When you are an entrepreneur, a lot of financial responsibility falls on you. You need to look at every single expenditure very carefully and weigh the pros and cons of any spending. You may have heard about the benefits of joining your local chambers of commerce, but unsure if you want to spend the $300-$400 and sometimes can go up to $1,000 depending on where your chambers of commerce is located.

Listen to the Episode below:

In this episode, you'll hear about:

Get acquainted with Local Businesses
Form New Connections
Reach more people
Go on Trade Missions

Hey ladies, welcome to Fempreneur Secrets where business secrets are revealed. In today’s episode we are going to cover the four reasons why you should join chambers of commerce in your area.

When you are an entrepreneur, a lot of financial responsibility falls on you. You need to look at every single expenditure very carefully and weigh the pros and cons of any spending. You may have heard about the benefits of joining your local chambers of commerce, but unsure if you want to spend the $300-$400 and sometimes can go up to $1,000 depending on where your chambers of commerce is located.

So in today’s episode we are going to talk about the four key reasons why chambers of commerce is a must for you to join:

Get acquainted with Local Businesses
Form New Connections
Reach more people
Go on Trade Missions

Get Acquaninted With Local Businesses in Your Area

So let’s start off with the first reason. It helps you get acquainted with the local business in your area.

So a lot of the times when you are starting and growing your business, you probably do not know what kind of businesses exist in your area. So you might have heard of the food and the retail spaces that exist in your area, but you probably do not know who the owners are when you joined chambers of commerce. It helps you get acquainted with the owners of all these spaces so that one day when you need to, you would have already formed that bridge. Go on over to the fempreneursecrets.com/vault where I will be sharing a list of chambers of commerce that I have found online that will be beneficial for you. So if you know of any chambers of commerce within your area that has not been listed in my list, please let me know and drop it in the comments so that I will be able to update the list as we go along.

Form New Connections

The second reason why you should join the chambers of commerce is it helps you form new connections. Chambers of commerce responsibility is to gather as many business owners or businesses as possible within your local area. Their value-add could be creating events, launching causes, or even forming business matching services to help you further your growth in your business.

When you are in a chambers of commerce, you also gain access to the directory of members in other chambers of commerce. You will be able to see the various industries that exist in your area and who are involved in those industries. When you are just starting out, you probably don’t know what you don’t know or you don’t know who you should know.

Being in the chambers of commerce helps to form that affiliation with the other members. It helps you connect yourself with new people and people you probably don’t think you need now, but perhaps into the future for your business. Take advantage of joining the chambers of commerce in your area and also find out how you can get hold of the directory in the Chambers of Commerce.

Introduce Your Business to More People

The third why you should join the chambers of commerce in your area is to introduce your business to the members for future collaboration. On top of introducing your business to the members. I also must stress the importance of introducing your business to the people involved in the chambers of commerce, meaning the staff where you introduce your business. It’s probably the first time that they would have heard about your business unless you have been in the area for a very long time. So the fact that you are only joining the Chamber of Commerce now means that there is a high probability that a lot of people still don’t know about you. So when you introduce your business with the Chambers of Commerce, the members as well as the staff of the Chambers of commerce, your opportunities are endless.

Now instead of just speaking to one customer or one client that you meet on a daily basis, you are speaking to a lot more people. Usually chambers of commerce have events and during those events they will encourage you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about what your business does. Usually in under 15 to 20 seconds you can listen into the previous episodes where I shared about how to make the perfect self introduction for this. When you would carry out this self-introduction during the 15 to 20 seconds that you have a lot more people are going to be glued on you because this is the first time they have probably heard about your business.

The more people you get to reach and share about your business, the greater the opportunities you will get. Chambers of commerce is definitely a great community for you to be a part of, especially if you are starting and you want to grow your business with the next phrase.

Go on Trade Missions

The fourth reason why you should join, and it’s my personal favorite, is you get to go on trade missions. So if this is the first time that you are hearing about trade missions, let me share with you a little bit about what trade missions are. So trade missions are like tour groups in a way that has been organized by the chambers of Commerce to help you source out for new opportunities in other parts of the world. You get a lot of opportunities when you go for these trade missions.

1. You’re not going alone

During these trade missions, there will be a group of people who are going together with you means you are not going alone.

2. Business travellers are usually decision makers

The second thing that is really great about trade mission is that the people that you’re going to travel with are usually those people who are decision makers in their businesses. Being with them for five to seven days or even more, you tend to get closer to them, which means that they are going to be a very strong network for your business if you play your cards right.

That’s just about going there. Now what about when you are there at that country doing your treat mission?

3. Introduce Your Business to Foreign Delegates

They will also usually give the opportunity for the visitors or the members of the trade mission to introduce themselves as well. So bear in mind if you are looking to expand and your business or you are looking to look for potential partners in those parts of the world, then you really need to speak up and make sure your introduction about your company is really done right in the first place. They probably have never heard of you because they are not in the same country as you.

But if you share it for the first time and you share it really well for the first time, those people who are your potential collaborators will start to hear out for the words that they are interested in.

So for example, if you are in the F&B i.e. food and beverage industry and you run a restaurant here in Singapore, you went on a trade mission to Malaysia or Sabah and you have never explored the cuisine in Borneo. So when you were in Borneo you realize that you really wanted to explore the cuisine over there and wanted to make or produce certain foot types that you can introduce in your restaurant. So you mentioned in your pitch that you are looking to collaborate with food manufacturers to bring in suitable cuisines into your restaurant.

The people who are in the host country will start to open up their doors, does even if they do not know or even if they do not do the services, they would know someone who does it and they will be more than willing to share their network with you. It is also a win win situation for them.

That’s the great thing about trade mission and I really love trade missions. It can be a little bit costly and depending on which city you belong to, there are some government support and some tax breaks that you can get from going to trade missions.

Depending on where you live, trade missions is definitely something for you to consider when you are going to be part of the Chambers of Commerce.

So there you have it. Those are my four reasons why you should join chambers of commerce and I really feel that the membership fee is very small sum compared to the amount of benefit it gives you in your business.

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Keep learning and keep believing in yourself because the one and inspiration and just like you, and I’ll see you in the next episode of Fempreneur Secrets.

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