When I first started my business, I didn't have a marketing plan to get new clients. (I didn't really have a marketing budget either.) But I had heard that networking was an important tool for building relationships and getting new prospects, so I started showing up at the networking breakfasts run by my local chamber of commerce. And the rest is history. Well, not quite. The actual process of muddling through my networking took time. I had some successes but also some early screw-ups before I started to feel comfortable with my networking. And it took a little while for me to develop a cohesive strategy that allowed me to leverage … [Read more...]