Mo asks Dorie Clark: What's your big idea when it comes to business development? One of the key things that professional service providers need to grapple with are the long term and short term needs of business and life. Long term relationship building is what really drives results, but in the short term we still need to generate business. When it comes to networking and building your network of relationships, there are three ways to go about doing it and the first is the most commonly thought of and also the reason the majority of people dislike networking. Short term networking is all about making the sale and what you can immediately extract from someone. When you already have a relationship with someone you can be direct and ask for the sale, but it's not conducive to creating a real relationship. With long term networking you're not trying to immediately get something out of the other person, and in Infinite Horizon networking you cultivate relationships solely because they are interesting and you never know where people will end up over time. It's about having an infinite perspective of what's possible. It's about being helpful and meeting interesting people. When we think about networking most people think of it as a chore, but reorienting it towards meeting new and interesting people can change how we feel about it. Just getting to know someone is more than enough to build a great relationship. We are all pressed for time but we can all find an hour in our week to make this kind of networking possible, it's just a matter of prioritizing it. In the era of the pandemic it's also possible to host virtual cocktail parties to get to know people. Optimize for interesting, instead of money. Follow your curiosity, meet with interesting people, and you will go in interesting directions. Mentioned in this Episode: growbigplaybook.com dorieclark.com/join