AAAARGH! Networking!

What’s worse than trying to big yourself up? Bigging yourself up to a group of complete strangers, that’s what.

The mere mention of ‘networking’ would send a shiver up my spine and a cold sweat heading back down it.

“Hi, I’m Greg, I run Flying blah blah blah”, “we do x/y/z”, “insert generic small talk here”, “What do you mean I can’t just sit at the back and watch?”

I am generally not a small talky type of person. I’m good with comfortable and uncomfortable silences, but I do find people interesting, (fascinating in some cases). What makes them tick, what they did to get where they are, what is their end goal if there is one?

I was recently invited to a new networking group as a guest. Cognates it’s called, at some ungodly hour in the morning. The kind of start time that doesn’t involve just the normal cup of coffee, but the full 5 heaped spoonfuls in a cafetiere cup of coffee.

I went in with a tired, but open mind. There were a couple of familiar faces in the group, (that always makes it easier), and I’d chatted via email with the event organiser prior to so it was good to put a face to a name. We had a little chat before the event officially started, and we went round the Zoom room with a one liner of who we are and what we do/or strapline. That was painless. Good start. Then came the breakout room, I ended up in a room with 2 strangers and someone I knew. OK, I can work with this. The 2 strangers pretty much led the conversation, but something said earlier in the round robin bit gave me questions. Then the 4 way conversation grew. Then time was up and back into the main room. Oh…but we were chatting there… Then came the presentation from one of the members. A good 10 minutes of things she’s picked up along the way of running her own business. Other people’s experience is a gold mine. You get your own experience and learn from it, sure. But why can’t you learn from other people’s too? Avoid mistakes you don’t need to make and open doors by having an open ear. Seems like a perfectly reasonable plan to me.

By this point pretty much an hour had gone without noticing. Then off we go into the 1 on 1s. I was put in a room with someone who’s passion for what they were doing was infectious. Super friendly, very easy to talk to. Looking forward to seeing their venture grow.

BOOM! Back in the main room. Dammit! Hadn’t finished talking!

Then another round robin, a bit more detailed this time, but you had about a minute. You had to not even sell yourself particularly, but let the group know what they might be able to do to help you as a business. Who were your ideal clients? This kind of thing. Caroline, whose guest I was, presented a poem. Brilliant, no-one else had done that….but challenge accepted!! 30 seconds later I had my limerick ready to go! I was a little pensive about it, not going to lie, “Who’s this noob, what’s he going on about, would it work?” It did. The ditty actually managed to explain one of our offerings and how it was beneficial whilst still being lighthearted/stupid.

“There was a young man from Notts Who liked to take interesting shots. He stuck his drone in the sky To get a birds eye And helped farmer Giles view his crops”

I could see people laughing, maybe it was the flourish at the end with me throwing my notebook over my shoulder, guess I’ll never know. The event wrapped up and I was left thinking I could’ve managed a bit longer in there. There was no hard selling, just conversation, and an ideal of collaboration and support. This is when Caroline’s words came back to me, “people buy from people”. Then I went and bought some cream from the guest speaker for my wife.

Networking; some people revel in it, some people shy away from it, some do it begrudgingly. Whatever your view on it, it should be done. The more you engage the more engagement you get, like anything really. I’m actually looking forward to the next event for this group as not selling your business; but selling yourself, seems to be a great way of getting people taking note.