Viktor Posudnevsky meets Juddy Shema, and entrepreneur from Kenya who is pioneering a new business concept that aims to keep Ireland connected
Viktor Posudnevsky meets Juddy Shema, and entrepreneur from Kenya who is pioneering a new business concept that aims to keep Ireland connected
“If you want to prosper for a month you grow seeds, if you want to prosper for 10 years you grow trees, and if you want to prosper for all your life then you grow people,” says Kenyan-born Juddy Shema, who operates Signature Speed Networking, a company that sets up speed networking events in Ireland.
Before Shema opened her business in January, speed networking was a rare occurrence in Ireland. However, the idea itself is not a new one, originating from the ‘speed dating’ concept started in California in 1998, when Rabbi Yaacov Deyo came up with a plan to help young Jewish singles meet and marry. In his system, single men and women would spend two minutes talking to each other before moving on to the next potential partner. It wasn’t long before the business world adopted the idea, re-dubbed speed networking.
The way the networking sessions are conducted is not at all different from a speed dating event. Usually people sit in two rows facing each other. They are given two minutes to talk to the person opposite, before moving on to the next person until they meet everybody in the room.
The concept is very helpful for business people to build up contacts, explains Shema. “In Ireland networking is very important. Any person you meet – be it an Irish person or a migrant – will tell you that regardless of what you know, the background you have, the degrees you hold and so on, it all boils down to who you know and who knows you. Networking is really big here, you have to know people to succeed.”
Born and bred in Kenya, Juddy Shema – the significance of the extra ‘d’ in her first name is known only to her mother – moved to Britain with her family nine years ago. She went on to study marketing and events management, and it was while later working for Abbots estate agents in the UK that Shema decided to relocate to Ireland three years ago. Her family was about to move back to Kenya and she wanted to stay close to her sister, who is also living here.
“I really love Ireland,” says Shema. “It’s my second home, and as much as I thought England was a place for me, Ireland is more homely and welcoming than England. I was also able to achieve in Ireland much more than I did in England.”
It is a common joke in Ireland’s business world that the ‘six degrees of separation’ that are supposed to exist between every two people on Earth boil down to just two degrees in Ireland, because people here are perceived to be good at making friends and contacts. However, until fairly recently speed networking had not made its way into Ireland and business people here were stuck to traditional ways of networking.
“There are many organisations holding meetings between their members to network, for example the Small Firms Association, Chambers Ireland, Network Dublin and so on,” Shema observes. “But the one thing that lacks in all these meetings is structure, and therefore a lot of the attendees tend to mingle in groups of people that they already know.”
For a newcomer – like Shema, and most immigrants to Ireland – this can create an obvious difficulty as they try to make their first contacts in this country. “I worked in events management before, so I went to many meetings that involved suppliers,” she says. “But often I couldn’t talk to people because they are in closed groups at these events. They all know each other, and if you’re a newcomer then you might feel isolated because you don’t want to interrupt their conversation.
“In the first 20 seconds people know whether they want to do business with you,” she adds. “If you don’t catch someone’s attention in those 20 seconds, trust me, trying to build their interest in the other 70 or 90 seconds of conversation will be really, really hard because it’s made up in their head that they can’t work with you.”
For Shema, these are difficulties that are easily overcome, and it gave her the idea to set up her own speed networking events. She was familiar with the concept from her previous experience in Britain, where she was engaged in setting up teambuilding meetings for large corporations.
Signature Speed Networking hosted its first event in January this year, inviting hundreds of people, but nobody came. And only six people showed up for the company’s second session. But since then – thanks to extensive networking by Shema herself – visitor numbers have doubled with every new event. Signature’s last event – a speed networking session held in November during Global Enterprise Week – gathered 75 participants, with more than 20 individuals on the waiting list.
But speed networking is very far from being Shema’s ultimate ambition. What she is finding is that the ‘speed’ concept is applicable to almost any sphere of human communication. “We’ve got plans to develop online speed networking, speed blogging, speed recruiting – speed everything!” she says.
One unusual idea that Shema is currently working on is what she calls ‘speed flatmating’, which brings apartment owners with space to let together with students who flock to the capital each year for college in need of accommodation. Shema says Signature’s first speed flatmating event was “very successful”, and there are plans to hold future events in Dublin, as well as other major university cities like Cork, Galway and Belfast.
Another area which needs development, in Shema’s opinion, is networking among immigrants. While some nationalities living in Ireland are quite well connected, others are disjointed and there is a considerable lack of any network among ethnic entrepreneurs, as Shema perceives.
“There’s nothing like being far away from home and having a network that can support you,” she says. “That’s why I would encourage everyone to network as much as possible and build contacts and relationships with people in Ireland.”
