Random musings

This is a continuation from something I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago.

Unfortunately my post was imported from Twitter and part of my comment was cut off. It should've said "I think this is an interesting article. Whether you like it or not, your success at work, in business or in life requires networking."

Here's the link to the original article on LinkedIn.

One of the comments posted after the article talked about how the economy would fail if everybody spent 90% of the time marketing and creating their brand and only 10% of the time working. However, I felt that he missed the point. If you're happy where you are in your job or business, you don't need to change anything. But if you want to advance at your job or grow your business, then you better be more strategic as to how you go about it.

Suppose that you have a job, but you feel it's time to move up to the next level. What do you do? According to the article, you should divide your effort between networking, building your personal brand and work.

Let's say that you decide to spend an extra 10 hours a week doing things to advance your career.

Hang out with your boss and his or her boss for 6 of those hours. Do things to help them with their work. Make your usefulness visible. But don't hang out with them just at the office, but go to the Friday afternoon after work "meeting" at the local pub, go to public events that they attend. Become a recognizable face in their world. However, I'm not recommending that you stalk them.

Spend the next 3 hours developing the look and feel that will allow you to fit in with your proposed peers. If you look and act like them, they'll be more comfortable with you as a peer. You don't have to copy them, but if they all wear Dockers and Polo shirts and you always wear jeans and a t-shirt, they won't see you as one of them.

And for your final hour you can do the additional work that shows that you're willing to go above and beyond.

Now suppose that you have a business, whether network marketing/direct sales or something a little more conventional. If you want to grow your business, you again need to put in the extra time and effort that it takes to grow it.

If you're working at a full time job and running a business on the side, or working your business full time, you need to network, brand and work.

You decide you're able to put in 20 hours per week to grow you business. How are you going to spend your time?

You need to spend about 12 hours a week going where your prospective clients/customers are, whether it's at a chamber mixer, a BNI or Successful Thinkers meeting, or a 1:1 meeting with a prospect - you need to get out and meet them.

Next, spend about 6 hours a week developing your personal brand. Are you going to be Walmart or Nordstrom? Also, you again want to make your customers feel at ease around you. If your prospects are CPAs, you don't want to dress like an auto mechanic or vice versa. Next week, I'll be writing more about branding yourself.

And the last 2 hours you can spend doing paperwork or self-motivation.

So remember…60% networking, 30% personal branding and only 10% doing additional work.

Let me know if you found this information helpful!