The networking disaster that forever changed how we build relationships

By Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh

Seven years ago our year-old company, YEC, was gaining traction as a valuable membership organization for under-45 founders of multi-million dollar businesses. And then, in a single afternoon, we almost completely screwed it up.

We had invited some Boston-based members to a “networking lunch” in a conference room at a member’s offices. It was the middle of summer and we had ordered a big, heavy Italian buffet, set up in a generic conference room with stark walls, a conference table, and a white board in the corner — exactly the kind of soul-sucking environment that we all already spend too much time in. Attendance was embarrassingly spare — there were more YEC staff in the room than members. The run-of-the-mill “let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves” exercise took roughly five minutes per person because we had put absolutely no thought into the introduction process. Before long, people were checking their phones, staring out the window, and pushing congealed pasta around their plates. We looked at each other with growing panic: it was painfully clear that we were destroying our growing reputation as community managers, and jeopardizing the future of our business. In a desperate attempt to salvage the meetup, we asked them what they liked about YEC and what we could do to improve. They obliged with brutally honest feedback: If you want to compete for our attention, then offer us something remarkable.

The Oasis Effect

Don’t get us wrong — our “disastrous” event was probably no worse than 90% of the networking events you’ve ever attended. But that’s the point exactly: it just wasn’t memorable. It taught us that creating remarkable, valuable experiences for all participants should be the goal of anyone curating an event. It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO hosting a dinner for customers, a VP of sales who wants to motivate the team at a retreat, or the head of a local Chamber of Commerce running a monthly meeting — you’re wasting your participants’ time if you don’t plan, execute, and follow through in a way that makes people feel valued. We learned that the hard way, and those lessons have changed our perspective and helped us build a business that now creates communities for some of the biggest media companies and brands in the world.

Our first step after our big fail was to ask our members for feedback via an online survey. They told us they wanted to meet new people, that they craved unique experiences, and that they disliked too much structure. One of our members was painfully blunt: “Networking for networking’s sake is useless to me.” Ouch.

So we cultivated the art of listening, but instead of asking our members how we could make our organization better, we watched how they interacted on our forums and on social media so that we could anticipate their needs. What conferences were they attending? What industries were they in? Where were they traveling? What kinds of experiences were they excited about? All of these data points factored into our event planning and we became much more deliberate about the who, what, where, and when elements of our events. And that meant no more heavy Italian lunches in sterile conference rooms.

For instance, all of our events now take advantage of other people’s real estate in the form of existing conferences, such as SXSW in Austin or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. By hosting special events at conferences, we get a great cross-section of local members and inbound travelers, creating the kind of collision that is unlikely to happen elsewhere. For example, we’ll hold a private event, such as a whiskey tasting with the goal of creating an oasis, away from the insanity of the huge event. The smaller, intimate setting gives people a way to meaningfully connect instead of being “networked to”.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Remember the old adage “don’t sweat the small stuff”?  At our first event, not sweating the small stuff almost cost us our reputation. Now, we sweat the small stuff  — and the most minute stuff — 24/7. By the time event day rolls around, we’ve done enough research so that we can achieve our most important goal: to vastly reduce the amount of friction between participants so that they can skip the small talk and start having interesting and fruitful conversations right away. Before every event, we ask each attendee to fill out a questionnaire. What are they hoping to gain? What are they working on right now? Is there a particular type of person they want to meet? Is there a special issue they are grappling with that they hope to resolve? We also let everyone know who else is coming by sending emails with every attendee’s name, headshot, and LinkedIn profile, a challenge they’re currently facing, along with a fun fact about them (e.g., he was the seventh grade bubble-gum champ in northern Virginia!).

If we’re hosting a seated event, we we seat people next to someone with common interests and we add a little intrigue by telling them that the seating is purposeful, but encouraging them to find out why on their own. As for the “let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves” element that we let drag on at our first event — if we do it at all now, we tell people they have 30 seconds. At events that are less structured (and most of ours are), we put forethought into who should be introduced to who, and we make those introductions using simple trigger phrases to help people remember one another (ie. “Ashley just published her first book.”)

Goodnight is not Goodbye

Our job doesn't end when our events do. After we say goodnight, we follow up with each participant, sending them another email with a series of questions: Did you get to meet everyone you wanted to? If not, can we make the intro now? What worked? What didn’t? Okay, we did get something right at our first event — we did exactly this kind of follow up and the responses smacked us up and set us on the right path.  

Smart follow up is probably the most important — and neglected — element of group gatherings. A good event leaves its participants charged up and ready to take action, but it’s only human nature for us to let our good intentions slide when we’re settled back into our daily routines. By going the extra mile, we keep ourselves at the center of our participants’ networks, constantly adding water to the seeds that help long term, meaningful relationships blossom.

Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh are the co-founders of The Community Company and the co-authors of the book, Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter.