One thing I’ve learned over expanding my career is that skill and diligence isn’t half as important as having connections. We all hear about the friend’s dad that works for Disney and can get people passes or that friend that works at a fast food place and could probably get you some extra fries for no charge. What some people don’t realize is that this is, a lot of the time, the kind of thing that gets people places where they need to or want to be. Tolkien never would have published The Hobbit if his friend hadn’t told a publisher about some manuscript he had written. If The Hobbit was never found, The Lord of the Rings would never have been written, and that book series practically created a genre, so we know where that went.

So, one very real and important thing to do is to make friends with fellow students and even some college professors, especially if they are in the field you want to enter. You never know which friend will land a job with your dream company or something similar, and if they still talk to you that makes it loads easier to landing a job there, too. Connections are everything.

I’m not saying its easy to make friends with powerful people. I’m saying it could very well pay off in the long run to make friends with potential. Talk to that person with a 4.0+ GPA. If they like you, they’ll help you out. Another way to do this is to make friends with people that have wide connections. If you know somebody that knows everybody, they’ll always be able to help you out. It’s a bit lazier and the secondhand connection could make things a bit harder sometimes, but the result is usually the same.

I hear about authors all the time that say they never would have made it anywhere if they hadn’t met “X Agent”. I’m aware that there are literally millions of aspiring writers worldwide that want to be the next J.K. Rowling or whichever millionaire author you want to mention. Sure, everybody has to start from the bottom, but it’s a lot easier to climb a tree if you find somebody with a ladder.

So, my advice to you today, is that if you want your life to get a whole lot easier by having other people around you to help you out, do one of two things (or both to have that safety net): Either find a bunch of people with ladders to climb up several different trees, or find a guy that rents out ladders. As I said, if you’re introverted like me, you may find it easier to do the latter (haha) but since that guy doesn’t really the quality of any of the ladders he hands out to people, it’s better to know a bunch of people. Usually, they’ll also hold the ladder when you climb, too, whereas the guy that rents them won’t have time to help you out with your specific scenario.