My business partner/husband recently attended a B2B networking event with me.

It was a great opportunity to maximize our efforts; I was invited to speak on a sales and marketing panel and one of our clients was sponsoring the event, so he would get a lot of photos and some video footage for future marketing collateral.

Mark usually attends these events to work, and rarely as a guest.

This event was held in a conference room that seated about fifty people, and it was full. Which meant there was nowhere for Mark to hide. He was forced to network.

In my mind, the event was a success. The panel was fun and a lot of people stayed for the sponsored happy hour.

On the drive back to the office, I asked Mark what he thought about the networking portion, knowing that it may have been uncomfortable for him.

“I’m so glad that you have the patience for this kind of stuff,” he said. “A few of the people I talked to, were either trying to get something from me or sell me something, and the interactions were performative at best.” In other words, it felt “fake.”

If you’re in a business that uses networking to build relationships and drive new business, then there’s something you need to hear…

….forget “Know. Like. Trust,” as a formula for networking. It can lead to performance based, in authentic interactions.

Yes, I understand that you network to grow your business, but there’s a better, more authentic way to approach networking.

If you want to meet people who will partner with you and refer business to you, then think of building psychological safety.

Network Better, Create Psychological Safety

I’ve grown my businesses and my clients’ businesses through the relationships I’ve built from networking, and I’m an introvert.

If you want to be successful at making new connections, one’s that will last throughout your career, then do this…

….offer psychological safety before you offer your business card.

Psychologist Carl Rogers first used the term “Psychological Safety” in his 1954 paper, “Toward a theory of creativity.”[i] (If you’re familiar with the term then you might have discovered it through the work of Amy Edmondson.[ii] )

In it he writes, “For the individual to find himself in an atmosphere where he is not being evaluated, not being measured by some external standard, is enormously freeing. Evaluation is always a threat, always creates a need for defensiveness, always means that some portion of experience must be denied to awareness. [iii]

During the B2B event, Mark’s experience was the opposite of feeling psychologically safe.

Rather, he was sized up and evaluated for an opportunity, rather than being met with openness and curiosity, which in turn put up his defenses.

I think we can all relate to this type of experience.

And for those of us who do a lot of networking, you may have found yourself evaluating people based on what they can do for you or trying too hard to be “likeable,” rather than  being authentic.

How to Create Psychological Safety While Networking

The best advice I can give to create psychological safety immediately is to be appropriately prepared for the type of networking event you’re attending and second ask each person you meet an open-ended question, one that gets them talking about themselves and helps you learn more about their business.

Two Types of Networking

There are two types of networking events, peer-to-peer events and client networking events.

Peer-to-peer networking events are centered around making strategic alliances and introductions to each other’s customers. Their value is to help you build a network of trusted advisors to turn to when you have a client who needs help.

If you’re networking correctly, then these folks will be a ready source of warm leads and net new business.

The second type of networking are client-based events. Think about trade shows and trade association events. Here, businesses are looking for products and services, and you should be ready to have a sales forward conversation.

Most people confuse peer-to-peer networking with client networking events.

This is what happened at the event that Mark and I attended. That event is primarily focused on peer-to-peer interactions, but some folks mistook it for an opportunity to sell services.

When you pivot your communication strategy to fit the environment, you’re more than half-way to making more valuable connections and creating a psychological safe environment for your would-be partner or customer.

One Great Question.

Try your best not to ask, “What do you do?” or “What’s your position at the company?” Those questions do not allow for curiosity and openness. They threaten psychological safety and will cause the person to shut down.

Rather, my favorite question after an initial introduction is a version of “Who is your favorite client or what is your favorite project this year (or last year)?”

This question is a great icebreaker, and, in my experience, people love answering this question!

The key is to ask with genuine curiosity. It works equally well at client-facing events or peer-to-peer events.

When you ask them a version of this question, be ready for them to tell you about their most challenging client or tell you about a project they completed five years ago. That’s okay. The point is to help them feel safe enough to start talking.

You’ll naturally fall into a lovely conversation and eventually, they will ask you about your favorite client or project.

This is an organic way for each party to understand the value of one another’s services.

More importantly, they will be able to decide whether or not they have a client introduction for you or can use your services themselves. Which leads me to another point…

…never sell to your peer-to-peer networking group.

Your peer-to-peer networking group is your unpaid salesforce.

Your job is to educate them on your products and services in such a way that they understand what your company does and who your best clients are.

I can’t stress this enough; you’re not at a P2P event to get business from your peers. Rather, look for strategic alliances and offer help right away.

Best of luck!

[i] https://psychsafety.com/the-history-of-psychological-safety/

[ii] https://amycedmondson.com/psychological-safety/

[iii] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/1970-vernon-creativity.pdf

It was a deal of a lifetime.

The Seller’s company was undervalued by several hundred thousand dollars.

Our leadership team was thrilled. We’d been planning for this exact scenario, buy a slightly smaller company and acquire the resources to reach our five-year goal.

A Letter of Intent was drafted and sent to  Stan[1] and his partner Bob, the sellers. But before they’d sign, they wanted another $150k. No problem, we had the funds and they would still be undervalued.

However, the buyer, Debbie, the primary shareholder and CEO, didn’t want to give Stan and his partner the extra cash. We were stunned. The deal was dead. Wrongly, Debbie believed she had the upper hand.  She said, “They’ll never get what they’re asking for. Let them shop around. They’ll come crawling back.”

They didn’t come crawling back.

Less than a year later, Stan and Bob sold their company for a price well above our original offer.

Lurking Monsters Within

The reality was Debbie didn’t want to acquire this company, or any company. Although she hired a consultant to guide the process, made careful plans, and said all the right things, she managed to sabotage the deal, saying, “It wasn’t meant to be. We can reach our goals through organic growth.”

Debbie didn’t consciously sabotage the deal. Her unconscious fears overwhelmed years of good careful planning, awakening (and not for the first time) her inner Saboteur.

In the 1991 romantic-comedy, “Defending Your Life,” the main character, Daniel dies in a car crash and is sent to “Judgement City” where every soul (except children) must review and defend how they lived while on earth. If you did well, you go to the next level, if you did poorly, then you are reincarnated onto earth.

In one scene from Daniel’s life, he is offered an opportunity to invest in Casio watches but laughs at the opportunity. He reasoned that since the Japanese weren’t known for their timekeeping prowess the watches would never sell. He preferred Swiss watches. This, of course, turned out to be a huge financial mistake as Casio went on to be one of the biggest watch makers of the time.

Back in Judgement City,  Daniel was confused as to why he was being punished for making a bad business decision (Daniel made a lot of bad decisions), but what he was being held accountable for was the fear that drove his decision to say, “no” in the first place.

You too have an inner saboteur lurking the closet of your unconscious mind, waiting to pounce and scare you silly whenever a big opportunity comes along.

If you’re honest with yourself, you have made self-sabotaging decisions that have ruined a deal or key relationship. Mistakes, that if you decided differently, would have taken your life and fortunes in a more successful direction.

You can try and comfort yourself by thinking that in the end, everything has worked out for the best. But that is only true if you understand why you made decision at the time and have made conscious efforts to change your decision-making processes.

Success and Confronting the Inner Saboteur

Although Debbie said she wanted to grow the company through acquisition, her behavior around it became more and more secretive, and her attitude changed from excited and optimistic to negative and hostile.  For example, whenever Stan and Bob had a clarifying question, she would get angry say, “These guy’s are a pain in my ass,” and sometimes take days in getting back to them with an answer.

Change, Love, Resources, and Power

Every human being must confront the following four core challenges and turn them into assets during his or her lifetime:

1. Your Relationship to Power
2. Your Need for Love and Belonging
3. Fear of Change and Dealing with the Unknown
4. Allocation of Resources (Internal and External)

The inner Saboteur shows up when it’s time to confront your fear of change and allocation of resources.

Here’s how it works, Debbie had an opportunity that would introduce a significant change into her business, one that she’d been asking for, but one that would be disruptive.  More importantly, change challenges the sense of security that comes with certainty.

But change wasn’t the biggest factor in Debbie’s saboteur showing up, rather it was the allocation of mental and emotional resources she needed to accommodate the added responsibility.

That is, the purchase would have nearly doubled the number of employees and clients, which put more pressure on her internal resources for managing more relationships.

Combine this with the added complexity of applying additional external resources to ingest a company that was nearly equal in size operationally and becoming increasingly shutdown and secretive about the deal as time went on, was a recipe for a crash-out.

Befriending the Saboteur and Growing Successfully

Self-sabotaging behavior will show up in a variety of ways. For example, over-thinking (analysis paralysis), procrastination, perfectionism, giving in to frustration and quitting too soon, avoidance tactics…I’m sure you can think of a few more.

To turn your Saboteur into a powerful ally, think back on an opportunity that you missed, one that you suspect you may have sabotaged. If you’re unsure, think of an opportunity where you sometimes wonder, “What would have happened if I said, ‘yes,’ or ‘no.’”

Ask yourself, how did you sabotage yourself and/or the opportunity? If you’re still unclear, ask a trusted friend about your inner saboteur.

Once you have a sense of your self-sabotaging actions, you are on your way to turning the saboteur into a friend.

When the self-sabotaging behavior arises, that inner Saboteur is tapping you on the shoulder, saying, “Hey, here is an opportunity. So, I have two questions for you, are you ready for the change it will bring? And, do you have the mental and emotional resources for added responsibility that this change will bring?”

That is, the Saboteur helps you:

1. Recognize there’s a potential opportunity that may change your circumstances.
2. Recognize if you’re emotionally (internally) and physically (externally) ready for the changes this opportunity will bring.
3. Ask yourself if you’re ready for the additional responsibility that the change will bring.

The most important lesson that the Saboteur teaches is discernment.

Imagine that you have the opportunity to bid on a government contract.

You are friends with the consultant who is helping the client write the RFP, so you have added access.

The problem is that this new opportunity is outside of the scope of your usual delivery of services.

The RFP is due in 45 days, but you’ve spent the past week procrastinating on getting started. The Saboteur is tapping you on the shoulder.

Discernment means that you consciously and soberly ask yourself questions about your readiness to embrace change and your ability to apply resources to the opportunity and accept the added responsibility.

About the author:

Krista Hollingsworth is the President of Windshore Media LLC and the founder of K. Hollingsworth Consulting, where her and her team helps service-based businesses breakthrough the higher revenues and greater operational efficiencies.

With an award-winning sales career and over a decade of entrepreneurial leadership, Krista launched Boutique Marketing Group in 2012 and later served as Chief Revenue Officer for a Managed Service Provider. In 2023, she founded K. Hollingsworth Consulting to bring her proven revenue strategies and people-centered approach to businesses ready to scale.

She is a Certified Business Consultant with the International Association of Small Business Consultants (AASBC), a Master Practitioner of NLP, and has taught meditation and mindfulness for more than 20 years. Her diverse background gives her a unique ability to help leaders align vision, execution, mindset, and communication strategies to achieve breakthrough results.

Krista’s client work spans industries and challenges, from redesigning operations for efficiency to building predictable revenue systems. View case studies here: https://helpugrowcro.com/portfolio/#casestudies

Outside of work, Krista is married with two adult children. She has no pets but does have a lot of plants and enjoys cooking, traveling, and bad movies.

[1] This is based on an actual event, but the names and other identifying details of the transaction have been altered to protect all parties.

I started my first service-based business in 2012 on a computer in my bedroom. At the time, my daughters were 12 and 10 years old and still very much in need of my attention.

To set new boundaries, I told them that when mommy had her shoes on, she was working and not to be disturbed. This was significant because we never wore shoes inside the house.

The business I started was called, “Boutique Marketing Group,” and it was a digital and direct marketing business.

I began with the intention of turning it into an agency, even though I had no clue how to do that. What I did know how to do however, was get clients.

This article is for you if you are in any service-based industry, including technology, dentistry, medical, facility management,  professional services, or consulting.

How It Started

I started by telling my friends what I was up to, and luckily a friend of mine needed help for her coaching business.

This is often overlooked, because many business owners don’t want to bother their friends and family about their business, which is understandable.

I’m not suggesting that you give them a sales pitch, but you can be intentional with providing information. It is very likely that that your friends from the golf club, the pickle-ball court, or your kid’s soccer games know someone who may need your services.

Then, I joined the local chamber of commerce and found clients through networking and being deeply involved with the community. Some of these clients are still with me and have transitioned over to K. Hollingsworth Consulting.

I found clients by teaching businesses how to create beautiful brochures using Microsoft Publisher which a lot of businesses were using at that time.

I tested a direct mail campaign where I reached out to 150 businesses about a free in-person class that I was teaching at our local Staples. 20% of the businesses I reached out to attended that class.

One of the attendees hired me to teach Microsoft Publisher to her team at a popular local bakery where she was manager so they could make their own marketing materials.

Shortly after, they hired me to do detailed marketing research in anticipation of a big competitor who was moving into the neighborhood. The goal was to mount a defense and retain their market share.

Product vs. Services

Prior to starting my marketing business, I had an award-winning career in sales.

I sold cookies and pharmaceuticals for Fortune 500 companies. So, I can tell you with confidence that marketing and growing a business that relies heavily on labor and technology to provide services is different than marketing and growing a product-based business.

“…marketing and growing a business that relies heavily on labor and technology to provide services is different than marketing and growing a product-based business.”

If you are having trouble with your sales and marketing efforts, it could be because you have not made this distinction, which means that your strategies likely aren’t tailored for service-based marketing and selling.

Two Categories of Service-based Business; Consumable and Complex

Broadly speaking, there are two categories for service-based business, and it’s not professional or business services. What I’m referring to are businesses that provide services that are readily consumable and services that are complex and/or expensive.

Consumable service-based business provides services that are timely, local, and where the buyer has either an immediate or urgent need.

For example, a child falls on playground and cracks her tooth. She may need immediate dental care so her mother grabs her phone to search for “emergency dentist near me.”

Or the commercial oven at a very busy restaurant needs immediate repair services, as downtime will result in significant losses in revenue.

If this is the type of service-based business you have then consider the following as part of your marketing and sales strategy:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click. This can be expensive if you are in a competitive market, but with the right SEO partner and strategy, you can be very competitive in a crowded marketplace.
• A website that is designed to quickly convert traffic to booked appointments.
• Have a live phone number throughout the website.
• Have a strong referral network of strategic partners. For example, if you’re in IT Security then aligning with consultants who serve your same customer base. Or if you’re a pediatric dentist, consider a referral partnership with a local pediatrician (this is how I found my daughter’s dentist).

Complex service-based businesses provide services that are expensive, timely to implement or acquire, changes your prospective client’s processes (think leadership/culture coaching, hiring a new IT management company, or changing personal habits), and has a detailed onboarding process. Lastly, these services can be national or global.

If this is your type of business, then the focus of your sales and marketing strategy should include:

• Mitigate the inherent risk of change with a professional sales process that addresses their specific pain points, is results focused, and shows them the process for onboarding.
• Building trust through frequent and brand consistent posting on social media or wherever your customers will be exposed to your brand and service (remember that your prospective customers and clients will research you online. If you are absent from the major social media platforms, this will raise the risk-factor for them).
• Have testimonials on your website and case-studies available for prospective clients to review.
• Showcase third-party attestations such as Google reviews, Trustpilot, the Better Business Bureau, or others that are industry specific.
• If possible, create a new easily consumable service as a low-risk option so they have an opportunity to get to know your organization and services.
• Provide psychological safety for them by giving a guarantee.

In addition to what I’ve outlined there, there’s much you can do to build trust, get more clients or customers, and create lasting relationships. If you’d like to learn more, please book a free, high-value discovery session with me here https://calendly.com/helpugrowcro/30min.

I look forward to working with you.

Are You Selling or Serving?

You’re outgoing and have a large social network, so what?

You are generally introverted and enjoy working “in” the business

You as the Ambassador of the Organization, Another Mindset Hack

• Deep institutional knowledge
• Is the keeper of the company’s history and founding story
• Understands every aspect of the service and its value to their customers
• Deeply values her employees
• Is able to articulate all of this with clarity and enthusiasm.