The Boss of You

I just fin­ished read­ing “The 10 Secrets of a Mas­ter Net­worker” over at Inc.com — and before you gag on how cheesy that sounds, hear me out, because it’s kind of awesome.

There’s a lot in it I don’t relate to, because the sub­ject of the piece, Keith Fer­razzi, is a relent­lessly ambi­tious guy who has made it his sin­gu­lar goal in life to achieve the kind of suc­cess Emira and I are pretty skep­ti­cal of — the kind that comes with being a For­tune 500 CEO, a polit­i­cal big­wig, or some other kind of high-profile, high-income heavy hit­ter. How­ever, I found Fer­razzi com­pletely fas­ci­nat­ing, and I even dis­cov­ered a cou­ple of snip­pets of advice that I think are both bril­liant and applic­a­ble to just about any entrepreneur.

For starters, there’s this com­ment about main­tain­ing a diverse cir­cle of friends and connections:

The best sort of net­work­ing occurs when Fer­razzi can con­nect two peo­ple who don’t know each other. Which dri­ves home a sur­pris­ing impli­ca­tion: the strength of your net­work derives as much from the diver­sity of your rela­tion­ships as it does from their qual­ity or quan­tity. Most of us know the peo­ple within our own pro­fes­sion and social group, and lit­tle more. Fer­razzi makes a point of know­ing as many peo­ple from as many dif­fer­ent worlds as pos­si­ble. The abil­ity to bridge those worlds is a key attribute in man­agers who are paid bet­ter and pro­moted faster, accord­ing to an influ­en­tial study con­ducted by Ron Burt, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Grad­u­ate School of Business.

I’ve per­son­ally seen this in action, and in fact Emira is one of the most bril­liant exam­ples I know of. She’s for­ever mak­ing con­nec­tions between the var­i­ous worlds in which she trav­els, be it high-tech and DIY crafters, or mom­pre­neurs and non­prof­its. When you can be the go-to per­son peo­ple turn to when they need to meet just the right per­son in a field that’s out­side their usual realm, it becomes highly valu­able for them to main­tain their rela­tion­ship with you — which in turn has all kinds of good reper­cus­sions for your business.

I also enjoyed this bit about shar­ing your knowl­edge freely:

The care and feed­ing of con­tacts is a rel­a­tively new con­cept for the busi­ness net­worker. In Power! How to Get It, How to Use It, a 1975 self-help screed on the secrets to becom­ing a cor­po­rate chief­tain, Michael Korda advised that “mas­ters play­ers … attempt to chan­nel as much infor­ma­tion as they can into their own hands, then with­hold it from as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.” That is, 30 years ago old-style con­nec­tors attained power through a monop­oly of infor­ma­tion, whereas today peo­ple like Fer­razzi view the sys­tem as social arbi­trage, a con­stant and open exchange of favors and intel­li­gence. It’s a sort of career karma, too; how much you give to the net­work deter­mines how much you’ll receive.

I feel like we’re hear­ing this mes­sage more and more, but it still bears repeat­ing: Share what you know, and don’t expect an imme­di­ate tit-for-tat return on it. You’ll build up a rep­u­ta­tion as an expert and a source of good info, and peo­ple will turn to you when they need help.

I rec­om­mend read­ing the whole arti­cle, but I don’t think I’ll be fol­low­ing Ferrazzi’s lead when it comes to work-life balance:

Fer­razzi, who has no chil­dren but has been in a 10-year rela­tion­ship with another man, spends almost all his time work­ing. “I wake up around 5 or 6 in the morn­ing, and I go until 1 in the morn­ing,” he says. “Every free moment is a chance to E-mail or call some­one. But I don’t con­sider that work. That’s my true joy. I have bal­ance, but it’s my own ver­sion. My career and my community-service stuff have always taken a front seat to my per­sonal life. But, in a sense, that is my per­sonal life. There’s no dis­tinc­tion for me. Yes, I’d like to go to church more and med­i­tate more. And it’s been a while since I’ve taken a real vaca­tion. But do I feel like I’ve sac­ri­ficed any­thing? No.”

Although I admire the fact he’s clearly made a con­scious deci­sion about fus­ing his work & per­sonal lives, I know that wouldn’t work for me. I think I’ll be stick­ing with keep­ing a good chunk of time for myself (not to men­tion for sleeping!).

Oh, and while you’re over at Inc., you may be inter­ested in read­ing Mar­got Fraser’s “How I Did It” story; she’s the founder of Birken­stock, and an amaz­ing woman. We were for­tu­nate enough to meet her a few years back, and she’s one of the hum­blest and most delight­ful women I’ve ever met. She treated us like peers and was eager to learn from every­one she met. If I can remain that open into my eight­ies, I’ll be damn proud of myself.