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Fiona Chorlton-Voong wrote a new post
How do you incorporate business development into your life? Business development is crucial for anyone with a portfolio career – it’s how you…
Build awareness of your brand 
Communicate your value to others 
Grow your business 
Understand the needs and wants of your potential clients For this week’s article I shares my advice on how to incorporate business development into your everyday life by building habits, growing relationships and staying consistent
Check out the article and let me know how you approach business development in the comments below
Read MorePortfolio careers are a great way to monetise your skills, creating multiple revenue streams and allowing you to follow your passion while earning the income your experience deserves. A portfolio career can be a great lifestyle, but it can...
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Fiona Chorlton-Voong wrote a new post
Read MoreThe pandemic gave professionals everywhere an opportunity to rethink their career paths. We have seen more and more successful professionals and executives reinventing themselves, spinning up side hustles and launching portfolio careers. These changes require storytelling, and the people that...
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Great post
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The fabulous Dr Maria Evans just shared this great Ted Talk on LinkedIn and I loved it so much I had to share with our wonderful community.
Very timely too as we are underway with our Brand Your Story Masterclass and we were just discussing today the power of an impactful story and how it makes you memorable.
People connect with feelings and not data.
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To my Masterclass comrades – Alex Pitt, Lexi Radcliffe-Hart, sara gori, Hemali Patel, Darren Kirby, Jason Rance, Wendy Liu, Tina Louise
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Its a great video it really underpins what we have been doing on the branding masterclass
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It is spot on. There are a few others who mention the same thing. She encapsulates what we need to reach people’s hearts with our brand story! Thank you for sharing Fiona.
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I love networking!
I love growing it and I love nurturing it.
How do you grow your network organically though?
Think less…LinkedIn copy and paste outreach and more serendipitous connections.
An old mentor of mine tasked me with the mission to speak to at least 3 strangers a week. Now, she was a very confident woman that could approach a complete random person in a queue in Pret confidently and think nothing of it. For us mere mortals, this seemed a very daunting task. Bear in mind, this was also pre covid when it wasn’t quite so easy to hide behind my zoom screen.
I liked this approach though, thinking of growing my contact base by an extra 3 people a week meant it wasn’t with the intention of finding clients or professionals to work with. It was about making real genuine human connections. Striking up a conversation with a stranger that could well become your new yoga instructor.
Fast forward 5 years later, I still try and keep this habit up …
19 Comments-
Networking is so important
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I know some of my friends in the community will love this article Alex Pitt Nicola Twiston Davies Caoimhe Kelly Mike Richardson Joan Langley James Bebbington Silvia Janska Shalaka Laxman Duncan Dalzel-Job Zarir 'Zed' Vakil Faris Aranki Lexi Radcliffe-Hart Rebecca Beck Dr Maria Evans Bryony Ireland Rob Wright Pete Domican Aušrinė Keršanskaitė Saira Chaudry Carolin Greiner Tina Orlando Vic Mistry Lara Hayward Janis Chan
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How funny, I came on today to drop a note and see if I can book in some coffee chats with the TPC community. Meant to be!
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Lovely article and interesting read; many of these techniques I teach my clients in so it’s great to have them validated. It all begins with a conversation and it doesn’t matter how you start it…
I think I’m going to look up Georgie
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She’ll be lucky to receive one of your voice notes Faris Aranki!
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Loved this, thank you for sharing! I really like the idea of breaking away from the script and I just asked my friend how he would rate his day out of 10 (he said 8) 🙂
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Yes! Breaking away from the traditional script that doesn’t require people to think too much is a way more interesting conversation. I spoke to a child psychologist recently (actually was one of my strangers) and she was telling me that as adults we should use the same approach we use to communicate to children. Take the generalisation away from our questions and be much more specific and intentional. If you want a specific answer…ask a specific question. I’ll practice this on you at our l…
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Haha yes please, looking forward to it!
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Back in my Aerospace days, I broke out of the comfort zone habit of going to conferences, exhibitions and trade shows as a group, with the natural tendency to cluster together in the lunch line, over coffee breaks and at dinner events. I learned to love going on my own to roam the room.
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I can’t imagine you ever not being comfortable roaming the room on your own Mike Richardson!
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Introvert who learned to extrovert!
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Thanks for that, Fiona! Reminds me of Louie Rahil’s very short article I saved back in 2020, “Marketing is the art of talking to strangers” (which left me musing that marketing should be the art of engaging with strangers, this being a critical build; otherwise, we might make the grave error that marketing is uni-directional – all push & no pull). If anyone wants to read it, hit me up. Can’t seem to find it online anywhere anymore…
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I’m definitely interested in reading that Rob Wright!
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Me too, please Rob Wright!
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So simple but how many of us actually do that! I’m guilty of staying stuck behind a screen ’networking’ on Linkedin
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What a fascinating article. I wish we taught these skills at school. I was terribly shy as a young person, and rubbish at networking until fairly recently. And even then coming to the TPC networking event in London last month pushed me right out of my comfort zone! But it’s such a valuable skill, both professionally but also personally. There are some great podcasts, and a book called Together, by Vivek Murthy on the power of human connection.
Think I’ll now try and adopt the stra…
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Really interesting article, Fiona! Thanks for sharing it. There’s also Malcolm Gladwell’s book ”Talking to Strangers” which is well worth a look see! And of course ”On Connection” by Kae Tempest.
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Late to the article but a great one, thank you for sharing! As a northerner in London – the whole topic makes me smile. When I first moved to London, I was taking the rubbish out and all I did was say “hi” to a neighbour, I got a surprised look as if I was mad…that conversation ended there! It was a bit of an adjustment from the north. Also reminds me of Fox’s biscuits advert with “London needs biscuits” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=losScM-v1F0 –…
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We should have badges for us Northerners ’Northerner, say hi’ just like those ’Baby on Board’ badges they have on the tube; then we could all talk to each other!
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For any of our fabulous community that is interested to hearing what Ben Legg Jesus Iniesta and I have planned for TPC, come along to our FREE Fireside event this Friday 17th Sept at 1pm UK time (sign up below to get the zoom link).
You’ll get the chance to grill us and ask for things you would like to see on TPC!
https://portfolio-collective.com/events/fireside-chat-grill-the-founders
See you there!
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Should be a really interesting event
Would love to see you there- Linh, Adarsh Nalam, Nicola Twiston Davies, Duncan Dalzel-Job, Zarir 'Zed' Vakil, Damien, Conrad Young, Stephen Fleming, Tim Walters, Ph.D., Jamie Thomas, Hamish Croll, ilona van wegen, Des Greene, Paulina Połońska, Mark Whitby, Neelam Kumari, David Ingram, Ton Dobbe, Lorenzo Espinosa, Ezequiel Sarra, DigiZhets, Cristian Oancea, Oliver Burt, Mike Smales, Anuj Tyagi, Jacob Lehman, Samantha Poole, Aparajit Bhattacharya, Deepak Kasthwal, Toby Sawyer, Dene Heywood, Richard Saldanha, @joanne_p…-
Thanks for the mention, Ella Bernie. I’ll be there.
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I can’t wait to grill Ben Legg Fiona Chorlton-Voong Jesus Iniesta on Friday! Looking forward to some juicy questions from the community audience too…
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Is there a replay of this? (I have a client at these times on a Friday hence missing all these Fireside chats!)
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Yes, it wil be made available over the next few days.
You can find the recordings of our previous firesides in our video library: https://portfolio-collective.com/video-library/
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Thank you! I must look into changing this time to make networking sessions! Great prompt to check in with my Client to do this!
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Fiona Chorlton-Voong
London, United Kingdom
EMEA, East Americas
Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder of The Portfolio Collective.
I'm a Commercial Strategist who is passionate in guiding professionals to find their WHY so that they can build their brand story. Reach out if you would like to collaborate on any new idea you may have. Or reach out if you just fancy a chat.
Such an important read – if you want to find out more about business development then come along to our Fireside chat on exactly that this Friday – https://portfolio-collective.com/events/fireside-chat-the-human-side-of-business-development/