No Bull, Just Beef - The Small Business Marketing Podcast · Spaghetti Agency

EP 12: 10 Years of Networking: The Good, The Bad & The Game-Changers

·48 min·3 clips

Todd rejects the “most award-winning digital marketer in Warwickshire” style of self-promotion.

The title gets corrected right away. Ten years sounds neater, but Todd says fifteen, and that pretty much sets the tone: half bicker, half hard-won memory. This is less a trip through the past than a look at what all those rooms, pitches, stiff chats, and strange habits teach you after a while. Networking comes across as useful, awkward, tiring, and sometimes oddly important once people stop trying to perform and get clearer about who they are. Confidence takes some knocks. The best stretch is about owning your space, because the room seems kinder to people who know why they are there, even if it takes a lot of practice to reach that point. Nobody sells it as easy. One speaker says the first networking event was terrifying, which makes the advice land better than any neat little pep talk. The boring answer is still the answer: keep going. Get better by doing it. Step out for coffee when the room fries your brain, then come back when you can handle another conversation. Introverts get advice that actually sounds usable. Stand by the coffee, let people come over, or take a small reset before forcing another chat that feels like dental work. Then the episode lets itself get ridiculous. Fake phone calls, disaster excuses, dogs, props, and book-table etiquette all barge in without wrecking the point. The jokes work because networking really is a bit of social theatre, and small human tricks can make the room less painful and easier to remember. Props are apparently fair game. A dog helps. A useful giveaway might help. Walking up to someone with your own book as the opening move gets roasted, then partly defended. That push and pull is where the episode is strongest. It keeps drawing a line between confidence and pushiness, and it treats presence as something that works best when it feels generous instead of needy. The close fits the show: send in your networking stories, leave a review, trolls will be side-eyed. It ends like a practical debrief after a long, weird stretch in a business room.

As heard by us

Dry, practical networking advice with introvert-friendly tips and a blunt take on confidence.

This episode treats networking as a practical small-business test, with awkward small talk, unexpected connections, and a blunt question about whether the effort is worth it. The tone stays raw and lightly inappropriate, but the dry back-and-forth keeps it moving.

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Why you'd press play

You'll want this if networking feels like a room full of awkward small talk and people pretending to be busy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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