Not the belle or beau of the ball? Don’t do well in groups? Are you kind of shy or just hate playing the networking game? You can still be a great networker. The best part is, you don’t have to and shouldn’t change you.

You do have to play by the rules. Networking is a balancing act; give and take. It’s not just about sales or prospecting. Although these can happen.  You can also use it for finding friends, jobs, fun places to go or avoid, and a million other things. Think about it as a combination of a “net” which gathers things in and keeps things out and a lot of hard “work”. Believe me, it doesn’t come easy to extraverts either although it may seem that way.

Rodin's "The Thinker" could have been named "The Introvert". Photo by James Whitesmith.

But you can play to your strengths and get great rewards. What are those? Most introverts I have known are great gathers of information and deep thinkers. When I did a session on Networking for Introverts at SXSW two years ago, I first wondered if anyone would show up. They did and all those introverts made me a true believer in their abilities. This depth means introverts have a lot to give. Most are good observers, intuitive, with great analysis skills. Hard work and thoroughness is central to how they operate. I recommend to every extravert, that they network with at least one introvert.

If you are an introvert, here are three abilities you already have that will make you a successful networker and a valuable member of anyone’s network. They are things you can capitalize on because your energy is focused on concepts and ideas. These are (or should be) highly prized by extraverts.

Number 1: Use your powers of observation and your inquiring mind to collect information that an extravert would find valuable.

Help us do the work. We’re not lazy but we do put our focus elsewhere usually.

We want to know about people and what’s going on because we want to always be in the know ourselves so we can share that with our network of people, We want to know enough about the “how” of things that we don’t appear unprepared or stupid. That doesn’t mean that a good, extraverted networker should steal your thunder and expertise. It does mean that generally, we like to learn. Help us and we’ll help you.

Number 2: Use your analysis skills to listen, read, and prepare for a meeting where your goal is networking.

At that meeting, share your news with the right people who need or want to know this. Not everyone will be open to this, but some will. Watch for them. Also include “Negative Networking” information in what you share. This is not gossip but does provide warnings about potential problems. These can range from things like places to avoid because of bad food or service to issues related to functionality of a product or even integrity of a firm. Extraverts, like everyone else, don’t like to make mistakes or give bad information to their network. That makes them less valuable in their own eyes and others.

I was just interviewed by Patricia Rogers of the Austin Business Journal . Ms. Rogers is the List Director for ABJ, writes the Growth Strategies and does some wonderful  profiles. She asked me a lot of good questions and I learned something about her. She’s from Houston, we share a love of animals especially horses, and, luckily for Austin, she didn’t follow the advice of her uncle to stay out of journalism (he was a journalist in Houston).

One question she didn’t ask was about a scary moment in business. Mine was scary and the most fun. Last March I did a program for SXSW “Networking for Introverts”. Why was I concerned? What if no one showed up? That didn’t happen. As a matter of fact the room was full to overflowing.

I wondered if they would participate. Not good for a speaker when everyone is silent. No worries here either. I found that if you give an introvert an opportunity to talk, they’ll take it. They came up with good comments and questions. It was a blast that I wish I could repeat.

Tomorrow I do this presentation again for Soroptimist International’s South Central Region District meeting. My friend Pat Turner asked me to speak and I could not say no. Pat a  long term friend. She’s also one of the women from the Austin Women in Construction club that, under Mayor Carole Keeton Strayhorn (aka Carole McClellen), built the Lady Bird Lake (aka Town Lake) gazebo that I love to see and visit year round. So, I feel I owe it to Pat because of the beauty she and her colleagues brought to the city.

Am I scared? Not exactly. I don’t have to worry about attendees since they will be captive. I do wonder if they will take the lessons extroverts can learn from introverts and use them to their advantage to improve their clubs. Soroptimist clubs do great work on behalf of women and girls. I hope they go back and look at their membership differently. I hope they will embrace the quiet ones. Not to change them but to see the beauty they bring and the potential they have.

What’s your scariest time in business?

Next month, it will be four years since I became the Business Liaison Chair for Responsible Growth for Northcross (RG4N).

I chose to get involved because I am a business owner, a small business activist and I live and work in the area.

Last night was the VIP opening of the more neighborhood-sized WalMart on Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas. The RG4N board was invited and several of us went including the original President, Paige Hill.

Our efforts to stop the supercenter were not about size as much as about the impact of that size. That impact includes traffic, litter, security, safety issues for those with disabilities, crime, air and water quality. It was also about the impact on locally owned stores that do not fare well with a big box, especially a WalMart, nearby.

This store, while not perfect, does some good things. I look forward to continued dialogue with the store manager, Scott Gray, on behalf of my fellow business owners from the area.

As Jason Meeker, our Vice President and Communications Chair said, RG4N hopes that people will realize that if things are going on that they don’t think are good for the neighborhood, they should voice their concerns. And, if they work together, they can make a difference.

Independent businesses are parts of our neighborhood. We could not have accomplished what we did without Alamo Drafthouse North, Discount Electronics, Encore Music, Genuine Joe’s Coffee, Kids N Cats, Scandinavia Contemporary Design, Thunderbird Coffee, Zingers and others. They did not just locate their businesses in the neighborhood they were actively engaged in what was going on. And these were the names that my fellow neighbors and board members thanked when we were being interviewed by the media.

What should that tell other independently owned businesses? That these businesses made friends for life. Those who live in the neighborhood see that businesses located in the neighborhood care. They are engaged.

It should also tell every owner that the role of business in neighborhoods should be more than giving donations to the local school or scout group. That’s good, but there’s more to do.

You chose that location for your retail or service business. Now choose to be involved in its future.

What can you do?

1. Be a small business activist.
2. Join your local Neighborhood Association or Home Owners Association if you can. There may be several in your area so look around. In Austin, there is a list of all known active associations at the Austin Neighborhood Council. Most have a membership category for businesses.
3. Read the local neighborhood paper, join and participate in the online neighborhood association discussions or at least stay informed by talking to customers, those who live in the neighborhood, and owners of other local businesses.
4. If there is something that will affect your neighbors, get involved. Offer places for them to meet or put out literature.
5. Help recruit other local businesses that might not have heard about what their “community” is trying to do.

This way you give yourself some control over what happens. Besides, independent businesses can do things that chains and larger businesses can’t without getting permission from a corporate office which may or may not understand.

I know you are busy. So am I. This is not too much to ask. Your future is on the line here, too.

So, just do it. You’ll feel like you are part of something special. You will be. You’ll have a special kind of network. One in which there is give and take and people care about people. One that is about more than prospects and sales.

Finally, tell other businesses what you did. Together, you and your neighbors can keep your community the best it can be for everyone. After all, this is your “business neighborhood”, too. What happens to them effects you.

What have you done lately?

There are 7 potential customer types you could have. But you should have only the best, the Platinum Customer. They give you money and a lot more.

If you aren’t satisfied with the value of your current customers, make better choices by setting up a Platinum Profile™ identification system. This is more than just “target” or “niche” marketing. The four parts of a Platinum Profile™ are demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and geography.

The right profiling system will give you a way to improve your sales process and avoid those radioactive waste prospect/customers who are out there. It will also give you a metric to judge how well your message is working: if it attracts the right prospects great; if not, fix it asap. That makes the effort to set up this system a money maker and mind saver.

The hardest part is coming up with the profile in the first place. You can put the results into most sales programs (ACT!, Salesforce.com, etc.). You can use the profile to be more specific with your salespeople about who to focus on. An added advantage is that it also makes it easier to communicate who you really want to work with to your strategic allies and other people in your networks.

In addition to setting up the profile, it’s critical to understand how a customer buys. There are 7 steps no matter what the purchase. Some are longer; some are shorter. Some are more important, some less depending on many factors.

I recommend using 7 steps in your sales cycle as well. These do not have an absolute one-to-one correlation with the customer’s buying cycle. But each must happen for the best kind of sale, a platinum sale, to take place. No matter what, the customer has to go through their version of the buying cycle in order for any sale to take place. What happens when they don’t? They DIY it, Do-It-Themselves, or DNAAs, Do Nothing At Alls, two ever present competitors. (More on this at my previous post on Ghost Competitors.).

I did a presentation on this topic for “Meet Here Mornings” at CoSpace coworking space in Austin, Texas, last week. I will be doing a shorter version next week for a local chamber. For those of you who can’t come,  I thought I would share the slides. If you need help or have questions, email me at T-R-I-P-L-E-T-T@ b-s-c-u-s-a.com.

Do you have a system for being proactive when it comes to identifying the best customers for your business? What system do you use?

Austin, Texas’ small business and entrepreneurial history is long and full. There were special support meetings called “Satellite Network Meetings” all over town and even in Round Rock long before there were Meetups and Bootstrap groups.

And, there was The Networker, a small monthly publication especially for women. From June 1980 to its last issue in August 1987, I wrote, managed or was its editor. We covered politics, interesting women, events around town, the arts, business, sports, education, healthcare, and jobs. We covered issues from the ERA to “Should women fear computers?” And, yes, that was the title of an article. We covered women magicians like Judy Wilkes and Valerie Cordell, early aviators like Pearle Ragsdale, truck racer Shawna Robinson, women firefighters and women at war. Young and old, of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds were included in our news.  We even did some interesting articles about men including Cactus Pryor and cartoonist Ben Sargent.

The Networker was originally a City project that came out of what I believe to be Austin’s  first networking event, the Austin Women’s Network Brunch, sponsored by the Austin Commission on Women (then called the Austin Commission on the Status of Women). The brunch was an outgrowth of the 1979 Women’s Conference.

We soon became a non-profit corporation and moved away from control of the City. The magazine’s slogan was “The Paper Texas Women Read”. And, they did. In its heyday, it had several thousand paid subscribers and  a circulation of 7000 readers without ever receiving any City funding.

In 1984, then mayor Ron Mullen declared July 17 as Networking Day and “called on all citizens to recognize the contributions made by The Networker in promoting equality of opportunity in the job market” and presented us with our first proclamation. Awesome!

Putting it together was an all volunteer effort except for the typesetter and printer. I feel very privileged to have worked with a very talented group of women including Meg Wilson, Nadea Gizelbach, Billie Passmore, Mary Margaret Navar, Lu Russell, Martha Hartzog, Beverly Scarborough, Brenda Trainor, Mary Bird Bowman, Leslie Geballe, Beverly Larkham, Theresa Feschek, Fancharm Gibson, Mary Wheeler, and Barbara Brown.  There were some great men associated with us as well including Austin historian Ed Van De Vort, Joe Stengel, Craig Meurer, and photographer Dan Diener.

But the most fun was working with my mother, Jane Dinsmoor. It was her fault I was there anyway because she suggested I write for The Networker. I did. The column was called “After Image”.

Then she suggested I become The Networker’s Managing Editor since I was such a good nag. She meant that sincerely and with great pride. So I did.  I must have done ok because I became the Editor. I can tell you The Networker gave me the best education into how Austin works and how to network.

Besides giving me motherly advice, she wrote a wonderful column called “Overtime” each month and “People” where she interviewed well known and less well known women including architect Judy Brown, international storyteller Helen Handley, Eleanor Richards (Gov. Ann Richards mother-in-law and politico herself), and scholar Dorothy Hartshorne. Much of the snail mail we got or the comments made to me in public were about her articles. I was very proud of her, too.

August 5th would have been her 92 birthday. With great affection, admiration and thanks, I want to reprise one of her best loved articles, “The Cockroach”. A “fitting” subject as she would say for summer in Texas. Enjoy.

If you have memories of those Satellite Meetings, The Networker or other activities that helped spur small business or entrepreneurial development in our area, please share it.

———————–

Overtime
by Jane Dinsmoor

from The Networker, Vol 2, Issue 1, January/February 1981

Wishful Thinking: A Pied Piper to get rid of cockroaches. Photo by bixentro.

In Austin it is now perfectly within the bounds of good manners to discuss the common roach. I’m glad. Silent emotional storms of that magnitude are the pits. True, whole generations of ladies lived their lives denying the existence of both diarrhea and roaches, but those ladies are known as forebearers. In the North one still refers to the critters as “Building Beetles. . .Water Bugs. . .not Roaches, you know.”

According to my dictionary, “roach” is short for “cockroach” which is “any one of a family of insects; especially a small brownish or yellowish species found in kitchens, around water pipes, etc.”

The only thing correct about that definition is the etc., and I need a new Austin-type dictionary. Actually a roach is any of a thundering herd of other similar insects. Their colors are best described as repellent roach brown, repellent roach black, etc. And smallish? The smallish-est you have to worry about weighs in at 15 pounds. You can tell a little one because it’s only carrying two sacks of potatoes.

But to continue. . .it is ridiculous to think that anyone ever went out looking for a roach! “Found,” indeed. They pop out of drains anytime anyone turns on the water; they pose majestically on toilet tanks; they stampede across the kitchen floor at night; they appear with the desert at any meal to which guests have been invited. Give me a quick-moving Southern guest who can stomp a roach off the rug and never spill the syllabub.

My dictionary also states that the word “cockroach” is an “alteration of the Spanish word ‘cucaracha’”. . .and what does that do to international relations? But there are also German cockroaches. My friend the exterminator told me so. We have had many, many, of these discussions over coffee as we waited for the fog to settle so we could count casualties. “Yoicks!” says he. “Yoicks!” says I. “I think it’s safe for you to have house guests now. . . if they come right away.”

He also told me you never get rid of roaches. . .just keep them at bay. I know what he means. They kept me at bay for the first three months I was in Austin. My greatest triumph came when, at the height of the battle, I lashed out, connected, and kicked a big one smack in the head!

Keep roaches at bay indeed! Light up the Tower! Give me my spray, my swatter, and my good right foot! I will overcome!

Photo link for bixentro.

I would like to congratulate Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and the  City Council for holding its first Small Business Summit in March.

Forty of us were invited by Council Members and the Austin Independent Business Alliance to come and give our thoughts on the major ways the City could address business owners concerns. I was invited to participate by Council Member Laura Morrison, who was the former President of the Austin Neighborhoods Association among her other achievements.

As a small business activist with almost thirty years of talking, testifying, watching and waiting, it was nice to see old comrades and make new allies. It was also nice to be included in this new effort to support small business. To me, Austin’s small business and entrepreneurial history is as relevant to this discussion as the latest news.

At my table were hotshots including the keynote speaker Lemeul Williams of Uptime Devices, long time retailer and commercial landlord Lynn Raredon, Laura Trzpit, the General Manager of one of Austin’s unique spaces Casa de Luz, Jimmy Flannigan from Site Street, a web hosting and design firm that helped keep Choose Austin First members connected, and newcomer Nicole Rogers who is starting an IT training business.

The Summit was limited to two hours. Pretty short and sweet. The first half hour was devoted to welcome remarks and the keynote. This made our time even shorter.

We had been asked to prepare to discuss three  questions:
1.  What steps could the City take to better assist small local business owners with planning and development?
2.  What steps could the City take to help create a better overall environment for small local business owners to succeed?
3.  What are some specific obstacles you have encountered in interacting with the City, and how do you believe these could be addressed?

With the help of our facilitator, Lupe Morin, a former City staffer,  we determined the issues for our table. Then we were given three minutes to present those to the whole group. A total of about sixteen different items were presented as needing City attention with several “dittoes” as time got shorter and other tables came up with similar issues.

By an odd quirk of fate, this very “public” meeting had not been posted in advance. This meant that the Mayor and Council had to rotate through the 90 minutes of discussion making sure there was never a quorum present in the room so they would not violate the Open Meetings ruling. From my perspective, it meant that Council Members got only a partial picture.

My Concerns

Without taking anything away from the Summit or the report that is being assembled by Rosie Jalifi and the City’s Small Business Development Program staff, I want to mention four concerns I have.

1. No context.

Because we did not hear the discussion at the other tables and were only presented with the issue as part of a list, it is hard to tell if some of the concerns people listed were universal or more industry specific for instance, home owners vs music venues; certain kinds of permitting; the power of the Neighborhood Associations. I presented for our table and found it hard in such a short amount of time to help the other tables understand the context of our issues. I know the other presenters had a similar problem.

Since each Council member only heard  part of the discussion, I believe their perception is even more compromised. How these are presented in the report is going to be very interesting and a real challenge for staff.

2. Size considerations.

Small is a relative term. At the federal level, it refers to those with less than 500 employees. State definitions generally use 100 employees as the cutoff and then use another term for an even smaller firm, a “micro business”, one with less than 20 employees. In the Austin area, over 80% of our small businesses are really micro businesses where the owner is the owner/investor, manager, and employee.

Again, it would be useful for Council and staff to know what the issues are by size or complexity of the business. It does make a difference when it comes to deciding where the City can or should make changes. As one of these “micro” businesses and as someone who works exclusively with owners of enterprises of this size, I can guarantee you we look at life and work differently than Yellow Cab, one of the other Summit participants.

3. Not enough clarity. Not enough time.

The Summit could have focused on identifying problems or recommending solutions. I think it tried to do too much in too little time. As a result, what I heard from the three-minute presentations from the other tables was a mixture of both. I am not sure what conclusions I would draw if I were either staff or Council.

For many years in the 90′s, Texas regularly held the Governor’s Conference on Small Business. Business owners from all over the state gathered to talk about problems and issues and propose solutions. Then we went to work to get it done. It was great brainstorming and strong networking. This ended in about 2000 and NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) and other groups started to hold Small Business Legislative Day. Not as good but better than nothing.

As a former delegate to the Governor’s and White House Conference and Congressional Summit on Small Business, I have seen real change come from this kind of event. My feeling is that this takes more time than two hours on one day in March.

4. The beginning or the end.

This is my biggest concern.

The Austin City Council has started something with this Small Business Summit. It could really be of major assistance to the City’s desire to remain a great place to start and run a business. Or it could be just a “two-hour trick pony”, a false start leading nowhere. My hope that is that this gets more attention and resources and that it continues.

Austin has made some efforts. For years, we have had City Commissions for minority and women-owned business. Good work has been done but not enough. In addition, this has left out other businesses and divided the small business community into two camps. The economic pie is too small for that to continue.

It is time that Austin find ways to support a united small business community while recognizing that we do have some unique concerns because of our size and industry differences.

At the Summit, Mayor Leffingwell talked about our contribution to job creation and also to maintaining jobs. We also contribute to the uniqueness of Austin that comes from having a large number of locally owned and operated lifestyle businesses. We are an important part of Austin’s quality of life now and hopefully always.

As I have before, I will wait and see how the issues are reported. As I have already done, I will present my concerns to Council Members who I think really want to hear from small business owners like me.

Recommendation to Other Owners

If you own a business, I encourage you  to get involved. Pay attention to what is happening. What happens in Washington is important but a long way away from here. What happens in Austin, happens to you and works either for you or against you.

I am also interested in what are your concerns and issues. Please post a comment or contact me directly at triplett@bscusa.com. I look forward to continuing this effort whether you are from Austin or elsewhere. Your insights are relevant, too.

Periodically, it’s good to go through your business library and freecycle what no longer inspires you. Passing them along to others means I don’t have to feel badly about getting rid of books. Instead I think of them as getting a new home.

Here are three that I would not part with no matter what year it is or how old they they are. So instead of giving them away, I want to encourage you to add them to your library or go to the library and check them out.

Because people matter

Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher was originally published in 1989 but is based on a 1959 series of London University Lectures. He promoted sustainability and green before they were popular.

Schumacher was ahead of his time. And, although some of the book is dated, it focuses on what still could be a wonderful world. Theodore Roszak refers to his approach as “nobler economics that is not afraid to discuss spirit and conscience, moral purpose and the meaning of life.”

It is uplifting to read. A client, Sharon Sarles, asked me if I had read this because she thought she heard me voice many of Schumacher’s ideas. I had not. But once I had, I never wanted to let this book and its vision disappear. I was honored that she thought that I had read it. Now I try to tell everyone who will listen about him and this book.

Small truly is beautiful and it inspires me to focus on small businesses and their owners who truly care about their business, their families, their community and the world. If you want to be involved or learn more, there is an E.F. Schumacher Society which is located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Believers, Rebels & Competitors

Neanderthals at Work: How People and Politics Can Drive You Crazy…and What You Can Do About Them by Albert Bernstein & Sydney Craft Rozen, 1992. They have some great ideas on how to keep sane when people and politics drive you crazy.

Bernstein, a clinical psychologist,  has a website and still explores “Neanderthals” and other creatures. No offense to all the Myers-Briggs and personality test stuff out there, I just like this better. It’s fun, witty, and very different as you would imagine from the title. Other people may find it too simple.

This book  helped me look at my past and current customers – not just employees. It helped me understand me. I am a Believer – as are most small business owners who are active in their business. It helped me help other owners because the traits they discuss, once you know them, are easy to spot. BTW, it is good to match what  kind of Neanderthal you are to who you sell to and who you hire. I find hiring a “Competitor” or having one as a client is usually not a terrific idea.

I do admit, as someone with the same business partner for 27 years, I have often wondered what happened to Rozen, the co-author. Looks like she has gone on to write some interesting books for families.

Why small business matters

Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses by Stacy Mitchell, 2006, shows why we should try to keep every community weird.

Mitchell is the inspiration for many Big Box Ordinances around the country including Austin’s which took TWO YEARS to get through City Council and almost did not make it. She came and spoke here a few years ago at an event sponsored by Austin Independent Business Alliance. She is terrific in person and in print.

Her research in Big Box Swindle on the impact on communities when mega stores move in is eye-opening, jaw-dropping and blood-boiling. She tells it like it is: the good, the bad, and the exceedingly ugly. For small businesses who try to sell to these companies like WalMart, the results can be devastating. For small businesses in the shadow of them location-wise, with some exceptions, it does not mean better sales or even more sales. It usually means a slow death.

She has a great website full of ideas of what to do when faced with this and a terrific newsletter to keep us all connected.

There is a story behind this book. I bought it from BookPeople, our independently owned bookstore in Austin. It was signed and autographed by Ms. Mitchell. I was proud to have it.

As the Business Liaison Chair for Responsible Growth for Northcross, I carried this book everywhere. When I went to speak on behalf of the Big Box Ordinance in Austin, I carried it. Our goal was to get Council and citizens to see that a huge Walmart Supercenter store placed on neighborhood streets, across from a school, was not good for community development or retention.

We lost in court but WalMart did decide to scale back to only 90K feet from about 200K sq feet. We will have to live with it but thanks to Mitchell we knew how to fight and not lie back and take it and how to protect our neighborhood and our businesses. We also know now what to watch for as the project goes forward and we have a strong network. Most importantly, I think, it brought five neighborhoods together with the area businesses and it pushed us to request the creation of  the Northcross IBIZ (Independent Business Investment Zone).

The tragedy for me is that somewhere along the line, someone picked up my book. I only hope they find it as inspiring as I did. Hopefully, I will get another copy and maybe Ms. Mitchell will sign it.

More of my book recommendations are  located in the “Worth Reading” widget on my blog. I update it periodically when I am inspired. Do you have a book I should add?

What “oldie goldies” are on your shelf? Have you told someone else about why they matter at least to you? Pass on the wisdom. We need all we can get.

Be sure to watch my Tweets for date and time of when I am freecycling some of my business library. I just hope they will inspire you and you will give them a good home until you pass them along.

I think I am pretty organized. I think I am disciplined. But, boy oh boy sometimes I need a little help from my friends.

Especially when it comes to blogs. I don’t know about you but I sometimes get writer’s block when it comes to blogs. Or I get started and then get pulled away to do other critical things. So I have several half done that I  really want to finish.

My friend Julie Gomoll and I decided to do something about that for others like me. We are co- hosting our first blogging party get together to “get one done and posted” this coming Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2-4pm at our BSC (Business Success Center) offices Chase Bank Blg 7600 Burnet Rd. We are located across from St. Louis Catholic Church/cross street is Northcross Blvd – go in the tower, not the bank.

The goal: to inspire each other and other fellow bloggers. The clublet is called The Secret Cabal of Bloggers. Click for more info and register at EventBrite.

Bring your laptop and we’ll provide munchies. Walk away with your next post and new friends.

No charge. Not a class. Only requirement is your willingness to share ideas, support and encourage others. “It can take a village of business owners to finish a blog.”

We hope to make blogging fun again.

Hope to see you there.

Here’s to our success!