I made the biggest mistake of my career when I lived in Chicago – I rarely networked. I went to maybe 1-2 events per year and made an occasional phone call. My excuse was that I was too busy for it. In retrospect, I cringe when I think about how many business opportunities and great talent I may have missed out on recruiting for my company, because I was too cooped-up in the office preventing “fires” and taking care of my people.
But I’ve changed my ways. Ever since I moved to Boston, I’ve made sure to partake in at least one networking event each week, and I have a much larger network now than I ever had in Chicago.
But as I network, I have noticed a huge problem for someone like me, who is more valuable for mid to late stage startups/SMBs – individuals, who need you and know how to value you, have been getting busier and busier in the last 3-4 quarters and now are too overwhelmed to network. This causes a catch-22: they need talented individuals to join their teams, so they can scale, but at the same time, in order to find those professionals, heavy networking is required.
I frequently find myself networking outside of my market “bull’s-eye”. Although I realize the time investment I have put into building relationships has a great long term payback, I still need to deal with the reality of building more relevant connections for the near term. However much I enjoy hanging out with the 1st time entrepreneurs, most don’t know what they don’t know enough yet to be able to value my knowledge and experience (see my article on why 1st time entrepreneurs don’t need consultants).
So what is the solution? I really don’t see having/attending more events solving the problem. If busy business leaders can’t get out of their offices, what is the point of having more events? But, we are blessed to have the Internet. I think the solution at this point is to “open source” and share your knowledge, and actively promote it, so it is easier for those business leaders to find you. Share what you know. Don’t worry about people “stealing” your ideas. It is all about execution and if you are really good at your craft, you have nothing to fear. For the more immediate term, concentrate your efforts in building a larger online footprint. It is time for us to pony up the money on a professional blog theme framework (Headway or Thesis can be had for about $87), stop using free poorly coded themes (especially if you can’t hack PHP or CSS), increase number of articles you write, and start contributing to other blogs. The market is saturated with snake-oil salesmen, fakers, and rookies. If you are a real seasoned pro, you need to bring up your volume. The right people know how to distinguish high quality and valuable content from “snake oil”, but first they need to be able to find you first.
Do you have suggestions? Please share them in the comments section.
Hi, my name is Apolinaras Sinkevicius, but most call me Apollo. I am the guy who takes care of the day-to-day business and technology of rapidly growing companies. 12 years in managing the "nuts and bolts" of companies and being a steward of corporate cultures makes me a seasoned operations professional and right hand person to founders and CEOs.
Nice post. I would have to agree here for us this is something we have begun doing not only to get an awareness out but also to help build those early adopters to shape our mvp. We find ourselves in a social web world so there’s no excuses.