When You Volunteer, You’re Investing In Your Business
For the next two days, starting tomorrow, I’ll be volunteering my time to help run the GEL conference here in NYC. I’ve never been to a GEL conference, but I’ve heard good buzz about them in the past.
GEL (Good Experience Live), is sort of a mashup conference that explores business, technology, life, art, and society — live and in your face. You listen to speakers, go on tours around the city, work together on activities, and listen to great performances and demonstrations.
People from various industries and sectors will be there — entrepreneurs, business leaders, leading experts, technologists, bloggers, podcasters, you get the idea… And guess what, since I’m volunteering, it’s free! I’m not sure, but I think it costs around $1000 per ticket, so I’m very thankful to be attending.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you should be looking for volunteering opportunities wherever you can. Volunteering is good in many ways:
- You get to attend for free (saves cash)
- You are put into a pool of amazing people who you can network with and build relationships with
- You enjoy the perks of free food & financial compensation (sometimes)
- You get to listen to great speakers who can inspire you to improve your company
All of these things are great, but my favorite is “networking opportunities.” When you volunteer, you are put in a position to meet great people from all walks of life.
Every time I volunteer for an event, I make sure to throw on my “Mind Petals : Infinite Ideas To Bloom” tee-shirt with ” www.mindpetals.com” on the back. It’s amazing marketing, because everyone always asks “what’s Mind Petals?” or “do you run Mind Petals?” and that allows me to immediately spread the network and explain what it’s all about. So don’t forget to purchase at least one tee-shirt with your company name/URL on it if you know that you’ll be volunteering for many events.
All in all, volunteering is a great thing for everyone to do, especially entrepreneurs wanting to spread the word about their business and do some serious networking. Keep up to date with events in your area with Meetup.com and eventful.com.
Volunteering is a great investment for your business. For a small amount of your time and energy, you can end up gaining clients, partners, investors, and new ideas for your business. Sounds like a good deal to me.
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