I explain what I call value-driven, service based networking here. I spoke of how crucial it is to embrace it and how impactful your relationships with people in your life, work, and communities in general could be on your goals.
After internalizing the concept of value-driven, service-based networking, you might wonder how do you be generous enough to add value to your connections if you do not have a network in the first place. The obvious answer is build one. Anyone and everyone can build it.
But, how? How do I build a web of connections around myself that will help me succeed?
Here's how. You need to start somewhere and build off of that. For instance, you just read an article that inspired you in some sense. If you are like most other readers, you would read the article carefully, absorb the lessons, reflect for a bit, and then move on to another article, or get back to your work. I have a different approach to pursuing this process of reading articles for feeding my interests.
If I come across an article that really speaks to me, I make sure that I save the article on my phone using applications like pocket. Whenever I have some free time, I would try to reach out to the writer of that article via an email to let him or her know that I really liked her ideas and I might send her an article that I think he or she might find fascinating or could help her get some inspiration. I literally followed this strategy and ended up getting a response from a writer that motivated me to email Arianna Huffington. As crazy it seemed to me, I decided to reach out to Huffington to get her thoughts on my article that talks about my notion of value-driven, service-based networking. I knew beforehand that she is very big on human relationships. A chain reaction of this was that Huffington personally offered me to become a blogger for The Huffington Post merely 6 hours after I emailed her. The domino effect in value-driven, service-based networking is very real, positive and cumulative.
This does not go to show that you randomly keep emailing writers of all the articles you have liked in hopes of getting in touch with the CEOs of news and media companies they work for. I had no intention whatsoever to get in touch with Huffington when I reached out to the writer. I had absolutely no reason to think that I deserve to be a writer, let alone reaching out to a top executive for becoming a blogger. It is the purity of your intent that is important.
I have sent such emails to five writers over the summer to genuinely appreciate their work. Two of them did not respond. The other three said something along the lines of "Thanks for reading my article. Appreciate it". But, hey, it is the one shot that counts. The first five emails did not go in vain. They helped me practice the art of emailing writers. That practice helped me to get a response from a highly respectable woman in the news industry. This is just one of the many ways you can start building your relationship capital. The major takeaway from this is that you should start serving others to get exciting results for yourself in highly unconventional ways.
You certainly cannot expect others to give you everything you want on a silver platter right off the bat. You need to help others in order to be helped. You need to appreciate their work in order to get kindness in return. The only caveat to remember is that do not do any of this with an intention of getting something in return. Doing so is parasitical networking that lacks authenticity. Not value-driven, service-based networking that inspires genuinity and fosters personal growth.
Feel free to shoot me an email with your thoughts at sar@haribhakti.com