By holding meetings once a month, we are finding that more and more business owners are signing up and taking the time to attend—whereas weekly meetings tend to attract the employees and sales representatives. The truth of the matter is that if you ask business owners whether they have an extra one hundred hours they can block out of their calendar over the next twelve months, they are going to look at you like you’re crazy. However, we all know the importance of networking, so typically owners will send their salesperson in their place. But who would you rather network with? When you set up a one-to-one, you want to make sure you’re sitting across from the person who has the authority to write you a check and, better yet, has the power to refer you.

In addition, holding fewer meetings attracts and retains higher numbers than the average early-morning get-together. The standard organized networking group averages fourteen members. We require our groups to be a minimum of twenty-five members, and many of our groups are maintaining long-term membership numbers of thirty-five or more. It’s not hard to figure out why. It’s just easier to book something into your regular schedule when it’s not asking so much of you.

At NIA®, we like to think that we ask you for less and deliver more.

I’m not sure which has exits clearing faster—Sunday morning church services or an early-morning networking group! You better not be near the door at the end, or you risk getting run over before you’re even out of the parking lot. When you’re meeting before your workday starts, you are going to be in a hurry to get out of there and start checking things off your to-do list. If you’re a business owner, you may have already missed a number of important calls just during breakfast.

This is one reason why we don’t hold early-morning meetings. Though our franchise contract allows franchise leaders to hold meetings when they like, we encourage all of our franchise owners to hold them in the afternoon. Today, 100 percent of the ninety-minute NIA® meetings are in fact being held between 3:00-5:00 p.m. in cities across the country. The impact of an afternoon meeting is that members are able to stay and visit with each other when it’s over.

By holding meetings in the afternoon, usually at the end of the workday, you have the time to visit. You can set up one-on-ones with other members in your group, ask more questions about a referral someone gave you, or just get to know members better in a relaxed atmosphere. You have the time to build relationships, which is ultimately what networking is all about. This means that you have the opportunity to come and more completely do what you came to do.

Keith Duke sat in his chair, trying hard not to roll his eyes. It was 7:23 on a Tuesday morning. He had been up since 5:00. The drone of familiar voices around him, saying the same thing they said last week, and the week before, and the week before, made him restless in his seat. He understood the value of networking, but doing it this way—the way he’d always done it—was starting to take its toll on him.

“Before I found Network In Action, I had been in an organized networking organization for several years, and it had run its course for me. I was tired of the weekly meetings—of standing up and saying what I do every time, and if I had to hear the pest control person say he kills bugs one more time, I was going to go insane. I had to find something a step above the rest.”

One of the reasons he was first drawn to sign up as an NIA® member was because of our unique model of holding meetings once a month versus once a week. In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons people are either leaving traditional networking groups and looking for an alternative.

There are thousands of people across the country who recognize the need for networking, but they either don’t want to or simply can’t attend weekly, early-morning networking meetings. Some people join local chapters anyway in hopes that they can make it work and then either leave or are kicked out after missing more than a couple meetings per year. Either way, the end results are the same: they just flushed hundreds of dollars in membership fees down the drain, and they are back where they started.

There are several reasons you may not be able to consistently attend weekly gatherings: Perhaps your clients span the United States and you are required to travel often. Maybe you are the parent responsible for getting your children dressed and fed in the morning before they go to school. Many business owners are up at dawn putting out fires and don’t even breathe until after lunchtime. You may be one of the majority of Americans who don’t particularly like getting up before the sun. Or, perhaps you are like many others who are currently attending the weekly ritual of repetition, and you’re just done with it.

The first and most obvious benefit to having a once-a-month meeting is the amount of time that you save. This networking model gives you some additional eighty-plus hours in your schedule every year. You are able to carve out more time in your life and in your business for the things that are most important without sacrificing the value of being part of an organized group of people who are all supporting each other’s business growth.

Even the few hours you save every week make a big impact on your day. A recent study suggests that losing as little as thirty minutes of sleep can increase your insulin resistance, which raises your risk of diabetes and obesity. There are studies that have tracked the correlation between having to set the clocks back in the spring (i.e. losing an hour of sleep) and higher incidents of car accidents. In his article Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think, clinical psychologist Michael Breus, a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, says that reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as ninety minutes for just one night can reduce your daytime alertness by as much as 32 percent. This cuts your work productivity by almost a third! Multiply that effect by four weeks, and you’re potentially losing over a day’s worth of productivity every month. How much is it costing you to wake up a couple of hours earlier once a week, in addition to the loss of your beauty sleep? (And let’s face it—some of us need that more than others.)

Most major networking group in America is run by a volunteer or is a non-profit organization. The fact that we have paid leadership is a unique identifier of Network In Action. However, for our franchise owners, the money always follows their passion for building a successful group. It truly is not about the money. It is about creating value for our members—it is about creating value for you. Look at it this way: You can get your nephew to build you a website, or you can pay someone to build it. The professional, trained expert you pay is always going to do a better job. Period. This principle is true for everything. When you ask someone to give you something for free, you are likely to get what you paid for. In a typical networking group today, the group is run by the next man or woman up, which is most often determined by who served as last year’s volunteer vice president. This annual migration of leadership leaves many groups wandering aimlessly while the new leaders find their way. A volunteer lawyer, CPA, realtor, or whoever it is who is next up is just not going to care as much about a networking group as a vested professional. With NIA®, we are breaking the mold and doing things a different way. We are proving that better leaders build better groups!

We aren’t just simply paying our leaders. We aren’t offering a job opportunity with rebates on enrollments. Our groups are set up as franchisees with owners who have to first make an investment in order to have the rights to operate an NIA® group. These investments are not made lightly, and they ensure your leaders’ commitment to the purpose and integrity of NIA’s model.

Each franchise owner is a professionally-trained Community Builder, which means they are every bit “the professional” you would look for when hiring for any other task in your business.

Focused on YOU

Our franchise owners have a financial stake in the success of the group. That means that in addition to taking the time to help your business grow, they are personally invested into making sure it does. They are always thinking ahead on your behalf. They understand that your success is necessary for the group’s success. They want to make sure you have every opportunity possible to build relationships with the types of business owners and decision makers who can impact your business in a positive way. When NIA® franchise owners leave a monthly meeting, they are typically leaving and going right back to work on group-building strategies.

By joining the NIA® group, you essentially hire a professional matchmaker to keep an eye out for the people looking for your products or services. This completely takes the risk out of your investment and is a service that is unique to NIA®.

In 1962, David Oreck was selling heavy upright vacuum cleaners to hotels all across the United States. During his many business travels, he noticed hotel housekeepers struggling to drag big, heavy vacuum machines all over the hotel property. The drudgery of it was clear as they pulled and pushed their way from one floor to the next. One day, he had a radical idea: What if someone were to design a lightweight, yet powerful, vacuum cleaner to relieve the physical stress of hotel staff all over the world? He approached his employers and tried to convince them to do just that.

As he tells it, he was laughed out of the room and told, “No one would ever buy a lightweight vacuum cleaner.” The Oreck Corporation began as a manufacturer of upright vacuum cleaners for the US hotel industry in 1963. It was a huge success. Bigger than he'd anticipated. Not only did hotels eagerly start buying them, but the hotel staff members themselves started buying these vastly-improved vacuum cleaners for their own use at home. So, David's original idea evolved as the Oreck Corporation began selling its unique products to residential consumers as well. As they say, now you know the rest of the story. Well, not quite.

In 2005, I was dating a woman who sold her candle company to none other than Mr. David Oreck himself. One weekend shortly after the purchase of the candle company, she and I were invited to spend a day on David’s private ranch. The property is breathtaking, with longhorns grazing along the side of his personal runway and an airplane hangar that houses over fifteen restored vintage aircrafts. During the early part of the day, we took turns flying with him in various aircraft around Louisiana and Mississippi. Once the keys to the various planes were locked away, Mr. Oreck proceeded to break out the scotch. That afternoon, he introduced me to fine whiskey and began to ask about my business. I explained to him that we were operating in thirty-seven states and two providences in Canada and that we were in the business of putting our hands into your pockets and legally extracting as much cash as possible.

I remember his response like it was yesterday. “Oh, you are in marketing? What type of business do you think I own?”

I immediately responded, “The vacuum cleaner business, of course!”