Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Staver. This is Mondays with Mike, a weekly video series where I answer questions from people just like you. Here’s this week’s question.
“How can I build and maintain a strong professional network?”
I’ll tell you what, I’m going to answer this question and I’m answering as much for me as anybody else because I’m not very good at it. I don’t really dig networking. I really don’t. I’m scared somebody’s going to mistake me for a people person, and I really don’t want that to happen.
So here’s how you do it. Make sure you’re adding value in some way. If you’re not adding value consistently, then the people around you will see you as a receiver and not a giver. So I find ways to build a strong professional network by making sure that I’m adding value in ways that the receiver defines. Value may be as simple as a phone call, maybe an article I’ve found. It may be something that I saw in a store that I thought they might like. It might be a picture that I send them. I build a professional network by adding value and then making sure that the value I add is the value that they determine as valuable.
The other thing is that I hang out with professionals where I want to build the network. I do a lot of work in the real estate space. I tend to be at real estate conferences. I tend to be around people who are real estate professionals, so that builds a relatively strong network.
It isn’t going to happen by accident, right? It’s a little bit like dating. You’re not going to get a date if you’re sitting in the house watching too many videos on how to get a date. You’ve got to get in the pool, get in the lab, and connect. So add value, be really focused on being where the network you do want to connect with IS and make sure that you do it regularly.
I hope that’s helpful.
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