What are the top three activities should I do daily to grow my connections with the high net worth individuals?
Answer
There's a story from my Billionaire next door friend, when I asked if he had to start over from scratch what he'd do. He replied that he'd take any job to make $500, buy a nice suit, then go to parties where he'd meet successful people. The implication being that he would meet someone who'd offer him a job, share an opportunity, or share ways of creating wealth, etc.
With over 50 years of experience with people, and of the half a dozen career changes and three different businesses, I can say they all came to be through networking. Only the first job came out of applying to a job listing.
How to network…
Networking isn't something you just go out and do. It's immensely more effective if you have simple people skills. And when I say simple, I mean spend a couple hours reading Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Read that and try it out at a party and you'll be blown away by how effective it is. And see how it works after meeting and talking with a few people and asking them about themselves, how they'll want to help you, without you asking them for help.
When at a party, introduce your-self, shake the person’s hand firmly, look them in the eye and say” I’m so glad to meet you”. Move on to the next person. After you have introduced yourself to a dozen of important looking people and none of the person involved engaged you in a conversation… just move-on. After half an hour, revisit the people you have introduced yourself to and ask one simple question, "So tell me about what you do."
That simple question results a huge increase in leading conversations that you can direct towards what you want. Notice, you didn't ask people, "What do you do?" There's a subtle difference. If you ask the latter, many people will just tell you in a few words what they do. If you ask the former, it's an invitation for them to tell you their story. Few people will turn that down.
Here’s my story…
At one point early in my career, I was looking for business opportunities and wasn’t that interested in my day job as project engineer in the nuclear power construction. I wanted to make more money and get into the business side of things (this was around 1978). I spent nearly one year relentlessly looking for business opportunities, applying for executive level jobs, writing cover letters, researching companies… but with no success. I was doing it all wrong.
One night, my wife asked if I wanted to go to a house party. Sure, no problem. We went. I didn't know a single person there. It wasn’t too long before I had a few people gather around listening to my jokes and stories. My jokes were funny and stories were about cutting edge breeder reactor nuclear technology. After sometime, the crowd thinned and people moved-on to get their refreshments and freshen-up their drinks. I wandered back to the kitchen to get a beer. There was one other guy in the kitchen and I introduced myself. We talked for a while; I asked him what he did. He said he worked for a public utility in nuclear fuels department. However, his passion was in stock investing and one of the hot companies he recently discovered was Apple Computers. I mentioned I was looking to get into the business and PC computers offered challenges but also huge opportunities. Well, that was the beginning of a partnership [in 1980] that resulted in our first IBM authorized computer store in Paramus, New Jersey.
People skills are very important…
There are dozens of ways to meeting high net-worth people and hundreds of paths to getting rich. And there are countless people who've gotten rich who are jerks, tyrants, manipulative, conniving, and all around asset holes. When you're working in different industries, you'll start to feel that all the successful people are this way. But in reality, these are only the people who leave the most lasting impression, not because they're the only people who succeed.
But there's unlikely anyone successful out there, who wouldn't emphasize the value of people skills in succeeding.
So, to answer your question, do the following…
The High Level Activity:
1. Learn relentlessly. Read books for knowledge and books on success, people skills and anything that might have some inkling of a strand of wisdom about success and wealth. Especially read the biographies of successful people. In his autobiography, Mark Cuban talks about how he would buy and read any book on business that he thought might help. Drew Houston of Dropbox talks about how he would spend every weekend reading books on business, sales, and marketing, all day long. Every weekend.
2. Become a people person. This is a learnable skill or set of skills. No one is born a great salesperson. There may be people (like athletes) with better inborn abilities (outgoing, etc). But the best tend to learn, read, study, and practice. Relentlessly. A lot of times, those with the best given talent don't end up being the top in the field because at the start, it came easy to them. The ones that have to work at it work relentlessly and don't ever get complacent. And then one morning, they wake up and the effortlessness at sales or marketing or leadership that they never thought they would achieve, they now embody.
3. Work hard. Regardless of what you do─ job, business, relationships, or networking─ work hard to accomplish your goals. It's worth its weight in gold. Drop your expectations and ego, and put your nose to the grind and good things will happen.
4. Take risks. Regardless of what you do─ job, business, relationships, or networking─ take risk. Not dumb, fickle risks and not gambles. But smart, calculated risks where you have a good chance at succeeding. You won't always succeed, but you will learn a huge amount in the process and you will garner an enormous amount of respect from people in doing so.
5. Become an expert. Regardless of what you do─ job, business, relationships, or networking─ become an expert. Pick an area within your industry and learn it inside and out. Start writing answers on the topic in Quora, start a blog on the topic, network with other experts. You'll find pretty quickly that this type of knowledge and expertise will lead to a huge array of options… and meeting high net-worth people is just one of them.
6. Finally, start a company. When you’re in a business and become successful, you’ll meet lots of high net-worth people in your life. Name a billionaire who didn't start a company and made lots of high net-worth connections. Yes, there are a few who did not start a business, but they ended up running the company they joined (Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Ballmer, Eric Schmidt).
Don't look at the most successful people and companies and see where they ended up or you'll be overwhelmed. Look where they started and you'll see how it's achievable.
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