Better Networking: Tips for Being a Better Networker

What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts. And I'm Sara

Lucy. And this is Brandon, your comprehensive guide to creative branding. And

on this episode of the podcast, we're going to be talking about

networking. And we've definitely talked about

networking before four, but I think we're going to look at it a little more

in depth today and maybe even look at it from a

couple of different perspectives. Because networking

in your day to day operations or even networking at some of your

local networking organizations could be completely

different than the way you network at a conference. Yeah, I think

with a conference, everyone is in the mindset of they

want to do business, and that can be a completely different take

versus if you're just going to a networking event, which is more

just connections. But even in social

settings, I've networked at weddings, I've networked at parties. Maybe that's

just because I can't turn it off, but it's also,

you meet different types of people from different walks

of life. When you're at a networking event or you're at a conference, everyone there

has something in common versus if you're just in a social setting. I feel

like everyone is super unique. As

entrepreneurs and brand builders. Can we ever really turn

it off? I mean, we kind of need to be networking

24/7 yeah. And it can get annoying,

honestly. I was literally at a wedding over

the weekend and someone brought, like, they mentioned that

they want to write a book someday. And I'm just immediately go into, okay,

well, I have friends in the publishing world, so send me an email. I can't

turn it off. Right? Just being like, oh, that's awesome. I'm just like, okay,

who can I connect you with? How can we get this done? Your book will

be out next.

You know, I went to the success north Dallas Young executives

on Tuesday night and I just went there to, I go every month

just to support the organization. And I met some people. Before I knew it,

they had my book in their hand and we were taking a group photo

and I made these connections and I made these new

relationships, and you just never know when that

opportunity is going to present itself. Yeah.

And one of the things that I have learned the hard way, that has been

a piece of advice I've gotten, but I still have not listened to it,

is number one rule of networking. Have a free

hand. Don't have both of your hands full because people

are going to try to shake your hand. And every single

time I'm in a situation, my hands are full.

I'm trying to shift things from one arm to the other, awkwardly go in for

like an upside down handshake. And it doesn't help that I'm left handed, so I'm

usually holding things in my right hand, but then they want to shake my right

hand, so then I have to switch everything over or give them the awkward, we're

on the same side handshake. But at the same

time, doesn't that create a memorable experience?

Don't they go, oh, you're the girl. That had all these,

you're the hot mess I met. You're the hotness, that

hot mess that I met there at that event. It's going to be

a mess. May as well be a hot one.

But the thing that really spawned this conversation was

I downloaded an ebook of 120 ways

to power network. And I looked through it and like, wow, this might be good

for us to cover some of these and kind of bring it to the forefront.

Yeah, that was one that really stood out to me. And then another

one was, don't be a snob. Make sure that you're talking

to anybody and everybody. Yeah. And this one really

stood out, especially because I look a lot younger than I am.

So I have had a lot of people kind of just snub

me in a networking setting because they assume I can do

nothing. What can you possibly bring to the table, Sara? At my

age, for real, we all. Need to know that. Yeah. Thanks,

Lisa. Credit where credit is

due is immortalized

forever. Forever.

But I remember back, it was in my first job, and I

was actually the one that created and ran an internship

program for the company. So I would go to these

events where students were allowed to go as well. They got like, free

entry so that they can network with companies and try to get

internships and stuff. So I remember me and

Renee, who was my coworker, same age as me. We're

talking to a full size adult who she used to work

for. Do I qualify as a full

size adult? Is that what you do? I'm still like an adult with training. Thanks,

I appreciate that. Thank you. But we were talking to a full size adult, and

this student sidles up in between

me and Renee and the full size adult and just has her back

to us and starts elevator pitching the

woman. And it goes on for a, like we were in a conversation. So

me and Renee are now just standing there like, all right, rude.

And then after she feels like she's made her case,

she turns to us and is like, oh, so where do you guys go?

And we're like, we represent our company. We're here

to find potential interns. And she's like, oh,

do you want my card? No, I do not.

Not even a little bit. And then she walks away. And I'm pretty sure the

woman she talked to who did take her card threw it out.

Because even if I was a

student, you don't just turn your back on someone and. Oh,

God, it was not good. Yeah. I mean, it can be hard

to not make those assumptions right out of the gate, you know what I mean?

But it reminds me back in the day of when I sold cars, this was

way back in the day. There was an incident where

everybody was on the floor. It was a slow day at the dealership, and this

guy pulls up, and he's in this beater of a mini

truck. You can look at the truck, and you can see that the entire dash

is covered in cigarette butts. This guy gets out of the truck, he's

wearing, like, coveralls, and he's less than clean. We'll

put it that way, because I'm trying to be polite here. The entire floor,

all the other salespeople, they vanish, right? I get with

this guy because they left me there to take him on, and

I show him around the dealership. We finally find a vehicle that he's looking

for. Dude writes a check at sticker.

No negotiation. Just writes a sticker, full price for this van.

And, of course, still nobody believed that this cat could even do this. Well,

they verified funds, the check cleared, and I sold this guy a

van at sticker price. No negotiation. Because

everybody else made an assumption based on his

appearance. And, I mean, I couldn't have been more than 21 years old at

the time. But that lesson stuck with me, and it's very

applicable when it comes to networking. Regardless of these events

that you're at, regardless of someone's outward appearance, there's still

an opportunity to make an amazing connection. Regardless of

what you may think right. Out of the gate, it's definitely not

uncommon for me to be misjudged based on I look

like a child. I've seen it happen, but it's also, I feel

like, for you, it happens. We've had a lot of conversations with people.

One was recently about how we dress and how

what you wear when you go to these events means a lot about

how people take you seriously. Sure. And your uniform is

either your hoodie or your quarter zip with jeans and sneakers.

And it was even said, like, oh, well, that's fine. You're just a

podcaster. Exactly. That's exactly what was said.

I'm still sort of somewhat taken aback. And

even just yesterday, I was in a hot seat of a

mastermind. And it's a fairly high end mastermind that I

don't necessarily feel comfortable being a part of because it's such a high end

gig. Not that I don't consider myself a high end cat, but I'm talking, these

cats are high end.

There's definitely levels to this game, folks. And one of the

people that were on the call, she pulled up my website, which has

photos of me on stage, and there I am

in my three quarter little zip up, and I've got these

stark white sneakers and my jeans, and I'm doing

my thing. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't

just somewhat embarrassed of the fact that she pulled up my

picture in that uniform in

front of this particular crowd. But it's

you. It is. And that's the benefit of being an

entrepreneur. That's the benefit of being who we are. That's the benefit of

building your own personal brand, is you have that

opportunity to be you.

So many people live their lives in this

bubble that they have to be in

order to be, quote unquote, successful. And this whole

podcast is about building your brand and building your personal brand

and securing your personal identity and being successful

within that personal identity. And someone in that

same mastermind yesterday asked me, they said, if we paid you $300,000 a

year, would you consider coming to work for us?

Yes. And of course I said yes.

Yeah. Where's the contract being recorded? Witnesses? This

was an offer. It is recorded. And don't think for

a minute I won't play that back for them here. As soon as they post

on your new ringtone. Yeah,

but at the same time, I sat back and I went,

would I. Would you want to work for someone? Again? Would I want to work

for someone? They're offering me, they didn't really

offer, but hypothetically offered $300,000 a

year to travel and speak for their

company around the country. And

that sounds amazing, but is it really

amazing? Because if I was to do that,

do I still get to be who I am? Do I still get to wear

the red hat? Do I still get to wear the three quarter zip up or

the hoodie? Do I still get to wear my Jordans everywhere I go? And

that's something that, and we've gone off on a freaking tangent here

very much. Yeah, we'll come back

to the networking thing here in a minute, but I think that's what you have

to ask yourself. And I'm going to take this back to networking.

Now, networking allows you that opportunity to be yourself,

but at the same time, we have to be cognizant of the fact that the

other people in the room may be looking at it from the same

perspective. They're there in their brand, they're there

in their comfort zone, they're building their own

personal brand, they're running their business from their own perspective.

You just used every form of there in the same sentence. And the english

language is nonsense. It's all about pronouns, baby. It's 2024. So

I want to make sure I'm inclusive. That's the whole goal here.

So I'm being very inclusive

in my description here of what we have to

take into account when we're networking. And

it's easy to make that snap judgment. And Sara, you led me down

this path. I'm going to blame you for this. You led me down this path

because of the youthfulness of your outward appearance.

You're 28 and you are young and you're put

together, and a lot of people will make these

outward assumptions just based on that. And that's

something that we have to avoid when we're in these networking situations.

Regardless of whether it's someone that appears to be young or in

the case of that cat that I sold the van to, older,

and who is perceived to be as

not in a position to buy a brand new vehicle, let's put it that way.

I'm going to give another networking tip. I just have to say. At that wedding,

someone told me that they thought they were at least a decade older than me.

Yeah. And they were 27. Yeah. And they were younger.

Yeah. So they thought I was a teenager. So

we're just going to leave that there. One of the things when it comes

to social event versus conference, I think the way

we follow up on connections is

also different. And we talked about following up with, like, when we talked

about business cards and when we are exhibiting at conferences and such. But if

you're just attending or you just meet somebody out in the world, I

feel like at a conference setting, you follow up with an

email, but at a social setting or a networking setting, I

would follow up with just a LinkedIn connect or with like a little message,

a note about what we talked about or something. Is that just

me? Is that weird? I don't

think it's weird by any stretch of the imagination, but I think we tend

to be somewhat short sighted in these

scenarios. I literally just followed up with a guy that I met

on Tuesday night at the young executives meeting, which was a local networking

event. I literally just followed up with an email this morning. Now,

we followed each other on LinkedIn that night, but

what good is that? Well, you include like a message. Well, yeah,

you have a little message. You go, oh, great. Yeah. Great connecting with you, too.

Thank you. Let me know if I can do anything to help. And then you're

good. I'll usually, hey, great connecting with you here.

And then when they accept it, then I'll say, let's continue the conversation, and

I'll actually put my calendar link in the chat. And that's great. That's an

excellent next step. You know what I mean? And I think that's

what so many times we fall short of, is not taking

that next step. Now I'm sitting here breaking my arm, patting myself on

the back for just sending an email to a guy I met on Tuesday night.

Right. But my point there is I at least

followed up. We followed each other on LinkedIn. He had a

copy of my book. So we also took a picture which was posted on LinkedIn

and posted on Facebook. So we put ourselves out there in

that regard. But what's going to come of it from beyond that

if I don't send that email and go, hey, man, appreciate meeting you on

Tuesday night. Appreciate you taking a copy of my book. Would love to continue the

conversation. Do you have a calendar link? And if not, here's

mine. Let's get together. Let's talk.

And again, not trying to break my arm, pat myself on the back, but I

think that's such an overlooked step. So many times

when we're networking, we just don't follow up. I mean, going

back to the hot seat that I was in, in that

mastermind, I had a gentleman follow up with me after the fact

on LinkedIn that said he wanted to work with me and

gave me, dude blew my mind. But this was an example of how

well this individual does follow up. He

wrote, like, paragraphs of input

in LinkedIn after we came off this hot seat call in

that mastermind, and I was blown away because he took the

time to really engage and really take the

relationship to the next level. And also, here's such a

big part. So many times, and this is even in that list

that we were talking about when we first got the episode going. So many times

we go to networking events. And what's our goal

to get? Our goal is to get, to take,

to find, to secure that next lead, to get

that next. That's not what networking is all about. That's

what getting out there and getting involved and meeting other people is all

about. We have to go from a giving perspective.

And I keep going back to this, and maybe this should

have been the episode. Was Larry in the hot seat? I don't know.

Next episode. Yeah. And it scared the living daylights out of me. But

I gave freely of information that

I don't want to give, that I really probably not even probably,

I just don't want other people knowing about me, about my

business and where I'm at. But guess what happened when I

gave. You got back. I got back

and they gave free. I mean, super freely. It was,

was, it was the direct opposite of what I expected to

happen. And it was really amazing. And I think if we go in there,

not just, yeah, you're laughing. No, I'll tell you why I'm laughing. After

you. I think I already know why you're laughing. And it's just another Larry check.

I don't know. You don't? No, I don't. Okay, cool.

Well, now I'm off track, because now I need to know why you're laughing.

So my great grandfather, I think it was my great

grandfather, he used to have a saying, when

you lay your breads upon the waters, they come back to you

in sandwiches, which is like when you give, you

get back more or something. It's

a great saying. That's the greatest saying I think I've

ever heard about. Right. But it got even better. Oh my

God, my sister, so she, in

college, she didn't drink much, but she had one, I think it was like

their senior day, and they all got a little hammered. And she was

trying to remember what this saying was. So she

just starts rambling about soggy sandwiches.

Nice. So now anytime someone talks about, like, it's give

more than you receive, I'm just like, you don't want soggy sandwiches.

So that's why I was laughing, is because you need to lay breads and

get sandwiches. Definitely not where I was going with why you were laughing. But

I love a good soggy.

Honest. We can learn a lot

from soggy mean.

That's, that's my whole thing, man. Going to these networking events and the young

executives where I went Tuesday night, it's just an extension of another

networking organization, which is just success north Dallas.

There's a gentleman that has been going to

success north Dallas for months now.

And one of the cool things that we do there at the organization is if

you are in transition from one position, potentially,

to, ideally, another position, meaning unemployed. We're trying to

be very cordial here and not say, if you're looking for a job,

but if you are looking for a job, there's an opportunity

for you to get up and say, hey, I'm so and so, and this is

my background. This is what I'm looking for. And hopefully there can be a connection

made that will put you back in the role that you're looking for. And

this poor gentleman is always at the main

meetings, he's always at the young executives, and he has yet to find

that role. And I firmly

believe, because I know I've heard his background and he brings a lot to the

table, but there's also that. And

I don't just want to pinpoint this cat, but I'll turn it back on myself

as well. There's always this air of,

I just need a job, I just need a connection. I just need to make

it work. I just need.

That comes off this cat, and it's a little

off putting at times. And that's something that

I know. And I say this, I know it because I know I do it,

too. I'm very guilty of

going into networking opportunities with an air of

desperation, with an air of, oh, this is my chance to get a

client. I've even done it in speaking gigs.

I'll go to an opportunity to speak, and

I guarantee you that I'm reeking of if I

crush this talk, I'll get some clients. And it just doesn't

work. It's never worked, and I don't believe it'll ever work. So

that's something that we need to be cognizant of when we go to these events,

is, what are our true intentions?

Because even if we try to mask our true intentions, people can

see through it. And we need to go to these events with

an attitude of giving, with an attitude of contribution,

with an attitude of relationship. And

that goes far and above an attitude of getting

something back in return. Yeah, I think that really highlights the

importance of networking, even when you don't need anything at all. Because if then

you do find yourself in that position where you're looking and you

do need, you already have people you could personally reach out

to because they're already part of your network.

But one of the things that I think

millennials, and we kind of

invented the side hustle, and I

think side hustles are so important just because,

come on now, we invented the side hustle.

No, I was, for millennials, where you. Were in a

thing, you were just hustling. Oh, I just hustled

it. Side

hustles. Okay. We may not have invented it, but we perfected it.

Okay. All right. But it's so important to

have something like that on the side so that if you do lose your

main position, you have something

to fall back on. Not even just for the income standpoint, but

if you're on LinkedIn and you have your position

as unemployed, it might as well say dead.

No one wants to talk to that person. No one wants to connect with that

person. So if suddenly my company goes under,

so instead of being president, favorite daughter media, I have to

rely on something else, and also branded and all of that. But

if I have a side hustle, I can just fill in and all these side

hustles, I can just swap it out with

a side hustle so that I still have a position. Because

if it just says nothing like unemployed, the same

what we were just saying you shouldn't do, other people are going to see that

and say there's nothing they can do for me. So that's not going to get

you anywhere. So having a side hustle can be really important

in the case of losing that main job.

I'm a huge advocate of side hustles, and I wholeheartedly agree.

You got to have a side hustle. I may have gone side hustle a little

too hard when I was still the corporate guy back in the

day. I may have been side hustling on company

time, but that's neither here nor there.

But no, I love it, man. And that does open up those opportunities.

I think the biggest takeaway here today from this

conversation is go into your networking opportunities

with something in each hand. So you have to struggle a little. Bit to shake

hands so they'll remember you. So they'll remember you. That's one of my

takeaways. Speaking of remembering, though.

Yeah, I just want to throw this one out there. Throw it out there. We

talked about follow ups and now about remembering. Make sure

you're following up within 48 hours, because if you wait longer than

that, they will not remember ever having met you unless you're like a celebrity and

they're ever going to forget you or something, or you really embarrass

yourself or something. Maybe. You ever read that? Remember

that? Yeah. But for the most part, they're not going to remember. So

make sure it's within those 48 hours that you're sending that follow up. Yeah.

Thank you for scolding me, because I really meant to follow up yesterday with this

individual that I followed up with this morning, but his card fell out of

my wallet. I was like, oh, my God. Oh, yeah, I better follow up here.

So, anyway, man, hopefully you guys got some value out of this

episode. I think Sara and I really conveyed some

of our own experiences here and some of the things that we've learned over the

years in networking and putting ourselves out there. So hopefully, you can gain

some insight from this and move forward in your networking

efforts and continue to grow your own personal brand. So if you did

find some value, do us a favor. Hit that subscribe button so we can continue

to bring you this amazing content each and every week.

And with that, I'm Larry Robert. I'm Sara Lohse. We'll talk to you next week.