E4: Networking isn't a dirty word
Alright, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you dare tell me to network! I hate networking. But hear me out. What if networking = coffee chats with friends? And it doesn’t feel like walking into an empty room with everyone staring at you waiting for your awkward to show? What if it is with fellow entrepreneurs who want to help you succeed? Let’s talk about that kind of networking.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to Probably Bothered the podcast that cuts through online business meds so that you can redefine your version of success because I believe if you aren't a little bit bothered, you probably aren't paying attention.
Well, it turns out that this weekly show in real time is a little bit harder than I thought. I missed a week, but I have a good excuse, I promise you that. So last week I just had to pause the show because my foot got stuck under my coffee table and there was flail. . But anyway, where were we last week? Last week my family and my husband's family came in town and we had our second wedding reception.
So we did a small wedding in November of 2021 that had 15 people, immediate family only. And so last weekend we did the big party and between prepping for the big party and having the big party, I, I just wasn't able to get to the show, but here we are. We are back. We are refocused. This is going up a day late, but late is better than never.
So let's jump into today's episode, which is all about networking. And I don't even wanna call it networking because I feel like networking has this like not so positive connotation. And. What I have found after removing myself from the corporate environment in immersing myself into this world of fellow entrepreneurs and fellow business owners, is that networking does not have to feel the way that I used to perceive it to feel, and I know others have as well.
So let's get started there. Let's get started with how do you get started? , I wasn't exactly sure what to do in, in terms of how to start meeting people. But what I realized is I already have some really good friends, right? A couple of really good entrepreneur friends. And that might not be the case for everyone.
If you're listening and you are brand new to business, you might be like, how do I get started? Reach out to me. Let's have a call. That's how you get started. But in my case, I have a few really solid. and I started to tell them like, Hey, I have this new idea and I wanna talk to people about it. I wanna get to know more people in general, even if they, if they are a fit for this new idea.
If they're not a fit, that's fine too. I just love getting to know people. Is there anybody that you think I should meet? And you know what happens when you ask that question people? Give you introductions. They make introductions for you of people that they know and they like and they trust to help you expand your circle and meet new people.
So typically what I would do after I got an introduction, As I would just email them and say, Hey, I am so looking forward to meeting you. I take a peek at their website, so I kind of understand what they have going on in their business and I send them my . Scheduler. And some people love the scheduler. Some people don't love coffee chats and they might say, oh, I'd like to just connect on Voxer so that I can respond when I'm free.
You can respond when you're free, et cetera. But for the most part, most people like the face-to-face and the coffee chat. So give them my scheduler. and wait for the call. And then of course, before the call, just prep yourself, know a little bit about that person, make sure that you've taken a peek at their site, their recent social media posts, whatever that they've been putting out that they've been working hard on so that you've got kind of a ground level understanding of their business.
And then I like to keep things super, super casual. I typically say like, Hey, I'd love to hear about you and your business. And you know, we can go from there. And once they've explained about themselves, then they'll typically reciprocate and ask about you. And the thing that I found is being really, really honest in these conversations is so incredibly helpful.
and I'll tell you where I learned this. I learned this from my friend Kristi Mitchell. And Kristi hosts networking calls every once in a while if you get on her newsletter. So she asks everyone to come and introduce themself and then says, what's the one thing that you need? How can we help you?
Like, what are you asking for? And in that moment when I sat on one of those calls, I. . It's not a bad thing to want something. It's not a bad thing to say exactly what you need from someone or exactly what you're hoping to get out of the conversation. Now, of course, I wouldn't come into it and say, I want you to send me a client when you barely know me.
Don't necessarily trust me or what, so have you. But I do typically say, I am vetting this idea. I would love your feedback on it. If they're in my target audience, if they're not in my target audience and say, if you know anyone that this fits, that might have some good feedback for me, I would love to speak with them too.
And so those are kind of small asks, right? Those are low stakes. People are typically willing to help as long as it doesn't take more out of their day or their time to help you. The other thing that I found really helpful that my friends did was they said, Hey, I wanna introduce you to Becca.
And Becca, you know, I'd like to introduce you to so-and-so. Becca has a new idea that she wants to run by you, and she'd also just love to get to know you. So that really set things up. Most of the time they would ask me like, Hey, you know, so-and-so mentioned that you have a new thing that you're kind of thinking about.
Do you wanna tell me about it? And you know, I'd love to give you some thoughts. So that gives you a really great invitation. talk about your new offer or the potential of a new offer, which is what I did a lot at the beginning. If you listen to the last episode of Probably Bothered, the other thing that I would say is for a while I was a networking queen.
I had to slow down a little bit. I've had a pretty intense start to January just with the wedding reception and everything. I'll probably pick back up here shortly, but I learned. To allow my scheduler to put boundaries in place for me, so I stopped accepting any networking calls in the morning. I only accepted them after 1:00 PM and I started narrowing it to specific days of the week too, because I started finding that my schedule was getting out of control and I was.
Having trouble getting client work done, which of course is the priority, and I needed to account for that. So putting boundaries in my scheduler was really, really helpful. Being upfront about the ask was really, really helpful. And then the other thing is being, being open. Wanting to meet more people.
So at the end, in order to help facilitate future introductions at the end of each conversation, I tend to say something similar to, you know, I'd love to help you meet other people who might help you in your business. Is there anyone that you're hoping to meet that I could introduce you to?
And they'll typically tell me who they would like to meet, whether it's potential partners, potential clients anything in. and then I would say nine times outta 10, they'll say, how about you? Who can I introduce you to? And in that respect, you tend to walk away from each networking call with maybe another two to three introductions for future calls and future people that you can speak to and meet with, and really expand your.
So that's kind of the how, that's the how of networking. Here's the thing that I didn't expect the follow up, and I know you're, that's probably like a duh. Of course there's follow up. I don't know what just happened to my voice, but I, if I were to do this differently, I would be, I would get prepped and ready for a season of.
Intense networking in my business. The way I would do that is I would set up a special form in my Deb Sodo. It's one that I could kind of tag people, coffee chat. Just so I remember. One of the struggles that I'm having now in my Deb Sodo is that no one is tagged, whether you were a coffee chat or a past client.
So having that special form and a workflow that has your reminder email has a tag, what? Whatever helps you stay organized would be step one. Step two is the follow up. . One of the things that I have started is keeping a notion dashboard, and I know this sounds silly, it sounds like, oh my gosh, you don't even remember who you've met with, and that's not the case.
I remember people, of course, I remember people, but it helps you to just have a more personalized touch. So instead of me saying, Hey, so-and-so, I wanted to follow up with you because I know you are a social media manager and. Here's an article I read that might be interesting to you. I can follow up and say, Hey, last time we talked, you were tossing around the idea of.
You know, restructuring your offers in this way or of adding a new offer or creating a membership or whatever the case may be, whatever the very, very specific thing is. It just gives me a, a place to make sure I have all of those details. And also as someone with a lot of social anxiety, I can also use it to check myself.
So even if I think like person A was talking about a me. , but I can't really remember. My social anxiety would be like, never reach out to them again. What if you ask about it and you get it wrong, and you're just sitting there in a puddle of embarrassment because you ask the wrong person about the wrong thing.
It's so much safer to just never talk to them again. Right. But now that I have this dashboard where I can double check myself because I go in after every call and record a little bit about what we spoke about, about what they're working on right now, about who they were hoping to meet. So if I meet someone in the future who might be a good fit, I can still even, you know, a month or two months after the original call, make another introduction and I can double check.
That I have the details right, so that I am confident in my follow up. So that's step one. No, I guess that's step four. , who's counting? Not me, obviously. So get, it's the get organized, it's the have the call, it's the record, the information to help yourself navigate social anxiety. And then it is, what the heck do you say?
How do you stay in touch with. . So I've gone a couple of different ways and I am by no means perfect. And it's been another month since the end of the year, so I probably need to start this process again. But one of my favorite things to do is to just re just email and say, Hey, I said this earlier in the episode.
Hey, last time we spoke you were talking about X, Y, and Z, and how's that going? , have you made any progress? What's new? What's different? Is there anything I can do to help now that you've had some time to, you know, develop the offer further or think about it more, et cetera. The other thing, which I haven't even started to do yet, so you guys are gonna get a true sneak peek.
That's a lie. I did it once. Not in the same. Anyway, you're gonna get a true sneak peek. I was on a call with some fellow web designers and we were talking about cold pitching companies and someone KL of Musher Boom Studios. I'll put a link in the show notes too. They do beautiful work. So on that call, KL mentioned the strategy of.
kind of, of course, following on social media. And this is for cold pitching and, you know, commenting, et cetera, just kind of get in their sphere. But the, the thing that was so brilliant was adding yourself to email lists. And I started thinking about it after that call. I don't do a lot of cold pitching in my business.
I have for brands that were very, very aligned to my interests. But. I started thinking, oh my goodness, this applies to networking. So one of the things that I'm going to do is start an email address that's like Team Becca Wood or mail becca wood.com or whatever the case may be. Haven't thought of what it's actually gonna say.
And I'm gonna use that email address to only subscribe to the newsletters of. , all of the people I have been meeting on coffee chat, on coffee chats, and then once you are on the email list, what you'll do is read them, and you don't have to do this for everyone of course, but read, read the email if you want, if you're like, Hmm, I haven't, you know, been in touch with person A in a while.
Find their latest newsletter that they've sent out. Read it and reply to that newsletter because everybody loves getting a response to their email newsletter. You can't tell me that you don't like whenever somebody replies to my newsletter, it is literally the best day ever. Something hit home.
Something was incredible that I said, well, okay, that's my percept. that I said something was that was incredible . But you know that it resonated enough for them to take the time to respond to you and give their thoughts or answer your question, whatever the case may be. So that's something that I'm gonna start doing moving forward because it's hard to think that there's all this pressure.
steer a conversation with people that, let's be honest, if you've had one coffee chat, you don't know that well, so it's not the same as, you know, picking up Voxer and chatting with your biz bestie. But there are ways to make that burden a little bit less. So maybe you are the one who is. Starting the, the outreach, but you don't have to also come up with the topic of conversation as well.
Let me bring this back full circle because I wanted to tell you about networking. But the why behind networking. The why behind networking is for my new offer. I am not going to have a sales page on my. I am not going to talk about it on social media. The only way that I'm going to promote this offer is through partner marketing.
So we've talked about networking on this episode. I think I'm gonna call this one because I didn't mean for this to go on for, this is gonna be a 20 minute episode. So we talked. Networking. We talked about how to get those calls, how to start the process, how to help kind of build the funnel of your coffee chats.
Next week, let's talk about partner marketing. We'll talk about why it's different, why it is a strategy to consider in your business, and how to do that in a way that is effective.
That'll put a nice end to this episode that will tie things up in a bow. So this is part one of networking. Next week will be part two, so I'm gonna leave you here. I'm gonna go edit this episode and get it published for tomorrow so that I don't miss two weeks in a row because that is my rule with probably bothered.
I cannot, I can miss one week, but I can't miss two. Alright, you know the drill. I'm going to include a link in the show notes to schedule a call with me if you don't believe me by now, that I actually want you to do that. This is your sign. Please schedule a coffee chat. I'd love to get to know you and love to get to know your business and hear what you're up to and what you think about the new format of the.
All right. I'll talk to you next week. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. As always, if you resonated with this conversation, if you would like to pass it along to a friend, I would be endlessly grateful. And if you want to subscribe or leave a review as well, that would make my day.
It would make my. If we're being honest, until next week, this was probably bothered.
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2023 is the year of connection! I’d love to get to know you and your business through a coffee chat! Please grab a time that works for you below!