Meet Chris Yoko
Driven by an indefatigable determination to make the world a better place, Chris is focused on helping people, and the organizations they belong to, pave the road to a more utopian world. He primarily does this by helping these like-minded organizations build and champion themselves using their most powerful asset, their web presence. When Chris isn’t fearlessly leading, you’ll likely find him playing hockey, reading, or playing and exploring with his incredible wife and two daughters.
Can you share with our listeners, one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you’ve had?
Yeah, so my favorite networking experiences I’m actually a part of, I’m just outside of DC and there’s a group here called Qadri DC. Sometimes people have a negative connotation with that word networking and they wanted to flip that on the head. So it’s a little bit more what can I do for other people and karmically that comes back around.
How do you stay in front of or nurture these relationships that you’ve built?
That’s something I think all of us struggle with. Having people join us for other events that are going on has been a really good one. It’s a great way just to make sure you stay in touch with people even if they can’t make it. The the fact that you want to offer to take them as a guest is I think a huge deal.
What advice would you offer the business professional who’s looking to grow their network?
Nothing seems to replace just getting out there and doing it. And a lot of people think like, oh, I gotta go to the classic like networking events and stuff like that. But just about every really good opportunity I’ve had has come from me reaching out to a couple people that I didn’t know or barely knew and asking, hey, it looks like you’ve built something really cool, accomplished something really cool or, whatever the case might be and ask if they would be game for me to buy a drink, catch up and maybe learn a little bit more about how you did that and mostly asking questions and listening.
Digital networking or traditional networking, which one do you find more value in?
I’ve certainly found value in both. I’ve met people, especially, it’s a weirder time now, especially social media wise just because it’s so ubiquitous and so many people have it. I think it’s just a little bit more a matter of now do you have to put in the effort on either, whereas before, you could kind of get away with less effort on digital. And now it’s such a crowded, noisy place that you’ve got to put just as much maybe more effort into digital to break through as you do in person because obviously, a face to face interaction lasts longer than a tweet or a Facebook post does.
If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of or differently with regards to your professional career?
The biggest takeaway I could give myself is just think about what you want to accomplish what that end goal is whether it’s a purposeful exit strategy or a non-purposeful exit strategy or here’s the objective and work backwards from that because a lot of times it’s easy to get into something and then follow whatever path opportunity gives you but if you’re not in control that path and you don’t know where it leads, you can find yourself some some some weird places as a as you go through your journey.
We’ve all heard of the 6 degrees of separation…Now, who would be the one person you’d love to connect with and do you think you could do it within the 6th degree?
So the one person I think I would love to connect with is I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s writing so I would love to bump into him and I have to feel like there’s probably six degrees that would get me connected to him.
Any final word of advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network?
Supporting and growing, the network is just carving out time to go do it. The compound interest on relationships is probably greater than just about anything you’ll do. But you have to be intentional about it, you’ve got to carve out the time to do it.
How to connect with Chris:
Website: https://www.chrisyoko.com/
Website: https://www.yokoco.com/
Twitter: @chrisyoko
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisyoko/