The American Business Development Alliance or ABDA started about a year and a half ago after being involved in various Chamber groups, networking and tips groups. Frankly, we thought we could do it a bit better. We have quite a few people in ABDA groups who agree it works. There are several core ideas of ABDA, but the focus of the ABDA is as a business group that meets weekly to mastermind and pass warm exchanges.
We are exclusive in that only one person from each profession is represented in each chapter. Further, chapters are limited to only 25 member participants. Currently, we have groups meeting on Tuesdays, both morning and lunch; Wednesdays, both morning and lunch; Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings. So we have something to fit almost anyones schedule
You will find our simple mission and goals a positive and welcome edition to your work and life, but of course the best sample is for you to attend a meetings as our guest. We do collect dues for membership, but attendance and active participation is the true coin of the realm. We follow predrafted chapter bylaws and improve them from time to time based upon the input of the membership. We do collect dues for the betterment of the ABDA and to further the success of the members. The startup fee of $99 covers your first two months in the group. Thereafter, the monthly dues are $29. As an incentive to members the monthly fee will be waived for each additional guest that they bring who ultimately joins the group. As you attend the meetings, socials and other events you, as well as talk to current members you will see that we actually use the fees collected to help further the group and the businesses in it.
We have three main focuses:
- To grow one-another's business by helping them not only in a traditional referral setting, but by actively caring and giving out each others cards and providing the referral back to the business in our meetings (or sooner if possible)
- To participate in masterminding. Taking a current business topic and having group comment/sharing about successful strategies and also by sharing our collective business expertise...something more than just a "guest speaker."
- Maximize impact through the power of size. The idea of the whole being greater than the sum of the individual parts is relevant. In a short time we've grown this organization and have seen results that individually would be either very time consuming, or very costly to any one of our firms individually. Some of the fees collected for the group have been used for this purpose. We do group socials, have a booth at the Buy the Big O Show that all members can use to their advantage, and we do local advertising to support the groups and the businesses in them, among many other things.