We also asked a question that was used in the manuscript in various places: “Has networking played a role in your success?” We got some interesting findings when we cross-tabulated these two questions. We expected casual contact and referral networks to do fairly well, and they did. We were surprised, however, by some of the other results in the survey.

Online networks did very poorly, with only 27% of the respondents saying that networking has played a role in their success! Women’s business organizations did even worse, with 17.7%; and service clubs came in last, with only 17.2% of the respondents saying that networking played a role in their success.

Face-To-Face Preferred

What does this mean? Overall, people who got the most results from their networking efforts seem to participate in “face-to-face” casual contact networks such as a Chamber of Commerce, referral networks like BNI and, to a lesser extent, professional associations (such as any professional body or society representing a particular industry), while the success of online networks, women’s business organizations, social/business groups and service clubs rated very low.

Even though they didn’t fare well in this survey, I’m actually quite an advocate of online networks, women’s business organizations, and service clubs – and I will continue to be so. I thought about the results of the survey, and why these groups received such low percentages compared to casual-contact and referral networks.

I’m inclined to believe that the women’s organizations and service clubs didn’t do as well because each has another important purpose that takes precedence over networking. Women’s business organizations often provide a place where members both support and educate each other. The mission of service clubs focus primarily on providing service to the community, with networking opportunities being more of a “by-product.” With groups like these, tangible success in members’ networking efforts is much more subtle, and that may be one of the main reasons why they didn’t do as well in the survey.

Because I was really surprised by the results, I spent a lot of time thinking about online networks and their disappointing standing in the respondents’ ranking of successful networking efforts. The results are in line with a comment that I hear quite often by business owners who have begun to market their businesses via the growing number of online social and business networking sites: “I’ve got a profile page and a thousand connections…now what?”

Many entrepreneurs jumped on the “social media marketing” bandwagon and spent a lot of time and effort building their online social capital (through LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends and “likes”, and Twitter followers), but without an actual plan of how to turn this growing number of contacts into actual customers. This is one area many entrepreneurs struggle with as online networking continues to come into its own.

Another issue is that the addition of Internet marketing (including online networking) has exponentially increased the number of marketing messages that the average person sees each day – to literally tens of thousands. While online – whether chatting on Google Talk, or looking at friends’ photos on Facebook, watching a celebrity’s Twitter feed, learning about a connection’s promotion on LinkedIn, reading a blog for business or pleasure, or doing an internet search – a person is inundated with countless entreaties such as:

Read this!

Buy this!

Try this!

Connect with me!

Like my business!

It’s easy to get distracted by these messages, particularly because those who have the time, staff, or money to put out the most messages tend to drown out any messages from smaller businesses or single individuals also trying to get their messages to be “heard.”

As I’ve already mentioned, I like online networking. We may someday figure out how to make it work even better; however, the results are the results and – still a surprise to me – they’re not very good. I certainly don’t think that entrepreneurs should stop finding ways to improve their success in the online networking arena. However, as we have learned in our recent multi-national study, online networks still have a way to go before they can begin to compete with the effectiveness of the more traditional, face-to-face networking opportunities available.

Called the “father of modern networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. His newest book, Networking Like a Pro, can be viewed at www.IvanMisner.com. Dr. Misner is also the Sr. Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company.

Now, everyone knows the Amazon review system is flawed. Friends weigh in on authors’ books and bestow five stars to build up their rankings. Enemies try to drive them down by giving just one. Just as critics can have a personal vendetta (or affiliation) that can mar their impartiality (as if a critic is ever impartial),the Amazon “reviewers” are often driven by something other than a wish to convey their disinterested thoughts on something they’ve read.

But what are you going to do?

People actually rely on reviews on Amazon. They have little choice. The amount of review space in newspapers that’s devoted to books has shrunk considerably over the last few years. Compared to Britain, which still has lively, informed coverage of books of all sorts in newspapers and magazines, and to France, which continues to devote hours of television time to authors and their works, book coverage in the United States is, at best, limited. Television broadcasting of books is almost unthinkable in this country, where television bookers don’t care about a book, any book, unless it’s been written by a reality-show celebrity or actor who dishes the dirt, or unless it’s an exposé of some sort that purports to reveal hidden truths about the government or politicians. Or the Mayan apocalypse in 2012.

People used to rely on their local bookseller’s recommendations. But with fewer bookstores, and less personal service, people turn, for better and worse, to Amazon, or to the reviews on Barnes & Noble. Or to the many sites devoted to books that provide personal recommendations.

But if you’re an author who’s built, or is building, a platform for your work and ideas, who’s reaching out to a growing audience thanks to the conversation you’ve been having with your readers, you can build your own network of followers, of fans, of “reviewers,” who will link to your site, appreciate your work, recommend your books. The necessity to follow, or rely on, Amazon’s reviewer system is lessened.

In the meantime, you’re building your own system. Amazon is perhaps the most powerful force in publishing today. But by building your own platform you’ve got a good chance to build power for yourself, your ideas and your books.

To work in the finance services industry, whether it be financial or estate planning or business financing, requires that individuals establish trust with their clients. A great deal of trust. The kind of trust that permits a person to disclose the nature of his or her worldly possessions to someone else, to follow that person’s advice and be guided by that person in making key personal and business decisions. Such decisions can resonate throughout one’s life.

Successful financial professionals traditionally have been required to invest years and years in establishing themselves and their brand, and in building trust. In the past, you didn’t get into the financial industry unless you were prepared to devote a good portion of your life to it. Eventually, if you were around for 20 years or so, people (and clients) probably figured that you’d been doing something right to last that long.

Networking

Becoming successful in financial services requires that you learn, understand and follow the core values of networking. Every business, even specialized ones such as equipment financing, can truly benefit from building a strong network based on competence, connections and accountability. But since trust is so keenly vital to financial services, it’s particularly relevant here.

Professional networking organizations such as Business Networking International (BNI) are based on the concept of “givers gain”: I give you business and you will reciprocate. At the heart of that is trust. Each person must trust the other to do the right thing, both with their intentions and capabilities. Business networking can accelerate the development of trust among our peers and networks because by following a system such as BNI’s, you will learn to develop targeted skills in the pursuit of new business opportunities. Skills that guide you in how to act, dress, what to say and to do the key things that will elevate the trust factor and your reputation much more quickly than if you waited for it to happen on its own.

A financial planner told me once he didn’t need to network because he had regular business referred to him by his old friends. I asked him how long did it take to develop his business and contacts and he replied, “Thirty years.” Who has that much time to build a network, let alone a business? Why not build the same devoted network on a much faster pace with highly predictable results?

A finance specialist or broker or any person in the financial industry can build his or her name and reputation with a consistent dedicated effort in few short years as opposed to the decades it use to take. This is a key consideration for any profession that requires a high trust factor to be successful.

Build a diversified network, develop trust within it follow-up with contacts and colleagues and connections on a regular basis and you can establish a foundation for long-term success. Business networking and financial services such as equipment financing are on the same side of success.

Lester M. Salvatierra is an experienced and licensed Finance Specialist with First U.S. Finance (http://www.FirstUSFinance.com). He helps small to mid-size companies lease or finance a wide variety of equipment and special projects nationwide. He is passionate about referral marketing and is a business networking coach and Area Director Consultant for Business Network Int’l in Ventura County, California. Sign up now to follow his business networking blog at: http://theRogueNetworker.com

There are a lot of strategies to advertise your business or your company, some good and many bad. As an advertising graduate, I would like to share with you some of the tips I learned from experience (I promise not to share the bad ones).  First tip: speak to the heart and the wallet will follow.

I’ve heard many people say that advertising just don’t work for them. It’s frustrating for marketers who have invested so much on advertising trying to find the best way to advertise and yet fail because they aren’t getting enough conversion from their ads (conversion refers to the people who “convert” from merely reading into actually buying your product or service).

If you want to know why your advertising has failed, then the question is, what is your advertising based on?  Is it based on facts or values?

In my opinion, facts can change every now and then but values are hard to change.  For a long time, many believed that the world was flat, but Columbus’s voyages (and those of many others in the age of exploration) changed those hard-and-fast “fact,” by proving that the world was, and is, round. A white shirt may become a colored one by soaking up dye. On the other hand, some facts, such as one plus one equals two, don’t change. Or sugar is always sweet and water is always wet.

Values, however, may actually be difficult to change.

Values change when a situation is altered. Our daily decisions in life are usually based on our values.  We decide to wake up, work and deliver with excellence because of the values taught to us from childhood onwards.  Values are hard to change because it is something that we have developed as we grow up.  Values become our habit.

When it comes to advertising, it is better to touch people’s values first before presenting the facts.

When you, as a businessman, are able to present the facts that influences the person’s values then you get a sure sale.  I’ve found this to be very effective in any product that I have sold in my 15 years of sales and marketing experience.  Indeed a good way to advertise!

Yesterday, Barnes & Noble announced a new turbocharged version of its Nook, priced at $249, the same size as the new Kindle Fire, with 1 gigabyte of RAM. It’s become more of a tablet than an e-reader, which is the trend among these gadgets.

We aren’t satisfied simply with reading anymore. We must have access to email. We must have a device with the ability to play embedded videos, movies, YouTube viral sensations and the like. We must have more.

Barnes & Noble has also further expanded the in-store space it devotes to displaying and selling its Nooks. The Nook has become an important part of the chain’s bottom line, maybe even more important than books themselves.

With the new Nook, the Kindle Fire, the iPad and other tablets or tablet-like devices, reading has become simply one option among many for the entertainment-starved consumer. These new and improved electronics come at a time when publishers are still trying to figure out how to capitalize on the power of the new media. So far there are only a few apps that feature books. Excellent ones include The Waste Land, devoted to the classic 1922 poem by T.S. Eliot. Good ones include On the Road, which enhances a bit the experience of reading Jack Kerouac’s groundbreaking 1957 novel.

These are classic works. But as for contemporary writing being published  now, mostly it’s available in e-book form, not app form, and any enhancement is perhaps a matter of type design rather than additional content. We haven’t yet gotten used to the notion of other things in e-books. Book marketing ideas are perhaps going to be part of how a book is delivered electronically. (Let’s hope they don’t come with book trailers, as do movie-rental DVDs.) But perhaps manufacturers believe that what the consumer wants is other things besides e-books.

What the new tablet-like e-readers provide is the gateway to what manufacturers truly believe consumers want: video. And, of course, email. The thing is, e-readers didn’t take off like they did because of video. They became popular because they offered books. But as tablets caught on, e-book manufacturers probably thought they needed to add more to compete and stay current. Even the simple Kindle of only a couple of years ago may seem quaint as we head into the holiday season. Devices change faster than ever.

It’s an interesting development among retailers. Big ones like Barnes & Noble and Amazon seem to be ahead of traditional publishers in trying to anticipate consumer needs (or create a consumer desire), while publishers are playing catch-up figuring out how to deal with a fast-changing reading (or viewing) landscape.

You may be preoccupied at the moment with how to create your book or how to find a publisher. You may want to think more about finishing your book and then how to make it pop out on an e-reader. Of course, you’ll have to act quickly: technology is changing faster than you can write.

I was in Hawaii enjoying the surf when, unbeknownst to me, the water became thick with Portuguese Men o’ War. Suddenly I felt a stinging sensation across my chest. I wiped my chest with my right wrist and arm and lifted my arm up out of the water. I saw the tentacles dripping off my arm and followed the tentacles with my eyes about eight feet away to the body of the Man o’ War. With mounting alarm, I shook the tentacles off my wrist back into the water and quickly swam out of the surf to the shore.

I ran up to the first hotel employee I saw, a cabana boy who was serving drinks to a sunning couple just off the pool deck and urgently exclaimed, “I think I’ve just been hit in the chest by a Man o’ War jellyfish!  What should I do??”

“Are you feeling any pressure in your chest?” he wanted to know.

“No, none at all,” I replied anxiously.

“Okay, okay, here’s what you need to do. Go on over to the market off the lobby and ask for some vinegar and meat tenderizer. You’re going to want to spray the vinegar onto your chest and then shake the meat tenderizer onto the same spot and rub it all around. You’ll be fine,” he assured me.

Well, I must say that I was less than impressed with this bizarre advice. The cabana boy was entirely too calm and offered what was entirely too easy a solution to be effective – not to mention that it was just plain strange. I figured he was doing a version of “let’s goof on the tourist,” so I moved on to ask someone else for help.

I spotted a hotel employee standing not too far off and gingerly jogged over to him, urgently repeating my exclamation, “I’ve just been hit in the chest by a Man o’ War jellyfish; what should I do?!”

He said, “Are you feeling any pressure in your chest?”  Oh boy, I thought, next he’s going to tell me to get some meat tenderizer!  I thought he was kidding, or maybe I was in a bad dream and just couldn’t wake up.

“No, I’m not feeling any pressure in my chest,” I reluctantly responded.

“Okay, then go over to the market off the lobby and ask for some vinegar and meat tenderizer.  You have to get that on your chest and rub it around and then you’ll be just fine,” he said reassured.  I felt anything but reassured.

By this time, I thought that maybe I better find someone who might really know what to do.  I headed up to the lobby, thinking that the hotel manager would be a good choice to get a straight answer from.

There at the front desk was a mature gentleman wearing a badge that read: “Hotel Manager.” Surely, I thought, this guy’s not going to “goof on the tourist.”  I walked up to him and repeated my mantra about the jellyfish strike.  He looked at me with grave concern and said, “Are you feeling any pressure in your chest?”

“No,” I replied, “I’m not feeling any chest pain.”

“OK, good,” he said.  “You need to go down the hall to the small market and get some vinegar and meat tenderizer and put them on one at a time and rub them thoroughly into your chest.”

Finally, I said what I’d been thinking all along… “You can’t be serious, right?”  This is a joke, right?”

“No.” He reassured me that this was not a joking matter. It was clear that I needed to proceed to the store immediately and apply that remedy.

I reluctantly trucked down the hall to the store just knowing that they were all back there laughing at the goofy tourist who was actually going to do a self-imposed “meat rub” on his chest.  I was sure they had some barbecue grill going for when I returned to the lobby all slathered up with vinegar and meat tenderizer.

I entered the small market off the lobby and started my search for char-grilled products when I started feeling short of breath.  Suddenly, very quickly and forcefully, I began to experience a crushing weight on my chest.  Was I having a heart attack?  Great!  I’m having a coronary after wasting so much time talking to members of the hotel staff, who were trying to get me to rub meat tenderizer on my chest.  I walked out of the store and staggered to the front desk, which by now was very busy with new guests checking in to the hotel.  I made eye contact with the hotel manager and almost immediately, dropped to the ground, clutching my chest, barely able to gasp “Man o’ War!”

What happened next was a total blur.  I seem to remember a small child yelling and pointing at me as I lay there in my bathing suit, gasping for breath.

“Look mommy, there’s a man on the floor.”  The mother said something about staying away from people who do drugs.  I looked over and tried to say no, not drugs – jellyfish! But all that came out was gibberish.

The paramedics rushed to the scene.  Finally, I was going to get the medical attention I needed. After determining what had happened, the paramedic opened his life-saving kit and I knew he was about to pull out a defibrillator.  I made my peace with God and I braced myself for the big jolt.  Instead, he pulled out – yes, you guessed it – vinegar in a spray bottle and some Adolf’s meat tenderizer!  He then proceeded to spray the vinegar and then sprinkle the meat tenderizer on my chest, and thoroughly rub the mixture around.  Within seconds, literally seconds, the excruciating pain began to subside. Within a couple minutes it was almost completely gone.

Simple and Effective

What I thought was a big “barbecue joke” on the tourist turns out to be a well-known cure for some jellyfish strikes.  You see, the meat tenderizer contains the enzyme papain, which breaks down the toxin proteins and neutralizes them.  It sounds too simple to be really effective, but it is, in fact, one of the best things to do in that situation.

Thinking back on it, I am amazed at how many people gave me the solution before I had to learn the hard way. Sure,who’s going to believe a cabana boy?  I mean, what does he know, right?  And the hotel employee – OK, maybe there’s the start of a pattern here but, I have a doctoral degree – I’m “smart,” and these guys have just got to be kidding me… right? And then the hotel manager as well… OK, I admit it, at that point there’s just no excuse. I should have figured out these guys knew what they were talking about and I did not.

I made one of the biggest mistakes that people in business make – I didn’t listen to the people who have experience. I assumed that I just had to know better… and the truth is, I didn’t know better.

There is nothing like experience. It beats education every day of the week. The only thing better is a combination of education and experience… or a willingness to learn from other people’s experience. There are many basic referral marketing and networking techniques that any good businessperson knows to be effective. They don’t try to look for something more complicated or involved, because they know from their own experience, as well as the experience of others, what works in business and what doesn’t work in business.

Throughout your life you may read things that seem too simple to be effective or may see ideas that you’ve heard before.  Don’t dismiss them.  Embrace them.  Although these ideas may be simple – they are not easy.  If they were easy, everyone would do them – and they don’t!  Great networkers learn from other people’s success.  So, go get that vinegar and meat tenderizer and learn from other “masters” that sometimes the simplest ideas can have the biggest impact.

Called the father of modern networking by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author.  He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI (www.bni.com), the world’s largest business networking organization.  You can read more of his material on his blog at www.BusinessNetworking.com.  Dr. Misner is also the Sr. Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company (www.referralinstitute.com)

When we hear the word networking, we immediately jump to the conclusion that this has something to do with meeting people, getting their numbers and email so we can take advantage of them – or at least in the back of our mind we think that way.

Many businesspeople struggle in this area because they fail to understand the real meaning of what business networking is.  So what is Business Networking, really?

In general, business networking is being able to leverage your business through your connections to other people in the same business or area of interest.  It is meant to bring a regular stream of business opportunities to you and help make you successful.  But why do many still fail?

Here are some reasons I believe why they fail:

Greed – Most of the reasons why people fail in their life is greed.  Someone told me that if you ‘want’ money, then you will soon lose it all; but if you ‘need’ money, you will soon earn it.  Greed is what made man fall in the Garden of Eden – he wants more.  Now I am not saying that we should be mediocre, but what I’m saying is that we must not do things because we want to gain more, even if we have to step on others.

WIIFM – This stands for ‘What’s-In-It-For-Me’.  My personal experience as a businessman tells me that it is easier to sell something if we use the ‘Pull-strategy’ rather than the ‘Push-strategy’.  When we push a product to the customer, they usually feel that we are only doing it because we want to get their money instead of helping add value to their lives through our product.

When we are able to present the value of something to someone, then we are using the ‘Pull strategy’.  It’s the same way with business networking, you have to show that you are a valuable asset to others rather than just thinking that they can add more money to your pocket.

Relationship – If I had to describe what is business networking in one word, that would be ‘Relationship’.  It is easier to add value to someone else’s life when we are building a relationship.  The downfall of every institution and business is that they fail to build relationship.  Relationship makes business networking genuine and thus gives you a steadier stream of business coming to you.

You cannot just build your business overnight; it takes time to build something.  If you really want to have a more stable business with long term effect, then you have to have the three components above. 

What is Business Networking? It is like building a house; you don’t build it on sand, but you build it on stable rock.

Are you building yours on the sand or on a rock?

A business college professor drilled into us that we should always “narrow our focus and stick to it.” Like many such business guidelines it made sense, but recently it really hit home.

I have friends in various businesses — health insurance, financial planning, mortgage lending, business consulting and a host of other professions — and in speaking to them over the last year, I’ve realized that each of us has approached, or been presented with, the opportunity to participate in projects or service requests that fall outside of our normal specialty. When business is less-than-full capacity, the first inclination is to take any business you can get your hands on. Why not? If you have spare time to do it then why shouldn’t you go after other similar types of business?

The issue is that when you do something outside of your core service, you’ve usually got a learning curve, which involves time. You can’t simply hang a new product on your shingle. You have to know and learn about it at some level to sell it with any competence. If you get enough of this same type of business, which initially did not fall in your main lineup of products, then you can perhaps consider making it one of your regular service offerings and you have automatically broadened your product business scope. Instead of just selling widgets A, B and C, now you have A, B, C, D and E to sell. If all of them are aimed at the same market group and they naturally blend in together you have a good mix. Nevertheless, you need to be aware that you now have five products instead of three. This will increase your marketing expense.

A friend of mine who’s a printer is a successful example of a good mix: He started with standard paper printing products and now offers specialty imprinted items, banners and even car wraps. The blend of related products has been profitable for him.

Pulled in Different Directions

A problem arises when you get requests from different directions that don’t speak to your core service or product or specialty. In the effort to get more business and satisfy more customers, you gradually become the jack of all trades and the master of none. Viewed from the outside, the perception will be that you cannot survive focused on one main thing so you have to do many and your integrity and reputation suffers.

One gentleman I’ve known for years offered financing for various projects, then he added merchant card services and a few months later he included home mortgage financing. Just recently in speaking with him, he justified his strategy by saying that if he offered enough services, then he wouldn’t have to say no to anyone. After that, he added immigration services in helping immigrants get properly documented. He was like the fisherman with 20 poles in the water. The problem was that each pole was in a different lake!

Here are 3 guidelines to avoid falling into the “I can do it all” category:

1. Identify your core services and products. What do you really want to do and what do you excel in? Identify your experiences and strengths and market only what you do best. If you are good at analyzing financial documents and think logically, then don’t try selling prepaid legal services or including them in what you do. Solidifying an “elevator pitch” will help you narrow your focus because if you can’t state your core business in a couple of sentences, then you either don’t know what your focus is or you’re spread too thin. Become the specialist and avoid becoming the generalist.

2. Learn to say “no.” If you spend enough time networking, you’re going to be approached to add some service or market some product or perhaps add a new feature to your core business. Be firm in letting people know you are only focusing on your core expertise. Even attending an information seminar on something that doesn’t fit within your business model or area of service is a waste of time. Discipline yourself to stay on track.

3. If you feel inclined to add a new service, then always test-market it, and add no more than one new service at a time. By adding only one element, you keep your test phase manageable and, more importantly, you do not appear to be flaky and jumping around from service to service to your clients. Your goal is to always add another service that will help your clientele and improve what you already do for them. The test phase will also help you evaluate if there is a sustainable market for your new product or if it will appeal only to a few additional clients.

In the interest of efficiency, you don’t want to pursue a tiny market with little growth potential. In a sluggish economy, people scramble to make ends meet and tend to accumulate more “add-ons” to their standard product line. On the surface, this seems fine, but it will distract and take away time and effort from your core strengths.

During slower periods, it makes better sense to re-focus on and improve your main business. What can you do to boost your main services and what new markets can you penetrate? Can you partner with an adjunct business to pool a marketing strategy? These are all questions you should be asking yourself to keep your core business intact and on target.

Lester M. Salvatierra is an experienced and licensed Finance Specialist with First U.S. Finance. He helps small to mid-size companies lease or finance a wide variety of equipment and special projects nationwide. He is passionate about referral marketing and is a business networking coach and Area Director for Business Network Int’l in Ventura County, California. Sign up now to follow his business networking blog at: http://theRogueNetworker.com

And I bought in to what he was saying…hook, line and sinker.

As it turns out, I worked on my doctorate in some pretty impressive company. One classmate became the Deputy Director of the FAA; another the Director of Library Services for all of Los Angeles County. I even attended classes with the Captain of the Palace Guard for Saddam Hussein!

The sad news is, though, that I’ve never actually passed a referral to – or received one from – any of these high-level classmates. That’s right. Even though I founded, while working on my doctorate no less, what turned out to be the world’s largest networking organization, I never did utilize much of the “elite network” I was told I would have for a lifetime.

Why is that? Because even though the degree program certainly delivered the opportunity to meet valuable contacts, it never taught me the skills needed to utilize them. After graduation, we quickly spread out to realize the fruits of our labors, and outside of the classroom, we had no real context in which we could keep in touch.

Telling us that we had a great network, but not giving us the tools on now to capitalize on that network, was like telling someone there is a car out there but not giving him any idea of how to drive it!

In all fairness to my particular program, when I was an entrepreneur getting my graduate degree it was in the early- and mid-80s, and today’s tools – particularly social networking and other online services – weren’t readily available to allow us keep in touch. Today, however, there are a multitude of options to help you maintain the relationships you make while pursuing a college or university degree.

1. Take Advantage of Your School’s Alumni Services Department

Interestingly, colleges and universities have only recently realized this same thing: In order to increase and maintain alumni engagement long after graduation, it is vital to establish the connection with the alumni before they leave and spread out all over the country and around the world. They are doing this by creating networking “affinity” groups and other opportunities to get involved. These efforts help students sustain their relationships with each other and – through this – sustain their connections with their universities.

By remaining active with your alumni organization, you may also have the opportunity to share news about your business that may catch the eye of your fellow graduates. Because I kept my schools updated with what I was doing in business, I was given a full feature article in one undergraduate university I attended, and two features in another!

2. Technical Tools Do Much of the Work For You

With the constant moving around that everyone does today, people are making more contacts than ever…and it’s impossible to keep track of every valuable contact without the use of technical tools. For this reason, it’s vital to set up – and maintain – a database of the people you come in contact with.

In addition to the standard contact databases available in Microsoft Outlook or Apple Contacts, or the more robust contact management systems such as ACT, there are web-based contact storage systems that let you store your contacts in “the cloud.” You can do this in Gmail, MSN Live, Yahoo – or through your account in LinkedIn or Plaxo.  My favorite online system is www.Relate2Profit.com. They have elements that directly relate to someone’s networking efforts.

Don’t forget the amazing capabilities of smart phones to help you store important contact information. For example, there’s a new mobile app available for iPhone and Android phones called Go2Tag. This app literally allows you to create and apply customized “tags” to your contacts, so that you can remember who came from where, and where they’re from: university classmates, those you met at a particular chamber or other networking group, contacts you meet at trade shows…even those you make through church, civic groups, or your kids’ school or sports activities).

3. Online Business and Social Networks

Facebook was started at Harvard University, and now it’s morphed into an international network of people, from students to parents, from entrepreneurs to brands, from friends to families and more. I hear stories all the time about how adults have re-connected with classmates they haven’t seen in years. LinkedIn is the largest “business-only” social network, and you will likely find many of your former classmates on there.

These are just two of the many social networks available for you to connect and keep in contact.

As you can see, there are many tools available today for maintaining contact with former classmates; you decide which work best for you. The main thing is to maintain touch points with these potentially wonderful business contacts. You can’t just pick up the phone and ask for a favor out of the blue 10, 15 or 20 years later!

Called the “father of modern networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. His newest book, Networking Like a Pro, can be viewed at www.IvanMisner.com. Dr. Misner is also the Senior Partner of the Referral Institute, an international referral training company.

All three are valuable. But only one of them holds the keys to thriving in tough economies.

If you let the other two dominate, be prepared to struggle.

The visionary Entrepreneur asks, “How can we make/do this better? What is the market demanding?”

The pragmatic Manager asks, “How can we systemize this? How can we control the chaos?”

The hard-working Technician asks, “How can I get the Entrepreneur and the Manager to leave me alone so I can just do it how I want to?”

During recessions, cash isn’t king; innovation is king. The companies who adapt and shift resources the quickest crush slower but more capitalized companies.

“But trying new and different things is risky.”

Not nearly as risky as maintaining the status quo, crossing your fingers, and hoping that the economy will turn around.

“Think of risky undertakings as ‘experiments.’ Regardless of whether your experiment succeeds or fails, you’re going to learn something useful.” -Roy H. Williams

Change is Your Friend

The Entrepreneur faces reality and acts boldly. He’s never content with stagnation or mediocrity. He thrives on growth and creation.

But growth requires change, and Managers and Technicians detest change.

You’ve heard it before: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

Are you content with your current results? If so, stop reading this and get back to work.

If not, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wait for the stars to align? Are you going to let external circumstances dictate your results?

Or will you take charge and keep innovating until you figure out what works? What other option do you have?

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” -Winston Churchill

What Do You Have to Lose?

If your business is declining or simply maintaining, then what you’re doing isn’t working

So what do you have to lose? Money? You’re losing money already–and you’re only going to lose more the longer you wait.

This doesn’t mean you blindly throw stuff up against the wall and hope something sticks; innovation need not be reckless.

It means you set your box aside and brainstorm long and free to think in ways you’ve never thought before. It means you dig deep and analyze market trends. It means you execute, watch your data, then shift your strategies based on what the data tells you.

The Manager and Bean Counter in your head will warn, “Now, let’s not be hasty. Those new ideas don’t have a track record. We don’t know if they will actually work.”

Never let your skeptical Manager make strategic decisions when decline is imminent and change is required.

Put your Entrepreneur in charge. You may get a few scrapes and bruises along the way, but he won’t quit. He’ll pull you out of the wreckage of temporary failure time and time again. And eventually, you’ll succeed. It’s inevitable.

“The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. The energy behind every human activity. The imagination that sparks the fire of the future. The catalyst for change. The Entrepreneur lives in the future, never in the past, rarely in the present. He’s happiest when left free to construct images of ‘what-if’ and ‘if-when.’” -Michael Gerber

The “Box” is Your Enemy

We were recently in brainstorming mode while consulting with a company.

We threw out idea after idea after idea, only to be immediately shot down on each of them by one of the owners. She was in Manager mode, so she only saw all the reasons why we couldn’t do them.

Whether or not the ideas are feasible isn’t the main problem in this scenario. The problem is the endemic skepticism. The immediate discarding of any idea that’s even remotely outside the box.

Our question for the owners was, “Okay, if not all the ideas we’ve presented, then what? How will you grow? What are you willing to do differently than anything else you’ve ever tried? Because everything you’ve tried in the past isn’t working.”

What will make or break your business during recessions is how you make decisions.

Is your Manager making your decisions, or is your Entrepreneur?

By definition, Managers don’t use the thinking processes that instigate rapid, fundamental, and drastic change. Managers and Number Crunchers are highly creative when it comes to proving why ideas won’t work, yet astoundingly deficient when it comes to generating the ideas themselves.

This isn’t a criticism–it’s simply not their job to innovate. But when innovation is critical, you must learn to defer to your inner Entrepreneur.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” -Dr. Linus Pauling

Crush the Box

When the economy is great, you have the luxury of being comfortable. You no longer have that luxury.

If you’re not dedicating people, time, imagination, money, energy, and other resources to a growth strategy, either accept the reality that your results won’t change or start putting resources to innovation.

Managers and Technicians have their place, but to innovate and grow you need to put the Entrepreneur in charge.

“The Entrepreneur is our creative personality–always at its best dealing with the unknown, prodding the future, creating probabilities out of possibilities, engineering chaos into harmony.” -Michael Gerber

Ready to rock the new year? Buckle your Manager in the backseat. Put your Entrepreneur at the wheel. Slam on the gas pedal of innovation.

It’s going to be a wild ride.

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and writer with KGaps Consulting. His firm uses their methodology Hub Mentality to help small businesses generate more leads, sales, and referrals while making their marketing budget more efficient.

Stephen is the co-author of as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interactions as well as the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.