Tresaca Hamilton @tresaca: Did you start having networking lunches with wealthy people b4 or after u became wealthy? Thanks!
Answer:
No, I was always wealthy when I networked. Not in money but in ideas. No random person wants to have lunch with you. Nor do they care if you pay for the lunch. What the random person needs is an idea or a connection that will make their life better or that will make them more money. I prepare at least 1-3 hours before any lunch I have with a new person.
So have wealth in ideas. This is the greatest thing you can offer someone. Before I ever meet someone, and this counts for the last 20 years of having lunch with people, I prepare ideas that I think will help them. I try not to think of how they can help me. If I help them, I know that sometime in the future they will help me. Networking is not about drawing a giant graph on your whiteboard of all the people you are connected to, and who they are connected to, and so on down the chain.
Networking is about who you have given to without any expectation in return. The entire world is like this quantum bank of probabilities. If you increases someone’s probable chance of success, then you have just increased your quantum net worth in this bank. Eventually you will be able to cash that in. Not necessarily in money. Not necessarily in a new job. But you will be able to cash it in. In the world of infinite possibility. It will be wonderful.