I was asked to provide some insights on networking in an upcoming book that I am excited to be a part of. We agreed that each chapter would be at least 1500 words in length, so I could not wait to get to work on this chapter. I am including my chapter in this blog in hopes that if I have missed anything on the subject of Networking, that it is brought to my attention before this book is released. As you know 1500 words is enough to cover most topics, but nonetheless a challenge.
Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Ken Rochon, and I will be writing a chapter in this book. I was not formerly a writer, and I don't consider myself famous. I am a good writer and I will be writing this chapter about networking. Here is a little information on Networking. Networking is good and I mean really good. And networking is important. Furthermore, I like networking and so do other people that I have met when networking. I am almost done with my first 100 words, but not yet. I have only three more words… done.
Now I have to write my second 100 words without using any material from the first paragraph. That will be challenging because the first paragraph had a lot of information I know really well like my name and information about my writing history. What can I write about that hasn’t already been covered? Well I suppose I can write about networking. I only have 40 more words that I have to write in this paragraph, so I don’t have a lot of time to go into networking at this point because the paragraph is coming to a close right now.
This is actually not too difficult at least from the first 2 paragraphs. I already am about 10 percent done with this chapter if I am writing 2000 words. But I would prefer to eat, so I will only write 1500 words. I think this paragraph will be longer than the others because I can talk about how many children I have. I do not have children, but if I did, I would teach them about networking. Networking is like a box of chocolates, you never know who you are going to meet. The longer I am networking, the more fascinated I become with the topic of networking and its lifelong effects. In my adult life I have networked by reaching out to associations, groups, communities in order to better understand the realities of relationship building, marketing and even more if you can believe that. This was a huge paragraph compared to the first two. This one is actually so far over 100 words that I think I am going to go for a 200-word paragraph. Honestly, I didn’t expect this to happen, but I was having so much fun I lost track and next thing I knew I was typing this word here which just put me at over 200 words. The exact number of words I have typed already is 431 words counting this one right here.
I have not covered networking entirely because I am saving some of the material for later in this chapter. Kind of a suspense business book if you will. I don’t want to build it up too much, but I think this could be one of the better paragraphs that I’ve written in for this chapter, even though this paragraph is very short at this point, I am going to make a nice segue from the previous paragraph on children to my parents. Here goes… My parents are my Mom and Dad. And they raised me. I was a very little person and they fed me and I grew, and grew, and grew. It was exciting, but it took a long time. Already this paragraph is taking my childhood to adulthood and I could stop here and it would be a great paragraph. So that I can get into the meat of this chapter, I will close this paragraph off very soon at 600 words, which is almost half way there.
This paragraph is like the build up of the middle of the chapter. This is where a lot of readers pretend they are reading but are not. The reason why is that almost everything that needed to be said in this chapter was written in the first paragraph. We know this chapter is on networking, so big surprise, each paragraph is a redundant reiteration of how networking is important and how networking came to be and why we can’t live without networking. I actually should have made this point much earlier, because if most people don’t read the middle of a chapter then this was a waste to even write. So I am bringing this chapter to a close at 722 words.
If you have previously read any books on networking that might help you understand what networking is and what it is not. The soul connection will sometimes be missing when you are networking. Don’t let that bother you. It is not important. That is more for lifelong relationships with someone you love. Networking is more, well actually less intimate. I started off with more because the correction gave me more words in this paragraph. It is a sneaky secret that most authors will make a point and then purposely admit it was a mistake to get more content into their paragraph, chapter or book. Depending on how much experience they have. Well if we haven’t celebrated yet, we are past the mid-way point. This was actually way more challenging than I expected.
I did already write about my growing up correct? Well to make sure the point is clear, I will use a tactic of bringing some earlier information back into the story to tie this very nicely together. Growing up I did whatever I could to learn things. I was scared to death of dying because it seemed so final. I wasn’t a troublemaker and I wasn’t a police officer and I wasn’t even a doctor, but I was a good boy who liked to play soccer. Of course, I was not aware of this until I reached adulthood. This is going to be a shorter paragraph because I know we need to get to the networking part of this chapter quick. The reason I haven’t is because, as I said before, most people don’t read the middle paragraphs in a chapter. If you noticed I used a technique of explaining what I was not when I was a child and that gave me a word count on this paragraph of at least 8, maybe even 9 words more. This explanation further catapulted the word count to make this paragraph quite lengthy in fact probably the second or third longest paragraph in this chapter thus far. I would venture to guess the second longest just by looking at how many lines are present.
My personal experiences of growing up were very personal to me. I will share some of the personal experiences that led me to networking. My studies and my work were huge parts of my life and so was playing around. In fact if you take my studies, my work and my playing around, that really monopolized my time. I ate meals too of course and I slept which took up probably 8 hours of my day. This paragraph is very short, and it really is not worth expanding on, so I am moving into the networking component now.
I sincerely appreciate people who are experts at networking who have networked a long time. Painters have painted such an accurate painting of what networking is if that was the theme of their work. I like networking from a standpoint that you are meeting people, and learning about them and what not.
Many books are out there on networking. They are not necessarily feel-good stories that romanticize networking as a fairy-tale answer to success but rather a business approach to cultivating business. The reality of networking is that it is here to stay. I have seen it here for some time and I don’t think we can even wish it away. It is a far cry from being a secret. I wouldn’t consider people that network members of a secret society. They are simply meeting people and learning more about them.
Some people look at this as an opportunity to help others be more successful. Others just want to vomit on anyone they meet about what they do and why people should use their product or service. Do you notice I am writing some killer sentences? That is because everyone reads the end of a chapter. It is like the closer and if you have done your job right, they will smile and think what a great conclusion to this chapter and not really feel they missed anything in the middle. So without further ah-do (bless me), I will move on to the final chapter, the finale, and the pinnacle if you will of this chapter.
And furthermore, we have examined every aspect of networking only to find it is an essential part of succeeding in business. After all, where would we be without our clients? As was mentioned in the middle of this chapter, without networking there is no business. We must look at every stranger as a future client waiting to be discovered, and nurtured into an extension of who you are. Then through their own network that they share your message as if they were you because your networking skills created a comfort zone that brought them back to memories of their childhood. And this is why … Hey, I am actually over 1500 words, so you get the point of how networking is the Mack Daddy of business.
