“If you’re collaborating and networking with your peers, you’re probably getting better insights and better knowledge into what you do for a day to day job.”
Michael Cadieux is the Founder and CEO of an exclusive, free network of procurement professionals called The Procurement Foundry which, over the course of the past year, has transformed the way people define networking.
Given the current restrictions on travel, events and socialising, this particularly pertinent episode of Talent Talks sees Martin Smith delve into how creating an online networking platform achieves its goal more effectively, the benefit of opening The Procurement Foundry up to a global community, and maintaining a level of exclusivity on a free platform.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- Improving the quality of your online interactions
- How to be more connected in the procurement industry
- Operating outside of your comfort zone
- Nurturing business relationships over time
- Quality over quantity in thought leadership
Links & references:
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
- Michael Cadieux, Founder of The Procurement Foundry https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-cadieux-4a0123/
- The Procurement Foundry https://www.linkedin.com/company/procurement-foundry/
Episode Highlights:
“I thought to myself ‘Okay, the one thing I haven’t done is successfully start up my own company yet’. And I thought, I’m a little bit of a thrill junkie. So I thought ‘Okay, let’s let’s completely just jump out of a plane’. I do not recommend it – do not go out and start your own consulting firm without some clients. I threw caution to the wind when people told me that, but I did it anyway. ” – Michael Cadieux
“All of our growth is attributed to word of mouth, so that may be why it’s a little bit slow on the uptake, meaning that we’ve only got 3,500 members. What’s interesting, though, is we’ve had almost 5,000 people apply to get in.” – Michael Cadieux
“It’s got to be relevant to the community, and other members from there have got to see that there are like minded and similar people in the profession rather than just anyone joining,.” – Martin Smith
“What’s really great is to start to see inside of The Procurement Foundry now, if you start to ask questions, you’re getting answers from a global subset of peers. And you’re getting answers in hours now, which is fantastic. And you’re getting multiple answers.” – Michael Cadieux
“We didn’t really build The Procurement Foundry for the companies that they work for. We built it for the practitioners to be able to stay up on their education, stay up on their knowledge, be able to network and be able to find jobs, which is why almost all of our members join with their own private email addresses.” – Michael Cadieux
“First and foremost, if you’re collaborating and networking with your peers, you’re probably getting better insights and better knowledge into what you do for a day to day job.” – Michael Cadieux
“The procurement world is a huge, huge industry that’s only growing, and I think people sometimes don’t feel comfortable about actually – ‘How do I network? Do I just go to a conference and sit there and listen to some people talking?’. For me, that’s not modern day networking, modern day networking is building a community. It’s building an online presence.” – Martin Smith
“I used to hate doing videos. People that listen to this [podcast] will see me doing personal videos and blogs, and I never did that in a million years. Actually, by sometimes taking yourself out of the comfort zone, and actually just doing it, just nailing it, owning it, being yourself, doing that – I think that’s the joy of it.” – Martin Smith
“Pick bits from people. It’s good to pick up best practice from certain individuals and little bits you like, but create your own personality” – Martin Smith
“My community is so amazing that they’ll pay to come to a personal retreat as long as there’s no actual training or education like a conference.” – Michael Cadieux
