Small business week over, yet a ton of networking to do!

Hey! Andres here,

Welcome to the networking desk! I believe there are some great events happening next week, so please take the time to review and see if anything matches your current networking needs.

Here’s what we got this week:

• Being consistent in networking event

• local events from the community

Alright, let’s do this.

“Lean forward moment” of the week - 👩‍💼Networking Consistency

The most frequent question I get from new business owners going into networking is, which networking events to go to.

Obviously, because I have this newsletter I can send them here, but is it really healthy to just go to as many as possible?

I actually believe that picking a few networking events or groups consistently outperform covering more events.

Let me explain:

Let’s call the first situation a “Spray and pray method” - meaning, just visit every single event that fits in your schedule and try to sell everyone there.

This method relies on finding people either looking for your services, or willing to talk about a partnership. It can definitely bring some business, anything that has effort and doing it enough times will generate results.

However, this method eventually becomes tiring, and people will see you as a sales person and not want to create a meaningful relationship. Which lead us to the next method.

Relationship building method - Taking the time to know people who frequent certain events and make it a habit to be there every week. As humans, we love patterns, creating a sense of community and hanging out with people similar to us.

We can trigger this response by creating a schedule of same events every week, month, or quarter (more frequent = better)

This is why there are BNIs, PowerCore groups, weekly chamber collectives, masterminds, etc… I am part of a PowerCore group, and it has significantly developed my skill of creating referrals and not selling to everyone, which creates more and more healthy business. And why organizers make a living out of grouping people frequently.

I currently schedule 3 organizations every week, so I can truly connect with people there, grab coffee outside the event and get them connected with clients and other networkers.

Exception to the rule: like most things, there are exceptions to these 2. I don’t consider the following “networking” but more improvements to social or business skills:

Industry events (purpose to learn), game nights, small business market events, book clubs, etc.

Yes, you can get business and connections out of them, but the main goal is different from networking. Instead, I use them to share new information with my contacts or learn about new things to improve my networking skills.

🖥️ Convert more website users into clients

🗓️ Now, the events…

⭐️ = Top picks of the week

Local shop of the week - LR Burger, Duluth

Not an ad – just a cool spot you can visit

I’ve visited this place with friends a bunch of times now, and it never fails to keep their quality consistent, It is always hard to find a good veggie burger and they have an excellent one.

We often visit Downtown Duluth as it has great breweries and things to do, so me and my friends drop here often to eat - they also have a great bar on top!

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Thank you for reading! Quick thing before I go:

1. If you are new or would like to read older posts, check out this page. There is a backlog of previous weeks of “The Networking Desk”

2. Know someone who would benefit from this newsletter? Be sure to share it with them! 📩 (just copy the link or forward this email) I will keep putting out great newsletters for them and for you. That’s a promise.

See you next week.

- Andres Inciarte