We’ve talked about several steps in the Writer’s Path, and today we’ll focus on Milestone #5: Expanding your networking of friends, fans, and connections.

Why it’s important: One of the biggest things that holds back great writers is not knowing how to network and build relationships. I have learned a lot from Vincent Pugliese in this regard. He leads the Total Life Freedom community and mastermind, and he’s recently released a fantastic book called The Wealth of Connection, which I highly recommend. It will help you develop a mindset of networking and building relationships.

A network is critical because these are the people who will support your work, share your work, refer others to you and vice-versa. Whether it’s friends, fans, readers, collaborators, or connections, you need other people in your life and business to do anything significant.

The challenge here is that it’s hard for many introverted writers to do networking. We’ll have a lot more to say about this later on, but for now, I want to challenge you to simply reach out to three people a day just to say hello and see how they’re doing. People love it when others check up on them.

Remember, our greatest emotional need as human beings is for others to affirm and acknowledge us. When you can get past your introverted nature and begin to strategically reach out to people and build your connections, amazing things can happen.

This is one of the main things that holds writers back. You can be the greatest writer in the world, but if you don’t have connections and a network, you’re basically dead in the water. Your relationships are the difference-maker.

The big challenge here, especially for introverted writers, is that we mistakenly believe that writing success is all about being a good writer, about creating the most innovative or well-written content or books. Not true. We have to get out of our comfort zones and take initiative to build and nurture those relationships.

Daily Question: Who are three people you can check in on today?