Interpersonal Networth.
Your Network is Your Networth.
When it comes to networking, a lot of people look at those who inspire them or those whom which they aspire to be. I used to be guilty of this too, especially in my early to mid-twenties. However, as I entered my thirties era a handful of years ago, I came to the realization that instead of always working to network vertically, it’s more mutually beneficial to network laterally with your peers. After all, when attempting to network vertically it’s usually a one-sided level of engagement where you’re needing something or hoping for something from them and not necessarily able to bring anything of concrete value to them. This dynamic makes for a more transactional relationship. No one wants to feel like they’re being used.
The first example of this is I had been working at a PR agency called Terry Hines and Associates (now The MRKT) where I led the Black audience focused PR campaigns for several films and series (i.e. Empire S1, Underground S1, NBC’s The Wiz Live!, Captain America: Civil War, Zootopia, 007 Spectre, etc.). I started as a paid intern and eventually became a publicity and promotions assistant. As an assistant, your job is to make the lives easier of those who you report to. You are responsible for being 2-3 steps ahead anticipating the needs. Additionally, for me, I always made sure I was the first one in the office and the last one to leave. For clarity, in this refined era of workplace culture, I am by no means endorsing long hours being what makes for success within a workforce infrastructure; I am simply sharing that in that entry level position, I had to hustle. Due to this work ethic, I began to advance rather quickly with both promotions in title and compensation. Moreover, I got a lot of face time with one of our clients including travel with them. Due to this, not only did I get to develop a working relationship with them, but when OWN was looking to add a new member to the PR team, my client referred me to the hiring manager. This started a pattern for me of learning how most professional industries work—it’s not just about who you (think you) know, but more important who KNOWS YOU. Every job I secured since then has been by referral and not a generic application portal.
Another example of how this momentum continued over the course of my decade+ long PR career circa 2016 as I just started working at OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. Once I got there, I realized that my friends who were publicists at other networks/studios/streamers all knew me as many of them were my former clients, but they didn’t know each other. To that end, I decided to do something about. This mission became important for me because quite often, each of us were and still are the only 1-2 Black in-house publicists and I found it to be of the utmost importance to make sure that we’re all connected at the end of the day. For me, it didn’t matter if we had competing films releasing the same weekend; we weren’t the filmmakers. Thus, I started this quarterly dinner meetup in in the fall of 2016 that consisted of eight of us representing OWN, Annapurna, NBC, Warner Bros. and FOX. Fast-forward to 2020, and the group had grown to 48 people representing OWN, NBC, FOX, Annapurna, Netflix, Amazon, Shondaland, Warner Bros., SpringHill Company, ABC Freeform, Marvel, Universal, Apple, Starz, TNT, HBO, Nickelodeon and Bravo!. This group became affectionately known as TGN = The Gatekeepers Network. Within this group, we would use our meetups to vent, exchange ideas, celebrate each other’s promotions and general fellowship. It just felt so good for all of us to connect as Black PR professionals working in-house at major companies. However, to bring this back to the aforementioned pointed about networking laterally, the BEST PART of this group is that when someone would leave to another company, there were at least seven to ten roles that were backfilled by referrals within our group.
Community.
Trust.
Support.
Offer.
Receive.
These are few words that come to mind when I think about the success that came from one simple idea being the conduit to connecting so many people.
I will say it once more—
Every. Single. Job. Has. Been. From. Referral.
P.S.
One small thing I do as well is after a meeting gets setup for me with someone’s office, I always send the assistant who scheduled it a $5-10 Starbucks gift card a small token of my appreciation. Having been an assistant before on the earlier side of my career, I know that assistants are the calendar gods and they also won’t be an assistant forever. In an industry where assistants are often treated without a lot of gratitude, they may forget what you said but they will always remember how you made them feel.
So reach across the room to your peers, because you’ll be on the rise together anyhow and we all need someone.
