In this solo motivational talk, the speaker confesses that for a decade he deliberately avoided learning to network, convincing himself it wasn’t necessary. He describes the excuses he made—tiredness, discomfort, and avoidance of meeting new people—and how this avoidance limited his business growth. After finally embracing networking, he experienced a dramatic boost in his business, eventually becoming a global trainer of networking skills. He emphasizes the universal truth that people buy from those they know, like, and trust, and urges listeners to examine what skill they are currently dodging, arguing that confronting and mastering that skill is often the catalyst for taking a business to the next level.
Chapters
There's one specific skill that I didn't learn for over 10 years because I kept on telling myself that I did not need it. That skill was networking. I always said to myself, I don't need to go out and meet people. It's not the most important thing to me. And now, of course, I teach networking skills to so many people across the globe because it's the most important part in terms of growing a business because people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And I want you to think about this for yourself. I really dodged networking for the longest time. In fact, I still don't really enjoy doing networking, but I know how important it is to my business. And once I started to get good at it, I started to realize how powerful it was in taking my business to the next level. But I often would make excuses like, you know what, maybe tonight I'm just tired. I've had a long day. I don't feel like going out tonight. And then at other times I'd make up other excuses just so I didn't have to go networking and meet people for the first time because that was super uncomfortable for me. And guess what? It was the most important thing for me to do. And I dodged it for 10 freaking years. My question to you right now, what are you dodging? Because the thing you're dodging the most is probably the thing you need the most to take your business to the next level. So I'd go stand in front of that mirror right now and say, what are you dodging? Because when you take that skill, you go learn that skill, and you get yourself to the next level, that's often when your business changes the most.
