Featured Client: Penny Brenden of The Connecting Experts

By: Andrea Lotz Tuesday June 2, 2015 comments Tags: clients, networking, featured client

Penny Brenden is a born networker. At a young age she realized her passion for connecting people to people, and after many years, has finally found her calling as the owner of The Connecting Experts.

She has devoted her life to helping small business owners feel more confident networking through her Art of Networking seminars and trade shows.

“Everything has brought me to this,” she says. “It’s the perfect thing for me to be doing.”

The only problem? Being a business owner today requires a lot of technology. There’s the website to be kept up-to-date, the social media channels to maintain, the marketing campaigns to manage, and the website analytics and sales to track . . . and that’s just the start for many business owners.

“See, I hate technology,” Penny says. “Whenever I have to even think about doing all the technology stuff, it’s like I’m going to have an anxiety attack. So that’s why AllProWebTools is doing it all.”

Diverse Talents Make Great Partnerships

Penny has only been an AllProWebTools user for a few months, but it’s already been a great partnership.

“It’s made it a whole lot easier having AllProWebTools do all the things I’m not brilliant at,” she says. “Typically a good outside sales person is good at the face-to-face stuff and is not good at the technology stuff, and vice versa. It’s the beautiful part of the world in which we live, that there are people whose brilliance is opposite. But we coexist so well and it makes our lives so much easier.”

We certainly appreciate Penny’s brilliant gregariousness—she has introduced us to many important contacts in the Denver area through her awesome, highly diverse trade shows.

Play to Your Strengths

Penny’s strengths lie in connecting people, and in helping people build the confidence to make their own connections.

“I love it when the light goes on about how to network,” she says. “I also love it when I am introducing two people to each other and it’s just a fantastic, perfect fit.”

She hosts an Art of Networking seminar about once every month, and trade shows periodically throughout the year.

 “The most fun thing is when it all comes together on the day of the actual event,” says Penny, “and I see a room full of hundreds of people, and everyone is smiling and connecting and doing what I love for people to do.”

Prioritize Your Passion

One thing small business owners never seem to have enough of is time. This is what makes prioritization so important to the success of a small business.

“People complain about getting 4 or 5 people to one place at one time,” Penny says. “Imagine getting 150 small businesses in one place at one time. But that’s why you have really great people to work for you and work with you.”

In general, the best strategy is to find ways to spend the bulk of your time doing the things only you can do—the things which earn you a piece of your market. For Penny, that’s connecting people and hosting her events.

Using technology to grow and promote her business, on the other hand, is an area where she doesn’t have a lot of skill or passion. Penny uses AllProWebTools to outsource, automate, and organize many parts of her business, including:

• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Website design
• Digital marketing and social media campaigns
• SEO

She also uses AllProWebTools’ CRM tools, ecommerce tools, and more so she can spend more time following her passion.

“There are so many things you can do with it,” she says. “You guys help do the back end things that I hate doing, and I’m bringing in all the people.”

Seek Out Connections

Penny’s philosophy when it comes to making professional connections is, “Every single contact is a good contact. That person may not be the person for you, but they might know the person for you.”

This holds true whether you’re looking for customers, mentorship, or partnerships. A small business’s most valuable asset is its network of connections. Your network can help you hone your skills, or can help you cover skills that you simply don’t have time to acquire.

This is what makes The Connecting Experts and AllProWebTools such good partners. We love to help each other out.

So, if you’re looking for someone that can help you make more connections and get better at networking, we highly recommend looking up The Connecting Experts. We can say from experience that Penny Brenden will bend over backwards to get you connected to the people you need to meet.

We encourage you to attend an upcoming Art of Networking Seminar, or one of her larger trade shows. The EPIC Summer Summit is July 30^th, and the August Extravaganza is August 27^th. For more information on those events, click here.

Find out more at www.theconnectingexperts.com

If you’re looking for ways to automate and organize your online presence and business management, try a free demo of AllProWebTools today!