Do you struggle to make real connections for your business? Do you panic when it comes to starting a conversation with a stranger at a networking event? You’re not alone.
Joining me on the podcast to talk about building authentic relationships is Alexis Dean, founder of the Dovetail Community of Woman Entrepreneurs. Dovetail has a couple of main groups of entrepreneurs that they work with. They have their women on the rise, which is women who are growing and scaling their businesses, typically anywhere from six figures up to seven figures. And then they have their Dovetail summit ladies who are more experienced business owners and typically generating seven figures plus annual revenue. Alexis also owns a corporate team building and training business that she has had for about six and a half years. Needless to say, Alexis has built many authentic relationships over the years.
By building authentic relationships you can market and grow your business without needing a huge budget to do it. Alexis has done this. In fact, a lot of what Alexis does is about relationship building.
Growing your business through relationship building
It’s always been really important for Alexis to build relationships and to market her businesses in a genuine way because she doesn’t know how to do it any other way. She didn’t know how to do corporate sales or mass market sales or anything like that. She knew how to build relationships and how to create friendships with people.
So, in her first business, in corporate training, she didn’t have many connections at big companies, but she had a couple. And so she would take people out to lunch, and take them for coffee, not to pick their brain, but to get to know them and get to know what their challenges were and what the gaps were that they were seeing in their industry, in their office or in their world.
Building relationships helped Alexis get some of her first big clients in that business. She started working with big banks and big corporations when she hadn't had those relationships before. It came from one-by-one, befriending people at the organization.
It didn't take doing anything that didn't ever feel natural to do to grow that business. And the company she worked for ended up working and still do work with some of the biggest banks. And that's all just through Alexis building real relationships with people and putting herself out there.
Overcoming the awkwardness
Asking strangers for lunch can feel awkward and oftentimes they will wonder, “what do you really want?” So, sometimes it's just bringing in coffee or showing up to do something small with them.
This is also how Alexis started Dovetail. For the community, for the camp and for the first summit, she started by wanting to do it on weekends and knew she wanted just 25 ladies, but wasn’t sure how to find 25 really great women entrepreneurs when she only knew a couple. So, she thought, who would she really want to hang out with for the weekend? She had five women and called them her pillar woman and went at them in a few different ways. She was always looking for ways to build genuine connection and build real relationships.
Building genuine connection
She found out if they had a particular hobby or interest or something and look for ways to connect on that. But, aside from that they would also be a great entrepreneur and so she would be somebody Alexis was really interested in making that connection with. And once you connect with those people, they're more than willing to introduce you to other people that could be potential clients or community members or anything.
Using social media to maintain relationships
Social media is important in fostering relationships. It's a thing that you can do to grow your brand and get out there, but somehow it's gotten to the point where people think that it's the magic bullet and it's a thing you have to do and it's the way you have to do things. So before business owners think they can do anything else, they feel like they need to go out and do all of the Twitter and the Instagram, the Facebook, the blog, podcast, all the things. But, when many business owners are asked if they have personally reached out to people to connect, often the answer is no. Find the relationships, finesse them and then maintain the relationship through social media.
Making connections and building relationships is essential in growing a business. Yes, it takes a bit of finessing and definitely a lot of practice. But with a bit of work you can definitely finesse your way into real relationships.
Connecting beyond Business Cards
Do you remember when business owners (and some still do) would go around with their business cards and it seemed like the goal was to hand out as many business cards as possible? But then, we would hand out stacks of business cards and nobody ever connected with anybody ever again. It was a game of see how many business cards you could hand out and see how many you could get, but no one would ever connect.
Now, we can ask if they would like to connect on LinkedIn or are you an Instagram person or Facebook person? And right then and there get on social media and connect. Send them a quick note and say, “Hey, it was great to meet you at this event or that event.” And it immediately establishes contact because then when they go check their phone, they're going to write back to you. And then you have a conversation already started versus a business card that maybe you have to reach out to later and maybe you forget about it and you lose it.
Walking up to a stranger
It can be very intimidating walking up to a stranger and having a conversation. Honestly, it's sometimes just going to be awkward, but you're going to have to walk up to people. Alexis tries to find either where the food is or maybe if there's a fire, even if she’s not drinking alcohol, find a drink of some sort. And then you can ask the person near you, “Oh, what are you having?” And then ease your way into, “Oh, and by the way, my name's Alexis, what's your name?” Finding just that one or two people that you can approach. Alexis tries not to go out to a group of like four or five because it's awkward to interject a group conversation. But if you can find two people, such as a couple of people standing by the food or the drinks.
Sometimes you just have to put yourself in an awkward situation. It's not going to last forever. It’s just a couple of seconds of “this is kind of cringy but I'm going to try to jump in here because I don't want to just stand here.” And you get over it. Eventually you're going to meet someone and usually if you're sitting there by yourself, somebody will come over and talk to you because you're an easy person for them to connect with because you’re not talking to someone.
There are still going to be those awkward times, especially if you're the only new person, but remember everyone has been there. It’s all about not trying to get to know everybody but having some really good intimate conversations.
Sharing an experience
Alexis finds sharing an experience together to be one of the best ways to form a deep connection. So, if it's at a party and they're eating something and you have the same thing and you can talk about it. Or part of what Alexis does at Dovetail is they have these opportunities to do things together, such as doing a craft together. When you’re doing something individually but with other people it can create a connection.
Sometimes Alexis will reach out and let the person know she loves what they’re doing and will ask for a phone call. She gets on the call and learns more about them. She usually goes in with kind of three questions if we are having a longer call or three ideas. And what she wants to learn is what their big vision is for what they're working on. And then she wants to learn about their business and their life.
Sometimes you just end up being friends. You have a nice chat and you love what they're doing and it's good to have that in your back pocket.
When it comes to meeting people and building authentic relationships, Alexis’ advice is to always make horseshoes, not circles. And remember, it’s not always easy and you might see people doing it and they're doing it well, but that is just from lots and lots of practice and putting themselves into awkward situations occasionally. There will be times when the conversation doesn't always flow, but it's always worth it. It's always worth getting out there and connecting with new people and making those friendships.
We're all humans who like to connect with each other. Whether there's somebody making seven figures or six figures or five, we're all just, we're known human beings who like to connect with other people.
Find out more about Alexis and The Dovetail Community at https://www.dovetail.community or if you’re looking to join Lara and Alexia at Dovetail Camp, visit https://campdovetail.ca. Both are great places to find out more about building authentic relationships.
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Podcast editing done by Eric Wellman