So many events, so little time!

As someone who evangelises about the benefits of meeting new people and making new connections (in real life rather than on Social media), I often get asked which events are good and those that should be avoided. I wish I could say that I have a list of exactly that, that I refer to regularly.

Sadly, I, like everyone else, manage to end up at the event from hell, surrounded by people who may not understand why they are there themselves.

I have found that it is often not the event that is important to choose, but the likelihood of who will be there that is likely a better focus.

My first rule of thumb is to go to events run by people I know, who seem to know lovely people. I am fortunate to know such people who put on events, so that helps. If you don’t know many people like this, how about you think about putting something on yourself? If you know some great people, you are bound to get a good crowd together. Think about it as a dinner party that you can invite some good friends to.

If you are looking to meet new people and don’t know where to start, my first piece of advice is: don’t turn up to something you are not interested in yourself. It is a bit like dating, if you head to a workshop on how to fix your car and could never imagine getting under the bonnet, you are likely going to be around people who want to discuss an engine. This will be boring for you and you will come across as boring to them, however hard you try to sound interested in the subject.

If you are interested in something and just starting out on the part to learning about it, don’t go to something that advertises itself as hard-core. This will mean you will have many conversations that you won’t understand. Not a good start.

If you are going to events for business development or marketing purposes, do some investigation into the events. See if they are likely to have those attendees that suit your product, service or opportunity. Frankly, this is very hard to do. In my experience, every event I have been to, that I feel would have people I could help has ended up with lots of people like me in the room. That is great when you want to have something in common with people, less so if you want to try and build business.

I have found a better way for me: I go to very few events. I find that the effort it takes for me for the results, don’t always stack up. Don’t get me wrong, if I go to such an event and have met at least one person that I have got on well with, I definitely mark it up as a success. But some of these events have been overshadowed by some hideous experiences of having business cards thrown at me or boring conversations with people who like the sound of their own voice.

In my experience, if I want to meet certain people, I research those people and directly connect with them. Once I have met enough of these people 1:1, I find that they know people similar to them and they often generously offer to introduce me. This means I get to have a proper conversation, over coffee, if I am lucky, without the pressure of ‘working the room’ or getting stuck with the bore of the year.

What I have found from the events I go to, is that if I do find someone interesting, I invariably need to meet them for a coffee at a later date to build a relationship, so why not cut out the middleman?

In the simplest terms, I help people to get ready to profitably scale. What you do with a room full of people is very different to how you do it when they cross cities, continents or oceans.

I am happy to spend a few minutes working through a challenge you have, as an advisor on officehours.io (Officehours connects you with amazing people, for 10 minutes of free 1-on-1 advice).

Check out my available slots here