Segun Johnson’s Story: The Truth About Who Helps You

I've been on the crusade against networking as a person.

Most people tell you, you have to network.

And I always say, where I concede to networking is where I say you have to build relationships.

You know, many of you watching this, I'm not asking you to believe me.

I'm asking you to believe your experience.

You've amassed some of you, many of you perhaps, many cards, gone to events, collected some of these phone numbers.

Many of these people don't pick up, reply to your messages or talk to you.

We do know that that thing of collecting cards, going to a party, moving, floating from place, getting cards, doesn't work.

It doesn't give results.

What gives results is building relationships.

And building relationships takes time.

That means when you meet somebody, you have a conversation with the person that makes the person remember who you are.

but that makes the person interested in what you do.

Now, you are likely to do that if you are truly interested in the person.

Building relationships takes time, takes energy, takes effort.

Collecting cards doesn't do any of those things and doesn't give results.

I said to some people who go to an event that I'm speaking at, sometimes they even do it after I've told them that this doesn't work.

And they want to collect your card at the end of the day.

And I said, but my industry and your industry don't even merge.

You are just treating me like a typical big man There's no, I don't, the time you used trying to get my number because you proceed that I am, I am, I am status high.

You could have used that.

Look, my biggest, the biggest relationship, professional relationship I've made in my life is my co-founder.

So how did I meet a developer like that? I've shared this many times, it has become part of our origin story.

We were sitting there in the audience at Inside Out with Agatha, a TV show we were recording at the University of New York.

And me and him were sitting side by side and we started talking.