Learn my 10-step process of how to start a business while keeping a full-time day job, from someone who's successfully done it. What's your side business?
Real networking is about finding ways to make other people more successful. It is sharing your knowledge and resources, time and energy, friends and associates, and empathy and compassion in an effort to provide value to others while increasing your own.
Substitute a standard web services interface for a speaking tube, a business rules management system for his encyclopedic knowledge of policies and regulations, data mining or predictive analytics for his customer knowledge and adaptive control for his experimentation and you have Decision Management. The Answerer but on an industrial scale.