Roland Hanekroot

Last year, I retired from networking.

If I never see another mini meat pie, dry goat’s cheese canape, soggy finger sandwich or rubbery poached egg with conference coffee, it will be too soon.

I’ve spent innumerable hours at hundreds of networking events talking to other business owners who only want what I want: To sign me up as their client.

Leaving another fruitless couple of hours small talking with fellow hopefuls, I was often reminded of a line from the TV series ‘The Westwing’, where a character is heard muttering when leaving a meeting:

That was 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back

Except when networking, I’d lose 2 hours of my life, not 20 minutes.…

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Business is all about people.

In the long forgotten good old days (say 10 years ago) getting more clients was easy for small business owners. To generate more leads for your business, all you had to do was spend more money on advertising. Advertising agencies became rich and powerful by simply getting their clients to spend more money in the Yellow Pages or on TV and Radio.

Those days are gone forever.

There’s a Golden Rule about marketing:

“People do business with People they Know, Like and Trust”.…