybe you’ve come across these people.

They send you a message and ask how you’re doing and then immediately try to sell you something.

They talk to you pleasantly and then they talk to somebody else about you behind your back and a lot of the times it’s complete lies.

They lie to people to get what they want.

They lie about their income to make themselves appear like they are more than they are.

Or they only make an attempt to connect with people who are supposedly further along in their careers than they are, because they think it will be a waste of time to talk to the, quote, little people.

Building Real Relationships

To me, this type of behavior is just appalling.

First off, there’s no reason to gossip about other people behind their back. To me, gossip is a sign that the person is insecure about themselves and really needs to do some inner work to take themselves to their next level. I will not deny that I have been guilty about gossiping in the past, but I really make every effort not to gossip about people now. I can almost fully guarantee that whatever you say about somebody will get back around to them. So you want to make sure that you’re protecting your best interest and your reputation by just keeping your mouth shut.

Building Real Relationships

Next, there’s no reason to lie about your successes. In fact, I think it’s more important to talk about the struggles that you’ve been to so that you can relate to the community around you. Don’t feel like you have to have a mask on all the time because, hey, we all know you’re not perfect. I embrace and I love your imperfections. And if you were perfect, I would want to know how I could get some of your magic potion. And I don’t want to be jealous like that. I want to be able to laugh about our struggles. And in all honesty, it’s the struggles that I laugh about most often with my network of friends and acquaintances. So often we keep our struggles to ourselves. However, if we just talked about them some more, we would be able to create such meaningful relationships with the people around us simply based on our transparency in our authenticity. There’s no reason for you or me to hide what we’ve been through and what we’ve learned from our struggles. We’ll be able to benefit somebody else. When it comes to building relationships, always go forward thinking about what you can bring to the relationship rather than what you can get out of it. There are people out there who are no different than the bots that I have contacted me on social media, I know that the bots are set up by people. But sometimes when I make new connections on Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram, especially, I’ll get that bot response back right away. That isn’t a getting to know you message. but is instead of what can I sell you a message. If you’re coming to me just to sell me something, then please just go somewhere else. And I would have to ask you to not go to any of the listeners or my acquaintances either. We should all be out there to serve others. And by building valuable relationships, we’ll be able to achieve much more in our businesses than we will if we’re purely out there to make income. Start with the impact in mind, how can you best provide value Everybody in your network? How can you put out one hand with a gift and provide the best resources, tools and support that that person needs? Because I guarantee you, that person will remember in the end, what you were able to do for them when you had no expectation every payment. Please No, I’m not saying to go out there and provide all your services for free because we just simply can’t do that. We need to know when to say no. But right now I am asking you to say no to being greedy in starting relationships, simply because they will serve you moving forward through today and tomorrow, this week, this month this year. Take off your mask, get to know people and what’s really going on with their life and business. Put aside any expectations of repayment and really set a course to creating and building the best relationship possible. Now with all this said, Go forth, and Make it a positive and productive day.