Connections, connections, connections. I'm sure you've heard it before, but I'll reiterate it – without connections, it doesn't matter how great you are at something; connections connect you to success. In the business world, connections are everything. The more connected you are and the more people you know, the larger your sphere of influence is.
In my line of work, sales, you have to know people and how to interact with them if you want to successfully close a deal. Knowing their name and having them know mine gets my foot in the door to their business so I can pitch my product to them, which brings up the first and most essential part of getting connected – learn the names of people around you and at least one thing about them.
It's amazing how effective this first task is to help you build connections between yourself and those in your community. I remember back in high school, walking into a public school with almost two-thousand students was daunting, with so many unfamiliar faces passing by me every hour and every day. It was then, in my freshman year, that I resolved to learn the name of every person in my school and have a piece of information to associate with each of those names.
Was it a simple task? Definitely not. In a way, I failed to complete that resolution; I'd learned a good number of names from the senior class, a few more in the junior class, the majority of the sophomore class, and almost all of the freshmen. But, as things go in high school, the seniors graduated and I wasn't able to learn more of their names, so instead I focused on the rising senior class. By the end of the next year, I knew the majority of the new senior class, almost all of the new junior class, all of my own class, and a good chunk of the new freshmen. This process continued throughout high school career until, during my senior year, I was able to identify every single student in my school and know something about every single one of them.
"But what was the point of doing that?"
In my final year of high school, I was president of two honor societies, vice president of two more, and the coordinator for community service for the student government body. I wasn't a particularly exceptional student – I was in the top ten percent of my class, sure, but there were so many more students who could've taken my positions in my extracurriculars. What gained me those positions was knowing every person in my class, making sure they knew me and appealing to them during the election processes. Without them, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to make positive change within my community. Without them, I wouldn't have had a place within my school.
Applying that same ideology to a larger scale, knowing people around you has the potential to bring massive success. Every one of us has our social circles, some larger than others, some overlapping, some more important than others. The most successful people I know are the ones who are the most connected to their communities – socially brilliant minds connect themselves to others on the road to success and reap the benefits from their efforts.
Knowing people, though, isn't all there is to this. Finding value in others is great, but if they don't find value in you, nothing will come from that connection.
"You give some, you take some."
By giving in a relationship with anybody, you create value for yourself. On the other side of that coin, if the other person has nothing to give, then the relationship is meaningless. When I say that, I don't mean in a materialistic or fiscal sense; some relationships are built upon reciprocal emotional support, helping one another, or simply camaraderie.
If you want to be successful, you have to be something or somebody. Basically, you have to have something to offer to your social circles, regardless of its significance. Without that, you're transparent within our vast society. In order to make the most of a connection, offer yourself to them in a way that benefits them; in turn, they'll offer what they can to you. Now keep doing that with others, and you'll expand your circles. Sooner or later, you'll find that a circle of people you know happen to also know members of another circle, and so your web of connections links together and further.
Simply put, making the most of the people you know begins with making value for yourself. Find others who've made value for themselves, too, and you'll build the strong and beneficial connections necessary to promote and launch yourself to success.
