Pushing past that comfort zone!
I’ve had a couple of days of doing things that stretch my comfort zone. Thursday evening I went to my first book club meeting. I felt quite nervous beforehand because I really didn’t know what to expect, but of course when I got there it was absolutely fine. It turned out that I already knew the woman who organises it (just hadn’t made the connection between name and face) and she was incredibly welcoming and encouraging, as were the rest of the group. I can’t wait for the next one now. What I need to work on is being more confident about speaking without having to be encouraged first.
And yesterday I went to my first speed networking event. There were a few familiar faces there which was good but I also spoke to lots of people I hadn’t met before. It was a really positive afternoon – I got some good reactions to my introduction and have made some promising contacts. Apart from a couple of people everyone was really nice and went out of their way to be interested. There was one bloke who I found completely rude – while I did my 60-second intro he actively looked bored and then told me that he had no interest in my business because he already had a website – then he went on to try to sell me his product… Come on, he only had to pretend to be interested for 60 seconds, that’s not much to ask is it?
Overall a really good, confidence-boosting couple of days. Just need to keep it up.
My second week of brilliance
I’m at the end of the second week of my 90 days of brilliance. The highlight of my week was joining the A1 Business Forums and I already feel like I’m settling in there. I’ve stuck to my plan pretty well – I’m not always doing everything on the day that I’d planned to do it but everything on the list seems to be getting ticked off. One of my tasks for today is to plan the next 7 days. Must remember not to cram too much into each day.
The most ‘non brilliant’ thing this week is continuing problems with the bloomin’ car. I’m hoping to try a speed networking event next Friday, so fingers crossed that we’ve managed to get it fixed in time.
Confident Networking for Career Success and Satisfaction
The book easily passed the ‘easy to read’ test – it grabbed me straight away and kept me interested throughout. I liked the way that it didn’t jump straight in with the ‘you need to talk to as many people you don’t know as you can’ kind of stuff that usually goes hand in hand with networking advice. It acknowledges that not everybody is comfortable in networking situations and offers practical advice for how you can feel less daunted by it. I was also pleased that the authors recognised the value of online networking and offered some advice specifically about that (though best to ignore their description of ‘forums commonly known as blogging’).
What I wasn’t so satisfied with is that I didn’t feel like I came away from the book with a solid plan of action. I could go back through it and work through the different pieces of advice to slowly increase my confidence and skills, but the book doesn’t offer a particularly structured approach to this. Maybe I’m wanting to have my hand held a bit too much, but I do like it when practical books set you particular goals to achieve.
Rating: 
Buy “Confident Networking” from Amazon >
Great business forum
Over the last couple of days I’ve joined A1 Business Forums. I’m really impressed so far and am gradually getting to know how it works. Every forum seems to have its own personality and the feeling I’m getting from this one so far is that it’s very friendly and accepting – great if you’re a bit shy about going on and introducing yourself. I got a really warm welcome which made me want to stay and explore a bit more.
One for ‘business communities’ on the resources page.
A brilliant week
Yesterday was the end of the first week of my 90 days of brilliance. Ignoring the breaking-down-car incident it was a pretty good week and I’ve come to the end of it with my motivation still nice and high. One of the things that I’m working on is my networking skills and confidence (so expect some book reviews on these subjects…). I feel like I’ve made a positive start with this:
- I’ve identified various opportunities for networking in our area and signed up for the first few of these.
- I’m half way through a book on ‘confident networking’.
- I’ve been working on stretching my comfort zone by actively looking for things to do that I’d usually be nervous about.
- I’ve joined a local book club – the aim of this is to help me be more confident in talking in a groups. I’m reading the book at the moment and will have the first meeting next week.
Hopefully I’m on my way to feeling more confident in a networking situation.
Another online networking site
Following on the theme from yesterday, I’ve also joined up on a site called Workology. Looks like it might be an interesting one – social networking but for people who don’t necessarily work regular hours. The reasoning being that you can find people to work with or get work from. Again, I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything on the site besides sign up and start entering my details but it’s a nice looking site and I think it might have potential.
Online networking
I’m trying out a new networking organisation that a friend has recommended to me: 4Networking. It looks like they have groups in quite a few locations around the country and offer levels of membership depending on what you want to do. Unfortunately they don’t have a group in Cornwall yet, which makes going to meetings completely out of the question for us – we’re as west as you can get, so Plymouth is a bit too far for regular events. So I’m starting out by trying the free online membership, which means that I get to put my profile on the site, contribute articles and participate in the forums. I’ve got as far as putting in my profile so must now spend a bit of time exploring the site and seeing what is going on in the forums.
One for the resources page I think.
