Networking gets a very bad reputation. It makes you think of, saying hello to strangers, shaking hands with people you don't even like but is it working still? Yeah [inaudible] No worries? I saw the producer do this. I'm starting over. Here we go. Perfect. Love that. Is that much better? Yeah, this is much better. Thank you. [inaudible] Yeah, no worries. I like this is much better. It's not doing anything for my hair problem, but we can't help that. Networking. Is it that boring and even a little bit awkward? Networking gets a very bad reputation, very bad rep. It makes you think of large conference rooms filled with people you don't know, and exchanging business cards, shaking hands and just generally what they sometimes call the United States schmoozing with other people. But it doesn't have to be that way and networking done well is different. This is a news article from the Washington Post and the last couple of years have been called "the Great Resignation" and there's a lot of things happening in the world where people are re-evaluating the work that they want to do and what they want to do with their time. I'd say, one reason you want to be thinking about networking in a more positive way is that we can't predict perfectly what opportunities are going to come our way. Even for myself teaching here at Emory even though I wanted to do that, it took a lot longer to find that right spot. Networking allows you to know the right people, get smart and be prepared for when opportunity comes. Humans as you might imagine, are very tribal and consulting cultures are also very tribal, and I mean that in a good way. There's downsides too, but I mean that in a good way. Number 1, we are hard-wired biologically to find people who are going to take care of us, support us, we can help them, and they help us. It's that theory of reciprocity and without talking too much more about it, I mean, there's a lot of obvious benefits that you might have. You know, about the good projects, you find out which partners are fun to work with, you find good people to give you feedback. As a professor, I won't be very good without getting feedback from students and other faculty members on what is working and what's not working. It's the idea of reciprocity and generosity. Don't think about networking as some painful thing that you have to do, that's cheesy, unfun, and unauthentic. Instead, think about it as creating a group of people. Surround yourself with smart and generous, experienced, ambitious people that want you be successful. The thing about it, just like making good friends. Here at the bottom, what you'll see is the leverage pyramid, you see the finders, the grinders and reminders. The title says that consulting is tribal because partners and senior managers are looking for analysts, consultants, senior consultants who do great work, who if they send them an email or call them on the phone, they're eager, they talk the same language, and they're able to work together very effectively. You might still be skeptical. You're like John, I really don't like networking. It makes me nervous. I'm more of an introvert. I'm going to tell you once again why networking really is necessary. Really quickly. One is you want to be solving difficult problems. We are paid to solve problems that the clients aren't solving themselves. Those problems typically are more than you can solve yourself. You need to depend on other people. Also, by networking, you are getting feedback about the market. I said this and they didn't understand what I was talking about. I said that in that very much resonated. Your ability to get feedback from potential buyers, your suppliers, different people you interact with is a wonderful thing. You'll find if you're like me and you've had multiple jobs in the past, your career has ups and downs which require pivots and those pivots, serendipity is a fancy word. It just basically means good fortune or luck. Finally, relationships take time. We talk about gaining relational equity and that's gained over time because you're doing great work, helping people out, giving favors, being useful to other people. The first step sounds super simple. Just introduce yourself in a way that makes sense. This could be on LinkedIn, when you're creating a connection. It could be just interacting with somebody in your workplace or at a conference, so a couple of things. The main thing I want to emphasize on this page, there's a lot of words and you don't have to read them all. The main one is be relevant. The opposite of relevant is probably random. We don't need more random people in our life. We have too many random people in our lives. We want to make sure that we're being relevant. When you reach out to people, provide them the context. Hi, my name is John. I teach at Emory University. I wanted to just reach out to you, spend 10 minutes either by phone to talk about A, B, and C. Maybe this will be useful to you too. It's always helpful to have a referral because we get so much spam in our email box that originally you see this and you start deleting them. Getting a recommendation, getting a referral, very useful. Also, be a little humble. When you're introducing yourself for the first time, you want to make sure that there's something in it for them and ask for help. There's no shame in asking for help. Some of the most effective interactions I've had sounded like this. "Hi, my name is John. I was referred to you by Bob. Bob said that you are expert in x, y, and z and I'm very eager to learn a little bit about that from you. I'm not going to waste your time. Maybe just a 15-minute phone call. Nothing for you to prepare and I'd like to just throw some questions your way." Non-threatening. It has context. The person receiving your email or LinkedIn invite or talking to you on the phone, they have a feeling that you're coming prepared, that you're respectful, you're a little bit humble, you're willing to work with. The last thing is also very important. Since you are asking them a favor by introducing yourself and coming in a little bit cold. You need to give them the opportunity to say no. Nobody wants to feel like they are a jerk because they said no to you. Give them the opportunity and make it okay to say no. You want to allow them to save face. At the end of the email or LinkedIn invite, you might say, "I realize you're really busy and if this is not a great time, I'd be more than happy maybe to reach out in about a month or so. Otherwise, here's my email address and my cell phone. Feel free to reach out to me at a time that's convenient for you." To recap a little bit, be relevant. Don't ask people for a phone call without an agenda, without any context. They're not going to be very responsive. They're going to treat your email like spam. So be relevant, make it worth their while, don't be too imposing, and also give them an opportunity to say no. You might ask, "John, that sounds like a lot of work?" I would say, "it is work." The default setting, most of us, we just want to hang out with the five people we already know. You don't want to meet new people. It's awkward to introduce yourself then I get that. In consulting, I would say though, you are going to be on different client projects. Some of those projects are only going to be six weeks long. During those six weeks, you need to make friends very quickly. Your ability to build rapport and it doesn't have to be super deep like best friends forever relationships, but your ability to build rapport, find a common ground, is super useful. Have a little curiosity. Build that curiosity muscle and you might say, I'm going to go meet this person and I wonder what their story is. I'm curious what their experience has been. I wonder how I might be able to help them. One way to do that is practice informational interviews. These are you reaching out to your college alumni or people in your loose network and introducing yourself perhaps through LinkedIn. Then if relevant and useful, getting on the phone with them for 15 minutes. Later, I'll tell you the cardinal rule; what you need to make sure that you do on an informational interview. Couple takeaways. Be curious. Networking doesn't have to be a boring or dirty or awkward or uncomfortable thing. Just think about it, you're making friends. It doesn't have to be a deep friendship, but you do need to be curious and your heart needs to be in the right place. The goal of it is to make other people successful, not just you. You creating relationships, and them wanting to help you, beautiful thing. For the blue ladders, for the internal consultants, the people who are inside of accompany, my request to you is look outside. If you're a marketing person, look outside of marketing, finance, operations, manufacturing, R&D, sales. Also, look outside of your company. You don't always stay in the same company forever, or even the same role. You having a diverse network is very useful to you. One question you might ask yourself is, how many other department VPs know your name and what you're really good at? If not a lot of people know you, that's a problem. For the red airplanes, which symbolizes the solo entrepreneur consultants, it's time for all of us, including me, John Kim, to treat it more like a business and less like a hobby. Need to get a little bit more serious about; who do we know? Who should we know? How do you reach out to those people and how do you add value? The biggest takeaway around networking is this, you want to develop relationships with people consistently and develop those relationships before you need them. Before you need a job, before you need a favor, before you need access to an analyst's report, before you need someone to fill out your survey, you want to be giving, giving, giving, be generous and network ahead of time.