The CEOs of Networking: Connecting - Engaging - Opportunities to Serve

The CEOs of Networking

Connecting • Engaging • Opportunities to Serve

Heidi Torres

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Heidi Torres

All rights reserved.

The CEOs of Networking

Connecting • Engaging • Opportunities to Serve

ISBN 978-1-63676-498-6 Paperback

978-1-63730-463-1 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-464-8 Ebook

For my late father, who encouraged me at a young age to talk to not-yet friends and to believe most people are good and deserve to be helped.

Contents

Growing Together

Part I

How We Got Here

Chapter 1

Science of Connecting

Chapter 2

Evolution of Networking and Technology—Social Media

Chapter 3

The Way Networking Used to Be

Chapter 4

Motivations

Chapter 5

Why Now

Part II

Principles of Networking Intimately

Chapter 6

Seven Layers of Networking Recipe

Chapter 7

Purpose = Your Mission Statement

Chapter 8

Starting the Conversation

Chapter 9

Choosing the Best Networking Formats

Part III

Growing Your Network

Chapter 10

Different Methods to Expand Your Network

Chapter 11

Serving through Volunteering

Chapter 12

Staying Connected to Your Network

Chapter 13

Communities of Commonalities

Part IV

How to Leverage Intimate Networking

Chapter 14

Networking Your Way into a New Career

Chapter 15

Networking for Introverts

Chapter 16

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Introduction

Growing Together

I was never the most popular person at any school. In fact, I discovered that I was an oddball when I was just four years old and attending preschool.

One day, one of my friends told me he could no longer play with me. It was a day after his parents picked him up from preschool and saw me with my father. When he said this, I didn’t understand, and I asked him why we could no longer play together. He explained that his parents told him I was different.

I remember going home and bawling my head off. My dad asked me what was wrong. I said, I don’t know, Daddy. I’m different. My friend told me I was different—that I look different. And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to fix that.

It was then that my father told me I was adopted.

My father tried his best to explain to a child of four years old about genetics; the reason he had brown hair and blue eyes and why I had black hair and dark brown eyes. Why they were not shaped the same, mine more slanted and his round. From then on, I knew I was different. My innocence was gone. I was no longer colorblind regarding the people around me. I knew at that point I was an oddball.

While I was growing up, I did not know my father was shy or an introvert. I think being shy and an introvert hurt his career and how he networked. I am certain he did not want me to have those same issues talking with people. When I was little at the store with my father and he could not find something in the store, he would send me to ask the store clerk, or if he were lost while he was out driving, he would have me ask someone for directions. Thinking back, that was a little weird for a child to go up to strangers and ask for directions. Stranger danger was not in my vocabulary growing up. I did not realize that my father was trying to teach me how to talk with people. I remember always being really annoyed as a child about having to talk to adults, but it did do one thing: it made me more comfortable talking to people I did not know. My father would tell me, People like the convenience store clerks are just friends you haven’t met yet. Comfort zone was not a phrase used back then, but my father pushed me out of my comfort zone to have the ability to talk to unknown people that could turn out to be friends.

My father never treated me any differently for not being his biological daughter. His ex-wives, on the other hand, were a different story. His third wife, Mary, always seemed embarrassed by our connection. Mary had alabaster white skin with blue eyes and flaming red hair. We did not look remotely alike; the only thing we had in common was that were both females.

I remember a time at a grocery store. It was just the two of us. We were both in line, and I bought something small with my own money and waited at the end of the counter as the bagger was packing Mary’s groceries. After she finished paying, I reached to pick up the bagged groceries to help carry them out to the car, and the cashier pointedly said to me, Those are not yours. I looked at Mary for support, but she had this pained look on her face as she replied, "That is my stepdaughter." Proof once again I did not fit in. It was a struggle to find common ground with my family. My father and stepmother played instruments. So, I took piano lessons. My stepsister was on the high school dance team and my stepbrother was on the football team—they were athletically gifted. Unfortunately, I was not musically or athletically inclined. I failed to master the piano and dancing. I eventually learned to embrace my oddness in school if not at home.

Not only was I Asian American, but I was a military brat. My father was in the US Army, and we moved a lot. I went to twelve different schools during my academic journey. I was that kid—the one who joined your class in the middle of the school year. The one with zero friends. The one wearing funny-looking clothes and sporting a strange hairstyle.

Almost every other year, I changed schools, and most of the schools I attended lacked diversity. I was usually the student who made those schools diverse. The schools I attended were predominantly white—white students and white teachers. It wasn’t even until I reached high school that there were more than three Asian Americans in the school and that included me.

Every school had its own flavor of the in way to be—new perspectives on music, literature, TV shows, and fashion. Being the new kid, it was a struggle to fit in and make friends. I faced the challenges of proving I was not the stereotypical Asian female. It did not help that I was weird looking when I was twelve. I had a huge overbite with crooked double rows of teeth because my father could not afford to get me braces until I was in the tenth grade.

We did not have a whole lot of money. While I was growing up, the lack of funds meant we could not afford the fancy name-brand clothes that most of the kids wore. Many of the popular kids came from more affluent families. The advantage some people have over others based on where they grew up, went to school, and where they work is what LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner calls the network gap. (Freeland Fisher, 2019)

Still, I was able to make friends with different groups of people. It did not matter what they looked like or how much money they had, because from my point of view, I did not want anyone to judge me on how I looked or dressed, so I did not judge others for how they were. I learned how to fit in by being adaptable and interested in those around me. I found one classmate and started a conversation about something going on in class, and they later introduced me to a friend of theirs. This process of making friends continued over and over.

Have you ever wondered what a good networker or influencer was like in school? Most highly regarded professionals have large networks or a robust circle of influential friends. I bet you probably think a top networker would have been a valedictorian, the star quarterback or cheerleader, or perhaps even the debate champion. You probably thought they were the most popular kids in school, and I imagine some were. There were some commonalities that the popular and the high achieving students shared that were expanded upon as an adult. We will talk more about those common traits later in the book.

There were times as a child when I was lonely, especially during the time of showing up to a new school and having not yet connected with that first friend. When I was seven, I had an imaginary friend with whom I would practice how real conversations with classmates might go, but imaginary friends can only take you so far when you are sitting alone in the school cafeteria. So, I would go forth seeing who was open to talking to the oddball and start to connect with my classmates, knowing that as soon as I made a friend, I would have to move again. After being the new oddball kid at different school number six, I found ways to connect with the cheerleaders, jocks, brainiacs, goths, band geeks, ones with beautiful voices, stoners, preps, school thespians, teachers’ pets, class clowns, ROTC nerds, and normal ones. The secret was that we are all a little odd because we were unique; no two people were exactly alike. There was something special in everyone and finding out what made them special allowed me to connect and make friends.

As the oddball at home and at school, I started to embrace what made me different and find other ways to forge bonds. Later in life when I was an adult, I heard top chef Carla Hall’s message when she spoke at the 2019 HRSouthwest Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. She said, Be your authentic self. When you are not genuine, people pick up on it, and, growing up as one of the few Asian females in school, I had no choice but to embrace my authentic self. Try as I might to conform at home and in school to what was expected of me, it was not until I forged my own path embracing what made me the oddball that truly led to connecting with those around me.

I moved from making friends in high school to networking in college. I was a nontraditional college student. I decided to go to college after working twenty-plus years in commission sales, when I decided to pursue a career in human resources.

I was the 2019-2020 Texas Woman’s University (TWU) Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) student chapter president. During my tenure, several members asked me why networking was important and how to do it. I told them that, when it came to landing a professional job outside of retail, most people do it through networking. It was not what you knew but whom you knew. I also shared some of the advice I received about being prepared with an elevator pitch and finding something interesting about whomever you were talking to, especially at a networking event.

After one of our general meetings, I asked, Would anyone like to go with me to a DallasHR networking event? I told them I would help whoever went with me practice how to network with HR professionals.

Immediately, two members came up to me wanting to go, Anastacia Iuevano and Anne Nguyen. They shared with me that they thought it was too scary to go by themselves but would love to go with me.

I recommended that we have our business cards handy and set a goal of how many new potential friends we would talk to, learn from, and share our stories with. I thought five was an attainable goal and my classmates eagerly agreed that it should be an easy goal to reach. I could tell they were excited at the prospect of going to their first professional networking event.

We only had to walk two feet into the crowded bar before I ran into someone I knew. Immediately I introduced this friend to my classmates. Then I asked for permission to take a selfie to commemorate the introduction, and my connection quipped, That’s why you’re the LinkedIn selfie queen! Taking selfies with my connections, new or familiar, at various networking events was a fun method that allowed me to learn people’s names and show engagement. Who does not love to see themselves having fun with others on social media?

After introducing Anastacia and Anne to what seemed like the seventh HR person, my classmates commented, You make it seem so easy. How do you know so many people at the event? I told them about my selfie queen method that I had been using for months and encouraged them to find their unique way of remembering who and what they were learning from their new connections. As the event wore on, eventually Anne and Anastacia ventured off from me, emboldened by their successes with meeting new people as they started talking to different people on their own. I was so proud of them as I watched them gain confidence. It was like watching two birds flying from the nest and into the wild for the first time.

We met back up an hour or so later to count the collected business cards and to see whether we had accomplished the goal we had set earlier. My prodigy networkers collected more than eight business cards each and one of them even arranged a coffee chat with a new connection to learn more about a company that might have a possible internship. We had a lot of fun and even took a photo of just the three of us at the conclusion of the night.

This might sound obvious, but networking is not meant to be a solo event. When I took Anne and Anastacia to the networking event, it was to teach them how to build authentic relationships with professionals in a fun bar hangout setting. Throughout my senior year in college, I invited classmates to attend various networking events with me. It was an extension of how I made friends from my childhood. I am never going to be the life of the party, the smartest person, or the one with the loudest voice in the room, and I am okay with that. I did learn and continue to learn from