September 27th 2022 was my first ever networking event. I chose that day because the event was based round areas such as culture and building a great ethos within a business and those are areas where we are always actively looking to improve.
4 years earlier, I helped found Red Rock Communications and the last thing I ever thought I would have to do was networking. A room full of strange men and women, big achievers, accomplished people, and business leaders was the stuff of nightmares.
For the first couple of years, we winged it and made excuses for not holding ourselves responsible, handing out free passes, and not setting meaningful targets and when we didn’t hit a target the free pass would come back out. However, we did well, very well but the business side of Red Rock was suffering and we had a lack of direction and clarity on what we wanted to achieve and how to get there. This in turn highlighted in multicolour the fault lines within business.
Roll on a couple of years and we made the decision to engage a business coach. This was the best decision we ever made as our coach ended up being David Poxon of ActionCOACH. The phrase “comfort zone” came up a few times but as far as I was concerned it was always manyana manyana and I stated categorically in several meetings with David “I am not doing networking, ever!” Of course, David let it lie and bided his time. This summer, networking came up again as a way of growing our business and generating more leads. It had been more than 12 months since our previous networking chat and in that time my comfort zone had grown a lot but the thought of networking still made me go weak in the knees and not in the good way.
David introduced me to Chris McKenna; Managing Director at Downtown in Business and we had a couple of meetings before we decided to sign up for a year.
Now back to September 27th 2022 and a year on from my statement of never doing networking there I was stood in a room full of people who all looked far more comfortable than me and doing my first networking event with DiB.
But thanks to David and Mili at DiB and some of the attendees on the day it was a great experience which has helped me move forward, even if it is just an inch at a time and expand my comfort zone.
Hopefully, I will meet and get to know many more leaders within the business world over the coming years and have the great opportunity to learn and grow from the best in the North-West.
It’s important to expand your skillset constantly; as fibre optic installers and a cabling company, we’re also well versed in business internet and the hosted telephony sector; our people have been doing it for years, and they have mastered it well. However, in networking, I am still a novice; fortunately, Downtown in Business has given me the confidence to take further steps toward improving this vital skill set.
I would highly recommend DIB events for those in a similar situation to myself who have an aversion to networking. It’s no secret that I was tremendously out of my comfort zone throughout this experience, but the staff and guests were eager to help me feel more comfortable whilst expanding my comfort zone.
Many thanks
