Review
"A mother lode of timely, hard-earned, bite-size, street-smart golden nuggets-- invaluable for job seekers, employed or unemployed."
--Stephen Covey
"[Harvey Mackay] joins Bob Townsend (Up the Organization) as master of brief, biting, and brilliant business wit and wisdom."
--Tom Peters
--Stephen Covey
"[Harvey Mackay] joins Bob Townsend (Up the Organization) as master of brief, biting, and brilliant business wit and wisdom."
--Tom Peters
Book Description
Bestselling author Harvey Mackay reveals his techniques for the most essential tool in business--networking, the indispensable art of building contacts.
Now in paperback, Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is Harvey Mackay's last word on how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away. This shrewdly practical book distills Mackay's wisdom gleaned from years of "swimming with sharks," including:
What kinds of networks exist
How to start a network, and how to wring the most from it
The smart way to downsize your list--who to keep, who to dump
How to keep track of favors done and favors owed--Is it my lunch or yours?
What you can do if you are not good at small talk
Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is a must for anyone who wants to get ahead by reaching out.
Now in paperback, Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is Harvey Mackay's last word on how to get what you want from the world through networking. For everyone from the sales rep facing a career-making deal to the entrepreneur in search of capital, Dig Your Well explains how meeting these needs should be no more than a few calls away. This shrewdly practical book distills Mackay's wisdom gleaned from years of "swimming with sharks," including:
What kinds of networks exist
How to start a network, and how to wring the most from it
The smart way to downsize your list--who to keep, who to dump
How to keep track of favors done and favors owed--Is it my lunch or yours?
What you can do if you are not good at small talk
Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty is a must for anyone who wants to get ahead by reaching out.
From the Publisher
Harvey's Network Speaks for Itself:
Praise for Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive:
"Harvey Mackay may be the most talented man I have met."
--Lou Holtz
"To read Harvey Mackay's 'cookbook for success' is to know Harvey. He'll share with you everything he knows--and I wouldn't hesitate a minute in taking his advice."
--Charles Schwab
"Harvey Mackay takes you on an easy reader ride to success in the business world. He got his; now, in a burst of compassion, he's drafted the guidelines so that you can get yours."
--Ted Koppel
And now get ready for the book Harvey Mackay was born to write and you were meant to read...
"If I had to name the single characteristic shared by all the truly successful people I've met over a lifetime, I'd say it is the ability to create and nurture a network of contacts."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
"A mother lode of timely, hard-earned, bite-size, street-smart golden nuggets-- invaluable for job seekers, employed or unemployed."
--Stephen Covey
"[Harvey Mackay] joins Bob Townsend (Up the Organization) as master of brief, biting, and brilliant business wit and wisdom."
--Tom Peters
--Stephen Covey
"[Harvey Mackay] joins Bob Townsend (Up the Organization) as master of brief, biting, and brilliant business wit and wisdom."
--Tom Peters
About the Author
Harvey Mackay is a bestselling author whose books include the mega-selling Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive; and a nationally syndicated columnist, whose weekly business advice appears in fifty newspapers around the United States. He is an active corporate CEO and a prominent civic leader. He and his family live in Minneapolis.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Network Never Sleeps
Our foursome had finished the usual Saturday morning round of golf. We were in the clubhouse doing the postmortem when Jerry said, "Last night I got a call. It was two in the morning. I won't tell you who it was because one of you might know him. He was semihysterical. His accountant had called him that afternoon and told him he was broke; his company couldn't make the payroll, and if he didn't retrieve the checks he'd written, there was a good chance he'd go to jail. The guy needed $20,000. The strange thing is, I hadn't talked to him in over ten years. He said the only reason he called me was that I used to be a close friend and that I knew he was a trustworthy guy. Well, I offered to lend him a few thousand dollars, but I didn't give him what he needed even though I could have.
"It got me thinking though," Jerry added. "What if it had been me? How many people could I realistically count on to bust a gut to help me out if I'd called them at 2 A.M.?"
"How many, Jerry?"
"Two, maybe three."
We went around the table. The answers were about the same until they got to me.
"Fifty," I said.
"Come on, Harvey! That's B.S."
"No, it isn't," I said. "I've been ready to make the kind of call that Jerry got for nearly forty years. I never had to make it. I made fifty others like it instead. I've made 2 A.M. calls to find the absolutely best doctor in town in a family medical crisis; I've made them to get a valued employee out of a blackmail situation and to stop a customer not only from dumping me but to keep him from badmouthing me so totally that my business would be ruined forever.
"I know I've been to the wall at least fifty times, and in each one of those fifty times, I was able to find the right person to get me the help I needed.
"Ever since I was dumb enough to buy a bankrupt envelope company when I was just a kid, I've been building a network of people who I could count on and who count on me in case one of those 2 A.M.ers came around. I know I wouldn't have survived if I hadn't, and I'm proud that a lot of other people who made those kind of calls to me wouldn't have made it either if I hadn't been part of their networks."
I feel sorry for the guy who called Jerry, because it didn't have to come down that way. But the guy didn't stay in touch. He didn't prepare. He not only didn't dig his well before he got thirsty, he waited until he was dying of thirst before he even started clawing the ground.
How many names do you think he called before he called Jerry--a guy he hadn't talked to in ten years? Five? Ten? Probably even more. And with each call the odds grew longer against connecting, because he was getting farther and farther away from his real network.
Remember the Broadway show and movie Six Degrees of Separation? The title refers to the fact that there's a chain of no more than six people that links every person on this planet to every other person.
What if I want to meet the president of GE and sell him some envelopes? Well, if I know somebody who knows somebody and so on, six deep, I can be standing there in Jack Welch's office pitching #l0s before we play our next round. That's a helluva network, and we're all capable of building one just like it.
But try to reach over the five people between you and Welch directly? Can't be done. That's Jerry's nonpal's way. A non-network. A rope of sand. If you dig your well and actually have a network, you're never going to be out on that sixth dimension all by your lonesome where all you get is busy signals and wrong numbers.
"Jerry, I just want you to know that if I get a late-nighter from you some day, the twenty grand will be in your account within twenty-four hours. By the way, what have you got for collateral?"
"What have I got for collateral? I remember catching one of those 2 A.M.ers from you, Harvey. I've been there for you."
"You're right," I said. "And that's all the collateral you need."
Jerry and I have been around forever. If we can keep our network going year after year, it isn't too late for you.
The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies showing that people who stop smoking, even though they may have smoked for decades, can cut their risk of lung cancer nearly to the same levels as people who have never smoked.
Same reasoning with networking.
The Mackay Journal of Networking has no published studies but cheerfully predicts that no matter when you start, you can build a network of people who will pick up the phone, ready to help, if you ever have to make a call at 2 A.M.
Mackay's Maxim:
2 A.M. is a lousy time to try to make new friends.
The Most Important Networking Lesson I Ever Learned
When I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I couldn't afford my own apartment. I lived at home in St. Paul. My mother had died just about the time I finished up at school, so my housemate was my father.
He was lonely.
I was trying to get my career started, and I was in over my head most of the time.
The result: a lot more father/son talks than I'd had in all the previous years we had lived together.
At the time, I was scratching out a living selling envelopes for Quality Park. I wanted to get on the fast track, but I didn't have a clue as to where the fast track was or how to catch the train that traveled on it.
My father did.
"Look, ever since you were seven years old, you've been batting golf balls around. I've seen you come in with bloody hands from hanging out at the driving range." (They gave me all the free whacks I wanted in exchange for running around in a golf cart with an iron cage mounted on it, picking up the loose balls.)
"Now that I think about it, golf is probably the only form of human activity you've taken seriously up to now.
Why don't you try to capitalize on what you've lost?
"Go over to Minneapolis and pitch the admissions committee at the Oak Ridge Country Club. They're always buried in last place in the Minneapolis City Golf League. Tell them how you played golf for the University of Minnesota team, won the city championship twice, and was runner-up in the state high school tournament. They need new blood. They need talent. See if they'll let you in without having to pay the usual horrendous initiation fee, which neither of us can afford.
"If they do, you've got unlimited potential to make great business contacts. I think they have about 300 members, and most of them would love to play with you because of your low handicap. And maybe your generous and visionary employer will help you with the dues if you can show them some envelope action."
So why not? What's to lose in trying?
I gave the admissions committee the sales job of a lifetime. I figured the odds were the same as making a hole-in-one, but I gave it a shot.
"For nothing? You want us to admit you, a twenty-two-year-old kid, who knows virtually no one in the entire club, for nothing? Just so you can hustle our old duffers, pardon me, our distinguished members?"
Slight overswing. I had landed in a bunker.
"No, no, that isn't what I had in mind."
"Right. You want to help us win the City League Championship. Not sell envelopes."
"Well, not gamble on golf. I promise you I will never hustle a member. But I don't see anything wrong with making business contacts. That's what people do at country clubs. And just because I'm young, you shouldn't hold that against me. Young members are likely to pay dues for a lot more years than old members."
"No initiation fee?"
"I can't afford an initiation fee. Not now. Maybe someday."
"Someday? Then maybe we should defer your admission until someday."
"And blow off young members until they get old? And good golfers too?"
And so it went.
No sale. Triple bogey.
But I didn't throw away my clubs.
Six months and numerous meetings later, I was admitted.
For next to nothing down and a dues schedule I could live with, barely. As part of the deal, they made it clear they would be looking over my shoulder for any signs of improvement in my financial condition.
As I look back on my career, there's no question that this was the one single act that most helped me launch my career.
Three hundred members. Three hundred potential customers. Three hundred million unbet three-footers and Calcuttas. All in addition to the ton of new contacts in the city league.
What a network!
Fingerhut Corporation--the huge direct mail company. My largest account forty years ago, and still my largest account today
The Minnesota Vikings
General Mills
The Pillsbury Company
Coast-to-Coast Stores
Honeywell
To name just a few. So many new doors were opened up for me that within a few years I was top dog in sales at Quality Park and ready to go into business for myself.
But the best payoff was yet to come.
I was introduced to another former junior champ with a closet full of golf trophies.
Though my new golf partner never bought an envelope from me, she did say "I do." As a result, Carol Ann and I have been married for thirty-six years and raised three terrific kids together.
Mackay's Maxim:
Your best network will develop from what you do best.
Doin' What Comes Unnaturally
Fred was one of my schoolmates from fourth grade all through college.
He was a loner, a total introvert, painfully shy, with all the baggage that comes with it--the dead-fish handshake, the downcast eyes that never quite met yours, the halting, barely audible stabs at conversation.
Still, Fr...
Our foursome had finished the usual Saturday morning round of golf. We were in the clubhouse doing the postmortem when Jerry said, "Last night I got a call. It was two in the morning. I won't tell you who it was because one of you might know him. He was semihysterical. His accountant had called him that afternoon and told him he was broke; his company couldn't make the payroll, and if he didn't retrieve the checks he'd written, there was a good chance he'd go to jail. The guy needed $20,000. The strange thing is, I hadn't talked to him in over ten years. He said the only reason he called me was that I used to be a close friend and that I knew he was a trustworthy guy. Well, I offered to lend him a few thousand dollars, but I didn't give him what he needed even though I could have.
"It got me thinking though," Jerry added. "What if it had been me? How many people could I realistically count on to bust a gut to help me out if I'd called them at 2 A.M.?"
"How many, Jerry?"
"Two, maybe three."
We went around the table. The answers were about the same until they got to me.
"Fifty," I said.
"Come on, Harvey! That's B.S."
"No, it isn't," I said. "I've been ready to make the kind of call that Jerry got for nearly forty years. I never had to make it. I made fifty others like it instead. I've made 2 A.M. calls to find the absolutely best doctor in town in a family medical crisis; I've made them to get a valued employee out of a blackmail situation and to stop a customer not only from dumping me but to keep him from badmouthing me so totally that my business would be ruined forever.
"I know I've been to the wall at least fifty times, and in each one of those fifty times, I was able to find the right person to get me the help I needed.
"Ever since I was dumb enough to buy a bankrupt envelope company when I was just a kid, I've been building a network of people who I could count on and who count on me in case one of those 2 A.M.ers came around. I know I wouldn't have survived if I hadn't, and I'm proud that a lot of other people who made those kind of calls to me wouldn't have made it either if I hadn't been part of their networks."
I feel sorry for the guy who called Jerry, because it didn't have to come down that way. But the guy didn't stay in touch. He didn't prepare. He not only didn't dig his well before he got thirsty, he waited until he was dying of thirst before he even started clawing the ground.
How many names do you think he called before he called Jerry--a guy he hadn't talked to in ten years? Five? Ten? Probably even more. And with each call the odds grew longer against connecting, because he was getting farther and farther away from his real network.
Remember the Broadway show and movie Six Degrees of Separation? The title refers to the fact that there's a chain of no more than six people that links every person on this planet to every other person.
What if I want to meet the president of GE and sell him some envelopes? Well, if I know somebody who knows somebody and so on, six deep, I can be standing there in Jack Welch's office pitching #l0s before we play our next round. That's a helluva network, and we're all capable of building one just like it.
But try to reach over the five people between you and Welch directly? Can't be done. That's Jerry's nonpal's way. A non-network. A rope of sand. If you dig your well and actually have a network, you're never going to be out on that sixth dimension all by your lonesome where all you get is busy signals and wrong numbers.
"Jerry, I just want you to know that if I get a late-nighter from you some day, the twenty grand will be in your account within twenty-four hours. By the way, what have you got for collateral?"
"What have I got for collateral? I remember catching one of those 2 A.M.ers from you, Harvey. I've been there for you."
"You're right," I said. "And that's all the collateral you need."
Jerry and I have been around forever. If we can keep our network going year after year, it isn't too late for you.
The New England Journal of Medicine has published studies showing that people who stop smoking, even though they may have smoked for decades, can cut their risk of lung cancer nearly to the same levels as people who have never smoked.
Same reasoning with networking.
The Mackay Journal of Networking has no published studies but cheerfully predicts that no matter when you start, you can build a network of people who will pick up the phone, ready to help, if you ever have to make a call at 2 A.M.
Mackay's Maxim:
2 A.M. is a lousy time to try to make new friends.
The Most Important Networking Lesson I Ever Learned
When I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I couldn't afford my own apartment. I lived at home in St. Paul. My mother had died just about the time I finished up at school, so my housemate was my father.
He was lonely.
I was trying to get my career started, and I was in over my head most of the time.
The result: a lot more father/son talks than I'd had in all the previous years we had lived together.
At the time, I was scratching out a living selling envelopes for Quality Park. I wanted to get on the fast track, but I didn't have a clue as to where the fast track was or how to catch the train that traveled on it.
My father did.
"Look, ever since you were seven years old, you've been batting golf balls around. I've seen you come in with bloody hands from hanging out at the driving range." (They gave me all the free whacks I wanted in exchange for running around in a golf cart with an iron cage mounted on it, picking up the loose balls.)
"Now that I think about it, golf is probably the only form of human activity you've taken seriously up to now.
Why don't you try to capitalize on what you've lost?
"Go over to Minneapolis and pitch the admissions committee at the Oak Ridge Country Club. They're always buried in last place in the Minneapolis City Golf League. Tell them how you played golf for the University of Minnesota team, won the city championship twice, and was runner-up in the state high school tournament. They need new blood. They need talent. See if they'll let you in without having to pay the usual horrendous initiation fee, which neither of us can afford.
"If they do, you've got unlimited potential to make great business contacts. I think they have about 300 members, and most of them would love to play with you because of your low handicap. And maybe your generous and visionary employer will help you with the dues if you can show them some envelope action."
So why not? What's to lose in trying?
I gave the admissions committee the sales job of a lifetime. I figured the odds were the same as making a hole-in-one, but I gave it a shot.
"For nothing? You want us to admit you, a twenty-two-year-old kid, who knows virtually no one in the entire club, for nothing? Just so you can hustle our old duffers, pardon me, our distinguished members?"
Slight overswing. I had landed in a bunker.
"No, no, that isn't what I had in mind."
"Right. You want to help us win the City League Championship. Not sell envelopes."
"Well, not gamble on golf. I promise you I will never hustle a member. But I don't see anything wrong with making business contacts. That's what people do at country clubs. And just because I'm young, you shouldn't hold that against me. Young members are likely to pay dues for a lot more years than old members."
"No initiation fee?"
"I can't afford an initiation fee. Not now. Maybe someday."
"Someday? Then maybe we should defer your admission until someday."
"And blow off young members until they get old? And good golfers too?"
And so it went.
No sale. Triple bogey.
But I didn't throw away my clubs.
Six months and numerous meetings later, I was admitted.
For next to nothing down and a dues schedule I could live with, barely. As part of the deal, they made it clear they would be looking over my shoulder for any signs of improvement in my financial condition.
As I look back on my career, there's no question that this was the one single act that most helped me launch my career.
Three hundred members. Three hundred potential customers. Three hundred million unbet three-footers and Calcuttas. All in addition to the ton of new contacts in the city league.
What a network!
Fingerhut Corporation--the huge direct mail company. My largest account forty years ago, and still my largest account today
The Minnesota Vikings
General Mills
The Pillsbury Company
Coast-to-Coast Stores
Honeywell
To name just a few. So many new doors were opened up for me that within a few years I was top dog in sales at Quality Park and ready to go into business for myself.
But the best payoff was yet to come.
I was introduced to another former junior champ with a closet full of golf trophies.
Though my new golf partner never bought an envelope from me, she did say "I do." As a result, Carol Ann and I have been married for thirty-six years and raised three terrific kids together.
Mackay's Maxim:
Your best network will develop from what you do best.
Doin' What Comes Unnaturally
Fred was one of my schoolmates from fourth grade all through college.
He was a loner, a total introvert, painfully shy, with all the baggage that comes with it--the dead-fish handshake, the downcast eyes that never quite met yours, the halting, barely audible stabs at conversation.
Still, Fr...
