Jonathan Rosen, founder of Collaberex, returns to Stop The Noise to discuss networking for business growth and combating isolation through authentic, supportive network groups. These groups foster deep connections that enhance goal setting, accountability, and professional growth, highlighting the importance of relationship-based networking in today's economy.
Notes from the Show
Jonathan Rosen, founder of Collaberex, is my go-to guy for networking, and it’s a pleasure to welcome him for the third time on Stop The Noise. Today, our focus is on networking for building your business and the crucial role network groups play in overcoming isolation. Jonathan's Collaberex network groups are exceptional; after 90 minutes in one, you’d feel like you went to kindergarten together. This sense of camaraderie stems from the authentic way people open up and support each other. These groups foster genuine connections that go beyond mere client referrals to encompass goal setting, accountability, and personal and professional growth.
In today's economy, the key to thriving is relationship-based networking rather than transactional networking. Purposeful relationships are mutually beneficial, offering support in various aspects of business, not just lead generation. There are many organizations that provide value and support that help create a strong community, whether they are local or national groups. Finding the right fit for your needs is essential, and reaching out to Collaberex could be a great starting point. The first step in engaging with a network community is understanding what you want to achieve from it. Whether it's building connections, personal growth, or achieving business goals, the right community can make a significant difference.
What’s Inside:
Collaberex - a one of a kind networking community.
The key difference between a group and a community.
Relationship based networking vs. transactional networking.
The role of networking in building your business.
Escaping isolation as a solopreneur with networking.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:37
Hello and welcome back to stop the noise. Thank you all for being here. Today my guest is Jonathan Rosen, who is the founder of Collaberex, which is a relationship focused peer advisory professional development community. And he is an expert, in my opinion. He's my go to guy on the topic of networking, especially relationship based networking. And this is his third time that he's joined me on stop the noise. Jonathan, welcome, welcome back.
Jonathan Rosen 1:07
I'm so happy to be here. I'm glad that you're not sick of me yet so.
Susan Tatum 1:10
never, never. Well, things keep changing in the in the in the need for networking. And so I always have more questions to come back to you with. So before we dive into what the topics that I want to get into today are networking for building your business, and then the importance of groups and the contribution that they make, especially for our listeners who are coming out of the corporate world and experiencing the isolation of working by themselves for the first time. So before we do that, let me give you an opportunity to tell everyone a bit about Jonathan Rosen and Collaberex
Jonathan Rosen 1:47
Okay, well, you know, I think when I started Collaberex, you know, I wanted something that was really going to provide the most value to other business professionals. I'd been in a lot of not so great networking groups that I thought were had their value to certain people but were relatively ineffective, and so I wanted to provide an organization that really could have a broader value than most things out there. You know, people think of networking groups as lead generation groups, right? And running any business is so much more than just getting cold or semi cold leads and trying to turn these prospects into clients. It's much more than that. It's now you come across as a you know, as a leader, as a manager, as a co worker, as a sales person, as an administrator, everything. So we're looking to create an organization that did more of that and provided those values. And we know, and I've always known, that in my years, in my career, the number one thing that has made the most impact on both my personal and professional growth have been long lasting, authentic, impactful relationships with others, and so that's kind of the basis of what we do and our our model and our mission, which is to create those long lasting, impactful personal relationships between business professionals create communities of support, and I don't know, it kind of comes down to just kind of showing people we care, and by caring about them, we care about their themselves and their whole business, not just that small part of the top line of their business,
Susan Tatum 3:38
Right, right? And you, when you and I first met, you had two, maybe three groups are in the New York area, and now you're on
Jonathan Rosen 3:49
now we have 15 groups. We have what we call 11 primary or home groups that meet twice a month. Everything's on Zoom. We switch to zoom when covid hit. Of those groups. We have one in California, Canadian group, bunch of US, East Coast groups, group in Europe. And it's become much more global. So we have, you know, people in the US will go to the group in the European, so called European group, that's all on Zoom to have access to that market, and vice versa, they'll come to the US groups to have access to the US market.
Susan Tatum 4:27
I've sat in on a few of your groups before. You were kind enough to invite me, and it is while people are getting business from the folks by being in the group. It's also a learning you always have these great videos and opportunities for them to learn and share with others and somebody you know people doing presentations. And I think that's great.
Jonathan Rosen 4:51
Well, that's how people that is our, our model for building relationships, I often say to people and our so our regular group. Meet for 90 minutes. You know, in the beginning of a meeting, there'll be some guests there, and some members, and all our members, and I'll say to people, think about how you feel about the other people in the room right now. And they'll look at me like, What do you mean? I I haven't met any of them. They're they're strangers. They seem nice. You know, they're smiling. They have a good zoom background or whatever. And I said, I'm going to ask you that same question at the end, the end of the meeting. We know we're doing a good job if these people actually like think they went to kindergarten together by the end of 90 minutes there. So we do such a purposeful job in getting people to show up authentically, to put down their masks, not, you know, not hide behind elevator pitches and features and benefits, but to show up so we can get to know them. You know, one thing that differentiates us is we literally support the person so we get to know the people who they are as their authentic selves, sometimes vulnerable, imperfect human cells. That's who we're supporting. If that person is, you know, whatever, a marketing consultant, or if that person's a, you know, an accountant, doesn't matter to us. We're supporting the person. We're not supporting what they do, we're supporting them, and that's how you know you build trust from getting to know people. And therefore you know that if you trust them, that if they do this or they do that, it's secondary to us. It's the person, not, not, not the job title.
Susan Tatum 6:37
So tell me about about Jonathan you was it a year or a couple of years ago, you were the first one that mentioned to me the difference between a relationship based networking and transactional networking. And you would you had gone back and studied the members of your group and who has succeeded and who hadn't. So and I think this is really important, because so much of new business now, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm a, like, lead generation and all that sort of stuff. So that's, you know, that's where my attention goes to. But the people I've talked to, 83 people that have recently come out of the corporate world and are forming their own independent consulting firms. They're building their practices. So this since January, I've talked to them, and what I'm hearing over and over again is the ones that are doing well with building a pipeline and building a good foundation of clients are doing it through networking. But I have a feeling it's not these networking and I hear because they don't want to do it, these networking things, where you go, when you hand out business cards, and you're sort of like speed dating networking. So what's the difference? Mean,
Jonathan Rosen 7:49
it's all the difference makes all the difference in the world. So with a transactional networking group, and there are many of them, and they are, they do provide some benefit to certain people that maybe certain people that have, maybe transactional business practice right, that have or work for a larger company where they have to meet certain sales quotas. So for example, you know title insurance, or, you know, a mortgage broker, or things like that. Or people that do work for these expense reduction companies, or people that work for certain human resources payroll companies, right? People that say, Okay, you have to hit your numbers each and every month. But the relationships that are the most value and that bring a higher return on investment over time are the ones that are relational and not transactional. So these groups that say, Okay, this is what we're there, we're here, and our primary focus is to give referral, referrals to each other. So that's what they look at, and that's what they count. If you're counting referrals, then you're going to get you're going to get quantity over quality, right?
Susan Tatum 8:59
You're going to get introductions and not opportunities.
Jonathan Rosen 9:02
Mostly Gold leads, and if you're getting lower quality introductions, they are less likely to convert to closed business. If you're getting high quality introductions, because the people know you personally and care about you personally and want to support you because they're also getting support in return. It'd be too embarrassed to give you know, garbage referral. They're gonna they're the referral they're gonna give. If I was giving you a referral, I would say to you know, someone that needs your services, I would say you need to speak to Susan. She is the person that can help you with this issue. And they might say to me, Well, why are you so certain? My answer would be, I'm in this group with her, and I've gotten to know her so well and I unders, and I know her so well that I know it's a perfect match. So you know, it goes like this, a transactional relationship is the foundation of that relationship is the transaction. So. Oftentimes it's it's price, and so if a competitor comes along and and offers something for a penny less, that relationship that's transactional is going to fall apart. Yeah.
Susan Tatum 10:11
well, and if we're talking to, sorry, I think I might have just talked over you there for a moment for talking to our listeners are primarily consultants, which is nobody buys high end consulting services without a huge amount of trust.
Jonathan Rosen 10:29
It's trust and it's they have to feel that they're aligned. It's an emotional connection between that person, if you're if you're working with a consultant, over time, it's a lot of interaction there, so you really have to feel comfortable with sharing your you know, a consulting relationship doesn't work if, if the client isn't comfortable enough to reveal what issues they have, consulting is very much like sales. Okay, you're a consultant and you you need to discover the needs of your client. Same with sales, you can't, you don't people don't sell things because you say, you know, just features and benefits. It has to match what their needs are. So yeah, discover those needs,
Susan Tatum 11:16
and the higher the risk in the purchase, the more that connection has to be there. Yeah, because, you know, if I'm buying a cell phone service and I pick the wrong one, I'm just going to change cell phone services. But you pick the wrong consultant, you could lose your company, you could lose your job. You could, you know, who knows what, it's not good.
Jonathan Rosen 11:36
I actually think if you did a survey of executives at every fortune, 1000 company, and you said to them, tell us who your best customers are. I think if they're being honest, they would not say it's the customers who gave them the most business in the last year. They'll say it's the customer that they've had the best relationship with, the one that's been loyal, the one that they work together as kind of a partnership relationship, they there's trust they're paying them based on value, not on price. It's the ones with like they that they went to their daughter's weddings, they went to barbecue together. It's those are the customers that actually bring the most long term value, because those transactional relationships are generally short term and based on price, when you know a value based relational relationship, based on on trust, is going to last longer, and they're going to understand your value more, so you could actually charge more
Susan Tatum 12:39
Absolutely. Yeah, so let me ask you this, Jonathan, if is, in fact, a networking is what is working now in this economy, and just where we are right now in terms of getting new clients, obviously, you start with the people that you're connected to and the people that you already know. But how, what advice can can you give for someone that needs to expand beyond those people that they already know they're if they're looking for something like collaberex, how do they what should they be looking for? What kind of tips can you give us?
Jonathan Rosen 13:14
Well, you know, first of all, if you're, if you're forgetting about any group, about collaberex, or joining any group. If you want to form something on your own that is really going to help further your practice, you have to build fewer, deeper relationships. Don't say, Well, I'm going to go to every chamber event and every business event and every network I speak to people all the time, and they say, Oh, I'm so busy. I belong to five different groups, be better if they belong to one group that worked. But what they need to do is be purposeful about the relationships that they build. And say, let me find say five people, that's it, just five people that I think can be essential to my success, where I can create a mutually beneficial relationship with where we will support each other in in everything in our practice, not just in client referrals. That's just as I said before, just one small piece, but you know, be accountability partners and strategic partners and advisors and focus groups, things like that. I'll give you a brief example. I met a guy who he was an accountant. He was up in Boston, and he said he had moved to New York, and I met him, and he said, You know, I want the group that I had in Boston. That's what I'm looking for. He said, Tell me about the group. He says, oh, it's people I went to college with. I said, oh, so like tell me about he says, hey, you know, we, we our kids were growing up together, and we, we had barbecues at each other's houses, and we gave each other business, and we gave each other advice, and we formed strategic partnerships, and we held each other accountable. So I said to him, would you stop being friends with any of them, if they didn't give you a referral, looked to me like I was crazy. Says, of course not. It's just one of many things that this very valuable support group, if you want to call that, or community, has helped me with. It's all those things and people tend to gravitate just towards lead generation and say, That's all I need. It'll solve all other problems.
Susan Tatum 15:23
Yeah. Well, yeah, yes, you're absolutely right. And people do say that. I think a lot of the folks that I talked to maybe because they in the corporate world, they were surrounded by a team. They had a lot of resources that they could go to. They're thinking beyond just, you know, help me get new clients or lead generation. They they're all of the things that I know that you guys do with putting together people that have different specialties, that are experts in different areas, so they can help each other out. I think that that's what folks would benefit well from. They just don't necessarily know how to do it. Some of them are doing it on their own. But, yeah, I mean, so what? So you said, like, was there like a sweet spot for a group like that? Like five people, seven, eight people,
Jonathan Rosen 16:13
you know, for us, we switched from in person meetings to zoom meetings. When covid hit, our members do not want to go back to in person. We still socialize and have a lot of socials together, but the meetings themselves became, you see, more efficient, more personal, more impactful, because we changed our model to match the technology, instead of just placing our model in this technology. And you know, so we show, as you mentioned before, we show a lot of educational videos or TED talks on topics that cover all the things that anyone needs in order to be more successful in their practice. So their professional growth skills, personal growth skills, relationship building, skills, business development, best practices and goal setting and accountability. So those are five categories, and then our facilitators pick from a library of agendas that are under those categories. And they pick the agendas that are in the best interest of their members, because they know their members best. And they ask their members, what kind of agendas would you like? And yeah, we we do the topics that are of most value to each and every group. And every group is different, but I don't know if you're picking if you're looking for a group. You know, I hate to say it's a gut feeling. You have to find a group. Well, let me take that back. We're not a group. Most organizations are a Group. We're a community. If you join one of our groups as you if you pick one of our groups as your primary group, you can go to all our meetings, all our groups. Okay, you don't. We don't restrict. The only way we restrict is if there's someone that's a member of a group and a really direct competitor wants to come in. We ask the member if they're comfortable, and I have to say about 99% of the time they say no, bring them in, because everyone has an abundance mentality in our in our meetings. But you have to pick the community that feels right to you, and you have to pick the community that really cares about meeting your needs, and you have to decide where your needs are versus we want you to join our community because we want something out of you. That's how most networking groups are. There are a lot that talk a really good game. Oh, we care about relationships, but then they go around the room and waste everyone's time by doing elevator pitches, and that shows that's their emphasis. But they have to meet your needs. They have to really care more about you than getting something out of you, which is, oh, we want your your Rolodex, we want your contacts so you can give business to other people,
Susan Tatum 18:57
right. So what if they Well, I guess, I guess nowadays, with Zoom, it's, it's easy enough, it's easy enough to find. you just, you just said you can go to the European group if you want to. It doesn't matter. You can do all of these different things. How does somebody go about So, that collaberex. How does somebody go about finding other groups that are out there? Do you have any suggestions for that.
Jonathan Rosen 19:21
Well, you know, Well, you know I'm sure if you Googled it, we have our newest member for industrial Google search.
Susan Tatum 19:26
really
Jonathan Rosen 19:27
yes, best networking near me, you know, something like that. And then he was, he was came with low expectations. And then when he saw how different we were from anything he's ever been to, we get that a lot people say, Oh, my God, I've never been to anything like this before, and we work hard at differentiating ourselves. Yeah, but there, there are lots of groups. There are national groups, there are local groups, you know, you have to, you get test them out. You know, they they should definitely don't reject any group that doesn't invite you as their guest. You. You know, that has this firewall up and wants to make it. You know, from a marketing point of view, they're they're creating this, this scarcity, this fear missing out, kind of, you know methodology that to for people to think that they are special, there has to be a mutual agreement between the member and the organization, are you a good fit for us? And you know, are you gonna, are we gonna meet your needs? And you know, are you gonna fit well into our community?
Susan Tatum 20:29
So what I heard you say a little while ago, Jonathan, that I think is worth repeating, is that the step one should be understanding what it is that you want to get out of a group. And I will go out on a limb and say, if you are selling high ticket or providing, let's say high ticket consulting services, a transactional network is not what you're looking for.
Jonathan Rosen 20:50
I would say. And this might and I think I'm pretty accurate, people that are in a transactional group are generally not as experienced. They're joining based on fear, like, Oh my God, no one's going to like me. I need business, and I need it from you, as opposed
Susan Tatum 21:11
now
Jonathan Rosen 21:12
now, yes, as opposed to end it doesn't work because they get leads that don't convert, as opposed to us, our members are more I'm going to be perfect. I'm going to build relationships with people here. This is what I do. This is what I believe. And I'm going to interact with people so everyone knows, you know what, what my needs are and what, how others can help me, and they'll tell me the same. And from that the people that that align with each other will naturally start doing will want to do business together. Because, yes, it's, it's that other person thinks so much like they do. And so it's building those relationships. It's not, it's not instantaneous, the people in our groups that have done the best. We've had people in our groups that say they're they're swamped with business, and those are the ones that visited other groups that built relationships with the people in their group. That came to our workshops, came to our open networking events, came to our affinity groups. They they engage with the community. It's not it's almost not rocket science. It's just putting yourself out there and being yourself, being authentic,
Susan Tatum 22:27
it well, and when you were talking about that, it does take a certain kind of person that's willing to be vulnerable like that. And I'm with you that that's how to build good relationships, and that's what you want in your... It's a relationship you want with your clients too, is that they feel like they can share stuff with you. But we design
Jonathan Rosen 22:47
our groups so that's the culture of the meetings that people share and and appear and are vulnerable, but we also design it in a way that both introverts and extroverts thrive. I sometimes think that introverts thrive more because
Suan Tatum 23:07
tell us more about that, yeah,
Jonathan Rosen 23:08
because they think before they talk often. And so since we're all about having these really thoughtful, engaging conversations, introverts don't talk just to hear themselves talk, and you get, you know, such a, I don't know, a diversity of opinion from from actually different personalities, but introverts. We also we keep our group small, intentionally, an ideal our groups have, uh oh, I don't know between, most of them have between 10 and 16 people in a group, and an ideal group is really nine to 12, because we want everyone to feel like they we're not presenting to them. We have a lot of small breakouts with groups of three. So it's many people are much more comfortable talking in a room with with two other people than they are even with a group of 11 other people.
Susan Tatum 24:01
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Well, Jonathan, if folks want to find out more about collaberex, how should they go about doing that?
Jonathan Rosen 24:09
They can either go to our website, which is collaberex.com, it's C, O, L, L, A, B, E, R, E, X.com, or they can email me at jonathan@collaberex.com
Susan Tatum 24:27
and we'll put those in the show notes. And when's your book coming out?
Jonathan Rosen 24:30
If you'll be my book coach, then soon.
Susan Tatum 24:34
Oh, you're kidding. There are some good ones out there, but I'm not one of them. Well, thank you so much for stopping by. This has been very informative and helpful.
Jonathan Rosen 24:43
Well, thank you so much for having me again,
Susan Tatum 24:47
again. Yes, three times and three times.
Jonathan Rosen 24:48
I'm, I love talking about this. You know, it's, it's the joy of doing what you love so
Susan Tatum 24:56
and I can tell that you are, you genuinely, authentically do love it because you do it very well.
Jonathan Rosen 25:02
Thank you so much.
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