I was in a little networking group many years ago when I had a roof cleaning business in Washington State.

It was a small, informal thing where about 6 to 8 of us would meet at Denny's for lunch every Monday morning.

We all had home improvement or home service type businesses. There was a window washer, a guy who cleaned gutters, a landscaper, a painter, and a couple of others.

Our goal was just to have all of the others in the group carry our cards and flyers and give them out to their customers whenever they thought they had the need for our services. And it worked really well.

It was also like a little mastermind group where we'd all talk about different problems and situations we were facing and getting ideas from the rest of the group on how to solve them.

We talked a lot about marketing ideas and figured out what worked and what didn't work for each other and we even did some combined advertising with all of our services on one flyer.

The concept is great if it works. Often it doesnt. I guess it all depends on the people involved.

Jim