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Welcome back to the Productivity Podcast where I give you a daily productivity tip so
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you can get the most out of your time, your talent, and your ideas.
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I'm your host Brandon White, here we go.
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I was at a conference in Washington DC a few years back, nice hotel, open bar, great
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food, and all the right people in the room.
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A guy walked up, shook my hand, and before I finished saying my name, he was already
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scanning the room over my shoulder, already looking for the next person to talk to.
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He handed me his card and said, let's connect, and was gone in under 90 seconds.
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I looked down at the card when I got back to my hotel room and already forgot who he was.
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You've met that guy.
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Maybe at a conference, maybe at a chamber breakfast, maybe at a holiday party, he's everywhere.
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He thinks he's networking, but he's not, he's collecting, and there's a big difference
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in what those two things produce.
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Today kicks off a seven-part series called Build Your Network.
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We're covering why networking fails and how to do it right, how to treat your network
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as a real asset, the three types of relationships you need, what you should be depositing into
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your key relationships, how to identify the handful of people who can change your trajectory,
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and how to build a deliberate structure around all of it.
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In this first episode, we're breaking down why most networking fails before it even
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starts, and how to do it right.
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Look, most people show up to networking with two problems working against them at the
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The first is mindset.
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They're hunting for what they can get rather than thinking about what they can give.
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The second is strategy, or the complete lack of it.
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No clear sense of who they want to meet, why those people matter, or what they would
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say if they actually found them.
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Those two problems feed each other.
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When you don't know what you're there to offer, your default is grabbing whatever you
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can, and when you're just grabbing, you never build anything.
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David Noir, who wrote Relationship Economics, maps out exactly where this breaks down.
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We identify three phases where most people blow it, preparation, interaction, and follow-through.
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In the preparation phase, the problems are a lack of purpose, fuzzy goals, and no relationship
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Most people walk into the room with nothing more than a vague intention to meet people.
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That's not a strategy, that's hope.
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In the interaction phase, people show up reactive and haphazard.
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They engage transactionally thinking about what they can get rather than what they can
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offer, and they're often talking to the wrong people entirely because they never figured
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out who the right people were before they walked into the room.
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In the follow-through phase, they fail to give the people they met any reason to remember
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They disappear, and the connection dies before it even started.
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No follow-up, no value, nothing.
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Do that long enough, and you end up with a contact list full of strangers.
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Now here's where this gets interesting.
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Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, spent years studying how people
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build success through the relationships.
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His findings came from interviews with 30,000 people across industries and cultures.
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What he found was counterintuitive.
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The biggest givers in any network end up at both the bottom and the top of the success
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The ones who get crushed are giving without strategy, burning themselves out with nothing
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The ones who win are giving with intention, playing a long game most people don't have
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The collectors, the guys scanning the room at conferences, they're the takers, and Grant's
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research shows that in tightly connected fields, takers' reputations catch up with them
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faster than they expect, doors quietly close, introductions stop happening.
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The intentional givers are quietly compounding something no one else can see yet.
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So here's the reframe of all this, networking is not a transaction, it's an investment,
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and here are three things that separate investors from collectors.
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First, they arrive with a plan, not, I'll see who's here, a specific person, a specific
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reason to connect, and something of value to offer.
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I had a business development guy who worked for me, the best I've ever seen at this.
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He came to every event with a target list of people he wanted to meet, a short background
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on each, and a specific thing that he could offer every single one of them, no guessing,
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he always left with real relationships, not a stack of cards.
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Two, they add value before they ask for anything.
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A relevant article, an introduction or resources useful to that specific person.
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People remember who showed up for them before they need anything, that memory is worth
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more than any follow-up email.
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And third, when they follow up, it means something.
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Not a copy and paste linked in message, a real reference to the conversation you had,
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followed by doing what you said you would do.
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Think about the people in your own network who have moved the needle for you, in your
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career, in your life, wherever.
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Not one of them handed you a card and disappeared.
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They paid attention.
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They remembered things, and they found a way to be useful before you ever asked.
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The guy with the wandering eyes and the stack of cards, he's still out there collecting.
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The investors, on the other hand, are building something that grows.
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Here's your move this week, before the next networking event, meeting or professional
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situation you walk into, write down two things.
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First, one person you want to connect with.
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And second, one thing you can offer them.
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One person, one thing of value to them that they will find useful.
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See what changes when you walk in prepared like that.
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In the next episode, we go deeper.
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How to think about your network as a real asset, and what treating it like one looks like
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Thanks so much for listening to the Productivity podcast.
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Please remember to hit the follow button in your podcast player so you never miss the
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See you in the next episode.