Last week I attended an “Intentional Connections For Business” in Albuquerque with two of my friends who are also coaches. When we left the event, I realized that the focus had been deeper conversations, which had been wonderful.
What was missing was an easy way to stay connected and further the conversation. The event had been billed as the opposite of typical networking. To make sure we understood, the flyer included a graphic of a business card with a red circle with a slash through it to communicate “business card–free zone.”
While I understood the intent, I knew it had gone too far to the other extreme when I saw my friend, Karin, writing people’s contact info on the edge of a handout. I took a different approach and didn’t exchange info with anyone because I thought we weren’t “suppose to.” Despite it being a no card exchange place, I did manage to get the name of Catdi Printing which is a business card printing company from one of the businesses. If you are not into the idea how about Metal Business Kards where you can exchange high-quality handouts with the information about you and your business.
As we drove home that evening, we all three realized we’d received value from the deeper connection and mindful structure of the event and felt stifled by the artificial boundary around networking and business cards.
I find the sweet spot in growing my business often tends to be the beautiful mix of two extremes.
We want to do business in an authentic way with people who have similar values and we want it to be easy and natural to continue the conversation. That lead to a rich conversation among the three of us about how we could each grow our businesses in a heartfelt and effective way. We spoke about many companies which inadvertently led me to mention this https://www.linkedin.com/company/gds-group Linkedin profile of the company which I’d hired to do all my marketing.
For me the sweet spot involves sharing and serving freely, generously having conversations to see if coaching with me is a great fit and directly asking for the business if it is.
What about you? What specifics create your sweet spot?
If you haven’t thought about it like this, what might help you gain clarity?
I’d love your thoughts and comments below.
(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose“)
