A better approach to networking

Recently, I gave a talk at Product School on how to network (the right way). A handful of people who attended asked for the deck afterwards. I wanted to put it up here as well in hopes that it can be a catalyst for YOU to level up your networking skills too!

On the surface, networking seems like it should be straight forward and easy. But for way too long, I was thinking about it and doing it completely wrong.

Ultimately, I didn't have a strategy and because of that, I flopped around.

It wasn't until I started taking a Product Manager's approach (coming up with hypotheses, designing experiments, and documenting results) that I measured what worked and what did not.

I was often surprised about how counter-intuitive things can be. Here are three main lessons I've learned (often the hard way) about how to network:

1. Focus on making small and consistent investments into your network
2. Concentrate on quality and not quantity
3. Be interested, not interesting

I now understand that this is a lifelong journey and I'm excited about each and every step of the way.

By no means do I consider myself great at this. I'm certainly not a natural. But, I do believe everyone can get better at networking.

I also believe this skill is vitally important to get where you want to go in your career.

What I can tell you is that like any other skill, I've been consistently getting better the more I practice it. Slowly and methodically, I've developed a different mindset and approach, and with it, I'm seeing a very different set of outcomes.

Check out the presentation below to hear about some of my successes and colossal failures. After each story, I break down the lesson learned and give you a way to try it out for yourself.

I'm sure you have different approaches / tools / tips / techniques, so share it below! Let's work together and help each other get better at this.

(a big thank you goes out to Presentio.us for making it easy to overlay audio on top of the slides to create a much richer presentation)