Svaha: the time between seeing lightning and hearing the thunder
Several of your recommendations stuck with me and they have been very useful.
- Think that the people you are going to meet at the event are all your friends. That has helped me open up more.
- Don’t think you have to “work the room,” or meet many people. Be with the person you are talking to at the time. The thought has helped control some urges for meeting more people and leaving the one I am talking to, and allowed for more in-depth conversations.
- Stay a bit afterwards, and talk with the people you found interesting. Leave a “hook” to make sure you stay in contact after the event.
I went to a talk yesterday; I enjoyed it and made at least one wonderful and potentially useful contact.
Your webinar was well worth all the time spent and the small fee, many times over.
- Benjamin Sagalovsky, Lean Six Sigma consultant & trainer at Variance Reduction Int'l, San Diego
I went to a two-day seminar this week. The topics were very work-related and, as usual, I went hoping to learn things I could use. Normally, I would have made a very big effort to talk to as many people as possible and unload business cards right and left. After your class I decided that this was not a good networking opportunity and decided to just relax and pay attention to the technical program.
So, of course, five people ASKED for my card and one person asked for my resume. I am fairly sure that I will get work. AND, I had a good time talking to people and finding out how the technical program applied to them and how they intended to use the information.
- Nancy Pasquan, Software Process Consultant, Eyes On, Inc.
But when networking reminds you of the worst parts of high school ...
... and you find yourself meeting endless people who just want to sell you something ...
... and you don’t hear from the people who take your business card ...
... and you can’t seem to start conversations with people who are interested in what you’re doing ...
you end up feeling like you’d much rather just stay home!
In fact, one person described her old approach as “dread, dread, and dread.”
She used this program to transform her networking experience, and told me, “You’ve lifted the veil on my ineffective networking techniques — and now I actually enjoy myself!”
What’s more, it doesn’t take years or months. With the exercises in this program, you can start to shift your experience within weeks and even days. In fact, by the time you attend your next event, you can start feeling better and more confident about your networking.
A different approach to networking for your business.
An approach that recognizes that there’s a lot more to networking than going to events, shaking hands, and handing out business cards.
An approach that recognizes that trying to force yourself to do things you’d really rather not do doesn’t work. (Have you noticed?)
An approach that helps you understand and honor who YOU really are — throughout the whole networking and follow-up process.
And an approach that helps you get very strategic about the events you attend — and very tactical about what you do before, during, and after the event.
I wish there had been someone there for me, to teach me what I want to teach you. I can put myself back just a few years and remember ... remember walking into an event with my neck and shoulders so tense that I could feel the headache growing. Remember driving away from events in tears about what a disaster I’d made of it. Remember wondering what it took to actually make networking work. Remember telling my friends that I just wasn’t going to network any more, it wasn’t worth the pain and struggle — and the lack of results!
Now, my networking is a significant part of my business success — and a significant part of my enjoyment of my business. (And yes, I’m delighted to be able to write that statement!)
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Click here to go read about the package components.
Key Fact One
There are two parts to every situation: the internal part and the external part. While
both of them have to be in alignment for you to experience real success, the internal part is
by far the most important.
It’s the internal part that creates those feelings
of confidence.
Most approaches to networking only address the external part — all those rules about what
you’re supposed to do at an event. This program focuses on the internal part
first, and only then talks about the external aspects of networking. (Without subjecting
you to all those rules!)
Key Fact Two
Formal networking is inherently artificial. And yet it’s also supposed to be all
about creating authentic relationships. This program addresses this fundamental discrepancy, helping
you find ways to deal with the artificiality, be yourself, and get results.
Jennifer Hofmann took the class from which the program was developed, and has also been working with the workbook (which has more than twice the content of the original class handout). Here’s what she has to say.
I’m the one who summarized networking with three words: “Dread, dread, and dread.” I’d been to countless groups: chamber, greeters, membership networking, you name it. I couldn’t understand how all these interesting people seemed as stiff and awkward as I felt.
Grace, in your own inimitable style, you’ve lifted the veil on my ineffective networking techniques. I went to an event just last week and actually fully enjoyed myself. I made real connections based on shared interests — instead of worrying about what I “should” do at a networking event.
This product isn’t priced high enough when you consider the value of the referrals and the increased business you’ll receive. I was a skeptic. Now I’m telling everyone I know — corporate and self-employed alike — that they have to have your book.
I don’t know how to recommend this strongly enough!
- Jennifer Hofmann, Inspired Home Office (inspiredhomeoffice.com), Salem, Oregon
Ben Sagalovsky and Nancy Pasquan were participants in the networking teleclass on which this program is based. They independently, and without my asking, sent me delightful notes about their success after taking the class. You can see their comments in the sidebar on the left.
There’s so much potential when you meet someone new!
That one person could lead to a new job, new clients, referrals to people who can help you in as-yet-unknown ways.
Only you can say what the value might be, in personal satisfaction, time saved, and money earned!
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(Please click the “return to Svaha Concepts” link when you’ve completed the transaction. There’s one more step that will help ensure you receive the download information immediately!) |
Perhaps you’ve been trying to learn ... just as I did. The classes I attended and the books I read all told me the same old stuff — the stuff that I suggest you just throw out. For a long time, I believed I was doing something wrong, but it was really only that the traditional rules and ideas about networking were wrong for me, just as they’re wrong for most people.
I’m not going to tell you that it won’t take some work. I’m certainly not going to tell you that this is some sort of magic that will transform you into a completely confident networking superstar ... overnight.
But I am going to tell you that the ideas, questions, and perspectives in this program can help you be successful in your networking efforts — and can take you well beyond networking, if you’ll let them. And that ultimately, you can be a confident networking superstar!
Let me repeat that!
And as Jen Hofmann says in describing her experience, you can actually enjoy yourself and realize real benefits in your professional career.
99 pages of detailed concepts, exercises, tips, and techniques.
This is solid content — although it’s a workbook, I didn’t waste space with blank lines for you to write on. You’ve got plenty of paper of your own, and it creates better results (and it’s much more fun) when you have unlimited space to write as much as you want and need.
(And for those exercises that really do need worksheets — I provide them separately.)
And that page count doesn’t include the cover page, table of contents, or “About the Author” pages. Just content, all content, nothing but content. (The total page count, with all those other pages, is 107.)
You’ll find concrete guidance on everything from discovering how your belief structures about networking affect your results (and how to shift those beliefs to get much better results), to understanding exactly what your networking objectives are (and how those objectives influence your strategy). And a whole lot more in between.
Take a peek at the Table of Contents.
Listen as I review the techniques and ideas with real people discussing real networking issues. The two class recordings have been tightly edited so that there’s only content — you don’t have to listen to all the “umms” or to long pauses while people gather their thoughts.
After editing, the first recording is 1:13:39 long. The second is 1:07:35 long.
There’s nothing more annoying than trying to find a specific place where a topic was addressed on an hour-plus recording. You know you heard it, you want to hear it again, but where the devil is it?
So I created an index for the class recordings, with the topics discussed, the location, by time, on the recording where you’ll find it, and — where relevant — the corresponding chapter and section in the workbook.
My friend Sherry Essig, who’s been in business for herself for 16 years now, credits her success to her ability to develop and nurture her powerful network.
I learned a lot from her as I was developing my own networking skills, and she helped me see how it really can be fun and successful instead of a dreadful struggle.
She too started out hating networking. So our conversation is full of real-life tips and techniques, some of which expand on the material I present in the workbook and class recordings, and some of which is uniquely Sherry’s delightfully practical and humorous perspective. I learned even more from her as we talked, so I know there will be plenty of ideas for you to try!
The interview is 55:33 long.
Even when you really, really want the results, it can be hard to sit down and read through exercises in a workbook like this — and then to actually do them.
But the exercises, especially the experiential ones, are important — they’re what help create the shifts in your understanding and your approach.
So for the key exercises, there are recordings to help walk you through them, to slow you down and allow you to experience the process more deeply.
These are a new addition — they weren’t part of the original program.
While some of the exercises need recordings — one of them clearly needed a worksheet. So I created one to give you space and structure for some of the strategic and tactical work involved.
This is also a new addition that wasn’t part of the original program.
As I keep networking and talking to people about networking, I’ll keep discovering new things.
I’ll accumulate them, and every now and then, on no particular schedule, I’ll send you an email compiling those tips and ideas.
It’s an ongoing totally random encouragement that you’ll receive unexpectedly and that will help keep you on track, focused, and motivated.
And don’t worry; you won’t miss out on any that were sent out before you purchased the package. They’ll all go into a PDF document that you’ll receive with your order.
This is an electronic program only; there is no hardcopy version.
The workbook comes as a PDF file explicitly formatted to be easy to read on your computer screen; the worksheets are PDFs for you to print out and fill in — and I also include a mind-mapping template if you prefer. The three audio segments and exercise recordings are MP3 files, which you can listen to directly from your computer, download to your iPod or other MP3 player, or burn onto a CD to play in your car.
$87.00 covers the workbook, the three audio segments, exercise recordings, worksheets, and the ongoing updates.
In the unlikely event that you don’t get the value you expected, I’ll refund 100% of your investment up to 60 days from your purchase. No worries, no problem.
And then you get to pass the material on to one friend or colleague whom you think will benefit from the material. They get 100% of the value, you get 100% of your money back. 200% total. It’s that simple.
Just click the Add to Cart button below.
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(Please click the “return to Svaha Concepts” link when you’ve completed the transaction. There’s one more step that will help ensure you receive the download information immediately!) |
I want to be sure you have all the information you need to make the best decision possible. Use the form here to ask me anything at all. It sends an email directly to my personal email in-box, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. (And that’s usually very soon. Certainly within one business day, usually within an hour or two.)