Stop Collecting Business Cards

I once asked a member how many contacts he had on Zalo. He said over 3,000. Then I asked him how many of them he could call at 11pm if something went seriously wrong in his business. He went quiet.

This is the trap of modern networking, we've confused volume with value. We attend the event, exchange the contact, send the polite follow-up message, and call it "building relationships." But a contact is not a relationship. A relationship is something that's been tested.

I've built my entire career, from BNI to founding Hanoi Coaching Group to my role at CorporateConnections, around one philosophy: Give first. Plant seeds, don't hunt. This isn't a soft, feel-good idea. It's a practical one. Hunters get one kill and move on. Farmers tend the same land for years, and the harvest compounds.

The business owners who grow fastest aren't the ones with the biggest network. They're the ones with the smallest, most trusted circle, the three or four people who will tell them an uncomfortable truth before a deal goes wrong, recommend them without being asked, and pick up the phone at 11pm.

You don't need more connections. You need to know, with certainty, who would show up for you. If you can't name five people right now, that's not a networking problem. That's a structure problem. And it's solvable.