In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle challenges the idea that success requires hundreds of connections and explains why a small number of the right relationships can have a far bigger impact.
Networking isn’t broken—but the way most people think about it might be. In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle challenges the idea that success requires hundreds of connections and explains why a small number of the right relationships can have a far bigger impact. She breaks down why intentional networking is about sequence, not scale, how quality beats quantity every time, and why real business growth comes from depth, not constant outreach.
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Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, and I'm a business designer and strategist. And in the 15 years I've done this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into a trap of centering strategies first, and they need to be centering sequence.
Because the reality is the steps you take in your business and the order in which you take them is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly following someone else's strategy. Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy.
In every episode of this show, I answer a real question from a real entrepreneur who's struggling with a real challenge in their business. And today we're going to address a common misconception I hear whenever I start talking about intentional networking. And I talk about intentional networking all the time, so I hear this all the time.
The Misconception About How Many Connections You Need
And that misconception is, drumroll please, how many people you need to be connected with in order to really reap the benefits of intentional networking. And by the way, when I use the word intentional networking, when I put that intentional in front of it, I'm doing that to mean that you are being, well, intentional with your networking, meaning you're being strategic about who you want to meet. You're not just showing up at networking events hoping you get lucky.
You're not accepting every single coffee chat that comes your way or Zoom connection that comes your way. You're being really intentional with who you want to meet. And I often hear in this process, and admittedly this is partially my fault because I talk about Dunbar's number and we'll get into the specifics of what that is later, but I'll hear and see people who are not networking because they think they need so many connections that it sounds exhausting and so they never start.
They understand the strategy behind it. They understand the sequence over strategy behind it. They know that they should be networking in particular if they're a relationship marketing business.
They just never get around to it because they think they're going to need to meet so many people that it just feels like too big of a job. So I want to change that thought process today. And mostly because if you're feeling this way, you're not alone, right?
If we're talking about it on this show, it means that it's not the first time I've heard this question or the first time that I've heard this feeling. It's one of the more common questions I get from people who are newer to intentional networking and trying to talk this down to size. And it is often the case that, you know, when I have a conversation with someone who wants to start relationship marketing and wants to start doing some intentional networking, I hear them say one of those things, right?
They feel like they're behind because they don't have a big network yet. They feel like they're going to need those hundreds of connections to make networking work. So even more common, they're like stressing that by networking, they need to stay in touch with every single one of their LinkedIn connections.
This is so common where I see people who equate networking with all of the different people that they've chosen to connect with on LinkedIn. That's not necessarily your network, right? And when you think it is, feel real intimidating because usually that number is larger than what feels doable to stay in touch with on a human basis.
Like I said, they're kind of intimidated to start because it feels like it means you have to meet 100 people. And they're assuming that by starting some intentional networking, they're like somehow committing to staring down like 30 coffee catch-ups a week. And that is just not the case.
Why Fewer, Better Connections Change Everything
And I wanted to spell all that in this episode because there's two other things that I know. I know how everybody perceives this process, but I also know that your business is the average of your network. You know how they say that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with?
Well, what I have seen is that your business is the average of the quality of your network. So I want you to have a strong one. I want this to be a doable process for you.
One of the biggest reasons I talk about networking is because I know it's so indicative of how your business is going to go. And so I want it to be doable. If it feels intimidating, I want to talk it down to size for you.
And I also don't want you to put off doing this because you think you instantly need to be besties with a hundred people because that's just also not true. Because the reality is, and I've been teaching networking for over, gosh, over 10 years now, and I used it myself before that. So trust me, I have seen this.
I've seen this play out over and over again. The reality is businesses start to change when they meet and connect with the first one, two, three, or five great connections. It is really that few.
And again, by that few, I mean closer to the one or the three that I just rattled off than the five or the 10. Like I have seen businesses change completely by meeting the right one, two, three, four, five perfect connections. You can see significant immediate change in your business when that happens.
And in fact, sometimes it's better to start with just a few and not try to start with a lot because you also get compounding effects by the right people. And we'll get into that in a minute. So I want you to hold that thought, but spending the time to meet the exact right people and then looking at what are the compounding effects, how am I going to leverage this?
How is it going to grow? It can be so much more effective than trying to meet a lot of people. And honestly, it comes down to relationship or strategy.
But for now, what I want you to remember is that the problem isn't that you're starting from zero. The problem is that you're thinking you need to build 100 or 200 or 500 connections before you see results, and you just don't. You need to build to one, three, five, or 10 of the right connections, and everything starts to change from there.
Right-Sizing Networking With Dunbar’s Number
Let's kind of break this down in a second how this works, right? And let's think about the connection between like network size and network effectiveness. And as we get into this, I want to remind you about Dunbar's number.
So I teased that a little earlier, and I told you that I kind of create my own problem by talking about Dunbar's number sometimes. Well, first I'll tell you what it is. And then I'll tell you why I do talk about it.
And Dunbar's number is just a number that came from a sociologist named Robin Dunbar out of the UK. And he found that there was actually a number that represents the number of people you can maintain stable social relationships with. And I kind of define this in the real world as the number of people that you're able to have a better conversation with than just talking about the weather, because you know them in a stable social way that you are able to ask something more interesting than how's the weather.
Although it's the middle of winter right now, we're having a lot of snow. I'm talking to everybody about the weather, but that's just an aside. Anyway, Dunbar's number, what Robin Dunbar found is that Dunbar's number is 150 people, meaning that in your entire life, the maximum number of people that you can maintain a stable social relationship with is about 150.
And I talk about this number, right? I said that this number kind of messes me up sometimes, the reason that I talk about it. But the reason I talk about it is because people come to me from those extremes we talked about earlier.
They're either kind of starting from scratch and intimidated that I'm going to ask them to make 500, 1,000 connections, or they're sitting on like a big LinkedIn following or a big historical network, and they're intimidated that I'm going to ask them to connect with everybody that they follow on those places and become actual friends with them. Neither of those two things are true. So I use Dunbar's number to kind of right size the challenge in front of us, right?
Because we are talking about real relationships here. We're not talking about kind of like drive-by networking. We are talking about intentional networking where you are building stable social relationships.
So I talk about Dunbar's number of 150 for people to kind of help you realize that the number of connections I'm asking you for can't be that high. Because the 150 is not the number of people that you can even network with. 150, right, that includes your family, your friends, kind of anybody else in your world that you're maintaining a relationship with.
So once you take into account all of those folks, there's not a ton of room for business connections. And what does that mean? It means you have to make them count, right?
From Traffic Thinking to Relationship Marketing
Because maybe you have room for like 50-ish business connections, but like even that's a lot and usually is too many. So that's the size factor that we're talking about. Like, right, let's right size the challenge.
And when I say 50, that may still sound intimidating for you, or it may sound like way too few if you're a big extrovert, but that's about the size that we're looking for. And again, you don't need all 50 though to start because there's also an effectiveness factor to those 50. And depending on where your network is, when you come to understand relationship marketing and you come to understand intentional networking, it will matter.
Because we know relationship marketing is about quality over quantity, right? I talk about that all the time. It's not a numbers game.
It is about finding the right people. It's about precise inputs. It's about getting things right.
And yet it's still so easy to take a traffic mindset with to it, especially in this networking. And when you start thinking about how many connections you can make and how quickly, which is usually how people default when they decide that they're going to start networking, you actually start to take a little bit of a traffic mindset to it. Even though networking is the most classic relationship marketing tactic ever, your brain, as it does for almost every tactic, kind of defaults down to thinking in terms of traffic terms.
If you're thinking in terms of traffic, when you're thinking about networking, what does that mean? It means you start thinking about how am I going to max everything out as quickly as I can, right? How can I build as many relationships as quickly and efficiently as possible?
But that is not what relationship marketing is about. Relationship marketing is about depth. It's about quality.
And so we want to bring that to our networking. We want to make sure that the intentional networking that we are doing is staying true to relationship marketing. And the reason we're doing that is because we need that quality to count.
Building Compounding, Long-Term Relationships
So this is where we circle back to the numbers, right? Because I know that if you meet the right three people, that the collaborations, the borrowed audiences, the partnering that you will do with those three perfect people will knock out of the park anything that you could dream of doing with 50 of the wrong people. So even though Dunbar's number is 150, and out of that maybe 50-ish can be business people, we don't want to just quickly fill up the 50 people that we can find that kind of sort of look like their connections.
We want to instead say, let's find the right people, right? And that's because in the moment, right, in the moment when you meet them, they will have your people. So any kind of immediate collaboration that you do is likely to pay off for both of you.
And when that happens, what happens? Like when we get an early win-win, you are going to appreciate each other and you're going to find more reason to keep connecting and to keep talking. And again, like that will lead you to being a sticky relationships, meaning like it will become a relationship that lasts for years.
So it'll become a relationship relationship, right? It'll become a relationship that's rooted in what we want out of relationship marketing. It will not become a traffic relationship.
That's a little bit of drive-by networking, you know, more transactional, what can you do for me in this immediate moment? We don't want that. We don't want that because our businesses, the leverage that we're looking for, we are looking for long-term partners where there can really be some compounding effects.
And then we'll come back to those later, but we're looking for things that last the time, right? Last for years, grow over the course of those years. We want things that are not a one and done and kind of a handshake and everybody's like, okay, we got that done, nothing really happened.
Instead, we want a one and like, holy crap, that was amazing, what's next? We want to sound cheesy. We want to find relationships within our intentional networking that just lead to so many win-win-wins that it's a no-brainer to keep going, keep kind of dreaming about what's next and keep creating.
How to Start Building the Right Network
So let's make this practical, right? I'm talking to you about the fact that you want to have quality over quantity in your network. You want to really understand how to make this happen.
You are going to commit with me to building these, what I'm going to call, relationship relationships, right? Not traffic relationships, but relationship relationships and you're going to build strong. You are not going to build for the first 50 overnight.
You're going to build, you're going to go start looking for who are those perfect one, three, five people. How do you do that? Well, first, we need to know who your ideal connection avatars are, right?
And we've talked about this often and there are episodes and we'll link them in the show notes about who your ideal connection avatars are. So step one of this in our sequence over strategy about how to build a compounding network is to, number one, define who those customer avatars are. Who are those people who are most likely to create these win-win-wins for you?
And then, once you have that profile written, you're going to go find people who match that. You're going to look in your current network and you're going to say, okay, instead of just looking at my network and reaching out to them and hoping something comes of it, I'm going to look at my network and say, who matches with my ideal connection avatar and what can I do about that? How can I prioritize those folks?
How can I prioritize coming up with ideas for them? And then you're going to focus on building the relationship with those people. Once you've reached out and once you have found one, three, five people who fit your ideal connection avatar profile, you're going to sink your teeth into it for a minute, right?
You're not going to keep trying to go. Instead, you're going to say, how can I build on these relationships for a minute? How can I really stick these into the ground, stabilize them, have a first great win-win-win experience so that we can start building on something?
That's the goal here is that you have relationships that are not just thinking about how can we just borrow an audience and move on. Instead, we're thinking about, hey, what could the future look like? What is a relationship that could look sticky?
How can I create such a win-win-win and a first collaboration that we're so kind of obsessed with the idea of coming up with bigger and better? You know, in my own business, some of my best collaboration partners, we've been working together now for eight years. And why are they my best collaboration partners?
They're my best collaboration partners because back whenever it started, we had a great experience early on. And that great experience early on motivated both of us to sink into the relationship and to commit to the relationship because we saw opportunity and because we knew that we could grow on it. And so we're always thinking about, gosh, what could be next?
What could be something fun that we can do next? How can we ante up, right? How can we move the stakes?
How can we make this bigger and better so that it's an even bigger and better win-win-win for ourselves and for our audiences? And that's what you want to do is you don't want to just be checking the box of like, okay, Michelle said I'm supposed to meet 50 people. Let's meet 50 people.
Instead, you want to start small. Start small the way we do with all relationship marketing and find those bright people. Be curious about who are the right people.
Then connect with them. Then, you know, make sure that you can do some sort of collaboration in a way that is really a win-win-win, that you're onto something here. And then sink your teeth into really building those relationships so that you have a really strong foundation that you can grow on so that in eight, 10 years, you're like me and you're talking about the strength of these core relationships that you have.
And then once that's in place, you know what that relationship looks like and you can go build others. Right? But honestly, it's doubtful that you have to go build 50.
If you spend your time early on really finding who the perfect people are, then you will get so much leverage out of each kind of quote-unquote perfect relationship, perfect collaborative relationship you're able to build that you're not going to need 50 because we're going to be playing in real relationship marketing world where that quality is going to go so far for you that you don't have to dip. You don't have to do a lot of things. You just have to do the right things, right?
And so if you take that time to really understand who are my collaboration partners, which can take a minute, but if you take that time, then the number required becomes increasingly lower. It's like an inverse relationship, right? The more precise you give yourself the opportunity to be with your inputs, meaning the more precise that you're able to think about who really is that very perfect connection for me and really nail that, the fewer you need because there's less noise.
The closer that you get to the perfect ideal connection avatar, the closer you get, the better conversion that you're going to have out of every collaboration, like the more it's going to work for you, right? It's going to be more efficient. And so when it's more efficient, you need fewer of them.
So if you're a person who is intimidated to the process, even if you hear the number 50, well, the motivation there is, well, okay, what if I never need more than five? Because that's a very possible if you are thinking quality over quantity with your network. And if you are thinking longevity, if you are thinking, how can we compound on this over years?
And that's what I want this episode to open your eyes to is that I realize I talk a lot about networking. I talk a lot about ideal connection avatars, but we're really not talking about the impact that you can have when you get this right or when you give yourself the grace to experiment a little bit and to understand who your ideal connection avatars are and really take the number requirement down by doing that. The more time you spend getting it right, the fewer people you need to maintain relationships with.
And there's a win-win if I've ever heard one, right? So let's sum this up. My friends, you do not need hundreds of connections to see results.
When I talk about intentional networking, I do not intend for you to be going out and making hundreds of connections. You don't even need to max out Dunbar's number. You just need to start with the right connections and then zero in and make sure that they're the right ones, make sure that they're win-win-wins, make sure that there is motivation from all parties to continue building on them, and then let that compound, right?
So your first one, three, five, ten connections, when they're the right ones, they change everything, not only in the moment, but permanently. And that's because those networks compound when you start with the quality and you build from there. And so that's what I want you thinking about is committing to this process of, like, who are my ideal connection avatars?
What do they look like? How could I make that better? How can I connect with somebody who really gets it, who really understands and has access to my audience in ways that we have win-win-wins?
That is the most effective way that you can network for a relationship marketing system. Thank you, as always, for being here. If you haven't yet done it, please subscribe and even rate the show whenever you're listening.
It just makes a huge difference in others being able to find it and use it for their own resources. And if you're ready to start building your networks intentionally, if you're ready to start doing some of this work and get into the mud and have these real precision of inputs so that the impetus on you, the burden on you to have a bunch of them goes down, then I would invite you, if you haven't yet, to join me over in Networking That Pays. It is my course that goes over exactly how to think about this.
It's an evergreen course. You can hop in and out anytime. I am live once a month, helping people think through these exact questions of who should be your ideal connection avatar.
What does it look like? What does that quality over quantity look like? And if you're interested in that, you can even get started over at themichellewarner.com/freetraining, which there I will walk you through a little bit of the science. We'll talk a little bit about Dunbar's number, talk a little bit about these ideal connection avatars, get you started in thinking in this way of how to find the right connections. So I'll see you over there in the free training or I'll see you over here back on Sequence Over Strategy in two weeks. Have a good one, my friends.