Network Effects

On the way back from the event on Saturday I read George Mack’s ‘How to engineer luck’ article

One quote really struck me

‘Networks are unique because they don’t divide when you share them - they multiply. There’s no higher ROI on any other 30-second activity.

I think the thing I’m most proud of this year is connecting people

Making introductions to people who’d be great podcast guests, who’d run interesting webinars, would be decent business partners or just would share some good ideas

I know I probably still have amazing people in my network who would benefit from me introducing them to other people in my network, and they’d create something great

We all want to have a positive impact on the industry, and to use the All Blacks phrase ‘Leave the jersey in a better place’

That doesn’t have to be with our own work - sometimes it’s about connecting people who I know will do great work together, without me being involved at all, and that’s great.

I’m also not going to be naive and pretend this is solely altruistic work that benefits those people and not me - I know that these introductions will have ROI for me in the future, too.

How much? Which ones? When?

I have no idea, and I don’t really care.

The fitness industry has this obsession with making money yesterday, while businesses in every other industry are actively trying to futureproof their business for 5 years time.

I also come from an industry where everyone talks about ‘networking’, but that seems to only be ‘trying to get people higher up the food chain than you, into your network’, rather than helping people ‘lower’ than you.

My goal with networking is to avoid both of these things - to futureproof my business for the next few years, and to do my tiny bit to connect with great people and help them get a platform.

I would recommend that you do the same - it leads to some pretty cool results