Have a small circle of friends and don’t see or speak to any of them. Be a Man.
I laughed.
Perhaps because there is something uncomfortably familiar about it.
Sometimes we find it very easy to turn independence into a virtue.
I will sort this out.
I will figure it out.
I do not need to bother anyone.
I will just think it through a little more.
Then we sit alone with a problem someone else solved three years ago.
You are probably not the first
Very few of the problems we encounter are things nobody has seen before.
You are probably not the first person who has:
hired the wrong employee,
priced a project incorrectly,
run into cash-flow trouble,
had a difficult client,
built a product nobody wanted,
had to let people go,
lost a major contract,
or faced a decision that seemed impossible.
Thousands of others have grappled with something very similar.
And thousands have probably already found a way through it.
That does not mean their solution is automatically your solution.
But their experience can save you a great deal of time.
A network is not a collection of business cards
I think we sometimes talk about networks in the wrong way.
As if the goal were to know as many people as possible.
I think it is much more important to have people around you whom you can call and say:
“I do not know what to do here.”
And know that the other person will not immediately try to sell you something, show you how clever they are or judge you for not knowing the answer.
They might simply say:
“I have been through this. Here is what I learned.”
That is incredibly valuable.
One good question can save months
I have often tended to try to solve things myself first.
Learn more.
Analyse more.
Find a better system.
But sometimes the shortest route would simply be:
Who knows this problem better than I do?
And then:
Why have I not called them?
Sometimes the answer is pride.
Sometimes we do not want to interrupt.
Sometimes we would rather approach people once we have solved the problem.
Which is rather funny when you think about it.
Relationships work both ways
There is one thing that matters, though.
A network is not just a group of people you call when you need something.
You also have to answer the phone.
Share your experience.
Connect people.
Talk about the mistakes you made so that the next person might not have to make them.
That is how a network becomes valuable.
Not because of how many people you know.
But because of how much experience, trust and help flows between the people in it.
So perhaps the saying is slightly wrong
Have a small circle of good friends.
You do not have to speak to them every day.
But when you have been sitting alone with the same problem long enough:
Call someone.
That might be wiser than being a man alone in a cave.