Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

Building Your Professional Network the Non-Slimy Way

15 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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Cameron Herold argues that common perceptions of networking are tainted by "sleazy" practices like collecting business cards at conferences. He reframes networking as understanding others' needs, fears, and desires within your business community and helping them; that help then returns as reciprocity. Herold emphasizes relationship-building and service over transactional contact-collection.

Chapters

Networking is not the dirty word that we all think it is. The problem is that the networking that we grew up with is kind of sleazy and slimy. The networking that we grew up with, you kind of went to a hotel conference room, everyone wore their jackets and ties or their business attire, and your entire purpose was to rock around and collect as many business cards as you could and hand out as many business cards as you could. That's not networking. It doesn't work and kind of sucks. What networking really should be is actually getting to understand the needs and the fears and the desires of other people that are in your business community so you can connect with them and help them. And if you get to know other business people in your community or in your industry, or even other business people that are expanding your community or industry and you understand what their needs or desires are, you can help those people. They're in turn want to come back and help you. But if you go into it just to try to expand and to learn and to help others rather than collect more business cards, networking is not a bad thing at all.