I had the pleasure to see Julien Smith (@julien / co-author of Trust Agents) last Monday night. He spoke to a group of about 30 social media types in Calgary – hosted by “Third Tuesday” (http://www.meetup.com/third-tuesday-calgary/). I find Julien very passionate about what he does, he is surprisingly young and loves to swear – a perfect combination for a informative and entertaining time.
He spoke to us about the benefits of building social capital – aka “building a tribe.”
Something that he said struck a cord with me “If you don’t do it – your network won’t do it either”. He was speaking about getting out and doing things, meeting people, taking risk.
Julien pushed us to believe that our choices in life affect our friends – okay I agree on many levels. But what he really pushed is that if we open ourselves up – and essentially say YES to more things rather than NO, our friends will in turn start saying YES more often.
So why the heck is saying YES a good thing? If you haven’t seen ‘Yes Man’ with Jim Carey – go see it! He says YES to everything, and what happens is he experiences a lot of really fun and crazy things and he meets a lot of pretty cool people.
This hit home for me. A good friend of mine has decided to sign up for her second mini-triathlon. She asked me to do it with her about 5 times. Seeing as I don’t have a bike, I don’t know how to swim properly and I am not a great runner – I said “hell no!”.
There are always excuses to why we can’t do things – I have a family, I work crazy hours at work, I am the Chairman of a very complex non-profit board plus I am volunteering on the Ad-Rodeo Sponsorship Committee, oh and I will be helping with Communications for CADE (Canadian Association of Drilling Engineers), so clearly I don’t have time – and my body would likely break from attempting this crazy feat.
But over the course of two weeks I got thinking – why not just jump in with both feet? I will get in shape, have some fun with my friends, be a good example for my family and learn a lot doing it. So I agreed to do my first mini-triathlon – I said to myself “why not?”.
I also asked another friend if she would like to join me – she feels the same way I do (her first reaction was “are you crazy!”), but she is amazing and open so she is also jumped in with both feet.
So my friend has positively influenced one person in her direct network, and another person in her extended network, and I am sure the energy will keep flowing.
Maybe it is our obligation to our networks to say YES more often.
Let’s raise our glasses of Gatorade, and cheers to saying YES to new and exciting things this year, it not only helps us experience life – but it helps our network (and vice versa!).
Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk)
Twitter: @sbkelsick
contact me: sbk@sbkelsick.com
