Master the Art of Networking: Two Simple Lessons for Unmatched Personal and Professional Growth
I am currently doing a lot of different things at the same time.
I do marketing, content curation, content creation, film reviews, doing online courses, exploring different cultures, hosting workshops, and most importantly, I aim to disrupt edification.
However, all my tasks have one thing in common:
To be able to create content, I also have to process a decent amount of information and experiences.
So, as you can imagine, every week I have a set of new learnings.
And yesterday I suddenly had the idea of doing this kind of weekly learning posting.
In 2023, there will be 52 weeks; each week, I will share some learnings from that week.
Here it starts.
1. 10x Your Network in Just One Month: The Surprising Secret to Making Friends
In the last month, I have interacted with people from different countries and races on different occasions. Thanks to #Internations
The biggest lesson I learned from these meetings was that you can make more friends in just one month by becoming more interested in other people and curious to know their stories than you can in your whole life by trying to get other people interested in you and making them curious to know your stories.
When I met an Australian marketer, I was really curious to know more about him; at the same time, when I meet an Indian, I don’t have the same curiosity. When you are genuinely interested, it will be visible on your face and in your actions, and your friend will understand this vibe, which will help them open up more to you. The more they open up to you, the more they get closer to you.
Try this next time: Just be interested in what they are saying, be patient and wait for their answers, and don’t think about your experiences or what you need to say after they speak. Just listen.
But I know it’s difficult because our human brain is like a starving monkey; it needs something to fill in the gaps, so just observe which words they are usually repeating and which actions they use while telling about a situation.
Trust me, soon you will be a good friend of many.
2. Why Focusing on the ‘Why’ Will Help You Stand Out in a Crowded Market
My next learning is from ” Start With Why, by Simon Sinek”
As a marketer, your task is not selling what your team does but rather why your team does it.
Remember even before Apple, ‘Creative’ made better portable mp3 players aka iPod.
Why did ‘Creative’ flop and Apple knock it out of the park?
“ We make great MP3 players. They are beautifully designed, simple
to use and user friendly. Wanna buy one? “
This is how Creative shared their idea. “What” and “How” are answered but they missed the “Why” and Steve Jobs filled it by saying “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo”
This lesson resonated with me as I have found that when I focus on the “why” behind what I do, rather than just the “what” and “how,” it helps me to attract a community of people who are aligned with my vision.
While taking classes, I used to offer a free one-month course for many students, not to show what we do but rather to let them know why we were doing this.
When I offer a free demo class, it shows how our classrooms are different or what we do in the classroom, but they will never understand “why we are doing it.”
We require a community that shares our vision. Let your customers understand your vision rather than your services.
It helped us every time; all those students who picked up this offer enrolled for the full course.
They realise that we are doing this to make them independent and liberate them from the clutches of coaches.
So, that’s it. I will limit last week’s learning to these two. I hope you found these lessons as valuable as I did, and I’m looking forward to continuing to share my weekly learnings with you. Let’s connect and continue to learn and grow together!
Live.Learn.Liberate
