How Authenticity Helps You Build A Professional Community From Scratch?

Bonjour, my name is Tiph’ le Roux and I have questions.

Have you ever moved to a new city, a new country and wondered… “How the hell am I supposed to build a professional network here? I don’t know anyone! No one knows me!”

Or… Perhaps you’ve recently understood the power of authentic networking and now you’re eager to know where and how to actually start doing it.

Either way my friends, please bear with me as I’m about to share some actionable tips with you which will actually help you get started!

As a country opener, off from Paris I went — with a spring in my step all ready to open up shop for Toucan (a French-based Dataviz company) in a brand new Bostonian market. This was ten months ago. I was fully aware that I would be doing so as a virtual nobody…a foreign nobody in fact who nevertheless had to establish operations right from the ground up. It became apparent to me rather quickly that a question needed to be answered:

How do I grow a new business as a nobody? In Boston, the land of connections?

Now I could have spent weeks ruminating, reading online articles in a vain quest to find answers while driving myself crazy in the process. That wasn’t sustainable or, indeed, particularly interesting to me. Ok: Newbie in town, really important that I at least start acquainting myself with making acquaintances.

I had to talk to people.

Therefore I decided to spare myself hours of research online and instead seek help from any startup enthusiast willing to grab a coffee with me for a few minutes. What was there to lose, after all? The worst outcome I might face: “No, sorry, I’m just too busy right now.”.

Not exactly the end of the world.

My dear readers…I simply can’t express how amazed I was, astonished even, by the amount of people actually willing to make time for me and sit down to share advice and social opportunity: Salespersons, product executives, CEOs…some of them even gladly made some intros for me to potential buyers and ‘dot connectors’.

After the first three weeks in Boston, I realised how important having a network was going to be. I decided to up my game. I started attending networking events, actively going out to engage with new communities for both personal and professional socialization. What’s resulted is my being able to offer you two key takeaways:

• You are NEVER alone.
• Growing your company in a new place is inextricably linked to you going from nobody to somebody.

I repeat…

• You are NEVER alone.
• Growing your company in a new place is fundamentally predicated on you building rapport, establishing trust, and thus turning from nobody to somebody.

Could you, I wonder, spot the link between those two statements?

One word. Six letters.

PEOPLE.

People buy from people. People are your best advocates.

This wisdom which I leaned into granted me the following awareness: It’s crystal clear that my efforts would not be successful were I simply to limit myself to creating a Toucan-friendly community. It was instead about building, in addition to that and as a value-add, an independent supportive community that will help to empower me to open doors. To turn the key, turn the page, and essentially turn away from thinking in terms of the impossible.

All things are possible through the power of connection.

Fast forward to now. 10 months post-voyage of discovery. I want to share with you a few additional tips I’ve learned along the way in order to help you start doing what I did if you happen to be in the same predicament.

The tips themselves however are such that I’m confident in their applicability for multiple types of professionals: from new startup founders to country openers, even a recent transplant looking to enter the game of networking for the very first time.

So, take a breath…sit tight…and get ready to rock n roll!

1) Dare To Ask For Help

We’re all different when it comes to going out there to meet people. I get it. Being a social animal is not for everybody. That being said, I can assure you that asking someone for a coffee/call for the right reasons, such as asking for help, is not as scary as it sounds. Very often, people you will ask this of, say in the Boston startup community if we use my experience as an example, may very well be quite happy to help as most of them have been in your shoes — especially among the bootstrapped founders and those further along in their journey who “remember those days”.

Some may even feel it to be their duty to “pay it forward”.

Where To Start ?

Good question! Here are a few places:

• Co-Working Spaces: If you work in a co-working space, start asking your closest fellow community members for advice or maybe ask the community manager to leave a note in the location’s online chat portal.
• Social Networking Groups/Apps: This option is particularly intriguing and potentially appealing for those of you who might struggle with making the first move. I must tell you that there are tons of groups you can gain entry to operating on Facebook, Linkedin, with layers of relevancy and relatability for you based on things like job, network, industry, city, community (in general), even gender-focused. If you’re feeling adventurous, some apps like Shapr offer the occasional chance at making a good connection…use at your discretion!
• Follow The Leaders: Make sure to keep up with what the real influencers and community builders are up to, those gallant active professionals who sometimes congregate on Linkedin and Twitter. If you want to get tactical, consider looking at posts tagged under specific hashtags such as #startupboston, #womeninsales, for example. The idea behind getting granular like this is that such a specified search approach will more easily enable you to spot the right dots to connect — industry hotshots, event managers, all of these can be a great source of assistance as they tend to share a stream of relevant events. The more you do this, the easier it becomes to identify and acquire the right networking spots to go to (and, indeed, the ones you’d do best to avoid).
• Once you’ve found the right places to be for the right reasons, go to them! Use whatever tools at your disposal, in addition to human-based intel, and for this I might recommend Meetup, Eventbrite, and rarely Facebook Events (the latter tend to be less organized).

These are good places to start building community.

But wait! Hold on…

Before moving on to the next bit of advice, here’s a quick Tiph’s Tip we might refer to as Tiph’s Golden Rule:

To make things 10X easier, ask each person you meet up with to open the next door for you

This means: Build the bridge of connection through good intention…since, by asking this person to help you, you are also helping them in their overall professional/social development.

The door to open may be an introduction, a recommendation, an additional conversation, there’s a level of variability here but the principle remains the same.

Take the leap of faith, don’t be afraid to ask for help, I promise you: It gets so much easier once you do it once!

2) Build Genuine Connections

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

I wonder whether or not my astute readers have noticed something happening in this article. A pattern of sorts. A matter of word choice. You see I’ve purposely decided to use the word “community” a lot more than “network” throughout the course of this article.

Admittedly in examining the difference between the two, you may find several distinct definitions. The main difference for me however is found in the way you approach relationship building and nurturing as a whole.

Authenticity

This is where relationship-building and nurturing find their nucleus and, therefore, possess a results-generating powerhouse. Bear in mind the following: When building a community, it’s not just about coming to a person pitching your product, service or solution and figuring out in 5 minutes or less whether or not you can do business with them.

In fact, if you do this, you’re essentially killing the very possibility of there being a relationship…you’ve burned the ground and salted the earth. Why not test the waters, wait it out, see what happens? Be open-minded and you may find that the doors open even easier and faster than they did before.

Let’s not be impatient even if, and I emphasize, it’s part of your job to execute and move things forward as fast as possible.

Bear in mind that, in walking this fine line of prospecting — doing the prospector’s dance as it were, you may have to let go of your assumptions and you’ll dance much freer, faster, and without as much constraints.

Remember, please, that it is all about PEOPLE. People talk with one another.

So, if you’re a good connector and first-class in your manners, they’ll compliment you. If not…yikes. Therefore for each person you interact with, the question becomes not whether or not a connection can help you right now but really:

How can you make sure THEY remember YOU?

More importantly: How can you make them want to talk about you (and your company) to others?

For instance a few weeks ago, I was invited to represent Toucan Toco at SHEConnects — a Venture Cafe event series. It was a virtual networking event and I was assigned a virtual table with up to 5 attendees. One of the questions I was asked struck me as curious: “Oh…I thought this was about demoing a product?”

I replied: “Yes, it is about demoing a product, but what’s the point of that if I don’t get to know who I’m talking to, and if they don’t get to know me, how can we build trust and establish understanding?”.

He looked quite surprised as I said this, but later smiled and came out of his shell…even going so far as to share some stories with us.

It was by getting to know my fellow attendees that genuine connections could, even remotely, be warmly and genuinely formed. Toucan’s product demo could be tailored to their tastes and needs.

More importantly? We laughed.

Now the sale might or might not take place in future, but at least they will remember how a conversation with Tiph from Toucan made them feel. We connected through Linkedin, and agreed to catch up in a few weeks.

Tadam: Here we go — part of my network, and perhaps the community eventually as well.

Always focus on the experience, make they remember how doing business with and working with you will cause them to feel.

Delight them, my friends, delight them.

3) Nurture Your Community.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” -CEO, Amazon

As mentioned previously, people talk.

Since we know this to be a matter of course, we should be aware of the imperative to make sure they say good things about us. Build reputational capital and guard it jealously. This affects your company’s image. This affects everything.

The good news: You don’t have to build a master plan to nurture. All you have to do is be your authentic self, be consistent in your authenticity with people.

Additional Tiph Tips:

• Create a spreadsheet with your contact information.

I’m not that great at remembering people’s names over time — especially if it’s a brief encounter. If you’re like me, this will help you keep track of your connections and contacts’ history over time.

Believe me, when you start, it seems very easy to keep track of a few dozens of people. But before you know it, your connections will grow exponentially and you don’t want to be that person thinking — I wish I applied Tiph’s advice weeks ago!

Therefore, make sure to create a spreadsheet (or use your own personal CRM system If you go fancy) and write every person’s information: names, emails, phone number, context about how you met that person. As you grow your circle of acquaintances, professional connections… this will be super helpful!

• Write down 2–3 facts about them

What personal matter, fun fact did they share with you? This is key and really helpful when you nurture relationships. For instance, someone might tell you she is a fan of the local soccer team. Perfect for you! Next time you want to catch up with her, it will be easy to start the conversation by mentioning the score of that soccer team’s last game!

• Genuinely Ask how they are doing

We are human beings.

Let’s not forget we all have ups and down. I feel it is very powerful to show empathy with your community. By that, I am not referring to the typical coffee morning conversation “Hey how are you doin’?” Clearly the person who asks doesn’t even care about the answer in that case.

No, I mean a genuine enquiry to figure out how the person is doing personally and/or professionally. This is even more true now with this Covid19 situation. Showing empathy is critical to build deep connections and boost your brand image.

• Be consistent and regular

Nurturing never stops.

Creating long lasting relationships requires time, commitment and regularity. Don’t think professional relationships are any different from personal ones. If you talk to a professional connection once or twice and then go radio silent for months, guess what happens? They will forget about you!

Think of turning a network into a community to be as demanding as it would be for you to turn an acquaintance into a friend. What does it take for that person to invite you to her next intimate birthday party?

Again, let’s keep it simple

Once you have created that contact spreadsheet, set up regular calendar alerts, phone reminders or CRM notifications (for the fancier ones ha!) to remind you to get back in touch with your network. Start with monthly Reminders and as you go overtime, you will quickly understand who are the people you should invest more time on!

So what should you remember from this article?

All in all, if I had to stick with 3 words to sum up how to successfully build a community from scratch, it would be:

Authenticity, Patience and Regularity.

It doesn’t matter where you are at, it is never too late to start building your community. Find the grit to do that first move, be genuine in your interactions and nurture them. At first, it will seem very hard to believe you can become slowly a somebody, but as you keep doing it, you will surprise yourself!

One of the best reward is meeting someone new and hear that person saying “Oh, I heard one of my contacts talking about you/your company the other day!”

I promise, if you apply all of the above, it will happen. Just be patient. After all,

Rome hasn’t been built in one day!

I hope this was useful, please don’t hesitate to add comments and suggest tips on how you build your own community to help others especially in this new “normal” we are facing now :)