How many people? Do you know? How many people you connect with? There is a really interesting article, I think it was written in about 1973 by a chap called granovetter. And he says, basically, you find jobs through not through who you know, but through the people that your friends know. Yep.

LinkedIn works on this. By the, you know, I might have I think I got about six or 7,001st connections on LinkedIn. But my second connections, I think I have about 30 40,000,002nd connections of people who know people I know. And this is the whole idea of the six degrees of connection that you can connect to anybody in the world through just six people in between. and that broadly speaking is true. Maybe it's a little a little bit less now with the internet and modern social social networking.

So is an entrepreneur is absolutely critical that you know, lots of people because the reality is is people buy from people. And opportunities come from people. Yeah, you might see something in time or in the economist or in another magazine or online. Yeah. But if you want to make the most of that opportunity, you need to be able to connect with the person who's doing it or the person who knows about it. And how do you do that?

So one of the first things I do when I, I start working with a new entrepreneur, is to look at how many people that are connected with on LinkedIn. If they're connected with just a couple of hundred people. It's like, okay, have you really got the network to actually deliver on your promise? Are you going to be able to find the people that you need to work with? Are you going to be able to find the people who are going to give you money? Are you going to be able to find suppliers have you got those relationships and very often They answer is not.

And so it's absolutely crucial to be going out having a very, very wide network. And broadly speaking, the way I looked at it is like, number of questions, right? How many people in your sector in your country, do you not? Do you know, but most of the people in your in your city? Do you? Have you connected with a lot of data managers and the directors of competitors in your city?

If not, why not? Yeah. If you if you don't know them, if you don't know the way they think, how are you going to be able to beat them? Yeah. Do you know who all the thought leaders in your industry are? Have you connected with them in some way?

You may not have been able to meet them in person, but have you read their blogs Have you commented on their on their articles? Because if you haven't connected with them, there's no way that you can go to them and ask them for To help or ask them for advice or give them something in return something that they might find valuable that they can share to somebody else and they can then connect you with somebody else. How many people in your sector or an industry I was talking to a chap doing drone delivery the other day? And okay, so you know lots of people in Malaysia and and Singapore dangerous but 30 now in the US who have you spoken, which we should the drug companies in the US have you Spectre which ones in Austria, which ones in Australia, again, limited network, because the more you spread your tentacles, tentacles out into the world, the more opportunities you're able to find the more the opportunities will will find you.

And again, it's this whole serendipity thing. You cannot control what is going to happen. You cannot control who's going to connect, but the more people that you are connecting with that you're sharing your ideas with that you're talking with About what you want to do, and very, very importantly, about what they are wanting to do and how you can help them, then this is a huge lever that you can use to actually change the world to to make the change that your startup or your business is there to create. So it very much depends on your industry. Where you go, I find that that LinkedIn is is very effective for most b2b plays. Again, it's very useful if you're a b2c to sort of figure out the back end all your partners and suppliers who are going to help you deliver in other cases, Facebook or snap or others work just as as well is partly it is social media network, but also getting out there.

How many events do you go to a week that allows you to new and interesting people, how many times you are able to pitch to real life person each each week? And yes, again, this seems like like a like a big tax on your working time. Because if you're out there talking to people, can you be in the office getting the real world but real work done. Again, though, how important is sitting in front of a computer being busy filling up the hours, as opposed to getting out and talking to the right people, you need to execute at the right time and be talking to the right people. So you can be executing, but you also need to be stacking up those people who are going to help be helping you in phase two, phase three and phase four. Because if you don't know who you can talk to at the time you need them, then you've got a big delay.

So it's always thinking, Well, what does my network need to be like? Who does need it needs to be in it in three to six months time, keep growing it. The more bigger network is, the more empowered you are to create the change that you Once great