Sometimes when the mountain won’t go to Mohamed then Mohamed must go to the mountain. Finding networking in your city or town as far as organizations that host them can prove frustrating. If you live in New York, maybe you’ll get lucky but in some American towns you are hard-pressed to find one that will have more than three people show up and two of them are real estate agents. In places like Florida and other tourist-oriented states it is like this a lot. Some folks have become members of meet up groups that are geared toward meeting people of like-mind and interest and a lot of networking goes on there, if again, you can get people to show up. Even sites that require an RSVP have this issue.
But alas, it is ok; you can just take the bull by the horns and do it yourself. There are ways to get a networking group started that only draws serious people but this comes with a warning. It may take some time and experimentation before you get it right and that is ok too because you want to weed out the flake cases that are only wasting your time. After all if they flake on showing up to a meeting they will most likely flake when you need their business and vice versa.
How to get started
First you need to build yourself a website from one of the thousands of free web services there are. All you need is a catchy name that will clearly state that you are a business networking site. You need the home page; ‘about us’ page a blog and a registration page with a PayPal button and account. Yeah you got that right sista you gonna charge!
Once you state your mission, you will then set a moderate price and you can do these two ways. We will tell you what they are and they we will make suggestions.
- Charge a one-time membership fee for the year like $100.00. Why this amount? It is not too much for a serious person looking for business leads can afford and it is not so little that they would be tempted not to show up
- Charge a $15.00 fee that they pay on line with a printable ticket and a coupon attached. This way they are more obligated to pop in to see what the deal is and I would even go as far as having a raffle and a door prize.
The second option is the best one because you have a better chance of getting quality serious people to show up. When people think they are getting something free you can be sure to see faces.