Get more clients with this world-class, 3-step formula for networking.

About 15 years ago I owned a marketing company, and I'd just paid real money — the first time I'd ever paid significant money — to attend a two-day marketing conference. I showed up buzzing. I figured I'd learn a lot. I also figured I'd walk out with a few new clients.

My heart sank about five minutes in.

The host, Perry Marshall, walked on stage, welcomed the room of roughly 150 people, and started acknowledging the heavy hitters — folks who'd flown in from halfway around the world, the known experts. And as he read off the names, it dawned on me: for every marketing skill I had, there was at least one person in that room who was better at it than me. Some of them, a lot better.

Seeing as I was an all-around athlete in a room full of Olympic specialists, my odds of landing a client were just about zero.

Lunch came. I grabbed my plate, stepped into the hallway, and noticed a second ballroom directly across from ours. Completely different event. Completely different people. I looked closer at the sign: the Insurance Adjusters of America. These folks knew nothing about marketing. And literally nothing about digital marketing.

That's when an old proverb popped into my head — one often credited to the Renaissance scholar Erasmus:

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

— attributed to Desiderius Erasmus

The idea stuck. In my ballroom, I was one capable marketer among 150 — most of them sharper than me. But across the hall sat a whole room of people who needed marketing and had almost no one to turn to. Same skills. Completely different value.

Let's call a room like that a Ripe Room — one that's ripe with opportunity, because you bring something the entire room needs and almost no one else there can offer.

That one idea changed how I've networked ever since.

As soon as I got back to my home city, I asked myself a simple question: what rooms could I walk into that were Ripe Rooms?

I scribbled down a list.

Looking at my list, I asked: of these rooms, where do I understand at least some of the lingo and the basics of how the industry works?

A few years earlier, before the 2008 crash wiped me out, I'd been a full-time real estate investor. Although I lost financially, I learned a ton about that world — investing, raising capital, being a landlord. I could talk the talk. And because I knew how to market to that world, I could walk the walk too.

So I asked the next question: what's the most expensive room full of my ideal clients that I can afford?

Turns out there was a national real estate investors' club that met in multiple Canadian cities — one of them mine. It was not cheap. Four hours, once a month, $300 a meeting. I bought the annual membership, took a deep breath, and showed up.

My thesis was right. This was a Ripe Room. And I was the only marketer in it.

By the end of that first kickoff meeting, I'd met the national president of the entire club — and he asked to sit down and talk marketing for the entire national club.

By my third meeting, I'd met a ton of members and closed my first-ever $30,000 consulting contract. Then, a month or two later, another $10,000 contract. In five months in that one room, I made more than I had at dozens and dozens of marketing conferences combined.

So here's why I'm telling you this.

We underestimate the importance of the room, and overestimate the importance of ourselves.

History is loaded with examples of mediocre restaurants that made a killing just because they happened to be located near a hungry crowd.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say your success or failure in networking is 80% dictated by which room you choose to walk into. All the other stuff — a nice business card, a snappy elevator speech — is, at best, 20%.

Most attorneys, though, choose crowded rooms. Bar mixers. CLEs. Practice-group happy hours. Rooms full of other lawyers. Those rooms have their place — but if you're an estate planning or elder law attorney trying to grow your book, a room full of estate planning attorneys is a room full of Olympic specialists in your event. You're one of many. And nobody in that room is your client.

Your Ripe Room looks completely different. It's the room where you're the only attorney — and everyone else needs exactly what you do.

Think about who's already sitting on the assets that need protecting. Financial advisors and their study groups. CPAs and their associations. Business owners in peer groups like EO or Vistage. Real estate investors, physicians, country clubs, philanthropic boards. Every one of those rooms is full of people who need an estate plan, a succession plan, a trustee they can trust — and not one of them does what you do.

Then layer in the two filters that made this work for me.

Do you speak their language?

You don't have to have been one of them, nor do you need a PhD in their field. All I mean is you understand the basics of their world — their worries, their vocabulary, their key players. An elder law attorney who genuinely gets the financial-advisor world will out-connect ten lawyers who just show up with a stack of business cards.

Can you get into an expensive room?

This one feels uncomfortable, so I'll say it plainly: if a room costs real money to be in, the people in it have real money. The $300 a meeting isn't the cost — it's the filter.

A paid room screens for exactly the clients who can afford serious estate planning work.

That's the whole approach, and it comes down to three questions:

1. Where am I the only attorney in a room full of people who need one?
2. Where do I already understand the basics of their fears and concerns?
3. Where's the most expensive version of that room I can get into?

So before you register for one more conference full of other attorneys, ask yourself where your Ripe Room is. Find the room where you're the single most valuable person in it — then go pay to be there.

That's where the clients are.

Onwards and upwards,
Tim