Friday, January 18, 2013

Richard Schwartz, Effective Networking


I have the opportunity to serve the Entrepreneurs Circle meetup.com group by being on the advisory board.  This week we had the greatest opportunity to hear from our founder, Richard Schwartz, Phd. on Secrets of Effective Networking in Business Development.

The most important parts of business development are relationship, visibility and trust.  He described some common Utahisms:
  • Expect something for nothing
  • Afraid to say no directly
  • We stay in our little silos
  • Different is bad
  • Afraid to commit
  • 20 miles is too far to go to build my business
Wow…isn’t this the truth!  Being a native Utahan I have totally done some of these things well except the driving…I am constantly driving.  These don’t just apply to business development either.

Another important concept I took from the meeting is to value your weak connections.  Now what is a weak connection?  This person is more like an acquaintance.  The weak connection can get you in front of the right people or know about the right opportunity.  They are not your closest friend but they know you or of you.

Richard is unselfishness in his networking.  He encourages pay it forward concepts and helping others.  He has been a success story because as he describes it…he was one of those geeks and has obviously taken himself to another level of public speaking and mentoring.  Because he is a geek he has analyzed networking groups all around Utah and has taken the best concepts from each of them to form a fantastic networking group.

The meeting had intense synergy and I took many things from the meeting and encourage other Utah entrepreneurs to join this proactive networking group.

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