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🏸I try PICKLEBALL!! ➕ My Rant About How to Really NETWORK: Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 474

Episode 474 • 13th March 2026 • Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson • GURU Media Hub

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Do This, NOT That! podcast. And usually I come on here and I talk about marketing tips. Oh, do this on social media or stick this in your subject line. You're gonna get this open rate. But sometimes I like coming on here and just talking about general business and career and life stuff that kind of drives me a little bonkers.

Jay Schwedelson: And so this is one of those moments I wanna talk about networking. Everybody always is trying to network. Maybe you're trying to get a new job. Maybe you're trying to get a promotion, maybe you're trying to grow your LinkedIn connections. I don't know what you're trying to do, but everybody's always trying to network.

Jay Schwedelson: And when they say networking or even when they say that they're looking for a job, I think that people are doing this wrong and they have the wrong mindset. And this is just me. And there are little things that you can be doing that I've always done in my career that have helped me out a lot that I wish I knew, uh, sooner.

Jay Schwedelson: So first, let's talk about LinkedIn for a second. Oh, I don't really like going on LinkedIn. It's really not. Whatever. Listen, LinkedIn is the long game. You need to be making time all the time, every day, 15 minutes a day for LinkedIn and you wanna be doing. Networking on LinkedIn, not for today. Maybe you love your job today, but things happen, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: And you need to be growing your network with the exact right people now, so you are ready when you do wanna reach out to people, or you wanna be reaching out to people right now. And it's hard to connect with these people in a meaningful way. So how can you actually get connected to people that are really at that higher level, or people that you really wanna be connected with?

Jay Schwedelson: You can't just go on their profile. Send them a connection request. You can't just go in their profile, even write a custom note saying, Hey, I think you're great. Let's connect. That's not how you get kind of higher level people to want to connect with you. Here's the secret sauce, okay? And people do this me all the time, and it works all the time, and I do it to other people all the time.

Jay Schwedelson: Fine. You make a list of let's say a hundred people that you'd love to connect with, the director of whatever, the vice president of whatever. I don't care. Whoever they are, whatever industry you're in. Okay? Then you go to their page. You can go to their page every single day. You follow those people, and in the upper right hand corner on their page, there's a little bell.

Jay Schwedelson: You turn on the bell on that person's profile page, that director of whatever, and every time they post, you're gonna get a notification. And if you don't get the notification, you make that list of 50 people, a hundred people, and you go to their page. Every other day or every two or three days, and every time they post a new post, okay, you go on their post, you like their post, and you write something intelligent.

Jay Schwedelson: You write a sentence or two, maybe you ask a question in that post, right? And then you do that for about 30 days. 60 days. Alright? And you do that with every single post that they do. I will tell you this, I don't care, okay? I don't care how significant the person is. You'll start to become branded in their mind.

Jay Schwedelson: They will start to see your name. They will start to know that you are commenting on their post. And then you send them a connection request, not before. And when you send that connection request in the, you make it a custom note. So you can only do it on desktop. You can't do it on mobile. You go on LinkedIn, you click connect and it says, do you wanna add a note?

Jay Schwedelson: You always say yes. You get about a 30% increase in people accepting your connection when you write a custom note. But in that custom note, what you're gonna say is, I've been learning so much from your content, I wanna continue to learn from your content. It would be amazing to connect with you. Great.

Jay Schwedelson: They're going to accept that. A lot of them will. Now you're connected to this really important person. Amazing. When they connect, you write them. It's so great to be connected. That's awesome. Now, another secret sauce thing that you want to do is you wanna say, okay, let's say there's like 10 companies that you're really interested in working with, getting as a client, right?

Jay Schwedelson: Maybe there's 10 companies you really wanna work for. You wanna get a job at. What you do is you don't go after and try to connect with the person that is the vice president of whatever. 'cause when they see your connection request, they're gonna see that. You know, it shows who else are you connected with in common, and it's not gonna show anybody else on their team.

Jay Schwedelson: You are connected with. So what you wanna do is you wanna go down, you wanna go down manager level as low as you can within different organizations, right? And you want to connect with lower level people in the companies that you want business from. Okay? In the same department, let's say you want to go people in the marketing department, you have to marketing managers, you connect with the marketing managers in those companies.

Jay Schwedelson: As many of those as you can. And then when you go to connect with that director or that vice president, they will see that you are already connected with three or four other people on their team, and the likelihood of them accepting you goes up astronomically. You need to play the LinkedIn game a very specific way.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's talk about other networking things. It drives me bonkers how people think about events. They go to a cocktail reception, maybe they go to an industry event, maybe they go to a local, uh, networking event, whatever it may be. I will tell you it's the most annoying thing in the world to do this, but I'm gonna tell you right now that this is secret sauce for your career, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: I've always done this. Whenever I go to any little event, could be an event, like 10 people, are there a thousand people are there, 50 people are there? Whatever the event is, okay. Leading into that event. I am not going there saying, I wanna have a good time. I wanna go get a cocktail. I am not saying those things.

Jay Schwedelson: I am not saying I wonder what food they're gonna serve. I am not saying those things. What I am always saying is, alright, who is gonna be there? And I go down, I try, try to figure out who is gonna be there, and then I say to myself, who are the two or three people that I absolutely need to be able to meet and connect with at this event?

Jay Schwedelson: And I come up with who those people are, and this is terrible, but this is what I do when I get to that event. I don't care how big or small it is, that is all I care about. My focus is somehow weaving my way over to that person, getting introduced to that person, befriending that person, laughing with that person, exchanging phone numbers with that person I am.

Jay Schwedelson: Always intentional about any event that I go to, so that I walk out of there and I have met the person. I am not going there to have a good time, stop going to business events, just to have a good time. Go there with a plan, execute on that plan. I am telling you, by doing this, you'll advance your career so, so much.

Jay Schwedelson: And I know that this is not fun. This is like party pooper stuff. And I know it sounds aggressive and you're probably trying to relax right now, and you're like, why am I listening to this? But when we think about, oh. I sent out 200 resumes today. I didn't hear anything back, or, uh, I've been waiting on this promotion.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm working so hard and nobody recognizes what I'm doing, or I can't get this sale. I can't get this new client. I can't seem to get traction with anybody. You gotta mix it up. You gotta do things a little bit differently. And then the last one is ask for introductions. It's underrated how much people are willing to help each other.

Jay Schwedelson: If you see somebody you know is connected with somebody that you wanna meet, it is okay. Say, Hey, I would love a favor. Would you mind introducing me to that person? Or these three people I see you're connected with them or do you know anybody in the retail sector? I'd love some introductions. Let's say you ask 10 people for those introductions, one of them is gonna say yes, and that introduction might change your business, your career, your whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: We all say it. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Everything I just talked about is nauseating. It's not fun. It's the opposite of what you wanna do. I don't wanna do any of it. It is the worst. But if you wanna grow, you wanna advance, you wanna do these things, this is what you do. Alright, let's get into, since you didn't ask.

Jay Schwedelson: Since you didn't ask, by the way, before we get into, since you didn't ask, I want to let you know that this podcast, this episode, is sponsored by a company called. CallRail. Now, if you don't know what CallRail is, you are missing out. You know, if you're a company that gets phone calls, if you're a company that gets website traffic, okay, and people are going there and you wanna be able to attribution, is this converting?

Jay Schwedelson: Are these phone calls going well? Are these website visits going well? What is going on with our business? I am telling you, CallRail is it. If you own a business, if you are a marketer, you wanna make sure that every click, every conversation, every time your sales person's talking to somebody, every time a customer service rep is talking to somebody, every time there's a chat going on, you wanna know it's working.

Jay Schwedelson: Go to callrail.com/dothis. That's callrail.com/dothis. You will see it all. Amazing company. I've relied on them for a long time. Alright, let's get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast called, since you didn't ask. This is what I talk about. What's going on in my life. So my family thinks I have no life.

Jay Schwedelson: They do. They think I'm a big loser. And they say to me, touch grass because all I think about is work and they go, you need to go out and do, get a hobby. So, and I go, I don't want a hobby. They go, you have to get a hobby. So they said, uh, I go, well, what should I do? And they said, you should try pickleball.

Jay Schwedelson: And I'm here to report. I had a pickleball lesson today. Now, if I were you, I would make fun of me because if one of my friends said to me, they had a pickleball lesson. I would call them a nerd. I would say, you're a loser and I would make fun of them. Now, it doesn't mean if you play pickleball, you're a nerd or a loser, and if you get lessons, doesn't mean you're a nerd or loser.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm just a horrible person and this is what I would say. So if you wanna say that about me. Valid. I agree. How did it go? Um, it went well. I liked it. I did like it. I will say, here's the story with pickleball. Horrible name, horrendous name. Um, it's like you got this little racket, it's like a half a tennis racket and you hit this wiffle ball style ball and that's what you do.

Jay Schwedelson: And, um, it's a shorter court than a tennis court, so that's good because, uh, uh, you get tired very fast. Um, what I will say the negative about pickleball is number one, way too many rules. There's 4,000 rules and I'm trying to learn all these rules. You can't stand here, you can't do this. Too many rules. We need to cut down on the rules.

Jay Schwedelson: It's like when, uh, uh, um, you know, anybody's like, let's, let's, um. Some people play card games. Now let's play Rummikub. I, I what? What is Rummikub? Let's play Mahjong. I don't know. I have no idea what's going on with that situation. Everything needs to have less rules. You know what games I like? I like, like, remember Boggle, you got the little, uh, uh, letters and you shake 'em up in a box and then there's like a quicksand thing and you have like two minutes to see every word that you could see across all the letters in this little box.

Jay Schwedelson: There was like three rules. Great. I'm all for like three rules. What else has three rules? Checkers great. You make it to the other end. They king you great. I could do checkers, candy, land. You slide down a slide. Very few rules. We, we need less rules with all the games. Too many rules. Um, what am I talking about?

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know actually. All right. Listen, Jay schon.com launched a new site I wanna work with you. Let me do the demand gen for your business. It's what I do for a living. Uh, register for Guru Conference. Register for a fantastic, they're all free. Check it out. You're awesome Later.

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474. 🏸I try PICKLEBALL!! ➕ My Rant About How to Really NETWORK: Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 474