(On the road in Bali): While I’ve been away, my friend John Gordon, who's been underground for the last couple of years finishing up his MBA at Columbia/London Business School, emailed me looking for a recommendation. Actually, he wanted to see if I might be available for marketing consulting, or could recommend someone who was.
John runs USA Corporate Services which has been around for 20+ years helping with incorporation services and the like. I used USA in 2005 when I started my 2nd business, Center for Networking Excellence LLC, and they were awesome. John gave me some great advice that saved me almost a thousand dollars. They’re very responsive and know exactly what they’re doing, all for prices less than your accountant or attorney would charge you. 
He’s expanding the company and wants some help developing and executing an aggressive marketing campaign. He first contacted Carey Earle of Green Apple Marketing, a branding genius who belonged to the same networking group as John and me. She in turn put him in touch with Richard Fouts of Comunicado, whom I’ve never met but know of through a mutual friend, Nigel Edelshein of Sales2.0. Richard then suggested John engage me as his outsourced chief marketing officer (thanks, Richard!).
So in a totally roundabout way, John finally connected to me. However, I thought he might be better off working with an agency who could help him in with media placement, though off the top of my head (which has been on vacation for the last week in the tropics, mind you), none came to mind.
I really wanted to help John, though, so I logged onto my LinkedIn account from my hotel room in Bali, scanned my contacts, and came up with the perfect name: Steve Lauterback, whose firm focuses on small businesses. Steve and I also belonged to the same networking group a while back, but since I haven’t been a member for a couple of years, I haven’t seen him a while.
But, because he had the foresight to invite me to join his LinkedIn network at some point, I was able to recommend him to John.
I haven’t been proactive at all with LinkedIn. I’ve lazily accepted almost 70 invitations, and I've been very strict about it, saying "yes" only to people I know (so I can feel confident about recommending them) and have invited just one person myself. However, this experience has highlighted for me the importance of being visible, of taking up virtual real estate in someone’s contact database, or databases, wherever they may keep them.
So once I get home, doubling my LinkedIn contacts by the end of the year will be a top priority. I figure I can do this easily, simply by extending more invitations. Not sure yet whether I might need a more liberal policy for accepting invitations (anyone have an opinion on this?).
I’ve also continued to tinker around with Facebook while I’ve been away (does anyone else find it relaxing to be online when you have no deadlines?), so more of that story to come.
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