What would you say to people who think that networking is somehow disingenuous or too transactional? The underlying spirit of networking is generosity. If you engage with people in the spirit of generosity, as opposed to tit for tat—“I gave you three things, now you give me three things”—you’ll go so much farther. What’s more, the process can become joyful rather than an onerous task. Building a network is like cultivating a botanical garden: You don’t want everyone in your network to be one color or one species. You want a variety of ages and stages and professions and passions, and to tend
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