From my own experience of either being self employed or owning a business since 1982, I can now see that my survival has always depended on the strength of my business, social and golfing networks in the widest sense. To what extent has ecademy contributed to that and in what way? Firstly, whether we are out of work, in work, in business or short of work we all need to be inspired. Over the years I have found that almost every ecademy event I have attended has inspired me in some way. It might be the discussion. I may have met someone or it may have been the speaker who his provided the inspiration. The second is the power of RANDOM – which may actually be the most powerful resource working for each of us. What do I mean? Let me give an example. I attended Guildford ecademy Boardroom on Thursday this week. I had a meeting on Saturday lunchtime and when I was discussing it with Lyn at breakfast on Friday, she said “you need to find an accountant to come along”. Within 5 seconds I realised that I had just met the right accountant for the job on the previous day at the ecademy boardroom. It only took one call and he was there and a great help. I could give dozens of examples of how Random networking works for me – yet I have still not learned to pay real attention – right then – right now – to every connection from any of my networks. Thomas Power wrote a book called “Networking for Life”. In it he said that 98% of networking will not provide a direct financial return, but the 2% will generate enough revenue to justify the effort on the 98%. This is only part of the story. How you handle the 100% will cause the revenue generation from the 2% – directly or indirectly. Think about this. Comment on it.

It is easy to forget the pain after you have become comfortable but I was talking with someone yesterday who is still going through the pain, and I felt for him.

Perhaps we need to think about a term that is all encompassing such as………..mmmm. not sure about that……….any ideas

Terry