Founders’ Club #34: Networking – Review

Tips and tricks for building and maintaining a network came from brigk’s managing director Franz Glatz and guest systemic coach and mentor Simone Neumeier in this month’s 34th Founders’ Club. A good network creates contacts to fellow campaigners, supporters, potential customers and investors. However, building such a network requires courage, perseverance and a good portion of fun and curiosity in order to approach strangers and not lose sight of contact.

At the introduction of the club, Franz Glatz reported on his personal network experience, on interesting conversations with publisher Hubert Burda while sightseeing in Jerusalem and how his passion for bagpipes led him to unexpected contact.

The connection to coach Simone Neumeier also came about through the Franz Glatz network. With over 14 years of group experience as a team and project manager, she is a professional in the field. Your most important tip at the beginning – when networking, it is the quality, not the quantity, of the contacts that counts. This also includes a high-quality approach to potential network partners. It is important to be aware of which strengths you have and how they can be used optimally, which projects you have in mind and to formulate the values ​​you represent. In this way, commonalities can be found more quickly in a dialogue on which one can build. Preparation and being able to offer something to the other person help to confidently start the conversation. She gave various options to help with optimal preparation and also went into the differences between internal and external contacts. The online mentoring club, for example, offers a simple and helpful way of gathering experts in your network.

In order to keep in touch, Franz Glatz recommends making short coffee appointments with people from your own network who you have not seen for a long time. Calendly can be a tool for this – coffee dates, freshen up contacts and, especially now, gives you the opportunity to loosen up everyday life and collect new impulses.

Simone Neumeier knew how to actively involve the Founders ’Club participants in her lecture – a lively exchange on the topic quickly arose, in which some of the participants also talked about their own experiences and started to expand their own network in the group.

When it came to the question of the perfect networking event, everyone agreed that a personal exchange in a relaxed atmosphere produces the best network results. The brigk Founders ’Club also offers this environment – two of the participants this month and the founder of a startup based in brigk, met about a year ago in this internal brigk network. The third founder in the group also came through dedicated networking. Stay tuned – it’s worth it!

Here is the collection of links that emerged during the club:  

calendly.com – helps to plan meetings without having to make big agreements by email. People who have been contacted have the opportunity to book free calendar slots

mentoring-club.de – volunteer mentors offer to share their knowledge here. Simply choose the mentor you’re interested in and book an appointment. Simone Neumeier is also an active mentor here.

TED talk recommended by Simone Neumeier, Heidi Grant explains the best way to ask for help – one of the foundations of good networking.

We look forward to further issues! The brigk month of April is all about successful branding.

On the subject of networking there is the 2nd edition of our new format the Makers’ Club this month. The review of the premiere in February can be found here on our blog.