How to Grow Your Network
This project guide helps two Sky’s the Limit members work together through four meetings as they collaborate to learn leadership and people skills.
Meeting 1: Get to know each other and practice active listening
Before this meeting:
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Make sure that you’ve had an intro meeting. If you need help navigating your first meeting, visit this Guide to Your First Meeting.
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Review: Active Listening
In this meeting:
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Ask each other some general questions about each other, while practicing active listening skills. Start small with general small talk questions, then see where the conversation takes you.
After this meeting:
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Try using active listening skills with your friends!
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Note any agreed-upon next steps.
Meeting 2: New professionalism
Before this meeting:
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Review What is Professionalism
In this meeting:
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Work together to define professionalism. Think about what things you categorize as professional, what you don’t, and where there’s grey areas.
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After you’ve defined professionalism, identify your own personal brand as an entrepreneur.
After this meeting:
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Share your personal brand with friends, colleagues, or family members. Follow some of your favorite business professionals on Instagram or LinkedIn to see how they present themselves.
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Note any agreed-upon next steps.
Meeting 3: Update business profile on platform
Before this meeting:
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Review What are Power Skills
In this meeting:
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Share your Sky’s the Limit Profile and discuss how you could strengthen it with the goal of recruiting support from other volunteers.
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Analyze the LinkedIn profile of an entrepreneur you admire.
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Try creating a LinkedIn profile. If you already have one, discuss what you could do to strengthen that as well.
After this meeting:
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Based on your meeting, make continue to revise your profile as needed.
Meeting 4: Making [appropriate] introductions and events
Before this meeting:
- Review who you’d like to meet (by industry, location, etc) on the community platform, Linkedin, or within your own network.
In this meeting:
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Discuss how you should reach out to them and what you should say.
After this meeting:
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Introduce yourself to someone new and try to book a meeting with them. Meetings can, of course, be virtual.
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Be sure to mark your project complete, update your business tracker, and start a new project!
Want to talk to someone who can help?
Sky’s the Limit members are connected to a community of volunteer business mentors, more free tools and guides like this one, and exclusive funding opportunities.