Thursday: another early-morning trek across the Valley to the weekly breakfast meeting of the Scottsdale Business Association.
When I was invited to join this group, I privately thought it was going to be more hassle than it was worth. Because eggs make me upchuck unless they’re well diluted with flour and sugar (as in chocolate cake…), it’s always difficult for me to find something to eat for breakfast in an American restaurant. The group’s venue, the Good Egg, sounded especially unpromising {urk!}. And having to dive into the rush-hour traffic at quarter to seven was only slightly less unappealing.
However, I’ve found it really has been a very useful thing.
The benefits have extended far beyond the occasional job lead. For those of us who operate out of home offices, belonging to a local business group has the sterling quality of getting the entrepreneur away from the keyboard and out into the world. If I weren’t teaching, the only time I’d see another human being would be in choir and during shopping trips. Meeting weekly with a dozen other business people means I get to talk with professionals about topics that matter and enjoy the friendly company of a diverse and lively bunch of people.
More concrete benefits have included leads to useful business tools, such Carbonite’s cloud-based backup service, and presentations describing how various financial instruments and business-related strategies work. To those we might add practical advice: last week my dog-&-pony show was a discussion of how my associate editor and I are planning to step up marketing for our editorial business, The Copyeditor’s Desk. In response, practically everyone in the group had some idea or advice to contribute, and this morning they all wanted to know what progress we’d made on our plan.
On the other hand, except for a small local group of women bloggers, I don’t belong to associations of bloggers. Not because I don’t want to and not because I don’t see the value in linking with others who are trying to monetize their sites, but because an online network doesn’t serve the purpose of getting me out of my garret. Virtual socializing, while it has its purposes, is not the same as meeting people face to face. And it doesn’t take you off your chair and out from in front of your computer.
Too, Funny about Money doesn’t provide enough of my little corporation’s total revenue to make it worth spending a lot more time on it than I already do. One half-way decent editorial assignment returns two or three months’ worth of Adsense revenues; the recent two-week plumbing company gig paid more than seven times the amount FaM earns on Adsense in a month. Given that disparity, it makes sense to spend a lot more time on marketing the editorial business than it does to try to further monetize the blog. Really, if I spent as much time every day marketing The Copyeditor’s Desk as I do writing blog posts (hmm…like this one…), it would be earning as much as or more than I earn teaching, which other than Social Security is my only moderately reliable source of income.
Probably one doesn’t need to rub elbows with other business owners to arrive at revelations like this. But it helps.
Weird about the distaste for eggs thing. Husband unit has the same thing, hated them since childhood.
He has spent his life ordering breakfasts a la carte.
“I’ll take the Number Three, Maybel, and keep the eggs inside the chicken!”
On the other paw or hoof it’s a great networking thing if you support that idea.
My view on this is it’s some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld where all the participants are trying to steal each others ideas.
I’ve seen it before and I like mine over easy or in an omelet.
There is a thing called an egg beater, it will let you feed 3 people with one egg.
I hear you on the egg thing. I haven’t been able to eat breakfast-style eggs since I was in fifth grade (and got horribly sick after eating one, thus cementing a life-long taste aversion). My husband knows that if he ever wants eggs for breakfast, he’s going to have to cook them his own darn self.
It’s always nice to talk to other like-minded people, though, regardless of the topic. I remember being tremendously lonely when I last worked from home exclusively.
Funny can’t be lonely.
She has us. 🙂