What kind of people would you be bringing together for a profit? What service do you or your network have access to that can be sold, rented or traded? Would you be connecting businesses to consumers, consumers to businesses or businesses to businesses?

Leads are leveraging relationships for profit. Lead generation is connecting the hungry to food and charging for directions. The best lead generators are people who have cultivated a lucrative network of connections by bringing value to all parties and maintaining a reputation for not fucking people around. This is usually built on a career where they were selling or buying something and are considered a subject material expert in the field. Qualified to comment, respected as a technical or information expert.

Knowing that you need to understand where you stand in the eyes of those you will work for. Are you a master of a trade or skill? Do you know someone or some business and can offer some advantage or superior service to what your client is seeking?

The last thing I’ll say that may apply is what advertisers do daily, convince people to give you money to put them in front of an audience. Setting up a small local magazine or flyer with articles on local businesses with paid for advertising would help you gain experience in leveraging relationships and managing a small business.

Writing about locals, families or hiring a local writer on a per article basis can fill your magazine or local flyer with topical and relatable local content that you can charge local businesses to have their ads printed in. Mailing these to households in a targeted (higher income) area can generate leads for your ad purchasers and as advertising is a write off dentists, doctors and professionals have capital to invest.

Use these advertising relationships to grow a network. Recommend your advertisers regularly and build them up. At the end of a few years you should know quite a few people, businesses and organizations.

Build your relationships. Or as my mentor taught me, ”First we get their attention, then we get their trust and then we get their money”.