The Second Commandment of Networking

Welcome back. We are now onto the Second Commandment of Networking. Lee Knapps of Knapps Consultants said “Determine your objective prior to every networking opportunity. Ask yourself, why am I here and what do I hope to accomplish?”

When I go to a Networking event one of my main objectives is to create name recognition for my company. When people think about internet technology, such as blogging, video e-mail, social networking sites, I want them to think about Get Smart Women and soon to be Get Smart Men. One way in which to do this is to have a creative one minute commercial. I know that’s a tough one. Sometimes what you think is funny no one else does. I have had a few flops of my own and when I was done and looked around the room and everyone had that polite little smile on their face I realized they had no idea what I do. Lee subjects that you keep it simple but memorable. You can do that by focusing on one aspect of your business. Focus on how your product or service is a benefit to your customer. Remember it’s not about you it’s about your customer. I am also very interested in what people do for a living and how my company can help them achieve their goals. I believe that if I can’t help them perhaps I have meet someone at one of the networking events who can. If you pay attention to what people do for a living you would be amazed how easy it is to connect people and by doing so you have created a relationship with that person. They may not need your product or service but you can bet that they know someone who does and they will remember you.

Networking can be a joy or it can be a huge chore, It all up to you. If you go into it with the thought of creating relationships instead of trying to sell something you will find the experience much more beneficial. People don’t want to be sold, do you? They want to know that the people they are dealing with understand their needs and are there to help create solutions. So go out there and have a good time and happy networking…

First Commandment of Networking

I was at a Networking event recently. Who am I kidding I am at networking events all the time and the truth of the matter is I am going to be writing about my experience’s; The good, bad and the ugly. Networking is the one of the life lines of a company. It is free advertisement, okay not free but dollar for dollar one of the least expensive. We go out meet, greet, and shake hands. We talk about ourselves and what we do for a living and hopefully at the end of it all we have a client.

At this particular networking event the speaker Lee Knapp of Knapp Consultants talked about the 10 commandments of Networking. As she spoke I started thinking about the principals of networking. As I stated earlier we go to these event and we meet people and shake a few hands and then what? I started wondering if people actually had a plan? Do they have goals? Are there a certain number of people that they have told themselves they will meet? After the meeting I asked Lee if she would mind if I used her 10 commandments of networking. I wanted to look at each one of them and write about them. She was wonderful enough to give me her heart felt encouragement. So I thought I would start with the first one, not a big leap there, and expand upon it. So here we go….

Commandment number one: Your business networking tools reflect you, your business, and your professionalism. What are your tools saying about you? So what are your tools? As Lee say’s the most important tool you have is yourself and what does that mean. I know for myself that when I go to a networking event I always put my best foot forward. I present myself in the best possible light. I dress appropriately for the occasion, I am in a good mood, and if I am in a bad mood I don’t go. Not only is it a waste of time but I may end up presenting myself in a way that could be harmful to my business. I don’t know about you but when I am in a bad mood I can be somewhat shot tempered. I make sure that I have a large supply of business cards on hand. I do that before I walk out of my office door. There is nothing like talking with someone and exchanging business card only to realize you don’t have any, been there done that. Know your industry. Not just what your company dose, produces, sells but also how your industry is doing as a whole. Be informative. Bring along added information, a brochure or maybe an article that is informative about your industry, not a book please just a few short paragraphs. Better yet write it yourself. It will impress people. But most importantly have a good time. If you are so will the people around you. Happy Hunting.

Shout Out to LinkedIn

Hey, gotta give a shout out to LinkedIn.com. Their the talk of BloggingStock today. Seems they are the wonder boys to watch. For those of you who don’t know what linkedIn is. It is a social networking site designed for the business and professional world. They have more than 23 million registered users. According to BloggingStocks LinkedIn has just received a $53 million venture capital investment led by Sequoia Partners. The $53 million represents a 5% stake in the company. With fresh growth capital, LinkedIn will expand its marketing efforts globally and grow its user list. Well just goes to show you that as we say at GetSmartWomen.com if you’re not doing business on the internet your missing a large portion of your potential clients. So here is a big round of applause for LinkedIn

Death, dying, death. Ok I am sounding a little morbid. It’s just that I have two of my closest friends dealing with this right now. One of my friends mother pass away last night and another one of my friend’s mother is getting ready to pass. It just struck me how we talk about death. Passing on, getting ready to go. We have such a need to believe there is something else out there. That death is not an ending to life but a beginning to something else. My friend Barbara is taking care of her dying mother. She said it felt oddly similar to when she was a midwife and was helping with the birth of a child. Only now she was helping with the birth of a spirit.

Death is such an incredible difficult passage for humans to go through. I heard stories that back in the day women would wash and prepared the body for viewing, well truth be told there are probably places in the world where that still happens, and they would be laid out in the house while people came by to say their goodbyes. I remember at my Grandfathers funeral the Knights of Columbus stood watch over his casket until he was placed in the ground. I was told they were there to keep the evil spirits away. Today everything seems to be wrapped up in some kind of pretty little package. Did you know you could be cremated and made into a jewel? I don’t know how I feel about that…

It may be that I am a little freaked out about it. I’m 49 years old and that death and dying thing is going to happen. There is just no way to get around it. The thing is wouldn’t it be nice if there was some kind of passage; where it didn’t have to be such a painful and confusing parting. I know that most people believe in something, be it God, the Universe, the Source and I think that helps get through the hard times.

I am often asked what I should say. What can I do? The truth is that listening is the best gift a person can give. Letting a person grieve and express that grief is also an amazing gift. Understanding that it takes time to grieve, not a week, a month, or a year and that everyone grieves differently, that’s huge.

It’s 6:00 in the morning and I woke up with a revelation, how cool is that. Lately I have been struggling with everything in my life. I wouldn’t say I am unhappy but I am not happy either. If I were to put a color on my life I would say it has been varying shades of grey with an occasional blue and pink. I have been stagnated. I have spent the last year or so running around desperately look for some kind of answers. I work hard, I believe in myself, I focus, I follow through and yet for some reason things haven’t been moving along as I had planned. I mean I have faith. I believe in God so what is the problem. I thought perhaps that the Universe was trying to tell me something. Maybe I should not be doing what I am doing anymore? Perhaps I am suppose to be doing something else? Could it be possible that I missed my calling? Well if so what is it? I swear I’ll do it!

So in my determination to figure out what the problem is; I started reading books. I am a reader I just started reading a different kind of book. I didn’t want you to think I was lazy or anything, you know like I didn’t read… Anyhow, I started with the Secret, then I read Wayne Dryers, The Power of Intention, I went to Arizona on a spiritual retreat; listened to great speakers talk about connecting to the Universe. I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Elkhart Tolle’s, The New World. I took a class in pottery, connecting back to the Earth, and I started a new business with my daughter. Looking, looking looking. Surly something would change and I would have it figured out…..

Though out all the books I read and the speakers I have seen I believed the message they were telling me was that I just needed to focus on the good and to believe that all things are possible and so I did. Or at least I thought was. Now at 6:00 in the morning I realize I wasn’t doing that at all. It’s the vibration level that a person resonates at. I mean it’s the passion, the Joy. Tony Robins say’s “Live Your Passion.” The Secret says what you want you can have if you focus on it. Wayne Dryer says it’s your intent what you put out into the world is what you will receive back, “I intended to attract.” The Alchemist say’s “When you want something the whole Universe conspires in helping you get it.” Elkhart Tolle says to “Stay in the moment.” But it is more than that. It’s more than words. What was missing was the passion, the enthusiasm, the excitement. It is Joy. Loving your life, loving what you are doing with your life. Then what you want will come…..

What these people have done is give us the keys and the tools we need to get there. The responsibility is ours. We are the creator of our lives. Scary but true. We have the power to move a mountain all we have to do is live our passion……

I was raised on an Army Post, we army kids are affectionately known as Army Brats. It wasn’t an easy life. Money was always tight and we moved every two years or so. As a child I thought everyone wore green and carried a gun for a living. I believed that picnics were spent watching our fathers jump out of planes and crawling around tanks. I don’t remember any prejudices when I was growing up. There wasn’t a big distinction between the white kids, black kids, Mexican kids ect. Perhaps it was because our lives were so similar and all of our houses looked the same. The style of our furnishings depended on the last post you had been stationed at. The biggest distinction between us kids were the non-coms and the officer brats. Now that’s where the battle was. Nothing serious mind you but there was some diffident tension there. As I look back at that time as difficult as it was at times I am grateful for it. I learned to be flexible. I learned to not be afraid of change and to have the ability to face life head on. I believe these are some of the most essential qualities one needs if they are going to choose to be an Entrepreneur.

I own a Construction Company. Specifically I am a Drywall Contractor. I have been in construction since college. 25 years to be exact. I started at the bottom per-say. A laborer scraping out house’s, in layman’s terms it means I had to pick up the trash and throw it away. I worked for my husband in his drywall company, I’ve worked for a cable company laying cable, and as a Swimming Pool Contractor. Now please understand I didn’t stay a laborer at the first opportunity I moved myself into the office to learn the finer points, if you want to call it that, of the construction industry. In 1999 I started my own drywall contracting company and so Excel Drywall Inc. was born.

Being a woman in the Drywall Business was….. well let’s just say being a army brat didn’t hurt. My step father was a staff sergeant and there are some who would say I inherited some of his better qualities, if you get what I mean. But seriously it was challenging. I am not the kind of person to hide in the office and honestly even if I was I didn’t have the money to do it. I ran the company from the ground up. Meaning I was back to scraping out house’s, to the horror of my employee’s. I ran my jobs, did my own estimating, the accounting and delivering material, oh and I have some stories about that. The point that I am trying to make here is that if you want to own your own company and be successful at it you have to do everything, know every aspect of your company. Of course you don’t stay there because you can’t. As your company becomes more successful your time will be spent marketing, networking, and running the day to day operations. I can tell you that some of my fondest memories I have, are the first year I started Excel Drywall, it was a hoot……