NFI Networking

Here are the rules, explained in more depth below:

1) If you are a member of any of the NFIed groups, you are not welcome at this event and we'll ask you to leave.

2) You must bring someone from a different, non-NFI industry to the event.

3) You must bring business cards to the event which prove what you do for a living.

4) You must have a functioning website. (If you say you're in business and you haven't even bothered to set up a website, you're not really in business.)

5) You must be selflessly helpful and recommend the services of people you know.

6) To speak to somebody new, you must introduce someone else to them first.

7) After the event you must state who you tried to selflessly help and who tried to help you on the NFI MeetUp Group,  NFI Networking Blog and the NFI Networking LinkedIn Group.

8) If someone helps you, try to help them in return. 

The rationale

This is a networking organisation for business people that want to selflessly help other business people, to buy services and recommend the services of other people. It's about being helpful, not the hard sell. It's about back-scratching, offering selfless advice and doing favours. It's about business karma.

It's not a place where you simply sell your services. It's about helping people.

It's also about meeting a diverse group of business people, so you are also requested to bring along a representative from another industry not on the NFI list.

Certain groups of people are NFI - Not Flipping Invited - not necessarily because they are unhelpful, but generally because there's a saturation of them at networking events.

After the event, you are asked to post a comment to the NFI Networking blog or LinkedIn group about the selfless advice, help and sales leads that you offered another person - to prove that you were helpful. 

Your help should also be validated by the person to whom you tried to help, whether or not the help proves fruitful or not. 

Those that are consistently unhelpful will end up NFI. And we're big people, so we will be able to stop you entering our events.