Networking

I've been very interested in networking this past year.  Ever since moving to Spokane it's become a lot more apparent to me how important networking is to being successful, and that's true not just for careers. 

Just this past week when we went down to Florida, we stayed with the most wonderful family, whom non of us had ever met.  The husband was Smiley's father's roommate in college, and they hadn't seen each other in over 26 years. However, their friendship and the networking ended up providing us with great support on our trip.

As far as careers go...I would probably never have gotten my job, or had such an easy time getting into the program here if it wasn't for Scooby and his network he had already created for me in Spokane.

I got an email from the BYU alumni today with an article on building relationships and creating influence.  It's not long, but it's got a great point.  This quote from Dale Carnegie really stuck out to me:

"You can gain more friends in two months by being interested than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you.”

That really struck home to me, probably because I tend to do the latter more often than the former. And I've noticed that those girls in the ward that have no problem getting others to open up to them and create relationships of trust early on are the ones who do that, the ones who are sincerely interested in the other person.  This is something I need to work on for sure, especially if I want to be successful in my ventures next year starting a real career....