286: Expand Your Network with Devin Sizemore

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.

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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.
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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. 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 unl