An East Lancashire networking group is celebrating after generating £3million in business over three years of breakfast-time meetings.

Meeting weekly at Whalley Village Hall, BNI Beacon is part of Business Network International (BNI), the world’s leading business referral organization with over 280,000 members in more than 70 countries worldwide.

And recently, the group celebrated its third birthday as well as passing a milestone of generating £3million in business between its members since the group's launch.

BNI Beacon chapter president Richard Webster said: “Recent times have obviously been a huge upheaval for many in business, but we are very proud not only to still be here but also to be celebrating passing this multi-million pound milestone in terms of business generated by the group."

Established over 30 years ago, BNI provides weekly networking meetings for groups of businesses, known as chapters.

These chapters then follow a structured meeting agenda that enables them to use their combined network of contacts to find business opportunities and referrals for one another.

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, BNI globally closed all meetings for one week to provide member training for online meetings, then reopened purely online the following week.

Throughout lockdown all meetings worldwide were conducted online, still following the same structured agenda.

From October 2021, BNI meetings are now run on one of three models: in-person, online, or hybrid, where members meet in person for the first meeting of the month and the remaining meetings of the month are online.

BNI Beacon opted for the in-person meeting model, and are set to continue gathering at Whalley Village Hall every Thursday at 6.45am.

Mr Webster continued: "We’re very excited to be meeting again face-to-face in Whalley and are very keen to get some new members from the local business community.

"Our doors are always open to visitors who might be interested to find out more about what we do and see if it might be right for them.”

For more information about BNI in Lancashire, go to www.bni.co.uk.

Lancashire Telegraph: