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How a 2013 Inc. Article Sent My Business in a New Direction and Later Helped Me Sell It
What I learned and the full-circle moment of sharing about it here now.
When you look back at your life, can you immediately recall mile markers that sent you down a path that forever changed your trajectory? This article happens to be a meta bookend to one of those road signs for me, as it was a mention in an Inc. article that sent my business in a direction I’d never have imagined (as well as taught me a number of lessons along the way).
I awoke to a Google alert on a March morning in 2013 that my name was in the press. Upon opening it, I saw that I’d been mentioned in an Inc. article called “Why Networking Doesn’t Work,” written by a guy I’d considered to be a business friend. I had no idea he would be writing about my company after attending one of the events. My heart rate increased as I wondered if this might be some sort of teardown about my then-nascent second business: a networking events company for young professionals.
This was before I knew about the time-saving genius of the “command F” function to find my business name in the article, so I read it as quickly as possible.
As I skimmed, I was nodding my head because his piece stated a lot of what I also despised about events that wore the “networking” moniker…