Time Well Spent
Time.
Your, my, everybody’s most valuable asset.
It’s why you need to invest YOUR time before asking for someone else’s time (or their contacts and smarts).
For the past 3 weeks on Monday and Tuesday morning, I’ve been up, camera-ready and on Zoom for 5:15 am, talking networking with participants in the Bright Networks Internship Experience UK initiative. I should add, willingly and enthusiastically up to present at that hour. Why? Why give my time freely to this organization and these students? Because they are investing their time in their future careers. Because they are putting in the work — — everything these students had planned for this summer is in turmoil and they’ve adjusted, jumped in, taken control of what they can control: their knowledge and their networks.
As for me, I learn a lot from their enthusiastic posts on what they are learning. Like one this post — on how Google approaches sales:
I absolutely agree! Google’s approach to sales looks a LOT like how I think about networking which, if you’re a marketing/sales type of person, should cause you to reflect for a moment. The best sales people, like the best networkers build relationships to last. Not for one job or to meet that month’s sales targets, but for the long haul. This takes time (as the student notes) but isn’t investing in relationships, in other people, just as you would like others to invest in you, isn’t that time well spent?
As I see it, in the course of the same number of hours you could either spend your time investing in your career future or spend your time scrambling to make a single connection. One approach is a long-term investment, the other, fills in hours. Either way, you’re spending the same amount of time. So why not be smarter about the use of your time.
Is your online bio LOSING you client opportunities?
Last week on the #BYDN podcast — a challenge for those who have contorted their online bio to meet “industry standards” that they are now indistinguishable from their competitors….(i.e. corporate or marketing bios, especially in the spheres of consulting and professional services).
Take a listen to this episode of the Build Your Dream Network podcast — and don’t stress, it’s not an hour long podcast (it’s only12 minutes). You have 12 minutes to invest in improving your networking, don’t you?
My #BYDN networking ask! If you enjoyed this week’s podcast (or frankly any of the episodes of the Build Your Dream Network podcast that you’ve listened to), could you:
- Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
- Rate the podcast (5 stars please!) on iTunes/Apple Podcasts (and if you really feel like going crazy, write a review too!).
Subscribing, rating and writing reviews has a big impact, in terms of podcast discoverability by new listeners as well as promotion by podcast platforms. So thank you (in advance) for taking the time to listen to my podcast and for rating/reviewing it. Knowing I have your support truly makes the hustle and grind of creating/marketing/promoting a podcast a whole lot more enjoyable!
