#68 - How to Make Networking Enjoyable

Welcome to the Communication Mentor Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

And if you've never listened to the podcast before, first off, it's great to have you in second off.

The purpose of this podcast is to help you become a clear and confident communicator so that you can live a fuller life, grow in your career, and be more resilient to life stress.

Today, we're going to be talking about something that is quite important in our culture, something that many of us want to do, maybe don't know how to do, and something surprisingly I've never talked about on this podcast before.

And I won't be doing it alone.

Rather, I have two microphones with me, and I have the name managing partner for a new law firm known as Harris Legal, Zac Harris.

You're the founder, and something you've been doing a lot of lately is networking.

Yeah.

I think a lot of us hear about networking, and there's a negative association with the word networking.

And that's often because we feel like surface level or artificial.

So Zac, what's been your history with networking and your thought about that?

Well, one question I was gonna ask you at the start is sort of help us define networking.

Because there's, I guess, two contexts that I think about it.

One is the interpersonal one-on-one, we're having lunch, we're having a conversation, that type of networking, which I quite enjoy.

Then the other one is going to networking events.

And some people thrive at those.

I really dislike them.

I don't like networking events, really, at all.

And I'm interested to see if that's a common theme or if that's an experience a lot of people have, or if people do actually really enjoy networking events.

What do you dislike about networking events?

I think it's the pressure to introduce yourself cold to someone I don't like.

Even though it's the sole purpose that we're all there is to network, but there's just something about having to approach someone cold makes you feel like I'm back in middle school, trying to introduce myself to someone and at the lunch table.

Right.

The funny thing about networking events is that it fast tracks what happens over a long period of time typically, and you expect to show up to these events and get the same amount of rewards.

Relationships can be a lot of time and a lot of energy, and then after that, you get the rewards.

Oh, cool, it's fun to hang out with him.

He makes me laugh.

Oh, he's going to recommend me here.

He's going to recommend me there.

But then with networking, it's positioned or it's advertised like, hey, you don't have to do all of the sacrifices of relationship, but you get all the benefits and rewards.

And it's a funny event because then you have people who are showing up and they just hand you the business card, and then they tell you a little bit about what they do.

But the more we learn about effective sales or effective business, one of the most important parts is like discovery and knowing what the other person actually needs, knowing who the person actually is, and then connecting there.

So networking events are funny because whenever you advertise that you're going to add a certain value, you really have to have major buy-in with everybody there.

And more than likely, you won't be able to get that as much, because I also feel similarly.

But I do like the way lately how you've been doing it.

How have you been doing it?

Yeah, my networking has all been focused on really lunches.

Part of that is I enjoy lunches.

And so eating is good.

Do it around something you enjoy.

That's right.

I mean, everyone's got to eat.

So in this stuff, we can all talk about maybe later on in another podcast.

But as I've been thinking through growing my business, it's really been evolving in terms of how I'm trying to generate business, generate clients.

And I've been focusing more and more on networking and trying to find professionals in what I would call sort of allied fields that I can connect with and hopefully build a relationship where they can refer me business.

And I don't know a lot of those people.

So I've been thinking about financial planners.

I've had a few lunches with financial planners or financial advisors.

And I don't have one.

Maybe I should have one.

But I have some friends that have.

And so I've had them give me their phone numbers, and I send them a text.

And what I've done, because it's the only way I know how to do it, is just been very clear about my purpose.

So I sent them a text that says, hey, so-and-so, I'm Zac Harris.

Your friend gave me your number.

I just started my own law firm.

I'm trying to meet as many people as I can for lunch.

Classic networking.

Can we sit down?

And everyone's like, yeah, of course we can.

And what I found is, then when I show up to the lunch, it's way less awkward, because there's no secret about what we're doing here.

And what we're doing is fine.

There's nothing wrong with networking.

Like, they also want to believe...

The guy that's sitting across the table for me has also been told over and over again throughout their career, you have to network, you have to network, you have to network.

And so they're glad to be doing it too.

And it's okay that we don't have some sort of higher purpose.

It's okay that we're not going to leave that meal best friends and go and see movies together or something weird like that.

It's okay that we're just going to leave having made a professional connection.

And having that established from the beginning, I found has made the entire experience way less awkward and way more enjoyable because everyone's cards are on the table.

Versus saying, hey, let's get together.

And I saw your profile.

I thought it was so cool what you're doing.

And then 40, 50 minutes, all of a sudden there's an offer or there's some type of something that requires a commitment from you.

And people smell that.

Like I was telling you earlier that I posted this video on LinkedIn, and I got a message from a guy on LinkedIn called I've never met before.

And he was like, hey, I just saw your video.

I thought XYZ was interesting.

Can we connect on the phone to talk about it?

And so I looked at his LinkedIn profile, and he's like not in North Carolina.

He's nowhere close to North Carolina.

He's not in an allied field.

There's no reason he should be interested in my video.

He's a sales guy.

He doesn't give a darn about what I said in my video.

He saw your last post.

He's looking for a reason to get me.

He's looking for an end to get me on the phone.

And maybe he's not.

Maybe he was generally interested in what I was saying, but I don't think so.

I think he was just looking for an excuse to get me on the phone so he can sell me something.

What's been your experience creating YouTube videos because you're talking to a camera a lot?

Have you enjoyed it or has there been something that's surprising to you?

Similar to this, we're sitting down talking on microphones, much different vibe than the YouTube video.

But what's been your experience there?

Well, I've got a little bit of background in it.

You know, in college, really only back in high school, some friends and I ran a nonprofit where we were doing online media content.

And a big part of that was video content.

And so I got pretty comfortable speaking to camera in the form of creating videos.

I see the difference between what I was doing then and what I'm doing now is the level of polish and the type of tone that I'm trying to deliver is very different.

I'm less concerned now about the creative aspect of it, and for me, it's more about trying to deliver information that is relevant and helpful to the audience, but in a way that still looks professional.

Because now you're going for the subject matter expert domain authority approach.

Yeah.

And that's sort of designed to piggyback on the networking.

And so I've been doing these long form videos.

The second one's coming out this week, so I haven't done a ton of them.

I've only released one.

But basically, I go through recent appellate court decisions in North Carolina, and I explain them.

And I put them on YouTube, I put them on Facebook, and I put them on LinkedIn.

And LinkedIn is really where I'm expecting them to be the most helpful.

And the idea is that I connect with a guy over lunch.

We have a good conversation.

Hopefully, he doesn't think I'm a total idiot.

And he and I connect on LinkedIn.

And then every two weeks, he sees that I'm posting this video breaking down a recent appellate decision.

He doesn't have to watch it.

I don't care if he watches it.

I care that he sees it, and he goes, that Zac kid, he must know what he's talking about because he keeps making these videos where he's explaining this really complex topic.

And so hopefully, that will help me stay on that guy's mind forever, basically, as the guy he knows, hopefully he likes, and whom he believes is a subject matter expert in the field.

So when he has a client that needs my services, he hopefully has no qualms about saying, oh, I know a great lawyer.

He thinks of you.

And that's a funny way to view networking as well is now that we get to create digital content, for instance, this podcast, if someone were to listen to this podcast, in a sense, they've kind of networked with you because they know more about you.

Sure, right.

And the content creates a way for people, if there's someone you want to interact with, and they have a podcast, that could be a great in listening to an episode and saying, hey, I listened to this, I like this, or here's what I thought about this.

It's like an interesting networking angle.

Well, the listening thing you just said, I think is really special.

Some advice I've gotten that I've been implementing is having a list of contacts that are in my network, basically.

A list of people that I want to try to maintain a consistent relationship with over time, outside of my friend circle.

And again, no secrets about what this is.

I'm not making these people think that we're going to be buddies.

Everyone knows this is a professional relationship, and that's fine.

That's fine.

We all need those.

For the sake of the business.

That's right, and for their business.

But basically, I have a list of those people, and I try to spend time every Monday going through that list and just trying to find some legitimate connection.

And the key word is legitimate, because we're not trying to fabricate anything here.

We're trying to be truthful and honest, but find some connection.

And one of them can be, a great example would be tuning in to somebody's podcast and send a message.

Hey, I listened to your podcast.

At minute 20, you talked about this topic.

I thought that was really interesting.

Assuming that that's genuinely true, that you found that interesting, I mean, that's a great way just to sort of, it's almost like the old Facebook feature, back in the day, the poke feature, completely random poke.

Hey, I genuinely thought what you did was interesting.

That's it.

Have a great day.

And it's way more prone for a response.

If someone messages me that, I'm like, what?

How cool is that?

Because with podcast content, YouTube content, social media content, we post it, then we forget about it.

But what it's doing is it's creating all these different opportunities for people to connect with us.

And people nowadays have a much better way to network with me because there's a lot going on digitally.

Another thing I think about networking is I would imagine we are getting worse at it with the loneliness epidemic and the friendship recession and digital immersion.

I think that in-person networking events have probably gone down, especially after COVID.

And I think people just don't really know how to navigate networking.

There's a TEDx talk I'll put in the description that I listened to about networking.

But he said, arguably the most important way to view networking is revitalizing weak ties.

So people who are acquaintances and people who you used to go to school with or former teachers, and then going from there.

Did you ever do virtual networking like during COVID?

No, did you?

A few times.

They're like for networking events.

Like in Zoom calls?

Yeah, I thought they were a complete nightmare.

What a task.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm pretty extroverted.

A complete nightmare.

Because there's no like that's that you're you know, you're sitting at a networking event, and you're standing around in a group and everyone's got a beer in their hand.

There's a little bit of you probably can give me the language for it as the communication guide.

There's some unwritten rules about how that conversation is going to go.

Everyone's going to take turns a little bit.

Yeah, the conversational turn taking.

And you can tell who wants to assert their turn based upon body language, or what they're saying.

None of that virtually.

None of that.

And so you just get quiet.

And then, you know.

And then there's a lag.

Right.

And so my humor is not for everybody.

And it's real rough virtually.

Because there's no, I'm not getting any feedback.

It's, I'll make a joke.

And it's just quiet because people are on mute, letting me talk to them.

Oh, man.

I love it.

I hate it.

But now that I'm talking about it, that awkwardness, I also kind of love that from a humor level.

Cracks you up.

Cracks me up.

Do you have moments where you will have such, it's not even like such a bad joke, but the response to it, such a bad response that it's hilarious?

Oh, dude, it's the best, man.

It's the honestly, like, it's, that's when I think like, maybe I should be a standup comic.

Just because I kind of love, that feeling, I kind of love bombing, of missing a joke.

Like, you drop a joke, and you think it's gonna be awesome, and whoever your audience with is not with it.

That's like, I won't say the joke, but at your wedding, I gave a speech and I made a joke.

You'll have to say it later.

And I had about half the room, and half the room loved it, and the other half...

That the joke was about?

Yeah.

And I loved that.

I was like, that's exactly where I want to be.

I want to have half the room with me and the other half against me.

Do you want 51% with you or 49% with you?

I think 49%.

I think a majority against you.

But enough to justify you being there.

Yeah.

And of course, I say this as a guy that has performed stand-up comedy exactly zero times.

So I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Last weekend, I did my first open mic.

Did you really?

But it was with a group of guys.

At a bachelor party.

And there was nine of us there, and we all had to do a one-minute set.

That's awesome.

Was it dry?

It was dry, and it was nerve-wracking.

Yeah.

Even though I knew all the guys, I was so nervous.

And I was thinking to myself, if I'm nervous, that's what I tell myself a lot to make myself feel better.

If I'm nervous, I know others are so nervous.

And that's what you have to tell yourself at networking events.

Nice segue.

If I'm having a hard time here, everybody else is having a hard time here.

So one of the best ways to approach it is I'm going to make it easier for the other people here.

Yeah.

And I'm going to ask the questions.

I'm going to be in discovery mode.

Yeah, I think oftentimes we overthink networking.

And really, I think the most successful networking is getting to know people, finding things you can connect on them, and then reaching out to people you already know or have a loose tie with.

And we'll be able to get into a lot more because this Thursday, we'll be releasing an episode that's much longer and features Zac as a podcast guest.

So if this episode added you any value, leave a rating review and share it with one person.

The only way the podcast grows is by us being able to share it, particularly if you think it's going to be able to add value.

As always, we will see you next time, and get ready for Thursday.