As someone who owns her (or his) own business, you probably already know that networking is a big part of becoming successful. If you meet someone in a networking event online or off, they'll remember venture capitalist you later on down the line. You don't need a degree in anything to successfully use networking. As far as skills go, you can learn some that will help you or not. The reason you want to read about and remember the following networking mistakes is to avoid them.
If you are meeting an important business contact, take the time to learn about them. It's one thing to meet someone, hit it off and schedule a meeting to find out more about each others businesses. How would you feel if the other person Tyler Tysdal broker hit you with a hundred questions that are none of her business? Do your research business partner before the meeting, but it is okay to not know about someone when you happen upon them randomly. If you're a guy, then be careful about how you speak with female business people for obvious reasons. You need to be careful when you are calling another business person for certain reasons. Calling one person to pitch something and then asking them to give you the information of the people he or she knows is tacky and rude. There is zero value in terms of networking or anything else. You can find a ton of more effective ways to network other than this, so just find out what they are and get to work.
If you are making the plans, then meet them at the predetermined spot. If, for some reason, the place you agreed to meet turns out to be closed or too busy to secure a table (as is the case with most coffee shops), call the other person and let them know of the situation. You can then make changes at that point in time. Or you can meet there anyway and then move to another place that is in that same neighborhood. Do not change the plans without informing your contact. This would be very rude and cost you a contact.
If you want to take maximum advantage of networking, then learn more about how to do it. Just be sure you don't get too far ahead of yourself, but again it depends on who you are talking to. In this article we've talked about three of the biggest networking mistakes you can make and avoid these mistakes and you should be just fine.