Small Business Networking

By Georgina To’a Salazar, PhD

Growing relationships by networking is crucial for your business. Some people in your business network may be potential customers, and others might refer business to you, or help build your reputation with a wider audience. Still others might be people on an entrepreneurial journey similar to yours. The many venues for networking include online communities, networking events, and conferences.

Online communities

Large professional networks in online communities such as LinkedIn may be key to helping you start and grow your business.

Indira Carey, PhD, founder of AccelSci Consulting, explains that LinkedIn was the first platform she turned to when she was first developing her business network: “Most impactful for myself was finding a group of people who were on a similar journey to mine and sharing my experience and learning from them. That was huge.” She recommends a process she has used for identifying such a group of people, explaining, “The raising-visibility piece was, for me, first reaching out to people in my LinkedIn network who are consultants and who, like myself, have launched businesses in the biotech space, and saying, ‘What are some things that you’ve tried to identify potential clients? What worked? What didn’t work?’” After a lot of 30-minute conversations, Carey found two or three business owners who had a good overlap with her. She followed up with them to form a community of entrepreneurs who communicate regularly to share ideas, learn about events of mutual interest, and explore the potential to co-market together and maybe blend services. She also uses LinkedIn to post marketing materials when sponsoring an event.

Soody Tronson is another experienced entrepreneur who heads a boutique intellectual property law firm, STLG Law Firm, and has a health-tech startup, Presque. She advises looking for LinkedIn groups that may be relevant to your business and posting on the platform to get your name out and to make sure people know what you do. For Deborah D. Stine, PhD, founder of the Science and Technology Policy Academy, LinkedIn provides a way to understand and document the needs of her prospective clients. First, she shares a survey with her connections, asking them to characterize their interests quantitatively. Stine describes part of the survey as follows: “I say, here’s all the things that I teach—about 20 different classes and workshops. Which of these are of interest to you? And then I ask, ‘How much would you pay for a six-week class? For an hour of content outside of class and an hour inside class—how much would you actually pay for this knowledge?” Then she conducts brief interviews with her connections to determine qualitatively why they had answered as they had. Analysis of this data empowers her to tailor her offerings to what her audience really wanted.

Networking events

Kristen Slawinski, founder of BioFluent Communications, also conducts remote interviews with people she meets on LinkedIn, and she is a strong believer in the power of in-person networking. She acknowledged, “Yes, you get to know fewer [people], and it takes more effort, but you form better relationships. Especially if it’s within your community and you meet more often at other networking events. You make a friend for life; as they move from company to company, they bring you with them. That’s the number one piece of networking advice I always give: make friends. The people who trust you as a friend are the people who are going to recommend you and try to hire you within their own companies.” Pre-pandemic, Slawinski even started a couple of her bionetworks in the San Francisco East Bay and in Orange County.

Networking events such as those organized by AWIS chapters are another source of information for participants looking to fight past obstacles like self-doubt and low self-esteem. One entrepreneur who credits AWIS with providing key support is Jyoti Taneja, PhD, founder of Varada Agriculture. She was inspired, as she was growing up, by women teachers who motivated her to achieve financial independence and to learn about professional roles beyond the ones she saw in her small hometown. An inner conviction called her to impactful work that would apply her academic knowledge to real-world problems. When she moved to the United States from India with a young daughter, however, she had a professional gap in her résumé. “During this time, I was losing my confidence to be able to do science further, but I kept pushing myself—I always liked networking,” Taneja stated. “AWIS events made me aware of my self-limiting beliefs and helped me shed some, maybe just two or three—but they were important ones.”

Taneja also credited a local Chamber of Commerce event with opening her eyes. “It was the first time I had met a lot of start-up founders. And I think this was a life-changing event for me. I met a woman who started her company just based on an idea, and I came to know that there is a whole ecosystem and resources to support you.” These resources include grants, fellowship programs, and speed-mentoring events. While working as a project scientist at UC Berkeley developing tools for pest control in agriculture, Jyoti benefited greatly from the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, which offered a wealth of resources to help prepare and groom her as an entrepreneur. Find some of these resources here.

Conferences

Academic women in STEM are familiar with scientific conferences where researchers present and discuss their work. Business owners can also participate in specialized conferences to build brand awareness, engage with customers, and generate leads. The best match depends on the nature of the business. For instance, for Tronson, whose firm counsels domestic and international clients in IP and technology transactions, the Association for University Tech Transfer (AUTM) is a good match. Its annual conference serves tech transfer offices that receive disclosures from university professors and then make decisions about whether to pursue a patent or license.

Networking is crucial for your business success. Whether you use online resources or in-person events, use these examples as inspiration for building partnerships, finding new clients, and gaining valuable insights. Don’t miss out on the power of connections and start building your network today.

Additional Resources

Select AWIS articles on entrepreneurship and starting a business:

Select networking organizations, additions to industry related conferences and expos and individual networks built by connecting with academia and industry stakeholders through platforms such as LinkedIn:

 

Georgina To’a Salazar, PhD, works to create innovative solutions in science communication, research, and policy. With a BS in chemical engineering from Stanford University and a PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Salazar has fulfilled her dream of exploring the world, having taken research positions in Singapore and Japan before returning to the United States to focus on science communication. She currently works as a freelance scientific writer through her small business, Redwood Scientific Communications, LLC.