Brainerd Chamber Members Practice Networking at Blue Ox Success Series Event

Each month, the Brainerd Lakes Chamber of Commerce hosts their Blue Ox Success Series to help local businesses collaborate and learn new skills. On Tuesday, Chamber members met to learn the importance of networking and some tips on the best way to do so.

“Today’s event is about helping people network more comfortably so that they can master themselves and not be as nervous when they walk into a room to really work on developing those relationships that will help build their business,” said Lori Scharenbroich, the presenter for the workshop titled “Turning Conversations into Collaborations.”

“We had a sold-out event today, so all of the chairs were full and people were really excited to learn about how to collaborate, get to know people and just learn how to make those elevator pitches,” said Brainerd Lakes Chamber Director of Tourism Nichole Heinen. “It was very informative.”

The Chamber recently started making use of Chamber members to lead the workshops.

“We have been doing business-to-business success series that happen and we have our business owners actually teaching other business owners and key business roles all about kind of what’s going on and key things,” explained Heinen. “Our main goal always at the Chamber is just to connect businesses together and to show that, you know, we can all work together and we can accomplish a lot of things.”

Heinen also says that having these workshops run by local businesses strengthens the community.

“I think the best part about it is that people know that they get to meet people that they are going to interact with throughout their career,” said Heinen. “It’s a way for people to meet one another, but also to gather information about each other so that they can share that and just make the community even better.”

For Heinen, the Blue Ox Success Series allows members to gain expert knowledge from peers in the community.

“These activities like today, these meetings that we have, are able to—they teach everyone how to learn a little bit more about the businesses, but not just the businesses themselves, but give them tips,” she added, “Because not only are these people business owners, but they also have really great knowledge in certain areas that others don’t know about.”

The next Blue Ox Success Series event will be based around estate planning. More information on the Brainerd Lakes Chamber’s upcoming events can be found on their website.