Switched from Chamber of Commerce membership to a local Meetup group. Best call I made all year.

I was paying $350 a year for the Chamber and getting nothing but spam email and invites to luncheons full of people selling insurance. Joined an Edmonton founder Meetup group, no fee, and landed two solid leads in the first month. One guy even referred me to a client that paid my rent for 3 months. Anybody else ditch the fancy networking for something more small time?

3 comments

3 Comments

rubys8023d ago

Did that Meetup group have any kind of vetting process or did they just let anyone in?

theac6323d ago

Agree with @rubys80 it's nice when the group keeps out the insurance peddlers.

elliot_johnson3114d ago

Yeah, the "insurance peddlers" part really gets to me. I had a buddy who joined a local hiking group last spring and the second meetup had a guy who spent the whole trail trying to sell everyone on a whole life policy. They never invited him back after that. It just ruins the whole vibe when someone shows up with an ulterior motive like that. The group he's in now asks a quick question in the signup form about what you're looking for, and that seems to filter out most of the sales types.