Access to Anyone

Tony Simmons grew up in Queens alongside future rap legends like Run D.M.C, Russell Simmons, Salt-N-Pepa, and LL Cool J. Today he’s the Executive Director for the High School For Recording Arts, where he’s using music to reinvent the way we approach education. In this episode, Tony takes us back to the birth of Hip Hop, what it’s like to work with Prince, and how to make meaningful connections through self-reflection and creativity.

Topics include:

Putting imagination (and passion) back into education

How to make bold ideas come to life

Why being in touch with your own story is essential to success

Working with the resources you have to create opportunities

Tony Simmons is the Executive Director of High School for Recording Arts (HSRA) and Studio 4 Enterprises, an educational services and management organization. Tony has served as board member and/or provided technical assistance to leading national school reform organizations including Edvisions, Inc., the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools. He was also part of the development team for Minnesota's first online project-based charter school EdVisions Online Academy. Tony attended Howard University and Pace University where he earned a BA in Political Studies, and graduated from Rutgers University School of Law with a Juris Doctorate.

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Today we continue our conversation on the Connector’s Path. We not only reveal the pivotal step to becoming a power connector, we explore another one of co-host Michael Roderick’s foolproof concepts.

Asking your connections for what you need without damaging the relationship is one of the toughest skills to master. Luckily, we’ve figured out how to do it.

In truth, there are four different levels or types of asks anyone can make. It’s called the DIME concept, and it is the golden ticket to getting what you want without offending your connections. Today we show you how it works.

Topics include:

The four different types of asks (and how to master them)

Seeking introductions to opportunity instead of reciprocity

Not overselling yourself

How to reach out to high-profile people

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Cameron Brown is an international speaker, songwriter, and community builder. His dinner (and so much more) series The Thriving Collective has become the go-to forum for powerful people who want to trade ideas about creativity and social innovation. During the course of our conversation, Cameron shares how he has used storytelling to build communities across the globe and much more.

Topics include:

The five steps for thriving

Following your personal philosophy (whether or not it’s true)

Building trust through technology

How to turn your dream into an enterprise

Cameron Brown has been fascinated by what contributes to true happiness and a life worth living, and how we can use that deeper level of understanding to thrive in today's modern age. He is a keynote speaker, and his music and videos have reached millions of people in over 190 countries. Cameron also facilitates introductions and creates events and experiences around the world that connect our planet and the people within it. He runs invite-only peer network events in multiple locations in the US, Canada and Australia. He firmly believes that everyone deserves the opportunity to be happy, to live fully, to experience the world and genuinely feel like they’ve made a positive impact, no matter how big or small that is.

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Becoming a good connector takes a lot more than simply having an energetic personality or a knack for making friends. The world’s best connectors have mastered a very specific set of habits or steps that co-host Michael Roderick calls the Connector’s Path.

In part one of our two-episode conversation, we break down the Connector’s Path to help you reliably make, build, and curate powerful connections. Then we show you how to shape those connections into a financial rewards.

Topics include…

Four common myths about making connections

Why your network is a flowing ecosystem (and how it works)

How to create your identity, define your business, and master your own language

Why you need to make things memorable instead of different

The GATE Strategy

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James Dearsley is a digital marketer who lives at the forefront of technology. He mastered social media before it hit the mainstream, and now he’s breaking new ground with virtual and augmented reality. Today James explores how these new “realities” will bring about new opportunities to make connections and build relationships by redefining physical boundaries.

Topics include:

The differences between virtual reality and augmented reality

Why society always wants something extra

The craving for human immersion

Normalizing difficult tech

Why technology isn’t the enemy of human connection

After 15 years working directly in the property sectors in sales and marketing roles, James Dearsley’s “day” job is running The Digital Marketing Bureau, an agency focusing on all aspects of digital from SEO to Social, PPC to email automation. After building successful strategies in his own businesses ranging from property to beekeeping, he decided to take the leap and use his passion for communication and digital marketing to help others succeed. James is also an evangelist and regular keynote speaker looking to the future of marketing.

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Grant McCracken is a cultural anthropologist who helps businesses tap into the thoughts and behaviors of their customers. He’s worked with Jeep, The Ford Foundation and Nike, just to name a few. In today’s episode, we talk about his concept of culturematics — a tool that allows any entrepreneur, inventor, business person, and artist to inspire innovation, create cutting-edge content, and build stronger relationships.

Topics include:

Taking in other people's point of view

Riffing on other people's content (and why it's brilliant)

What you can take away from Fantasy Football, fan fiction and Mad Men

Finding genius (and value) in the unlikeliest of places

Why the gift economy isn't all it's cracked up to be

Grant McCracken has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and worked for many organizations including Timberland, New York Historical Society, Diageo, IKEA, Sesame Street, Nike, and the White House. He is a long time student of culture and commerce, and has taught at the University of Cambridge, MIT, and the Harvard Business School. He also started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures.

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Darrah Brustein turned a series of casual get-togethers into the hottest networking events in Atlanta (not to mention a big-time business). She cultivated one of the biggest communities for young professionals in the country. Today she tells us exactly how she did it.

Topics include:

How to get people to champion you

Letting your natural chemistry do the talking

The assistant hack

Drawing the line between networking and dating events

Darrah Brustein is an entrepreneur, children’s book author and connector. In 2009, she founded a merchant services brokerage with her twin brother to help connect businesses with the best credit card processing solution for their needs. In 2011, she founded Network Under 40 to help friends from college make friends in their young adult lives. Due to its overwhelming success in Atlanta (now selling out monthly events for 500+ people), she expanded into Network Over 40, as well as brought Network Under 40 to Baltimore and DC, with other cities to come. Darrah is a contributing writer for Entrepenuer.com, and has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Inc., CNN Money, Fox Business, and Mashable.

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Brian Swichkow turned a Facebook prank into one of the most inventive marketing strategies to hit the Web. After writing about his high jinks on Reddit, Brian’s blog became an instant smash reaching over one million views in just a matter of days. Today he’s hailed as a marketing pro by the likes of AdWeek and Forbes. In today’s episode, Brian reveals why experimentation and having a playful attitude are the best ways to make business – and people – come to you.

Topics include:

Why drunken ideas are often the best ones

How to craft a message designed to attract traffic

Approaching everything with a slant

How to convince people that you understand them better than anyone else

Building relationships over new technology

Brian Swichkow is an entrepreneur, marketer, influencer, and speaker with more than a decade of diverse experience bridging the gap between digital and analog. He specializes in the strategy and execution of campaigns that both foster and convert viral traffic into targeted growth.

He founded Ghost Influence to teach interpersonal communicators how to transition and amplify their skills in the digital world. Members within the Ghost Influence community are responsible for driving more than seven million page views per day through social platforms like Reddit and Imgur. He has been featured as a marketing expert in several recent publications including AdWeek, Observer and Search Engine Land.

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Have you ever noticed that every dictator, tyrant, and aspiring despot has a book to his name? Quotations From Chairman Mao? Mein Kampf? The Art of The Deal? This is no accident. While there are countless ways of creating media nowadays, publishing a good old-fashioned book still packs an unparalleled punch when it comes to building and consolidating authority.

During today’s conversation, we explore why this is so, along with how you can create a book that will help you build your very own fanatical following.

Topics include…

Why books pack more emotional punch than short form content

The genius of L. Ron Hubbard and The 4-Hour Work Week

How to get your own book going (even if you can't write)

How to get book agents to give you a platform for world domination

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Todd Gailun has discovered a way to measure complex human emotion and to help people apply what they learn about themselves to have a better life. On today’s episode, we hear what led Todd to embark on such an ambitious journey. We discuss the ways in which emotional self-awareness empowers us to make better decisions and interact with the world in a more positive and profound way.

Topics include:

How to explain (and sell) forward-thinking tech to the masses

Thinking of content in the context of emotion

Consciousness hacking

The emotional aspects of micro-celebrity

Prior to founding psychological technology company SENSOKA, Todd Gailun worked at Morgan Stanley as a junk bond Internet analyst, lived in Sweden while working for Ericsson, and served as the evangelist for hakia, the pioneering semantic search startup. All that he learned throughout these diverse experience informed what he does today.

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