Of the many hats I wear, including goal achievement coaching, property development and IT project management, the other one is the building of my personal influence network. This is building a network of collaborators and advocates to find and realise opportunities to our mutual benefit.
In physics, Acceleration is distance/(time x time). Just as in the physics equation, multiplying your time can accelerate your growth and progress.
You are in a job or business so why build a network? Many of us are looking for increased opportunities. As we bring people into our networks we bring in opportunities.
Many opportunities cannot successfully be realized by a single individual, due to limited time, resources, skills, or simply the need for a wider market. But by building a network we have duplicated. This multiplies the opportunities and the talent available to help realise those opportunities.
By multiplying opportunity, what happens?
For some opportunities I can invest money, and have it work for me in the background, with an outcome paid as an annuity, dividend, or lump sum.
For some I can connect the players and accept a “commission” for setting up the deal. If there are ongoing transactions, this may result in a passive income.
For others, I can put in the sweat equity, with others, and reap the rewards.
All of these can come about due to the quality of the people and the quality of the opportunities brought into our scope. This enables us to massively multiply our earning potential, our profit. If I can command $100/hr now, and I ramp up my opportunities and bring it $500/hr, have I spent 5X as much time? No, I still have 168 hours in the week, but that 1 hour is now worth 5X as much. I have effectively multiplied my time by 5.
Another example:
If I was to put a property development together and needed a lawyer, town planner, quantity surveyor, loan broker, accountant, etc. How long would I spend on the internet Googling possible partners, checking their work, their references, working out who I could trust, developing a relationship, pushing for quality work? Probably not much as I would reach into my network, and into the networks of trusted collaborators and find people I could trust. Find people that others trust and have already advocated for. That is a time multiplier.
We are familiar with the concept of franchises –the franchisors multiplies effort, profit and time through duplication and a system that the franchisee uses to approach the required activities, giving time efficiencies and consistent outcomes.
The secret is, of course, duplication. How do I apply this to building a network? I coach my contacts to do what I do, to build their networks. I coach them to coach. and they then coach their contacts to coach. This is true duplication. I am “franchising” in a way, I am delegating the building of the network to others. In this way I can have a network of 100 trusted advocates in a few years by finding and coaching 5 people to build their network. The system makes us duplicatable, or is it duplicable ?. We are multiplying our time. I want a network of contacts worthy of advocating for. I want my contacts to have such a network, and their contacts. Duplication. This means we can virtually be in multiple places at once. The network grows to our mutual benefit.
Have you used You Tube or Google to learn to do something? How much time does it take to find the right information, go thru it only to find out it doesn’t solve the problem, having to keep looking, doing more weird Google searches to try and get a result, getting distracted and chasing down the rabbit hole of roller-skating dinosaurs and underwater cats, or some other time-wasting distraction?
What if you can identify the talent in your network and reach out and spend some time with them? This, again, multiplies your time.
In a TED talk by Rory Vaden on multiplying your time, Rory says that you MULTIPLY your time by giving yourself the EMOTIONAL PERMISSION to spend time on things TODAY that give you more time TOMORROW.
He takes the Urgency-Importance equation and adds the dimension of Significance.
To find the tasks that multiply time, that provide Significance, he proposes a 5-stage significance funnel through which we filter the things we have to do.
1. Ignore – This is the first cut, permission to ignore, say no to things that don’t add value, that don’t help the goal – useless meetings, dinosaurs. This saves time.
2. Invest – Invest time to automate, to develop a system for periodic tasks, to save time later. This saves time.
3. Imperfect – It’s not perfect unless we do it ourselves, right? We have to let go of that. Let others do some, take some of the workload, learn. Better yet, if you can put a system around a periodic task and then delegate, you can increase the efficiency and have a better, predetermined outcome. This is why we coach, we delegate to duplicate. Duplication automates network building, multiples time.
4. Incomplete – It’s not perfect unless we do it ourselves, right? We have to let go of that. Let others do some, take some of the workload, learn. Better yet, if you can put a system around a periodic task and then delegate, you can increase the efficiency and have a better, predetermined outcome. This is why we coach, we delegate to duplicate. Duplication automates network building, multiples time.
5. Protect – This is where the rubber hits the road, where you focus on what delivers your goals. Permission to protect the actions we are going to take, avoid the distractions, peer pressure, obstacles, or excuses. Focus and protect actions to succeed.
By talking this approach, you can effectively multiply Profit, Opportunities, Talent, Effort, the Network itself, and Time.
POTENT isn’t it?