531 – How To Meet People At Events - James Schramko SuperFast Business Online Business Coaching

In the episode: 00:38 – It’s not about you 01:25 – Finding common ground 02:18 – How to treat big shots 03:22 – Beware of THIS 04:24 – When to approach a speaker 05:05 – Are you the person people want to be around? 05:59 – When invited to dinner… 06:53 – A big no-no 07:46 – What you can offer 08:39 – How to be recognized 09:17 – A way to bridge conversation Access the complete presentations from SuperFastBusiness Live 2017 inside SuperFastBusiness membership Download the PDF transcription and A Checklist For Meeting People At Live Events Transcription: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I’m going to be talking about live events. I just ran my live event, SuperFastBusiness Live. All of the presenters there were fantastic. A lot of them I’ve met in person at other events, and quite often, in other countries. So today, I’m going to share with you some top tips on how to network better when you go to a live event. “How to network better at a live event” CLICK TO TWEET Be interested The first tip is be interested rather than trying to be interesting. So a lot of the people at events generally gravitate towards a bar. Wherever there’s food or refreshments served, that’s where people go because they’re away from home. So you’ll find people congregate there. And rather than trying to be very interesting and have everyone notice you, instead, be interested. Be curious. Ask questions. “Rather than trying to be interesting…” CLICK TO TWEET But just be low key as well. You don’t need to be over the top. You don’t need to stand out and be the class clown. What you want to think about is this is a very long-term relationship. And first impressions are important. But you’ll have more than a few bites at the cherry, and I’ll explain why in just a minute. Find things in common One thing that I do when I’m meeting someone is I find things that we have in common because that makes it comfortable to have a continued discussion. Where did they go to school? Where do they live? What things are they interested in? What type of careers have they had? What are their passions or sports? What sort of family situation have they grown up with? So there’s all sorts of common ground you can find. Fairly quickly, you’ll find friends who you have in common. These days, it’s even easier with things like Facebook will actually tell you who you have in common. So if you know the person, and you’re trying to establish contact, have a look and see who you have as mutual friends because they will be common grounds for you. In fact even better is to get an introduction from one of those friends if they happen to be there at the event. It’s way better to get introduced by somebody than for you to have to go up cold.