Key Takeaways

• Your nodal network is made of your deep relationships with a handful of people who can really help you succeed.
• Rapport and economic glue have to exist for someone to be a good member of your nodal network.
• Always be looking for people to add to your nodal network, even after you’ve built a strong one.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has a lot of truth to it—but building the right relationships and leveraging them for maximum impact takes some strategic thinking and finesse that this old cliché fails to recognize. 

First, it’s important to recognize that one key way many multimillionaires and billionaires attain their level of wealth is by honing their networking skills until they are razor-sharp. When we examine the wealth-creating behaviors of self-made billionaires, for example, we find that shrewd networking is nearly always part of the foundation on which their tremendous financial success is built. 

If you want to pursue significant wealth, chances are you would do well to take a page from their networking playbook. 

For example, we find that the most successful processionals tend to approach networking in an extremely strategic manner by creating two distinct yet complementary types of professional networks:

• Expansive networks
• Nodal networks

Here’s how these two unique networks operate—and how to use them together to create a roster of friends, associates, partners, and contacts who can help you pursue accelerated success.

One network of many, another network of few

Having an expansive network means knowing a lot of people—all of whom can prove beneficial in helping you build a business or another professional endeavor, providing you with useful information, or delivering some hard-to-access resources (such as membership in top mastermind groups or high-level concierge medical practices). 

An expansive network is the type of network most professionals develop, in part because it’s fairly easy to cultivate. An expansive network is useful, of course, but it has its limits. The bonds you have with the people in your expansive network likely won’t be particularly strong. You might leverage these relationships now and again, but not consistently. 

In stark contrast, a nodal network consists of a few very powerful, highly targeted deep relationships with people who, in turn, have an array of similar relationships of their own. The people in your nodal network will likely be willing and able to help you themselves, while also leveraging their relationships to provide you with information and resources. 

Nodal networking enables highly successful people to maximize their time and efforts as they connect for profit—first indirectly, then directly—with a wide variety of people who can make them wealthier.

You can see the value of both networks, and the affluent masterfully develop and leverage both. They tend to have many casual professional relationships along with a small number of exceptionally strong ones strategically designed to deliver extraordinary insights and opportunities.

Building a highly effective nodal network of professionals

The sticking point: A high-functioning nodal network is much more complex and complicated to build. So let’s focus our attention on that piece of the puzzle.

The good news is that there are systematic processes you can use to create powerful nodal networks. 

In most situations, you are going to need to identify and work with a small group of people to achieve your professional and financial goals. The members of this small group are your network partners. When you work the process expertly, these partners can become instrumental in making it possible for you to create a meaningful personal fortune.

We see that highly successful professionals cast a broad networking net over time, catching many professionals—but ultimately narrowing their take to a select few. These network partners turn out to be crucial in helping very wealthy people achieve their financial objectives. 

While the science of nodal networking is quite nuanced, there are five basic steps to building this type of “narrow but deep” network.

1. Identify the qualities and talents you need to access to reach your business and personal financial goals. You need to be able to ballpark the expertise required to help you reach your objectives as they stand today. At the same time, you will need to be able to source new people rapidly, since the world can shift quickly. 

2. Profile prospective members of your nodal network. Depending on what you need to accomplish, you have to make sure the people you are aligning with are who you need them to be. This entails conducting an in-depth and extensive evaluation of potential network partners by determining issues such as these:

• Are there other people they already work with or have relationships with who are similar to you and what you do? Do you bring anything unique or special to the table?
• What is their agenda—what do they want? This will help determine the right “economic glue” to use when working together.
• What is the nature of their business, and how does it function in terms of revenue generation, compensation and so on? 

3. Determine the requisite economic glue. You want to fairly compensate people for their contributions. For your nodal network to run well, all parties should be properly motivated. This normally necessitates paying with one type of currency or another. It could be money, of course. But it also could be intellectual expertise that helps the other people run their businesses better or achieve their other goals.

4. Build intense rapport. Based on your profile of your network partners coupled with the right compensation arrangement, you need to develop a deep professional relationship. Over time, the relationship usually incorporates personal aspects as well. As a result, you are constantly updating your profiles as well as ensuring the economic glue remains strong.

5. Leverage your nodal network. At this point, you need to garner the maximum benefit from your network partners. You need to capitalize on their ability and relationships to help you reach your business and financial goals.

Three guidelines for establishing your nodal network

Despite its widespread use among highly successful entrepreneurs and professionals, nodal networking is often overlooked. It tends to be a much more involved, complicated and difficult-to-enact approach to building alliances than what many networking pundits promote. 

When this approach is implemented, however, the results can be astoundingly powerful. Keep in mind a few key ideas and concepts for making the nodal networking process most effective. 

Guideline #1: Get to know the friends of your friends

The essence of nodal networking is that your strategic partners are “nodes” of your network with well-developed and powerful networks of their own—and that because they are your network partners, you can access their networks. The network partners of the highly successful have their own nodal networks, which also can be accessed. Hence, you are knowingly or unknowingly working through an array of contacts to attain a desired result.

Wealth creation implication: In profiling people to be part of your nodal network, you need to develop a deep understanding of the depth and breadth of their personal and professional networks. Moreover, you need to recognize ways you can leverage their relationships.

Guideline #2: Build your bench strength

This means that even when you have your handful of network partners all set and motivated to support your efforts, you need to be looking for possible replacements. It is highly likely that one or more of your current network partners will not deliver, and you will need to replace them. Always be auditioning understudies.

Wealth creation implication: You need to consistently be reevaluating the viability of your network partners while scanning for new potential partners—looking to maintain and strengthen your nodal network.

Guideline #3: Master N.E.X.T.

This is an acronym for Never Extend eXtra Time. This philosophy comes into play when you are profiling people and continues as you get to know them. If the person you are profiling does not match up with your needs, then you say “N.E.X.T.” Top professionals we know seek out the “right” strategic partners as opposed to trying to convince wrong, but otherwise excellent, candidates. 

Wealth creation implication: Work to develop a set of criteria that you strongly adhere to. Doing so will prevent you from being enveloped by the combination of people’s self-inflated value of themselves and your own wishful thinking. This will help you move on expeditiously from people who are less than worthwhile.

VFO Inner Circle Special Report By John J. Bowen Jr.

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