I am working on some pieces that the customer has requested that I keep private, so I will spend the next few blog posts just chit-chatting at you.

A year ago I attended my first meeting of BNI – Business Networking International – at the urging of my cousin who said it helped his business tremendously. I parked far away in case people would judge me by my car, and expected to find stuffy people in fancy business clothing. Instead, I found a room full of authentically friendly go-getter business people, most of whom were measurably younger than me (and all drove better cars, but whatever, Fernando has been paid for for many years).

During that year I did the following because of BNI

• Gave about 45 1-minute presentations
• Gave 3 “Feature Presentations” using powerpoint
• Gave 9 “Referrals”, only 1 of which turned into a “Thank You For Closed Business”
• Received a bit of business, called “Referrals” in BNI Speak, from 2 of the members, not anywhere near enough to pay for my membership but appreciated all the same
• Had 22 “One-To-Ones”, no where near BNI standards, but impressive for this introvert who fiercely guards her work time and solitude
• Met over 30 interesting, varied, focused determined business people from different professions, many of whom I now consider friends
• Invited about a dozen people, 5 who actually attended, but none who wanted to join because using Zoom isn’t personal or real enough
• Learned to use Zoom
• Refined my one sentence business description (“elevator pitch”) several times until it became this:

I make art that people can understand of places and things they love for prices that don’t scare them.

I view this whole venture as a marketing effort, and marketing has very slow returns. This particular way of marketing was time consuming and expensive, but the results are far superior to FaceBook or those other virtual methods because I made real friends.