I went networking alone and it was scary

Remember that networking event I was freaking out about a few episodes ago?

I went. And honestly, it was awkward at first, but I'm so glad I didn't turn around and leave.

In this episode, I'm walking you through what actually happened. The conversations that opened up new ideas I hadn't thought of. The partnership opportunity that came from just showing up. The reminder that sometimes the biggest opportunities aren't sitting behind your laptop.

If you've been avoiding in-person events because they feel uncomfortable, this one's your sign to say yes to one this year.

👉 Grab a ticket to my Gold Coast in-person mastermind (link below or join the waitlist if it's full)

👉 DM me on Instagram - have you been avoiding networking events too? Let me know.

Transcript

 Hello, my loves, welcome to the Flow State Business Podcast. If you're new here, I'm your host Ruby Lee, and I'm sitting down with my cup of coffee. It is actually pouring down rain outside today, so why not cozy up and chat to all of you. And also kind of, I feel like I wanna record a part two to an episode that I did a few episodes ago.

So if you're new here, you will love this podcast. I basically share what is going on live inside of the business, my real raw fears and joys and excitement and overflow and. I really just want it to feel like I'm sitting down with my best friends in business and discussing, Hey, this is actually the shit that's happening.

I need some help, or I hope that this inspires you. So that's kind of the vibe. But anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, I recorded a podcast called Irrational Fears, and in that episode I talked about this thing that had been sitting on my mind for a little while. That was going to a networking event. And if you listen to that, I promise that I would be doing a follow-up episode on all things networking because I know that it is so, ugh, it's so awkward for so many people.

And let me tell you, it was actually really bloody awkward, at least at the start. So I'm gonna story tells in just a second, but. If you are kind of, you know, thinking to yourself, do you say yes to the thing? Do you go for that workshop? Do you just pull off the bandaid and decide like, this is the thing that I wanna do.

I'm actually hosting an event on the Gold Coast, and it is an in-person mastermind. I don't know if there'll still be tickets by the time you guys listen to this, but I'm gonna leave the link below anyway. I will definitely be, if it's fully full, then there'll be a wait list. I mean, some people can't make it on the day, but.

Go and check it out because I feel like this might be the episode that, you know, gives you the opportunity to also get into those scary rooms, but also see the amazing things that come out on the other side of it. Okay. So, ah, okay. I'm gonna take you back to this networking event. I found this networking event because the founder of this event had actually messaged me on LinkedIn.

It was somewhat of a cold message, I'm sure he just kind of location. Searched people and then looked at what they did, and then just sent out like big invites. So it wasn't personalized in any way. But anyhow, I decided I would say yes this time, and I was so weirdly scared about it, which honestly felt irrational.

And I spoke about this in that other episode because I speak on stages, I run masterminds, I host events myself, as I've just said. I coach people for a living. And, uh, my background was in sales and recruitment. Like I love being around people, but for some reason the idea of walking into a room where I didn't know a single soul and I didn't know anyone felt really scary and honestly, really difficult.

It felt very vulnerable. It felt very high school, cafeteria energy. We don't have high school cafeterias really here in Australia. It's kind of just like that school yard energy of like your friends not being there and you have to try and find some friends for the day. And it was like this feeling where honestly, like everybody already seemed to have known each other and have these little groups, but I can say now that nobody really knew each other.

It's just what you make up in your mind. And I just got there pretty much like right on time. I'm not a late person. I'm a right on time person. But you know, there were already seemingly sort of little clusters formed and people were deep in chats and I was like, oh my gosh, where do I go from here? Where do I sit?

How do I approach people? And I know a lot of you can relate to that for sure. But I'm glad I went and let's discuss like some of the things that genuinely surprised me about going to these events. And um, yeah, we'll start from the start. So I walk into this venue and there's about. At the start, there was probably about 40 people in there.

The room eventually grew to a hundred, and I knew exactly one person I mentioned that I dragged along one of my friends, but he's a late person, so he was like 45 minutes late. I kid you not. So I was like, where is he? Where is he? Anyway, force me to actually be a big girl and find somebody to speak to, and I don't know, like I honestly feel.

It was good for me because otherwise I may have just attached to him and spoken to him the entire time, and I had to get over that wave of nausea and that nervous energy, that feeling of being so hyper aware of yourself, you know, like, oh my God, do I have a weird flyaway going on of my hair over anything in my teeth?

So those sorts of thoughts were coming up, and I guess what I did was like when I went in, I scanned the room. Because I thought everybody already knew each other and everybody looked really comfortable. I have to admit, guys, I had to deploy the coping strategy, which is kind of like normal in events. But anyway, I went up to the bar and I ordered myself a glass of French rose.

Yes, I am bougie AF when it comes to Rose. I love the expensive stuff. Anyway, now listen. No judging, okay, I know someone is listening and is gonna be like ribs. That is not a coping strategy, going straight for the alcohol. But in that moment it helped a lot not to like necessarily even down the wine. I promise you I wasn't like s skulling it.

It's just something to do. You know, even for like the first three minutes, walk up to the bar, have someone to speak to, which is the bartender. And then almost like having something to do with my hands, like holding a glass. And, oh my gosh, anyhow, I kind of laugh about it now as you can hear in my voice, but it just gave me a little moment to just settle myself.

And then I did something very simple. I said to myself, look around the room and look at who may be your vibe, Ruby. Okay? And then you're gonna just take the brave steps and walk up to that person. Because let me tell you, there was a good 30 seconds where I just thought, turn around, walk back down the stairs and run the hell out of this room.

What the heck are you doing here? It's not even gonna forward your business. This is a waste of time. Why did you say yes to this? Uh, Uhuh. Okay. Find the person. So. I looked around and there was this lovely, lovely person. Like she just looked glowing, to be honest. And I was like, okay, she looks like my person.

I'm gonna go up to her and I'm gonna say, Hey. And that's what I did. That was it. I attached myself to a little cluster of, there was like three, and I became like the fourth in this cluster. And I, I was like, hi. And that was it. You know, the, the group sort of opened up, made space for me. We all got chatting and oh, that just felt like immediately relieving and I don't have a clever opening line.

There was no rehearsal, there was no handshakes even, it was just hi. And that one tiny step changed the whole night. Okay. Like I feel sometimes these are the lessons that we need to take away. It's so loud in our heads. It's just so much chatter and clutter that really what changed the trajectory of that whole entire evening was me just saying hi.

Now the funny part is that I have to tell you is honestly, it felt like I was cheating the networking system a little bit because me and this person who I found her name's Samantha. We ended up finding a really nice seat near the breezy windows. It was a very, very warm like event day. So, you know, balmy weather, beautiful breeze.

And I went and sat down with Sam and I, and guys, I swear to you. As people were like coming to say hey to me and then moving on to the next, I felt like the room came to me. I know this sounds so kind of like, well, sort of like cheat code is what I'm saying, but also like everyone came to me. I didn't need to go to them, but it was just genuinely like that people kept coming over to my table and starting conversations.

So in a way I said to the universe, driving home, thank you so much that I didn't have to go and work the room. The room actually came to me and that happened for almost three hours, which also meant that my legs went completely numb because by the end of the session, like I didn't really move and drinks were coming to me as well.

Food was coming to me as well. Uh, so I don't really recommend that necessarily, but I was nervous. I just planted myself down and the room just magnetized. And for a very first networking event in a long time, I was very happy with that outcome. Mind you, you know how I said I had that like glass of rose?

That glass of rose stayed with me for about one hour. So it was very warm by the time I'd finished it. And then I just had one other drink, so that was totally fine. But you know, the conversations that came out, I have to share that with you because it wasn't just about like being nervous. 'cause by the time I was sort of done with being nervous, I just really sat very present.

And really, really there with the people who were in front of me. So in no particular order, I'll talk about some of the people that were there to give you an idea of what you can get from these networking sessions. And I definitely have to say I would never have gotten this, just even talking to people on LinkedIn, which mind you, like most people who were there immediately kind of gave me their phone to put my LinkedIn details in.

So it was very LinkedIn, you know, like that makes sense. It's networking. Nobody really asked for Instagram. It was all LinkedIn. Anyway, so one of the guys that I met was called John, and John and I started talking about, um, businesses, website, online education, and he was very much in the user experience, AI bot.

Type of thing. And he's got this really cool, uh, startup where he basically is building Tinder for online fashion. So you know how on Tinder you swipe left and right. He's building out a capability where when you're online shopping, you swipe left and right to the things that you like, and then the algorithm, let's say you are shopping on, I don't know, a sauce or something, it will just give you the things that you are saying you wanna see, which I think is so, so clever.

Anyway, he had a look at my website and I was so nervous. 'cause you guys know in the chat that I had with Vivian also a few episodes ago, I was sharing with her how I'm sort of embarrassed to share all things website. It is getting better. I'm improving it week on week. But he said that, you know, firstly, wow, like he goes, you've accomplished so much.

Like, who the hell are you? What? He goes, this is amazing. Love your site. But then he started to ask me questions about how I'm utilizing AI for the user experience. I was like, wait, tell me more. And he explained to me that you can actually build an entire AI bot for about $50. $50. You could probably do it for free if you really had like the mind for it.

Essentially, he said what it would do is it would sit on the website and have conversations with visitors. So imagine someone lands on your website as a coach and they type something like, I am new to this world. So for me it would be, I'm new to passive income. Someone would write, how do I learn to sell on Instagram?

Someone would say, I am a high ticket coach, but I'm not sure how to start selling low ticket. So the AI bot would chat with them using the same tone and language that I train it with and then. Guide them to the exact courses and pathway that would suit them. Now you could take it a step further and actually do the swipey swipey thing.

So it's like, no, like whatever, swipe left. I don't know. Tinder, obviously I've been married for 12 years, but like swipe whichever way that you don't want, swipe the way that you do want, and then it would give you more courses and it would give you more ideas and more like kind of just the links delivered straight to them.

And the coolest part is like you can literally send like your course thumbnails with the link out recommendations, et cetera, straight to their inbox or straight in the AI chat bot so that they can just go straight to that page and purchase. And what he was explaining is like, you know, it needs to get easier for people because you have a passive income business.

And I was showing him my dms about like how people are messaging me all the time with like, what courses do I take, where do I start? And it just hit me like, oh, this is the missing piece. And it's not like I am AI illiterate, like I'm very much loving how AI has saved time for us. I'm definitely not someone who's like, I never use AI in my content.

I absolutely do. 'cause I find like it cuts down a lot of time, it makes me sound a lot cleaner and things like that without taking away my tone. But now I understand like there's this piece of the puzzle with AI that could really help the user experience and it, it makes a ton of sense for me. So I think that's something that I really wanna put into place.

And just even hearing about this AI bot felt like one of those small, powerful ideas. And if you've ever read the book, atomic Habits by James Clear, pretty much a bible now for, you know, uh, productivity and flow. You need to also understand how. You know, he, James Clear talks about the power of 1% improvements, and this, to me, felt like a 1% improvement.

That's gonna compound into really big impact, you know, through the course of how we grow our business from here on out. So, yeah, I felt so excited. John and I are actually catching up further to talk about it, and I'm genuinely so interested to hear how it's gonna play out. So I'll let you know as that builds out and what I decide to do there and how it was $50 because I really don't know that fully yet, and what I'm using, what app I'm using, what tools I'm using to integrate.

So don't worry like more on that to come. As we start to build that out. But I loved that combination of ai, creativity, entrepreneurship, and really truly like he helped me so much. And guys, by the way, this was probably like a 20 minute conversation if that, where he was just chatting in front of me.

Anyway, so John gets up next, like literally like the seat became available. I was speaking to a few people around me and it like it was again, the next person just showed up at my table this time. It was a lovely lady called Dom. Hey Dom, if you're listening. So Dom is, oh, she's amazing. Short for Dominique.

So she's like a fitness instructor, but she's also building a career clarity coaching business. And I don't know, like it was just really nice to talk to her. She was absolutely hilarious. We just had the best chats and so many laughs. But essentially it kind of became a conversation where she's like, you know what?

It's really hard to know where to begin if you're just starting out as a coach. There's so many things that you can invest in. There's so many places where you can put your money towards. It's almost like became this sort of really nice conversation, not coaching at all, but just me just sharing some things about the start of my journey, like how I started to work out, what to invest in, how to package up my office, how to turn my skills into an offer, and that conversation just reminded me of something that I see all the time with beginner business owners.

That beginner doesn't mean inexperienced in life. So Don, for example, is so experienced, has so much culture, has so many different, you know, leadership elements to bring corporate experience. So, you know, whenever I say like I work with beginner business owners, so many beginners are actually incredibly driven, intelligent people who are successful in their own right and they've had careers and expertise and ideas.

And I know that this is you also. But what you are navigating is fear, right? Like the fear of investing, the fear of making the wrong decisions, the fear of not using your time wisely or doing it wrong, and underneath that is all the potential to become so incredibly impactful to this world. And talking to Dom just reminded me exactly why I love working with people at this stage.

And honestly I had like such an incredible conversation with, with her for the rest of the time. And then she had to kind of whiz away. So then the next guy who rocks up is this, oh, such a cool conversation. This was actually, I'd say quite the, the conversation that really stuck with me the most. And, um, he's a therapist.

He's currently working in a very large, like government organization is named Sam. And he was saying to me that he's got this side hustle where he's building out a mentoring business focused on nervous system regulation. And you know, he works a lot as like a therapist for people who have a lot of like old stories and shadow work and things like that.

And he was asking me really thoughtful questions on how to start building a social media presence while still working full-time. And again, like these questions, I'm like, this is what started literally my business where I used to network so much. I would just share some ideas and share some thoughts and like never sell.

There's no way I'd be in front of somebody going, you should come into my mastermind. Like it was just sharing. All the goodness. And it was so nice to be able to give back in that way as well. And he's just like, man, like I just suck at personal branding. I never know what to talk about. People misjudge me a lot 'cause he was, this dude, he's a really, really kind soul.

I could just tell. And he was very, you know, kind of like softly spoken. Wouldn't surprise me if he was like. A Pisces or something where he was just very, I don't know, just you just wanted to open up to him and just talk, tell him all the things. But he was tatted up to the hilt. You know, he had tats all up, like his arms, right down to his fingertips.

He had tats up his neck. So I think a lot of people would've misjudged him. You know, maybe like for being a therapist and he's like talking to me about personal branding, like how do I. Put myself across in a way where I wanna talk about nervous system regulation. I feel like he's gone through a lot in his life as well and not be judged, you know, right up.

So that was a really interesting conversation. Very deep. You know, very much about like how we grew up and things like that. So, oh, it was really, really nice you guys. I mean, these are just some of the highlights that I had in the three hours I was there, but. One thing I didn't get to do was actually say hello to the founder of the business, and I was so spewing about that.

He, he was obviously so in demand. I obviously didn't move from my seat 'cause people kept coming to me, but I had to run at the end of the, uh, networking session. But I did reach out, you know, at the end I reached out on LinkedIn and I said, you know, hey, like thank you so much for putting on this event.

Absolutely loved it. It says a lot about the people that you're attracting because every single person I met was so on the frequency, and I just wanna say thanks for opening up the space. Anyway, he's very well known here on the Gold Coast, and he reached out to me right afterwards saying, oh man, like sucks that we didn't get to meet.

I think I saw you across the room, but he goes, thank you so much for coming along. I actually wanted to reach out to ask if you would be open to explore ways to partner together. He's actually really interested in what I'm building inside of, you know, flow state business and on the digital education side of things.

And he goes, you know, like, we should definitely catch up. I'll send you my calendar and I wanna discuss how your business could benefit the founder network that I have. And obviously having met some of the people in his network, I'm already like, well, hell yes. Like, let's do this. So that door would've never opened if I had walked out of that networking room and that door would've never, you know, opened if I decided, you know what, I'm just not gonna go.

I'm just gonna stay at home. So, you know, I wanted to share all this because if I had listened to that irrational fear, and if I'd convinced myself that it wasn't worth going, that none of those conversations, you know, were even gonna be worth it for the business, none of this would've happened. I wouldn't have had such.

Amazing conversations that's opened up my possibility mind. That's given me this creative thought process that's opened up new doors for collaboration. Obviously, the partnership conversation would not have happened, none of it, and I feel like that is the real lesson here. Sometimes the opportunity is not in the strategies sitting behind your laptop.

It's in these sorts of rooms, it's in the proximity, it's in the real life conversations that you literally cannot plan for. And if I could leave you with one move from this whole episode and also from me sharing this experience, it would be this, just say yes to one networking event this year. Okay. Like as I'm recording this where you know it's March and even if it feels uncomfortable, let's do it.

Let's promise ourselves that. For the next nine months. You know, whenever you are listening to this for the next few months, you are going to find an event and say yes to it, even if it feels like you're the new kid. Because you know, I feel like these are the uncomfortable moments that it's going to really put you forward.

And this is the year you fire horse. Like, we've gotta be bold, we've gotta charge forward. We've gotta take hold of the reins and say, yeah, this is what we want more of. Especially for those of you. Who want to become speakers and personal brands and write books and be a household name in your industry, whatcha doing?

Sitting behind the laptop? I needed to have this chat with myself. And you know, sometimes I realize this now that the smallest decision, like showing up to a networking room can unlock ideas and momentum and excitement that you haven't felt for a really, really long time. You simply cannot access that at home on your laptop.

And honestly, I am feeling so proud of myself for doing this and for going, I'm gonna keep going to these events. By the way, they were so good. Like, I'm gonna keep going. So if you are here on the Gold Coast and hit me up, I'll tell you the events that I'm going to and. I suddenly feel like I am gonna do a lot more networking events.

I definitely wanna be on more panels speaking at these events too. Some things I'm calling in there and obviously, you know, working my way up to getting back on the speaker stage. I haven't spoken on a stage in two or three years now, like I've spoken at mastermind events in person and things, but not.

Like stage, stage. So I feel like that's gonna happen and unravel itself very quickly. I wouldn't be surprised that by the end of this year I'm speaking on stages again. But anyhow, I digress. Do the thing that scares you the most because sometimes it's the biggest win of all. So I'm gonna leave you with that and enjoy the past episodes.

I'll see you in future episodes and sending you all big, big love. Mm.