I had the pleasure this morning of attending the Indiana Business Rally, sponsored by Bitwise Solutions and Inside Indiana Business. The event was held during breakfast at McAllister’s Deli. Over 200 local business leaders were in attendance. In addition, donations were collected for Big Brothers, Big Sisters.

As an affiliate marketer, I do not attend many local networking events. However, I was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk at the last Affiliate Summit to start networking more outside of affiliate marketing conferences. I am glad that I did!

The event was low key, starting with a $5 breakfast buffet and some opening announcements. Gerry Dick from Inside Indiana Business relayed some great news about 1300 new jobs coming to Connersville. It was a great way to kick off our networking with encouraging news for our local economy. Others spoke briefly about the need for us to take economic recovery into our own hands by being positive and networking to build trust relationships.

I was able to speak with people about affiliate marketing because most of them have never heard about it. In addition to spreading my own Sunshine Rewards brand, I think I educated some consultants about what affiliate marketing could do for their clients. I also met interesting people from places like Comcast (who is hiring!), Bitwise Solutions, and Sandler Training. I had a particularly good discussion with Amy Lemen of ALL in One Marketing about how she started her own business after many years in corporate America.

The rally was a perfect opportunity to 1) brush up on my elevator speech for upcoming Affiliate Summit, 2) spread the word about Blog Indiana, 3) meet new people, 4) learn about other businesses, and 5) remember why I am excited about what I do.

If you have the chance to attend an Indiana Business Rally or something similar in your town, you absolutely need to give it a shot. For $5 and a couple of hours of my time, I walked away feeling like a million bucks.