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Written B y: Adam Gray So here we are…in California. Tim and I have come here to meet interesting people as this is so often how things get started. You have conversations…you develop relationships…then you do business.We’ve had a good week meeting-up with people who we’ve known from work we’ve done over the years. But the importance of “being” in the environment cannot be stressed enough.On Saturday we hired a car to go and explore, we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and took the scenic route up the coast. First thing we did was to stop at a very nice looking Californian diner in Sausalito and we struck up a conversation with a mother and daughter standing next to us in the line. It turns out that the daughter worked for Facebook and was very interested in what DLA does…and offered to make some introductions for us at Facebook.It’s amazing how often business (or at least opportunities) comes from just happening to be in the right place at the right time – serendipity – you might call it.Now, whilst “face to face” serendipity is much more effective than electronic serendipity…there’s much more effort to achieve it. You wouldn’t fly to San Francisco in the hope that you might be standing in line next to someone who happens to work at one of your target companies. But being online you can create myriad of these opportunities for you without even leaving home…so when you DO travel to your target geography you can have as many meetings as possible.Related: Are These Flip-Flopping Sales Gurus for Real? personal brand – look as authentic, interesting, professional and nice as you possibly can grow your network – 500 connections is better than 100, and 5000 is better than 1000 – this is not a case of simply collecting connections (as you need to develop some kind of visibility and value for these people) but if nothing else improves twice the network will yield twice the opportunities be ever present – don’t snap people, but publish your content that educates and empowers ME the reader as often as you can (never sell) be responsive – answer every like, c comment and question quickly and honestly There’s little more to it than that.This behaviour provides the maximum serendipity as it increases the chance of “just happening to be there when I went online”…So the choice is yours, you can either network online and create some value for yourself…or you can jump on a plane fly half way around the world on the off chance that you might bump in to someone who likes you and can help you.