It’s that simple

Welcome to all of you who have joined in the past few weeks. If you’re opening this for the first time, or you’ve been so engrossed in Succession that you forgot what this is about - I write weekly on insights and tactics around building an incredible network of clients, collaborators, and community.

Whenever I see an internet meme take off, I go through a shame → confusion → rejection → shame cycle.

Shame for being out of the loop on micro-trends, despite my entrenchment in the digital world. Confusion over trying to understand why it (and most memes in general) are such a big deal. Rejection for the hype. And back to shame for clearly “missing” something many others latch on to.

With that being said, let’s bring in a meme.

Last month I wrote about the simplicity of prioritizing your relationships into just three groups.

Call it A/B/C, VIP/Community/Everyone Else, Squad/Friends/Enemies… however you like.

When I teach this to ~60 glowing boxes on Zoom every other month, I can, as I did before, explain why simplicity works. I pay close attention to facial expressions, and I get a lot of nodding.

Then the question always comes up.

“OK… once I do that, what’s next?”

I hold back a smile, because, on one hand, I hold the knowledge that the thousands of GoodSphere clients who have embraced this approach “get it” and see the success from it… and at the same time, I know that this is so painful to accept initially.

Enter the midwit trap. We tend to look at a straightforward solution as too foolish to be effective. We’re smarter and better than that, right? It has to be more intricate and complex.

So we overcomplicate it, throwing tons of tools, ideas, plans, to-dos. We burn ourselves out, and set ourselves up for failure.

Then we realize the Jedi-knight solution was there all along - keep it simple.

Because simple doesn’t mean easy.

Taking Action

If you are ready to heed my guidance about prioritizing your network by something as simple as A/B/C but still want more, here is what I tell our clients.

First, let’s make sure you have the people you care about sorted as such.

Before you go and create all sorts of different tags so you could find “working parents with three children who attended an open house in West Oakland and play banjo” - go back to your the top of your list.

If these represent the most important relationships for you - shouldn’t you have…

• Everyone’s birthday?

• Their home address?

• Their office address?

• Their dog groomer address?

• Their kids’ names?

Everything that will help you deepen and maintain a relationship with them for years.

Further Reading

I enjoy seeing different ideas and approaches. Ha writes about choosing a personal board of directors instead of a cultivating a wider network.