Alex Fees: I'm Alex Fees on Small Business Television. We are coming to you from Cleveland Ohio at the 2008 COSE Small Business Conference. COSE, that’s C-O-S-E, the Council of Smaller Enterprises, a group that yields to the experience of its membership.
Debra Hegler is with us here. Deborah, good to have you, thanks for joining us.
Debra Hegler: Thanks for inviting me.
Alex Fees: Deborah is the executive director, is that right?
Debra Hegler: Yes sir.
Alex Fees: Of the Shaker Heights Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
Debra Hegler: Yes, that’s right.
My background prior to this is that I do event planning. I set up meetings and conferences for small businesses and prior to that I have a sales background and a financial history background.
Alex Fees: How long have you been a part of the Shaker Heights Chamber of Commerce?
Debra Hegler: It was founded March of 2008.
Alex Fees: So, very recently?
Debra Hegler: Very recently. We just started off. We have just under a hundred members currently and we have a potential of 5 to 600 businesses in the Shake Heights area local.
Well, we started this chamber simply to serve and support the local businesses in this city. We have certain amount of businesses that have been moving out because of the economic conditions and businesses move in we started this chamber to help and support and try to retain what we have. We interact a little bit more closely with the city government as well as the schools, the arts and within the community.
And I think there were some merchant association but no one has actually organize the formal chamber and so now we’ve done that and I think that it’s only going to make the economic conditions better for the businesses that are there and to attract new businesses into our area.
We've made a pretty mighty impression so far. We have had or asked the mayor to come in to speak. We have a series of events called Minding Your Business luncheons once a month and Minding Your Business after hours and there are opportunities for networking and we've had some pretty prominent speakers come through so far.
We came to COSE to explore a little bit further the program that they have called the I Buy Neo. We’re considering adding that into our cache of products where we will have merchants offer discounts and try to persuade the citizens to buy local within the Northeast Ohio area.
I have been familiar with COSE for many years.
Alex Fees: Have you been here before? Have you ever been to a summit like this one?
Debra Hegler: I've never been to those COSE conferences before?
Alex Fees: What's your impression?
Debra Hegler: I love it. It’s been a great way to connect with all friends to find new technology and to find out more about the wider area businesses that are here that can enhance our chamber.
We look at COSE as a mentor.
Alex Fees: And you're not alone there I think everybody around you is looking at COSE as a mentor.
Debra Hegler: They have been very supportive, very helpful and they have a lot of resources and they I think can teach us small new chamber how to do things well and enhance our efficiency. So far I had a lot of technology, the I Buy Neo program and directed those to vendors that might be able to sponsor more benefits for our members.
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