5-12 raving fans, people that you’ve helped and that will help you is a wonderful new asset for nearly any business.  That’s the first part of building your community, the steely center of your business and the focus of the people you want to serve.

The Core is a starting point, and learning to be of serious service to a set of peers.   It’s good for you because you get beyond the day to day noise of your business and you get involved with learning to serve people that you admire.

Buy we want to get beyond that core, and we want to recruit others that can we can help (and will help us).  We want to have a group of folks we know somewhat, we’ve spoken to, and who might be folks that we can serve at the next level.

I call it my nifty fifty. Right now, my nifty fifty is at 86 members.  I need to determine which of the relationships I want to really, really bet on and which can drift into the “crowd” status (that gets baseline friendliness, help, and en masse interaction and response).

Now, the goal with the nifty fifty is this:

To have a good group of diverse pros and “go to guys,” that I can introduce to one another.

To be a resource and connector between 12-50 people that I really like.

To have some social interaction and a pool of people that has received a favor from me, personally.

To challenge myself by learning other businesses.

To get business.

Goals are roughly in this order.  I don’t apologize for wanting business from this group–it’s a bigger group and the bigger the group gets the more you focus on automatic monetization.

Where Do You Find Your Nifty Fifty?

Right now, you need to go looking for the middle group, and oddly, adopt these folks in a more formal way than your core community group.   You want to make sure that this group is balanced, and that you keep your promises to them.   You find this group in the same spots as the core community group, except you focus on geography.  If your business is location dependent, you want to keep 60% or more of them where you live.

But, you recruit these people from:

• Your best customers
• your favorite vendors
• Business professionals in a “round table” (i.e. attorney, CPA, financial planner)
• Your friends with businesses.
• Folks you admire
• People that commented on your blog
• People that interacted with you via social media
• Long term contacts that you can help.

Again, I want to focus on people I can help and that aren’t necessarily my close friends.  Someone in a corporate job with little interaction with your product might not seem like a good fit, but referral sources are almost always a surprise.   You want people that know you.

How Do You Introduce Yourself To Your Nifty Fifty?

I did it seeking 100 people.  I think 100 might be OK once you really have a handle on 50 people, but I did it with a semi-custom form letter. My subject lines were stuff like:

“blog comment last month – what I did with it.”

“do you need any of my contacts?”

Dear $name of person,

[1-2 sentences describing event/connection]

With all the stuff that’s going on, I wanted to slow down and see if I can help you.  I really appreciate the way you present yourself online and the way that you do business.  I want to help folks like you.

No, there won’t be any pitch and there are no strings. I  just want to make sure that I’m helpful to the right people.

If you ever need anything from me–a connection to one of my contacts, some free send out of your marketing to my list, I’ve got your back on that.  Don’t hesitate to ask for anything, I’m here to help.  Even if you need me to show up and support an event your doing, I’ll be there for you.

Truly yours,

 

Chris

P.S. Feel free to pick up the phone and call me at 614-312-9141 any time.  I’ll always take your call when there’s time.

With these people, if they blog, I auto-spit their blogs via Hoot-suite and I make an effort to help them whenever I can.  My job is to make sure that I can stay in front of and friendly with them.

How Often Do You Stay In Contact?

With this group, it’s once a quarter.  I use a spreadsheet for mine, but I suppose you can use a CRM.  The key here is to keep everything personal as possible.  Relate a memory, shared experience or goal with the other person, and try to keep it as natural as possible.   I do this on purpose.

With 86 people in my list, and roughly 60 business/working days in a quarter, i do 2 per business day.  It’s a nice way to warm up as well, and if you can do a favor for someone, it’ll keep your cash register ringing.

I’m going to be doing more of this as time goes on, so just watch.

I tell people what’s been working in my business, and what hasn’t been.

I offer up leads (and try to stay in tune with what a real good & viable lead is).

And–for those of you on the blog that I’m truly following, you’ll hear from me at least once a quarter.

This builds nicely to the third step: getting your core audience to bring their friends and share your stuff.