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

Hi Mike,

I agree - if you don't DO something, it's hard to get anywhere....

However, if you are already doing that, then which could be more important - "who" you know, or "what" you know?

In one of your earlier posts, you wrote about the importance of "VLPs" - Very Leveraged People. This might suggest that "who" you know could be more important....

Here's Mike's excellent earlier post on VLPs....

http://www.sowpub.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl?read=7281

One person also pointed out to me that if you know the right people, you don't need to know much - you just ask the right person your question, and if they know, they'll tell you the answer. You can "leverage" other people's knowledge too!

There's a story about Henry Ford, who was suing a Chicago newspaper for calling him an "ignorant pacifist" because he had little education.

The story goes that the opposing lawyer asked Henry Ford a string of trivia questions, designed to make Henry Ford look ignorant.

After a while, Ford became tired of these senseless questions and said,

"I may not have a Harvard law degree like yourself, but what I do have is a button on my desk, and when I push that button in a matter of minutes I can have a dozen or men in my office that can answer all of your silly questions. Not only can they answer your silly questions I am sure some of those can ask you questions that will make you look silly."

(So the story goes....)

This story clears up a puzzle for me - how can people with little formal education often be so successful? One possible answer, in addition to being "self-taught", is that people may also leverage the knowledge of other people around them.... Who they know can become a replacement for what they know....

Anyhow, these are interesting things to ponder!

- Dien Rice