✦Career · 12 recordsBuild a professional network

Networking done at the point of need is asking strangers for favours. This builds the thing in advance and quietly — a list of people worth knowing, a reason to be in touch, and a habit of being useful first.

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Free on any plan. You will see this list again in the app, and nothing is created until you press install.

✦ Everything it creates

The whole plan, before you install it

Goal

Twenty people I am genuinely in touch with Month 6

Built before I need anything, which is the only time it works.

Write the list Week 4

Small enough to actually keep up with.

  • List twenty people worth staying in touch withDo firstDay 7
  • Note how I know each one and when we last spokeWeek 3
  • Reconnect with the three I have most let slideWeek 4

Be useful first Month 6

The whole mechanism, and it costs nothing.

  • Send three people something they would want to readDo firstWeek 6
  • Make one introduction between two of themMonth 3
  • Review the list and cut anybody it is pretending aboutMonth 6

Routines

  • Contact one personweekly
  • Note anything worth passing onweekly
✦ It comes with a note

Before you need it

Networking at the point of need is asking strangers for favours, which is why it feels awful. Built quietly in advance it is just staying in touch with people you like.\n\nTwenty is the number because it is small enough to be real. A list of two hundred is a spreadsheet, not a network.

✦ Questions

Build a professional network, answered.

Be useful before you need anything. Sending somebody a thing they would want to read costs nothing and is the entire mechanism; asking a stranger for a referral in the week you start looking is what people are actually recoiling from.
Twenty or so. Small enough that you can genuinely keep in touch, which is the only thing that makes it a network rather than a spreadsheet of names you once met.
Skip them. Most useful professional relationships come from working with somebody or from a sustained one-to-one thread, and this plan is built around those rather than around rooms full of lanyards.
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It takes one press. Everything it creates is tagged, so if it turns out not to suit you, it is easy to find and remove together.

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