Trade Associations and Encouraging Entrepreneurial Spirit

So this week's been a bit hectic. I spent Tuesday at the NOEA (National Outdoor Events Association) Conference in Leeds which had exhibits from industry related businesses such as health and safety, big screens etc alongside their AGM and also sought to help me, build links with helpful folk. Just in case you're wondering, I have been a member of the NEAC (National Entertainment Agents Council) and they are now merging with NOEA due to time constraints of members. The question still remains though, apart from the networking opportunities what benefit do trade associations actually have?

When starting, the legal advice and also how to structure my business were invaluable. Once I have been going a few years though, the question will still remains as to its benefit. The way I see it it's like a club. If you're the member of an exclusive club you'll do favours for mates and hopefully vice versa. Ignore competitors at your peril. They can get you out of some sticky situations if you don't have something a customer needs.

And extending this idea of networking, I was lucky enough to be invited back to the University of Birmingham to be one of the few students to bring the first SPEED (Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in Education) programme to a close. This did just comprise of 20 or so people, but it was the event afterward that was far more interesting as we were all asked to describe our business experiences to students. We were described as entrepreneurs and it got me thinking. When do you turn from businessman to entrpreneur and is there any difference? If this were a beeb blog I'd be asking the hordes to battle it out in the comments section, but I think I might be a bit like Homer when he's the only member left in the stonecutters and so attempts to dress up monkeys and make them do war re-enactments. If you have no idea what any of the last sentence meant, don't worry about it. Here is where a more astute blogger would come up with some witty conclusion, maybe cite a Churchill quote, but to be blunt, they're just pretentious idiots.

Until next time,


Hayden