Robbie Abed's Personal Blog

It takes too long.

It takes longer than it should have taken.

It shouldn’t be that hard to do, but it is.

It never turns out the way you first imagined it.

It sometimes never happens.

Other people slow down the process.

You don’t have the right skill set to start it.

You don’t have the right skill set to finish it.

You don’t have enough money to do it.

You can’t convince other people to give you money to do it.

You barely have enough money for you and your family.

You don’t know the right people to get it done.

You don’t have a mentor.

The people who know how to get it done, won’t reply back to you.

You don’t know where to start.

You don’t have enough time to start it.

You don’t have enough time to finish it.

It’s not worth your time to learn a specific skill set.

You don’t have enough people on your team.

It sounds better in your head than it does in real life.

Your real job takes up all of your time.

Your family takes up all of your time.

Surfing the internet is easier.

People might not like it.

People actually don’t like it.

You can’t get enough people to use it.

You don’t know enough people.

You don’t know the right people.

You think that someone will steal your idea if you do it.

What you built is amazing, but people don’t know about it yet.

A lot of people know about it, but they don’t use it.

People are too busy.

People are too busy to respond back to you.

You’re too old to do it.

People will laugh at what you built.

People won’t use what you built.

You’re not smart enough.

You don’t have enough patience.

You don’t want other people to know what you’re working on.

Someone already created what you wanted to create.

Your idea wasn’t really that great to start with.

 

The hardest part about starting anything is you get in the way of yourself and you care too much about what other people are going to think about it.

So what if people won’t respond back to you. So what if people will laugh at what you built? When you die, are they going to look over your grave in the cemetery and say

“Do you remember how shitty Robbie’s blog was? I can’t believe he spent his time on that. I think he paid 10 dollars for that shitty theme Actually, I think he created it himself! It was full of grammatical errors and link bait headlines.”

And what if they do say that? You’re f****** DEAD. It doesn’t matter what they think! LITERALLY.

Would you rather the conversation over your grave be like this?

“Whatever happened to the blog Robbie talked about writing? He spent so much time talking about it, but I never actually saw it. That was Robbie’s problem: He had all these ideas, but never finished anything.”

No matter the decision you make, it will always be wrong.

Live your own life and stop caring what other’s are going to think about you. Start something and then finish it. Then laugh at how stupid your creation was. Then create a better version. And repeat it until you are happy with the result.

Once you realize that failure is a made up word and what other’s think about you doesn’t really matter, anything becomes possible.

Follow @RobbieAb

Meeting is the name. Coffee is the game.

Mark Suster inspired me to take 50 coffee meetings. I took his advice, and then I took it again, and again and again and again. To the tune of 250 coffee meetings in 400 days. The result was phenomenal.

My main motivation to do this was because 1)I like people and 2)I knew no one in Chicago after I quit my job. I wanted to get connected in a deep way.

Here is a summary of what has happened:

1. My bullshit detector has improved dramatically. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I have gotten very good at determining who is telling the truth and who is exaggerating. Are you just trying to get me to develop your product for free, or do you really want technology insight? Do you really have 3 fulltime employees, or are they all unpaid interns? Is your startup really doing well, or are you just saying that to make yourself feel better?
2. People think that developers are going to solve all of their problems - “If only I had a developer, this business would take off and I can get the real funding I need to take this off. I need a developer to take on sweat equity”. I sigh every time I hear this. Somehow, someway successful starters with non technical backgrounds make things happen with very little money. These are the people who developers want to work with! Not the people who ”just need a developer to finish the last 20% of a project started by a college kid over the summer”.  To quote The Social Network “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you‘d have invented Facebook”.
3. Some people have no business being entrepreneurs - I hate to say this, but there are some people who have no business starting a business or quitting their full-time jobs to pursue a project. I get the hustle and persistence and follow your dreams and all, but there has to be a point where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what have you really accomplished in the past 6 months or year. No product, no co-founders, no customers, no funding, no industry knowledge and no real vision. Sure, it’s extremely great learning experience, but I sometimes question why people do it. Get a real job and get paid.
   
4. Under no condition should you talk smack or gossip about another person or their business - I made this mistake once and I’ll never do it again. There was gossip about a startup funding situation and I repeated the gossip at a Starbucks and I’m about 99.9% sure that the CEO of the company was sitting right next to me and heard everything I said. I spread gossip about someone I didn’t even know. I felt like crap for days. Just don’t do it. I’ve also made the mistake of telling someone I hate a product and find out that the person’s best friend is the founder of that product. It just doesn’t pay to talk smack. Nobody wins.
5. People are surprisingly very open about difficult situations – I don’t know if this is a Chicago thing, a startup thing or people just trust me thing, but for the most part people are very open about the troubles they are having at their companies. When a meeting starts with “I need help”. These are the meetings I like, because it takes guts to say that and although I’m usually of very little help – I want to help this person. The person has opened themselves open to be vulnerable, and I appreciate that.
6. Trust is everything – “Do I trust you” is the question I usually ask myself when meeting someone over coffee. My first goal in any coffee meeting is understanding how I can help this person. Whether it is technical advice or connecting them to another entrepreneur, developer, business owner, investor, etc. I really just want to help. I’m a give forward type of person. If I trust you and like you, I will connect you. Sometimes I’m “on the fence” with someone. I’m not really sure what this person is really up to even after a coffee meeting. I will shoot someone else an email or ask someone a trust about what they think about a person. Which brings me to my next point.
7. A bad reputation can screw you, very quickly - Once the word gets out that you’re a bad person or you do shady business deals, the word travels fast. Actually the word travels to everyone besides you. If I ask a trusted person about someone else, and I hear bad things about them I immediately discredit the other person. It was as if we never had coffee.
8. I still love Dunkin Donuts more than Starbucks Coffee any day of the week. DD is so simple when ordering. Medium coffee cream and sugar please. None of this special edition coffee that they got from some tribe in Africa or Nicaragua type coffee crap. I do drink more Starbucks than I do Dunkin Donuts because taking coffee meetings at Dunkin Donuts is not really an option. DD all the way.
9. Shipping Matters. Technical or Non Technical, I just want to hear you shipped something, anything. It shows that you care and you can execute at the bare minimum. If I’m talking to you about the same idea you had a year ago, the conversation isn’t going to last long. SHIP.SHIP.SHIP. Even if you ship something that sucks. People like other people who ship.
10. The most powerful question you can ever ask is “How can I help you?” It’s a game changing question. The look on people’s face and the big sigh while they think of how I can help them is awesome. It needs to be asked at every meeting. It can open doors and opportunities.
11. The more I see you, the more I like you, and the more we can help each other - The coffee meeting is just the start. The people who I see consistently attend meetings and networking events are the people who I end up doing business with. It shows that they care about the community as much as I do, and I appreciate it more.
12. There needs to be something better than Starbucks to meet people. If I didn’t have an office, I would pay a monthly charge to a coffee shop that gives me access to a private room with computer / project setup and coffee. I’ve had this idea for ages, please someone do this.
13. Being addicted to coffee is awesome, but sucks at the same time. I was anti-coffee in a previous life. Now, I’m all about it. I seriously cannot imagine a morning without coffee. It’s hot and makes me feel awesome. It sucks because I know it’s not good for me. I want to stop. But I probably won’t. Coffee is for closers, right?
14. Rapportive is an absolute life saver. Seriously, it’s amazing. It’s a chrome extension for Gmail that gives you detailed information about somebody just from their email address. It’s super simple and super effective. I use it to pre-stalk the people I’m going to meet.
15. There is no easy way to track people after you meet with them. I would have loved to have some simple dashboard interface that allows me to see the progress people have made since I met them. I imagine it would integrate with my calendar and give me summary highlights of everyone. I keep up with people by randomly seeing them at events, saying hello over email, etc. As I said before the people I follow-up with the most are people who show up to the events. There are some software products that reminds me when I haven’t emailed someone in a few weeks. I couldn’t care less if I havent emailed someone in 2 weeks. That’s not what I care about. I want to see how they are progressing and what they are working on. I dont’ know how this could be done, but it would be amazing.
16. Being connected has its perks - Being connected in any community opens a lot of doors. The type of people who I would never have access to a year ago, are now people who I talk too often and I get a better response rate on my cold emails.
17. Yes, coffee meetings can be a huge waste of time - I don’t take coffee meetings to make it feel like I’m actually busy. What I’ve done in the past 400 days is not sustainable. I think what I did was necessary to build my personal platform in Chicago, but not necessarily the best route for me to take going forward.

Overall, the past 400 days have been amazing and I don’t regret taking that many coffee meetings. It’s one of the best decision’s I’ve ever made.

Follow @RobbieAb

This post originally appeared on Jeff Carter’s Points & Figures Blog

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“Fake it till you make it” is a great motto to live by because it gives you confidence that you can do something even if you aren’t sure if you are really capable. If you live by that saying long enough, there is a chance that it will actually stick.

In a new business / startup, these are several situations where you can apply fake it till you make it:

• That first enterprise client that is asking you how many other big companies you have signed up already - Fake it till you make it.
• That investor that is asking what other investors are interested in your product – Fake it till you make it.
• That banner advertiser that is asking you how many page views you get on your site - Fake it till you make it.

For each one of the bullet points, what did you think “fake it till you make it” actually meant? Did it mean that you should tell the enterprise client that you have other bigger clients signed up, or does it mean you tell them that you have bigger clients in your pipeline and they should be signing up soon.

Do you tell the investors that the top investors are ready to invest, or do you tell them that you have still have ongoing meetings with them and have not reached a consensus.

Do you tell the advertiser you have more page views than you really do, or do you tell them the site is in transition and you expect traffic to pick up very soon.

There comes a point in your life or business where you just can’t fake it anymore. If you fake it an ounce more it will all be a lie. A small lie of course, but that can easily turn into the biggest lie you’ve ever told in your life. The biggest problem about lying is you are not only lying to a potential customer / investor / friend, you are also lying to yourself and anyone part of your team.

The moment that a lie comes out of your mouth, evaluate why you told that lie. Why did you feel the need to lie? Stop faking it till you make it, because you have lost touch of what it means. Be honest with yourself. Your company is not as good as you thought it would be. You’re really not that great of a developer. Your product sucks compared to everyone else’s.

Own up to it, embrace failure and stop faking it till you make it because it’s ruining your life.

It’s OK to tell someone your site gets 10 visitors a day. I’ll take 10 real visitors a day, than a perceived 10k visitors a day. The only person you’re fooling is yourself.

—-

Robbie Abed is a technologist and career aficionado. He is the CTO of Technori and Author of Fire Me, I Beg You. His mission is to help talented people find a better job through his blog. Robbie love’s fan mail and will respond back to almost anything sent to him. You can contact him here.

The 2013 headline of the year goes to…….. this post!

OK, so sometimes I see a lot of cool things and I want to tell the world. Today, I have decided to put it all in one post. Also, I would like to add that I DID use the Oxford comma in my title, as previously discussed in my blog post that you probably never read.

Let’s start with oddball interview questions from glassdoor. For the record, I almost never would read an article from glassdoor, but this one was good.

Here are my favorite interview questions:

Just entertain me for five minutes, I’m not going to talk – view answers

A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero.  What does he say and why is he here?” – view answers.

On a scale from one to ten, rate me as an interviewer.” – view answers.

I WISH someone asked me those questions when I was interviewing.

Moving on. A good friend of mine is doing an indiegogo project for Centup and I have to say the video is pretty awesome!

 

Finally, but not least. I present you Japanese Binocular Soccer

There are two kinds of people on social networks: those who want more followers and those who are lying – Guy Kawasaki in his new book APE – How to Publish a Book

The same could be said about getting traffic to your blog or website. Everyone craves for it. There is something about seeing a lot of people on your website at the same time that gives you a sort of rush. You almost feel like your creation and even your existence has been validated. I would lie to you if I told you that I don’t check google analytics on this blog every day, even If I didn’t post anything on that day. It’s an addiction.

Rewind to yesterday when I see that Shay Howe created An Advanced Guide to HTML and CSS. It launched yesterday, and immediately sprung to the top of hacker news with 582 points. To give you some perspective, When I was the top link on hacker news with Fire Me, I Beg You, it only received 231 points. Basically, people loved what he created x 2.

When something like this gets to the top of hacker news, I just wait for someone to chime in on why they think the project is wrong or the implementation is horrible. It was surprisingly free of any of that type of banter.

There are three great things about this:

1. He didn’t come up with some crazy bait link headline. He could have titled it: “You’re Doing HTML and CSS Wrong”. It could have even been “Your CSS Sucks, and it’s all your fault.” (That’s sort of a joke, since my post “Your Professional Network Sucks, and It’s all your fault” front paged on HN. I also just realized HN Changed the title to “Your Professional Network”. As you can tell I’m part of the problem)
2. It’s Free – Good Guy Shay has a deep interest in moving HTML / CSS forward.
3. It’s not even finished yet. 7 of the 10 courses are not complete yet and are grayed out. I think this is great validation that people want to see the other 7 finished.

I looked at Shay’s twitter feed this morning and noticing it is still blowing up. Of course Good Guy Shay replied back to everyone that shared the link! I am very close to making Good Guy Shay a meme

 

Long story short, I learned one valuable lesson from this. Create great content and you will get noticed. If you are having trouble coming up with a catchy headline, then just tell it like it is. Great content gets rewarded.

When I left my fulltime job on January 6th, 2012, I didn’t really know anyone in Chicago. When I say no one, I really mean it. I knew no one.

It made sense that one of my 2012 goals was to get more connected. The people I talk about below are all extremely driven people and they are consistently pushing the envelope. The best part about them is they are willing to help you out, and are the most unselfish people I’ve ever met.

95% of the people I mention below I met for the first time in 2012. The other 5% I got to know a lot better.

(Note: I stole every single image from the Technori Facebook Fan Page. Thanks Crystal!)

One of the first people I met was Bernadette Freeman at an event called “The Big Idea Forum“. She changed her career and became a lawyer at 45, and now she’s an administrative law judge for Cook County. If that’s not inspiring, I don’t know what is. At the same event I also met Nik Rokop who gladly took my 10 dollars to attend the event .

Towards the end of 2011 I started to hear more about Technori and I reached out to Seth Kravitz a few times to get more involved with Technori. After he didn’t respond back to my emails (thanks man), I reached out to Val Chulamorkodt and before you know it I was working out of the Technori Office, and soon became the CTO. Soon after Melissa Kong comes all the way from Brooklyn (REPRESENT) to become Technori’s Editor in Chief. Crystal Schuller joins us from Florida to become Technori’s Events Director even though she has a Georgian accent. Some things you just can’t explain.

At a Depaul Coleman Center event I met Ethan Austin of Give Forward and Aksh Gupta of Play Occcasion. Ethan’s a burrito eating machine and Aksh is all up in the political world. Throughout this year we got to know each other through mutual acquaintances.

As I was working through my limited network, I got connected to Reid Lappin at Vokal Interactive who, in my opinion, has the best mobile company in Chicago. Reid’s a no bullshit type of guy and that’s why we got along. I got connected to Reid through Razi Khan who was connected to me by my cousin whom I wrote about here. The first time I heard about Vokal was when I met Hashim Ali at a Technori Unwind event and he recommended I talk to Vokal. Now that I know Hashim, I would recommend you stay as far away from his as possible . He’s the type of guy who only responds to me on Twitter and Facebook so he can increase his Klout Score.

I met Deborah Ritchey through an ad I placed for my company in an email distribution, and we must have had at least had 7 or 8 coffee / lunch meetings this year. Whenever I need marketing help, she’s my go to person. The SpotHero (Jeremy Smith, Mark Lawrence) guys were kind of hard to ignore since all they did was wear their SpotHero shirts everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everywhere.

Howard Diamond from Rise Interactive is part of an amazing success story. I remember sitting in Rise’s office a few years ago, and there was about 6 or 7 employees there. Now they are in the heart of downtown with an amazing office.

I also got connected to “John” from my mentor Frank Mack. The only reason I am calling him “John” is because he doesn’t want his name associated with his hilarious and anonymous 4 inches of love blog. We started brainstorming funny taglines for the blog such as: “4 inches of love, because 8inchesoflove.com was taken”, or “4 inches… from the ground”, or my favorite “4 inches of love, and that’s only half the story”.

Liz Kammel at Zipfit.me opened up a retail store on Michigan Avenue, and Julie Bashkin has made great progress with KlutchClub, Jeff Scheur is killing it with NoRedInk and Pek Pongpaet is doing great with Pinstagram.co. Fun fact about Pek is that he can woop your ass without a sweat. If you don’t know now, I warned you. Do your research

At another Technori event I remember meeting Jeff Carter and at the time I had no idea who he was. I asked him what he does for a living and his response was that “he’s an angel”. I’m a tech event, but for some reason I didn’t put 2 and 2 together and all I thought was “Why is this tall dude telling me he’s an angel? This is kind of weird”. Then I figured it out he’s an Angel Investor. BIG DIFFERENCE. I guest blogged for him a few times on his blog pointsnfigures.com which is a must read blog for any entrepreneur. I remember pitching him a “buy in bulk, deliver fresh” service which I blogged about here. I still think someone should steal that idea.

The first time I ever waited outside for Chipotle to open was with Chris Ziohbehr who is starting his own Micro Venture Capital Firm. It was 11:01 and the doors weren’t open yet. Let’s just say, nothing gets between Chris and his Chipotle.

I met Nick Delgado from Dignitas at a TechWeek event and he is the best looking bald dude I know (Sorry Jeff. He has an irresistible tan complexion). He connected me to Arabel Rosales who is the founder of Latino Fashion week and AAR Rosales. I introduced her to Amit Rana who is a consultant and created the Chicago South Asian Film Festival was a success this year. I am convinced that the three of us will eventually create a company together, once I get my shit together! Amit connected me to Kaivan Dave of Myinsens who went to India to create the best organic incense there is!

Through Technori Pitch, I meet Tom Giles AKA Megatron who is the founder of StageBloc and Mirrorgram who came here all the way from Wisconsin. He’s also one of those dude’s who wears his company T-shirt everywhere. As I was bullshitting with him and he coined the term “Executive Urban Dish Washer”, which would be a portable dishwasher for college students. It would clean one fork, one spoon and one plate at a time and would have some sort of alternating mechanism so you can also use it as a drawer while the rest of the dishes are being cleaned. That’s something I will create if I ever have too much money I don’t know what to do with.

I get connected to Len Kendall of CentUp who is the only person I know who proposed to his wife online, and got away with it. He basically crowd-sourced the proposal. Genius, or crazy – I’m not sure. Nima Oftadeh who went to Purdue & Deloitte with me and now works at Google, connected me to Len.

I met the Colorjar team because partly I had no choice. They were sharing an office with Technori. David Gardner is like 8 feet tall and his twitter background picture is one of my favorites. Bryan Knight is one of my favorite people because I can bullshit with him for hours. I could say ”You know what I hate about forks?”, and then Bryan will go on a rant about why fork’s are just not that important anymore and why the Chinese were right about the Chop Sticks.

I can’t say bullshitter without mentioning Clay Neigher. If me, Clay and Brian ever got into an argument it would probably end up with us dying of laughter and calling each other out. Jonathan Pasky is the only human being I know who can have 5 Google Chrome windows open, and each have 70 chrome tabs open in each. He is a reading machine. Jon Nacewicz AKA “Snacks” is the master of anything snack related. He is the snacks Guru. All hail Snacks.

I got to know Alex Lumley of Incisent Labs really well, and he’s definitely one of the smartest people in Chicago. One of these days I’ll be able to work with him an official way. Dan Weinfurter was the CEO at my last company and he’s also someone everyone needs to know. We’ve kept in touch and helped out each other wherever we can. He is a packers fan, so if you decide to follow him – beware.

I met David Kadavy who is the Author of Design For Hackers at his book launch. If you click on any link, click on his book link. I have an affiliate link hooked up to it, and baby needs a new pair of shoes. The book is really good too. He’s in colombia living the single man’s dream. He’s very similar to Rob Modzelewski who is the definition of a nomad. If it’s too cloudy in Thailand, he’ll just go to Cambodia instead. This is all while he works remotely. I secretly hate him, but I would never say that out loud.

I will sometimes hang out at Resultly’s  office with Ilya Beyrak who is another person who tells it like it is. Golli Hashemian is an ex-Accenture turned freelancer and by rule of thumb, I get along with anyone who worked at Accenture.

At  1871 I will always bump into Scott Mandel at SnapClass, David Pritzker of Mouthee, Avi Levine of PhilterIt and Asif Elani of Ourlabel. Eric Shen is also always good for a cup of coffee. A good friend of mine from College Zeshawn Ahmed  also joined the startup scene at 1871 with Hoppin.

Lindsay Lamb has been helping me out with my first book and I am forever grateful & Michael Stark will wear a suit anywhere he goes.

I’m sure I missed a few people along the way that deserve to be on this list, so If I did, my apologies!

Put yourself out there and amazing things will happen.

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I have meant to go to a Jelly Chicago event for probably around 2 years now. As described from Jelly’s website:

Jelly is a casual place for freelancers, entrepreneurs, etc. to meet and work together. We meet at the Whole Foods in Lincoln Park on Thursdays from 12pm-4pm.

I originally reached out to Willy from OneDayOneJob to bounce some ideas off of him, and he mentioned he was going to a jelly event on Thursday, so I made the tough executive decision and came to my first Jelly event!

The person taking the picture is Sean Johnson, who is also the founder of Jelly Chicago. Sean is also expecting his second kid and was on “alert” for the entire time.

For my first “Jelly”, I got a lot of work done and we had a lot of productive conversations. I definitely will be attending more often.

I also couldn’t help myself but to repeat “You jelly? I’m jelly”, which is a play off this video:

Overall, the day was a success! If you are in Chicago and can make this event, you should definitely come.

This post originally appeared on Technori.

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Have you sent an important e-mail to someone recently and are still waiting for that person to e-mail you back? Has it been over 3 days since you sent the e-mail? It was probably a question about a business relationship, job application, coffee meeting, or a request to get press for your company.

But, still no reply. Weird, right?

You probably made up excuses about why that person hasn’t emailed you back:

“She’s a busy person. She’s probably running across town as we speak going from meeting to meeting.”

“He probably has it starred in his e-mail and is waiting to get 20 minutes of relaxation so he can sit down and respond back to me.”

“He probably forwarded it to someone else, and that person hasn’t responded back yet.”

Let me clue you in. That person already replied back to you, and the answer is NO.

Except the response isn’t in your inbox or stuck in your SPAM folder. The lack of a response was the response.

Here is what that person told you, without ever speaking a word or lifting a finger.

No, I don’t want to get coffee with you.
No, I don’t want to write about you on my blog.
No, I cannot connect you with that person.
No, you are not a fit for this job position.

Here are the 10 emotional stages of e-mail rejection:

1. Excitement - Send an important email to the person you are looking to connect with.
2. Anxiety - Constant refreshing of your e-mail for the first 5 hours.
3. Curiosity – Wondering why they haven’t responded back yet.
4. Investigation – Checking your spam folder to see if it’s in SPAM.
5. Confusion – You start questioning your contents of the e-mail. Maybe it was too long or too short? Maybe they didn’t like you when you first met them? Why has that person not responded back yet?

Sadness – Be honest, it’s a little dejecting to send an important email and not get a response.

6. Anger – Why hasn’t that person responded back? How unprofessional of them. If they wanted to say no, all they had to do was say NO. That person doesn’t know what they’re missing out on.
7. Acceptance - You have come to acceptance with the person not e-mailing you back. It is what it is.

Lack of Acceptance- Okay, so you haven’t truly accepted it yet. They were probably busy and lost track of the e-mail you sent. So you send another follow up e-mail with a different approach.

8. Repeat - Go to step 2 and start the process over again.

I have been on both ends of the response-less email transaction, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I wish people would give everyone an ounce of respect for what they are doing and just reply back with an honest answer.

On the other hand, for the people who get these requests all the time, I can understand where they are coming from. If they respond back to the e-mail, it’s just going to lead to another email and the vicious cycle continues. It’s not that they don’t respect the person who emailed them, it’s just that they also need to respect their own time and top priorities.

I’ve learned to accept “NO” responses and move on.

How do you avoid the pain of “No Response” rejection?

The answer to getting a better reply rate to your e-mails is to send an e-mail that offers something that clearly only benefits them. It’s about providing genuinely valuable information and connections for others before you ever ask for something from them. Be an authentic and useful connection. Don’t give them a reason to say “no.”

If you continue to do good work and get noticed in the community, they will email you back eventually. When they do finally email you, just make sure to not respond. That’ll teach them.

Next time you are with someone who is starting a company and is working on it full time, ask them this question verbatim:

Have you ever thought about getting a real full time  job? A salary paying corporate job. Has it ever crossed your mind?

This is going to result in one of two responses:

Hell No, and I am offended that you would ask me a stupid question. This is my life and I’m going to make this happen no matter what. Are you trying to imply that my company isn’t going to work out? Thanks for the vote of confidence asshole.

You know what, I have. I really don’t want one, but I actually started thinking about it last week. This company is taking a lot longer to grow than I thought it would. I’m really figuring out my options right now. I don’t even know where I would work to be honest. I also don’t want to get a full time job because people will think that this company failed. I still think it could work. Maybe go back and get my MBA? Don’t tell anyone about this, OK?

You would be surprised how many starters will answer with the latter response. I wouldn’t recommend going up to someone you just met and ask them that question because it will always be #1. Get to know them first and then ask them and you will see how their response changes.

Personally, I keep in touch with all my previous employers regardless if I like them or not. You just never know when you will need them.

This post originally appeared on Technori.

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My friend sent me this post by Jason Fried, which is a must-read. In it, he writes:

“When you look back on events, it’s pretty incredible how things come together. Nothing happens independently. Everything is tied to something before it. Sometimes the links are more obvious than others, but it’s healthy to take a few moments to reflect on how many things – and people – had to come together in order for another thing to happen. You just never know.”

Jason then listed the specific chain of events that led him to meet a New York Times writer, and it’s an amazing process. I started to go through my own chain about how I know the people I know. It dawned on me that as I’ve met incredible people, I have employed one single mantra: “Every single relationship counts.”

All of the great things I have going in my life right now are tied to the great people I’ve met. I nurtured every relationship I could, and it has paid off in spades.

Here is a short example of a chain of events that started nine years ago:

• I applied for internship at Flipdog.com while I was in college
• Got job offer, later found out that my new boss had no idea how the job posting found its way to flipdog.com
• The boss liked me, then asked me if I wanted to build a website on the side for someone else. I said yes.
• A co-worker told my boss that his friend could do it instead because he needed the money more than I did. I persisted, letting my boss know that I was the guy for the job.
• Through my persistence, I did get the chance to create the website for that new client. He eventually became my mentor.
• Seven years later, I was looking for a new job and he brought me on board as the Director of IT for a company he joined.

All of this happened because my boss from nine years ago liked me and was kind enough to pass along another great work opportunity as a result.

How to make relationships work for you

1. Put yourself out there - This is probably the easiest step, but the one that is done the least by a majority of people. The only way to make relationships to work for you is put yourself out there so you can build great new relationships in the first place.
2. Connect others - The best networkers I have seen are the one’s that can and want to connect me with other people that can help me. If you are an IT person and someone needs social media help, connect them with your close social media friends.
3. Have integrity - Integrity matters in everything that you do, and everyone can tell very quickly how genuine you really are. Jeff Carter wrote a great article about why integrity matters in everything, and I couldn’t agree more with his post. It’s a great read.
4. Be consistent - This is by far the hardest to do, but if done right, you will absolutely reap the rewards. Consistently attend network events, connect others, and do things with integrity.

Just Remember:

1. Every single relationship counts.
2. Integrity matters in everything.
3. You just never know where a relationship will take you.

Interested in meeting? Contact me at robbie [at] technori [dot] com and let’s have coffee. You never know. I could get you a job in seven years!