Revitalise Networking - Scotland’s finest

It was great being able to be part of the Revitalise Network January meeting ( Yes, I’m late blogging about it!). I’ve known Lee for probably four years now and he’s, as he joked in the call, ‘The Geordie living up in the wilds of Irvine, in Ayrshire.’ And it was great to experience his network, which I’ve had a very slight touch on over the years, when he’s come down to Newcastle for different events and not quite had the chance to do anything in person, just on a logistic sense. So to be able to jump on a Zoom call and to be part of the whole experience of networking with everybody, it’s that different crowd thing, you know? We all get into our little bubbles that we’re happy with. I mean, for me, obviously, I’m quite strict as you know, on making sure that I know all of the networking facets that I do, all justify themselves, whether that be financially or personally for me or for the potential of interesting shoots and grow my portfolio. 

I know this isn’t something that everybody does for getting your brand out there, getting your name out there, it does, obviously, help, but I like to see sometimes tangible KPIs on the back of it. That said, that’s probably the reason why I don’t do as much networking as I did in the past. I was a serial networker for a lot of years. Nowadays, it’s a case of topping up those connections and making sure everybody knows I’m still around, without being around as much, just because that’s not always easy when business is busy and family life and things get in the way; so the early morning networking’s still a little bit of a challenge, with school drop-offs and that sort of stuff. 

So going back to Revitalise, obviously it was heavily dominated north of the border, which I was fully aware of. Lee’s based up in Scotland and the vast majority of members are in-person members, so they’re local to Scotland. But, it was great and it was a really good bunch and some really good chats. I’ve already got three one-to-ones booked in on the back of it and I feel that everybody was in it for the right reasons. It wasn’t in any way sales-y and pushy and all of those things that you sometimes associate with networking, it’s far from that. It was just a good opportunity to have a good chat with people in vastly different sectors. 

The likes of Gary Friel, who’s a musician, was a fantastic chat. Gary Sutherland, who’s in employment law. I met Gary many years ago now, on the golf course up in Edinburgh, I’ve finally remembered. And follow-ups, I’ve got a one-to-one potentially booked with Ladey Adey, who produces books, as a publicist. So it’s just those connections, you never know who you’re going to meet, you never know who you’re going to see. Or Jay Crump, who is a sports therapist and helps Revitalise at the moment and he has some great connections in the sports sector from his past, where obviously, we always say, sport is something that I really want to bring back into my business. 

All these are great. So as a session, it was absolutely brilliant. Now, will I be part of it every month? I don’t know yet, but what I am going to do and I probably haven’t told him yet, is I am going to join for the month on his 30 for 30 deal, which just gives me a chance to meet more of the members and just kind of test the water with things, because you never know. And it’s very much that thing of you do never know and you don’t know who’s in the room or who could potentially use your services. I always say that I cover a lot of Yorkshire, I’m in Yorkshire quite a lot and that’s two hours south. If I go two hours north, I can get up to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Yes, it’s not as far as Aberdeen and Inverness but there are still quite a lot of people between me and two hours away, so there’s no harm in growing a network if everybody is doing some interesting stuff and seeing what’s going on. So, if you’re looking, if you’re based in Scotland, you should definitely, definitely check it out. If you’re looking for something a bit further afield and you’d like to target Scotland as an area to expand your business into, have a chat with Lee it’s definitely worth investigating as a network.