Remember the Basic Rules and Principles

In the previous chapter, we covered the mindsets that will be most helpful to your networking journey. (Be sure to complete the action steps at the end of the previous chapter before continuing to this chapter!)

You may be struggling at this point, but stay focused and stay the course. Keep experimenting with different motivations and discover what works for you. If it helps, keep track of your daily successes on a piece of paper. As you advance throughout the day, log each success. If you exercised, put it as a success. If you learned something new about power dynamics, put it as a success. If you cut someone toxic out of your life, put it as a success. Review your successes before you go to bed and finish your day to remind yourself that you are making progress and moving forward. I’ve even heard of people writing each individual task or habit on a separate sticky note and crushing it in their hands once they’d completed it. They put it in its own special container or trash bin and after a long day, they can look inside the container to see that they absolutely crushed their day (pun intended).

This chapter is all about the basic networking principles that are most beneficial if you’re looking to achieve your goals as well as long-term success. This chapter will contain principles and rules to networking that are helpful to anyone with a more short-term mindset, but is geared more toward those who are looking to develop long-lasting, consistent success.

“In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to ‘play the game.’ In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can get by and make favorable impressions through charm and skill and pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships.”[1]

In other words, you need a strong, clear focus on principles if you want any hope of maintaining long-lasting connections for long-lasting success. Techniques are great, but techniques aren’t always the answer because techniques change depending on the situation. Principles are an unchanging reference point you can refer back to whenever you’re unsure of what to do, what to say, or how to act.

The principles you will learn about in this chapter are not suggestions rooted in teachings found in religion. The principles in this book are independent of any specific religion, doctrine, or other socio-cultural system from theology. These principles are unwavering aspects of the human condition, firm ingredients to the consciousness that exists in all human beings, regardless of any social conditioning. They are the fundamental principles of human effectiveness concentrated toward the art of networking. It’s always good to start with the basics.

The Circle of Influence Rule [2]⁹

Always be in charge of your circle of influence by managing it on a consistent basis. We have found ourselves in a world where some men and women in their forties and fifties are going broke, while some teenagers are making six or seven figures. Due to technology, age has become a less relevant factor in success. Today, success is more about who leverages their power and, as we previously discussed, one form of power is information.

If they have something you don’t have, chances are it’s because they know something you do not yet know. One of the most underrated rules to success that some people think they fully understand but really don’t (or do know about but don’t apply) is to keep your circle of influence in check.

Young professionals will look to older adults for guidance because adults have years of experience. If you look to a professional who’s older than you for guidance but that particular adult hasn’t improved their income or success in twenty years, then they don’t have those twenty years of experience. They have one year of experience repeated twenty times. This means that you could get more value, knowledge, and experience (better information) from working with another young professional who’s closer to your age that has seen consistent growth and a steady increase in success.

Screen the people in your social circle using your goals. Your circle of influence is the most important key to your success in life and in business. These are the three pieces to your circle of influence:

1.) Support

This category is for family, friends, and the people you hold day-to-day interactions with.

Who is in your support system? The people you keep in your social circle on a regular basis will make or break your ability to achieve your goals. How many millionaires do you talk to on a daily basis?

Bestselling author and entrepreneur Peter Voogd said, “If you want to become a millionaire, talk to billionaires. You’ll get there quicker.”

I grew up with people who said, “Yeah, but I have my whole life to make money.” I grew up with people who delayed building their wealth and focused more on partying. Any money they did have they either flaunted it or spent it on expensive clothes and video games. This social circle wasn’t the best motivator for me to stay on track, achieving my goals, so, I cut out the people who didn’t align with my vision for the future and for myself.

As your vision gets bigger, this circle should get smaller.

2.) Peers

These are the people you work with. Who do you bounce ideas off of at work? You need what is called a “mastermind network.”

These are the people you brainstorm with and exchange ideas with. Ideally, your peers should be people you would trade places with in terms of lifestyle. These are the people who have wisdom and information that can help you get to where you’re trying to go. You discover more about your goals and the best ways to reach them through a “mastermind session” with them.

Imagine having a billionaire in your network. Now, your peers don’t necessarily need to be that high-power, but that’s where you realize that you’re really only one connection away from achieving your dream lifestyle. If you want someone like that in your network, you want them as a peer.

This piece to the circle of influence is built around the concept that if you hang around five millionaires every day, you’re eventually going to be the sixth. Keep that in mind when evaluating your peers.

3.) Mentor

Who can you learn from that you would trade places with in terms of success and lifestyle that can also cut your learning curve in half?

You’re not just learning from how this person gained their success; you’re learning from this person’s failures so you don’t repeat them and take longer to get to where you want to go. Learning from your own mistakes is good, but can be costly and time consuming. Learning from your own past mistakes and the mistakes of others who have already reached the end of the road you’re on can help you save time, which is how your learning curve is shortened.

Mentors give you education, guidance, and will call you out when necessary (respectfully of course). They will help you think outside the box and expand the box you’ve been thinking in. The best part of all this is you can be mentored online. With today’s technology, there is no need for you to be mentored in person. This means that you can even get more time with your mentor since it’s much easier to meet virtually. In today’s world, you don’t have to schedule around both of your calendars for a block of time in the day that works for the both of you every time you’re ready to learn something new from your mentor.

The Immersion vs. Maintenance Rule [3]

“Immersion is the concept of completely engaging in a certain activity for the sake of improving yourself. This is beneficial, because it allows you to focus all of your resources on improving a single skill set or facet of your life.”[3]

“Maintenance is the concept of doing just enough to “maintain” your current level of proficiency or balance in a certain facet of your life.”[3]

As you learned from the Circle of Influence Rule, it’s best to manage your social circle, which means periodically evaluating who’s good and who’s bad for your personal and career goals. As you weed people out, as your vision gets bigger and your circle gets smaller, the urge will be to start networking more frequently to rebuild your social life, since you’ve gotten rid of so many bad apples (most of whom were people you talked to every day).

The initial feelings of loneliness are normal and the desire to network and build relationships all the time to get rid of those feelings are completely understandable, but be careful. There has to be a balance.

While the power of money is hugely overestimated in terms of how big a factor it plays in your ability to achieve your goals, it’s still important. To immerse yourself fully in your job, internship, or whatever you do that makes you money while also immersing yourself in networking constantly would cause burnout.

As an example, if you choose to immerse yourself fully in the work that generates an income for you, working two jobs, working sixty hours a week or whatever the case may be, it’s best to keep your current network on maintenance. Follow up with them every now and then and stay in touch.

Let’s say you choose to immerse yourself fully in networking. You’re spending money on tools to help build your social media profiles, attending networking events, constantly sending cold emails and cold calling people you want to connect with, and so on. At that point, it would be best to put your other work on maintenance.

You have to have both immersion and maintenance if you want any chance of being successful. The man who does not immerse himself in anything can end up a jack of all trades and a master of none. However, the man who immerses himself in two or more things overexerts himself and collapses mentally or physically before he can achieve any goal or accomplishment of significance.

The WIIFT Rule [4]¹⁰

“WIIFT” stands for “What’s In It For Them.” To understand this, we look to social and power dynamics where we find a term called “the law of social exchange.” Put simply, the law of social exchange is the theory that social relations are based on exchanges of value.

The three major byproducts of this law are that:[4]

1. To get what you want, you have to give others what they want

2. The most popular and powerful people are those with the most to give

3. Strong relationships have a balance of give and take (or at least, the people in them must feel they are balanced)

This is how the “fake it ‘til you make it” concept works. People can fake being high-power (having lots of money, having lots of followers on social media, etc.). When high-power individuals perceive these types of people (those who are faking) as high-power, they rationalize that they can create a balanced relationship with them as opposed to if they were to create a relationship with someone who is low-power. In a relationship where one is high-power and the other is low-power, the one lower in power typically spends more time taking in the relationship since they have less to give.

Faking can be done ethically and unethically. Those who have actual power—who are actually high-value—but who do not have the traits of a high-quality man are perceived as low-power, and therefore miss out on opportunities for networking and collaboration. The millionaire who dresses and acts like the homeless beggar does not have the same networking advantage as the millionaire who dresses and acts like a charming billionaire. In that regard, faking can be done ethically and can open doors that would otherwise be closed.

I hope you see now why it’s so important to be perceived as high-power for success at networking. As a high-quality man, you can offer value not just in the forms of money or status, but in the forms of information and personality. High-quality men invest in themselves and are almost always learning. They are also emotionally intelligent, which develops their personality into one people want to be around. You can use being a high-quality man to balance out the difference in value between you and the high-power professionals you’re networking with.

Here is an example that further illustrates my point. How willing are you to start a conversation with a smelly, homeless drug addict in tattered clothes? That is the extreme example of the law of social exchange with someone who is low-power (at least that’s how we perceive them. That same homeless drug addict could be an undercover millionaire and we wouldn’t know). The point is, the relationship is off-balance in terms of value—unless you’re also a homeless drug addict.

“Collaborative frames without power will be seen as a kind of weakness and people might try to take advantage of you. That’s why the goal is not just to collaborate, but to seek fruitful collaboration from a position of strength. You make yourself into someone who can put value on the table of whatever negotiation in life you go through and then seek others who also have plenty to put on that table and who are willing to collaborate and go for win-win.”[5]

To further explain, if you were to find yourself in a situation where that same smelly, homeless drug addict is looking to collaborate with you or do a win-win deal, you may look at the deal as more of a win for him than a win for you, since he is so low-power. There are people who will see this “win-win” deal and use it to take advantage of the poor homeless man. They view his willingness to collaborate as a sign of weakness, since he’s not in the best position to be negotiating for anything.

Especially when cold emailing or cold calling people (reaching out to people you’ve never spoken with or met before), it’s best to see the interaction as an exchange of value. If you don’t, you put yourself at risk of coming across as awkward and even annoying. WIIFT means focusing on the other person’s possible wants and interests.

Examples of good WIIFT moves:[6]

1. Invite them to lunch or dinner and make it obvious you’d treat them

2. Tell them you’d be happy to pick them up at the airport

3. Propose that you will get them into some cool places or clubs that you have exclusive access to

Common mistakes:[6]

1. “I wanna pick your brain” = communicates “I want you to give me your time and sit there and answer all of my questions while I give you nothing.”

2. “Let’s have a coffee” = you usually grab coffee in the morning. Here, you’re communicating that, “In the middle of the day, right when you’re probably working, let’s go out while I ask you a ton of questions. And just in case I decide to pay, it will be cheap for me (that’s what your input is probably worth, anyway)”

As you can see, the balance in these last two examples is off in terms of the exchange of value. You’re using phrases that highlight what you get out of the relationship, but do not take into consideration their interests or what they might want. It’s an unfair exchange and can make you come across as someone who doesn’t get how relationships or networking works. High-quality men know power dynamics, so they understand and implement this rule—which is another reason they are typically perceived as high-power and have greater success in networking.

Also bear in mind that high-quality men stick to their values. If you do something that violates their values, such as aiming to create a relationship with them where you’re only taking, then you’ve soured your relationship with that high-quality man regardless of how high-power you are.

High-quality men don’t care too much about how high-power you are. High-quality men stick to their idea of right and wrong and use their knowledge of power dynamics to effectively create fairness in their lives. A high-quality man understands that we teach people how to treat us and will choose not to sacrifice his beliefs and morals just because you’re rich. That would be the equivalent of teaching you that it’s okay to cross his moral boundaries whenever you see fit simply because you have a lot of money. A high-quality man will treat himself well so others will be prompted to also treat him well. If you treat him unfairly, you’re asking him to set a precedent that it’s okay to disrespect him. A truly high-quality man will make the hard choice and draw a line in the sand.

It’s smart to network with high-quality men. If they aren’t already high-value, they have all the traits that will lead them to acquire resources and status soon. If you want high-quality men in your network, be sure to keep the relationship fair and in balance.

The Fairness Principle

I hope now, after reading the WIIFT rule, you’re starting to realize how much truth there is to Chris Voss’s words when he said, “Everything in life is a negotiation.”

The Fairness Principle is important not just to the law of social exchange, but to collaborative frames. Use WIIFT to make sure everyone in the interaction walks away from a win-win situation that you helped to create.

“Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They’re fundamental. They’re essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. One way to quickly grasp the self-evident nature of principles is to simply consider the absurdity of attempting to live an effective life based on their opposites.”[7]

I doubt that anyone seriously believes that networking by taking as much as you possibly can and leaving everyone else with as little as possible is a solid foundation for long-lasting success in life or in business.

The law of social exchange is used to ensure fairness and is not to be confused with the “law of reciprocity.” The law of reciprocity states that the more you give the more you will receive, but this is not always the case.

For example, networking expert Bob Littell encourages the concept of the “Irrefutable Law of Referral Reciprocity” which means that the more you refer others, the more you will be referred. However, observation as well as real-world evidence (and my own personal experience) has shown that there are circumstances that cause this “law” to lose its effectiveness.[8]

1. If you’re actually still networking within a competitive frame (a taker’s mindset), even if you don’t realize it, you may be putting some strings attached—I’ll scratch your back, but only if you scratch mine. Any time you add conditions to it, it eliminates the feeling of obligation to give on the other person’s part.

2. When you network within a collaborative frame, you believe in win-win. This means that at some points you will give so the other side can win. What do you think happens when you give to takers? They take and take and take.

3. When someone makes an introduction for our benefit (and this is especially the case if it’s a powerful introduction), we tend to take ownership of that new relationship. As the saying goes, “We often forget the girl who brought us to the dance.” For me, I think of this as the equivalent of someone scoring a goal in soccer, the crowd going wild, and everyone forgetting the player who made the pass for that goal to happen.

The Integrity and Honesty Principle

Integrity and honesty. “They create the foundation of trust which is essential to cooperation and long-term personal and interpersonal growth.”[9]

Faking it until you make it is sometimes dishonest if it’s overdone. Becoming a high-quality man is different from faking it until you make it. High-quality men have all the traits that are the highest predictors of success and pave the way to acquiring resources as well as status. In many ways, they are high-value.

Faking it until you make it dishonestly and with a lack of integrity would be lying about how many followers you have on social media, posting pictures on social media of stacks of money giving the illusion you’re rich when in reality you pulled those images from a website, and other actions of that nature that inflate your value dishonestly. These methods of “faking it” may work in the short-term but have serious consequences in the long-term. For long-term success, focus more on networking with integrity and honesty, only “faking it until you make it” ethically.

You can appear higher value than you are to attract bigger fish without dishonesty by leveraging and improving the qualities people usually notice about you upon first impression:

1. Attractiveness/Beauty

2. Style

3. Physical fitness

4. Body language / Nonverbal cues

5. Posture

6. Grooming

7. How you walk and move

With an improvement in each of these categories, people will perceive you as higher value and think to themselves that a relationship with you would be balanced. This leads to higher networking success.

The Service Principle

You’ll notice that the majority of these principles are about being less of a networker and more of a human being. You’re a human being first and should exhibit the qualities of a human first and foremost, such as being compassionate, thoughtful, and giving.

If you want to build connections with people you have to do just that: connect. One way to connect with others is by giving value to them.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou

Following the Service Principle means serving. The best way to do that is by giving value that makes others feel good. Congratulate them on their promotion or their birthday. A collaborative relationship is about giving value and building each other up. A competitive relationship contains a lot of value-subtracting behavior, such as bragging, lying about your accomplishments, trying to hog attention, or using others for social climbing. These are things that might make you feel good, but not the other person in the relationship or interaction.

As much as this principle is about serving others, there are definitely times when you should serve yourself. A part of the WIIFT rule is taking into account the other person’s interests. It’s insensitive and unwise to assume that the other side is interested in digging around the internet and your social media to figure out what you bring to the table. Therefore, a part of following the WIIFT rule is self-promoting in a way that signals to the other side you have value without coming across as a crude narcissist.

When some people follow the Service Principle, they network with a “go-giver” attitude and can make the mistake of giving too much. An example that illustrates this point well is a popular habitude (an image that forms leadership habits and attitudes) used by Dr. Tim Elmore:

“The starving baker spends so much time baking bread for others he forgets to eat and starves himself. It looks noble and is noble to keep giving, giving, giving. But just like I need to lead myself before I lead others, I need to feed myself before I feed others.”[10]

There’s a difference between selfishness and self-care. Promoting your strengths and areas of value is caring for yourself and your career. If you keep quiet, you risk losing out on valuable opportunities because only open mouths get fed. However, as a general rule, it’s best to think of the service principle in terms of serving others, not just serving yourself.

The Growth Principle

The Growth Principle is about accepting learning opportunities, even if those opportunities require you to fail in order to learn. If you’re afraid to reach out to that CEO or celebrity but you know you would like to connect with them, do it. Accept that opportunity to learn and grow.

Remember, even if you’re a master networker, you’re not a networker. First and foremost, you’re always a learner. That’s who you are. The rest follows closely behind.

It’s only when you accept that you’re a learner first that you can have the self-esteem to network with an antifragile ego. It all starts with being willing to claim and own your identity as a learner.

You want to call that billionaire? Do it. You’re not a networker, you’re a learner. That means that no matter what happens, as long as you have the antifragile ego you started building in Chapter 2, as long as you’re a learner, you’re proud of yourself. You take pride not in making the perfect cold calls, but in having the courage to make those calls even when they’re far from perfect.

The Patience Principle

Patience is a virtue. Patience is also an important principle to remember if you want to be successful at networking.

Let’s say you sent a text to that girl that you can’t seem to get out of your head. Let’s also say that you know she read that message but still hasn’t responded after fifteen minutes. You decide to be patient. A half an hour goes by with no response.

What do you do? You quadruple-text her. That’s right. You text her three more messages.

What do you think happens when she hears her phone going off? What do you think goes through her head when she realizes that all three of those rings were not from the entertaining group chat she’s in with her girlfriends, but from you?

“She back-rationalizes that if she hasn’t replied so far it’s because she didn’t like you.”[11] Now your chances are next to ruined.

This is close to the same effect that impatience will have while networking. If you send three to four emails out of nervousness or any other reason that doesn’t involve a life or death emergency, it will not work in your favor.

Be patient. They’ll appreciate it more. The last thing you can expect them to appreciate is an inbox full of “Why didn’t you return my call” emails.

Like I said, these principles are about being a human being before a networker. Be a compassionate human being and give them the benefit of the doubt. An example of the right response would be to assume that something came up. The right next action would be to reach out to them at a later date with one email, asking if your previous email got lost in their inbox.

As a side note, if they don’t respond right away, sometimes that’s good. It means they’re busy. Anyone who is always available with lots of free time is typically not that high-power. That could be a sign that they would be a taker in the relationship. You can tell who’s really worth your time by how busy they are.

The word “busy” has three different categories in it:¹¹

1. The first kind of busy is the fake kind of busy. Nobody wants to do business with someone who has a lot of free time on their hands. If you were a potential customer for a business and you were looking to connect with the business owner, that business owner having a lot of free time would indicate that they probably don’t have too many customers they’re busy taking care of. That might be a bad sign for you. Why don’t they have any clients? Why are they always so available? Then, to make up for their lack of clients, they go around telling everyone they’re busy and make up fake appointments, so you have to fit into their supposedly “busy schedule.” (Fake busy is a tactic that can help you from day one, but you can only do that for so long.)

2. Then there is actual, genuine “busy.” When they are really busy versus fake busy, you can feel the difference. You will feel it and see it in how they interact and carry themselves.

3. The third type is when they are extremely busy. Say they used to meet with you for an hour and a half, but now they only have thirty minutes. They used to have one assistant; now you notice they have three. They do this so they can focus more on what matters to them. All the other tasks they used to do themselves, they have moved to somebody else below their current position. Their value (power and success) has gone up and, as a result, so has their level of “busy.”

In other words, a part of you should want it to be hard to create the relationship with them that you’re looking for, because if you manage to do so, you’ve made the cut. Everyone else who couldn’t persevere lost the chance to build that relationship, but you didn’t.

If it’s too easy to build a relationship with someone because they contact you back right away as if you’re the most important thing in their entire schedule, you should be concerned about what their true intentions might be. What causes them to be so invested in building a relationship with you when you’ve hardly had to put in any effort on your end? Not only is it a sign that they may be low-value and could end up being a taker if their schedule is so free, but if they’re not even going to pretend to be busy (or fake busy), what does that say about what they might want?

Avoid getting upset when someone doesn’t respond right away. Be glad. It’s a sign you’re probably networking with someone worth knowing.

Action Steps:

Circle of Influence “Support” Steps:

1. Evaluate your support network. Ascertain whether they build you up or tear you down

- Do they help you advance toward your goals? Do you walk away from conversations with them feeling emotionally good and capable of doing what you put your mind to, or not?

2. Create a “Make It or Break It” list

- Make a list of the five people that you feel like you need to keep around regardless of if they make you feel like you’re incapable of achieving your goals. These are the people who might be negative but who you really want to keep in your life. Title this list your “maintenance friends.”

- Make another list of the five people in your life who most closely share your vision, your goals, etc. These people are encouraging, supportive, and positive. These people motivate you, help you think bigger, and give you solutions. Title this list your “growth friends.” You don’t need to know these people personally; they can be people you’ve only heard of and plan on befriending soon.

3. Lower the time you spend with your Maintenance Friends and increase the time you spend with your Growth friends

- Right here is tough. Right here is where you need to ask yourself if you’re willing to do “Whatever It Takes.” This is where the “No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great, Duty First,” motto can help you cope with the sudden change in social life you’ll experience if you choose to follow these action steps.

- Remember, the pillars to the good life are health, wealth, love, and happiness—and health always comes first. It may be dangerous for your mental health to suddenly cut everyone off whom you feel may be holding you back. Gradually and slowly shift your time with your maintenance friends to your growth friends. Avoid making any major or rash decisions out of sudden surges of motivation.

Circle of Influence “Peers” Steps:

1. Evaluate your peers against who you can bounce ideas off of; who gives valuable feedback; who you can share strategies, tips, and tricks with; and who can provide you with accountability and support.

2. Connect more with the peers you feel are an ideal fit for your network.

Circle of Influence “Mentor” Steps:

1. Wait until Step Five, where we go more in depth on the mentor category.