WHY A BLOG ABOUT BEYOND NETWORKING?

From the desk of Ron Sukenick

They say all good things in life start at the beginning. Sometimes, though, we get pretty far down a certain road before we realize that road isn’t leading exactly where we want to go. Much as we’d prefer to keep moving forward, it might be a better idea to turn around, go back, and make a brand new beginning, using all the lessons we’ve learned on the round trip! This blog is about new beginnings, and how we can move beyond the old ways and the old thinking to create a new reality for ourselves.

“Wait a minute!” you say. Is this Ron Sukenick that is talking about going beyond networking? The same Ron Sukenick who’s been teaching and preaching networking, networking, and more networking for what seems like the last three decades? The same Ron Sukenick who’s recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on the art and impact of - networking?”

Yes, yes, and yes. See, here’s the thing: Back in the 70’s and 80’s, when formal business networking was first growing in popularity, it was all about making contacts. To create success, we wanted to meet with lots of people, tell them about our business, and then follow up to convert total strangers into loyal customers and clients. Dressed in mode-of-the-moment business attire, armed with hundreds of business cards and brochures, we “worked the room” at networking meetings with efficiency. Considering it a “no-no” to spend too much of our precious time with just a few individuals, we scanned the room, moving quickly from encounter to encounter, giving “spiels”, jotting notes, and shaking hands, listening to just enough of others’ remarks to rank them as useful to us or a waste. As our crop of contacts grew, we needed to “manage” those, being careful to catalog all the business cards in order to select only the hottest of the hot leads for followup,

At some point, somehow, we began to sense that something was missing. I was thinking the other day about Mel Gibson making a movie about what women want. I’m not a movie maker, but I thought the time was ripe for a blog about what networkers want that traditional networking just can’t supply. I began to realize we don’t want to just keep working at networking; we want to have networking work for us! To do that, we need to reach beyond networking - to connection.

As part of my own new beginning and my resolve to go beyond networking, I co-authored the book, The Power Is in the Connection, introducing fifteen relationship building strategies, as the next level up from a networking approach. I’ll be sharing some of these relationship strategies here in the Beyond Networking blog. But, as I came to understand how we need to BE before we can DO, I knew there was an even deeper aspect to connection. I studied under world-famous communications and relationship development expert Dr. Robert Rohm to become a Certified Human Behavior Consultant™, offering my clients the Ultimate Discovery System. I’ll be sharing more about the Personality Insights assessment tools in this blog as well.

We cannot Beware of something until we are Aware of it, so the blog will be about becoming aware of what lies beyond traditional networking. I’ll be here blogging on Beyond Networking blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, working to provide a platform for networkers to achieve the kind of sharing networkers really want and need. Together, we’ll build business by going beyond networking to Connection, and then by going beyond connection to Relationship. We’ll share the tools. We’ll share stories. We’ll share resources. Watch out world – we’re going into the Beyond!