Communities Grow Together on Elevate Springfield featuring Local First and LLPNG

Summary

In this episode, Robert Ferriell discusses the importance of community growth through local networking organizations. He highlights two key groups: Local First Springfield, which focuses on supporting locally owned businesses, and the Land of Lincoln Professional Networking Group, which emphasizes referrals and collaboration among professionals. Ferriell encourages listeners to engage with these organizations to foster economic growth and strengthen community ties.

Takeaways

• Communities thrive when local businesses thrive.
• Supporting local businesses keeps money circulating in the local economy.
• Local First Springfield promotes the importance of buying local.
• Networking events can lead to valuable referrals and partnerships.
• Membership in local organizations can enhance business visibility.
• Strategic collaboration can spark new opportunities for growth.
• Local First and LLPNG complement each other in supporting businesses.
• Engaging with local organizations fosters community resilience.
• Networking can help small businesses reach new customers.
• Joining local groups is a simple process with great benefits.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Elevate Springfield, where we'll dive into strategies and stories that help you rise to your full potential. Each episode, we'll talk about how you can take intentional steps to elevate your life and your business while making a meaningful impact on those around you. Along the way, we're gonna bring in the change makers from our community that are already elevating. We'll bring the actionable strategies, you bring the discipline and follow through, and together we can elevate Springfield. Alright, let's go, Springfield. Time to 10X your day, y'all. Time to level up, time to crush it. Hey, you are listening to the Elevate Springfield podcast. Robert Farrell here, certified 10X coach, speaker, and mentor. Here to bring you actionable strategies. You bring the discipline and follow through it together. We're gonna Elevate Springfield. Well, you are listening to another segment of Communities Grow Together on the Elevate Springfield podcast. As you know, we drop these segments each week. The Communities Grow Together segment will touch on all things nonprofit associations and how we as a community are working together so we can all grow together. This segment is brought to you by David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agency over on West Wabash. Whatever you need insurance-wise, whether that's business, life, home, auto, or anything in between, hey, David and his team can take care of you. Give them a shout, or hey, stop by and visit them over on West Wabash. These segments are quick hits of actionable strategies and what's going on in our area to help you level up and grow together. Be right back after the break. Looking for personalized insurance with hometown care, David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agent is here to help you protect what matters most: your family, your home, and your dreams. Whether it's auto, home, life, business, David and his team are proud to serve the Springfield community with trusted advice and reliable coverage. Local service, real relationships, peace of mind. Call today or stop by their office. They can build your dream protection plan together. Call 217-726-6343. All right, and we are back for another edition of Communities Grow Together, brought to you by David Hilst, American Family Insurance Agency. Hey, anything you need insurance-wise, David and his team will take care of you. Give them a shout, or head over to West Wabash and visit them. So today, I want to follow up on something that I tasked everyone with was to research one of the associations, one of the organizations that you could get involved with. Two of them that I am highly involved in. You've heard me talk about on the show multiple times is Local First Springfield and Land of Lincoln Professional Networking Group. So I'd like to give you a little bit of a short deep dive, I guess, into what both of those organizations are all about. So currently I'm the president of the board of directors at Local First Springfield. And if you haven't heard of us, or if you've just heard of us and don't really know what we do, Local First Springfield is essentially a community-focused organization dedicated to highlighting the importance of supporting locally owned businesses right here in Springfield, Sangaman County, and all the surrounding counties. See, Local First Springfield really emphasizes that where you spend your dollars matters, and that choosing local businesses helps keep money circulating within our local economy. You might have heard me mention that if you buy from a locally owned business, 67 cents of every dollar stays here locally. If you don't, it's more like 43 cents. So the more we can do that here locally, the more we can support our friends and neighbors, and the more we can grow together, just like we always talk about on this segment. We do have a phenomenal board at Local First Springfield. You've heard me talk about how great our board is over the last few months. Just a lot of hard chargers, a lot of heavy hitters, a lot of people that are doing great things in the community. Such a great group of folks really putting in the work to help support and grow local businesses here. So, what are some of the benefits of being a local first Springfield member? Well, first off, we have our business directory on the website. You can be featured on there. We have events throughout the year. We're planning on four larger scale networking type events this year. We're also going to have our holiday market, planning on some smaller pop-up events as well, and potentially some educational, professional development type events as well. So many great opportunities for you to be able to network with folks within the small business community. You can go there and as we talk about all the time, find those collaboration points, maybe find some referrals, find some ways to work together to help all of us grow. We also have a robust social media arm. We like to promote our members heavily. We have a good following on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and we promote our members on there as much as possible. And as a member, you get two posts a year, promotional type posts. Um you can also share other items with us that we could we could push through there as well. In addition to that, we have a VIP program where you can have monthly posts about your business. You could be featured on our website with a video and be a named sponsor at some of our events. So again, what we're trying to do is promote our members as much as possible and then give them the opportunity to network throughout the year. So this combination of networking and marketing exposure can certainly help small businesses reach new customers because maybe you're a small retailer out there and a couple of posts through our network could go a long way to driving some business to a new shop, right? So check us out over at localferspringfield.com. If you want to become a member, it's a pretty simple and easy process. Just hit the join button on the website. It's$175 for a business. It is one hundred dollars if you're a nonprofit. If you are a franchise, but still locally owned, that's two hundred and fifty dollars. So three price points, all with great benefits attached to it. So we'd love to have you join us. Head over to localfirstspringfield.com. If you have any more questions, you can send an email over to info at localfirstspringfield.com. That'll go directly to me, actually, and I'll be able to answer any of those questions that you have. All right, so let's move over to Land of Lincoln Professional Networking Group. You hear Jeff Dillman talking about this a lot when we are in the studio together. It's for local business owners and professionals. It's all about creating connections, referrals, and collaborative growth. So Land of Lincoln really emphasizes real business networking, not social hours, not social networking, but focused meetings where members share referrals, build partnerships, and support one another's work. So each month there's a monthly networking meeting. It is on the third Wednesday of the month from 4 to 5 p.m. That's going to create a space for folks to connect and exchange referrals right there. And you see, the whole idea here is for businesses to work together for referral-based growth, strategic collaboration and partnerships that can open doors and quite frankly spark new opportunities. Landa Lincoln's mission is simple empower locally owned businesses through meaningful connection and community support, helping each member succeed together, not alone. One thing that's different about Landa Lincoln compared to other groups is each segment is only limited to two companies. So say Tree Service. There's only going to be two tree service companies, or there's only going to be two insurance companies within the group. So there's a lot of opportunity for partnership and growth without having a ton of competition within your same industry. So head on over to LLPNG.com to learn more. It is$120 for the yearly membership dues. Head over there, fill out the application, and you'll receive a decision on whether you're accepted shortly after that. So as I've mentioned before, LocalFirst and LLPNG mesh really, really well together. And it's because they're rooted in the same principle. Communities thrive when local businesses thrive. So local first can strengthen the consumer side by encouraging folks to support and buy local while also marketing all the local businesses, while LLP and G can focus more on the professional side and help business owners support each other through referrals and collaboration. So when these are combined, these efforts can create a more resilient local economy with deeper connections amongst the businesses and stronger relationships that can often lead to more opportunities for success for all of us. So hey, hope that helps with some of your research on what association or group you're going to get involved in. Hey, we'd love to have you in both of them. Head over to localfirstspringfield.com or LLPNG.com. Check both of those out. Shoot us a message if you have any questions. But for both, it's going to help you and help all of us support Springfield, support local businesses, support our friends and neighbors so we can all grow together. We'll be back after the break. 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