Darcy Rezac knows a thing or two about networking. By his own estimation, he’s been introduced to 320,000 people face to face.

He also understands that most of us dislike networking, don’t believe in it, and given our druthers, we’d prefer not to do it.

People who feel that way are missing the boat, Rezac says. They’re losing out on a chance to enrich their personal lives, never mind extending their business networks.

This week, November 6, Rezac speaks to a lunch-hour audience at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. A savvy crowd, he nevertheless expects that up to 80 per cent of them don’t like networking, won’t know more than a few great networkers personally, and if they do network, probably aren’t aware of how much better they can be.

Photo courtesy Dave Roels
Darcy Rezac, right, exchanges business cards with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell. Rezac believes networking can become effortless with practice.

He’ll stress the need to shift their thinking from the negative networking concept of selling and closing deals to what he calls the seminal secret of networking success.

“The secret to positive networking is discovering what you can do for someone else,” says Rezac, managing director of the Vancouver Board of Trade the past 18 years.

“It might mean introducing a new contact to someone else, or passing on some information, it’s that simple. It’s a definition that takes the pressure off because you don’t have to sell yourself. It’s also the first step in building a good relationship.”

As part of his visit, Rezac will hold the Calgary launch of his new book, The Frog and Prince: Secrets of Positive Networking.

Written with Judy Thomson and his wife, Gayle Hallgren, the tributes gracing the book’s cover are testament alone to Rezac’s knowledge and/or his personal networking ability. Included among his boosters are author Peter C. Newman and businessman Jim Pattison. The foreword is written by Thomas J. Donahue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The book’s title borrows from the fairytale theme of the princess who kisses a frog. The frog magically turns into a prince, and they live happily ever after.

Throughout the book, he promotes the idea that the more people (frogs) we meet, the better our lives will become personally and professionally.

“The first secret is that you have to be out there networking a lot,” Rezac says. “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.”

It doesn’t take a huge leap to connect with Rezac’s message.

I found the book inspiring. It’s teeming with hundreds of practical tips about networking and helpful illustrative anecdotes about the world’s greatest networkers – many whom Rezac knows personally.

A crucial part of his theory centres on the idea of the “small-worlds” phenomenon. It’s the notion that we’re all connected to each other by as few as six handshakes. Also known as six degrees of separation, the theory was proven by two Cornell mathematicians in the late 1990s.

“We’ve all had those experiences where we sit next to someone on a plane or in a pub, get talking, and suddenly realize we each know someone from the same hometown,” Rezac says.

These meetings often turn into situations where both parties benefit. Business cards are exchanged and sometimes, “out of the blue,” the contact you’ve made on the plane has passed your name on to another person who calls you, offering work or a lead on a job.

It’s why Rezac suggests carrying business cards wherever we go: at work, shopping, at the hockey rink, the movie theatre, working out in the gym, anywhere you might meet someone that you might possibly help.

“When you do that you will find that amazing, random and unexpected things happen to those who network well, and also to the people that you touch.”

Supporting his theory, Rezac cites the research of Mark Granovetter at Johns Hopkins University. He found that 80 per cent of the time, people who find jobs through networking find them through “weak connections” – via distant acquaintances rather than through close friends.

What, Rezac asks, does that tell you?

“Every contact you make is like gold. You never know when things will light up . . . but it also works for other people. You’ll connect someone to somebody else who ends up benefiting some way.”

The purpose behind his book and his lectures is for people to become more conscious of the power of networking and the happiness it brings.

The good news is that networking is a learned skill, like learning to dance. If a person has the right attitude, learns the proper steps, pays attention to their partner, he/she can become an elegant networker, he says.

“Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had to learn the steps, had to work hard. But all that practising resulted in a skill that became effortless, and then it became a lot of fun.”

Just like great dancers, there aren’t a lot of great networkers in the world, says Rezac. So, there’s plenty of room on the networking dance card.

To illustrate, he recalls a presentation he and his wife made in Quebec City last month. It was a four-day meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Delegates from across the world attended, attracting the type of people who should be good networkers. Within two days, virtually every delegate was out of business cards, so they had nothing to offer potential contacts the last two days, Rezac recalls.

At the same time, most of the groups sat together with themselves. They didn’t mix. Either they didn’t feel that they had permission to network, or they didn’t want to move out of their comfort zone, he says.

Perhaps it’s not much different than the business groups he addresses, where typically – and surprisingly – four out of five people aren’t comfortable with networking.

In The Frog and the Prince, the point is made that in all our social interactions we are networking.

It’s up to us whether we find the right frog to kiss.

Web watch:
www.frogandprince.com