Transcription
[Music] [Music] oh hi thank you for joining me for another video. this is my dog molly and this is a wooden wine glass.
i'm gonna talk to you about mistakes that people make networking. what a dirty word that is. and i'll talk a little bit about how i've built my own network as it were. my advice in short is to go narrow and to go along.
all right. so that involves deep relationships with a small number of people and then playing the long game. what many people do is they go to an event to collect business cards and then they follow up with people with whom they have no common interests in the hopes of some type of transaction in the near term, the next few weeks, the next few months.
i can work. but what i would suggest you do is if we're looking at events which can be very, very high yield, look at either volunteer events where you can volunteer, all right, or super high-end events where you can attend and pay premium to attend.
and in the former category, i can give you an example of a tipping point for the 4-hour workweek, my first book. and that came about by going in part to south by southwest 2007. and my tactic was as an attendee here, which is fairly expensive to go to, moderated panels. and then when a panel ended, instead of flooding the scene to get in line to talk to a panelist, i would actually talk to the moderator who people tend to ignore. and i would be very, very humble to the extent i could and say, it's my first time of south by southwest. i'm pretty nervous. i just wrote my first book. i don't know anybody. not gonna pretend to understand everything about tech. i don't. but i'm really interested in a, b, c, d, and e. and i'm originally from this part of the world. and these are some of my interests. is there anyone you think i might enjoy meeting here?
now you have say, mary or joe, whoever saying, yeah, you should meet mike such-and-such. then i go and find mike or i'm introduced to mike. and i already have that social stamp of approval of one person. okay. now i meet that person and we talk. and there's no explicit ask. it was really important. i do the same thing. just got the south by southwest. my first time here. i apologize. kind of a random introduction. but i don't know anybody. and i have my first book out. i really don't know what to do because i have my launch coming up. but i'm here to learn. that's it. i'm here to learn and meet people. i don't even know what to ask for. and talk to them, talk to them, talk to them. and then if the timing seems right, and it may not, may never be right, but if it is, you can ask. and is there anybody else here you think i should meet up with or buy a drink for? who can i buy a round of drinks for? just to have fun, cool people who i might be able to hang out with and who might enjoy hanging out with me. and then you go to the second person and so on. and now all the way up to this point, i have not made a single ask. alright, other than the question, is there anybody else you think i might enjoy meeting?
now at some point, you will then have a small gaggle of people. and probably you'll be buying booze. at least that's my tactic. it's fairly, fairly easy to buy booze for people. and then everyone's talking. so let's say you have a group of people in tech. or you have a dog wants treat is coming back to say hello. a bunch of people in tech. we're talking about tech things. and they're saying things like, blah, blee, blah, blee, blah, ruby on rails. i don't know what that is. as a guy, i'm talking to the guys here because women generally don't have this problem. don't pretend like you know everything. it's really not endearing. so they would say something like, blah, blah, blah, ruby on rails. and i would say, you know, so sorry to interrupt. this is deep in the end of my ignorance pool. i don't know what ruby on rails is. what is ruby on rails? and every once in a while, i would interject and ask for clarification just to learn.
eventually, after two or three rounds of drinks, someone will say, who are you again? like, what do you do? what are you doing here? and then you can offer a little bit. you say something like, well, i just finished my first book. i'm really nervous. it's coming out on such and such a date. and i don't know what a book launch is. so i'm here to try to meet people and learn different skills to figure that out. and then you stop. you don't give them a two-minute or three-minute pitch. and chances are, someone will ask, okay, well, what's your book about? and then you can give a little bit more. and then let's say you're in a group of eight people. you watch the one or two who are going to have more follow-up questions. and then eventually, maybe in a group of eight people, you say to one of them afterwards, you say, look, i have a ton of books that my publisher sent me. these are review copies and advance copies. i don't know what to do with them. i don't think you'd actually read the whole book. but there's there's a 20-page bit then i think you'd really enjoy on x, y, and z because you know that you've already ascertained it through the conversation you had. and you say, you know, if it wouldn't be a burden, if you'd enjoy it, maybe i could send it to you. but if not, that's cool. and i would say, 90% of the time, they said, yeah, sure, that'd be cool. i'd love to see it. and that's how it all happened, guys. that's how the book hit them. your toughest self worth list was by doing that over and over again.
and this is the key point. you don't have to be a networking. you don't have to sell yourself to the highest bidder or compromise and spend time with people you don't like. you can find people who are a-class players in a given world who you want to spend time with, who have similar values and hobbies. so that one person out of the ten who said, yeah, cool, no, i'd love to check it out. the vast majority of those people from eleven years ago are still my friends today. and that's going narrow and going long.
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