Network Like You Mean It: Who Do You Know?
Exercise: Who’s in Your Current Network?
This exercise is designed to help you bring to mind the people in your current network. When you think long enough about the people you’ve connected with throughout your life, you’ll realize that you’re in a much better position than you might have originally thought.
Your Immediate Network
This network includes people who would quickly answer or return a call, email, or text from you. For each type of person listed, name up to three people you would consider as part of your immediate network.
Customers of clients
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People from whom you buy products or services
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Coworkers
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Professional colleagues
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Friends and neighbors
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People in Your Secondary Network
Your secondary network includes people you connect with periodically. They might include people you went to school with, people you worked with at a previous job, friends from an old neighborhood, or people you met by chance and have found interests in common with. List up to five people in this category; beside each name, note how you met the person.
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People in Your Universal Network
If you had to create an Excel spreadsheet of everyone you know, how many people would be on it? Chances are it would be a much longer list than the names you just listed in your immediate and secondary networks. This long list of your universal network is something to go back to every few months, to see what has changed in your business life that warrants getting in touch. Say you have several medical industry contacts you haven’t worked with for years. Right now they could be part of your universal network. If you change jobs, however, and start working with medical products, these people would move to your secondary or immediate network. Your network is a living database that you need to nurture and maintain.
Networking Ladder
- Top rung: Your immediate network—people who connect via any form of communication from you right away
- Middle rung: Your secondary network—people who know who you are when you contact them
- Lower rung: Entire list of everyone you have ever known
Take-Away Reminders
Key exercise point: Check this list every three months to make sure you keep your network current. That way, you’ll always have a list of people to reach out to when you’re looking for a new opportunity or have something to help someone in your network.
Accountability: After each chapter, review and highlight the specific action steps you will take and how you will personally measure and monitor them.
In the Part 1 Appendix, you’ll find a strategic networking guide that will help you with your action plans.
- “Networking is the tool to open up doors. If you don’t network, then get used to looking at a closed door.”
- —Jeri Sedlar, writer and coach