Episode 94: Leveraging Your Social Capital to Monetize Your Network, with Ungenita Prevost
In this week’s inspiring episode of The Business Habitat podcast, Sam welcomes networker extraordinaire, Ungenita Prevost, host of podcast Billion Dollar Rolodex, and Founder of FEMME 500 Global Feminine Leadership Network and Networking in Stilettos. Calling in from London, Ungenita shares her passion for networking and explains how women are missing the mark when it comes to building their own social capital.
Success didn’t come easy for Ungenita. A child of the foster care system in the US, Ungenita’s natural ability for building rapport with people led to her first job in a real estate office at the age of 15. Sacrificing weekends in an effort to create opportunities for herself, Ungenita learned quickly how to leverage her social networking.
Sam and Ungenita discuss their mutual enthusiasm for monetising their strengths and explore the difference between a ‘gig’ network which dissipates when you change jobs, and social capital born of authenticity and an ‘abundance’ mindset. In this age of ‘followers’ and Insta-likes, Ungenita points out how few influencers really know how to extract value from this emerging media and draws the distinction between popularity and profitability.
Recognising that women’s networks tend to fail when a masculine approach to building relationships is adopted, Sam and Ungenita consider the under-utilisation and importance of so-called ‘soft’ skills such as listening and asking questions.
If you’ve ever questioned the benefit of building your network or wondered why your attempts to expand your business via your social network are not achieving your desired results, you cannot afford to miss this conversation.
Listen to an excerpt
What we cover in this episode
Ungenita’s journey from foster care to being the OG of networking
Building social capital to monetise your network
The gender network gap
The power of alignment
Being in a Category of One
Feminine vs masculine energy
Ungenita’s top three tips to take forward
Quotes
“I want to help women build social capital to monetise their networks. Because we talk about the gender equity gap, but it’s really addressing the gender network gap“ - Ungenita
“If your network is based on what you do as opposed to who you are, then it’s only a gig network“ - Sam
“It is about having a strategy, but the strategy is really coming from a place of being in your feminine and owning who you are and engaging with the other person.“ - Ungenita
“Consistency is not sexy, until you get results” - Ungenita
“Owning your expertise. I think women don’t do that enough and so I give them permission to own their expertise. I egg them on, is the term that I use. I egg them on and say ‘look, you have to own it’. It’s not bragging if you can back it up” - Ungenita
“Everyone is in a category of one and it’s just a matter of finding the skills and everything to match your expertise with your lived experience and take that to the world, because the world needs it“ - Sam
“One of the reasons that women struggle and they’re not as confident, you know there’s tonnes of studies and data around this, is because often we’re trying to be someone we’re not.“ - Ungenita
Links mentioned
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