Skip the card pile. At networking events, find one person who matters for your goals instead of working the room. The speaker built a real estate network in North Carolina through volunteer work with trade associations and friend-of-a-friend introductions, not random handshakes.
Can you build actual referral and business opportunities by going to networking and educational events? Oh honey, yes you can. But I want to tell you a little secret to it. A lot of people approach events thinking they alone need to get everything in the room. I want you to go to it though thinking about how your business can change with one more opportunity. So I want you to go to any networking event, any conference, convention, Rotary Club, wherever you go, looking for that one piece of information or that one connection that may scale out into something else. The reason I say this is that too often we're trying to collect people, and you don't need to collect people like business cards. I want you to focus on people. Drill it down a little bit tighter. Find the person you're looking for. And in fact, I love going to real estate events looking for a somebody. For example, I'm in North Carolina. I always need people in outlying areas because our state is just so big. And I do have an amazing network of REALTORS® in other cities and counties and towns. Well, where'd they come from? Friends, they came from volunteering at the trade association. Some of them I met through my former franchise network. Some I've met through a friend of a friend. But the bulk of my network I met through understanding their hearts and their brains through volunteerism.
