Entrepreneurship, Paul Revere Style
"It's all connections," says master networker Christopher Gergen.
(Lifeentrepreneurs.com)
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Thomas Heath's "Value Added" is a new column appearing Tuesdays on the WashBiz blog. Most weeks, it will profile local entrepreneurs, discussing how they make money and what they do with it.
Seven years ago, I was somehow selected for a fellowship to study at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, where I learned lots of cool stuff like accounting, the discount rate and the definition of "moral hazard."
But the biggest takeaway for me was something I had barely noticed before I got there: the importance of a social network.
In other words, connections.
A fascinating business school case explained that the reason Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere became a household name was because his social connections helped make him famous.
A guy named William Dawes, who also rode through New England screaming, "The British are coming," barely rates a footnote in history. Dawes didn't work the crowd. Revere was a networker.
Which brings us to Christopher Gergen.
Gergen, 37, is a natural networker, in a positive way.
"It's all connections," said Gergen, who has co-authored a book on becoming an entrepreneur, has built one successful business and is working on a second. "You've got to figure out who knows who."
After graduating from Gonzaga College High School, he studied art in France, then worked for a theater in Massachusetts. He did a semester with National Outdoor Leadership School (akin to Outward Bound).
Gergen studied English and fine arts at Duke. He sold a painting for $300 in his sophomore year and bought a plane ticket to New Zealand, where he began to think about the possibilities of distance education while teaching school on a 40,000-acre sheep farm.
