4th Meeting held at Kabuto Steakhouse - Building Trust

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the fourth meeting of the Lake Norman Young Professionals group. This is still a new initiative that is being driven by some amazing individuals. It’s wonderful to see others sacrifice their time (their most valuable commodity) for the greater good of each other and the community. 

This event was held at the Kabuto Steakhouse in Huntersville. We would like to extend a special thank you to Kabuto for hosting us and for providing fantastic appetizers. If you’re looking for a venue to host a private event or have a great meal, please keep them in mind, as they are conveniently located off exit 25.

Our dedicated leadership and committee chairs arrived early to discuss this evening and firm up next month’s plans.

After the general mingling and catching up was complete, we got started with brief, 10-second introductions from everyone in the room. What an impressive group! We have business owners, lawyers, former athletes, sky divers, classically trained opera singers and someone that can get you a trip to Iceland for $250 (Laurel Shea). After the brief introductions Chaz highlighted the importance of having a 30 second elevator pitch prepared at all times. As an example and thank you to his dedicated committee chairs we got the opportunity to hear Laurel Shea, John Sheehan and Shayna Inman all talk about their businesses in 30 seconds or less. Be sure to bring your business cards to each event. We will be randomly selecting individuals (from their business cards) to win the opportunity to present their elevator pitches in front of the group. If you don’t have a card that’s ok too, just write your name down and place it in the collection bowl. You can talk about your background and the line of work you would like to find employment in.

Talking about trust

Moving on Chaz gave a brief presentation on trust, the three key elements of trust and 12 keys for building trust with others. I won’t get too deep into the details of this talk but the three key elements of trust as Chaz described them are:

• Competence
  
• Sincerity
  
• Reliability
  

Owning my own business and knowing how busy we all are I’m grateful that Chaz squeezed the time in to present to us again, that’s two months in a row. Thankfully for him our professional development committee has lined up a fantastic speaker for next month that is going to talk to the group about public speaking methods and best practices. Arguably just as important we will be meeting at the AssClown brewery (<- feels weird typing that) located on Bailey road in Cornelius. Once Chaz was finished he challenged us all to write one quality about ourselves on a piece of paper and cut the paper into the shape of a heart in the spirit of Valentines day. The mission was to network around the room, guess the quality of someone else and collect the most hearts possible. I performed poorly as I spent most of my time getting to know two individuals and was deep in conversation as the challenge ended.

There was also talk of the Young Professionals group having the opportunity to participate in a Relay for Life walk AND a Tough Mudder event this summer. I think we may have some friendly competition brewing with Bill Russell (Chamber President and CEO) and Mike Russell (Chairman of the Chamber Board). No relation between the two… If you're interested in participating in either event be sure to let Shayna or Laurel know.

I also want to give a big shout out to Shayna Inman and Kim Snyder for making sure we all received the email blast ahead of time. If for some reason you did not receive a message about this event please reach out to them (by clicking on their linked names above) and share your email address with them. 

In closing and for Chaz, I’m participating in this group SO THAT I can hang out with other business owners, lawyers, former athletes, sky divers, classically trained opera singers and someone that can get me a trip to Iceland for $250 :-)

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See you all on March 10th at 7pm when the AssClown Brewery hosts our next event. Don’t forget to like and RSVP on the groups Facebook page. For those of you that still don’t have a Facebook account, I commend you and you can let us know through the website. 

- Mike