Jeff Dudan | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #66

When is it appropriate for a business owner to join a trade association and why do people join? My experience is that the best business owners in a community oftentimes spend time serving at the head of the trade association that serves their industry. Why do people do that? Well, number one, it's an opportunity to get visibility for you as a person and get visibility for your business inside a community that you would have to drive around and meet everybody individually otherwise. Also, you can find great collaborations there. There might be a company that does something before your service or after your service that it would make sense to create some sort of a partnership or some sort of a referral relationship with. There is also the opportunity to meet great vendors. You can't have enough great suppliers. You should always be looking for great partners who provide not only professional services, but equipment, material suppliers, all of these types of things. They're going to be hanging out at your trade associ and you're going to find employees there. There might be people that are participating or showing up at a trade show event or an association event, and you might have a trade show and you'll find that there's somebody that you'll meet there that might be working in the industry that might want to come and work for you. So, that being said, you've got to pick carefully because you only have so much time, so much energy and so much money. And the biggest mistake that I see people making is they join a trade association and they don't participate. They only show up for one meeting, or they only show up every six months. They never volunteer for any of the activities that go on there. And that's a mistake. If you're going to do that, save your money, sit at home on the couch, put it in paid advertising, do something different. Now, if you do want to maximize your role inside of a trade association, the first thing you need to do is you need to commit that you are going to be able to show up consistently. And that means the monthly meeting, the monthly dinner, whatever it is, you need to put it on your calendar and protect that time and make it a point to be there. You also need to join a committee. And by the way, the best committee to join if you want to meet as many people as possible, is the membership committee. The committee that is evaluating and speaking with people who are interested in membership. They always need people that are willing to do this. It does take a little bit more time and energy, but very important committee that you can join. But there's other committees that you can join. There's gonna be an annual event. There's probably a charity that they're affiliated with, there's educational programs that they have, and these all take committees to run. So the first thing you should do is say, is there a committee that is looking for somebody to help right now? The next thing you should do, whenever an event pops up, you should sponsor. It doesn't have to be big dollars. You could sponsor the door, you could sponsor the breakfast, you could sponsor a speaker, you could sponsor any part of it. But to be seen as somebody that shows up, somebody that volunteers, and somebody that will put a little bit of money where their mouth is so that the trade association can meet its objectives and provide the resources for the membership that they're looking to provide. Last thing, bring a friend. Referrals are everything. When you are a new member, the best thing that you can do is say, I'm getting so much value out of this trade association that I recommended this to another business owner that I know. I brought them with me to a meeting and I'm going to see if I can't give, get them to sign up and get the same benefits that I've gotten from this organization. So there are so many reasons to show up and to join. But if you don't show up and if you don't participate, you're not going to get anything out of it. So just don't even do it. So if you're not willing to show up in a big way, it might be better for you to spend your time, energy and money somewhere else.