My wife, Beth, and I were in South Africa recently on safari at Camp Jabulani in the Kapama Reserve. Camp Jabulani has a beautiful suspension bridge between the main lodge and the guest suites. If you’ve ever walked over a suspension bridge, you know the feeling of the springiness under your feet as you walk. It was almost like wearing those Moon Boots I got for Christmas as a boy! As we made our way over the suspension bridge, we noticed pretty quickly that when we did not walk in sync, the bridge’s flex...

Are you looking for a networking approach that will help you save time and money?  Yes? . . . I had a feeling you’d say that. Source seeking is a great way to save time and money, increase your number of sources, discover some of your best sources and opportunities, and broaden your knowledge of your sources’ networks.  It involves contacting your prospective sources to identify people they know who can help you achieve a particular goal.  For example, you may ask a source to name someone who can help ...

I posted a blog this past Monday explaining what networkers need to know about the law of reciprocity, and I promised that I’d follow up today with some tips on what to keep in mind as you learn to use the law of reciprocity in your networking efforts. Below you will find four very important things to remember: Tip No. 1–Giving means helping others achieve success. What is your plan to contribute to others? How much time and energy can you spare for this? Do you actively seek out opportunities to help...

Networking is the kind of social and professional interaction that came naturally to businesspeople throughout most of this nation’s history, especially in smaller communities. But as villages grew into towns, towns into cities and cities into megalopolises, the sense of community and the close, personal business relationships that went with it gradually disappeared. The rise of large retail chains and multinational corporations, along with the demise of small businesses under the stiff price competition from t...

I had the privilege of attending the rollout of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo yesterday.  The spaceship rides under the center portion of the mother ship, called the WhiteKnightTwo (which I wrote about last year). The rollout had many special guests, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured at podium–last photo at bottom), Sir Richard Branson (pictured in second to last photo) and Burt Rutan (the designer of the spacecraft, pictured with me, here) . The plane will carry the spaceship and it...

People often think that networking is all about talking business and exchanging cards, but that’s a definite misconception. In a networking group, you should talk about more than just business. A referral relationship is more than just, “I do business, you do business, let’s do business.” A much better approach is to find common ground on a personal level, then relate your business to it. The longer I’ve been involved in networking, the more I’ve seen the power of personal interest...

The following article was written by my friend and partner in the Referral Institute, Mike Macedonio. I wanted to share it with you here because it mentions some very important points regarding asking for referrals. After you read the article, I’d really like to hear what you have to say in response, so please feel free to post a comment. Just Ask. Right? . . . No. By Mike Macedonio I was recently attending a BNI National Conference and there was a lot of effective networking going on. With the culture of ̶...

Today’s blog is a unique one because normally you only hear from me; but this entry, which talks about building relationships, was fittingly co-written with my wife Beth, the person in my life with whom I have the strongest relationship. This summer, our family took a multi-day, small ship tour of the Great Barrier Reef. The first night we noticed that the anchor being used to secure our small ship in the middle of the Coral Sea was quite small compared with the size of the ship. The second night we were anchor...

Experienced networkers know that the fastest way to expand and enhance their network is to regularly attend gatherings where networking takes place. Having many people with overlapping interests within arm’s reach facilitates the process of making connections based on mutual benefit. While flipping recently through Masters of Networking, a book I released back in 2000, I ran across an article contributed by my friends Cindy Mount and Jeremy Allen. The article outlines a great, six-part foundation for success at...