Furthermore, I've found that networking is a very long game. If you go in thinking "what can I get out of this today?" you are only seeing a small part of the benefit. My biggest financial success came from a person I met 7 years before we ever worked together. We only loosely kept in touch over the years, but when the right opportunity came along for both of us we were glad to have met all those years before.

I have dozens of people like that in my orbit. Smart, ambitious, connected etc. We just haven't found the right opportunity yet.