The Prospecting Professor: "Birds of a feather..."

"Bird of a feather will gather together."...Robert Burton

Here's an interesting exercise that will help you think and consider the make-up of your own personal network.

Consider all of the persons in your personal network. These are people who you rely upon for:

Exchange of (private) information
Specialized expertise
Advice
Creative inspiration

These folks may be business colleagues, friends, family members, neighbors, individuals where you share an interest/hobby, etc.

How did you meet them? Were you introduced by someone else? Or did you meet this person on your own?

Most likely, you have introduced yourself to your key contacts in your network without the introduction of a third person, i.e. a mutual friend or acquaintance. This is true for most of us. The majority of the people that we know, who are within our personal network, have been self-selected by us.

Moreover, many of the persons that we gravitate towards resemble us in terms of :

Worldview
Experiences
Training
Background
Etc.

If your network is built like this...if the nexus of people who you know/trust resemble you in some or many ways...then you are building your network using the Self-Similarity Principle.

The advantage of the self-similarity principle is that it is easier to know/trust people who think and act like ourselves. Working and interacting with "clones" of ourselves is more efficient due to the minimal friction in the interchange of ideas.

The disadvantage of the self-similarity principle is that it can create networks that are too inbred. Beyond that, if you have met all of the people in your network by virtue of your own efforts...it's not really a network at all. It's simply a collection of people that know you...who have no connection to each other. In this way, there is no synergy.

A collection of people who all know you, without knowing each other, is not a network. It's a wagon wheel. A wagon wheel without a hub (you), will fall apart. In other words, when you go away, so will your network.

This is not the worst thing in the world, yet it is not the optimal use of the collective energies of the people who you have diligently assembled over the years.