Why are you doing what you are doing?

Temporary has a nasty habit of becoming permanent!

Did you start out with a grand vision of where you’d like to end up?

Or was more a case of accepting a role or “buying yourself a job” just to earn enough income?

Or maybe you’ve been retrenched once or twice and you’ve been forced to take on less than ideal roles to keep the income stream going?

Most of us are already working to the max!

Which means the last thing we want to do is to take on yet another thing that we don’t absolutely have to – right?

Hold on though – where does that thinking lead?

Chances are you’ll still be struggling for time / income 5 years from now – right?

Isn’t it time to start thinking more strategically about where you could be investing a small portion of your time?

  • That doesn’t just benefit your clients
  • That doesn’t just benefit your employer
  • It actually (also) benefits you?

What-If

You invested a consistent amount of time which actually saved you more time than you invested – even in the relatively short-term?

In other words what if the time invested in building one of your most valuable assets (your network) actually resulted in a net time-saving?

Then you may only be investing extra time in the very short term.

Assuming you want to get ahead or set up a better, more secure future/retirement, where would your ‘spare’ time be best invested?

Have you ever met someone who you believe to be even busier than you are (with lot’s of family commitments, long work hours, etc) and you are wondering how they find the time (and money) to obtain an extra academic qualification? For example, they are studying for an MBA?

What’s really happening?

They are making a short-term sacrifice for what they believe to be a long term gain.

They are re-arranging their priorities for a short period of time.

Fortunately, it’s much easier to fit Network Building into your schedule

In general, deciding to get good at deliberately building your network will

  • Require far less time than say studying for many higher academic qualifications
  • Cost far less than the cost of a higher academic qualification
  • Allow you to build a much bigger and possibly more influential network than when studying for a higher academic qualification

And what about the likely results?

When you invest in an extra academic qualification you may have to wait till you’ve actually qualified to see experience any tangible results – that could be say 4 years from now.

When you start proactively investing your time in building your network you are likely to see great results in well under 4 years.

Isn’t it time to start to think strategically to achieve better results (long and short term)?

Begin with the end in mind.

Is it important for you to build assets that result in you spending decreasing amounts of time to generate increasing amounts of income?

Could building your network help you to achieve that kind of result?

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