4 Business Small Business Owners Talk About Finding Their Personal Networking Style
By: Tara Mcmullin
Tags: Small Business, Business Strategy, Networking, Podcast, Business

Marie Poulin

Hey, I’m Marie Poulin. I am the co-founder of Oki Doki, a business I run with my husband where we help people plan, design, and launch their digital products and services.

Something that I do on an ongoing basis to meet new people, and develop relationships, is make space for it in my schedule. I regularly set aside time to schedule coffee dates. Sometimes I even put reminders in my calendar to kind of engage in other online communities, comment on people’s posts, just kinda see what people are up to.

With our business, it’s really about one on one, going deep, really getting to know people’s businesses, and working pretty closely side by side. Often, over the course of years. So, relationships are definitely the most important thing in our business. Connection with people is the most important thing for me, and my brand. Meeting new people is everything. Having those referrals, and networking is so important.

I keep an open mind and assume that everyone I meet might be a potential collaborator or referral.

I love people, I’m friendly with other people, and I try to be as useful as possible. If I’m hopping on a call to meet someone that a friend has introduced me to, I keep a really open mind, and I try to be as useful as possible. If I can offer some value to that person. I make sure it’s really clear to them what I can do and how I might be able to help them. I go into it with no strings attached. There are no expectations that we have to work together.

I think you just never know where those next projects are gonna come from. So making networking a priority, scheduling it in, letting people know what kind of work you want, is important.

Sometimes we forget to ask for the kind of work that we want. I think if you’re not of actively connecting with people, people can kind of forget what you’re up to.

So being really active in other people’s communities, guest posting on people’s podcasts, just really being curious about what other people are up to is huge. Sometimes I’ll just send out an email to someone just to say like, “Hey, just wondering what you’re up to. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

This way, people remember you as being helpful, and that’s a really big part of our business. There are lots of connections, and just sort of random networking, I’ve done that has definitely led to business. Sometimes even two, three, or four years down the line.

It’s not necessarily something that you might see the benefits of right away, but I do think there’s compounding interest, almost like you’re stacking those gains. The more that you are contributing to other people’s communities, offering value with no expectation in return, the more people will remember you as being a really helpful person. The more likely they will be to refer projects to you.

Again, whether people send me work or not, I rely on other people to grow as a person and to learn about what’s happening out there in other industries.

Lots of calls have led to personal friendships as well. I think you gotta keep an open mind, and make it a priority in your schedule, making yourself available. I make a discovery session available in Calendly, and I send that to people left, and right. I’ll set aside Friday mornings as my discovery time to just connect with new people. That’s been really fun.

I think if you look at it with no strings attached, and keep an open mind, it can actually be pretty fun to meet new people. You might learn something new.

I often try to position it as what can I learn from this person? What can I learn about the way they operate? The way they show up? I almost look at it as customer research, a chance to see behind the scenes of other people’s businesses and find out what makes them tick.

So yeah, networking is definitely a priority. I do as much as possible in online communities and in-person events, locally or otherwise. I do my best to just make sure that I show up in those spaces.

Christie Mims

My name is Christie Mims and I’m the founder of Coach Pony. We are a specialized community that focuses on helping new life coaches learn about the business side of coaching. Our mantra is that if you can’t support yourself then you can’t support your clients, and frankly I want every single new life coach to succeed. So if you want to know more, you can find me and my team over at coachpony.com.

A crucial business relationship for me is the one that I have with my longtime Mastermind partner. We meet weekly and have been meeting regularly for about six straight years. Over the years she’s helped be my sanity check, my sounding board, a copy editor, a resource of business ideas, an affiliate partner, and most especially mental health support.

I cannot emphasize the last one enough. Having someone who is a fellow entrepreneur who gets it, who is in your court, and who provides a space for you to be honest and raw, is priceless.

We met through a big paid Mastermind that we had both randomly joined. As a part of that big Mastermind, we were put into smaller groups, and she and I ended up into a small group together because the powers on high had determined that we were a good business match.

Through that program we got into the habit of meeting weekly, which is really great business hygiene, a rhythm I recommend for everyone.

I found through our weekly meetings that I really liked her, and, though we serve different customers, our business models and values are really similar. As our Mastermind was winding down and coming to an end, I cherry-picked her and a couple other people from our paid group and asked if they wanted to just continue to keep meeting, just us.

Over time that group has changed and the members have evolved and come and gone, but the two of us have always stayed committed. Flash forward six years to today, we still meet once a week via video chat. We have a recurring meeting set on both of our calendars. It’s always the same time and day each week, which for us now is Friday.

I love to meet at either the beginning of the week to set up the stage for the week or the end of the week to be accountable to each other. We meet over Zoom, and of course, it’s always the same Zoom link, so we can see each other.

By making it recurring and removing all the obstacles of when to meet and how to talk has made it really easy for us to basically never miss a meeting, which has been awesome for both of our businesses.

To be honest, she’s not the only one I’ve partnered with over the years. I’ve found that any time I’m in a paid program with a lot of good contacts or at a conference meeting other entrepreneurs, and I really connect with someone, I’m not shy about asking if they want to meet again.

Seeing if there’s a chance to partner or support each other in some way -that’s one of my secrets for what’s working in my business.

Carol Cox

I’m Carol Cox, Founder of Speaking Your Brand and host of the weekly Speaking Your Brand Podcast. We help women entrepreneurs create their signature talk, whether it’s a lead-generation presentation, a keynote for an important industry conference, or a TEDx talk.

Our mission is to get more women in positions of leadership and influence, on stages, in the media, on boards, in politics, and in our communities, and speaking and visibility is one of the best ways to get there.

This brings me to this episode’s topic of networking, which I really see as building a supportive and reciprocal community, deepening existing relationships, and bringing in new people.

Here are three things I’m doing on an ongoing basis to meet new people and develop new relationships.

First, I show up in real life, at events. Seems obvious, I know, but with so much emphasis on social media and online marketing, we’ve forgotten about the power of meeting people in person. I try to go to at least two events each month in my local community, in Orlando, Florida where I live, plus I go to a handful of conferences each year.

Now, I’m not the type to throw a bunch of business cards at people at these events. Instead, I aim to meet two or three new people and invite them to a virtual coffee if I want to deepen the connection. I hold these virtual coffees over Zoom video. It’s fantastic, because it’s so much easier for us to schedule and find a time to do this, and then because we’ve already met in person, then it’s nice to follow up with a video call.

What about if you’re a bit more introverted or shy, and the thought of showing up at an event is not that appealing? I feel you. This is one of the main reasons I got into speaking at events and conferences 15+ years ago. It was a way for me to break the ice with others.

Being a speaker gave me an entry point to talk to the other speakers, and it gave other people a reason to come up to me and to talk to me.

So this is a great strategy that you can use. Besides being a speaker, you could become an officer or a volunteer with a group, and that provides an excellent way to meet new people, and it also helps to break the ice.

As far as online connections, I truly do treasure the friends and the colleagues that I’ve met online, like the fantastic people who are in the What Works community. I invite listeners of my podcast, and other women I meet, to join my free online community, which right now is a private Facebook group. Having an online community has been a game-changer in getting to know new people. I have somewhere to invite them to where we can interact, plus they get to know and get support from other women speakers and entrepreneurs.

So if you have a podcast, YouTube channel, or other regular content, hosting a private community is one of the best ways to get to know new people and deepen the relationship with your audience. I wish you lots of success in your entrepreneurial endeavors. You can find me at speakingyourbrand.com.

Andréa Jones

My name is Andrea Jones, and I’m a social media strategist over at onlinedrea.com. Our business helps other businesses and podcasts on social media by crafting consistent content and also finding and building communities for them online.

The question is, how do I meet new people and develop new relationships? My answer is — social media.

Social media’s my jam. I love it, and one of the ways that I’ve been really leaning into adding some personality to my social media outreach is doing Instagram direct messages. Not just text-based messages, but adding an audio/video element to the message. Oftentimes, this is the first point of contact with me. I don’t want them to confuse this with some sort of automation or robot or whatever the kids are doing these days.

I really want to make it a personalized connection, and this is such a powerful, powerful way to really show that you care and help you stand out, especially if this is a person that gets a lot of messages in any given day.

Sometimes, these messages don’t really turn into anything. That’s fine. It happens. It’s business. It’s life. But, sometimes, they turn into clients for our business.

One of my favorite ways to do this is with podcast guests. I’ll invite people to be on my podcast through this Instagram audio direct message. Actually, one of the biggest things that has happened through the power of Instagram direct message is my mastermind group.

My friend, Lanie Lamarre, reached out to me on Instagram with a video, inviting me into a peer mastermind group. She sent me this video message, and I was really impressed with it. I thought she was asking for money at first. That’s how impressed I was because I totally would have paid her.

We created a peer mastermind group, along with Meg Casebolt and Rachel K. Albers, and we meet every other week. We meet through video, so this has really deepened our bond, and we’re besties now, but this would have never happened had it not been for the power of that initial video DM.

I really challenge you to think about how you can add personality to connecting with people, especially through social media. Maybe it’s audio. Maybe it’s video. Get outside of your comfort zone. Get outside the box. You never know what opportunities could come along from adding that personal touch.

I hope you take the challenge today to sending an audio/video message, and I’m rooting for you.