I was the original person to ask this question at Coffee Tea You and Me, and I can tell you that I got an incredible answer from the Coach. For those who attend the actual event, you know that Coach Powell asks for Panera Bread gift cards if you get something out of the event. Well, needless to say, I owed him a coffee card!

The question stemmed from a situation that I saw a while back. There was a business person that I knew from all the networking events that I was attending. He was middleaged and was trying to jump from one end of the IT field to the other by starting his own business. We had been bumping into each other at networking events for upwards of 6 months when at a networking training event someone asked him to give a story about how he had gotten some business through networking. His response was “I haven’t.” And I about fell out of my chair!!

To reveal a little personal information, my networking costs average about $300-$400 a month, and I know that that is low. If I was to really push the limits I’m sure I could double that (I just don’t think I could handle all the business!) But I tend to make more than I spend when I’m out networking. In fact, a handful of jobs would put me into the black. So when I heard from this gentleman that he wasn’t making ANY money off of these events but I knew that his expenses were around the same as mine, my jaw dropped.

So, instead of asking the Coach how to make networking more effective (thats for another day), I ended up going the other direction and asked how to make networking cost less. We’ll post up the Coach’s fantastic answer next Monday, but let me give you one strategy that I know of and then I want to see your input ^_^.

I learned this strategy from Jon Graft a great networker and estate planning attorney. (Also a really funny guy who seems to keep turning up in the paper’s style invitational.) He told me about a friend of his who was a BNI member. Not all BNI chapters do this, but this guy’s BNI chapter charged for the meeting. There was a weekly charge of about $15 per member for food and the meeting space. As you might expect that can add up! (think $780 a year!) But this guy figured out an ingenious way to solve his problem with paying this cost every week. Every week he’d contact another member of his personal network and invite them to BNI, all they had to do was pay for his breakfast and he’d introduce them to 30+ business professionals who could explode his guests profits.

Sounds like a fair deal to me! And thats a NICE way to clear out several hundred dollars worth of expenses and enjoy a LOT of free breakfasts! Hehe :).

Now it is your turn, what are some ways that you can lower the cost of networking? It is an expensive sport (kinda like golf… in fact I’ve seen that networking often involves golf!) There are ways to keep your wallet from melting away to networking heaven.

Post in the comments below :).