EP. 248: Karl Pontau - Practical tips for networking and relationship management

Wow.

Self-actualization.

From your last name, Bridge 2, to your focus and alignment around your purpose of connecting humans.

I always say, you know, quality of life has a large reflection on the quality of your relationships.

And the way you were able to show, and from these obstacles that you were able to push through, that the community around me, my first degree network, my good friends, my family, people that were more acquaintances, I barely knew the way they were able to support and actually...

Allow me to get through this.

I don't know if it would have been possible without.

And it just it was nothing short of amazing the way you're able to talk about that and then put that in the context of, hey, business networking, human to human.

I'll hear at times as a marketer.

We have B2B marketing initiatives, business to business.

We have business to consumer.

We have business to investor.

And in the B2B conversations, there's almost a wall put up if you're not talking about a B2B, business to business specific strategy where I could tell you firsthand you're dealing with an individual over there.

how you target them with advertising, what you do with outreach, how you build an actual relationship with them, how you need to establish that relationship well before you have an ask for it to be more sincere and authentic.

It's very much that human-to-human connection that you're speaking to.

Yeah, it's something that is... we're so wired for connection that we need it from the fundamental level when it comes to like food, shelter, air, water.

And we really crave that connection.

And when we don't have the connection, it really strains our mental health and our emotional health, those sort of things.

are really strained when we're isolated.

It's why like solitary confinement is a big punishment in prisons because we want to be around people.

And so in the entrepreneur space, so often it's hard for people to connect because they don't really know themselves that well to begin with.

So often people are given external sources of what success means or what they should be doing for their career path or what their job should be.

And so they're not often doing things that really align with who they are as an individual, as a human being.

And so it's one of the things, trends I've noticed from doing the show as long as I have is that one of the biggest things sources of disconnection is between people and themselves.

I don't really know who we are or why we do what we do at a strong enough level to understand the sort of people we want to be connected with or the sort of jobs that are going to resonate with us.