Richard Triggs on Using Community and Networking to Build a $1.2 Million Revenue Lifestyle Business

Richard Triggs is an executive search specialist who’s mastered and harnessed the power of networking to build a successful lifestyle business with a great content ecosystem at its core. In my conversation with him, Richard shared everything with me, from his highs and lows to his love of meditation. And in this article, I’m going to sharing a few highlights from the episode with you.

When Richard first joined the recruitment industry 14 years ago, it only took him three months to figure out how to be a success in his field: good communication. And while you’d think that would be a no-brainer in that type of work, you’d be surprised at how many professionals totally get it wrong. Richard had realised the importance of community and service, and decided to leverage this epiphany toward his own goals.

So, he started asking himself what steps he could take in order to get there. He immediately looked at LinkedIn as a great platform to reach out to a huge number of people and build powerful networks. Amazingly, virtually no recruiters had taken advantage of LinkedIn in a proactive way at the time, and so Richard saw his opportunity to separate himself from others in his industry.

Before long, Richard had built up over 14,000 connections — a database from which he could headhunt for his own clients. He also used the platform to create large groups of like-minded professionals. These online communities allowed members to usefully interact with each other, while giving Richard a platform to promote his own services and products for free.

This revelation only further encouraged Richard to become more prolific with his content and product ecosystem. He wrote and released a bestselling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market: How to Find and Win Your Next Senior Executive Role, and also now has a successful podcast, Arete Podcast.

All of these learnings were things that Richard came across along the way on his entrepreneurial journey. It was through a series of failed product launches that he realised the importance of niching; the KPI programme helped him understand the importance of pitch and output, and how to improve upon it; and his success versus his struggles have shown him how to balance out all of these things in order to live a happy and balanced life.

As Richard told me, he only got into business in the first place because he was sick and tired of being told what to do by useless bosses, but since then he’s grown to love it and has proven himself to be a talented entrepreneur. Everything he does — including his book and podcast — is of the highest quality. Launching yourself into those types of things takes real courage, and that’s clearly something that Richard’s got heaps of. I tip my hat off to him and his entire process, and can truly say he’s out there making a dent in the universe.

Blog by Glen Carlson