{"id":4589,"date":"2014-11-04T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T19:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/?p=4589"},"modified":"2024-02-14T10:38:29","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T15:38:29","slug":"meet-strangers-grow-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/blog\/meet-strangers-grow-your-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Strangers & Grow Your Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Kelly, Owner, Sandler Training<\/a>, Futurpreneur Canada Mentor,\u00a0ckelly@sandler.com<\/a>, Toronto, ON<\/em><\/p>\n

I have some good news and some bad news for you.<\/p>\n

The good news is simple. You can participate and get involved in your choice of more than 200 Canadian based events taking place during\u00a0Global Entrepreneurship Week from November 17-23.\u00a0You have a whole week to \u201cget out there,\u201d which is something many of my clients tell me they want to do, since it relates to their business growth. Global Entrepreneurship Week is your opportunity to hang out with other like-minded people, trade some valuable business tidbits, and grow your network. This is good news!<\/p>\n

Suppose you\u2019re thinking of \u201cgetting out there\u201d during Global Entrepreneurship Week, the bad news isn\u2019t so simple. When I was young, my mother said to me on several occasions, \u201cdon\u2019t talk to strangers,\u201d \u201cspeak when spoken to,\u201d and \u201crespect your elders.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if you heard flavors of these when you were growing up, but you may have. This leads to the bad news \u2013 you\u2019re like me, most of our caregivers didn\u2019t sit you down on our eighteenth\u00a0birthday to tell us we can NOW talk to strangers (especially regarding to business growth), also, they didn\u2019t tell us that we might have to initiate speaking in order to be spoken to, and they certainly didn\u2019t explain, \u201cyou are an adult now and you can view yourself as an equal to the other adults you encounter, regardless of their business title.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, because my Mom (sorry Mom), never told me about all of these new realities when I turned 18, sometimes the \u201cpre-18 protective Mom\u201d would come with me to events that are similar to those being offered during GEW and I wouldn\u2019t come away with the results I envisioned. I would fall short of things like meeting new people, prospecting, networking, booking meetings, or asking for referrals. I felt like the events weren\u2019t the right ones, didn\u2019t have the right people, or I\u2019d tell myself that the event was sub-par.\u00a0For falling short, I put the blame on my Mother?<\/p>\n

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU \u2013 for GEW
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Identify and book in your calendar at least two events\/activities you\u2019ll invest your time and effort in during GEW.\u00a0 Don\u2019t \u201cunbook\u201d them or \u201cmiss\u201d them, or be \u201ctoo tired\u201d to go to them.<\/li>\n
  2. Leave your \u201cpre-18 childhood advice\u201d at home.<\/li>\n
  3. In going to these two (or greater) events, have a plan.
    \n– What outcomes do you want? (meetings, referrals, conversations)
    \n– How many strangers will you want to initiate a conversation with at each event?<\/li>\n
  4. Prepare and rehearse how you\u2019ll talk about your business. Let me suggest that how you talk about your business should be relative to the strangers you\u2019re speaking with; it shouldn\u2019t be self-centric. Make sense?<\/li>\n
  5. Learn something; take note of it and of course, action it.
    \n– Sounds easy, I know.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Keep a \u2018hot list\u2019 and prioritize it. Choose one or two things you can improve on or change. If you\u2019re gutsy, meet someone new at the event and tell them and create a new accountability partnership.
    \n– Also, take note of when you feel uncomfortable during your stranger meeting effort. You know, when you get the butterflies in your tummy feeling? If you get that feeling, well done!<\/li>\n
  6. Debrief on your GEW results and make the necessary adjustments to your growth behaviors, attitudes and techniques.<\/li>\n
  7. Go and grow your awesome business.\u00a0 You deserve it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Christopher Kelly, Owner, Sandler Training, Futurpreneur Canada Mentor,\u00a0ckelly@sandler.com, Toronto, ON I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is simple. You can participate and get involved in your choice of more than 200 Canadian based events taking place during\u00a0Global Entrepreneurship Week from November 17-23.\u00a0You have a whole week to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurpreneurs-and-partners"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurpreneur.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}