And it's quite easy to get to know a restaurateur. The smart ones will go out of their way to make your experience delightful. All you have to do is reach out and go there often enough.
When in a new city, I generally ask people to give me a list of a few of the hottest (and most established) restaurants. I like to call ahead and ask to speak with the owner (though the maitre d' will do) and tell them that I go out regularly, sometimes in large parties, and I'm looking for a new place to entertain, a lot!
If you don't go out as often as I do, find one or two restaurants that you enjoy and frequent them when you do go out. Become a regular. Make a point of meeting the staff. When you're entertaining for work, bring others there. When you have to cater an event, use them.
Once you get to know the owner, it'll become like your very own restaurant—a place that has the patina of exclusivity and cachet a private club imparts with all the warmth and comfort of your own home.
With some advance planning and a little loyalty, a restaurateur will not only share the bounty of his kitchen with you but introduce you to his other roster of clients as well.
2. Headhunters
Recruiters. Job-placement counselors. Search executives. They are like gatekeepers. Instead of answering to one executive, however, the really successful ones may answer to hundreds of executives in the field in which they recruit.
Headhunters are professional matchmakers, earning their wage by introducing job candidates to companies that are hiring. Should you get the job, the headhunter gets a sizable commission, typically a percentage of the successful candidate's first year's compensation.
As a result, headhunters are an interesting blend of salesman and socialite. To find candidates, headhunters often place job ads.
They also contact likely candidates directly, perhaps on the referral of a friend or colleague. In the industries in which they specialize, they become invaluable resources of names and information.
The sweet spot for a headhunter revolves around two issues. You're either hiring them to do a search or you're helping them do a search on behalf of someone else. If you're in the market for a job, let as many search firms as are willing hit the phones for you.
I keep a file of headhunters: who they are and what they're looking for. And I return every call from them, helping to tap my network to find people for their jobs. I know they'll help me with access to some of their clients when I need their help. After all, they are in the networking business!
Can anyone contact a headhunter? To be honest, headhunters prefer to be the one contacting you. But if you're careful about not trying to sell yourself before you offer up the network of contacts you can provide to them, they'll be receptive. In the early years of my career, when I was not in the position of hiring them and didn't know people who were using search consultants, I would ask pointedly, "What searches are you working on? How can I help you find people?"
The other advice in this area is to act as a pseudo-headhunter yourself, always on the lookout to connect job-hunters and jobseekers or consultants and companies. When you help people land a new gig, they'll be inclined to remember you if they hear of a new position opening. Moreover, if you help, say, a vendor of yours land a new client, they'll usually be more open to negotiating prices on your next project. Helping others find good employees is a real currency.
3. Lobbyists
Well informed, persuasive, and self-confident, lobbyists are generally impressive networkers.
By virtue of their job, they are intimately familiar with the ways of large organizations and how local and national government work. They are almost uniformly passionate people whose goal is to sway politicians to vote on legislation in a way that favors the interest they represent.
How do they work? Lobbyists will often host cocktail parties and dinner get-togethers, allowing them to interact with politicians— and their opponents—in a casual atmosphere. Their more grassroots efforts involve long hours spent on the phone and in writing letters, trying to rouse the community to get involved behind an issue. All of which makes them a rather easy group to please. Can you hold an event for them? Volunteer your services? Refer other volunteers to their cause? Introduce them to potential clients?
Lobbyists tend to bump up against a lot of people who it might be helpful to know, including those who are powerful and successful.
4. Fundraisers
"Follow the money" are words fundraisers live by. They know where it is, what it will take to get it, and most important, who's most likely to give it away. As a result, fundraisers, whether they work for a political organization, university, or nonprofit group, tend to know absolutely everybody. And while they have the unenviable job of trying to convince people every day to part with their well-earned money, they are almost always incredibly well liked. It's a selfless job often done for the best of reasons, and most people recognize that anyone who has a good friend who is a fundraiser has an open door to a whole new world of contacts and opportunities.
5. Public relations people
PR people spend their whole day calling, cajoling, pressuring, and begging journalists to cover their clients. The relationship between media and PR is an uneasy one, but at the end of the day, necessity brings them together like long-lost cousins.
A good friend who works in PR can be your entree into the world of media and, sometimes, celebrity. Elana Weiss, who coleads the PR firm I used called The Rose Group, introduced me to Arianna Huffington (through someone she knew in her office), the noted author and political columnist. Arianna has since become a friend and confidante and one of the dazzling lights at my dinner parties in L.A.
6. Politicians
Politicians at every level are inveterate networkers. They have to be. They shake hands, kiss babies, give speeches, and go to dinners, all in the name of gaining the trust of enough people to get elected. The stature of politicians is derived from their political power rather than their wealth. Anything you can do to help them gain power with voters, or exercise power in office, will go a long way to ensuring you a place in their inner circle.
What can a politician do for you? Local city hall politicians can be key to working through the thicket of local governmental bureaucracy. And politicians at any level, if successful, are celebrities—and their networks reflect that.
How can you reach out? Join your local Chamber of Commerce. Local executives, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs generally populate the Chamber. In every community, there are plenty of young politicos looking to climb the political ladder. Early on, before their rise to prominence, you can engender a lot of loyalty and trust by supporting their goals and chipping in when they decide to run for office.
7. Journalists
Journalists are powerful (the right exposure can make a company or turn a nobody into a somebody), needy (they're always looking for a story), and relatively unknown (few have achieved enough celebrity to make them inaccessible).
For years, since I was back at Deloitte, I've called on journalists at different magazines, taking them to dinners and pumping them full of good story ideas. I now know people in top positions at almost every major business magazine in the country. Which is one of the reasons why in less than a year after I took over YaYa, with barely a shred of revenue to its name, the company—and, more important, the idea YaYa was trying to sell—appeared in publications like Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, CNBC, Brand Week, Newsweek, the New York Times... the list goes on.