 How are you giving, as Johnny said, that attention, that appreciation, and acceptance to others? What about when people are going through difficult times? Are you there to be that shoulder for them to lean on? Are you there to pick up their spirits? That is another form of social capital that we all have to offer. Networking is not just career based. I think that word gets thrown around a lot and we naturally think about, okay, well, what are my job prospects? I've made friends through networking. I've gone on dates with people in my network. So if you think about it and you're listening to this, you're like, well, I'm happy in my career. I don't really need to grow my network. Networking is not just about moving ahead in your career and advancing. Networking provides a wealth of opportunity in your life and it creates a social life that's healthy for your mental health. And we've talked about this countless times on the show. The more connected we are as humans, the happier we are. So networking, it's ongoing. It happens everywhere. It's not something that you need to buy a ticket to attend to get an opportunity to network. And when you approach it with the right mindset of how can I actually connect with this person instead of what can I get out of this person, it's far more fun. And it can be insanely rewarding. Like I have this alarm sound on my iPhone that goes off every morning and it's my favorite song. And here's the story behind the song. I was the one that connected the two people that formed that band. And it sounds a little bit like, I don't mean to show off here. I just mean to say that whenever my alarm clock goes off, I'm getting I'm getting goosebumps because I'm thinking back to 2016 when these two people attended an event that I was hosting and they connected on that event and they both formed a band. And six months later their first album came out. And now after the lockdowns are over and there's concerts again, playing in Vienna and sometimes they play and I sit in the audience and when I hear people clap, I'm thinking less like I was a little part of what happened here because I was networking in my in my social life. And this goes with what AJ was saying. You may feel content in your career or there's no reason for you to network and you're happy where things are. But I've been saying this on this show for a while now that you should have several missions in your life. You should be putting together several things. Maybe you have a family romantic mission of what you want that to be like and what you're going to build for yourself. Perhaps you have a hobby mission of something that you want to do on a creative level. And then you have your career mission. I certainly have all three of those for myself. And you can have as many as you want. Obviously, the more you have, the more scattered you're going to be. For myself, my two main ones and because I just moved to Vegas from LA last year, there was two main missions on my mind. Number one is always going to be AOC and the work that we do here and its importance and how we're trying to change the world. The second one is my second, my slash career and my hobby, which is music. And because I had wrote a bunch, I had nothing but time on my hands during the pandemic and I had wrote a bunch of stuff. And I had decided that the mission that I was going to take on as I moved to Vegas was to jump into the music scene to go along with Michael and to make a record, at least the demos, putting it together and the idea of getting a record together based on the music that I had written during the pandemic. It was a weird time in all of our lives. I wanted to document that time and music being a medium that I love using to create. That was high on my list. And as things started opening up and I started meeting people here, as I started talking about what I was doing here, that mission of music making this record was at top of my mind, especially while I'm going out to see shows because that's the community that I enjoy. And we'll be discussing that in a bit. But it has opened so many doors for myself. And yet I'm incredibly new to this scene here in Vegas. It has been so much fun because it has allowed me to be purposeful in the conversations that I'm having, what I want to get out of these relationships. And of course, more importantly, how can I contribute? And I had started that networking well before things opened up in Vegas. I had started that networking the minute that I realized I was moving to Las Vegas. And I started that from the comfort of my own living room in Los Angeles. And let's talk about how you're able to start that. Because in order for us to become great net workers, we have to first look at our own social capital bank account and think about what we have to offer before we start focusing on what we can get from others. And we define social capital as really three things that every single person on this planet has, no matter how junior you might think you are. If you are a fresh college graduate, you have social capital, you may not realize it yet. Social capital, as we define it, is your relationships, your knowledge or expertise, and emotional support. These are three things that you bring into every networking situation as something you have to offer others. And no matter how junior you may be, you have some relationships. You have friends, you had your Greek life, you had people you've worked with in your internship. Or if you're senior, you have a ton of relationships, most likely. And we work with a lot of clients who are in that phase of their career. They're senior, they're in the C-suite, and they're asking us, you know, I've reached all of my career goals, what's next for me? And the one thing that we say over and over again is how can we help the people below us get to that exact same level? That's just as fulfilling. So if you're at a place in your career where you're happy, you've checked every box, you're enjoying life, how about looking two, three rungs below you and saying, what do I have to offer these people who aspire to get to my level? That's incredibly rewarding. The second bucket is knowledge. You have knowledge whether you realize it or not. Guess what? If you know TikTok, you have more knowledge around TikTok than the three of us combined. And you have incredible value to companies who are trying to reach to the younger generations on new social platforms. We have a member, Todd, in our X Factor accelerator who is getting started in digital marketing and he was struggling to figure out what he could do as an intern to really help businesses. And I was like, Todd, we don't know TikTok. And I don't have the time to understand all the nuance of TikTok. You're on it every day, you have knowledge in that area. The third is the easiest of all three, emotional support. What are you doing to celebrate those around you? How are you giving, as Johnny said, that attention, that appreciation, acceptance to others? What about when people are going through difficult times? Are you there to be that shoulder for them to lean on? Are you there to pick up their spirits? That is another form of social capital that we all have to offer. So as we go through this section around social capital, we're gonna be asking you to really first look introspectively around what you bring to the table. What do you bring to that lunch? What do you bring to that coffee? What are you putting out there on LinkedIn for others to see the social capital you have to offer? We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. To go along with that and I wanna discuss two strategies in networking that people may or may not be familiar with. And this is where a lot of people run into problems because they don't see it as two different strategies. One is defensive networking strategies. So an example of that would be I'm going to this networking event. I'm gonna dress my best. I'm gonna put on a smile. I'm gonna chat with the people who are around me. But at that moment, I'm gonna hope for the best, right? I'm gonna hope that I meet the people that I need to and that things work out well for me. As you see in that hope is part of that strategy. So why is it defensive? Because you're setting up, you're getting a base and you're doing your best to chat with the people that come to you. That's defensive. Versus, what are your offensive strategies? Did you do any research? Do you know who you're looking for? Do you know your own self-worth? So when you have those opportunities, you're able to pitch rather than hoping that it all just comes together. And this is incredibly important because when I start digging in to our clients and then the X factor of what they are doing in their networking and I hear, well, I went to this thing and I talked to the folks who are around me and nothing really came out of it. What were your offensive strategies? How'd you go into it? What was your plan? I did what you guys told me, I went and I talked to the folks around me. That's defensive strategies and that's good. You want a good mix of defensive and offensive strategies because having an offensive strategy allows you to then take control of the situation of who you're going to meet. And in order to put together an offensive strategy, you have to have a mission because you have to know what you need. You have to know where you already are. This puts the ball in your hands and you gotta get yourself together and collected and do what's right. And by bringing in a mix of both, you are going to maximize those networking opportunities. This is why it's so important to be clear on why you're going and what do you have? And I want to say another point in having a mission and doing your research and understanding your worth. This brings up an interesting point. One of the points that you brought up, AJ was the emotional support, right? To give people the attention, approval and acceptance, they need to feel good on their mission, on their journey. And I see this a lot where people are like, well, I told my friends if they need any help to hit me up, you know, they didn't hit me up. Is that defensive or is that offensive? It's defensive. We think it's offensive. We think it's offensive. You're putting the ball in the other person's court. You're asking them to come to you with something. And as we know, asking for help, asking for support is one of the most difficult things we all do as humans. Many of us are completely averse to asking for help. So if you're like, hey, just let me know when you need help or let me know how I can help you without suggesting anything that you think might be helpful without being proactive about it, you are playing defensive. Now, one of our recent guests, Susan McPherson, gave us an incredible offensive strategy that many aren't utilizing. So if you have an event coming up, go to the attendee list, add all of those people on LinkedIn, send a little message, I'm excited to meet you and start offering emotional support or growing your social capital before the event by commenting and liking the posts that these people are putting out on LinkedIn. That's the simplest form of emotional support. Have I met this person in real life? No, do I have any connection to them? Not yet, but I'm excited to meet them at the event. And now I'm playing an offensive strategy. And guess what? They will have seen my face on LinkedIn. They will have had some warm and fuzzies for seeing some comments that are relevant to what they're posting. And when they see my face in that room, odds are they're probably gonna feel compelled to talk to me, maybe even approach me. All of that took minutes. It didn't take hours, it didn't take years. And it puts you in a position that 90 plus percent are not doing. They're playing defense. They're showing up thinking that's enough. If you consider yourself a top performer, you know that showing up is not enough to get you there.