As a 2x CEO with a $640 million exit and early investments in unicorns AppLovin and Chime on his resume, relationships have been essential to Tod’s success. But for him, “networking” isn’t the right word to describe his strategy. It’s all about genuine, meaningful connections, built by bringing people together around shared interests and passions. Our conversation with Tod was packed with insights about the value of being a host, why curation is a relationship-building superpower, and the importance of reminding people you’re still alive.
As a 2x CEO with a $640 million exit and early investments in unicorns AppLovin and Chime on his resume, relationships have been essential to Tod’s success. But for him, “networking” isn’t the right word to describe his strategy. It’s all about genuine, meaningful connections, built by bringing people together around shared interests and passions. Our conversation with Tod was packed with insights about the value of being a host, why curation is a relationship-building superpower, and the importance of reminding people you’re still alive.
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"I think the single most important thing is authenticity. Relationship building is the absolute core of human nature, and the absolute worst thing I think you can do to bring to that experience is something that is incongruent with who you are." - Tod Sacerdoti
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:20) - Why networking is super- important kryptonite
*(02:30) - How Steve Abbot change the trajectory of Tod’s career
*(06:21) - The power of ambition, persistence, and tenacity
*(10:37) - The role of relationships in Tod’s investing career
*(17:18) - Finding the superpower in organizing events
*(26:31) - The fundamental mistake of being too transactional
*(37:52) - Why authenticity and relationship building are most important
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Sponsor:
Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.
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Links
[00:00:31] Annie: Hi, this is Annie Riley today. I'm joined by Tod Sacerdoiti. Who's the founder CEO of Pipedream, and previously Tod was the founder and CEO of bright roll, which was bought by Yahoo in 2014 for $640 million. So we're really excited to chat with you today, Tod, about all things networking.
[00:00:52] Annie: Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:53] Tod: Thanks for having me
[00:00:54] Annie: Yeah. So when I say the word networking, I'm curious what comes up for you?
[00:01:01] Tod: Yeah. I mean, there's really two things that come up for me with the term networking first, I think of networking as maybe one of the most foundational elements of having success in business, or frankly, in any field that.
[00:01:12] Tod: Requires interactions with other people. So I almost couldn't think it's more important. And secondly, I think the term is like kryptonite. Even if you say the term, it makes it feel salesy and something you wanna avoid. I think the concept is important, but I do everything to avoid the topic. As it's branded as networking.
[00:01:32] Annie: : Do you have a rebrand that you like?
[00:01:34] Tod: You know, it's just relationship building is really at its core valuable in its own. Right. And obviously pays tons of dividends over a career or over the, the life of a company. I feel like networking, like just makes this very transactional activity. That feels a little bit one-sided and a little swarmy. So I try to avoid that.
[00:01:55] Annie: And if we think about a long-term relationship that you've been able to cultivate that has had a really big impact on your career to date, what would be one or two of those long-term relationships that you'd point us to? And how did you keep that relationship alive?
[00:02:11] Tod: Two relationships that come to mind. One was really like a launching relationship. One that sort of, kind of got me onto a different trajectory. And the second relationship is somebody that actually has become somebody that I actually invest with on a kind, a weekly basis as an investing partner. So someone who started early in my career, like changed the trajectory of my career, but ultimately became like a business partner over.
[00:02:34] Tod: The first person that really comes to mind was a gentleman by the name of Steve Abbott. And Steve Abbott was essentially my first boss in my first job after college, I had some control in getting in his group at a firm called Roberts and Stevens, which was an investment bank, but somebody who ultimately through both, I would say mentorship, but also
[00:02:55] Tod: being my primary recommender, both formally like literally writing my letter of recommendations into business school, but also informally just sharing a ton of his experience and making introductions for me and sort of pointing me in the right direction, made, you know, just a tremendous impact on like the earliest part of my career that ultimately led to many other relationships.
[00:03:17] Annie: And if you think about how you cultivated that in the early years, you know, I think some folks look at the senior people working around them and think I'd love for that person to be a recommender or a supporter to me, but don't know how to necessarily make that transition. What would be your recommendation for how folks could turn that into more of, um, a mentor relationship?
[00:03:39] Annie: What were some things that you did yeah. To get that support from Steve?
[00:03:42] Tod: Um, I mean, in many ways I think that high achievers do. To be mentors for other people. They're just sort of overwhelmed with, I could mentor or be a supporter of many people, hundreds or thousands. And therefore they get a bit paralyzed about where to spend their time and sort of how to add value to people earlier in their careers.
[00:04:02] Tod: And I think a lot of it is just. The first step of essentially raising your hand. And I don't mean literally asking for the sport. I just mean like, some people are gonna stand out from the crowd in terms of their aggressiveness or being persistent in pursuing that sort of mentor mentee relationship.
[00:04:17] Tod: But also I think it's like, People wanna bet on success and they wanna spend their time, uh, making investments and things that are gonna produce returns. So if you can find a way to, you know, build that relationship a lot of times, if it's a somebody in your organization, it's by being an outperformer or by demonstrating potential or finding ways to, you know, add value to things that they're working on, those are the things they're gonna grab somebody's attention and say, okay, of the a hundred people I could spend time with, I'm gonna choose to spend time.
[00:04:46] Tod: This person or, or sort of lend my credibility to them. And I I've honestly experienced that a lot as a mentor myself or as a, as somebody's boss later in my career. But at that time, you know, it was simply just doing the best job I could and trying to shine.
[00:05:01] Annie: You mentioned now being in the position of being a mentor, are there any things you've noticed when folks have been making an ask of you that make it easier for you to say yes.
[00:05:10] Annie: Or is there anything about the folks that you've decided to invest in that. Stands out that makes you excited to support them.
[00:05:17] Tod: One of the things I'd be critical of myself is I'd probably say yes too much. So, you know, oftentimes when people ask for, you know, quick coffee or they wanna make a connection or they have want my feedback.
[00:05:27] Tod: Yeah. I tend to be much more biased than people I've reached out to frankly, in my career to do that. And so maybe I, maybe I do it on. Too significant of a basis. But generally I would say that that allocation of time is almost always driven by what I view as like the ambition or, uh, I would say the potential of the individual asking, you know, and some of that actually comes through quite clearly in the ass.
[00:05:52] Tod: You know, if somebody has outlandish expectations for something they're working on or something that seems unrealistic, or they seem somewhat disconnected from like the reality of the situation, then I would kind of back off on that. Right. But if someone has, you know, a plan and is very ambitious, they're not there yet, but I could see, oh, this person potentially could achieve that.
[00:06:09] Tod: That's like a magnet for me. I'm drawn to that. That's something I wanna. Support and yes, sometimes those things don't prove to be valuable or it ends up being amiss, but I I'm gonna bias towards, you know, sort of ambition, persistence, tenacity. Those are the things that I'm gonna grapple onto as maybe this is somebody I should spend more time with.
[00:06:29] Annie: And what are the specific things you would observe that let you know, this is somebody who's tenacious. This is somebody who's gonna go the distance. Are there any behaviors or, or quality specifically that you'd pick up on that would be a signal to you?
[00:06:44] Tod: I mean the most obvious one is it is. So easy to find a personalized reason to connect with somebody.
[00:06:52] Tod: Hmm. I mean, if you are willing to spend the time, you can listen to podcast, somebody's been on listen to interviews, read things that they've written, check out their business. There is like an unlimited number of ways that someone could write me a very personal note about something that in my history or in a shared experience or something there's overlap in our background.
[00:07:12] Tod: Some reason why. There would be sort of a, a bias towards leaning in and building that relationship. And to me, I just think like you can smell that out in an email in five seconds. If someone writes you a 15 paragraph email where 99% of it seems like they've sent it to a million people, you know, you're just gonna disregard that immediately.
[00:07:30] Tod: If someone sends me a two or three sentence email with completely specific things that are relevant to my background or overlap between our things we're working on or, or might have some shared history, I mean, I'll know that instantly and. Um, my capacity to consume and prioritize email is very high.
[00:07:48] Tod: I'm gonna give that a few seconds of read, but the people who've spent that time do stand out. And you
[00:07:54] Annie: mentioned there was another relationship that you wanted to refer back to your bus, the one who became an investing business partner to you. I'd love to hear a little bit. What that relationship was, how you cultivated it and how it's helped you?
[00:08:08] Tod: Yeah, so that gentleman is Warren Hoffman. Uh, and I met Warren Hoffman, actually 2000, uh, three or 2004 when I had a startup idea and a friend of mine said, oh, you have a startup idea. You should pitch, you know, my friend Warren Hoffman. And I met him and we had a great intro conversation, but it became very clear to me.
[00:08:27] Tod: Or was a true, authentic connector. He was just somebody who was like deeply embedded in the Silicon valley startup ecosystem. And we also shared a very clear personality trait, which is we both loved organizing events. And so that was really like the cornerstone of how our relationship was built. And I, I invited him to my events and he invited me to his events.
[00:08:48] Tod: But if I mapped that relationship over a long period of time, you know, I vividly remember 2006 driving up to San Francisco from a company that I was working at called plao, which ironically was a contact management product, very close to this concept of building relationships. And, you know, I was debating whether I should leave my job to start a new company and he just sat on the phone.
[00:09:09] Tod: He. First of all, you should leave your job. Second of all, I believe in you and I believe in the company and third is I'll be your first check. That was the catalyst that I needed to make that leap. So nothing could be more foundational than putting somebody in business, which is writing them their first check and encouraging them to leave their job, you know, but it didn't stop there.
[00:09:28] Tod: He ultimately helped me raise my first financing quite a few years later. I ultimately put him on the board when. Co-founder left the company and, you know, the relationship just grew from there. It was probably, you know, about 10 years later that we ended up formalizing an investment company together and, and doing investing.
[00:09:46] Tod: And I could go through the laundry list of things we've done since, but it was purely organic. From the beginning, just shared values and ways that we thought we could help each other. That's awesome. And
[00:09:57] Annie: Where does that relationship stand today?
[00:09:58] Tod: I mean, today, Warren and I raised the venture fund. We're actually on our second fund together and we're essentially in business together in a much more formal and scaled way than we were, you know, over the years.
[00:10:09] Tod: But it was very iterative through that entire process. It was really a kind of a 15, 20 year journey of just getting to know each other, help each other, being supportive of each other. In many different roles. He's been on my board. I've been on his advisory board. We started a company together. We invested together.
[00:10:25] Tod: We've invested separately, et cetera.
[00:10:28] Annie: On the topic of your investing. I saw that you've done, a lot of deals. You're involved in some really high-profile companies like chime data van and a bunch of others. What has been the role of relationships in your investing career?
[00:10:42] Tod: When I was first starting investing when I was sort of getting my feet under myself in terms of understanding what I was doing when I was starting to write bigger checks than I ever written before.
[00:10:51] Tod: In all of those early days, the vast majority of investments I made were with people I knew personally. And if I look over the trajectory of my career as an investor, the best investments I've made, which is a little bit tied to the fact that the majority of the early investments I made. we're all tied to personal relationships, you know, as it comes to the present, I think it, you know, I can't rely wholly on that.
[00:11:14] Tod: So, you know, the actual CEO of a company that I might invest in, you know, maybe a third of the time or a quarter of the time is somebody I knew. But of course, even if I don't know them personally, Whether you're doing diligence, whether you're talking to a potential or existing customer, whether you're trying to reference any part of that industry or category you're leveraging personal relationships.
[00:11:34] Tod: So it it's as core to the process of investing as any other part, uh, of the investing process. In my mind, mm-hmm
[00:11:42] Annie: on the investing side, is there a example or an anecdote of a relationship that played a big role in, in getting into an investment or, or working on an investment that you're particularly excited?
[00:11:54] Tod: I can give two examples that I think are great. I've written about also extensively, but so the first is actually chime. So chime for those, you know, who don't know the company, it's, it's a neobank with I think, three or 4 million customers and has completely disrupted, you know, sort of banking services for people that were historically unprofitable for traditional banks to serve, but can be wildly profitable.
[00:12:16] Tod: If you have a kind of digital first model, there were two founders of chime. One of which was the CTO, a gentleman by the name of Ryan King and Ryan King. And I actually worked together at plao. Ryan was the, uh, VP of engineering of that company. And when after I left plaque, so was acquired by Comcast. He had a kind of four year, uh, engagement with Comcast as part of the acquisition.
[00:12:38] Tod: And I thought Ryan was world class. And, and I've said many times, I, he probably thinks I tried to hire him once or twice. Bright role, but I feel like I tried to hire him like eight or nine times, because every time we talked about potentially hiring someone, I said, well, what about Ryan King? You know, and every time he was like, not interested, um, I've got a great relationship with Comcast, you know, maybe I'm gonna start my own company.
[00:12:58] Tod: And so I have this sort of simple model, which is if you know somebody who's amazing and you wanna hire them, but you can't. Then the second best thing is you should invest in them. And when he eventually came around, To pitch, which at the time was a, you know, mobile app based like couponing company tied to your credit card, which to be honest, made no sense to me at that time.
[00:13:16] Tod: And I knew nothing about that category at all. It was just simply a bet on, on Ryan, because I thought he was, you know, world class. He was truly unique and that was actually the first. Check I ever wrote in a startup was that company. And unfortunately for me, I didn't have a ton of money, so I didn't invest a lot, but obviously it's worked out great.
[00:13:35] Tod: Uh, and I couldn't be more happy for him and the team, but, you know, that was a hundred percent a direct personal relationship. The second story I'd share is a, is another company that's had a pretty incredible run is a company by the name of app Loven, which always has, I think has a funny name. People who don't know it don't know what it does, but it's a public multi-billion dollar company does I think around two or $3 billion of revenue, it's been wildly successful and it's in the mobile app monetization space.
[00:14:03] Tod: And they ultimately, uh, went into creating their own mobile apps, primarily games as a publisher. Um, and I think. It's unlikely I'll ever invest in a company or be involved in a company like chimer AppLovin at that early stage that will reach the Heights that either of them have achieved. So it's sort of unique, I think, to think about those two stories, but I was actually introduced to AppLovin by a gentleman by the name of ser who happened to be a business school, classmate of mine.
[00:14:28] Tod: And he said, I know that you're the CEO of a company in the advertising space. I was focused on video, which was kind of like the new big category in online advertising. And he said, this gentleman, Adam Froy is starting a company in mobile app advertising, which could be the next big space. And ultimately did become sort of the next big space and said, I think you could be super helpful to him, but it was really.
[00:14:51] Tod: A friend connecting one of his friends to another one of his friends. And at the time, you know, app 11 was, I think, less than 10 employees and they weren't even raising money. So I became an advisor to the company. I've told SAR, like for the rest of my life. I don't think he'll ever pay for anything in my presence because this casual introduction to a company with eight employees, you know, ended up being one.
[00:15:13] Tod: Most successful, you know, financial gains as a result of being an advisor to the company. And I would always say this also with Adam present is I can't think of a company I added less value to. So Adam was truly unique and, and didn't need advisors or help, but I understand the logic of connecting two folks who were early in, in categories together.
[00:15:32] Annie: Great. And once you were introduced to Adam, what were some things that you did to build trust and really make the most of that connection? Right? Cause the introduction takes you to the door and then there must have been things that you did to build that trust and, um, build that relationship with Adam from there.
[00:15:51] Annie: Can you think of anything that you point us to
[00:15:54] Tod: I truly gave him my best thinking, completely unfiltered with no expectation of, you know, response. Like at that time, I don't think I was trying to be an advisor or being involved in the company. It was just like, I'm gonna give you my raw feedback, the same way I would give my raw feedback to, you know, a friend or somebody who's working for me or anything.
[00:16:14] Tod: I just. I heard this over the last hour. Here's the three things that jumped out in the conversation. My advice or recommendation taker for what it's worth is X, Y, and Z. And there were a few other things in there, including like who else to talk to and some ideas that like that he should dig deeper on.
[00:16:30] Tod: But I did specifically say my number one piece of advice is X and he, you know, dismissed it out. Right. Which again is totally fine. I mean, that's the whole point, but if I put myself on the receiving end of that, I think it's. Hey, this is gonna be a person that I can talk to and will always be a hundred percent transparent and no filter and not transactional.
[00:16:50] Annie: Terrific. So you mentioned that you really love organizing events, and I would love to hear more about what type of events you've organized and the role that that has played in your ability to build and keep up with relationships in your.
[00:17:05] Tod: Yeah. I mean, I, when people ask me, what can I do to be a better networker or how can I be more embedded in a community that's important to me?
[00:17:13] Tod: Or, you know, how can I build relationships in related to my startup? My, one of my superpowers is bringing people together in organizing events. So it's often my, my number one recommendation for others. Events are an underestimated way to get leverage in building lots of personal relationships, I'd say both quickly, but, but also over time, because it's not just about a quick connection, it's also, you know, a reason for touch points with people over time, my own personal story, which I'm happy to share more about, but, you know, I sort of started as like a party promoter.
[00:17:46] Tod: Like that was something I did. Just for my own personal interest. I did it in college. I did it in San Francisco. When I moved to the city. I never did it, you know, professionally as my job, but it was something that I always loved doing. And it was a way for me to build relationships outside of my sort of core obvious personal friendships and start building the broader set of relationships that I didn't know what, what they would turn into.
[00:18:09] Tod: But when I moved to San Francisco in 1999, and I started organizing events, they were, you know, a hundred people, then 500 people then. Thousand people. And 2000 people, you know, if I look at the people that went to those events, many of those people ended up being some of the most important technology, founders and investors in the world.
[00:18:27] Tod: Now I didn't do it for that purpose, but that really set like the foundation of what I ended up doing, you know, events for many other purposes, you know, I'm 45 now. I'm not throwing parties at nightclubs anymore, but I often. Dinner events with CEOs or broader events that bring together people of the same industry or around a specific topic.
[00:18:46] Tod: And I find it's really the exact same tactics, right? You focus on a topic or theme or a concept that you think people will be interested in. You get a handful of anchor tenants that other people will be interested in being around and hearing from and building relationships with. And then you curate that environ.
[00:19:04] Tod: So that, you know, everyone who attends has a good experience. And I think that works if a, with a 10 person dinner or thousand person event, I'm super
[00:19:12] Annie: interested in this piece of your career that you had, could you point us to one or two of your favorite events that you've hosted over the years? And tell us a little bit about how you set it up and maybe what came out of it?
[00:19:26] Tod: There's one early in my career. This was in around 2006, 2007, a handful of us, myself and gentleman I talked about earlier named or Hoffman came up with this idea of founders brunches. So at the time almost all of the founders that we knew. You know, did not have kids had a lot of time on the weekend. I would say some were married, but, but not that many were married.
[00:19:48] Tod: So many of us had free time on the weekends to meet up with other people. And so we came with this idea of the founder's brunch, which was somebody would open their house and essentially organize a brunch. I don't remember exactly if it was like a potluck or it was just, you know, a small group of us kind of brought things together, but we then tried to.
[00:20:06] Tod: Essentially founders who had really nice houses, basically open up their house and host the event. So it wasn't that hard to say, Hey, we're gonna bring, you know, 50 founders or a hundred founders over to your house on a Sunday. And we'll like, cater it or get the food organized. Most people were super excited cuz they wanted to meet other founders and.
[00:20:24] Tod: And it wasn't a time in silky valley where, you know, founders were inundated with invites to these kind of things. And I think we did it for about two to three years and we did about once a month and we got some amazing locations. Like we did it at Peter Thiels house. I think we did at Keith Rabois house.
[00:20:39] Tod: I hosted one in my. You know, modest apartment at the time. And there were quite a few, you know, successful founders that were willing to kind of open up their nice homes and host other founders. And we sort of became the center notes, right? Like people wanted to come to the event. It was, it wasn't exclusive per se, but it was kind of like, you felt good getting the invite and you know, over time we did have to curated a bit, but what a powerful way, in retrospect, to build, you know, relationships with people that are starting companies in Silicon valley, I don't think that model by the way, would work today because you know, there's like a hundred X, the number of founders.
[00:21:10] Tod: They're each invited to about a hundred X, the types of events, but it worked for that moment in time.
[00:21:16] Annie: What do you think might be the today version of that? What might work for today?
[00:21:20] Tod:I think that the easiest way to translate anything that worked in the past to the today version is you just narrow the aperture of what the focus, right?
[00:21:30] Tod: So if you're in Austin or you're in Miami, Some of the models that worked in Silicon valley 10, 15 years ago probably will work. So maybe it's your specific industry founders or your stage of company founders, right? You kind of narrowed the aperture, but I, I really don't see any reason why the exact same model works because if you're running a.
[00:21:52] Tod: Series B FinTech company in LA. There is tremendous value in knowing everyone else who is, and again, maybe that's already been done, maybe series B's too late, but I just think of it as like you embed yourself as deeply as possible in the category that is most important and growing the fastest and good things happen as a result of that.
[00:22:11] Annie: Mm-hmm . And then once you got everyone in the room, what were the things that you did or that you'd recommend people do to really make it amazing and leave people wanting to come back once you get them into the space?
[00:22:24] Tod: One of the underappreciated things about events is that events with great. People tend not to need to be curated in at all in terms of content.
[00:22:36] Tod: Again, I go back to 2006, you go to a founder event in 2006, 10 of the 50 most important founders in Silicon valley. And you get five, 10 minutes with each of them just because you're milling around, you know, its like a standup kind of Eid and chat with people. The events were only like two, two hours, two, three hours.
[00:22:52] Tod: There doesn't need to be anything more than that because those people are content themselves simply bringing. The anchor tenants to the event that our content themselves is enough curation mm-hmm .
[00:23:05] Annie: And how did you get Keith or boy and Peter teal and the likes of those folks to host these events?
[00:23:10] Tod: Well, all you need to do is get other people to organize with you that know those people.
[00:23:14] Tod: So, you know, I used the same strategy, even when I was a party promoter back in, you know, my college days is. You just get a handful of people that know a lot of people involved and your value to them is I'm gonna organize everything. You're adding tons of value for them, which is they get to put their name on an event and be involved and they don't have to do any work.
[00:23:32] Tod: So it's not a hard pitch.
[00:23:34] Annie: You mentioned you had a second example from more recent in your career.
[00:23:37] Tod: Yeah. Well, one of the things I love to do now, when I meet oftentimes like an early stage or a young founder is I just say. You know, what is the topic that is like number one on your mind right now. And then I try to curate something around that topic, because if it's number one for an important emerging CEO, I almost guarantee you it's important for many others.
[00:23:57] Tod: And one that comes to mind actually was there was a CEO who said, I have this. Q and a, you know, all hands Q and a system in my company. And I don't, I'll give you the exact context. This was right. When a company called SIFY had sent out an email to 10 million customers to tell them to vote for Joe Biden.
[00:24:17] Tod: And this CEO said the number one question on the Q and a for all hands was, should we send an email to all of our customers to tell them to vote for Joe Biden and the number three question in the Q and a board. Should we cancel our contract with Expensify and he said, I just have absolutely no idea how to handle this topic.
[00:24:41] Tod: And I sort of paraphrase it as being a CEO in a highly politicized environment. Oh, by the way. I personally, as a CEO, I have no idea how to manage that. And I all guarantee you, every other CEO that I know is struggling with this problem. So at that time actually, or, and I together, we organized a lunch for CEOs on being the CEOs of high during a highly politicized environment.
[00:25:05] Tod: And to Warren's credit, he actually got the CEO of expense Y to come to the lunch. And, you know, we had kind of like an off the record share the conversation about this topic now. I don't think he needed to be there for the, for the conversation to be super valuable, but did it make the event that much more, you know, exciting to be a part of, and to sort of be able to talk about this with the exact context of someone who had went through that process and made a decision?
[00:25:30] Tod: Of course. And so that to me is sort of later in your career, when maybe you have a little bit more access to more higher profile individuals and can maybe curate something. Maybe more burning or more topical, but to me again, foundations are fundamentally the same.
[00:25:46] Annie: Yeah. And I love the idea of picking a group that you want to help, or you want to get to know and asking them, what's the number one thing on your mind.
[00:25:55] Annie: And then using that as the jumping off point to actually be helpful in answering that question or solving that problem. I think that can be. Broadly applicable, even if you don't have that guest in mind.
[00:26:07] Tod: Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like you're putting the work of creating the content on the attendee at some level.
[00:26:12] Tod: And of course, by the way, if someone picks the topic, they'll invite people also
[00:26:17] Annie: totally. Could you point us to a mistake that you've made or a common mistake that you've seen other folks make when it comes to networking and relationship building?
[00:26:26] Tod:I mean, there's lots of mistakes. People make, I think in building relationships, but I think the most fundamental one is always about being transactional or too transactional because I think the most valuable relationships in my life have been people who are.
[00:26:43] Tod: Highly sophisticated at managing relationships. And those people are the most apt to sort of recognize highly transactional people up front and, and sort of dismiss them as a result. You know, I think about this term a lot, which is like being long term greedy. I don't think anybody criticizes folks for building relationships as part of their, you know, career or corporate trajectory and being long term greedy, like leveraging those relationships over their lifetime or, or the length of their career to, to drive value.
[00:27:16] Tod: But it's about being that short term greedy where people just immediately. Respond negatively and just kind of like outright reject the process. And I think part of that is just because over the long term, they're actually on your team. So when someone's on your team, they want you to succeed, right. It's about building the relationship so that they're on your team and that just takes time.
[00:27:39] Tod: That's human nature. Uh, so I just think generally. Avoid being transactional as much as possible for as long as possible.
[00:27:48] Annie: What's a good example of being long term greedy. I've never heard that term. And I really like it. Is there someone that you've seen do that really well? Or could you paint a picture for us around what that would look like?
[00:27:59] Tod: Well, I mean, this is not industry specific. This is career general advice, but I always advise people to like find a bull market and embed themselves in it. That's like my number one most foundational lesson. And I sort of define a bull market as like a rapidly growing industry where there's economic returns on ambition and work ethic.
[00:28:21] Tod: And so it really is completely generic in terms of what it could apply to. I believe that. Any bill market that I had focused on early in my career and embedded myself in it. I would've found ways to be economically successful over the long term. Right. And I think the real question is like, what is a bill market?
[00:28:40] Tod: Where is it? And that's really person specific. I mean, I think you have a bull market in. Geographies, you can have a, a bull market in, you know, hardware or software or consumer goods or products for Amazon or anything. And the best way to embed yourself in it is to build personal relationships with people that are already there or are rising stars or have high potential in that bull market.
[00:29:02] Tod: And so to me, That's absolutely core to this idea of not being transactional, cuz who knows the crypto industry in Miami 18 months ago, like who knows where that's gonna go, but I guarantee you, there are like 10 people that are in that community that have been deeply embedded and building relationships and organizing events and bringing people together and making connections and finding ways to add value that they didn't know how that was gonna.
[00:29:28] Tod: Ultimately sort of materialize in terms of their career or economic success, but I'm pretty confident if you've been there for the last few years, you've had success.
[00:29:39] Annie: Yeah. And you, once you sort of put yourself in that position, right. And you're exposed to the people who you're interested in getting to know, interested in building your network with what are some tips for going beyond the superficial and really kind of making that relationship deeper, more meaningful as you move ahead.
[00:29:57] Annie: Right? Maybe not necessarily quickly if you're being long term greedy, but deepening that relationship over.
[00:30:03] Tod: I mean, I, this is where I go back to the authenticity point to me. If you're authentically there, it's just not that hard to find ways to sort of deepen those relationships because you are committed to that community.
[00:30:16] Tod: Like you're like, I live here, I'm working here. I'm gonna spend the next X number of years of my life here. My goal is to expand this community and make it more impactful and have the people who are here now, gain success as a part of that. Like, I don't feel like you have to do a lot more than that because if that's your mindset, people are gonna see you, you know, in a repeated basis, over a long period of time, you're gonna find ways to have shared experiences.
[00:30:43] Tod: You're gonna find ways to connect them with other people. You. Find ways to, oh, you mentioned this, did you know this other thing? And you're, you're just gonna find so many ways to enrich their, their own career or their own trajectory that I, I just don't think you have to do anything to force it. Just physically being there and doing the things you would do to embed yourself is the, the way to deepen those relationships.
[00:31:04] Tod: And because it's authentic, there's no risk of being perceived that you're doing anything.
[00:31:09] Annie: You know, you are someone who's been a part of many different communities. You probably sounds like you've lived multiple places. You've worked at several different jobs. You've started multiple companies invested across a ton of different companies at this point.
[00:31:24] Annie: How do you maintain those relationships over time?
[00:31:29] Tod: Yeah, I do think social media has sort of enabled people to keep loose ties, you know, sort of, I don't wanna say fresh, but I just mean like kind of relevant over much longer periods of time than they used to. So I think being active on social media and leveraging those tools does help.
[00:31:48] Tod: I also, I sort of jokingly call this effort. I'm still alive, but I, but I think there is some truth to it, which is people that you've built relationships in the past. They just get busy and they, they have their own markets they're focused on in their own communities and maybe they've moved. And so it is good to have some sort of regular drum beat that you're still alive.
[00:32:08] Tod: And that, and that I think social media actually does that for people that are connected, but there's a lot of people that are not connected to you. Uh, and, and one of great example, like. Somebody I knew early in my career, Reed Hoffman, who ended up founding LinkedIn. I mean, you could argue Reed Hoffman doesn't do need to do relationship building.
[00:32:24] Tod: He was the CEO of LinkedIn and he's a billionaire and he's famous. I, he still sends out like a quarterly email newsletter called, you know, in case you missed it, it's the acronym for that. And he basically says, here's like, what? I've been up to? Like, here's a podcast. I was on. Here's a book I'm working on.
[00:32:40] Tod: Here's an interview. I. Here's an article I wrote. And, and I, and I'm like, if he's willing to spend that time and not be so egotistical that like I'm famous, I don't need to tell people what I'm doing. Like everybody should be doing that. Right. It's just a drumbeat of, Hey, I'm still here. I'm still doing stuff I'm still relevant.
[00:32:58] Tod: Maybe there's some things we could do together.
[00:33:00] Annie: Something. I hear people say in reaction to things like the email newsletter is like, who am I to send an email newsletter? You know, I'm not doing as interesting projects as Reed Hoffman, for example, what would you say to folks who are concerned about that or shy away from sending those kinds of updates?
[00:33:17] Tod: I mean, my initial response would be that's bullshit. I mean, it's the fact that you're writing the email newsletter is probably an example of the reason why it's worth paying attention to what you're doing, because you're out there. You're, you know, you're, you're building something you're growing your brand you're and of course you're gonna find reasons to.
[00:33:36] Tod: Create content or aggregate content that's relevant for the newsletter. I mean, one of the greatest examples of this I love and, uh, you know, a few people have done this in different industries, which is the, what I've been reading lately, newsletter. I mean, you literally don't even have to create anything.
[00:33:51] Tod: Like you literally just go about your normal life, but you happen to be reading interesting stuff in a vertical that's relevant to other people. And you just say, here's the five things. Read this month that we're most relevant. You're just leveraging the work of other people. And there's a thousand ways that you can add value without necessarily being the individual, creating the YouTube video or the long form article.
[00:34:15] Tod: So I just completely reject the theory that you can't find a way to create that content and be.
[00:34:23] Annie: there's a, a theme in several things you've shared around adding value, being helpful, right? Like curating the content. So people might say, oh, thanks so much. I've been looking for things to read or watch or solving the number one problem on their mind.
[00:34:37] Annie: Is there anything else that you would point us to, that you do in order to add value or to be helpful to others? When you think about that as a authentic way of building your network?
[00:34:50] Tod: I'm gonna sort of go to what I think is a misperception, which is a lot of people say, how could I add value to this smart, famous, successful, rich, whatever it is, person who has more experience than I, and I think the thing that people miss is that.
[00:35:06] Tod: When you engage in this activity of like proactively building relationships, being in the flow, being physically present, bringing people together, it's actually that act that creates the things that you could do to add value. So like when you're early in your career, you don't know the answers. Right. But other people who are successful actually do have some of those answers.
[00:35:27] Tod: And when you are the organizer, all you have to do is put those two people together. Right. You don't have to have the answer for one of. You simply have to know somebody that can help them. And so the misperception is, is that I don't know where to start. Well, the way you start is by building that sort of organically created pool of relationships, and then you start bringing those people together.
[00:35:47] Tod: That's the value in the beginning, you don't have the value, right? But by bringing those people to solve each other's problems is a. Low cost way for you and low cost way for them to add value. But you get the benefit of that because people see, oh, that relationship was brought to me by this individual doesn't mean they had the answer, right.
[00:36:05] Tod: They just had the, the relationship and the willing to willingness to engage. So I think the sub lesson there is you just have to get started because these things self reinforced. It actually gets easier over time. Right? The hardest part is starting
[00:36:19] Annie: love that. Are there any non. Things you would advise people to think about when they are looking to build relationships.
[00:36:28] Tod: I mean, one thing that might be not obvious to people is that when people start out, they often sort of steer away from people who seem to be doing similar things in similar industries, because they say, oh, like, why would I start working with them? Because they're gonna view me as a competitor or they're gonna view me.
[00:36:47] Tod: Uh, somehow like stealing their ideas. And my experience has actually been the exact opposite. The people that are most willing to work with other people who are building relationships are people who highly value that activity themselves. And in many cases, like when you are the person who's earlier in your career, or a little bit more green in the effort, it's like, There's lots of ways to help that person, cuz that person's probably further ahead in the effort.
[00:37:12] Tod: They definitely don't view you as a threat. And if anything, you're like giving them leverage and extending the efforts they're doing. So I would almost like try to spend time building relationships with the relationship builders because they're also the most connected people and they'll will tell you very quickly, don't go down that path or those people are waste of your time or that's not gonna work in this market.
[00:37:32] Tod: So I would say gravitate towards the. People who you observe as being most successful in that area, essentially doing. Structurally the same thing and just find ways to get close to them.
[00:37:43] Annie: Love it. Reflecting on everything we've talked about today, what's the single most important thing of everything that we've discussed today?
[00:37:52] Tod: I think the single most important thing is authenticity. Relationship building is like the absolute core of like human nature and the absolute worst thing I think you can do to bring to that, you know, sort of experience is something that is like incongruent with who you are, but if it. Congruent with natural and unique things that are special about you as an individual I'm personally way more interested in engaging on those fronts.
[00:38:16] Annie: Well, thank you so much, Tod, it's been such a pleasure talking to you and hearing all about your experiences and getting your advice. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:38:25] Tod: Thanks for having me.