Why you don’t really say what you do at networking events

Do you ever leave a networking event realising you know exactly what everyone else does… but hardly anyone could say the same about you?

You might have had good conversations. You might have felt comfortable, even enjoyed yourself, and yet nothing has come of it. No follow‑ups. No referrals. No real sense that being in that room made any difference to your business.

In this episode of Rise From Within, I’m talking about why that happens.

This isn’t about having a better pitch, being more confident, or forcing yourself to sound salesy. It’s about the very common ways women hold back at networking events without realising — asking questions instead of speaking about themselves, minimising what they do, or moving the focus away from their work and asking others about what they do instead.

I explore what’s actually going on underneath those behaviours, why networking confidence can feel harder the more experienced you become, and how being liked at networking doesn’t automatically lead to being remembered or referred.

In this episode, I cover:

• Why networking confidence often looks like being polite, asking lots of questions, and keeping the focus off yourself
• The difference between being socially present and being professionally present at networking events
• Why confidence at networking events can feel harder, not easier, as your business grows
• The cost of being liked at networking but not referred
• What it really means to own what you do without apology in business spaces

I also talk about the temptation to say “they weren’t my people anyway” and dismiss what's really happened, and why networking isn’t just about who buys from you now, but who might remember, recommend, or refer you later.

This episode is for you if you’re showing up to networking events, feel like you're doing all the right things, and still wondering why it’s not translating into opportunities and sales.

Transcript

0:00

Hello, happy new year to you. God, it feels like ages ago, doesn't it? Christmas and new year. Absolutely ages ago. But it's actually only been a couple of weeks, really. Anyway, uh yeah, first episode back for the new year. So that's exciting. I've left it a few weeks to come back into the podcast. I wanted to really sit with what I wanted to talk about this year. And um I decided I'm just going to wing it. the same way that I always do. I'm just going to see what happens, see what kind of topics take me. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to this year and talking to you guys again. I've had a bit of a break, needed a bit of a rest and Christmas and New Year was a good time to do that. So I'm looking forward to getting back into it weekly though. I've missed it. I have actually missed doing the podcast. So that's lovely. I am coming to you today with what is left of a bubble tea. um I love these things. I love these. They were part of my Christmas stocking this year. I love bubble teas. They're just a little bit different and I know they're an acquired taste, right? Not everybody likes them, but I really like the little bubbles and when they pop in your mouth, there's that bit of syrup, but I've got a really sweet tooth. So that's the way it goes. Yeah, so there's not going to last me the whole episode this, don't think, but we'll see. What else has been going on? So we had a lovely Christmas, lovely New Year, had a busy one. It was busy, but it was lovely. And everything else is as it was before, I guess, as it was. Yeah. So hope you had a good one. I hope now in the New Year you're ready to go. It's quite a nice time to come in as well now because we've just had the new moon. And I think everybody was feeling a bit sluggish up until that point. There was still that lull of energy and some people weren't really ready to get back into stuff in the new year. Completely understandable. You know what? Our bodies are not designed for hitting things running in the new year. It is January, it is winter. It is a season of cold and dark where animals are hibernating. And as humans, don't do that. As humans, we are like, new year, let's go. Let's push forward. Let's get some stuff done. Our body's not really geared up for that. So if you felt a little bit sluggish in the new year, then there's no surprise really. That's why, but we've had this new moon and so we're in new energy and now it feels like a good time to get going again. So first, first episode, let's go. I'm excited. You'll also notice there's no intro music on this one. I'm not very good with this sort of stuff. So I've decided I'm just gonna come straight in and just talk to you because my intro sounds rubbish. Let's just go with that. My intro sounds rubbish. The actual podcast intro, know, like the music and the, hi, this is the Rise From Within podcast. I'm just gonna come on and talk to you, I think. If there are any people out there that are really good at this stuff and want to create something for me, then fill your boots. I will give you all the credit in all of the land, but I'm not doing it myself. So there. What's been going on then? So this week I went to a networking event. I have not been to an in-person networking event for a very, very long time. It's been literally years. I used to go to them really, really regularly. And since COVID and since the business change and all of that, because this hasn't always been my business as you know, since that's all changed, my, all my networking has been online. It's all been in online spaces, in zoom calls and stuff. thought, God, I really like to get out there and do in-person stuff again. I'm a bit, bit zoom fatigued. I think we all are. And so I was looking for places to go and networking locally. And then at very short notice, someone said, oh, well, there's space on this one tomorrow. Would you like to come as my guest? I was like, brilliant. Yes, please. Thank you very much. So I went to this networking event and in the run up to it, I could feel all the old hesitations from when I used to go networking before. In my head, before I'd even stepped out the door, I was making those excuses. No one's going to want what I've got to sell. No one's going to know who I am. That's the point. It's networking. You go and you meet people, right? But, know, irrational thoughts and all that. um I don't feel very well. I'm tired. I've got a headache. I'm this, I'm that. I've got nothing to wear. All of it just churning around and around in my head. This used to happen to me all the time. And the number of times I would talk myself out of going networking was unreal. The chances I must have missed out on, the opportunities I must have missed out on, because I just didn't get myself there because of my self-confidence was unthinkable really. So I was very quickly, no, no, no, I recognize these thoughts. I recognize this and this doesn't get to win this time. This does not get to dictate whether I show up or not anymore. When you do that, when you allow that to happen, you miss out on an awful lot. And another thing I used to do was show up at these networking events. When I did get myself there, I would show up and I would talk to nobody or not, not talk to nobody. I would talk to the few people that I knew. Now, what is the point in talking to the same people every time? What is the point in going and standing with your friend? It's not going to make you more business. It's not going to give you new leads. It's not going to give you new contacts. It's not going to give you a new circle of business people that you can lean into. And I always used to leave these events knowing what everybody else did, what everybody else did. And I'm sure nobody really knew what I did because I would really briefly mention what I did and then move on. People would like me. and I would be welcomed in these spaces, but I'm not sure that people knew or trusted in what I was doing because I wasn't very good at selling myself. It's about allowing yourself to be recognized, I guess. So I completely understand if this is the space that you're in, I completely understand that because I used to do it all the time. And here's how it shows up when you actually go to these networking events. You default to asking questions about other people rather than talking about yourself. Right. So you will. Here's what used to happen to me. People would go, oh, and who are you and what you do? And I would say, well, I'm Terri and I'm, you know, whatever I used to actually let's, let's go with it as if it was now I'm Terri and I'm a business coach. And what about you? What do you do? Shut it down straight away. See, I've given you my name. I tell you what I do now onto you. And I would then pad out the conversation. So they would explain what they did. And then I would ask lots of questions about what they were doing, about what their business was. So I keep the conversation flowing, but I keep myself very small and I make them the center of attention. And then even if it came back to me as a person, that would then look like softening what I did. Minimising my job, minimising my role, minimising what I could do for people or just really quickly breezing past it. And the focus would be on being more interested in them and being helpful to them or just being easy to be around, just being a likeable, nice person that people like to see in these spaces that people gravitate towards, not because of what you do. but because you're a nice, friendly person. And that's the way I used to do networking. It is not good. It is not the right way to do things. know, excuses before you've even left the house, questioning what you're wearing all the time, being more curious about other people instead of yourself. It means that what you are is socially present rather than professionally present. You know, so socially present means being engaged and interested without really landing on what you do. And social, social presence builds comfort. Okay. It builds a comfort and a sense of belonging and a sense of, of yeah, comfort is the best way I can describe it really. You just feel happy and comfortable being in that space. But it doesn't give you anything more than that. professional positioning, that's what you're looking for. That's what you need to achieve in these spaces. It's a lot more tricky because you have to talk about yourself and you have to talk about what you do and the outcomes that you achieve for people and what you're good at and why people should buy from you. You don't want to be the person that's remembered as lovely. Well, you do. You want to be the person that people like and think of as lovely, but you want to be that's Terri. She's lovely. And she does this. I would rather people say, Oh, who's that? that's Terri. She's a business coach. She helps women be more visible. She helps them have the confidence to go to networking spaces or to show up online or to sell themselves and their business or to price themselves properly. she runs great events. You should really go to one of her events. You'll get a lot out of it. Instead, if you do the other thing, if you do the comfort building thing, you get, oh, this is Terri. Oh yeah, she's lovely. She's really nice. I want to be both, right? You want to be both. You want to be lovely, but you also want to be the person that people buy from. What is the point in going to these networking meetings if people are not buying from you? So that social presence keeps the conversation flowing. The professional positioning gives people the direction. It tells them what they need to do next. It tells them that you ask somebody to be trusted and someone to buy from. Now there is another aspect to this. We have all met the person in the room who is loud and outspoken and confident and just seemingly taking up a lot of everybody's space and energy. And I think as people, especially in the UK actually, we don't want to be seen as that person. We don't want to be seen as too big, too much, you know, more than, more than whatever. don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that more than. more than what this expectation, I guess, on how people should behave in business circles. There was one of these people at the event that I was at this week. She turned up, she integrated herself into this group of six or seven people that we were stood as a group talking. And she comes in and she introduces herself very confidently. She asks what everybody else does. She hands out her information. She strikes at conversations. She was a big voice, she was a big energy, she was a big person in the room. We are told, we are taught that that is too much. We are taught that if you have big energy like that, it's not okay, it's too much. And you wanna be just enough. That's what we're conditioned to believe. We are taught to criticize or judge that behavior. And then what happens is because we don't want to be that person, we then start... playing ourselves down just to make sure that we're not. Now, let me just say this. If a man behaved that way, nobody would think anything of it. If a man comes into the circle and he's saying those things, I'm such and such, this is what I do here, I have my business cards, this is how I can help you and what do you do, can we work together, blah, blah, blah. And if he started behaving in the same way, everybody just thinks confident guy. That's what confident guys do. If a woman does it, it's too much. So there is a lot of conditioning that goes into how you behave in these circles. So it's not your fault. If you play yourself down at networking events, it's because it's the way that you've been taught to be. But you have to find that balance. well, actually, you don't have to find balance. You have to be yourself. You have to be yourself because you're not too much. You are you. And people who like you will be drawn to you and your energy and what you're offering. So you just have to be yourself. If you are not confident in what you say about yourself, others cannot be confident in you either. So that's a really important thing to remember. This is all conditioning. This is all learned stuff. These are responses that you've learnt to bring about when visibility feels unsafe for you. Over time, in many, ways, you learnt what feels safer for you in rooms where you are somehow being seen and assessed. And this is what's happening in these spaces. You are being seen and you are being assessed. And that's because people want to know if you are somebody they want to work with, somebody that they can get referrals from, somebody that they can refer on to. There's all kinds of ways that you... and your offer are being assessed in these spaces. You've learnt over your years up to this point what feeling safe in those rooms looks like for you. And you learn to be agreeable and interested in other people or quiet. Quiet was often rewarded more than you being clear and assertive and energetic. You might have had this from when you were little. We were talking about this in a session that I led last week. When I was little, it was common to hear things like, stop showing off, stop showing off, stop drawing attention to yourself, be quiet, all those sort of things. So all these conditioning might have come in for you from when you were very, very little. And visibility meant judgment and misunderstanding and being labeled as too much. So if you did hear that message when you were little, stop showing off, sit down, be quiet, then you're taught that by putting yourself out there and being yourself and being energetic, you are too much. So this messaging can start very early for a lot of people and then it makes it very difficult to put yourself forward. Those responses. to being quiet and being reserved might have helped you at one point. When you were little, if you heard that message, then it meant that you didn't get into trouble. So by being quiet, you went unnoticed and you didn't get into trouble, maybe. As an adult, maybe you've had an experience where you were being yourself and you were happy being yourself and then something happened. to make you feel unsafe in that. Something like maybe somebody criticised you and judged you and commented on your energy. mean, all it takes, all it takes if your confidence is ready to take a hit is for someone to go, you're very confident, aren't you? And that knocks you. So those responses might have been useful once, but they're outdated now and you don't need them anymore. Maybe you don't actually lack confidence. You're just managing your visibility. You're managing your exposure and you're managing your safety in that. So your body will respond before your mind catches up with you. Okay. You walk into a room and your nervous system scans the room. before you've had a chance to consciously think. Your body will pick up on tone and hierarchy and energy. It will pick up on groups that feel safe or unsafe, spaces that feel safe or unsafe. Where can you feel most comfortable in the room? Your body will pick up on all of this stuff before your brain has even had a chance to think about it. And you might feel that. You might feel it in different ways. So you might feel it in your chest. You might feel your breathing changes. You might have this sudden urge to just get out of there. You might have these signals to be busy, look busy so that nobody comes over and talks to you. By the time your mind says, I should speak up, your body has already decided that no, that is not what we're doing today. Thank you very much. I am not comfortable with this. Logical reassurance does not change your behavior in the moment. Okay. Your brain is going, don't be stupid. We're perfectly safe here. And your body is going, I don't like it. I don't like it. The response is always physical first, cognitive second. So you might have created these behaviors that help you to manage that. You might go into a quiet corner where you're not really in the thick of it, or you might go and stand by somebody that you know and that you like, and that always chats with you and you consider to be friendly. And you might stay with them the whole time and go wherever they go, even if they want you to or not. And even if you realize you're doing it or not, maybe you're just swaying. to doing that and going to the same spaces. I actually found myself in a corner at this meeting that I just went to. Not intentionally. I did see a friend and she was waiting for me. She knew I was going. So she said, I'm just inside the door. I'm just over here. So I made a beeline for her and went and stood with her. That put me in a corner. Now that was unintentional. But at some point this guy comes over and he's chatting with me and he's like, what do you do? So I was talking to him and we found ourselves in this corner and I said, you I'm not, we made a joke about me not being his target, eh not me being his, him not being my target audience. And I at one point said, don't feel like you have to stand here and talk to me the whole time because I am not going to be buying from you. You're not going to be buying from me. So. don't feel like you have to stand here just to be polite. And he came back and made a joke about the fact that actually he was quite enjoying just standing in the corner. Now, whether that was a confidence thing, maybe it was a moment where he's like, I just need a bit of quiet before I head into it. He was lovely. He was very chatty, but being in that corner was not getting him the results that he intended to get when he walked through the door that day. So who knows what was going on for him. But when you put yourself in these positions, when you adopt these behaviors that keep you very small, you are... protecting yourself, but you're not developing anything. You're not developing yourself. You're not developing any contacts. You're not promoting your business. So your business isn't growing and you drain yourself. You drain your energy because you'll walk out of there thinking, well, that was nice, but I haven't made any new contacts and I don't have any new business, but it feels like you've done something because you've gone to this networking event. Right. No. This is not a newbie thing either. It is very easy to dismiss this as well. I'm very new to networking or I'm very new to business. But actually experienced women do often struggle in rooms like this. Not less, which is interesting. The more experience you have, the more clearly you know what's at stake when you're being seen. That's what I tend to find. Being visible now means that you are evaluated on real expertise, not potential. If you are seen to be in business for a good while and you're perceived to be successful or whatever it is, you are then being evaluated on your real expertise. You're not anymore hiding behind, I'm new, I'm learning, I'm just finding my feet, I'm just trying to figure out what spaces I need to be in. trying to figure out what I'm doing with my business. Nobody expects you when you're new to be a pro at all this stuff. But when you're experienced, this becomes more of a, this becomes more of an expectation, I guess. And then you've got your identity and your reputation and your credibility all tied up with how you're perceived. And so your nervous system then becomes more cautious, not, more relaxed. And this is why confidence does not automatically grow with experience. That's not a given. It's not a given. And it's really easy to just justify this stuff. Okay. It's an avoidance pattern. It's really easy to say, well, they weren't my people anyway. Oh, they're never going to buy from me. um dismissing the room can just feel safer than acknowledging Mr. Presence. The misunderstanding that network only matters if somebody buys from you. That's another thing, isn't it? Networking is only good. It's only working if people buy from you. But the reality is that when you put yourself in there, you are building this rapport. And often with people that might not buy from you directly, but they might refer on, they might recommend you, they might remember you later when somebody's talking about needing what you've got to offer. So you should never feel like an imposter, okay? You should never feel like you don't deserve to be in this space or you don't deserve to be talking about yourself. There is a real cost to showing up like that. There's a real cost to not getting involved in the conversation and not mingling and not sharing your business cards and not talking about what you're doing. It means nobody really knows what you do. You don't have a clear positioning. Nobody knows your job role, how you help people, how people can access you, all that sort of thing. And that means no referrals. And so what happens is you're liked, as I was talking about that earlier, people like you, but they don't really remember you. So that then stalls your growth because they can't recommend you, can't refer on, you don't get the referrals and there goes your business growth. Opportunities will pass to people with louder and clearer voices. So there might be something that would be perfect for you to get involved in. but nobody's gonna tell you about it because they don't know what you do, so they don't know if it'd suit you. So it's not always about what you can sell to other people. Sometimes somebody might have something that is perfect for you, but because they don't know about you and they don't know what you do, they don't know that it's perfect for you, so they can't tell you about it. And then you end up leaving these events, just kind of replaying conversations. thinking about what you could have done and should have said and you know all that and you don't build any momentum and you don't build relationships and you don't build forward movement in your business. You just have time spent analyzing what you should have said or could have said and this kind of emotional exhaustion of the before the during and the after. the whole self-management thing and the frustration of doing all the right things and not getting any return. If you're going to these networking events and you're speaking to these people, you can easily feel like you're doing the right things, but you're getting no return. So it's really important that you realize that this is costing you time and energy and essentially money. And none of those things are easy to come by if you're lacking in them. None of those things you should be handing over for no return. So let me just put this into context then a little bit. means you need to show up better, not necessarily show up more. Networking isn't about saying more. Confidence in how you're putting yourself out in networking spaces is not about saying more. It's occupying your role without apology. It's about selling what you do and telling people who you are and how you help people without apology. It is showing up as the person that you already are, not the version that you think will be acceptable. So clothes can come into this quite a lot. You can turn up dressed as you think you should dress to be accepted in the space rather than what you actually want to be wearing and what you feel most comfortable in. There's a lot to be said for showing up in a space feeling great in the clothes that you're wearing. It's really good for your confidence. But sometimes we show up wearing what we think we should wear and then we spend the whole time going, God. don't know if I look okay or not, you know, all that sort of stuff. And it means having conversations and allowing your role and your experience and your perspective and your thoughts to just reach other people without you playing them down and without you justifying them. And it's speaking from responsibility and... confidence in what you're offering rather than seeking the the permission of other people. Sometimes in conversations, we try and be agreeable and we try and tell people what we think they want to hear. If your message doesn't land with them, that's not your fault. That's just they're not ready to or they don't understand or they're not interested. And for them to not be interested is absolutely fine. Not everybody is going to be interested in what you do and what you have to offer, but you should never play down what you're offering to please other people and to get that permission from other people. And know that your voice is not an arrogance. It is a positioning. It is a confidence. It is you being you. Who cares if you're that person in the room? That is the big energy. If that is you, that is you. And you shouldn't downplay that. It's not an arrogant position to stand from. People can be arrogant. We know that. But by you being you and promoting what you're Offering, that's not an arrogance. We've got to be better at selling what we offer. We just have to. What is the point in going to these networking events if you're not going to tell people what you do and how you can help them? You are not being asked to become louder, bolder, more salesy. You are being invited to stop managing yourself so heavily and to start having a presence in your role, in your capacity, in what you have to offer people. So if this feels familiar, this is the work we do. I'm not teaching you how to network. I'm not teaching you how to get the best out of business relationships, all that sort of thing. Just trying to help you feel a bit safer and a bit more confident in your ability to go into these rooms, to lead, to speak, to be seen. And then maybe your personality and what you offer people in your business can actually start to reflect what you do and how capable you are. It is just brilliant when people get to know you and know what you do and then start to refer on, but you've got to give yourself the chance in the first place. So that is it for today. I hope that's been really helpful. I hope that starts your new year networking with a bang. yeah, let me know. Let me know how it works out for you. In the meantime, have a great week. and I will speak to you next week. See ya.