A business thought leader who is known as “The Woman with the Titanium Digital Rolodex.” Judy Robinett has been profiled in Fast Company, Forbes, Venture Beat, Huffington Post, and Bloomberg Businessweek as a sterling example of the new breed of “super connectors” who use their experience and networks to accelerate growth and enhance profitability.
Judy takes the word “Networking” not only to a new level but re-defining it into a dynamic “power grid” of influence and connections and explains it in her new book, How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule for Turning Your Business Network into Profits.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Tuning your Business Network
Excerpt from the Podcast:
I found that people either don’t have the dots or they don’t connect the dots. Most importantly, they don’t leverage the dots. My goal was to really give people a boost so that they could quickly get to their goals.
Joe: That awful word, “networking,” seems so obsolete to me. Can you explain why the book describes networking differently and why it’s different than that typical networking type of strategies?
Judy: Absolutely, Joe. I hate the word networking. I think its old school. It was transactional. If you think about how many times you’ve been in some meeting or room and somebody runs toward you with a business card, barely says hello or what their name is and then dashes off like it’s some kind of a game. I think those days are gone. People have really realized how valuable it is to have long-term relationships with people who have your back and have your future. My focus is being authentic and determining critical quality relationships with people that have gravitas, power and influence than can and will help you.
Joe: You take those connections and turn them into strategic thinking don’t you?
Judy: Yes, I do. My formula is quality relationships plus strategy to a very specific outcome. You know Joe, a lot of the books out there are pretty good. “How to work a room”, Susan Roane’s book has sold over a million copies. It is exceptional. But what I found is 95% of people are in the wrong room and even don’t understand the ecosystem they need to get in.
This is particularly true if you are trying to find funding for a startup, often people needing to get a job. So I often say, if you go to an event or you go to a conference and there isn’t anybody in the room smarter than you or can have answers or thought leaders, you’re in the wrong room.
Joe: That is so true. I like that take on it because I would describe it that you really should make the mistake downstream. Kind of like being in the wrong room and seeing your customers’ customers in it versus going in the room that everybody is selling your customers.
Judy: Absolutely. Absolutely Joe. That’s true. One of the best things that I recommend for people is to join powerful groups. There are amazing groups out there that are curated individuals. For people who are wanting to get to the CxO level. A good group that’s national, that has been around for must be for years is ACG. The other one is CXO. You can just Google these and find out about them.
They are not typical. A lot of people don’t know about them, but truly one of the best things you can do is join a powerful group that is across different verticals, not just service providers.
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