I am new here on Steemit, and I would like to help all of the Entrepreneurs that want to get more, connection, leads and Ideas for there business. I am now living in Shenzhen China for the time being helping out one of the young men that I mentored over the years. Now I am helping him to establish more business for his import and export business.
I have set up several networking Club over the years and this is a way to get yourself and your business known with that important face to face meeting.
I am working part-time as a recruiter for CEO Space International an business forum that is held 5 times a year in Tampa Florida. They have been rated #1 by Forbes.com and Inc.com consecutively for the past 3 years "As the must go to business forum".
I am working with Chinese companies that don't understand western marketing and concepts.
In the past, I work with a network group in Beijing called the FC Club which stood for Fortune Cookie Club.
They held events twice a month and would normally hold this event at a 5-star hotel. The Hotel was eager to get this set up to increase their sales at their in-house bar.
I was one of the founders of the YES group in Sarasota Florida called the Young Entrepreneurs of Sarasota, It still is running after ten years and they hold a lunch meeting every Tuesday at one of the local bufett in Sarasota.
Being in Shenzhen I decided to replicate our group in Sarasota since Shenzhen and Sarasota both start with the letter "S " and calling it the YES group was no problem.
Asking myself the question? How to get the people to attend? First I had to get a venue, the Hilton, got it!
Now to get local business support, so I focus in on the expatriates and found a chain of restaurants ran by a western man from South Africa. No problem, Done!
Next to find all of the support group here in Shenzhen for the expatriates, Internations group this worked out better than I expected. Next free media, That's Magazine and Shenzhen Party.
Now everything is set up and, all I have to do is a little promotion on my part.
Now to give all of you some detailed instruction on how this works. You may ask yourself why would I want to do this, is this for me?
Well, there are many tremendous benefits that come out of this. You can make extra income and drive business traffic to your existing business as well as getting qualified leads for your type of business.
It also gives you exposure with the local businesses and the community in your area. You may ask yourself what do I need to make this Happen? First, you need a venue and then you need a time, and date to hold this event.
Pre Planning is a must to get the maximum amount of people and have a successful Club.
First, you need to decide how many times you would like to run this event. Depending upon what type of event your doing will determine how many times you should hold this event.
There are three main time frames you can hold this event, Morning breakfast, Luncheon, or evening event.
You can hold it every second or fourth week of the month. What I like to do is a night time evening event which you can hold at a local establishment such as a sports bar, or a high-Class Hotel. If you are doing the morning event then I would suggest in the beginning to do it every other week to start until you get the numbers you want. Pick out a day that is best for you and, what would be best for the business people in the community. Try to avoid Mondays and Friday, Mondays are when people are getting back to their work routine, and Fridays are when people are going home to their family.
I would suggest that you visit several different restaurants in different areas of your community to get a comparison of location, price, and availability.
Once you have found a suitable restaurant that is willing to work with your event, you need to negotiate the terms. Never pay for space, you are advertising their business, and you are driving traffic to there establishment. The attendees will be buying breakfast at their establishment and, that is enough compensation.
Also, find if they're excited about what you're doing and if they will promote your event to their existing customers base. This is a critical part of the decision of where you're going to hold the event.
Next, I would give yourself at least 60 days to market the event, You will need time to work with the local businesses in your area where you are holding the event.
The format for the breakfast and the lunch should be very similar, but the night-time theme is a little bit different.
Next, you need to determine what the theme of your event will be. There are several ways of going about this.
The way I've done it in the past is calling it an entrepreneur supporter group with guest speakers that talk about different subjects, and problems within business relationships. It becomes an educational class for business owners. People will do their networking before and after the event begins. you should make some common ground Rules for this event here are some suggestions.
- don't over promote your business
- no side conversations during the speaker's presentation
- turn off your cell phone
- participate freely
- Alway have new guest stand up and give a 30-second promo of who they are and how they found out about the Club.
The theme can be different each time you hold the event. You can talk about internet marketing. It can be about entrepreneurship, or you can talk about local problems with business and how to solve them. The main key is you want to make It interesting so the people will tell other people to join your group and, you will have returned customers on a regular basis.
Don't expect to make a lot of money from the marketing, or the attendance of the breakfast or lunch event. the money you make will be enough to cover your printing and your marketing efforts. Your benefit will come as your business gets more exposure to the local business community and, they get to know more about your business.
You also want to contact local businesses that would like to talk at your event. they will get benefit by having people know more about their business and, you will get great benefit by having a list guest speaker that will always be available for your event.
Next, you need to find people who will help you with your event. I will recommend to get postcard size printing done on 4 by 6 front and back these can be distributed to the restaurant or, bar where you're holding the event. You can also distribute these to other people that are committed to helping you at your event. This might be the local business entrepreneurs.
Next, you need to secure a press release to give to the local Media in the area to obtain free advertisement. you can also ask local businesses for free give away gifts for the amount of $5 to $20 these can be in the form of gift certificates or small giveaway items that they sell in their store.
This will give you a way to collect all of the business cards of the people who attend your event which will give you an email list. I would suggest a program such as Constant Contact or another email Marketing program so that you can keep up and continue giving information to the people who attended your event.
The price you should charge should be anywhere between $5 to $10 and no more, any more than that you will not get the numbers you expect. Remember the customer is buying breakfast and lunch if it gets too expensive the attendance will drop off, you want to get the attendance where you have enough people to hold a weekly event.
Now getting into the Night-Time events like a sports bar or, 5-star hotel like the Hilton this is where I normally hold my events.
The nighttime event held at the Hilton can host up to 200 people. So, this event can be profitable as you make $15 per person with 200 people that come out to a $3,000 profit for one evening. If you are in a large City you could have multiple venues in different parts of the city. We ran 4 events every Tuesday in Beijing these were at different hotels throughout the city. We also had different themes.
This is a great way to get exposure to your business and to increase your customer base it is not a way to make large sums of money from just the event, but you will get exposure, customers, and credibility within a community.