Networking for the Networked Network
We’ve all learned about the importance of networking. Mark Zuckerberg taught us about the social network and its value by making $130+ Billion just for himself as well as spawning another seven billionaires (not including the venture capital funds that made….billions). Those others include, Eduardo Saverin ($5B), Dustin Moskovitz ($8B), Sean Parker ($3B), Jeff Rothschild ($1.5B), Sheryl Sandberg ($1B) and Chris Hughes ($1B). And lets not forget the Winklevoss Twins with their $3B, but then someone might rightly say that they made most of that on their own in the cryptocurrency space rather than Facebook specifically, but it certainly seeded that whole effort and is still on point with where I am going. These people all caught the networking tiger by the tail when it was young enough that you didn’t have to add that much value to rack up those types of gains. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anyone any good fortune they can land on in life and being in the right place at the right time is what 90%+ of the game is all about, so good on them. But most of these people (with the possible exception of the Zuck himself and maybe Sheryl) probably prefer more anonymity than notoriety at this point. I don’t think of these people as being busy building their personal brands, as they say.
Personal brand building has always struck me as a frivolous exercise that is less about adding value and more about building a market for your thoughts and opinions so that you can be an influencer that has doors opened up to you that otherwise might remain closed to you. I have had ample evidence that my view on this issue is stupid and that people have monetized themselves into significant bucks by paying attention to how the world finds about how wonderful they and their views are. Yuck, I still hate the way that sounds and feels. If people become accomplished and therefore famous, I’m all for it. If they become renowned for their talents or capabilities, wonderful. I can even get behind someone becoming a celebrity because they are cute or sexy (that’s a fairly lightweight form of value, but it is value nonetheless). But people who build a brand and a network just to figure out how to spin gold out of it rather than find ways to spread the word of their capabilities and get more opportunities to deploy those capabilities are not people who I tend to respect.
I happen to have a very strong resume. It is evidence that I spent the last forty-five years working hard and being a serious contender in whatever I did. I wasn’t necessarily the best at everything I did and I certainly didn’t always win, but I was always very serious about doing a good job, being innovative and adding value to the relevant stakeholders. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and I consistently rose in the ranks over the years and was given opportunity after opportunity to keep doing what I was doing or applying what I was capable of doing to a new set of challenges. I actually think the highest value I was able to add came in that latter form or applying best practices (tricks, if you will) from one business into another business. I find the cross-fertilization of practices and skills to be one of the best way to create value. They say that there is nothing new under the sun. If that is even only somewhat true, it is not true if looked at through the lens of creating the next killer app that has succeeded in one market and applying it to another likely contender market. To do that you need to be a cross-fertilizer, which is much, much different from being a cross-seller. Cross-selling can be a dilutive activity that does more damage to a reputation and image, but cross-fertilization is almost always a productive way to innovate in a more compelling and productive manner. Repurposed and appropriately modified applications beat the hell out of de novo ideation, which is far more likely to feel like a game of darts played from one hundred feet away. My resume shows a pattern of repeated cross-fertilization.
I wish I could say that I orchestrated all of that for myself, but the truth is that I merely responded to the opportunities presented. I can only remember one time when I actively had to market myself for my next opportunity, and that was by my own doing. After a very “internal” constantly-changing career track for twenty-three years through Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank, I went off to do my own thing. I partnered up with three other partners and we went off with some OPM (Other People’s Money…along with some of our own as well). That lasted for the better part of three years, a time when I allowed my presence in the Wall Street community to fade from view (our venture fund was too small to be on the big-boy screens in which I had previously played). When I did go around I got pretty meaningful traction from some of the bigger movers and shakers on the street. I would like to think some of it had to do with my presence, and obviously that had to ultimately be the case, but the opportunity set was a function of my best promotional tool, which was my diverse, upward-arching resume showing a strong career track, albeit in only two connected firms.
The point is, I never intentionally worked to create an brand or an image for myself. The resume said what the resume said, and while I think it did a good job of stating the case for my strengths, there was nothing fabricated or even exaggerated in it. I was never a believer that I was about negotiating for a huge package going in. You can say I was not confident enough to take such a strong stand, but I would say it says the exact opposite about me. I was always so confident that I could create value and make myself valuable to the firm I was joining that I was always prepared to go in with less guaranteed than most. I know I would never want to stay where I was not wanted and then demand payment for earnings not truly earned. That may make me naive, but I think it makes me highly confident in my own abilities.
Today I got a memory boost about the value of networking as I define it. I had an important expert witness issue that needed to be plumbed to meaningful depths in a rather arcane sea of the financial services industry. It was a very hard issue to go at directly, but I knew there were sources of knowledge out there to be tapped. I have never been a Rolodex guy by design. I never carried client relationships in my pocket when I left one firm and went to another. But I have a strong Rolodex nonetheless, mostly because I had a long and diverse career and always made a point of befriending the smartest people I ran across. I try to always treat people with respect and the proof that it seems to have worked is that people tend to return my calls and emails and seem genuinely happy to speak with me even though they know very well that I am in no kind of power seat any longer. While some of them may hope that I bring them opportunities, most of them seem more interested in being helpful and I feel it seems like some form of repayment for my treating them well along the way. At least that’s what I like to think.
I mobilized my innate network of contacts and meshed it with my memory of who knew what and was smart about what. I am beginning to feel that my ability to marshal resources and find answers through my network could be a real strength that I have under appreciated.The expert witness game is a game of network and I guess that means that if I am able to network the networked network I may have found another way to extend my relevance.