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Interviewer: So David, I’ve known you for about probably 12 years now and I wasn’t, I didn’t know you in this part of the world in Norfolk but I found whenever we’re having a chat you’re constantly being acknowledged by people that know you. Can you give tips for people that are sort of maybe working in their local area, they want to work locally for how they can start to develop that sort of level of connection and reputation in their community?
Interviewee: Yeah, I mean building reputation takes time and it’s you know, there are a lot of things that you can do to accelerate it, it’s about being consistent and authentic. Strange enough I mean I actually got you to thank for this in the fact that building my reputation locally really came about through developing networking events, the antidote was something I set up it was about 10 years ago I started it, it ran for 8 years and became one of the largest networking groups in Norfolk and I realised that that was a great opportunity to simply get in front of and meet lots of people. Certainly being a sort of a host to a networking event is a great way of being seen and heard by people and then I was even going on the speaker platform and starting to talk. It’s, for me as I said probably the two biggest issues really are about authenticity and consistency. If you’re authentic about who you are and what you’re aiming to do and you’ve got a sincere desire to deliver something of value to other people you’re not just in it for the money. If you’ve got you know, a real sincere authenticity about that I think people pick that up and the other thing is about being reliable, being known that if you’re going to do something you know, say that you’re going to do it and carry it through you know, if you built a reputation of being reliable people will come back to you time and time again whereas typically if you offer to do things and then don’t follow through you may get a second chance but you probably won’t get a third so it’s something that takes time and having meaningful conversations, if the guy that trained and mentored me you know, one of his big comments was he always said look to have one meaningful conversation with someone new every day and that’s a really, really good idea, it’s a really good task, it doesn’t matter whether it was in a bar, a restaurant, hotel, standing at the bus stop, whatever it is just have a conversation with people it’s amazing what you get to learn.
Interviewer: Thank you.