For your Success
Networking to Find your Superstars
By Jeff and Rich Sloan, co-founders and head coaches, StartupNation

The biggest difference maker in business and your own personal career is still people ö individuals. You can have a great product idea, hordes of capital, and a sizzling marketing plan. But if you arenât working with the right people, you arenât destined for much over the long haul.

Call these people ăsuperstars.ä And realize that you must pursue them. Think of yourself as a college football coach: How many blue-chip recruits do you think you would get if you simply placed want ads and did a little networking to attract them? Zip. Every coach knows that heâs got to go knock on the front door of the coveted recruitâs home, sit down around the kitchen table with the kid and his parents, and sell his program.

Like that, we recommend that you become extremely proactive about attaching yourself to the people who are going to make the biggest difference for your career or company, and vice versa. In fact, we recommend that you put together a ăsuperstar list.ä These should be people you meet in your professional or personal lives to whom you feel immediately connected, who share your enthusiasm for great ideas and bold new ventures.

Write down the names of 12 ăsuperstarsä you would like to work with. Donât limit the list to people who fit one of your companyâs current needs, or restrict yourself only to individuals that you know now. Include at least one or two targeted superstars who probably never have even heard of you or your company, or are just too important to have bothered. Think big!

We recommend that you look for three types of people to populate your list, whether they become employees, employers, partners or mentors. List people with potential, people with proven skills, and people who are what we call ăpower brokers.ä

The easiest notion is to go after people with proven skills that can help your career or your company now. Weâre always on the lookout for these superstars in all our dealings, including conferences and in our work with big clients and partners. Make connections with these folks, shoot the breeze with them, let them know about you and your vision for your future ö maybe even suggest that someday you could work together. Plant a seed.

The second group on your superstar list is more difficult: people with potential. It can be a little scary hiring, or allying with, people for potential as opposed to linking up with them based on their proven skills. But these people actually can provide the biggest payoff, if you can manage to help unleash their potential exactly when you or your business needs to take advantage of it!

Power brokers are the third category, and by that term we mean people who wield influence in your community, the industry, or in the marketplace as a whole. These may be bona fide celebrities, or CEOs, or just people who could yield huge strategic benefits to your career or your company. In building our businesses, some of our superstars have included our attorney, a local power broker who helped us commercialize our first product, Battery Buddy; an engineer whose enthusiasm for Battery Buddy helped enlist other engineers; and the chairman of the regional chamber of commerce, who himself invested in our company and drew other top-shelf angel investors to us as well.

Just as important as creating a superstar list, and putting the right people on it, is to make it an active and dynamic grouping, not a static one. This isnât just a wish list. You should develop a system for making regular contact with individuals on the list. At first, cultivate the relationships by letting them know whatâs going on in your career or business and, especially, your vision for the future. Then, gradually -- but with determination ö try to reel them into your web until it becomes evident whether your attempts will work.

If youâre successful in solidifying a relationship with one of your superstars, youâve scored a big victory for yourself or your company. If not, at least youâve tried. And you move on, replacing that person on your superstar list. We recommend never letting the number of coveted superstars dip below 10.

One more thing: As your company grows or you take on a new professional role and become part of a new team, itâs also a good idea to make sure your employees and associates start and work their own superstar list. If all of your team members are cultivating relationships with 12 people they feel worthy of adding to the company at some point, or doing business with, youâll likely never have to hire an unknown! And youâll strike business partnerships that you know from the get-go will be worthwhile.

Our Bottom Line: If you want your career or business to soar, create a list of superstars whoâll help it get off the ground. And then pursue their involvement!

For more information, visit www.startupnation.com or contact us at info@startupnation.com.