This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
The Importance of Networking
Date: May 7, 1998
Age: 16
Location: San Diego, CA
Subject: Networking
Hi Hannah. Right now, I’m sitting alone in this million-dollar room. There are wall-to-wall electronic whiteboards that record what you write. There’s 100-foot video projectors mounted on the ceiling. Every table, every mesh-backed ergonomic chair, and every piece of audio-visual equipment was purchased in the last month, all part of San Diego County’s push to merge education and technology. In about an hour it’s going to be filled with people and cameras, here to listen to Lt. Governor Gray Davis present himself as the “education governor.” And when he’s finished, he will sit right next to me as part of a panel on technology and education. This guy could be the next governor of California, and he is introducing me!
And the best part is that this all came from self-improvement. You remember giving me Harvey Mackay’s Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty last year? You must have known, on some level, that this is what would happen. I single-handedly credit that book for where I am today.
Back then, I felt like the whole world was lifting off without me. It seemed like a day wouldn’t go by without some passing dot-com success story. “Oh did you hear of the kid at Poway High who made $35,000 in one month from some Internet stock?” “Oh hey, did you know that so-and-so in our class spends $1,000/mo. on high-speed Internet just to keep up with the demand for his web hosting business?” Why were these guys chosen and not I? Where was my golden ticket? I realized that I had spent a year talking about the Internet boom, and yet didn’t have anything to show for it.
Then I read your book on networking, and it made me realize that the only thing separating ordinary people like us from those success stories is connections. Take the kid who made $35,000. He got “friends and family” access to some pre-IPO shares because his uncle works for a start-up. Or take the classmate who has been racking up high-speed Internet access bills. He knows the editors at ComputorMagazine, who told him about advertisers converting $100 of ad space into $5,000 of web hosting business. These two kids aren’t any smarter than me, but they just so happened to be at the right place at the right time. Mackay’s book offers a path to that “right place,” and it’s achieved by shaking hands from one person to the next until you get closer and closer to where the oil well is gushing.
The book really drilled home the importance of follow-up. I was at an awards ceremony for a web design competition, and I made small talk with a teacher sitting next to me. She said she was impressed with my acceptance speech and so she handed me her business card. A few days later, I emailed her about my entry into ThinkQuest (tip 1: send regular status updates), and I asked her for advice (tip 2: flatter people by asking for advice). She said maybe I would be interested in checking out the new educational computer lab downtown. When I got there, I told an administrator about what I did for our school’s website (tip 3: share even the smallest bit of related experience). He gave me his card, which led to an introduction to a video director for the school district.
When I followed up with the video director, he said he wanted to make a little television series on technology and education, and the best part is, he wanted me to host it! I was bowled over. I had never been on TV before and just the thought that I could reach a thousand-plus people blew my mind.
Fast-forward a few months later, when I met an associate producer who is also an event organizer. I got her business card, followed up with her, and now I’m here, waiting to appear on this education panel with Gray Davis.
Follow-up. Follow-up. Follow-up. That’s all there is to it.
On some level, I wonder if all of this is coming to me because I’m young. These adults are frantically searching for a line into the dot-com boom, and here comes a student who not only builds websites, but can also speak well. Is that what they’re thinking?
Or is it because of Carnegie’s and Mackay’s techniques that I’m finding myself closer and closer to the Holy Grail? What if I read another 10 more books? Where would I be then?
- Phil
All told, I got paid trips in high school to Antigua, Cairo, and Washington, D.C. In D.C., I was on a panel with then-Senator John Kerry, talking about education and technology. Networking is something I still keep in the back of my mind, although it’s less important to me now than creating really strong bonds with a few collaborators. In a way, the gains I received from rapid networking in the 1990s matched the dot-com hype of the time: They were both built on vapors.
This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
For Philip’s 14th birthday, Hannah gave him Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which kicked off a life-long obsession with self-improvement. Over 16 years, Philip wrote 82 letters to Hannah describing every book, pop psych article, and method that he used — or abused. Dear Hannah is either a cautionary tale about self-improvement, or it is a filter for the 10% of self-help that may actually change your life.
PHILIP DHINGRA is a President’s Scholar from Stanford University, where he received his B.A. in Mathematical and Computational Sciences. In addition to authoring books on life change, he develops best-selling iOS apps including Nebulous Notes and The Creative Whack Pack (a collaboration with creativity pioneer Roger von Oech). Philip divides his time between Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California.
