Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age

by Porter Gale, Guy Kawasaki (Foreword by)

Overview

An internationally known public speaker, entrepreneur, and marketing executive shares practical, up-to-date tips for mastering the skills of networking.

Networking doesn’t have to be that frenzied old-school game of calendars packed with stuffy power lunches and sterile evenings at community business gatherings. We’ve entered a new era, one in which shifting cultural values and the explosion of digital technology enable us to network in vastly more efficient, more focused, and more enjoyable ways.

A fresh take on How to Win Friends and Influence People, Your Network Is Your Net Worth is an entertaining, straightforward guide filled with revealing case studies, hands-on advice, and innovative strategies for building your network. Written by sought-after speaker, entrepreneur, and marketing executive Porter Gale, with a foreword by Apple evangelist and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki, this book shows you how to establish, expand, and nurture your connections both online and off.

New ways to network are popping up every day—and Gale tells you how to make the most of them—but even traditional networking opportunities are not the same animals that they once were, and we need to shift our attitudes and approaches accordingly. Networking has evolved from a transactional game to a transformational process. Whereas once it was about power plays, now it’s about charting your own course, following your passions, and making meaningful connections, which in turn increase your happiness and productivity.

In addition to chronicling her own rise from an ad agency intern to an in-demand consultant, Gale also shares the inspiring stories of so many others who live by this networking model: a military wife who connects with social media communities while her husband is deployed overseas, a young woman blog-ger battling leukemia, a dyslexic politician who wins elections by telling stories, and the CEO of a Major League Baseball team who once made a phone call that changed the course of his life. When you focus on your passions and reorganize your networking around your values and beliefs, you will discover the kind of lasting relationships, personal transformation, and, ultimately, tangible wealth that are the foundation for happiness and success. With a message both timely and important, Your Network Is Your Net Worth is the definitive handbook to Networking 2.0.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451688788
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Porter Gale is an internationally known public speaker, networker, and entrepreneur with more than twenty years of experience working in marketing, advertising, and independent filmmaking. From 2007 to 2011, Porter was Vice President of Marketing at Virgin America. Prior to Virgin America, Porter was a consultant and held the post of general manager at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners San Francisco. She was awarded the Changing the Game Award by the Advertising Women of New York (AWNY), was on AdAge’s Digital Hotlist, iMedia's Top 25-Digital Marketers, and named a Digital Passionista by The Huffington Post. She lives with her daughter in San Francisco. She is also a blogger for AdAge and The Huffington Post.

Read an Excerpt

Your Network Is Your Net Worth

Chances are that if you are reading this book you are currently in a process of assessment. You may be facing a challenge—a career interruption or transition, a new life stage, or perhaps a financial difficulty—that you are trying to overcome. Or you may be working toward a specific goal in your personal or professional life and need to find the missing link that will take you into the final stretch.

If you are one of the millions who are aspiring to do better—in work, relationships, and financial growth—you have probably found that the process of assessment is a constant companion, and making a change in one area of your life inevitably calls for an evaluation of others. I have gone through this process enough times, during career moves and relationship bumps, to know that in order to make a positive change you need to have a sense of your overall net worth. And by “net worth,” I don’t mean the status of your financial accounts.

I believe in the power of social capital to improve your productivity, expand your professional options, and raise your overall quality of life. I believe that seeking out and working in collaboration with others who share your interests and values will provide a stronger foundation, enabling you to reach a higher level of success than you would on your own. I believe in the power of connections, not just between people but between passion and productivity, between value and profit, between authenticity and purpose, and ultimately between your heart and your wallet. Therefore, I believe that your “net worth” will be based not on the size of your portfolio but on your ability to define and stay true to your passions and values and that working with other people who share them will allow you to build a strong and enduring interpersonal safety net that will carry you through any financial calamity to greater output and personal fulfillment.

In Your Network Is Your Net Worth, I will show you how to unlock the hidden power of connections. And I will show you why your social capital, or your ability to build a network of authentic personal and professional relationships, not your financial capital, is the most important asset in your portfolio. I will show you why your net worth should be measured based on relationships, happiness, productivity, and job satisfaction and not solely in dollars and cents.

I will explain why strengthening and growing your network is the fastest way to improve your real net worth. For years, net worth was a quantified number or a collection of assets. In Your Network Is Your Net Worth, I will show you why investing in your network is the new model for improving your real net worth.

This kind of worth—wealth as interpersonal creative riches—is at the heart of my approach to networking. Fortunately, the postindustrial, information-age economy that has so profoundly altered the way we build our worth has also provided us with countless new tools to do so. In this book I will show you how I, along with other entrepreneurs and business leaders, have used these tools creatively to build our networks to achieve happiness, success, and true wealth.

In Your Network Is Your Net Worth, I will give you clear steps, tools, and ideas to use to build and grow your network. The process of connecting to like-minded people for pleasure and profit, though timeless in concept, has, since the rise of information technology, altered dramatically in methods and potential. The days of mandatory reading of the daily newspapers or bestseller lists to impress someone at a cocktail party, sharing the latest office gossip to bond with a colleague, or controlling your subordinates as you claw your way to the top are past. We’ve entered a new era where shifting cultural values and improved technology enable us to network in vastly improved, more focused, and more enjoyable ways that are more in tune with our personalities and passions.

The old way to network involved climbing a ladder while pushing others down or to the side for individual benefit. The past was about competition, pursuit of materialism and “keeping up with the Joneses.” Networking was all about your position in the game and the number of degrees on your résumé or titles placed after your name. This process worked for some people, to be sure, but not for most. Thankfully, networking has evolved from a transactional game into a transformational process. It’s not just about “who you know,” it’s about “who you are becoming as a person.” The new way to network and build your true net worth is about charting your own course, living life based on your passions, and being the best you can be. In today’s world, what’s important is no longer about power plays but more about what you value and how—and with whom—you want to get there.

Another reason that having a strong network is important is that how we work, along with the role of the employer, has been completely transformed. Globalization, changes in digital technology, and a wavering economy have made tens of millions of corporate positions more contingent and less secure. A 2010 Deloitte survey found that nearly half of all employees say a loss of trust in their employers will cause them to look for a new job when the economy improves. What’s more, between 1999 and 2010, the share of workers who said they were satisfied with their job dropped from 59 percent to 25 percent. The reality is that no matter how much you like your job or your company, you can, at any given time, be forced into unemployment.

With few workplace guarantees, it’s important to recognize your best path to job security is yourself. The more adaptive, flexible, and agile you are, the more you’ll succeed. Look internally, not externally, for happiness and job security. Build your skill sets, improve your network, ask questions, and don’t assume that others will take charge of your career.

There is a bright lining to the new model of networking, employment, and globalization. Millions of determined professionals are now creating and fueling a dynamic and innovative new culture of entrepreneurship and virtual teams free from the constraints of the old corporate culture. In Your Network Is Your Net Worth, I will share stories that demonstrate how technology has accelerated how we connect and reduced the degree of separation between people. Whether you are excited or discouraged by the bewildering array of social media choices, Your Network Is Your Net Worth will illustrate how and why technology and social media can help improve your networking productivity and how you can use them wisely.

When I learned to express my own voice and started using today’s tools, I broke through to a new level of creative productivity. Having confidence in who we are and why we matter prepares us to actualize more of our potential by creating a complex, rich web of relationships. These possibilities are richer than ever before in our globally linked, mobile world.

In Networking Smart, Wayne Baker states, “The term networking elicits strong feelings, positive and negative; some people swear by it, others swear at it.” The approach you’ll learn in Your Network Is Your Net Worth throws many of the existing ideas about networking out the window. If you are willing to focus first on your passions and purpose, I will show you how to reorganize your networking methods, as well as your entire life, around your true beliefs. When you do this, you will discover the kinds of lasting relationships, personal transformation, and, ultimately, tangible wealth that are the only foundations for happiness and success.

If this approach seems overwhelming or foreign, don’t worry. Most likely, you are adapting to the digital and social evolution and you can thrive with a values-based, transformational approach to networking. The core of the approach is looking inside first, outside second. This approach to connecting should not feel like work; instead, it should be life-enhancing and collaborative and ultimately bring you joy and greater prosperity.

Connecting with others with similar values and passions can also increase your feelings of happiness in most cases. An article in Scientific American titled “Your Brain on Facebook: Bigger Social Networks Expand the Size of Neural Networks” by Gary Stix noted, “Lots of ‘friends’ drive the growth of gray matter in areas linked to processing social information.” James Fowler, a professor at UC San Diego, stated in an interview with NPR, “We find that people at the center of the social network tend to be happier . . . . We think the reason why is because those in the center are more susceptible to the waves of happiness that spread throughout the network.”

Connecting and building my network have changed my life. Because of the lessons I’ve learned, I have more friends than I ever imagined possible. I have thousands of Twitter followers and unlimited business contacts, and I’m more productive than ever. What happened? I turned my weaknesses into opportunities for personal growth. I built my personal brand and started sharing my opinions.

If you are thinking “I’m not like you” or if connecting overwhelms you, you’re not alone. Networking wasn’t always easy for me. When I was younger, I used to hide behind a wineglass and would avoid gatherings if I didn’t feel perfect. In my twenties, I’d stare glassy-eyed at Lifetime docudramas for hours on end, a cone of Ben & Jerry’s in one hand and a cocktail in the other. But then I began to change my life. When I hit thirty, I started first to identify the habits of mind and actions that were holding me back. With self-reflection, practice, and focus, I learned how to authentically connect and build my social capital.

In my story, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a heated argument with a boyfriend at a Halloween party seventeen years ago. I was drunk. He was late. What happened next included an argument, and the end of the night wasn’t pretty. At that point, I did a lot of soul-searching. I went to therapy, and I made changes. It wasn’t always easy, but it’s always been worth it. I had to first learn to value myself and understand the importance of my interests and passions. I had to turn off the docudramas, and I dropped the cocktails. You don’t necessarily need to toss out your Jack Daniel’s to sharpen your connection skills, but you must understand what is holding you back, because if you’re not where you want to be, an honest assessment of the reasons why should come first.

Your path to transformational networking may not be as dramatic as mine, but chances are you’ll relate to some if not my entire story. Your Network Is Your Net Worth details the lessons and skills I have learned on my journey and in twenty-plus years of work experience, rising from an intern to the general manager of an advertising agency and from my post as vice president of marketing at Virgin America to an in-demand consultant and writer. In addition to my own experience, in this book are inspiring stories about a twenty-year Internet entrepreneur, a military wife, a film director, a young woman battling leukemia, a philanthropist, the CEO of a Major League Baseball team, a politician with dyslexia, a celebrity chef, an art gallery owner, and more.

In Your Network Is Your Net Worth, you will learn how to (1) develop a transformational attitude, (2) build a values-based team, and (3) cultivate fields of creativity. I hope my book and my approach to networking will inspire you to transform the way you make connections and help you thrive for years to come.

In the first part, I will show you how you can transform your networking by developing a transformational attitude. It introduces five core concepts: finding an authentic foundation, defining a purpose with the Funnel Test, networking with positive productivity, having a Give Give Get attitude, and the benefits of shaking it up. This section focuses on strengthening your inner confidence and self-esteem so you can nurture stronger values-based relationships.

In the second part, you will learn about building a values-based team. It introduces four concepts: using three degrees of separation, building your core circle, identifying power pockets, and connecting with hub players. This part details how technology has changed how we communicate, exponentially raising the rate of our interactions and reducing the degree of separation between connections. It shows why unlocking the power of connections is not a solo pursuit but one where you can benefit from understanding the dynamics of your core and secondary relationships.

The final section of Your Network Is Your Net Worth includes four chapters designed to help you cultivate fields of creativity, thus transforming your networking success. This section shows how everyone is a producer, the power of reaching critical mass, the ask, and how to know what is most important, your head, heart, or wallet.

I hope Your Network Is Your Net Worth will help you find the happiness, focus, prosperity, and success that I have found. Whether you’re looking to improve your connecting skills or secure a new job or just want to understand the benefits of social media, this book is filled with stories, exercises, and tips to help you flourish in today’s evolving world. Remember, building and strengthening your network will help you improve your happiness, productivity, and true net worth. In this global, networked economy, don’t let your social capital lie dormant. Reinvest it!

Table of Contents

Foreword Guy Kowasaki xiii

Introduction 1

Part I Develop a Transformational Attitude

1 Find Your Authentic Foundation 11

To Discover Where to Go, Know What's Holding You Back

2 The Funnel Test 32

Focus Your Passions, Then Define Your Purpose

3 Positive Productivity 52

Connect Purpose to Action

4 Give Give Get 68

Why It's the Real Networking Secret

5 Shake It Up 87

Change Your Routine to Unlock New Growth

Part II Build a Values-Based Team

6 Three Degrees of Separation 103

Accelerate Your Connections with Technology and Social Media

7 Build Out Your Core 126

Cultivate Positive Relationships, Support Your Purpose

8 Power Pockets 149

Define the Places, Events, and Groups That Accelerate Networking

9 Hub Players 169

Find and Learn from Connectors Who Belong on Your Team

Part III Cultivate Fields of Creativity

10 Everyone Is a Producer 185

Create Content Products, or Services to Share Your Purpose and Improve Your Reach

11 Reaching Critical Mass 206

Harness Influences, Partners, and Groups to Accelerate Positive Change and Growth

12 The Ask 219

Clarifying Requests, Interviewing, and Making Successful Pitches

13 Head, Heart, or Wallet? 242

Understanding and Nurturing Your Path to Happiness and Success

14 Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections 251

Review Sample Exercises, Do the Work, and Track Your Progress

Afterword 267

Acknowledgments 271

References, Additional Reading, and Twitter Handles 273

Index 279

What People are Saying About This

Jon Bond

“This book is a must read for anyone who wants to thrive in today's 'connected culture.' Networks are exponential, and networked people are exponentially successful.”

Sean Gardner (aka: @2morrowknight)

“A thoroughly absorbing, and enjoyable book that challenges the contemporary conventions of networking, while leaving the reader wanting more. This book makes one thing abundantly clear: Porter Gale is a renaissance woman whose literary vision is as dynamic and impactful as her entrepreneurial track record.”

Michael Mina

"Porter's a connector. In fact, she's introduced me to more people than I can count. Her book includes the recipe and the secret sauce for networking.

Richard Kirshenbaum

"I've seen Porter rise and network herself from a Jr. Account Executive to one of the most well respected advertising executives in the US. If you want to know how to connect your way to success read this book and start increasing your net worth!

Bill Clerico

“In a noisy and busy world, Porter's book helps you focus on the opportunities that matter and act on them. Her advice comes to life through her own fascinating anecdotes as well as in interviews and stories with the key players of Silicon Valley.”

Gary Vaynerchuk

"Porter's book hits the nail on the head. Be authentic, follow your passions, nurture relationships and use technology to improve and accelerate your connections. This is a great read with insightful stories and lots of practical tips. Not to mention Porter has executed this not just talked about it.

Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith

“Want to bring value to the people you connect? With currency, credibility and unvarnished honesty Porter creates a brilliant model of networking for a meaningful purpose. Relating stories of personal challenge while driving efforts at some of the world’s most valuable brands she derives and shares hard-earned tools that anybody can put to work.”

From the Publisher

“This book isn’t a rehash of stuffy, old-world networking ideas. It’s a primer and storybook, which will inspire you with amazing stories of well-known business icons and everyday people who have transformed their lives through networking.” —Guy Kawasaki, Author of Enchantment and former chief evangelist of Apple

David Mayer de Rothschild

“In a time when we all need to learn how to unlock our human potential and make meaningful connections, Porter masterfully articulates the path ways, this is a must have read.”

Ryan Holiday

“Look at the names on and in this book. Porter's title isn't just a cute quip, she's built a priceless collection of friends, colleagues and contacts using it as mantra and so can you.”

Editorial Reviews

The most valuable asset you have is not your money but your "interpersonal creative riches," says public speaker, entrepreneur, and blogger Gale. She champions cultivating social capital to create a "safety net," and describes her networking recipe with clear steps and tools. Though readers may initially find her advice daunting, Gale is an effective cheerleader: "I've been in a pot that was outgrown. You can either stay and wither or get a bigger pot." She tells readers how to put her advice into action, by helping others when you don't expect anything in return, navigating privacy issues, relying on a "core circle" for support, and learning to work with "hub players." Sprinkled throughout are stories of reluctant networkers who learned to draw on their own circles for strength. The most inspiring of these anecdotes, however, are Gale's own, and they are sure to convert even the most jaded of readers. With a foreword from Guy Kawasaki, Gale's book is robust, encouraging, and entertaining—perfect for anyone who gets faint at the mention of a cocktail party. Readers will come away prepared to build relationships and lift themselves to higher levels of success. Agent: Stephen Hanselman, Level 5 Media. (June)

Publishers Weekly

This book isn’t a rehash of stuffy, old-world networking ideas. It’s a primer and storybook, which will inspire you with amazing stories of well-known business icons and everyday people who have transformed their lives through networking.

Guy Kawasaki

Porter’s book defines one of the most important and critical missing components of the digital age. That no matter how advanced or powerful or connected our digital equipment is, at the end of the day we are human, and that in itself is the most useful tool we have to create the world we want to live in.

Nick Graham

Porter highlights the significance and value of strategically building your network to improve your personal and professional prosperity.

Jeffrey Hayzlett

This book could not have come at a better time. Today, when our networks are more valuable than ever before, Porter offers the tools that will help us tap into our connections in a way that effortlessly brings exponential returns to our lives and relationships.

Randi Zuckerberg

Porter's fascinating and personal book reminds us that the more digitalized we become, the more human we need to be. And, at the core of being human is our need to connect. This book is a profound reminder of how to authentically connect with others.

Chip Conley

They say it's who you know, not what you know. While not entirely true, your network is in fact a crucial tool in advancing toward your own personal goal line. Porter's advice is built on real life success. Your network IS your net worth.

Jason Felts CEO

"Porter's a connector. In fact, she's introduced me to more people than I can count. Her book includes the recipe and the secret sauce for networking."

Celebrity Chef - Michael Mina

A thoroughly absorbing, and enjoyable book that challenges the contemporary conventions of networking, while leaving the reader wanting more. This book makes one thing abundantly clear: Porter Gale is a renaissance woman whose literary vision is as dynamic and impactful as her entrepreneurial track record.

Sean Gardner

"This book teaches you how to bring value to others and yourself through the power of connections."

Sir Richard Branson

This book isn’t a rehash of stuffy, old-world networking ideas. It’s a primer and storybook, which will inspire you with amazing stories of well-known business icons and everyday people who have transformed their lives through networking.” —Guy Kawasaki, Author of Enchantment and former chief evangelist of Apple

From the Publisher

Want to bring value to the people you connect? With currency, credibility and unvarnished honesty Porter creates a brilliant model of networking for a meaningful purpose. Relating stories of personal challenge while driving efforts at some of the world’s most valuable brands she derives and shares hard-earned tools that anybody can put to work.

Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith

In a time when we all need to learn how to unlock our human potential and make meaningful connections, Porter masterfully articulates the path ways, this is a must have read.

David Mayer de Rothschild

"Porter's book hits the nail on the head. Be authentic, follow your passions, nurture relationships and use technology to improve and accelerate your connections. This is a great read with insightful stories and lots of practical tips. Not to mention Porter has executed this not just talked about it."

Gary Vaynerchuk

In a noisy and busy world, Porter's book helps you focus on the opportunities that matter and act on them. Her advice comes to life through her own fascinating anecdotes as well as in interviews and stories with the key players of Silicon Valley.

Bill Clerico

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to thrive in today's 'connected culture.' Networks are exponential, and networked people are exponentially successful.

Jon Bond

"Porter's a connector. In fact, she's introduced me to more people than I can count. Her book includes the recipe and the secret sauce for networking."

Celebrity Chef Michael Mina

Look at the names on and in this book. Porter's title isn't just a cute quip, she's built a priceless collection of friends, colleagues and contacts using it as mantra and so can you.

Ryan Holiday

A thoroughly absorbing, and enjoyable book that challenges the contemporary conventions of networking, while leaving the reader wanting more. This book makes one thing abundantly clear: Porter Gale is a renaissance woman whose literary vision is as dynamic and impactful as her entrepreneurial track record.

Sean Gardner (aka: @2morrowknight)

"I've seen Porter rise and network herself from a Jr. Account Executive to one of the most well respected advertising executives in the US. If you want to know how to connect your way to success read this book and start increasing your net worth!"

Richard Kirshenbaum

Effective networking modalities for a hyperconnected world. Energetic international public speaker and entrepreneur Gale displays passionate determination in her promotion of ways in which both established and novice businesspeople can improve their chances for success. Her message of strengthened connectivity from effective networking is delivered with the measurement of one's "social capital" (interactively systemic net worth) and in real-life profiles of entrepreneurs and business professionals who have found great value in what others would consider failures, like a job loss. Gale's advice is grounded in the power she believes can be achieved when a synergistic balance is struck between professional productivity and quality of life. A positive attitude and a willing mindset are key, she writes, to successfully identifying and overcoming the personal barriers that stunt professional growth. Her theme is consistently positive and galvanizing, fused with advice derived from more than 20 years of work experience and episodes of her own long-overdue soul-searching and efficacious networking. Gale offers decluttering techniques to maximize efficiency and activity variations to promote and increase opportunities. The pages of personal profiles are entertaining and relatable, and they contain the most accessible business-friendly lessons. The author also discusses how to network offline using the tried-and-true face-to-face approach. Gale stresses that although utilizing social media outlets and honing creative potential are paramount to career fulfillment, breaking old habits is just as important. While the author's steps toward achieving a networking transformation are hardly revolutionary, they are smart and straightforward and provide a healthy reminder about the relatively simple things professionals can do to stimulate their motivational processes and achieve even greater success in today's competitive marketplace. A useful guidebook for those desiring success through shrewd networking.

Kirkus Reviews