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- Hello, everyone. This is Alex Tremble from The Alex Tremble Show, and I'm super excited to film this very special video for the participants of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Nancy Foster Scholarship Program. This is going to be a great video, and I'm even more so looking forward to meeting you virtually in the next few weeks.

In the next few weeks, we will talk specifically and be diving into the most effective skills you can use to network your way to success, to build those relationships that are not going to only help you personally and in your career but also the relationships that will help you further your science and do great things in the world.

But before we all come together, your program manager thought it would be an awesome idea to collect some questions from you, your most pressing and burning questions about networking, and allow me to address them, just to get us started before the day. And I was like, yes, it's friggin awesome. Let's do it.

So that's what we're going to do. You submitted nine very, very interesting networking questions that I'm going to walk through, and we will address as much as I can within our time right now. But please know that we're going to address so many more questions, as many questions as we can, during our session together. So without any further ado, let's get started.

Question number one. When building a network of professional and personal mentors, how do you go about navigating how professional to be and how personal to be? I sometimes struggle with only being professional during meetings with mentors, but I'm wondering if and when I should be incorporating personal information.

Great question. And I would say from the jump, we'll learn about this during our workshop together. So don't worry, we're going to really dive into this. But I generally tell everyone to start off with personal information. The reality is that if you keep it at a very quote unquote "professional level," then you become nothing more than a professional connection, and people don't think about professional connections when they leave that professional situation.

You want to be the person they think about on the weekends, when they're having fun, when something cool happens and they think of you. And what does that mean? You want to be someone like a friend, or a very close colleague at the very least.

So I recommend actually starting out with personal information. What does that mean? It doesn't mean I love to cut my toenails and pick the jam out, or something crazy like that, but it's oh, yeah, I'm the fourth of six children, or I have this number of sisters. I'm from this state, or where are you from.

And we'll talk about this a lot, but building those initial connections with that individual on a personal level is key to strategic relationship building and networking, so great question. Looking forward to talking more at our workshop.

Question number two. Do you usually advise students to have some mentors in your network who are solely for personal advice and other members who are solely for professional advice? Or do you advise students to mix the personal and professional details with everyone in their network?

I don't want to be seen as unprofessional, but I think that an important part of decision-making is when you're forming those decisions based off of a personal thought. Great question, and I'm going to answer it like this. The first part is I believe there's two types of mentoring relationships. There's a single mentor and another mentor, which we'll refer to as Frankenmentorship, in just a little bit.

The first one is when you identify a particular person, and you do everything that person did, and you listen to every piece of advice that person gives you because you want to follow every step they did to reach their goal. And hypothetically, and I guess logically, if you do everything they did, you will ultimately be successful and reach where they've reached.

That's a logical perspective, but I think there are some challenges with that perspective because reality is the world is always changing. And so, if you do everything one person did in the past, that's not necessarily going to get you to where you need to be.

What I am an advocate for is what I call Frankenmentorship. So if you think about Frankenstein's monster-- because remember, Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster-- Frankenstein's monster was put together by multiple pieces of multiple different people. And all together, that is what created that strong monster.

So I'm not going to suggest that you're going to be a monster, but I do recommend that you build your own monster, your own networking or mentoring monster. So the first step would then be-- we're going to talk about this in our workshop, about the C4 strategic networking model, so we'll really dive deep in this.

But then the second C, which is internal clarity, that's where this comes in again. You are going to first have to understand yourself. What are your goals? What are your interests? Where do you want to be exceptional?

Once you identify those things, then it's really easy because then you're looking for individuals who are exceptional in those areas that you want to be exceptional. And once you've identified those individuals, then you follow their lead, and you ask for their advice in those particular areas.

So let's take me, for example. I want to be really great at networking, and so I have a mentor whose phenomenal network has connections all across the world. I have a mentor who is extremely talented and connected in the political world because I think in my role it's important for me to be able to navigate in the political space, so I found someone who is really great there.

I also used to be in the federal government and I wanted to be an executive, so I found an executive in the federal government who could mentor me to help me in that path. I also want to be a great father, so I found a mentor who, honestly, is just an awesome father, and I ask him about those types of situations and how to be a great-- even a better husband.

So I think you need to identify those areas within yourself that you want to be exceptional, and then find individuals who are exceptional in those areas. And then ask them for advice and have them mentor you in those particular areas.

Now, if you want to get a little more complex, this is what I love to do. I love to have those individuals who are kind of niche to those particular areas that I just talked about, but then what I'll do-- I'm going to get crazy, going to go a little risque-- is I will ask mentors, I'll ask the individual who is a great father, I'll ask the question I'd ask him to other mentors who aren't necessarily in that pigeonhole for me, just to get a different perspective because I love different perspectives.

Some questions I would ask the political mentor, I would ask that of the executive mentor, or the networking mentor, even the father figure mentor, because I want to have different perspectives on a particular area. But the challenge with that is that you now have to be comfortable making a decision because now you have all this information coming in, and you now have to discern which way is the best way forward.

So again, the simple way is just to listen to someone give you advice. That's simple, and if you use this Frankenstein model, it will actually help you a lot in doing that. But if you want to take it to the next level and you want to really test and grow your critical thinking skills, then you can also ask those questions to the other mentors and then get all the different perspectives. And then you process that information, and you decide how to move forward.

I hope that answered your question. Again, we're going to dive down deep into all this stuff through our networking session, but I'm so excited. Thank you so much for these great questions.

Question number three. Conferences in my small subgroup discipline often feel like being back in a clique middle school, and I'm the introverted new kid. How do you network successfully in situations like this?

I actually love this question because you're right. There are so many situations where you can feel like the outsider. And this is, again, this is what we're going to be talking about during that workshop, and again, that extra internal clarity aspect.

But the first question is, where do you feel comfortable? Some people feel very comfortable walking into a group conversation and just kind of sitting there and watching and finding a good opportunity to then jump in. It's like Double Dutch, right? Some people feel very comfortable with that. Others, not so much.

So it can be very difficult in those situations, so what I would recommend is first understanding internal clarity-- again, remember-- understanding where do you feel comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable bulging in or barging into those types of conversations, then what can you do?

You can do some pre work on the front and find out individuals who you want to build relationships with. You can watch someone in a workshop or a panel discussion, or you can overhear someone that you want to talk to. And once they move away from their group, then you can engage that person on a one-on-one.

Honestly, that's kind of where I sit because I don't always feel comfortable in those situations. So I generally watch for people who I want to build a relationship with, and as soon as they're away from everyone, I will approach that person and start building a relationship with them one on one.

The other reason why that could work for you is because once you build a relationship with one person, that one person can then introduce you to other people, and then you become a part of the "in" group. So I think that's a wonderful, wonderful question. I'm really looking forward to diving more into this when we get to our session together.

Question number four. How personal should I get when I network? I understand that being friendly and somewhat vulnerable strengthens relationships. Is it good to share vulnerabilities and get personal, or should one stay professional at all times while networking?

Wonderful wonderful, wonderful question, and I'll say, it depends. Honestly, it really depends on how comfortable you are and how practiced you are in the art of networking and building relationships. For the general public, what I would say is that you want to get personal, but you don't want to get too personal.

Think of it like this. You're not going to meet someone for the first time and tell them all of your woes. You're just not. You're not going to oh, my god, I'm worried about getting divorced, and this happens, and this. You're not generally going to do that with anyone, so why would you want to do that, then, with a relationship that you're trying to build that's really important to you?

I'd also say when we talk about being vulnerable and being personable, we have different versions of ourselves around different people. I can tell you right now, I think I'm pretty cool, and I'm pretty nice, and all that good stuff like that, I'm pretty sure, but I am not the same person I am around my mom. This is a reality.

I'm a different person around my mom than I am with my best friend, than I am in the office, and when I'm sitting in executive rooms. I'm not a different person, I'm just a different version of myself. So like I said, understanding what is appropriate.

And so when you're coming into an initial conversation, you want to get personal. Again, share some personal information about where you're from, what do you enjoy doing, hiking and whatnot. I love telling jokes. I am a jokester. I really, really enjoy making people laugh, so that's part of what I do.

But you also have to be very watchful of crossing lines early on. And actually, if I can be honest with you, it's somewhat of a understanding what is the worst that could happen. So again, in my situation, I generally love making jokes. I really enjoy making jokes.

At the same time, I know that I feel very comfortable that if someone doesn't want to then build a relationship with me or doesn't want to get to know me because I made a joke and they didn't find it funny, I'm OK with it. I have a very extensive network. And so if someone doesn't want to be a friend with me or network in my network, I'm OK with it. Not everyone feels that comfortable and that confident with themselves in the beginning, so maybe you're a little more restrained.

I'd love to share a quick story with you to kind of explain how I approach the situation and why I do approach it in the way I do now. So when I was leaving my master's program, I had the opportunity to interview for a great, great job. That was going to start off making $25 an hour, doing some really great travel for a very, very significant big organization. If I were to say it, you would say, OK, I know that organization. I would be in New York a lot.

And I interviewed for them a week or two later. They reached back out to me. And the woman on the phone told me that I wasn't selected. I was like, oh, great. Thank you so much. I don't take these things too seriously.

And then she went on. She said out of 500 people, we only selected two, and you were number three. I was like wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. You made me feel like I did fairly well.

And she said, yeah, the reason why you were number three is because one of the questions you answered during the interview just didn't make sense to us. Oh, please do tell. I'd love to know this.

And she said, well, when we asked you if you had any questions for us, you said that, no, we contacted your friends and asked them what questions you were going to ask us. How would we know who your friends are and how to contact them?

At that point, all I could do is laugh to myself because that was, to me, an obvious joke. There's no way they were going to know who my friends were and contact them and ask them. For me, that was an obvious joke, and I felt like, oh, if they don't get my jokes, it's OK because I'm going to be joking all the time. And I don't want to be in a place where I can't joke, I can't be myself.

So it's a long-winded answer to say you have to also feel comfortable knowing that at some point maybe you say something that someone doesn't like and that the relationship may not go on from that point. And I honestly feel that you should feel comfortable with that because there's a billion people in the world, so there's so many more people to meet.

So again, long way to answer, but I do think you should be personal. I do think you should share aspects of your life in the beginning because you want to build those connections with those individuals-- and we're going to talk about this a lot during the workshop-- but you want to build those one-on-one personal connections. Those personal connections are what's going to maintain that relationship.

At the same time, you also want to make sure you're not going crazy. You don't want to do anything-- again, I love cutting toenails off and popping pimples. That's a little too personal for the first time.

But then simultaneously, you should also be very comfortable at, you know what, not everyone's going to like me. And it's OK, because there's more people out there. As long as you're not being a D-I-C fill in the blank, I think you're OK, and you'll keep progressing, meeting more and more people. Thank you so much for the question.

Question number five. How do you maintain relationships with professionals you no longer work with anymore? That is a great question. When we're talking about networking, that question comes up a lot, mostly because most people don't know how to maintain relationships in general.

Once you meet a person, the easy part. You're identifying an individual. You're building an initial relationship with them. That's, honestly, the easy part. It's the maintaining the relationships that becomes more difficult because you have so many different things going on. You have school and work and parents, and everything else, relationships.

There are so many of the things in your life that kind of bombard you that it's hard sometimes to make sure you're always hitting those touch points with your relationships. And so when you're no longer working with those individuals, it becomes even more difficult.

So that's a really, really great question, and what I would say is I believe in automation. Actually, there's a saying I love. It's I rather depend on automation than motivation. So motivation can go away. Motivation is an emotion, and emotions change. Emotions change fairly quickly, where automation is going to happen regardless, like clockwork.

So how do you automate the process? Well, identify those individuals in your network that are really, really important to you. And if they're really, really, really important to you, then you can put it on your calendar. I actually have a friend who does exactly that.

He'll put on his calendar to reach out to certain people once a month. He has people in his network that he reaches out once every two months, once every six months, and once every year. And those specific individuals that you know you want to keep tabs on, you want to make sure they know what's going on in your life, and so on and so forth.

For those bigger and broader networks, maybe you're not sending an email to that person every so many months or whatever. But if you have a large group of people in your network and you want to keep them updated, then what you can do is you can send an email annually, just saying, hey, how are you doing? I want to let you know what's going on. These things happened in my life. They're so cool. I'd love to hear more about what's going on in your life. Can we schedule a time to talk?

The great thing about that is because you do a few things by doing one thing. One, you're updating everyone on where you are in life. That's the easy thing. So they don't even have to respond. I used to email my entire network annually, and after I sent 1,000-odd emails out, I'd get 100 responses back. That doesn't mean those other people didn't see what was going on because when I met up with them, they'd say, oh, yeah, we loved your email. Thank you so much for the update. They just didn't respond, and honestly that's great because it's less work for you.

Two, then you have those people who respond, and once you have them respond, you have the option to go back and forth, and you become updated on their situation, which is another great benefit from it. And then from that 100 people, maybe you'll actually jump on the phone with 20 of those people, and now you have an opportunity to really kind of dive into what's going on and share what's going on in your life or what's their life.

And then of that 20 people, maybe you actually meet up in person with fie people. And that is how it works. It's really a numbers game. So just feel very, very comfortable with reaching out to people, again, whether it's on a periodic basis, and automate it, just automate it because there's so many different things going on in your life. Don't beat yourself up if you're busy and you forget things. That's why you automate it. That's why you have a calendar, and so on and so forth.

And too, just make sure that you're being, that when you do reach out to them, don't reach out for stuff. I have a rule for myself. When I haven't spoken to someone for a while, I generally like to have three back-and-forths before I ask for anything. Even if I do need to ask for something, I don't want to come off like I'm just contacting them for something. Let me hey, how are you doing? How's the family? How's school going? How's work going?

Have a little back and forth, and then hey, look, I'm working on this project. I'd love to get your impact on this, or your thoughts on this, or your reactions to this. Or do you have a relationship here that you can connect me with? But I never do it just off the top, just because I don't want them to feel like I'm using them. They are someone who's important to me, and I should want to learn what's going on in their life, and then I can also ask them for that favor. So great question. Great, great question. Thank you.

Question number six. What are some tips you have for networking at science conferences and meetings? So I addressed some of this in the questions I just answered a few seconds ago, but the first thing I would say is do the internal clarity, do the internal work, do the homework.

Understand before you go to the conference, what are the things you want to learn about? Where are the people you want to meet? Who are the people you want to meet, and where are they going to be? What are they most likely to be engaging in? What panel discussions will they be going to? What networking events will they be going to?

Understanding those spaces and those individuals is the first thing, the first thing you need to be doing when you get to a conference. Well, sorry. First thing is the first C, which is mindset change, feeling comfortable doing this. But again, we'll talk about this all at our workshop. But the second C is internal clarity, which is, again, really understanding what it is you're there for and who you need to meet.

So once you know that, then be in those places. There's a strategy that I love sharing, and I've used it in my life to build my network and reputation, and I've seen countless other individuals do the same exact thing. So I want to share with you a quick story.

When I was younger in my career, I was-- again, I was really young. I was 24 years old. I had the opportunity to build some very significant relationships with very influential individuals, and one of the strategies I used was being seen.

So I would actually-- I found the corridor within the government agency where all of the most senior-level executives were, where the assistant secretaries were, the deputy assistant secretaries were. And what I did was I found every reason to walk down that corridor as often as possible.

Why? Because I wanted to be seen there. See, people are not very complex, and you all know this. You're all science people. You know how people think. People make assumptions. Our brains are designed to make assumptions so that we can be efficiently moving forward, not always analyzing everything.

And so the thing is if someone sees you in a particular place over and over and over, they then quickly and very quickly, actually, begin to assume that you belong there. So me being on that corridor, every opportunity that I had to walk up and down that corridor, people started to assume that I belonged there, which then they assume that I must be some sort of leader within the organization, and they assume that I must have information to share.

It wasn't too long before people started asking me, hey, what's going on? Hey, what are you working on? Or asking me to lunch to have some conversation, or inviting me to meetings to listen to what's going on to hear my perspective, simply because they always saw me in a particular place, and they made the assumption that I had some information to provide.

I would say the same exact thing for you, that is, go to those places where you want to build a relationship. Go to those places where you want to build your reputation as being someone who has thoughts on a particular area, and at least be in those places.

And if you have an opportunity, always raise your hand and ask a question. Find a reason to ask a question because it gives you a spotlight. Everyone sees you stand up. They see you have a thought on the topic. I love, I love, I love the aspect of asking questions because, again, it puts a spotlight on you out of everyone in the room because all eyes are on you, and it's just a great, such a great strategy.

And then when possible, when possible, go out with people. Again, I answered this in my first couple of questions about taking the relationship from a professional relationship to a personal relationship. Remember, professional relationships are at work. Personal relationships are outside of work.

I don't think about my friends when I'm at work. I think of my friends when I'm outside of work. And so people who are in work and are my friends, I'm thinking about them a lot. So you want to be that person. You want to be "yes" in the networking, in those meetings, in the conference, raising your hand and people seeing you, but you also want to be the person who they can think about outside of that context, in the personal context.

So go out. Again, that's for everyone's ages. So maybe when you're getting a drink, you're getting a coffee, or some water or maybe. I don't want to push anything on anyone. But find an opportunity to go out with people and just have a good time. Don't make it all about work. Have some personal interaction. Share some personal stories. And really, honestly, just have a good time. Great question. Thank you so much.

Question number seven. How often are you supposed to update your network on your achievements and goals? How much is too much, and how little is too little? Again, great question. I believe that you should, at a bare minimum, on an annual basis. If you have the opportunity, do it on an annual basis.

But it also really depends on who it is in your network that you are trying to focus on. There are individuals who are very, very senior in my network, and I want to let them know what I'm working on, possibly on a monthly or bimonthly basis because I want them to know that I'm progressing, that I appreciate the input and the advice they provided.

And so I let them know more often. They may not even always respond. I may just send them a text message, saying, hey, I'm working on X, Y, and Z. I'd love when we connect we can talk about it. So it really depends on who it is in your network.

But again, for the general public of your network, annual is good enough. You don't want to be sending too many emails, but if those-- again, you want to identify. You may identify to talk about mentorship. You may identify maybe 10 or 12 mentors. Again, it depends on how good you are about managing relationships.

But you can identify that many mentors, and you can keep them up to date, possibly on a bimonthly basis, depending on how close they are. I have mentors who I update on a weekly basis. I have mentors I update on a quarterly basis. So it really depends on how important that relationship is and how close you are to those individuals.

Again, if you're not really close to people, annual is good enough. But if you are more close, then you may think about on a monthly, bimonthly, even quarterly basis. Great question.

Question number eight. Is it acceptable to use humor and joke while networking, or should it remain professional and serious? Well, if you're around me, you'll know very quickly that I use humor 98% of the time. People love to smile. People love to laugh.

Now, it's the appropriate amount of humor, which is the question. Again, I make a lot of jokes, and again, as you heard earlier, I am very comfortable with myself. I'm very comfortable knowing that if someone doesn't like me because of my jokes, they may not like me, and I'm OK with that, completely OK with that.

But my humor, my jokes, my personality is what differentiates me from other people. And when we talk about networking in our session, we're going to talk about the importance of standing out. And if you're like everyone else, you will not be remembered. So you have to find things and ways to stand out from others, and for me, it's my humor. I'm always making really funny jokes.

That said, you do need to know the appropriate type of joke to tell to the person in a particular situation. The jokes that I tell the people I'm just meeting are different than jokes that I can tell to people who I've known for six months, a year, and longer because I have a lot of sarcasm in my jokes sometimes, and so some people know, oh, Alex is just joking. Some people are like, oh, wow, is he serious?

So it's yes. To answer your question, humor is definitely appropriate, but you have to know what type of humor. Are you going to use a sarcastic humor, dark humor? You have to be really careful. It's a great tool, but you have to use it the right way because it can get you in trouble, especially in today.

Again, we're going to be real. There's a lot of people who are really PC today, politically correct, and they will get mad over anything. That's it. Again, I am very comfortable. At some point, someone may not like my joke, and I'm willing to accept the consequences.

I think that's the best that-- that is the real point. You have to be willing to accept the consequences of your behavior. If telling a joke is that important to you and it doesn't go over well, you have to say, OK, well I made the decision to tell that joke. It didn't go well. They may not like me.

Do I now work to try to salvage the relationship? That's on you. But yeah, just I think the most important thing is be willing to accept the consequences of your behavior. But it also means be willing to accept the consequences of a lack of behavior. If you don't tell jokes and you're boring and serious the entire time, are you going to stand out? Are they going to remember you after that moment? There's always questions about that.

Again, if you don't have humor, it's OK. You can use other things. Again, you can use the professional, serious tone and be a very, very thoughtful person who can bring up very interesting questions. Again, that's another route I can go sometimes because I'm not an expert in everything, but what I am really good at is asking good questions.

And being someone who can ask good questions is just as good because you get the other person thinking, and they'll say, wow, this person is really smart. And you haven't given any answers, but you've been able to ask really good questions. So asking questions is a great strategy as well. Thank you so much for the question.

Question number nine. How do you identify what your career goal is? I love this question. So obviously, it has nothing to do with networking per se, but yet, it does, actually. So the first thing I would say is that remember your goal is just a direction.

I think there's a lot of people, so many people, who believe they need to find the right goal, and then they can get moving. That's very difficult to do because your goals are always going to be shifting. I can tell you right now, they're always going to be shifting.

And some people, because there's not sure what their goal should be, they never move, and they become stagnant, and that is the absolutely worst thing you can do is become stagnant because if you're stagnant, you're not meeting new people. If you're stagnant, you're not learning new things. If you're static, you're not going and engaging in new experiences.

So what's really important when you're thinking about being goal is almost like a, I want to say, just like a snap decision. But you do want to say, OK, what am I interested in? I'm interested in this. Don't think about it too much. Go for it. Go, take action.

I talk about this all the time in my YouTube page and my podcast, which I encourage you to watch, The Alex Tremble Show. You can see some episodes on YouTube, some on the podcast, The Alex Tremble Show, and actually you can go to thealextrembleshow.com.

What I strongly, strongly recommend is to take action. So even if you have an inkling of where you think you want to go, take action towards it. Once you take action towards it, you will learn what you like, you will learn what you don't like, and then have the flexibility to say, you know what, I've done this a little bit. I don't particularly like this and that, but I do like this over here, so let me redirect myself over here a little bit more.

And that is OK, because that is what is going to happen as you have experiences in life. You're going to change. And if you're not willing to change, again, you're also going to end up in a very, very uncomfortable situation because you're going to be very frustrated with yourself.

If I can share my own journey really quickly, when I went to college, I wanted to be a high school counselor, and that was my focus, to become a high school counselor to help you. That's what I wanted to do. Actually, really quickly, there's a great book called The GPS Guide to Success. You can get it on Amazon, The GPS Guide to Success, a great book that's going to actually tell you how to identify your goals.

But what I'll say is I used to want to be a high school counselor, and so everything I did was to become a high school counselor. Then I was introduced to IO psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, in my junior year of college. And I was like, wow, this is really cool. I want to be an international consultant.

So then I went to school and found a job near Washington, DC, because I wanted to be an international consultant. Great, now I'm doing this. Now everything I'm doing is to further that goal.

Well, ultimately I got a job working for the federal government, and I said, you know what, I love the federal government. Let me grow here. So everything I was doing was to become a better federal employee. Again, I'm not sure if I-- we'll learn, we'll talk more about this during our session-- but I started off as a 23-year-old kid managing the Executive Leadership Development Program for the US Department of the Interior, very, very big job for someone that young and just for someone, period.

But it was in that job, I was like, oh, this is really good. Then, then, I wanted to be a senator. So then I started meeting individuals who were on the campaign and meeting individuals in politics. And then I wanted to be a secretary of an agency. So I start meeting those types of individuals.

And then after that, I wanted to start my own business, and I started my own business. I wrote two books. I do online training. I now do speaking all across the country. And I started meeting people who were doing speaking full-time, who were trainers, who were salespeople. You need to learn how to sell when you're doing that type of stuff.

Then, I finally decided I want to be a talk show host. I want to be a personality. I love, I love, I love talking to people and having great conversations and discussions. And that's how The Alex Tremble Show got started.

Now, I'm telling you all this because I want you to understand that every time I had a new goal, I gave it everything I had. I learned as much as I could in that particular vein. And then when I said, oh, I like this a little bit more, let me tweak it a little bit more this way, then I went full speed that direction.

But you know what happened? All the stuff I learned is still with me. See, I also serve as an executive at the second largest national conservation corps in the country. What makes me good at that job is all the other stuff that I learned on this journey to this path.

What makes me so good at being a host and being asked extremely, extremely interesting questions to my guests, whether it be the acting director the CFPB or the RNC's national spokesperson or other kind of-- I actually interviewed the deputy director for intelligence for the CIA. The reason why I'm able to have these interesting conversations with these individuals is because of all the experiences I had previous.

So the point for you is to understand is that please, please, please, don't spend forever trying to identify that goal. That goal is going to change. It should change. As you have more experiences and you learn more about yourself and your strengths and what you're interested in, your passions, your interest in wanting your goal should change, and that's OK.

Then, redirect your effort and go 100% at that until it changes again. And what that does is, again, it makes sure you're always moving forward. You're always progressing, always learning, always having more and more greater experiences, always meeting new people and expanding your network and your influence, while at the same time making you so much more competitive.

Because those individuals who picked a particular goal and they said, I don't care if I'm interested or not, I'm staying in this goal. I'm going to be this person. I'm only going to have these experiences. When you are at a table with them, and you're looking, and you have to look for a creative way to solve a problem, they're only going to know and be able to solve the problem using the information within this small group of experiences they've had, whereas you will have all of this to pull from when solving those problems and asking those questions and leading those people you'll be leading.

So whew, I get excited about this stuff. Thank you so much for this awesome, awesome question. And thank you so much for all the questions that all of you have asked today. And I'm looking so much, I'm looking so forward to meeting you and having this conversation, as we really dive into what I call the C4 strategic networking model. So we'll dive into that to teach you the skills and the steps to become the most effective networker you can become.

But also, as we're there together, ask me more questions. Ask me all the questions you have, and we will discuss as many of them as we can within the time that we have. Thank you so much, so much, for joining me today. Again, I encourage you. Follow me on LinkedIn.com. Find me there. I'm always sharing more and more content.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel. I'm always put more content there. And listen to the podcast, The Alex Tremble Show, thealextrembleshow.com, and you'll hear so, so much more information that's going to help you reach your career aspirations. As always, stay strong, stay positive, and definitely, stay moving.

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