No. Good question. The quality varies from town to town, but in my experience the larger the city the more valuable it is. Here's the issue: newbies to business don't know where to find good customers, and so they join networking organizations like this because they believe it will help them.

Fact is, it probably won't. Again in my experience over the past 20 years, organizations and events like this tend to be filled with newbie businesspeople trying to find customers. And if you're all trying to find customers, it's not going to be effective. Since most business owners don't have a good 30-second commercial or consistent qualifying process, these meetups are filled with bad attempts at conversation and pushing of self-centered agendas.

In the town I've been in for the past 5 years, my early experience of this sort jaded me so much I got the impression no competent businesspeople existed here and I developed my operation internationally instead. This, as I have found out over the past year helping local friends develop a television network, is untrue; however, my experience with the local Chamber, BNI, after hours meetups etc. demonstrated the competent business owners are NOT at these events. They're in their offices, getting good customers.

What you're likely to find is a bunch of insurance and mutual fund salespeople looking for people to push product at...and that gets old really fast.

If you want to network for business, I recommend identifying good prospects and pursuing them individually...doing information interviews to discover their true pain points...and qualifying with a consistent method. The idea that you're going to casually meet someone at an event, have a good conversation, and that will lead to an order is fantasy. Are there exceptions? I'm sure people will pipe in with them...but they are flukes and there are much more straightforward methods to get clients.

There is no legal or business requirement for you to be a member of the Chamber or any other networking organization, and I personally believe it's a waste of valuable time.