networking Archives - Solopreneur Profit Coach |

How Networking Exponentially Expanded My Small Business (and How it Can Help Yours Too!)

Business growth depends on marketing. It depends on growing your client base, so you can continue to scale your business to the size you want it. Do you know what my number one marketing strategy is? Yep – it’s networking!

Finding other small business owners to align yourself can be a wonderful thing for your business, and there are so many ways to do it. When you find the right crowd, figuring out ways to support each other in business growth is easy. Here are my top tips from my own networking journey:

Be Genuine and Enjoy Connection

Many people hate the term “networking,” often because they imagine going to an event where their interactions with other professionals feel forced, fake, or desperate. If it helps, you can try thinking about networking using different terms – “connecting with other business owners” might help set a better tone, for instance.

The bottom line here is that networking doesn’t have to – really shouldn’t – feel forced. A good networking connection that’s really valuable to you and your business will be someone who you get along with and enjoy planning with, working alongside, or supporting in other ways. The goal is genuine connection that benefits you on multiple levels. So don’t fake it!

Try Out Different Circles and Find the Best Fit

When I first dove into the world of networking while representing At Peace With Money, I tried several different groups before I found the Women’s Networking Alliance, where I’ve been a member for several years now. I attended a networking group through my town’s chamber of commerce, a Business Networking International group, and a different local women’s networking group. They were all great, but none of them felt like the right fit. Someone in the other local women’s group recommended WNA to me, so I decided to check it out. When I joined WNA, I connected with the other women involved in a genuine and enjoyable way, and I feel confident that I’ve found the right spot.

Even If You Work Online, Try Local Networking!

Just because you’re available to work with people all around the world, doesn’t mean you can’t try local networking. Making connections with others in person is a great way to get your business out in the world. People are more likely to remember the impression you make or they experience they have interacting with you and your business in person, as opposed to online. This can easily lead to a good local reputation, referrals, and collaborations. This brings me to my next point:

Find Ways to Lift Each Other Up

The world of small business need not be a highly competitive one. In fact, as small business owners, we have so much to gain from lifting each other up! The more we collaborate, the more we assist each other in expanding success for everyone, including ourselves.

I personally like to do this by doing Solopreneur Spotlights in my newsletter, and I also sometimes interview small business owners for blog posts! Check out my recent awesome interviews on the small business finances of digital marketing consultant Tracey Lee Davis and herbalist Magic Knocks. I’ve also worked with different small businesses to address my own business’s needs from time to time – like when I needed to hire another part-time bookkeeper, and contacted Sprout HR for help (I highly recommend them!).

One of the best ways to lift up another business owner is to find a “power partner,” or someone who does work adjacent to you who can refer their clients to you, and vice versa. When you find someone who does work you respect and whose clients often require the services you offer in addition to theirs and vice versa, this can be an immensely valuable and enjoyable working relationship. I am honored to call Andrea Paap a power partner – if you need tax services, I highly recommend her work!

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How to Step Up For Your Community As a Business Owner

Community is absolutely key to the business owner. Recent events have called on us over and over to think about how we’re all connected. The COVID-19 pandemic made it more obvious than ever how we all depend on each other, while the protests happening around the country call on each of us to reflect how we interact with each other and the ways we enable racist policing to continue. Throughout all of this, one of my main pieces of advice has been to stay checked in with other business owners, clients, and other community members. From staying in touch with your audience via social media like Bri Crabtree, to leaning on your money team to make financial decisions, community is very important to a business. No solopreneur exists in a vacuum. So, during this time of unrest and reckoning with our racist past and present, it’s important that we each recognize our responsibilities as community players.

In this post, I’ll talk about the importance of taking time to reflect on your role in your community, and what you can do now to support Black lives. Whether its fellow business owners, youth in your community, or medics and community workers, many people are in need of support and resources. This is our opportunity to step up as business owners. Let’s dive in:

Reflect

Take time to consider how you’ve shown up in your community prior. Whether it was donating your goods or services to a local fundraiser, or starting a project that raised money for a specific cause, consider your past efforts. If you’ve never embarked on a project like this, have you had any ideas about it in the past? Reflect on your values and your personal desires to get involved and be supportive to others. What motivates you? It is to your great benefit to build a network in your community of people and causes you support, and who support you in turn.

Reach Out for Feedback

Ask friends who are involved how your business could support community efforts. If you have friends who are currently involved in anti-racism work, ask them how you could support them or amplify their message. You’ll likely receive some fresh suggestions.

Take Cues From Other Businesses

In my newsletter this month, I highlighted Ben & Jerry’s statement on recent events, “Silence is Not an Option.” Along with this statement, they have also released a new flavor that benefits four different organizations “working on the front lines of the peaceful resistance, building a world that supports their values.” While Ben & Jerry’s is a fairly large corporation, their example is inspiring for businesses of all sizes.

Here’s an idea more to scale for many of us. Many solopreneurs on Instagram are participating in the #amplifymelanatedvoices challenge, to uplift Black and Brown solopreneurs. Quieting their own social media presences and spotlighting these creators helps them materially, but also creates stronger networks of community among these solopreneurs. Some business owners have also been donating free services or products to Black people and organizations. For example, I’ve seen several herbal apothecaries that are offering free herbal products and consultations for Black people and organizers.

Do some research and find out what others in your industry are doing, and how businesses in your area are responding to the moment. Then think about what you can do for your community that is authentic, helpful, and realistic given your resources. To ensure your actions are concretely helpful to the Black community, check out this read on do’s and don’ts of allyship.

Consider Your Resources

All businesses are not alike, and while you may not have the resources to release a new ice cream flavor, perhaps you can use your platform to speak out. Simply adding your voice as a business owner to the current discussion around the importance of Black lives and the horrors of police misconduct can be helpful. The same goes at another time for another issue.

Perhaps you can donate your time or services to a cause, or offer them for free for Black or low-income people in your area. You might create a fundraising offering, where a certain percentage of proceeds goes to fund an organization in your community. If you get creative, there are many ways to chip in and stay in your business’s budget. Next week, I’ll be talking about how to use money mapping to figure out how much you can give to causes. Stay tuned for that.

Above all, remember that whatever effort you make to contribute to your community, if you make it with good intentions, know that it will be appreciated, and likely returned to you down the road. The more we create good networks that are based truly on helping each other, the more we can each succeed in our endeavors. If you’d like another reflection-based exercise to go along with all this, check out my posts on how to do a mid-year review.

Angela

Image by Joan Villalon