5 Ways to overcome Networking Nerves for Novices

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Nicky Kriel

You have set up your own business. Your idea is going to conquer the world! You spent ages deliberating over your business plan, decided your price, product or service and how you were going to brand it. You designed your business cards, letterheads and logo, printed off leaflets. You thought you were all ready to go, but there is one key ingredient missing: Customers!

Now you can sit and wait for the phone to start ringing from the Yellow Page advert you placed or the expensive online directory or wait for people to respond from the direct mailing and the email you have sent out. You can rearrange your office furniture, organise your stationary, write up to do lists…

OR…

you can get out there and meet people.

There are a number of good reasons to network when you are starting up your business.

You need to increase the number of people you know, so that more people know that you are out there
You may meet potential customers or someone who knows your ideal client.
But more importantly you might meet someone who can help you.

The quickest way to become more business-like is to spend time with business people. Remember you don’t have to get it right the first time. You don’t have to know all the answers. I learnt so much by the questions that stumped me initially when I started networking. I have also gained so much from the friendships and free advice that I have been given.

So here are 5 ways to overcome any nerves you may have about networking.

Remember the people you meet networking are just people, they have families and lives outside their business. They have good and bad days too. Don’t put people on pedestals! There is a person behind the attire. Networking is about getting to know people that you like and trust.
Be prepared for the meeting. Each networking meeting is slightly different. It is a good idea to find out the format of the meeting. Email or phone the Group Leader to get more details and visit the networking group’s website before you go. Make sure you have your business cards and literature with you. Double-check the timing and the location of the meeting.
Prepare a short introduction to yourself- There is a good chance that you will be called upon to tell the group a bit about yourself. You may have as little as 40 seconds to do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time you do it. You will learn from other people, but it is worth working out a script for yourself, starting and ending with your name and business name. If you think you will be very nervous, write it down. Practise saying it out aloud and time it. If you have only a minute, make sure what you have to say is under a minute.
Breathe – It may sound obvious, but before you enter and networking event, it is worth stopping before you go in and take a deep breath! Notice where your feet are and how they feel in your shoes (very simple technique to ground yourself and bring yourself back into the present!) Take another breath, stand tall and put a smile on your face, then enter.
Remember that not all networking groups will suit you. You want to belong to a group that welcomes you and makes you feel comfortable. Your first networking experience is not how all networking experiences are. It is worth trying out a few to see which ones suit your personality best. Don’t let one bad experience put you off. You will get pushy people who shove their card in your hand and bombard you with a sales pitch before they have even asked you who you are, but not everyone is like that. Some people feel better within a structured environment and some people enjoy just mingling.

I belong to 4Networking because I like the flexiblity and friendliness of it and I run Guildford’s Ladies Who Latte group, which is a free networking group for women. There are plenty of networking meetings around, I could easily go to a breakfast meeting in the morning, morning group, lunch time group and an evening event every day of the week without having to travel more than a few miles! I would recommend that you find a group you like and go regularly so that you build up relationships with the people you meet. When you go regularly it feels more like walking into a room full of friends than networking. Have fun!

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Speech Coaching on BBC Surrey

Nicky Kriel

Nicky Kriel is a Social Media Coach & Trainer inspiring, educating and empowering Business Owners to use Social Media more strategically. She is also the author of How to Twitter for Business Success. For more information visit http://www.nickykriel.com or to find out about her courses that she runs in Guildford visit http://www.nickykriel.com/courses

Speech coaching on BBC Surrey

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Nicky Kriel

What an exciting day I had this week! I had a slot on the radio!

It all started with a tweet a few weeks ago to BBC Surrey. I asked them if they covered Farnham and if I could talk about Farnham Speakers Club which had just been launched. Nick Wallis asked me to email him and told me that he was interested in me coming in to talk. Then it all went quiet.

At the end of last week an email arrived from the Breakfast show’s producer Jack Fiehn asking if I come in this week. Yay! I was thrilled and excited and a little bit nervous. I had never been into a radio studio before and now I was going to be speaking about public speaking. What happened if I sounded really nervous or filled my speech with filler words? A definite no-no in the Toastmaster world! I had once been on the radio as a spokesperson for my children’s school’s PTA. That time I had been in my bedroom speaking on the phone. This time was different: I was going in to a studio with a presenter and encouraging people to gain confidence through public speaking!

I had a chance to do a dummy run at the Guildford Speakers Club meeting the night before the radio slot. There are a number of advanced manuals that you can do after you reach your Competent Communicator level at Toastmasters and the Public Relations Manual was perfect! The second project was the Radio Chat Show. It involved a role play with a “host of a radio show”. I had to prepare a short speech about promoting the organisation (Farnham Speakers Club specifically and Toastmasters International in general), followed by a question and answer session. It was not allowed to be rehearsed! In addition, my boyfriend phoned me up at lunch-time and fired questions at me as extra preparation.

When I spoke to the show’s producer he had mentioned that Nick wanted to speak about what made a good speaker, so I focussed my short talk on that at the club evening. What was flattering was that most of the audience hadn’t realised that I had no idea what the questions were going to be and had thought we had rehearsed the Q & A section! I had done as much preparation as I could.

Driving to my interview in the morning, I listened to the show only to hear that a public speaking coach was coming in. The expert was going to give a nervous speaker who was in the studio a five minute speech makeover and everyone would be able to hear the results. Gulp!!! No pressure!

I arrived at the studio and was shown in. I was supposed to be kept apart from my nervous guinea pig. Wendy Amos had made the mistake of replying to a tweet that BBC Surrey had sent out the night before. They had asked for any nervous speakers who would like some hints and tips. At 7 am she had been asked if she could come into the studio, not realising that she would be speaking. She was asked to write a one minute introduction for herself that she would normally use when she was networking, including some topical information. I had to fight against my instincts to calm her down. Wendy had been given a brilliant opportunity to promote her business on the radio and despite her obvious anxiety she was ready to play!

I sat there and thought about how much I liked a challenge! The one thing I have always loved about NLP is the speed that you can do things. I had experience of coaching, experience of networking and experience of mentoring speakers through Toastmasters. I knew that the quickest change I could make was changing her state from being nervous to feeling calm. I also knew that breathing makes a big difference to your nerves and your voice!

We watched the clock! When we were called in, we were shown into the studio and met Nick Wallis. It seemed as if we barely had time to sit down, position ourselves next to our microphones, put on our headphones and we were on! Nick introduced us and asked me a few questions about Farnham Speakers Club and Toastmasters International and then introduced the social experiment. Wendy had to read her introduction that she would use networking then it was over to me to give her some hints and tips.

My coaching mode kicked in and by calming Wendy, I relaxed. It is amazing where you pull inspiration from. Nick was featuring all time favourite speeches as a build up for me coming in, which made me think of John F Kennedy and a story I had been told in my Master Practitioner course about his speech coach, so I used that. I had recently written a blog “I and you” which was about the use of you to connect with the audience, so I used that. We were then given a minute while they had the traffic report to “Rewrite” the speech. Obviously, it is impossible to rewrite the script, so we quickly changed the order of the networking pitch. Given a few minutes, I would have got her to change most of her “I” statements to “you” statements, but there was no time! So all I could do was get her to relax as much as possible before she delivered her second version. She sounded and looked so much more confident when she delivered it. Yay! Nick played applause and it was all over!

The producer was very pleased with how it had turned out. Wendy is planning to come along to Guildford Speakers because she lives close by and she popped along to my networking meeting this morning. It was great fun and I am ready for the next time! Does anyone want to interview me?If you would like to hear the radio show click

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Nicky Kriel

5 Ways to Boost Confidence for Mums

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Nicky Kriel

Something strange happens when women become mothers. Many of us lose confidence in ourselves when in fact we have gained new skills by becoming a mother. There is a whole raft of reasons why this happens. Your sense of identity changes. Suddenly someone else is the centre of your universe. You may put your wants and needs on hold for a while; it is amazing how many women will almost hold their breath for a few years until the children have gone to school, gone to secondary school, left home…. Children don’t come with a set of instruction manuals and you get conflicting advice from “experts”. How do you know that you are not ruining your children’s lives? Suddenly you have to become an expert juggler. Simple tasks before like going out for dinner require military strategic planning. So what can you do? How do you improve your self-confidence?

Surround yourself with supportive people- As a mum; you spend a lot of time caring for other people. Who is looking out for you? Make sure you accumulate a group of people who will say “yay!” when things go your way or will put the kettle on when things go wrong. Have a look at the people that you spend the most time with at the moment: are they helping your confidence?
Take stock- Quite often we get busy doing things and we forget to look at our achievements. You have all the skills that you had before you had children! You may not be using all of them and some of your priorities may have changed, but they are still there. PLUS you have also acquired some new skills by becoming a mother. Why not spend a little time acknowledging them? If you can cook a meal with a baby on your hips while chatting on the phone, what else can you do? If you can manage to get three children up, dressed and to school on time, what else can you do? If you can create a meal for your family from a virtually empty fridge because you haven’t had time to go to the shops, what else can you do?
Do something different or something new – If you are not expanding and growing, your world is becoming smaller. If all you spend your time doing is child-orientated and all your conversations revolve around your children then it is not surprising that you don’t have confidence doing something else. You are out of practice! When did you last go somewhere you haven’t been before? I am not necessarily talking about visiting a new country. Somewhere new could simply be that little lane that you have passed a hundred times but have no idea where it leads. When last have you learnt a new skill? Or did something you normally do in a different way? When last did you do something that scares you a little? You don’t have to jump out of plane, but if you do something out of your comfort zone, if you stretch yourself a little, you start growing again.
Don’t compare yourself with other people -we are good at thinking other people have perfect lives and being down on ourselves, but do you know what is going on behind closed doors? That Supermum may be on antidepressants! Don’t put other people on pedestals; they are just people doing the best they can: they are not perfect. Mums are good at assuming that they are the only one who feels fears, but even confident appearing people have fears. The difference is that they do not let their fears stop them from doing things.
Act as if you are confident! Guess what, if you act as if you are confident, people assume you are confident and you eventually become confident. Look out how confident people carry themselves: shoulders back, standing tall and head up. Alternatively, buy yourself a lovely pair of shoes with a heel. You will carry yourself in a different way and your strides will become more confident! What a great excuse for a new pair of shoes!

If you want to raise children with healthy self-esteem, we need to make sure that our self-esteem is good first.

Nicky Kriel | Social Media Coach & Trainer | Social Media for Business

Inspiring you to grow your business through Social Media

Tag Archives: confidence

5 Ways to overcome Networking Nerves for Novices

Nicky Kriel

Speech coaching on BBC Surrey

Nicky Kriel

5 Ways to Boost Confidence for Mums

Nicky Kriel