Finding the confidence
Not all of us are confident in these situations, especially if you don’t come from a business background. But those things which are initially hard to do are the things that are most worth doing. We call this a ‘barrier to entry’ and it means that if you first found it hard, then your competition will also find it hard and are less likely to be doing it. Things that have a barrier to entry are the activities that separate successful companies from less successful ones. As a budding vegan entrepreneur you should take a deep breath and commit yourself to things that you don’t yet know how to do, but have the confidence that the one thing that you DO know how to do is learn.
I am fortunate that I have done a lot of networking over my career. When Lisa and I first set up a business together she didn’t know how I could stand before a room of 50 people, hold their attention and get them laughing along whilst I spoke about our company. She didn’t know how I was able to walk into a room full of people I had never met, walk up to the closest, shake their hand and then go straight into a conversation about our respective businesses whilst she stayed nervously by the sign-in table. Now, several years on I don’t get a look in! If we go to an event then Lisa is the one warmly shaking hands and getting people to open up to her about their companies in a way I never could. I can leave a conversation with a business card and a promise to exchange emails; Lisa leaves with a new lifelong friend and a promise to swap recipes. She makes connections with strangers at a level I never could, she just needed to be persuaded, nagged and sometimes even dragged to events until she forgot that she couldn’t do them. Now everyone wants to talk to Lisa and I’ll feed off her scraps!
And it all simply comes down to experience. I spent nearly 10 years going to local early morning networking groups where I got the chance to stand up and present my business every week. I was rubbish for the first 6 months, not embarrassingly bad by the end of the first year, and then competent by the end of the second. I didn’t get anywhere near approaching ‘good’ until I’d been doing it for years and then became the one helping others to learn how to do it. But the thing to remember is that you being in a room of potential customers feeling awkward puts you miles ahead of your competitor who was too nervous to go in the first place. Is the future success of your business worth putting yourself through an hour of being uncomfortable and afraid you won’t know what to say? Of course it is.
You can also be sure that if you’re nervous, then many other people in that room are also nervous and feel like they have no clue what they’re doing. So, take a deep breath and be the brave, warm friendly one – you could be the person who helps to put them at ease and not feel alone in the room. If you do that multiple times during the session, then you’re going to be the person that they remember with a smile and they’ll actively want to have you in their network.
