I’d need to rebuild my entire brand, audience, and infrastructure — with no startup capital. So again, I turned to my network. Now I needed their help.
That didn’t come easy; asking for help has always made me feel needy and burdensome. But I came up with specific requests for specific people, and I was blown away by the response. Peers lent me their customer service and marketing staffs. Friends spread the word about my new show. I realized that asking for help is a profound, essential act of vulnerability. It made my relationships deeper and more meaningful. We were all in this together. And the results were amazing: With my network’s help, the new show quickly rose in the podcast charts. We now enjoy six million downloads per month, generating a seven-figure revenue.
The experience made me reflect on something an old colleague said. He described networking as “digging the well before you’re thirsty” — that is, constantly cultivating trust and loyalty with the people around you, with no immediate expectation of return. I’d done a version of this in my career, though never strategically. Now I understood its full value and decided to double down. – Jordan Harbinger
My network got me going when I went freelance
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I am sure that is because you took the time to cultivate those relationships…
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Yes. The biggest surprise was the Director of Social Services who gave me a contract for day a week consulting across the board in the department. Thank you, msw.
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Closed mouth don’t get fed
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That is my grandma’s very idiom, and has proven to be true time and time again 🙂
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Wise woman
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This is a great post, a lot to think about here, for me. This is something I’ll need to practice this year, asking for help – might make it a resolution and at least ask for help once a week and see what happens!
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That sounds like a wonderful resolution/goal, and remember no one gets in where all by themselves.
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