Leading With Authenticity

Happy Monday. Jean Mitchells here representing Be a Good Person today. This Cadre session is sponsored by Be a Good Person. I'm kidding. It's not sponsored. But I am happy to be here. I'm excited to see you today. So I'm gonna hold on for just a few seconds and let people join in intentionally sitting in the sunniest corner of where I live so they can feel that warmth. Minneapolis is going to get up to 60 today. I can't wait. So wherever you're calling in from today, live or on repeat, I invite you to type in the chat where you are.

I invite you to type in the chat how you feel today. How are you? It's important to check in, to be able to assess where we're at any given point in time. Most Mondays, I'll ask the same or similar question. How are you? How do you feel right now in this moment? Type it in the chat. I, Jean, feel two things. I feel excited. It's Monday, fresh week, and I already feel a little overwhelmed. It's only 9am my time, and I already feel like I'm a little behind because I get stuck in some of the minutia, right?

Answering some of the questions that may not be the highest priority, but they're easy to solve for. So then you get in. I find myself getting into that pattern of just quick solves. And then next thing you know, I haven't had breakfast yet and I need to do that. And then I wonder where time has gone. But I also recognize that some of those quick hit things are things that I just need to get off my plate. So I'm celebrating that those are done. So today on Monday, I wanted to talk about networking.

When I say that word, how does it make you feel? Now I will have to. I'll laugh at this as I tell you this story. So I used to run a networking event for women for about eight years. And when I say it was for women, I would have a lot of guys in my network that thought my events were really cool because I would bring in speakers, different speakers, and they would be like, well, I want to come. And I'd be like, okay. But it's mostly women, so just know that. And so every once in a while, I'd get a few guys that would come on into the events that were good friends of mine or good colleagues of mine because they wanted to experience the events.

And I like to name things. Usually I can't start something unless I have a name for it first. I don't know why it Just gives me a sense of purpose. So I talked last week about purpose and passion, and I'll bring that forward again. But when I name something, it kind of puts that stake in the ground, and then I can move forward with it. Good morning, Ali. How you doing today, sweetie? Good to see you on the bike tomorrow morning. Can't wait. So if you're just joining in, I am talking a little bit today about networking, and I'm going to explain why.

I used to, a long time ago, as I mentioned, host these networking events for women. It was about. I did them for about eight years, and it was a hobby of mine at a local restaurant that would give me, like, an entire space. I'd buy $5 gift cards for everybody that attended, and they could apply it towards meals or whatever. So it was a way for me to host a really inexpensive event, allow people to get food from the restaurant, whatever they wanted versus something I might come up. And I would have a speaker.

We would do some. An activity. I would have little, I don't know, door prizes for everybody. It was really fun. And after eight years, I kind of got tired. But mostly I was going back to school, and I worked full time, and so I didn't have the space to do all of it. So this last week, I got invited to a networking event. And to be honest, I had gone to many over the years, and I kind of just got tired of going to the events. I got tired of the having to have my elevator speech of what I do, because I continuously evolve in what I do.

I am a serial entrepreneur. So at any given point in time, when somebody asked me what I'm doing, my answer could change week by week or month by month. And so they kind of got to be a little overwhelming. And then we hit a blackout period, right where we couldn't go network and be in person and do events. And so that became different. So I would host events for, at the time, our Cycle Bar community, and I would make virtual events just to help people stay connected. But what I've discovered is I really love bringing people together, and I do it differently now.

I don't necessarily host networking events, but I bring people together in different ways. So this last week, I got invited to a networking event, and I'm not gonna lie, I rolled my eyes a little bit, and I was like, I don't know if I want to do this. It's kind of schmoozy. And I like things to just have a little more purpose and meaning. But I really like the ladies that Were putting it on. They came to my sound bath. They were so excited that I was coming to their event. And so I. I went and I walked in and I just had that feeling.

Right. I saw all of these people and it. And it's not even that I'm shy. I'm not. I wouldn't necessarily. Hi, Ray. Ray. I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a shy person, but when I go into networking events, I am a little bit cautious because one, I can sometimes have a big personality. I don't always. And two, depending on what the group is, will dictate a little bit about which entrepreneurial venture I might share. Because I find that if I share all the things that I do, that can be overwhelming for people, and that's not my goal, or it can be intimidating, and that's not my goal.

You either. My goal is just to be authentic. And most of the time, I want to help people. So I went to this event, and this lady that was running it, I felt like she was a lot like me. When I started my event a long time ago, and I mentioned that I like to name things. I used to call my events network Buzz, like Bu Z Z. Because I wanted people to have the buzz of an energy. And when you think about bees that they're curating and they're pollinating. And so I always wanted to be planting the seeds.

And so this lady did what I did at my very first event that I hosted. She showed up. She stood up on a couch, or I stood up on a chair, did something to get everybody's attention, and then gave a little speech about why this event was important to her. And I had so much empathy in that moment for her because this was her first. Her first event, and she was really proud to bring people into their space. And she was so excited to have. It looked like probably 25 women come together to talk about their work and their businesses.

And it really did take me back to many years ago when I started my first ever networking event. I wanted to help women be able to talk about what they do and feel strong and calm, confident about what they do. But I also wanted to create a space where women could celebrate who they were in that moment and not be intimidated by what the work is that other people do and to celebrate their strengths. And this individual, her name is Madeline, she did the same thing. And it was really, actually beautiful to be a part of.

So while I was a little, like, not nervous, but uncertain walking into a networking event, because sometimes we all know they can be a Little schmoozy. And there's always going to be that person that's trying to sell you on their business. And I like going into things that feel more collaborative. And then we did speed networking and that is the one thing I'm not going to lie, I dread because they want you in 30 seconds to talk about all you do and then you swap business cards and you move on. And while it's not always my favorite thing to do, because I love having a rich conversation with a person and I don't always want to jump off.

And so I, I admittedly was like, okay, here we go. And I had my cards and I have two different business cards because I have, I have three different businesses. One of them I just don't have cards for. And so depending on and I let them go first, I almost always, when possible let the other person go first. So then I knew which, which hat would be best for me to share with them. And I met some lovely people and I walked out of the event and I emailed two people while I was sitting in my car. So I would follow up right away with two people that I knew I wanted to do something with.

One was getting a massage. Hopefully you can still hear me. One person I wanted to get a massage from, she is a masseuse and one person I wanted to connect with because I have a new idea and I need a new website for my new idea. So I followed up right away. But what I walked away with was a fond remembering that networking is important and it can be really fun. So when I say that to you on here, how many of you like to go to networking events? And when I even say that word, what does that feel like in your body?

In my body, when I say networking, I kind of go. And I'm honest about it, I'm not gonna lie. But I'll do it because sometimes it's really important. I do go to a lot of events and I host a lot of events, which means that in my head I'm really picky about what I choose to go and sometimes I need to just allow myself to participate. Networking ally makes you nervous. If you are willing to share, if you don't mind adding why it makes you nervous, I'd love to hear that. But it can be, it can be overwhelming walking into a space where we're walking by ourselves and we don't know a lot of people.

It can be nerve wracking. It can cause us to question what is our value? What do I have to offer that anybody Here might want to receive, right? It gives us a moment of pause and sometimes we walk in with self doubt. Why do we do that now? Having and creating meaningful connections, that's my ways to, to flip the script a little bit. I like to be really intentional and create meaningful connections. I feel awkward. I don't know how to say how I fit in. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing, Ally.

I really appreciate you. It's exactly that, right? But think about it. If we walk into event with 30 people and everyone walks in, or let's say 50% of those people, so 15 other people are walking in feeling awkward and they don't know how they fit, then by default we already fit because we are experiencing something same or similar to other people that have walked through that door. Now, I guarantee you at the event that I went to this last Friday, that over half the people just didn't know how they fit either.

I could hear it as I could hear it in the conversation. I watched other people as they stayed in the corner and maybe went to the snacks first. But finding spaces that can make us uncomfortable, it's beautiful because what it does is it allows us to stretch and grow. If you think about it from a career standpoint or career transition standpoint, getting your name out there is really important. When I started my networking event all those years ago, I did it because I worked at a really big company.

You may have heard it, it's called Best Buy. And I was part of a women's leadership group. And I discovered that there were so many people that didn't know how to talk about what they do or what they were passionate about. So when I started my networking events, I invited a lot of people that I worked with at Best Buy. But then I had invited a bunch of people that I knew from tennis and I knew from volleyball. I knew from other jobs that I had worked at and some places that I had volunteered. And I brought them together intentionally and I invited a kind of a particular group of people because I wanted to make it easy for everybody.

Because going to these events are not easy. But what I discovered when I worked at Best Buy was, and what gave me an aha moment is at that time, so many people had worked at Best buy for over 10 years. So somewhere between 10 and 20 years, I think at the time I was maybe at 4 or 5. And when I left there, I probably had worked there for about seven or eight years total. But the only people that these people knew were people that they worked with at Best Buy. And that caused me to have a little bit of an alarm.

And not like a red flag, maybe, maybe alarm, maybe it would be like a yellow flag. Because what was happening is at the time and all organizations, they go through layoffs. And these people didn't know. These amazing, strong, beautiful women that I knew, didn't have or didn't know what their brand was. They didn't know how to share what their jobs were. And I wanted to create a safe space so that we could talk about what we do. Because if somebody got laid off or let go, they might not have a network outside of Best Buy.

Keeping that network at Best Buy is also really important because people will move on to different jobs, but staying in touch with them can be really hard. So I started this whole series around networking and then building a personal brand and identifying what our strengths were. And I started teaching all these different workshops because people kind of lost track of how to stay connected from a business perspective. And at the end of the day, it's really important that we can have a little speech about who we are and what we do.

So while I might be hit or miss on going to networking events, the act of connecting and having a solid connection point is really important. So whether it's attending a networking event, setting up a lunch with somebody you haven't talked to in a really long time, or a coffee date, creating a meaningful connection opportunity can single handedly be one of the best things that you can do for you as it relates to your career, as it relates to getting promotions, as it relates to maybe making an internal move in your organization or identifying a mentor.

So the word networking to me kind of says the same thing to. It might say to all of you. It kind of gives me a little bit of the ew, but it reminds me how important it is that connections are. And if you approach an event, hi, Major is here today too. If you approach a networking event or you approach with a plan, making meaningful connections, establishing those connections, maybe going to the museum with someone that you hardly know but you or you know in one way, but maybe you'd like to get to know them in a different way.

And that could be a fun experience to create a deeper connection. Find it, do it. Because at the end of the day, no matter what happens next, connections matter. Human connections matter. And you have a beautiful story to share, you have a beautiful connection to make because you have history, you have learnings, you have curiosities, you have experiences, you have work experiences. So make those connections. Schedule that lunch schedule that coffee date, reach out to that boss, that old mentor, that old colleague that maybe moved into a new company and you don't see them every day anymore or new department or division.

Find those connections and let's maybe cross out that word networking. And let's insert creating meaningful connections. So my invitation to you this week and my invitation to you by the end of today. What is one or two who are one or two people that you can schedule meaningful connection with in the next two weeks or within the next month? So take the action today to identify a meaningful connection to and take the action today to send them an email or a text message and say, hey, let's connect.

And maybe you have a purpose. Maybe you want to explore new job possibilities. Maybe you just want to rekindle a relationship that meant something, that is important to keep nurtured. So today is about crossing out the networking, changing the story and creating meaningful connections. Let me know how it goes. Hope you have the best day. I'll see you all soon. Ally, I'll see you on the bike. Have the best day.