During the business boom of the dot-com period, I interviewed with a number of firms after graduate school.  One in particular was a startup company called Edu.com, which was founded and populated by a number of young business school alums.  Along with receiving an offering from a strategy consulting firm, I received an offer from Edu.com for a position within business development.  I debated the offer and eventually decided that consulting was the best option for me at that point in time.

The difficult part of turning down this offer was that I had a wonderful conversation with the head of business development at the time, and in fact felt a strong connection with him.  I made the call and turned down the offer, but did something else, uncharacteristic for me at the time.  A few days later, I called up and spoke to “Prakash,” and said that while it was a tough decision to turn down the offer, I was actually interested in keeping in touch with him.  I said “I know this sounds unusual, but I felt that we had quite a bit in common professionally, and I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again.”  As a turns out, Prakash stated that he kept his professional and personal life very separate and would be happy to stay in touch with me.

While it took nearly a year for us to finally meet, we actually developed a good relationship.  Our wives met for dinner, and Prakash introduced me to some of his other friends from business school, with whom I developed some peripheral relationships.  Prakash happened to be very well respected not only amongst his classmates, but also amongst the entrepreneurial startup community in the area.  So knowing him, and mentioning his name on occasion to people actually opened doors for me.  He introduced me to other people as the years went on and helped open doors for me.  My decision on applying to business school, where to apply, and which school to select were areas where Prakash was a terrific mentor.  Had I not taken the bold step of reaching out to someone I had initially turned down, I would not have built new contacts or a new friendship.