Blog · Fundamentals
How to Network
Three principles, and none of the three is about how many people you know. They're about what you listen to, who you choose and what you tell — which are the three things you actually have power over.
Published 11 November 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
First principle
Draw on the perspective of the person in front of you
The job is to understand the needs of the person in front of you and turn their vagueness into clear solutions. Everyone has doubts and questions before deciding: your task isn't to cover them up, it's to bring them out.
There is only one way to do it, and it isn't complicated: listen and absorb. Then adapt how you present what you do to the style of whoever is listening, and keep it centred on their needs rather than on your own features.
The sign that you're getting it wrong
If at the end of a conversation you know a lot about yourself and little about them, you haven't networked. You've given a presentation.
Second and third
Select your network, and share your story
Selecting
A network isn't a collection: it's a support system. The question to start from is "what do I need?", and the answer tells you which direction to move in.
The goal is a network you can turn to for any need — not just a source of work, but also a safety net. And that's why it's worth making it varied: different sectors cover different needs.
Telling
The weapon no competitor can copy is your story, and it costs nothing. It has to show the project, the company and the purpose — and it has to be built, because a story told at random isn't remembered, and so isn't repeated.
The point isn't that it spreads "on its own": it's that it gives the people who value you the words to talk about you when you're not there.
One word at a time
"Scientific, certain foundations" deserves to be taken seriously
That's how the article opened, and it's a demanding claim. It's worth looking at what it means, five years later, to take it literally.
What it takes to say it
Statements that can be contradicted, measurements with a window and a method, and a willingness to publish even the numbers that are inconvenient. Without these three things, "scientific" is a marketing adjective.
What exists today
Six laws stated one by one, a glossary where every term has a definition, and numbers published with their date and method — including the 6% of matches that get no reply.
The discipline is called Relational Engineering, which is what this article, in 2021, was still calling "the fundamentals of Networking".
Saying "it's a science" costs nothing. Publishing the inconvenient number costs something.
The first step
Where your company stands, in one number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the Relational Capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration required. Your browser calculates the score and it appears immediately, along with the dimensions where you're losing the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email, and within one working day someone calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the AIRA-DX© Stoic Analysis makes sense for your company. It's free and limited to twelve a week, so it isn't owed to whoever takes the check-up: it's decided together.
Would you rather just talk it through? The number is 0549 888808.