In the real estate industry (and sales in general) there is a heavy emphasis on “networking.” It generally involves the process of going out and meeting new people to create loose connections that you will then attempt to grow into tighter connections (and hopefully become friendly). Over time, these tighter connections are your network.
Communities are developed differently. The focus within a community is creating value for participants – not just in being friendly with a single person. There are several complexities in building a community instead of a network with the top two being: the time to build a group of people is very long; and adding value takes time where you aren’t often bringing in commensurate revenue. It’s easy to understand why most sales people therefore choose to stick to the classic network.
But if you want to be BIG. If you want to build something self-sustaining. If you want work to come to you the only way to do that is through a community. It may take 2 or 5 or 10 years for it to happen, but at the end of the process it will have been worth the work.
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