🤔 Should Everyone Know You?

I hope you have all had a good start to the year! I have just finished my first two exams for this week!

Today, I wanted to briefly discuss whether ‘everyone should know you’ and how important it is to be well known. This topic really came about from a discussion with friends about how my current intercalation degree in Management emphasises networking and trying to ‘get to know as many people as possible.’

During this discussion, the phrase ‘your network is your net worth’ is often cited, but is it really true? Similarly, is it better to focus on connecting with a few or many?

Personally, I think meeting a group of people briefly doesn’t really grow your network. I notice many people connect on LinkedIn or other platforms at events (and I am a culprit of this, too) but never really follow up after that. So, that brief interaction is almost meaningless as you won’t know what projects the other individual is getting up to. A method I have tried to mitigate against this is to create a CRM on Notion, which automatically reminds me to get in touch with people I have interacted with every 3 months. I have also taken notes on what we had previously spoken about so that I can get in touch again. I find that to be a better way to cultivate relationships.

The second half of this is, how many people do you really need to get to know? I think getting to know fewer people with more energy invested in each conversation is better than trying to get to know everyone. Trying to get to know everyone simply leads to fatigue and unfinished conversations, in my opinion. But there is no one right way, and everyone’s preferences are different.

I truly believe your net worth only increases from your network if you foster relationships. I'm keen to hear your thoughts and how you guys approach networking and relationship building.