Loads of people I talk to in real life say the big money is to be had from networking. They talk about quadrants, networking events, chambers of commerce informal gatherings. How on Earth can you make money from drinking red wine with boring gits pretending to be someones? Is it more related to accessing information before it’s officially released or what?
Can anybody enlighten me please? I’m being invited to such events regularly, find them boring and uninspiring, time-wasting exercises. Or should I just drink more red?

I think it’s the eejits organising the events that make the money.

It depends what your business is, what you do and what you want to do with it. Throughout my working life, who you know is often as important as what you know. If your business is selling one specialist widget to one specialist customer and you have no desire to change it, then probably not much use.

I’m in advisory services incl. some translations and linguistic stuff. Dealing mostly with the public not corporate clients.

it’s supposed to get like businesses together informally that wouln’t necessarily link up in the real world to foster realtonships that could bloom into full blown business relations.

i.e. a local bodyshop manager might get talking to a manager of a aluminium extrusion company who mentions that the cost of his fleet repairs is soaring due to body repairs and bada bing

it’s all about b2b baby, and if ain’t on the train you ain’t going nowhere.

PS never been but thats what the marketing guff promises me when i recieve it.

Do you want to get into corporate business? Do you want to broaden your client base?

The character of my business is such that corporate clients are hugely unlikely to be interested. I do it in my spare time to keep occupied and keep my brain cells working a bit as looking after my 4-year-old daughter can drain all the logic from any brain, looking after corporate clients would be profitable but stressful and I prefer sanity to a fuller wallet.

Don’t go then. You are not the target audience for networking events.

i.e. a local bodyshop manager might get talking to a manager of a aluminium extrusion company who mentions that the cost of his fleet repairs is soaring due to body repairs and bada bing

Had to read that twice. I thought the bodyshop manager was trying to sell some watermelon facial scrub and hemp body butter. 🙂

I knew someone who made an aboslute killing out of these ‘events’.

He organised a ‘forum’ via video conf.

The title of the forum was “Intranet Optimisation Forum”. In fact, it was f–k all to do with computers or anything remotely technical.

But he got the head of marketing/business from Ford, Merc, Ferrari, VW, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Kelloggs (etc etc)…. in the same room as each other to ‘discuss’ things. i.e. find out what the competition was doing in a private environment.

They paid £10k per seat per session.

There were 50 people at the ‘table’ per session.

And they met every 3 weeks ‘online’.

That’s £500k of income, every 3 weeks. The guy was an absolute GENIUS.

Senior managers with access to large budgets are given the opportunity to get pissed and brag to other people about how succesful they are.

How could it not make money?