Where Everybody Knows Your Name (and Your Business)

There’s a new business-networking group called the Montco Trusted Merchants (MTM). The group is currently made up of 18 entrepreneurs and business professionals, who held their second meeting on Jan. 24.

MTM meets every other week, from 7:30 – 8:30 a.m. at the Village Italian Bistro, located 420 S. York Road in Hatboro.

There, members donate around $10 for their breakfast, talking over hot quiche and coffee, and asking about their children’s basketball tournaments or debating if Pandora in the car was better than satellite radio.

Such conversations were often preceded with sincere hugs and greetings, as if these people have known each other for years.

And, for many in the MTM, this is exactly the case.

“We do love each other’s company,” C.J. Fitzgerald, a mortgage consultant for Vision Mortgage Capital, said during the meeting. “We’ve been used to sitting here and receiving tips, let’s try to spin that around and get tips.”

Fitzgerald is the de facto leader of the informal business-networking group. The group is so new that, according to another member, in the weeks between the first and second meeting on Jan. 24, the MTM was still deciding on a name.

However, the majority of the MTM members have known each other for nearly 10 years. Fitzgerald explains that most of the current MTM members were also former members of LeTip of Willow Grove, which also held breakfast meetings at the Village Italian Bistro until December 2011.

LeTip of Willow Grove was a part of LeTip International. According to the website, LeTip International is the world’s largest, privately owned, professional business leads organization.

According to Fitzgerald, MTM is also a professional business leads organization, but with major differences.

Aside from the $10 “pay-your-own-breakfast” donation, there is no fee to join MTM. But, the biggest difference is in the way leads are given to one another.

“It’s about getting to know each others' business well,” Fitzgerald said. “It might open up doors and avenues to greater and better business.”

And like other business networking groups, technology useage was encouraged among the MTM members, citing LinkedIn as a valueable resource. While still new, the group even has its own MTM Wiki page.

However the emphasis behind MTM is to encourage more familiarity of both the business professional and their business itself, in that such familiarity will produce warm leads for members.

Once the pleasantries and breakfast is over, MTM gets back to business, and those present get to briefly talk about themselves and their business, as well as any successful referrals made in the interim between meetings.

Meetings typcially follow an agenda, set forth by one member at each meeting. The members are selected on a rotating basis.

The Jan. 24 agenda was set by Patricia Neslson, a benefits consultant for the Huntingdon Valley company Nelson Planning Solutions.

As the one creating the meeting’s agenda, Nelson was given the opportunity for a “Food for Thought” lecture over a finer point of her industry that may be both professionally and personally useful for the group.

“It’s very educational,” Nelson said. “It’s our opportunity to educate the group more about what we do. It engages them and allows them to ask questions.”

She discussed long-term care insurance, explaining the expenses of nursing homes and the lack of the availability of such facilities.

During her presentation, the various business professionals within the group used their expertise to supplement the information. Within MTM there are few competing professionals working in the same industry. Rather, the majority of the businesses present, complements each others’ business, and often provide business for one another.

“Don’t let a chiropractor be a plumber,” joked Dr. Scot McCormick of Willow Grove-based McCormick Family Chiropractic, during the meeting. He said he was able to hire the group’s plumber Barry Paripsky, owner of Aquality Plumbing and Heating Co., to fix plumbing in his home.

It’s this first-hand knowledge of each others’ businesses that will encourage these professionals to provide trusted referrals for their own clientele.

“I feel comfortable in referring this to my own book of contacts, because I sat at breakfast with these people,” Nate Hall, president of Alfonso Insurance Services, Inc. “They’re not ‘fly-by-nighters,’ I use them myself.”

At the Jan. 24 meeting, Hall received his third family portrait from Howard Karashoff Photography.

“I think MTM here gives us a chance with this tough economy, as business people are thinking differently,” Karashoff said. “It’s not just to show up with business, but to show the assets of your business.”

The next meeting of the Montco Trusted Merchants will take place on Feb. 7 at the Italian Village Bistro in Hatboro.

For more information, visit http://mtmnetworking.wikispaces.com/