Shownotes
Everybody can be successful if they want to be. With patience, persistence, and perspiration, you can accomplish anything. Successful networker and Chief Connection Officer of Firestorm in Denver, Colorado Phil Pelto helps people grow their business through relationships, strategic partnerships, and referrals. Firestorm is a business to business networking organization. They organize events and meetings for business people to meet, build relationships, and share referrals. He says no matter who their target market is, the goal is to help people grow their business. Phil shares a lot of what they’re doing and who they are serving from different industries.
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How Strategic Relationships Can Help You Grow Your Business with Phil Pelto
We have Phil Pelto. He’s the Founder and Chief Connection Officer of Firestorm in Denver, Colorado. Phil, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
Phil and I have a history. We’ve had breakfast together. We’ve talked about his networking efforts. He is an awesome networker and he’s built quite a business. Phil if you would, tell us about your business and who you serve.
Firestorm is a business to business networking organization. We organize events and meetings for business people to meet and build relationships and share referrals. The whole idea is to help people grow their business through relationships, strategic partnerships and referrals. The people that we serve are typically business owners that are still actively involved in the biz dev. I would say zero to $3 million in revenue, where they’re getting out and trying to grow their top line sales. We also have a good contingent of salespeople that work for larger organizations, the Comcast and CenturyLinks of the world, but are also going after business owners. The one thing both of those folks have in common is they are serving clients that are between $1 million to $50 million in revenue. We have all sorts of different industries. There are people that are doing the podcasting and phone systems and there are people that are doing digital marketing and websites and attorneys and CPAs and all that stuff. That’s our target market and the goal is to help people grow their business.
I was looking at your website and you had a lot of these groups up and down the front range. Can you describe the nature and the structure of each one of those separate units?
The nice thing about our organization is each one of those groups take sides on flavor, depending on who the core group of people is. What we’ll do is we’ll get a leader that has a business that it would behoove them to do this anyway. They would be out there looking for a group on their own and they decide that they want to run it. We have some good support structure in place for that. They will choose who they want to start the group with and they get to be a little bit selfish about it since it’s their group. They all say you’re in the exit planning and financial services business and so you would say, “Who are good partners for me?” We’d map out some good strategic partners and that would be the core group of people that we’d look for and then it expands from there. Depending on who the first person is, that will depend on the way the group grows and the makeup of the group going forward. It’s interesting. You can visit a chapter in Longmont and visit a chapter in Lone Tree and they are very different makeups, depending on who it was that started it.
We’re going to pretend I’m down in Colorado Springs and I want to open my chapter. Let’s go to the mechanics, your support level, expenses and that kind of thing.
We’ve been doing this for thirteen years now. Over the years I’ve been keeping notes and making manuals and becoming more sophisticated. We’re at the point where we have an online learning management system that we use. I’ve created a curriculum for the chapter president and for the chapter leaders and for the members and they’re all separate things. One of the benefits of starting a Firestorm chapter versus doing it on your own, which a lot of people are totally capable of. I would highly recommend doing it, whether it’s on your own or going with somebody like us. The end result should be the same. You’re going to grow your business with referrals and strategic partnerships.
I have taken a lot of headache off the table for you. We’ve got a lot of support. We’ve got a process for how to get things going and how to structure the group, how to support the group, how to add content and add value to each meeting. There’s a framework and structure to the meeting. As far as a cost goes, at some point in time, we will probably start charging. Right now, if you’re the group leader, we don’t have any initiation costs or set up fees. It won’t stay that way forever, but right now I’m a lot more interested in getting the right people in and making sure that that process goes smooth.
We’ll circle back around your growth plan.
There’s an incentive to be a leader because there’s not a cost associated with it. After that, we provide a lot of support. I want to make it as easy as possible for the chapter president to grow the group. If you wanted to start something in Colorado Springs, for instance, I would make a plan with you and say, “Here’s step one through ten and have a timeline to go along with that.” I would try and provide as much support through the process as I can.
In a typical group, is there a typical quantity of people that are in each one of these groups?
We capped them at 24. It’s a smaller group than some people are used to. I’m much more interested in quality over quantity and that’s one of the themes in our business both with the number of people in the groups and the number of referrals that get passed around. I’m much more interested in one deal that’s going to turn into something and be beneficial for my business than a pile full of so and so introductions.
There are a fair quantity of networking groups around. What makes Firestorm distinctive from many of the other networking groups?
The biggest differentiator for us is we’re focused on that business to business market. Most of the other organizations that are out there are a combo of business to business and business to consumer. They will accept any member, which is great. If you’re in a business to consumer role, there are a lot of options out there for you. For the person that’s selling to another business, it’s a more complex sale. It’s a longer sale cycle. There are other certain nuances to that whole process and the way that you build a partnership with someone, the product that you’re selling and the whole decision-making process. For the business to business salesperson, it doesn’t make sense for them to be in a group full of people that are selling, let’s say, Cutco knives or a guy selling suits. In those roles, I wasn’t necessarily able to help somebody that’s a management consultant or going after a larger more complex sale.
When you’re trying to build a relationship with somebody, you need to stay at the top of mind of that person.
How frequently do the groups meet?
The groups meet weekly. It’s a big-time commitment, but there’s a method to the madness. When we ask for that weekly commitment, part of that has to do with staying top of mind. If you look at how adults learn whether it be in college or continuing at or whatever, the reality is we forget half of the stuff that we hear 24 hours from now and another half, 24 hours after that. There’s a fairly short half-life on information. When we’re trying to build a relationship with somebody that I want to help their business or I want them to help my business, you need to stay top of mind of that person. If you do a monthly meeting or you do meeting every couple of weeks, if I missed one of those, I go four weeks, maybe eight weeks before I see that person again. I completely forget most of the information that I’ve heard at the last time I saw them. That’s one of the main reasons that we do weekly meetings is to stay top of mind with people. It’s nice to get in a routine, having the calendar to set appointments. It’s like going to the dentist. I don’t think about it, they send me a reminder card. It’s on the calendar.
What’s the typical length of the meeting?
It’s an hour and fifteen minutes.
Is there a typical structure within the meeting?
Growing Your Business: I’m much more interested in quality over quantity, and that’s one of the themes in our business both with the number of people in the groups and the number of referrals that get passed around.
Yes, absolutely. We’ve got an agenda. It’s the same agenda. There are certain things that happened during the meeting to help facilitate the relationship building process with people. To stay top of mind and to make sure that we’re reminded of things that can help each other out. If you run through the meeting agenda, we all do a quick intro and remind everybody what we do. At some point, people will think to themselves, “Why are we doing this? I know Bob. I know what you do.” You’ll think, “We should maybe skip that.” It’s fun to mess around with people if they say something like that and say, “Really? Bob, you’re going to do the introduction for the person to your left,” and see how they messed it up. It’s always fun exercise because we realize you get in the zone and you’re like, “That’s Bob, that’s Phil, that’s Susie.” You don’t listen to what they’re saying. That’s one of the first things.
There’s some chapter business type stuff. Things that are going on around. We talk about events. We try and vet other events that are going on around town and report back to our member base and say, “These are good. You should check these out. These are ones that are so and so,” and then stay away from those. We don’t talk about the stay away from, but we want to highlight the good ones. We highlight one member for the week. They get a chance to talk. There’s some curriculum around which presentation they’re going to give like Toastmasters. It’s different content but the same idea, where you have a presentation number one and you talk about this. Presentation number two and you talk about that. We do something called referral mapping. That’s where we go through and dive in deep for the person that’s featured for that week. We help them brainstorm and identify. It also helps the group here and remember who is their ideal client, who are good strategic partners for them?
What are the things that we could ask our clients or what are things that we’re going to hear when we’re out doing the course of business for our jobs? What do we hear that says, “That’s a great referral for Bob or I should make an introduction to this person?” We go through that and then we do target referral requests, which my wife and I did a quick video on in the car. The target referral request is a challenging thing for a lot of people because we ask people to bring specific names of people that they want to be introduced to. That means that you have to do some homework and come prepared with a list. What it does is it forces you to do it, which is the best part of the exercise and the most valuable. The second part is when you say it to somebody else, we zero in on things and I talked a little bit in the video about the reticular activating system. It makes you focus on one particular person, one particular name and whether you know that person or not your brain starts to think about how can I connect the dots? How can I find that person or find a way to get to that person, which is fascinating?
Back to pretending, I’m running my group and we’ve got somebody that’s caught wind or whatever and go, “I want to join your group.” What’s the process?
The first thing is to have them visit. We always want people to visit a couple of times for free. I don’t want there to be a huge barrier to entry at that point. We’re paying attention to that person. How they conduct themselves. Are they a good business person? Are they coming with the right intentions? Are they there to serve others or are they there to take for themselves? What do they do? Are they a good fit for the group? What kind of network are they going to bring to the table? What’s their background? There are all sorts of things that were keeping our eyes peeled for.
I would expect them to do the same. Are we as an organization, as a group, a good fit for what they’re trying to accomplish? At the end of the day, I’m trying to help people build long-term relationships. This isn’t a quick hit, come in, sell everybody at the group and leave or get fresh meat in so I can sell them and then kick them out the door. That’s not what we’re all about. I’m trying to build long-term strategic partnerships. I would love to see people be in the same group for a decade or two decades or more. There’s an interesting article, The Wall Street Journal put it out maybe 2010 or 2011. It was a group called the Wednesday Ten in New York. These guys have been meeting for 50 years. That’s what I want to create on a larger scale.
I think about that process and you have some plans because you have chapters all up and down the front range. You had chapters started in other towns. For the folks out there going, “This sounds interesting. I’d like to do one in my town.” What do they do?
The first step is to contact me. You can go to the website. There’s some information.
Let’s go ahead and do that. How do people find you?
The website is MyFirestorm.com and that’s the easiest way. You can shoot me an email, Phil@MyFirestorm.com. All of our information is on there. There’s a section on the website where it explains the process of becoming a member. Once a person visits, we sit down to have a conversation. There’s an application that they fill out and we interview them. There’s a little bit of process to get in because we want to make sure it’s a good fit. It’s a similar process for opening a chapter. I want to make sure that it’s the right fit for us and are the right fit for the person that’s going to run the chapter. Not everybody’s a good fit and we’re not a good fit for everybody. It goes both ways. We’ve got some preliminary information that you can check out in what’s expected and how the whole process goes for starting a chapter.
Everybody is capable of being successful.
There’s our chapter President’s agreement on the website so everybody can look that over before they decide they want to go any further. If it is a good fit and we decide that we want to do that then there’s again an application process and then we would have a conversation and start the planning process for that group. From start to finish to get a chapter, from nothing to first meeting, it’s probably a couple of months to do that. After that from the first meeting to a thriving chapter, I would say it takes a year to eighteen months to get it up and running. We’re playing the long game. You’ve got to have that long-term focus and you’ve got to have the wherewithal mentally with your business to not need to get immediate deals out of it. I’m not selling the get rich quick scheme, “Come to me and we’re going to grow your business 30% next month.” That’s not our jam.
They’ll find you on LinkedIn as Philip Pelto.
Firestorm is on LinkedIn as well, @MyFirestorm and all of the social media stuff.
I was on your site and you do video vignettes. Tell us about you as a TV star, you and your wife.
We do these member-of-the week videos like this. I like to highlight our members and chat with them. They’re short, they’re five minutes long. It’s a quick little snippet of information on one of the members. We do that every week and we also have some educational videos that we do. Part of my goal is to help people become better networkers. Help people be better at building relationships and understand that whole process and the nuances to it. We put out some content about that. We did this Firestorm Fridays thing. It might come back by popular demand, I keep getting asked. There’s always a fireplace or an open fire or something around in the background. It’s a little fun chat around that. There are quite a variety of videos that we do.
I was intrigued because it’s you or your wife doing the interview. What’s been the reaction of your guests to be interviewed by you?
Growing Your Business: We’re playing the long game. You’ve got to have that long-term focus and the wherewithal mentally with your business to not need to get immediate deals out of it.
They enjoy the interaction. A lot of them have used the content to post on their LinkedIn pages and profiles or to put in on their website or use as a little marketing piece. Everybody likes it and it’s super short and fun. At least, that’s what I hope it is.
Shifting gears a little bit, some of the stuff that folks want to know is perhaps a book or an influential book that’s altered your perception or contributed to your perception of being a business owner as you go?
There are a ton of good books out there. A couple that I have finished that are fresh in my mind that are good. One is Tribes by Seth Godin. It’s particularly poignant for my business because that’s what we’re doing is building these tribes. I’m building a tribe and I’m helping other people build tribes. I enjoy the face to face interactions with people. There’s not enough of that in the world now. That was a good book. Ryan Holiday has The Obstacle is the Way and
