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.

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.
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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. And so the subtitle I have on my book is you’re one connection away from massive success in your life and business. And so that subtitle is really about this idea that one connection can unlock everything for you personally and professionally. And because of that, that’s why connections are so important because you never know which one of those connections is going to unlock something super big for you.

Can you give an example where a connection unlocked a big opportunity for someone?

Yeah. So, let’s go the kind of whole gamut. So, the first would be like an ideal internship. So as a college student or someone young in their profession, they want to land this perfect internship in the right industry with the right people. It could be finding the perfect job with no competition. So being invited to be an applicant for a job instead of having to go through a candidate pool of 30 candidates, it could be seven figure deals, JV partnerships, integrated offers. I’m doing a workshop in two weeks at a mastermind, I’m facilitating the whole second day, that was through a connection. So it’s everything from a connection for an attorney, a service provider, something you need, a job opportunity, seven figure deals. Like there’s so many examples and reasons why one connection can unlock something for you.

Yeah, that is true. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, they say. Let’s talk about the framework because in this book, Connection Expansion, you developed or you documented this framework which people can actually use to build their own network, their own connection expansion process. Can you share the steps? I think it was about six steps. Share the steps of this framework and how that works.

Yeah, for sure. So in the book, the first step is the connection expansion exercise, and that’s where we shift from targeting clients to targeting everyone who surrounds our clients. That’s the first thing that really unlocks the process, and then it shifts your ask from the ideal client profile to these strategic partners. Once you have that grounded, the rest of the process is how do you approach networking? How do you follow up? How do you schedule connection meetings? What is a connection meeting and how do you have a successful meeting? How do you follow up and add value from the connection meeting? And then how do you nurture someone long term? What’s that template and the messaging there? And so those are all the different elements that when combined with the core principles will unlock your network success.

So connection expansion exercise, and then you get into the networking follow-up, so how you use this whole networking process and adding value. So what does the connection expansion exercise do? What is the outcome of this exercise?

Yeah, so let’s talk about it. We’ll use realtors as an example, because I think it’s something everyone can relate to. So when I ask a realtor who they want to connect with, they’ll usually answer with their ideal client profile. So, first-time buyers or move-up buyers or investment buyers. They have a profile of a buyer or a profile of a seller. Typically, it’s buyers though. That’s great. That’s the ideal client. The savvier realtors, when you ask them, who can I connect you with? They’ll go, I want to know mortgage lenders or insurance agents. Because they know that those are good strategic partners that have access to a lot of potential ideal clients. But that’s where most people stop. And so in your industry, it’s probably the same thing.

Who do you want to connect with is the ideal client profile. And then the next step would be like the standard referral partner. Where we go steps further in the connection expansion exercise, we look at vendors. So which vendors are your ideal client spending money with? Where do your ideal clients get educated? Where do they gather? Who has influence over them? Who do they trust? And who’s a general connector? And so there’s six more categories we explore so we can build out a much deeper list of potential connections to that ideal client. Then we align that list with our personal preferences, our history and background, the things we’re passionate about, and we identify five or six strategic connections that we can ask for.

That starts to position us in better rooms and better meetings and it eliminates all the friction when we’re building our network. Because if we only ask for ideal clients, I’m asking Steve to connect me with the prospect so I can sell to them. It creates so much friction in the introduction. Whereas if I educate Steve and say, Hey Steve, I want to connect with the business CPA because we’re targeting similar clients and there’s great alignment. You can go through your database like, oh, I know a few CPAs, let me connect you. Now there’s no friction, it’s easier to make the intro. And so the process is to get you to change your ask, to build this list that your competition is not thinking about, and then to open all these opportunities up with less friction.

Yeah, I like this idea. And you’re right. I mean, sometimes I hesitate. Someone asks me, okay, this is the ideal client. I’m a service provider. Maybe I’m an HR, fractional HR. And unless I know that this person would do a fantastic job and I trust them, I hesitate to introduce them to my client because then the implication will be that they want me to talk to that person, that I am vouched for that person and I might not be in a position to do that, but other connectors would be easy to do. Now, if someone introduces me, let’s say my target client is small to medium sized business owners and maybe financial advisors would have good connections and I don’t know, CMOs, marketing people. And I drew the six different types of connection, build this list. So, what do I do with that list? Do I just talk to these people and explain what I do? Or is that also part of the connection exercise, how to engage with these people who are not my target market?

Yeah. So once you have your list, the quickest action item is to go back to your current network and schedule more meetings. The issue is there’s so much untapped potential in your network. You’ve probably met with a lot of people in your network, but when you were meeting with them, they were probably focused on educating you on ideal clients.

You were probably focused on educating them on ideal clients, which kept your conversation really closed.
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I’m betting you have a lot of marketing contacts because of that. Those are great connections for me because we’re targeting similar people but offering different services. Like anyone that you connected to while you were in that part of your journey, we probably could collaborate. And what we’re doing is we’re eliminating all these barriers for connections. So the list, although it’s your target, you shouldn’t be going out and cold prospecting the people on that list. You should then be taking that idea to your warm market and changing the conversation because what we’re trying to do is get them to introduce us to these strategic connections. Because if we’re getting two, three, four of these connections a day, we start to fill our calendar with much better leveraged meetings, which allows us to expand our network rapidly.

Okay. So it’s not that we don’t want to talk to our target market clients, it’s just that we want to first build a connector network so that we can have a lot of opportunities connect to our target markets. Is that it?

Yeah. We want referrals, but the problem is most people stop there. They ask their clients to give them referrals, they ask their network to give them referrals. It’s all prospects, which goes back to that friction. The quote I tell everyone is everyone wants to buy. Nobody wants to be sold. Yet, everything about that referral world positions people to be sold. So what we’re doing is we’re taking the barriers down and we’re going one step before that. Let’s build the connection network. Let’s build the strategic partnerships.

Let’s surround our clients so that when they do raise their hand and the time’s right, the budget’s right, they have enough pain point and problem, we’re the only option because no matter where they look, everyone’s saying, hey, you got to work with Steve, you got to work with Devin, you got to work with Bob. And so we’re going to get referrals at the long end of this process, but in the meantime, we’re going to explore integrated offers, strategic partnerships, podcasts, beakings, events, joint masterminds, all of these other things that you’re missing. Because again, you’re just chasing clients. You’re not chasing the strategic connections.

Okay. So the goal here is to really build up the top of mind awareness in a small community, which is like the local community of all those people who could connect you to the ideal target market. You basically want to saturate all those connectors with the top of mind awareness for us so that whenever someone raises their hands, we’re going to be the logical choice?

Yeah. So the quote I use there is, you want to be the authority in rooms where your competition doesn’t play. And so let me give you a real example. I was on with this gentleman named Peter last week that I was connected to. Just a joint connecting email. We were connected because he’s targeting faith-based business owners and so are we for one of our projects. I get on and talk to Peter. He tells me a service offering, tells me what he’s doing, and then we start trying to connect some dots and I ask him how he is doing a service offering. He says, I’m doing it through group coaching. Do you know this person? That’s who I’m working with. Oh, funny. I’m going to be the host of that guy’s summit in two weeks. Oh, you’re going to be attending?

So instantly, I just went from some person he was connected to. I was already edified and elevated to now all of a sudden, I’m more of an expert because I’m facilitating day two at an event he’s already paid for. And then we keep going and we find out that his best referral partner, I helped them write their book, they’re a client. His second best referral partner is a really good friend. And the next event he’s going to refers all their business to me. And so, by the end of the meeting, he didn’t even come in to buy my product or service. By the end of the meeting, he was asking what I sell. Because there’s so many connections in common, he’s going, oh, you’re playing at the same level with all these other guys. I must need to work with you or I need you in my network. And so that’s what I want. I want people to get connected to you.

And sure, if they’re an ideal client, there’s so much alignment, but in there, there’s so many strategic things that have happened. There’s events, there’s podcasts, there’s speaking, and this is just one meeting. But most meetings I’m in, this is exactly the scenario is, oh, do you know this person? Yeah, by the way, I work with them or I talked to them or I did this. And so, we’re becoming authorities in these little micro rooms. Sometimes they’re not micro. Sometimes these are big events with 5, 6, 10,000 people. But if you’re the go-to expert there, that’s where you really start to set yourself apart from the competition.

Yeah, I love it. That’s pretty cool. Okay. And what do you find is the appropriate geographical area where you want to create that kind of saturation? Is this a geographical area? Is this a niche market that you want to do this in? So what are the considerations as to delineating this market that you want to go after?

It doesn’t matter what the market definition is. And so the system we use works if you’re trying to attack a geographical market. We do that. We’ve done it in our own market. We do it for clients where we open new markets. It works extremely well if we’re going after verticals. So we’re going after a certain industry type because then we can build all of the relationships in the industry. Or it works if we’re going after a client type just to surround the client type, which becomes its own sort of market. It really doesn’t matter what the strategy is. It just matters that we figure out what our target is and we surround it and we use the network to surround it. And again, we want to do this in ways that we enjoy doing so that you shouldn’t be choosing strategies in places you don’t want to play and places our competition isn’t playing. 

Because there’s nothing worse than going to an event where there’s nine of you in the same room exhibiting and speaking. Do you want to go to an event, even if it’s a hundred people, which I’m going to this week in Philadelphia, we’re the only sponsor. Matter of fact, they don’t even have sponsors, but because we had such a good meeting and we were so referred and edified to this person, we became the only sponsor at their event.  So now we have a captive audience of perfect fit clients and we’re the only one there offering them anything. So that’s what I want for you. I want you to end up in a room where you’re it. You’re the authority, you’re the go-to and you’re not having to compete for it.

Yeah, that’s great. So do you have an ideal number of connectors that you can effectively work with? Because I find that it’s very hard when there are too many of them. It’s hard to stay top of mind. It’s hard to really know everyone. It’s hard to have enough touch points. So, what’s the Goldilocks zone of these connectors to work with?

Yeah. So, the system works really well with one person. Like you can literally meet one person and start the process. But the backend conversation here is the system. So, we check in with every contact every six weeks and we send them a check-in template. It’s all templatized. It’s not automated, so we do manually send it, but that’s how we nurture our database. We also track all the connections we’ve made. We sort our database. There’s a lot of tips and tricks on the backend there. But the answer is you want to go really wide. We want tons of people to know what you do. We want tons of people to see value. We want you to have made connections and added value to as many people as possible because that’s where we start to get the snowball down the mountain.

If you’ve made a hundred connections for other people, if you’re nurturing a hundred people, it is inevitable that you’re going to get amazing connections for other people.  If you’re nurturing a hundred people, it is inevitable that you’re gonna get amazing connections, amazing alignment. I just finished my Monday morning setup for the week and just from Friday noon to Monday morning, 17 inbound connections for me. That’s 17 conversations. I didn’t have to cold call. I get to follow up with, I get to book meetings with, all just from the network.

Okay. Well, that is interesting. I don’t know if it’s possible to have infinite number because how do you then even keep track of who these people are? Maybe they don’t do this with other people, you’re the only one and okay, you don’t even have to know everyone for them to know you. I mean, maybe that’s possible, but I’m still wondering how that works.

So yeah, let’s go a little deeper. So it’s not that we’re trying to have one referral partner sending us a hundred referrals. We wanna have a thousand advocates that anytime someone mentions anything that relates to what we do, we’re the option. And what that does is it spreads it out so that when someone needs something, you’re the only go-to. So, if someone wants to write a book, I get an introduction, hey, Devin’s the guy to write the book. That might be someone I met two years ago and I’ve just been checking in every six weeks. Maybe we haven’t even connected, but I’m still top of mind. Maybe they’ve replied to a couple of emails. But as soon as someone raises their hand or they find an opportunity, and then my checking email shows up, they go, oh, I was thinking of you, but I couldn’t remember who you were. Or I did have a conversation, right?

So we’re trying to create those mental cues where people can go, Oh, you know what, Devin? Yeah, I do have a connection for you. And the other part of this process is we want to nurture long-term because that’s where you set yourself apart from your competition. Your competition is only asking for client referrals. They’re likely only nurturing one or two referral partners that they hope give them enough referrals. They’re not building a long-term nurture strategy where they’re staying top of mind and they’re activating their whole network instead of a really small part of it.

Okay. So it is a numbers game and you want to build this big network that are aware of you and stay top of mind with them and then you can get referrals. Okay. So you’ve been in business for 15 years and you’ve met with lots of entrepreneurs. What do you think is the most important question an entrepreneur should be asking themselves?

It’s so interesting. I think the biggest question is why and then where are we going? It’s kind of a two-part question because I think a lot of people get into business for a lot of the wrong reasons when they start. And so I think really understanding why you’re in business, why you’re doing what you’re doing personally, professionally, who you’re trying to impact, that’s important. And then I did a Mindset podcast last week, and I think that the future anchoring is critical. I think so often people don’t have a big enough vision to where they’re going, what that looks like, what that feels like. And so you’re so stuck in today’s fires and today’s to do list because you’re not thinking about the future. You’re not thinking about the systems and processes, the team, the things you’re going to need to build to become that future version of your business that you’re growing. So why and then where are you going? You’ve got to have clarity on both of those things.

Yeah, I agree. Vision includes both. Why are you doing this and where are you going? Awesome. Well, Devin, thank you for sharing your expertise on creating powerful networks. That’s definitely not been on our podcast yet. I encourage you, if you’re listening to this, to check out Connection Expansion, which is Devin’s book, and it’s available on Audible as well as print and Kindle. So Devin, thanks for coming to the show. And if you’re listening, then stay tuned because every week we bring an exciting entrepreneur or thought leader who helps you grow your business and make it better. If people would like to connect with you, where can they reach you?

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Steve. I appreciate your questions. You can go to connectionexpansion.com. That will take you to my community where we help facilitate connections. You can also go to devinsizemore.com, which has a bunch more information about me, videos on the system we talked about, templates, frequently asked questions, and a whole bunch more. Love to connect with you. If you have questions, reach out. Happy to answer those questions specifically for you.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Devin. Thanks for coming and thank you for listening.