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MODULE EIGHT : TOPIC 2

BEYOND NETWORKING

Transcript

Converting Your
Networking into
Opportunities

TRANSCRIPT
MODULE EIGHT : TOPIC 2 [Link] BEYOND NETWORKING
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Converting Your Networking

into Opportunities

Back in 2011, I planned a trip I had been dreaming about for years. After
traveling through some of the craziest places in the world, I decided I had to
visit the strangest one I could think of: North Korea.

So I invited 10 of my adventure-junky friends, including writer Neil Strauss,

several of our AOC alumni, and Gabriel Mizrahi, a writer who would later
join the AOC team. For seven days, we took a bus all over the country, and
became some of the first Westerners to explore the world’s most secretive
country. The whole trip was like summer camp, except in a totalitarian
regime. During the day we absorbed the history of the country, and at night
we bonded over North Korean beer and stories in the bar of our Pyongyang
hotel. Halfway through the trip, we recorded the first podcast from inside
North Korea, which you can check out in our podcast feed.

When we got home, Gabriel and I had a ton of amazing photos and stories
from our trip. On a whim, we created a blog, and posted a few articles along
with our photos. A few days later, we got over our jet lag and went back to
real life.

Then, something amazing happened.

People started reading the blog -- a lot of people. Outlets like The Huffington
Post and the BBC started booking us for interviews about North Korea. Our
blog posts started getting syndicated. Readers started asking us how they
could travel to North Korea and have the experience we did. So we started
sharing travel tips, sending out a newsletter with information about North
Korea, and making introductions to our travel agency on the ground. Without
thinking too much about it, we started converting our experience into social
capital.

Fast-forward four years. That blog is now a full-fledged travel company that
connects people with safe, interesting trips to North Korea. The business runs
itself and continues to build our brands in the adventure-travel space, and we’re

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now talking to a few companies interested in buying the site.

In 2011, I had absolutely no plans to start another company. I had no idea

that Gabriel would become my business partner. I definitely didn’t think
there was money to be made in trips to North Korea.

So how did something so valuable happen out of thin air?

In Module 4, we talked about the concept of seeing the world as people. If you
train yourself to see the Matrix, then you can maximize your goals, projects
and experiences by turning them into human relationships.

But here’s where the Matrix gets really fun.

Just as opportunities can be converted into people, the people you

know can be converted into opportunities.
If you build your network the right way, it can become a constant source of
new products, companies, experiences, ideas and productivity -- whether it’s
a book, a vacation, a startup, or a travel company that focuses on North Korea.
We’ll be returning to the North Korea story throughout this topic, because it’s
a great case study in relationship-driven opportunity.

Mining your network for new opportunities, just like all social capital, is a
combination of random chance and conscious effort. But if you peel back
the layers on how those opportunities actually unfold, you’ll discover a common
framework. That’s what this lesson is about: creating opportunities in your
network, and converting your relationships into opportunities.

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Before we dive in, let’s make a quick clarification.

When we talk about “converting” your “network” into “opportunities,” you

might be thinking: Wait a second, isn’t that pretty transactional? You’re right: If
you go about mining opportunities in your network that linearly, it will be.

Our goal here isn’t to meet people, build relationships, then take a step back
and ask: So how can I turn all these people in valuable opportunities? As you now
know, that’s exactly the kind of networking that we’ve been teaching against.

We’re doing something different here. Rather than squeezing opportunities out
of your network, you want to be able to discover and create those opportunities
as they develop organically in your relationships. If you invest your social
capital using the principles of this course, then those opportunities will already
be forming before you even realize it. Once you do realize it, that’s when you
strategically invest more social capital to bring those opportunities to life.

So let’s break down the process for creating opportunities from

your network.
The North Korea venture started as a simple experience: A trip with 10
friends to a fascinating country. That’s it. There were no additional expectations
imposed on the trip. Our only goal was to create an interesting trip, learn about
an unusual place, and have a ton of fun with other curious people.

Every piece of social capital that came out of that trip -- the friendships, the
blog posts, the interviews, the bonds we created with one another and with
our Korean colleagues -- all of that capital began with an experience.

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So that’s the first principle of mining opportunities in your

network: to constantly create experiences.

There’s a huge body of research that shows that experiences create more
happiness than ‘things.’ We live in a world driven by material possessions, but
all the science shows that money can only buy happiness up to a certain point.
After that, it’s really our experiences -- like going on an amazing trip or seeing
a great play -- that create more happiness.

The reason is that experiences create more social capital. Whether it’s a dinner
party, a vacation or a hike with a friend, experiences create the conditions for
social capital to grow. That’s why companies host off-site retreats for their
employees, superconnectors host monthly dinner parties, and leaders like
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg famously take walks with their colleagues
instead of having sit-down meetings. No matter how sophisticated the online
world gets, analog experiences will always be king, as we talked about in the
module on personal branding.

So as you build your relationships, constantly look for ways to create experiences,
and to elevate your networking beyond the world of ‘things.’

In the smallest ways, that means taking a walk instead of buying someone a
cup of coffee, or looking for ways to bring people into your everyday experiences,
like inviting a colleague to join you for lunch.

In bigger ways, that means creating experiences that bring multiple people
together. In Modules 3 and 4, we talked about the importance of building a
platform, whether it’s a podcast or a dinner party. A podcast is really an experience
that brings people together -- you, your guests, and your audience -- around
a common topic. A dinner party is an experience that brings people together
around a common human experience, which is food and conversation.

The experiences you create do not need to be as ambitious as a trip to North

Korea -- in fact, the best ones are way less intense. Even the smallest experiences

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can create meaningful social capital: a home-cooked meal, a ride to the airport,
or an old paperback passed along to a friend.

So start creating those experiences wherever you go, as a matter of habit.

Next, start paying attention to the social capital that these

experiences naturally create.

Experiences have a way of compounding all three kinds of social capital

simultaneously. When you get people, knowledge and emotional support
swirling around a common event, that social capital will organically get
shared and grow.

In North Korea, that social capital took the form of fun new friendships, absorbing
conversations, a better understanding of Korean history, an emotional bond
with the country, and so on. And all of that social capital had a deeper meaning,
because it was actually being created in the country as an experience -- not
just read in a textbook or talked about in a restaurant in Koreatown back
home.

An experience will always create natural follow-up opportunities to turn

that social capital into real-world value. After every dinner party, for example,
I put the people who really connected in touch. If we explored a certain idea
or topic at dinner, I’ll do some extra research and share it with the group by
email to keep the conversation going. These are small gestures, but they are
the glue that holds social capital together. For an experience to pay dividends,
you have to start paying attention to the social capital that it’s creating, and
help move it along.

“Moving social capital along” means thinking deliberately about the people,
knowledge and emotional support already occurring naturally in your network.
Following the principles of this course will help you connect the dots created

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by your experiences.

But to really capitalize on these opportunities, you must start to

create them.

When our plane landed in Pyongyang, I remember sitting on the tarmac

thinking about the fact that I was missing a week of podcasting back home.
Later that week, sitting with the AOC crew in the bar of the hotel, I realized
we were having an amazing conversation about a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Suddenly I thought: Why not turn that conversation into something more
lasting -- something we could all share -- something that might turn the raw
social capital of our conversation into something more tangible -- something
other people could enjoy? The next night, I recorded the first podcast from
North Korea on my Macbook Pro, which led to several more episodes, which
are all available as bonus episodes of The Art of Charm Podcast.

With that small move, I packaged our social capital by creating a product out of
it. Because our platform was already in place -- which, I should mention, was
about six years in the making! -- I already had a way to distribute that product
to our audience.

Ultimately, a great conversation is brilliant. But a great conversation captured

as thought leadership has the potential to multiply social capital. And that’s
exactly what we did.

So in this step in the process, start by paying attention: That means discovering
the social capital organically growing in your interactions.

Then find ways to move that social capital along: That means connecting the
dots of the social capital you’ve discovered, like connecting people, sharing
knowledge, and applying emotional support as needed.
Then, look for ways to turn that social capital into a product, whenever possible.

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That means using your tools to create knowledge, using your platforms to
turn it into thought leadership, hosting a follow-up conversation to explore a
topic more deeply, and so on. That’s exactly what Gabriel did when he turned
our stories into blog posts, which became the backbone of our blog. Those
articles became a form of thought leadership, and later evolved into marketing
campaigns to sell more trips.

The next step is to recognize when social capital is revealing a

critical need or a valuable opportunity.

The more we talked about our experience in North Korea, there more we
heard our friends and readers saying, “What? You can go there? I want to go
there!” We heard that so many times that it became hard to ignore. There
was clearly a demand for safe, curated, meaningful trips to North Korea. Our
social capital had revealed a valuable opportunity.

Usually, those opportunities aren’t as immediately obvious.

Take this story I recently heard, for example.
My friend Karen, a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco, recently hosted a
dinner party with several interesting women. Over dinner, the conversation
seemed to focus on two things: the unique experience of women in technology,
and the challenges of modern dating. Because these people are great social
capitalists, they naturally started sharing and bonding over dating stories,
and quickly agreed that their best dates were introduced through people they
already knew.

After the dinner party, Karen put everyone in touch by email, and that weekend,
they kept the conversation going. They couldn’t stop talking about dating in
the Bay Area: what worked, what didn’t work, why certain people meet and

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others don’t. The more they talked, the more they realized that existing dating
apps didn’t take into account the people you share in common with a prospective
date. Suddenly, without really trying to, Karen had stumbled across a hidden
need.

The last time I talked to her, she and a few of those friends were mobilizing a
team of developers to build a dating app that introduces people who share
friends in common. It’s now being tested by a small group of users with
promising results.

If you break that story down, you can see how it reflects our
framework.

It all started with a simple experience: a dinner party. That dinner party naturally
created a bunch of social capital, but that wasn’t enough. Karen, who is one of
the greatest social capitalists I know, started connecting the dots and turning
that social capital into a product: putting her guests in touch, continuing the
conversation going by email, contributing her own ideas. As soon as it became
clear that they had discovered a critical need, she sprung into action, and
created an opportunity out of it. That opportunity was the dating app, which
came to life by mobilizing her people, knowledge and empathy.

So the final step is to recognize when social capital represents a

real opportunity, then to chase that opportunity.

I remember the afternoon we decided to turn The North Korea Blog into a
company. I was filling up my car in San Francisco when Gabriel called with
the latest numbers. A bunch of our readers had booked trips to North Korea
on our recommendation. “I think we can build a business out of this,” he told
me. Sure, I thought. Why not?

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But here’s what made it possible: The moment we committed, Gabriel was
already putting his social capital in motion. “I know this great guy named
Jun,” he said. “We should bring him on as a partner to run the digital stuff.” I
could hear him typing in the background. He was already writing an email to
the travel agency we wanted to work with, proposing a partnership agree-
ment. Jun proved to be the same kind of social capitalist.

When your network starts creating social capital, which then reveals a need or
an opportunity, and you decide to chase that opportunity -- then it’s up to you
to start investing social capital more strategically to turn that opportunity
into a reality. In practical terms, that means mobilizing your people, knowledge
and emotional support to make it happen.

It’s the Matrix all over again: turning your opportunities into social capital. If
you’ve been maintaining your social capital along the way, it’ll be there,
ready to work for you, when you need it.

For the best social capitalists, networking is their work, because they permanently
see the Matrix.

So continue to invest social capital in your network, and start to pay attention
to how and where new social capital gets created. Become the puppetmaster
of that capital: moving it around, organizing it, turning it into a product. At a
certain point, you’ll realize that there’s an audience, a market, for your social
capital -- at which point you’ll double down on your social capital investment.

And that’s how to convert your network into valuable opportunities.

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