Networking for introverts: places

Lex:

Today's episode continues our series on Networking for Introverts, and today we're talking about places to network.

I'm coming to you from one of my favorite coffee shops in Atlanta, Hodgepodge Coffee every Saturday. You'll find the Atlanta Solopreneurs here where we meet to talk about things that are going on in our business. It's a great networking opportunity if you find yourself here in Atlanta.

Hodgepodge is one of those amazing community hubs where people come together to have meetings, to meet friends, and it's also where you can learn about all kinds of local events happening around Atlanta. They have a bulletin board where you can put flyers and they have a chalkboard with upcoming events.

Whether you prefer to network online, locally or via travel, this episode will give you some aspects to consider when choosing where to put your time and energy. We'll talk about finding dual purpose communities, why coffee chats are so introvert friendly and what it means to get that sense of belonging. I'm Lex Roman and this is the Low Energy Leads Show.

Lex:

The first strategy for finding places to network is to find dual purpose communities. Places where you're not only networking professionally, but you're also doing something that you love or getting value out of it in a different way. You're learning something, you're sharing something, you're finding people who have shared interests with you, so you're networking is serving more than one purpose. You may have noticed that we switched locations. I'm over here in the West End of Atlanta at a big complex called Lee and White. There's a coworking space over here. There's several breweries over here. This is a really popular place for events. If you do find yourself locally in Atlanta over here we have Monday Night Garage, and you'll catch all kinds of clubs and activities over there after they go roller skating, after they play sports. Over here we have Wild Heaven where we held the first ever Atlanta Solopreneurs meeting.

You'll catch poetry readings there. ATL Friends has a lot of events there. There's all kinds of stuff going on in this complex, and when you find an area like this in your local community, you can go over and over again and there's always stuff going on.

When I was putting together this episode, one of the first people I reached out to was Jasmine Jae of Boss, copy editing. Jae and I are in a couple communities together and she's always sharing her advice there. I'm always discovering new communities through Jae, and so I wanted to reach out to her to talk with her about how she discovers communities and since Jae identifies as an introvert, how she navigates within those communities. So the first thing that we talked about was her experience with her local chamber of commerce, and here's what Jae had to say about it.

Jae:

Initially, when I started in business back in 2000 five-ish or so, I did what I think a lot of people new to business do. I went to my chamber of, I went to my Chamber of Commerce as a new business owner and was like, hi. And thankfully I can say that now, thankfully, they had a portion of the Chamber of Commerce devoted to young professionals. It was actually called Young Professionals Group, and I started going to their mixers and I found that they didn't have a welcoming committee, and so a light bulb went off was like, well, I want to meet people and they don't have a welcoming committee, so I'm going to volunteer.

And so that's what I did. Literally, I volunteered to be the welcoming committee so I could greet people and say, Hey, I'm new too. And I made a lot of cool friends that way and a lot of connections, friends that are still friends to this day because of stepping up and volunteering.

So I challenged myself to step out of my comfort zone, and I knew that in doing that particularly that that would put me in more of a control position because you feel out of control.

You go to an event and you don't know anyone, and so you go in and you're standing against the wall and you're hoping people talk to you. But if I'm put in a position of authority, so to speak, I feel like I'm in more control and I can sort of navigate the systems better and create the situations the way that I would want that show up. So that's basically what I did. But before that, before saying,

Hey, I want to be the welcome committee, I would go to the events and say, walk right in, not scan the room, and who's standing and who's doing what. No, literally walk in, walk up to the very first person I saw and said, Hey, how's it going?

Lex:

Jae also shared with me the idea of INFJ communities. INFJ is a Myers-Briggs personality type, and apparently there's a lot of communities where INFJs are coming together to support each other for various types of networking, both personal and professional. Here's what Jay had to say about why they're so valuable.

Jae:

When I learned about the different introversion spectrum, because that was completely new to me seven years ago, I didn't know what INFJ was or ENFJ or any of that kind of stuff. And so I went to what's the site? 16 personalities.com and took the test and was like, oh, wow, INFJ. That's pretty cool. And then I started researching, well, what the heck is that? What does that mean and where are these people if I want to connect with them? And that's where I found Lauren Sapala, who's an amazing INFJ writer, a few other people that I connected with and started relationships with, and then there was the summit, and then that introduced me to a lot of people. So it was doing the research and then being willing to step up and say, Hey, I'm just like you. What are you up to? We talked the same talk.

I think for me personally and generally speaking, when you read the description of what an INFJ is or what an introvert is, we don't like small talk. And so that's one of the major things about going to an event, whether it's virtual or online, and people are at that surface level of, hi, how are you? What do you do? And with INFJ groups specifically, we know how to take it deeper. We know how to go beyond, hello, how are you? What's your name? What do you do and what brings you here? Is this your first event? Can you give me some pointers or where'd you grow up? Oh my God, really? That is so cool. You know what I'm saying? It's easier when it's your people, so to speak.

Lex:

Jae is also a big fan of the One-on-One Coffee Chat, which we'll talk more about in this episode, and she's tried out something called Lunch Club, which actually matches her to relevant people for those coffee chats,

Jae:

And I found Lunch Club, which is essentially LinkedIn and AI got together and had a baby. I guess you could sort to say you're connected, matched with other business owners and you have a video chat through the platform, and that's been great. I've connected with folks. I've landed contracts through lunch club, I've made friends through lunch club. I just like recommending the platform because it's gotten a lot better since they started. The video portion was a bit choppy for a while now it's really, really good. Not an affiliate or anything like that.

I just think it's especially for folks who don't have the resources to go to group after group after group and test it out because it's matching you automatically and you can set it up to where it matches you two times a week or three times a week or whatever, and it automatically connects with your calendar so that the appointment is set and it even makes the introductions for you send you an email and says, Hey, this is who you're meeting and this is what they're into, and you guys can have the conversation or reschedule or whatever, but the system takes care of the rest, so that's been really, really great for you know what, I'm just going to put my times in there and not have to worry about setting up the meeting because AI does it for you.

Lex:

One of the other things we talked about was the importance of mutually beneficial groups where you feel you can contribute and you can also receive support, help, referrals, et cetera. So Jae talked about a couple examples of how she identifies that and how she looks for that energy to be reciprocated.

Jae:

My introversion superpower is being very sensitive to my energy output as well as the energy that I'm receiving from others, and so if I get icky or if I get, I don't know, these are just not my people, then I can cross 'em off my list and not feel obliged.

The other thing you and I have in common has given up social media. I cannot stand social media. I haven't been on Facebook in six years, gave it up, didn't look back. I'm on the verge of doing that with IG two, so it's how do I feel, and if the group is not active, you sign up and all of their welcome stuff sounds great, and then nothing. It's like cobwebs and tumbleweed. There's nothing, so if it's active, if the energy is great from other folks that are participating, then I will pin it to my browser and when I'm dedicated, you've seen Unlike minded, I'm in there every day all day, whether I'm posting something or connecting with others or sharing whatever. I like making sure that the energy stays active, but yeah, I've been in circles in Mighty Network in LinkedIn groups and when I find one that I feel comfortable or I feel like I am benefiting others as well as receiving, then it stays pinned to my browser.

Lex:

If you're not already in a community with Jae, I highly recommend joining one because you'll get constant tips about where to network, how to network, and cool events going on around the internet. I'm adding some of her curated links into this week's newsletter. I love the idea of dual purpose communities where not only is it something that you're networking in professionally, but you also have shared interests with others in the group. I think that's a really strong way to make networking feel like less of a drag where you know that you'll get something out of it.

For more on this, I turned to an interview I heard last year on Tara Reed's Introvertpreneur Podcast.

Tara interviewed Kari Ginsburg of Uproar Coaching about her experience authentically networking, and Kari talked about some of the ways that she goes about finding those groups where not only can she have a professional connection, but there's shared interests as well. Here's a clip from the episode.

Kari:

Getting out and intentionally speaking with people even have aligned interests or small networking groups. I'm part of a group called Upper Left Ladies, which is based out of the Pacific Northwest, even though I am in the East coast, but it's a small group of women business owners who are just really cool gals, gals and pals, and knowing that we have shared experiences of being individuals in business and growing businesses and what those challenges mean and how to balance and integrate work and life and aspiration and family and dogs and all the things, having those commonalities is also an easy way to get started in chatting about what I'm up to and what my business is doing.

Tara:

I love that. Yeah. We actually connected virtual networking event in a breakout room.

Kari:

We did. That's true. This is exactly what I'm talking about, right? It's like this is, we both invested in this program together and then now we had the opportunity to meet in a networking event and here we are, and so it's like a little out of comfort zone and then you start to funnel it down to the thing that means the most to you, the thing that has the most value to you, which is that, well, I say you as in the universal, I mean me, but the one-on-one conversation.

Tara:

Yeah. I think a lot of introverts do tend to thrive more when it's, I know when I'm in those breakout networking rooms, I'm a little nervous and awkward, but if I can make a couple connections that move out of that breakout room, then that's really the goal because I know I'm much better, so if I could make that initial little connection or some kind of thing we have in common. I loved how you're rescue dogs because I do that too and I have three right now, so I love that, and that was a really big connection point. I was like, yes, you're a dog person. You rescue dogs. We need to connect.

Kari:

Yeah, absolutely. We can talk about that. I would talk about that until I'm blue in the face. It's funny because we are in 2022 and in January of 2022, I committed to having two 30 minute coffee chats with someone new a month since January, and I have been successful in doing that, and two seems like a small number, but given the fact that I also interact with so many people in the day-to-day through coaching or consulting, two is a healthy number to continue to expand my network, to get out and talk to different people, to find new business friends, to make new connections, to see who they else can refer me to. If there's another person that's cool that I should speak with, but two is manageable, two, I can prepare for, two I can recover

Lex:

From. I met Tara and Kari in that same breakout room and I never would've known that they both identified as introverts because I think that they've gotten so savvy about where they should show up and where that energy is well spent, so they're able to show up fully in those spaces and they're able to set aside the spaces that aren't really worth their time.

Sponsor

That brings us to the sponsor of today's episode Connection Club. If you want to cultivate more friendship and community in your life, you should definitely check out Connection Club run by Kat Vellos. Kat Vellos is the author of the book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships.

Connection Club is Kat's membership community that will help you achieve your connection goals. Members have a wide variety of goals like adding more novelty to how they spend time with friends, creating gatherings and leading and running clubs. If you've been frustrated by how hard it is to make and maintain friendships in adulthood, join Connection Club today. Learn more at weshouldgettogether.com.

Lex:

Tara and Kari also spoke about the idea of the One-on-one Coffee chat, which I think is a really powerful idea and I heard a ton about this from all the introverts. I asked about networking. 

Kortney Ross is a freelance instructional designer who supports organizations that want to retain working parents, and she underscored this desire to have more coffee chats.

Here's what Kortney said:

I've found that I'm much better at networking in one-on-one settings, so I purposefully seek out opportunities to have coffee chats with people either virtually or in coffee chats are the idea that you get online or go to a coffee shop with one other person, maybe two, and you talk through what you do in your business, what kind of connections you're looking for, what kind of support you're looking for. It's a pretty informal way to get to know someone and for many of the introverts who contributed to this episode and the others, they always aim to get people from the group setting into one of the one-on-one coffee chats.

Lex:

When it comes to booking coffee chats, there's more than one way for those to happen, and one of those ways is through conferences and events that you're already attending.

Freelance product designer and UX consultant, Krisztina Szerovay shared some tips for when you're at a conference or event and you want to take those group interactions that can be kind of overwhelming and turn them into a more intimate one-on-one conversation Krisztina recommended you set up opportunities in advance.

For example, posting on social media that you'll be at a certain conference or event and asking people to DM you if they want to have coffee. You can also pay attention to posts about the event that you are attending in real time, so if you see someone that you follow has just posted about a talk that you listen to, Krisztina recommends you interact with them. You can send them a DM or a comment and start a conversation.

For example, let's grab a beer and discuss what we just heard. Krisztina shared these tips and more in an article she wrote about conference tactics for designers. I've linked it in the show notes.

The idea of coffee chats might be new to you. They're also called Connection calls. I've also heard them called serendipity calls by Pat Morgan of Better by Design, whatever you want to call them.

The idea of a coffee chat is that you connect with someone, one-on-one to get to know each other better, to see if there's ways that you can help and support each other, and that can range everything from referrals to collaborations, to just knowing about each other, amplifying each other, sending resources.

There's so many ways that you can connect with people and have mutually beneficial relationships with them, and you may not figure it all out in the first call.

It's just an entry point to figure out is it worth continuing this relationship? A few tips for you if coffee chats are new. The first tip is to make a wishlist on who you would actually want to have coffee chats with. Write down the kinds of roles, the kinds of companies, the kinds of shared interests you think would be valuable for you to connect with.

Another tip I have is to create a calendar booking link. I like to use Calendly, but whatever you want to use, set up a way that people can book time on your calendar. Usually coffee chats are 20 to 30 minutes, but you can make them 15. You can make them an hour if you want. Make it easy for people to book with you, and you can include this when you introduce yourself in groups. You can share it with people one-on-one when you DM folks, or you can put it in something like a link in bio in the interest of developing your relationships.

Another tip I have for you on coffee chats is to invite people you already know to have them, so maybe you've already met someone at a conference or event or maybe it's a past colleague you haven't connected with in a while. Invite them also to have a coffee chat with you that can create an additional space for you to get to know them.

Again, it's a great informal way to reconnect with people to see what they're up to, see if things have shifted and to update them on what's going on with you. I have found in particular that coffee chats are really low pressure. They don't feel like sales calls.

People don't feel like there's a transaction that's going to happen. It really does feel like an opportunity to connect. I find that people really love having coffee chats and they're grateful that you made time and space for them and they don't feel like they're going to get sold anything.

When it comes to finding places for networking, if you are meeting new people, if you are entering a new industry, you're trying to expand your network. One of the biggest themes I heard from introverts is finding that sense of belonging. I remember when I moved back to Atlanta, I went to an event that was for networking. It was actually for friendship networking, and I was really excited to go.

I'm kind of a risk taker even though I can get really nervous in social situations as well, and I went into this room. It was dark. There was club music playing. There were 200 people there. They handed me an icebreaker question at the door, and I remember walking in and thinking, there's no entry point here for a relationship. I'm going to walk right back out, and so when I talked with introverts, they had experienced this many times and my heart goes out to you if this is something that you've experienced.

One of the things I talked about with a couple of the contributors was the idea of how do you know where you're going to feel that sense of belonging, where you're going to feel welcome, where you're going to feel comfortable on this subject?

I heard from Mitchell Clements. Mitchell is a senior product design manager and an avid public speaker. He's also quite popular on LinkedIn and Mitchell talks about how he shifted his networking from offline to online. Mitchell talked about how he realized he didn't have to network in person if he didn't want to, and some of the entry points he has found that have been successful for him in his networking:

I always dreaded networking because I thought it meant going to meetups, conferences and career fairs, walking up to strangers and giving 30 second elevator pitches. It always made me anxious and uncomfortable, but then one day I realized I didn't have to do that.

Instead, I started focusing on contributing to conversations in online spaces such as LinkedIn and Slack communities where I could excel as an introvert. Over time, this proactive engagement eventually led me to 28 k plus followers and getting invited to speak at conferences, podcasts, and meetups. Now, when I attend in-person events, I'm realizing I don't have to initiate every conversation because people recognize me and they go out of their way to meet me, which still surprises me and is very humbling. My biggest recommendation to introverts is to play to your strengths.

You don't have to compete in an extroverted world if you get intimidated walking up to people in real life, being in public space with people. The idea of online networking is really expansive. There's so many places to show up online, and if you need that space to be able to have an intentional conversation to able to find your people, take it and see if you can find a community that really suits your needs.

It really suits the way that you want to interact with people. There are small online communities. You don't have to go to social media. You can look for in based communities, industry-based communities, and places where your buyers are or your peers are.

One example of that is Like Minded Collective, which we've talked about a little bit on this show and founder Inbal Claudio shared the ways that she's been trying to network in her community. Inbal has an online platform for women founders and she does networking calls online, but she's also been connecting locally and doing events locally earlier this year in Growthtrackers.

She shared some of her experiences looking for those events, realizing she had more of them happening in her community than she thought, and how she goes about discovering them.

Inbal:

Coworking spaces will host events that you don't have to be members of and you can go, so there's women in tech at this coworking space that I didn't even know existed down the street for me, so I'm super stoked about that, and Eventbrite, there's so many events on there.

Also, I think Lex and I were talking about this, just finding Facebook groups of people in your community, so just searching to see if there's a Facebook group for entrepreneurs in Atlanta or entrepreneurs of Orange County and following people, so it's hard because maybe they don't update the website or things like that, but I really try to find people through their business website or their Instagram because if there's an event going on, they will talk about it and promote it, because even if an event happened last year, then it'll show who planned it and then you can connect with them and even send them a message. Say like, Hey, I'm looking for more events like the one you hosted last year. Do you have any recommendations?

Lex:

Inbal has also started hosting her own events in Orange County, and this was one of her tips for introverts was that if you didn't see the space that you wanted in your community, that you create events yourself. Similar to what Jae mentioned at the top of this episode, it puts you in a position of control where you decide how the event is going to flow, how many people are there, who's going to be invited, et cetera.

It also invites people to come up to you rather than having to go to everyone in the room. Inbal mentioned Eventbrite and Coworking Spaces as great places to start. I would also recommend local coffee shops here in Atlanta. A lot of the coffee shops have bulletin boards for all kinds of events. You can also Google keywords by interest by industry plus your city, or plus the word online, or things like community networking to find events, to find groups that are relevant to you.

I would also ask around. Ask peers, ask your clients, where are they showing up online and offline? Are any of those spaces places where you would find value? To the point about finding dual-purpose communities, you can also find local events that are just for fun. Things like hiking clubs, sports crafts, where you can connect with others and possibly meet like-minded individuals who also share professional interests with you. As we talked about in the first episode, it's a big networking pitfall to feel like you have to constantly be out there meeting new people.

When really honing the relationships you already have is your strongest play. Looking at who you've already met and who you want to know better is a great focal point for your network building. When it comes to checking out new places, whether it's online or local, consider Anish's advances advice from our last episode.

They talked about asking yourself, where can I show up where I can help others and others can help me? Finding those mutually beneficial connections is where you will get the most value and where you will find people that will stay in your life for longer than just that one meeting.

Check out the contributors to today's episode in the show notes and you can listen to the whole series on networking for introverts at lowenergyleads.com.

If we've never met before, I'm Lex Roman. I am empower creative entrepreneurs to make smarter marketing bets. I do that through this show and through my membership growth trackers get on my newsletter to receive my weekly advice about spending less energy booking clients.

If you liked this episode, you might also like the episode I did with web designer Eleanor Mayrhofer. In our interview, Eleanor talked about her relationship building with German business owners and German ex-Pat business owners through LinkedIn, through local meetups.

Through her podcast, she also reflects on leveraging past connections through her professional network on LinkedIn. Go check it out to hear more about networking in action.

Until next time, keep your energy low until the value will be high.