Should you join your local chamber of commerce?

Hey, guys. Matt Paulson here. In this video, I want to talk about whether or not you should join your Chamber of Commerce. For a long time, I had a lot of preconceptions and I'd say some misconceptions about organizations like chambers of Commerce. My perception was that they weren't a good use of time or money. I honestly thought that being part of the Chamber would be more about what can the community kind of extract out of me in terms of who can promote their stuff to me, their business services, what nonprofits will see my name on a list of chamber members and ask me for money. I thought by being part of the Chamber, I would just be really placing a target on my back to be advertised to and to be targeted to for marketing. I also thought that chambers and warfare are bricks and mortar businesses. They're more for an older generation of entrepreneurs. And the perception that I had was that they don't provide a lot of value to younger entrepreneurs and people that have online businesses like me. I'll talk about whether or not those preconceptions are true or not in a little bit. I ultimately did join in my city. I joined the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce. And the reason I did that was because I was helping launch Falls Angel Fund. And I wanted every opportunity to plug into the established business community and to develop relationships and identify one investors for fallouts Angel Fund and then two other potential deals that I could do down the line. It cost me between three and four hundred dollars a year to join, so it wasn't a really big expense for MarketBeat, but it was just another thing to add to the list. When I first joined the Chamber of Commerce, it turns out one of my preconceptions was true. There are marketing agencies that will cold call every new chamber member when their name appears in the month Chamber magazine. And they do it as a way to drum up business. We can talk about whether or not that's effective, but I probably got a dozen phone calls the week after that magazine came out. It was kind of annoying, to be honest with you, but I did email the Chamber and they said, hey, do you know this is happening? I'm getting a lot of solicitations here. This isn't really what I signed up for. And then they put me on a marketing opt out list and that kind of helped. And then, you know, once I was on the chamber for a little while and my name wasn't the newest name in the magazine, most of that stopped. So it was a minor annoyance the first month. But on an ongoing basis. I don't get hit up for a lot of things specifically because I'm in the chamber. And I think they have done a better job of clamping down on that in the last couple of years. But I've probably been in the chamber for maybe three, four years now, and I really have come to appreciate everything that our chamber does and local chambers do in general. I think they do provide a lot of value to local businesses. They do a really good job on legislation and lobbying and making sure that you are up to date about everything that your state legislature is doing. The state legislature in South Dakota, they do a lot of crazy things, and the chamber keeps an eye on it, just makes sure that they don't do anything too crazy. So they do a really good job of keeping you up to date on legislation and giving entrepreneurs and business owners warning to pay attention whenever something really bad or something unhelpful is going to come through the state legislature. They do a really good job of that. Second, our local chamber of commerce, they do ribbon cuttings, they do mixers, they do educational events. And going to those things is a really great way to meet other entrepreneurs and business people in your community. Granted, you don't want to overdo it and go to everything because you could go to five chamber events a week if you wanted to, and they will just distract you from working on your business. I do think there is some value in going to one or two events a month just so that other business people in the community really have any idea who you are. There really is a value in developing a personal brand for yourself in your local business community. This makes it easier to find a job if you ever need a job or if you're a business owner, it makes it easier to hire people if people already know who you are before you post the job. If you want to get invited to serve on nonprofit boards, people have to know who you are to invite you to serve on a nonprofit board. So that's obviously helpful to be a known person. Then anything that you might want to accomplish in your community that you're working on, knowing a lot of people is going to be a lot more helpful to get that done. For example, right now I'm helping Sioux Fall Seminary with a Catholic campaign. And just the fact that I've been spending years building relationships with people in the business community, that's going to be much more likely to help my nonprofit get a yes when other nonprofits might get a no. When the nonprofit knocks on the door of somebody to Get a potential donation. So just by me being a well known person in the community, when it's my turn to come ask for money and say, hey, this is something that matters. This is something you should care about. This is something you should give to, that gives the nonprofit that I'm a part of and I care about a lot more credibility than if I was just a nobody knocking on the door for a donation. There's also a really nice marketing benefit to being part of the Chamber of Commerce. At least in Sioux Falls. Our chamber has a monthly local business news magazine that they get sent out to all of their members. And they're probably not going to write about you if you're not a member. They've invited me to write columns a couple of times. They've written about some of the stuff I've done, like Falls Angel Fund, and that's been helpful. And then also when you join a chamber or when you move into a new office, you can have a ribbon cutting, then you can invite a bunch of people, have a party, and create awareness about your business in the community. We had one of those a couple years ago, had a great time, and a lot more people had a chance to know about MarketBeat than otherwise they might have. So now when I go to events in the business community, there are fewer people that say, what's MarketBeat do? I've never heard of that before. And you know, I hear a lot more of, oh, I've heard of that before. And that's always a good thing too, especially if you have a local business. Ribbon cutting is just a great way to drum up interest and awareness and attention about your business. The last benefit that I come across is that if you do any kind of local advertising, radio, tv, newspapers, chances are you're going to get some kind of discount through your chamber membership. So when I signed up, I got packages that had a bunch of coupons and offers to buy local media at a discount. Now, you know, local media doesn't really work as a marketing strategy for MarketBeat. We have to advertise in financial, kind of the financial vertical publications. You can't really advertise in the August Leader, but I could say in a Wall Street Journal, but if I was a local business, I would probably be all over those discounts. So in general, I think it's a good idea to be part of your Chamber of Commerce. Yes, I wish there were some things that were different, but there are some really, some nice benefits too. You get to meet people in your business community, you get to build a personal brand for yourself. You can have a ribbon cutting. They can do a really good job of keeping an eye on policy issues in government as well for you. I honestly think most people should do it. It's just really a matter of when you should do it. It's about $300 a year for us to be part of the Chamber in Sioux Falls. If that's a major burden on you, maybe you're not ready to do it yet. Obviously, the cost of a Chamber membership is going to vary from city to city. So, you know, if your chamber membership is 100% of your marketing budget, maybe hold off and don't quite do it yet. But if it's 10% of your marketing budget, it's probably going to be a pretty good use of your money. So it's a good thing to be part of the Chamber. It's really just a matter of when and when that $300 expense or whatever it is in New York City isn't going to break the bank for you. So hopefully this will give you some thoughts about and perspective about the value in joining a chambership or the lack of value. I've really been a big fan of what our Chamber Sioux Falls has done over the last couple of years. They brought on Jason Ball to be the new CEO to replace the longtime CEO Evan Nolte. And Jason is really breathed a lot of new life into the Chamber and I really appreciated that. Our Chamber has partnered with me and other entrepreneurs on some events like Jesu Falls, and that's been really helpful. So I wouldn't say that I'm all in on the Chamber, but I would say that our Chamber in Sioux Falls is definitely moving in the right direction. And they've been doing a lot of good things lately. So they definitely deserve some praise and congratulations for that. So those are my thoughts. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. I do one of these at least every week. I hope you'll keep watching now.