Speaker 1: I have a question. What is the image of a successful person in your mind if you have to choose? Is it good education and solid skills? Or is it money? For example, you made a fortune. Or is it social capital? Your network. Could you please vote with your fingers? Education, money, or network? I just want to see. Mm-hmm. A lot of number one, number three. Somebody who heard my speech already. Well, if I have to choose, that is definitely going to be number three. Your network. I've been uniting people since my early childhood. When I was five, I decided to invite my girlfriends to my granny's flat. It didn't occur to me that that meant running away from the kindergarten. I wanted them to play with my toys, to see my nice granny, and... We sneaked away when my babysitter didn't see us, crossed an eight-lane street, and found ourselves at the doorstep of my granny. My granny was shocked, but she didn't scold me. She was like, honey, I understand your desire to play with your friends, but probably the director of the kindergarten is a little bit worried, so let's go back. When we came back, parents were there, and one-one was shouting, how could you leave the kindergarten? You know you cannot do that. And my friend was like, I wanted to be with them. You know, I don't know if you can call it networking skills, but since then I heard this phrase a lot. I want to be with you. I want to be part of this project. I want to be part of this community. Networking. What is it? The question that we ask ourselves very often. And for a long time, networking is something that comes natural. For example, when you want to try something new or something brief, how often do you ask your network for some contacts? For example, you want to take up yoga classes or you want to learn how to ride a bike, who asks your network for some contacts? Raise your hands if you use your network. Exactly. If we speak business-wise, according to Lean Startup Theory by Eric Ries, when you want to launch a project, it's actually not very wise to spend tons of money to attract your first customers. First thing you have to do when you have an idea is go to your network and ask them if they are ready to pay you. Develop in the MVP and only in this case develop the strategy further. If they don't want to pay you, fail fast. Fifteen years ago, my classmate and I founded a language school based on our students. No marketing, only network. Now, it is a network that embraces more than 90,000 people all around the world, teachers, partners, students. Well, it's easy to say, use your network. You may wonder how to do it, how to build it first. Well, based on my first story, you may think that it all comes naturally. If you are a strong leader, you just tell your friends, let's go, and they follow you. I had been thinking like that for a long time, but when my business started to expand, I understood that my leadership skills were not enough. Something else definitely was needed. So I took it seriously and I signed up for an MBA course. Two days of MBA program were fully devoted to networking. My international trainer, after the very first session, came to me and said, Kate, this is not the way you do it. You have dollars in your eyes. Stop selling everything to everybody. I'm like, how can I not have dollars in my eyes if I am an entrepreneur? Who else will sell my services? You don't have to make everybody your client. They can be just in your network. Just give first. I tried to take immediately. I was offended, but I decided to try this approach. First, I started to take part in networking sessions and think what I'm ready to give for free. And it worked. Then, being a teacher, I started to organize my own networking within my school community, then within city community, then within country community. And then I threw a networking session for a thousand people in Istanbul, in Turkey. Not bad. The turning point of this happened to me in 2022 when I had to relocate to another country. So I lost my network that I had been building for so many years. I moved to Kazakhstan, where I knew literally nobody, not a single person. So imagine me, my kids, two luggages. Hello. You can network, Kate, can't you? I told myself. So I appointed 32 meetings first week. Eight confirmed, four came. You can say they're very poor statistics, but these four are my friends now. Moreover, I started to attend a lot of conferences that are available. You know, I was sitting on all websites just saying, what's happening in Astana? Where can I go? And at one of these conferences, actually the very first one, I found myself being here at Nazarbayev University, just looking around, wow, what is this university? What is this conference? And this is where I met my future boss, my professor, who looked at me and said, hey, you have very interesting and interesting expertise and great energy. Do you want to develop an outreach community of our business school? So one month later, being totally new in a new country, I actually got a job offer. You may think, how? First of all, the art of giving is really strong. If you learn how to pay things forward, no strings attached, you're always going to benefit. The energy that you have when you enter the room and you think what you can give is so strong, it is much stronger than trying to sell. So I agree with my international trainer who told me that. Number two, create a striking self-presentation. Not just, hi, I'm Kate, I'm a teacher of English. We are much more than our jobs. We are much more than just our occupations. Tell us about your passion, about your hobbies. This is what makes people united. This is how we can link to each other, heart to heart. And number three, prepare something you can share. And by the way, you can do it right now. If you take your phone, because conferences are amazing for networking, and you just write there two phrases, I can help. What can you help with today? Maybe you can help with, you know, some piece of advice, how to start your academic research. Or maybe you can share the best coffee places at Nazarbayev University, where you can enjoy really good coffee, latte with coconut milk. Say something you are ready to share when you come and enter any space with this energy, this is so strong. So, the art of giving looks like a success story. However, there is something that is not written in any business books, and that I wasn't taught. The art of giving is so strong that once you start, it is hard to stop. I gave from four to seven free of charge networking sessions in Russian and in English every month. Over a year, I started to teach young entrepreneurs for free. I started to throw networking sessions for free. I started to create more and more presentations. Long nights, creativity everywhere. My team was asking, Kate, where are the leads? Do you remember? We're a language school. You have to provide us with something. My family was like, Mom, why are you working even more now? What is happening? So, I couldn't stop. Sometimes I could organize networking sessions four days in a row. And one day, I remember this clearly, I just went on stage and I couldn't talk. I couldn't talk. Just words wouldn't go out of my mouth, literally. I understood that I was completely drained. Immediately that night, I went on vipassana. Do you know what it is? Five days silence. Really, first time in my life, I understood that this is the time for me to really keep silence and think what I'm doing with my life. And these five days of silence, I heard some voice. Knock, knock. Who is it? That's me, Kate. Do you remember? You are an entrepreneur. What are you doing? You're not earning anything. You are just working all the time. What's happening? And this is the moment where I realized that you cannot be giving unlimitedly. Like, look, this phone. Do you have your phones with you? So, are they charged? If they were not, are they of any use to you? We all have our phones. We rely on them so much. We know how important they are. But if their battery is empty, can you really use it? No. And that was like a revelation, maybe obvious. But I understood that the art of giving is as essential as the art of receiving. You can't water flowers if your jar is empty. You have to put some water first and then go and water it. So, to these three principles that I fully agree with and that I totally adore, I would just like to add number four. Receiving is as essential as giving. So, when you network, be prepared to receive as well. And to these two sentences that I told you I can help with, why don't you add two more? I can receive. So, before you go and network, think what you would like to receive today, what you can benefit from. It's okay. Maybe we need to change the way we teach young entrepreneurs, not to burn them out. Maybe we should be in balance inside and outside. Giving and receiving at the same time. Thank you.