How to Build Community Relationships from Home – DSP 240

Building community relationships when you’re already working 12 hour days at your float center can seem impossible. How do you make those connections when you’re busy during business hours? Derek and Graham tackle this problem and focus on it from personal experience. When Float On was just starting up, Graham was always running around, but still found time to grab a tea with local wellness professionals in his down time just to chat and hang out. Derek also points out that there’s plenty of social media tools that you can use between transitions when you have a couple minutes.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Alright that was Agents Of E.C.C.O. helping out again with the intro. And we have Derek in the studio once again.

Derek: Hello everybody.

Graham: Instead of Ashkahn who’s off working hard, hard, hard on the upcoming float conference, floatconference.com if you want to check that out. And my name’s Graham.

Derek: Yes you are Graham.

Graham: I am Graham, and we have a question to answer which is, “I can’t leave my shop during business hours to talk to other businesses. Is there a good way to build relationships in my community anyway?” So I guess no surprise to anyone who’s been listening to our show, we’re really big about going out and being active in your community and running outreach programs and grabbing drinks and dinner with other wellness professionals. And just as a small brick and mortar business taking part in your community and really enveloping yourself and of course for especially solopreneurs or people who work a lot of hours in the shop, it makes sense. You’re working your own shop and when you get off you’re pretty burnt out. So it’s hard to let go and just rock out another like two or three hours of schmoozing and face-to-face time.

Derek: Yeah. And most of the time, by the time you do get that energy to get out there, everybody else is closed. And so I guess it’s the bar scene, you’ve got to hit all the bars.

Graham: Yeah. Go to the strip clubs.

Derek: Yup. There’s your strategy right there.

Graham: That’s it, yup. Just hit up the strip clubs, give up whatever other aspirations you had and you’re set.

Derek: Bags of epsom salt on stage.

Graham: You heard it here. Daily solution of the day. Cool.

Derek: Go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Graham: What actual advice should we give for this?

Derek: Since I’m the online marketing, nerdy, kind of deep into the internet kind of guy let’s start there. There’s a tool out there called Twitter and it’s a fantastic outreach platform.

Graham: I’m just taking notes on this. How do you, T W I?

Derek: Double T E R.

Graham: Yeah, Okay, got it.

Derek: It’s the one with the little blue bird, and you tweet, tweet’s a thing. So when you log into Twitter and you start searching for your city, you can also change the trending topics to be more reflective of what’s happening in your city. Often you find that being more political and sports talk, but you’ll find people that live in your area. You can start following them. They tweet and you can start engaging with tweets to your comfort level. And you’ll seem like a real person behind this Twitter profile.

And I think back when Twitter was big, there was a lot of businesses that caught wave here in Portland, there was a place it’s no longer around because other reasons but Big Ass Sandwich. They made most of their following through social media and by outreach, just being hilarious on Twitter. With Ease Fried Pies was another one. There was a Twilight Pizza and you’d be talking about the Blazers and you’d see these businesses, you’re like, you got some good insights on the Blazers and you look them up and you’re like, oh, it looks like pretty good pizza. And you just go there and you talk to the owner because you just talked to him on Twitter and it was like way back when Twitter was hot. I think a lot of people forgot about that’s a way to use Twitter. So that’s one method. There’s probably some form of a-

Graham: And actually just just to, before you go on, would you say the same strategy works on Facebook as well. Just trying to reach out to people, local businesses on Facebook?

Derek: It’s a little bit more difficult and a little bit more skeezy from the standpoint of like there’s not a public conversation that’s generally happening on Facebook. Usually because Twitter is a public conversation, you can follow people to be more in lined with their thoughts. Facebook, you kind of have to be friends with private people. Businesses can’t do that. So the only other alternative is to go on other businesses or community pages, like the local news or being float on and going and talking on the other bars, Por Que No restaurant’s facebook page. That just seems kind of weird that a business is talking with other people or other businesses.

Graham: Feels like you’re hijacking audiences as opposed to contributing value with a conversation.

Derek: Even if you’re contributing value, it’s still weird that you had to use your business profile to go onto this other businesses page to leave a comment about something.

Graham: Sure, that makes sense.

Derek: And I’m sure it’s capable for sure. And Instagram, you know, Instagram is another public conversation that has more of a conversational platform element to it with the comments, so Twitter and Instagram, since Instagram’s the new hotness. You could probably use that same strategy with that-

Graham: I always say trust anything that has “Gram” in the name.

Derek: That’s true, you have said that more than once. So I mean, kind of diving a little bit deeper into other online forums like subreddits for your city, like there’s r/Portland or whatever. You can again be a business, you can have your business username be your profile username and you can be like Float HQ chatting away in the business or the Portland section of Reddit. You can do stuff like that and people go, Float HQ, and they’ll link back and figure out where you’re from and say, “Oh, it’s that float tank place.” You can do stuff like that if you have nothing but time on your hands while you’re at the center and everybody’s checked in and everything is cleaned and you’re just waiting for the next thing to happen, get online for 10, 15 minutes at a time and start finding where people are also online and conversing.

Graham: During all that free time you have when you’re running your float center.

Derek: I said 10 to 15 minutes.

Graham: No, no, it’s true. There’s almost always small little areas. I was just thinking about running around like a madman when I’m behind the desk.

Derek: We’re also talking about the need for getting people in your float center. So I’m just naturally jumping to the point that maybe some of these centers that aren’t at full capacity-

Graham: Yeah, aren’t totally busy yet.

Derek: Only have to turn over two rooms by themselves on a transition, there’s probably a little bit more free time there.

Graham: Yeah, for sure. Plus I just like looking busy so it’s not like I was actually that busy.

Derek: It is true.

Graham: You’ve just got to keep the bosses happy you know? When Ashkahn’s looking over my shoulder gotta seem like I’m doing things.

Derek: One hand on the mouse, one hand on the keyboard, serious look on face, you don’t have to be doing anything.

Graham: I was going to say, and we use this, it’s been a couple of years now since we’ve been, if I guess, yeah, almost three years since we’ve been kind of fully out of running the business and, or at least mostly out of the day to day for in the shop. So not working behind the desk and doing that ourselves. But back in the beginning I always thought if I didn’t have time to go around and visit with other people and introduce myself and make friends, which to be honest somehow I just always found time to carve that out. It’s like even if you finish up a 10 hour shift at the shop, spending an extra half an hour, 45 minutes just grabbing a drink with someone or grabbing some tea, it’s not the worst experience. And it’s not like I don’t know, like you’re going out with these really boring businessy type appointments where it’s obvious both of you just want something from the other person, like a typical Hollywood lunch or something like that.

But you’re going out with people who are passionate about wellness center oftentimes really interesting and it’s actually, it’s relaxing time, at least for me rather than it is kind of draining social time, which you can get sometimes. So there is that. Make time for yourself, but get them to come into your center. If you can’t go out to their business, then email them or even give them a phone call and just try to talk to the receptionist. Or if you reach the owner, talk directly to them. Try to get them some free floats for the staff, for the owner, lure them to come in and float with you and let them know to set aside some time afterwards if they want to have some tea and chat while they’re actually visiting your float center. And that’s actually worked historically very well for us too, is just sending out some free floats and getting people to come in.

Derek: So I mean enlighten me a little bit on that element. So if you, let’s say cold email or cold call someone, what’s kind of like your pitch that you just don’t seem like another person looking to get a transactional business meeting this time on your grounds? Like what do you say to break down those kinds of concerns that someone might have receiving a cold email?

Graham: Yeah. It’s a good question and it depends on exactly what you’re trying to do and how many businesses you’re going after and stuff like that too. Right? The easiest things to go after are things that you yourself are passionate about. So it’s way easier to get an acupuncturist to come in and float if you’re one of their paid clients right? Or you’ve met them before or whatever. And the same goes for a rock climbing gym or for mixed martial arts gym or for the smoothie place down the street. If they know who you are and you’re a customer and you’re passionate and in that world, it’s going to be pretty easy to make connections and get people to come in. And then you can just be authentic and say, “Hey, I love your smoothie shop. I probably spend like $20 there a week, let me just give you a present because you guys are awesome and you should come try out our business and let’s just, you know, if you have time as one of the owners, let’s hang out afterwards. We’re both local businesses. I just love meeting other local business people.”

And you know, some variation. So if you’re cold emailing a business, if they’re just general masseuse, you’ve never heard about massages with them. Just be honest and say, “Hey, I’m just reaching out and I’m new or I’ve been existing in the town for awhile,” or whatever it is. “I’m this float center and I’m just trying to make some more relationships in the world. You know, I worked my own center all the time. I realized that I don’t get to poke my head up from running a small business very often and I want to offer other people in the wellness community a chance to come in and experience floating. And if you want to hang out afterwards and get some tea and just hanging out and chat,” like it’d be really cool for me to be able to hang out with other small business owners or other wellness practitioners.

Derek: Yeah. And chances are there’s probably, speaking of building relationships, a lot of relationships from past careers and previous work life’s that you can reach out to your old colleagues and say, keep up to date with what you’re doing now and invite them to come check it out. If you worked in a environment where they have a lot of contacts, you get them involved in floating, they can potentially now be spreading the word for you.

Graham: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that’s a great point which is floating is beneficial to so many groups of people. Like maybe you have your eye set on really trying to get as many masseuses floating as possible, but maybe it was your tech support job that actually has the most people who are crouched over computers who can really use access to floats and yeah, for sure. Using whatever connections you had kind of in your past life and offering that to them and getting people who you know excited about floating is totally worthwhile. And yeah, that’s like starting with softballs, right? You can probably knock those out of the park pretty easily before you move on to the big leagues of just straight up cold calling big wellness facilities or something like that. But I mean, what’s the worst thing? Like you were just reaching out to people and you’re saying, “Hey, I want to do something nice for you,” and if they ignore you, then they don’t use up your floats and whatever. And chances are if you’re just honest, that’s how you phrase it is, hey, I just want to do this nice thing. Whether it’s because I, hey, respect your business, or hey, I just respect your line of work. Let me give you a gift. You’ll probably see a response from it.

And also one thing I found that was totally surprising when we first did this, we gave out floats to about 50 different wellness facilities actually in person walking around when we first opened up and very few of them were redeemed immediately, but a lot of them trickled in over the next 18 months. It felt like we were maybe getting like two or three floats a month. Just kind of slowly trickling in from that effort. So don’t be surprised if you go around and give out just a ton of free floats, but you don’t immediately see a rush of those people coming in and they probably will come in over time. It’ll just take a little bit.

Derek: Nice.

Graham: Cool. Well if you have any questions-

Derek: Go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Graham: Yup. And we will answer them. So tune in tomorrow and you can hear us doing just that.

Derek: Bye everybody.

Graham: Bye.

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