Business Is a Team Sport: Choose Your People Carefully

When I was a teenager, I spent time with people whose habits affected my own. I drank too much and had habits I later changed. I bring that experience into my lesson on networking because the people around me influence how I spend my life. Choosing a group of people deserves serious attention.

In the same lesson, I tell the audience that spending time with each other is part of the reason to be there. They can meet people who are taking action, working on substantial projects, and learning from mistakes. Business is a team sport. I want people around me who take their goals seriously, and I have to bring that same seriousness to the relationship.

Start with your goals and choose people who fit

I start with what I want to accomplish. Then I consider which people I need around me to help accomplish it. That gives me a reason to build a network and a way to think about the relationships I choose.

“Start building that social network today.”

In the video, I say this in response to the question of what to do and how to prioritize. Building relationships can begin while I work on the rest of my goals. I don't have to wait until everything else is complete before finding the people I want around me.

I also think about whether the people around me fit my underlying outlook. Some parts of what I want from life aren't going to change. I want to recognize a mismatch instead of assuming a relationship belongs in my life just because it has been there a long time.

In the lesson, I apply that question to old friends and family as well as newer acquaintances. Familiarity alone doesn't answer whether the people around me support the direction I'm trying to take. I have to look honestly at how I spend time with them and what that does to my own habits.

Bring good conduct to the group you want

Finding good people is difficult. Once I have those relationships, I don't want to disappoint them through short-sighted behavior. I can't behave badly and expect high-quality friendships to last.

I make that point early in the lesson. The kind of person I am matters to the relationships I can maintain. It isn't enough to want access to a good group. I have to think about how I treat the people in it.

In a business setting, I want to spend time with people who are doing substantial things. I also want to learn from people who have tried something and made mistakes. Getting things wrong is part of the experience of entrepreneurship, so I don't dismiss someone simply because his experience includes failure.

Before turning a relationship into a working agreement, I want to make the expectations clear. Finding people and deciding how to work together belong to the same process.

Build while meeting your current responsibilities

Some people in the audience have jobs. I tell them there's nothing wrong with that. If someone wants a different way to earn a living, I describe starting other work and growing it while thinking about replacing that income.

The sequence I describe is to build something, grow it further, and eventually reach a point where the employment arrangement no longer makes sense for that person. I don't present leaving a job as the first step. The other work has to develop.

I also talk about my own difficulty finding motivation in an office environment where I would have to spend time fitting into a culture that didn't suit me. In the lesson, I acknowledge that getting along with that culture can be part of what an employer pays someone to do.

Give a primary and secondary goal real attention

The second half of the lesson connects networking with focus. I recommend a primary goal and a secondary goal. There are only so many hours in a week, and ten demanding pursuits can't all receive my best attention at once.

As the main skill develops, the priorities can change. The secondary pursuit might become the primary one. I might choose a new primary pursuit while keeping the other in the background. That gives me a way to develop several skills over time.

In the conversation, I refer to an audience member's achievements in university and jiu-jitsu. The important question is whether all his demanding achievements happened simultaneously. The example supports developing a few things seriously, then moving on as those skills grow.

I've moved between different priorities in my own life, including college and business. I describe those combinations to explain how attention can shift over time. I'm not claiming one combination will make everybody happy. I'm describing an approach I've found useful.

My separate discussion of focusing on fewer pursuits goes further into what I can delegate and what I have to practice myself. Here, I explain how I move between priorities when I have several things to do.

Change tasks when more effort stops helping

I describe a conversation about continuing to work when I'm tired and my brain doesn't want to cooperate. Sometimes I shift from the primary task to the secondary task. If more time on the same problem isn't helping much, another task gives me something useful to work on.

“Let me just work on the secondary thing for a little while.”

Sometimes that change means going to the gym. I may feel unable to keep doing the same mental task while still being able to do a workout. Moving the workout into that part of the day can free time later in the week.

I used a version of this approach while studying at university. I set up different workstations around the house. One subject's books and papers would sit on the loveseat. Another would occupy one end of the dining table, and another would occupy the other end.

When I couldn't keep concentrating on one subject, I would do some push-ups and move to another station. I describe one term when I took eight classes, which I say was too much and wasn't enjoyable. The workstations helped me move among the things I had to study.

That's a specific experience behind my advice to shift gears. It doesn't require pretending I have unlimited concentration. It gives me another useful task when I can't keep working effectively on the same one.

Keep established skills as you build another

Near the end of the lesson, I discuss the difference between developing a skill and using one that has become familiar. Once I've done something at a high level, parts of it can feel routine. Someone else may find the task impressive while I recognize what to do and get on with it.

I suggest maintaining those established skills while building a new one. I ask the audience for their views because I'm describing how I think about that tradeoff, not offering a guaranteed maintenance formula.

The same approach connects the whole lesson: choose meaningful goals, find people whose experience and conduct fit that direction, and give the work enough attention to become good at it. As my skills develop, I can change my priorities without treating every new pursuit as a reason to abandon everything I've already learned.