Never Eat Alone

1. Becoming a Member of the Club

Нow on earth did I get in here?" I kept asking myself in those early days as an overwhelmed first-year student at Harvard Business School.

There wasn't a single accounting or finance class in my background. Looking around me, I saw ruthlessly focused young men and women who had undergraduate degrees in business. They'd gone on to crunch numbers or analyze spreadsheets in the finest firms on Wall Street. Most were from wealthy families and had pedigrees and legacies and Roman numerals in their names. Sure, I was intimidated.

How was a guy like me from a working-class family, with a liberal arts degree and a couple years at a traditional manufacturing company, going to compete with purebreds from McKinsey and Goldman Sachs who, from my perspective, seemed as if they'd been computing business data in their cribs?

It was a defining moment in my career, and in my life.

I was a country boy from southwestern Pennsylvania, raised in a small, hardworking steel and coal town outside of Latrobe called Youngstown. Our region was so rural you couldn't see nother house from the porch of our modest home. My father worked in the local steel mill; on weekends he'd do construction. My mother cleaned the homes of the doctors and lawyers in a nearby town. My brother escaped small-town life by way of the army; my sister got married in high school and moved out when I was a toddler.

At HBS, all the insecurities of my youth came rushing back. You see, although we didn't have much money, my dad and mom were set on giving me the kind of opportunities my brother and sister (from my mom's previous marriage) never got. My parents pushed me and sacrificed everything to get me the kind of education that only the well-to-do kids in our town could afford. The memories rushed back to those days when my mother would pick me up in our beat-up blue Nova at the bus stop of the private elementary school I attended, while the other children ducked into limos and BMWs. I was teased mercilessly about our car and my polyester clothes and fake Docksiders—reminded daily of my station in life.

The experience was a godsend in many ways, toughening my resolve and fueling my drive to succeed. It made clear to me there was a hard line between the haves and the have-nots. It made me angry to be poor. I felt excluded from what I saw as the old boys' network. On the other hand, all those feelings pushed me to work harder than everyone around me.

Hard work, I reassured myself, was one of the ways I'd beaten the odds and gotten into Harvard Business School. But there was something else that separated me from the rest of my class and gave me an advantage. I seemed to have learned something long before I arrived in Cambridge that it seemed many of my peers had not.

As a kid, I caddied at the local country club for the homeowners and their children living in the wealthy town next to mine. It made me think often and hard about those who succeed and those who don't. I made an observation in those days that would alter the way I viewed the world.

During those long stretches on the links, as I carried their bags, I watched how the people who had reached professional heights unknown to my father and mother helped each other. They found one another jobs, they invested time and money in one another's ideas, and they made sure their kids got help getting into the best schools, got the right internships, and ultimately got the best jobs.

Before my eyes, I saw proof that success breeds success and, indeed, the rich do get richer. Their web of friends and associates was the most potent club the people I caddied for had in their bags. Poverty, I realized, wasn't only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people that could help you make more of yourself.

I came to believe that in some very specific ways life, like golf, is a game, and that the people who know the rules, and know them well, play it best and succeed. And the rule in life that has unprecedented power is that the individual who knows the right people, for the right reasons, and utilizes the power of these relationships, can become a member of the "club," whether he started out as a caddie or not.

This realization came with some empowering implications. To achieve your goals in life, I realized, it matters less how smart you are, how much innate talent you're born with, or even, most eyeopening to me, where you came from and how much you started out with. Sure all these are important, but they mean little if you don't understand one thing: You can't get there alone. In fact, you can't get very far at all.

Fortunately, I was hungry to make something of myself (and, frankly, even more terrified that I'd amount to nothing). Otherwise, perhaps I would have just stood by and watched like my friends in the caddy yard.

I first began to learn about the incredible power of relationships from Mrs. Poland. Carol Poland was married to the owner of the big lumberyard in our town, and her son, Brett, who was my age, was my friend. They went to our church. At the time, I probably wanted to be Brett (great athlete, rich, all the girls falling over him).

At the club, I was Mrs. Poland's caddie. I was the only one who cared enough, ironically, to hide her cigarettes. I busted my behind to help her win every tournament. I'd walk the course the morning before to see where the tough pin placements were. I'd test the speed of the greens. Mrs. Poland started racking up wins left and right. Every ladies day, I did such a great job that she would brag about me to her friends. Soon, others requested me.

I'd caddie thirty-six holes a day if I could get the work, and I made sure I treated the club caddie-master as if he were a king. My first year, I won the annual caddie award, which gave me the chance to caddie for Arnold Palmer when he came to play on his hometown course. Arnie started out as a caddie himself at the Latrobe Country Club and went on to own the club as an adult. I looked up to him as a role model. He was living proof that success in golf, and in life, had nothing to do with class. It was about access (yes, and talent, at least in his case). Some gained access through birth or money. Some were fantastic at what they did, like Arnold Palmer. My edge, I knew, was my initiative and drive. Arnie was inspirational proof that your past need not be prologue to your future.

For years I was a de facto member of the Poland family, splitting holidays with them and hanging out at their house nearly every day. Brett and I were inseparable, and I loved his family like my own. Mrs. Poland made sure I got to know everyone in the club that could help me, and if she saw me slacking, I'd hear it from her. I helped her on the golf course, and she, in appreciation of my efforts and the care I bestowed upon her, helped me in life. She provided me with a simple but profound lesson about the power of generosity. When you help others, they often help you. Reciprocity is the gussied-up word people use later in life to describe this ageless principle. I just knew the word as "care." We cared for each other, so we went out of our way to do nice things.

Because of those days, and specifically that lesson, I came to realize that first semester at business school that Harvard's hypercompetitive, individualistic students had it all wrong. Success in any field, but especially in business, is about working with people, not against them. No tabulation of dollars and cents can account for one immutable fact: Business is a human enterprise, driven and determined by people.

It wasn't too far into my second semester before I started jokingly reassuring myself, "How on earth did all these other people get in here?"

What many of my fellow students lacked, I discovered, were the skills and strategies that are associated with fostering and building relationships. In America, and especially in business, we're brought up to cherish John Wayne individualism. People who consciously court others to become involved in their lives are seen as schmoozers, brown-nosers, smarmy sycophants.

Over the years, I learned that the outrageous number of misperceptions clouding those who are active relationship-builders is equaled only by the misperceptions of how relationship-building is done properly. What I saw on the golf course—friends helping friends and families helping families they cared about—had nothing to do with manipulation or quid pro quo. Rarely was there any running tally of who did what for whom, or strategies concocted in which you give just so you could get.

Over time, I came to see reaching out to people as a way to make a difference in people's lives as well as a way to explore and learn and enrich my own; it became the conscious construction of my life's path. Once I saw my networking efforts in this light, I gave myself permission to practice it with abandon in every part of my professional and personal life. I didn't think of it as cold and impersonal, the way I thought of "networking." I was, instead, connecting—sharing my knowledge and resources, time and energy, friends and associates, and empathy and compassion in a continual effort to provide value to others, while coincidentally increasing my own. Like business itself, being a connector is not about managing transactions, but about managing relationships.

People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses. If you strip business down to its basics, it's still about people selling things to other people. That idea can get lost in the tremendous hubbub the business world perpetually stirs up around everything from brands and technology to design and price considerations in an endless search for the ultimate competitive advantage. But ask any accomplished CEO or entrepreneur or professional how they achieved their success, and I guarantee you'll hear very little business jargon. What you will mostly hear about are the people who helped pave their way, if they are being honest and not too caught up in their own success.

After two decades of successfully applying the power of relationships in my own life and career, I've come to believe that connecting is one of the most important business—and life—skill sets you'll ever learn. Why? Because, flat out, people do business with people they know and like. Careers—in every imaginable field—work the same way. Even our overall well-being and sense of happiness, as a library's worth of research has shown, is dictated in large part by the support and guidance and love we get from the community we build for ourselves.

It took me a while to figure out exactly how to go about connecting with others. But I knew for certain that whether I wanted to become president of the United States or the president of a local PTA, there were a lot of other people whose help I would need along the way.

Self-Help: A Misnomer

How do you turn an aspiring contact into a friend? How can you get other people to become emotionally invested in your advancement? Why are there some lucky schmos who always leave business conferences with months' worth of lunch dates and a dozen potential new associates, while others leave with only indigestion? Where are the places you go to meet the kind of people who could most impact your life?

From my earliest days growing up in Latrobe, I found myself absorbing wisdom and advice from every source imaginable— friends, books, neighbors, teachers, family. My thirst to reach out was almost unquenchable. But in business, I found nothing came close to the impact of mentors. At every stage in my career, I sought out the most successful people around me and asked for their help and guidance.

I first learned the value of mentors from a local lawyer named George Love. He and the town's stockbroker, Walt Saling, took me under their wings. I was riveted by their stories of professional life and their nuggets of street-smart wisdom. My ambitions were sown in the fertile soil of George and Walt's rambling business escapades, and ever since, I've been on the lookout for others who could teach or inspire me. Later in life, as I rubbed shoulders with business leaders, store owners, politicians, and movers and shakers of all stripes, I started to gain a sense of how our country's most successful people reach out to others, and how they invite those people's help in accomplishing their goals.

I learned that real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful. It was about working hard to give more than you get. And I came to believe that there was a litany of toughminded principles that made this softhearted philosophy possible.

These principles would ultimately help me achieve things I didn't think I was capable of. They would lead me to opportunities otherwise hidden to a person of my upbringing, and they'd come to my aid when I failed, as we all do on occasion. That aid was never in more dire need than during my first job out of business school at Deloitte & Touche Consulting.

By conventional standards, I was an awful entry-level consultant. Put me in front of a spreadsheet and my eyes glaze over, which is what happened when I found myself on my first project, huddled in a cramped windowless room in the middle of suburbia, files stretching from floor to ceiling, poring over a sea of data with a few other first-year consultants. I tried; I really did. But I just couldn't. I was convinced boredom that bad was lethal.

I was clearly well on my way to getting fired or quitting. Luckily, I had already applied some of the very rules of networking that I was still in the process of learning. In my spare time, when I wasn't painfully attempting to analyze some data-ridden worksheet, I reached out to ex-classmates, professors, old bosses, and anyone who might stand to benefit from a relationship with Deloitte. I spent my weekends giving speeches at small conferences around the country on a variety of subjects I had learned at Harvard mostly under the tutelage of Len Schlessinger (to whom I owe my speaking style today). All this in an attempt to drum up both business and buzz for my new company. I had mentors throughout the organization, including the CEO, Pat Loconto.

Still, my first annual review was devastating. I received low marks for not doing what I was asked to do with the gusto and focus that was expected of me. But my supervisors, with whom I had already developed relationships and who were aware of all my extracurricular activities, had another idea. Together, we cooked up a job description that previously did not exist at the company.

My mentors gave me a $150,000 expense account to do what I had already been doing: developing business, representing the firm with speaking engagements, and reaching out to the press and business world in ways that would strengthen Deloitte's presence in the marketplace. My supervisors' belief in me paid off. Within a year, the company's brand recognition in the line of business on which I focused (reengineering) moved from bottom of the consulting pack to one of the top of the industry, achieving a growth rate the company had never known (though, of course, it wasn't all my doing). I went on to become the company's chief marketing officer and the youngest person ever tapped for partner. And I was having a blast—the work was fun, exciting, interesting. Everything you could want in a job.

While my career was in full throttle, in some ways it all seemed like a lucky accident. In fact, for many years, I couldn't see exactly where my professional trajectory would take me—after Deloitte, a crazy quilt of top-level jobs culminating in my founding my own company. It's only today, looking in the rearview mirror, that it makes enormous sense.

From Deloitte, I became the youngest chief marketing officer in the Fortune 500 at Starwood Hotel & Resorts. Then I went on to become CEO of a Knowledge Universe (Michael Milken)funded video game company, and now, founder of my own company, Ferrazzi Greenlight, a sales and marketing consulting and training firm to scores of the most prestigious brands, and an advisor to CEOs across the world. I zigged and zagged my way to the top. Every time I contemplated a move or needed advice, I turned to the circle of friends I had created around me.

At first I tried to draw attention away from my people skills for fear that they were somehow inferior to other more "respectable" business abilities. But as I got older, everyone from well-known CEOs and politicians to college kids and my own employees came to me asking for advice on how to do those things I had always loved doing. Crain's magazine listed me as one of the forty top business leaders under forty, and the World Economic Forum labeled me as a "Global Leader of Tomorrow." Senator Hillary Clinton asked me to use my connecting skills to raise money for her favorite nonprofit organization, Save America's Treasures. Friends and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies asked if I could help them throw more intimate dinner parties for their lead prospects and clients in key regions of the country. MBA students sent me e-mails hungry to learn the people skills their business schools weren't teaching them. Those turned into formal training courses now taught at the most prestigious MBA programs in America.

The underlying "softer" skills I used to arrive at my success, I learned, were something others could benefit from learning.

Of course, building a web of relationships isn't the only thing you need to be successful. But building a career, and a life, with the help and support of friends and family and associates has some incredible virtues.

1. It's never boring. Time-consuming, sometimes; demanding, perhaps. But dull, never. You're always learning about yourself, other people, business, and the world, and it feels great.

2. A relationship-driven career is good for the companies you work for because everyone benefits from your own growth— it's the value you bring that makes people want to connect with you. You feel satisfaction when both your peers and your organization share in your advancement.

3. Connecting—with the support, flexibility, and opportunities for self-development that come along with it—happens to make a great deal of sense in our new work world. The loyalty and security once offered by organizations can be provided by our own networks. Lifetime corporate employment is dead; we're all free agents now, managing our own careers across multiple jobs and companies. And because today's primary currency is information, a wide-reaching network is one of the surest ways to become and remain thought leaders of our respective fields.

Today, I have over 5,000 people on my Palm who will answer the phone when I call. They are there to offer expertise, jobs, help, encouragement, support, and yes, even care and love. The very successful people I know are, as a group, not especially talented, educated, or charming. But they all have a circle of trustworthy, talented, and inspirational people whom they can call upon.

All of this takes work. It involves a lot of sweat equity, just as it did for me back in the caddie yard. It means you have to think hard not only about yourself but about other people. Once you're committed to reaching out to others and asking for their help at being the best at whatever you do, you'll realize, as I have, what a powerful way of accomplishing your goals this can be. Just as important, it will lead to a much fuller, richer life, surrounded by an ever-growing, vibrant network of people you care for and who care for you.

This book outlines the secrets behind the success of so many accomplished people; they are secrets that are rarely recognized by business schools, career counselors, or therapists. By incorporating the ideas I discuss in this book, you too can become the center of a circle of relationships, one that will help you succeed throughout life. Of course, I'm a bit of a fanatic in my efforts to connect with others. I do the things I'm going to teach you with a certain degree of, well, exuberance. But by simply reaching out to others and recognizing that no one does it alone, I believe you'll see astounding results, quickly.

Everyone has the capacity to be a connector. After all, if a country kid from Pennsylvania can make it into the "club," so can you.

See you there.

2. Don't Keep Score

When I give talks to college and grad students, they always ask me, What are the secrets to success? What are the unspoken rules for making it big? Preferably, they'd like my response wrapped up in a tight package and tied with a neat little bow. Why not? I wanted the same thing at their age.

"So you want the inside scoop," I respond. "Fair enough. I'll sum up the key to success in one word: generosity."

Then I pause, watching the faces of the kids in the crowd as they look back at me with quizzical expressions. Half the group thinks I'm about to tell them a joke; the other half thinks they would have been better off getting a beer rather than attending my talk.

I go on to explain that when I was young, my father, a Pennsylvania steelworker, wanted more for me than he ever had. And he expressed this desire to a man whom up until that moment he had never met, the CEO of his company, Alex McKenna. Mr. McKenna liked my dad's moxie and helped me get a scholarship to one of the best private schools in the country, where he was a trustee.

Later, Elsie Hillman, chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, whom I first met after she read in the New York Times about my unsuccessful bid for New Haven City Council in my sophomore year at Yale, lent me money and advice and encouraged me to attend business school.

By the time I was your age, I tell the students, I had been afforded one of the best educational opportunities in the world, almost purely through the generosity of others.

"But," I continue, "here's the hard part: You've got to be more than willing to accept generosity. Often, you've got to go out and ask for it."

Now I get that look of instant recognition. Almost everyone in the room has had to reach out for help to get a job interview, an internship, or some free advice. And most have been reluctant to ask. Until you become as willing to ask for help as you are to give it, however, you are only working half the equation.

That's what I mean by connecting. It's a constant process of giving and receiving—of asking for and offering help. By putting people in contact with one another, by giving your time and expertise and sharing them freely, the pie gets bigger for everyone.

This karma-tinged vision of how things work may sound naive to those who have grown cynical of the business world. But while the power of generosity is not yet fully appreciated, or applied, in the halls of corporate America, its value in the world of networks is proven.

For example, I enjoy giving career advice and counseling. It's almost a hobby. I've done this with hundreds of young people, and I get enormous satisfaction hearing from them later on as their careers progress. There are times when I can a make a big difference in a young person's life. I can open a door or place a call or set up an internship—one of those simple acts by which destinies are altered. But too often the offer is refused.

The recipient will say, "Sorry, but I can't accept the favor because I'm not sure I'll ever be able to repay you"; or "I'd rather not be obligated to anyone, so I'll have to pass." Sometimes, they'll insist right there and then that they return the favor somehow. To me, nothing is as infuriating as encountering such blindness about how things work. Nor is it, as one might assume, a generational issue. I've gotten similar reactions from people of all ages and in all walks of life.

A network functions precisely because there's recognition of mutual need. There's an implicit understanding that investing time and energy in building personal relationships with the right people will pay dividends. The majority of "one percenters," as I call the ultra-rich and successful whom many of my mentees aspire toward, are one percenters because they understand this dynamic—because, in fact, they themselves used the power of their network of contacts and friends to arrive at their present station.

But to do so, first you have to stop keeping score. You can't amass a network of connections without introducing such connections to others with equal fervor. The more people you help, the more help you'll have and the more help you'll have helping others. It's like the Internet. The more people who have access, and use it, the more valuable the Internet becomes. I now have a small army of former mentees, succeeding in any number of industries, helping me to mentor the young people that come to me today.

This is not softhearted hokum; it's an insight that hard-headed business people would do well to take seriously. We live in an interdependent world. Flattened organizations seek out strategic alliances at every turn. A growing pool of free agents are finding they need to work with others to accomplish their goals. More than ever before, zero-sum scenarios where only one party wins often mean, in the long run, that both parties will lose. Win/win has become a necessary reality in a networked world. In a hyper-connected marketplace, cooperation is gaining ground on competition.

The game has changed.

In 1956, William Whyte's bestselling book The Organization Man outlined the archetypal American worker: We donned our gray suit for a large corporation, offering our loyalty in exchange for job security. It was glorified indentured servitude, with few options and few opportunities. Today, however, employers offer little loyalty, and employees give none. Our careers aren't paths so much as landscapes that are navigated. We're free agents, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs—each with our own unique brand.

Many people have adapted to these new times with the belief that it's still a dog-eat-dog world, where the meanest, baddest dog in the neighborhood wins. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Where employees once found generosity and loyalty in the companies we worked for, today we must find them in a web of our own relationships. It isn't the blind loyalty and generosity we once gave to a corporation. It's a more personal kind of loyalty and generosity, one given to your colleagues, your team, your friends, your customers.

Today, we need each other more than ever.

Sadly, plenty of people still function as if it were 1950. We have a tendency to romanticize independence. Most business literature still views autonomy as a virtue, as though communication, teamwork, and cooperation were lesser values. To such thinkers, interdependence is just a variation of outright dependence. In my experience, such a view is a career-killer.

Autonomy is a life vest made out of sand. Independent people who do not have the skills to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be seen as good leaders or team players. Their careers will begin to stutter and stall before too long.

Let me give you an example. When I was at Deloitte, I was working on a project for the largest HMO in the country, Kaiser Permanente, forcing me to travel between their two headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and back to my home in Chicago on the weekend.

It was clear to me early on that I hoped to use the consulting world as a gateway into some other field. Since I was in Los Angeles, I wondered how I might begin to create inroads into the entertainment industry. I wasn't looking to accomplish anything in particular; I just knew that I was interested in the industry, and when the day came to move on, I wanted to break into Hollywood without having to deliver some agent's mail.

Ray Gallo, my best friend from my undergraduate days, was practicing law in Los Angeles, so I called him to get some advice.

"Hey, Ray. Who do you know in the entertainment world that I can talk to for some advice about breaking into the industry? You know any people who'd be open for a short lunch?"

"There's a guy named David who I know through mutual friends who also went to HBS. Give him a call."

David was a smart entrepreneur doing some creative deals in Hollywood. In particular, he had a close connection with a senior executive at one of the studios whom he had also gone to school with. I was hoping I might get a chance to get to know both of them.

David and I met for a cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe in Santa Monica. He was dressed in very dapper casual L.A. attire. I wore a suit and tie, befitting the buttoned-down Midwestern consultant that I was at the time.

After a good deal of back-and-forth, I asked David a question. "I'm thinking about transitioning into the entertainment industry at some point. Is there anyone you know who you think could lend some helpful advice?" I was a good friend of a close friend of his. This seemed like a mild request given the strength of our meeting.

"I do know somebody," he told me. "She is a senior executive at Paramount."

"Great, I'd love to meet her," I said excitedly. "Is there any chance of arranging a quick introduction? Maybe you could pass on an e-mail?"

"I can't," he told me flatly. I was shocked, and my face showed it. "Keith, here's the situation. It's likely that at some point I'm going to need something from this person or want to ask a personal favor. And I'm just not interested in using the equity that I have with this individual on you, or anyone else, for that matter. I need to save that for myself. I'm sorry. I hope you understand."

But I didn't understand. I still don't. His statement flew in the face of everything I knew. He thought of relationships as finite, like a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces. Take a piece away, and there was that much less for him. I knew, however, that relationships are more like muscles—the more you work them, the stronger they become.

If I'm going to take the time to meet with somebody, I'm going to try to make that person successful. But David kept score. He saw every social encounter in terms of diminishing returns. For him, there was only so much goodwill available in a relationship and only so much collateral and equity to burn.

What he didn't understand was that it's the exercising of equity that builds equity. That's the big "ah-ha" that David never seemed to have learned.

Jack Pidgeon, the headmaster of the Kiski School in southwestern Pennsylvania, where I went to high school, taught me that lesson. He'd built an entire institution on his asking people not "How can you help me?" but "How can I help youT

One of the many times Jack came to my aid was when I was a sophomore in college. I'd been enlisted to work during the summer for a woman who was running for Congress against a young Kennedy. Running against a Kennedy in Boston, and for Jack Kennedy's former congressional seat to boot, was for many people a lost cause. But I was young and naive and ready for battle.

Unfortunately, we barely had time to don our armor before we were forced to wave the white flag of surrender. A month into the campaign, we ran out of money. Eight other college kids and I were literally thrown out of our hotel room, which doubled as our campaign headquarters, in the middle of the night by a general manager who had not been paid in too long a time.

We decided to pack our duffel bags into a rented van, and not knowing what else to do, we headed to Washington, D.C. We innocently hoped we could latch onto another campaign. Boy, we were green.

In the middle of the night, at some anonymous rest stop on the way to Washington, I called Mr. Pidgeon from a pay phone. When I told him about our situation, he chuckled. Then he proceeded to do what he has done for several generations of Kiski alums. He opened his Rolodex and started making calls.

One of those people he called was Jim Moore, a Kiski alum who was the former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan administration. By the time our caravan of lost souls made it to D.C, we all had places to stay and we were on our way to getting summer jobs. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Pidgeon had made a few similar calls for Jim in his day.

Mr. Pidgeon understood the value of introducing people to people, Kiski boy to Kiski boy. He knew not only the impact it would have on our individual lives, but that the loyalty such acts engender would ultimately reap rewards for the nearly bankrupt, small, five-building facility in southwestern Pennsylvania he was trying to establish.

And so it has. Jim and I are now on the Board of Directors at our alma mater. And if you were around when Jack first took over the school, today you'd barely recognize the place, with its ski slopes, golf course, fine arts center, and the sort of sophisticated technology that makes it look like some midwestern MIT.

My point is this: Relationships are solidified by trust. Institutions are built on it. You gain trust by asking not what people can do for you, to paraphrase an earlier Kennedy, but what you can do for others.

In other words, the currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.

When I look back on all the people who have taught me invaluable lessons about creating lasting relationships—my father, Elsie, my mentees and the college kids I speak with, Ray, Mr. Pidgeon, the people I've worked with—I come away with several fundamental insights and observations:

1. Yesterday we had the new economy. Today we have the old economy (again!), and no one can predict what's going to be thrown at us next. Business cycles ebb and flow; your friends and trusted associates remain. A day might well come when you step into your boss's office some afternoon to hear, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, b u t . . . " Tough day, guaranteed. The experience will be a whole lot easier to handle, however, if you can make a few calls and walk into someone's office soon after to hear, "I've been waiting for this day to come for a long time. Congratulations ..."

Job security? Experience will not save you in hard times, nor will hard work or talent. If you need a job, money, advice, help, hope, or a means to make a sale, there's only one surefire, fail-safe place to find them—within your extended circle of friends and associates.

2. There's no need to ponder whether it's their lunch or yours.

There's no point in keeping track of favors done and owed. Who cares?

Would it surprise you if I told you "Hollywood" David isn't doing that well any longer? David hoarded the relational equity he had until he eventually looked around and discovered there was nothing more to hoard. Ten years after I met him at that Santa Monica cafe, I haven't heard from him. In fact, no one else I know has heard from him either. Like so many industries, entertainment is a small world.

Bottom line: It's better to give before you receive. And never keep score. If your interactions are ruled by generosity, your rewards will follow suit.

3. The business world is a fluid, competitive landscape; yesterday's assistant is today's influence peddler. Many of the young men and women who used to answer my phones now thankfully take my calls. Remember, it's easier to get ahead in the world when those below you are happy to help you get ahead, rather than hoping for your downfall.

Each of us is now a brand. Gone are the days where your value as an employee was linked to your loyalty and seniority. Companies use branding to develop strong, enduring relationships with customers. In today's fluid economy, you must do the same with your network.

I would argue that your relationships with others are your finest, most credible expression of who you are and what you have to offer. Nothing else compares.

4. Contribute. It's like Miracle-Gro for networks. Give your time, money, and expertise to your growing community of friends.

5. In thinking about what Jack Pidgeon did for me and countless others, and the legacy he will leave behind because of it, I've become more convinced than ever that sharing what I've learned from him about reaching out to others is the greatest way to repay my former headmaster. Thanks again, Mr. Pidgeon.

3. What's Your Mission?

Do you want to become a CEO or a senator? Rise to the top of your profession or to the top of your child's school board? Make more money or more friends?

The more specific you are about what you want to do, the easier it becomes to develop a strategy to accomplish it. Part of that strategy, of course, is establishing relationships with the people in your universe who can help you get where you're going.

Every successful person I've met shared, in varying degrees, a zeal for goal setting. Successful athletes, CEOs, charismatic leaders, rainmaking salespeople, and accomplished managers all know what they want in life, and they go after it.

As my dad used to say, no one becomes an astronaut by accident. Luck has little to do with achievement, as a study cited in Success magazine makes clear. In the study, researchers asked Yale's class of 1953 a number of questions. Three had to do with goals:

Have you set goals?

Have you written them down?

Do you have a plan to accomplish them?

It turned out that only 3 percent of the Yale class had written down their goals, with a plan of action to achieve them. Thirteen percent had goals but had not written them down. Fully 84 percent had no specific goals at all, other than to "enjoy themselves." In 1973, when the same class was resurveyed, the differences between the goal setters and everyone else were stunning. The 13 percent who had goals that were not in writing were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent of students who had no goals at all. But most surprising of all, the 3 percent who had written their goals down were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent of graduates combined!

My own focus on goal setting started early. As a Yale undergrad, I thought I wanted to become a politician, a future governor of Pennsylvania. (I really was that specific, and that naive.) But I learned that the more concrete my goal, the more I could accomplish toward it. In my sophomore year, I became chairman of Yale's political union, where so many alumni had cut their teeth before going on to careers in politics. When I became interested in joining a fraternity, I didn't simply join the first organization available to me. I researched which fraternity had the most active politicians as alumni. Sigma Chi had a rich tradition and an alumni roster of impressive leaders. But the fraternity wasn't chartered at Yale at that time. So we founded a chapter.

Eventually I ran for New Haven City Council. I lost, but in the process met everyone from William F. Buckley and Governor of Pennsylvania Dick Thornburg to the president of Yale, Bart Giamatti. I made regular visits to see Bart up until he died; he was a virtual oracle of advice and contacts for me. Even then, I recognized how something as simple as a clearly defined goal distinguished me from all those who simply floated through school waiting for things to happen. Later, I would apply this insight with even more vigor.

At Deloitte & Touche, for example, it was one of the ways I differentiated myself from the other postgrad consultants. I knew I needed a focus, a direction that I could pour my energies into. An article by Michael Hammer that I read in business school gave me that focus. Coauthor of Reengineering the Corporation, Hammer's ideas were taking the business world by storm and were on the verge of creating a new segment for consulting services.

Here was a chance to become an expert on a relatively new body of knowledge and research that was quickly becoming in hot demand. I read all the case studies and attended every conference or lecture I could. Wherever Michael Hammer was, there was I. Over time, he thankfully saw me less as a stalker and more as a pupil and friend. My access to Michael Hammer, and my growing knowledge in the field, helped me broker a much stronger relationship between my company and one of the business world's most influential and respected thinkers. Publicity and profits followed for Deloitte as they became a company at the forefront of the reengineering movement. And with that success, my career, which had once been on shaky ground, began to soar.

Countless books have been written about goal setting over the last few decades. Yes, it really is that important. Over the years, I've refined my own goal-setting process into three steps. But the key is to make setting goals a habit. If you do that, goal setting becomes a part of your life. If you don't, it withers and dies.

Step One: Find Your Passion

The best definition of a "goal" I've ever heard came from an extraordinarily successful saleswoman I met at a conference who told me, "A goal is a dream with a deadline." That marvelous definition drives home a very important point. Before you start writing down your goals, you'd better know what your dream is. Otherwise, you might find yourself headed for a destination you never wanted to get to in the first place.

Studies indicate that well over 50 percent of Americans are unhappy at work. Many of these people are doing well, but they are doing well at something they don't enjoy. How we got ourselves into such a situation isn't difficult to understand. People get overwhelmed by the decisions they have to make about their jobs, their families, their businesses, their futures. There are too many choices, it seems. We end up shifting our focus to talents we don't have and careers that don't quite fit. Many of us respond by simply falling into whatever comes down the pike without ever asking ourselves some very important questions.

Have you ever sat down and thought seriously about what you truly love? What you're good at? What you want to accomplish in life? What are the obstacles that are stopping you? Most people don't. They accept what they "should" be doing, rather than take the time to figure out what they want to be doing.

We all have our own loves, insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, and unique capabilities. And we have to take those into account in figuring out where our talents and desires intersect. That intersection is what I call your "blue flame"—where passion and ability come together. When that blue flame is ignited within a person, it is a powerful force in getting you where you want to go.

I think of the blue flame as a convergence of mission and passion founded on a realistic self-assessment of your abilities. It helps determine your life's purpose, from taking care of the elderly to becoming a mother, from being a top engineer to becoming a writer or a musician. I believe everyone has a distinct mission inside of him or her, one that has the capacity to inspire.

Joseph Campbell, who coined the phrase "follow your bliss" in the early 1900s, was a graduate student at Columbia University. His blue flame, he decided, was the study of Greek mythology. When he was told there was no such major, he devised his own plan.

After graduation, he moved into a cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he did nothing but read from nine in the morning until six or seven each night for five years. There isn't exactly a career track for lovers of Greek myth. Campbell emerged from the woods a very, very knowledgeable man, but he still had no clue what to do with his life. He persisted in following his love of mythology anyway.

The people who met him during this time were astonished by his wisdom and passion. Eventually, he was invited to speak at Sarah Lawrence College. One lecture led to another, until finally, when Campbell looked up one day twenty-eight years later, he was a famous author and professor of mythology, doing what he loved, at the same school that had given him his first break. "If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living."

So how do you figure out your bliss?

Campbell believed that deep within each person, there's an intuitive knowledge of what she or he wants most in life. We only have to look for it.

Well, I agree with Dr. Campbell. All good decisions, I'm convinced, come from good information. Deciding on your passion, your bliss, your blue flame is no different. There are two aspects to getting good information. One part comes from within you; the other part comes from those around you.

1. Look inside

There are many ways to conduct a self-assessment of your goals and dreams. Some people pray. Others meditate or read. Some exercise. A few seek long periods of solitude.

The important thing when conducting an internal review is to do without the constraints, without the doubts, fears, and expectations of what you "should" be doing. You have to be able to set aside the obstacles of time, money, and obligation.

When I'm in the right frame of mind, I start to create a list of dreams and goals. Some are preposterous; others are overly pragmatic. I don't attempt to censure or edit the nature of the list—I put anything and everything down. Next to that first list, I write down in a second column all the things that bring me joy and pleasure: the achievements, people, and things that move me. The clues can be found in the hobbies you pursue and the magazines, movies, and books you enjoy. Which activities excite you the most, where you don't even notice the hours that pass?

When I'm done, I start to connect these two lists, looking for intersections, that sense of direction or purpose. It's a simple exercise, but the results can be profound.

2. Look outside

Next, ask the people who know you best what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Ask them what they admire about you and what areas you may need help in.

Before long, you'll find that the information you're getting from your own review and the input you receive from others will lead you to some very concrete conclusions about what your mission or direction should be.

Some of the business world's toughest CEOs and entrepreneurs are big believers in this notion of the blue flame—although they probably don't call it that.

James Champy, celebrated consultant and coauthor of Reengineering the Corporation, claims that success is first and foremost a matter of our dreams. In his book The Arc of Ambition, Champy found that the abilities of successful leaders like Ted Turner, Michael Dell, and Jack Welch are less important than the fact that each shares a clearly defined mission that drives him in all that he does.

When Champy asked Michael Dell where he found the ambition to build Dell computers, the CEO started to talk about business cycles and technology. Then he stopped.

"You know where I think the dream really came from?" he said. He described driving to school through the suburbs of Houston and ogling the office buildings with their great flagpoles. Dell wanted a flagpole. He wanted that kind of presence. To him, it was a symbol of success, and it drove him to envision starting up his own company before he could legally order a drink. Today, he has three flagpoles. I've spoken to Michael a number of times about his strategy at Dell, and it's amazing how each and every time this dream comes through clearly.

Human ambitions are like Japanese carp; they grow proportional to the size of their environment. Our achievements grow according to the size of our dreams and the degree to which we are in touch with our mission.

Coming up with goals, updating them, and monitoring our progress in achieving them is less important, I believe, than the process of emotionally deciding what it is you want to do.

Does that mean a hopeless dreamer could have run GE as well as Neutron Jack? Of course not. The transformation of a dream into reality requires hard work and discipline.

"Welch might resent the fact that I say, 'Jack, you're a dreamer,'" says Champy. "But the truth is he's a disciplined dreamer. He has the ability and sensibility that allows him to walk into various industries and see where the opportunities are."

Disciplined dreamers all have one thing in common: a mission. The mission is often risky, unconventional, and most likely tough as hell to achieve. But it is possible. The kind of discipline that turns a dream into a mission, and a mission into a reality, really just comes down to a process of setting goals.

Step Two: Putting Goals to Paper

Turning a mission into a reality does not "just happen." It is built like any work of art or commerce, from the ground up. First, it must be imagined. Then, one needs to gather the skills, tools, and materials needed. It takes time. It requires thought, determination, persistence, and faith.

The tool I use is something I call the Networking Action Plan. The Plan is separated into three distinct parts: The first part is devoted to the development of the goals that will help you fulfill your mission. The second part is devoted to connecting those goals to the people, places, and things that will help you get the job done. And the third part helps you determine the best way to reach out to the people who will help you to accomplish your goals.

It's a bare-bones, straightforward worksheet, but it has been extraordinarily helpful to me, my sales staff, and many of my friends.

In the first section, I list what I'd like to accomplish three years from today. I then work backward in both one-year and threemonth increments to develop midand short-term goals that will help me reach my mission. Under each time frame, I create an "A" and a "B" goal that will meaningfully contribute to where I want to be three years from now.

A close friend, Jamie, offers a good example of how this works. Jamie was struggling to find direction in her life. She had graduated with a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, thinking she'd become a professor. But she found academia too stuffy. She gave business a shot, but found the world of commerce unrewarding. So Jamie spent several months living in Manhattan thinking about where she was going in life, until it occurred to her that what she really wanted to do was teach children.

I asked Jamie to give my Networking Action Plan a try. She was skeptical at first. "That may be good for MBA types, but I'm not sure it works for people like me," she insisted. Nonetheless, she agreed to try it.

So she set about filling out the worksheet. Her "A" goal three years forward was to be a teacher. Her three-year "B" goal was to be a teacher in a well-respected district located in a place she wanted to live. Then she filled in his short-term A and B goals.

In ninety days, she wanted to be well on her way toward becoming certified as a high school teacher, enrolling in some type of program that would help professionals transition into the field of education. In a year, she wanted to be teaching full-time; she made a list of some of the best high schools in Manhattan that she might enjoy working at.

In the second part of the Plan, broken up in similar time increments, she had to name one or two people for each A and B goal who she thought could get her one step closer to making her goal a reality.

Jamie did her research and found the contact for a program that places midcareer professionals into teaching positions. She also found out the names of the people at each of the best high schools she had listed who were responsible for hiring. Finally, she found the number for an organization that provides teaching certification courses.

Within a couple of weeks, Jamie was on her way. She started to see the symbiotic relationship between goal setting and reaching out to the people who can help us achieve those goals. The more she accomplished, the bigger her teaching network grew. The bigger her teaching network grew, the closer she came to accomplishing her three-year goals.

Ultimately, the third stage helps you assess which of the strategies I'll show you in the following chapters will be most successful. With some people, it will require you cold-call them (which we'll talk more about later). Others you'll be able to reach through friends of friends; still others might best be acquainted through a dinner party or conference. I'll teach you how to utilize all these methods and more.

Jamie is now a tenured high school history teacher in one of the best high schools in the country, in Beverly Hills, California. And she loves the job.

This process can be used by almost anyone, whatever your career. After completing the worksheet, you'll have a mission.

You'll have the name of a flesh-and-blood person who can help you take the next step in achieving that mission. And you'll have one, or perhaps several, ways to reach out to that person.

The purpose of this exercise is to show that there is a process, a system if you will, involved in building a network. It's not magical; it's not reserved for a select few born with an inherent gift for being social. Connecting with others really just involves having a predetermined plan and carrying it out, whether you want to be a ninth-grade history teacher or start your own business.

Moreover, you can apply the worksheet to every aspect of your life: to expand your network of friends, further your education, find a lifelong partner, and search for spiritual guidance.

Once you have your plan, post it in a place (or places) where you will see it on a regular basis. Share your goals with others. This is very powerful and perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of having clear goals—there are hidden opportunities waiting to be accessed in everyone if you just tell them what you want.

Fill this sheet out now, before going on to the next chapter. I like to keep some variation of it in my Palm to remind myself regularly what I need to be accomplishing, and whom I need to reach out to. A few years ago, I laminated a small version of the sheet and kept it in my wallet.

But your goals must be in writing. Have the conviction to put your intentions to paper. An unwritten wish is just a dream. In writing, it's a commitment, a goal.

Here are a few other criteria to consider when filling out your

Networking Action Plan, or NAP:

• Your goals must be specific. Vague, sweeping goals are too broad to be acted upon. They must be concrete and detailed. Know what steps you'll take to achieve your goal, the date by which it will be accomplished, and the measurement you'll use to gauge whether you've achieved the goal or not. I tell my salespeople that setting a goal like "I'm going to have my best quarter ever" is not enough. Will they make $100,000 or $500,000?

• Your goals must be believable. If you don't believe you can reach them, you won't. If your goal is to increase the revenues of your business to five million dollars in a year, and you only achieve revenues of one million, you're setting yourself up for failure. Instead, set your goal at half a million dollars for the year—and beat the heck out of it.

• Your goals must be challenging and demanding. Step out of your comfort zone; set goals that require risk and uncertainty. And when you achieve your goal, set another one. One of the best salesmen I've ever met is a man my father knew named Lyle, who sold books door-to-door. He would set annual sales goals for himself, write them down, and place them wherever he could: in his wallet, on his refrigerator, in his desk. Inevitably, he'd reach his goal months ahead of schedule. Then he'd simply write down another one. The man was never satisfied. What matters is the goal setting, Lyle would say, not the goal getting. He may have been the only door-to-door book salesman in Pennsylvania—or anywhere else, for that matter—who died a rich man.

Next, take ACTIOM It's called a Networking Action Plan for a reason. To prepare yourself to run a marathon, you must get out there and jog every day. With a plan in place, it's up to you to start reaching out. Every day!

Step Three: Create a Personal "Board of Advisors"

Goals, like everything else I write about in this book, aren't achieved alone. With a plan in place, you're going to need reinforcement to stay focused. As in any business, even the bestconceived plans benefit from external vetting.

It helps to have an enlightened counselor, or two or three, to act as both cheerleader and eagle-eyed supervisor, who will hold you accountable. I call this group my Personal Board of Advisors. They may be made up of family members; perhaps someone who's been a mentor to you; even an old friend or two.

My board came to my own aid at a critical juncture in my career after I left Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the company that owns such brands as the W Hotel and the Westin. I was adrift. For the first time in my life, I couldn't lay claim to a title or a job. I had to reassess my mission.

I had come to Starwood from Deloitte to accept what was an irresistible offer: to be the youngest chief marketing officer in a Fortune 500 company (a goal I had set for myself three years earlier) and reinvent the way an industry thought about marketing.

But my new job didn't go exactly as planned.

Juergen Bartels, the president at Starwood who recruited me, promised to mentor me and pave my way toward becoming a future leader of the company. My goals for the company were large and required changing an entire company's way of thinking.

Up until that point, marketing in the hospitality industry was a regional affair, often left to individual hotels. But the cost of that arrangement was a lack of company-wide brand consistency. Our plan was to consolidate our marketing functions under one roof with a global outlook. Rather than allow each of our regions around the world to set their own individual marketing strategies, I wanted to centralize our marketing operations more in order to clarify our message and create greater impact in the marketplace with a cohesive brand. After all, our primary customers—business travelers—were increasingly global and expected consistency.

Shortly after I was hired, however, Juergen Bartels left the company. Corporations, like any bureaucracy, tend to resist change, especially when the change doesn't have the support of top management. It became clear, a year into my job, that under the latest president I wouldn't be able to garner the kind of support within the company I needed for such a radical reorganization.

The new president made it clear that we would not be moving forward with our plan to reorganize the marketing department. The writing was on the wall for the plan and for me personally. Without the go-ahead needed to make the kind of bold decisions that I felt would ultimately lead to company success and a more senior personal position, I knew I wouldn't be able to reach my goals here.

I was shocked. I left work early that particular day and jogged mile after mile through the beautiful paths of New York's Central Park. Exercise has always been a refuge where I do some of my best thinking. But some ten miles later, I was still in shock.

The next morning, as I walked into the office, I knew that my future was somewhere else. All the accoutrements of a top executive's life—the large, cushy office, the mahogany furniture, the corporate jet, the fancy title on the door—meant nothing if I couldn't implement the ideas that made work fun, creative, and exciting. I officially resigned soon after, and if I hadn't, I know I wouldn't have been long for the company anyway.

It was time for me to establish a new goal. Should I seek out another position as chief marketing officer, proving myself by building bigger and better brands, striving for greater revenue (and profits), and helping to turn a company into a brand icon? Or should I set my sights even higher? My ultimate goal was to become a CEO. But it seldom happens for those in marketing. I had spent the greater part of my career convincing top management that marketing can and should directly influence all operating activities, yet I was not responsible for all of them.

To truly define the brand, the ultimate marketing job was to be the CEO. If I chose the latter direction, what else did I need to learn to become CEO? What were my chances of getting such a job? What sacrifices or risks were involved?

Honestly, these questions weren't clear to me at the time. In the wake of my disappointment, after years of go-go-go, I felt lost. I needed to figure out what I wanted to be all over again.

And I was scared. For the first time in ages, I had no company to attach to my name. I loathed the thought of meeting new people without a clear explanation of what I did.

Over the next few months, I had hundreds of conversations with the people I trust. I took a Vipassana meditation retreat where I sat for ten hours each day for ten days straight—in silence. For a guy like me, who can't shut up, it was torture. I wondered if I might fritter away all my time thinking. I wondered if I should go back to Pennsylvania and find a smaller pond to inhabit.

During that time I wrote a detailed twelve-page mission statement asking such questions as What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What are the various industry opportunities available to me? I listed the venture capitalists I wanted to meet, the CEOs I knew, the leaders I could turn to for advice, and the companies that I admired. I left all my options open: teacher, minister, politician, chief executive officer. For each potential new direction, I filled out a Networking Action Plan.

When everything was laid out, I reached out to my personal board of advisors. I didn't have the qualifications to be appointed a CEO with a major corporation. Yet when I looked inside myself, that was exactly what I wanted to do.

Sitting down with Tad Smith, a publishing executive and one of my best friends and advisors, I was told I had to get over the prestige of working for a Fortune 500 company. If I wanted to be CEO, I had to find a company I could grow with.

It was exactly the advice I needed to hear. I had been too focused on big companies. While the dot-com crash had made entering the digital world a whole lot less palatable, there were still some very good companies in need of business fundamentals. Now I knew this was where I needed to look, and I began refining my action plan.

From that day on, many of the calls I made, and the meetings and conferences I attended, were aimed at finding the right small company to call home. Three months later, I had five job offers.

One of the people I reached out to was Sandy Climan, a wellknown Hollywood player who once served as Michael Ovitz's right-hand man at Creative Artists Agency and who then ran an L.A.-based venture-capital firm called Entertainment Media Ventures. I had gotten to know Sandy during my time with Deloitte, when I was exploring paths into the entertainment world. Sandy introduced me to the people at a company called YaYa, one of the investments in his firm's portfolio.

YaYa was a marketing company pioneering the creation of online games as advertising vehicles. They had a good concept and the strength of committed employees and founders. They needed a bigger vision to get the market's attention, some buzz for their then-unknown product, and someone who could use all that to sell, sell, sell.

In November 2000, when the YaYa board offered me the CEO position, I knew it was the right fit. The company was located in Los Angeles, and it offered the sort of unconventional route into the entertainment world I had been looking for and a chance to bring my experience as a marketer to the CEO job.

If Virginia Can Do It, You Can Too

A few months a g o , a friend of mine told me about a woman named Virginia Feigles, who lived not too far a w a y from where I grew up. He had been inspired by her tale of triumph. Hearing her story, I felt the same way.

At forty-four, Feigles decided she no longer wanted to be a hairdresser; she wanted to be an engineer. From the get-go, there were naysayers, people w h o insisted it couldn't be done. Their negativity simply provided more fuel for her fire.

"I lost a lot of friends during this whole thing," Feigles says. "People become jealous when you decide to do what no one thought you w o u l d , or could. You just have to push through."

Her adventure reads like a Cliffs Notes guide to career management where a bold mission and a commitment to reach out to others combine to create opportunities previously unavailable to a high school graduate. It also conveys a harsh dose of reality: Change is hard. You might lose friends, encounter seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and face the most troubling hurdle of a l l — your own self-doubt.

Feigles had always planned to go to college. Raised by a single mother in small-town Milton, Pennsylvania, the opportunities were slim. She was married by seventeen and pregnant a year later. She worked full time as a hairstylist in her husband's salon and raised her only son. Twenty years went by. W i t h her second divorce, Feigles rethought her life. Growth, she reflected, came only from change. And change came only from new goals.

She was working part-time as a secretary at the chamber of commerce when she realized life had more to offer. "I just thought, 'This is stupid. W h y am I on the wrong end of this? Not everyone who has a Ph.D. in physics is Albert Einstein.'"

W h i l e it's true not every engineer is a genius, they all know algebra—something Feigles couldn't claim. So she buckled down and learned the subject within a few months.

After a summer stint at community college, she decided to apply to a top-tier civil engineering school at Bucknell University. The associate dean, Trudy Cunningham, didn't sugarcoat the situation. " W h e n she arrived, I told her that life was about to get hard. She's an adult with a life, an apartment, a car, and she was competing with kids w h o were living in dorms and having their meals cooked."

Luckily, Feigles had always been an avid connector all her life. She was a member of a number of community organizations, serving on the boards of the Y M C A , Milton Chamber of Commerce, and Parks and Recreation Committee. She also had stints serving as president of the Garden Club and the Milton Business Association. She had supportive friends and advisors all around.

For the other students, the end of class meant keg parties and football games. For her, it meant a night working at the salon followed by grinding study sessions. Feigles doesn't remember a d a y she didn't think of quitting.

She remembers getting back her first physics test. She failed. "Another student thought it was the end of the w o r l d . I told her not to worry, I wasn't about to commit suicide," she recalls with the w r y insight reserved for someone who's been through it. She ended up with a C in the class.

M a n y sleepless nights and several Cs later, Feigles found herself among 1 3 7 other engineers in the graduating class of 1 9 9 9 . No one was more astonished than the graduate herself: "I just kept on thinking, ' W h a t have I done?' And then repeating to myself, 'I've done it, I've actually done i t ! ' "

W i t h her goals completed, her network has grown—and not only in terms of friends and new business contacts. Today, she's newly married—to her former boss at the chamber of commerce— and busy with a budding career at the state's Department of Transportation. Recently she became chairperson of the Planning Commission, where she used to take notes as a secretary.

Reaching your goals can be difficult. But if you have goals to begin w i t h , a realizable plan to achieve them, and a cast of trusted friends to help you, you can do just about anything—even becoming an engineer after the age of forty.

In 1 9 6 8 , when W i l l i a m Jefferson Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he met a graduate student named Jeffrey Stamps at a party. Clinton promptly pulled out a black address book. " W h a t are you doing here at O x f o r d , Jeff?" he asked.

"I'm at Pembroke on a Fulbright," Jeff replied. Clinton penned "Pembroke" into his book, then asked about Stamps's undergraduate school and his major. "Bill, why are you writing this d o w n ? " asked Stamps.

"I'm going into politics and plan to run for governor of Arkansas, and I'm keeping track of everyone I meet," said Clinton.

That story, recounted by Stamps, epitomizes Bill Clinton's forthright approach to reaching out and including others in his mission. He knew, even then, that he wanted to run for office, and his sense of purpose emboldened his efforts with both passion and sincerity. In fact, as an undergraduate at Georgetown, the forty-second president made it a nightly habit to record, on index cards, the names and vital information of every person whom he'd met that day.

Throughout his career, Clinton's political aspirations and his ability to reach out to others have gone hand-in-hand. In 1 9 8 4 , when he was governor of Arkansas, he attended, for the first time, a national networking and thought leadership event called Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Clinton secured an invitation through his friend, Richard Riley, w h o was then governor of South Carolina. Attending Renaissance Weekend was like a trip to a toy store for a guy like Clinton, w h o wasted no time meeting others and making friends. Here's how a Washington Post article from December 1 9 9 2 describes Clinton in action at the event:

M a n y guests, reflecting on Clinton's presence, remember images more than words: how he would roam from discussion to discussion and take a spot at the side of the room, leaning casually against the w a l l ; how he would seem to know everyone, not just from their name tags, but remember what they did and what they were interested in. "He hugs y o u , " said M a x Heller, the former mayor of Greenville. "He hugs you not only physically, but with a whole attitude."

W h a t Heller is referring to is Clinton's unique ability to create an almost instantaneous intimacy with whomever he's talking to. Clinton doesn't just recall your personal information; he uses the information as a means to affirm a bond with you.

From Clinton, two lessons are clear: First, the more specific you are about where you want to go in life, the easier it becomes to develop a networking strategy to get there.

Second, be sensitive to making a real connection in your interactions with others. There is almost an expectation among us that whoever becomes rich or powerful can be forgiven for high-handed behavior. Clinton illustrates how charming and popular you can become, and remain, when you treat everyone you meet with sincerity.

4. Build It Before You Need It

Forget the images we all have in our heads of the desperate, out-of-work individuals scooping up every business card in sight while fervently mingling at business conventions and jobhunting events. The great myth of "networking" is that you start reaching out to others only when you need something like a job. In reality, people who have the largest circle of contacts, mentors, and friends know that you must reach out to others long before you need anything at all.

George, for example, is a smart guy in his twenties who was introduced to me through a mutual friend. George worked in public relations in New York and aspired to start his own PR business. He asked me to lunch one day looking for advice and encouragement.

Ten minutes after we sat down, I knew he was on the wrong track.

"Have you started to reach out to potential clients?" I asked. "No," he told me. "I'm taking it step by step. My plan is to work my way up in my current company to a point where I can afford to leave. Then I'll incorporate, get an office, and start searching for my first customers. I don't want to start meeting with potential clients until I can present myself as a credible PR person with my own firm."

"You've got it totally backwards," I told him. "You're setting yourself up for failure."

My advice was to start finding future clients today. Had he thought about what kind of industry he wanted to specialize in? Had he thought about where the top people in that industry hang out? Once he could answer those questions, the next step was to go hang with this new circle of people.

"The most important thing is to get to know these people as friends, not potential customers," I said. "Though you're right about one thing: No matter how friendly you are, if the people you approach are any good at what they do, they won't hire you right off the bat to do their PR. Which is why you should offer your services for free—at least at first. For instance, maybe you can volunteer your time to a nonprofit organization they're involved in, or aid in publicizing a school fundraiser their kids are involved in."

"But won't my employer be angry at my expending so much energy on other things?" George asked.

"Doing good work for your employer comes first," I told him. "Finding time to manage your outside work is your responsibility. Concentrate on an industry that your present employer doesn't service. Remember, if you haven't done the necessary legwork on the day you decide to open your own business, you'll be back at your old job in no time flat."

"So I should work for these people for/ree?"

"Absolutely," I said. "Today you are unproven, and breaking in is tough. Eventually you'll have a growing circle of people who have seen your work and who believe in you. That's the kind of connections you're looking to create if you're going to start a business, or if you're looking to change jobs or careers."At some point, while you're still working for your current employer, start looking to turn one of your contacts into a real, paying client. Once you've got an established client that will provide references and create some word-of-mouth, you're halfway home. Then, and only then, is it time to go back to your company and ask to go half time, or better yet, turn them into your second big client. If you quit at that point, you've hedged your bets. You have a group of people who will help transition you into a new career."

The last half hour of our lunch was spent thinking about all the people he already knew who could help him get started. I offered a name or two from my own network, and George's confidence started to soar. I'm confident that now, when he reaches out, his interactions won't be tainted by desperation. He'll be looking for ways to help others, and everyone can benefit from a little bit of that.

The ideas behind starting a business aren't that different from the ideas that will make you a hot commodity within your company—not to mention give you job security. I know that's hard to believe given the current job environment. According to a recent study of business school programs, the percentage of MBAs in 2004 who were without a job three months after graduation tripled from the year before to an alarming 20 percent. Scores of people are out of work or living in dread that the ax will fall on their heads. A blizzard of pink slips has convinced job seekers that they must do more than scan the help-wanted ads or send resumes.

Too often, we get caught up efficiently doing ineffective things, focusing solely on the work that will get us through the day. The idea isn't to find oneself another environment tomorrow—be it a new job or a new economy—but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.

Creating such a community, however, is not a short-term solution or one-off activity only to be used when necessary. The dynamics of building a relationship is necessarily incremental. You can only truly gain someone's trust and commitment little by little over time.

Right now, there are countless ways you can begin to create the kind of community that can help further your career. You can: (1) create a company-approved project that will force you to learn new skills and introduce you to new people within your company; (2) take on leadership positions in the hobbies and outside organizations that interest you; (3) join your local alumni club and spend time with people who are doing the jobs you'd like to be doing; (4) enroll in a class at a community college on a subject that relates to either the job you're doing now or a job you see yourself doing in the future.

All of these suggestions will help you meet new people. And the law of probability ensures that the more new people you know, the more opportunities will come your way and the more help you'll get at critical junctures in your career.

My first year in business school, I started consulting with my friend Tad Smith, who is now President of the Media Division at the large magazine publishing company Reed Business Information. The idea wasn't to create a sustainable consulting company that we would run after school. Instead, we wanted to offer our knowledge and work ethic to small companies for cut-rate prices. In exchange, we'd learn about new industries, gain real-world skills, and have a list of references and contacts when we graduated, as well as make some ready cash.

What about the world you inhabit right now? Are you making the most of the connections you already have?

Imagine, for a moment, that all your family and friends and associates are a part of a garden. Take a stroll through that relationship garden. What do you see?

If you're like most people, you see a tiny parcel of cleanly cut grass that represents the usual suspects of an ordinary Rolodex. It consists of your immediate friends, coworkers, and business partners: the most obvious people.

Your real network, however, is an overgrown jungle with an infinite variety of hidden nooks and crannies that are being neglected.

Your potential for connecting is at this moment far bigger than you realize. All around you are golden opportunities to develop relationships with people you know, who know people you don't know, who know even more people.

There are a number of things that you can do to harness the power of your preexisting network. Have you investigated the friends and contacts of your parents? How about your siblings? Your friends from college and grad school? What about your church, bowling league, or gym? How about your doctor or lawyer or realtor or broker?

In business, we often say that your best customers are the customers you have now. In other words, your most successful sales leads come from the selling you've already done. The highest returns don't come from new sales; they come on top of the customer base you've already established. It's easiest to reach out to those people who are at least tangentially part of your network.

The big hurdles of networking revolve around the cold calls, meeting of new people, and all the activities that involve engaging the unknown. But the first step has nothing to do with strangers; you should start connecting with the people you do know.

Focus on your immediate network: friends of friends, old acquaintances from school, and family. I suspect you've never asked your cousins, brothers, or brothers-in-law if they know anyone that they could introduce you to to help fulfill your goals.

Everyone from your family to your mailman is a portal to an entirely new set of folks.

So don't wait until you're out of a job, or on your own, to begin reaching out to others. You've got to create a community of colleagues and friends before you need it. Others around you are far more likely to help you if they already know and like you. Start gardening now. You won't believe the treasures to be found within your own backyard.

5. The Genius of Audacity

My father, Pete Ferrazzi, was a first-generation American, a Merchant Marine sailor in World War II, and an uneducated steelworker whose world was hard hours and low wages. He wanted more for me, his son. He and I were inseparable when I was growing up (his friends called me "re-Pete" because he took me everywhere with him). He knew I would have a better life if he could help me find a way out of our working-class heritage.

But my dad didn't know the exits. He'd never been to college. He knew nothing of country clubs or private schools. He could picture only one man who would have the sort of pull that could help me: his boss. Actually, the boss of his boss's boss's boss—Alex McKenna, CEO of Kennametal, in whose factory my dad worked.

The two men had never met. But Dad had a clear sense of how the world worked. He'd observed, even from the plant floor, that audacity was often the only thing that separated two equally talented men and their job titles. So he asked to speak with McKenna. McKenna, upon hearing the request, was so intrigued that he took the meeting. In the course of the meeting, he agreed to meet me—but nothing more.

It turned out that McKenna liked me—partly because of the way I had come to his attention. He served on the board of a local private elementary school, the Valley School of Ligonier, where all the wealthy families sent their children; by reputation it was one of the best elementary schools in the country. Strings were pulled, and Mr. McKenna got us an appointment with Peter Messer, the headmaster.

The day I enrolled in the Valley School, on scholarship, I entered a new world that set me on an entirely new course, just as my father had hoped. Over the next ten years, I got one of the best educations in America, starting with Valley School, then Kiski School, Yale University, and on to Harvard Business School. And it would never have happened if my father hadn't believed that it never hurts to ask.

As I look back on my career, it was the single most important act in my life. Moreover, the lesson I learned from my father's action, like no other, informed all that I have done since.

My father simply couldn't be embarrassed when it came to fulfilling his family's needs. I remember once we were driving down the road to our home when Dad spotted a broken Big Wheel tricycle in someone's trash. He stopped the car, picked it up, and knocked on the door of the home where the discarded toy lay waiting to be picked up.

"I spotted this Big Wheel in your trash," he told the owner. "Do you mind if I take it? I think I can fix it. It would make me feel wonderful to give my son something like this."

What guts! Can you imagine such a proud, working-class guy approaching that woman and, essentially, admitting he's so poor that he'd like to have her garbage?

Oh, but that's not the half of it. Imagine how that woman felt, having been given an opportunity to give such a gift to another person. It surely made her day.

"Of course," she gushed, explaining that her children were grown and that years had passed since the toy had been used.

"You're welcome to the bicycle I have, too. It's nice enough that I just couldn't throw it away..."

So we drove on. I had a "new" Big Wheel to ride and a bike to grow into. She had a smile and a fluttering heart that only benevolence breeds. And Dad had taught me that there is genius, even kindness, in being bold.

Every time I start to set limits to what I can and can't do, or fear starts to creep into my thinking, I remember that Big Wheel tricycle. I remind myself how people with a low tolerance for risk, whose behavior is guided by fear, have a low propensity for success.

The memories of those days have stuck with me. My father taught me that the worst anyone can say is no. If they choose not to give their time or their help, it's their loss.

Nothing in my life has created opportunity like a willingness to ask, whatever the situation. When I was just an anonymous attendee at the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland, I walked onto a hotel bus and saw Nike founder Phil Knight. Knight was like a rock star to me, given his extraordinary success at creating and building Nike, and the many marketing innovations he introduced over the years. Was I nervous? You bet. But I jumped at the opportunity to speak with him, and made a beeline for the seat next to his. Later, he would become YaYa's first blue-chip customer. I do this sort of thing all the time, whatever the situation.

Sometimes I fail. I've got an equally long list of people I've attempted to befriend who weren't interested in my overtures. Audacity in networking has the same pitfalls and fears associated with dating—which I'm not nearly as good at as I am the business variety of meeting people.

Sticking to the people we already know is a tempting behavior. But unlike some forms of dating, a networker isn't looking to achieve only a single successful union. Creating an enriching circle of trusted relationships requires one to be out there, in the mix, all the time. To this day, every time I make a call or introduce myself to people I don't know, the fear that they might reject me is there. Then I remember the Big Wheel my father got me, and push ahead anyway.

Most of us don't find networking the least bit instinctive or natural. Of course, there are individuals whose inherent selfconfidence and social skills enable them to connect with ease.

Then there are the rest of us.

In the early days at YaYa, I was worried for the company's survival. For the first time in my career, I had to reach out to a lot of people I didn't know, representing an unknown company, pushing a product that was untested in the marketplace. It was uncomfortable. I didn't want to cold-call executives from BMW and MasterCard and pitch them my wares. But you know what? Pushing to get into BMW was not that difficult when the alternative was laying off a bunch of my staff or failing in the eyes of my board and investors.

Mustering the audacity to talk with people who don't know me often simply comes down to balancing the fear I have of embarrassment against the fear of failure and its repercussions. For my father, either he asked or his family didn't have. For me, I either ask or I'm not successful. That fear always overrides my anxiety about rejection or being embarrassed.

Ultimately, everyone has to ask himself or herself how they're going to fail. We all do, you know, so let's get that out of the way. The choice isn't between success and failure; it's between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity.

For many people, the fear of meeting others is closely tied to the fear of public speaking (a fear that consistently beats out death as the one thing we dread most). Some of the world's most famous speakers admit to feeling similar anxiety. As Mark Twain said, "There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars."

The best way to deal with this anxiety is to first acknowledge that our fear is perfectly normal. You are not alone. The second thing is to recognize that getting over that fear is critical to your success. The third is to commit to getting better.

Here are a few things you can do today to make good on that commitment and get more comfortable at being audacious in social situations:

• Find a role model.

We're predisposed to seek out people like us—shy people tend to congregate with other shy people, and outgoing people congregate with outgoing people—because they unconsciously affirm our own behaviors. But everyone knows that one person within their group of friends and associates who seems to engage others with little or no fear. If you're not yet ready to take the big leap of addressing new people on your own, let these people help you and show you the way. Take them with you, when appropriate, to social outings and observe their behaviors. Pay attention to their actions. Over time, you'll adopt some of their techniques. Slowly, you'll build up the courage to reach out by yourself.

• Learn to speak.

Many businesses have responded to the nearly infinite number of people who recognize they need to become better speakers. These educational organizations realize you're not looking to give speeches to an audience of a thousand people (at least initially). Most people who come to them for help are looking to gain self-confidence and some trusty tools for overcoming shyness. They don't offer one or two simple quick-fix cure-alls. What they do offer is a chance to practice, in a nonintimidating environment, with an instructor who can guide and push you. There are hundreds of coaches and schools devoted to this type of training. One of the most well known is the Toastmasters Club. They're sure to have a local chapter in your area. It is a well-run organization that has helped millions of people hone their speaking skills and overcome their fears.

• Get involved.

You'll feel most comfortable when you're doing something you enjoy with others who share your enthusiasm. Any hobby is an opportunity to get involved: stamp collecting, singing, sports, literature. Clubs develop around all of these interests. Join up. Become an active member. When you feel up to it, become one of the leaders of the group. This last step is crucial. Being a leader in life takes practice—so practice! The possibilities for making new contacts and reaching out to others will grow and grow.

• Get therapy.

I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "He wants me to go to therapy to become better at talking to people?" Let me explain. One, I think merely acting on the desire to be better than you are now, no matter the venue, is a very important commitment. Two, some of the most successful people I know have been to a therapist at one point in their lives or another. I'm not suggesting therapy will make you a better people person, but it might help you address your own fears and social anxieties in a more productive way. Many studies funded by the National Institute of Mental Health report a high success rate using counseling to alleviate the conditions that normally inhibit a shy person.

• Just do it.

Set a goal for yourself of initiating a meeting with one new person a week. It doesn't matter where or with whom. Introduce yourself to someone on the bus. Slide up next to someone at the bar and say hello. Hang out at the company water cooler and force yourself to talk to a fellow employee you've never spoken with. You'll find that it gets easier and easier with practice. Best of all, you'll get comfortable with the idea of rejection. With that perspective, even failure becomes a step forward. Embrace it as learning. As the playwright Samuel Beckett wrote, "Fail, fail again. Fail better."

Fear debilitates. Once you realize there's no benefit to holding back, every situation and every person—no matter how seemingly beyond your reach—becomes an opportunity to succeed.

The Madam of Moxie

W h e n it comes to improving your speaking skills, no one is better than DeAnne Rosenberg, a thirty-two-year career counselor and owner of her own management consulting firm, DeAnne Rosenberg Inc. Rosenberg is the madam of moxie, and for good reason.

In 1 9 6 9 , she read a Wall Street Journal article that noted the absence of a female voice in the American Management Association.

"They were interviewing the then president of the A . M . A . , who was quoted as saying, ' W e haven't found a woman w h o can speak authoritatively in public about management,'" Rosenberg recalls.

She cut the article out and sent a letter to the A . M . A . telling them to look no further. Two weeks went by and her letter went unanswered.

"Well, that wouldn't d o , " she snaps. "I wrote another letter straight to the president, effectively telling them to put up or shut up."

Two days later, the president of the association called to say that they had scheduled her for a lecture. DeAnne went on to become the first woman to speak on behalf of the A . M . A .

The lesson from that fateful series of events remains with her: The recipe for achievement is a medley of self-assuredness, dogged persistence, and audacity. Encounters of the audacious kind, as DeAnne learned, are what successful careers are built upon. In her many years teaching others to overcome their fears, she's created a time-tested script that anyone can use when meeting someone for the first time.

I found the script helpful. I think it can help a lot of you as well, and I gratefully offer it to you here:

1. State the situation. "You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic," says Rosenberg. She made it clear to the A . M . A . that a) having no women speakers was w r o n g , and b) hiring her would be a step in the right direction. It makes sense that before you can speak persuasively—that is, before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand.

2. Communicate your feelings. We downplay the influence of emotions in our day-to-day contacts, especially in the business w o r l d . We're told that vulnerability is a bad thing and we should be w a r y of revealing our feelings. But as we gain comfort using "I feel" with others, our encounters take on depth and sincerity. Your emotions are a gift of respect and caring to your listeners.

3. Deliver the bottom line. This is the moment of truth when you state, with utter clarity, what it is you want. If you're going to put your neck on the line, you'd better know why. The truth is the fastest route to a solution, but be realistic. W h i l e I knew Phil Knight of Nike wasn't going to buy anything based on one fiveminute conversation on a bus at Davos, I did make sure to get his e-mail and tell him that I'd like to follow up with him again sometime. Then I did so.

4. Use an open-ended question. A request that is expressed as a question—one that cannot be answered by a yes or no—is less threatening. How do you feel about this? How can we solve this problem? Can we meet up again sometime soon? The issue has been raised, your feelings expressed, your desires articulated. With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you. I didn't insist on a specific lunch date at a specific time with Phil. I left it open and didn't allow our first exchange to be weighted down by unnecessary obligations.

6. The Networking Jerk

He is the man or she is the woman with a martini in one hand, business cards in the other, and a prerehearsed eleva-

tor pitch always at the ready. He or she is a schmooze artist, eyes darting at every event in a constant search for a bigger fish to fry. He or she is the insincere, ruthlessly ambitious glad-hander you don't want to become.

The networking jerk is the image that many people have when they hear the word "networking." But in my book, this breed of hyper-Rolodex-builder and card-counter fails to grasp the nuances of authentic connecting. Their shtick doesn't work because they don't know the first thing about creating meaningful relationships.

As I learned the hard way.

If you knew me as a younger man, you may not have liked me. I'm not sure I liked myself that much. I made all the classic mistakes of youth and insecurity. I was pretty much out for myself. I wore my unquenchable ambition on my sleeve, befriending those above me and ignoring my peers. Too often people put on one face with their subordinates, another with their boss, and another one yet with their friends.

When I became responsible for marketing at Deloitte, I suddenly had a lot of people reporting to me. I had some very big ideas about what I wanted to do—things that never had been done from a marketing standpoint in the world of consulting. And now finally I had a team with which to execute them. But instead of viewing my employees as partners to be wooed in achieving my long-term objectives and theirs, I saw them as called upon to carry out my tasks.

Add to this my young age (I was twenty years younger than any other member of the executive committee), and you can understand why the resistance among my staff was holding all of us back. Tasks that I thought should have taken hours ended up taking days. I knew I needed to do something, so I reached out to an executive coach, Nancy Badore, who had been coaching highlevel CEOs before there was a name for such a thing.

The day of our first meeting, sitting in my office, we barely had a chance to exchange pleasantries before I blurted out, "What do I need to do to become a great leader?"

She looked around my office for a few moments and said nothing. When she finally spoke, it struck me to the core. "Keith, look at all the pictures on your wall. You talk about aspiring to become a great leader, and there's not one picture in your whole office of anybody but you: you with other famous people, you in famous places, you winning awards. There's not one picture in here of your team or of anything that might indicate what your team has accomplished that would lead anybody like me to know that you care for them as much as you care for yourself. Do you understand that it's your team's accomplishments, and what they do because of you, not for you, that will generate your mark as a leader?"

I was floored by her question. She was absolutely right. Had I shown the genuine concern I had for the lives my employees led outside of work? Why hadn't I made an effort to make them part of the leadership? I'd been doing it with my bosses from day one.

I realized then my long-term success depended on everyone around me. That I worked for them as much as they worked for me!

Politicians understand this in a way too few executives grasp: We vote for the people we like and respect. Great companies are built by CEOs who inspire love and admiration. In today's world, mean guys finish last.

My friend and author Tim Sanders taught me there are two reasons for the end of the era of mean business. First, we live in a new "abundance of choice in business" in everything from products to career paths. Choice spells doom for difficult colleagues and leaders. "At a time when more of us have more options than ever, there's no need to put up with a product or service that doesn't deliver, a company that we don't like, or a boss whom we don't respect," he writes. The second reason is what he calls the "new telegraph." "It's almost impossible for a shoddy product, a noxious company, or a crummy person to keep its, his, or her sad reality a secret anymore. There are too many highly opinionated and well-informed people with access to e-mail, instant messaging, and the Web."

The bottom line is if you don't like someone, it's easier than ever to escape him. When you don't have others' interests at heart, people will find out sooner rather than later. Our culture demands more of us these days. It demands that we treat each other with respect. That every relationship be seen in mutually beneficial terms.

When you look back upon a life and career of reaching out to others, you want to see a web of friendships to fall back on, not the ashes of bad encounters. Here are a few rules I can suggest from personal experience to ensure that you never become a Networking Jerk:

1. Don't schmooze.

Have something to say, and say it with passion. Make sure you have something to offer when you speak, and offer it with sincerity. Most people haven't figured out that it's better to spend more time with fewer people at a one-hour get-together, and have one or two meaningful dialogues, than engage in the wandering-eye routine and lose the respect of most of the people you meet. I get e-mails all the time that read, "Dear Keith, I hear you're a good networker. I am, too. Let's sit down for fifteen minutes and a cup of coffee." Why? I ask myself. Why in the world do people expect me to respond to a request like that? Have they appealed to me emotionally? Have they said they could help me? Have they sought some snippet of commonality between us? I'm sorry, but networking is not a secret society with some encoded handshake practiced for its own virtue. We must bring virtue to it.

2. Don't rely on the currency of gossip.

Of course, using gossip is easier. Most people lap up such information. But it won't do you any good in the long run. Eventually the information well will run dry as more and more people realize you're not to be trusted.

3. Don't come to the party empty-handed.

Who are the stars of today's Internet world? Bloggers. Those freewheeling cybernauts who set up sites and online journals to provide information, links, or just empathy to a community of like-minded individuals. They do it for free, and they're often rewarded with a devout following of people who, in return, offer as much as they receive. It's a loop. In connecting, as in blogging, you're only as good as what you give away.

4. Don't treat those under you poorly.

Soon enough, some of them will become "overlings." In business, the food chain is transient. You must treat people with respect up and down the ladder. Michael Ovitz, the famed Hollywood superagent, was said to be a master networker. A scathing and relatively recent Vanity Fair profile, with dozens of anonymous and not-soanonymous sources taking shots at the man, was a very public expression of a dazzling career that had gone somehow horribly wrong. People asked what happened? Ovitz has some amazing interpersonal skills, but he wielded them disingenuously. People he no longer needed he treated with indifference, or worse. It wasn't surprising that these same people not only reveled in, but may have also contributed to, his fall.

5. Be transparent.

"I am what I am," the cartoon character Popeye used to say. In the information age, openness—whether it concerns your intentions, the information you provide, or even your admiration—has become a valuable and much-sought-after attribute. People respond with trust when they know you're dealing straight with them. At a conference, when I run into someone I've been dying to meet, I don't hide my enthusiasm. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I've admired your work from afar for quite some time and been thinking how beneficial it might be if we could meet one another." Coy games may work in a bar, but not when you're looking to establish a deeper, more meaningful connection.

6. Don't be too efficient.

Nothing comes off as less sincere than receiving a mass e-mail addressed to a long list of recipients. Reaching out to others is not a numbers game. Your goal is to make genuine connections with people you can count on.

I'm embarrassed by the way I learned this lesson. I had always heard that sending out holiday/New Year's greeting cards was a good idea. So I began a practice when I graduated from Yale to send a holiday card to everyone in my contact database. By the time I was at Deloitte, that list was thousands of people long and I was hiring temp help to address and even sign the cards at year's end. Well, we all can see this coming. The intention was good enough until a college roommate noted (actually gibed) how appreciative he was to get not one but actually three cards one year . . . all with different signatures. It's not about mass, it's about a real connection.

If you're not making friends while connecting, best to resign yourself to dealing with people who don't care much about what happens to you. Being disliked will kill your connecting efforts before they begin. Alternatively, being liked can be the most potent, constructive force for getting business done.

CONNECTORS' HALL OF FAME PROFILE Katharine Graham (1917-2001) "Cultivate trust in everyone."

Tragedy transformed Katharine Graham from wife to publisher overnight. She took over the Washington Post in 1 9 6 3 after the death of her husband, Philip Graham. Her shy and quiet demeanor seemed unfit to deal with the demands of one of the most important newspapers in the country. Graham proved everyone w r o n g . She helped to build one of the great newspapers and most successful businesses in America. During her era, the Post published the Pentagon Papers, took President Nixon head-on over Watergate, and ruled Washington's political and media scene in a style that was inimitably her o w n .

In fact, it was this style that is her most lasting legacy. Running the Post with compassion, kindness, and sincerity, Graham became a powerful figure. Graham's influence gave her an ability to empower others—from the highest echelons of society to its lowest—with a sense of dignity and respect.

Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote the following a few days after Graham's funeral:

On a beastly July Sunday some years a g o , I returned to Washington from the beach and took a taxi to the parking garage across the street from the Washington Post where I kept my car. A tent had been erected on the Post's own parking lot. It was for a company party, given for people whose names you never hear—those un-bylined, non-TV-appearing types who take the ads or deliver the paper or maybe just clean the building. In the heat, I saw Katharine Graham plodding toward the party.

She was old by then, and walking was difficult for her. She pushed her w a y up the ramp, moving in a laborious fashion. She had a farm in Virginia, a house in Georgetown, an apartment in N e w York a n d , most significantly that hideously hot day, a place on the water in Martha's Vineyard. Yet here she was—incredibly, I thought—doing the sort of thing vice presidents-for-smiling do in other companies.

Analyze the life of Katharine Graham, and one inescapable theme emerges: Despite a lifetime free from financial worry, and a social status bordering on royalty, she made friends with everyone—not just those w h o could assist her newspaper or augment her position within the Beltway.

Most reports on her funeral mentioned celebrity names like Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Tom Brokaw. But you don't have to do much heavy lifting before you find an extensive list of non-celebrity attendees. Here's a sampling:

• Irvin Kalugdan, a Fairfax County special-education teacher who founded a student break-dancing team with a $ 3 5 0 Washington Post grant

• Rosalind Styles, from the Frederick Douglass Early Childhood and Family Support Center, for which Graham had helped raise money

• Henrietta Barbier of Bethesda, a woman retired from the Foreign Service, belonged to a weekly bridge club of about sixty women at the Chevy Chase Women's Club. She said Graham never missed a session: "She was bright about the game, and she took lessons, and she was serious."

All of which reveals an inner truth about the skill of reaching out to others: Those w h o are best at it don't network—they make friends. They gain admirers and w i n trust precisely because their amicable overtures extend to everyone. A widening circle of influence is an unintended result, not a calculated aim.

Graham's relationship with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, more than anyone, highlighted her flare for friendship qua friendship, as opposed to friendship for ulterior purposes.

On the surface, the two seemed the unlikeliest of pals: After all, the crucial moments of Graham's career were stunning blows to Kissinger's. First, in 1 9 7 1 , there was Graham's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, confidential documents detailing the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A year later the Post, at Graham's behest, began its Watergate investigations. Both led to the embarrassment of the Nixon administration in which Kissinger served.

Yet there was Kissinger, the first speaker to eulogize Graham at her funeral. He and Graham frequently attended movies together.

How did Graham form such an alliance, such a friendship? How did she create connections with everyone from anonymous teachers to the world's most famous and powerful? By knowing her boundaries and cultivating trust in others; by being discreet; by the sincerity of her intentions; by letting the other person know she had his or her best interests at heart.

In an interview with C N N , Kissinger remarked: "It was a strange relationship in the sense that her paper was on the opposite side from my views very often, but she never attempted to use our friendship for any benefit for her newspaper. She never asked me for special interviews or anything of that k i n d . "