The benefits of networking for self-employment

Networking comes with plenty of benefits, especially if you’re self-employed. One of the biggest challenges of being self-employed is getting your name out there and making it stick.

Networking is a perfect place to do that. We’re going to take a look at some of the other benefits of networking for self-employed professionals and freelancers.

Build your confidence

It’s very difficult to practise building your confidence if you’ve got no one to interact and share with. Networking enables you to do that. The more you do, the more you’ll learn what works and doesn’t work for you.

You’ll gain confidence in communication skills, whilst also getting a better insight into your own business and how you want to share it with others.

Develop professional relationships

You’re regularly meeting with fellow professionals where you can collaborate, learn from and give back to.

By communicating with potential customers or partners on a regular basis, you can more easily raise your personal and professional profiles and remain in people’s minds for longer, which is exactly what you need to build your business.

Hold yourself accountable

If you’re working on your own, it can be easy to lose momentum. Sometimes, you just need an outsider to encourage you and hold you accountable.

This doesn’t have to be in a formal setting. Knowing you have a weekly networking meeting, for example, will ensure that you’ve got something prepared every week.

Learn from each other

There’s so much you can learn from working with and meeting with fellow professionals regularly. Whether it’s fellow experts in your field, people who have been in the field longer than you have, or people in a completely different field altogether, networking gives you a great opportunity to work with and learn from others. You can develop new skills, and find new and better ways to develop the skills you already have.

And better yet, people can learn from you as well. Maybe you have previous experience in a different field, or you’ve perfected some ways in which to stay organised that you can share with the group.

Networking regularly helps you to develop mutually beneficial, reciprocated professional relationships that build not only your business, but other businesses too.

Gain more insight into your business

You might find that talking about your business brings new things to light. For example,  you might find that a different audience has an interest in your product or service to your initial target market. That insight could have been gained by finding out who in the networking group wanted to learn more about the product or even wanted to buy it.

Insights like this can’t happen if you’re not engaging and communicating with people regularly. It’s a great way to find out how to improve lots of different aspects of your business, what works and what doesn’t, and how effective your current methods are.

These are just a few of the reasons why, as someone who is self-employed, it’s so useful to start networking. If you’re looking for a networking group to join, get in touch with us at In Business. We’d love to meet you!