The Power of Networking

What if I told you there was one sim­ple thing you could do every day that would save you thou­sands of dol­lars a year in expens­es and even have the poten­tial to make thou­sands more a year?

It’s so easy, lit­tle kids can do it!

I’m not refer­ring to poop­ing your pants (although if any­one has a side hus­tle of poop­ing their pants for $$$ I am mad impressed!) or cry­ing for a nap at 1 pm.

I’m refer­ring to the ulti­mate life hack of networking!

Inten­tion­al­ly and unin­ten­tion­al­ly net­work­ing with peo­ple has led to amaz­ing things hap­pen­ing in my life. I encour­age every­one to talk to peo­ple in their lives as you nev­er know what will hap­pen. I’ve saved a lot of mon­ey over the years and even got­ten a bet­ter job thanks to the pow­er of networking.

My Networking Skills and Results

I think every major thing that’s ever hap­pened in my life has been a result of net­work­ing. At age 17 I unin­ten­tion­al­ly net­worked with my fel­low Girl Scout coun­selors that led me to fig­ure out which uni­ver­si­ty I want­ed to go to.

I inten­tion­al­ly net­worked dur­ing my intern­ship to form a pos­i­tive impres­sion at the com­pa­ny to get hired back upon grad­u­a­tion. Like­wise, I also made a point to talk to the dean of my col­lege and form a good rela­tion­ship with him. He was beg­ging me to stay and get a grad­u­ate degree but when he could­n’t pay for it, gave me a glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tion and made me Depart­men­tal Schol­ar for our col­lege at grad­u­a­tion instead.

Good net­work­ing looks a lit­tle like suck­ing up, but it’s only suck­ing up if you do it too much and make it too obvi­ous. It’s called net­work­ing when you just pause and talk to some­one that you maybe would­n’t do otherwise.

I unin­ten­tion­al­ly net­worked at a class I attend­ed for work. I start­ed talk­ing to a guy over lunch and it turns out we both like know­ing use­less knowl­edge. He invit­ed me to be on his triv­ia team for an event the next week, so I went and had a fun time show­ing off my knowl­edge of baby ani­mal names. You nev­er know when know­ing what a baby goose is called will come in handy!

It did­n’t stop at hav­ing fun at triv­ia nights, though. Lat­er, when I moved back to town I was look­ing for a short-term rental to stay in until I found a house to buy. Instead of help­ing me find an apart­ment com­plex, he offered his base­ment to me for a few months. I got a nice place to stay for cheap and he got some help with the bills. A win-win for both of us!

Lit­tle did I know, blog­ging and pod­cast­ing are also net­work­ing. Sure, going to mee­tups and fun things like Camp FI and the Chau­tauqua is an obvi­ous form of net­work­ing but it goes fur­ther than that.

I am net­work­ing with each and every­one one of you, my read­ers and lis­ten­ers, every time I write a post or release a pod­cast episode. I did­n’t real­ize it at first because it’s only in one direc­tion (no, not the band).

How­ev­er, sev­er­al good things have come from read­ers reach­ing out. I found my new job in DC because some­one reached out to me and let me know they’d refer me to any open job in their com­pa­ny. Inter­nal refer­rals are awe­some and set you apart from the rest of the can­di­dates. Ear­li­er this year I went to a retreat in upstate New York and men­tioned I’d be stay­ing in the city the week­end after­ward. A read­er reached out to me and offered her couch for as many nights as I need­ed. She turned out to be one of the coolest peo­ple ever and we’ve stayed in touch since then. I saved a bit of mon­ey AND had a fab­u­lous time. Win-win again!

Last­ly, I men­tioned mov­ing here to DC and I got an email from a read­er offer­ing me to let me stay in their base­ment until I get to know the area bet­ter. I met them for din­ner when I was here last week and they decid­ed I was as I appeared online (aka a lit­tle quirky but not like ser­i­al killer lev­el weird). I am incred­i­bly grate­ful to have a nice place to stay while I set­tle in and fig­ure out what I want my life to look like here. Instead of hav­ing to find an apart­ment on Craigslist or Padmap­per, I can explore dif­fer­ent areas to see what works best for my per­son­al life and work loca­tion. I can take my time to find the best deals in the DC Room­mate Face­book group and find a place with a nice, clean, qui­et room­mate who loves cats. I also did­n’t have to move all my stuff with me at once since the room they offered is fur­nished. (oh — more net­work­ing: my stuff is at a friend’s house back home for the low price of a sur­prise Christ­mas present and a $20 hid­den under a plant in her din­ing room.)

Start Networking Today!

“But Gwen,” you say “I’m not good at talk­ing to peo­ple like you are.”

Here are words of wis­dom: Prac­tice makes per­fect! Ask cashiers how they’re doing. Crack a joke to some­one stand­ing behind you in line. Make a com­ment on some­thing hap­pen­ing to the per­son stand­ing by you. Ask a per­son in a class or on a beer league team some­thing about the clothes that they’re wearing.

Exam­ple: Some­one is wear­ing a Cam­bridge sweat­shirt. They either went to school there or they vis­it­ed for the day. Ask them about it! You can have a fun con­ver­sa­tion about life at Cam­bridge or have a good con­ver­sa­tion on trav­els and if they’ve been oth­er places. Notice the end goal isn’t to get some­thing from them — it’s about talk­ing to peo­ple and get­ting them to remem­ber you for lat­er if need be. Once the ice is bro­ken, you can ask them oth­er ques­tions and deep­en that connection.

Or they look at you like a weirdo and move to the next train car. Either or haha.

This world we live in is already dif­fi­cult enough as it is. Hav­ing a net­work of peo­ple who care about you and want you to suc­ceed makes deal­ing with every­day real­i­ties so much easier!

informer­cial voice start net­work­ing today!

Thanks for read­ing! How have you ben­e­fit­ted from net­work­ing? Sound off in the com­ments below!