My New Year's resolution was to catch up on my Rolodex. Maybe that's setting my sights pretty low but it's more important than it sounds. There's a saying that he with the biggest Rolodex wins. In a nutshell, business - and often lots of other parts of life - can be all about who you know and networking.

In this computer oriented society, it's easy to forget about business cards. If something comes to you via computer, you may add it to your mailing list but the quickest way to handle a business card is still to stick it in a rolodex. Mine is so old that more than probably a third of the contacts are obsolete and the edges of the cards are tattered.

Think of all the times that your path crosses with someone else's - all the business cards that people hand you (some of them artistic treasures and for the rest of us just Staples variety) - all the nice people you meet. Keep these contacts where you can put your hands on them.

In Don't Worry, Make Money - Spiritual and Practical Ways to Create Abundance and More Fun in Your Life, Richard Carlson, Ph.D. reminds us to delight in the success of others. He fesses up to the inclination that most of us have to want to be more successful than our friends, to be competitive and jealous. "While it can be seductive to try to keep others at your level, it's absolutely, positively not in your best interest. The way to rise to the top is to wish everyone well, to hope with all your heart" that others succeed ... There's plenty of success to go around." While that may sound like a spiritual message (iwhich yes, it is), it's also a business message.

I'm putting the scattered business cards and the Rolodexes - the old and the new - in the same stack as the other things that I like to do when I watch a dvd - that is, ironing, bill paying, and the very occasional sewing. I'll put my stack of personalized postcards (an excellent way to remember to say hello, congratulations or thank you) with them. Networking matters - in a variety of ways.

We've all been there: waiting to get an important phone call returned.

It's a scenario that feels especially crucial when you're a business owner, especially when you're just starting out, and you feel like your company's future success hinges on that one call being returned. It also can be life and death when you're unemployed and broke, and hoping against hope that your future employer calls you back before your phone is shut off. And, of course, that whole "phone home" line was an important part of the plot in the movie, E.T.

So when career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman offered some advice to me on getting people to return phone calls, all I could think was, "Where were you when I was a sophomore in high school, and waiting for Buffy Johnson to call me back...?"

Well, never mind. Deborah is an expert at getting people to return her calls (well, at least, I returned hers), and so if you're hoping to land a big business deal or that dream job, you'd do well to consider following her advice.

When I started my business more than eight years ago, I didn't have any clients and I didn't have anyone in my Rolodex. I quite literally started from scratch and had to build a contact list. Hopefully you're luckier than me in that regard, but even if you do have a base of clients and contacts already, you are probably still looking to grow those lists.

"Networking" is one key way that I built my business from the ground up. I'll confess.... I hate the term "networking." It's so overused and definitely abused. But that's what most people like to call after-work mixers or breakfast meetings.

I did a lot of these events in the beginning. I went to Chamber of Commerce mixers, meetings for bar associations and CPA societies, morning lead exchanges, and lunch-hour "elevator pitch" meetings. I was always on the lookout for events that might have attorneys in attendance, as that's who sends me most of my business. But the events didn't have to be focused on lawyers. I knew there were plenty of other business professionals with fat Rolodexes who would be there, so I wanted to meet them too.