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for $36,000 a year makes in the world, it’s a fairly low-leverage difference. Furthermore, whoever ends up licking those envelopes didn’t need to study for four years in college to do so, and my fellow Brown grads who took these kinds of jobs could have spent their years between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two learning the skills and mind-sets of having a real impact on the lives of other people, the way the people in this book learned. Instead, they take these kinds of jobs because they assume that if there’s money, profit, or commerce involved, it’s not making a difference, it’s greed.

The entrepreneurs in this book, in turn, understand that true giving generates wealth, and true wealth helps you give more.

They understand flow. They understand affluence.

Much of the rest of this book is given over to self-education in the different tools in the Swiss army knife of advice giving, specifically : sales, marketing, connecting with influential people, how to invest in and increase your earning power, how to build a personal brand, how to take responsibility for your own success, and getting in touch with your purpose and meaning on the planet.

Diving deeply into your self-education in these real-world skills for success and leadership pays a double benefit. Not only will learning as much as you can about these areas improve your own life and business. They are also the main business areas in which other people seek advice. Developing experience, skills, and knowledge in these areas is a direct investment in your connection capital because it allows you to give a highly leveraged gift (valuable advice and guidance) to many people around you, increasing your circle of connections and contribution and also drawing the right teachers, mentors, and guides into your life. This connection capital, once in place, can pay “interest and dividends” for decades to come, as you use it to provide value, both personally and professionally, to the people around you.

Do you see how this all works by now? It’s all really, really simple.

Give give give. Give give give. Give give give. Give generously within your network, and to people you hope will be in your network one day. Always inquire within yourself, and within your deepest creativity, how you can be of greater service. Without keeping track and without concern for a specific quid pro quo.12

Once you get a true network of co-support and mutuality going on, the giving and service and help start going around in this amazing community circle in ways more powerful than you can imagine.

■ HOW TO GIVE WHEN YOU’RE JUST STARTING OUT AND YOU’VE GOT NOTHING TO GIVE

There are still cynics among my readers who are starting to grumble. I know, I know. I had the money to fly out to Eben’s talk in LA, and to go to Burning Man, and to an expensive weekend in Ojai to connect with him. I had a connection to Bryan in my social circle, and the network to be able to introduce him to a lot of future customers. I had already learned enough about marketing to give Bryan—a successful businessman—credible marketing advice. And I happened to be close friends with the amazing Annie Lalla, marriage material through and through, whom I was able to introduce to Eben.

In other words, my networking cup already ranneth over. I had a lot of “capital” to work with in my giving. But that’s precisely the point. I had developed this capital—the ability to earn good money, knowing lots of people in New York, gaining access to great marketing teachings, and counting among my friends amazing people like Annie—largely because of past connecting, giving, and networking. It’s a cycle that grows and grows over time, once you get hip to this dynamic. The more you give, the more you get, and the more you get, the more you have to give.

But you ask, “What if I have nothing to give. What if I’m broke and can’t jaunt around the country to Ojai, or to wild bacchanalian parties in the Nevada desert, to hobnob with powerful mentors ? What if I know no one and have no network to connect anyone else to? What if I