Be the Bridge
“Be the Bridge – Problems become opportunities when the right people join together.”
November 1 marks eleven years that I have served as the President of the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce.
I looked up the traditional gift for an eleventh anniversary. The traditional gift is steel as it represents a symbol of strong bonds you share with your partner.
A strong bond with our Members is something I pride myself on. Our Members should feel that their bond with their Chamber is strong and just as steel is the support system for so many things, that their Chamber is a support for the inner workings of their business. You don’t always see the steel in a structure and you won’s see the Chamber staff working in our Member businesses but we are working everyday to support them.
“Be the bridge” - problems become opportunities when the right people join together. The “steel” in being a Member of a Chamber is the opportunity for the right people to come together. We bring our Members together with possible future customers and that connection comes in several different forms.
The TriCounty Chamber has unique opportunities for our Members to connect with the community. We have a Chamber Chat show on Facebook Live that provides Members a social media platform to share their story with a larger audience that they might not reach through their own contact list. Members also have access to posting job postings, press releases and community events on the Chamber’s website. We use our Members posts to populate our social media as well as share that information in a community email - again, providing our Members with additional exposure and creating opportunities for them to connect with the right people.
Vital to creating opportunities where the right people can join together are opportunities for Members to build relationships. Although we have postponed some of our larger events, we continue to bring together Members in more intimate networking opportunities. Finding success in being a Member of an organization like ours is not pursuing networking as only exchanging business cards but building relationships. Members are much more successful when they try and bring people together and help people make contacts that could benefit their business instead of focusing on the sale.
As we move into 2022, we are focused on reinforcing the steel! The TriCounty Chamber will be offering a new dues structure for Members to align their membership investment with the benefits they need to grow their business. This Chamber has grown our programs and services as a direct response to suggestions from Members. We will be turning to the Members in the next few weeks to ask what their Chamber should look like. The priorities we pursue in 2022 should be based on the support/steel our Members need from us. 2022 will also give us the opportunity to showcase our largest event of our program year, our Annual Dinner. The original April event of 2020 was of course cancelled and rescheduled for September 23rd of this year but again we made the choice to postpone. On April 27, 2022, we look forward to having a long overdue celebration of the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner – fingers crossed! We look forward to the Annual Dinner, our “be the bridge” event, but also creating and offering opportunities to be the steel reinforcing our 400 plus Members in the tri-county region.
#tcaccbettertogether