Kickstart Your Success: 10 Momentum-Building Strategies for the New Year

Kickstart Your Success: 10 Momentum-Building Strategies for the New Year

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to this special Christmas episode of the business development podcast. And today we're talking all about momentum and 10 tips specifically to help you kickstart the year for success. Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode one hundred and ninety seven of the business development podcast. It is my absolute pleasure to kick off our very first Christmas episode. My gosh, guys, Merry Christmas to all of you. Happy holidays to anybody who does not celebrate.

I hope you guys are having and have had an absolutely incredible year in 2024. It's super, super cool to have an episode launching on Christmas Day. What a present, huh? What an honor. I'm I'm super psyched and super happy that I can I can be out here on Christmas day for you all. I hope you all have an incredible day, an amazing day with friends and family, and hopefully very, very little work.

We have lots of time for that another day in a, in a really fun twist this year. We actually have another show releasing on new year's day to kick off the year. So. It's just a a couple weeks of holiday episodes for y'all, and I'm very excited and very, very happy to be here. 2024 has been an absolutely incredible year for the show, and I am eagerly anticipating crossing our 200th episode in just the coming weeks, guys.

I wanted to start today's show by just thanking our incredible rock stars. You our experts and our sponsors for sticking with us on this journey. 2024 has been an incredible year. We had some absolutely incredible, amazing guests. We've had some rock star sponsors step up and help us out with this show.

And I can't tell you guys how incredible And how fortunate and how happy I am that we were able to get that support here in 2024 guys, I could not have done it without any of you, we can't do this show without our listeners, we definitely can't do this show without our experts, and we absolutely cannot continue to grow this show effectively without our sponsors, so it really is a three stooled community.

And I appreciate each and every one of you for helping us on this journey. It really is a community, guys. And it takes a community. It really does. It takes a community to grow a show. And I can't be more thankful and more grateful for you guys sticking with us, for telling your friends, family, co workers, for following us on your platforms of choice, and for continuing to join the conversations we have on LinkedIn, connecting with me, commenting, sharing.

I cannot, cannot tell you how much I appreciate you all and especially the messages, man. I, I can't tell you how many times I'll be having a hard day and I'll get a message come in from one of our rock stars, the BDP community, just letting me know how this show has helped them, what they are doing, what steps they're taking to improve their businesses or to do better in business development in the year.

And My gosh, it's super, super cool. It's a, it's something I never expected on this journey. Guys, we get messages all the time from people that are launching their very first business from people that have gotten their very first business development job from people who are winning world recognized awards from businesses that they started and then continue to pursue with knowledge from the show, man.

I can't even tell you, I, I never saw this impact coming. And all I can say is that I'm so grateful for you guys, for our incredible community that you guys not just. Show up and participate and listen to the show, because really, what more can any podcaster ask for? But the fact that you're taking some of this information and doing incredible, world changing things with it, I could have never, ever expected that, guys.

I never saw that coming when I started this show talking to a wall in my room a couple of years ago, so. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's truly an honor. It's truly an honor and a privilege to be on here with you. And it is truly an honor to just be part of your day to be part of that journey. It's amazing, guys.

And thank you so much. Thanks for including me in your journeys. Thanks for letting me know how it's all going. And please do continue to participate in this show. Continue to let me know what's going on with you guys. Continue to let me know show topics that you'd like me to cover. And Continue to participate community questions.

I could not do this show without you. I want you all to be part of this. I want you to be part of this community, but not just part of this community, part of the content that we ultimately put out in this show. So thank you so much. Thank you for participating. Thank you for helping me to get to this point.

And I hope you continue to stay with us as we head into 2025. Because guys, 2025 is going to be an incredible year. I can feel it from the bottom of my heart, everyone. Seriously, thank you so much. Thank you so, so much today. I wanted to talk about how we can kick off a new year with a bang as we head into 2025.

There's some strategies to help us start with momentum and continue to build it throughout the year. Guys, there's something really powerful about kicking a year off strong. I know sometimes when we get back, it's a slow buildup, there's lots to do. It kind of feels like January just pitter patters by, but guess what?

We can take advantage of this. And I'm going to talk to you today about 10 things that we can start to do to make sure that when we start 2025, we can really kick this thing off, get the ball rolling hard and strong and exit January with a roar and really be ahead of the pack when it comes down to our business development.

So let's just get into it. All right. Number one, we need to start the year with a plan. I want you to start the year, guys, by writing out your goals for the coming year. And if I'm getting you during the Christmas break, heck, maybe even on Christmas day, maybe in between turkey dinner today, you could sit down with a pen and paper and just start to write out what are my business goals for 2025.

Just write them out, list them out just in jot note order. Guys, this does not have to be like complex. It does not have to be super detailed. You can literally just start to jot note out one, two, three, four, five, all the way to 10, 15, whatever you want in your business goals, personal goals. And if you'd like family goals, try to write out as many of these goals as you can, feel free to be as detailed as you want, the more detailed you can be the better, but if you've never done this before and you just need to get started, you haven't written out your goals list.

guys, you can always come back to it later and make it more in detail, but just get started by writing out a goals list for 2025. And like I said, business goals, personal goals. And if you like family goals for 2025, there is something absolutely incredible and magical guys about sitting down and telling the universe what you intend to do.

Okay. Some people, this is all it takes for some people. This is the thing. Holding you back from doing it or not doing it is simply putting it down on paper. And guys, I'm not talking about a computer. I'm talking about literally sitting down with a pen and paper and simply writing out business goals, personal goals, family goals.

1, as many as you like. But just write them out. And guys, I did a show about this a while ago, but what I was talking about was, no, you probably won't hit all of these goals. And that is completely okay. There's nothing wrong with rolling over goals to the next year if you do not accomplish them. But understand, the simple act of actually writing out your goals, and saying, this is what I intend to do this year, There is something magical about it.

And people will say, you got to read your goals over and over and over again. I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but I also don't think you have to. I think there's something magical in simply writing out your goals one time. I can't tell you how many times I have done this, and I am confident that I have accomplished many of those goals.

I think it's subconscious. I don't know what you want to call it. The universe. Magic happens when we start our year out with goals. Feel free to be as detailed and specific as you want. I think the more detail and specifics you can do, I think the higher chances you have of achieving it. But, trust me, the simple act of actually writing things out on a piece of paper as to what you want to do, There is magic in it, people.

There is Christmas magic. Take advantage of the day and let's write out that goals list. Number two, set a financial revenue target that is at least 15 percent larger than last year's revenue. And once again, guys, you write whatever number you want. Once again, it's the power of writing something down. I want you to genuinely think about what you want to grow by.

In this coming year for us, it's 2025. If you did 200, 000 last year, maybe this year you want to do 240, 000. Maybe you want to do 300, 000, whatever that is. Maybe you want to do 3. 5 million, whatever your number is. Write the new growth number down on a piece of paper and figure out how many new customers is it going to take for you to accomplish that growth goal.

One of the things that I always say with business development guys is it's really about new business, right? With a lot of companies, You tend to achieve the same revenue with the same customers over and over and over again, especially if you have like a repeat business or you have a services business.

A lot of those companies, once they found you and they're working with you, you tend to get repeat business over time. And so what I typically say is, if you want to grow by 20%, you typically need to find that additional 20% In a new company in new opportunity. So figure out what that number is for you guys.

If like I said, if we're talking 200, 000, let's say 20 percent is another 40, 000. Right? So if we need to come up with an additional 40, 000, how many new customers is that? And this is not actually that hard to find out guys, figure out what your average customer value is, add up all the revenue you made last year, divided by all the customers you had, and you have your average customer value for the year.

Maybe that's 5, 000, maybe that's 10, 000, whatever it is, figure out how many new clients you have to close to achieve your new growth goal and start to set targets regarding how you are going to accomplish that. This simple task right now can help you hit the ground running in the new year. If you need to accomplish 10 new clients, 5 new clients, 20 new clients, hell, 50 new clients, at least you know, at least you know what number you need to accomplish, and it can give you just that little bit extra kick in the butt to really ramp things up when you hit the ground running in January.

So don't be afraid to set a lofty goal. Don't be afraid to set a lofty goal. Heck, if you want to achieve 20%, maybe aim for 50%. You can always miss the moon and hit the stars, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But start the year with a revenue goal. You will be surprised at how often, when you can start the year with a revenue goal and start to put a plan as to how many new customers that might be to achieve that.

You figure out how to make it happen. Trust me, there is something magical once again about writing down that financial target. And I do say at least 15 percent bigger. You really do need to have a significant revenue increase year over year for your business. Guys aiming for 15 percent is probably a bare minimum, depending on how your organization works.

I think 20 is probably a safer bet. But figure out what those numbers are that you need to grow by, figure out what that equates to in dollars and cents, and then figure out based on your average customer values, how many new customers that is. That gives you an incredible place to start from when you were hitting the ground running in January.

Number three, create your top 50 ideal customer list. I say do this every single year, guys, even if you've done this before, and I'm sure many of you have, Every single year, this is a process worth repeating. Sit down, pen and paper, like I said, guys, pen and paper, it's magic, and just write out if you could work with 50 of the best customers on planet Earth.

Who are they? What companies are they? Okay, just sit down, write them out. If you're in Canada and you're after oil and gas, write out all the top oil and gas companies. If you're looking for industrial construction, write down all the industrial construction companies you wish you could work with. Don't be afraid to write them all out.

I always call this a wishlist. I do this with every single one of my new customers. There's nothing wrong with doing this. Will you hit them all? No. But it gives you an incredible target list to start and work from. You can always find the sub industries and things like that that would be equally ideal for you.

But having a wish list, having like a target list of companies to start from gives you a great place, especially when we start to do the ideal customer profiling and we start to figure out what are the buying positions with these organizations. It never hurts to start with that wish list, so don't hesitate.

Sit down, write out that wish list and we can make sure that we start to track down the contact details for those companies as we start our ideal customer profiling and targeting. Okay. Trust me, start with that top 50 ideal customer list. You can thank me later. It works. Number four, clean up your CRM. If you're like any of us who've worked, you know, years on a CRM, they start to get real cluttered and real messy.

And we start to get way too many people on our weekly contacted stage. And it is time to purge some of these people. Okay. It is time to reevaluate your CRM. This is an incredible thing to do. The first week back, hop into your CRM, look at all of the companies that you've spent too much time trying to track down.

You haven't had a whole lot of luck for back burner, them back burner, them, and we can replace them with fresh new opportunities as we head into The new year. Okay. There's something special about starting with fresh new opportunities. It makes you pumped up. It makes you amped up. You're not making the same phone calls for like the 18th time or whatever, you know, follow up call you guys are on.

Don't be afraid to purge bad contacts on your CRM. Don't be afraid or to find new contacts depending on the priority of that company. But if it is not a high priority company, you are not confident you have the right person. You've made multiple attempts to connect, have not made it. Do not be afraid to backburner that company and replace it with something fresh, hot, and new.

Get a quick win under your belt with a new meeting and just help that momentum carry you forward. Number five. Evaluate your marketing materials. Okay. I know there's a lot of companies out there right now who you are really just pushing it with your five or 10 year old marketing materials. Heck, some of these materials don't even represent your company anymore.

I can't tell you how many companies I've been to their website. And I know for a fact there's stuff on their website they do not do anymore or it is not a priority for them, but it has been years, years since they have updated their website and probably even longer since they've updated their brochures, guys, getting in in a new year and just starting fresh and saying, okay, If I was to revamp all of these, how would I do it?

Don't be afraid to critique your websites. Don't be afraid to critique your marketing materials, your brochures or lack thereof. Okay. There is nothing wrong with critiquing them. There is no obligation to fix it. But let me tell you, I think once you've gone through the critiquing process, once you've evaluated what should be changed, what needs to be changed, maybe the things you aren't even doing I think you're going to be surprised at how fast you figure out how to make that change, okay?

Understand, websites, marketing materials, things like that, they really do need to be updated fairly often and at least revamped and changed and updated probably on an annual basis, guys. These materials are getting outdated so quickly because companies are moving so fast. Things are changing so flippin quickly, across the board, at companies all over the place, okay?

Not to mention, the people making buying decisions are getting younger and younger and younger, and you are having essentially that generational shift, okay? And I talk about it a lot on this show where I talk about millennials and that we have very short attention spans. I am a millennial and you got to wrap us in real, real quick.

And we get bored real, real quick. And things like slideshows and maybe a slightly zooming in image. Guys, these things aren't cutting it for us anymore, okay? We need better. We need more. You need to visually engage and trap us as soon as humanly possible. And understand millennials. Are making the buying decisions at most companies at this point.

Okay, people 40 and under tend to be in pretty high level positions at this point at a lot of different companies. And so I would argue a lot of the people you are trying to market to are millennials. You need to up your game on visual appeal. Okay, we have to make sure that all marketing materials brochures.

Websites social media strategies, social media content is visually appealing, vibrant, engaging. Guys, that means our websites, they need to have video. Really, at this point, guys, we need to be coming to homepages with video. Video is engaging, it wraps us in, especially if it's got high quality visuals, it's done very well.

Video tells stories. Guys, it's time to take a look at your websites. If you guys are going to your websites and we have that boring banner bar and we have like just an image, maybe some wording, whatever it is, we need to take a peek at our websites and figure out how the heck can we bring these things into 2025 standards?

It is changing your website is your 20 story skyscraper in the age of the Internet. Your website is your 20 story skyscraper and that might mean that we need to be doing annual updates. These things guys to make sure that they are vibrant beautiful engaging that they actually speak to the products and services that we offer to the world.

That they are going to make an impact and make people want to dig deeper. Make people want to learn more. Okay, it really does come down to how engaging can you make that website. And so if you guys go to your website, you're evaluating it. You're like, I am not engaged. Guess what? Neither are your customers.

It's time to take another look at it. This rolls right into your brochures and marketing material, guys. Brochures are not dead. Not dead at all. I use brochures for myself, for every single client I work with, and for like every meeting I go to. Okay? I bring physical brochures to meetings. I send digital brochures to all email interactions, all LinkedIn digital introductions.

They all include brochures. Why? Because they do the speaking for you, especially when they're done correctly. And when the job is brand awareness, like when we're doing LinkedIn digital introductions, It can do a lot of the speaking for the business while I do the speaking for myself because I want to make a personal introduction, a personal connection and say, Hey, I'm also working with this organization.

I think you might want to check them out. I attached a brochure below guys, nine times out of 10, they are opening those brochures and they are reading at bare minimum the first page. What does that do for you? Brand awareness. They now know who you are when you reach out to them in person and what company you work for.

And why they might be interested in your products and services. It is a win win win all around. Okay, we have to make sure that we are spending time and creating epic marketing materials, websites, brochures, business cards, whatever we are going to give out to the world. Make sure it is visually appealing and make sure that it is going to resonate.

Because guess what? If it does not resonate, it does not matter how great your message is. Okay, the message can be epic, but it doesn't matter at all if they will not read it. Number six, social media strategy. Guys, we talk about this all the time. Social media has blown up through the roof. If your business does not utilize social media, If you personally are not utilizing social media for personal branding and business purposes, you are behind.

Understand that you are behind way behind at this point, and we need to get rolling on it immediately. Okay. You need to ask yourself in this coming year, what type of content do I want to share with the world? In this particular case, guys, I'm talking business. Okay. We're going to get into the personal side in a minute.

What type of content does your business want to share with the world? Do you want to talk about corporate updates? You want to talk about your products and services? Do you want to find ways to help your customers? Do you want to educate and inspire? Do you want to give away 90 percent sell 10? Talk about it.

Understand what your social media strategy for the business is going to be in 2025 or whatever year you're hearing this because social media is no longer optional. It is mandatory and you absolutely need to start thinking about what your strategy is going to be. Okay. The next part of the strategy, what is your release strategy going to be?

How many posts are you going to do a week? My recommendation to you right now is I would be doing at bare minimum, one corporate post per week, one corporate post per week. Once again, this is bare minimum and content really is the more the merrier. Content is one of those things that you can really never have too much of.

So if you have not started, if you're not currently doing a social media strategy, Let's just get going with one post per week. Think about what you want to post, figure out what you want to talk about, figure out how you're going to create those images or those videos, and start to get them out there.

Trust me, it is absolutely going to change your business. The next thing you have to ask yourself is, Where will you share it? Okay, and this really depends on what type of business you have. Not all social medias are created equal. I would say at this point, for B2B branded business, any type of B2B business, which is something we talk about extensively on this show, LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is your place for B2B business. If we're talking B2C, things like that, Instagram might be a better option for you. But, for B2B business, I would say start on LinkedIn, get that company page created, and start to post regularly, both on your pages and in relevant groups to your business types, okay?

Start to get that content far and wide. We need to make sure that people are getting brand awareness with your brand. How will you engage? This is the other side of social media that nobody is talking about. You cannot, cannot build a community if you do not participate in it. Okay? You have to participate in your own community.

If you are a company or a brand and you are posting things on LinkedIn, on Instagram, whatever it is, and people are engaging with it. They're commenting, they're liking it, things like that. You have to get involved. You have to message them back. You have to continue responding to their comment chains. You have to participate in your own social media strategies.

This is for personal. This is for business, guys. But I see so many people just posting content and not even participating in any of the comments, any of the engagement you're getting. Guys, social media does not work this way. You have to participate for it to get promoted. You have to participate. In your own advertising efforts, okay, if you are willing to post things on the Internet, you have to also be willing to engage in the conversation that happens around them.

It is absolutely imperative to growing your brand. So make sure that for all your posts, you are also going to respond in a timely manner to any and all comments and messages that happen around them. Start conversations, build that community, aim to get engagement. Engagement moves the post. Okay. All right.

Number seven. Let's get into personal branding. Holy cow. 2024 guys was the year of personal branding. It absolutely was personal branding started to absolutely take off and I talk about it in all of my coaching at this point because I think effective business development from this point forward. Also requires effective building of your own personal brands.

It is no longer enough to just represent the company. People want to know who you are. They want to engage with you. They want to be part of your community. And in order to do that, we have to be authentic. We have to share. More than just our corporate updates. Okay, how do you want to be represented in the world?

You get to choose the fun thing about your personal brand is you get to choose what you're willing to share what you're willing to talk about. But here's the thing the more authentic the more honest the more open we can be the easier and the more effective it is to build our own personal brand. So think about it.

You're an expert in something. You're an expert in something. And this doesn't have to just be your business. This can be whatever you like. Maybe you're really great at guitar. Maybe you're really great at flying model airplanes. You name it, whatever your thing is, think about it. What is your thing? What are you an expert in?

that you could share that knowledge and start conversations with the world. And don't be afraid to share that. Don't be afraid to share your passions, no matter what they are. Share that knowledge with the world and see how fast it resonates. See how many people start to love your content and follow you because they absolutely agree with whatever thing you're sharing with the world.

OK, trust me, this is what personal branding is about. It's about being authentic. It's about being you. It's about sharing, not just the business you. The entire you, good, bad, ugly, the more you're willing to share, the faster that personal brand is going to grow. And guys, the reason we build our personal brand is it builds up everything else around us.

Think about Elon Musk, right? You know, Elon Musk, Elon Musk can't release a company that's not successful, but he has an incredible personal brand anywhere on planet earth. Someone knows who Elon Musk is, right? Like you could go almost anywhere on planet earth and ask them, do you know about Elon Musk? And they say, Oh yeah, Elon Musk.

The guy with SpaceX, the guy with Tesla, the guy with PayPal, right? Everybody knows who he is. He could not fail at starting a company at this point. Why? Because his personal brand is epic. It's epic. Anything that guy touches will turn to money. And it is based on that incredible personal brand. Think about what that can do for you as well.

Now with our personal brand guys, we have to decide what type of content we're willing to share. And I always recommend taking photos everywhere you go. Take photos everywhere you go. It's all content for the future. If you're on vacation, take a photo. If you're at an event, take a photo. If something epic just happened at work, take a photo.

Just take photos all over the place and don't be afraid to share an authentic communication about what was going on in that moment for you, or something else that resonates with you. And guys, write these out as authentic as you can. Don't be afraid to like hand type out this whole thing. Don't worry about using AI.

If we're trying to be authentic, if we're trying to communicate like a human, Communicate like a human, like it's Facebook in 2010. Okay, AI doesn't exist, it can't write your post for you. Start to write posts like this. Share an authentic image. Share an authentic video. Video is huge, huge for creating trust and authenticity.

You can't really fake videos, not these days, not yet. So don't be afraid, don't be afraid to do these things, to share in the most authentic ways you can and watch that personal brand grow. Because what do we connect with as humans? We connect with trust. We connect with other humans. We connect with authenticity.

Be authentic, be human, and watch your connections increase. What will you commit to? We talked about the commitment with a company, right? We recommended one post a week to start if you haven't been doing this. I recommend the exact same thing on the personal branding side, guys. If you are not currently sharing personally, maybe you are sharing corporately, but you are not sharing personally yourself with the world with social media, Start by posting one thing per week.

And obviously, like I said, the more the merrier. But we have to start somewhere. We have to gain momentum. We gotta get this wheel turning. Let's get this wheel turning by doing one personal post per week to start. And then, as you feel more comfortable, Do more, but guys, just get started. Commit to something.

Commit to one personal post per week and one corporate post per week. That's two posts per week is all we're asking to get started here in the new year. Okay, start there and then the more the merrier, but you have to start somewhere. And lastly guys on the personal brand. I just want to say, look, you are an expert in something.

There's no question. Anybody listening to this show. You are an expert in something. Maybe you're an expert in parenting. Maybe you're an expert electrician. And Maybe you're an expert business developer, right? Name it. You are an expert in something. Think about how you can teach that expertise to the world.

We are a world eager to learn. We want to learn. We want to do better. Everybody you talk to wants to be better at something. That something could be your level of expertise, and you could be building a massive, Massive brand around your expertise. But guess what? It starts with having the bravery to share it.

Do not be afraid to build your personal brands by sharing expertise in something that has nothing to do with business. Whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever you're an expert in, share that knowledge with the world. You're going to love it. You're going to love it. It's going to change your life, but you have to get started.

Number eight, we have to identify the ideal customer profiles for the coming year. Okay? Part of our business development strategy, a huge part, and you know, we got lots of shows on it, is identifying the right person who buys our products and services. This is the fastest way, guys, for you to sell your products and services, is to first identify the buying positions of your products and services, identify the types of companies that need your products and services, And then do a search, do a search on LinkedIn for that job position.

If you're selling safety services, maybe it's director of HSE. If you're selling quality services, maybe it's the quality director of the quality manager. If you're selling plant services, maybe you got to talk to the plant manager. Right. Identify who buys the products and services that you are selling.

Do a blanket search for that position, and then just connect with the people that work at the companies that would be relevant to your products and services. You are going to be surprised if you take this approach, how fast you are able to start securing meetings that lead to real revenue growth for you and your organization.

But so many of us are failing to take the step of identifying the buying position and then specifically targeting those buying positions. Guys, This is a huge difference between good business development and great business development. It's simply doing some homework up front to identify who can actually buy the products and services.

And it's important as well to understand that with every new industry you target, that buying position can change and does change a lot of the time. So make sure that you're doing your research. If you're going into a new organization, a new area, a new industry, you want Figure out who buys the products and services.

It may not be the same person who bought it in oil and gas that buys it in forestry or who bought it in industrial construction, who's now going to buy it in environmental services. You have to figure out who the buying positions are at various industry types and target them directly. It does not make sense to start to reach out and waste your time targeting people to get information or targeting people that you do not know by the products and services.

Do yourself a huge favor. Do the research up front, figure out who and what positions buy your products and services, and connect with those people. It's going to streamline and effectively speed up the entire business development process for you and your organization. Remember to send out your 100 connections per week, okay?

This is part of our strategy. We talk about it a lot on this show. But you have to be using your 100 LinkedIn connections every single week. If you do not use them, you lose them. They do not get tagged onto the next week. If you don't use your 101 week, you do not get 200. The next week you get 100 per week, whether you use them or lose them, we need to make sure that we are using them effectively every single week, guys.

I do this like on a Sunday or Monday morning, every single week, I literally use all my connections. I figure out what positions I'm targeting that week. What type of companies I want to work with and I just go through and I spend about 30 to 45 minutes adding 100 people per week so that I can add them to my digital introduction stage for the very next week.

Use your 100 connections every week. Don't skip this part. This part will allow you to grow your social media strategy as well because now The people that you're connected with, the people you want to see your content are actually going to be seeing your content on a weekly basis. It has a win win scenario, both for your company, for your digital introductions and your business development process, but also for your branding and personal branding process.

Number nine, commit to authentic human connection. Guys, Guys, we are AI'd out. We are AI'd out. We know it. We know it. AI content is the norm at this point. It is no longer the cool new kid on the block. It is the normal kid on the block. I'm not going to pay attention to that kid on the block, okay? We need to commit.

To going back to creating authentic human connection. We crave it, right? We have to be brave and we have to work to shine through with everything that we are doing. How do we do this? We do this by interacting in human ways, guys. Don't be afraid to type out a post. Don't be afraid to comment without double checking.

Don't be afraid of a spelling mistake here and there. Don't be afraid of sharing video with the world. Don't be afraid, especially, of picking up your phone and And booking a lunch meeting or a face to face meeting with somebody. This is still the way of the world. No matter what people are telling you, we need human to human connection.

Trust is built in human to human interaction. And trust is a required step of B2B business. Especially repeat business over time. We have to establish trust. Trust is built in person. Trust is built in authenticity. Trust is built in openness and honesty. Find ways to connect in these ways. Find ways to connect as a human.

And you are going to have extreme success in 2025. I think more so than almost ever, guys. And the reason I think this is because we have gone so far in the wrong direction. We embraced AI wholeheartedly. We embraced the robocall. We embraced the automated answering machine. Guys, we are, we're sick of it.

We are sick of it as a culture. We are sick of it as a species. We have to go back to go forward, work to create genuine, authentic connection. Do not be afraid of your phone. Your phone is your best friend. As we head into 2025, pick it up, make phone calls again, leave voicemails again, ask for meetings again, watch a change, watch your response rates go through the roof.

We are getting so much crap that a genuine person reaching through and trying to build authentic connection. You're going to shine like a star in the night sky. Okay, it is going to be incredibly effective for you guys as we head into 2025. And number 10, belief in yourself. Okay, do not be afraid to tell the truth about who you are and how you feel.

Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right. Face your fears. The greatest ticket to your success is likely the thing that you are afraid to do the most right now. The thing that will take you the furthest in your career. is likely the thing that is scaring the bejesus out of you. Do not be afraid to face your fears here, as we head into the new year.

Do not be afraid to try to do more of the thing that you are avoiding. The thing that you are avoiding is likely the thing that is holding back your entire career or business at this time. Try to make the uncomfortable, comfortable. The act of planning and starting a strategy has the effect of building momentum and the act of taking a step demands the next one and the one after that.

Start strong with intention and watch success unfold in front of you. That takes us to the end of today's show, guys. It's an absolute pleasure to be on with you guys. Christmas Day 2024. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for sticking with us over the past couple of years. I promise you 2025 is going to be a big year for the business development podcast.

And I commit to continue to show up strong for you guys as we head into this next year. Shout outs this week, Lauren Graff, Gary Noseworthy, Sherri Allen, Mark Farand, Colin Harms, Deanna Kean, Evan Baxter, Stefan Czesla, Jesus Arroyave, Jan Hnat, Steve Austin, Daniel Sonnenberg, Susan Poseika, Jayson Chakkalakal, Adam Kimmel, Derek Armstrong, Roxanne Kasianchuk, Kari Watchel, Rich Cohen, Ace Qureshi, Ricardo J. Flores, and Jamie Moffat. Until next time, this has been the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side, and see you in 2025.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www. capitalbd. ca. See you next time on the business development podcast.