A NEW online business networking group in the Highlands and Islands is being launched by BNI Scotland North.
Company owners and business leaders from the Black Isle, Ross and Cromarty, Caithness and Sutherland across to the isles of Skye, Lewis, Harris and up to the Orkney and Shetland Islands are being invited to join BNI. It will be the 15th BNI group in the North of Scotland.
An opportunity to find out more about BNI, how it works, and how to win more business will take place on Wednesday, November 4th, from 8 am to 9.30am. The online event is free of charge. The new group has been named Tuath, a Gaelic word for north.
BNI Scotland North has 335 members. The organisation generated £20m worth of business last year through almost 17,000 referrals. All BNI meetings were held face-to-face prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. While BNI hopes to return to face-to-face meetings in the future, the new group – due to its broad geographic reach – would remain online.
Members participate in weekly online meetings to discuss business operations and share referrals to support each other’s businesses.
BNI Tuath will focus on the Highlands and Islands, while there is also the opportunity to engage with other BNI networking groups in Inverness, Elgin, Peterhead, Inverurie, Aberdeen, Stonehaven, Montrose, Perth, Dundee and Dunfermline.
Angela Kinghorn, Aberdeen-based executive director of BNI Scotland North, said: “We are delighted to be launching a new group in the Highland and Islands outwith the Inverness area as we already have a group there. This is an opportunity for ambitious business-minded people across a large area to build relationships and spread the word about their products and services in a proactive way.”
Douglas Greig, managing director of Inverness-based Highland Print & Design, will lead the new group. He said: “We look forward to bringing a focussed online networking group to business people who
may be more than 100 miles apart from each other. The BNI format is working extremely well online and we look forward to hosting interested parties that want to find out more about BNI and what it can do for them.”
BNI members pay a joining fee and an annual membership fee to be part of a group. Each group is formed on a competitor-free basis; only one business from a specific market sector is included in each group.
BNI (Business Network International) is one of the largest face-to-face online business networking referral organisations in the world, with more than 270,000 members in over 9,500 groups operating across 72 countries. In 2019, members generated over £13 billion through 12.2 million referrals.
