Networking & life-style. Why you should change approach from now (part I)

Many of you already know me and my "bad" habits, when I want to explain, or even "to push in you" how you should behave in doing business nowadays. Because the world is not like it was 20 years ago, and is changing again these days, so you need to stay quite good updated, or you are simply out. Ask yourself, how many bad habits you have in life, how much you are doing worse than before. Now, you will not believe this, but I can see how you are doing just observing when you are online, send an e-mail, answer on chat, post an article, or comment, or not write at all. Yes, correct, in this article I will bother you with networking issues...

In this article I will talk about:

• the bad influence of wrong people
• what is really networking
• network as a challenge
• old e-mail system is finito
• you are gonna be damaged if you use networking just little bit
• why I run discussion groups
• what I have discovered as networking moderator (online case, part I)
• LinkedIn groups real useful for doing networking?
• conclusions

The bad influence of wrong people and business partners as root of your (cold) illness

Before starting let me introduce some background about the surround and how it influences you. I have been quite deeply in social stuffs exactly for half of my life, dealing with people offline and online. I can learn if I do watch things happens, analyze and listen to you. My feel, you are too much influenced by wrong people, social-ignorant with master, certified people with negative attitude (so called half-empty glass people). Or you are surrounded by the ones who do not believe in anything in life, or the other bigotry, fundamentalist of big books, who believes too much instead and requires you to be bigotry too. Or still, some people got elected and went to the parliament just to tell you later "hey you, you must work harder, target more revenues, and pay more tax otherwise the refugees are more welcome than you" (...) So people who have never really passed the test in history at school, but they were very good in their city district in distributing propaganda fliers full of written-enrichment like "hey let′s open all the borders", they tell you that you are not good because you must be nice and welcome anybody. It′s just an example. There are many kind of new moralist around. No worries, I will not explain networking screaming like that. Do not take seriously the above mentioned example, I′m not going into politic, however also politic surround and screaming people influence you . I will not convince you to get down all the borders of the world, all your protection and safety belief, and your own opinion. I will respect you. Just remind, even the ones who want to make a brain washing in your head for open borders or something like that, at the end of the day lock their home door, three times before going to bed, and the day after search for a new model of alarm....ah.

There are many professionals in this world, maybe your collegues, associates in office, moved just by interest or because they like to be noisy and annoy you with stories, driven by ego of (selfish) freedom. You listen them because you are tolerant, because you found written, in the book of your favorite mentor, that you need to "listen" in life. That′s great but, sometimes, you can get well just by stop listening anybody, even stop listening the shaman of your industry, and start making instead, at least for a while. It′s maybe time to change partners? You may need to refresh your companies, if you see they are not inspiring you to do for example healthy networking or absorb all your time.

What is really networking, you must know

Well, from the wikipedia point of view the explanation is little bit limited:

Networking means the process of meeting new people in a business or social context using computer networks

It sounds so, you are playing a video game and meeting people like dating. But in the reality is something extremely important for your business life, career, present and future, at work. So here my definition of it

Networking is the multi-dimensional space (3D or more) where you perform yourself as a communicative professional to engage others into your stuffs. It is no matter you sell a virtual service, you build houses, you resell cars. It challenges you anyway in the online world as well in the offline, because the effects of the networking normally change your "offline" outdoor life. You get a deal, or you meet an agreement, or you join next conference, and this may change your life from tomorrow.

Many of my people, I have seen, believe skeptic that networking is something related to the digital world only. Wikipedia is also not complete. So, Peter told me, "Daniel, I′m a maker, without tipping characters on a keyboard, I don′t need to be social on social medias".

I answered so... "Peter last month you joined an event you casually saw on internet, and when you came back to office you told me that the event opened your eyes and changed your minds, you got an amazing new idea for your business. You said, after the event you had a successful chat with one of the person you met, and you are gonna do something soon. Peter, I think you made a very good networking first online, after offline. What about improving this ability? And why not writing an article about that happen?"

Networking does not mean writing an e-mail. In fact you do networking before, during and after "internet", when you are in that location and meet others. They do not know that they are doing networking, but they are really doing that and they are gonna continue that process later, again and again.

So, it is now clear that a "networker" is not a computer freak, addicted to a keyboard, but a professional able to talk and listen, able to make a bridge of communication, negotiate, generate win-win or make new business partners for a new venture. Network is the world like always, based on a global diplomacy. The growing digital world just support all this and add many fast highways going everywhere up to the sky.

Network as a challenge

If you miss to challenge yourself in networking, it is because 3 reasons, or more, you need to fix:

A) you are afraid, not feeling confident enough to use your language or another foreign;

B) you got an empire from your family and you prefer to enjoy that capital spending all your time on vacation;

C) you made an empire because you are self-made, you are great and smart, you tried to do networking using for example social medias, and you had no results; so since you are strongly successful in business with your "goal-oriented" attitude, you think you want to target something able to generate money faster, simply too fast.

Please allow me to shoot a feedback about A) Stop believing that other are much better than you. No, you are not stupid, believe me. Take it as an exercise for keeping the brain on B) You are so lucky that you have stopped your personal growing, so you don′t become a senior, nor a mentor, nor a guru for somebody. So it will happen that when you talk, people will just not listen to you really; C) You are too smart, too intelligent, and above all too fast in judging; please admit you were doing networking not caring about the rules, too skeptic, not using any tool because you were too confident, so you made little mistake by your own, and then convinced yourself that networking does not work just to feel excused.

Look, tell me, where and when we challenge our self? Well, exactly we do when we move into the crowd and express things, ideas or present our initiatives, Right, when you do networking!

Old E-Mail system is "finito", better you start using other ways before anti-age medicine

They asked me again, "Daniel, did you get my message, I sent an attachment". Oh man, seriously! Maybe your situation is not so different from mine: I have no time, neither to read all, nor to say if I got it. I daily receive around 80 e-mails of spam, 10 of scam, 2 of phishing, 20 partners feedbacks, 40 notifications (50% maybe to check little better more carefully). I cannot longer see the future in the e-mail messaging like it is nowadays. Can you? Mails are too formal for these times, absorb too much energy, too cold, too much format necessary, cheering all the time, rewriting always the same things like a robot, and still spam issues, attachment size issues, or boring to read, all the same, either they ask money or they ask help for no money.

The other bad thing is that when you write an e-mail and send, you are never sure whether the other side got your message or not, right? Filter issue, tech issues, etc. You don′t want to check daily your spam folder and rubbish to search missed mails. Imagine, how you can invest time all your life feeling in need of putting your nose periodically in the "trash bin" under your desk, moving old banana peels and gums to check missing docs?? Kidding me?? So, the times for old e-mail style for doing business, like for the paper fax, has gone. Isn′t better to understand this before visiting the family doctor and ask medicine, correct?

You are gonna be damaged if you use networking just a little bit

Keeping accounts on various social medias, without any activities for years, can damage your work, reputation, life, and ... even marriage. You wanted to make networking in internet, so time ago, maybe 9 years ago, you created profiles everywhere, because you wanted to be updated, following fashion. But it was still too early or you were just not ready to talk, so you left the field, missed the battle. I see your last post, "Hello we are now on Twitter too, selling the best product of the world". Your post reports date of 12nd February 2012. Ohoh, 6 years ago! I believe now, whether your product still exist or is really valuable, or you are sitting on a roller-chair cannot use the finger even, poor you, or your business crashed in between, or you just passed away. So shall we forget to follow your account because you don′t exist?

Do remind the principle:

you want to talk about valuable things; when you don′t, is just because you feel your stuff is not valuable enough. That′s the marketing message you are sending on network.

Ah, ok, you say, if you talk, then you risk too much? Well, then you are not thinking like an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship means you risk everyday something. So, in this case it is better you just remove yourself, delete the accounts, go back finally coherently convinced to the old-system, and.....let′s restart fax business and paper again he?

Why, I run and moderate 14.000 members groups on LinkedIn

There are many ways to do networking. One of these is going into digital forum, blogs, social business platforms, just sitting in office. From one side to the other side of the world, that′s the power of internet. I made some networking groups for passion and chosen LinkedIn for professional discussing. I actually did not want to put me in the middle as a leader. I wanted to motivate the others, share my initiatives, let other share theirs, and of course I also wanted to get some deals from the crowd. I liked the idea to manage the crowd. Because on LinkedIn we are presenting our figure and stuffs seriously, not anonymous, not for fun. You can see their CVs. Ok, there are many fake accounts, but no matter, most are accounts like you and me. LinkedIn did not convince me 10 years ago but I changed opinion, because "networking world" changed. I have honestly gained new money even from the digital networking, and first of all found new great people since I started understanding networking rules. I love complaining every month for something with LinkedIn: I discuss with LinkedIn team about their bugs and I protest when they do not fix the bugs. Platform is tragically not perfect. But honestly, LinkedIn made something great with this platform, and you can use it nowadays successfully.... if you open the eyes. Bad it is not.

What I have discovered during 5 years of networking on LinkedIn on groups. The "online" case, part I (part II another time, when I will talk of networking in conferences)

Mostly a dominant ego-centrism, that′s what I have found. I′m sorry gonna tell you bad news: you are selfish. Your product is better than the others, you get angry if the others do not cheer you with fireworks in the sky, like you always wanted. But, look, on the other hand you never cheer the other′s initiatives, you just read (in a hurry) or listen silent. You are egocentric: you believe that your article, speech, message or title represents the highest expression of human business culture and you are a guru. You know, you are not really ready to listen the other′s opinion.

I have seen many posts or article really bad written. Also I have watched videos of people in "self-interview" who uses the media just to show the new shirt maybe. I do send sometimes tips when you write in such ways. Usually I give a tip to CEOs with good CV, so quite powerful type of networkers. When I do it, it is not for blaming you but for helping you. I get this kind of answers: "sorry Daniel Ok I will go away from the group, didn′t want to bother" Oh! ego hurt, so much! such a pain! that they run away crying, driving their Ferrari.

I forgot something? Ok for sure you know that a common category of professionals is the one of the "shy". You are shy, I′m shy, we are sky and we think, we want to observe the others talk, we skip talking so. But the others expect the same from you. So here the funny result: I have since years thousands of members, in LinkedIn as well as outside in our community, who really like their business LinkedIn profile: they update it continuously, they receive and send messages on time, they receive newsletters, notifications, from us, and yes somehow they like feeling part of all this, so they are not zombies at all, not a fake. But.... they don′t talk! Yes, you have understood, they do not talk! Humans who are pretending to be zombies. When they talk, they just make copy/paste of an article they found nice in some news. You know, I even don′t permit this, because you should send at least articles self-written otherwise related to the discussion topic. So what you want to do really? you want to talk of your potatoes when I made that group for you to talk about carrots? And on the carrots group, I made for you, you stay silent for years and one day you wake up and write "I have the best product of the world to sell, I search for distributors" but N.B. you did not mention at all that you are talking about your carrots, maybe thinking the others will understand what you are talking about?? Where′s the keyword? You do such mistake because you are shy, so you decide to write in hurry up to avoid feeling the embarrass, then you use the words of others forgetting the magic keyword to attract audience to your stuff. Result: article moderated, no published, sorry. You were targeting quality. Well, the other target the same. Please do not believe that somebody is against you or that networking is not working fine for you. It is just a little rule, etiquette, net-etiquette you need to experience to generate a new version of you: 2.0, 3.0, 3.5...

So, what? you are finally back to the phone, proud of your communication skills, and call a distributor asking "why are not selling my product, we are the number one in the market!" And they answer you, "hello I′m the bakery, you are ordering bread or what?" Ohi, you see, too much hurry up and you have chosen the wrong audience to listen to you, once again.

LinkedIn groups is really good for doing networking?

Well, considering that we ALL are what we are, and when we are adult we rarely change or improve skills fast, then it might be a good life training as well, not only for doing business, when we participate or contribute in business forums, online, offline, events, conferences, as well as when we actively do something on LinkedIn groups. But it works only if you are on and stay tuned. However, there is a lot of technical and strategic limits on LinkedIn-groups and these make members bored, and moderators tired. LinkedIn is at the moment not investing resource on development of the groups because, probably (there are many reasons I will explain you next time) because you are using them not correctly, or abusing them or spamming, or not following rules, and you are still back in understanding the modern networking, so LinkedIn is postponing the matter. I will write next article about that, everything you know and do not know about LinkedIn groups and development of discussions in the biggest business platform of the world!

Conclusions

I could write still longer about networking, but I cannot bother you for so long. You are busy and need to go and me too. I will continue another time with another article about networking rules and net-etiquette, when I find the time, and if you like. Please leave a comment on this article, I′m curios about you.

Do remind for now the key concept: Networking is a new fundamental life-style and business attitude that means working together, so no matter if online or offline, we all do our best to talk to each other, collaborate and build a new world.

And we need good networking and social one. It is improving the world and the communications. Do not miss the chance to contribute, do not miss to live entirely your life, do not wait for the next. You know, you cannot longer use the phone to talk and listen anybody, getting a cancer in head later maybe. Train your fingers, might be good alternative.

Networking means sitting too long on a chair, and it′s not for you as you are active person? Super, then write, chat or send effective things shortly and effectively, then you will go for a walk somewhere, maybe to next conference, or with a new associate, because you have been invited, you have a new business friend. Otherwise you have to invent your own conference and inform the others that you have just created it. Do not feel discouraged when they do not join your event....maybe you just forgot to invite them.

-----------------------------------

The author Daniel Janetschek, since 2000 managing partner of Janetschek & Partners works as entrepreneur, advisor, negotiator, moderator and business angel, founder of the trading community B2BALTIC.org and Television, active development hub for Nordic-Baltic area, promoting innovation & smart-cities since 2014. DJ also run the LinkedIn group under the same name and many other topic groups.