Ever felt like networking events are a gauntlet only the extroverted can survive? Stephanie Toma's here to change that narrative. In our enlightening discussion, she unveils the 'solitude sandwich'—a game-changing strategy to help introverts manage their energy and engage in social settings without feeling the urge to bolt. We also unravel the Daily 321 method, a trifecta of reading, writing, and meditation that promises to bolster your energy reserves for whatever the day throws at you. As we dissect these tools, Stephanie offers a roadmap for introverts to navigate networking with confidence and grace, ensuring they leave a lasting, positive impression.
The transformative power of networking unfolds through the unexpected journey of a runner turned user researcher, all thanks to a pivotal book launch encounter. This episode isn't just about the 'who you know' but how you harness those connections to catapult your career forward. Drawing from these real-life insights, we dissect the importance of seizing opportunities and knowing your worth—with a little help from my book "Confident Introvert" and coaching services. Listen in for an infusion of inspiration and practical guidance that will equip you to seek out and thrive in environments that resonate with your skills and passions, whether you're an introvert or just someone hungry for personal and professional growth.
Ever felt like networking events are a gauntlet only the extroverted can survive? Stephanie Toma's here to change that narrative. In our enlightening discussion, she unveils the 'solitude sandwich'—a game-changing strategy to help introverts manage their energy and engage in social settings without feeling the urge to bolt. We also unravel the Daily 321 method, a trifecta of reading, writing, and meditation that promises to bolster your energy reserves for whatever the day throws at you. As we dissect these tools, Stephanie offers a roadmap for introverts to navigate networking with confidence and grace, ensuring they leave a lasting, positive impression.
The transformative power of networking unfolds through the unexpected journey of a runner turned user researcher, all thanks to a pivotal book launch encounter. This episode isn't just about the 'who you know' but how you harness those connections to catapult your career forward. Drawing from these real-life insights, we dissect the importance of seizing opportunities and knowing your worth—with a little help from my book "Confident Introvert" and coaching services. Listen in for an infusion of inspiration and practical guidance that will equip you to seek out and thrive in environments that resonate with your skills and passions, whether you're an introvert or just someone hungry for personal and professional growth.
Speaker 1:
That sounds great. All right, stephanie, over to you. Networking for introverts. Hello there, my name is Stephanie Toma. Thank you for that introduction.
Speaker 1:
We will certainly cover introversion, extroversion and theversion. These are all terms you likely fall into one of these buckets, no matter where you are on the spectrum. You are going to get something from this, because if you are an extrovert, you are going to better understand introverts. If you aren't introvert, you're going to better understand yourself, and I would actually say about 95% of people are introverts. A combination of different factors, different people, different places may either enliven you or deplete your energy. So when I talk about introversion and extroversion, I'm not talking about how confident you are at a networking event or how confident you are on stage, because introverts and extrovert can be both of those things. Brené Brown, public speaker she's an introvert. Taylor Swift she's on stages a lot too, right. Pretty introverted as well, right? So I do view introversion as where you get your energy. People that are, let's say, creating things. If you spend a lot of time, let's say, writing music, if you are an avid reader, some of these things can actually feel quite exciting, comfortable and livening and allows you to have more energy to devote to, let's say, going to a meeting or being at an event. So we're going to talk about energy management right now. So when it comes to energy management, one pro tip I have for you. It's called having a solitude sandwich.
Speaker 1:
So before I define it, I'm going to share a short story where I was once giving my workshop networking for introverts. So, as you, as you probably know, this story came into the workshop a little later. You're getting the quick version. Someone asked me at the end hey, so I'm curious why you gave a presentation on introversion when you are so obviously extroverted. Ok, so when I received that question, I decided to answer it with another question and I asked OK, so what do you think I was doing before this workshop? And he said well, I don't know, were you at dinner with friends? And I was like no, I was actually in the waiting room reading for about an hour. And then I asked what do you think I'll be doing after this workshop? And he said well, maybe there's an after party and you're going to that. And I was like I don't know about that after party. I was not invited. However, I will actually be going home and doing the daily three to one.
Speaker 1:
That's something we'll talk about in a moment, and what I'm illustrating here is what I like to call a solitude sandwich, and you need to have this, especially if your precious energy runs out upon occasion and you hit that wall where you're like I've got to go now, there is no more energy left. You can't even have a smile across your lips. You're like nope, I'm done, goodbye, I don't care if this comes off as being rude or whatever. The energy is not there. So, to keep you from getting to that place, what I want you to do is have two segments of solitude sandwiching your activity. So your activity could be doing something like giving a presentation, going to an event. It could be a social event, it could be a networking event, and let's make this interactive as well. Feel free, because we are live. If you want to go ahead and write in the chat, I will be reading these things.
Speaker 1:
Okay, people are shocked to know that I'm an introvert. For every expert activity, I am alone for 10 hours prior to that. Yes, so, anka, you understand the concept of a Solitude Sandwich and the people who are, let's say, confident introverts, social introverts and introverted people, person, whatever you want to call it introverted, extrovert People use these terms and oftentimes these people have mastered their energy. So I want to encourage you to try that, if you haven't already, and let's say that you want to go ahead and maximize your energy. What do you do? Let's say that you have an hour before an event. So, for example, I was reading in that one story and what you can do is something called the Daily 321. So this is something that I formulated to really get the most out of an hour so that you're able to show up fully. This can also actually help you sleep and calm down if you have any nervous energy before bed, because having anxiety is not. It can sometimes be correlated with introversion, but it's not caused by introversion, that's if you're not managing your energy correctly. So the Daily 321 is composed of 30 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of writing and 10 minutes of meditation. So I'd like to know in the chat do you currently do any of these daily practices? I'm actually encouraging that you do them every day, all three. So 30 minutes of reading. It allows you to kind of absorb information. So hopefully this is a book where you're learning something. Maybe you're feeling good about what you're reading and then let's see. The second part is 20 minutes of writing.
Speaker 1:
I like to recommend narrative therapy, where you are writing down your feelings, gratitude points, where you are, let's say, allowing yourself to gain clarity on a situation that was uncomfortable. Sometimes there's discomfort in looking at events that happened today, maybe several days, several years ago, because we're like wait, what actually happened? There's this sort of second guessing. So just get clear on the narrative, like this is what this person said, this is how I reacted, and I would have liked to have done this, but I am choosing to accept that this is what happened. This is how I'm choosing to move forward in my life. This is what I learned, and sometimes we want to kind of look away and be like oh, I didn't like that. Let's like move on without addressing it, when how we build confidence, especially as an introvert, is by getting really honest and real with yourself and then getting to an embodied place where you can go ahead and share it, and then, last but not least, meditation. This is our integration.
Speaker 1:
If you feel confused or lack of clarity which I know some of my clients that I work with they're kind of like okay, I want to be successful. However, they define it right, Whether it be feeling comfortable socially more than they already do, whether it be building their career as a speaker or making their impact in some way, even speaking up in meetings more right Meditation has this effect even 10 minutes a day of allowing you to walk through your daily life with such a greater sense of clarity. So I'm gonna go ahead and take a peek at the chat again, and Katie says my solitude sandwich is pretty much any turkey club sandwich and a property worldwide, and I love that because, yeah, it's like right now I'm currently in Austin, texas who else is here with me? And you can have Texas toast, right, you can have tortillas. We have many options in Texas and beyond.
Speaker 1:
For however you'd like to have your sandwich, if you want it to have a big lot of peanut butter in the middle, maybe one little slice of turkey, you get to choose what kind of solitude sandwich you have, and I hope that you get creative with trying different time allocations. Maybe you want more solitude If you know a certain event or activity, it's more likely to deplete you and let's see, hmm. So narrative therapy never heard writing shared in this way. Love it. Yes, go ahead and try that out. And, yeah, listening to audiobooks on the treadmill and writing and journaling in the AI Rosebud app. Well, we got a recommendation there. Thanks, anka, and let's see. And yeah, if you have any questions, go ahead and ask them. I'm just going to be letting you know some of my best practices, based on a different yeah, different research and things that I've done. So let me see, in addition to a solitude sandwich, I would like to encourage you to this is very tactical Go to at least one event.
Speaker 1:
It can be social, it can be business per week. So if you're not already doing this, that's like about 50 in a year and if you make one aligned connection at each event. It's not about working the room and talking to dozens of people where all you know is their name and you have their business card but you know no context about them. That's not actually a valuable connection. The idea is and I know many introverts, let me know in the chat, if you agree with this that you actually prefer going deep and having a conversation that's meaningful, where, even if it is a noisy environment and you're like, oh, don't love this, like it's really bright and noisy, like let's, let's get out of here as a P, sometimes, when you're really sort of clicking with someone and like, ah, this is a great conversation, everything else kind of is blocked out for a moment and you get to be present. So these are the connections that are actually mutually valuable, either immediately or down the line.
Speaker 1:
So a quick story here is I went to an event and I also encourage you go to things that interest you If you're in a current industry, whether you love it or not. Go to things where maybe you're the only person at that event that you know it could be a meetup for people that work in tech. You know work in tech but you're like I'm curious, let's check it out. So just have a curious mindset and you just really never know. So when it comes to networking strategy, my strategy is planting seeds and being intuitively led in addition to more concrete strategies that are really specific on the person. That's, I'm giving you kind of the higher level broad thing, because I do think that we build confidence by attuning to what we feel is intrinsically right for us to move forward and try or do so.
Speaker 1:
The short story is I'm a runner, anyone else a runner for fun or something that you don't like, whatever if you do it. So I went to this event before I was an author and it was the book launch of a runner. They wrote a book and I ended up meeting this woman who was also a runner. She was also a user researcher and I ended up working in user research. At this point in time, I was not working in user research. Anyway, we met at the snack table and we ended up exchanging information, connecting on LinkedIn. Years later, I ended up working user research and she ended up working in a role that actually paid 10 times as much as I was getting paid at that time.
Speaker 1:
So it's like, hey, a few different learnings there, right? It's like know your worth, learn your worth and you know what connects with people. I know how that's going to really broaden and brighten your future. So, now that we have 30 seconds, I hope you got so much value out of this, and there are certainly more tips that you can learn in my book, confident Introvert. You know it's on Amazon. If you want to check that out. I'm on Instagram at Stephanie M Tomah, not Thomas, there's no s at the end and you can also go to Stephanie Tomahcom slash coaching. Take peek over there. And, yeah, wishing you a beautifully connected day and thank you so much it's you for having me on here.