People Networking - Mark Lee

Networking - Discussion between Michael Beale and Mark Lee, October 2007.


Mark Lee FCA, CTA (Fellow) MMC, who founded the Tax Advice Network, explains his view of networking, where and when he networks and what he considers to be some of capabilities and beliefs of effective networkers



(please allow 2 minutes for the MP3 file to download if you would like to listen to the discussion)


http://www.ppimk.com/nlp-podcast/mark.mp3

Michael - Good morning Mark, first of all thank you so much for agreeing to take part in this call

Mark - My pleasure Michael, good morning to you.

Michael - If we can kick off, if you could just introduce yourself and give the listeners a little bit of a background about yourself and what you do.

Mark - Well I'm Mark Lee, I provide a range of services that help accountants. They're mostly related to soft skills or tax, which I know isn't a combination you often come across. And over the years I suppose I've principally been networking with accountants, banker and lawyers, but recently I've stopped being in practice as a senior tax advisor and I've been networking with business people, consultants, trainers and small business owners - instead, and I'm loving it.

Michael - Ok so we're going to be talking about networking. Firstly would you like to give the listeners an idea of what networking means to you?

Mark - When in lecture on networking to accountants, I say that networking is not the same as not-working.

Michael - (Laughter)

Mark - It's not net-eating, it's no net-drinking, it's not even net-flirting, however it is a nice acronym. Networking I think is about building relationships. When you go networking, whatever your ultimate purpose - whether it's finding people who are going to be interested in your services, people who might buy something from you, people who act as your advocates, people who might be able introduce you to someone who can find you a job, ultimately when you're networking, you either are or should be looking to build those relationships.

Michael - Where and when do you network?

Mark - I suppose most of my networking is done in the evenings. I've occasionally been to lunchtime networking events, and I've even tried breakfasts a couple of time, and there are facilities to go networking at breakfast time. I'm not at my best then, I've tried different places, it doesn't suit me. So most of my networking is done at, parties, functions, events, and networking occasions if you like, and generally evenings after the normal working day.

Michael - the inference from that is that most of it is done face to face. Do you do networking online as well?

Mark - well I suppose I do. I've joined up with Ecademy, which is, which I think of a business networking community for small business people and for those looking to provide services to small business people. And there's many people from large business as well. But beyond ecademy I'm also involved with a couple of- they're not really networking sites, but things like accounting web, taxation web - they're websites that provide services for specialist to communicate and coordinate together, and indeed I'm about to launch the tax advice network, which will also be a networking community for tax advisors and accountants.

Michael - What do you actually do when you network? Two parts to this question - What do you do when you network? If you teaching somebody who was very new to networking, what are the key things you would you tell them to do?

Mark - I run courses on this…..I think that you have to focus on what you can realistically expect from any networking opportunity.

Read the full article: Mark Lee on networking