286: Expand Your Network with Devin Sizemore

https://youtu.be/VsYNJyvLhJQ Devin Sizemore, Connector, Consultant, Speaker, and author of Connection Expansion, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs unlock opportunity by building meaningful, leveraged relationships that drive growth. We explore Devin’s journey into connection strategy and his creation of the Connection Expansion Framework, a system designed to help business owners stop chasing prospects and instead build a thriving network that brings opportunity to them. The framework includes five key steps: identifying connectors to your target market, asking to be introduced, building strategic partnerships, saturating your niche, and staying top of mind through long-term follow-up. Devin explains why most entrepreneurs overemphasize referrals and underestimate the value of partnerships, events, and collaborations. He shares how to reduce friction in introductions, build authority in niche communities, and turn warm relationships into a consistent flywheel of growth. He also discusses his book Connection Expansion, a tactical guide to putting this system into action. --- Expand Your Network with Devin Sizemore Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And today my guest is Devin Sizemore, who is a connector, consultant, speaker, and author of Connection Expansion. Devin, welcome to the show. Steve, thanks so much for having me. Been looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I've been looking forward to it too, especially since I read, I'm through about halfway through your book, Connection Expansion, and I found it fascinating, so let's talk about it. But first, let's start with your personal “Why” and how you are manifesting it in your business and businesses. Definitely. I love that question. I think a lot of people aren't aligned with their “Why,” and so I love that you start there. My personal “Why” is my first core principle that I share in the book, which is always add value. So everything I do, I focus on how do I add value to others, whether that's just people I'm meeting, whether that's clients, whether that's your listeners, I'm always focused on adding value. And so everything I do, every decision I make has to align with adding value.Share on X And if it does, great. If it doesn't, I'm probably not interested in doing it. That's a good principle to live by, to always add value. I had a client who had one of their core values was always add value. It was a consulting company and I thought it was very appropriate. So let's talk about your book, Connection Expansion, which describes your unique networking system. So my question is what prompted you to write a book about networking and about the system? Yeah, again, another great question. I've been doing consulting for 15 years. I've owned a bunch of companies and the core of it has always been connections. But where I think we're a little bit different and where I'm different is I have the ability to be a visionary. So what do I think I wanna create, but also being tactical. So grounding that into an actual system. Seven years ago, I really focused on connections. A couple of hundred clients later, and we've proven the system works. And so writing the book was kind of the last step of that process with me going through and really documenting the questions, the follow-up, the cadence, the templates, the whole system in a way that I could share it easily with the world.  And then I work with a lot of book clients with one of my biggest clients. And so the combination of, I want to do it, and I'm watching all these people have success with books kind of led to me going, hey, it's my turn to do this and I need to share it with the world. Okay. And why is it important to build a network, to have lots of connections? Maybe it's a stupid question, but I'm still curious. No, it's a great question because depending on what your goals are currently, the answer is different.