The Power of your Network

One of the most important assets in my career has been the people I’ve met: my network. Networking has long been recognized as a powerful tool for business people — so much so that there are entire workshops, books, and courses dedicated to helping people learn to network and meet new people.

A strong — defined as active, diverse and broad — network helps in several critical areas. If you don’t have an answer, someone you know (or someone they know) can help you find it. Networking is important throughout your career to find new roles: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Yale University report that 70 percent of all jobs are found through networking. And the people you know provide emotional support to uplift your spirits in difficult times.

We all start with a built-in network: co-workers, classmates, neighbors, friends. So how can you build on those connections to create a strong network?

When asking for help, be respectful of people’s time

As you grow your network, build time into your schedule to reach out to others and to meet with people who reach out to you. This can extend your network and it keeps the connections active. I carve out several hours a week to meet with people in many diverse areas. There are two tips I’ve found that make this work:

Make the intro easy. If you’re reaching out to someone with whom you have a mutual connection make sure the person you know in common is aware that you’re reaching out and is someone who will give you a strong recommendation. If you’re asking someone in your network to make an introduction, respect their time by providing a ready-made introduction email which they can copy and paste.

Everyone has to eat. A simply way to begin networking is to ask to meet for coffee or lunch in a location that is convenient for the other person. If you ask more than twice — an initial contact and then a follow-up — and the person doesn’t respond, move on and find another contact.

Making the right connections

A great network can make a drastic difference in your career trajectory. Case in point: me. While I was in graduate school, two classmates and I were writing the business plan for one of the first online insurance marketplaces, InsureMarket. We asked Professor George Parker to be our adviser, since he sat on the board of several insurance companies. He introduced us to Stanford alums in the industry which led to our initial funding. Fast forward many months and it became clear that we needed a consumer brand to attach to InsureMarket. I reached out to my network, including a business school classmate working on Quicken.

Clearly, not all business success comes from simple introductions. You have to be able to deliver something of value to the people with whom you’re networking. In this case, it became clear that InsureMarket could help Intuit deliver on their vision to move from desktop (Quicken) to the internet (Quicken Financial Network.) After several months of negotiation, Intuit acquired InsureMarket and we became Quicken Insurance. None of this would have happened without a strong network of business professionals to help make useful connections.

Second degree and “weak” ties are as important as strong connections

Our professional connections are often most like us. They often know the same people, often work in the same industry, and have the same worldview/context. That’s helpful for solving problems or finding opportunities that are similar to your everyday work.

To find opportunities outside of your industry and to bring in inspiration to solve a problem in a novel way, you’ll want to look outside of your close ties. Try looking for those connections in your personal network, for example people with whom you went to school, people in your exercise class, people you meet at your children’s activities. Take the time to get to know these people — I’ve often found that their background and interests are different from mine and bring new ideas to a discussion about careers and how to tackle problems and opportunities I’m facing. The first part of the insurance example is an example of this: I did not work with the people I needed to know and instead tapped into a professor’s network to find the contacts we needed for input and capital.

Use your social networks, like LinkedIn, to make connections. If there is a skill or an industry about which you want to learn more and for which you don’t have a direct contact you can use social networks as an entry point. Be explicit about what you want to learn and why. LinkedIn makes it easy to find a 1st degree connection to make an introduction to your ideal mentor who is one-degree of separation removed from you.

Pay it forward

Providing guidance to — and making connections for — other people is always helpful and often rewarding. For example, several years ago my wife and I hosted a BBQ at our home in the Bay Area for a group of high school students from North Carolina. It was there that I met Morgan Howell, who was on his first trip outside of his home state. We talked about college choices and I talked with him about my experience at the University of North Carolina (UNC). Morgan went on to win a Morehead-Cain scholarship to UNC. We’ve stayed in touch, and a few years later he interned at GoDaddy, writing software for the summer and getting to be a part of a growing company. He recently wrote to me about his post-graduation plans.

“I believe you’ve had a very significant impact on my career trajectory starting with that dinner you hosted at your home back when I was a high school senior and even more so with the opportunities I had at GoDaddy. I’ve chosen to work at Facebook starting in August.”

Morgan earned all of his achievements with his own hard work … it’s been meaningful to me to encourage him on his path.

When people ask for your time, find ways to say yes. Per the point I mentioned above, everyone needs to eat. Pick a time and location that’s convenient and get together. If the person is not local, schedule a short call during a commute. Paying it forward sets a great precedent.

Sustaining a strong and healthy network takes a lot of consistent work, but the rewards can be truly life-changing. The ability to be mentored by experienced individuals can help you progress faster without making the same mistakes or missteps as your mentors. Making great connections and fostering those relationships can propel your career success — and you never know who you may get to meet, help, or learn from along the way.