The Awesome Hayley Mackintosh and I have seen enough ‘Networking Seagulls’ to last many life times. Avoid these chip stealing predators at all costs!
I was very lucky yet again to be spending some quality working time with the Awesome Hayley Mackintosh. She is the Manager in charge of Servcorp North Ryde and we have been lucky to work together on more and more shared projects & initiatives.
Today we had a Sales & Marketing Workshop for an intimate group of business people and spoke about a lot of different concepts that really resonated with the audience.
As the event was over and we were packing up – we had a great “Peer to Peer” conversation about networking events. I have been very lucky to be a Partner of Parramatta Chamber and a 4Networking Leader – and run more events that I can literally remember.
Hayley have done the same too. She is a very smart operator and runs Networking Events all the time and helps her own clients and gives Servcorp great exposure.
As we spoke, we started sharing “Horror / War Stories” with each other about events. We started talking about the odd awful person you get at networking events. Networking events are all full of great normal people like you, me & Hayley – however you get the exceptions to the rules. We have seen things like:
– “People” that come late & leave early – disrupting everyone with little regard.
– “People” that come and eat all the food & leave.
– “People” that just go there to sell their wares to everyone in the room.
During the conversation, someone muttered the term “Networking Seagulls” and it was a massive laugh! Hayley instantly got it and in this context it’s exactly what it means:
– A networking Seagull comes in, eats your food, squawks at you, poops on your desk and then flies out leaving you worse off for the experience.
As seasoned networkers we felt this is a riot and it’s so true! You just get people that don’t care and have little regard for the world around them. The truth is that there are some of these people around and there are several things to be wary of. Never have then as clients (as they won’t pay), don’t talk to them for more than 30 seconds as they will sell you some of their shitty technology / over priced products and finally – never accidentally invite them to your events.
My advice? If you are networking away and doing the right thing and a “Networking Seagull” flies in? Run, hide, throw an iPad / Surface 3 Pro at them or release a cat to go and chase them.
They suck, drain the world of valuable resources and we need more awesome people like you, me & Hayley at networking events.
Trust you enjoyed my rant this time and love your work!
No responses yet