Good networking isn’t natural. As a result, the art of building and maintaining a rich network of meaningful relationships must be learned and actively practiced. Unfortunately, few people learn this crucial step to success early in their careers. And yet, strong relationships with people you know are absolutely fundamental to any successful career.

Purposeful Networking is the cornerstone of our services at Rizers. Our goal is to transform the traditional views and approaches to networking into an invigorating way to engage with the world. For many people, networking means exchanging business cards in a noisy room. Or perhaps adding contacts to their address book or profiles to their LinkedIn connections. Rizers sees things a bit differently. We begin by clearly defining what we think of as our network, and then we follow that definition to a more natural understanding of the act of networking.

Start by visualizing your network, not as the contacts at the ends of the links, but rather as the living organism formed by all the active links between us and everyone we know. The emphasis here is on "active." It follows, then, that networking is the simple but profound activity of creating, freshening and strengthening links—in a word, providing the cultivation and care to grow the connection on both ends. Dinner with a friend, a phone conversation, an email, even a Tweet all become meaningful ways to freshen and strengthen links.

Learn more about our networking and building your online presence in our Building You, 2.0 workshop.