Relationships Aren’t the Side Dish— They’re the Whole Buffet
The following is adapted from Content-Based Networking by James Carbary.
Life starts with, ends with, and revolves around, relationships.
Whatever you’re looking to achieve, someone out there has the tools, the know-how, and the connections to help you do it.
When it comes to our careers, we’ve all heard “your network is your net worth.” And it’s true. Whatever you’re looking to achieve, someone out there has the tools, the know-how, and the connections to help you do it. We can all probably agree with that. Every actor knows that Spielberg can put them in the perfect role. Every person trying to land their dream job with Google knows if they could just meet with someone high enough up the food chain, they could prove their worth and land the job.
We all agree that a relationship with the right “someone” could be our ticket to starring in the movies, our “in” with the hiring manager of our dream job, or the monetary investment we need to take our business to the next level.
The problem is that most of us don’t know how to create those relationships. We chalk them up to, “Being in the right place at the right time.” We sit back, wait for serendipity to run its course, and hope that great opportunities somehow fall into our laps.
We hope that we meet our next customer at the local chamber of commerce meeting. We hope that one of our LinkedIn connections can introduce us to someone with deep pockets that wants to help fund our nonprofit. We hope we know someone who works at the same company where we want to work, so they can move our resume to the top of the stack.
But, should we really live our lives waiting for that chance encounter to change our course?
Don’t get me wrong. I owe a lot to serendipity and hope. However, serendipity and hope aren’t things we can create on-demand. Chance encounters are strokes of good luck, blessings, and serendipity. These types of strategic relationships aren’t repeatable, and they’re based entirely on factors outside of our control.
Serendipity and hope aren’t things we can create on-demand.
Well, that’s what I thought before.
As it turns out, pivotal relationships are scalable. There is a process we can all follow to remove chance and insert intent. You actually can bypass serendipity and go straight to the CEO’s office or the investor’s table.
That’s why I wrote a book.
I’ve found a way to take chance out of the equation. I call it Content-Based Networking.
You can learn more about connecting with the right people in Content-Based Networking on Amazon.
James Carbary’s podcast, B2B Growth, has been downloaded over 3 million times and is a top-ranked podcast according to Forbes. James has interviewed world-class thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk and Simon Sinek, and has been a contributor for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider. When James isn’t writing a book or running his business, you can find him sipping Cherry Coke Zero, eating Red Vines licorice, and trying to figure out how he somehow convinced the most incredible woman on the planet to marry him.
