Other people feed the greed. They give discounts, break the rules, slip you free handouts to curry favor. But that role is also hard to maintain—eventually their false generosity eats into someone else’s profits. Feeding the greed isn’t a good way to differentiate, anyway; a lot of people are already struggling to occupy that space.

So now that you know what a lovecat is, how do you become one? You follow my three steps: You increase your knowledge, you expand your network, and you share your compassion.

While we collect marbles, baseball cards, and antiques in order to hold on to them while they increase in value, the purpose of collecting contacts is to give them away—to match them with other contacts. Whenever you introduce people, instead of one plus one equaling two, it equals two to infinity—because when we make a successful connection, we

Be constant. Stay focused. It’s as though every time you touch people in business, you are running for president of their heart, and you’ve got to keep your campaign promises.

Success in the future will be based on the fuzzy intangibles: the way you speak as a leader, the culture you nurture, the processes for managing information you set up for your people, the partnerships you form around technology’s opportunities and challenges.

receive anything in return for what you are willing to give.

The most practical relationships are those that are forged when the motives are the purest.

Minding the Store by my new contact Stanley Marcus. “It changed my life,” Steve says. “It helped me find my calling as a merchant. It showed me that being a merchant could be a noble thing, something more than just selling stuff to people.”

The Dalai Lama helped me as a manager, teaching me about the ethics of human relationships, in and out of business. And he took the weight of the world off my shoulders, because he said, “You don’t have to be a god. Just stop hurting people.”