Day 18
BUSINESS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
Skip To The Key Takeaways & Action Items
One of my friends connected me with a member of the historic Leesburg Business Network International (BNI), a professional networking group, and I was invited to be a guest at their latest meeting in Loudoun County. My new friend Ben, the manager at Honest Tom’s Auto Care (go check them out), put me in a room with a lot of great potential connections and it was great.
I had been to a BNI group before, but the first time I had a full time job and was doing it as a favor, so I didn’t take advantage of the networking opportunity. This time, I did a much better job making connections.
Earlier in the 100 Days of Business I went to a different networking group called NexCo, and the BNI is a little more hardcore (and expensive). These groups meet weekly and are very detailed on the referrals that are given and received.
My goal of the BNi meeting was to connect with a realtor (since I do real estate marketing), a printer (because I need a print shop to print my work) and a tax specialist (since I’m new to small business). It turned out they didn’t have any members who could help me, so I just tried to talk to a few people and see if there was any other way we could help each other.
Here was my key takeaway and action items:
Key Takeaway #1: You Never Know Who May Be A Good Connection
As I talked about, I went into the meeting looking for 3 people, and in the end, ended up connecting with completely different people. It is important at these events to chat with everyone, not just those connections you are looking for.
Action Item:
Reach out to the Print shop guy
Reach out to the uniform guy
Reach out to Dawn with potential to help her
Reach out to 3 other connections
In the end, I like how organized the BNI group was, but at this point I really have no room in my budget to become a member.
UPDATE: I connected with one of the members and I may have up to 3 job opportunities, so this 1 meeting so far is the most profitable part of the Network Chain experiment.