(I Haven’t Made It Yet) Why I Network Once a Week - Ep 6

People are always really shocked when I tell them I network at least once a week. 

That's my average. 

I head to at least one event every single week, mostly in person, to network in the local community, or further afield if I'm  heading to a conference or training. 

And that's because networking, at the startup stage of my business, is pivotal for my business. 

It's the bit I got wrong in my first business, the part I didn't spend enough time doing. Despite being time-rich, I overlooked this as a key part of bulding relationships, building brand awareness and setting up the foundation for my business. 

So listen in to find out the reason I'm committing to networking once a week in 2024, and how this dedication is key to not just surviving but thriving in today's business landscape. 

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Music by Kadien: Instagram | Spotify | SoundCloud

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Okay, this week we are going to be talking about the fact that there's one activity that I do quite a lot of, and when I tell people how much I do it, they're often quite like shocked in a good way, I think. Who knows? But it's something that I think, in the particular early stages of my business, has absolutely moved the needle, alongside a whole bunch of other things that go together. But this first came about when I signed up to my sales coaching programme, which I am coming towards the end of the first year of, and part of that process, my coach at the time, josiah, went through this sort of audit that's what I can call it and it was a selection of different things that I could be doing and I rated myself out of 10 for each of those things, and some of them were doing sales calls, doing lead generation, etc. And one of the things I suddenly realised as a result of doing this that I didn't really do at all. I dabbled in it but hadn't focused in on it, and the one thing that I realised at that time that I wasn't doing as much of that I could be doing was networking. Now I know that the idea of networking straight away when I say that word freaks some people out. The idea of going into a room and feeling like you might be pitched by just about everybody makes you feel a little bit sick inside, and then the idea that you need to go there and sell yourself to these people. Now it's really interesting because I didn't necessarily go into networking that way and I think some of you may have an impression of that just based on the word and what you know about it and possibly have maybe experienced it like that in different circles. But from what I've experienced, networking has been eye-opening for me because if you go there realising that it's not to pitch to everybody, you can actually have some really great experiences from networking. Now, alongside some of the other coaches that are within that sales coaching program, we're talking about it and essentially I am time rich in the circumstances that I'm currently in.

Speaker 1: 2:09

As part of me moving into doing a business, running a business instead of being employed, I gave up my full-time job and that was risky at the time two and a bit years ago, at the time of recording, when I quit teaching full-time and I just knew I had to. It was an intuition. I could feel things were not going to be good for once. I returned after my operation. I could tell just from the sort of touch point meetings, whatever they call them that you keep in touch with the department. I thought this is not going to be the same department when I come back. I don't know how this has happened in six weeks, but it's going to be very different. And I was like hold on, it's fine, go back and see how it is. And when I returned in September, within a day or so I knew and my notice was handed in pretty quickly I gave them fair warning to leave three months or a term, maybe even four months.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Even so, I wanted to pursue this and work this out because this felt like more of a challenge to me. It would offer me more of the opportunities to keep growing as a person. But I knew that I needed the time because, as far as I was concerned, it was getting in my way. So I was therefore time rich. I have been able to somehow live on. It was initially like no days a week supply, which then turned into doing whatever I could. So I was taking that flexibly when I could and I think it worked out to about three days, I would say on average a week obviously not in the school holidays, plus my tutoring, which I've always had about three to four to five clients on the books at any given time that happens and it then went to two days fixed, with one extra flexible and not until recently I was still on two days a week, so that always meant I had to show up. I had to do about a 40 minute drive to get into work and show up there and be there for the entire day, pretty, pretty distracted by the work I was doing, and that's fine. But that gave me, as many business owners do, five days, if you include the weekend, to invest in my business, which meant I was time rich, which, if you are a business, I know isn't necessarily like true, because you still have to do a lot of stuff wearing all the hats. But one of the most high value items or activities I could include in that time was to network.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Now my goal in 2024 is to network once a week, and that is the statement that shocks people that once a week. How do you have the time for that? Now, this is not a sustainable business model. I do not anticipate that in by the end of 2024, say, but into 2025, that I'll be networking quite as much as that. But I am at the beginning stage of my business and, yes, my sales coach will tell me that all I need is my phone and me and my offer and I can essentially make sales. And I do agree with him to an extent. I like a little bit of lead gen, because making calls to friends and family about who they know that might want to help with a podcast is scarier than finding people that kind of are interested in a podcast. But essentially I get his point that, ultimately, if I did enough calls to people I already knew, chances are they would have some contacts that might know, contacts that are interested in podcasting. So, in order to fulfill my own sense of comfort and stay slightly more within my comfort zone, at that point in time I was like, okay, well, I don't mind talking to people and I don't mind making sales calls to people that have raised their hand a little bit. So, therefore, I'm going to go out and find these people and the way that I'm going to do that is I'm going to network and I started networking in the summer of 2023, maybe slightly earlier than that, actually, when I think about an ambitious women in Essex event.

Speaker 1: 5:49

But I went out and started meeting people and I now go to a whole variety of sort of regular events I'm not calling so events that run monthly in various locations in Essex and I also attend one off events that I would call. They might be annual events, but events that are bigger, you know, two day conferences and things like that and I obviously network at myself coaching, because there's a whole group of us there and it's one of those where it is to do with your network is your net worth. It's a little cringy line but the truth is in that the reason people say it is because there's truth behind it. So that's what I spend a lot of my time doing and I certainly don't show up to these events thinking I'm going to sell to everyone. In fact, somebody came over to me at an event recently and said oh, someone's had to speak to you about podcasting. They say I should have a podcast. I said oh, what do you want to put us with? I don't know. They just told me I should have one and I was like well, I'm not going to stand here and pitch you.

Speaker 1: 6:44

Podcasting in general, like my energy is that I want to work with people that have already decided a podcast is for them. So I did do a little bit of education on what it could be for and ask some questions to get them thinking about the vision, seeing what that could look like, but certainly not someone that I'm going into a deep conversation with, because this is just an idea for them, an idea from somebody else. Someone else thinks it's a good idea that they should have a podcast not necessarily them yet and so, as part of a customer journey and understanding who I'm speaking to, I'm not going to sit there and persuade someone they need a podcast. That's not my job. My job is to help the people that already know they want a podcast, and, of course, I'll share with why I think a podcast is good. If they ask me and do you think this is good for my business, I'll ask them to. You think it's good for your business? But also go, well, yeah, there's this and this isn't there, so it's not my job to do all of that.

Speaker 1: 7:38

But the ultimate thing is is that I'm having those conversations and even if a person is not suitable for me for the podcast service either of them, be that me doing strategy and content with them, or having the done for you service taken over by the agency. It's about understanding the people that are in front of you and what they need, the language they use, what they're hoping for. So it's really interesting to me if I went to your kind of marketing 101 and went back to basics. I should be, and I do say in my kind of vision seed statement I say how to get more leads through podcasting, because surely that's what everybody wants and, at the truth of it, people probably do want more leads because they want my sales from getting leads into their business.

Speaker 1: 8:25

However, there are a lot of people that I'm working with or in talks with when I say to them like, what do you want? Some of it is more of a passion project and that's quite hard to sell sometimes because there's not the return on investment to see, it's not a financial thing, though some of them go, you know it does need to fit into the business model, so we explore that bit then. But so many people come to work with me because they're passionate about what they want to talk about and some people are in the position to fund a passion project no matter what the return? That they just want to get themselves out there. They want the asset of the content. They want to build their brand personal brand, business brand they want to be known a little bit more and so actually, it isn't the leads, but it's it's being known. And being known something I'm going to talk about in a future episode, because it's always interesting when it happens when you are known by someone that knows you but you don't know them. I'll get to that in a future episode.

Speaker 1: 9:19

But networking is market research. It is relationship building, and that's not relationship building with people that are just going to be your clients. It's with adjacent characters in business so I got to celebrate making a sale with somebody because they were so excited for me and it's also being able to see where you've come from, to see people coming in behind you, starting their business and just being one step ahead, and it gives you that perspective, as well as gives you the perspective of people that are way further ahead than you and somewhere to aim for and to see what's possible. If I hadn't attended the Expert Empires event in I believe it was April 2022, I don't think I would have the belief system that I have now, because suddenly I was spending two days surrounded by people talking about turning over six figures, seven figures, etc. And I didn't really know many people that had done that or didn't know people that then spoke about that so openly and shared that and did that because business world and building a business in that sense and one that's going to have a team, have people working in it, have a vision, have a culture, to me in the way that I've understood it, is just a whole different ball game. You have to start playing in that different court before you can start playing that ball game differently.

Speaker 1: 10:39

So networking, as it currently stands, is a very significant part of my brand awareness, of part of my active activity, if you want to call it that, and it allows me to get to know people that I might just have a network with. I understand their business and the podcast is never really going to suit what they're doing. You never know what they're going to go on to next and you never know who they're going to know, who suddenly turns to their friend and says, oh well, business is going well, I'm thinking of launching a podcast, I just don't know how to do it. And they suddenly go oh, I know someone, I want to have a chat with her and, again, I'm not trying to close that person. If there's a good fit, then I will pursue it and I'll help that person. So be it, but I'll also be prepared to let people go.

Speaker 1: 11:23

It's not this desperation to get people to sign up, it's to go. Where are the good matches, where are the good fits and how can I find those people? Without just posting on social media, without just having a podcast? How can I actually get in touch with these people and understand them at the core? So if you've not networked before, I promise you it's not scary as you think.

Speaker 1: 11:46

I do a whole variety of them, because when it does come to 2025 and I'm maybe down to I don't know one every fortnight, maybe one a month. That sounds like too little to me, but who knows? I will need to be more selective about where I go, because I'll have done all of my research, I'll have looked at all these events that I've gone to. I'll have looked at where did I get those clients from? Because ultimately, the clientele does matter. So I need to look at that customer journey. Did it come from a referral? Where did that referral come from. Oh, actually it came from that event. That event also supplied this referral and actually got a direct contact and client from that one.

Speaker 1: 12:20

And suddenly you can build this pattern of where to go to get clients in person. And obviously you can keep experimenting, but that's my process at the moment. It's why I spend so much time networking and aim for at least one networking opportunity a week. And hey, I haven't done a lot of online. But there is also the value of online networking. Making sure that you choose again selectively gives you opportunities to talk to people in small groups. I personally prefer in person because you get more contact time, but offline makes it so much easier in terms of travel. You're not limited by location and you can access a whole different part of the UK even though you're not in it. So if you're not networking yet, have a little think about it. You don't have to start with once a week. You can start with once a month. Dip in your toe in and see in what it's like to meet other business owners, mix it up, go to say it different the next month and start seeing what impact that has on your business, your customer journeys and your whole sales process.