 Do you love to do in-person networking, going to meetups, going to business networking, professional conferences? Well, if you love doing that, if you get a lot out of it, you feel like it's a great use of your time and your money and your energy, then this video is not for you. But if you have ever wondered if there's a better way to use your time to build your business instead of going to in-person networking meetings, then let's talk about it. When was the last time I went to an in-person networking meeting? I can't remember. I think it was more than five years ago. And yet my business, which is a people-centric business, training, coaching, mentoring, is doing better than it has ever done. So in-person networking did not help me build my business. What happens at networking meetings when I'm gone, I don't know if you can relate to this. I usually am just in a corner. Maybe I'm by the food or the drinks area. I'm too shy to insert myself into any conversation. Two people, three people are having conversation. I just, I don't feel bold enough to just go up and, oh, yes, that's interesting. So yes, I don't, that's just not what I do. And when I finally do connect with somebody in the room, that seems like a nice person and we start conversation, we usually end up chatting the entire rest of the meeting and it's not necessarily even that great. It's just maybe both shy and both of us just get stuck with each other for the whole night. And in terms of the time spent, I had to prepare to go, can't wear this, can't wear something more professional, get ready physically, get ready energetically, get ready. I have to then commute. How much time does that take anywhere these days, especially if you're commuting within the city, it takes you 45 minutes just to go from, go like 10 miles or something like that, right? And parking, it's another nightmare situation. And then being there for at least an hour, maybe two hours. And then having to come home, commute, that's another 30 to 45 minutes. And then being at home, decompressing, kind of letting go and relaxing after the event. So the whole ordeal took at least three hours, probably more like four hours for each networking meeting. What could you do with four hours of time building your business? Let's think about this. What are the alternatives? Number one, could you do your networking on the internet? Imagine entering a room of two billion people and you're able to type a few words and find just the type of person you're wanting to reach and you get instantly teleported to connect with them. That's the internet. I mean, so why are we going to in-person meetings unless we love doing, unless we feel more energized and grateful that we went, then we're like, yeah, that was okay, right? I don't know why. I think people don't realize that they can just use the internet to connect with more people in a shorter time than they could with in-person networking. Because when you have a choice of, okay, two billion people's Facebook, let's talk about LinkedIn. It's over 500 million people worldwide, 200 countries and territories. You can find anybody, you can find 10,000 of the right people to connect with. Instead of you go to a networking meeting of 30 people, you would be lucky to find one who might be, maybe there's something, some business you can do together. So I really don't get it. If you do go to networking meetings, please comment below and let me know why you do it versus connecting online. In the four, let's say four hours, the four hours that you spend in-person, all the getting ready, commuting, being there, coming back, decompressing, four hours, right? You could connect with probably, I mean, I'm just gonna be conservative here and say that it takes you a long time to research somebody and to send them a message, okay? It takes you half an hour, okay? Let's say to research somebody and send them a message, somebody who doesn't know who you are, okay? Half an hour, four hours, connecting with eight, like really right to people, having researched them, which you don't have that benefit when you're connecting in-person. You have to ask them some questions, try to figure out, but in a half hour of, maybe 20 minutes researching somebody, looking at their website, looking at their LinkedIn profile or whatever, you know a lot about them. And then when you reach out, you can do this and, of course, it takes practice. I think this is what probably is stopping a lot of you I imagine from doing online networking is you don't know what to say. Well, the first time you go to an in-person network you don't know what to say, but you have to figure it out. So figure it out, it's not that hard. It's just another human being who is also as insecure, you know, all of us are insecure in some way, especially when connecting with strangers. Figure it out, it's not rocket science. Well, what do you do when you connect with a stranger? Do you go, hi, I'm George and I have something that you wanna buy? No, I mean, come on, right? It's think about the etiquette you would have with an in-person meeting with a stranger. Take that same feeling etiquette and bring it online. I really don't understand why so many people don't get it. When they connect online, they're so cold and they're so pitchy and they're so salesy. I'm like, why don't you understand that I'm just another human being? If you were to do that to me in person, I would leave. So what would you do to me in person that would make me stay and pay attention and connect with you and right? Do that to me online, okay? So ask me questions. Well, of course, when you have the power of researching the person online, LinkedIn, Facebook, their website, their Twitter, whatever they use, you can say something positive about what they've been saying online. Say something that you have a mutual interest that you have with them based on their LinkedIn profile or whatever, some content they have, some mutual interest. Praise them and then say, hey, we seem to have a mutual interest in this area. I thought that maybe we could find some way to collaborate to help each other out. If you feel a sense of connection, take a look at my profile. Maybe you feel a sense of connection. Maybe there's something here that we could work on. If not, then I just wanna say hi and thank you for the work that you do. I mean, I know it's just, as I say, it sounds so obvious, but, or maybe it doesn't sound obvious, but I've been practicing online networking for a long time. So maybe that's why it's so obvious to me now. So, and here's the other thing, so few people do this. Everybody thinks they just have to go to B&I, you know, business networking and national meetings or meetup groups or whatever. Like, that's how you meet people. Like I said, it's a waste of time. Most of the time it's a waste of time. So, try it out, please. That's my encouragement in this video. Please try out online networking and tell me what your experience is. And just like offline networking, not everybody you connect with is gonna wanna connect with you and it's not about you. Now, funny thing is when you're doing in-person networking, it is more about you, right? Like, I don't know, maybe I have a body odor, I don't know, maybe I'm too short and they don't like how I look, right? It's more personal when you get the rejection in person. When it's online though, it's not, they don't, you know, maybe they look at your profile and they just don't find a connection there or maybe your message then doesn't feel connected and they don't write you back. Expect that most of the people you email are not gonna write you back. I mean, if you get really good at this, you might get half of the people to write you back but at first, maybe one out of 10 will write you back and that's okay because, and by the way, if you're doing half an hour of research on somebody and messaging them, it's probably gonna be better metrics than one out of 10. Maybe it's one out of three or something like that. But if you think about this, if you do online networking, even if you had a good connection to somebody in person, you still have to follow up with them online, don't you? Like, you still have to follow up with them and how do you follow up with them? You don't go knocking at their door and show up at their house or show up at their office. That's weird. You follow up with them via email. You follow up with them via LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever. Same thing. So why don't you just cut out the middle man, right? Why don't you just cut out the in person networking and just do it online? And yes, you're not gonna hear back from everybody but that's normal and just expect that. And so don't spend half an hour researching someone before reaching out to them. Spend 10 minutes, right? Spend 10 minutes researching somebody and spend five minutes writing the message and then you could reach out to four people an hour. And in the four hours, you would spend doing in person networking. You could reach out to 16 people and probably have three or four of the right people reach back out to you, you schedule a call and you have a really mutually beneficial business connection as a result. So as you can tell, I'm honestly kind of flustered at the reason why people still beat themselves up going to in person meetings or just waste time doing it when they could just do it online. So please tell me why. Now, of course you may have social needs. You wanna hang out with friends or meet new people. Maybe you're dating or other social reasons, great. Go to as many social events as you want for social reasons where you don't have to feel like you have to perform professionally. All I'm talking about is when it comes to building your business and being professional in terms of building your network professionally, forget the in person meetings unless you have been getting a lot out of them. Just do the online. By the way, I'm not talking about meeting one person in person because you felt a connection, of course. I'm talking about going into a room of strangers and trying to somehow stand out or find the right person. It's just, or going to a conference and hoping you find the right person. Conferences also baffle me. Unless you're going because you have somebody, you're gonna meet them there, that's great. But if you're going to learn something and to maybe meet somebody, look at your past, I'm looking at my past conference experiences. I paid lots of money. I maybe had to fly there. I had to, you know, the things I learned, I could have learned much faster by searching online and reading an article or watching a video or taking an online course. I could have learned it faster in the comfort of my home and office and the people I met, I never kept in touch with the people I met at conferences. I don't know about you. Never kept in touch. I mean, maybe once in a while I did, but those three days would have been spent better doing the online networking thing, honestly, okay. So online networking, hopefully I can, you know, I don't want to persuade you into anything, but hopefully I've kind of given you some food for thought about how you're spending your time with networking. The other thing is the four hours that you would have done in-person networking, what have you used those four hours and created content and bought a Facebook ad for your content? You would have reached a thousand people, you know, somewhat of the right people. You have a thousand people to reach them through a Facebook ad that are targeted, that somewhat a good, a better chance that they're the right people than a random group of strangers, okay. A thousand people, you know how much it costs, $15 to reach a thousand people. Now it depends on the target audience, et cetera. It's anywhere between, I've reached a thousand people for like $10 and sometimes it takes $30, but usually somewhere around $15 to reach a people that might love, might like your content, $15. You probably would have spent $15 with the online, with the in-person networking, all the gas or commuting costs, maybe you have to pay the event fee and all that stuff. So yes, this is how I have built my business doing online networking, doing content creation instead of figuring out which conferences that I have to go to and which networking meetings are the right ones for me. It's just those have become a waste of time the only time that I go to in-person meetings anymore, the only time is if I'm the speaker and if I have at least 30 minutes to speak to an audience and usually I have at least 20 people that I'm speaking to. I mean, if they tell me 20 people are gonna be there, even if 10 people be there, I think, okay, 10 people, if it's the right people and I have their in-person attention for half an hour, that may be worth it as the speaker because I immediately have their respect and I have more credibility than just a random person in a networking meeting. So I never RCP or go to networking meetings anymore. I only go if I'm the speaker and so if somebody invites me basically. So anyway, I hope this is some interesting food for thought. Maybe they'll save you a couple of dozen hours over the next few years of not having to go to the conferences and in-person meetings and just learning how to use LinkedIn, learning how to use Facebook to reach out to people, learning how to use Twitter, whatever it is you enjoy using or just Google, Google the kind of person you wanna reach out to and find their website and reach out to them. So just do it online and do your in-person socializing for fun, but not as a professional business obligation. Thanks for Captain and Karen for joining me here on the live video. I know networking is not a popular topic, but I felt like I had to share it because I guess maybe it's a bit of a rant that I have and I just see so many, even some of my clients or some of people in my audience, like they're wasting, it seems to me that you're wasting your time. I mean, not wasting, it just, your life is precious, your energy is precious, why not do it in smarter ways and do it in ways that are just more fruitful, right? So Captain says, I was wondering if you'll end this video without talking about content. No, of course, right, content is the thing. So anyway, I know, and maybe this video might have made some of you angry because you somehow wanna defend in-person networking. Like I said, if you love it, if you enjoy it, fine. It's great. If in-person professional networking is working out for you, I'm not saying don't do it. If it's working out for you, if it's a good use of the four hours that you, anyway, great. But why don't you try the same amount of time doing the online networking to see what the results are? That's all I'm asking, give it a try. All right, be well, have a good rest of the day. Thanks, Sharon, also for joining me here. Take care.