A Networking Parable

There I was, a humble beer writer, at the 79th annual convention of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, trying to figure out how to connect to the middle tier of the alcoholic beverage industry. I had come to learn and to meet people, but a convention of over 2,000 people is not my favorite milieu.

After a midday seminar, I had several hours to kill before that evening’s opening reception, where I planned to turn on the meet-&-greet. The only open bar in the Hyatt Regency Chicago, their second-floor Big Bar, was packed out with attendees, most of whom seemed to be reuniting with old friends they’d met at previous conventions.

That’s pretty much my worst case scenario: everyone is enjoying seeing familiar faces—what use would they have for my new face?

Here’s an advanced maneuver for introvert socializing: When faced with a crowd and unstructured social time, dive right into the middle of it.

Fighting every urge to retreat to a quiet, out-of-the-way room, I walked into the bar, ordered a drink, and found a seat on an unoccupied end of a table. The guys at the other end had their backs to me, talking to people at the table next to us. Okay, I thought. Just look like you’re fine. I pulled out a trade publication and started casually reading it.

Within 20 minutes, the first group had cleared out and a man and his young daughter asked if they could sit across from me. They were from Scranton, and they wanted to watch the Eagles-Steelers game. Perfect. We could make small talk while letting the game fill the silences.

The Verrastros were pleasant enough to talk to, though they were more than a little distracted by the pounding the Eagles were giving the Steelers. I didn’t want to talk shop too much, but I did get Victoria Verrastro to advise that the way to target Millennials, which she proudly considered herself, was to follow the lead of sites like the Skimm and provide easily digestible content in an idiom that speaks to a content-overloaded, spin-dizzy audience.

Okay, so she was also an attractive young professional who begged me to quote her, so maybe I’m still human (you’re welcome, Victoria!). But it’s useful advice, and all in all it was enough of a networking win for me.

It’s a Parable If You Learn From It

I’m trying to think of that moment as a little introversion/networking parable. A parable, after all, is just a story from which you can derive a lesson, right? And I learned not to let fear guide my decision-making.

Other events that weekend drove the lesson home. For instance, in his remarks to the general convention, NBWA President and CEO Craig Purser argued that “disruption is the new normal for the beer industry” and suggested that the response should be to “lean in” to the change.

“Lean in”—that is, adapt, take stock and adjust course to meet your goals. Not so far from what I did when I had extra time that afternoon.

It turned out that Victoria Verrastro was a featured speaker on the NBWA Next Generation panel, which mostly highlighted the value of joining the Next Generation group—which is an important initiative in this multi-generational industry. Maybe, just maybe, a young leader’s advice about the future could be useful?

Leaning Into Fragmentation

So, fine, it was good to walk into the middle of that crowd—just as it proved good to walk into the middle of the reception that night and the one the following night, both of which a part of me was inclined to skip. I exercised my socializing skills, learned a bit more about the industry, met some great people.

But it’s not like every person I met, or even most of them, will lead to contracts. Networking, of course, is about more than that, but I’d be inviting trouble not to expect that most of those connections will fizzle and fade.

And that’s okay. Some relationships click; others don’t. Some folks will want what I do; others won’t. It’s a common refrain you hear in business coaching podcasts: not everyone will be a good fit for you, so know your ideal client.

I think we can triangulate this advice with the conclusion Danny Brager of the Nielsen Company came to regarding market fragmentation in one of the morning seminars at NBWA.

Brager described how the alcoholic beverage market is becoming more ethnically diverse, more economically polarized, and under greater pressure for variety and choice.

The conclusion he drew was that knowing your local market—down to the specific retailer—would become increasingly important. There are markets for lots of brands, but you have to know them.

In other words, not every retailer will want your same brands, so you have to know them.

Trust the Process, Fall Back on What You Know

There are many parts of the beer, wine, and spirits industries I’m still learning about, including the market for good, clean copywriting and where to find the brewers ready to hire a ghostwriter for their books, but I hold tight to the fact that our digitally oriented economy has become hyper-localized and fragmented, meaning I’ll keep finding those copywriting clients as long as I keep looking for them. I have to trust the process.

Despite all the repetition, it takes something surprisingly like faith to really trust in the Nielsen numbers or in my podcasters. The very condition of disruption implies instability and uncertainty, after all. But you can always fall back on what you know: your skills, your values, the confidence others have in you. The worst thing you can do is to let fear keep you from doing anything.

Image: Diego Torres Silvestre/Flickr