Last week’s 1 Million Cups Columbia was an education session on networking. Titled “Effective Networking and Intentional Community Building,” and led by 1MC founder Greg Hilton of SOCO and new community member Daniel Andrews of NIA, the session was a full-hour dedicated to discussing various networking techniques, strategies, and challenges. Some key takeaways included: 

• Social networking and business networking are not the same thing; making friends and building business connections require different approaches.
• Entrepreneurs should take the long view and work to build sustainable relationships, not just contacts.
• On social media everyone looks the same; differentiate yourself with face-to-face interactions.
• A short view is: “What can I extract from this person?” A long view is: “What can I give to this person?”

Community members had a lot of great tips to share and questions to ask. Overall, the 1MC community likes to see one another out-and-about at other events. Daniel suggested finding a community that works for you and realizing you’ll get out of it what you put in.

This week: Celebrity Chef Sarah Simmons of Rise! presents and explains why she left NYC for Columbia. 1 Million Cups meets Wednesday at 9 a.m. at Richland Library on Assembly Street. Learn more about 1MC by visiting https://www.1millioncups.com/columbiasc.