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It’s Who You Know
Posted by Scott on 17th January, 2008 | 14 commentsToday I had the pleasure of seeing President Bill Clinton speak at the Napa Opera House. The free event venue was supposed to hold 150 people, but 1,500 showed up, and I was #350 in line. Luckily, they decided to allow about 450 people inside, but I and others ended up in an overflow room, unable to see him speak, but able to hear the speech via loudspeakers.
If I didn’t have any connections, that’s where my experience would have ended. But as luck would have it, a close friend of mine works as an administrator at the Napa Opera House. Half way through the event, she pulled me out of the crowd of hundreds in the overflow room and took me to the main room where I got a great view of President Clinton’s speech and Q&A. Then, just before the speech ended, she took me out the back entrance, down a private elevator, and I was able to shake the president’s hand and wish him and Hillary well on their campaigning efforts, to which he replied “thanks”, which was awesome when you consider how inaccessible a person like President Clinton is.
On a similar note, a friend of mine recently asked me if I knew anyone who worked at a company that my friend wanted to do business with, because he needed to get a foot in the door. The company is owned by a well known billionaire CEO, whom I don’t know, and there’s no way that anyone could find his contact information anywhere. But I remembered that another CEO friend of mine knows that billionaire CEO, so I asked him for contact info and he’s sending it over this week. Soon, my friend, who runs a small high-tech consulting firm, will be hobnobbing with a well known billionaire due to that connection, which is something that he could not have accomplished on his own.
Making connections is almost always about a “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, kind of thing. Most people are more than willing to help you (or your friends and associates), because they know that they’ll be able to cash in the favor some day. This is a very powerful business tool at any level. You never know who you will need a favor from some day, so be nice to everyone, do business with as many different people you can (even if you just talk about the prospect of doing business with them and never actually do anything), and meet as many people as you can. Tradeshows/conferences are great for this, where you can schedule to meet lots of different people in your industry.
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Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 4:48 am and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Scott,
That is entirely the point of LinkedIn;-) If you connect to the 50 people you know and trust, and they continue to do likewise, you can find the key information with a search instead of calling around or bumping into people by chance.
The key is that you have to trust the person who’s asking enough to connect them to the other influential people you know. (and that isn’t going to happen for some random person who’s asked you to connect because they found your email address on the side of the road;-)
LinkedIn works, because it makes the process easier - to both find the right person, and to reach them through a web of trust.
And congrats on giving your friend the help - that’s another component of good networking: our willingness to help others first.
Linked-in is a great way to catalog your contacts and access 3rd parties who are contacts of your contacts. But you still have to network to build up your contacts list :).
I agree that it is who you know. Networking is huge. Building relationships is a great in many ways. Networking lightens up the hustle load and is more about strategy…
Former President Clinton isn’t “that” inaccessible. I have Chelsea in my cell contact list. Shh.
Heh well maybe he’s accessible to you if you know Chelsea :). The 6 secret service agents pushing back the crowd say that he’s inaccessible :).
That is exciting to see Clinton’s speech. I have never had the chance at an opprotunity like that. I need to start making some connections.
people love him. i guess cause he has that presence. Not sure if hearing his speech does anything for you tho. i guess for you networking point i understand. Networking is vital for any type of business. i think the best way to network is by introduction from a friend. the forced networking workshops such as conventions don’t work so well.
Cool!
Always nice to have a friend or two to help you out a bit.
Like “bloggernoob” already said, former president Clinton seems to have that aura when he gives a speech…
[…] Scott Wainner summarized it this way. Making connections is almost always about a “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, kind of thing. Most people are more than willing to help you (or your friends and associates), because they know that they’ll be able to cash in the favor some day. This is a very powerful business tool at any level. […]
Scott
You are obviously busy making money elsewhere, when you get a minute post on the blog and tell us about it.
All the best.
James
This reminds of a quote from Zig Ziglar:
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
I agree. very informative
Also, a very nice blog as well. Good photos.
Speaking of Bill Clinton:
It is opined that Bill Clinton committed racist hate crimes, and I am not free to say anything further about it.
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Y. Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are probably thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post.)
_________________
“If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.