"When I arrived at my first Network In Action meeting, I was instantly blown away. The energy, the people, the welcoming atmosphere, and then the meeting itself. I had never seen a networking meeting that was so engaged with its members. I was used to the meetings that were designed for the visitors. Attending a meeting that was structured around the members and building relationships during the meeting was really unique. Now, I am an NIA® lifer!"

When you are first introduced to Network In Action, the first thing you’ll hear are the seven ways that we are unique in the world of networking. However, I would argue that all seven of them boil down to just one: everything we do is built around adding value for our members, as opposed to just putting on a show for the guests. Let me demonstrate:

• Our guarantee: We guarantee you a return on your investment so that you know upfront that you aren’t taking a gamble with your investment. In addition, your professional leader enters into a partnership with you to ensure that you receive that ROI.
• Professional leadership instead of a volunteer: You are entering into a real partnership. Your franchise owner or community builder is someone who is committed to ensuring your success. In addition, the group maintains its numbers and value indefinitely, so you don’t have to worry about what we refer to as the annual networking roller-coaster.
• Ongoing coaching: Monthly coaching sessions are designed to help you continue to grow and improve your business in a variety of ways. You never have to choose between coaching and networking again.
• Monthly meetings held in the afternoon instead of weekly morning meetings: This makes it easier for you to work it into your schedule. In addition, this means that more business owners are making the time to come instead of sending their salespeople, which improves the quality of our membership across the board.
• Technology: We use technology so that it’s easier for you to pass and receive referrals and stay connected without face-to-face meetings.
• Marketplace: The NIA® marketplace gives you a place to offer your unique promotions to all of our hundreds of members across the entire country. This is free marketing to an audience that has already been qualified.
• Refer with confidence: Each member completes a background check and a personality profile so that you can refer to your personal network of friends, family members, and colleagues with confidence. In addition, it allows us to screen members before they join to ensure that you are guaranteed to be part of a group of high-caliber individuals.

Everything we do is about you! That is no accident. As I sat down and spent hours combing through the on-line reviews of networking groups, I made a list of all the things that people hated about the popular networking groups out there, and then I set out to create the exact opposite. It’s really no surprise that we’ve been able to create an organization that people love.

Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest

Other networking meetings are a dog and pony show for guests. The meeting’s focus is aimed at increasing the group’s membership, and that is done by convincing visitors that they have to join. The entire structure of the weekly meeting is geared toward that purpose. As a member, that should be insulting.

We do not sell franchises to just anyone with a checkbook. Our vetting process ensures that members will be put in groups where they can expect the best results and will be led by those who are qualified to coach them toward greater success. Our leaders come from various backgrounds within the business world and are able to draw on all of their valuable resources and experiences in order to help connect you with the people and resources you need in order to grow your business and to create a smoother ride for you as you expand.

When someone approaches us about becoming a franchise owner, there is a laundry list of things we look for. We specifically award our franchises to people who share a common goal of helping our members grow their businesses and develop their companies. However, it isn’t enough for them to have the passion and drive to just do that. They have to be qualified to do so. For this reason, it is equally as important that our franchise owners are teachers and students of business. Most often, they have already run or are currently running successful organizations. This allows us to glean from their background whether they are capable of becoming the networking experts they need to be in order to carry our NIA® brand forward.

Our franchise training is extensive and ongoing. Not only do we train on every aspect of building out a group properly, we work tirelessly to make sure that our franchise owners reflect the culture that we are trying to create in our NIA® brand. So, not only must they be people of action, they must be committed to their communities as well. NIA® members enjoy the benefit of these committed, highly-trained, and vetted professionals both in regard to the on-going coaching seminars and the networking training provided.

One of the topics we will consistently discuss in your regular monthly meeting is how to improve your networking skills. As previously mentioned, we encourage you to participate in every networking opportunity you can. Whether you’re networking within NIA® or mingling at other venues, we want to ensure you are equipped to do it as effectively as possible.

There is more to networking than just getting names and numbers. So much more. In fact, as I stated before, I used to despise networking, but that was only because I didn’t understand how to do it right, and I was completely turned off by how it was being offered. I didn’t understand that my success was determined by my ability to build sound relationships. At NIA®, we have gleaned the most proven networking strategies in the industry, and we have drilled down on the best of the best. These are the strategies we are committed to incorporating into each monthly meeting and training you how to execute in any networking meeting you attend.

One of the added benefits of your NIA® membership is our monthly coaching sessions that we offer. These are typically free, city-wide, ninety-minute networking events in which we have one of our NIA® members, an expert in a particular field, speak on a topic where that person’s experience can lend a hand to other members.

One month, it may be on sales training. Next month, it may be on keeping up with the latest trends in social media. Another month, it may be focused on helping you with your accounts receivable or cash flow. Next time, we may feature a CPA who’s talking about how to put more money in your pocket and pay less in taxes.

When you’re a business owner, you probably recognize the value of both coaching and networking. When you’re working with a coach, you are working with someone qualified to help you navigate the proverbial road less traveled—the road between where you are and where you want to be. Even if you are in the beginning stages of creating a vision of what you want to achieve and what is possible in terms of your future, you can bet that someone has traversed that road before.

When you’re networking, you are extending your reach through synergy and adding valuable contacts that are far more important than just filling a Rolodex. At the end of the day, relationships are what really matters, so networking is an essential part of growing your business.

So, both coaching and networking are vital to the lifeblood and efficiency of your enterprise. Often, the problem is that there are only so many dollars in your budget and only so many hours in a day. As a business owner, sales person, or entrepreneur, you are usually faced with having to choose one or the other. When you’re investing time and resources into coaching, your network may not be growing. When you’re working on growing and serving your network, coaching often has to wait for another day.

At NIA®, we recognize the importance of both of these, which is why we incorporate both into your membership. We have created a platform that includes ongoing business development, growth, and learning—all while helping you build relationships that last a lifetime.

When you recognize that networking is a powerful way to grow your business, it only makes sense to then ask, “Where’s the most efficient place to network?” You want to focus your efforts and resources on the groups that are going to bring you the greatest return on your membership fee and, even more important, on the time you will be required to invest. Otherwise, your efforts are more like hunting big game with buckshot, and instead of producing results and growing your business, you are just being robbed of your valuable time and resources that would be better spent investing into your business.

When it comes to growing your business through networking, the adage "You can’t compare apples to oranges" simply does not apply. In fact, in order to get the most benefit for your business, it behooves you to make that comparison. Up to this point, there have really only been two options out there for business owners who want to grow their businesses through networking: Weekly networking meetings run by volunteers with meetings focused exclusively on impressing guests, or Chambers of Commerce run by non-profits.

Historically, those who value networking have had to settle for joining one of these groups in an attempt to grow their businesses, only to come face-to-face with the reality that these are broken models that don’t deliver as advertised. That’s the boat I was in, which is why I was so disenchanted with the whole idea of business networking in the first place. Although both options may include some networking, that is where all similarities to Network In Action end.

Chambers of Commerce

I used to work with thirty-seven different Chambers of Commerce and Better Business Bureaus across the country, and I got to know them very well. Chambers are non-profits that have one focus and one alone, which is to help grow the economy in a particular city or in a particular area of the city. In order to do that, they want to attract more big businesses to the area. They want universities and large corporations to set up shop, which brings jobs and millions of dollars in annual revenues. That’s who they want. But in order to fund that effort, they prop themselves up on the shoulders of small businesses like yours. They get a bunch of small businesses to pay $300-$400 a year with the perceived value being: If I join this organization, I’ll network and grow my business.