How do you network without networking?

Networking gets a bad reputation.  No one wants to be the person forcing small talk or awkwardly trying to start a professional relationship with a stranger.  Yet most of us want to surround ourselves with other people who make us want to be better.  How do we meet them?  How do we start a relationship with them?  

Jenna: So I know that you have had contact with so many different people over your career and you've met so many people that have probably impacted your career and helped show you where you want to go.  I want to know where do you think you met people that had the most influence on you? Where or how did you meet these people?

Phil:  So I think I could probably answer the how more than anything else.  It almost always was because I was introduced to them through a mutual party who just knew I had done something really well or with excellence in a certain area.  And so I think about getting introduced into professional sports.  Some of the specific sports that I get introduced to, I had met the person who connected me into that . . . and you know, again, several people connected me, I don't want to just say one.  But I had met that person seven or eight years ago and just kept up a relationship.  And any time they needed anything, I'd help them and and try to provide excellent things.  Not again, with fully the intention of like, they can connect me.  It was just when the time then was right, they connected me.  So it was just about doing what was around me really, really well, and then the opportunities seemed to come from that.  Does that make sense?  I don't know if that answers your question.

Jenna:  It makes sense. But do you have like an example or like, you know, like you said, that you did something for somebody that then passed your name along?  Like what do those kinds of things look like for people that are trying to,"netowrk." I don't know how many things come out of having one drink with one person on one instance.  That doesn't sound like that's what you're describing.

Phil: No, so I would almost describe the opposite.  It is . . . I've never really gotten anything, and actually probably the least productive things are the one drink with one person.  You know, if I sit at Perform Better conference and I sit down and have a drink with somebody, like that's going to be my in.  Now, that's an important thing to do or, you know, to be at those conferences.  But I think it's actually being at those conferences, learning and then having that information, then be able to help someone else.  So I think of . . . let me put some legs to it. What I talked about in professional sports, is  one of my good friends needed help with large group testing.  And so, I helped them with that.  And they'd ask me questions like, how many people do I need for this or how many do I need to do with that?  And I'm like, okay, let me answer those questions.  Also, I'm going to send you a calculator for that, and you can do that yourself.  Okay, well, how do I test this many people?  And so I did that.  And then again, that was several years ago.  And then in a different, completely different scenario, different in a different sport, in a professional sport, someone was talking to this guy and saying, Hey, I'm trying to organize this.  How do I do it?  And they said you just got to talk to Phil Plisky because he has these answers.  He gave me these answers and I know this. So it wasn't a matter of like, again, sitting down having a drink.  It was the seed of seven years ago just helping out because the person asked. And, you know, they needed help.

Jenna:  Awesome!  I think that's such a good point.  And then also the fact of like, sometimes it's not immediate either.  You might help somebody and, you know, it's down the road where something comes back around.

Phil:  Absolutely.  I think that connection . . . Now I'll throw it back at you because, you know, what does that look like for you? Because, you know, you've had some great opportunities and some really good things that you're doing.  How did that come about?  I'm looking back maybe retrospectively, you're maybe just a few years out of those great things.

Jenna:  Yeah, I'd say most of them all came from things that I did, and I did to the best of my ability. But I didn't necessarily perceive them as something that was going to get me to the next step.  I remember doing these case studies for FMS that I honestly didn't even know what they were going to do with them or if anything was going to come from them at all.  I remember doing them, and like, just doing that is actually probably what down the road led to some activity, different opportunities. But like at the time, if you had said, nobody said to me, you do these things and this happens, it was just kind of like, Hey, if anybody has any cool things that have happened using our screen and using our stuff, let us know kind of thing.  And that kept kind of building on itself.  So I think there's those opportunities that we might not even notice that kind of come around.  And the more we do, you know, it's like throwing darts at a dartboard.  One's got to hit.

Phil:  Yeah, I agree with that.  And I'll tell you from my perspective as someone maybe who's, you know, 23 years into this, which is just scary, the idea that what you did in those case studies was a big help to a lot of different people. Meaning they were asking because they needed help.  And you provided that help so that those two things. A. it showcases your work, but B. it's like, wow, you know, willing to help me out.  You know, it causes that law of reciprocity comes into effect there.  There was like, you know, gosh, you know, the people you did that for, then look out and say, wow, they did great at this.  This is an opportunity.  They get first dibs. Yeah. Awesome.

Jenna:  Yeah, I think it's cool to look back in retrospect and see that.  I think it's just hard sometimes during the process.  But I think the more you do, the more you increase your chances.  The more people you meet, the more things that happen.

Phil:  That's awesome. Fantastic. Love the conversation.