Keith Keller talks about his offline touches to grow online business

Laura: Keith, I find it kind of interesting that a lot of people who have migrated into online businesses have kind of forgot that an online business should still actually have offline touches.

 

So share one thing that you actually do offline to be able to grow your online business.

 

Keith: OK. So I’ve looked at in recent times that I’ve only got a very small following relatively in Melbourne, but those Melbournians – what I call Magic Melbournians. That’s my Monday... I usually do on a Monday Magic Melbourne or Melbourne Monday as my hashtag. I have coffee with them. I mean what a concept in the 21st century people still having coffee.

 

So I make an effort. I’ve got this amazing café 10 minutes walk from my house, and it’s like an open... It’s like an open invitation for anyone that’s in the area if they ever want to catch up that I actually make sure that of all the people that I connect with in Melbourne, I’m open for coffee at my, you know, favorite café, but as I said, most of my following is not here.

 

So what I did was I found this really cool provider. I don’t know if you have it in the US. It’s called Lebara, L-E-B-A-R-A, and I can call anywhere in the world for $0.05 a minute virtually. So if ever I’m connecting with someone – And this happens a lot – If I’m ever connecting with someone that might be in France or they might be in Portugal, and I’ll say let’s have a chat. They’d go, “How are you going to do that?†I said, “I’ve got this cheap plan that doesn’t cost me very much money,†and it gives me this sense that hey, we’re having a chat. You know that I’m a real person. You get to hear my cookie voice.

 

And you know, I’ll tell you. Well I’ve created miracles doing that. You know, I ring Trinidad on a whim because someone said, “Look mate, you know, can we ever chat about this year?†“No worries. I’ve got my phone right here on my desk. I think it’s $0.15 a minute to call Trinidad, but it’s worth it. I probably only pick up the phone up once a month and I’ve always got it there just because people want a real-world connection, and I can’t have coffee with them because they don’t live in my town, but I’m always available for Skype and real-world calls. And I’ll tell you what. It does create miracles. Have you found this to be the case yourself?

 

Laura: Yeah, absolutely because people have really started to hide behind social media to where you can be a voice of sorts. You can create post whether you’re on Facebook or Pinterest or Twitter, whatever the case may be, but you’re not actually a person and you’re not humanizing what you do, and you’re not really interacting with people.

 

So it’s this strange place that people have found themselves in and the ones that are making a difference that are really seeing success are the ones that have been able to humanize themselves in a digital world, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.

 

Keith: Yeah. Look, I’ve been a bit challenged by it because of the lack of numbers here in Melbourne, in Australia in general. So for a very long time, I could have been accused of hiding out, but I decided to just take it the next step, and I’m always available for Skype calls just to be able to say hello because I tell you what. It makes a huge difference.

 

Laura: Yes, it absolutely does, and oftentimes, so as relationships that you forge where it’s beyond just the re-tweet or commenting back and forth through social media, when you make those relationships more personal, that’s when all of a sudden you can start leading the things where you find somebody that you’re going to do a business project with, somebody that’s going to potentially promote on your behalf or you’re going to promote them. There’s so many amazing things that can come out of it, not to mention the fact tha