Building My Dream Network

It’s been a minute since my last post, I just needed to get over the writer’s block. I have a new mentor-mentee relationship, me being the latter of course, that I’m excited to tell you about. I’ve bagged myself a renowned author and networking guru Kelly Hoey. 

Kelly and I go way back. By way back I mean I met her once about 5 years ago. She was a speaker at Indiana Women’s Conference. I attended her session on the Power of Networking. At the end of her talk, I stood in line as did other women to ask questions. After our brief chat, I asked if I could take a photograph with her. She graciously agreed but there was a technical difficulty. Kelly is a tall drink of water, not just figuratively, she is tall tall. I’m going to say a 6 footer and beyond. After a certain threshold everyone is over 6 feet to me. I, on the other hand, am a teacup of a human, standing boldly at 5’1″. Don’t even think of challenging me on that statistic, I have taken pictures at the doctor’s office when they measure height. No not the pediatrician’s office, hold your chuckle. 

So we did take that photo as presented by this piece of evidence. Kelly had her feet at ground level, I was up the third step of the stage. However brief our talk was, Kelly handed me her business card and told me to be in touch. She wanted to know if I was able to implement her advice and if it was effective. I intended on it.

This happened in November 2017.

I got diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer on 2 March 2018. At which point I forgot all about Kelly and everything else because I was consumed, wholly, by this cancer, being a mother to a 3 and 1 year old, and trying to figure out what it is to be an ailing wife at the age of 34. 

Fast forward to last week. Kelly and I had a heart-to-heart and caught up like we were old friends. Here are some pieces of advice she shared with me.

1. Know your audience. 

This didn’t seem like a revelation, I knew my audience, or at least I thought I did. When Kelly asked me who it was, I confidently said all of humanity. But when we peeled the layers of who I really want to reach and finally here’s what I came up with: women of color under the age of 39. This category isn’t arbitrary. It is how the American Cancer Society defines my demographic; adolescent and young cancer survivors between the ages of 18 – 39. That age range and being a non-white female was my audience. Cancer is merely my platform.

2. Your impact cannot be measured by the number of followers you have. 

To which I push back, isn’t it though? Isn’t chirpy and instasocial all about the numbers? Kelly reminds me of the ripple effect. I push back again, my TEDx talk has been out for nearly 3 years, and the views I’ve received so far hover around 66k. Forget a million views, I’m not even at 100k. How am I to create awareness of the stigma associated with cancer and eventually break that taboo with no one watching a 13 minute talk? She said we will come up with creative ways of measuring impact.

Next up I will ask about SEO, being a guest speaker on podcasts, and more. I’ll share the shareables on this blog.