Thanks for the response. Steve’s second link was especially helpful and it will take me some time to get through its links and comments. Tim, with your anthropological bent, I think you will like it.

Our research into rainmakers suggest that they have primary networks of between 20 and 50 people, mostly towards the lower end of the range. They often have names for these groups (breakfast club, posse, mafia). They also have secondary networks that are much larger made up of people they contact less frequently. (One rainmaker refers to his “friends” and his “Semi-friends) Tim, this is consistent with your number and also with Dunbar. Dunbar clearly didn’t have email or phones in mind when he wrote, and many looser, weaker relationships are possible today than in his primitive societies.

There is much to ponder here, still, but this is progress.

Steve, I miss your blog.

Ford Harding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar’s_number
http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

Great question on one of my favorite topics! Successful networking is helping other people (I believe you used the question “How can I help this person” to describe this in your book Rain Making). It is my belief that you should try to help everyone that you meet, every day. HOWEVER, I also believe that you should focus on a select group of people (More than 10, less than 20). I posted my justification for this in a recent blog on cofebuz.com: “When we help someone else once, it creates an innate and positive response. When we help someone three times, it creates a desire for them to help us in return; and when we help someone a dozen times, they have a healthy desire to help us in return. The great thing about real networking is that it creates mutually beneficial relationships where two people are consistently looking for ways to help one another. The key to this happening is concentrated effort on a specific group of people that over time develops these multiple mutually beneficial relationships.”

Tim Klabunde
cofebuz