What is the ETP Network?

I have known Rod Colon and his team for a few years, and met a few of them in my travels.  This is a terrific group of people.  I got an email from Rod yesterday that has a great explanation of what the ETP Network is and asked if I could share it with you (obviously he said yes). Here’s the email, from Rod:

Here’s a high level view of what the ETP Network is all about.

The ETP Network (Empowering Today’s Professionals) is a networking training organization that teaches its members 1) how to network effectively and continuously improve their networking skills; 2) how to adopt a CEO-like mind-set for managing their careers; 3) how to create a powerful and compelling value proposition to make themselves as attractive as possible to decision-makers; and 4) how to fuse the three preceding skills into one mega skill while following a well-engineered and precisely targeted 7-Step Job Search Methodology.

As part of this training, we teach members how to leverage the power of advocates, individuals who know you, trust you, and are willing to “connect the dots” for you if the circumstances warrant it. We leverage the power of these advocates to help you “network your way” into organizations or companies of interest. Let’s start with our mission.

The ETP Network Mission

Our mission is to encourage, train, support, mentor and advise fellow CEOs in all areas of responsibility to their Personal Board of Directors. The key to a successful CEO enterprise is accomplishing these five goals:

1. Secure a job/business where passion and income intersect
2. Build a trusted personal network of 200+ people
3. Create a career backup plan
4. Generate multiple sources of income not in conflict with the primary source
5. Become a networking leader

Our Guiding Principle: Own Your Career — Run It as a Business

You take ownership of your career when you make the decision to run it as a business, complete with CEO (you), a Board of Directors (your family) plus R & D (networking and business intelligence), Sales & Marketing (interviews) and all other components that make up a fully functional organization. (I’ll give you a more detailed breakout of your ME, Inc. business structure in Chapter 3, The Mentality: Run Your Career as a Business.)

At first, many individuals struggle with this paradigm. They think it’s silly, uncomfortable, or inconvenient; some actually believe it’s all three. But once they begin to apply it in real-life situations, they quickly see its value because it forces them to take responsibility for their actions. Suddenly, there is no room for excuses, no blaming others for bad decisions or errors in judgment. It finally hits them: Success or failure is totally in their hands.

Knowing that the safety and security of a Personal Board of Directors is your “corporate responsibility” every day is a powerful motivating force to keep you relentless in your job search and focused on your objectives.

Are you too tired to draft a targeted resume? Look at the faces of your children and think about how much they depend on you. Maybe you’re too weary to track down one more well-matched opportunity? Listen to the voices of your loved ones and read their body language. You owe it to them to be successful.

Own Your Career. It’s a powerful, emboldening statement. In three short words it captures the essence of the ETP Network’s philosophy and serves as a powerful differentiator between the ETP Network and other more traditional networking groups. It also represents the difference between Black Hole thinking and CEO of ME, Inc. thinking.

It’s easy to see why I chose it as the ETP Network’s tagline!

I like what they are doing – if you are in need of more support in your career management, check out the ETP Network here.