I’m a member of a fantastic tribe of Thought Leaders.  We get together every quarter to share tales of success and failure, support each other and work on our thought leadership and building our businesses.  Apart from the obvious benefits from hanging out with like-minded people, I also have access to experts across a range of topic areas, from Sporting Sponsorships to Improving Project Management.

The most pleasurable part of this is when I can connect one thought leader to a client who needs their expertise.  It’s a win all round.  The client benefits, the other thought leader benefits, and I benefit.

Match Making is about helping others find others.  Building, fostering and sharing the cool people in our world with other cool people in our world.

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the three types of people we need to help make a product “tip”, ie hit the critical mass where everyone wants/needs the product.  Think about the first iPods.  There was a time when not everyone had one, however once there was a critical mass of iPod owners, suddenly everyone had one.  And now we almost couldn’t imagine life without our portable music device.

Gladwell says we need to have connectors, mavens and sales people. As match makers, we want to foster relationships with people who fall into these categories, and then share them wildly in our network:

• Connectors – people who know people
• Mavens – people who know stuff
• Sales People – people who talk about stuff, to just about anyone who cares to listen

To be a good match maker, you need to:

• Have the ability to build rapport
• Have a spirit of generosity & abundance
• Have a mindset of possibility

Your homework:

Read Malcom Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point

Read Janine Garners latest book It’s Who You Know for tips on building your network.

Update your LinkedIn profile so that you are someone that others see as “linkable”.

Next week I will be talking about Skill 4: Peace Making