Pressureless Goals

Staying in line with my blog post on giving simple thoughts and ideas about networking, today I'd like to start talking about the little games I play to make my networking work for me.

Games 1  (Have a goal for what you want to achieve.)

I have an overall goal in the back of my mind of what I want all my networking to produce for me each week.  Notice I said "all my networking."  Some of you may have read the post about my goal of meeting with two new people per week.  Since I do quite a bit of networking each week, having the overall goal, instead of a specific goal for each event, works better for me.  It takes the pressure off and allows me to just enjoy the event.  In the back of my mind I am thinking about meeting my goal for the week and if someone that I meet helps me to fufill that goal, great!  If not, I can still enjoy the opportunity to chat and listen.

I can give an example.  This past week, I was at an event, where I either knew everyone or didn't want to meet with the ones I didn't know.  There wasn't really anything wrong with a couple of them, I just didn't feel the synergy.  So be it.  Instead of being frustrated I just sat back and enjoyed the presentation part of the meeting learning some little hints that will help me in my business.  Who knows, maybe I was just feeling lazy!  I figure I'm entitled to it once in awhile.

Of course, I can't sit back all the time, but having to overriding goal seems to be doing it for me.  So far this year, except for the week of vacation, I have had no less than my goal of 2 new people appointments per week. 

I think if I score this game, I am ahead!