This content was created by Tim Draper. This content was uploaded by Tim Draper. This is a YouTube talk titled "Heidi Roizen: Why Your Personal and Business Networks Are One and the Same | Draper University" (posted March 21, 2015). The excerpt is a single-speaker presentation by Heidi Roizen given to an entrepreneurial/audience at Draper University. She discusses career longevity, the need to continually reinvent skills and roles, skepticism about traditional pension/Social Security models, and the importance of building a business and personal network to create opportunities, support, and meaningful relationships.
Chapters
First thing I better explain to you is like why should you care? So this is why I think you should care. You're— well, I have good news and bad news for you guys. The good news is you're going to live a really long time, right? I mean, most of the people in this room are probably going to live past 100, just according to the way lifestyles and technology and medicine are going. So that's the good news. The bad news is you're pretty much going to have to work that whole time. Because the old models of the government paying for you or working somewhere and having a pension or whatever, I just don't believe in those things. I don't know about you guys, but I already figure that by the time I'm old enough to draw Social Security, which is actually not that long from now, they'll figure out a way to give it to somebody else. So I'm pretty much planning I'm going to have to work my whole life. And one thing I've already learned in my career, and I think that with the rapid pace of change accelerating, accelerating. I've had to reinvent myself many times, right? I've had different careers, I've had to learn different skills, I've had to change jobs, change companies, even change industries. And when you do that, something that's going to be really helpful to you in doing that is going to be a business network, a collection of people you are affiliated with that you are— that you've picked for various reasons that you can call upon to help you to make connections, It is still true to this day and I think it's going to be true for— I mean, I don't know how it's ever going to not be true that a lot of the opportunities that you get in your life come from the people that you know and not from filling out forms or applying somewhere as another faceless entry in somebody's database. So I really believe in that. And then the final reason that I think you should care about building a business network especially if you're going to be an entrepreneur, is the lines are very blurred between what's your business network and just what's your network network. Who are your friends? Who are the people you count on? Who are the people you go to for support and advice and all of that? And I think ultimately by building a network of people, you have a better life. You'll enjoy it more. You'll have more support. And I ultimately believe that actually if you talk about human happiness, happiness is about meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And to me, this is really about building meaningful relationships.
