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BookmarkHow not to network or, getting folks to like you isn't really that hard if you're doing it right
I wanted to share something I posted recently on my blog and see if anyone else has had a similar story of networking gone horribly, horribly wrong.
It was the first time we had met, and she was sitting near me at one of the tables as I had just started a conversation with someone else. As has occasionally happened, when the woman I was conversing with heard that my business name was the zen kitchen, she assumed I was a personal chef and got very excited about the possibility of having someone to plan meals for her. Amused, I explained what I actually did, and the fact that one of the things that I love about my business name is that people hear it and immediately ask me "ooh, what's that?"
Without skipping a beat, the other woman sitting near me, who I'd known all of about 5 minutes, told me that my name was confusing. She also mentioned that, as a Feng Shui practitioner, one of the principles of Feng Shui is that if your business name is confusing, "your business will never take off."
After going over a couple of potential responses in my head, I decided on, "Thank you for your feedback, but I've been doing this for three years, and things seem to be going pretty well."
The rest of the entry is on my blog. This isn't a shameless plug (okay, maybe it is) - more just not wanting to clog the page with the whole entry.
Has anyone else had a story like this to share? I'm really curious now. Any other funny socially-challenged moments out there?
