Hate Networking? Me too!

In this episode, host Jennifer Furlong tackles the topic of networking and shares her personal experiences and insights. Jennifer opens up about her initial struggles with networking events, feeling anxious and finding it difficult to engage in meaningful conversations. She recounts a specific networking luncheon where she pushed herself to step out of her comfort zone and shares the ups and downs of the experience.

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Transcript

[00:00] Jen: If you are feeling stuck or disappointed with where you are personally or professionally, and you want to level up your life, then I have a book for you. It's called Cracking the Rich Code and is a number one Amazon international bestseller. I, along with a group of diverse experts from around the world, have teamed up to provide you with powerful strategies and insights that will help you achieve greater success. This book offers some valuable entrepreneurial insights that will strengthen your life, your business, and your effectiveness overall. Use the Code podcast and get a 20% discount when you order from my website, www.communicationtwentyfourseven.com, or click on the link in the show. Notes welcome to the Communication 24/7 podcast, where we communicate about how we communicate. I'm your host, Jennifer Furlong. I hate networking. I mean, I'm great at meaningful conversations. I enjoy listening to people's stories. I love making connections and finding things that we have in common. I even love discussing topics that we disagree on. And maybe that's why I hate networking. I've always felt that most of the conversations I've had at networking events, I just feel like they're superficial. They tend to be limited to the typical Tell me about yourself and what do you do or What's your business about? I can get so nervous about attending a networking event that I will disappear into the bathroom for a while. No kidding. I've actually done that. Now if I attend an event where I have a specific job to do, like I'm the speaker or I'm delivering a workshop, it's no big deal that I don't know anyone because I'm there to do a job and I'm the presenter. So I'm going to end up having conversations anyway with a few people, and they likely will end up asking me some very meaningful questions because that's just the nature of doing what I do. But it's a completely different story when I'm attending an event just for networking. Let me explain. One time I attended a networking luncheon where I knew absolutely no one. I thought it would be a great opportunity. I am a business owner and I need to meet other business owners. And so this networking luncheon was an opportunity to meet a lot of business owners who live in my region. It was huge. I remember walking in, it was at this huge hotel downtown. It was in this huge conference room. And after I signed in at the registration booth, I put my little hello, my name tag on my shirt, and I began to walk through the first set of doors to go into the conference room and I froze. I stood there and I looked at this sea of people, and most of them were already in small groups having conversations. And I got the feeling that a lot of these people already knew each other. I was brand new to this organization. So again. I didn't know anybody and I could feel myself starting to get nervous and then I could feel myself getting even worse. It went past nervousness, it started getting into full-blown anxiety mode. And I really did not want to go in there. But I knew, hey, you know what? You need to get in there and you need to start having some conversations with some people. But I talked myself into going into the bathroom first. Maybe I just needed to calm down for a moment. I ended up staying in the bathroom for quite some time though, and I almost talked myself into leaving, but I didn't. I said, okay, this is ridiculous. I'm a communication person. Certainly, I can go in there and meet just one person. So that's what I decided to do. I gave myself permission to just meet one person. I was not going to try to force myself to meet every single person in that room. I did not need to meet every single person in that room. I just wanted to reach out and meet one person. I figured if I did that, then I would be successful. So that helped a little bit. I mean, I went into the conference room and I looked around and again, most everybody, they were already in these small groups having some conversations. And so I decided, let me look for someone who is not engaged in conversation with others. And I found him. If you've read my book, Cracking the Rich Code, you know it is chock full of fantastic advice from top thought leaders and super successful entrepreneurs from around the world. How would you like to be a member of an exclusive community that provides that same how-to content from those same leaders? What if you were able to attend member-only live events and interact with them? I'd like to invite you to join the Rich Code Club. It will change the way you think about yourself, your money, and your life. It's the only social media platform purely focused on helping you grow. Join the Rich Code Club today for free by clicking on the link in the show notes. He was sitting at one of the tables with his face in his phone and he looked up and looked around for a moment and in that brief second, I could tell that he felt, or at least he looked just as miserable as I felt. So that's when I decided, yeah, this is the guy that I'm going to go talk to. Now, this isn't necessarily the best advice for networking, but I will say this is a good piece of advice if you are nervous at an event where you don't know anyone and you just want to be able to gain the courage to strike up a conversation. So by finding someone who was already sitting at a table and looked very uncomfortable, I was able to walk up to him and asked if the seat next to him was taken and he said no. And I said, oh, good, so I'm going to sit down here. And then that opened the door for us to have a conversation. Yes. In the beginning, it was superficial. Is this your first time at this event? Do you know many people here? What do you do? But then eventually the table began to fill in with other business owners and then that opened up the opportunity to have a lot of different conversations with different people. Was this a win? Would I characterize this experience at this networking event as a win? Well, I mean, it really depends on how you look at it. It worked out in that I was able to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. The tactic I used helped open the door to a fun and engaging conversation. I met someone who was really interesting and we did end up having a pretty good time at the luncheon. So from that perspective, you could say it was a win. I mean, for someone who is uncomfortable in a room full of strangers, doing something similar might help you feel a bit more empowered. But on the other hand, I admittedly fell short of creating a business connection. I mean, this is why I went to a networking luncheon, right? While the conversation was nice, at the end of the day, I spent money on a luncheon that resulted in zero prospects, zero clients, zero potential partners, and zero potential collaborators. From that perspective, you could say it was a huge loss. I was in the negative. If you want to look at it in terms of finances, it was a complete waste of my valuable time. From that perspective, I know I'm not alone in figuring out how to be better at networking. And thanks to the pandemic, many of us are feeling a bit rusty when it comes to in-person networking anyway. Also thanks to the pandemic, we are attending more and more virtual networking events. Now that is a whole nother ballgame. So that's why I want you to be sure to listen to the next episode. My guest and I are going to discuss how to revolutionize your networking game. You're going to learn so much about different networking methods and it's going to help you step up your engagement game. After having this conversation, I can tell you my guest helped me step up my engagement game so I know exactly how I'm going to approach my next networking event. And it's going to help you avoid the trap of just merely swapping business cards. I mean, we're not really doing things effectively if we're just throwing out the business cards like they're candy. It's kind of like throwing something at the wall to see what's going to stick. That could be a huge waste of your time and money as well. And we're also going to talk about how to leverage some of the virtual tools that are available that are going to broaden your networking horizons. It's going to be a really great episode. In the meantime, I would love to hear from you. Please send me your communication questions. I would love to work them into the show for a Q and A segment. Or maybe you don't even have a question, but maybe you have a communication-related story instead. I mean, it could be a funny communication story. It could be a tragic communication story. As long as there's a lesson learned. Give us something that you would not mind sharing with the audience. If you have a story like that, please send it to info at communication 24/7. I'll check it out. And if there's a really good lesson that all of us could learn from, I'll share it on a future episode. All right, that's it for today. I hope you have a great rest of your day. You take care now. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support Podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and a review.