fbpx

The Importance of Networking

This weekend, when my daughter went to bed, my wife and I cozied up on the couch, popped some pop corn, opened a bottle of wine and watched a movie called “Molly’s Game” (pretty good, easy to watch movie). The movie is based on a true story about former Olympic athlete, Molly Bloom, who organized an exclusive poker game for rich and famous people.  One character that really stuck out to me was “Bad Brad”, an oil futures trader who was awful at poker.  Check out Bad Brad in this video (I taped it from my phone, so I apologize for the shakiness).

In this month’s Canadian Cashflownaire newsletter, we went over the “Hidden Rules of the Wealthy.”  Without giving away too much, one of the rules was building a solid network.  Wealth cannot be had without a solid network.

Bad Brad knew this.  Bad Brad lost a ton of money playing poker.  What AVERAGE people think when they see this is that Brad is an idiot.  What a waste of money.

But Bad Brad is not average.  Bad Brad sees it as an investment.  Bad Brad sees his losses as the cost of doing business.  As Molly states in her narration of the video, Bad Brad “knew what he was doing. He was getting customers. He would drop $100K at the game, and pick up $4,000,000 for his hedge fund.” Not a bad ROI, right?

Well we should all take a page out of Brad’s book.  WE ARE NOT AVERAGE.  I am guilty of sometimes neglecting the networking scene myself.  But I know that networking is what got me to where I am today.

I will tell you a little story from early on in my insurance career.  I am a life insurance and employee benefits advisor.  One thing I dislike is golf and country clubs.  I don’t understand the sport and I just hate all the snobby rules that come with the country clubs (I certainly am not calling you a snob if you are a member of a country club).

With that being said, I came across a large prospect where the decision maker loved golf.  I had given him a great presentation and showed some significant cost savings.  He didn’t give me his decision yet.  There was a guy in my office that belonged to a prestigious golf course in the area.  I asked him if he could set up a golf game for the 3 of us, and I would take care of all the expenses.  My prospect brought his associate.  The 4 of us drank beer, we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we smoked some expensive Cuban cigars.  The entire day costed me about $750 and I shot about 110 on the round(yikes!).  Nowhere near what Bad Brad was spending, but for me, that’s some significant dough for a day out.

But, like Bad Brad, I saw it as an investment.  As we walked to our car, my prospect told me to call him on Monday to discuss the next steps of moving forward with us as his new broker.  This prospect remains a client and the case pays me about $15,000 of commission every year.

ALL BECAUSE I STEPPED OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE AND USED MY NETWORK. 

Wealthy people understand the importance of a network.  Average people think of it as an expense and a waste of time.

Hopefully this gets you thinking.

Until next time,

Mike