Benjamin Todd

If Thomas had just added loads of people on LinkedIn, this would have probably never happened.

And this illustrates what many people miss about networking, the value of joining a great community.

Finding the right community can help you gain hundreds of potential allies in one go.

In fact, getting involved in the right community can be one of the best ways to make friends, advance your career, and have a greater impact.

Many people we advise say that finding their people was one of the most important steps in their career and life in general.

What's more, a group of people working together can have more impact than they could individually.

In this chapter, we'll explain how joining a community can help and how to get involved.

Why joining a community is so helpful

There are lots of great communities out there.

We've enjoyed being part of Y Combinator's entrepreneur community.

It made us more ambitious and more effective at running a startup, hopefully.

We've also enjoyed participating in the Oxford philosophy scene, the World Economic Forum's Young Global Shapers, and many others.

Joining any good professional community can be a great boost to your career.

In part, this is because you'll get all the benefits of having more connections, finding jobs, gaining up-to-date information, and becoming more motivated.

But it goes beyond that.

Let's suppose I want to build and sell a piece of software.

One approach would be to learn all the skills needed myself, design, engineering, marketing, and so on.

A much better approach is to form a team of people who are skilled in each area and then build it together.

Although I'll have to share the gains with the other people, the size of the gains will be much larger, so we'll all win.

One thing that's going on here is specialization.