After attending George Frazer’s Power Networking Conference, I can truly say I was impressed and blown away by the caliber of people in attendance. The conference had hundreds of people from all over the country with all kinds of different business models and goals. The seminars that George and his team had created I know have personally helped me think about new stages of development for my businesses.
The 7 things that I can say were the most important things that I learned are…
1. Have an online and offline business strategy
After attending a seminar by the great Andrew Morrison and Jessica the Golden Girl, I truly saw that I must take my businesses to the next level. I can honestly say that I myself have a pretty solid background in the online arena, but never thought about how to take my business offline to earn me more cash. I have applied the strategies discussed at the seminar to a number of businesses and am looking to launch them within the next month. I know that the The Networking Loop will have some big surprises including a shiny new website and what I like to call the launch of the Networking Loop’s offline $5 Mixer events taking place in a number of counties across my home state.
2. Pick a day, any day, but just get stuff done.
Andrew Morrison gave a seminar on how business productivity can double your income. In this seminar he gave a golden nugget that I think a lot of people overlooked but forever changed his life. The technique he described was to pick a day to do specific task. For instance making phone calls on one specific day a week and checking emails only on another specific day of the week. Since then I have been employing this trade secret (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s are voice mail and return phone call days, while Tuesday and Thursday’s are email days.) and seen true levels in productivity and new business.
3. Be prepared and never be shy because you only have one shot.
As a boy scout I lived by the motto “Always be prepared,” only now I know that is half the motto. The real motto should be “Always be Prepared and Never Shy.” For that reason I tell a story of a news journalist that I met in the elevator during the conference, and while everyone else was out of cards, tired from the conference, and a little shy to talk to strangers in the elevator, I was still networking. That one 30 second conversation could pay huge dividends and might land me in a publication that I would have never expected. So now I know why being prepared and never shy is so important.
4. Sometimes traveling 5,000 miles away can bring you right back home.
Even though this was nationwide event with business leaders from all over, I found that sometimes the biggest and baddest fish can be in our own pond. I tell this story to empahasize the point that here in Maryland we have phenomenal entrepreneurs and professionals without even knowing it. The person I speak about I will leave anonymus for their privacy. I met the man from Maryland who’s businesses earns him over $40 million dollars per year! Now if that was not amazing enough, the fact that he was so humble and well spoken blew my socks off. I never would have expected a person with so much to appreciate the things that were so little. It was really an I opening situation and one that was well worth the trip to Atlanta.
5. Follow your dream.
It has always been my goal/dream (I believe dreams are what we do at night and goals are what we achieve during our days) to be a public speaker. I have never lost so much sleep about how to go about conquering the public speaking and business world. Millions of question ciphered through my head at any given moment, what I my speaking promotional strategy? who is my target audience? will I use humor or be serious? what can I do to really brand me as the premier 1 speaker in the world (universe really).
Well after hearing the speakers at the conference (George Frazer, Andrew Morrison, Farrah Gray, Jeff Johnson, and the famous Les Brown) I was blown away and forced to put public speaking on my plate in a more full time manner (funny just another thing to do with school. Who would have thunk it?).
6. Don’t Party too hard.
One painful lesson I learned was that you can work hard but don’t always try to party harder. It was truly a lesson learned the hard way. I was a new a man in a new city and wanted to check out the scenery (and by scenery you know what I mean). I guess I wanted to make sure the local night scenes were good places for networking (come on now folks, I am still a college student). But I ran into a snag in the plan, the next morning from over sleeping, I missed the registration time for an important business competition. This was a competition I had been waiting all year to enter and I felt would have won. This competition would have not only provided seed money for my business but been a large scale introduction on a bigger stage for me speaking. But because I was sleeping on the job (literally) I missed a true opportunity and now know the value of a good alarm clock. It was a lesson well learned and one that will forever take with me on my life.
7. Always remember the breakdown time.
The final lesson I learned was always and I mean always remember your tradeshow booth break down time. It is kind of funny actually, I was so busy networking I forgot to breakdown my tradeshow both and the threw away my materials (luckily I have a low budget business and only lost about $20 in marketing supplies). It was a lesson well learned and one that reminds me of my economics professor Dr. Conrad as he always spoke about opportunity cost (the cost seen and unseen economic cost of making one decision over the other), and even though I lost my supplies and have to pay another visit to Walmart, I had the opportunity of a lifetime.
