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A while back I posted about how I joined the Chamber of Commerce and how it could help your business. Well I also said I'd keep you updated on any interesting news about it. Well yesterday they had a business mixer at a local Sizzler's restaurant. Because I am very young and new to the desert business scene, I was a bit intimidated and almost decided not to go. But I eventually mustered up the courage and went. I am very glad I went. It was actually a very fun experience and I gained a lot from it. I met a lot of people who also run local small businesses and I even won an awesome prize. Meet people - Get your name out Like I already mentioned, because of my age I was very intimidated to go and it took a long time for me to get enough courage to go in. But even though everybody was older than me, there was still quite a bit of people who were not much older than me and everybody at the mixer had something in common with me.They were all owners of a small business or representing a business. Obviously, this is a natural conversation topic so even if you aren't the best at coming up with topics to discuss, it's already been done for you. Another cool thing is that you will probably meet some people who you have seen before but never talked to. Or you will meet somebody who owns a business whose services you have used before. For example, I met somebody representing a sign business that did the signage on the back window of my car. Everybody who I talked to during the mixer has my card. Three people said they'd be calling me and I have a fourth person who is interested in getting a website set up soon. I even had a few people come up to me and ask me for my card even though I didn't even talk to them.
Eat some free food You can't go wrong with free food, right? Or at least that is my motto anyway. I got some free food that was really tasty. So that is another good reason to go to these business mixers. Win some cool prizesAfter paying to get into the mixer, ($5 in my case) I got a raffle ticket. You can also buy more raffle tickets too if you want to, but I decided to just stick with my one ticket. Eventually they start calling out ticket numbers and they give away a lot of cool stuff. Some of the prizes inluded: Bluetooth Wireless Earpiece
Round of Golf for Four at some country club
50-minute full body massage
Free services
Free dinners
Artwork
Gift Cards
$50 Cold Hard Cash They raffled off a lot of other cool stuff. I won a $25 gift card to Applebee's restaurant, which is pretty awesome. Me and my girlfriend now have $50 worth of Applebee's gift cards. What you should bring if you do attend a business mixer In the back of the room there was a table full of flyers and brochures. I didn't bring anything except for about 50 business cards. Next time I am going to bring some postcards specifically designed to target business owners. People didn't take too much of the material off the table. But a lot of the marketing material looked really boring and didn't really offer anything interesting. I have a feeling that a bright card advertising computer services would do well on a table like that. Anyway, that was my experience with my first business mixer. The food was good and the people were surprising easygoing and genuinely interested in what I had to say. So if you haven't done it yet, you might want to go down to your city's Chamber of Commerce and see what they have to offer. It could really do a lot of good for your business. If you have any questions or comments about this article, please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your opinion and I really appreciate all comments. If you'd like to be notified of new updates, please consider subscribing to the ProPCBiz RSS Feed. Thanks for reading!
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