By now we’re sure your Newsfeed has been flooded with everyone’s renewed sense of change and organized plans to make this new year “better than ever.” In our fast-paced society, appointments get pushed back, we begin spending less time at home than we’d like, and throughout our days and nights we get Calendar reminders, phone notifications, and emails telling us to juggle it all right now, because that’s why we did it on our own in the first place. To prove that we can pave the way ourselves.

As business professionals, we’re accustomed to curveballs and how to best adapt to them. It’s our playing field. Admittedly, when we’re each balancing different projects at the Tangible office, we sometimes get so lost in trying to complete our own checklists that it becomes easy to get swamped. However, we find our focus again by pausing and asking each other for help when we need it most. We like to keep this same group mentality when we host GVL Connect, our networking series. We’ve found that the best connections and the best creations we’ve made have been from maintaining our relationships. We’ve outlined three key steps to strengthening your networking in the future.

Your next networking venture can be a transformative experience as long as you bear this in mind: Don’t simply take, the key is to give back.

1. Share, Retweet & Repeat

If you’ve just gone to your first networking event or you’re a seasoned guest, chances are there’s been a time where you’ve felt uncomfortable and you couldn’t find anyone that could answer all your questions in one sitting, in one night. Instead of networking to only serve you, try thinking of who all is attending. Perhaps it’s an interior designer, the cafe owner down the block whose posts you always share, or even someone in your field that just started to build their social media presence and could use some tips from like-minded colleagues. One of the easiest ways to grow your presence and show support for your fellow professionals is to try sharing their posts/blogs/tweets on your business or personal accounts. Think of it as a way of saying ‘hi’ with a quick nudge, so everyone knows you’re always open for connecting. In return, you’d be surprised at how much your networking approachability goes up just through a simple like or share.

Of course, your main focus should remain in keeping the genuine relationships you make with your clients. With practice, you’ll see how transparency and open communication in networking is integral to maintaining loyal partnerships. You don’t want to stand talking to someone who’s only going to “sell, sell, sell” you on themselves and not offer to hear your story or seek your knowledge. You also don’t want to narrow your target audience to just your field of work. There are opportunities to help you personally and professionally on every social platform, as long as you keep your eyes open. Strike a conversation on common interests and what you both can do to increase your online presence, together. The regrams and networking invites will soon follow.

2. Build Your Networking Cloud

After you’ve left the networking space for the night, take some time to peruse through the business cards and mailers you received. And follow up with everybody. Depending on what topic the event focused on, it’s almost always a certainty that all who attended work in a variety of fields. Like we mentioned before, connecting with other professionals in different areas of work serves to extend your skill-set in the long run. Yes, creating these connections is one of the best ways to expand upon your brand. Are you needing help with buying a home? Or maybe your logo could use some fine-tuning. (Hopefully by now, you know who to call—sorrynotsorry for the shameless self-promotion plug.)

If you find yourself feeling like the evening was a little lackluster, ask yourself: while networking, are you only searching within your comfort group or judging the “relevancy” of your conversations to your interests? This is the best form of self-sabotage and will gain you no allies or followers. Step outside your box and offer what you know and how your services can help them. We know this for sure: eye-catching email blasts and salesy phone calls will only get you so far, but true interest and honesty will always boost your brand further than any other effort.

3. Be a Student and a Mentor

During your next meeting with a client or even someone you connected with from the event, be sure to be as present and “off-screen” as possible. Your time and undivided attention will always be noticed and rewarded. Technology pushes us all to be fast and concise, but find clarity in face-to-face interactions where you’ll have the chance to ask as many questions as possible. Here’s where the magic happens that you can’t find in a website bio. Listening to the personal quirks and stories behind a business or business owner is absolutely crucial in becoming a better networker. By understanding their personal message, you’ll find opportunities to provide them with suggestions on how to best increase their client market and presence based on your own personal experience. This is a true service to those interacting with you, and by default ups your status and credibility.

By being present (both physically and mentally) at networking events, you will find yourself learning more and better help those around you learn. Think of this as an opportunity to play the role of both the student and the mentor, being humble enough to learn in areas you’re less familiar with and being generous enough to offer insight in areas you’re more familiar with.

The value of your craft is in your helping hands. Be sure to be willing to share advice as much as you’d like to take away advice. Your networking opportunities will not only widen, but your brand’s reputation overall will inspire others to maintain the same level of authenticity.

The Takeaway

Being strategic in how you choose your interactions during a network event is important but it’s more beneficial to build upon those encounters and turn them into meaningful relationships. In the end, it’s about how you carry yourself and your skills socially. Do this simply by smiling and being enjoyable company all around without attempting to hijack every conversation. Should a situation arise where your expertise is called for, be friendly and more than willing to offer your help. By lending a hand to everyone that you come across, you’ll have gained a genuine support group of likeminded professionals that will be happy to assist you in the future.

If you’d like to hone your networking skills further, come join us during our next GVL Connect event. You can follow along and keep updated with our upcoming events on our Facebook page.

Heads up: We’re always available for personal consultations if needed to help your business be ahead of the rest. Let us know if you have any questions or if you’d like to schedule a meeting.

The lowdown: Since December, Tangible Strategies has moved from its office space in the Village of West Greenville, launched its brand new website, and undergone a good bit of internal restructuring. Needless to say, it’s been a crazy few weeks, and we want to make sure you’re caught up on all things Tangible as we ring in the New Year. So here are a few thoughts from our Founder and Creative Director:

Laying the Groundwork

We seem to be talking a lot lately at the Tangible office about the idea of settling—settling for just three cups of coffee in the morning because we’re trying to avoid caffeine overload (seriously, guys, turns out this is a real thing), settling for a tiny desktop Christmas tree because we were too busy with the move to fully decorate the office, settling for a presidential candi—wait, no, we’re not getting into that again. I think it’s safe to say that 2016 was a more-than-hectic year (for us, it marked our first full January-to-December succession in good ol’ Greenville). But honestly, for all its craziness, the last month of a rather long year was one of the most exciting and encouraging 31 days we’ve ever had. Which has got us thinking, maybe settling isn’t such a bad thing.

As many of you know, Tangible Strategies has been around since 2011, but for most of its existence, the business was a simple husband-and-wife venture with big dreams of far-off grandiose. In July of 2015, we moved the business to Greenville, SC from Western North Carolina and quickly realized that the demand for small business marketing in the Upstate was much larger than the two of us could handle on our own. So in January, we began building out our team, getting settled into an office space in the Village, and building a reputation as a true-to-its-name agency in a marketplace still entirely foreign to us.

A Year in Review

We’ve learned a lot since then, as you might imagine. In particular, we’ve learned that doing business in Greenville is all about who you know—and getting to know the right people is no easy task (in fact, this realization has been the primary inspiration behind our networking series GVL Connect). We’ve learned that project workflow for a team of two people looks nothing like project workflow for a team of three people. Or four people. Or five people. We’ve learned that possessing the capability to do everything does not mean one should actually try to do everything. We’ve learned that following through on promises really is as impactful as we always knew it was. And we’ve learned that partnership and collaboration are two things we simply cannot live without. Which is one of the many realizations that persuaded us to rethink our processes—and our work setting—a bit.

In case you’ve missed the details, Tangible Strategies now lives inside The Wheelhouse, Greenville’s newest cowork space along the Swamp Rabbit Trail. The Wheelhouse is a collective office space specifically created for marketing professionals and agencies, where freelancers and creative teams alike can work together on projects while maintaining their own brands and unique identities. A rather unique business model as cowork spaces normally go, The Wheelhouse acts as an agency itself, bringing in a steady stream of marketing projects and then turning to its tenants for executing the work on those projects. At its core, The Wheelhouse is designed to support the growth and development of other businesses while sustaining the same for itself. It’s ingenious really.

Making the Move

In October, Wheelhouse co-owner Jeff White approached our team after several recommendations pointed him in our direction. I was immediately enthralled with his idea for a new kind of cowork space and, after a few conversations, realized that the business philosophy behind The Wheelhouse lined up quite nicely with what we had been building at Tangible for the past five years.

And so there we were, faced with the prospect of an opportunity that would help grow our business, allow us to work on larger scale projects, and connect us with other local marketing professionals. You can imagine how long and hard we had to think about our decision. (I’m kidding; it was a no-brainer.) I’ll admit, we had our reservations at first, as none of us are particularly keen on big change, but the more we thought about it, the more this move made sense.

Experiencing the Benefits

After more than four weeks of working in The Wheelhouse, the Christmas-morning-like excitement has worn off and the new atmosphere is beginning to feel more normal. We’ve introduced the space to a handful of our clients, and we’ve even hosted a few networking events here. In the few short weeks thus far, we’ve formed new client relationships and watched the interior of the building continue to develop (re: the new garage door behind our table). A lot has happened in 40-ish days, but most importantly, we’ve been able to experience exactly how moving into The Wheelhouse is going to benefit our business, and we are super excited to share our findings with you.

Better Focus

Hands down, the biggest benefit to moving into The Wheelhouse is that we are able to spend more time doing what we’re great at doing. In the Village, we operated a full-time art gallery, a passion-driven project that allowed us to support emerging and student artists in the area, something we truly loved. In moving, we closed down the art gallery, which was bittersweet in every way, but in transitioning away from our role in the arts community, we’ve only now begun to realize just how much time and energy went into maintaining that presence. Redirecting that focus toward client relationships and toward our own needs has made us better partners of the businesses we serve on a daily basis.

Stronger Service

In addition to prioritizing our own business needs, we’re beginning a shift toward narrowing down what services we offer, focusing on the things we’re best at doing, such as websites and branding. We’re not a one-strategy-fits-all kind of agency—and we never will be—which means that our services are vastly different from client to client. This was never an accident on our part. We knew many small businesses were tired of trying to maintain relationships with half a dozen freelancers—one for their website, one for their social media, one for their graphic design, one for their email marketing, etc., etc.—and so why not offer to meet all those needs under one roof? At The Wheelhouse, we are surrounded by marketing professionals of every kind, which in essence means our team just got a lot bigger. We are able to offer the same solutions to businesses we always have, but we’re able to pass off the execution of services that we’re not as familiar with. Which means we are able to dial in on the services we do really well.

Richer Networking

Because of the structure of our new office environment, we meet new people every day who are operating businesses of their own in the Upstate. Meeting the entrepreneurs around us leads to a bigger network, which really means a bigger community to collaborate with. A larger, more inviting office space means more opportunities to do what we love more than almost anything: connecting people. We couldn’t be more excited to see how our networking grows in 2017, and we hope you’ll be a part of it.

Looking to the Future

So in many ways, moving out of our own office that was occupied by just our team and just our ideas can be perceived to many as a downsize in business—or, like I said before, settling. We do share spaces with other business professionals now in a way we didn’t before, but to us if this new space and workflow is “settling,” we’ll take that and more in 2017. For us, settling has taken on a new meaning. It’s requiring us to focus on what we are best at, rather than trying to do it all. Our choice to narrow down who we are as a business has led to a stronger team, a more precise focus on serving clients, and a substantially larger opportunity to connect with other small businesses in Greenville.