Who Knows You Who You Know

Welcome back to another episode of Halftime Talks. My name is Rahim Rasul, and you’re listening to the podcast that recognizes that in the middle of your game of life, whether you’re by 10 or down by 20, we all need halftime talks to uplift us, inspire us and challenge us to bring that level of performance it’s gonna take to win the game. Girl, you know you need to stop giving me the silent treatment, baby, can’t you see what you mean to me? Yeah, I’m jamming the roots, and now you’re jamming halftime talks, and before we get into this episode, you know, the first thing we love to do is center you with a little bit of appreciation.

Today, I want to appreciate my friends who I will never meet or have a conversation with, and those friends are the authors, the mentors, the people in the world that I can sit and bear witness to their immaculate wisdom. There’s so many people who you listen to conversations with through the words that they sit down with such intention to share in printed form, visual form, auditory form, the breadcrumbs, the bodies of work, the testimony of their life and biographies I love these friends who I may never meet, be they examples of how far I want to fly, or things I may want to Avoid, but those mentors continue to teach me, and I appreciate it.

Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of halftime talks. We are stacking them up. We’re on a chase to 200 and it begins and continues right here. In this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about a subject, a subject, if you check the title, then you know what we’re talking about, but it is who knows you. It’s an idea of creating a reputation that precedes you. As we move into the marketplace, as we become more professional, there’s something called the Metcalf’s law. The Metcalf’s law is about the power of a network, and in order to benefit from that network, you first must establish it. So who knows you and so as we proceed into this episode, strapping your seat belts because it’s about to go down.

What I like about halftime talks guys is that it’s a time stamp about how I feel about certain topics, and it’s the perfect platform to work out some ideas with. So today I want to work out an idea, which obviously you could tell by a few pauses and hesitations in my voice that it’s an idea and a concept and a domain that I look toward improving upon. I see an immeasurable amount of possibility right here. And so with this notion of who you know or who knows you, the biggest indicator of progress and how we move within the world is our value to the marketplace.

And beyond that value to the marketplace, it is cultivating the relationships with the marketplace. And when I mean marketplace, I mean the place that you go to exchange the value that you’ve built up through resources, assets, intelligence, domain, skills and all of this, but that relationship with the market implies the community. And so it’s not always what you know, but who you know, who you know that can offer that opening of the passage to participate within the marketplace, and the value that you offer them is the first line of the defense for business and be a business art, or any way that we Want to express our ability, as I discussed in an older episode when I talked about expertise and all the strata expertise that we can offer the marketplace.

To recap the expertise you have, one expertise, insights, domain. Number two, the pipeline, the sales force. Number three, experienced providers. Number four, the connectors, the facilitators, the vendors. Number five, you have the leaders. Number six, you have the Creator class. Number seven, you have the engineers. And number eight, you have the service and support, and as much as we want to go into our personal workshop, acquire the education, understand our domain and perform at a level of excellence for the marketplace, a lot of it comes down to cultivating the community, and that’s one of the things that I look forward to excelling at this year.

And in cultivating that community, you give your product, you give your skill, you give your value a chance to move beyond your own words and your own ability to talk about it. And so in this episode, I want to expand beyond it’s who you know framework, and I want to also say it’s about who knows you unsolicited, who was recommending you, who was going beyond what normal people would do and bring you up, who is inviting you to the events, who was inviting you to the marketplace, who was giving you the exclusive scoop on the inside track of information. Who is bringing you in, who is allowing you the inside access to the rare event?

And what this really comes with is understanding that your reputation is immeasurable. Your reputation should go out and proceed you the way that you work, the things that you do, the way that you articulate yourself, the way that other people understand your value and are able to recommend you to others. So it’s not just what you can do or who you know that is impactful within the domain that you seek to excel in, but it’s who knows you. How many times is your name coming up in conversation when somebody is bringing up that skill or expertise that may commonly be needed as an entrepreneur for the majority of my career, I would love when I would get recommendations from unsolicited future clients.

They would call me and say, I heard about you through X, Y or Z. The majority of my business came that way, and so one of the things that I did is I went beyond the expectation of what my clients wanted. I made sure that the communication was sharp, I made sure that the product was beyond the expectation. I made sure that I put more value in than they exchanged in return, because I know that this is one of the primary sources of future income, is when you can get other people talking about the quality of work, the attention to detail and the professionalism which you carry your brand forward with.

So I ask you, who knows you, in order for that next rung of evolution in your progress to occur, who are the type of people? How do you cultivate those relationships? Where do you go? What can you offer? How can you introduce yourself into the conversation? How can you demonstrate your value so that they can easily recommend you forward? It’s beyond who you know. It’s who knows you. We have this conception of the six degrees of separation, and so now in your mind, as you know who you want to know you, you know who you want to call you. You know who you want to build your community around for this next level of progress.

Now it’s time to deconstruct backwards. How do we get there? What are the activities that we can invest in, what are the relationships that we can foster, what are the questions that we can ask those that we know that are. Reputation cannot only proceed us, but we can become very clear in the value that we offer, and that can be recommended to others who look like what we want people to know us as. Now it’s a tough challenge, and if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Everybody would be having these conversations about all the people that are beating a path to their door.

We will be inundated with so much work, and we will be in a position to discriminate and discern between the work we want versus the work that is available. These are good challenges, but these challenges are born once we understand how to even in the tough times, even when the times where the season slows down, that our reputation still precedes us, not because there’s an excess of demand of projects, but because even those projects that are available are seeking us out, and I know I’m speaking in a very project centric perspective, but let’s go beyond that. Who knows you? How many of those people are talking about you on a regular basis?

How many people can bring you to life in the imagination of others. This is a question that my journal and I have been working on together. This these are the bedrock beginnings of understanding how to cultivate this process. Some people have it easier, depending on your personality, your inclinations, you may be an introvert, you may be less social. So who can you pair with? Who can you pair with to supplement that deficiency? No different than if, if, if we couldn’t process something, then we have to figure out how to bridge this gap. It’s not what you know and how good you can do it, because if you exist in the silo of just you and nobody knows about you, if a tree falls in the in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound, the sound that we are seeking, the sound that we want to construct, foster and promote, is the sound of other people who can clearly articulate our value to the marketplace.

But it begins with us being able to It begins by us presenting, demonstrating and exemplifying those qualities and those values on a consistent basis. It begins with us asking that next Ask that next stage. Do you know somebody who can find this valuable? Is there anybody in your network that you think I’d be a good match with? And these are questions that I’m asking. So I’m not speaking from the perspective of authority, but I am, I am asking the questions that do build that authority. So hopefully, one of these questions, one of these ideas, sparks something within you. I want you to take it forward.

I want you to continue this work, especially if you’re complaining about the myopia or the size of your network, the scope of your impact, and there’s a frustration that you have something great, but it’s not being recognized. So continue forward. Ask these questions and check with us next week on another episode of halftime talks. If you enjoyed today’s content, make sure you go back and check out episode number eight, elevator pitch. Number 27 creating thriving relationships. And episode number 82 communicating your strengths. Our entire library is available on our website, halftimetalks.net as well as the iTunes podcast library. While you’re on there. Do us a favor, SUBSCRIBE and leave a review.

Not only would we love it, but it would also make our podcast more findable, discoverable for other people, like you who can gain benefit from the podcast. So until next time, go out there in the second half of the game and play to win. In our next episode, we’re going to be talking about absorption rate, soaking in the relevant information to form and advantage you.