What people get wrong about helping others(social capital)

People, especially early in their careers get wrong about social capital.

First off, many don’t even think about social capital. They attend networking events, they talk to people on LinkedIn, all with the wrong approach. They consume too much and save little. They go into debt, demand instant gratification..and more.

But first, what even is social capital?

The word “Capital” mostly means something to do with money, right?
So let’s go with the example of money to understand social capital.

You’re young, just started to earn money and have many expenses. It’s obvious, if you earn more, you’ll be better off in life. If your spending exceeds your earnings, you’ll go into debt.

Social Capital works the same way. It’s what people think of you, and how they feel about you. How willing are they to do things for you?

In most simple terms, Social Capital is creating value for others. But in particular, it’s outside of a formal business relationship.

Like, if you’re an employee and creating value for your company — that’s expected because you’re being paid for it. It makes you a good employee, but it doesn’t build any social capital.
Outside of an environment where you’re required to, that’s where social capital comes in.

Helping people where it’s not required. Going out of your way to do things for others. That’s how you build social capital.

It’s not sending resumes, handing out business cards, or asking for LinkedIn endorsements (which is actually the opposite of social capital..it’s burning social capital).

Social capital is creating value for others.
Think like: “Things that make other people want to work with me, interested in me and what I’m doing, things that make other people associate me with good characteristics” ..that’s what value creation is. An investment in other people.

And you do this by asking yourself, ”How can I help them?” ”How can I help them accomplish things, clear up their plate, help them achieve their goals”

If you can think about it and be deliberate about it, (not being deliberate means you go about in your life and if something comes up, you help..being deliberate is where we’re at..is where you’ll build real social capital).

I heard the term fist from the GOAT, Isaac Morehouse.
He has built multiple successful businesses and his massive reserve of social capital is one of the biggest reasons why he was able to do so.

Here are some resources where you can listen to how building social capital transformed his life:
- How to build social capital by Isaac Morehouse
- Isaac Morehouse’s session in Career Hacker’s Career Supercharger event.

How to build social capital

Many people spend more money than they’re earning, hoping that in the future they’ll make enough to cover that -that’s a broken way of thinking.

It’s the same with social capital: if you spend your life asking people for favours and connections and not giving anything in return — you’re just spending your social capital without earning more..you’re getting into debt.

You need to focus on building social capital.
Now, how do you go about building it?

You do stuff.

You help others, help others where it’s not required of you to put in the effort and help others where it’s not expected. Help without them even asking.

Now, that’s the basic way of putting it into words.
But how does that translate to real life? I’ll give you a few examples:

AJ&Smart is a design agency based in Germany.
They have a good online presence, a capable team and amazing content. For such a company, a task as small as putting a description when they’re uploading a podcast episode — is a difficult task? No.
But still, for some reason, they were not doing it. They were not putting any description in their podcasts as they upload them.

Amr Khalifeh noticed this. Instead of criticizing the company, instead of going around his day, he decided to put up a description for them. And he did this for all the podcast episodes they were publishing.
Soon, they realised that someone was adding their podcast descriptions. Amr and team AJ&Smart made contact and in the end, Amr went from being a beginner UX Designer to working in one of the country’s best UX Design agencies.

There are tons of examples like this. If you help people where it’s not required for you to do so, they’ll remember it. This is how you build social capital.

Interact

One of the key elements to building social capital is interacting.

If you don’t go out and talk to people, you’ll never know how you can help them. And you can only help someone if you know what help they need.

And you don’t even have to “go out”, or attend “networking” events or things of that sort. You just have to interact with people.

Like, I interacted in the comment section of an Instagram post of a creator I like. I found Anurag Ganguly in those comments. And to this date, 2 years after that interaction, we’re friends.

The first step is interacting.

Meet new people. Interact with them. Share your story and listen to theirs.

But what if you have nothing of value for them?

I know this is a common question, especially for beginners.

“How do I provide value if they’re on a much higher level and won’t really be needing anything from me?”

Well, even if someone is higher than you on the career ladder — much higher, you still can think of a way to help them or make any of their tasks a little easier.

And in case you can’t find any such thing, you can ask for their advice.

Yepp, I said “ask”. This might be ringing some bells in your mind.
”You’re telling us to ‘ask’ them? Make them do the work?”

Yes. Ask them.
It’s super flattering if someone comes up to you and asks for your opinion, your wisdom and advice. It’s proof that you’re someone to look up to, that you’re doing something good in your life that others want.
People are eager to help and eager to share their expertise with beginners. I’ve done this and even with their busy schedules, they want to share their wisdom. It’s human nature — makes you feel real valuable when someone asks for your take.

And also, send thank-you notes and follow-ups. And be genuine.
These people can smell fakeness from miles away.

Your Social capital will take you places you don’t even know of, and perhaps can’t even imagine right now.

If you always do stuff while thinking about the benefits it will bring over your life, you’re sorting yourself off of so many opportunities.
You have to do stuff without thinking of the results. Without thinking of the outcomes. Because quite frankly, we suck at predicting the future. We never know how the things we’re doing today could help us tomorrow.

By building social capital, you’re building doors for opportunities to knock upon.