Is WHO you know more important than WHAT you know, if you want to be a business success?

I'm assuming you are talking about business...

As a business consultant everyday I come across people that are smart, very smart. They read all the business journals. They've invested tons of money in seminars and books and courses. The Internet allows them to stay up to date on all sorts of business issues. They visit forums and take nuggets of information others have posted...and yet they do nothing. Or they do very little, way under what they are capable of. Sure they might have some sort of little business on the side but they really aren't growing it.

On the other hand I also know people that seem to know "everyone"...politians, business people, people in the financial markets--people that could allow someone to succeed in business, but as with the folks that accumulate information and don't apply it, we have someone that doesn't use the contacts they have.

I can safely say that the successful business people I know represent virtually every type of business person under the sun.

Some started through the help of others...some did not.

Some are extremely brights...some are not (but are smart enough to admit it and found ways to work around it--i.e. hire smarter people!)

The fact is, lots of knowledge or little knowledge...lots of contacts or few contacts the one thing common thread I've found that ties these successful people together was the willingness to try. Most of the time they risked time and or money and pushed ahead. Quite often they had to adjust their business plan (sometimes radically) but they did something with what they had instead of sitting on the sidelines waiting for the "perfect opportunity".

So in closing I do believe that while knowledge and contacts can make things easier (sometimes they do make things more difficult) the willingness to just try overshadows everything else.

Take care,

Mike Winicki