And I don’t mean Facebook “friends”.

        What you need are serious contacts, people who can teach you something, provide a valuable service, or connect you with more serious people.     Don’t limit your contacts to your town, or even country.    People you can learn from and even work with don’t even have to live near you.    Correspond regularly with people anywhere in the world who share your interests and enthusiasm.   You can even Skype ( free internet video phone ) for free.   Download the free Skype software and get going on it.  

        In the old days, people used a Rolodex, ( rolling index ), and powerful people had a lot of names on theirs.

           These days, you can use contact software that is totally amazing.    It can keep track of mailings, responses, dates, all kinds of stuff, while you do other things to run your business.

You can also meet a lot of people on Twitter.  But, don’t just rack up “followers”, just to have a big number and ego to go with it.    Actually communicate with these people, learn from them, build relationships over time.