Mastering the Art of Strategic Networkign with Wendy Lloyd Curley

 People, the reason that they don’t like networking is because they feel uncomfortable doing it. They feel uncomfortable pitching their business to people who they don’t know. And there’s the problem. They’re pitching their business. Sales and networking are two different things. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly brought to you By CommTogether, the people behind Podcast Done For You, because we’re all about exposing other people’s brilliance.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and check out Podcast Done For You as well in the show notes. Now let’s get into it.

Everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites and today’s guest. I have never been a better person to say, introduce yourself. So I’m not going to say anything more other than Wendy, introduce yourself. Oh, Anthony. Thank you very much. Oh, hi everybody. I’m Wendy Lloyd Curley. I am the author of the best selling book called stop wasting your time networking.

And that’s partly why I’m talking to Anthony today. I’m the owner of B& I Sydney Northeast, which is a good network that I am associated with and have been for 13 years. I also am the owner of strategic networking and I provide keynote presentations globally to people who are interested in helping the audiences learn more about networking.

And I guess, Anthony, I just for way of background, because maybe some of your audience don’t know me. I have hospitality management experience, which gives me really good skills in making people feel comfortable and providing hosting capabilities. I’ve got a corporate background in telecommunications, which has given me exposure to corporates, large businesses, and large suppliers.

And then I also have entrepreneurial experience, whereas I’m start, I’ve done a startup company in the dot com age. I’ve also run my own sales and marketing for a long time. So I’ve got a lot of background and I hope to provide some good insights to people today. I know you most definitely will. And you left one thing out of there, it was, we.

So Wendy and I reconnected recently we should tell all of the listeners and we, we were trying to trace back as to when we originally met one another. And it was at a BNI event. No, probably not long after I started the CommTogether business which, so we’re going back 13 and a half years now.

And you were Wendy, the candle lady, weren’t you? I was a solid Wendy the Candle Lady for 18 years. And that’s a multi level marketing business, which I consider to be sales of marketing, really learning. And honing my craft there. I had never been in a sales role before. Unless you count selling steaks to people when you’re a waitress, but people need to eat and that’s pretty easy.

They’ve already walked in. But when you’re running your own business in a multi level marketing industry, you really do learn the value of network, the value of customer service, the value of follow up and the skillset of story selling. Story selling was what I did and I did it naturally.

I didn’t didn’t really know any other way to do it. Tell a story about a candle. When’s the last time you burned one and people will buy them? I want to come to the candles in a second back to the second, but I think what we should do just firstly for everyone’s benefit, because You and I are assuming that everybody knows what BNI is.

And whilst this is not a podcast all about BNI, we’re going to refer, if we refer to BNI, we should let people know what it is. So maybe you want to give a quick quick introduction to those that don’t know what actually BNI. I wondered the same thing. I heard the acronym in about 2007 from someone who said that she really thought that B& I was great.

I thought, I don’t like it when people use acronyms. So I went and looked it up and anyway, I, it was like NLP to me too. I thought that was a little bit dodgy at first. So NLP is Neuro Linguistic Programming and it’s quite safe and not really as sinister as it sounds. And BNI is the same. It stands for Business Network International.

It’s a global organization that started 39 years ago. And what it is it’s a way for business owners, usually, sometimes, Salespeople, but mostly business owners to work in a group, get to know each other very well, and be able to refer business to each other in a strategic way. And I became a member of that in my seventh year as a candle lady, and it catapulted my business to another level.

And I think it does that for many business owners, whether they are in building and trades, whether they are in professional services, business services. Health and wellness fields. It really is quite a well balanced and robust group and I liked it so much after being a member for 10 years, then I decided to invest in the franchise and bought the franchise.

So I support chapters throughout Sydney, Northeast, and I really I do believe in it, so I’ll try not to sell it at all on this call because you don’t have to have BNI to be successful, but it sure is a good network. We hope you’re enjoying listening to the biz by its podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world?

We’ll come talk to us at podcasts done for you. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you. So all you have to do is show up for a conversation, but don’t worry about that. We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course, helping you share it.

So come talk to us, podcast done for you. com. au details in the show notes below. Now back to biz bites. Yeah. And I, and again, we’re not gonna spend a lot of time talking about B and I, but certainly as I alluded to. I know for me in my particular situation, where B and I was great early on in the piece was establishing the, once I had just established the business and I had a colleague that had been a member of a chapter and invited me in.

And it was a great way to get to know a whole bunch of people. And there’s all the value of networking. And we’re going to talk about that and the value of networking and building your business. Thanks. But I think one of the things that are underestimated is being in business can be incredibly lonely.

So the value of just having a regular group of people that you can catch up with and learn from, and potentially then obviously do some business with, I think there’s a, that is underestimated alone, and I’m very grateful that those initial years that I was in BNI. certainly made a huge difference to that and creating some sort of routine, particularly when you’re in startup mode and you haven’t actually got clients to service at that point.

It’s nice to then go and be with people and help you get through that phase. Yeah. The powerful thing for me was the weekly rhythm, having a weekly rhythm, having something, somewhere to be and knowing that I needed to have accomplished things between those two to end. I believe that weekly rhythm is helpful for all business owners.

So startup established, even people who are looking, if you’re looking to grow that weekly rhythm is very helpful. Yeah. And I think it’s, what’s interesting about that as well is that I’ve been very lucky in that when I was in, even in my previous job, when I was employed I was able to do some work from home and once I started this business, I made the decision that it was a work from home business.

And even as we’ve grown, we have team, but they’re not, we’re not co located. Which is works perfectly for us. But that’s the interesting thing about having that routine in some way to go to as well can add a huge amount of advantage to, for people to get out and get used to that. And I think also in this environment whereby people are so used to remote younger generations are more used to text messages and things actually forcing yourself to be.

Again, I know there’s some BNI chapters that are just online, but even to be in a room, whether it’s physically is even better or online and having actual conversations with people about meaningful things to do with business. And learning from one another, I think is a huge opportunity. I agree. I agree.

It’s not a soft skill. It’s an important skill to be able to speak with people and to gain clients that way. Especially if you’re doing a business that is working on long term relationships. So you can do a lot over text and you can do a lot over LinkedIn. But picking up the song is not it’s not.

A lost art, it needs to be learned. It does. And I think, but that’s the interesting thing, isn’t it? That, that, that whole idea of having conversations with people is becoming more and more of a challenge because people are less and less used to it. Absolutely. I see in networking experiences, whether people are young, 20 year old and it’s amazing to me the unpracticed art of speaking to people and having a conversation that has meaning.

We, we aren’t taught these skills very frequently. I’m, I went to university and we did learn how to work in teams, but we didn’t learn how to meet people. It’s interesting. Meeting people is what networking is all about. And I think that it’s really important that we learn the skills and develop them over time.

And we need to start young, but it’s certainly not something that older people have an advantage over. Sometimes we just have poor skills That, that repeated for a long time. And there, there are two things that come to mind. And I’ve often had this debate with my wife about this because there’s the, so one thing is communication, whether you’re good or bad at communicating.

And that’s something you can learn. But one of the challenges for a lot of people is whether you’re introverted or extroverted. And the argument for a lot of people is that I’m in, I’m introverted. I don’t like being in a room with a whole lot of people. I don’t want to have those conversations. And so I know my wife always argues that she’s very introverted, doesn’t like those of being in those situations, feels very uncomfortable.

And I would argue that I’m also relatively introverted. And if you ask me, if I walk into a room whether it’s a business or whether it’s social. If I had a choice and I could just go and sit in a corner and quietly and just watch everybody else, I’d probably prefer to do that rather than necessarily, forcing yourself, but you do for whether it is for social reasons or whether it’s for business reasons, there is an element of forcing yourself and whether you’re introverted or extroverted, you have to do it right.

I think that there’s an advantage to, to pushing yourself. I also think that introverts make better networkers than extroverts because introverts listen more. And so introverts can learn the skills of asking good open ended questions so that the extroverts can answer them. And the introverts will probably listen and be better at doing follow up than the extroverts who might be just thinking about what to say next rather than what other people are needing.

So I would argue that introverts can make better networkers than extroverts and extroverts can be ineffective because they aren’t really using their ears as often as they’re using their mouth. Yeah I, and I absolutely agree with you. And I think. That the challenge of overcoming that idea of speaking in front of people is a really interesting one.

There’s that old comparison that most people would rather, would rather that with the funeral would rather be speaking at the, would rather be dead than speaking at the funeral. Yeah. It was, laugh about, but and it’s, it’s, I think it’s like anything, isn’t it?

It’s a bit of a muscle. If you learn to do it and you keep doing it, it becomes easier at doing it. Yeah. Doesn’t mean you, doesn’t mean you necessarily, it’s your first love of doing it as we were just talking about, but it is something you can learn. It absolutely is. And I hear, here’s where I think the gold is that most people think of networking.

And again, we, you’ve talked about social networking as well as business networking, but if I’m going to focus on business networking for a minute. Most people, the reason that they don’t like networking is because they feel uncomfortable doing it. They feel uncomfortable pitching their business to people who they don’t know.

And there’s the problem, they’re pitching their business. Sales and networking are two different things. And when you’re networking, you’re meeting people who may or may not need your product. More often than not, they won’t need your product. And so what you want to do is instead of telling them what you do and pushing it down their throat, You want to tell them what they do and tell them who you do it for so that they can then find people in their little Rolodex of the mind, and that tells you how old I am in their little Rolodex of the mind, who in their network might need what you are offering.

a very different conversation and one that makes networking more comfortable. If you don’t feel like you’re looking for the fail and instead are looking for the good connection, all of a sudden networking becomes a more comfortable activity. Yes. And it’s so interesting to me. The amount of times that you’re in a situation where it’s networking and whether it’s a formal structure, like a BNI or whether it’s a conference or whether it’s an informal structure, it doesn’t matter the amount of times where the, or people launching into that, even when they’re uncomfortable with it, and oftentimes they’re clearly uncomfortable with it, that they’re going, I’ve been asked, I must deliver my elevator pitch right now. Here we go. This is it. Usually the elevator pitch is terrible as well. But it’s it’s just it’s amazing how that people default to that. Yes. And it’s because you’re not taught. It’s because people are not taught how to make good connections versus how to sell.

Many people will take sales courses and I think sales courses are fantastic. I have great referral partnerships with people who teach sales guilds. And I really think it’s important that people realize you need connection skills as well. And that’s where networking comes in. And networking can take place on LinkedIn.

There are certainly good social media ways to begin conversations and to make good connections and to ask for the people that you want. There’s also in person networking and I include Zoom conversations as in person networking if it’s not a one way presentation. You and I are speaking right now and people are listening to it, that’s one way.

But when you are on a webinar and someone’s presenting there’s probably not very much networking happening. But if you’re given the opportunity to go into a breakout wi room with some people and introduce yourself, makes all the difference in the world when you know what you do and who you do it for, and share that with the people that you’ve met.

Absolutely. And I and it’s interesting you say that because couple of hours ago, I was on the phone to someone and we were just chatting about that bits and pieces. And I was relaying to him exactly that same scenario. I was in a breakout room of something that he had organized. Yeah. And I happened to be in that room with someone who I’ve known through this kind of connection over a number of years, but it’d been a long time since we’d had a conversation and we started talking and one thing led to another and he, we had another conversation and now he’s becoming a client and that was not the intention of why I went there.

Yeah. In fact. It was actually about the breakout room is about solving a problem that he was having and it had nothing to do with my service. But then it led to that conversation afterwards. And coming soon, new podcast, that, which is great, but it’s, and I think that’s what’s interesting to me is that when you what’s underestimated is the value of relationship building.

That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? And the really neat thing, again, if you say what you do and who you do it for, the options for them to opt into that, like your friend or the person you knew, he or she opted in to the conversation said, you know what, maybe I need that. If you are more deliberate, when you tell people what you’re doing, who you do it for, it enables them to think of the people in their mind, but it also allows them to say, wait a minute, that’s me.

I need that. And so your options are greater if you don’t say, do you need that service? But instead you ask, do you know someone who might need that service? Because then the answer could be, yes, I need it. And yes, I know other people. And it’s, and I think that’s, that’s the difference, isn’t it?

Because what people forget is that what you remember are stories and you don’t remember the, the how to’s or the little bits and pieces. Someone asked me the other day, or do I know a such and such, and I won’t say what field it was in. And I actually had to scratch my head and go, I know people or who is it?

And what were their names? And what I actually, and then when I was actually thinking about it, I actually remembered the story that someone was telling me and I went, Oh, that’s the person I need to refer them to. Cause I, so I didn’t actually really remember what this person was You know, did in that strict sense.

And I think that’s it’s a trap that a lot of people fall into, particularly in the professions that are easy to say that, I’m an accountant, I’m an electrician, I’m. And those things, people tend to fall into that, but yeah, okay. I need an electrician today. There’s I can pick up, any directory trees, which one you want.

And there’s a hundred sitting in there. So how do I separate one from the one from the other stories? You’re absolutely right. I’m actually doing a lot of training right now on this in my BNI network, and I’m extending this into my strategic networking work, I’m sure. And that is that people are spending a lot of time in their pitching.

By telling people what they do and how they do it. When, really, nobody cares. How you do it. They just want to know, if someone has this pain, can you resolve it? Or if someone has this need, can you resolve it? And, I think it’s really important that we find those stories that give that. Because you’re absolutely right.

People will remember the pain point that was resolved through a story. And they won’t remember how you did it. It doesn’t matter. It could be magic. It’s going to be able to be a story that they can recall and then recommend you. Yeah, absolutely. And I’m fine, particularly in the space that, that I’m in, that’s such a excuse me, particularly in the space that I’m in, that’s such an important thing to to keep in mind and for people to remember, because I talk about what do we do?

We expose other people’s brilliance. Because they’re wanting to build their credibility and be seen as a thought leader and they need the platform and are able to be able to do that. Yeah, that’s what we do. We make that possible and as easy as possible for them to be able to do it. And I think that.

I could easily have just said, what do you do? Oh, we do podcasts for people. It’s not that memorable on its own. And I think that’s the difference and being able to connect with people. And I wanted to ask you about this because your overall, your, I know your website strategic networking and that’s the focus, so strategy gets a bad, I think a lot of times and people don’t necessarily think at that level or they think they have, and they haven’t really.

Tell me how this all falls into the idea of being strategic in the way you’re networking. All right. Here we go. When people go to a chamber meeting, usually they pay for it. And then they show up and they talk to people and then they leave. They may collect some business cards along the way.

And if they follow up with those people, it’s usually a sales call. Strategic networking is completely different. You select the chamber more strategically based on the audience that would be there, the people that would be in the room. And that might be based on geography. Usually it is. Chambers, for example, are very geographic.

So you might choose it because you want to do business more in that area. And so you’ve strategically chosen that. But more importantly, before you do any networking, you think about who you want to meet. And this is where people really break the break their mold when they become strategic in it.

Strategic networkers find the five people that they need to meet. And I know them by name and know them by company and are able to ask people for introductions to those five people. And it’s five categories. And the first one is the competitors. So I do strategic networking. I do keynote speaking.

I would want to know other people who are in that field and I would be able to meet with them and talk with them and possibly turn them from being competitors in my mind into being collaborators, which is the second kind of person. So I would make a list of people I want to collaborate with and I can make those people, I know them by name and by company.

Who do I want to meet? And I can, when I meet anybody at that meeting, I can let them know that these are the people that I’m looking to meet. Do you know if they’re part of this community or do you know them personally? I’d love an introduction. Strategic. The third kind of person is someone who your clients need.

The people your clients need. In other words, after they have done my networking courses. And learned how to strategically network. I want to introduce them to Chambers. That’s a referral partner. To networks like BNI or VX or Business Referral Group. Those sorts of things. I could refer them to that. Or like industry associations.

Then I might be telling them, Listen, you should go and work with them. So these are people I can refer them to. I can also refer them to sales trainers. I can also refer them to stylists, all kinds of people that my clients might need after me. And then importantly, I need to know where my clients were before they got to me because I want to meet the people who might recommend me to their clients.

And again, that would be sales trainers. Sales trainers will often train people at the concepts of sales, but not in how to do the networking. And so they would refer to me. Other people who would refer to me would be business coaches. And other people who would refer to me would be photographers who are taking pictures of people who are going out networking to market their books, as an example.

These people are recommenders, and then there are the people that we recommend. I’ve just told you about four people. The competitors. The collaborators. The people who recommend me, and the people who I recommend. And then the fifth category, are your target market. And of course you want to know who you want to sell to.

You probably have an ideal list, and this is where most leads come from. Why not ask people strategically, do you know this person? I would love to meet them. I believe they’d be in my target market. I believe that my services could support them. I’ve seen their website, or I’ve seen the way that they pitch, or I’ve seen How they do think, and I’d love to work with them.

And so those are the five strategic people that I would want to know if I were in business and going out networking, and I’d want to do a lot of whole work on them before I went out. That’s in a nutshell, what strategic networking is. Love it. There’s so much in that the people, and I wonder how many people actually bother to think about those things before they show up to any kind of networking that they’re attending.

Very few, I think they think a target market. Oh, absolutely. And I think not only that they walk in with as much as they might say. Otherwise the majority of people walk in with a, who am I selling to today? Who’s going to buy from me today? This event is only a success. If I walk away with a new client and it.

Yeah. And really imagine if you could walk out with an introduction to someone who could become your best referral partner. Absolutely. And that’s it’s really and when you get that can be so valuable and I found myself over the years I know there are several businesses and I’m thinking of one in particular.

Yeah. That I’ve referred a lot of people to over the years, and they’re not related to my business or what I do in any way, shape or form. And but they’ve been they’ve become a client as well. So I won’t say who they are, but they’ve become a client as well. And that’s not the reason why I recommend them.

It does help, but it’s not the reason why I’ve become a client of theirs As well as that. And it’s still, I just believe in what they do and it solves people’s problems. And I think what that means is then people are then I think about the people that I’ve referred them to, and they’re all extremely grateful.

And all come back to you for other reasons. And again, it might be that they will refer someone else to me. That might be a referral partner. They might not necessarily pick up the phone and say, have I got a client for you be nice if they do, but that doesn’t necessarily work that way. And I think we are very short sighted when it comes to how we think about networking.

Yeah, no, we really are. And, we’re not in fast moving consumer goods. We’re actually in service businesses. Most of the people who are doing this networking and it’s important that we develop relationships with people over time. And it’s important that we identify who. Who we can support and help more.

It makes business more fun. So I really like strategic networking because it does open up a much wider peripheral vision about what networks. So there’s one more question I wanted to ask you around this bit. Now that I’ve got some other stuff that I really wanted to quiz you on because you’ve got so much information there, but I wanted to ask you about the contradiction almost of AI and the influence that it’s happening, having on Networking and cutting through that because there are so many tools out there that will spam people for want of a better term and how you can get that, how important is it to get that cut through in being authentic and real, but how much more challenging is it to actually stand out and not appeal like an appear as though you’re an AI.

Yeah. Yeah. All right there’s a couple different uses that I have for AI, and one of them is to come up with ideas. So I use AI in ChatGPT to develop ideas and to keep asking questions, to get lists of things that I might write about myself. I may also ask it to edit something that I’ve written and rewrite it so that I can see if I could make it any better, but I do use it as a tool there coming up with lists and even using it to say, I’m in this industry, who might I collaborate with?

That might be the beginning of a prompt in order to keep things going. That’s one way I use it. Another way is of course, through automations, and this is an area where I believe a lot of people fail, but they’re going for the long tail. They’re going for the small percentage of conversion.

They don’t care how many spam messages they send out as long as a few of them will bite. And again, I don’t think that is going not again, really. I don’t believe that is a way to develop relationships. So I believe it might be a way to start them. I use tools that enable me to start conversations with people, and if they bite, then I can bring in the real Wendy.

So I’ve used real Wendy language to get the conversation started, but people are busy, so they may or may not pay attention to it. But if they do write back to me, then I can come in with the real me. I don’t use chatbots to keep going down. I use chatbots to start conversations. And so I’m not sure if I answered your question.

Absolutely. Because I think that’s the key, right? Is the way of thinking about a lot of people think that the spamming of people is right. Unless they respond back to me and book an appointment, move on to the next one. But if you’re using it as a conversation starter, it’s a completely different way of thinking about it.

And I would say one of the, one of the interesting things I’ve found about using some of the AI tools is that actually what happens after they’ve the AI has written the its response to whatever your question is, when it then suggests these are other questions you might ask, that’s what I find is really interesting because Often that reveals this might be questions that my audience is wanting to know the answer to.

These might be things that I should be talking to. I might not necessarily want to go exactly with what their answer is to that question because it doesn’t have my unique insights into there. But the question itself is actually the fantastic prompt. A hundred percent. And I, these prompt engineers and all of that, it is fascinating to watch what people will do.

With ChatGPT and say, tell me more, even asking the ChatGPT to tell me more about that or change that from a 300 word article to 150 word article and just letting it show you different things. It’s, it is pretty phenomenal. I believe that it is a tool that we can use. I believe that as a networking tool doesn’t necessarily work other than to start the conversations, but I believe networking is personal and I don’t believe in sending unsolicited offers of business to people through social networks, as an example, immediately saying, by the way, I have this, would you like it?

It’s not the way I do business, but it’s certainly a way to do business and it does work for some. I want to turn our attention to keynote speaking in just a moment, but I just wanted to tell everyone that Wendy’s website, we’ll put the details in the in the show notes, strategic networking.

com. And you can get a free chapter of her book. And we’re also going to have a bit of a bit of bonus content where we’re going to discuss the difference between network and networking. So I’m looking forward to that. So that’s following the links in the show notes as well to get access to that.

But right now I wanted to ask you about this whole idea of keynote speaking, which is another part of what you’re heavily involved in. And I’m intrigued as to how that, how people actually get into that and how that kind of works for people who are interested in that space, because it seems to be, it’s a group of, it’s a community itself, isn’t it?

It is. Thanks. It is. So what attracted me to it is there’s a few things. Number one, I’ve always felt very comfortable on stage and doing training and presentations. I’ve done that my whole life. And so I’ve done it not as a profession, but as an adjunct to what I already do. Presenting professionally in front of conferences has been something that I’ve been part of.

So number one, I have the skill to do it. Number two, I. Really want to travel more in my life. And I know that in my BNI world, I’m very tied to the Sydney Northeast area. So my other business, I want to be more global. And so I intentionally looked for a business opportunity that would be able to take me to different places because my husband and I both love to travel.

I began to talk to some professional keynote speakers who were speaking at our BNI conferences and we were paying them bucketfuls of money to come to us and they were coming from all over the world in different places and I thought this is, this, there’s something to this because I know I can deliver And I often deliver for free what they’re delivering for high value.

And I thought they’re stopping too. I did start to get involved in the professional speakers of Australia community. I became an associate member of that last year. I’ve been developing my speaker show reel and my speaker, keynote speaker assets like things like videos and biographies and speaker introductions and headshots and.

All of the things that someone would need if they were going to be hiring and bringing me in to help promote something for their audience. I need to always remember, and your audience should remember this too, if you are a keynote speaker your client is the person who hires you, not the audience.

So you need to remember why the client has brought you in. Why does the client need you? What does the client want to achieve? By doing this. And so my goal is always to listen to what their needs are and deliver that. And I do it through rock and roll and networking. I love live music. I love rock and roll.

And I thought everybody could give a keynote presentation about networking, but if I make my strategic networking a little bit quirky, it’ll probably stick. And so rock and roll and networking is the theme and I use. It’s all on Spotify. That’s it. I’m all the time. And I don’t want to get in your head, but I do want to make this thing fun.

So I’m trying to do something fun with a microphone. And so I always say my favorite thing to do in a podcast, and it can be anything from a 90 to 30 minute podcast. And I put together an idea of what I love to do and what to do, and I put it together and let’s do it. And it’s easy to do it.

And suddenly I was just relaxing on the sofa and I was looking at my phone or whatever it was. And suddenly I hear this music coming up and going, what just really triggered me. And it was being used on a commercial, but it’s amazing how you associate certain music with certain things.

And it can be, it’s a bit of fun, but it’s also quite powerful as well because it puts you into a mindset that you can associate with something, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, you remember those five people I mentioned, I have one song for each of them and on the playlist, if you listen to it, hopefully on the way to a networking event, it’ll remind you what you’re there for.

I’m going to have to tune into that that playlist. We might have to make that give some links to that one as well for pretty sure. I’d love that. Just before we wrap up the part of the pro this part of the program, and you’ve given us so much information here, you touched on it at the beginning about a lot of the things that you’ve done.

Talk me through, prior to the 18 years of being the, Wendy, the candle lady where was the original dream? Where did you start off doing? What’s the backstory? Oh, the backstory. I I have always wanted to be. on stage. I’ve always thought that I would be an actor and probably mostly theater.

I never really thought of myself as an actor that would be on film. Though had I stuck with it, who knows what would’ve I actually was getting a degree in theater when I met my husband back in 1987, so I was 17 years old and I was definitely destined for the stage at that point in time. And I just left it.

I moved to Australia. I was already in hospitality and I started to really think about what I wanted to do for a living. And I didn’t really try to do theater as a career. It was always just more of this little dream. And so that was where it started. I really intended to be an actress and I suppose by getting involved in keynote speaking.

It’s enabling me to still be on the stage and still be influencing and helping people. And I am in a band, so I get to do my rock and roll at the same time. We can’t gloss over that. Tell me about the, tell me about the band. I’m trying to picture you in the band now. I started out as a performer and so I am a performer now.

My band is called the Bell. We play in Sydney very very frequently at a band and a venue called the Bayview in Blainesville. And I don’t know where all of your audience is, but we’re in Australia. So I we play in Wollongong down in to rule and we do private parties and things. And I, it’s a five piece band.

It’s a rock and roll band. We play covers, fun songs. So I get to explore that. So my background is in, on the stage. And so therefore the rest of my life, I’m doing that. What a lot of fun to mix those two things. I want to see the keynote speech that starts out with you rock and rolling and then not people not expecting that you’re then actually the speaker.

I think that’s great. That’s going to be coming soon to a stage near you. Fantastic. Just I just want to wrap this part of it up and again, reminded to everyone that the difference between network and networking and interesting conversation we’re going to have in the bonus bit of content, but just to wrap these things up that we talk about we talked about a lot of things around, from key from keynote to networking and to BNI.

People have got multiple ways of working with you or engaging with you, but are there particular heart moments that people have that you want to tell more people about that this is what you’re going to have if you come and work with me? Yes. So my, I guess my tagline will say most of it, but I like to I promise, I guarantee I will make the uncomfortable network talk.

People who, who say, I don’t like to go to networking events, I feel uncomfortable doing it. I will give them the tools and the knowledge and the skills to make them feel comfortable doing it. And then, the ineffective networkers, the ones who do a lot of networking, are out there all the time, aren’t really building their business.

I will help them to become effective networkers. And those are the things that I guarantee with the work that I do. And so the keynotes are whetting people’s appetite to the possibilities. The workshops that I run in the strategic networking masterclass help people to really hone those skills and personalize it.

And so the book that I wrote, Stop Wasting Your Time Networking, is because people waste their time. And so this book also has a workbook with it that it, when people go through that workbook and really take a pen to paper they will be able to get a personal strategic networking framework for themselves.

And deliver that. So I guarantee results from people and the testimonials I get from people who incorporate the framework into their networking. Get the results. That’s why the subtitle of the book is getting results through relationships. So it’s really important. So much gold in all of that conversation.

I know people have got plenty out of it and they’re going to stay tuned for the for the bonus bit of content. But. For now for as part of this, the main part of the podcast that Wendy, thank you so much for being an incredible guest. And we’re going to provide all the links for people to get in contact with you to read the book and more.

So thank you for being part of this bites. It’s a pleasure, Anthony. Thanks for having me. And thanks. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by Podcasts Done For You. The service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance to the world.

Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites.