I get a call from a guy who needs help. I look at his resume and it’s strong. I take 2 seconds and come up with a couple of companies that might fit, Crowe Chizek and ExactTarget. So I forward the resume on.

Crowe is one of the largest and most successful consulting companies in the world. ExactTarget (ET) is one of the fastest growing E mail marketing companies – which just made the INC 500.

I was able to refer to ExactTarget because my friend, Daren Tomey, works there. How did he get his job at ET? Well, Daren went out of his way one day to help me. He came to a post-work strategy session to help me think through a business problem I was having. At that session he happened to meet Scott Dorsey, one of the founders of ExactTarget, who was also volunteering his time to help me that night. So unless these two guys went out of their way to help me, I would not have been in a position to help.

Meanwhile, Paul Thomas, at Crowe Chizek also took time to consider the resume. I send a couple of resumes per month over to Paul and he always finds time to help, not because it’s part of his job, but just because I ask (and I try not to send him things that don’t fit).

And the only reason I know people at Crowe and ET is that I work at the Colts. And the only reason I work at the Colts is that Jim Irsay decided to give me a chance. (By the way, this I Choose Indy blog wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the efforts of Doug Karr, another ET executive who goes out of his way to help me with lots of my hairbrained schemes. Thanks, Doug).

So you see – people are the most valuable natural resource. We tend to take this for granted, like the air we breath, because we don’t have to pay for all the people we know. People are just there. On the other hand, we can make investments of time and energy into other people. And as this case illustrates, a few minutes investment shared across a network of people can lift a person, and an entire community, toward his goals.