If you’ve ever worked for a small business or for the sales organization of a large business, you’re no stranger to the importance of networking. Chambers of commerce thrive based on the reliance on a good networking event. Many small business owners spend 10-20% of their time on gala planning committees, at breakfasts, luncheons and happy hours. Trade expos and seminars are crawling with hungry salespeople and entrepreneurs. Seems like a lot of work though, huh? On the other side, this social networking craze is going on. In my experience, there’s way too much trash to hunt through to make any useful contacts, especially ones interested in business relationships.

Turning your career into a vocation requires that you find a way to make money doing something that you love. We still need to feed our families. Somehow we need to commercialize our passions. Finding the commercial component for what we enjoy is usually the easy part. It’s much harder to find knowledgeable people to mentor you, solicitous people to partner with, and wealthy people to buy your wares. Breaking free from the structure that enslaves us requires us to pull some strings.

Successful people know what they don’t know, and they always “have a guy for that”. I want to be successful, so I’m building my network of people who are not only experts at what they do, but love what they do as well. I’ve got writers, editors, musicians, designers, teachers, speakers, bit switchers, engineers, and ministers. Where do you fit in? I’m sure you do.

Here’s what I mean:

• Peter wants to start a small retail operation that sells just about everything. The catch is that he doesn’t have a clue how to find reasonable retail space, do his own bookkeeping or hire part-time employees — but he loves buying wholesale and knows his way around a print ad.
• Bill has been a corporate accountant for fifteen years. He loves the numbers, but can’t stand the bureaucracy, and wants to get out on his own. He can’t remember a thing from Marketing 101, and doesn’t have a clue how to set up a website. However, in addition to his accounting prowess, he’s a silent partner in a commercial real estate venture.
• Michael lives, sleeps, eats and breathes the web. He’s been running a successful small business with ten employees for six years. He’s up on graphic design, corporate identity, specialized web presence and applications. But he still needs that big contract to take his business to the next level.

Here’s the happily-ever-after: Michael serves as a mentor to Bill and Peter, Bill helps Peter with his books, Peter helps Bill with his marketing, Bill sets Peter up with retail space, and Peter and Bill support Michael’s business as customers and walking advertisements.

Unfortunately, Bill and Peter don’t know each other, and never will, because they haven’t rolled out their personal networks. So they remain at their local max until they stumble across this column.

By the way (shameless plug alert), I should mention that I’m in love with songwriting. I have no one in my network (yet) who commissions musical works, and don’t actually know any professional songwriters.

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