428: Why You Should Join a Chamber of Commerce
Brought to you by
Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Have you thought about joining a chamber of commerce or other local business support group? We had been throwing the idea around for a while and very recently decided to do it! Today, we break down what a chamber of commerce is, some of their benefits, and how we plan on getting the most of out it!
Main topics:
Why we joined
What are the benefits
How we are making the most of it
Main Takeaway: If you're looking for ways of getting connected in your business community and raising your profile in your area, consider joining!
Links:
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
chamber, pet sitter, events, community, business owners, business, connected, clients, join, networking, business cards, confessional, networking events, ways, area, place, professionals, company, associates, local
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:02
Hello, welcome to pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Colin. And today we are going to be talking about joining a chamber of commerce because that is what we did recently. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our lovely Patreon members for supporting today's show, Patreon members have found value in some of the over 400 episodes that we've done. And they would like to give a little bit of their hard earned money back, if you would like to help keep the podcast going, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support. Whether it's your first episode, or your 428, we appreciate you being here. As I just mentioned, we joined our chamber of commerce recently, and we wanted to talk a little bit about why we did that. The some of the benefits and what we are wanting to get out of it. On this episode, our company has two service areas that are two hours apart, those areas operate very differently. In one, we are relatively new and unknown in the market. And the other one we have been established for over five years now. And a lot of people know about our business. So we were brainstorming ways to continue to get connected in the community. Because obviously there are pockets of people that don't know about us. But how do we reach those people, we were
Collin 01:19
really looking for a couple of different things from our next move, we had been doing a lot of social media campaigns, direct mail campaigns, partnering with local businesses. And then we're trying to find another way to get as Megan said, connected with the community have a little bit more of a presence in the community as a service based industry, it's incredibly hard to have a place where people can can find you to know about you. And so we constantly have to do things to stay top of mind. And that's where we started to talk about the Chamber of Commerce as a way to get plugged in.
Meghan 01:51
Yeah, because we aren't a brick and mortar store. People can't drive by and see our signage and go, Oh, what's that place? Let me stop in. That's not how this works. And there are times when I feel like I have exhausted all of Facebook's reach. Because this it seems like the same people see our content, the same people like our content. And while I can post in a lot of different Facebook groups, it does seem that I have kind of reached the bottom of the well there. So we are really wanting to expand what we do in our community. And we are
Collin 02:23
constantly trying new things and new tactics on social media, on Facebook, on Instagram. But we are trying to figure out ways to access new areas of where people are that maybe aren't on Facebook, how do we get connected in new and different ways. So it's both targeting a different kind of audience. And being seen as a legitimate business in our community. And going to these events, and being part of the chamber is definitely a part of that.
Meghan 02:50
And there's a lot of different ways that you can try to connect with new people, you can ask your current clients for referrals, you can ask your staff members for referrals of new clients coming in, you can host community events, you can partner with people, but we were really wanting to connect with other business owners and as well and say, Hey, we Yeah, like you mentioned, we are legitimate.
Collin 03:11
So we've said this word Chamber of Commerce before and many of you are probably familiar with this. But if you're not, it's a local association that promotes and protects the interests of the business community in a particular geographic area. And that's what's also very important about the Chamber of Commerce is that they aren't a national organization. They are focused solely on a city, a geographic location, and they pull together resources to highlight and promote and in other words, the key there is to protect the business community. So they do work closely with city planners and developers and city hall and they work with people who want to help see the businesses succeed. And they support them through educational opportunities and promotions, and all sorts of networking opportunities as well.
Meghan 04:01
If you are thinking about joining one, you can go into their director or their person in charge of the chamber and you can sit down and have a meeting with them. And I'm sure they'll have pamphlets on exactly what they provide and some of the benefits. When we have that meeting. We actually did it in both service areas and some of the benefits that they provided were discounts on health insurance for employees. They told us that a lot of employers take advantage of that because it's not that much more for an employer to provide that and they get a discount on that versus buying it outright. They also told us about local partnerships that they have in our established service area. They partner with a military base that's about 20 minutes away, and they provide welcome packets to the new residents. They also partner with local realtors and putting together welcome packets for their clients as well as you would expect with the chamber. You they have a lot of networking events, whether it's a morning breakfast or an after hours after work
Collin 04:58
and their networking events are not just at The same place every week or every month. Instead, they move around the city to highlight local restaurants, local event centers, local venues, all sorts of places so that you can see kind of the options out there, you can see more of your community and highlight various aspects and businesses and cool things that are going on in your community.
Meghan 05:17
In our second service area, the number of networking groups is virtually infinite, you can attend one every single day of the week, twice on Sundays. So why the chamber why get connected with them?
Collin 05:29
Well, there are a couple of different aspects here is that obviously, the first one of networking with other business owners and promoting our business is very key to us. Because also, if one of our services is dedicated to busy professionals, guess where a lot of busy professionals go, chamber networking groups, they're also going to these places, so not only are they our target audience, our target client, but also it's elevating and raising our profile as a legitimate business to other people in the area so that they know what's possible. Additionally, there is the aspect of broader and larger impact that the Chamber has, we were looking to be integrated into a community, not just network and share referrals back and forth, that certainly is a possibility. But when we're looking for impact and elevating your profile, joining a community wide, something like like a chamber is going to do that, moreover, and against another networking group, all you do is just cheer business cards back and forth.
Meghan 06:29
Well, and some of the networking groups may have 20 3050 people in a group or maybe even 100, but the chamber has at least ours well over 1000 other businesses. And so we thought wow, this and we've kind of hit the jackpot here of these are our target people, busy professionals. So we need to be where they are, we need to go to the meetings in the groups that they are part of.
Collin 06:52
Again, I don't want to discount the aspect of raising your profile as a business. Because I bet if you go to your chamber of commerce right now, it'd be interesting to see how many other businesses like yours there are on the chamber. I know and we have done this. And when we did, we're the only one, we're the only one that is a member of the chamber, it means something right, it means something to be connected to a professional organization, especially a local one. And at the Chamber level, you'll help it you're helping support. This was also important to us, helping support the promotion of other businesses, helping to elevate local businesses as a whole. And to really feel like you're part of connected to a community where you really are helping and fighting for one another in your area.
Meghan 07:36
These are just some of the benefits that we have experienced since joining but I'm sure there are a ton others that networks and chambers across the country offer that we may not have access to here. But ultimately we wanted to join because again, these were our people, we wanted to say we are a legitimate business to just like the bankers and the lawyers, dog sitters and dog walkers and pet sitters. We are the real deal. We carry the insurance, the bonding, we are background checked pet first aid and CPR certified. We are a member of these organizations. We aren't just some fly by night company. We are here for the long term, and we are showing that by being members of the chamber. We'd like to tell you about our friends at pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. That's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at Pat's at llc.com You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout for $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at Pet set llc.com.
Collin 08:53
We do service to different localities and communities as Megan talked about that are over two hours apart. So why did we decide to choose one area over another to join? Right now? Well, one just financially wanted to try and invest in one area to see how it goes before we turn into the other ones since we're doing some other tactics there. But also, when we looked at the value per dollar we were getting for membership in the larger service area that really made a lot more sense than the slightly smaller service area who didn't whose cost to join really wasn't that much smaller, or that much more reduced when compared to the other one. Additionally, we are trying to just do a very big push in the new community because we aren't as well integrated. We aren't as well known there yet, and trying to find ways to do that and get a name for ourselves and become to grow our brand recognition there. We really thought that this was a great way to do that.
Meghan 09:52
As with most things in business, there is a cost to this so you do have to factor that into your budget and expenses every month. Some chambers They offer monthly, but a lot of them will do a yearly membership. And it could be upwards of five $600. So it's not cheap. And it probably cost more than your petsitter insurance. But you need to gauge if it's really something that you think is going to elevate your business above everybody else, and it's going to get you connected with people that you don't or you aren't connected with right now, then it could be a great thing for
Collin 10:23
you. Well, and so honestly, one of the first things where we started to think about this is again, financially, we were presented with an opportunity to have naming rights to a local apartment buildings, dog park. And that was something like, what five $600? To do, because they were just doing all this stuff. And we were like, well, my goodness, like at that price. That's amazing. Why don't we do that. But the more we thought about it, we thought about for that price, it's a really limited reach, because not everybody at the apartment complex is going to have dogs of those people who have dogs, not all of them are going to use the dog park. So what actually are we going to get out of this? When we looked at the Chamber for something very similar in price, we saw that we could have a much broader impact and be connected to an actual community locally, that could be very beneficial for us. So weighing those cost benefits of going, how much did I spend on XYZ, one time, I mean, truthfully, we even sponsored an event one time for several $100. At a pet friendly event, we probably talked to two to three people. Now again, we were making our name for ourselves and a big part of the community. But we looked at it at price per conversation, let's just do that. The opportunities are much broader and much wider would getting access to a kind of networking community like a chamber of commerce, that it would be in a couple of different other areas. So really just balancing out, where are you trying to spend money to get connected with people, right, just balancing that out, to try and walk through that decision making process.
Meghan 11:56
If you decide that you want to join your chamber, it is really all about what you make of it. If you go to a lot of things and you participate, then you're going to get a lot back and a lot out of it. Hopefully a lot of clients. And one of those ways is downloading blink, it is a digital business card.
Collin 12:15
We are out and about all the time we are in and out of cars, we never know what's going to be what we're going to have in our pockets other than poop bags and keys most of the times. So we didn't want to run the risk of showing up to a networking opportunity and not have business cards on ourselves. And additionally, we didn't want to have to have two sets of business cards, one that are just general business promotions and one with our names specifically in contact information on them for us. So we went digital and there's a couple of different options out there, you can use blank, there's another one called Hello. And basically you create a free account. So we're only using the free versions right now, there are limitations on these, you can't exactly set all of your brand colors, it limits the kind of information you can have on there. But for our general purposes, we're not looking for a whole lot here. So you go in you enter your information, you set a profile picture background picture, your name, title, company contact information, and it has a QR code. And so this was essential for us too, because we didn't know are we going to be talking to 20 People 200 People who knows, but we don't want to risk we're running out of polite ways for people to contact us. When we're at networking events, or when we are going to meetings. This allows us to always have a way for people to contact us. So when someone comes up and they say, Oh, can I have a business card, we swipe over on our phone up card pops up with a QR code, they take a picture of that with your camera and up pops our contact information and they can save it right to their phone from there. It really helps streamline that process. And again, just shows that yes, this is what we're doing. Because even we are we like being paperless. And it helps us stay more organized.
Meghan 13:53
Well and also because our current business cards or for our clients or potential clients are actually magnets. And so we would have had to order brand new and order and design brand new business cards and we didn't want to do that because we don't always agree on the design of things. And also we didn't have the time to do that before our first networking event. So this was just a simple free way to get it out there and we're going to continue doing it because it's digital and paperless. We are also getting the most out of it by going to every network event that we possibly can. So in our existing service in our long term service area. They have once a month events which is fine, but in the other busier service area. They have events just about once a week and so we are making time for that we are going to that we are wearing our our company swag we bought polos specifically with our company name on the front and then on the sides on the sleeves it says owner and then our name on the other sleeve. We did this because while I really enjoy our company shirts that say it big headers on the front pet sitter, and then our logo with our company name on the back. I love those. Not everybody thought that they were very professional. Colin,
Collin 15:09
who else could be about? Well, we'll need to talk to that in subordinate person. But yeah, we, we wanted to have a slightly more professional approach and look when we go to these meetings, and a simple polo can do that. So yes, when we go to these networking events, wearing that polo, having that presence, and presenting ourselves as professionals as true business owners is another aspect of what we are trying to do, changing people's perception of what this industry actually is.
Meghan 15:36
Our chamber also has monthly meetings to get a finger on the pulse of our local economy, this past networking meeting, they had the county commissioner come in and basically give a state, a report of the county, how it was doing, where we needed to do better, where some things were going great. And it gave the business owners in the room and idea of okay, this is how we're going to move forward. This is things we need to be collectively working on to push the county to be better.
Collin 16:06
Because we can be as in tuned with the nightly news as we want to be listened to all of the economic forecasting podcasts in the world out there. But none of those, there's very few of them are local to you about your city, but your county, so having a place where they talk about what was sales tax, what were sales tax receipts, like last month, how are they been doing quarter over quarter? What are they seeing what are they forecasting for new homes built? What are they seeing as how there's new business startups or closures, the the, the county commissioners, and city officials have all that data, the Chamber of Commerce is plugged directly into those city resources, and so they can share them out. So it gives you a much better and honestly much less scary perspective. And a lot of set cases about how things are going and allows you to plan allows you to understand how are the demographics of my community changing? Where are people moving to? What are they looking for? What's driving the economy? Where are my people going to be working? And how do I get access to them.
Meghan 17:10
While right now we are going to every single one of these meetings, there is going to come a time where we are going to pull back because there are 1000 businesses in our chamber. But at some point, I do feel like it's going to be kind of The Facebook Effect of we will have dried up the well there for a time. So it's kind of this push and pull effect of we're pushing right now we've got our foot to the gas of going to every meeting doing everything, making the most of our chamber experience right now. And then once we feel like we're seeing the same people kind of having the same conversations or saying oh, you know, meeting Gary, but Gary knows us from Tom and having those kinds of conversations creep up a little bit more than we're going to pull back a little bit and do these pushes and pulls every few months to to make sure that we are meeting new people every single time
Collin 18:03
well, and finding new and different ways to connect. So the networking events from the chamber are great ways to go consistently see other people, but also people attending there may have other ways to connect or doing different events or different organizations that they are plugged into. So really just coming into this in an open perspective of going, what are my opportunities? And that's a big thing for me, what are my opportunities? Why am I here? Why are we here, and asking that in an open way to so that when things get, you know, come to us or when we find out about new opportunities, we can determine whether they're going to be a good fit for us or not. But it
Meghan 18:36
also frees us up a little bit as business owners as well of going, Okay, I don't have to go to every single thing all 12 months of the year, like when we have busy seasons during the holidays, that is when I can pull back a little bit because maybe even the content at the networking meetings is not going to be that great, maybe they're going to fold it in because they know Oh, it's the holidays, not many people are going to be here. So we're just going to have some Q and A's or whatever. And I'm not saying Q and A's aren't great they are. But I'm just saying maybe the content is going to be a little less heavy, because they know participation isn't going to be as great. So those are our busy times. And we can then pull back a little bit as well. And then push hard during the slower seasons of january, february whenever those are for you.
Collin 19:19
And I will say that that was yet another reason why we decided that a networking event like the chamber was very important to us. Because our schedules change at the drop of a hat. We can't always go to these things. Having a something that didn't have attendance requirements was very important to us. I know there are a lot of different networking events that are like that and and groups that are met you must attend X percentage or they you know, they excommunicate you or whatever they do. I don't know what the process is. But we change a lot. We're not always available first thing in the morning. So sometimes we you know, it's so having that flexibility was important to us so that we could comfortably join and use and work at at our own pace.
Meghan 20:00
you're also using it as a way to promote ourselves more. So within Facebook, we're saying, Hey, we've done this thing, we've joined the chamber here, hey, potential clients and clients that follow us here is how we are continuing to elevate our business by joining other like minded business owners in the community. We are also putting it out on our website and putting it in our email newsletter of we've done this awesome thing, celebrate with us.
Collin 20:26
And the chamber itself makes sharing news and interesting posts very easy. So within the chamber software through their website, they have actually an internal posting boards. So this is where you can post information that only other businesses that are part of the chamber can see. So this is a great place to post jobs, advertisements, or community event events or get connected with businesses directly through their directory. Additionally, they have an announcement board where you go in through their website, you enter the information, attached photos, and then this gets auto posted not just to their internal board, but also they share out that automatically on their Facebook page. So it's yet another way to have us be posting on our feed and into individual groups, and now have the chamber posting our same stuff on their end to their connections, and they've got a lot of followers. So finding these little things that you can do, they all start to add up in the amp
Meghan 21:24
well, and your chamber may even host a large events for nonprofits or charities that you can then sponsor. I know there's one in our local community that they call it the Piccadilly, and they they have a silent auction, where chamber businesses can give away free items for the silent auction to help this charity. So you may in turn, get to double dip have not only been able to attend this event, and get connected with other business owners, but also putting something up for the silent auction that's going to raise your profile even more, maybe it's dog walks, maybe it's you make collars or whatever, but you can get the most out of it. One thing that we have not done yet that we want to do is a ribbon cutting. So if you join the chamber, they should have this option, they might they'll provide the ribbon to cut the big giant scissors that confetti cannon maybe. And it's a little hard for service based businesses because we don't have a brick and mortar. So think about where you would want to do this. What are some good options, maybe it's a part on a beautiful day,
Collin 22:20
or outside the chamber building themselves or maybe just some other location that you have a connection to, but you can work with the chamber to figure out what's going to work best to highlight and showcase your business in the best light possible. As we look towards being more involved with the chamber. It's not just about attending events or promoting ourselves more, but it's also about being involved in promoting other businesses and protecting local businesses as well. So as positions as opportunities come up where we can give input, we can give advice we can give a voice for other service based businesses and other other pet care businesses in our area. We're looking forward to the to the ability to do that in the future as people as we get better connected. If you have
Meghan 23:03
joined the chamber or are thinking about it, you can email us and let us know your thoughts at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. You can also look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you for listening to this today and thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode. We will talk with you next time. Bye
