Eric Siu explains why generic networking groups waste your time and how to build better ones. Start small dinners with carefully chosen people, rotate members, and decide together who stays. A few real collaborators matter more than a big loose network.
You shouldn't just try to join any group. And Neil's done a good job of filtering here because some groups I've been in in the past, some groups like to focus more on partying, for example, or some groups like to focus more on maybe talking about family, and that's totally fine. My focus right now is more on the business side. And when Neil joins these things, he's completely locked in on business. And so he doesn't want to hear about the other stuff for the most part.
No, I don't want to hear about your problems with your kid. I know that sounds really bad, but I'm paying for some business stuff. I want business value. I don't want to give feedback on marital problems and people complaining about their significant others.
Here's the thing, Even if you're listening to this right now, it's like, oh, I don't qualify for EO or YPO or Hampton or any of these groups. Even when I was 26, 27 years old, I would put together these small dinners even when I was like, I didn't have a lot of any money, right? I was broke, basically. I think the sooner you start to put these groups together, the better, because some of these people in these groups, like maybe only one or two might compound into building something really big. The rest, maybe not so much. If you're the leader of this group, you can kind of filter people in and out and you can rotate the groups, which is what I've done over the years. And it's not just an Eric decision. It's actually a group decision.
Yeah.
