Your business can’t survive alone. You can greatly improve your chances by networking with other entrepreneurs. My hometown of Alva, Oklahoma, is working on this, with Fast Forward Fridays.
Alva Area Chamber of Commerce Director Alexandra Mantz explained, “We hope to bring budding entrepreneurs in the region together to talk and find resources that will help them get started.”
That’s exactly the right reason for small town entrepreneurs to attend these kind of networking events: to make local connection, to share resources, to succeed.
The coalition of groups working on this event are Oklahoma’s Partners for Progress, including:
- Alva Area Chamber of Commerce
- Woods County Economic Development Committee
- Northwest Oklahoma Alliance
- Northwestern Oklahoma State University
- Northwest Technology Center
- Rural Enterprises, Inc.
- Oklahoma Department of Commerce Business Solutions
This is not their first event. Earlier in the year, they hosted a couple of great workshops.
What are the entrepreneur events in your area? Are you participating?
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Are there unaffiliated networking groups in the area? In Maine, groups are being formed by WOM and LinkedIn. We have a lot of serial networkers in the area.
Carl, that’s a good insight. We haven’t had any unaffiliated groups form here, but I’ll bet other areas are more like yours. In some ways, I think self-organized groups would be better.