You’ll pay as much as you do to consume to get to the right people

A bunch of years ago Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist wrote that in a digital society, the network is the most important thing there is. With a whole lot more arguing than I’m going to present here, they made a compelling argument that the people you have around you are going to be the most important asset you have.

I bought that argument back then, and I subscribe to it even more now, mainly because of my own experiences and the experiences I have from meeting people who do good today.

In order to get to the people you want to associate yourself with, you either have to make friends with them, provide them with enough value so that you can work with them, or you’ll have to pay to get in to the same parties as them.

You’re going to have to pay in order to get to meet your people.

This has been my tactic for the past couple of years, ever since reading their books. I barely look at the speakers if I’m going to a conference. I’m much more interested in looking at their communication style around the conference in order to deduce whether or not it’s a place people I want to meet are interested in and are going to.

I recently signed up to an Akimbo workshop because most of the people I enjoy working with think Seth Godin is a genius as well, and I’ve had a lot of fun with them. And I know there are going to be a whole lot more of those people in the workshop. But I did pay in order to get in there.

We’re used to have to pay to consume. A lot less today, but we’re still paying. Netflix, Disney+, Spotify and so on are all proofs of that. If we want to know something, we go to youtube, and we pay with our time on that ad. If we want food, we exchange a meal or groceries for our money. If we want new clothes, it’s going to cost us. And so on.

We’re used to pay for the things we have. But never before has it been more important to pay for the friends we want to have. Not pay them directly, but pay prices for conferences, for mingle parties, for workshops and so on. We need to pay to get access.

Even then, you’re by no means guaranteed a spot at the table. But you’re far more likely to get a spot at the table.

This in turn means that there’s business to be made in knowing the right people. If I rightly can say that I know a group of either highly skilled, useful or cool people, I can charge other people to get access to them.

There are two ways of becoming that confident in the people you know. Either you know the most people. By doing so, you also know that whatever people need, wherever they need it, you got someone who can help them out. By being friends with you, they know that a bunch of people are going to come along and one or two of them are going to be useful enough or cool enough to make it worth it.

Or, you know just the right people. I’ve had conversations with friends and small businesses in the last couple of months where none of them know how to start creating content for Socials, just to bring up an example. I can confidently say that I know the right people for them. I have an outstanding camera guy, a wonderful artistic designer, a guy who knows paid ads and I know the landscape of socials better than most.

If we were to set up a monthly workshop or think tank, it would be easy for us to make money off of it, because when I meet the people who need some help, I know where to point them.

As a last point here, I’m not saying that we’re all going to live off of kickbacks from referrals from friends and our networks. That wouldn’t create any real value. What I’m saying is that if you’re not ready to pay to get to know the right people in the same way you’re ready to pay for Netflix, you’re going to have a harder time moving forward.

For business, knowing the right people is a lot more important than a subscription to Netflix. So invest in it.