The Importance Of A Solid Foundation

Last year a friend of mine invited me to go to a networking group with her. Although I had been to a few groups before I had never really been to one that was focused on business so I was pleasantly surprised to find a variety of people from several different backgrounds and vocations. I enjoyed it so much that I joined a couple of them over the next few months and became a regular attendee of a few of them.

I found that there are some major differences in how some of them are ran. Some are really interactive, others are more of a spectator sport. At least three of the most major organizations in Calgary are very structured. Typically a meeting has an address from their leader, everyone does a short introduction of themselves and their business, leads are exchanged, and in some cases even extracted out of the members by forcing them to pay a toll fee if they don’t have one for someone in the group. Fees are charged at most of these groups and they don’t include the price of your meal.

The foundation of each group was interesting to study, because as goes the leader, so goes the organization. Usually in the beginning of each group somebody had some passion for something good and it got started, but none seemed to be thought out with any long term plan in mind. Some had began out of a need for networking while others seemed to be more focused on the agenda of the upper management. I encountered one that was a non-profit and therefore it had no profit for the participants nor the organizers. Another one was very politically motivated but seemed to shift sides as circumstances changed bringing a question of doubt to those who had invested in it previously. If the leaders were excited sales types they could draw a good crowd but typically they lacked sustainability, and many systems had no sense of accountability for leadership or membership. Two that I encountered had no qualms about using spam techniques to reach potential new members, and even though members knew of these practices they continued to participate anyway.

At first I too was caught up in all of the excitement of it and wanting to play nice in the sandbox, I paid my fees and went to lunch every week. I was not even deterred by the fact that I wasn’t getting much business from the event, I was having fun and it was a business expense. However, as the year progressed and I became busier in my work I realized that I had to cut some corners and focus on where I was actually getting most of my business. That came down to two things.

1. At Loyal2U we had created a social media vortex by using our own methods on ourselves first. We were getting new clients from our own marketing.

2. There was one network that was bouncing off our social media activity bringing us new clients. That network was the Calgary and Cochrane Business Network.

So what was different about CBN?

The first difference was their founder Jim Messner. He had also gone to many different groups over the years and had determined that networking organizations should be about networking. They shouldn’t be about collecting money to fund our political whims or starting our own little empire with a flashy website. Business owners want to get together to share what they do with other business owners, so why not provide an environment where that could be done naturally? Jim is a man of integrity so he attracted men and women of integrity. He is a networker so he attracted networkers. His first group in Cochrane was strong for years weathering the ups and downs of the economy and providing a steady base for entrepreneurs and sales people to meet.

The second difference was that the people that came out seemed to sincerely care about one another and want to give each other the platform. The atmosphere was friendly and truly non competitive. Even though other groups tried to eliminate competitiveness by not having more than one person from one industry present there was always a sense of striving. I remember taking a guest to a meeting who did data entry but she mentioned briefly in her introduction that she also took basic photographs while scrapbooking. A professional photographer told her at the buffet that she was not allowed to mention that because “he was the only photographer” allowed in the meeting, even though he had declared during his own introduction that he was too busy for anymore new clients. It seemed so petty, and worse yet, my friend did not want to go back again. Jim Messner though had always felt that a person should be secure in their trade. As a real estate agent, he has never been threatened by other real estate agents in the meeting because he knows what his unique offering is, and he is confident in that offering.

Ok so the difference was really only one thing. Jim Messner...

Really Jim built a solid foundation for CBN on trust. He had been in the RCMP for 20 years and he was and still is a man of his word. He built a solid reputation and an honest business and people felt comfortable with him. He felt that the networking should happen naturally as people got to know each other through interaction and through actually doing business together and then recommending each other would be the natural course of events.

I am really honoured that Jim has allowed me to carry that on.

We are really excited about the future with the Calgary and Cochrane Business Network and have several awesome announcements that are about to be made, but we go forward knowing that it is because there was a solid foundation that was already laid before us. Without a foundation it would be impossible to go forward. Jim and his associates and colleagues poured their hearts into the effort for many years and created something special that we can now build on.

Thanks Jim for founding the CBN and thanks for being a man of integrity. You built a solid foundation for us to go forward with.

Forever In gratitude,
Kerry George
Always Loyal2U