241. The 8 Types Of People You Need In Your Network

Have you noticed how some people seem to know exactly the right person to call when they need something? That's not luck - it's strategic networking.

If you're an innovator with ambition, you need to build your network strategically. This episode will help you plan whom you need, why you need them and how to find them.

Listen to learn:

• The 8 categories of professionals you need in your network if you want to build something new
• The types of developers to have in your network and how to connect with them
• Why you need both VCs and public market investors for different perspectives - even if you're not raising money
• How to surround yourself with highly successful people who expand your sense of what's possible
• Real examples of finding your tribe of ambitious innovators who are actually doing things, not just talking

Whether you're starting a tech company, driving innovation in a corporate role, or exploring new opportunities, you'll learn how to build the right relationships that will nourish you for the long term.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

03:01 Developers in Your Network

05:52 The Investor Perspective

09:13 Vision Expanders

12:00 Regulators in Innovation

14:48 Finding Your Tribe of Outliers

19:11 Leveraging Industry Veterans

23:04 Media Allies

25:58 Academic Connections

29:49 Conclusion

For more career & tech lessons, subscribe to Tech for Non-Techies on:

• Apple
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Amazon Podcasts
• Stitcher
• Pandora

FREE COURSE:

5 Tech Concepts Every Business Leader Needs To Know

Growth Through Innovation

If your organisation wants to drive revenue through innovation, book a call with us here.

Our workshops and innovation strategies have helped Constellation Brands, the Royal Bank of Canada and Oxford University.

Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.088)
We are going to actually talk about eight different types of people that you need to have in your network if you're a non-technical innovator.

Sophia Matveeva (00:13.496)
on Techies podcast. I'm your host, Tech entrepreneur, executive coach at Chicago Booth MBA, Safiya Mathur. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly,

share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to have a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello, smart people. How are you today? In this lesson, we are going to talk about building your network in a smart, strategic, and hopefully fun way. And I know you've probably heard lots of lessons about why networking is important and why you should do it and so on. And this one,

It will have elements of that, but we're actually going have a very strategic and thoughtful approach. And we're going to focus on real relationships and not just a random number of followers on LinkedIn. We are going to actually talk about eight different types of people that you need to have in your network if you're a non-technical innovator. So if you are a founder and you don't have a technical background, or if you're a corporate innovator and you don't have a technical background,

then you are going to want to have these eight types of people in your network. So what I suggest you do first is first audit, first of all, actually listen to this lesson, listen or watch wherever you are. So listen to this lesson, listen to the eight types of people that I'm talking about, and then actually just look at your calendar and think about, where have I been in the last month? Who have I spoken to? Who have I had meetings with?

then look at your calendar for the coming month and see who you're going to be hanging out with, see who you're going to be spending time with. And that's going to give you some indication of who is in your active network, like who are you catching up with. And then you'll be able to see, okay, you know, some of these eight types of people you have in your network and you basically just need to carry on refreshing that, but you don't maybe need to grow it. But then there'll be some types, some types out of the eight that I'm about to show you.

Sophia Matveeva (02:32.662)
that you don't have a new network at all. And then that means it's to be like, okay, well, don't have, I don't know, developers or I don't have regulators in my network. I would better get started. So in this lesson, I'm going to talk to you about the eight types of people you need in your network to be a successful non-technical innovator. And I'm also going to tell you about how you can actually meet those people and get them to be part of your network. So let's get started. Who are the first?

people that you need to know? number one is going to be going to call them the technical bridge. So you do need developers in your network. And why is that? So it's not necessarily that you're going to hire them or you're going to get them to do stuff for you, like get them to write code for you. You might do, but actually that's really a small possibility. I have a lot of developers in my network. And so I'll tell you some of the things that they've done for me. So some developers,

I literally just ask them for advice when I'm working on something with a technical team and I want to just have an outside expert, just an outside view from somebody who I know basically likes me and wants me to do well. I'll say to them, we're working on this thing. I'm not sure about whether this is feasible or whether this is a good idea or whether like the costs are kind of spiraling out of control. Having some experts that you can call and just ask for expert opinion is super useful.

Another thing which is really useful for non-technical innovators is that expert developers can help you hire the right people. So let's say you have an idea for a tech business or you already have a business and you want to add technology to it. I don't know, you want to add an app to your finance business at the moment. So you're not going to be writing the code yourself. You're going to maybe hire a product studio. But if you've never hired these people before and you don't know what you're looking for,

It's going to be difficult. having some people who are actually technical experts, who are technical leads, know, who are lead engineers, maybe who are CTOs, having them interview product studios, maybe even recommend product studios, that's super useful. And this is what I have used my developer network for. Also having contact with real expert engineers, and I'm talking about kind of like real expert level.

Sophia Matveeva (04:53.934)
They can really help you understand what hype and what's actually really useful. you know, if you're watching this, that means you are interested in tech news and that means you are probably hearing a lot of hype. know, remember there was the metaverse, there was crypto, now it's AI. And it can be difficult to work out, okay, is this just a phase or is this actually going to last? So being able to speak to technical experts, to have real expertise and say, hey, well, what do you think of this?

Are you using this? Are you excited to use this? When a new tool comes out, get them to give you their opinion. That can be super useful. don't think though that you only need to have CTOs in your network. Yes, CTOs and people who have scales technical teams, they are a useful asset. But also, if you can get your hands on junior developers, maybe you're at the start of your career, that's also useful because they're still smart people. They're still going to be experimenting.

And they can also help you do a lot of these tasks, but just at a different level. So number one, make sure that you have developers in your network. If you don't have any, basically you need to go find someone. So how do you do it? Go to tech meetups. So on Eventbrite and on Meetup, there are lots of technology meetups, and I've gone to quite a few. And just basically just go to them and find them online. If Meetup and Eventbrite aren't super active where you are, there are going to be other things online.

Like maybe just go to some hackathons, start turning up and at some of these events you'll be super bored and you won't know what's going on. But at others you'll learn stuff and you'll meet some new friends. So meet some developers. Number two, you need the money perspective. And so that means you need to speak to investors and it doesn't matter whether you're fundraising or not. Actually, I would say it's better if you're not fundraising because it's better to build your network with these people when you don't need them. And I would say that you need to have

two types of investors in your network. You need the venture capitalists and you need the public markets investors. And I have both in my network and I basically use them for two different things. So VCs, they generally, they're useful because they can tell you about what innovations are coming to the market, what are founders pitching to them right now. And also they can tell you why are companies falling apart right now, why are startups not getting funding.

Sophia Matveeva (07:17.9)
Why are startups having down rounds? What's happening to valuations? What's happening to bubbles and that side of the market? That's really useful. And also public markets investors, they really focus on the numbers. So VC is often focused on the vision because the actual specific metrics of a startup usually, well, they're not very good or they don't exist. know, if the startup is making revenue, it's like totally wildly up and down because venture capital is all about investing in innovation.

So if you want to invest in innovation or you want to understand how that works, VC is your place to go. But public markets investors, they're much more, let's call them spreadsheet people. know, they're watching this, they'll hate it. But you know what I mean? Like they have these really long, big spreadsheets, discount cashflow evaluations, and essentially they would take a company's revenues and profits, and then they would extrapolate them to basically make predictions about what's going to happen next. So they are very

metrics driven and so kind of less hype driven. And for a good example of that, you can look at what happened when WeWork tried to IPO and, you know, WeWork was all hype, which got private investors to back them. But when they went to the public market, they basically said no. This is why having these people in your network just for a sense check to see what they're investing in, to see kind of, to understand why public markets are reacting in specific ways. It's really useful. So how can you meet?

both types of people, both VCs and public markets investors. So alumni groups are a really good way to do it. So if you went to business school, you went to, you or you did a master's or even if you did undergrad, there will be some sort of alumni networks, alumni evenings, alumni extra classes. That's a good way to meet these kinds of people. Also ask your existing network. who actually

knows investors and just say that you want to understand their perspective. And the key thing is say, I'm not looking for funding. I want to understand the perspective of venture capitalists or public markets investors on this particular sector. So if you say that you are not fundraising, but you just want to get their perspective on a particular sector or maybe on a particular company or in a particular trend, you're much more likely to get introduced to somebody and then they'll have

Sophia Matveeva (09:41.814)
a zoom call with you and you know, if you ask them interesting, clever questions, then they're going to think, this is an interesting person. I might do that again, or they might then introduce you to somebody in their network and you build up from that. But the key is don't ask for money, right? Because if you basically just ask for introductions in order to get cash, a lot of the time it doesn't work. So there's actually this phrase in the startup world, which is

Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money. Anyway, that's a subject for another lesson. It is actually true. haven't used this, but anyway, so the two people you need so far are developers and investors. Okay. Who else do you need? You need to have people that I'm going to call vision expanders and vision expanders are basically people who are super mega successful. Get the most successful people you can get your hands on. Can you somehow through somebody,

meet a Fortune 100 CEO? Can you meet a very successful hedge fund manager? Sorry. Can you meet somebody who is in the C suite of a massive company? And these people, again, this is not about asking them for stuff. It's actually more about inspiration and about seeing these people in their natural habitat.

and kind of getting acclimatized to them. this is kind of a bit more, maybe a bit esoteric. But what I mean is that, if you are very ambitious, which is I'm assuming why you're watching this lesson. So if you're very ambitious, then you put super ambitious people on this pedestal and they're kind of like up there and you feel like you're there. And then you look up to them and you kind of start thinking that maybe they're superhuman.

actually, when you do spend time with these people and you build relationships with them, just seeing the fact that, they're humans, they get tired, they overate, you know, they might have one too many donuts one day, or, you know, they get dressed, all of just all the kind of normal human variables. And then you see that I show, you know, they are like me, I am like them, but they have done these things that I haven't done. So let me see what I can do to. So just

Sophia Matveeva (12:00.162)
being around these people can actually be inspiring and helpful. so their mindset, some of their behaviors can rub off. And also I just find that it helps me see what's possible. So I'll give you an example. Last week, I went to see a friend of mine and he runs a private equity business that he started and he is really successful. mean, my company is successful, but his company is doing extremely, extremely well. They own several well-known brands. know, well done him.

And it was really inspiring to go into his office and to just see what he's built and to like, I was thinking, this is like good on you. This is so awesome. Okay. So this is what we get to build. This is what we get to do. Okay. I'm going to go do that now. Even though he is in private equity, he's in finance. I'm not in finance. used to be. I'm now doing something else. Seeing.

somebody who is one of my peers achieve something incredible makes me go like, okay, yeah, I'm going to do that too. So that's super, super inspiring. So you might be thinking, okay, well, this is really useful, but how am I going to go and meet a private equity mogul? I totally get you. So I'm going to tell you how I've done it and I'll give you some tips. So a little while ago, I used to write for Forbes. So I had a column in Forbes writing about my startup journey.

And in that column, I basically just made an effort to interview very successful people. And specifically I was interviewing non-technical founders and investors who invest in non-technical founders. And to be honest, when I had the Forbes name behind me and I was reaching out to very successful people whom I didn't know, a lot of them responded. And you might be thinking, okay, well, this is great. Should I start writing for Forbes? Well, to be honest, yes.

You know, whether it's Forbes or another publication, like there are kind of less high profile brands that you could be writing for, like maybe for your alumni magazine or for a startup blog that already exists. So you could be doing that. But to be honest, right now I don't write for Forbes anymore. And I have the Tech for non-techies podcast channel. So there is the podcast and now there's the YouTube series and YouTube's a bit younger than the podcast, you know, Tech for non-techies.

Sophia Matveeva (14:19.466)
It's a good brand, but it's not as big as Forbes, right? But I have the same effect. So now I can actually write to extremely successful people and say, I heard about what you were doing. I think this is really interesting. I would like to have you on my show. And then I basically say, okay, in order for you to go on my show, we need to have a quick conversation to discuss what we're going to talk about. And then we have recording. So by the time I finished the recording, I already spoken to this very successful person twice.

And if we get on, we enjoy our conversation, then basically the relationship builds. There is no reason why you shouldn't do that too. So you could start your own podcast series, you could start your own video series, you could start a content series on LinkedIn. All of these things are possible. They just basically take some work. But if you want to meet super mega successful people and you don't have any access to them, I find that creating content and interviewing is a really, really good way to go.

Okay, so number four, what's another type of person you need to have in your network? And these are the regulators, basically the people who write laws, the government people, you need them. So why do you need them? Well, they're powerful, right? They're powerful and you're ambitious. So if you're an ambitious person, then you need to have different types of powerful people in your network because ambition,

needs to have powerful allies and this is what this episode is about. especially in the tech world right now, especially with AI, there is so much discussion about regulation and some of your regulations that are coming in I think are wonderful, some of them are idiotic, but it's definitely a space where people are trying to figure out, okay, how do we build a fair society whilst also not restricting innovation?

whilst also dealing with geopolitical problems. These are really, really big questions. So if you intend to build a very successful company or if you intend to be at the helm of a very successful company or if you intend to invest in very successful companies, you need to understand the regulatory landscape. You need to understand, okay, what laws do I think are going to come in? You also frankly might want to have an input into these laws.

Sophia Matveeva (16:44.652)
You might want to say to regulators, you know what? I think you're missing something. Let me add my perspective. So also frankly, if you have access to regulators and you know what they're talking about and you know what's coming, it makes you look very knowledgeable and very important. And that's basically really good for your image. Okay. So how do you do this? Again, I am not suggesting that you need to somehow go and meet, you know, country presidents and

get a seat in the Senate. I mean, if you could, great, by the way, then call me and tell me how you did it. But I'm not suggesting you do that. So there is a much more kind of low hanging fruit. So you can join industry associations. You can basically do that for a very small amount of money. You can participate in working groups. You can contribute to committees. So I know in the UK, there are parliamentary committees. In the US, there are also several equivalents of that.

Also, you could start smaller, so maybe start with your local region. You don't have to start with the international bodies, but basically start meeting people, start seeing where there are regulators. And you know how I did it? I knew that I needed to have regulators in my network. So I looked at this eight groups of people that I'm telling you about, and I saw that my big gap was regulators.

And I was thinking, God, how do I meet these people? And I was kind of doing all the things that I'm telling you about and it was happening, but I just wasn't meeting exactly the right people. Like I kind of knew which department I wanted to speak to. And this was in London. And what happened was that I was invited to speak at a panel and it was a panel discussion on something that I wasn't particularly interested in. And, you know, the audience was really small and basically

I was about to say no, but then I saw that one of the other panelists was going to be for basically the tech ministry in the UK. And I thought, okay, you know what? I'm going to go. I'm going to be super professional. I'm going to be amazing. And I'm going to be extremely charming to this person from the government. And it works. I was extremely charming and, you know, invited that person out for lunch. had lunch. Ended up basically actually becoming friends. And now I.

Sophia Matveeva (19:11.662)
can call her, can understand what's happening on their end. And basically that helped me get invited to all sorts of interesting things and have a different view, have a richer view of what's happening in the tech landscape. So these people can be a bit harder to find, but panel discussions, going to networking events where they are, that can really help. Number five, you need your tribe of outliers.

If you're watching this, you are an ambitious person and you want to do things with your life and you want to invent things. So either you want to invest, either you want to invent a whole new company or you want to invent a different part in a corporate. Maybe you want to invent a new product, a different product line. Maybe you're leading digital transformation. Anyway, you get my point. You are doing something big and risky. And what do most people do about risky things? Most people

avoid risky things like the plague. Not you. You are actually running towards the risky thing. So if you are the only person in your network who is doing risky things, first of all, you're going to be really lonely and that's going to be a bit sad. But also it's likely that your ambition is going to be kind of suppressed by all of these very risk averse people. And you know, it happens to me, it happens to the best of us, it happens to all of us because

Basically as humans, kind of absorb the atmosphere and then we start adjusting to it. So then your job is to make sure that you are in an atmosphere that inspires you as opposed to brings you down. So think about it. Think about, this is actually quite personal. Think about your friends. Think about who you are spending time with. Are they founders? Are they successful founders or are they founders actually doing something? Are they in event?

innovators, are they inventing something new or are they just trying new things or are you constantly spending time with people who are just really happy with a status quo? If you are spending time with people who are happy with a status quo, do not try to change the people, but just add those outliers. So what are some good ways to do that? So if you are in a startup, joining an accelerator program, but a good one can be really useful because actually

Sophia Matveeva (21:36.544)
the network and just kind of being in a group of people who are all creating something new, that's really, really exhilarating. So joining an accelerator can be good. Also just joining courses where you get to interact with people. So for example, when I teach my Tech One on Technical Founders course and I teach it in person and you people come who want to create products and they don't have technical backgrounds. And I remember in my last class, we had 30 people.

And it was wonderful. You know, we were meeting up twice a week. Yes, we were in class, but also people were talking to each other and so many friendships were formed and had so much feedback from the students that yes, they loved the learning, but they also just loved being in a community of people who are doing things that they're working on as well. So like they're in the community of peers. So find courses, find accelerators. Also, you know, look at your friend group. Are there

people who like maybe friends of friends who are doing cool stuff, well, reach out to them and say, hey, you're doing really cool things and I'm working on this thing. Do you want to get together and talk about the things that we're working on and just maybe make it more regular? But this bit, just surrounding yourself with ambitious people who are doing interesting and risky things, basically really good for your sanity. number six, we've got

We've got eight people, so two more to go. Number six, you need industry veterans. So whatever you're working on, you need to have people who understand the industry. So whether you're working in retail, you need people who maybe have been at the helm or in executive positions in retailers. If you're working in FinTech, you need people who obviously have worked in the particular area of finance where you're innovating and so on. Because these people understand the real problems of the industry.

especially if you're going to be selling in your product. So for example, if you've got some sort of software as a service thing and you need to sell it to enterprises and you've never sold anything to enterprises, you need somebody who is basically an insider who is going to help you and help you understand how enterprises work. I remember when I first started doing B2B sales for my previous company and yes, we had a SaaS product for B2B retail and it was really,

Sophia Matveeva (24:01.55)
It was basically, took ages because, you know, there were so many different points of decision in a corporate. So if you're trying to sell to a corporate and you don't even know who to speak to and you don't know who their bosses are and you don't know how decisions are made and how budget is allocated, then you're basically kind of standing outside a jungle and thinking, well, somehow in that jungle is a golden egg and I got to find it. And you're basically not going to find it without a guide. So this is why having industry veterans is super, super useful.

How do you do it? Again, obviously find out, do you have any second degree connections to these people? If you do, then contact them. If you don't, here's something that I have done, which works amazingly well. Basically, start organizing panel discussions. So panel discussions about your industry. So let's say you're working in Pintek. So let's say, I don't know, you're working on some sort of new app for pension funds.

I don't know, I just made that up. So then you would have a panel discussion where you get some people from pension funds to discuss about how is AI affecting the industry? So kind of typical panel discussion right now. You could have that panel discussion in a physical space or you could have it in a digital space. You could literally have a panel discussion that streams to LinkedIn. And so that's completely like no cost. And then invite these industry veterans.

This is kind of similar to the thing that I was talking about with creating content when you actually, you're not really that bothered about your audience. You don't really care whether like millions of people see it. And you know, if it's AI in pension fund reform, it probably won't be millions of people. But anyway, you get my point. It's not about having a massive audience. It's about whether you are reaching out to those people, asking them intelligent questions, behaving professionally. You know, if you're planning a

a panel discussion, are you turning up on time? Are you answering emails politely and professionally? All of this gives a good impression. And then after the event, you know them, they know you, keep on building that relationship and there you go, you've got your industry veterans. Okay, that was number six. Number seven, you need allies in the media. So you need people who are either journalists in the traditional press, so, or maybe in the tech press.

Sophia Matveeva (26:27.304)
And you also need influencers, so bloggers, podcasters, and so on. So this is going to be useful because at some point you are going to want publicity for your thing. So whether it's your company, whether it's your corporate innovation, you're going to want people to write about it. Also, whether you're fundraising or whether you're trying to get promoted, you know, being on a list of like the most innovative people in insurance tech, that's going to be

really useful people are going to be like, this is really, really important. And you know what I found out about those lists and awards and all these things? They're made out of people that the influencers and that the journalists know. So if your innovation is super amazing, if the product that you've created is super great, but journalists and influencers don't know that it exists and they're writing a list of like the top 10 innovations of the year, and they just don't know that yours exists, even if yours is better than all of the 10.

They weren't right about it. So you have to go and tell people. So don't think that this is about, you know, sending them press releases, because frankly, you're probably not important enough for them to care about a press release. know, Apple can send press releases and everybody's going to read them and be like, this is amazing. If you're basically doing something completely new, they're not going to care. So you need to start building relationships. And this is where social media really comes in. So when I read an article by somebody,

who basically I like, I like the article, I like the way they write, I like the way they're telling the story, I usually share it on LinkedIn and I tag them in and I say something, you know, I say something about the article and I basically say, thank you very much for sharing this interesting story and I tag in the journalists. I do the same thing with podcasts, I do the same thing with newsletters and people also do it to me. So, you know, at this point, my podcast does have a following and people want to get my attention. And to be honest, if people...

make a post on LinkedIn about one of my podcast episodes and they tag me in and they say why they learned something from it, I remember that person. And then if they reach out to me again, I'm far more likely to respond than when basically just a random person is like, hi, can I have 15 minutes of your time for free? I mean, I get a lot of that and most of the time I do not answer. Okay, so you do need media, you need influencers. And finally, you need to have some academics in your network.

Sophia Matveeva (28:55.438)
So if you're working in tech innovation, obviously having some academic technical experts, that's like the deepest level of expertise, that's going to be useful because if you're working on frontier innovations or you're working with frontier innovations, having people who can really help you decipher real innovation from hype is going to be useful. Having academics, maybe having an academic advisor on your startup advisory board gives you a certain level of credibility. It's the same thing with corporates.

trying to shake this UFO down for some innovation money, having somebody from Cambridge University or from the University of Chicago and saying that this person is involved as an advisor, that's going to give you some credibility. Also, business school professors are really useful because sometimes when you're working on something and you're thinking, I'm the only person who's ever dealt with this problem, and then you can speak to your

strategy or entrepreneurship professor at a business school and they're like, yes, this is what happens when competition is like this and this is the framework and you're like, okay, this has been dealt with before. So have some academics in your network, whether they're the tech people or the business people. And also actually, if you are getting involved with these people, then they can give you opportunities to address their classes. for example, I do guest speaking quite a lot at

entrepreneurship classes at business schools. And this is, this is basically really good speaking practice, but also it's useful to build my company's brand and to be seen as a thought leader. So if you, you know, if you're just starting out and you've actually created something new, then maybe speaking to academics and speaking at entrepreneurship clubs where you have maybe an academic speaking at a panel and you, that can be a really good way to build your brand and be seen as an expert. Okay.

So how do you actually do this? Well, you could contact the people that you went to university with, whether it's business school, whether it's undergrad, basically, if you went to any kind of higher education, see if you can get involved with that because usually they're really keen to hear from alumni, especially alumni who are doing something interesting. Also, if you're living really far away from where you went to school, you could just reach out to the places close to you and you could offer to do a guest lecture.

Sophia Matveeva (31:16.824)
So you could even take this and you could add your own insight to it and you could say, I would like to do a guest lecture on how to build your network strategically as a digital leader. And you know, I've given eight points, maybe make it 10, so it's not total plagiarism. And basically read that lecture and it's going to be fine. So start getting involved as a guest lecturer. You can also mentor in university programs and they are, in my experience, university programs.

especially in entrepreneurship and innovation programs, are really, really keen to hear from people who have any kind of experience to be mentors. So that's a really good way to build your network in academia as well. Okay. So we are coming to the end. I'm landing this plane. So what I'm going to do is right now I'm going to sum up those eight categories of people. And the reason why I'm doing that is I want you to be thinking as I'm summing up and I want you to think, okay, yes.

Some of these people I have in my network, I basically don't need to worry about that. But these other people I don't have in my network, okay, I'm going to make it this month to start building my network with these people. So number one, you need the technical bridge and these are the developers. Number two, you need the money perspective and these are investors, both venture capitalists and public markets people.

You need the vision expanders and these are the mega successful people. The more successful, the better. You also need regulators. That's your regulatory radar. The people who are basically going to be writing the laws or consulting, advising on the laws. You also need your tribe of outliers. And these are your fellow very ambitious people. Because you're surrounded by people who don't want to change, who are not very ambitious.

Even if you are very ambitious, you're just going to be squished down. And I don't want that for you. Okay. Number six, you need industry veterans. So for whatever industry you're in, whatever industry you're innovating in, you need people who are basically really important, very knowledgeable in that industry. You also need media and communication allies. So people in the press, journalists and influencers and podcasters. And finally, you need people in academia. They give you a different perspective and also...

Sophia Matveeva (33:36.92)
they lend you a lot of credibility. So my advice is audit your network and then just get one of those categories and think, okay, for this month, I'm going to focus on building my academic network and just go and get on with it. And after that, let me know how it goes. Okay? So be strategic. You can do this. I've done this. It takes time, but you know what? All good, important things take time. So you've got this. Thank you very much for watching. Thank you very much for being with me today.

If you found this useful and interesting, then press the like button below. Or if you are listening on Spotify or on Apple, then please leave the show a rating and review. Thank you very much for spending your time with me today and I'll be back with you next week. Ciao.