I was having an interesting conversation yesterday about business in general with another gentleman. It was an interesting contrast as I’m personally not the type of person who say hangs out at bars to mingle with people whereas he mentioned that he had actually met a lot of good contacts this way and it is in many ways his lifestyle.
We then started to talk about our personal experiences on whether we found that more people tend to do business with you because of your personality where they can relate to you like a friend or if demonstrating your knowledge and track record is more effective. While like anything it is always to have a good balance, it was kind of a fun conversation as we kept throwing “what if†type of thoughts to each other.
For example, for a person that is too outgoing does it prevent say more formal high figured people from wanting to speak to you? Likewise, does being too professional prevent you from getting your name out there faster as there are more casual people in existent than can spread the word about you faster?
In general, it seemed like we were both in an agreement that by being more socially involved in more pubic gathering activities you tend to acquire more personal leads/contacts whereas if you are one who focuses more on say an identity and its reputation it tends to bring more people directly to you. Realistically though, you do need both in the big picture I’d say.