How to Make Networking Fun Again (Without Burnout or Pitch Slaps)

Have you ever left a networking event feeling drained, annoyed, or questioning why you even showed up?

You’re not alone.

In this episode, we’re talking about how to make networking fun again — and more importantly, how to make it strategic. Because networking isn’t just small talk. It’s top-of-funnel visibility. It’s middle-of-funnel trust-building. And sometimes? It turns into bottom-of-funnel referrals and clients.

But only if you’re in the right rooms.

We’ll cover:

• Where networking fits in your marketing funnel
• Why transactional “pitch fest” rooms drain your energy
• How to find networking spaces that align with your values
• The structure that actually makes connection easier (yes, even icebreakers)
• How I reworked my own Marketing Mixer after experimenting with pricing and structure

If marketing has been feeling heavy lately, this conversation will help you reframe networking as a long-game, relationship-driven strategy — not a speed-dating sales tactic.

And if you’re ready for a room that feels strategic, supportive, and human? I’ll tell you exactly where to find one.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:01.112)

Have you ever been to a networking event where someone stands up to introduce themselves and they clearly have memorized their elevator pitch, but it doesn't land. Like you're like, I don't care about anything that you just said. And I completely forgot everything you just said as well. Yes, we have all been there. And often we show up at networking events and we think like,

This is gonna be great. I'm gonna make some great connections. I'm gonna have some good conversations. And we walk out of the room or we sign off the Zoom and we're like, ugh, that was exhausting. And sometimes even if you do meet one or two people that you enjoy chatting with, you still feel exhausted. And so then you're thinking, like, why am I even doing this? Not working, even helping my business? What is the point? You are not the only one who feels that way.

And so today I want to talk about how to make networking fun again and finding rooms that support your growth and your energy.

Marketing can be heavy. It can be draining. And networking being one of the pieces of marketing that can be draining and heavy, I wanna talk about how to make it not feel that way. And I wanna also talk about where networking fits in the marketing funnel. So networking is very much top of funnel and middle of funnel.

It's top of funnel because if you're going to new events, you're going to new spaces, you're hopping on new calls, you are meeting people who don't know who you are, who have never seen you before, which is getting new eyes on your business. It is top of funnel. And it can also be middle of funnel for people who you have met before because it's giving you an opportunity to reconnect with them, to get to know them better, for you to get to know them better.

Ruthie Sterrett (01:58.155)

to connect and build community and learn about each other and build trust, is middle of funnel. And sometimes networking can lead to bottom of funnel activities. Somebody that you met at a networking event could hire you. Somebody that you met at a networking space could refer you to someone else who hires you. And unfortunately, that is the part that is often a long game. It's like the first event you attend, you're planting some seeds.

And the next time you attend the same group, you're watering those seeds and fertilizing them. And if you reach out to people you had a good connection with, you're continuing to nurture that and cultivate that seed. And maybe it'll turn into a client and maybe it won't. And we don't know. And it's kind of like planting seeds and not knowing if they're going to grow or not. But if we never plant them, they'll never.

grow. So networking is a good way to get some top of funnel activity, to get some middle of funnel activity. And if you go back and you look at where your clients actually come from, if they are coming from personal connections, whether it's referrals, existing clients connecting you with somebody, friends connecting you with somebody, someone you met in a community connecting with you or becoming a client, that's an indicator that networking works for you.

And so taking the time to continue to do it is a good strategy for your business. But it's not a good strategy if leaving the networking space makes you feel exhausted, drained, annoyed, frustrated, all those things. And so that's why finding the right space really makes a difference. And we've all walked into the marketing or the networking event where

Maybe you're not getting like the weird elevator pitches or the like stack of business cards from people handing them out if you're at an in-person event, but the host is actually turning this networking event into a webinar or a pitch fest for their own thing. And they're pitch slapping you with their thing. And while as a host, you do have networking events to grow your network, to grow your community.

Ruthie Sterrett (04:26.656)

and you do want to use that as an opportunity to connect your community to your offers, it definitely should not be the first thing or the most important thing that happens at the event because the important thing is the connections and the community and the actual networking. And there are some networking communities that feel so incredibly transactional because they will even have quotas on how many introductions you need to make, how many leads you need to give to fellow members.

If you all have never been to one of those, me a DM. We'll have a conversation about when I went to one of those networking events and was immediately like, never again. And if you have been to one, I wanna hear your experience too. And while those events absolutely can work for some business owners and some types of business, that is not for us. As we say to my little cousin about things that we don't align with, we say, that's not for us.

But networking and community can be for us in the right rooms. So what do you want to look for when looking for a networking space? Well, I'll give you my list. Number one, a host who I align with, I connect with, I have a good relationship with. And maybe that's not the actual host, maybe it's a friend who's invited me into

a space that they've been to and I don't actually know the host, but my friend or my connection who's invited me, I know and I align with. That immediately is like, okay, this could be a good opportunity to go to. And if I didn't get a personal invitation or know the host personally, what I look for is what's the language that this host is using in terms of who they are inviting? I share the analogy a lot that as marketers,

when it comes to our messaging, if we talk to everyone, nobody listens. But if we talk to one person, other people eavesdrop. And so what I want to pay attention to is who is this event and this host talking to? And maybe it's not me exactly, but am I interested enough to listen in? Because if it's anybody and everybody, that's probably not a room that I want to hang out in because I don't really want

Ruthie Sterrett (06:50.413)

to hang out with anybody and everybody gets too people-y when we're hanging out with anybody and everybody. I want to hang out with the right people, the people who get it, my people, right? So you also want to look at the networking event in terms of is there structure? And in in-person events I've been to, a lot of times the structure is everybody goes around, introduces themselves, and...

shares their like one minute spiel and then the event is over or it's so ongoing and you're like open to like mingle on your own. And that gets feel super intimidating. Like number one, here I am introducing myself in front of this huge room of people. I'm not really thinking about what the person in front of me before me said because I was too busy thinking about what I was gonna say. Once I finished the person next to me, I'm not really listening to them either because I'm judging my own myself and wondering if what I said landed. But

In reality, people aren't even listening to me because they're thinking about themselves and it's just not effective. And then after the fact, the people that come up to me are trying to tell me something. They're immediately going to bottom of funnel. They're immediately like getting down to asking me to marry them on the first date after we just met. And it just feels, again, gross and transactional. Or in an online networking group,

If again, it's like really big room, you have to sit there for 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes, depending on how long the event is, and you get to talk for like two minutes and introduce yourself. Like that's not fun. I don't want to do that. So what I like in a networking group is breakout rooms where we get to have smaller interaction if it's online or if it's in person, more structured groups to have conversation. And then,

facilitated conversation. So what's a question that we could discuss as a group and not like who are you, what do you do, but a life question. Like if it's around the holidays, what's a holiday tradition that's unique to your family that you enjoy doing? That's fun. Like let's talk about that as humans, or it could be a business question of what's really working for you as a brand right now on social media. And we can have a conversation about that. So

Ruthie Sterrett (09:12.361)

Yes, I know we all roll our eyes at icebreakers, but no joke, I'm the queen of the icebreaker. I actually really like icebreakers because I know that that structure gives people a vehicle to connect and it makes connection easier because connection is what is going to fuel your community and your community is going to help you grow your business.

So all that being said, it's why I created the Marketing Mixer. It's why I host a networking event. And I'll give you a little bit of backstory and the behind the scenes of that event. So I started hosting the Marketing Mixer in November of 2024. I did the seasonal social media mixer and it was like a holiday party. We talked a little bit about what was happening in social media.

and tactics and trends and I did some like teaching and a workshop and we did breakout rooms and the feedback I got was amazing. I actually, if I remember right, I think I might have even hosted it two times in one day because I didn't know what time would resonate, like would work best for people. That was a little much for my own energy and capacity. I learned that two in one day is probably not a good idea. But then I just brought it back.

posted it again in February and got very similar feedback of like, this is great. I love this, Ruthie. You should do this more frequently. And both times I had, I don't know, 50 or so people register for the event and maybe had 20 show up live. And so I decided I wanted to do it more frequently. But I also decided that I wanted to charge an entry fee.

And so I wanted to make it accessible for everybody. But the reason that I wanted to charge an entry fee is I wanted the people who register to come. Like it hurt my feelings to have people RSVP yes and sign up with their email address, but then not show up. Like I know life happens. I know we sign up for things that we can't get to. And I just, really thought like if you buy the ticket and you spend the $5 or the $10, maybe you're more likely to come.

Ruthie Sterrett (11:31.31)

I don't know, we could have a whole episode on pricing psychology, but that's where my head was at. And so I decided I was gonna charge for it. And it was gonna be $10 a ticket, or you could buy tickets for the entire year, six events for $30. And I maybe sold over the course of the year, like 30 tickets between individual or all access passes. But by the end of the event, the end of the year, I was having like total, again, total transparency here.

like two or three people come to each networking event. And so it was no longer feeling like a networking event. It was feeling like just catching up with the two or three people that came every six weeks, which was great. But it wasn't serving the purpose that I wanted it to be as far as networking and giving us an opportunity to expand our audiences, our networks and connect with a community of people. So I could have scrapped it. I could have said, no, we're not doing this anymore. Never mind. But instead, I decided to bring it back free.

We're going back to the anybody can come, no charge. I hope if you RSVP you actually come, but if life life's and you can't come, I get it. And there will be a replay of the workshop or the teaching section of the event where we talk about marketing strategy or marketing alignment for your season of life or just some different topics that I have planned that make sense based upon the time of year that the events will be.

And to be totally transparent, again, because that's what I like to do here, is give you the real scoop. This is an experiment and it may or may not work. And it may or may not contribute to the health of my business. It may lead to a client. It may lead to somebody coming and introducing me to a future client. It may be somebody who sits in that room and says, yes, I'm ready to outsource my marketing and I am going to hire Ruthie in the corner office.

But I had to really sit and decide and work through the strategy of where does this fit in my business? What is the job of this networking event in my business? And how am I gonna make sure that this offer is doing its job? And so there was a lot of thought behind that and a lot of...

Ruthie Sterrett (13:50.248)

work around the messaging and the actual content of the event and what we're going to do in the event and how do I make sure it's valuable to those who come even if they never become a client of mine. That's okay. And so I share all of that because I've had some conversations with some other founders who are like, you know, I've thought about a networking event or I've thought about a free community as a piece of my business, but I just am not really sure.

And so the questions to ask are again, like what is its job in your business? What is its job in your customer journey? What job is it doing in terms of how it serves the audience? You know, this podcast is free to consume. My content on Instagram is free to consume. So I have to give those things a job because they do cost me time and energy to produce.

And so I have to be really clear about what is the intent of this offer in my business ecosystem. So if you have questions about hosting a networking event or you want to talk through it, I love brainstorming on this stuff. So send me a DM on Instagram and let's talk about it. And if you're like, well, I need to go to the marketing mixer. Ruthie, this sounds amazing. Yeah, you need to be in the room. I definitely want to see your face on Zoom.

The next one is February 19th. You can register at the consistencycorner.com slash mixer and we will host them quarterly. And so I hope you're there. I hope you bring a friend. It's going to be fun. I promise my ice breakers are not cheesy. They're actually very fun. And everybody tells me that I was, I could have been a cruise director or an activities director in another life. And I bring that energy into our networking space. And we also talk a little bit about, like I said, marketing.

and marketing for your season of business, your season of life, and marketing strategies that align with your capacity as a busy business owner with a full plate. So I'll see you on February 19th and I'll see you again in the next episode. Thanks for being here.