I am always amazed by the amount of politics involved in business. Think of the businesses that your business can’t survive without. Now think for a moment of the businesses that can’t survive without yours.

Take the company or product that you rely the most on. Now imagine that they are completely gone. They vanished overnight and there is absolutely no trace of them whatsoever. Their service is no longer available and your running out of time before your shareholders, and more importantly your customers begin to notice.

I’m sure you’ve already figured out what I’m about to ask already, but here it is regardless… “WHAT DO YOU DO NOW????”

Anyone with an entrepreneur’s mindset can tell you what must be done. Whatever it takes. It is up to you to make things work. Find alternatives, but don’t just look at the former company’s competition, there are all kinds of solutions you could be looking at.

Is this something that you can afford to do yourself? While that’s not always a financially feasible option, imagine for a second the market control that you could potentially obtain. Being as we said this is a rather important aspect of your business, something that you really rely on, let’s assume the likely scenario that you are not quite able to afford this. So what’s the plan now?

How about your network? I’m talking about both your personal contacts and your business’s professional contacts. The event of a company with a valuable disappearing off of the map (although rare!!) would not only be devastating to you, but also to your competitors and your partners. It’s fair to assume that YOUR competition isn’t going to sit around. It’s all about results and numbers.

So before you let yourself drown while wallowing in your own self pity, come up with some sort of plan. Can you be the one who unites everyone? I talked about having your company take over the service, but that could be expensive to your business. That however doesn’t mean that your network as a whole can’t arrange something where everyone benefits. And if the new service is owned by people who rely on it, you no are no longer subject to the whims of some unreliable company.

Now I’m not saying that you should wait around until some company that’s making money suddenly decides to disband before you can take action. It’s all about networking and politics. Who can help you get ahead and at the same time you can help get ahead?

One quick example is my friend Shay over at Sparkplugged.net, he is able to help me out with my weak area, web design. And meanwhile I am able to help him out with technical aspects of his site. By trading knowledge we can both get ahead. And more importantly, trust is developed between the two of us.

Both of the web-pages for Aridni and Sparkplugged are hosted by the same company and even on the same server. If for some reason there was a problem with the hosting (it’s been great so far, knock on wood!) by having two of us, we wield more power if something should occur. Granted it’s not a whole lot more, but what if our network a good portion of the people from the host! That would be a fair amount of influence. (note: I’m really happy with my host but it’s a relevant example here where a network could help build a great alliance )

Now it would be just awful to be caught off guard and need the network that you don’t have built up yet. If somebody doesn’t know you, they certainly won’t be inclined to help you out. If you haven’t even gained trust from someone, they have little incentive to offer you favors. So get out there and start recruiting your allies! What kind of trades can you offer? Remember both sides must benefit!

What if you only had one month to impress everyone, make friends, and influence people, do you think you could do it?

As you might know, I have traveled to Buffalo New York for the summer, and now that it’s drawing to an end, it is time for me to go home. This time I am taking a different route that the way over. I’m going to drive through Ontario to Michigan and then drive across the country on the I-90. (but that’s a little off topic!)

Our main business idea didn’t quite work out so I picked up a summer job here. As a seasonal worker I only had a finite amount of time to leave an impression.

The game was on, first order of business… training. I wanted to become competent with the operations and lexicon there.

My next priority was to improve/master the working skills. After training was complete I worked to become as efficient as possible with the customers.

The third task on my agenda was to offer help to other employees. While this was more of a courtesy most of the time, being useful and productive is a great habit. When you help people out, they are more likely to help you out down the road.

The last portion of my strategy was basically just talking to people. I tried to be friendly to customers, employees, delivery people, and management. Once again if people like you, they are more likely to help you later on.

I’m not going to be arrogant and say that this plan of attack impressed everyone, made friends, and influenced people. But what I am going to say is that I believe it certainly paid off.

After the first two weeks I was on friendly terms with the managers and supervisors. As I’m sure you know, this holds all kinds of perks and benefits. If you are on their bad side work can be a terrible time. It really is the difference between night and day. Of course you never want to compromise your own character to appease someone else.

Finally on the day of my last shift, the district manager came by and thanked me. He mentioned that everything he heard about me was good, and mentioned that if I ever come back to Buffalo that I would have a job.

My strategy of hard work and communication worked out well in this situation. You never know who is going to talk to who, so it’s a good idea to display the same great work ethic around everyone you encounter.

That’s how I tried to get ahead in the game. So now I ask, if you only had one month to define your image and mold how people think of you, how would you go about it?

Earlier this week I had a brief break from ‘boring mundane task #1′ and ‘boring mundane task #2.’ During this time I had to accomplish absolutely as much as possible in this amount of time as I could.

One quick note, when I say boring mundane task, I am referring to something that is obligated to be done, but won’t increase your wealth.

As BMT1 wrapped up, I immediately went to work attempting to get one step closer to my dreams. In this case, it was two important phone calls and tweaking some code. Both of the phone issues still need a follow-up, but the other item on the list is good forever.

Of course every time that I get a break it doesn’t end up as productive as this one, and hopefully I can have more such as this one in the future. Life takes planning, and there is an element of strategy involved as well. So when your 15 minutes comes around be ready for it. Have your time planned out and go accomplish things!

For those of you who read my article last week regarding my fall-out with my friend in Virginia, I am back to report that I spent my time off visiting a close friend in North Carolina. My friend Carrie lives in the “sticks,” about an hour’s drive from the Outer Banks, and her family confirmed my belief that people who are least able to afford life’s luxuries are also the most insistent on making their guests comfortable and meeting their every need. The principle of creating a hospitality savings account (see my earlier article) seems to apply to the majority of true Southerners, especially those who work hard for what they have and take pride in being able to share their modest, but well earned comforts with guests. Carrie’s mother told me that from the time she was a child, she was taught to make every guest feel like a “queen” even though her family was barely able to scrape by. For these people, hospitality is one of their greatest virtues.

Carrie’s family lives in the poorest county in North Carolina with the state’s (and for that matter, the nation’s) lowest ranked public school system. In order to offer their three children a chance at a better life, Carrie’s parents denied themselves luxuries many of us take for granted so that they could send Carrie, her brother and sister to parochial high schools and then to college. I was amazed at this family’s commitment to education, a commitment that on one level is even stronger than in the greater Boston community in which I grew up where 95% of the kids in our public high school matriculate at four year colleges. I was not considered successful for going to college- it was simply expected and to do otherwise was unthinkable. I would have only been a topic of cocktail gossip if I had gone to Harvard, and even Harvard is considered “normal” around here. Yet, for families like Carrie’s, getting into any college is a major achievement and their dedication to education is so pervasive because they can’t afford to feel otherwise. They have seen the alternative first hand, while the people I grew up around were hardly aware that most Americans were living a different reality.

It seems to me that the working poor and working classes are more conscious of the value of money than any other socioeconomic group. They put in long hours to earn their small paycheck. Consequently, they value every dollar much more than a single mother on welfare whose monthly government check reflects tax payer’s dollars and not her own labor. Carrie’s father works at a paper mill and while I was down there this week, he was working the night shift every day so I barely got to talk to him. However, he asked me to let him know if there was anything he could do to make my visit pleasant. The working poor may not know the ins and outs of CDs, 401Ks, and IRAs, but they do know how to use a savings account and they put money away for things that have lasting value like education and a comfortable, welcoming home as opposed to saving up for an Ann Taylor suit as I did once in high school. If I had grown up like Carrie, there wouldn’t have been any Ann Taylors within a 100 mile radius and I probably would have been using my earnings at McDonalds to help pay for my private school tuition if that opportunity was within my reach.

So the next time you lament about not being able to afford a new car or a bigger house, think about families like Carrie’s who are struggling to afford their mortgage and the rising cost of gas. When I offered to pay them back for the cost of the gas to and from the airport, her mother said “don’t be silly. You are our guest.”