International Networking Week 2008

And the Winner Is

And the winner is (drum-roll please!) Julie Cantu, Innovative Marketing Design.

Julie is a classic example of "find someone busy, and they'll make time to do more." But why don't we let Julie tell her own story.

"As a bit of background, I am a graphic designer. Three months ago, a friend of mine was preparing to open a restaurant, the Ottawa Inn, in Ottawa Lake, Michigan, just north of Sylvania. She needed someone she could trust to run the restaurant during the days and also to get it started. I decided to work in the restaurant on a daily basis to gain knowledge and to build relationships with food and beverage distributors, because my target market is the restaurant industry. I figured that if I do what my customers do, I can experience things from their prospective and serve them even better. While this scenario doesn't work for all target markets, it definitely does for mine. So I am bartending/waitressing during the day as well as designing the marketing materials and helping to market this restaurant.

"When the networking contest was announced, I thought I had no chance at all. I get up at 5:30 a.m. and design until 10 a.m., then head to work for the rest of the day. Then I realized that what I do at work all day is talk to people. So I started being more intentional about it. Instead of trying to cram my one-to-one meetings into the times away from the restaurant, I started having potential vendors, referral partners and clients come in during my slow times. A side benefit was that it also helped me spread the word of the new restaurant to others. Many will come in to eat or drink, and we'll chat while I serve them. It has worked out well. I also have many spontaneous meetings throughout the day. A customer will come in and as we're chatting, I'll uncover a need that they have. I will help them by connecting them with someone I know who can help them. When they are telling me about what they do, I request their card so I can refer them to others as well. I've doubled my network in the past three months.

"Actually, I had many more conversations over that one week, but the 21 that I logged were longer than 15 minutes and we both discussed what we do and I tried connecting them with someone or some information that they needed. Sometimes it's not the most obvious path, but by being creative and I found a way to make it work!"

Congratulations to Julie, she's a proven winner!