My first week as Membership Manager

Amy Lishman, our new Membership Manager gives us an insight into her first week at the Chamber. 

Three weeks ago I started as the new Membership Manager at Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce.  My job is to get to know Chamber members in order to help them make the most of their membership and also find new businesses who want to join one of the most dynamic and diverse Chambers’ of Commerce in the UK.

Usually the first week of any new job is a series of inductions, getting to grips with systems and processes and finding out where the tea and coffee is. My first week was a little different thanks to the Chamber’s action packed events diary. Here’s a little flavour of my first week as Membership Manager.

The highlight of my first day was joining part of the #GoDoBootcamp with the new intake of entrepreneur’s at Entrepreneurial Spark, the world’s largest free business accelerator for early stage and growing ventures (The Chamber is based in the Brighton Hub). #GoDoBootCamp is the dynamic induction process for entrepreneurs in each of the four categories - sprint, enable, grow and scale - where they work with other entrepreneurs learning and solving action based real work problems. Chamber Director Sarah Springford gave a brief presentation about the Chamber, what it offers and how it can support businesses, from those just starting out to established companies. I loved the atmosphere and spirit of community at the hub already and it was only day one.

Tuesday was a day of meeting Chamber members. I had a coffee with three businesses who had come for one of our fortnightly member meet-ups. We chatted about what they do, who they’d like to meet and ways to connect with local businesses. These sessions are a great chance for new (and not so new!) members to get together, start building their own network and also to chat to me in a small group about the ways they can use their membership to help their business. After work we headed across to Portslade for the New Member Welcome kindly hosted by Chamber member Heart FM. New members had come along to find out how they might use the Chamber to grow their business. Each business had a slightly different reason for joining for example, attending networking events to grow their business, getting help and advice and some wanted to raise their profile in the city. One things for sure, the Chamber offers a number of different ways to help businesses, charities and social enterprises.

It was an early start on Wednesday for our Pop up breakfast hosted by Brighton Spiegeltent. 120 people came to enjoy a fun networking event complete with delicious breakfast baps from Spade and Spoon and exhilarating performances from Head Start Acrobats who performed a showcase from their Brighton Fringe show, Elixir. It was an inspiring and energetic start to a Wednesday, the perfect remedy for hump day and confirmed to me that Brighton & Hove Chamber likes to do things a bit differently.

On Thursday the team and a handful of Chamber Ambassadors were out in full force to showcase the Chamber at the Let’s do Business Brighton Expo, now in its 8th year. We had a colourful stand with fresh fruit and free massages courtesy of Becky from Back2Balance - perfect after standing on your feet all day! It was a fantastic day and I met lots of businesses from Brighton and beyond.

Friday was all about catching up after a busy week. There was a lot of interest in the Chamber at the Let’s Do Business Expo so my priority was getting in touch with people who wanted to know more about membership. I spent the rest of the day making welcome calls to new members and then finally looked ahead to the next week and beyond.

I had a brilliant first week at the Chamber and the next month promises to be much of the same. I’m looking forward to the monthly Breakfast at Carluccio’s and going Behind the Scenes at the Hilton Brighton Metropole. Keep an eye out for future blogs over the next few weeks as I settle into life at Brighton Chamber. If my first week is anything to go by I can assure you it’ll be anything but dull!

Amy will be out and about at Chamber events throughout June and she's keen to meet as many members as possible. Keep an eye on our events calendar to see what's coming up.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk