It's really no secret. BNI. I joined the Boca Raton chapter in the spring of 2000. I was invited to come visit a meeting by one of the members. 7am - is he kidding? But I hauled myself out of bed at the unGodly hour of 5:45am and made it. What an eye-opening experience that was. A group of friendly local business people working to help each other promote one another's businesses and services. The mortgage guy referring the payroll services rep to one of his clients. She, in turn, referred the realtor to one of her clients who mentioned they were looking to move. it's like having dozens of sales reps out in the Boca area working to get you business. Over six years later, I'm of the opinion that if you can't get up early one day a week then you're making too much money.
Our chapter has 35 members and we meet at Maggiano's for breakfast. What a nice group of people that I really look forward to seeing every week. Working alone from my home office, it's nice to network with a bunch of people I like and trust. If I have a quick question for one of the attorneys I can just pick up the phone or shoot off an email. I get calls from members who ask me to help them write a quick press release or tweak their yellow pages ad. We really help each other out. But more importantly, we're out in the world drumming up business for one another. In the last few weeks I referred one client to our chapter's IT guy, and another to our printer. When a friend from up north needed a realtor to sell her late father's condo, I referred our real estate agent. When one of my friends was at Club Med he met someone from Boca who needed an accountant - and told him to call me for her name! (I've got everyone I know trained - they know I KNOW PEOPLE).
Our chapter has 35 members and we meet at Maggiano's for breakfast. What a nice group of people that I really look forward to seeing every week. Working alone from my home office, it's nice to network with a bunch of people I like and trust. If I have a quick question for one of the attorneys I can just pick up the phone or shoot off an email. I get calls from members who ask me to help them write a quick press release or tweak their yellow pages ad. We really help each other out. But more importantly, we're out in the world drumming up business for one another. In the last few weeks I referred one client to our chapter's IT guy, and another to our printer. When a friend from up north needed a realtor to sell her late father's condo, I referred our real estate agent. When one of my friends was at Club Med he met someone from Boca who needed an accountant - and told him to call me for her name! (I've got everyone I know trained - they know I KNOW PEOPLE).
