This book bangs the old drum about how successful networking is about giving, not getting. Most people who claim to network are looking for something from you... whereas master networkers focus on trying to immediately give you something you value. The value could be anything: a book, a website, a contact, or a job for their kid. Ferazzi has a long list of what value to give to people, and when, and how to go about it. I found the goal setting section alone worth the price of the book.

For the most part, being friendly and helpful will come back to you tenfold. However, freely sharing your network with every spammer and slimeball who asks is a sure way of losing friends and contacts...

Ferrazi sends mixed messages here... He shared several anecdotes from when he was just getting started in business about difficult people who refused to share their network. Clearly a big mistake, because Ferrazi is now a very useful person to know. Even if this wasn't the case, its vital to use the connections you have instead of hoarding them. If you cannot provide value to your network, your connections wither and die.

However, later Ferrazi complains about people who call him out of the blue asking to network. His claim is that they have no value proposition. Fair enough, a good chunk of them probably are slimeballs who care about nothing but their own needs. If these kinds of people don't know or don't care to know how to add value to me, then maybe I shouldn't waste my time.

Some of the folks without a value proposition may be connection vampires... on the other hand, they might be extremely valuable and just not good at understanding or communicating this fact. So how should we deal with these people? The big question that he doesn't fully answer, is how to be a lightweight gatekeeper? Yes, we should share our knowledge and network, but we also have the responsibility of protecting it.

I'd like to see his take on this in a later article or book...