Maximizing Business Benefits: Joining Your Local Chamber of Commerce

[nancycookspc]

Does anyone belong to the chamber of commerce in their towns?
If so what does it do for your business?

 

[chefcharity]

I've checked into it and my personal opinion as that it was too expensive. Keep your ear out for events open to the public that are put on by the chamber. Ours has a young professional event every other month and it is a good place to make contacts. That is just me and my town though. Could be less expensive and more profitable in a different town.

 

[lesliec]

I agree that it is pretty expensive in our areas. There are lots of other referral groups in our area. DH and I were a part of one for a couple of years, and it really helped to get our Landscape business off the ground. It was a group of about 40 businesses and there was only one business from each area allowed into the group. Although we aren't offically in the group anymore, we still do business with a lot of people from the group and have relationships with them, so we do still get lots of referrals out of it. That group was about 75% men and I know that there were a few women with DS business that would come through every so often, but I didn't really see it being too profitable for them, but honestly I never talked to them much, so I can't say that for sure.
You may also want to look for some sort of women's group in your area. That might help your business.

 

[DebbieJ]

Very expensive and it brought me little business.If I had more time/availability to attend chamber events and network it would have been worth it, but it just didn't work out for me--because of childcare, mostly

 

[etteluap70PC]

We have had discussions on this before. If you plan to invest $ in networking (which the chamber basically is) then you need to plan to make use of all the opportunities that that group offers. I you do not plan to attend meetings and seminars then it is a waste of $. Mine here is reasonable 100-150 for the year but I do not have the time (due to kids still home during the day) to participate in the chamber activities.