Joining a Chamber of Commerce?

Hi Jay

Used to be members of both Coventry and Birmingham Chambers of Commerce. All we used them for were networking meetings and events, which in hindsight we could have done, by going to any of the multitude of local networking groups, where you can normally go the first time free/guest or a pay a token fee. After a while, kept seeing same faces at the networking events, so knocked it on the head.

Coventry was big on "speed networking" which I did once, and never again! Sales pitched to death in 2 minutes

Used to get lots of stuff through about various free workshops, which to be fair never took them up, as was always too busy...

Let both Chambers lapse after 12 months, and I still get various offers to go to this or that event and go as a guest, so for us, they weren't worth the money.

Spoken to other people who have had more positive experiences, and who like the opportunity to connect with other businesses, and if you are looking for courses and workshops, I suppose it's alright, but it seemed to me (or was) expensive for what you got.

If you are a bricks and mortar business and looking to build up your business in that area then Chamber Of Commerce membership is useful (at a price).

It is an old school approach to business networking and does work but it is more of a membership club than modern day networking.

Andrew