I’m continuously amazed that networking is so much much more gratifying and fruitful when I take the time to meet with people face to face. I recently had lunch with a networking contact named Connie. It had been four years since we sat down face to face. Over that period, we have stayed in touch [read more]
Last week, I led a half-day workshop with the motivated accounting professionals of BlumShapiro, the largest regional accounting, tax and business consulting firm based in New England with offices in Connecticut (West Hartford and Shelton) and Massachusetts (Boston and Rockland). The title of the seminar was “Success by Association: how to grow your business through networking groups [read more]
Do you ever get nervous when networking and meeting new people? Do you get tongue-tied when it’s your turn to introduce yourself? Do you experience physical distress, nausea or feelings of panic in such circumstances? If you do, you might be among the estimated 75% of all people who suffer from glossophobia. Wikipedia tells us [read more]
Last week I met with Kathleen Lucas‘s advisory board to help guide her and her business forward. Kathleen is a financial planning professional with New England Financial Group (a division of MetLife). This was the third of four bi-annual meetings. The experience sparked the idea for this week’s networking tip. I did a brief survey [read more]
Have you ever thought about volunteering to serve on a judging panel? In addition to great community service work, you may find it to be a great networking opportunity. I was reminded of that just yesterday. I had the privilege of serving on the judging panel at the Sikorsky STEM Challenge as part of the [read more]
I recently read the book Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth, by Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe TV news show. I rarely read books cover to cover, but this one captivated me from start to finish. It is an empowering collection of interviews and self-reflection of career women and men [read more]
“What do you do for a living?” Don’t you just hate that question? It’s so dull and predictable. Worse yet you usually get a title-driven answer that rarely inspires or stimulates interesting conversation. You ask a straight forward, unimaginative question like “What do you do for a living?” and you might just get a straight-forward, [read more]
When networking with people at business meetings, conferences, association meetings or conventions, learn to ask more interesting open-ended questions to get the conversation going. Rather than the standard “what do you do for a living?”, why not ask a more creative, open-ended question to prompt a more meaningful discussion, and to enrich the human exchange? It all [read more]
I had the most amazing three way business lunch last Friday. It was Good Friday and it was good in so many ways. I had taken the opportunity to bring together two professional women who did not know each other and who might be able to do business together in the future. Carol is the [read more]
Sometimes I see corporate professionals shying away from networking. So much of their world is within the network of their employer. So many people that they need to connect with just within their own organization. This does need to be balanced with a strong external network. We all need to continuously forge new connections and [read more]
