From the course: The Ultimate Guide to Professional Networking

Where to look for networking opportunities

From the course: The Ultimate Guide to Professional Networking

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Where to look for networking opportunities

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- One of the biggest concerns people have when it comes to making network connections is about where to actually look for them. Now maybe you've never thought deeply about this whole networking thing. Here's the reality. Networking is not about getting a promotion. It's simply about being where your tribe is. If you work at a company, you might attend an annual trade show in your industry. You might sit at a booth, shake hands with your badge on. You might be on a committee even. But this isn't where you look for tribe. You find your tribe in the lobby at the side shows and in places where the confident people are. In other words, the places to look for networking opportunities isn't always the things that hold themselves out as the so-called obvious networking opportunities. I want to reveal the less obvious and more effective places to look. First, there are a surprising number of small groups on Facebook for every niche industry you can imagine. The same is true on LinkedIn. Next, find other easily accessible places where online collaboration might be the focus rather than networking. You'll also find great opportunities with small groups in real life on meetup.com. Finally, you can find opportunities to connect with real people near trade show events more so than at the events themselves. Now there's a lot more to learn about each of these strategies. For now, I want you to just see that there are so many more places that you can be looking for networking opportunities than you might have ever realized. I hear people constantly say that they just can't find the right places to network. Here's the problem. They're focusing on whether the thing they're considering has a big neon sign above it saying networking opportunity. They're missing the essential point which is this. When you focus on simply immersing yourself into and around your tribe, the networking happens by itself. I'll leave you with one great example I know of a copyright attorney who goes to a monthly event called creative mornings. The event hosts a speaker, serves coffee, and allows plenty of time to just hang around and talk to people. He's not there to sell people on legal services. But he's surrounded by creatives, and since copyright issues are at the heart of every creative business, his expertise naturally comes into conversations here and there and the next thing you know, he's made a meaningful connection. When you want to know where to find networking, just focus on the who part of the equation and you'll find it easy to find the right spots where your tribe hangs out.

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