Meetup group

My First Meetup group Experience

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending my first Meetup group.  I had tried to utilize this concept in my church planting ministry when I first started it in the fall of 2008, but I had not been very successful with it.  A few months ago, I began looking at the idea of Meetup groups again after listening to one of the leaders in the My Lead System Pro community talk about how he uses these groups to build his business.

For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of a Meetup group, let me give you a brief synopsis.  Meetup.com is an online community where people find others who share similar interests and then form offline get-togethers to build community in their particular field of interest.   In addition to the offline events, members of the group also engage one another in regular dialogue through their group’s page online.

Finding My Local Meetup Group

Shortly after hearing the MLSP leader speak, I found a small business owners group here in my local area.  The group was fairly young and had only met once before, but it seemed to have the proper mix of people for a good networking environment.  Last week I got notice of the next meeting and the topic was none other than “Online and Offline Marketing Strategies.”   Certainly a topic that I love, so I was even more excited about the meeting.

Yesterday we met for lunch at a Filipino restaurant here in the area.   There were myself, my wife and two other participants at our Meetup group.  The two other participants were both real estate investors who also have very successful network marketing businesses with a local electric provider that uses a network marketing business model.   The organizer has been with her company for about 3 years and had a story that I feel is important for anyone in network marketing.   She joined because a friend had told her to join.  She didn’t understand the company or the product, but she signed up one other person.   She put the business on the back burner, but she kept getting checks and those checks started to grow.  When they started to consistently be in the thousands, she decided to take another look.  Much to her surprise she had over 800 people in her organization and her checks are now coming up towards the $10,000 per month range.   We discussed the importance of perseverance in a network marketing business.   So many people give up before they really have a chance to see what can come about when a person puts even a moderate amount of effort towards their business.

As the meal went on we talked about the strategies we use.  I was the heavy internet user of the group and so I discussed the importance of attraction marketing and having systems in place.   One of the other Meetup group attendees loves using offline strategies.  He sets up a booth at a local trade center each weekend signing up retail customers and presenting the business opportunity in the process.   We also discussed the value offline of using a good old fashioned paper application form, as the experience of a person signing their name increases the level of buy in, whereas that same level of buy in is not readily apparent when someone signs into a computer form.

Looking For Ways To Enhance Your Meetup Group

We ended our Meetup group by discussing ways we could each present valuable content that draws on our skill sets to enhance and enlarge the group.   If you are not currently networking through this type of setting, then Meetup.com would be a great place for you to spend some time in the next few days.