Welcome to all 290 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.

Picture your 12000th-great-grandfather - one of the early Homo sapiens. Hairy dude.

He’s trudging through a field, foraging for berries to eat. He’s laser focused on the task - rummaging, picking, inspecting, eating, repeat.

Then he looks at the position of the sun in the sky.

He dashes off, leaving his family behind.

He has a coffee meeting with a prospective client in the next valley over. And he’s running late.

Not likely, right? The earliest discovery of coffee drinking is the 15th century.

All kidding aside, there’s some insight to the anecdote above. While our society has completely transformed many times over - we haven’t changed that much.

We wonder why it’s so hard for us to set aside time in our day to go to the gym or reach out to a prospect. Then we remember that our wiring has us more focused on surviving the next 24 hours without dying of thirst or getting eaten by a lion.

We wonder why we have internal resistance to engaging with an old colleague or walking into a conference. Then we remember that, for our 12000th-great-grandmother, stepping outside of our immediate tribe was dangerous, and her nervous system reminded her of that.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” - E.O. Wilson

Then, we can be a little bit easier on ourselves.

Finally, we can implement solutions.

Taking Action

I wish I could give you a key insight that contradicts what I’ve been told repeatedly for the past ten years, but I can’t.

When it comes to building your network, time blocking is one of the most effective solutions.

We spend most of our time reacting to the world around us, and whatever it throws our way. Carving out small bits of time to instead be proactive can make all the difference.

30 minutes, once or twice a week, to open your CRM, update a handful of contacts, and reach out to a few people.

Watch This

As I continue feeling my way into video, I posted a video about fear.

Further Reading

If you want to feel a bit better about your inner caveperson and the thoughts floating around in your head, look no further.