In my post about branding for small business, I mentioned that the opportunity came about in a way that shows the power of networking.

This is that story…

I was working for XM105, the local country radio station in Whitecourt (as opposed to the one I actually listen to when I’m not listening to CD’s which is the rock station) and the Edson Chamber of Commerce had booked a speaker on Sales Skills that the entire sales staff from XM105 attended. That speaker was Lara Dare of Arrow Business Training.

After the session, I approached her as I thought she would be the perfect interview for a podcast I was MC’ing at the time through Internet Based Moms. Unfortunately, that relationship didn’t last long as the podcast wasn’t delivering the expected results. So I never did get a chance to interview Lara as I originally intended. Or was it that I recorded it and it was never published…my memory is foggy on that one!

But we did keep in touch.

And we have tried to work together to pull off speaking engagements – once in her hometown of La Crete and in mine (Whitecourt! Woo Hoo!). Alas, while I love living here – the business community didn’t exactly respond to the offer of this premium (in my opinion) information.

So we’d kept in touch. (NOTE: This is a key point in successful networking. No point in making connections if you aren’t going to do anything with them!!)

And one day she contacted me to say that she had a scheduling conflict and wondered if I’d be willing to help out with the Branding for Small Business presentation. Which is the one I just did yesterday. So obviously, I said YES!

The point is, I could have left the seminar with just some ideas from the Sales Seminar  (though to be quite honest I was already well aware of most of the information she introduced except the stuff related to staff training Which makes sense since that is, after all, her specialty!) but by making a point to keep in touch, we were able to help each other out –

That is the power of networking

Pretty simple, huh?