It’s Horizontal Integration (get with it, baby)

How to go from 1 in a million to 1 in 10.

Jan 31, 2024

Futuretrip with me.

Dig deep into your crystal ball 🔮 and imagine the kind of projects, collaborations, and joint {ad}ventures you’ll be getting into once you have a few more hours/days/months of experience and relationship-building under your proverbial belt.

Who will be your business besties tomorrow?

That all depends on who you know now.

If you had told me two years ago that I would be invited, week after week, to co-host a panel show produced by Ross Brand, incredulous would be putting it mildly. And yet, I sit before you, series regular for 35 weeks and running on the StreamLeader Report, knowing that it was the power of Horizontal Integration that got me there.

Because in 2018, at my very first ever speaking opportunity, when I was younger, scrappier, and less experienced, I made a business decision to give away free consultation calls to anyone who wanted one. (Which, BTW, is a policy I still stand on. Get you some 1:1 time; make an appointment to get some coaching/support/advice on your thing.)

It’s tempting, in this bot-eat-bot world, to be stingy with your time, resource guard your brilliance, or create strong boundaries around ‘giving away for free’ and/or not ‘knowing your worth.’ Business advice hither and yon soapboxes profusely about protecting your proprietary ideas and time.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. “Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks,” Marilyn Wann once said, and I think that extends to all points past, present, and forward on the space-time continuum and every aspect of life. Including business.

For if I hadn’t given away consulting… and then I hadn’t honored the call and given it my all, generous with time and attention… and then it wouldn’t have been reciprocated.

In fact, I might not have ever even entered into the World of Livestreaming. And I definitely wouldn’t have been asked to contribute a prediction in Vol 4 of Ross Brand’s 100 Livestreaming and Digital Media Predictions. And I sure as shit wouldn’t have been invited to co-author the book’s foreword.

Every interaction is an intersection.

Snowballs sometimes roll uphill, but you gotta show up for people first and in good faith. Contrary to popular opinion, you gotta do it with generosity of spirit and embrace an openness to the possibility of what’s gonna be good for future you.

Horizontal Integration means looking laterally and valuing the people on your left and right, developing your network and relationships across longitudes, instead of who you can hire or who can hire you.

And although Gilly thinks it means something much more cheeky, horizontal integration means standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the folks you meet along your entrepreneurial journey.

Today you are 1 in a million of others scratching n’ crawling our way up the proverbial career ladder.

Keep on keeping on doing the right things for the right reasons, saying yes to things that you may not be able to see an immediate and obvious return on, give away your ideas like free candy on Halloween.

Soon, you’ll be 1 in a hundred. Eventually, you’ll be 1 in 10…and before you know it you’ll be the only obvious choice.