Unleashing The Power Of Virtual Networking – Exclusive Interview With Marc Jarrett
- Feb 8, 2024
- 5 min read
Marc Jarrett is an award-winning superconnector who operates more than 500 WhatsApp groups full of some of the world's leading thought leaders and entrepreneurs. Endorsed by Meta and the United States Presidential Service Center.
Marc Jarrett, Award-Winning Superconnector
What made you become a professional networker?
My wife suggested it. When I hit a mental and economic low a few years ago, she suggested that I should do what I do best: connect people. So I now do what I enjoy doing for a living. I salute individuals that make it to the upper echelons of the corporate world. I was a hopeless employee. I have never been very good at being told what to do, and I was just as bad at executing the tasks I was being paid to do.
What is your professional background?
I cut my cloth in banking at the now-defunct Barclays Bank International followed by a brief stint at the bank where royalty and rich people keep their money, Coutts, where I was fired for eating an ice cream in the lobby.
In 1986 I went on to become a futures trader at London’s World Trade Center, shortly after Big Bang, the phrase used about the sudden deregulation of financial markets at that time.
After five years or so of hedonistic capitalism, I decided to turn my attention to a sector that had always interested me: telecoms.
Why Telecoms?
Ever since I was a kid, telephony interested me.
A serendipitous encounter in Düsseldorf with who turned out to be my last-ever boss led me to become involved in the premium rate industry. The thought of making money in my sleep interested me even more.
Not long thereafter, I was first to market with mobile ringtones in UK which went on to become a multimillion-dollar industry in its own right. It only worked with Nokia, but back then every other person owned one.
Then what?
At the turn of the millennium, I knew that my future lay online and decided to move with my family from Hamburg in Germany to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. So remote working is not new to me. Shortly after returning to the UK in 2009, I launched the world’s first celebrity chat line. It was everywhere for a while including ABC, CNN, Howard Stern and the Wendy Williams Show.
The idea was to raise money for good causes but the celebrities kept all the money!
How did you get involved with WhatsApp groups?
I was invited to join a WhatsApp group that was run by fellow networker Thomas Power. I was made admin, and onboarded more people to it than everyone else combined, but I was evicted no less than five times for unruly behaviour. After the fifth eviction, I decided to create my own and on 22nd December 2019 the ‘Virtual International Pub’ (VIP) WhatsApp group was born whose group description reads: ‘A place to socialize and network with like-minded individuals globally. Business banter, mostly. Rules? There are none, except that courteousness and respect are a given. Avoid politics and religion.’
What are your 500 WhatsApp groups about?
In VIP, two people started talking about Education and so the Education group was born. In there, the subject of BioTech cropped up and so the BioTech group was created and it just snowballed from there.
I now operate more than 500 WhatsApp groups which VirtualPowerNetworking.com members can see are categorised under Arts, Science, Humanities, Industry, Country, City and Lifestyle.
Why do you use WhatsApp to connect people?
There are more than 2 billion reasons why – because that’s how many people use it. WhatsApp processes about 100 billion messages every day. It's the most widely used messaging platform in the world.
Why does LinkedIn play a key role in what you do?
Because it's a valuable information tool: I can see where someone has been educated, where they have worked, who has recommended them and who we know in common. But LinkedIn is not the best communications platform – which is why LinkedIn and WhatsApp complement each other. When someone joins my WhatsApp groups, I help craft an introduction for them using AI and the ‘about’ section of their LinkedIn profile which is included in their introduction. This gets seen by up to 1024 members, and so LinkedIn invitations galore invariably ensue.
Is your network just for business people?
No. Young people who are leaving school or university can benefit from joining my network. Networking remains the best way for them to find work. The best jobs are unadvertised.
At the opposite end of the age spectrum, I am finding that seniors can also benefit from what I have created an ‘always open’ virtual networking ecosystem. The same applies to the physically challenged.
Others live in really remote parts of the world and my network is like a virtual family for them.
How do you make money?
I have built my extraordinary network by paying it forward and serving others. However, I found that paying it forward does not help pay the bills.
So I teamed up with community specialists nas.io headed by the charismatic Nuseir Yassin with over 60 Million followers across the world. His target market is community builders like me and he has helped me bring order, structure and value to what I have created.
I am now asking people to make a small investment of £9.90/$12.99 a month or just £99/$129 for the year to join my network.
I also earn commissions on transactions that arise as a consequence of any introductions that I make.
Do you have any proof that networking this way works?
Where to start? There are so many examples. One that stands out is a lady securing more than a hundred meetings since joining it last month. This is social proof at its finest. My LinkedIn recommendations will give you other examples.
What is your ethos?
I subscribe to the Open, Random and Supportive (ORS) mindset – the antithesis of corporate thinking, which more often than not is closed and secretive. Sure, I encourage people to share their triumphs. But I also encourage them to share their trauma. Authenticity is important to me as is diversity and inclusion. Which is why my three mentees are all young black women. I believe everyone should have both mentors and mentees.
What are your plans for the future?
The number 1000 looms large at the moment – I plan to operate 1000 WhatsApp groups with 1000 paying members. After that, I will double the price and scale it further.
What I have created is unique, exclusive and impossible to copy. I think I am sitting on a goldmine, not least since so many people can benefit from it. Furthermore, in an era of AI and bots, the human touch is now more important and sought after than ever.
In tandem with this, I will be helping people who do not have the time or desire to network do so for them with my networking concierge service.
Looking ahead, I want to become a philanthropist when I grow up.
