When Shalom Klein moved back to Chicago from New York to help grow a family business, he quickly began looking for networking opportunities in the Jewish community.

He didn’t find any.

"Everybody told me you should network," Skokie native Klein said in a recent phone conversation. "So I started hanging out at a lot of bars downtown. I found good groups, bad groups, saw what works, what doesn’t work. But I’m a very business-oriented person, and when there is blasting music in the background, it’s hard to meet people for business."

Eventually, he discovered a small Jewish networking group and went to a meeting. "There were about 15 people there," he recalls. "I thought, this is pretty unproductive. People were talking for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. I was taught to do an elevator pitch – 10 to 15 seconds. I opened up my mouth and gave suggestions."

Realizing that there was an unmet need for a business networking organization in the Chicago-area Jewish community, Klein set about creating one. The result was Jewish B2B Networking (www.jewishb2bnetworking.com). Klein describes its mission as "uniting hundreds of Jewish businesses and job seekers from the far north to the southern suburbs." The organization is about much more than finding jobs, he says, although it has helped some participants in that way as well.

Klein now runs monthly "power" networking sessions, professional seminars and an online business-to-business exchange, and has plans for many more programs.

The next networking meeting takes place at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 15 at the Doubletree Hotel & Conference Center, 9599 Skokie Blvd., Skokie.

Before he created the organization, Klein says, "I spent a month just talking to people." At the end of it, "I realized I had already met with about a thousand business owners, many of them Jewish. I figured, we can grow this group and become a big resource for people who want to do business with the Jewish community." Jewish B2B is not a membership organization, Klein explains, and despite its name is open to anyone, not just Jews.

"There is really nothing like it in the Chicago area," he says. "I was always taught that the highest form of charity is helping people sustain themselves. There were so many (organizations) doing outreach, but nothing helping people meet each other" for business purposes.”

Klein’s driving philosophy, he says, is "if you connect with people, people will connect with you." He practices what he preaches. "I ask everyone, who are you looking to meet? Chances are I know somebody like that," he says, noting that he’ll sometimes be in Starbucks six times a day, meeting with different people.

And he does it all without pay. His real job is with Moshe Klein & Associates, an accounting and bookkeeping firm for small businesses. The contacts he makes through his networking group help in that area as well.

"People have put me in touch with others who are good contacts to have," he says. He’s hoping Jewish B2B will work that way for others too, and in fact, he says it already has.

"There are more than 350,000 Jews in the Chicago metro area, and everybody wants to network, whether it’s job seekers, employees, business owners. Everybody wants to meet new people," he says.

At the first B2B meeting, several months ago, "I was expecting 20 people to walk in the door. We had 65," he says. The next one drew more than 85, and Klein says he expects the Sept. 15 event to bring in more than 200 people.

Meetings include "speed networking" – similar to speed dating but for business purposes – in which all participants have the opportunity to meet 15 other people, plus educational speakers and "open networking – people can just walk around and schmooze," Klein says.

Aside from the meetings and other events, the group’s Web site has a directory, a job listing and blogs open to anyone who registers on the site.

While some people are seeking jobs, and are encouraged to use the site for that purpose, "that’s just one component," Klein says. "Everybody is a networking resource; even people who don’t have jobs can be a resource for other people."

The networking concept has been so successful that Klein is hoping to eventually open similar organizations in other Midwestern cities. For now, he continues to grow the Chicago group and is actively seeking board members with specific areas of expertise. (E-mail him at jewishb2bnetworking@gmail.com for more information.)

Klein says his e-mail list has grown to 2,500 people and "I get calls from people every day," he says. "I’m not making money off of this, but I see the need and the interest and I’m passionate about connecting people. Every business is struggling, and putting people in touch with other people is the best way to help."