Is it wise to mix business and pleasure? Is it old school thinking that says you shouldn’t? If you ask Guy Goodall, founder of Axus Social Business Networking Solutions, I think he’d say yes to both. These days a small business has to be innovative with marketing in order to thrive. Social business networking is the way to go.

I met Guy about four years ago in Chicago. He was visiting from Sweden and doing some web design with my friend Ben Lenz. A few years later he found me on Twitter and told me about Axus.net, a social and business networking website. I joined right away and since then I’ve been pretty inspired by this artist-friendly networking website.

As an artist I’ve taken the traditional route of showing my paintings in galleries. Most of my marketing has been word of mouth and through exhibiting in artwalks. For a long time this worked very well. Then came the Internet and life would never be the same again. I got my own website and also a page on etsy.com. Up until about March 2008 my painting sales were fantastic. And then (of course we all know what happened to the economy) painting sales really dwindled down.

The curious thing about the economy crashing is that simultaneously I was in the midst of a career shift. I began writing novels in 2004 and although I still consider myself a painter, I am much more of a writer these days. I’ve completed two novels, Mañana and Anna’s Edge, and I’m working on my third right now. I’ve also been writing articles for the Internet and Axus has been really helpful in finding people who need my skills.

The idea of social business networking is to create a network of people with whom you exchange contacts. This is done online and also through breakfast meetings. It is less about actually getting a gig that day and more about building a network of people who help each other. Let’s say you need a carpenter and someone has a nephew who does carpentry. You’ll get his contact info and then get in touch and decide if you want to hire him. Right now Guy is organizing breakfast meetings in the US, Sweden and the UK (and he’s happy to help get them up and running in other countries too). The online chatting, emailing and friending is of course a big part of networking, but as Guy says, “It’s the face to face meetings with people that really make a difference.”

In these casual breakfast meetings each person speaks for sixty seconds about their business and requests specifically with whom they would like to come in contact with. After that, one chosen member speaks in depth about their business for ten minutes. At the end of the meeting referrals are given and taken based on each members sixty seconds. The meeting is rounded off with mingling, exchanging contact info and booking one-to-one meetings. That’s how the networking happens. One of the advantages of Axus Social Business Networking Solutions is that you have all the online networking you can dream of – your own email, instant messaging with other members, specialized groups, blogs, website hosting, instant sign-in to Twitter, Facebook, etc. - and also you have the face to face networking. It’s all very personalized and Guy Goodall is there to help with any technical questions you may have (a great advantage for lo-techies like myself). Next time he comes to a breakfast meeting near you I hope you have the chance to meet him. If you’re lucky he might even invite you to Sweden for his famous dark curry chicken and a Guinness!

Julianne Ingles
Axus social business networking solutions member since Oct 2009