Who you know determines who you are — how you feel, how you act, and what you achieve. - Keith Ferrazzi

You want to impart both a sense of urgency and a sense of convenience. Instead of closing with “We should get together sometime soon,” I like to finalize with something like “I’m going to be in town next week. How about lunch on Tuesday? I know this is going to be important for both of us, so I’ll make time no matter what.

He thought of relationships as finite, like a pie that can be cut into only so many pieces. Take a piece away, and there was that much less for him. I knew, however, that relationships are more like muscles — the more you work them, the stronger they become.

Connecting your story with a known entity — be it a politician, celebrity, or famous businessperson — acts as a de facto slant. Bottom line: The media want recognizable faces in their pages.