Weekly Newsletter for Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce

Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce

Weekly Newletter

June 2, 2010

President's Corner

As we are just turning the corner in to the halfway point of the year, we have to reflect on the first 6 months and see where we have come with regard to our plan to become more of a resource to the business community. We tried some things that worked well and some that have not worked as well.

We kicked off the year with the Awards Dinner and the State of the City. They were a GRAND success. We wanted to ramp up our services to the business community so we started planning two exciting Seminar Series. On the first month of every Quarter at Business Exchange Breakfast we are proud to host Ramona Logan, an award winning journalist who first taught us to hone our 30 Second Elevator speeches and in July will talk about "The Brand Name Called YOU". That session is on July 11th starting at 7:45 a.m. and running until 9:30 a.m.. The second Series is presented by our own City Manager, Tom Hart. At the first seminar we talked about the "World Class Journey - 8 Steps to building a world Class Business & Organization". July 22, he will be talking about "Managing the Experience - Taking your customers and employees' experience to a new level."

Your staff also started talking on a regular basis about what more we can do for your business and specifically for the underserved business segments in the chamber. In April we hosted a Marketing Fair where chamber members who can provide you marketing tools were invited at no cost to come and share their products and services to our luncheon crowd. We had a great time and I believe we saw the beginning of some perspective sales.

In May we presented SCORE representatives who came to discuss confidential and free business consultative services that are available to all businesses by simply calling or e-mailing the organization. You can find them at www.SCORE.org.

This July we are planning a Non-Profit fair to be presented at the regular luncheon on July 21st. If you are a member of a non-profit organization that is a chamber member, please encourage them to participate in this event at no charge for the booth space.

We hope you are as pleased with our progress toward our goal of becoming more of a business resource to our members as we are. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

As you can see, "We Mean Business".

Lynn

Upcoming Events.....

Monday, June 7th

Executive Board Meeting

11:30 am, Chamber

Wednesday, June 9th

Leadership Alumni Meeting

4 pm, Chamber

Friday, June 11th

Business Exchange Breakfast

7:45 am, Chamber

Wednesday, June 16th

Monthly Luncheon

Speaker: Bob O'neal,

Economic Development Director

Sponsor: Chick-fil-A

11:30 am, Ruthe Jackson Center

3113 S. Carrier Parkway

$20 per person or $15 with RSVP by 6/15

Friday, June 18th

Sparkling Kleaning Service Ribbon Cutting

2100 N. Hwy 360, Suite 1402

11:30 am

Monday, June 21st

Techsterz IT Support Ribbon Cutting

2421 S. Carrier Parkway

11:30 am

Welcome our Newest Members!

GEEP Texas LLC
2501 N. Great Southwest Pkwy
Grand Prairie, TX 75050
(972) 602-2900

WorkSource for Dallas County
801 W. Freeway Ste. 500
Grand Prairie, TX 75051
(972) 264-5881

Uhaul Grand Prairie
920 S. MacArthur Boulevarde
Grand Prairie, TX 75050
(972) 269-4010

EYESthere DFW
2100 N. Hwy 360, #501
Grand Prairie, TX 75051
(817) 945-3003

Chamber Member DISCOUNTED MEMBERSHIP SPECIAL OFFER

Each Chamber member in good standing is eligible to buy a CareFlite Ambulance Membership at a cost of $10 per employee.

Per Jim Swartz, President and CEO of CareFlite, this is quite an offer:

"A one year family membership (usually) costs $49. The lowest public price which you can see on our website is $149 for 5 years or $30 per year. But the real value is if someone is transported. A typical ground transport is $1500 and a typical air transport is $15,000. In our experience, insurance companies on average pay about 50% leaving the balance to patient responsibility. Over the past 30 years we have transported over 500,000 patients. This year we will transport about 40,000. This is a bargain at $10 and yours would be about the 10th Chamber to offer it to their members as a special benefit. While our service covers all of North Texas, if someone is getting a helicopter transport in Grand Prairie, it is 99.5% likely to be CareFlite."

Contact the Chamber Office and we will gladly send you the Caring-Heart Membership Application so that you can offer this great benefit to your employees.

Business After Hours

May 27th was the date of our most recent Business After Hours which was hosted by the Grand Prairie AirHogs and Co-Hosted by LakeRidge at Joe Pool Lake, thank you sponsors!