Don’t Call it A Book Tour… Just Join Morgan Campbell at First Fridays Toronto August 7

First, a confession:

I suck at networking.

I’m worse at Circling Back than I am at schmoozing, and I schmooze about as well as Carl Lewis sings national anthems. My friends are my friends and my colleagues are my colleagues, but I’ve never figured out how to bridge that particular gap, or  charm decisions makers into helping bend my career trajectory upward. Becoming a more skilled connection-maker wouldn’t necessarily make me a better writer, but I’d be better known,

I would tell you I luck into the occasional networking success story, but luck has nothing to do with how I landed at First Fridays Toronto, Authors and Artists Edition, scheduled for this Friday at Studio M on Eglinton Ave. West. If you’re not familiar with First Fridays, it’s Toronto’s best-known networking series for African-Canadian professionals. The list of past presenters includes people way more famous than I am, and this opportunity to introduce new readers to my debut memoir arose because somebody recommended me, but she only passed my name along to the First Friday folks because she saw me in action and like my work.

A few weeks back I delivered the keynote at the Black Talent Initiative’s annual Juneteenth Celebration, exploring the long and intertwined relationship between Canada and Black America. An HR exec in the audience that day loved the presentation so much that she bout the My Fighting Family audiobook, and loved the book so much that she messaged her buddy, First Fridays Founder Warren Salmon, to recommend that he sign me up.

 

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Two emails and one introductory phone call later, here we are. That’s networking in action, too. A deal that sprung from the strength of my work, not from my ability to small-talk, which, as we’ve discussed, is weaker than an AM radio signal.

I’m presenting on Friday and I’ll have copies of my paperback available for sale and signing. If you can read this message you’re invited, so I hope to see you there. Come through, watch the presentations, buy a book and get it signed. Afterward you can stick around for the true main attraction of any First Friday event.

The networking.

I’ll stick around and schmooze.

I promise.