Your mother sowed your name on your underwear for a reason. Should anything happen to you, someone had to know your name. The road to you and your heart starts with your name. The roads to the people you'll meet business networking start with their names. Capture their name and you capture their heart. Bill Clinton rose to the top practicing the basics.

He started writing down what he learned about people when he met them in school. His shoe boxes stuffed with index cards were the stuff of legend when his staff in the governor's office finally transposed them into computers. Not for nothing did Dale Carnegie call our name the sweetest sound in the world. We forget that at our own financial risk.

You are now more personally responsible for your success than ever before. Large companies need less people. You must create entrepreneurial streams of income for yourself. You must act as if you are in business for yourself even if you work for someone else. The time has never been more ripe. Your opportunity has never been greater. You have never had a bigger or more impressive competitive advantage. And yet, if you don't think for yourself, you might miss it.

Here it is. Your competitive advantage is you, first, in the genuine, passionate, simple and easy concern and interest you can take in individuals as individuals, second, because your own life's story is more compelling, more interesting, more memorable than anything you or any marketer could say about your product or service. Your competitive advantage is you and how you treat people.

To demonstrate, to prove your genuine and passionate concern for others almost all you need concern yourself with is capturing and enjoying and appreciating someone's name. Now, please, listen to me very carefully. I want you to listen to everything they say. I want you to see and appreciate all they do and all they show you. But, remember, all that is meaningless if you don't know their name.

All the friends I've made, all the prospects and customers I've attracted would not have been possible had I not prioritized remembering and using and relishing and savoring the sound of my friends' names. I write it big and bold on the nametags I make for them when they sign in at my events. I wave it in a flourish to help the ink dry and call it, "the courtesy wave," which always gets a laugh. But their name is a very big deal.

Here's another reason to catch and hold onto someone's name that could only come from the trenches of experience and that is to say it loud and clear when you want to capture their attention, especially when they talk on and on about their product and you have had enough.

Capture someone's name and you've got something firm to stand on while you listen to what they have to say. And if by chance they actually intrigue you and you really want to follow up with them, you are equipped if and only if you have their name. All hail Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People for many things, not least of which is showing us the importance of the basics, and there's nothing more basic or important than your name. Remember that about everyone you meet and you will have a huge competitive advantage, the key to their heart.

For over 5 years I have had the privilege of creating and facilitating countless business networking meetings for my company in Atlanta, called Freedom Builders. Our meetings are posted at http://www.FreedomBuildersInc.com under "Daily Boardrooms." I go to many other networking meetings, too, sometimes as many as 3 a day for many days in a row.