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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guests for this episode is Wayne Michell and July of 2016, Wayne was named president and CEO of the Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce in Nacogdoches, Texas. He has worked with businesses and organizations over the past 45 years in various roles. Wayne is a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management and has served on the institute faculty for over 22 years. He’s taught chamber executives and nonprofit leaders from Maine to California. Wayne has worked for associations on the local, state and national level. He’s a past president and CEO of the Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce, former director of state services for the United State JCS, Executive Vice President of the Maine paper industry information office, former Executive Vice President for the Maine publicity Bureau, past president of the Maine JCS, past president of the Maine association of Chamber of Commerce executives, former CEO of the Augusta Board of Trade and former member of the Board of Directors for the Texas Association of chamber executives. In 1991, Wayne founded Broadcom, Broadcom provided a variety of services to state and national corporations and nonprofits. Wayne has been a registered lobbyist in Maine and Washington, DC. But Wayne, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.
Wayne Michell 3:38
Well, first of all, thank you Brandon for the invite to participate here today. And it brings back my institute faculty days and the opportunity to share all of the things that that I’ve learned good or bad in my 40 plus years of experience. After you read that resume, you can come to the conclusion quickly I can’t hold the job
around so frequently but all kidding aside, this is this industry is nonprofit world we live in a chamber world and not in the association world for me has been has been absolutely wonderful. I I have enjoyed my 40 plus year career in this in this field here. I think the you asked me to share an interesting statistic and that is that I spent most of my youth overseas in there in Taiwan or in Germany growing up so when my family finally settled in my in my late in my late school years high school years back here in the United States. It it was great to be re acclimated to the American way of life after living in in in China and and enjoying it for those many years and and you have enormous appreciation for this country and the and and many blessings that offer so. But I don’t regret a moment the opportunity I had to grow up overseas.
Brandon Burton 5:13
Right now both my parents were military brat, so living all over from Spain to Turkey to Japan and all over the place. So I can appreciate that and probably see a lot of similarities between our backgrounds there. But why don’t you take a moment and share with us a little bit more about the Nacogdoches county chamber just to give us an idea of maybe sizes, size of the chamber staff budget, scope of work, things you guys are involved with, just to help set the table for our discussion today?
Wayne Michell 5:47
Well, first of all, it’s great to be here Nacogdoches County, and especially the city of Nacogdoches, which is which is heralded as the oldest town in Texas 300 plus years old. The Chamber itself is over 100 years old as well. So we have a long and proud history here in Nacogdoches, we’re currently just a hair above 600 members. And we have a very diverse membership base everything from manufacturing, to retailing to, to distribution, you name it, we probably are engaged with it here. What I love most about an academician is is is the is the collaboration between the various organizations in town, we play so well together. And I think that helps us become more effective in accomplishing the objectives we have in serving our community here today, at my staff is typically about five. Right now we’re down one person, but will remedy that in the next few weeks, I suspect. And I’m proud to say that my Executive Vice President Kelly, Augustine is an institute graduate, as am I. So we’ve got the institute experience behind us. And we’ll be sending to other staff members to either the TC AC Institute program or the US Chamber program in the next year. So we take professional development very seriously. And we are a four star accredited chamber, which we’re also proud of, and we’ll be moving into the accreditation process in the next in the next couple of months are re accreditation for hopefully obtaining the fifth star.
Brandon Burton 7:28
Awesome. That is great. You guys are rolling and glad to see you’re sending to more staff to institute here in the near future as fantastic. So for our discussion, for our topic for discussion today. Rather, we decided to focus our discussion around something that either has been addressed or has been talked about, or has, at least the idea has been kicked around in a lot of people’s minds in the chamber world. And that is the idea of killing sacred cows. I think a lot of times the idea is there and the need is there to kill these sacred cows but there’s a lot of fear around it. But we’ll we’ll dive into that discussion much deeper as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 10:58
All right, Wayne, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break as we talk about sacred burning sacred cows, or killing sacred cows, doesn’t matter. I’m not prejudiced one way or another how we kill them, but we got to kill them, whether it’s by fire something else. But there is a lot of fear around getting rid of programs and, and things that your chamber is really identified with, you know, a lot of I think that’s the problem is a lot of times these programs and scope of work become something that really becomes the identity of the chamber, sort of get rid of those programs. I think a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around it. But how have you come to terms with being able to kill sacred cows and be able to move forward with more important work?
Wayne Michell 11:48
Well, first of all, I think I don’t know of a man or woman in the chamber business. Certainly a CEO that hasn’t inherited or, or had created a sacred cow with no organization. And I always define a sacred cow as a program or project that has run its course, it’s no longer needed by the membership. And I’ll give you a couple of Wayne isms as we go through this chat this morning, Brandon. But it is often difficult for chambers to move away from traditional projects and programs. But there’s a necessity to do it, especially in this changing economic environment. I often say that one of the things, one of the things we need to ask ourselves, every year about everything that we’re engaged in is the relevance of what we’re doing. And whether or not it’s the most important utilization of chamber resources. And I’ve always said that the resources break down into three different areas, staff time, volunteer time, and financial resources. If you don’t have the money, the staff or the volunteers to do something, you probably ought not to be doing it. And every year, something comes along, that we need to be engaged in a surprise in our community, the loss of a major industry, a catastrophe locally. All sorts of different things that happen that requires us to at least refocus our energies and our resources in order to preserve our economic base, and our and make our communities hopefully more attractive for investment. So I think it I think you can’t attack the sacred cow without some degree of risk as a CEO, and how you do it safely, I think is the key to success on this. So I I’ve got some thoughts or so how you approach it, or why it’s difficult to, to to eliminate those things. I mean, sacred cows typically have members and commute in, both in the within the chamber and within the community that are emotionally committed to the project. They may be founders of the program. I, the things I created as a chamber CEO will be included at some point in my obituary, either the first second or third paragraph. And yes, it I can say I’m objective, but the truth of the matter is, it is tough. When somebody takes a look at your program, sometimes the sacred cows create income, sometimes the community so, so committed to it and and, and expects it every year that it’s tough to walk away from. So those are the you know, those are least the approaches to sacred cows. Brendan,
Brandon Burton 14:44
so you had mentioned that as an executive, there’s always some level of risk when you talk about killing a sacred cow. At what point and I liked how you identified it as saying that the sacred cows a program project that has run its course, but at what point does see where this program project has run its course. And now it’s worth the risk of taking it on because of all those other factors of people being emotionally connected, or there’s it’s an income generator, there’s certain expectations in your community. So how do you balance that? Where you say, yep, now’s the time, we need to tackle this, this program or project that has run its course?
Wayne Michell 15:23
Well, I will tell you this brand, and I’ve tried to make their decision rather than my decision or my recommendation idea. And I do that by approaching it by saying, I think there are questions we need to ask ourselves. You heard me say at the beginning of this, this chap that in I have a few Wayne is one one. Wayne ism is a to many chambers that perform programs and projects based on tradition, and not based on the needs of the membership. If you can’t, if you can’t make a direct link between what you’re doing and what they need, then you probably ought not to be doing it. The second Wayne isn’t my answer is that every chamber has sacred cows. And at least once a year, someone needs to stick a fork in it, to see if it’s still relevant to the needs of the membership. See, if it’s when I say someone, I want my board and a retreat to look at every program or project and ask Is this still the most important utilization of chamber resources? And, and, and the third Wayne ism, I’d say it would be just because you’re making money on a program or project doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it. Money ought not to be the motivating factor. It shouldn’t be again, based on ROI, what return on investment, do we provide our members, I was engaged in a program a while back where we spent over $30,000 of the organization’s resources to execute. And on the way back from where we where we implemented that project. I had a long drive. And the question I kept saying, Well, what were the deliverables out of this project? What did that 30,000 Give my members? And you know, what? I, we reinvented that project, and we in order to be able to answer that question more comfortably. But we need every year to come to that conclusion. You ask how we do it safely? Right. From from a staff standpoint? Well, in my opinion, what we need to do is, it’ll Fiberon anything in the last in the last 30 years of my career. I think the first 10 years of my nonprofit career, I flew by the seat of my pants. I you know, I went on hunches and guesses and estimations. And I think the last 30 years, I have a great appreciation on the value of data. And on every program or project. I want to collect data, which starts with surveys. And I distill that down on every project project to three questions. If we do a trade show and somebody buys a booth at that trade show, we need to ask that woman or man, What value did this program have to your company or your business? And I have three questions great value, some value or little or no, in the vast consensus is little or no, then we’re going to we’re going to visit that project and determine whether we should be continuing now. We need to ask that question on not everything we do in our organizations, and not make some assumption is that people and when I collect that data I liked, I like to put it in a form where I can present it to my board. I give them an honest assessment of what the project did at the end. But then I let them know what the customers our members feel about that program or project. I had one Expo I remember my early years of chamber business we knit and probably 40,000, which would probably be 100,000. In today’s dollars, which shows you how long ago it was. Yeah. So it was a successful project. And I’m talking about knitting after staff time and everything else is calculated. Yeah. At the end of the program, I surveyed the 150 booths. And 70% of them said little or no value in the survey result. And so when I followed up and said, if you have little or no value to them, Why did you participate? And they said to support the chamber. That’s the wrong reason for them to be there. Right. I love their commitment and but we killed that project and next year based on the data and the feedback we had,
Brandon Burton 19:55
and we’re making good money though. You know what
Wayne Michell 19:59
Have we had to we had is that what we’re in business for just to make money, we’re in business to serve our communities and our customers, our members first. And so when my board saw that, the vast majority viewed that thing not as an investment, but as as a contribution. They wisely said, it’s time to move on. Money is not the motivating factor for doing an expo, we thought it was our business development. It had it had run its course,
Brandon Burton 20:29
Brendon? Yeah, I can see where somebody could say this is a successful program. Is it successful Expo? Because we made X amount of money? Yeah, X amount of dollars. And they may not want to ask those questions, because they don’t want to hear the answer. That was little to no value. So I think it’s a great idea of asking or providing these surveys for every program and project just across them, it’s, you don’t apply a filter on it ahead of time to decide whether or not to do the survey. It’s just part of everything you do.
Wayne Michell 21:02
Absolutely. And today, with, with the tools of technology that we have available to us, there’s no excuse for us not testing the value of our programs, each and every one of them. I think that that’s that’s a key. And here’s where this becomes complicated for those of us in the staff and volunteer leadership, when the woman or man created that that trade show is still around, active in the chamber meeting, you know, with us in the community, it becomes you know, let me tell you, you’re going to hear, you need to be prepared to hear from those folks. And to make your case when you try to do eliminate that, that program that they have an enormous emotional commitment to. Sometimes I’m successful in that, but I believe that sales job to the volunteer leadership, if they agree, the program needs to be either massively revised, or eliminated, guess what? Then they need, they need to be leading the charge, not the CEO of the chamber, and not the staff, the staff. So the staffs obligation is to collect the data and, and to present the results. Right. And I
Brandon Burton 22:12
think it may be a good idea, even with some of those community players who may be the founder, those who are emotionally involved with it to as you have those discussions, or have you, your volunteers have those discussions, to help them really find what their real identity is in the community. And maybe it aligns with some of those chamber things, being able to convene people maybe to be in a champion for business, rather than the identity being that particular event that they found it or, you know, I think there’s so much emotion to it, when it becomes your identity, that there might be other ways of approaching that to show where their value really lies, and maybe get them to buy in on the next thing, you know, that will maybe they have other ideas that could be a value
Wayne Michell 23:00
you’re spot on. I mean, I was always fun to sing when I was teaching it Institute. And it’s and I learned this, you know, I add a 30 year absence from the chamber management world I, I started out, you know, running a chamber in Augusta, Maine at the Kennebec Valley Chamber in the mid 80s. And then reenter the chamber world in the in the in 2016. And what I learned in the first six months of being here at NEC noches at this chamber is I could not run my chamber today, inaccurate notice the way I ran my chamber in the mid 80s, and be relevant. And if if I attempted to do that, we wouldn’t be a dismal failure today. And we we as change as CEO is better be prepared to change as, as the needs of the community change to stay relevant. And that means you need to have capacity, you need to have staff money and volunteers to do something, you can’t do 1000 things with a chamber, everybody, I don’t care what the size of your chamber is, we all have limitations. And they just they break down those three areas. So I’d rather get rid of something that’s no longer needed, and put something that has greater value and return on investment to our communities in its place. But it’s tough to do that because people are wedded to tradition. And that’s where, you know, it does put us at risk profession when we raise, raise questions like that because somebody’s gonna say, Wait a second, that’s my baby. Yes, what your baby’s grown up, and it’s about ready to and there were other ways to do it too. You can spin off a project or program to another organization. If the community doesn’t like is running the course. Great. Let somebody else do it. Yeah. And find another host for that program. If you can’t find another host I think that should speak volumes about the relevance of that project.
Brandon Burton 25:03
That is very true. Yeah, spin it off to another host and see that feedback as it comes in. But another thought I had is some of these programs, some of these community events, they, like you said, they’re steeped in tradition, because we tag on, you know, 37th, annual, you know, festival or parade or whatever it is. So it becomes an expectation, which at the beginning might have been a good idea marketing wise to have that going and have that expectation for each year. But when it comes to the end of its course, that can really come back to haunt you, when you’ve you know, tacked on the what year it is, you’re doing this festival? So be careful of that. I guess.
Wayne Michell 25:45
You’re absolutely right. I mean, it does add a level of difficulty and in moving along on those things. And I, you know, I look, I’m on the latter stages of my chamber career here, probably. But I will say this, nothing, nothing bothers me more than boring programs. Even if you don’t eliminate the darn thing, at least every I don’t like go into programs are the same every day, if I’m bored, imagine how my members feel about it. Right? So at the very least if you if you challenge the relevance, or stick a fork into a program and say, okay, is this still necessary, at least at the very least change the darn thing? So that you know, so that there’s something new, exciting I, I challenge my staff colleagues and my and my volunteer leaders, my committee chairs, is that look, don’t do it the same way. We did it last year. But we got a plan, we got a strategy. You know what? I understand that, but it’s the same plan you had three years ago, right? If you can’t have new and improved and show me something different than what you know, they have run its course.
Brandon Burton 26:55
That’s right. That’s great. And hopefully this is this conversation is getting the wheels spinning in the minds of people listening and in really evaluating what what are some of those sacred cows that their organization? How can they start having these conversations with those stakeholders and with those volunteers to and their board members to be asking those questions? Is this still relevant? Is this still the best use of your time and resources as a chamber? I think that that question right, there is so key to just continue being relevant as a chamber. But I wanted to ask as we start wrapping things up, what might be a tip or an action item that you would suggest for chamber who is listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level?
Wayne Michell 27:40
Well, first of all, find out what other folks are doing. And I don’t just mean in your region I’m talking about nationwide. The advantage I had in being a chamber consultant for 25 years, is that I had the opportunity to facilitate hundreds, literally hundreds of board retreats. And I always left almost every chamber that I was working with, with with a new idea or something. So in this day and age is it with with the with the technology and social media, things that we have available to us look at what folks are doing, I visit websites, I visit, I look at programs of work, I look at staff structure, and and and constantly reevaluate what we’re doing based on what the industry norms, are there extraordinary women and men out there that are leading these organizations. And let me tell you something. If you think after being on an institute faculty for 22 years, I learned at all, you’re sorely mistaken, every day, it seems like I learned something new about this industry in this job. And I think that’s what keeps us relevant. The learning process doesn’t stop at any point in his business. COVID showed us all that we had to reinvent the way we we serviced our members, and how we communicate with our members and how and how we added value to our membership. So that’s, that’s my tip is please, programs like what you’re offering here, Brendan, are essential. They’re absolutely essential to to us. And I’ll be honest with you, I heard myself saying things in this discussion with you. And it was a little voice in the back of my head that said, hey, Michel, if you’re so damn smart, I’m coming. You’re not doing that. There’s an element of that. And I think that I think that that’s, you know, in the history of candor, I haven’t learned it all yet. And, and I’ve been doing this job for the better part of 40 years. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 29:51
alright, you’ve learned it, but you haven’t learned the lesson yet. Right?
Wayne Michell 29:54
Maybe Yeah,
Brandon Burton 29:56
yeah. I love it. I love the honesty and candor there That’s great. So I like to ask anything you kind of touched on it a little bit there. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Wayne Michell 30:15
Well, first of all, you know, when I first joined this, we were primarily if there was, wasn’t a lot of hard edges on Chambers of Commerce doing a job, we were a social organization, communities used to collaborate and, and that networking, I’ve seen chambers today play a much more serious and much more critical role in representing their communities. And that’s going to be an area of advocacy, we’re going to see chambers in the future, we’ll be less loved by folks other than our members. Because if we’re doing our job, people are going to be angry at us. But I, my constituents, I know where my bread is buttered as a chamber CEO in 2023. And that’s with representing the, the men and women that are paying my bills and are trying to do business in a regulated world. And our job is to be that wall, between the regulation and the business owner. And to try it, you know, and that, you know, the US Chamber of Commerce does an absolutely incredible job on the federal level. Here in Texas, we’re blessed to have Glen hammer and the Texas Association for Business, doing a great job on the state level. But those of us on the local level, guess what we are the most important lobbyist of the business community has. And if we fail to communicate with regulators and legislators, our businesses are going to be underserved. So to answer your question, where we’re going to change, and this, this applies to chambers at all sizes, is that we’re going to have to become more aggressive and more effective in a advocacy area, to represent the business community and be more effectively. And that and that will make us less loved by those folks other than the ones that are paying or paying our salaries. But guess what? They need representation. And today, it’s a difficult word to do business. I mean, that’s the bottom line.
Brandon Burton 32:07
Well, really any say be in less love. But really, I mean, most people work for somebody, if they’re not working for themselves, if they’re working for themselves, they shouldn’t be a member of the chamber, they should be investing in the work the Chamber’s doing, but if they’re an employee of that person, they should still want pro business, you know, policy and candidates and you know, everything in the in the community going for pro business. So I, I don’t know, I might push back that there might not be as as little love as you think, you know, there might be more love for chambers of actually stepping up and doing meaningful work.
Wayne Michell 32:41
So it’s funny, I think back years ago, I have a project, I had an issue that we had taken a very public stand on in the chamber. And it was a front page article. And I remember walking through the local supermarket with my cart, and having a woman blast me for the position that we took on that issue. And I I was I was tactful, and and so I went back to my office, and my board chairman, my board chairman called me just out of the blue and, and he detected I wasn’t very happy at that moment. He said, What’s up waiting? And I said, Well, Bill, I said, I just got blasted in the supermarket. And I said, I’m just recovering from it. I said the woman was angry with the position that you folks asked me to share. And he said, and you’re you’re, you’re doing what nice, and I’m just sitting here trying to rehabilitate, he said, I’ll be right down, and the other one was corroding drove to my office. You can’t imagine you shut the door. And he looked at me and he said, What do you want out of this deal? And I said, just and I use the words, I said, Look, I want to be loved, you know? And he looked at me and he said, Let me tell you, based on the position you took on our behalf, your love by the people that are sending you check, move on. And you know what? He’s absolutely right. If I do my job from time to time, somebody shouldn’t be angry at me. But that doesn’t mean that you know, I kiddingly say just because they’re wrong, doesn’t mean I don’t love them. And I suspect from time to time, I may be wrong, and hopefully they’ll love me, in that case, too. But that’s where the engine is. Look, we didn’t do any of that in the hardly any of that in the 70s and 80s. Let me tell you this job today, there, you’re making decisions on a routine basis now that if you’re doing your job well, we’ll just got give me 100% consensus on everything. It goes with the territory. But I will tell you this. I think I’ve evolved because I’ll be honest, we I kind of enjoy it today. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be saying I just want to be loved anymore. I just want to be right.
Brandon Burton 34:54
Right, right. Yeah. No, I think you’re right. If you’re not if you’re not Making a stance, you know, if you are making a stance, you will have people that are upset. So if you’re not making people upset, that means you’re not making a strong enough stance. So, Wayne, I’ve appreciated the insights and experience that you shared with us so far, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect with you and learn more from you throughout your career, and specifically how you tackle killing sacred cows, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Wayne Michell 35:32
Well, they’re certainly welcome to contact me here at the chamber at my email addresses president@nactx.com. And that’s probably the best way Brandon to get a hold of me. Know, give me a chance to but I have a question or a comment. Listen, I suspect there’ll be a few out there that probably disagree with some of the things that I’ve said, but I’m willing to, I’m willing to to, to accept that. And maybe, maybe they’re right, and I’m wrong. So if they’ve got a counter point of view, I certainly would welcome that. But at the same time, this can be a lonely business, if anybody ever wanted to anybody who ever wants to chat on the telephone, they’re welcome. I suspect your chat, you’ll you’ll share my telephone number here at the chamber. And they’re certainly welcome to call me and and we can we can talk about on one on one basis. Like I said, it can be a lonely business, because there’s not a lot of folks that do what we do in our region. So
Brandon Burton 36:36
that’s right. Yeah, yeah. And I will put that in your phone number and email in the show notes for this episode. So people can look that up. And there’s truth in that there’s a loneliness and leadership for sure you’re making stances that other people don’t totally understand or agree with. But absolutely, it’s important to have that network of people to lean upon and to learn from and and, yeah, this is, it’s been a great discussion. I really do appreciate you spending time with us today on the podcasts. And I think this I think it should motivate some people that are listening to really take a deep look at their organization, see what changes there are that that might need to be addressed. So thank you for that. Right.
Wayne Michell 37:20
Thank you, Ron. And thanks for the opportunity to join you today. This has been fun.
Brandon Burton 37:25
Brandon Burton 29:48
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