Swimming with the Sharks, works well in the Forests too.
Over thirty years ago I came across Harvey Mackay’s book, Swim with the Sharks without getting eaten alive. I even had the opportunity to meet with him when he came to speak at a seminar group that I belonged to in the Twin Cities.
Harvey is all about networking and has it down to a science with a network that can easily put him in front of anyone in the world with just a phone call or two.
Though I did not follow Harvey’s formulas closely, I did get the gist of it and get into the practice of developing and growing my network through the years.
In the last thirty five years most of my business and even my jobs during college all came from colleagues who knew me and wanted me to work for their companies or other companiess that they cared about.
Maintaining a huge rolodex has always been important, though a good share of them are no longer around, I still get frequent calls when someone knows someone who needs our services.
We have worked on thousands of projects for our competitors or for people that our competitors have referred us to, and we are currently working on one of these.
For the last few weeks we have been working on one of those projects up in Northern Wisconsin doing an appraisal for a competitor who we have been close friends with for nearly 30 years.
In the early years of my business there were not many people in our part of the Forestry Profession, and we all got to know each other pretty well.
One of my early lessons from these competitors was that the best of them were not that concerned with competing with me, it was clear that they wanted me to be successful, since they knew that if I did well it would make the profession look good and grow stronger.
And if I failed it would make the profession look a little tarnished.
So, advice was always freely given, and we defended each other in front of clients, other foresters, and the public.
Knowing that what builds up one of us, builds up all of us.
This attitude has served us all well and created an environment where we are delighted to see each other at professional meetings and often call each other up to offer projects, ask for projects, or ask for advice on projects.
All without a referral fee since that goes against the Code of Ethics in our profession.
Now that I am moving more into the Real Estate industry, I hope that I can develop relationships like this here too.
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