Networking And Relationship Building Quotes

Success is not just about what you achieve, but also about how you impact others. Be a leader, inspire those around you, and leave a lasting legacy.

The internet and online communication is the window into your world - but real life, in person communication / connection is the door.

It is through the strength of what is genuine that meaningful connections build into relationships.

In the modern workplace, you gotta be a jack-of-all-trades. Mastering your career is all about being adaptable, versatile, and always learning.

Want to make waves in the business world? Then you gotta be bold, take risks, and always be ready to pivot.

The richest people in the world build networks and invest in people; everyone else looks for work and invests in survival.

They say that success is a journey, not a destination. But let's be real, the destination is pretty sweet - especially if it comes with a six-figure salary and a company car.

Don't just climb the corporate ladder, master it! And if anyone tries to push you off, show them who's boss and climb even higher.

Success is not just about hard work, it's about working smart. So, take a break from the grind and strategize like a pro.

They say that the first step to success is setting clear goals. Well, I've got plenty of goals - like finally getting that corner office with a view, and firing my most annoying colleague.

To achieve career mastery, you must first master yourself. Take the time to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and goals, and then chart a course for success.

If you want to achieve career mastery, then you need to be willing to put in the work. But don't worry, the view from the top is totally worth it.

If you're not driving business growth and profitability, then you might as well be a houseplant. So get out there and make some money, honey!

Professional development is important, but let's not forget about the most important kind of development - personal brand development. Because in the modern workplace, it's not what you know, it's who knows you.

The modern job market is like a game of musical chairs. You need to be the one with a chair when the music stops, or you're out of luck.

The workplace is like a battlefield, and you need to be a warrior to survive. So arm yourself with knowledge and fight for your place in the corporate world.

Building relationships is not about transactions—it’s about connections.

Effective listening is the single most powerful thing you can do to build and maintain a climate of trust and collaboration. Strong listening skills are the foundation for all solid relationships.

I think business networking is a complete waste of time. And I know there are people and companies popularizing this concept because it serves them and their business model well, but the reality is if you’re building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you. Trying to build business relationships well in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time. I have a much more comfortable philosophy: “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.

You only ever have three things: 1) your self, wellbeing and mindset 2) Your life network, resources and resourcefulness 3) Your reputation and goodwill. Treasure and tend the first. Value, support and build the second. And mindfully, wisely ensure that the third (your life current and savings account) is always in credit.

When we come from an authentic, genuine place in ourselves, our efforts to connect with people work to their fullest. Our relationships develop more easily and last longer, and we feel better about the people

It's good netiquette to empathize with others online. It builds strong internet relationships. NetworkEtiquette.net

To be a barbarian today is to draw your own perimeter and build social networks and reciprocal relationships that are not dictated or controlled by the Empire.

The depth of your network is more important than its length

Expertise and a goal are just your starting point. Networks are crucial because gaining access changes your outcome.

Authenticity is who you are--your honest reactions, your natural energy.

Being authentic will get you where you need and want to go, and it will be your path to building the most meaningful and enriching connections with others.

Sharing what is real about you is the key to building real relationships with others

Listening is a powerful building block: Continue improving your listening skills and your likability will naturally increase.

Authenticity comes from being true to the moment, in the moment.

...we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face. We are offered robots and a whole world of machine-mediated relationships on networked devices. As we instant-message, e-mail, text, and Twitter, technology redraws the boundaries between intimacy and solitude. We talk of getting “rid” of our e-mails, as though these notes are so much excess baggage. Teenagers avoid making telephone calls, fearful that they “reveal too much.” They would rather text than talk. Adults, too, choose keyboards over the human voice. It is more efficient, they say. Things that happen in “real time” take too much time. Tethered to technology, we are shaken when that world “unplugged” does not signify, does not satisfy. After an evening of avatar-to avatar talk in a networked game, we feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life and, in the next, curiously isolated, in tenuous complicity with strangers. We build a following on Facebook or MySpace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends. We recreate ourselves as online personae and give ourselves new bodies, homes, jobs, and romances. Yet, suddenly, in the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves. Sometimes people experience no sense of having communicated after hours of connection. And they report feelings of closeness when they are paying little attention. In all of this, there is a nagging question: Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

You can do something about abandonment. You can construct a stronger independent self, for instance, or build a broader network of meaningful relationships so your psychological well-being isn't wholly reliant upon one person. But you, as an individual, can't do much about the Canada goose.

Small talk is incredibly important when building new relationships and is necessary to do when networking, provided it is not small minded... Small talk helps to provide a bridge from saying "hello" to the substantive part of the conversation.

A COnNeCtworker is a networker who is always taking into account the needs of others. Approaching people with a service attitude to bring them value and build a relationship. Then when that person is looking for a reliable service provider in a particular industry, they will pick the COnNeCtworker.

At the base level, it is about making connections and building relationships, but if you take the letters from networker out of the word COnNeCtworker, you are left with 4 letters. C. O. N. C. Victor, we actually talked about this at Carina’s the other day with Sheila. C. O. N. C. stands for Considering Others’ Needs Continually.

The key to relationships is to build them before you need them. By reaching

Forget "six degrees of separation" today it's "six degrees of CONNECTION.

We are using social media and technology as a way to be noticed by others, and often seek validation through “likes,” “retweets,” etc.

What I do know about networking is this: It is an essential and continuous activity. You control the effort - but not the outcome. Networking is everywhere.

Your online presence needs to work in unison with your offline ambitions.

The term 'networking' is simply another way to think about how to start a relationship. Our relationships are our network.

You do not need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends you can be certain of

Dr. Lois Jolyon West was cleared at Top Secret for his work on MKULTRA. West's numerous connections to the mind control network illustrate how the network is maintained, not through any central conspiracy, but by an interlocking network of academic relationships, grants, conferences, and military appointments. Some doctors in the network were not funded directly by the CIA or military, but their work was of direct relevance to mind control, non-lethal weapons development, creation of controlled dissociation and the building of Manchurian Candidates.

But continuing to initiate conversations and be curious about people is fundamental to building valuable relationships, because curiosity creates connections—that is the law of curiosity.

Great leaders build trust from their team because the leader is willing to put his/her people “first.” Once the team believes that, they will put their leader, and the company, first as well.

In this day of strategic alliances and power networks, it’s literally impossible to build large-scale, long-lasting success without world-class relationship skills, including in social media.

Maybe the concept of friendship is already too colonized by liberalism and capitalism. Under neoliberalism, friendship is a banal affair of private preferences: we hang out, we share hobbies, we make small talk. We become friends with those who are already like us, and we keep each other comfortable rather than becoming different and more capable together. The algorithms of Facebook and other social networks guide us towards the refinement of our profiles, reducing friendship to the click of a button. This neoliberal friend is the alternative to hetero- and homonormative coupling: "just friends" implies a much weaker and insignificant bond than a lover could ever be. Under neoliberal friendship, we don't have each other's backs, and our lives aren't tangled up together. But these insipid tendencies do not mean that friendships are pointless, only that friendship is a terrain of struggle. Empire works to usher its subjects into flimsy relationships where nothing is at stake and to infuse intimacy with violence and domination.

the fundamental paradox of the tour of duty: acknowledging that the employee might leave is actually the best way to build trust, and thus develop the kind of relationship that convinces great people to stay.

Relationships compound. People reflect your behavior back to you. The more you help others, the more others want to help you. Being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.

You can do something about abandonment. You can construct a stronger independent self, for instance, or build a broader network of meaningful relationships so your psychological well-being isn’t wholly reliant upon one person. But you, as an individual, can’t do much against the Canada Goose.

Genuinely support people in ways you can. If you build great relationships and people get to like you for you, they will eventually promote what you do and would want to do business with you. The bottom line is that people love to do business with those they love and trust. Learn to understand people, your audience, their needs, and their real problem. If you are using a Facebook page or even your own profile, involve your friends in a fruitful discussion. Don’t just make a post and leave to expect likes and comments. Take time to leave a note for a friend, ask about their business and what interests them.

short term always leaves us in a place worse off than when we started. — To properly heal from addiction, we need a holistic approach. We need to create a life we don’t need to escape. We need to address the root causes that made us turn outside ourselves in the first place. This means getting our physical health back, finding a good therapist, ending or leaving abusive relationships, learning to reinhabit our bodies, changing our negative thought patterns, building support networks, finding meaning and connecting to something greater than ourselves, and so on. To break the cycle of addiction, we need to learn to deal with cravings, break old habits, and create new ones. To address all of this is an overwhelming task, but there is a sane, empowering, and balanced approach. But before we discuss how to implement solutions to the Two-Part Problem, we need to address one of the bigger issues that women and other historically oppressed folks need to consider, which is how patriarchal structures affect the root causes of addiction, how they dominate the recovery landscape, and what that means for how we experience recovery. If we are sick from sexism, homophobia, racism, classism, microaggressions, misogyny, ableism, American capitalism, and so on—and we are—then we need to understand how recovery frameworks that were never built with us in mind can actually work against us, further pathologizing characteristics, attributes, and behaviors that have been used to keep us out of our power for millennia. We need to examine what it means for us individually and collectively when a structure built by and for upper-class white men in the early twentieth century dominates the treatment landscape.

Building points of connectivity with others is a critical component of successful networking. Discovering links of commonality with others sharpens our receptivity to maintaining connections. Introverts’ ability to focus and ask well-formed questions means an innate ability to forge real connections. Conversations go deeper, catapulting relationships into a new dimension.

A network functions precisely because there’s recognition of mutual need. There’s an implicit understanding that investing time and energy in building personal relationships with the right people will pay dividends. The majority of “one percenters” are in that top stratum because they understand this dynamic—because, in fact, they themselves used the power of their network of contacts and friends to arrive at their present station.

People who create successful strategic relationships demonstrate 10 essential character traits:    1. Authentic. They are genuine, honest, and transparent. They are cognizant of (and willing to admit to) their strengths and weaknesses.    2. Trustworthy. They build relationships on mutual trust. They have a good reputation based on real results. They have integrity: their word is their bond. People must know, like, and trust you before sharing their valuable social capital.    3. Respectful. They are appreciative of the time and efforts of others. They treat subordinates with the same level of respect as they do supervisors.    4. Caring. They like to help others succeed. They’re a source of mutual support and encouragement. They pay attention to the feelings of others and have good hearts.    5. Listening. They ask good questions, and they are eager to learn about others—what’s important to them, what they’re working on, what they’re looking for, and what they need—so they can be of help.    6. Engaged. They are active participants in life. They are interesting and passionate about what they do. They are solution minded, and they have great “gut” instincts.    7. Patient. They recognize that relationships need to be cultivated over time. They invest time in maintaining their relationships with others.    8. Intelligent. They are intelligent in the help they offer. They pass along opportunities at every chance possible, and they make thoughtful, useful introductions. They’re not ego driven. They don’t criticize others or burn bridges in relationships.    9. Sociable. They are nice, likeable, and helpful. They enjoy being with people, and they are happy to connect with others from all walks of life, social strata, political persuasions, religions, and diverse backgrounds. They are sources of positive energy.   10. Connected. They are part of their own network of excellent strategic relationships.

Golf is the great conductor of life's symphony. Not in my lifetime have I seen anything with more ability to change the course of futures. It has the ability to build lasting relationships in a few short hours, promote executives, fund projects, build teams, break down barriers, and create an environment of deal-making, stress relief, and wellness. It's the one place where we willingly shut off our phones, turn away from distraction and become one with nature and ourselves. -Thank you for being a part of our symphony, Network & Golf

Asking why separates opportunity from a distracting time waste. When opportunities abound (meetups, Twitter chats, speed networking, reunions, summits, and seminars), how do you efficiently and quickly sort the productive from the less than productive? Here's the why filter I use: Is the opportunity aligned with my goal(s)? Will my participation add value to the other attendees and be valuable for me? Does the opportunity expand my network and/or strengthen existing relationships? What does my gut say? (Yes, I'm a big believer in trusting your gut.)

great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

Mingle • Be the connector—introduce people to each other who may not otherwise connect. • Be a conversation fire starter; point out what people have in common as you are introducing them. • Seek out the folks who may appear to be shy, or awkward, or wallflowers. Find ways to build trust and comfort. Engage them with a kind word to pull them out of their shell. • Arrive early and stay late; connect with people before and after your event. • Stretch beyond your comfort zone to speak with, sit with, and start conversations with people whom you do not know. • Offer to refill someone’s drink or clear their plate. • Encourage introductions: “There is someone whom I would love for you to meet . . .

No one is perfect, and I see ways in which each of the companies I’ve profiled could adjust and improve their social media initiatives. Then again, I’m well aware that there are things I could do to improve my own efforts. Sustaining relationships and leveraging social networks is challenging work. Yet the thing that strikes me about the individuals who are leading the companies and brands profiled in this book is their excitement. They work like animals, and the economy is still wobbly, but when they talk about their work, you get the definite sense that all they see are doors of opportunity flying open every day. It’s as though social media has given all its users an equal platform on which they can build not just their careers, but their dreams.

Social infrastructure is not "social capital" -- a concept commonly used to measure people's relationships and interpersonal networks -- but the physical conditions that determine whether social capital develops. When social infrastructure is robust, it fosters contact, mutual support, and collaboration among friends and neighbors; when degraded, it inhibits social activity, leaving families and individuals to fend for themselves. Social infrastructure is crucially important, because local, face-to-face interactions -- at the school, the playground, and the corner diner -- are the building blocks of all public life. People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures -- not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.

Here’s What I Believe about Good VCs Good VCs help entrepreneurs achieve their business goals by providing guidance, support, a network of relationships, and coaching. Good VCs recognize the limitations of what they can do as board members and outside advisors as a result of the informational asymmetry they have with respect to founders and other executives who live and breathe the company every day. Good VCs give advice in areas in which they have demonstrated expertise, and have the wisdom to avoid opining on topics for which they are not the appropriate experts. Good VCs appropriately balance their duties to the common shareholders with those they owe to their limited partners. Good VCs recognize that, ultimately, it is the entrepreneurs and the employees who build iconic companies, with hopefully a little bit of good advice and prodding sprinkled in along the way by their VC partners. If VCs remain good, they won’t become dinosaurs.

Ted and Rick. Ted graduates from university and starts his climb up the corporate ladder. Every day he works long hours. He spends Saturday on projects to try to get ahead. No time for sports, no time for relationships, and no money to save. Every month he reviews his goals to see how far he can climb the corporate ladder. Extra meetings, extra projects. Gradually, Ted begins his climb to the top. And after 18 short years, Ted has his chance. He could become the next new, semi-young, chief executive of the company. But the owner gives the chief executive job to his recently graduated grandson, who promptly fires Ted. Ted has lost 18 years of his life, his dignity, his hard effort, and is again unemployed. Ted’s friend, Rick, also leaves university, but takes an ordinary job. However, Rick does something different. In the evenings, after work, Rick starts his part-time network marketing business. Four years later, Rick fires his boss, and lives the rest of his life on the earnings of his network marketing business.

Louis and I worked on two projects. In the first we tried to formulate a gravitational theory based on the dynamics of interacting loops of quantized electric flux. We failed to formulate a string theory, and as a result we published none of this work, but it was to have very important consequences. In the second project we showed that a theory in which spacetime was discrete on small scales could solve many of the problems of quantum gravity. We did this by studying the implications of the hypothesis that the structure of spacetime was like a fractal at Planck scales. This overcame many of the difficulties of quantum gravity, by eliminating the infinities and making the theory finite. We realized during that work that one way of making such a fractal spacetime is to build it up from a network of interacting loops. Both collaborations with Louis Crane persuaded me that we should try to construct a theory of spacetime based on relationships among an evolving network of loops. The problem was, how should we go about this?

As social phenomena, languages are tied up in world of unequal power relations, gaining or losing status not based on technical linguistic grounds but on social judgement, biases, and stereotypes that are based on the status of their speakers. As such, we argue that white America's love-hate relationship with black modes of communication can only be interpreted within a framework that considers language a primary site of cultural contestation. It should be clear by now that it's about more than a mothafucka, right? Our analysis of Black Language forms that the dominant culture considers inflammatory, controversial, or stigmatized allows us to make several observations. First, building off what anthropologist and linguist Arthur Spears noted in his discussion of uncensored speech, Black verbal culture, like all cultures is "a complex network of predispositions, values, behaviors, expectations and routines." Language practices, in their varying sociocultural contexts, can only be understood if read within the full range of the community's speech activities, and that requires rigorous ethnographic search and analysis. Second the community's beliefs and ideas about language- it's language ideologies- should be the primary point of departure for investigation and interpretation.

forgot about my huge goal. I focused on what I could control: what I did every day. After a little experimentation and a lot of thought, I settled on a process. Because the Internet never sleeps, here’s what I did every day: Write a new post. Without fail. No excuses. Build relationships. I contacted three people who tweeted my posts that day, choosing the three who seemed most influential, the most noteworthy, the most “something” (even if that “something” was just “thoughtful comment”). Then I sent an e-mail—not a tweet—and said thanks. My goal was to make a genuine connection. Build my network. I contacted one person who might be a great source for a future post. I aimed high: CEOs, founders, entrepreneur-celebrities . . . people with instant credibility and engaged followings. Many didn’t respond. But some did. And some have become friends and appear in this book. Add three more items to my “list of great headlines.” Headlines make or break posts: A great post with a terrible headline will not get read. So I worked hard to learn what worked for other people—and to adapt their techniques for my own use. Evaluate recent results. I looked at page views. I looked at shares and likes and tweets. I tried to figure out what readers responded to, what readers cared about. Writing for a big audience has little to do with pleasing yourself and everything to do with pleasing an audience, and the only way to know what worked was to know the audience. Ignore my editor. I liked my editor. But I didn’t want her input because she knew only what worked for columnists who were read by a maximum of 300,000 people each month. My goal was to triple that, which meant I needed to do things differently. We occasionally disagreed, and early on I lost some of those battles. Once my numbers started to climb, I won a lot more often, until eventually I was able to do my own thing. Sounds simple, right? In a way it was, because I followed a self-reinforcing process:

These relationships are driven by much more than charisma or a good first impression. They are based on integrity and delivering on promises. They are based on genuine care for others. For some second chairs, building relationships is easy and natural; for others it is hard work, but for all it is essential.

Recognized as a way to build and maintain a network of mutually beneficial relationships, nonreproductive sex no longer requires special explanations. Homosexuality, for example, becomes far less confusing, in that it is, as E. O. Wilson has written, “above all a form of bonding…consistent with the greater part of heterosexual behavior as a device that cements relationships.

You can’t control the other person, and if you live your life trying to convince everyone to like you, you are going to burn out and really be challenged in all your relationships.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

this information without sharing it with me? This is all new information to me. I feel sandbagged.” To his relief and slight embarrassment, I pointed out that it was his own information. We had merely given it some analytical horsepower, in the spirit of broadened collaboration. After that, he became more trustful of the CNC, and a number of his senior leaders became major supporters of the center. Beyond this new trust and cooperation among federal agencies, the other new and innovative component of the linear strategy was the way we started dealing with our liaison partners in foreign intelligence agencies. Brian Bramson, a veteran CIA operations officer and Latin America hand, led the way here—and has never been fully recognized for this achievement. Traditionally, we tried to give liaison partners as little support and intelligence as we could get away with to stay in the game. We did not want to develop their skills to the point where they could jeopardize our other unilateral operations if they turned against us. I understood this reluctance, having seen trusted liaison partners become criminal liabilities. Nevertheless, when it came to attacking drug cartels at the CNC in the early 1990s, we made a decision to truly build up liaison capabilities and share with the locals even high-end resources—everything that could be used to damage the narcotic-trafficking networks. Our strategy was to use our liaison partners as a genuine force multiplier. Combining their on-the-ground knowledge, language abilities, and existing networks with our skills, training, and equipment, we went from minimal bilateral liaison to enhanced multilateral liaison. “The kind of information we were looking for had to be gathered in-country by our good liaison contacts that we trusted … liaison relationships were key,” Brian Bramson said.5 Soon we were building powerful and effective

To help you listen to the best of your ability remember that the word “LISTEN” rearranged is “SILENT.

If you want people to have a good time meeting you, you need to have a good time meeting them.

A Sales Professional To significantly increase sales, expand market share, and provide unparalleled levels of customer service to contribute to organizational growth and profit objectives Perform in-depth market analysis and create growth plans Lead generation, networking, and relationship building Demonstrate high-impact presentation and closing skills Assess client needs, and effectively overcome objections to sale Establish new territories and turn around underperforming ones Initiate new product/service launch Identify and capitalize on new and existing business opportunities Provide groundbreaking levels of customer service

networking” events. At almost every one of these events, it seems like the goal is to walk around and find people to trade business cards with, with the hope of meeting someone who can help you out in business and in exchange you can help that person out somehow. I generally try to avoid those types of events, and I rarely carry any business cards around with me. Instead, I really prefer to focus on just building relationships and getting to know people as just people, regardless of their position in the business world or even if they’re not from the business world. I believe that there’s something interesting about anyone and everyone—you just have to figure out what that something is. If anything, I’ve found that it’s more interesting to build relationships with people that are not in the business world because they almost always can offer

Don’t waste the opportunity your life has presented you with. You don’t get a do-over. There are no replays. Stop with the coulda, woulda, shouldas. It’s scary to try new things and fail. It’s hard to move through self-doubt and challenges when we feel like we are alone. But the truth is, the time for action is now. Stop accepting less than you deserve. Stop playing it safe, and start playing with courage, passion, vulnerability, love, perseverance, and a hunger for what’s next in life. There is no reason you can’t get whatever you want in your life. So go for it.

reading ebooks and print books, and is incredibly convenient (it can be done while driving, walking, or making coffee). Many of the most effective people learned to become world-class learners. Apply the power of proximity. Find role models. Befriend and learn from mentors. Make friends with people smarter than you and more successful in fields you are interested in. Build not just networks but genuine relationships; when you collaborate with these key people, you can lean on them when a need arises. Break away from consistent groupthink. Talk with and learn from people different from you. Be open to dialogue with acquaintances and even select strangers, as you may uncover interesting

It’s called relationship building, and it’s the foundation of great network marketing businesses.

EVERYTHING we accomplish is with or through other people.

We are living in an era where people have the worst communication and social skills ever.

the sum of your relationships and the ability to master your own psychology, which includes your thought patterns, mindsets, emotions, and habits, will equal the quality of your life experiences.

There is no such thing as a ‘self-made’ man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.” – George Burton Adams

With the rise of the Internet, technology, smartphones, and social media, an interesting—and alarming—shift has taken place in the last two decades. As a society, rather than becoming more capable of human connection, we have become more and more isolated from one another. Yet it’s relationships that are absolutely critical and essential to driving both professional and personal success.

By substituting social media and technology for real human connections, working remotely by ourselves, participating less in group activities and organizations, and living in a “rootless” world where people move from city to city often with very few connections, we’re eroding and losing touch with valuable communication, social, and human interaction skills. We are using social media and technology as a way to be noticed by others, and often seek validation through “likes,” “retweets,” etc. We are living in the online world more than the real world. A recent Harris Poll study found that Americans would rather give up sex than their smartphones.

People aren’t learning social, communication, or relationship skills in the education system. Instead they have to trust the school of hard knocks, their street smarts, a mentor/coach, or a book. Today, almost everyone is struggling and overwhelmed by how to put what they learn into action—how to find and develop new friends, business colleagues, and romantic relationships, and create a meaningful life. Many people are just giving up and feel hopeless and lost, and they disengage from the world around them or self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, prescriptions, etc. In this way, they create a cycle of failure in their relationships and enter new toxic relationships…over and over again.

Being connected with other people increases happiness and love, creates unlimited opportunities, and motivates us to create the life we really want. To become the best we can be, we need to enlist others to help us. And we need to help others get what they want in order for us to get what we want. We also need to introduce new people into our personal, social, and business lives on a regular basis. Every person can impact your life in a different way no matter who they are, where they are from, or what they do. By not doing this, we miss out on the chance to learn and absorb ideas and inspiration from unexpected sources.

To get something you’ve never had before, you must do something you’ve never done. Those new experiences open our eyes and minds to what we can change, and the limitless and extraordinary opportunities that lie ahead in life.

Ultimately, people with strong social capital become hubs linking groups and individuals and groups to other groups, and through that function, they can exert a significant amount of influence and power in society—locally and globally—and can uncover unlimited opportunities in any of area of life.

Anyone can be successful in this business if they want it badly enough. I was a teacher with no experience in sales or marketing and I had no idea who to bring this new business to, but I started talking to strangers anyway. I started building relationships. I started listening to people—truly listening to people and seeing what their needs were. Sometimes my product helped them, sometimes it didn’t—but I was always building new relationships with people.

Fredrickson shows18 that happiness increases our sense of belonging, allowing us to see things from others’ perspective and thereby more likely to make a positive difference in their lives. It dramatically increases our ability to build relationships and friendships. In turn, we feel more connected, more confident, and more supported by our growing networks. Our happiness also affects our colleagues’ productivity. Just as difficult co-workers can create a challenging atmosphere, people who are positive and supportive create an uplifting atmosphere.

I see professional advisors cold-call perfect strangers rather than do a call rotation for existing clients. I see advisors do prospecting seminars rather than a client advisory council or client appreciation event, and I see advisors run advertising campaigns rather than network with existing strategic allies and other professional influencers. “Spray and pray” marketing strategies are flawed on so many levels. Why, then, do so many advisors still attempt them? The reason for this is simple; nurturing existing relationships and other tried and true strategies can be boring and rarely results in instant gratification. Too many advisors want to find the next “new idea”, something with some “sizzle”, and, as a result, are continually searching for and dabbling with concepts that ultimately have minimal impact. It’s not unlike investing. How many times have you seen someone try to hit a home-run with a high-risk investment opportunity rather than stick with a methodical long-term approach? It’s not just money that compounds. As I’ve said before, discipline compounds, too. You have to be patient and let your efforts gather momentum. Too many advisors get themselves into the proverbial “Red Zone” and, rather than stick to the plan and see it through, they self-sabotage by abandoning the fundamentals and trying something new. Neglect also compounds. If we neglect our existing relationships it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be lured away and we’ll have to throw our own Hail Mary. Don’t deviate from your process. Identify the most fundamentally sound and proven trust-building activities, stick with them and tune out all the other noise. It’s much more effective to strengthen and nurture existing relationships over the long haul, rather than perpetually trying to start new ones. The prospecting treadmill is draining and you are building a business that is chaotic and unfocused. Relationships are proprietary and are a big part of the equity that you are building in your business.

Darcy Rezac defines networking as “discovering what you can do for someone else.” This generous attitude is the key to building the extensive, long-lasting, and trusting relationships that will make people believe what you have to say about your organization.

In Asia, influence is about relational systems of obligation—not power and control, but building social currency. You give people access to others based on your relationship, not necessarily on their performance. Should you later request help from them, they will of course try hard to help you. You reach out into your networks and create opportunities. Business and social are not seen as different; both are about helping people move forward in whatever they’re doing.

Survival of urban trees increases when saplings are embedded within the human social network. A tree planted by its human neighbors will live longer than one placed by an anonymous contractor. When a tree bears a tag naming it and listing its needs- water, mulch, loose soil, no litter- the probability of its survival jumps to nearly 100 percent. Psychological bonds to trees in cities are often fierce. In my experience of talking with people about trees, New Yorkers echo, in their own way, Amazonia Waorani. Relationships with trees are deep and personal. Outrage flares when the conversation turns to trees heedlessly damaged, whether a tree in a Manhattan street damaged by building construction or an Amazonian ceibo tree cut to make room for a road. These wounds are keenly felt by the people who live with the tree, people whose lives are wrapped into the tree’s own narrative. Trees, especially those who grow close to human homes, are portals to unselfed experience.

If you want to connect with people, you want do it just as a surprise. We call it ‘Planned Randomness.’” He takes his Planned Randomness very seriously. In fact, he reinvests 5 to 10 percent of his company’s profits back into his relationships.

Even though networks of friendships have expanded through digital outlets like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, the one thing that remains constant is that the strength of long-standing relationships depends on face-to-face contact. Seeing someone in person fosters a shared connection that you can’t get on social media. “Shares” and “likes” do not equate to the same positive shared human experiences, as face-to-face greetings, shared meals, or laughter.

In his networking book, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty, Harvey Mackay explains that if you want to build a business relationship with someone that’s worthwhile, you have to start it before you’re ready to make the deal.9

To properly heal from addiction, we need a holistic approach. We need to create a life we don’t need to escape. We need to address the root causes that made us turn outside ourselves in the first place. This means getting our physical health back, finding a good therapist, ending or leaving abusive relationships, learning to reinhabit our bodies, changing our negative thought patterns, building support networks, finding meaning and connecting to something greater than ourselves, and so on. To break the cycle of addiction, we need to learn to deal with cravings, break old habits, and create new ones.

I think business networking is a complete waste of time. And I know there are people and companies popularizing this concept because it serves them and their business model well, but the reality is if you’re building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you. Trying to build business relationships well in advance of doing business is a complete waste of time. I have a much more comfortable philosophy: “Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” [14]

Why wait passively for the next terrorist attack--or a nuclear missile launched by a rogue state, or a cyberattack emanating from China or from a group of disaffected Estonian teens-- when we could be eliminating the root causes of conflict by fostering economic development and good governance, building relationships, creating networks of agents and allies, collecting data, promoting "new narratives," or striking potential future enemies before they can develop the ability to harm us?