Make Your Mark - Connect

Our Make Your Mark Connectors are a group of extremely well connected entrepreneurs and network leaders, based all around the country.

They are here to provide connections and contacts to people who want to make things idea happen. In order to get this rolling, we've selected three young entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas to benefit from the might of the Connectors contacts.

Alex Gatton wants to make Delahaye the Dog, his wonderful 'pop cartoon' teaching young people all about morals, bigger than Mickey Mouse.

Claire Smith runs Caledonian Gifts, which provides a range of locally sourced Scottish gifts and products to companies and individuals.

Stephan Michaels runs cobuywithme.co.uk, which is an innovative, worldwide service to help people share the cost of buying property.

Over the next month these three entrepreneurs will get the full support of the Connectors in opening the doors and making the contacts needed to take their projects to the next level.

More to follow soon on how this grows!

We held a Networking Masterclass for young professionals at Lexis PR yesterday and invited uber-networker Oli Barrett to share his secrets. I learnt a lot - this is what he said:

The point of networking is to attract opportunities. Rather than spend lots of hours, money and effort chasing opportunities, you really want to get into the position where you attract interesting opportunities. There are three ways to do this.

1) Raise your profile

2) Create goodwill

3) Keep in touch

There are all kinds of ways to raise your profile - the simplest way is to go along to more events, speak at events, write articles or a regular column, or a blog, get in touch with people you want to get to know and ask if you can pick their brains about a particular topic over a coffee. Keep doing these things and you will start to get known. The important thing is that raising your profile needs to go hand in hand with creating goodwill. It's no good getting well known if everyone things you're a bit of a wally.

To create goodwill, get into the habit of sharing useful information. When you read an article that you've enjoyed, don't keep it to yourself. Think about who else would find it interesting and send the link in an email - do it straight away - it only takes 20 seconds. Keep you eyes open for gems, nuggets, intelligence and share it with people you've met. Let people know about interesting events and invite them along as your guest.

Be a connector. Make introductions between people who you think would benefit from knowing each other. Again - just a simple email to broker the introduction - then leave them to it.  Obviously make sure it's always a relevant article, invite or introduction. People will really appreciate the thought you've put in and remember you for it. You will become known as a helpful, generous, connected person who passes on useful information - people will always be delighted to hear from you.

Generating goodwill also gives you a great reason to keep in touch with people. Sending people an email to say 'good to meet you, let's keep in touch' is a waste- it just clogs up the in-box. However, an email with a useful nugget attached is a much better way to maintain contact - or re-establish contact with people you have met in the past.

Another way to keep in touch with lots of people is to host an event - it can be a simple get together in a bar - invite a mixture of people you have met so they can network with each other. Oli does this once a month and uses Speednetworking to get people talking. There are lots of light touch ways to keep in touch too - I heard of one company that sent each of their clients a lottery ticket when the jackpot reached £5million.

Email and phone calls are obviously the best ways to keep in touch and Oli had some quirky techniques for both of these. Here is one very simple tip - if you send someone an email and they don't respond. Go back to your sent box and forward the exact same email but put at the top in a different colour type Dear x, did you get a chance to read this email below, Regards x. Leave it at that. Don't send a separate new email because they will have to hunt for the original one. Just send them a prompt - it works every time.

The key point to remember is that 80% of opportunities come from people you already know. So if you raise your profile, generate good will and keep in touch, opportunities will be beating a path to your door! If you've got any comments, tips, ideas or stories on this, post them here....

Diana is a friend of mine of a couple of years now.

We met at the Public Services Summit at the Nobel Peace Prize. She's responsible for looking after all the education needs of children of US Army Personell across Europe. That's quite a big job.

When I worked at the University of Essex I invited Diana over to meet my team, look round the place, and generally find out a bit more about a UK Uni. I first floated the idea of a visit to her when we first met, and she expressed enthusiasm, but also frustration that when she visited places, she never got to see the 'real deal'.

Being keen to live up to a challenge, I took Diana out for a night in a pub with some my band mates after she'd met assorted Professors, Academics and other Uni folks.

They're a keen old bunch, and introduced Diana to the delights of the greatest beer in the world which she took to with great enthusiasm.

How does this all relate to networking?

In my experience, when faced with an interaction with somebody very senior, most people's instinct is to break out the paint brushes.

Networking is about connecting, and whether you're at the coal face or the board room table, everyone craves genuine human interaction.

Because I opted for the human approach, Diana's schools are now talking with the University on a regular basis, which can only be a good thing.

From Jack Butler, who runs the ace Sparkle Network:

Oli,

At least three reasons to network:

Knowledge and ideas
Profile / opportunities
Referrals / business leads

Most people focus too much on 3) and so miss value of other two, which, if done well, will probably lead to 3) anyway.

All best,
JB

Servane from Ogunte came in for a meeting this week. She's hopefully going to be running some fantastic Speednetworking events for us in Enterprise Week.

When we were talking she made a fantastic comment about networking being about giving '51% and 51%' - so I asked her to expand on it a bit more:

It's not a tax rule nor a gender quota, it is just a way to measure and evaluate your connections, your business relationships, your mood of the day and your networking standards.

The 51%-51% mini-equation is how I run my things and it looks like what the fitness instructor repeats me regularly: Do 10 more press-ups… it won't hurt you… you can do it!

So I stretch myself 51%-51% and when I meet people in an event, I say one more Hello, one more Thank You, one more "I have enjoyed your last blog", as I know how nice it is to be the one at the listening end (especially if I do mean it!).

When I can't attend a colleague's event, I go for the 51%-51% and send a quick email back, saying "cheers for the invite, can't attend, but passed the info to my colleague Bertha who will represent", or "gave your name to the guest list xyz as they have a wine-tasting evening coming soon". An interesting web link will do too.

I love when my guests do that for me, it proves that they are no dry seeds.

The 51%-51% is also giving a hand to the host at the end of a networking event to gather flyers, badges and other sundries. This is the moment when secrets are revealed!

The 51%-51% is not about making compromises (as it would stay at a flat 50-50%), it's a symbolic equation that drives you to go a little step further, navigating in a space where you don't "have to" do anything. You do it because it fits with your values and your principles, you are enjoying it and you make other people surprisingly happy and generous in their turn too. It is about developing that bit of curiosity and energy that drives you to meet other people.

However 51%-51% is also about not being sucked in other people's requests to help, distribute flyers, when they haven't taken the time to check if you were ok, or if you ever had the capacity or the time to help them out. It is a matter of courtesy. Many people do forget and only serve their own interest. They probably don't do it intentionally but you need to be aware of your balance as well!

I realised that the value of a network grows when generous principles are inherited and nurtured among the group.

Let me know what equation works for you.