So how have I come to be a networking cynic? Well after spending over a year at one particular networking event where every week I met lots of nice people, ate some mediocre breakfasts, drank lots of coffee and gave away a number of free business coaching sessions, what did I get from my investment of time? I think it would be unfair to say that I got nothing because I did get something; I acquired a bucket full of frustration!
Fortunately at the time (2004/5) I was transitioning away from career as a business analyst and was looking to utilise my new found skills of NLP in a new career as a business coach. Maybe I wasn't desperate enough so when I joined the group, which was based (probably still is) on the south coast of England, but very quickly I settled into their routine: one minute to promote your business followed by the weekly talk given by one of the members followed by the bit which used to make my heart sink: REFERRALS. God I used to hate that bit and there were two reasons why. 1- I was new to the area and I worked some distance away so the amount and quality of referrals that I would generate were poor and 2- I would sit and hope and wait for the referrals to come in for me. Nothing every did ... week after week I would sit there seeing the local mechanic, florist, plumber and carpenter get all the referrals while I was left with zip, zero, goose-egg, nada. This frustration would turn to anger, which of course I used to suppress, but week after week I hung in there expecting things to be different.
Now I consider myself to a fairly enlightened individual, but still pretty much a still work in progress, so when I noticed that things weren't going as I expected I decided to change tact. I will share more about this in my next update and I will talk about the lessons I learned from networking in this group.
Bye for now.
Love and light
Mark
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