How to Make Money Out of Networking

Think about this:

At your local peer networking events you meet with self-employed consultants just like yourself.

You each have marketable skills, and seek a way to improve your business position by finding ways to sell your skills to paying clients.

We have already established that you’ll not get rich from folks who grudgingly pay $10 to get a cup of coffee and a chance to chat with you. Again.

Here are two events from yesterday:

I met with Rick Shea and we spent three hours coming up with an idea that we hope will launch his business into a revenue-maker, and will involve me in the back-end of the scheme. Together we make a very powerful business model out of a good but unsupported business.

I am not denigrating Rick. If you like, “I can help Rick by producing computer stuff that makes Rick’s package do-able”.

I chatted with Alison Silbert on the phone. We appear to be on the brink of a scheme that will marry my computer talents to her marketing skills. She will generate revenue from a service to business clients, and I will make revenue from streaming to her the information she needs to tap each client on the shoulder.

In both cases I am meeting with a fellow networker, and rather than taking money from them, I am making money with them.

In Rick’s case, we are “in it together”; we present a single face to the world, the Rick-and-Chris team that help you measure your impact.

In Alison’s case we operate as a chain that starts with a vast source of data, passes through me to produce information of value to Alison, and then passes through Alison to be of value to her clients.

I’m not taking money off Rick; I am taking money of Alison, but only the money that she is getting from her clients as a result of my efforts,.

Do you see the difference?