Epic Entrepreneurs

You Can't Know Enough Good People: Building Business Through Genuine Interest

• Bill Gilliland

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Have you ever watched someone effortlessly extract a person's life story within minutes of meeting them? That special ability to connect deeply and quickly with others isn't just a social superpower—it's a business advantage that can transform your professional relationships and opportunities.

After observing my wife's remarkable gift for human connection over four decades, I've identified the key components that make her so exceptional at forming meaningful relationships instantly. Whether she's chatting with our server during our recent client retreat in Curaçao or navigating complex organizational dynamics, her approach reveals powerful insights about genuine connection.

As a business owner, these connection skills translate directly to growth opportunities. 

Want to develop these connection skills yourself? Start by approaching your next interaction with curiosity rather than an agenda. Bring positive energy, smile genuinely, listen actively, and care about what you're hearing. Life happens between people—not in isolation—and mastering the art of human connection might be the most valuable business skill you'll ever develop.

Thanks for Listening. You may contact me or our team at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button, leave us a 5 star review, and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com or at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!

Bill

Speaker 1:

Hey there, I hope you're having a fantastic week. Just want to remind you the Asheville Business Summit is coming up in September. You can go out to wncsummitcom. It'll give you all the information. If you want to get in front of 500 or so people and businesses, that's one way to support you can become a sponsor. You should all attend. If you're listening to this, you should attend because it's going to be about business for business, to help you become better at business. We're celebrating Asheville. We're celebrating a year of recovery of Helene. We're celebrating the future. We're going to celebrate blowing up the business community here in Asheville. We're super excited about it. Hey, just go out to WNC business I'm sorry, wncsummitcom. All the information is there. You'll find it in there.

Speaker 1:

Now, today I want to talk about my wife and you're like whoa, what do you want to talk about your wife? For? That's crazy. Look, my wife has a gift and I've been studying this gift for about 40 years and it's remarkable what she can find out about people, and so she's got a gift for connecting to people. Now I've got a little bit of this gift. There's some intuition to it, there's some skill to it, there's some just actual attitude to it. So I'm going to give you my take on why it works, and I mean I'll give you an example. We were just, we just did a retreat with our clients and you're going to want to go on this retreat next year too. We did. We went to Curacao and we it's a personal development retreat we worked and we had fun and we families were there. It was, it was great. But just as an example, but just as an example, my wife was able to find out from our server how old she was, where she went to college, what her ambitions were, who her relatives were. It's unbelievable what she can find out about people in a short period of time. It's a real gift, but I think it's a gift that all of us can learn from. All of us should be more like her and learn more about people, because life happens not in here, not out there. Life happens between people. That's where life happens.

Speaker 1:

So here's a couple of things, characteristics that my wife has that I think are unbelievable, and she's just a genius at people and understanding and finding out what's going on. She's got a real gift inside an organization for knowing everything about what's happening in the organization and you should, by the way, if you're running a company that's big enough to have employees, then you should have someone in your organization who is like that, who can keep tabs on everything that's going on. But as far as finding out things fast from people, the first thing is she's interested. She's not trying to be interesting. Instead, she's not trying to be interesting, she's interested in them. She asks questions about them, it's all about them, and it comes across that she actually does care.

Speaker 1:

So interested and caring. She really wants to know. She's curious. She's just naturally curious, trying to find, trying to understand how people work and where their brains are and where you know, getting information helps her determine what that is. She's also friendly and she's also enthusiastic. She smiles a lot. She's not. She doesn't approach them, you know, in a threatening scally. I'm in a bad mood, kind of. So I mean, you're not going to find out much from somebody if you're not friendly.

Speaker 1:

She comes with energy, she brings a certain energy to the conversation and she's a good listener. She listens well, she pays attention, she picks up on cues, she's good at body language, she's good at verbal cues, she's very good at hearing what's going on, and this is something that she's naturally good at, but she's also worked at it. This is not something that you just are born with. You have to get into this. So my question to you is what do you need to do to learn more about people? Now, this skill comes in handy all the time, because you never know. I remember when I was very young, one of my friends' dads owned a bank, and I don't know why. We were even together, but we were there, and somewhere along the way his dad said you can't know enough good people. It's so true, you can't know enough good people.

Speaker 1:

When you're out, you're networking. How fast can you find out what's going on? Can you find out? A lot of times, I mean, sometimes, we find out we're related to people that we didn't even know we were related to. Because of this thing. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, but this is a great skill for making connections to connections that could eventually help you grow your business.

Speaker 1:

So be interested, be enthusiastic, smile a lot Care, bring energy to whatever it is you're doing. Make sure that you get out there and learn as much as you can. Be curious and you're going to find out. Amazing things are going to happen in your life as a result of finding out these connections with people, so I hope you find that useful. I look forward to talking to you If you need help. You just want to sit down. You just want to have a cup of coffee. Maybe you got one question about your business, or I got one the other day. It was basically how do I give somebody a raise? Just a simple question about anything business related. I'm happy to have a chat with you, jason's happy to have a chat with you. Beth is happy to have a chat with you. All you need to do is just reach out to us and we'll be happy to grab a cup of coffee with you. Hey, and until next time, all the best.