Why You Should Get Out More

I attend quite a few seminars and networking events each month with one sole purpose in mind: meet more people. Not to sell my services, but to chat over breakfast or a glass of wine at after 5 events because the people you don’t yet know can be the lifeblood of your future.

Last week, I went to a breakfast marketing seminar to listen to a Q&A session with a well-known marketer. When I entered the event, there was the usual table with attendee name badges all laid out and as I always do, I stopped to look at who else was attending. I saw Brian’s name. The lady on the desk promised to introduce me when he arrived.

It was whilst I was getting myself a coffee that I first met Brian, and we exchanged pleasantries. After me flooding the drinks area with boiling water and Brian admitting he had forgotten his jacket and he had the wrong socks on, we realized we were both on the same wavelength and we hit it off like old friends, putting the world to rights and chatting about marketing, the subject of the morning’s seminar. Since then, we have met over coffee to see how our paths might cross in a business sense and how we might be able to use each others talents for a project. A stranger turning into someone I now know.

During the event, the speaker told us a tale about how his vineyard’s name had come about, about how a traveler had asked for directions and had misheard him. Rather than the traveler hearing “turn left at the lone Nikau” (a tree) he thought he had heard ”turn left at the lonely cow”! The name stuck, and he drew the logo on a scrap of paper there and then and it is still used today - Lonely Cow Wines. Without that chance meeting of a traveler, who knows what the vineyard would have ever been called.

He also had three pearls of wisdom to offer that had been passed on to him from encounters with various people he had come into contact with over the years, from a business man, an architect and a cleaner:

1. I’ve lost my fortune three times; thank goodness I’ve made four.
2. Never pull your carrots up to see if they are growing.
3. Love what you do, have something to look forward to and have somebody to love.

Each one of his three pearls was given to him via an encounter with a stranger, someone he didn’t really know, and they have become his own life rules.

I wanted to ask him as a marketer, where he gets his inspiration from each day, to come up with new ideas and concepts, but the answer was already staring me in the face. Just like my chance meeting with my new friend Brian, it’s simply about chatting to new and varied people from all walks of life, all of the time, that is where our inspiration and our future lies.

Just this week, I have been able to reach out to people for funding advice and secure a conference speaker for an event I am involved with, all from getting out more and getting to know more people.

You don’t meet people sat at your desk all day, so how can you meet someone new each and every day? You can find more of my posts on this here and here. It's very simple to do, just start with hello.

Your Turn

What encounters have you experienced from talking to someone you didn’t already know? Maybe you too have met an angel investor, or even your biggest client?

If you like the concept of meeting more people you don’t yet know, try my latest book “Start with Hello” (Wiley) out in September but available for pre-order on Amazon.

You may want to hear about The Say Hello Project, which is running in New Zealand on Friday October 4, encouraging everyone to speak to 5 people they don’t currently know but come into contact with. Let me know if you want to get involved.

Email me [email protected].