In this article I will explain how to network effectively starting with your mindset. I will also explain how to create the right first impression, how to establish rapport and how to follow up properly.

Get Your Mindset Right

Your mindset plays a critical role in making anything a success – and networking is no different.

Successful networkers are typically confident and comfortable with people but some people have mental barriers that prevent them from networking with ease.

For example you may find that you tend to think negatively when around other people.  If you think positively in any situation you increase your chances of success.  So think optimistic thoughts.

Be aware of thoughts that pop into your head telling you that you “shouldn’t go to the party because you are tired/have to walk the dog/ don’t feel like it/ or that I’m no good at these things”. Or when you are at the social event you may tell yourself “that person looks to busy to talk to me”.  These inner voices can determine the outcome of the interaction before you even start!!

The good news is that networking is a skill and can be learned and any barriers that exist can be overcome if you are aware of them, and learn how to address them.

Create The Right First Impression

Success in networking can depend on the first impressions you create.  Yet many people leave the success of these impressions to chance.  When you first meet somebody you are usually busy forming impressions about them and so you may not consciously be aware of them forming impressions of you.  It is important to consider the impressions you want to create and how you will go about creating them.

Remember in the first twelve seconds of an interaction people will make impressions of you.  Once these are formed they are very difficult to change.  People tend to look for reinforcing behaviours rather than contradicitive behaviour once they have formed an impression.

A big key to creating the right first impression is to make sure your handshake is proper, not to hard and not too soft.  Never shake hands when you have a sweaty palm.  Make sure you smile upon the introduction.  A smile can speak a thousand words.  And consider your dress before you go marching off to the event.

Once you’ve made your first impression it is time to establish rapport.

Establish Rapport

I was happily in a small group of people recently when in swooped a woman whom no one could possible ignore.  She descended upon our small group like a superstar television evangelist (with the image to match).  In a not unexpected loud voice she declared “Hi! I’m Tammy Robinson.  Here’s my card. Have a great day”. She promptly handed every person in our group her business card turned and left as quickly as she had arrived.  It was not surprising that most of these cards ended in the rubbish bin!

The objective of networking is to strike a rapport with people that will open the way to building relationships.  If you have established rapport with a person, you should each feel equally motivated to swap contact details.  Your objective should be that the person remembers you as someone they had a positive interaction with and wants to see you again.

Start the conversation

You can start a conversation by asking open ended questions ie questions that start with ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’, ‘when’ or ‘why’.   Make sure you deliver the questions with fitting body language, and listen to the answers intently. Remember every person you meet is absolutely fascinating, if given the opportunity.

In The 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey stresses the importance of listening.  Covey claims that truly genuine listeners don’t just pick up on the words they hear, but the feelings or meaning behind the words.  To do this, you need to watch for signs of feelings which are seen through facial expressions, body posture, movement, and tone of voice.

You can also start the conversation by telling stories to emphasize points, or making statements.  Don’t rely on the other person to do all the talking.  If you were to ask one question after the other the interaction would appear as a job interview rather than a meaningful conversation.

The key to telling personal ’stories’ is to keep them relevant and succinct and make sure they don’t make you look too fantastic.  Remember us Australians have such a thing as ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

Making relevant and genuine observations about the person you are talking to is good etiquette and is a wonderful way to show genuine interest and get the conversation going.  For example you can pay the person a compliment or notice something different about them. Make sure you focus on positive observations only.

These tactics can also be used throughout the conversation.  The key is to use these tools to make the conversation flow, especially when changing topics.

Topics

Identify topics you are both interested in discussing.  It is easier to be genuinely interested in someone if you are discussing a topic you are genuinely interested in.

Use emotional intelligence

Developing rapport involves a high level of emotional intelligence, see the book by Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1996).   Goleman explains that emotional intelligence includes optimism, a genuine desire to understand other people and their needs, flexibility in approach, listening, empathy, focus on the other person’s needs rather than your own, honesty, resilience to rejection, reliability, responsiveness and being well organised.

Remember their name

A persons name is generally their favorite word so remembering a persons name is important.

You may find it helpful to use a method for remembering names.  One method is to immediately (and consciously) take a mental note of the person’s name, and associate that name with something about them or someone else you know with the same name.  Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t remember someone’s name straight away and feel free to re-ask if necessary.

Look for opportunities to keep in contact

Throughout your conversation you should look for ‘hook points’.  A hook point is a point of establishing a valid reason to keep momentum of the new relationship going and exchanging contact details.

Follow Up Properly

Its all well and good to establish rapport in the midst of having a great conversation with somebody but truly effective networking is more than that.  It is about developing relationships.  In order to develop relationships it is about ongoing interactions.

Get their contact details

Many people find it difficult to get across the ‘invisible follow up line’ – the line between “it was lovely chatting to you and hope to see you again sometime” to “we will keep in touch by…”.

To achieve this you not only need to create good impressions and build rapport, you also need to create the opportunity to follow up.  When you meet somebody that you would like to see again it is important to look for every opportunity to stay in touch.

Look for opportunities in the conversation to establish an event together.  For example I like theatre so if somebody that I am interested in talks about a play I will use that as an opportunity to say something like “Hey lets go see a play together”.  Once they agree I then see that as the opportunity to exchange contact details so that we can keep in touch and contact one another about a play.  Then when I call them it is expected that we are going to meet.

Of course if nothing arises in the conversation that we would both like to do together I can always say “It was nice talking to you.  Let’s grab a meal/coffee sometime” and then swap numbers after that.

It is best not to only give your details to them in the hope that they will call you.  It is better to be in control of the follow up.  The other person may be lazy and not call you or may even be to shy to reconnect.  You should be in control of this process.  That’s why you make sure you get their contact details.

I prefer swapping phone numbers over email or Facebook.  The telephone is more personal and it is easier to re establish rapport.

Making the contact

It goes without saying that once you have created the opportunity to follow up you then need to act on it.

It is usually best to make the first contact within one week of meeting the other person and have a clear objective and reason for calling.  This will be easy if you created the opportunity to follow up when you met.  If not remember that you don’t always need a reason to call other than ‘catching up’.

Remember voice tone accounts for 93% of the message on the telephone.

Manage Your Network

It is important to manage your network of people.  You should never use the excuse of ‘not enough time’.  It does not need to take a lot of time, and the time you put in is worth it!!

Some ways to manage your network are to meet for a chat or coffee, send people emails, organise events together, invite them to events you are going to that you think they will also be interested in, remember important dates ie their birthday, or send them cards or gifts (these giftts don’t need to be expensive).

One method I often use is sending a group sms.  This saves a lot of time, touches a lot of people in your network at once and can be made personal.

By using these methods you will become a great networker in no time!!

Feel free to post any specific questions or comments you have.

- Matthew

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3. Get motivated to get lean!

Well first off I’m here to tell you that there are way more benefits to having a great body than impressing the opposite sex. The main benefits come from the way you feel about yourself. Having a body you are proud of will increase your self esteem and make you happier which will carry over to all aspects of your life including professionally, socially and with family members.

Secondly, I’m here to tell you that building your body into something you are proud of is more about motivation and will-power than anything else.

In this article I will give you the nutritional information you need and the training principles to match BUT it is up to you to use them. AND the only way you will do this is through absolute desire and willpower to say NO to that cheesecake. Except for Sundays! Which I’ll get to later.

So lets GET MOTIVATED TO GET LEAN!!

How you build your lean body

There are a million gadgets out there that promise you the abs of your dreams in just 30 minutes a day!

In fact your garage may have one, along with the dust settled on top.

Truth is these gadgets don’t give you the magic the infomercials promise… surprise!… surprise!!

The real truth is that there are two key components to building a lean body. Nutrition and exercise. By following the principles below your dream body will come true.

Nutrition is most important so I’ll tell you all about that first.

What to eat

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are the body’s prime energy source. They help in the proper function of the brain as well as the body’s muscles by transforming sugar into the energy your body truly needs. All carbohydrates are made up of sugar.

There are both simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are made up of only one kind of sugar. It could either be fructose (fruit sugar), glucose (corn sugar), sucrose (table sugar), lactose, and maltose. This is the type of carbohydrate that is quickly turned into glucose after consumption, so the bloodstream can absorb it and transport it all over the body. Because of its fast transformation, its effect is a sudden boost of energy to your body. Any energy that your body doesn’t burn stores as bodyfat.

On the other hand, complex carbohydrates are composed of different types of sugar. These carbohydrates normally take slower digestion that also affects the glucose transformation. As such, the body’s energy lasts longer unlike that of simple carbohydrates. This means that your body can use the energy from these carbohydrates as opposed to them converting into bodyfat.

Complex carbohydrates are considered good for the body. They have nutrients that include the dietary fiber that help you have a faster metabolism. Not only that, complex carbohydrates also have lower amounts of fats.

Examples of complex carbohydrates are white and sweet potatoes, rice , whole grain cereals, pasta and wheat bread.

Protein

Protein is the building block of cells and fluids, and is essential to the body because it manufactures, maintains, and replaces body tissues. Every muscle, hormone, and organ found in the body is made of protein and it helps in manufacturing haemoglobin and antibodies. The body makes use of protein to function properly and nine of the essential amino acids humans require can only be found in protein foods.

Examples of protein foods include meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, soy products, and nuts, poultry, shellfish, cheese, oats, tofu, yogurt, egg substitutes, and legumes.

It is important that any protein you eat is lean.

Fat

Saturated fat is found in a wide range of foods including fatty meats, full cream dairy products, pastries and cakes. These are bad, very bad and will raise your risk of heart attack and stroke by increasing blood cholesterol levels. Avoid these fats.

Trans fats are devil food! Even more potent than saturated fats in raising bad blood cholesterol. Found in many snack foods, processed foods, commercially prepared fried foods and some margarines, these man-made fats are produced by heating liquid vegetable oils in the presence of hydrogen (a process known as hydrogenation).

And for the good news…

I present…

Unsaturated fats. These include the mono-unsaturates found in olive oil, canola, and avocados, and two types of polyunsaturated fats: omega-6 (including safflower and sunflower oils) and omega-3 (found in fish, some plants such as spinach, nuts and seeds). These fats can help lower cholesterol and can also lower your own body fat.

Sample nutrition plan

Here is a sample nutrition plan for you to follow. For best results and to make it stick, you should ideally follow it for 8 weeks.

I am eating according to this nutrition plan at the moment. I will go from 85kg and 12% bodyfat to about 80kg and 8% bodyfat. It will take me about 5 weeks to do this.

It’s likely that you don’t weigh the same as me. If that’s the case all you need to do is subtract or add more food into your nutrition plan, so that it is tailor made to you. Doing this is easy. For every kg more than 85kg you weigh add 1% to the quantity of each food item. Alternatively for every kg less than me you weigh subtract 1% from the quantity of each food item.

Good news is that once a week you may have a cheat day. This is the day you can eat that cheese cake. You will learn to love this day!! On your cheat day you may eat 1 or 2 meals plus one snack of whatever you want. But be careful that the ’snack’ is just a snack ie a medium packet of chips, an ice cream etc and not a full blown meal.

Exercise

As well as eating well you need to exercise in order to build your dream body. Exercise is made up of cardiovascular exercise and weight training. You ideally need to do both.

Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardio is exercises that involve the large muscles like legs and help make your heart and lungs stronger. Cardiovascular exercise has lots of health benefits like lowering your blood pressure, and burns lots of calories leading to weight loss.

You need to do Cardio at least 5 days per week. Your cardio can be made up of either brisk walks or interval sprints. Choose whichever best suits your fitness level.

The bad thing about cardio is that it will need to be done first thing in the morning. The good thing about cardio is that you will learn to love it!!

Interval sprints

Some studies have shown that interval sprints are the best way to lose bodyfat. Ever seen a fat 100m sprinter??

If you choose sprints you will do them as follows:

• 3 – 5 minutes warm-up (light jog, low intesity, gradually increasing at the end of the warm up period)
• 1 minute high intensity sprint followed by a 1 minute low intensity jog (repeat 6-8 times)
• 3 – 5 minutes cool down (light jog, low intensity, gradually decreasing by the end of the cool down period)

This will take you 20-30 minutes to complete and thus can give you an extra 30 minutes sleep than a brisk walk will allow.

Brisk walk

If you don’t like the idea of doing sprints you can do a brisk walk.

Or you can mix up days you do a brisk walk with days that you sprint. Again the key is to make sure you are doing cardio at least 5 days per week.

A brisk walk needs to be done for an hour. With an i-pod this hour can go real fast.

Here’s some good news… and a bit of leeway. If you can’t do your cardio in the morning you can do it sometime during the day. Just make sure that you do your cardio at least 3 hours after you last ate.

But as I said. Morning is best.

Weight training

Weight training is the use of weights to put resistance on your body. Two key concepts in any weight training program are to make sure you use as many compound movements as possible and make sure your workout is intense.

Compound movements are those that incorporate as many muscle groups as possible in performing the lift. Squats, deadlifts, clean and press and bench press are all great examples of compound movements.

Intensity simply means to make sure you work hard. Hard work does not necessarily mean to build a sweat BUT it does mean to tax your body. Ways to ensure your work out is intense is to have short rest periods, lift massively heavy weights, and lift to the point that you can no longer do that exercise with proper technique.

Your weight training workout should go for between 40 minutes and 1 hour.

Here is a weight training programme for you to follow for the next 8 weeks.

Sample weight training program

You should only do weight training three days per week. On the other days just do Cardiovascular Exercise or rest.

Monday: Chest/Triceps/Shoulders

Wednesday: Back/Biceps/Forearms/Abs

Friday: legs

For all these exercises rest between 1-2 minutes.

And it is important to see a personal trainer if you are unsure how to do any of them to avoid injury.

Feel free to post any specific questions you have and I’ll answer them for you.

…and remember GET MOTIVATED TO GET LEAN!!

- Matthew

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3. Mental Discipline an introduction

I know many people who are entrepreneurs and running their own businesses, and doing quite well. The jobs and businesses they have are widely varied and different, but the motivation behind their origin is the same: the Entrepreneur’s desire to have a job that they ‘own’. Their desire to live and work to their own schedules and to become experts in their own niche – in euphemism, to be able to dance to the beat to their own drums.

Many people who start their own businesses hold this ideal in their hearts – it is the reason they started their business. It is also the reason they should remember this when their business booms and they start to take on staff – the desire to own one’s work is not exclusive to entrepreneurs!

21st Century jobs have a much heavier cognitive component then their 20th century cousins. Today’s jobs are less mechanical and monotonous, and require higher levels of creativity and inventiveness – outside the square sort of stuff. In this talk Daniel Pink covers how for most 21st century positions that traditional rewards, such as money, are not always the best incentive for performance. Traditional rewards tend to narrow and sharpen focus on a particular task, which is a creativity killer. Creativity requires an individual to own, love and enjoy their work. In other words, they must gain autonomy, purpose and mastery for their toil.

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Welcome to part 5 of our first multi-video series, 5 tips for a positive mental attitude. We will be releasing one video a day from Monday to Friday this week – each video will be covering a tip to help develop and improve your positive mental attitude. Having a positive outlook on life is a key and initial step that is needed to achieve success in your professional and personal life.

This video gives the final of our 5 tips, Emotional Monitoring. In this video we talk about how emotions can and will spiral out of control without close monitoring, and why it is important to keep your moods in check to keep a positive attitude.

The list below is an outline of the week ahead.

1. Monday: Healthy Living
2. Tuesday: Perspective
3. Wednesday: Appreciation
4. Thursday: Social Environment
5. Friday: Emotional Monitoring (this video)

Enjoy this Friday (and final) video and thanks for watching this series. If you have missed any of the earlier videos, you can find the rest of the series by following the links in the list above.

Thanks again for watching!

Chris & Alborz.

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1. 5 Tips for a Positive Mental Attitude. Part 1 of 5: Healthy Living
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3. Creating positive thought habits

Welcome to part 4 of our first multi-video series, 5 tips for a positive mental attitude. We will be releasing one video a day from Monday to Friday this week – each video will be covering a tip to help develop and improve your positive mental attitude. Having a positive outlook on life is a key and initial step that is needed to achieve success in your professional and personal life.

This video gives the fourth of our 5 tips, Social Environment. In this video we talk about how people you associate with WILL affect your mood and attitude – and about how spending time with positive people will make you a more positive person. The list below is an outline of the week ahead.

1. Monday: Healthy Living
2. Tuesday: Perspective
3. Wednesday: Appreciation
4. Thursday: Social Environment (this video)
5. Tomorrow: Emotional Monitoring

Enjoy this Thursday video and stay tuned for the final video of this series tomorrow on Emotional Monitoring, and why it is important to keep your moods in check to keep a positive attitude.

Cheers,
Alborz and Chris

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Welcome to part 3 of our first multi-video series, 5 tips for a positive mental attitude. We will be releasing one video a day from Monday to Friday this week – each video will be covering a tip to help develop and improve your positive mental attitude. Having a positive outlook on life is a key and initial step that is needed to achieve success in your professional and personal life.

This video gives the third of our 5 tips, Showing Appreciation. This tip is about showing appreciation for what you DO have (as opposed to focusing on what you don’t have). It is also about showing appreciation for the people and mentors in your life that have helped you along your journey.

The list below is an outline of the week ahead.

1. Monday: Healthy Living
2. Tuesday: Perspective
3. Wednesday: Appreciation (this video)
4. Tomorrow: Social Environment
5. Friday: Emotional Monitoring

Enjoy this Wednesday video and stay tuned for tomorrow’s video on Social Environment, and how the people you hang around can, do and will affect your mindset.

Cheers,
Chris and Alborz

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Welcome to part 2 of our first multi-video series, 5 tips for a positive mental attitude. We will be releasing one video a day from Monday to Friday this week – each video will be covering a tip to help develop and improve your positive mental attitude. Having a positive outlook on life is a key and initial step that is needed to achieve success in your professional and personal life.

This video gives the second of our 5 tips, Perspective. It is focused on how to apply a positive perspective to your everyday life!

The list below is an outline of the week ahead.

1. Monday: Healthy Living
2. Tuesday: Perspective (this video)
3. Tomorrow: Appreciation
4. Thursday: Social Environment
5. Friday: Emotional Monitoring

Enjoy the Tuesday video and stay tuned for tomorrow’s video on Appreciation. It is focused on how to have appreciation for what you have, and for others in your life.

Cheers,
Alborz and Chris.

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1. 5 Tips for a Positive Mental Attitude. Part 1 of 5: Healthy Living
2. 5 tips for developing a positive mental attitude (text version)
3. Maintaining long-term same gender friendships

Welcome to part 1 of our first multi-video series, 5 tips for a positive mental attitude. We will be releasing one video a day from Monday to Friday this week – each video will be covering a tip to help develop and improve your positive mental attitude. Having a positive outlook on life is a key and initial step that is needed to achieve success in your professional and personal life.

This video makes mention of another of our articles on mental Discipline. You can find the article Mental Discipline: An Introduction here.

This video gives a brief introduction in what we aim to achieve in this series, as well as gives the first of our 5 tips, Healthy Living. The list below is an outline of the week ahead – we will update the list with links to the videos on each upcoming video release.

1. Monday: Healthy Living (this video)
2. Tomorrow: Perspective
3. Wednesday: Appreciation
4. Thursday: Social Environment
5. Friday: Emotional Monitoring

Enjoy the first video and stay tuned for tomorrow’s video on applying a positive perspective to your everyday life!

Cheers,

Chris & Alborz.

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It was a really nice day outside today and working a really busy job can make it hard to be able to get out there and enjoy days like today. I decided to kill two birds with one stone – both head out to enjoy the day AND get some work done.

In this video I talk about some changes that I have brought into my life to increase my levels of productivity and work efficiency, allowing me to spend less time in the office and giving me more time to head out and enjoy outdoor activities that I enjoy – like surfing!

I cover three aspects of productivity in this video:

1. Project and task prioritisation
2. Time management
3. Having the right work environment

Something I mention briefly in the second section of the video (Time Management) is the 80:20 rule. I don’t really go into any detail of the rule in the video, but you can read a summary of the rule written by Alborz in this article, The 80:20 Rule.

At any rate, it was fun getting outside to make this video, I hope you enjoy it!

Cheers,
Chris.

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Why the whole ‘now officially including women’?

Well, way back when in the early months of 2006, The Delfland Institute of Mental Health in The Netherlands released findings that optimistic men had a higher level of longevity due to less risk of suffering from heart attacks or other heart disease. This supported previous research suggesting that optimists tended to live longer. This new study however was the first to find a specific health link to optimism. The researchers suggest that people with higher levels of optimism then to be better at coping with difficult situations (hence less stress) and tended to take care of their bodies more (hence better cardiovascular fitness).

Since early this week however, it seems that women too fall into this category. On Monday, the BBC reported on a US-based study showed that optimism also decreases risk of heart disease and increases life span in women – mirroring the findings of the male-based Dutch study 3 years previous. This second study was based solely on females only for the same reason the first study was men-centric: single gender research is very common in medical research as it reduces complexity by decreasing possible variables in experimental design and interpretation.

I’m a pessimist – am I doomed?

No, you definitely are not. It turns out there are working and reliable methods out there for changing your attitude from a negative one to a positive one. There are a lot of resources out there to help you change your outlook, including professional blogs, books, etc.

In fact, one of the foremost experts on developing optimism and positive psychology is psychologist Martin Seligman. His book ‘Learned Optimism’ is a great resource for increasing the levels of optimism in your life. One great thing about this book is that it has a psych quiz you can take to uncover your current level of optimism – and then gives you very real and concrete strategies to improve your mindset.

Book Review:
Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman

Also, we have some articles on developing a positive mental attitude on Cognicology you may wish to read:
5 tips for developing a positive mental attitude
Creating positive thought habits

References:

And finally, you can find the links to the original BBC articles here, with a big thanks to Jane Rawson for letting us know about the BBC article from earlier this week!:

Optimists ‘have less heart risk’ – Dutch study on men, 2006 (BBC)
Optimistic women ‘live longer’ – US study on women, 2009 (BBC)

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2. The importance of inspirational material for success
3. 5 tips for developing a positive mental attitude (text version)