Jamie Stewart, networking legend.

Jamie runs Circle networks and he used to be a reluctant networker. Back in 2013 he had to go networking to find customers for his social media business. At the time most businesses were not on social media, so he had to go and find them. But he fell in love with networking and it took him on a long journey. Jamie says the business was providing social media for businesses that weren’t using it at all. It was mainly Twitter.
When Jamie started business he wanted to be able to do the school run. On that basis he never did breakfast networking. One of Jamie’s clients pestered him for weeks and then he eventually went and enjoyed it and got some business. When he started networking he was offered training, which he thought he didn’t need. Then Jamie eventually did some networking training. Using the training he moved from getting £18k of work in a year from networking to £88k a year.

Jamie says we have all experienced just going networking and pottering along, but few of us think of training. His business also involved getting video testimonials which he enjoyed doing. That got busy and took him all over the country, which wasn’t what he wanted to do. And people started to approach him for networking training, He eventually moved his business to doing that. He says it is around understanding what it is you really want.

Jamie says before networking, he thought carefully about who he wanted to work with. He decided he wanted to work with a franchisee. His plan was to do excellent work with one franchisee, get referred to others. This worked well and in the end he also ended up working for the head office. All from doing a little planning before going networking.

 

Marcus thinks most people are just “winging it” in networking rather than planning. Jamie also says what you would wear to networking should be the same as what you would wear to meet a dream client. He says for Zoom meetings many people don’t make any effort at all.  He also talks about what people see on the background of your Zoom calls. Marcus has some lighting which shows exactly what he does. Marcus also says he has made Zoom backgrounds that were slide shows of his work and people loved it at the networking events.

Jamie’s top networking tips
1. Prepare. Don’t just jump from one call to another with no breaks and no planning.

2. Arrive early. You would never arrive late for an in person event so don’t online

3. Go networking with one thing in mind. It might be you are looking for support, a recommendation, an accountant or anything else,  but go with one aim in mind. If you are going for referrals. Have one in mind and be crystal clear. Treat it like a marketing campaign. You could do it as simple as explain who your latest client is or your ideal client is. You want people in the room to be able to filter all the people they know down to one, who they will introduce them to.

4. Be proactive with referrals. Go out and find people to refer, don’t just refer people you happen to come across. Jamie says for example while speaking to people he asked them if they had business insurance and then when it needed renewing. If the renewals were coming up he would pass them on to a connection who sold insurance.

 

Jamie has a photographer he works with on quarterly shoots. He says his face is his personal logo. Using photographs of ourselves is not showing off, it’s personal branding. He also says that as he’s used more professional photos he has found his social media reach expand.

Most people though don’t know the value they would get from professional photos. It is therefore important that photographers explain what value they deliver with a photoshoot. 

So while networking talk about your clients and then the follow up is really important. Jamie said he made a decision to pass more referrals than ever before. And as a result of that he has been passed more referrals than ever before.