For many Americans, working for others or creating an entrepreneurial venture, be it large company or small, their focus has been on building paper currency and sustainable career advancement. However, beyond financial capital, there are three things you can do to shift your attention to a more purposeful pursuit...leveraging your social capital.



Social capital is a broad term - but is defined here as the resulting accumulation of social resources to assist in achieving your life's goals - whatever they are. Social currency is what is used to build social capital. You can have a great deal of social currency but not a lot of social capital. Let me introduce you to Michael for an example of this point.

Michael, a marketing professional in Miami, knows everyone who's anyone in Miami. He is the one to call if you need last minute reservations at the hottest club or restaurant. He has access to and regularly works with celebrities, socialites, and all forms of the media. From most perspectives, he has a great deal of social currency. Michael's long term goal is to work in a position that will allow him to pursue his love of design, be it graphic, interior or industrial. While his current position is head of a non-profit foundation for a local celebrity/socialite, he is not working at doing what he loves, but rather has found a means to an end, and a pretty fabulous lifestyle to boot! While he knows everyone and everyone knows him, he has not used his social currency to facilitate building social capital, or the resources he needs to achieve his life goals. Why is that?

Michael is not purposeful in his use of social currency. He has accumulated a ton, but unfortunately has not invested it, or defined its purpose. He does not realize that the path to his ideal job might be right before him, yet he hasn't articulated his dream into a plan, and the real reason he cannot raise social capital, is that no one else knows about his plan or how to be a part of it. How can anyone give him a lead on a great design job, or offer to introduce him to the owner of an interior design firm, or even offer to loan him the money to start his own firm? Michael has not been purposeful in realizing his goals. It is the same as someone who attends three networking meetings a week and still finds them to be a waste of time.

Now, Michael just found out that he is losing his job. The foundation he works for is being dissolved due to the withdrawal of pledge contributions from mostly stock market funded clients. Now what? The answer for Michael is easy. He must leverage his social currency to create social capital by purposefully planning his every social interaction to contribute toward his goal of finding a new job, this time in design. What about someone who has very little social currency and finds themselves without a job today? The great news is that If you are purposeful, you can build social capital through the course of your everyday life; be it the gas station, gym, church, bank, McDonalds, department store, bus, train, plane, airport, etc. with the exception of bathrooms. Some hard core networking folks may disagree with me here, but I personally do not want to receive social currency in the bathroom.

Keep following me on this one. You're at the check-out counter in the grocery store and the cashier notices the t-shirt you have on says "Go Bulldogs" and remarks that her father was a football player and now he owns a company here in town. If you are not purposeful, you might lose out on this opportunity by not saying, "oh really, what company does he own?" Since you should always e on the lookout for job leads for yourself or someone you know, you ask, once again because you are purposeful, "do you know if your father is hiring"? While the cashier is formulating her response, you suddenly hear a bell go off in your head, "cha ching". That is the sound you will hear when you are about to receive social currency - which in turn might help you raise social capital.

So...the three things you can do to shift your attention to the more purposeful pursuit of leveraging your social capital are:

1. Shift your thinking to focus on social capital in addition to paper capital.

2. Focus on earning social currency in addition to paper currency.

3. Invest your social currency in building social capital to pursue your life goals.

In a tumultuous time like the one we are in, where all Americans are asking themselves consciously or unconsciously, what might this historic economic event have on my ability to pay my bills, keep my job, live comfortably in retirement, or retire at all, you have to think differently - and ultimately act differently. Since most of us focus the majority of our efforts working, and that very liberty is at risk, we need to take stock of our personal portfolio, which is the sum total of who we are and who we know, and ask what is my plan? And hopefully not what is my "bail out" plan. Thinking purposefully about your interactions with every person you meet, conscious of raising social currency along the way. Act purposefully by investing your social currency in the social capital necessary to support your life goals - be it a job or a dream, or hopefully the marriage of the two, but purposely planning for both.