Vet Wall Street Journalist Teri Agins Gives Networking Tips

Designer Guy Wood, R Journalist Teri Agins

If you’ve spent years attending cocktail parties with the likes of George Clooney, Mick Jagger, and Karl Lagerfeld you learn a thing or two. Teri Agins was grande dame of fashion journalism at the Wall Street Journal from 1989 thru 2009. She began at WSJ in 1984 but began her mission to build its fashion beat in ‘89. Though officially retired from reporting in 2009, Agins continued to write for the Wall Street Journal and had her own column, “Ask Teri”.

Agins was a panelist at last night’s Dreamleapers fashion event moderated by Harriette Cole, founder of Dreamleapers. Agins was just as generous with her wisdom after the event as she was during. She shared some of her networking tips with the attendees who gathered to meet her and get signed copies of her book Hijacking the Runway. By the time I made my way over to her, she had sold out of them (I’m not mad at her). She still had plenty of great advice though, and generously dispensed those nuggets. Here are a few:

Teri Agins' Networking Tips

• Do your homework. Google or Bing or what have you, the person or persons you wish to meet and make a connection with. So, “get to know them” before you try to “get to know them”.

You’ll have a better chance of them remembering you if you make the effort.

• Don’t try to meet EVERYBODY! Be selective and focus on meeting one or two key people. Your chances of coming away with a quality networking connection are much better then.

Bonus networking tip-

• If you didn’t do your homework before the event, arrive early and make friends with the PR person- or whoever is the equivalent. That person can put faces to names for you and provide some info about them.

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