Derek Coburn - Networking Is Not Working Stop Collecting Business Cards and Start Making Meaningful Connections

NETWORKING IS NOT WORKING

STOP COLLECTING BUSINESS CARDS AND START MAKING MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS

DEREK COBURN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ON MEETING A PRINCE

Im unemployable. At this stage in my life, Ive run a few companies and consulted with a lot of larger ones. Theres really no hope for me in ever asking for a real job ever again. You know, a grown-up job.

My business is 100% based on networks. If I didnt have a network of friends and colleagues out there doing amazing work, I wouldnt know how to make a living. I thrive because of this and only this. Like a shark swimming, if Im not moving, I will die. I exist purely because of the network.

For that reason, I have become very picky about networking: whether its books or events. Ive read many very bad books and been to thousands of bad events. Now I try to avoid them all. But then there is Derek Coburn.

Derek brought me to one of his events once. The differences were like night and day, like swimming and standing still:

The difference between a master networker and someone who knows how to swap business cards is this: more wins. Derek continues to deliver endless value. It is his #1 goal. You could say it is his only goal. I could keep going. He introduced me to his chiropractor/sports medicine friend Dr. Jay Greenstein, who helped me via Skype once (seventh win). See? I could just keep doing this.

Thats what you want. You want to learn how to network for life, for a thriving and endless relationship. This experience, this choice, this opportunity, is to become a prince of the city, the way Derek is in DC and beyond. The win is to become royalty and to have earned it.

This book, Networking Is Not Working , is an extension of everything Derek brings to his business relationships and to the world. It is filled with wins, with endless value, with lessons on networking for life.

My fear? That few people will dig in enough, will use the book the way its intended, will realize the heart parts of this book are more important than the technical details. Use this book. Thrive within its covers, and then practice it. Live it.

That way, youll network with me in a much more useful way, and Ill continue to swim. Seems like a fair deal. Agree?

CHRIS BROGAN

INTRODUCTION

It was 11:30 on a Thursday night. I had just returned home from my second networking event of the week and I was exhausted. Once again, I had invested more than five hours of my time without much to show for it. It would have been nice to crash into my bed at that moment, but that wasnt an option. I had several client emails to respond to.

It was 2008 and we were in the early stages of what would turn out to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. I owned a wealth management firm and my clients portfolios were at the mercy of the stock market, which would eventually go down by 40%. They needed me more than ever.

At the same time, I needed to bring on new clients to offset my declining revenue. My income was directly tied to the value of my clients portfolios. While we were doing better than most firms, losing 20%-30% of revenue definitely hurt, especially when I still had rent to pay, people to employ and mouths to feed. And those expenses didnt have the common courtesy to decline along with my revenue, which made writing checks that much more difficult.

At that point, I had built up a pretty good client base, which I mainly attribute to working 80 hours per week for 10 years. It was a long and draining process, particularly in the early years when I was a cold-calling machine. As my roster of clients expanded, however, I needed to find a more efficient way to meet new people.

Like most professionals, I thought the best way to grow my business was to network. And the primary way to do that was to attend networking events. Even though I viewed these events as a way to grow my client base, I was not expecting them to pay immediate dividends. I had a long-term approach. I wasnt under the illusion that I was instantly going to meet people whod say Oh my God! I came here because I wanted to meet a financial advisor. How do I give you all my money right this second?!

I did have the reasonable expectation, I thought, that I was going to meet and connect with other professionals in a meaningful way and, eventually, welcome some amazing new clients to my practice. Unfortunately, this was an expectation that rarely realized itself. Why wasnt everything in the books and all the advice I had ever heard on networking...working? I was constantly taking business cards and bouncing from client meetings to networking events. I was doing everything they talked about, and it wasnt like I was expecting to hold the world in my hands. What was I doing wrong?

It wasnt until I had to start devoting extra time to my clients, which left me with even less time to network, that I realized my approach had never been an effective one.

It turns out the odds of yielding rewarding, long-term professional relationships vs. the time I was allocating toward this goal were poor, at best. Worse, I couldnt keep this up without sacrificing time I would otherwise spend focusing on my existing clients; time I could ill-afford to lose.

The direness of my situation was a blessing in disguise. It forced me to revisit the over-arching goals I had for my business: to provide a great experience for my existing clients, while adding more of them to my practice. It became clear to me that if I wanted to do that, I needed to do something completely different. So, I started to identify more effective ways to accomplish my goals. I left no stone unturned, no avenue unexplored, no sacred cow un-slaughtered.

What follows is an outline of the unconventional networking strategies that emerged from this process. Collectively, these strategies grew my revenue by over 300% in just 18 months. Not surprisingly, large, traditional networking events were not part of this picture. The cornerstone of these strategies is something I call un-networking. I will lay out for you the steps I took to create this unique, counterintuitive version of a networking group for myself. Consisting of approximately 25 handpicked professionals, its limited, curated nature allowed me to facilitate valuable connections and create opportunities for the people in my network. Finally, I will show you how to turn the value you create for these group members into more ideal clients for your own business.