SVA Forum

[karenray]

Hi Everyone,

I have just booked a place on my first ever networking event with my local Chamber of Commerce. Its great as once a month they run a free event to help get people started.
As I have mentioned before on post I am not the most confident of people and I am quite shy so this is going to be a real effort for me, I am actually petrified but I know its vitally important to get out there for the sake of the business.
Does anyone have any valuable advice or tips for this sort of thing.

Thanks

Karen

[cathpooleva]

Hi Karen!

Well, I am also new to networking and attended my first event a couple of weeks ago. It was a free event run by Business Gateway and I too was pretty nervous and didn't really know what to expect, but it was absolutely fine! I'm not sure how your event will be run, but we did speed networking, like speed dating but telling the person opposite you about your business in six minutes, quite fun!

After my initial nerves I just tried to relax and be myself and actually enjoyed myself! I think the anticipation of the unknown is definitely worse than the reality and chances are if it's an event to help businesses get started everyone else will be nervous too. And I did get one potentially useful contact, so it certainly is worth it.

I am actually looking forward to the next one now - good luck with yours, I'm sure it'll be fine!

Catherine
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Catherine Poole Virtual Assistant
www.catherinepoole.co.uk
catherine@catherinepoole.co.uk
Twitter @cathpooleva

[caroline]

Remember everyone there is in the same boat - no matter how confident and "businessy" they may seem!

One of the first networking events I ever went to was for young entrepreneurs - in the corner was this VERY confident, suited and booted group of people who seemed to all be doing a roaring trade with one another. They all had these different titles "managing director" this, "head of creative" that.... They all worked for the same cooperative of web designers. They seemed so much more together than me!

Fast forward a few months though and the whole story came out - they'd spent all their start up funding on the fancy business cards, flashy expense accounts and still hadn't had a single client in!!! Happy to say that 6 years later, I'm still in business along with my business buddy Alan the Geek from that first meeting. We still meet up for coffee/lunch and bounce ideas around - I can honestly say that without his support, I'd never have made it this far. And if I'd never gone to the meeting, I'd never have met him!

Lessons learnt:
- Things aren't always as they appear.
- You'll find kindred souls somewhere at a networking event (even if they are lurking behind the coffee!!)
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