I cannot tell you how many people I come across who tell me they aren’t very good at networking. They are people who know many other people, they are friendly, the right kind of chatty. They are open to new things and they introduce great people to each other. I know that this definition may not be everyone else’s but to me this is the epitomises good networking.
The reason they have this perception is because they are sick of going to another warm wine gathering in a hotel/office conference room and speaking to people that have nothing in common with and who talk incessantly about their own views, business, product or subject they find interesting but others less so.
I was fortunate to give a talk on networking at an event in my home town a few weeks back. I went to support a friend who was asked to present her career story as an alternative to the traditional route. At this event, I was introduced to her friend who does her PR for her.
After a couple of coffees and chats, we were bemoaning the lack of places to go and find interesting people, close to our home, when we hit on an idea of just bringing our business friends together to meet and chat and put the world to rights. We figured that we would have a decent list between us that we could gather together.
It turns out that there are few duplicates on that list, but we have the start of a group that we think we can have some fun with. Bearing in mind, we are dealing with those in our local area, so that limits the people we think would want to join us, but we think that the network effect will make it grow into something useful for our friends.
We are on a mission to create a group of business friends, who won’t necessarily talk incessantly about their business or product or service, but will be a great sounding board if needed. Or just be interested and interesting in life as we know it right now. As life changes, purely social friends may not sit in the same circles as we do, so we want to build a group of people who may fit that circle.
Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Blog, Events
Anonymous on 
