Glen Gould identifies five mistakes that kill networking events: showing up without a plan, oversharing, staying with friends, phone distraction, and not introducing yourself. The fix is asking the right questions, especially "Who do you need to meet?" This makes you the most interesting person there and uncovers real opportunities.
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How to never attend another boring networking meeting and still have the opportunity to meet everyone you need. Would that be cool if you didn't ever have— I mean, how many of you have been to one of those boring networking meetings? I mean, they're just awful. And if you didn't raise your hand, you're liars. If people didn't approach networking the way they do, perhaps it wouldn't be so boring. So I'm going to start out by telling you some of the mistakes that typically happen when you are getting involved in networking. We'll go through this pretty quickly, and then I'm going to tell you— while I'll make good on my promise, I will tell you how to never attend another boring networking meeting and still meet everyone you need to meet. Actually, I'm going to do it backwards. I'm going to show you how to meet everyone you need to meet, and then I'll tell you how to never attend another boring meeting. Fair enough? Okay. The first thing is this. My friend Pat McGaughy, he has a saying that networking is one letter short of not working. Okay. If you're not really careful, that's all it takes to be not working. And we used to have a program, a partner of mine and I, we had a program called Is Your Networking Working? And for most people, it's not. And there's a bunch of reasons why. But these are my top 5. No plan. My wife and I, we like to go to garage sales. We go to garage sales because we want to piddle around and look and see what's going on. But the truth is, even going to a garage sale, We can pull up in front of it and we can look and see if there's anything there we want to look at, because in the back of our minds we already know what we're looking for. If it's just a bunch of clothes that are kids' clothes, you know, toddler and stuff, we, we know that they probably— all they have there is kids' clothes and toys that they've outgrown and things like that. That's what they're selling. There's no need for us to stop there. We're past that stage in our life. Probably great for somebody else. But if you don't have a plan, even a rudimentary plan of what you're looking for when you go to a networking meeting, well, then I can promise you it's going to be a boring meeting. Second reason that networking meetings are boring is when you try to be interesting. The worst thing you can do probably is to try to be interesting. You've been around those people, right? Some of them we call Johnny Shotgun. They go around the room and they want to talk to everybody and say, hey, I'm Johnny, I do Johnny better than Johnny. Here's my card. Here's my card. Here's my card. And they spew all over you about themselves trying to be interesting to you. Now that's one type of trying to be interesting. The other type of trying to be interesting is, is to try to be an expert in everything that everyone's talking about. If you, if you want to carry on that conversation and be the expert every time you meet somebody, nobody's going to want to talk to you because the big news is they want to be the expert in what they want to talk about. Right. So makes it very difficult if you try to be interesting. You're going to have a tough time. You're going to have a boring networking meeting. Number 3, hanging out with your friends. This is about the worst thing you can do. I may have said that the worst thing is being— but maybe this is even worse. Hanging out with your friends. If you're hanging out with your friends, the fact is that you're uncomfortable, you're nervous, you're going to hang out with your friends. Because you want to feel comfortable. And in doing so, they already know everything about you. You already know everything about them. It'll just be like any other time. I mean, you may think you're having a good time, but you won't get anywhere. And if we go back to number 1, you got to have a plan to get somewhere. Number 4, I used to say that you should not use or even bring in your cell phone. I've changed that. But I will tell you that you have to be careful not to have the wrong use of your cell phone. If you have your cell phone, first of all, it ought to be on airplane mode. If you can't step away for an hour, okay, then put it on silent. I mean, maybe there's something going on in your life, something going on with your family. Maybe you're expecting a call from a job interview or something like that. I get it. Keep it on vibrate. But if you can, have it on airplane mode because you should be totally focused on what you're doing here. This can make you More successful than anything else is being at networking events because you're connecting with the right people at the right time in the right place. Now what I say is bring your phone because it has your contact list in it and you have the ability to share your information digitally and receive information digitally, especially from those people who pull the, no, I don't, I don't have business cards anymore. I've moved past that. Yeah, business cards are so 2000 and what, 16 or so. I'm way beyond that. Truth is, if you don't have a business card with what you do, you ought to have one. Even if you're unattached, if you're a free agent, you ought to have a business card because business cards matter. People don't throw them away. The number 5 networking mistake: not introducing yourself. If you're a wallflower, if you walk up to people and jump in the conversation, you don't ever bother to introduce yourself. This is a huge, huge mistake because most people are nervous and afraid. They don't want to introduce themselves, and they certainly don't want to not know who you are. And so you want to have a frame of reference from them and from you. You want to get their name. And the best way to get somebody's name is to introduce yourself. We'll go into that in a second. All right. So what is the number one best way to never attend another boring networking meeting? The number one best way to never attend another boring networking meeting is to learn to ask questions. You must learn to ask questions. You see, we go to a networking meeting, we have a need. We have this need for a job or to connect with somebody to make a sale or whatever. And we forget that everybody else is the exact same way. And so we tell people what we want and they tell us what they want and we go, boy, was that boring because nobody was interested in me. The best way to be the most interesting person in the room is to ask questions. Here are the right questions to ask. Hi, what's your name? Best way to get somebody's name is, hi, I'm Glen Gould. Hi, I'm Dana. There we go. He's going to say it. But if they don't, what is your name? You know that every restaurant we go to, my son will ask the waitress or waiter, What's your name? And call them by name every single time we interact with them. Have you been here before? If you're networking, there's probably an event. Have you been to that event before? These are open-ended questions with the exception of what is your name, right? I mean, they're not gonna say, well, today my name is Bob, but tomorrow it might be Sam, I'm not sure. Mostly open-ended questions. You're trying to engage in conversation. What do you do? Dave will walk you through. If you haven't been here before, you will know exactly how to tell people what you do. And when you ask them what they do, this will blow your mind, but most of of the time, they struggle. And now you'll have an opportunity to help somebody. You know, I attend this thing called Job Seekers, and Dave tells us to do this, this, and this when introducing ourselves. Might wanna try it, okay? Big opportunity for you to help somebody, and that's the Christmas present law is what I call it. You get somebody a Christmas present, what do they feel like they need to do immediately? Go out and get you one, right? Okay, and this is probably the most powerful question I was ever asked. I was at a first networking meeting that I really ever remember. It was at Venice Area Chamber of Commerce, and Kathy Lander came up to me and said, "Who do you need to meet? Who do you need to meet?" Everybody is there trying to meet someone. And the way we used to ask this question was, as I go through my day, how will I know a perfect referral for you? How will I know exactly who you need to meet so that when I come back, I'll be able to share what you do, who you are, who are you looking for? I've told you the number one best way is to ask questions, and I've given you some questions you can ask. There are many, many more. Be happy to help you. I'm at glengould.net. My email is glen@glen-gould.net. The best way to never attend another boring networking meeting and still meet everybody you need to meet is don't be boring. Seriously, don't be boring. And who is the most boring person in the world that you have ever met? That bore who goes on and on about themselves. I can't get a word in about me because you're so busy talking about you. Don't be boring. Ask the questions, help when you can. And I think you'll find your networking will be far more successful and it'll never be boring again because you're asking questions. You're going to find out a lot of things. You're going to learn a lot of things. And I hope it helped you today. If there's anything I can do to help you, once again, Glen at Glen Gould dot net. Have a great morning, everyone. Thank you. He got me worked up. He got me worked up. I should have never said that. We'll be editing that off the tape.
