A few weeks ago Gran Canaria held its very first MIB event, on the infamous beachfront of Las Canteras! We were an eclectic bunch of women from ten different countries, all coming together to share stories, businesses, ideas and of course to network! Now if you had asked me just a few months ago if I thought I’d be the leader of a MIB group here on the island, facilitating this incredible event that brought so many women together, I’d definitely have laughed and said ‘no’. I’ll be honest, although I’d been a member of MIB for a years, I hadn’t fully embraced the power and impact that networking can have, and I had certainly not considered becoming a leader myself.
Running your own business can be lonely
So let’s go back in time here and unpack what happened to make me change my mind and realise that networking is the way to go. A few months ago I was mulling over the fact that although there are some excellent groups for mums on our island, that offer support, friendship and advice, I hadn’t found anything similar for mums who were working for themselves. It can be lonely when you run your own business, you have no colleagues and no one to share your ideas and goals with. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me that an idea sounds feasible, or not, and give me some accountability to follow through with my plans. I was becoming more active in the main MIB group, and enjoyed the weekly coffee and chat networking sessions and the enthusiasm that these women from around the world had for my business goals, even though we’d never met in person!
You could lead your own MIB group
Now online networking is great, but it’s not the same as actually meeting up in-person, chatting face to face and building real relationships with other women in business who live in your area. So, to continue with my new pro-active, say yes approach to life, I decided to get in touch with Leona at MIB and offer to run a group here for all those women who were in the same boat as me. It took a couple of months to get me set up but then we were off! Reconnecting with a group of women that had been inactive for over two years, forging new relationships and igniting the flame of motivation and empowerment.
You only fail if you stop trying
I’ll be honest, it was not as easy as it imagined! I thought I would share my welcome post and 250 women in the existing MIB Gran Canaria group would all cheer and we’d be up and running again! But Facebook algorithms do not work like that and in actual fact nobody saw my first few posts in the group! The reach grew to just a handful of women in the first couple of weeks and I started to doubt my own ability to grow a successful networking group here on the island. But remembering the powerful saying about only failing if you quit, I knew I had to keep going and take the advice and support of the other MIB leaders.
Everything they say is true!
Now this part is where it gets exciting because I can now share with you some tips to grow a group, re-engage a ‘lost’ audience, increase post reach and sell tickets for an event, (this could be your own products or services if you are not running your own MIB group). I can share these tips because over the last few months I have tried them and they work!! I have not reinvented the wheel here, I can’t claim these tips as my own, I have simply listened to what works for others who are doing well and put their actions into play myself. So here we go, some of the things I’ve done that you can do too, that really work:
- Being consistent is hard when you lead a busy life, so spend an hour or so once a week scheduling your posts. I like to sit quietly on a Sunday afternoon, while the kids are playing, and plan my content for the week ahead, 2-3 posts a day, different types of posts, press the schedule button and boom! You are now posting consistently all week and you don’t have to actually do any more work! ( Replying to comments is helpful though!)
- Be authentically yourself. People can see right through you when you’re feeding them a line, or copying someone else’s style. I am genuinely passionate about helping other women connect and improve their lives through running their own businesses. My energy and enthusiasm seems to rub off too and I have seen women taking charge of their futures and making plans for change! When you’re excited and passionate about something it shows, so make sure your audience can see what lights you up.
- Don’t stop when things seem tough. This is a sure fire way to fail. Keep going, ask for help, there’s plenty out there in the MIB community, and don’t be afraid to copy what’s working for others because there’s a reason it’s working! Go check out others in your industry, follow their instagram or Facebook pages and see what people are engaging with, then try out some similar posts yourself. I’m not saying to copy their content, you’ve got your own ideas and passions to share, and it’s never ok to directly copy someone else’s hard work!
- Lastly, don’t sit back on the sidelines watching, get yourself involved and make things happen! Successful people aren’t waiting for opportunities to come up, they are out there creating their own opportunities. A few months ago I was lurking in the background, waiting for an opportunity to come up, and guess what? It never did! I made a conscious decision to put myself out there, I contacted MIB to become an area leader, and I started making plans for my own business. It was hard, I felt out of my comfort zone for sure, but it has become easier each time I try something new and the knock on effect is that doors are opening that I never even saw before.
Which one will you try first?
I can guarantee you’ll start to see a difference if you aren’t already doing all of these and you decide to put them into practise. Maybe it’s time to look into the nearest MIB group to you and book a ticket for the next in-person event! And if there’s no events near you, no problem! Perhaps you’re the next area leader…
I’d love to know what you implement and what changes you notice as a result; do your audience engage more? Is your post reach increasing? Are you making more sales? Let me know how you get on in the comments.
