These four words built the entire backbone of who I am today and the reason business development and relationship-building aren’t just skills for me… they’re my native language.
Today marks 27 years since my dad died. I’ve lived my entire adult life without him physically here. What I didn’t realize when my career began was that he was already (and will forever be) the most influential mentor I ever had. Even from beyond.
My parents ran their own real estate development company. From the earliest age, my sister and I were fixtures in that world. We grew up in the office, at events, at topping parties. We didn’t know it then, but we were being raised inside a masterclass.
My dad had an undeniable presence. He was direct, sarcastic, honest, zero-bullshit kind of guy. He was like an M & M with a hard shell and soft center. He was real. He was generous. And he loved people with a depth that didn’t need to be announced to be felt.
He was a people magnet and a natural connector. He was a man who never met a stranger he didn’t like. Different backgrounds, cultures, religions - it didn’t matter. Everywhere we traveled, he came home with a new friend. He’d met a shop owner on a trip to Acapulco one year on vacation and the following year when he and I went to Mexico City to visit them and stayed in their home. His wife was an artist and her work still hangs in my mother’s living room.
But his favorite thing in the world? Connecting people. Helping people.
If he could make your life easier, he did! And he did it immediately, instinctively. And the soundtrack to my childhood was these four words:
“I got a guy.”
And he meant it. For everything.
Of course in real estate he knew every architect, contractor, accountant, and attorney within a hundred miles. But it didn’t stop there. Need a dog walker? A dentist? A tailor? Somehow… he had a guy.
I learned more from simply being in his orbit than from every class I ever sat through in college. No course could have taught what he showed me by example:
How to connect with people.
How to build real, meaningful relationships.
How to treat every single person the same whether they were a janitor or CEO.
Status never impressed him. Money never intimidated him. Titles didn’t move him an inch. That was one of my favorite things about him.
So when I started my own professional life — with zero experience — and was told, “Go network,” I did the only thing I actually knew how to do: I went out and met people, and I made new friends.
Over the years, I built this massive, wildly diverse ecosystem of professionals… and even better humans. Everyone asks me endlessly, “How did you build such a big network?”
It wasn’t until I really sat with it that it hit me:
I had been training for this my entire life.
My instinct, my intuition, and my approach wasn’t accidental. It was inherited. My dad handed me the blueprint without either of us knowing it.
So how did I do it? The answer was painfully simple. In fact it was almost embarrassingly simple.
It all boiled down to being a decent human who genuinely enjoyed helping people. That’s it. No secret playbook. No elite training. No algorithm.
Be a good person. Honestly. Just don’t be a dick.
Do the right thing.
Help without keeping score.
That was his entire operating system.
And the more I watched him, the more I understood:
The reward wasn’t in the transaction. It was in the doing.
He listened. I mean actually listened to people. He wasn’t waiting for his turn to talk, not angling for an opening, not trying to impress anyone. He listened because he was genuinely curious about people, and because he cared to help. And that’s where the magic was.
When you really listen, you hear what people need.
And when you hear what they need, you start thinking:
How can I make their life easier? Who can I connect them with? What’s one thing I can do right now that would matter?
Nothing about it was complicated. Nothing was performative.
It was basic human decency that he executed consistently, relentlessly, and without expectation.
That’s the part everyone misses.
They want the strategy, the script, the 10-step networking system.
But the truth is maddening in its simplicity:
If you want a powerful network- an ecosystem of resources, support, and opportunity- become the kind of person people are grateful to know.
My dad modeled that every single day, without ever explaining it, naming it, or calling it a strategy.
Because my whole life, I watched the man who always had a guy…
be a guy worth having.