Building Your Professional Network with Kelsey Recht

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with Kelsey Recht. Kelsey is an investor and advisor and was the founder and CEO of VenueBook, a company she started in 2010 and ran and grew through its exit in 2020. Kelsey, welcome to The Daily Bolster.

Kelsey Recht: Thanks for having me, Matt.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, so one of the things that I've really come to appreciate about you, as you and I have gotten to know each other better over the last few years, is that you're really, really good at networking. And so my question to you is why is it worth a CEO's time to build a network? And, how should CEOs think about going about that, going about cultivating those relationships for the long haul?

Kelsey Recht: Well, there's a great saying when it comes to networks, that all of your best jobs come through secondary connections. They don't come through your close network. And the reason is is that usually your close network knows you too well and the most interesting opportunities are a few steps away. The reason I use that point as you think about being a founder is that as a founder, your best customers, partners, investors, thought advisors are usually not within your immediate circle. They're a few steps away. And so, building a broad diverse network when you are not the big brand name, the new kid on the block, is really important for a founder overall. But one of the hard things is is because you're the new kid on the block, you're not... I started out my career at Fidelity Investments. Anybody would take my call when I was at Fidelity Investments. There were trillions of dollars backing Fidelity Investments. You would've been dumb not to take my call as a 22- year- old. But-

Matt Blumberg: Right. It doesn't work necessarily when you're the 22- year- old founder and no one's ever heard of you or the idea you're working on.

Kelsey Recht: Exactly, exactly. And so you have to learn how to get people to want to speak to you and spend time with you. And one of the things that I think a lot of founders... It's very tough because you need customers, you need revenue, you need investors overall. These things don't appear overnight. And so sometimes as early stage founders go about to build a network, I think they go in looking only for the ask and not having a curious open mind. And the reason is is that usually people who can be customers, be partners, can be investors, probably 100 of those calls aren't going to lead to anything. But you might have four to five that lead to something. But 100 of those calls can be a source of great advice, customer feedback, understanding your partner's needs, understanding what milestones investors want from you. And so, as I think about building a network, and I think some people think of networking as a dirty word, they think of it as very mercenary. That's not how it is. It's all about going in and trying to talk to smart people and get good advice and good feedback. And, that saying is really true. Go in asking for money, you get nothing. Go in asking for advice, you might get money or a customer, or a partner. One of the things why I think this is so important is as an early founder, I mean I definitely made the mistake when I was early on where I was like, " I need capital in the door." I can't build my product unless I had capital. So you go in and you need it so badly, it's hard to focus on the forest versus the trees. And I found with both myself and founders that I advise or coach, they've had a lot more success when they start to pivot their minds towards being curious. What can this person offer for me? And then, your downside is 30 minutes of good advice. Your upside is revenue, partners or potentially investors is the way I see it overall.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, it's funny. It's not unlike really good sales training methodologies, right? You don't want to go in saying, " Feature, benefit, feature, benefit." You want to go into a sales call to discover. You want to go into a sales call to learn. You want to go into a sales call to ask questions. You want to go into a sales call to offer your own help, where your own help can come into play. So, it's interesting. I think it tracks that pretty well. So that formula worked for you at VenueBook? Continues to work for you in your career?

Kelsey Recht: It worked really, really, really well. And I still remember people... That was one thing the board always told me that I did really well, where they said, " How do you get to these people?" It was never a brute force how I got to people. It was usually I had to have 10 calls before I got to the person who had the perfect advice or was the perfect partner, or the perfect customer. But I got a lot from those 10 people who sent me there, and it's always good as you're doing these calls to say, " Hey, who else should I speak to? Who else do you recommend? Who do you think could give me good advice? Who has insight on this overall? Can I follow up with you if I have questions? Do you prefer email? Do you prefer calls?" Setting it up that the goal is to build the relationship over time generally. Because, I think what starts to happen... I actually have some interns working for me now on a bunch of other projects, and one intern just wrapped up and he was joking to me. He was like, " Everything we looked at, Kelsey, you would be like, 'I have a friend who works at a company like this.'" The other intern just started laughing and I said, " You're right." And, it's not intentional. It's just by being curious and being open to talking to a lot of people over time and continuing to cultivate those relationships over time.

Matt Blumberg: For sure. And, I have found the same thing that you have, which is the longer you're in your career, your network starts to multiply.

Kelsey Recht: Completely.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. Kelsey Recht, great advice. Thank you so much for joining.

Kelsey Recht: Thanks for having me.