On Social Capital: Kingston’s Journey #125

Defining Social Capital

It’s not what you know it’s who you know, or as we’ve put it in prior posts, it’s not who you know it’s how well you know them. Which brings us to our 3rd type of capital that we’ve been discussing, that of social capital. To recap, there are many different types of capital that are all interwoven with one another. It’s a constant exchange between the four major types, of personal, emotional, social and financial.

Today’s analysis will be on that of social capital. To recap, social capital is when it’s a matter of the people you associate with and the circles of people you are affiliated with because every single person has there own degree of influence on their environment. And social capital is a matter of influencing the world around you through the people in your life. Now this could be in a matter of getting referred to the right person, introduced to the right social circle or just generally being seen with the right crowd. Because that is all just human nature, we make assumptions on people based on their outward appearance.

Cultivating Social Capital

So how do you go about increasing your social capital? Well it could be a matter of exchanging one type of capital for another. Say if you bought a nice yacht and joined the local Yacht club, it will give you access to a new social group, a group that could be to your advantage, or if you paid the expenses to relocated to a different place, you interact with different people. That is finance to social. Or it could be a matter of talking your way past a door man that is the gatekeeper to an exclusive party of influential people. This could lead to you making meaningful connections, and this would be your utilization of personal capital to create social capital. And lastly, if you had the mastermind group that we discussed previously, those within the group can also give you the right connection that would advance your social capital.

Another way to put this is that all those types of capital are all intertwined. One leads to another and a balanced approach is needed to live a sustainable lifestyle. Which is why we will discuss the last piece, financial capital in the next one.

Kingston S. Lim

November 17, 2021

Lagos, Nigeria

Originally published at http://kingstonlim.com on November 18, 2021.