Link-Up Orange County

I just got back from my first ever ‘Link-Up’ in Orange County, California.  I came up with the idea after being on Linked In for some time and having great success in making online as well as offline contacts.  I originally posted messages on the ‘groups’ section of  two different Linked In Groups I am a member of.  The summary of the message explained about the new group and it’s not a typical ‘networking group.’  In fact, this group is anything but one of those groups.  Not to say that networking groups are all bad, but when I hear that word, it brings to mind people wearing nametags passing out business cards and asking ’so… what do you do?’ before even getting to know the person.  So I decided to come up with something more personal and down to earth in a format that promotes small groups so that we all can get plenty of talking time.

The 5 people who came out saw my message from various sources- Linked In group post, Twitter Tweet, and one referral from a friend. Considering the group’s focus on entrepreneurial thinking, innovation, technology, internet, and sales & marketing; I think we were off to the right track since Rob (one of the members) actually found me from a twitter tweet!  Our discussion started at 8:00pm promptly and we all spent the first 20 minutes getting to know each other and learning that we all came from diverse backgrounds.  For example, Mike and Peter are accountants/consultants that focus on a very specific niche of small business owners, Rob is a software developer who’s worked for IBM and is now actively involved in a tech startup that is involved in creating a sales & marketing platform, and Behrouz is a programmer developer with an interest in tapping a specific internet market and wants to provide solutions that help people monetize various sources of content on the web.  I myself have an extremely diverse path ranging from technology sales to working for a Wall Street firm to starting my own business to working at a startup and innovating new e-commerce sites.  I think the diversity is what made our group unique but the technology discussion is what kept us interested.

We are planning on setting up regular weekly meetings on Monday nights from 8:00pm-9:30pm in Laguna Hills, California in Orange County- just in between Los Angeles and San Diego.  The next meeting will be on Monday, June 8′th at 8:00pm in Laguna Hills.  Please feel free to contact me about it or join our Linked In Link-Up group here. Our group focus will be to discuss entrepreneurship, technology, sales & marketing strategy, and help each other establish new businesses, grow existing businesses, and share how technology & the internet is helping us to solve problems, provide solutions, and help run our businesses with more automation and simplicity.