For example, every two weeks, I have lunch with a college friend and fellow entrepreneur who always keeps me grounded every quarter, I meet with another entrepreneur friend who is running a complex global business and who reminds me to think big.
SHRINKIT 2 PROFESSIONAL
Through professional speaking, business development on behalf of The Community Company, and mentoring aspiring young entrepreneurs through groups like Junior Achievement, I interact with tens of thousands of individuals every year, but there are only a handful of people and activities I make time for religiously. In other words, you need to be ruthlessly selective, because everyone in your core group also has an inner circle with which you will ultimately be connected, and those people will have an inner circle, and so on. That doesn’t mean that you should try to populate your inner circle with high-profile contacts whose shine will rub off on you it means seeking out, and nurturing relationships with good, smart people who, says Brustein “can help you to be a bigger and better version of yourself.” Networking events are Brustein’s lifeblood, but she often does a little relationship housekeeping, keeping in mind that “people are going to draw snap judgements of you” based on your inner circle. “It’s important to consider the five people who are in your inner circle, because they are going to deeply and profoundly influence you,” says Darrah Brustein, founder of Network Under 40. But your undiscerning generosity may be self-defeating: by giving your time to fifty people rather than, say, five, you are making far less of an impact in the world than the sheer volume of your network would have you think. You probably have a hard time saying no to people. And as a result, people you barely know are probably making demands on your time and, like a true mensch, you may be accommodating them. If you’re like most people, you have built your network haphazardly, connecting with anyone who will communicate with you. But networking doesn’t have to be so time-consuming. We’re all time-deprived it can be daunting to have to manage work, family, and the “spare” time we spend on the necessary evil we call networking.
And that core group should be a lot smaller than you think. Rather, it’s about surrounding yourself with a carefully curated group of people who you admire and respect and with whom you share common beliefs and values - people who will set the tone for the foundation of your larger network filled with people who provide value to one another. But in fact, being what we call a “superconnector” has nothing to do with supersizing your network. So it’s only natural for us to want to supersize our network of connections - both online and off - because the more people we know, the greater our chances of being exposed to opportunities that may lead to professional advancement, potential mentors, material success, and so on. We live in a time when “bigger is better” is the prevailing assumption when it comes to, well, just about anything. Carefully curate your most trusted, inner circle and you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable you’ll become to the larger community of people in the world who care about the same things you do. When it comes to networks, the bigger the better, right? Not necessarily.
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