What Is The Size Of Your Heart?
Lesson Learned: Small groups can really pay off!
In my early days of networking, I volunteered to host a group that was taking place about two hours drive away from my house. I had to get up very early and drive on a remote country highway to get there. In retrospect it was not the wisest decision that I ever made. The group started at 7:30 a.m. and I'm not a morning person so I'm not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to this. I guess I was so desperate for new business I was willing to do just about anything.
Once a month on a Thursday morning, I would get up before the roosters at 5 o'clock and I would sing to myself on the drive there so I wouldn't sound like a frog that was choking on hair balls when I started to speak. I even considered taking my coffee intravenously while I was sleeping to give me an edge. If you can imagine a stunned and grumpy woman trying to think through the fog, you may be starting to understand the obstacle course I had created for myself.
One morning in February I woke up earlier than usual to discover that a raging snowstorm was delivering the angriest of tantrums. There was a good two feet of snow on the ground already and it was coming down sideways in 3 inch chunks. I thought about not going very seriously, but I was the organizer and I was worried about my reputation, so I didn't want blow off my obligations even if it meant I might blow off the road. There was no way to send out a message to everybody to cancel the meeting because nobody was going to get that message so early in the morning. I reluctantly put on my heaviest sasquatch fur coat and trudged out into the blizzard to scrape the mountain from my car, and pry the frozen doors loose before I could even begin.
The drive there took an hour longer than usual and I arrived 15 minutes late with white knuckles and PTSD. I had been so ridiculously concerned that people might show up and not have my precious leadership, when in reality I was just overly invested. Imagine my horror to discover there were only four people in total who had braved the elements.
Of course my heart sank. One of the other four was another organizer, and I already knew that he was not going to be my client. I desperately needed new business. Finances were so tight that I did not even have the gas to spare. It would have been easy to sink into anxiety and to focus all of my energy on the negative. We could have even just sat around complaining about all the people who were supposed to be there that did not bother to show up. It's a good thing that I'm just not that person. I always try to focus on the positive, and besides the other organizer was a mentor of mine, so I had to keep my chin up.
The positive of this story is that we had four people who were basically locked in together for many hours with no place to go. We got to drink all of the coffee and eat all of the donuts ourselves. We also had way more meaningful conversations then normally would be had at any networking meeting.
We were able to talk more extensively about the services that we could provide each other. We were able to tell stories, and give examples. In those days I was selling online marketing services, and this was a great environment for me to share the outcomes of previous clients. Within a couple of hours two of the attendees signed up for my services. Then one of them had the idea to call a friend of theirs who only lived a couple of blocks away. They surmised that this person was likely snowed in and possibly would be willing to walk over to where we were.
As it turned out, their friend was indeed willing to trek through the snow. They were stuck at home bored with themselves. In total I was able to write $70000 worth of annual business that morning.
Imagine if I had stayed home and gone back to bed!
More importantly I learned a valuable lesson that day and I have never forgotten it. Many times I have heard people complain that a networking meeting had too few participants. Many times have I heard people talk about how they prefer only large networking meetings. These people do not know the lesson that I learned that day.
The size of the meeting does not matter. It is the bigness of your attitude that will win out in every circumstance. I kept my attitude in a good and happy place, and I was therefore positioned to capitalize from the experience. I did not give up. I kept going. It was the size of my heart that made this a success, not the size of the meeting.
This is a lesson that has served me well in networking and as an entrepreneur.
What is the size of your heart?
Do you truly have a heart for networking?
Kerry George
CEO, CIBN Connect
As the CEO at CIBN Connect, Kerry George inspires business owners with vision and passion and allows them to thrive in every circumstance.
Kerry is a professional networker who has attended over 6000 networking meetings and has been a keynote speaker for hundreds of online and live events.
As you can imagine, a few things have gone wrong in running that many events. Kerry always keeps a sense of humor during the chaos, which has allowed her to continuously be in good spirits to help other entrepreneurs work through their stuff.