Effective networking is a lot like matchmaking.  As you are out and about meeting people, always be thinking about who they should know.  By taking a sincere interest in people and learning what kind of work they do, you will be able to refer people and resources to them.  You can always tell when you’re dealing with a good networker when they say, “You know, I need to introduce you to so and so.”  That differentiates them from a lot of people right there but the great networkers take it one more step.  They actually facilitate the introduction. Anyone can say that I need to introduce you to so and so, but the pros actually do it.  This may sound shocking, but so does the fact that people do things that they know are bad for them.  We all do this in different areas of our lives.  We’re all hypocrites …

We never outgrow the need to have our feelings known.  When we meet people we need to remember that everyone likes to feel appreciated.  Whether the person is a white collar, blue collar or no collar worker, we are all so much more similar than we are different.  DNA has proven this.  I’ve heard that all humans are genetically 99% the same.  It’s the 1% difference that we tend to see and focus on.  Skin color, height, gender, hair or lack thereof…you know the drill.  I also recently heard that all life on earth is at least genetically 90% the same, whether you’re talking about a banana or a whale.  Well, I know some people that have much more in common with bananas than humans, but I digress. Much of the conflict in our lives can be explained by one simple fact: people don’t really listen to each other.  We …

There was a time in business when there was your personal life and there was your business life.  I think that most people would agree that those lives started to blur together a long time ago.  With the advent of Social Networking, the dividing line has completely evaporated for a lot of us.  Personally, I think this is a great thing.  We’re not talking about stalking here, we’re talking about transparency.  This is our opportunity to let people know that we’re not corporate drones and that we have souls and are compassionate.  Being a great businessperson, networker, or whatever and caring about people are not mutually exclusive. We need to remember that we’re not dealing with companies, corporations, institutions and son on – we’re dealing with people.  It’s easy to forget that sometimes, especially when you’re in line at the DMV and places like that.  We feel like we’ve become …

We become like the people we associate with.  This is true whether we’re five or fifty-five.  There are certain kids that we don’t want our kids to hang around with.  The reason for this is because we intuitively know that we become like the people we associate with and we don’t want our kids becoming like “those kids”.  So, at what age does that change?  It doesn’t.  Adults are just kids with long, hairy legs.  Just like little kids, we become like the people we associate with.  Knowing this, it may serve us well to choose to associate with positive, uplifting people.  I’m not talking about hanging around with people that are in denial that there is crap in the world; just people who choose to focus on the positive.  Everyone has crap in their life and anyone who tells you that they don’t needs a checkup from the neck …

There are a lot of strategies and techniques that are proposed to break people’s attention and get them to focus on us and our message.  I find that most of these maneuvers are very self-serving and pretty simple to see through.  I also believe that only every waking moment of our lives we are sending messages that I call “tells”.  In Vegas, a “tell” is a sign that you give off unintentionally regarding what you’re holding in your hand.  Actually, we give off “tells” all the time.  The question is whether we are aware we are doing this or not. Not to be sexist, women tend to pick up on tells more frequently than men.  Maybe it’s their intuition, or their experience in reading through a lot of b.s. from guys.  Who knows?  As guys, we often don’t realize that our body language, eye contact, intonation, listening, or lack of …

You would have to be Tom Hanks living on an island with a volleyball named Wilson not to know that Social Media is hotter than a blowtorch right now.  And while that’s all well and good, there are many, many people who seem to have forgotten that traditional networking still exists.  Actually, it’s stronger than ever for real networkers because the effective use of Social Media opens up tons of doors for traditional networking. Up until a few years ago, you never had to differentiate between “offline” and “online” networking.  Social Media/Networking has changed all that.  And while they may seem separate, in fact, they are far more alike than different.  The irony is that we are not networking “with” computers, but “through” computers.  And the best networkers move it offline as quickly as they can in order to develop true relationships with their networking partners. Organizations like BNI and …