Not Everyone Can Build Relationships
September 21st, 2008 by JeremyI’ve read post after post from bloggers and entrepreneurs on how the best way to market your company is by being the uber-evangelist and making relationships with all the key influencers. It’s great in theory, and for the very lucky few who can pull it off, I say mazel tov. The unfortunate reality with this kind of advice is it just doesn’t apply to most entrepreneurs or CEOs, and is over-the-top idealistic.
Reason #1: Introverts. There are plenty of amazingly intelligent people out there who are, simply put, bad with people. This doesn’t make them any less qualified to start a business, but it sure makes evangelizing it a challenge. So telling the less socially inclined entrepreneurs that the only way for them to market their business is through relationship-building and going to techie meetups isn’t necessarily the best advice.
Reason #2: The Geographically Challenged. Carnegie said it best, but we all know that location matters. But that shouldn’t be the only way to build a successful business. Not everyone feels like uprooting their entire personal life just to go to San Francisco or New York or another hub. I’ve known extremely successful entrepreneurs in Boise, Montreal (Go Habs!), Indianapolis, not to mention internationally run businesses. In fact, it’s highly ironic that location should matter so much with the modern capabilities of remote working.
Reason #3: Busy People. Many startup CEOs need to spend their time on the core business. Whether it’s technical in nature or out there closing deals, it’s actually quite rare to find a CEO with enough free time to spend it meeting and greeting. I’m not suggesting they not be well-networked, but it takes a lot of time to properly maintain media/influencer relationships.
Reason #4: It’s a Ponzi Scheme. I’ll switch tacks for a second here – let’s now assume that everyone is socially inclined, centrally-located, and has enough free time to go to every feedup, tweetup, blogup, and yawnup they can possibly find. We all do not have the capacity to make sufficient relationships in the end. Think of the “Top 10 Influencers” in your given field. Now imagine the burden on them to build relationships with all the other entrepreneurs like you. The numbers just don’t add up.
So where does this leave the, say, 90+% of entrepreneurs who need to take advantage of personal relationships, yet for one reason or another just aren’t able to make that work for them individually? Well, I think it pretty well paints the case for relationship-oriented firms. My only advice on how to pick them is to check those relationships! There’s a big difference between a rolodex entry and a friendly, trusted relationship.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Wow great insight. I appreciate your candor specifically on the topic of introverts who are business owners and simply aren’t going to glad hand at every social event.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
You do present some strong limiting factors that keep people from being able to reach certain networking goals they might have. I would say that, for example for introverts, the process of overcoming the negative effects of their introversion through attempts at networking is just as important for their growth as the networking would have been.