I was talking with the loveliest Rolfing practitioner the other day about practice building and she mentioned that she, “really needed to start to do more… [deep, melancholy sigh]… networking.” And it occurred to me that I precede the word “networking” with the same deep, melancholy sigh on the outside- and on the inside I’m thinking I want to run for a scalding hot shower while screaming, “Get it off! Unclean! Unclean!!!”

As it turns out I’ve been getting familiar with that deep sigh lately. So I have this little site here, and it, well, really matters to me. It may sound corny, but I’m truly on a mission to help wellness providers to thrive- and ultimately to help more people who are in need of our righteous healing goodness to find their way to us and get well. What that means is that I need to let the world know that this little site exists.

Enter the melancholy sigh.

I’m proud of my work here, but when I think about carving out tangible chunks of time to “network”- I resist. In fact, I want to run a really hot shower and grab a Brillo pad.

As I was internally groaning about networking, the clouds parted for a moment and I had a hilarious epiphany. In just the last month or so I’ve managed to have a nice little e-conversation with Seth Godin, get a shout out from Havi Brooks on her blog, and meet Chris Guillebeau and Jonathan Fields in person and then to stay in touch with both of them a bit. (OK I know it’s dreadful. I realize I’m name dropping and that that’s annoying. I only do the blatant name drop because it’s meaningful for this post. I don’t mean to imply that we’re all BFF’s who have sleep over parties and plan benevolent world domination together.)

Without ever dragging ass and forcing myself to do the dreaded networking, I’d somehow connected with four of the people whose work I most respect and admire. That’s because I had never filed these interactions under the networking category in my brain. They could instead be found under the “connecting with people whose work I really freaking love” file. 

I propose we re-label the networking file in our brains as the connecting with people whose work we really freaking love file. It’s not networking in and of itself that’s awful, it’s just the word that sucks.

OK, ok, and the history of people doing it that uber sleazy way.

I remember a couple of years back I was at a holiday party at In Good Company- a fabulous place that supports women entrepreneurs- and I encountered someone who is the reason that the words networking and “Unclean!” go together.

There we were- a group of lovely women having a nice chat- eating the occasional cupcake- taking the occasional sip of wine- and just generally enjoying one another’s company when a random loud mouthed guy pushed into the group, disrupted all conversation, and yelled, “Who’s here to do some NETWORKING!” while thrusting business cards at all of us which were (I kid you not) fanned out carefully in each hand. Seriously. True story.

What was lost on him was that we were networking in that “connecting with people whose work we really freaking love” way.

So we all know none of us is going to be as clueless as desperate-holiday-party-guy. Nevertheless, I propose a clarifying question we can all use to keep us in our happy connecting place when we’re hating on the yucky networking dark place. When you’re trying to grow your, er, network- ask yourself the question, “Would I genuinely enjoy having lunch with this person.”

Let’s say you’re a massage therapist who’s trying to grow your referral network in your town and there happens to be this acupuncturist who has a crazy busy practice. So you think to yourself, “I should really connect with that guy. Too bad he’s an annoying egomaniac. Ugh. Guess I have to suck it up and do that whole networking thing…” No thank you please. Forget about who’s busiest and see who passes the lunch test.  Find the acupuncturist with the practice that’s half as busy, but who you find to be really quite lovely.

The lunch test is a great one. Frankly, I’d fly halfway across the world to have lunch with Seth, Chris, Havi or Jonathan. Which brings me to my last point. If you know there are people out there who you’d drop everything just to have lunch with- by all means, prioritize that relationship, reach out, and start connecting. 

*for more non-dread inducing tips on networking, you can check out this earlier post.

Tags: marketing, networking, practice building

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Practice Building in the Tangible World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.