Bonjour mrburnzie, very fine post.
As EE since 1960s, amnd consultant in 1970s..1990s, I can make a few points.
IEEE has many facets, including standards groups, quarterly proceedings of various groups and the monthly magazine IEEE Spectrum.
(full disclosur: I have authored articles for IEEE Spectrum in Feb 2019 and just now Sept 2021)
The cost for just the magazine or just member are reasonable, the groups are super specialized and at highest level, with may new developments years ahead of commercial deployment.
Examples: Microwaves, Power Electronics, Industrial electronics, Network theory, etc.
Finally IEEE has some yearly conferences that can be interesting for personal connections.
You could of course place an adv in the IEEE website or Spectrum.
Nowadays PCB and embedded SW are commodity work, available from offshore at very low cost, I do not think the 450 000 IEEE members will provide you a lot of leads.
At least the IEEE Spectrum will expand your horizons and is a super EE magazine! The online free link is here:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/magazine/2021/september/BON CHANCE with your business and IEEE connections,
Jon