We had a great webinar yesterday with Eve Tahmincioglu, she’s the author of “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office,” as well as a renowned journalist covering career development, business and entrepreneurship. Tahmincioglu is a regular contributor to The New York Times’ business section, as well as BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine, and currently writes the entrepreneur and small business blog for MSNBC.com. She also authors a widely-read blog entitled CareerDiva that explores current career and workplace issues and trends.

She had some great insights for entrepreneurs about how to move forward in a down economy.  She talked a lot about taking risks and how if you stop innovating in a down economy with the pace of change that’s still happening, you will be out of luck when things are rosy again.  I know it’s counter-intuitive to most people, but the worst thing you can do is batten down the hatches and stop doing what made you successful in the first place.

Eve interviewed many successful CEOs and one of the key things she found was that they didn’t worry about failure or making mistakes.  And when they did make mistakes they looked at what lessons they could learn from them, making adjustments in the future.  This trait is also very valuable for entrepreneurs, I’ve seen this quality in many of the people we’ve interviewed for the book.  It’s not about being completely fearless, it’s about facing your fears head on and then doing it anyway.

You can listen to the full webinar with Eve on the website.

I get a lot of questions about networking, it’s not a comfortable thing for most people.  The key to networking is being authentic about it…and not doing it only when you need something.  A good network is built over time and has the foundation of solid relationships.  A great network, built properly and maintained  is is a tremendous asset.

Recently, an ex-colleague of mine reached out to me.  Someone I barely knew at a company I worked for over 2 years ago.  The person sent me a note saying he knew I didn’t know him very well and that he wasn’t good at relationships but wanted me to review his resume and provide feedback;  he also had list of companies he wanted me to review and let him know who I knew in those companies I could introduce him to.    I have to say  this is a clear example of how NOT to do networking.

I generally do this for a lot of people in my network who I have regular contact with.  It takes time to go through a resume and provide feedback and then to make introductions.  I understand that he doesn’t like networking, but if you want help you have to actively participate in some way shape or form.