Keeping Track of All the Things at a Virtual Networking Event

Hello and welcome once again to the Guy Who Knows A Guy podcast as we count down to the first JV Connect in December 2023. Of course, if you're listening to this later, it's still relevant because there's another JV Connect coming up every three months. JV Connect is not the kind of thing you go to once a, ah, I've been there. It's kind of like saying, ah, I brushed my teeth once, I don't have to do it again. You do it again and again, because you always need to be meeting new, great people. And JVConnect is the place to do that. So, every week I'm sharing with you some tips that you can use at this event and any event. But specifically, this event is optimized to work with the way I teach networking. So if you really wanted to put this to use, Go to jv connect. com. Be sure to register and join us and put to work what I'm about to teach you. So what am I about to teach you? I asked around, so what do you guys need to know? And one person asked, how do I keep track of everything going on on a virtual event? There's so much going on. There's so many people, there's so much talking, so much going on in the chat. How do I keep track of all of it? So I don't leave and say, whew, that was overwhelming. And now what? So first. As always, begin with the end of mind. Why are you there? You're there because you want to make connections. You're not attending just to have fun, although it's gonna be fun. You're not attending just to meet people, although you're gonna meet people. You're attending the payoff from this. The score, the KPI, Key Performance Indicator, is booked appointments with great people. that you want to connect with. Now, this could be potential joint venture partners, it could be prospects, but that's not really what you go to a networking event looking for. It could be possible mentors, it could be possible partners like collaboration partners, or even accountability partners. It could be someone, you know, you maybe gotta coach each other, support each other, so you're doing something similar. Someone to share ideas with, create a little mini two person mastermind. You know, know what you're trying to find. Imagine that there's a networking genie there who will say, What is your wish? I will give you any introduction you want. And you can make an introduction, you can make a wish, to the networking genie, and they will give you whatever you ask for. There's going to be hundreds of people there. So you want to know what you want. Now, now you know what you want. So you're going to be going into the rooms, looking for those people. And once you're in there, a lot of things are going to be happening. A lot of people introduce themselves, you're going to hear a lot of intros, you're going to hear a lot of things going on. A lot of these rooms, there's going to be some sort of activity or task or challenge. You're going to have to see how people interact. It won't just be the, you know, introduction. Yeah, you know how, what I do is, and I do this, and here's what I'm looking for. Yeah, you'll have that, but you'll also have a breakout, maybe we're building a giveaway, or a breakout where people are, are, the task is to build collaborative programs, build programs together. And people say, well, I have this asset and I have this giveaway and I can teach this. I could also teach this. I also have this that I could add to someone else's program, but I don't market it primarily. So, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it gives you the opportunity to learn all kinds of things about them. And here's the thing. The first thing you want to be doing is keep an eye on the chat. The chat is going to be kind of the, the business end. So the conversation, the video, the audio, that's the main channel, but the chat is the secondary channel to put information in. So you want to be keeping an eye, especially for private messages, because if you introduce yourself and you say something compelling and interesting, and somebody wants to meet with you, they're going to shoot their calendar link over in a private message. in the chat. So don't ignore that. I do also recommend people put their LinkedIn in the chat, because if they can't find you in the chat, if you missed their message, they may reach out to you on LinkedIn. It's easy, it's easier than email, because you can just go on LinkedIn, hit a connection request, and in that note say, hey, saw you at JV Connect, wanted to connect, here's my calendar link, let's hook up. Easy peasy. One click as opposed to email you have to go to their email and then oh look I have all these emails to read they get distracted So I I do recommend that but pay attention to the chat as well as you can And side note don't litter the chat don't increase the noise What you drop in the chat should be very simple, very concise. Keep in mind, people are looking at this chat while they're listening to people talk. And while they're trying to parse their introductions and things like that. So if you have a page long introduction, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. For 27 years, we have been in the business of helping all these people. And here's a link, and here's an event, and here's some other stuff, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no one's reading that. Put a list. You know, one sentence, maybe two, who you are, why you're interesting, LinkedIn, website, email address, phone number, calendar link, why you should reach me, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, bullet points that people can consume while listening, and it really shouldn't be more than 10, maybe 15 lines. If it's paragraphs, it's too long, and it's cluttering the chat, and it's not useful, nobody's gonna read it. Probably, because nobody goes back to the chat and reads it, which I'll get to in a second. But, do be paying attention, look for those messages. If you're doing it right, people are sending you messages to connect. That's how you win. And, send other people messages. You're going to send them messages to engage. Now, I don't keep track, for the most part, as I go, of what's going on when I go to an event like this. There's a fire hose, I put my bucket up, I try to catch someone. I'm not trying to catch every single person, because I'm not super organized. If you are super organized, Awesome. Fantastic. Have a notepad. Have a place to copy notes to. Have an open notepad file. You know, or a Google Sheet or whatever it might be. But if you don't have any of that, no problem. Just pay attention to the chat. Calendar link comes in. Hit the button to open that up. And so you're ready for it. And the way the event is set up... There's going to be breakout rooms, where kind of the action happens. And then you come out, there's a little bit of education. There might be a sponsor, there might be a a break. Sometimes you do breaks. There might be, we're gonna teach you something, or talk about something, or, or whatever. And, yes, I'd like you to pay attention to that. That's good stuff to do. But that's also an okay time to go to that calendar link that you just got. And book a time, right? That's an okay time to, to clean up some of this stuff. It's an okay time to reach out to some of these people that you have talked to in the chat. You don't have to keep track of everything. Just get it done. Get it done right there. It's built for you to be able to do that. And that's one of the great things about this not being an enrollment event. This is an enrollment event? I need to hold your attention on me throughout the entire event. I don't want you going over, booking appointments, doing all that stuff. No, I need your eyes on me. This is an enrollment event. I win if you win. I win because you book a bunch of calls, because you connect with the right people, because you come out satisfied saying this event has been awesome. I've got to buy another ticket right now. I've got to go to the next one. I've got to tell my friends. So, if that means you're not paying attention to me while I'm sharing things in between breakouts, that's totally okay. If you don't have anything to do, pay attention. I might have something useful. We've got some really smart people sharing stuff. We just had The folks from InfiniteList, they're a done for you giveaway program. So, you know, if you've heard about giveaways as a list building tool, they do all the work for you, you just have to send out a couple emails. It's really cool. They're going to be coming in talking about giveaways, just sign them up, and some other things like that. But, what? Me get distracted? Who? Yes. Okay, so, as I said you are going to want to have a place to copy notes to. Because sometimes it's not as simple as a calendar link, sometimes you want to... Grab someone's info and copy it down. Sometimes they don't give you a calendar link, maybe there's just an email address, or LinkedIn, or whatever. You're gonna get to it later. Copy those things over in real time. Do not assume You'll just save the chat. Now you can save the chat. That's totally cool. If you haven't done it already, there is a setting in Zoom that lets you automatically save every chat from every meeting. I recommend you set that to being on. They're not very big files and it avoids that, Oh, I forgot to save the chat. So definitely do that. And for the love of God, log in from a computer. Do not try to log in from a phone. You want to log in from a phone? Fine. Don't complain about not having the chat, and don't ask people for the chat. If you're logging in from a phone, you're sitting in the balcony and you're watching. Alright? You're not fully engaged in the event. It's fine, you gotta do what you gotta do. But I'd come with the right equipment. You know, you don't go to an event without dressing up properly. Don't come to a virtual event without being on the right Technology, right? That's just my, my little rant there. Again, I'm not gonna stop you. You wanna be on your phone? Be on your phone. I don't care. But it's gonna be much, much harder to communicate with people if you are not on a laptop, desktop device. So, keep place ready to take notes. Copy those over, if you need to, you know, cut and paste, do that kind of thing. What Kendra recommended, what she says she does, is she has a Google Sheet ready. So, she has a, she already has the header set up for what she's going to want to keep track of. And if she sees something interesting, she puts that information right there in the Google Sheet. And then afterwards, she can follow up by going down the sheet. She's my VA, she creates orders, she's really good at that order thing. Me? Not so much. So, if you are one of those orderly people, have a Google Sheet, or a notepad, or something ready to copy content into, so you're ready to follow up when you have a moment. If you're like me, and you're like, ah, I don't need more stuff to follow up with, that's too much work. No problem. Just do it right then and there, calendar link, bam. See someone you want to meet? Shoot them your calendar link. BAM! Your calendar link should have questions. I believe I've talked about this in a previous episode or somewhere else. I know I talk about this all the time. Your calendar link should have questions. Questions should include, Where did we meet? Don't start your conversation that you have in February because you met so many people saying, Where did we meet again? Waste of time. One question, where do we meet? Another one, who is your ideal introduction? Who would you most likely be introduced to? That's a great one. Something like, what are you working on right now? Or what's your biggest frustration in your business? Or anything in that space that gives you that understanding. You know, questions like that. And you can also use this. I, on mine, have a question that says, Can I add you to my email community? And most people will say yes. Now you're growing your list. They can always unsubscribe if they want to. Now don't do this if your list is one of those pitchy, spammy lists. You don't want your network or partners on there. But if your list is high quality, valuable content that people like getting, then yeah, ask questions. Can I add you to my community? A lot are going to say yes, they're going to get it, they're going to love you. If you send emails like I do. So, that's, that's kind of my tip, a couple tips for keeping track of everything. And the biggest thing, don't worry, don't worry about it. You're not going to catch everything. You're not going to get every opportunity. This is an abundant space. You're going to be surrounded by dozens or hundreds of people. There might be a hundred people who would be good for you to meet with. Maybe you're going to follow up with 20, of them. That's awesome. That's 40 follow ups. How great is that? Who cares about the 60 you didn't get? Think about the 40 you did get. And all the 60 you missed? Come back in March. Come back in June. Come back in September. You can meet them then. You only have so much time to follow up. So don't worry about, Oh, I missed something. Oh, I missed a follow up. I missed a calendar. Don't worry about it. If it's meant to be, you'll see them in another breakout room. Entrepreneur'd happened because I met Laura Lake in a big breakout room and we sort of connected but didn't really gel. And then we made each other another breakout room where she was there and Eli Delaney was there and a few other people and we started talking about entrepreneur and we're like, Oh, this would be great. We should do this. And then, we did a one on one, there's going to be a couple, we're going to do that, a couple speed, speed networking one on ones. And there I was with Laura Lake, and I was like, we got a new entrepreneur. We do, we got to do it. And it was a year later when the stars aligned, and we were able to actually put that together, and yes, there will be another entrepreneur next year. But, it was meant to be, so it happened. Plenty of people at the event I didn't end up connecting with, wasn't meant to be, didn't happen. It is what it is. You know, so don't stress out, don't freak out. If you come out with, 10 good, 5 good connections. If you spend 2 days and come up with 5 really good connections, that's a good investment of your time. 10, that's a really good investment of your time, for, for that much time. Think about any networking event you've gone to, any hour or 90 minute networking event, how many really good connections did you come out with? Usually it's 1, maybe 2, 3 if you're lucky. So if you go to a 14 hour event, and you come out with 30 connections, That's over to an hour pretty solid if you come out with 45 even better But pretty solid pretty solid investment time plus you're gonna. You know learn some stuff You're gonna get around some people you're gonna be seen by people you'll see and be seen so a lot of good stuff happening There if you are not yet registered for JV connect You should get on that because the rates gonna be going up somewhat soon. It's going up regularly It's a a ramping rate, so it's not one of those like there's no early bird in regular. Nope 30, 50, 70, 90, 110, 130, 150, depending on when you get it. And I don't know when you're listening. So I mean, I can tell you the prices now, but go to JV dash connect. com. When you go there, hit the register button and that will give you the details on the pricing. So I look forward to seeing you at the next JV connect. Whenever you're listening to this, hopefully you've found this valuable. If you have maybe share it with a friend, tell someone about it. And if you don't know, I do a daily motivational podcast called morning motivation. So search wherever you listen to podcasts for Morning Motivation by Michael Whitehouse. It's really gotten a lot of traction, so check it out. You might like it. A lot of other people do. And be sure to check out our next episode with another great interview. Do I know which one it is? No. But you probably do, because you've got the podcast list in front of you. So, check that out. We've got some awesome interviews this season, and, of course, awesome solo content. And do share it with your friends. This is Michael Whitehouse, the guy who knows a guy. You are the listener, I am the podcaster, and hopefully you learned something. See you in the next episode.