Your network is your net worth. We are sure you have heard of such a phrase before. Now, you may have wondered. Why is that? Well, in this post we will show you several reasons why your network quality matter and a few things you can do in between to increase your network quality.
1. You Become Alike with Them
This is one of the most important reason why the quality of your social network matters. Remember one of Jim Rohn’s quote “You are the average of five people you spend the most time with”.
If you are hanging around mediocre people, you would most likely to become mediocre yourself. However, if you hang around with high quality people, you would eventually pick up their quality. It does not matter if you have been friends with someone for years.
The moment they start doing drugs or something which ruined their life. Leave them. Yes, we might sound cruel and heartless, but you are not responsible for fixing anyone’s life.
Don’t get your hands dirty by helping someone to get out of the mud they jumped into themselves in the beginning.
Instead, you want to spend time with the positive, the smart worker, the realist, and the successful. You want to be around people you can admire, not someone you look down upon.
2. Gate of Opportunities
Having high quality networks would open up plenty of opportunities you never could before.
For example, if you love fashion and you happen to befriend the creative director or the head of PR of a world class designer brand, you might get free tickets to a prestigious fashion show or fashion runway, which in return would allow you to broaden your networks in that field even more as you would meet other fashion lovers and enthusiasts.
This same principle is applicable in nearly every field you can think of.
You want to surround yourself with people who are full of opportunities. They will help you to elevate your life by allowing you chances you might not get otherwise.
To understand this concept better, we recommend you to read Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell.
3. Learning Figures
You must have heard the phrase “if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”. We completely agree with this quote. When you have high value and high quality networks, you could actually learn from these people.
We suppose at least you have one of the people in this circle which you admire and see as aa role model. You can learn from them. What did they do that make them successful?
Copy that. There is no shame in copying someone’s method of success as long as you don’t claim you invent it. Which you probably don’t. It’s really interesting how so many people hang around people who are worse than them just because they want to be the smartest one in the group.
We suggest you to hang around people who are better than you at what you want, this way you’ll get to learn from them and their mistakes and avoid them for yourselves.
4. Better Social Credibility
This one is just obvious, when you have better quality networks, you would have better social credibility. It just comes in a package.
For example, saying that you are friends with Jay Z or one of the prince of Dubai sounds better than saying that you are friends with the truck driver at your local neighborhood (nothing against truck driver, but you get the point).
As much as we would like to think everyone is equal, some people possess more social value than others, and hanging around with these people would definitely boost your social image and credibility
5. Safety Net
This may not be everyone’s first reason to hang around high quality people, but having high value people in your circle of network would come in advantage when you are in a tight spot, maybe your latest business venture failed due to external factor, such as natural disaster or sudden recession, you can come to these people and ask for their help.
If your relationship with them is strong enough, they should be willing to help, of course, you must have had a good social image and credit scores to begin with, but this form of safety net does not just work financially, it also works socially as well.
Which is why it is easier for people with strong social network to raise back up again after a fall compared to average people.
One, because they already have the skills, and if they are smart enough, have learned from their mistakes, but it’s also because they have a safety net in form of social network (connect this with point 2 for better understanding)
Yes, there is a reason why the rich love to hang around other rich people. They understand the importance of high quality social network. Believe us when we say having high quality networks would bring you far in life as long as you know how to use it properly.
