If walking into a room full of strangers feels like your worst fear, you’re not alone. Many people do their best to avoid networking altogether, but this attitude can be very detrimental to your success. Networking is crucial to both you and your business, but it doesn’t have to be as intimidating as you think.

Love it or hate it—it works - It’s about initiating, building, and maintaining relationships.

Your network is the group of people you know who like you, trust you, hire you, and send their friends and family to you. Networking is about connection and caring. Networking is about compassion and commitment. It's about knowing, understanding, communicating, and demonstrating that what you do and say is coming from a place of support, encouragement and being of service. 

Networking is not:

• selling


• connecting on Facebook or LinkedIn


• attending for a 'free lunch'


• trying to meet every single person at the event you didn’t want to attend


• talking about yourself


• throwing business cards at people as you make eye contact with the next person at which you intend to throw a card


• e-mailing the same article to 200 people on “your list,” or


• having lunch and never calling again.

Networking is about creating relationships with people who are a good fit for you and for whom you can be a good fit. It's about building those relationships over time so trust grows. Learning what it is that other people need to fulfil their dreams and revealing what you need as well. Ultimately, it's about helping one another make those dreams come true.

Today, I got to catch up and hang out with the former youngest FTSE 250 Managing Director, turned Entrepreneur to discuss What, How and WHY to network effectively. 

Jamie Stewart had an impressive career in 'corporate' rising the being Managing Director of a FTSE 250 at the age of 33.  However, these days you'll find him enjoying time with his family, walking the dogs, having lunch/dinner out and generally enjoying all life has to offer! No, he's not yet retired, he's the founder of Circle Networks.

Jamie identified what everyone else complained about when attending other network events, and set about to create something completely new, different and HIGHLY effective. In his own words "Circle Networks more than fills the gap in virtual networking, driving quality conversations, and helping you to make great connections that lead to new business opportunities."

You can hear Jamies' interview of me on the Networking LAB podcast here

(And, if you chose to join, remember to state that you were referred by Jay Allen)