So how does a social climber, aka a networker, who wants a Big Fish to invest in his/her gizmo or business scheme or who needs a job broach the subject of needing help?
To begin with, no matter how desperate your financial straits are or how long you have been unemployed, erase the thought that you are asking for help; you are offering the Big Fish an opportunity to help themselves by helping you get in a better position to make the Big Fish money . . . hopefully. You are doing your Big Fish a favor. And if you lose his money, he still owes you for trying.
For starters, say nothing about your business proposition or job request to anyone, most especially to the Big Fish you plan on approaching, who, for the purpose of this exercise, we will call Big Fish Bob. Stay off the subject of business entirely except to flatter Big Fish Bob for his business savvy. If, when you are in Big Fish Bob’s presence, you witness someone else make a business proposition to Bob or if Bob asks your opinion of another’s proposition, always subtly indicate how pathetic and foolish you find it that someone would stoop to exploiting a social friendship with a shrewd man like Bob for personal gain.
By now, you will know Big Fish Bob well enough to be aware of a second Big Fish that Bob either is in direct competition with or loathes due to the fact that he is either above or below Bob on the Big Fish food chain. We will call this one Big Fish Pete.
Without Big Fish Bob’s knowledge, make the acquaintance of rival Big Fish Pete. How do you do that? By using your well-honed social climbing recon skills. Find out Pete’s hobbies, people you know in common, etc. If you discover Pete has a passion for a rarefied pastime, say, for the purposes of this exercise, snail charting, read up enough to know that snail charting consists of putting a dot of colored nail polish on the shell of a snail and following it around for several days, mapping its routes though the garden. Arrange to bump into Pete and mention your fondness for live escargot and invite him to have lunch with you at the restaurant where you know Big Fish Bob has lunch.
Why will Big Fish Pete, whom you just met, say yes to lunch? Because you are a fellow snail charter, and because he knows you are friends with his enemy and competitor Big Fish Bob. Even if Pete doesn’t like you, he will break bread with you in the hopes you will inadvertently say something that he can use against Big Fish Bob.
At your lunch with Pete, discuss neither your business proposition nor your friendship with Bob. Talk snails. When Big Fish Bob arrives at his favorite restaurant and sees you having lunch with Pete, pretend not to notice him. Make a show of laying a spreadsheet out on the table that shows the path of the imaginary snail you’ve been charting.
Guaranteed, within twenty-four hours of this lunch at which nothing but snails was discussed, you will get a call from Big Fish Bob inquiring why you were having lunch with someone as loathsome as Big Fish Pete. Reply that you asked his nemesis to lunch to discuss an investment opportunity or a job you want. Big Fish Bob, having seen you show Big Fish Pete papers, will assume they were business papers or your résumé, not a snail chart. At this point Bob is sure to say, “Why didn’t you come to me with your business deal?” or, “Why didn’t you ask me for help with a job?” At this point the cunning networker sinks the hook by confessing, “I didn’t want to take advantage of our friendship.”
Now that you have him on the line, play him carefully. Because Big Fish are competitive, Big Fish Bob will begin by telling you all the reasons you don’t want to be in business with a knuckle-dragger like Big Fish Pete, or have a bottom-feeder like Pete get you a job.
Note: Big Fish often consider beating another Big Fish out of a deal a good deal, even if the deal is as lame as the one you will likely be offering them. Even if Bob does run with the bait and offer to help you then and there, hesitate. Tell Bob that you and Big Fish Pete shook on the deal and you are a man/woman of your word.
Big Fish Bob will then call Big Fish Pete and mention the fact that he saw you and Pete having lunch and ask what you were talking about. Know that when Pete tells Big Fish Bob the truth—that you were discussing snail charting—it is an absolute certainty that Big Fish Bob is going to think Pete is lying. And in Big Fish Bob’s mind, if Pete is lying about what you were talking about at lunch, it means that your business proposition is a better proposition than it seemed when you relayed it to him or you have hidden skills that make you more qualified for the kind of job he assumes you asked Big Fish Pete to help you get. Either way, two or three days after Bob hangs up, he will call you back with an offer to team up with him. Say no twice before saying yes. You know you’re screwing Big Fish Bob, but he doesn’t.
Even after contracts are signed, the game is not over, not for a networker like you. Via the magic of networking, Big Fish Pete will hear about your new business deal with Bob or the new job Bob got you. Big Fish Pete, thinking he missed out on a chance to make money by talking snail charting with you, will now ask you out to lunch at a restaurant not frequented by Big Fish Bob to find out what other deals and ambitions you have simmering and offer to hook you up with bigger and better investors or a higher paying job.
Remember, you should always network within striking distance of at least two new potential bigger fish partners before jettisoning your first Big Fish business partner or getting fired. We say this not because we think you’re going to be fired, or hope your deal goes south, but simply because whether your business fails isn’t important, it’s that you succeed that matters.
WARNING
If you’re a small fish, be on your guard when a Big Fish seems overly eager to be networked by you.
Mr. Wittenborn learned this in 1991 when he was introduced to the Big Fish of his dreams, a smart, savvy, no-nonsense film financier—new to New York—who happened to be Bill Gates’s cousin. Yes, that Bill Gates. Most impressive of all, she wanted to give Mr. Wittenborn $5 million to make a movie. He and other aspiring filmmakers were thrilled to be approached by a woman who knew everyone in show business by their first name and had unlimited resources.
Not surprisingly, every networker in Manhattan homed in on her like heat-seeking missiles. Big Fish loaned her their limos and invited her to stay in the guest rooms of their penthouses. After a feverish month of being wined and dined, it turned out there was just one problem: This Big Fish of everyone’s dreams was not Bill Gates’s cousin.
The moral of this story? Networkers who promise to give people millions of dollars they don’t have not only need psychiatric help, they also give honest, hardworking social climbers a bad name.
Genuine Big Fish who can lend support or, better yet, invest money in a social climber’s dreams are called mentors. If you are that rare networker who actually possesses real business acumen, and if you succeed in using your mentor’s money or connections to turn a profit for both you and the mentor, the Big Fish will want to remain your mentor.
Of course you will realize that if Big Fish A can enable you to make a hundred-thousand-dollar profit, even bigger Big Fish B could help you net a million. In short, your beloved mentor Big Fish will need to be upgraded about as often as the operating system on your Mac.
EMPOWERING THOUGHT #32
Do not feel guilty when it is time to leave your mentor behind, especially if you have made your soon-to-be-ex mentor money. Remind yourself that they are getting old, and if you linger, you will soon be helping your old mentor more than they are helping you—which is not what networking is all about.
Obviously, you should choose your mentors carefully. A Big Fish who is on the verge of bankruptcy or has turned to investors of last resort, i.e., Mexican drug cartels, is not the kind of Big Fish you want to be mentored by, unless you are interested in a career in organized crime.
Naturally, mentors are most important to the young networker who’s just starting out on the economic climb. The choice of mentor is often the deciding factor that determines whether a young and ambitious person’s dreams come true, especially if you are like most young people; i.e., in spite of your exalted place in
the universe, your skill set is at best average.
The earlier one starts networking for a mentor, the better. If you are a member of that most disenfranchised caste of go-getters, the unpaid intern, know that networking a mentor for yourself early may be your only chance of surviving your first workplace experience.
Unless you obtained your internship through your parents, rich uncle, or other successful relative (in which case you’re already a networker), whoever you are interning for will not simply treat you like a slave but will take pleasure in it. Why? Because that’s how your boss was treated when he/she was an intern. Often, the abusive, annoying, and demeaning tasks that you, the intern, will be greeted with on that first day on the job will be due to the fact that your immediate superior got you, an intern to lighten their workload, rather than the pay raise or promotion they had been promised in their last job review.
How can the intern network beyond servitude? When your immediate master/mistress asks you to do unpleasant things, i.e., lick stamps, stay late photocopying graph paper, pick up lunch, fetch coffee, clean up coffee they deliberately drop, etc., always smile and offer a cheerful “No problem, I’ll take care of it.”
Why are you pretending to be happy? Because your immediate boss wants to break you. Your seemingly bottomless good humor and enthusiasm for drone work and humiliation will become more and more annoying to them. So annoying that your immediate boss, who is determined to crack you, will begin to create more and more elaborate fool’s errands for you to run. In a matter of days they will have you picking up dry cleaning, walking the dog, purchasing condoms and/or sex aids, taking their urine sample to the lab, etc.
Now, as you set off on these fool’s errands you are being forced to run, always make a point of purposely walking through that area of the workplace reserved for Big Fish. Stop any and all Big Fish you pass in the hall, or whose open office door provides an opportunity for face time, and volunteer, “I’m just dropping off Sally’s urine sample, can I get you anything?” Which will in turn prompt the Big Fish to do one of two things: confront the employee you’re interning for about using you to run personal errands, which will result in them firing you from a job you don’t want anyway, or, more likely, inspire the Big Fish to put you to work running personal errands for him or her.
If the latter happens, do not mention this to your immediate superior. Tell the Big Fish who’s above your boss on the corporate ladder that you are eager to learn as much about the business as possible and would “love” to come in on the weekends and help out. Soon, you will be changing the Big Fish’s shelf paper at home. Babysitting their children. Washing their car. Which of course will lead the Big Fish to ask you to do things they would rather you not mention to your superior, their superior, or more important, their spouse. Soon you will be filling OxyContin prescriptions for them, getting them pot, helping them have an affair, etc. Once the Big Fish has trusted you with some detail of their life that would be embarrassing, you have succeeded in flipping the power dynamic of your work relationship.
Now if you are an intern and a networker and one of those readers who, in spite of our advice, intends to sleep his or her way to the top no matter what we say, your volunteer weekend work will offer you the perfect opportunity to give your future mentor the business.
Remember, immediately after you have lost your office virginity, always act upset, morose, tearful. Wait until the Big Fish asks you at least twice what’s wrong before answering. Trust us, the Big Fish you’ve just done the nasty with will be so relieved to hear that you aren’t going to file a sexual harassment suit that you will only have to allude to the fact that you don’t like the person you’re interning for to prompt the Big Fish to do the right thing . . . for you. Follow our advice, and within twenty-four hours, you will have a paying job and an intern of your own to abuse.
As a networker, whether a lowly intern, Big Fish, or Whale, you are part of something much, much greater than the economic food chain; you are a part of what Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) called a “virtuous cycle.” Just as Blankfein sees the financial good deeds he performs for himself and others as “doing God’s work,” so should you. And remember, when the Almighty is at the top of your network, there’s a special place in heaven waiting for you.
THE FAMILY THAT CLIMBS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER
One of the many joys of social climbing is that it is an activity the whole family can take part in.
Teaching your children how to Mountaineer will not just give them the confidence and skills essential to leading a happy, healthy, and most important, rich life, it will bring your whole family closer together.
Single parent? Divorced? Not that we blame you, but social climbing with your children will teach them how to seek out friendships that will not only enrich their lives but also make them feel less lonely and disappointed that you couldn’t hold on to your marriage.
To those Tiger Moms and Dads who say their children’s lives are already overscheduled—violin lessons, tutors, soccer, hockey, basketball, etc.—get real. What are the odds your children are going to grow up and play the violin at Carnegie Hall? Or get even a measly $10 million signing bonus for playing pro ball? Yes, if they achieve all-state status, those pastimes might help them get into one of the “right” universities. But if they tear their ACL, what happens to your family’s dream? And even if they don’t get hurt, they’ll be so busy playing sports they won’t have the free time or social skills to make the most of what going to a prestigious university is all about in the first place—forging friendships that can help them network and get a job after graduation that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get based on grades or talent.
Here are some basic tips that will help get you and your family climbing in the right direction—to the top!
When it comes to the arts and sciences of social climbing, New York City is the Athens of the twenty-first century. Climbing in the Big Apple isn’t just a spectator sport that the whole city takes part in, it’s a more fundamental ingredient in everyday life than any religion. A family doesn’t put up with the cost, crime, and taxes of NYC if they are not aggressively and devoutly upwardly mobile. The same can be said to a lesser degree of life in any big city in America—Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, Boston, etc.—but when it comes to climbing as a family, NYC is on the cutting edge. Because of this, seeing how it works in NYC will help you work it in your hometown.
The Right School
There are hundreds of private schools in New York City. Sadly, only a small fraction of them are considered the “right schools” and can truly help you and your child’s climb. The yearly tuition at one of the right private nursery schools is more than twenty thousand dollars per year, and by the time your child is a teenager going to one of the right private high schools it will set you back in the neighborhood of forty grand per annum. All told, sending one child to one of the right schools from nursery through twelfth grade will cost you around half a million dollars. If that seems like a daunting number, know that you aren’t just purchasing academic excellence, you are buying a lifetime’s worth of social entrée for you and your child.
Of course, city climbers can send their child to one of the right boarding schools, too—Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, Deerfield, etc.—they all provide an excellent education. But we feel Mountaineers who send their children away to boarding school are missing the opportunity to climb as a family. Yes, there are first-rate Mountaineering opportunities at elite boarding schools. You can take comfort in knowing your child will be bunking with the children of international tycoons, Chinese billionaires, European royalty, Russian oligarchs, and Third World dictators, at least one of whom will be destined to appear before a human rights tribunal. There’s no question that giving your children an opportunity to make friends with the leaders of a country that lacks an extradition treaty might help them if they grow up to be a fugitive from justice. The question is, what will it do for you now?
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sp; Yes, on parent visiting days at boarding school, you will have the opportunity to meet exotic Big Fish and Whale parents of your child’s friends. But even for the most rapid and audacious parent climber, there is so only so much Mountaineering that can be done in the course of a parents’ weekend, especially when your hobnobbing opportunities are constantly being interrupted by meddlesome meetings with your child’s teachers.
The fun and payoff of sending your children to one of the right private day schools in New York City is that once they’ve been accepted at one of the right schools, you, as parents, will also be accepted, i.e., you will have the opportunity to meet Big Fish parents who can speed your climb every single day of the school year.
The parents of a child who attends one of these schools will find themselves at drop-off, pick-up, the school playground, athletic contests, etc., making small talk with billionaires, hedge fund princes, prize-winning novelists, Academy Award–winning actors, TV personalities, and diplomats, i.e., people whose bodyguards wouldn’t let you get near them if their child weren’t friends with your child on a daily basis. You won’t ever have to ask Big Fish for their unlisted phone numbers, they’re printed out in the school directory, along with the Big Fish’s nickname . . . that’s if your child gets into one of the right schools.
Think of all the exciting and profitable new best friends you could be making if your kid attended one of these elite institutions. You’ve read our chapter on networking; you know what to do once you’re on a first-name basis with a Big Fish. From day one, admission to the right school will enable you and your children to step into the winner’s circle together, and you will have the privilege of being able to social climb with them as you push their strollers into a better life.
The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile Page 14
