As many of you know, I am always touting the importance of networking strategically.  Sometimes, pockets of ingenuity and really wonderful opportunity live much closer to home than we realize.

Check out this sequence of events:

I recently decided to list my Westchester house for sale.  It’s a great house, great area but I  may want to be living in a new area in the next couple of years so I decided to put it on the market. Turns out that you have to stage your house in order to sell it these days. My broker recommended  “house stager extraordinaire”  Penny Weiner. Penny and I bonded at once. Not only is she amazingly talented at restyling and organizing your home, but she is a fabulous connector. You’ll see that connecting people is in Penny’s DNA in a moment.

We started talking and she invited me to a local networking group. At first, I resisted because I generally don’t network locally. But, I really liked and trusted Penny so I went.

What a great group of people! At this event, I met a number of innovative business owners.

Rita Kim is a residential real estate expert. She went off to start her own agency, Global Living Realty www.globallivingrealty.com. Her unique value message: An Eco-Friendly Broker. She helps home sellers feature the green eco-friendly advantages of their homes, helps sellers enhance the green benefits of their homes, and helps buyers who are greenly-responsible find the right homes for them. Great concept, right? And her office is green as well. She creatively thought to put together  a green resource center in her office so you can visit and learn about eco-friendly home ideas whether you are a home buyer or not.  Here’s a photo of Rita and her agent Janie Blanks, who enjoys covering the NYC market.

Also at tonight’s networking meeting were Mike and Emilio Coppola who have started an innovative business, Mobile Dry Cleaners, www.mobile-dry-cleaners.com. They are green-minded and pick up and deliver dry cleaning throughout Westchester via a mobile truck. All orders are submitted and tracked virtually/online so you always know the status of your dry cleaning. And they also do handbag, shoe repair, and alterations. Service to the max, and green to boot (they use eco-friendly cleaning and hanging materials).

Meet Emilio and Mike:

Green-ovation is alive and well with our local entrepreneurs!

And Penny Weiner? We got to talking about social networking and Linked In. Penny is very partial to Linked In? Why (other than the obvious) Her son, Jeffrey, is Linked In’s CEO!  It’s a very small world and inspiring world, folks.