Growing a Business: One Contact At A Time – Episode 1 – Creating Your Own Luck – Part 1
Are you networking with the right people? Are you spending your time with a bunch of idiots? Learn how to network effectively on a day-to-day basis which will help you grow your business immensely over the next 12 months. In this episode, Business coach Clay Clark (former US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year) discusses with Caleb Taylor the the importance of being able to network effectively. In one study that the both of them recount in this episode, over 60% of employees lack interpersonal skills necessary for the workplace. Ask yourself: do I communicate well with others? In this episode, there are specific action steps that will allow you to communicate more effectively during networking events, and teach you how to specifically determine whether or not the networking event will be effective for you. For most business owners, the chamber event where all of the business owners are not looking to develop a deep relationship with others is not the best place to create a long-lasting relationship. Consider this: only take advice from those who have been where you are wanting to go. If you are going to create a relationship with somebody, make sure that they add value to your life. If you were going to spend your time superficially meeting many people that you will never actually spent time with, then that is going to be time wasted. Paul Graham, the founder of YCombinator which funded dropbox.com, reddit.com, and airbnb.com, talks about how it is more important to have 100 customers that love you and then I thousand customers that kind of like you. As you grow your networking list of contacts that you want to develop a relationship with, you will find that this is not a overnight process. You must grow your contact list one at a time. Find people that are willing to invest in you and you create value for them. One of the ways to continuously be able to meet with somebody is to consistently create more value for them then they do for you. When you do this, you will find that you will always win the game of life.
