You’ve heard the expression hindsight is 20/20.  It is.  Hopefully, you have enough time left in your career to make use of hindsight.  If not, at the very least you hope others can benefit from the value of your hindsight.  I have mentioned my non-theory “3 income theory”, also known as multiple sources of income.  The reasons should be obvious.  First, you provide yourself some financial insurance in case your main source of income suddenly vanishes.  Secondly, the more people and or money you have working for you, the more money in theory you should make.  I think that hard work is a given, smart, hard work is even better.  But  there are things you should do in addition to finding a way to get the multiple sources of income.

One thing you should do is be a people collector.  By that, don’t just meet someone, shake their hand, and move on.  Find out about them.  Get their contact info, and follow up.  Granted, there are people you meet that you realize that you just don’t like.  Make sure you distinguish that from people with which you have nothing in common.  You never know when that kid that interns for you ends up starting a company like Twitter.  Or that socially awkward lawyer you met at your spouses company holiday party becomes a senator.  Everybody wants to be their friend when they get to those positions, but you knew them and helped them when they were “nobody’s”.  What if the intern needed a lawyer for his startup, and you hooked him up with his lawyer now senator?  Your status rises with theirs.  It can never hurt your career when you collect people, and then introduce them to each other.  Be the middleman, and do it just because you know two people that could benefit by knowing each other.  Do it for no other reason than to be a good person, and help people out.  First, it is just a good thing to do to help people out.  Secondly, you just never know how it is going to benefit you.  But if you are positioned as the person that knows everybody, when the time comes that you need a favor, and it will, you will have people falling all over themselves to help you.  You should have multiple sources of income, I believe forever; but a huge Rolodex, or Outlook database, or whatever you use to keep your contacts straight, is a very important tool to have in your arsenal.

For career and financial survival,  work on multiple sources of income, and become a collector of people.  There is more information to come, including things that need to be on your watch list.