Have you every heard someone bemoaning the fact that they just don’t know the “right” people?
Sometimes, especially in the business context, there’s a push to always be networking, to always be going broader, to always be making more contacts. And although there’s nothing wrong with meeting new people, what would happen if we chose to invest our energy into creating deeper relationships with the people we already know?
Several months ago, I heard an interview* with Bob Beaudine where he made the statement that we already know who we need to know. The important thing is not how _many_ people we know, but rather_ our willingness to invest in the relationships we have_.
It’s one thing to be friendly, and to have lots of acquaintances. It’s another to have friends we actually know, and who in turn know us; to have friends who know our story, and our values, and our family, and our hobbies; who we can count on, and who can count on us; who we wouldn’t be afraid to call if we got stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
It can an be easy to think of all the ‘friends’ we have, but how many of them are true friends in this sense, and how many are mere acquaintances?
The challenge is that friendship can be also be difficult—it requires something of us. It’s one thing to want a friend; it’s another to be a friend. And maybe this is one reason some of us stop making friends as we grow older.
Building a network and making friends are not mutually exclusive. But they’re also not identical. The ability to have a friend, and to be a friend, is an incredible gift. And although it takes effort, it also enriches and deepens our lives in ways merely building our network never can.
_* The interview was from the EntreLeadership, Episode 186 (the interview itself starts around the 20:00 mark)_