Change Your Scenery

This does not mean moving, it just means changing one thing about your routine or status quo. Get out of your networking comfort zone. Go somewhere different––take a day trip to a museum, volunteer at a hospital, take a class on something that intrigues you yet is not in your “core business” life. Observe and connect with the other people you meet along the way. You never know what you’ll learn from each and every walk of life, yet you will be enriched for it and have more collections in your "small talk" networking toolkit.

Start "Client-Telling"

Take five of your clients, contacts, friends or associates to lunch. Introduce each to the other and create connections for the pure synergy of having other bright and interesting people meet each other. What you invest in this “event” will come back to you many times over the years––with all types of surprising and interesting opportunities.

I always think of the people first and how they might learn something from the others there, then what they will contribute by being there. Whenever I do this, it is fun, extremely interactive, rewarding, and is a wonderful way for me to continually nurture my network.