Before starting I would like to clarify that this is based on personal experience and may or may not apply to the reader.
You will see through the blog that I will refer to my experience in Toastmasters especially Westgate Toastmasters Club, BNI & Connext nation. these three institutions affected how I’m networking and dealing with people.
I’m currently working on my Strategic Relationships pathway in Toastmasters, and the subproject forced me into networking. What follows is one of my Toastmasters speeches about networking.
“I became an engineer and a handyman since joining the engineering school at Princess Sumaya University in 2005 and I got used to working in labs and workshops behind the scenes. I was never interested in working on the front desk of any task. This resulted in my preference to work more with machines and solve technical problems than working with people and handling their personalities. Eventually, I found communication to be energy consuming and frustrating.
One of my entrepreneurial ventures was at end of 2011, almost a year after finishing school. That was the first time I needed to have direct interaction with people and networking with a lot at the stake. It was a total failure that taught me a lot and the importance of networking for startups.
A year after that, I was back to being an employee working in the backend between 2012 and end of 2016, where I forgot all about networking, and the only network I have was my colleagues and a few friends back from school.
In Late 2016 I started my third startup, CCTRONIC LLC in the United States, but this time, I had the networking issues in sight and I knew what it means. Even though I kept working for a year without networking. Afterwards, I started needing help, and from there the wheel started spinning.
Connext Nation Referal program was my first step, and it was amazing, it helped me to know how to network purposefully. One of the best points that were great is just to get to know the speakers of any event, and that was my goal! No one else, just the speakers, you will be amazed at the results.”
” … Just go to speaker after they finish and praise their work and effort …” Debby Peters
This is the point that you should take from this post, if you don’t like networking when you go to networking events, go to each speaker and thank them for their speech and the information they provided, and give them positive feedback, regardless of how experienced. To them, they will feel as if you handed them the world, and a nice relationship will develop from that if you follow up with it.
Proof Reading By Nida Ammar
Information influenced by:
Leo Make 
Great!
LikeLike