Implementation Day 18 – Networking
Right, I’ll put up two posts today to get the timing of the blog back on track. Getting the blog up at the end of the day is far better than spending the start of a day talking about ‘yesterday’.
Anyway, yesterday ..
Was all about networking. Physical and virtual. In the morning, I attended a 4Networking business breakfast. In the afternoon I was telling my social network (4 people and a dog) about the new video I had uploaded the day before.
Business breakfasts:
I’ve attended a few of these now. A couple of BNI, 4Networking and some smaller local ones. I tend to go to the free introductory meetings and never go back. I think there are are a few reasons for this …
1) I ‘quite’ like the things. A group of entrepreneurial people in a room all trying to further their businesses .. it’s nice. I feel like a should ‘really’ like them and that it should be exactly what I want to commit to. But that’s not how I feel. I just quite like going one every few months.
2) The big ones are all just a bit too ‘selly’. Not people trying to sell their products. I’m completely comfortable with that. It’s people selling the breakfast set up it’s self. They are all very nice and try to be subtle about it, but a few people seem to really want you to come along a bit more eagerly than simply for your own benefit. I don’t know how these things work financially, but it feels like the people who are really eager for you to sign on the dotted line probably have something to gain. Others do genuinely want you to come because they think it will be good for you. You can ‘feel’ the difference between the two.
3) The time commitment. This is the deal breaker for me. I don’t mind spending £400-£500 to be part of a group that will generate more income for my business. However, once you add £10 for each breakfast that figure immediately jumps up to more like £1000 per year which is not to be sniffed at. I’m even fine with that though! I feel sure that over the course of a year I would easily recoup the financial investment of £1000. I’d guestimate that I would double or triple it. The problem is the time investment. On top of the £1000 cash, I’ve got to invest approximately 225 hours (6.30am – 11am x 50) of my time! That just doesn’t add up. I’d want about 5x the ROI that I’m guestimating for that.
4) Point 3 is less important if the ‘social’ aspect of it all is as important to you as the business side. If you’re having fun while you’re making new contacts, then it’s time well spent. Kind of ‘productive pleasure’ for business. That just brings me back to point 1 though. I just ‘quite like’ the breakfasts and fancy going to one every few months.
I have questioned if, during my ‘month of implementation’, I should challenge myself more and push myself into one of these breakfast groups. I think the logic above has just talked me out of it though.
Social media:
I have a love/hate relationship with social media. It’s both a humongous waste of time and incredibly productive. It’s kind of like a game, which I suppose all of business/life can be viewed as anyway.
Yesterday I got almost exactly the same number of people to look at the new video on the Christmas website as I do with a day of £30 AdWords advertising. That’s pretty impressive on one level, if you think about the amount of time I spent on it (maybe 15 min x 6) compared to Google trying to feed my AdWords to people all day long. On the other hand, AdWords is just set up and left to run so I’m not ‘working’ to get the click throughs.
I’m enjoying Social Media though. Yesterday was obviously ‘broadcast’ heavy, but I try to get the engagement/connection/broadcast more balanced generally. It just needs to be kept within a tight time frame though or it can consume a black hole of your day. I think I’ll start sitting down to it with both a clearly defined goal and a count down timer. 20 minutes should be enough for any single social media blast.
When not networking, I was catching up on admin. Quite a few things got pushed back due to the video getting finished.
The video:
And quickly, on the video .. I’m very pleased with it! Cait and I seem to work very well together on that sort of stuff. We both see different things and know that the other is usually right about ‘their bit’. It’s also huge that we got the thing done within a few days. I’ve had other bits of video online before, but this is the first thing that I could call a properly edited “promotional video” showing what I do. It’s been something that never seems important enough to get to the top of the list above other stuff, but this month of implementation was just the inspiration it needed. Do it, and do it quickly! We actively made choices along the way that slightly lessened the quality in exchange for increasing the speed of production. Hopefully we got the balance right. Do you think it looks like a professional piece?
