PEOPLE who surround us have an effect on our lives and most importantly, on our success. I am one person who treasures and has tapped from the power of relationships and has benefitted immensely. My late father, Billy, shaped me in relationships and I will forever cherish his advice. At a tender age, when my father told me to shun certain people, I got so angry and thought he was very suppressive, but now I see the good effects of that.
Relationships are very important to increased success. People of the same status usually would befriend like people and some people would want to become your friends because of what they can benefit from you. When you have no money they might not be your friends, but when your financial clout grows they find ways into your inner circle. Relationships model and motivate us in either good or goofy direction. Let’s explore seven ways to tap from relationships:
l Treasure relationships that stood with you in hard times
Some people are there just to be like bedbugs. They will guzzle your resources until you are not able to breathe and when you give in to the ghost they run away. There are some people that will stand with you despite your shortcomings, shame, weakness and, above, all in hard times. This gives us profound lessons in life; you also don’t help because people have a better status. For example, there are some offices, some years back, I would visit seeking help and professional connections, but they would not accept me, but now it’s easy for me to get what I want when I get there. Such is life. Because of what I went through, I have learnt to help people rise from where they are to a better level.
l Focus on worth
It has been said your network determines your networth. Les Brown, author and motivational speaker, says if nine of your friends are always broke, you are guaranteed to be the 10th of the broke crew. He further says, if in your group you are the smartest, look for another group so as to grow. Create relationships that add value and to your wallet as well. Sociologists call this “social capital”.
Decide and dedicate your time to growing your relationships with more people of quality and they will connect you to like people. As a salesperson, you would need a niche market to buy your products or services and it’s ideal to connect with that group of people.
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There are some friends you don’t need. Don’t negotiate your stay with them, they will drain your energy and resources. Look for better ones and invest your attention on them.
l Grow the size
The bigger your relationships are the better. When your network is bigger, the other person will tell the other person about your product and that’s free marketing. Direct marketing has worked greatly for me. I treasure every person I meet in life and that has created great referrals for me. People I have never met would call and say they had been referred to me by someone and I harvest from that. The more people you know, the more leverage you will have in life.
l Create a list
When I was launching my latest two books I made a list of all personal and professional relationships. Not that all people were not important, but I used that list to gain more attention to the outside circles. The friend told a friend and I made a special effort for that to happen and it paid off greatly. It was done without a newspaper advert or pre-launch media reports. After the launch more newspapers were looking for me because it was greater than my judgment. Cultivate a greater bond with the list.
l Create new relationships
I had friends when I was at high school and university. Some of them are still around, but others have died, but what I have learnt is that you need new relationships for every level you enter into. To deal with the corporate world you need a different relationship compared to when you are dealing with personal relationships.
l E-Relationships
The 21st Century era has created us a network that is so big and if you invest in it, you get great rewards. For example, people that buy my books locally are somehow different from people that buy the books on Amazon. I have realised that, less people in Africa would buy a book online, but people in Australia, United Kingdom and United States buy my books on Amazon. The main reason being the way we are socialised and our appreciation for new communication technologies. As a result, there is great need to invest on social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, just to mentions a few. For companies, I would suggest that they engage a digital social marketing media consultant or personnel. This might not make sense for some now, but that is where the future is.
l Identify energy drainers
As I conclude, Cynthia Hakutangwi in the book Success Within Reach (2015: 11-21) says: “Until we realise the kinds of people and things in our life that are robbing us of our energy it is very difficult for us to be empowered enough to attract wealth. When our levels of exhaustion are constantly high it becomes very difficult for us to receive the wealth that we desire. We must, therefore, develop courage, boldness and willingness to part with certain people and preoccupations in our lives that may be dragging us down or constantly keeping us back.”
lJonah Nyoni is an author, success coach, leadership trainer and public relations consultant. He can be contacted on 0772 581 918 or email: [email protected]
