Category: Advocacy

Policy & Advocacy with Brian Francis

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Brian Francis. Brian is founder and CEO of Lumin Strategies, a firm that helps Chambers of Commerce build eight plus advocacy programs through one on one consulting and a signature of advocacy framework online program. Brian’s experience covers nearly all facets of the policy and political world from political campaign leadership on successful bond referendum to successful advocacy as a registered lobbyists. He is past public affairs officer for Mecklenburg County and past vice president of public policy programs at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. He founded lumen strategies in 2016. This year, Brian joins the faculty for the US Chamber Institute of Organizational Management. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Davidson College, whose basketball program he’s supported since before Steph Curry. Brian, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Brian Francis 3:11
great. Thanks, Brandon. I’m really excited to be with you all today. And you hit on one interest, perhaps interesting thing about me I’m big, big college basketball fan. So the last couple months have obviously been a lot of fun for me, both for my alma mater, Davidson College, but also in the Big East. My son is a freshman at Butler this year. And so we’ve been following them. A more controversial thing about me perhaps one of my passions is that I think we should eliminate timezones. And we can certainly talk about that. But that’s probably a different podcast.

Brandon Burton 3:42
Yeah, you can get on your soapbox there for a moment right. Now, that’s great. So I’d like for you to take just a few minutes and tell us a little bit about lumens strategies, what the company is like, who you serve, and it’s about advocacy, but just maybe in a brief nutshell, to kind of set the stage for discussion. Yeah,

Brian Francis 4:04
probably like a lot of companies. You know, we’ve evolved over time. So we’ve been in business for about eight years, we started as a strategic communications consulting firm, that really dabbled in a lot of different areas. But over the last several years, we’ve really honed in on chambers of commerce and helping them build advocacy programs. And we we do that two ways. One, we work one on one with chambers in a consulting role many times serving essentially as the VP of public policy for their Chamber of Commerce. In fact, some of our clients put us on their staff page as their Director of Advocacy or VP of public policy. And we also work with chambers of commerce through our signature online program, the advocacy framework. This is oftentimes for chambers that maybe are a little bit smaller, aren’t looking for the kind of the investment required to have somebody working directly with them. But what to get involved with advocacy wants to learn how to do advocacy, and through our program, we basically teach them how to institute and run a public policy or advocacy program.

Brandon Burton 5:06
That’s very helpful. And as listener might guess, we’ve decided on a topic for our discussion today to be centered around advocacy since you guys are kind of the experts on that. So we look, we look forward to dive in deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Brian, we’re back. So before the break, when you were telling us a little bit about lumen strategies, it’s obviously a company that you built around helping chambers of commerce and build advocacy programs. Why do you think that advocacy programs are so important for chambers to be involved with?

Brian Francis 7:23
Well, if you think about chambers of commerce, historically, really, the whole reason we have Chambers of Commerce is to help businesses in a community grow. And chambers do a lot of great work around networking activities, helping their members meet potential customers. But I think a core part of helping the business community grows, ensuring that there is a public policy climate that allows for businesses to grow. And really, Chambers of Commerce were instituted to represent business interests in their community. And so from a foundational perspective, I think it’s really important. I think it’s also really important as you talk to maybe your higher investor members, you know, a lot of times if you have a manufacturer in your community, they’re not looking to sell to the community, their market is global. If they’re going to get involved in the chamber, they need a different value proposition. And really the value proposition for them is what are you doing to make the overall business climate better, so their business can succeed? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 8:25
And I know chambers of all different sizes, you know, they’re in different areas of spectrum, right, as far as being involved with advocacy. So I’m hopeful that our conversation today will help shed some light on different ways to get involved on an advocacy front, whether that’s bringing in somebody like yourself to help with that effort, or just to expose them in ways to to better support those business members that they have. So kind of along those lines with advocacy. I think there’s a real argument to have ag advocacy as an investor hook. Right. So as you’re going after new members, you’re trying to bring in new businesses to join the chamber. How would you see using advocacy as an investor hook? Well,

Brian Francis 9:15
I really do think it is something and you have to think about your high level investors, it is a way to get them to participate more in your chamber and to put more money into your chamber. And you there’s some four boxes out there people will have probably seen when you think about your Chamber members, you have chambers who Chamber members who are looking to get something from your chamber, and you have Chamber members who are looking to get something done. And one of the things we talked about is you we often think about the return on investment for members and a lot of members are looking for that return on investment. And if you think about you know a lot of your smaller members, your local retailer or maybe a residential realtor or a copier salesman, they’re looking to find customers and they’re going to measure their return on how many customers? And how much revenue Did you directly produce for them? Like I mentioned for a manufacturer or maybe even a bank or a bigger member of your community, and oftentimes the longer member longer time members of your community, those who are the pillars of the community, as it were, they’re not really looking for that so much the return they’re looking for is, how much can they grow their business, because you have helped foster a climate that is positive to them. I would also say, you know, for those smaller members, there is a direct return as well in in North Carolina, a couple years ago, there was a tax issue related to PPP loans, that local Chambers of Commerce got behind and ultimately saved small business in North Carolina $640 million through their advocacy. Now that 640 million was 5000. Here, 5000. There, but that was it made a big difference to a lot of small chamber members. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:57
absolutely. And I think there’s a lot of examples through the pandemic, and the PPP loans and things of that nature, where you can really see the advocacy efforts of chambers really being recognized, especially by those businesses that maybe were more transactional, to begin with, and kind of moves them over to the transformational side of things and understanding the bigger picture of what chambers can do. You didn’t necessarily use those that phrase of transactional, the transformational, but are there other ways that you can see where you can take somebody from a transactional relationship to more than transformational in this kind of a advocacy conversation

Brian Francis 11:36
100%. And in fact, one of the things I would say is you need to talk about that value. I’ve seen this with a lot of chambers we work with they they’ll have a tiered do structure, which I 100% support, and I think it is the direction all the chambers need to go and if they don’t have one already, but when you get to those higher tiers, the value that the Chamber often puts on that piece of paper is we will give you a foursome at our golf tournament, or we will give you a table at our annual meeting. And a lot of times, that’s not necessarily what those larger investors are looking for. What they’re really looking for, is we saved your company money by helping navigate this regulation or changing this local zoning regulation, or, you know, we were at the forefront of this tax policy change that is making a difference of 10s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars for your business. So part of it is changing what you talk about and recognizing the and giving credit to those people because of your investment, we were able to do this advocacy. And because we were able to do this advocacy, you saw this return.

Brandon Burton 12:45
Absolutely, yeah. But just the examples he gave there, I can see where some members may say I’m, I’m really just not a golfer like that doesn’t appeal to me, or I really don’t need to go to another meeting, like as much as I appreciate the prime table at the annual meeting, I don’t really care to go, you know, whereas if they can look to the chamber and say, Man, you guys really helped us tackle this big issue of child care, or workforce or whatever it may be, then they can really see where the needle is moving with their business with the involvement with the chamber. So

Brian Francis 13:18
absolutely, I mean, we I think we forget, sometimes sometimes it can be a hassle to have to try to fill a table. And so you’re actually making your members life more difficult on by trying to give them something that they really aren’t looking for. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:32
So great arguments for being involved with advocacy, what from your experience, and just reasonings that you can see why. What holds the chamber back from getting involved with advocacy.

Brian Francis 13:44
I would say the first thing and I hear this all the time is chamber presidents executive directors and their boards say, we don’t want to get involved in politics. And oftentimes that comes from a bad experience that maybe they had years ago where somebody said the chamber is too political. And so we’re dropping our membership. And one of the things that we emphasize to people, we’re not talking about getting involved in politics, we’re talking about getting involved in policy. And here’s the distinction that I make politics is about people and power. Policy is about laws and regulations. And I will put the caveat out there. There are some chambers out there who get involved in politics, they have PACs, they endorse candidates. And I would say that’s kind of at the end, you talked before about a spectrum that’s at the end of the spectrum. If you’ve never done anything in the political realm or the policy realm before, that’s not where you start. Where you start is identifying the issues that matter to your members and working on those issues, regardless of who supports them. So this isn’t, hey, we’re going to support this ordinance because the mayor asked us to it’s we’re going to support this ordinance because we had a rigorous process to identify what is important to our members. And they’ve told us this is an important issue that needs to be corrected in order for their business to grow.

Brandon Burton 15:03
Absolutely. And I would even say even some of the pushback that they might have gotten in the past, I think getting involved with politics rather than policy is an obvious reason why they might hear some of that pushback, but there’s always going to be somebody who’s not happy with something, and they tend to be the loudest, right? So if you’ve got 1000 members, or 400 members, and you hear that one squeaky wheel, you know, that’s not indicative of what everybody else is thinking. So everybody else is cheering you on, even though they may not be coming to your front door to patch on the back.

Brian Francis 15:37
You know, that’s 100% Correct. And I imagine most of your audience are chamber staff, folks. And that’s one of the things that we talk about. When that squeaky wheel starts to squeak, we think it’s very important for your chamber to have a member driven policy process where you have a committee that’s developing the policies, it’s reviewed by your executive committee, it’s approved by your board. So when that squeaky wheel calls up the director and says, Why did you decide this? The director can say, Whoa, I didn’t decide this, this was decided by our members, by the people who participate, who learned about the issue and identified it as being something important for us to be involved

Brandon Burton 16:15
in. Right, right. And I think for all the staff to be able to understand this is how you respond when when there is opposition. I think that’s very important. So I can understand your chambers may not want to get involved with politics. But to think more on the policy side, I think would hopefully generate some interest for chambers to get involved. Are there other reasons that that you can see why chambers hesitate from getting involved with advocacy? Yeah, so

Brian Francis 16:45
I think once chambers make the decision, they want to get involved in policy. The next step is where do I start? And where do I find the time to do it. So a lot of chamber executives don’t have experience in the policy world. They, they literally don’t know where to start. And then also, you run into this all the time, especially with your smaller chambers. You know, there’s 1000, things that they have going on, you need to get your invoices out, you’ve got business after hours, you have to plan annual meetings coming up. The local school system wants to talk about workforce development, where do you find the time to put together a policy program and and I’ll say, that’s really where we step in. Both from our past experience, I’ve been involved in the political and policy arena for more than 25 years, we kind of have the expertise of how the process works. But then also, from the capacity standpoint, we try to make it easy for our clients in either our consulting or our online program by providing email templates, draft agendas, really all the work that needs to be done behind the scenes we do for them, so that they can just go out and execute on on running the policy program. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:00
no, I can see where where the expertise and capacity could be, you know, hurdles to overcome. Maybe starting with with expertise, if you don’t feel like you’re equipped to be able to handle this, what are some solutions or ways to overcome it? I think every chamber needs to be involved on some level on that spectrum with advocacy and policy. But how do you overcome that big hurdle of not having, you know, the not being fully equipped, or you may not feel like you’re equipped enough to handle these these topics? Well,

Brian Francis 18:32
I think the first thing is to accept and feel confident that it’s okay that you don’t understand every issue in the middlee. Elected officials don’t lobbyists don’t There are a lot of niche areas. And so the first thing I would do is say, look for your experts. So if there is an issue that a lot of members are talking about health insurance costs, and you have an insurance agent or representative who’s a member of your chamber, go to them to look for information, go to the local hospital system. If broadband is a a coming issue in your community and and investing there, look to the telecom providers that may be involved. So within your membership, you have a lot of expertise. And one thing you can do is look to your members to help educate you on their areas of of expertise. The second thing I would do and this varies a little bit from state to state, but oftentimes the State Chamber of Commerce can be a great resource. We work in South Carolina quite a bit and the South Carolina chamber does a great job every week of putting out a an email and a social media post that has just three things to know. And oftentimes, those are focused on policy issues that are moving through their legislature. And so you can often kind of repurpose that content and share it back out to your members and establish yourself as an expert just by finding the information for your members that they don’t have time to find.

Brandon Burton 19:57
Yeah, and that that helps with The Capacity stand front too, if you’re able to have a trusted source, like a State Chamber who’s doing a lot of the legwork, they have staff members who are facing, you know, the advocacy issues, and being able to put that out, be involved, like tap into that resource, but then repurpose it, then it shows Hey, we’re tapped into knowing what’s in the know, and what’s important to you. And, and all of that, are there other ways as far as tapping into the capacity issue, that time issue for chambers with getting involved? Or is that the the main thing you’d go to?

Brian Francis 20:34
So I think those are definitely helps. You know, I would say, if you have volunteers who have capacity, this is a great way to plug them in. One of my favorite tricks, so to speak, is to find a former chair of your board, who still wants to be involved. A lot of times, you know, these chairs kind of they they have their chairmanship year, they’ll have their immediate past chair year, and they still want to be involved with the chamber, they’re not sure what to do next. And so getting them involved in chairing a policy committee, you’re drawing on somebody who has a lot of experience and a lot of leadership within your your organization. And so you can rely on them. You know, and I’d say, your drawl from other Chambers of Commerce. You know, a lot of that one of the important things to get started is developing a legislative agenda. And Chambers of Commerce typically will put those on to their websites. So go around to other communities that are of like size to yours in the state are maybe even a little bit bigger, maybe more involved with it and see what they’re talking about. And use that as a jumping off point.

Brandon Burton 21:39
I love that. It’s it’s always good to collaborate good ideas from other chambers. And and the the idea of using a past chair, I think is is crucial, because they’re intimately involved with the the goings on with the chamber. They understand the mission and vision they’ve been highly involved. And to be able to keep them involved in a meaningful way, I think is a great way to utilize a past chair, that’s a great idea.

Brian Francis 22:03
Well, the other thing I would say to with working with other chambers in advocacy, coalition building is really important. And so sometimes people are like, Why do you still want to take what somebody else did, and I can make some arguments, you shouldn’t just do that, because you want your members invested in your policy positions. So I always say use them as ideas, rather than just taking something old cloth from somebody else. But once you say, hey, childcare, and ensuring that we have more childcare workers is an important issue to us, and we want to work on it, you can leverage the other chambers who have said the same thing to work together. And not everybody has to be the leader and carry all the water on each issue. Sometimes simply saying me to our chamber to supports this can really help move something forward. And the other people who have already identified that issue will be happy to have you working with them, and won’t really see it as you’re taking something from them, but rather, you’re adding something to their efforts.

Brandon Burton 23:02
Right. And I think as far as coalition’s go, especially with a regional focus, if you’ve got the chambers within your county or a Tri County area where you’re facing a lot of the similar issues together, it’s one thing from a chamber from another state, there’s still value that can be found there for sure. But you definitely wouldn’t want to copy paste, you know what they’re doing. And then South Carolina if you’re in Tennessee, for example. But if you’ve got other chambers in your county, that you can collaborate together and really build something that’s efficient and meaningful for your members. I agree.

Brian Francis 23:36
And particularly because we’ve really tried to focus our clients on working at the state level, what we have said is at the federal level, it’s just so big. And the process, especially these days is so unwieldy. It’s hard to have influence. And at the local level, a lot of stuff just happens kind of ad hoc, you know, you run into the mayor, and you talk about an issue and it gets resolved. But the state process, it’s it is more of a process. There’s a timeline that needs to be involved. There’s, there’s a lot more work, that move happens to move something through. But chambers really can have a lot of influence. You’re seeing your state reps, hopefully, you’re seeing your state senators, they’re calling on you for advice, and it’s a place where you can really have an impact. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:18
Absolutely, you can make that impact. And I’d like to argue that maybe it does make an impact on the federal level if enough states are doing it and the broader level can see what’s important. But Brian, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for the chamber listening who’s interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What tip or strategy might you offer to them to try to accomplish that goal?

Brian Francis 24:43
So the first thing I would say is have a conversation with your board. You know, this is really I’ve started by saying needs to be a member driven process and that starts with your leader members who are on your board of directors. Talk to them about why you You think advocacy is important, we have on our website or by contacting me, I can send to you a PowerPoint draft presentation that you can literally drop your Chamber’s name into. And it kind of walks through how to have that conversation, a lot of what we talked about today about how to talk to them about being involved in policy, not politics. What you need to do to get started with kind of the steps are that you’ll go through the process, but the very first thing you need to do is have buy in from your board, because this is not an easy thing to do. If it is staff driven, you really need to have that volunteer leadership on board.

Brandon Burton 25:34
Absolutely. So I like asking this question to everyone that I have on the podcast, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian Francis 25:48
So the first thing I would say, obviously, we know we’re a much more global economy. So the the hometown member to member transactions become less and less prevalent, it’s easy to find a website provider who’s across the country across the world. And so I think there is a need for chambers to evolve, and to continue to provide that value. But I would also say, when you look at the political world these days, I would say that we are oftentimes dominated by extreme conversations or folks who are more at the the ideological fringe. And I think there is a need for a common sense, bro business policy advocate in just about every community. And it’s if the chamber is not doing it, we always say if the chamber is not the voice for business, then business has no voice in the community. And so I really think the futures of chambers, if they are going to continue to be relevant, they have to be involved in providing that voice to say, regardless of all the stuff that people are talking about, that elected officials are talking about, here are the things that we really need to do to invest in our community, to invest in our workforce and to promote our businesses so that our economy can continue to thrive.

Brandon Burton 27:07
Right. And I think you hit on the political fringes, I think so much of that we see on the national level, right? Watch news channels and things like that, where you get in the local levels, you get into local policy and and even state policy. And you don’t see quite as you know, dramatic ends of the you know, the those political fringes that the opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s a lot more in the middle. And there’s a lot more that chambers can can stand on as being that same center and being able to bring people together, that I think that that vision you have of chambers, the future, I think is spot on. So thank you for sharing that. I wanted to give you an opportunity, Brian to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or ask for the PowerPoint that you mentioned, to be able to have these conversations at their board, what would be the best way for listener to reach out and connect with you?

Brian Francis 28:04
Well, I’d say there’s two great ways. First of all, you can always email me is bfrancis@luminstrat.com, that’s L u m, I n s t r a t, or connect with me on LinkedIn on Brian Francis, from North Carolina, Davidson College, that should give you enough to find me, we try to put out a lot of content that is helpful for chambers of commerce through the LinkedIn. And so that would be a great place as well. That’s

Brandon Burton 28:32
perfect. And we’ll get that in the show notes as well make it easy to find and, and I would encourage everyone to reach out to Brian and ask for that PowerPoint to be able to start these conversations with your board. They will to get ideas of where on that spectrum you want to jump in at and getting involved with policy and advocacy at your chamber. And, and maybe you’re already involved. But let’s see, you know, how can you continue moving that needle. But, Brian, it’s been great having you with us today. I appreciate you taking some time to deal with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you’ve pulled back the curtain on a lot of important topics and around policy and chambers getting involved and overcoming you know some of the hurdles that they might see as hurdles, but to see that it is possible to move, move past and move through those obstacles to really get involved in a meaningful way. So I appreciate you being on here and sharing your expertise with us. Well,

Brian Francis 29:29
thank you for having me, Brandon. Maybe I can come back and talk about Thompson sometime.

Brandon Burton 29:33
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Civic Engagement with Candance Brake

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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.

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Candance Brake. Candance is the President and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky. She has held the CEO position since 2015 and has a career dedicated to Community and Economic Development. She served as a three term city commissioner from 2004 to 2010, serving on conditions that led to the downtown placemaking strategy and the region shift to a knowledge based economic development strategy. Prior to holding public office, she served as executive vice president of the greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation and deputy judge slash slash executive for the Davies county fiscal court. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Western Kentucky University. She served on numerous boards and Ken Ken Commission’s throughout her career. She’s also a member of ACC and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce executives and the Kentuckians for better transportation. That candidates I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Candance Brake 3:13
Well, thank you so much for having me branded and thanks to Carlos Phillips for passing my name on to you. He’s a rockstar around here. So and hello to all my fellow champ chamber executives. We you know we’re all right now grinding it out. And I’m think we’re all probably dealing with legislative sessions no matter where we live around the country. So it’s it’s such an energizing part of my life to be a part of a group of people who are really pushing our country forward as we push our communities forward sometimes against all the odds. So thanks for having me here today.

Brandon Burton 3:46
Yes, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. Just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to set the yeah for our discussion.

Candance Brake 3:59
So we actually are in the Evansville, MSA to put it in perspective of where we’re located. So we’re close to Illinois, Indiana and content. We’re in Kentucky. So we’re in a tri state area. And we have around 180,000 and RMSA. Ellen’s borough is a town of around 60 in a county of around 120. And our chamber we represent around 1000 members. Our membership goes all the way from health care to nonprofit to churches and mostly predominantly small businesses most chambers are our annual budget is a little over a million dollars. And so we operate small we have a small team of four that serves those 1000 members and we’re always trying to like every other chamber our size, we’re trying to offer more programs and and do more things for our communities because we know that that what we can do even from a programming perspective is going to translate into economic growth for our region. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:58
absolutely. Yeah. for staff to service 1000 members, you guys are hustling you guys are you’ve got really good efficiencies and programs in place. So

Candance Brake 5:08
I would say both I would say yes really lucky to have each other to great team.

Brandon Burton 5:14
Very good. Well, I’m excited for our topic today as we dive into that, around the the idea of civic engagement, and I think you have a unique perspective to bring to this topic. And I think across the country, there’s, you know, chamber chamber leaders from all different walks of life, some that are just starting day one today, and others that have had a whole career as a chamber executive. And you know, maybe some feel like they haven’t been given the keys or the permission to get involved civically, so I’m excited to dive into that with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Candance we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the topic today of civic engagement. So I would like to hear from you. Just to start off, let’s let’s hear from your perspective. What should a chamber be thinking of when it comes to being involved civically in their community?

Candance Brake 7:55
So yeah, I think a lot of that Brandon depends on the size of the community or the chamber is our community. As I said earlier, we’re we’re considered a rural area. But we do have an urban center, we’ve got just a really interesting mix of what we do here economically, but also, you know, with with people who live here, we have a rising M Afghan refugee population, and then several other refugee populations that are coming to our community that we’re very excited about. And we actually have, I believe I’m bragging, but sometimes I can go just a little too far. But I believe we have the highest refugee certification rate in the country. And that’s due to the fact that we have people in our community that are that are working tirelessly to do this. So in that that person who’s in charge of that is actually our chamber executive committee. So we try to have had built a bench that really understands the community engagement piece. People who don’t see big pictures often have a hard time understanding why chambers would need to be involved in civic engagement. You know, but all the the national studies that you’ve seen, show that communities around the country that people are dealing with an ever growing sense of isolation. And isolation is not good for human beings for mental health, but it’s also not good for economies. You know, people need to feel like they’re part of things to be productive citizens. So that’s where we start started. A few years back deliberately, we engaged a data person to look at our civic engagement levels and where they were as compared to around 50 other peer communities around the country. And those peer communities would have been communities without interstates like our community and without for your public universities we have to private colleges in our community, but that public universities we know it was a giant game changer for our community. So we looked at peer communities to see how we stacked up to those with regard to civic engagement. And what we found was we were we were clearly lacking in some some very critical roles. And our board at that point said, Okay, it’s time for us to do something proactive and jumpstart where we are, as a region, or we’re going to fall behind. And that’s when we came together. And we developed a Leadership Institute. And that we started it at the chamber, and we nurtured it over a year long period. And now it is a standalone nonprofit, that it’s a nonpartisan, it’s a think tank, but it’s also a do tank, okay, we’re, we’re they’re really making things happen. But that that organization, which is in our building, but but separate, it’s really, it’s already making some great headway in civic engagement pieces.

Brandon Burton 10:55
That’s fantastic. So I would love to know a little bit more about the Leadership Institute, kind of the purpose and mission behind that kind of the work that’s driven there. But also, as I touched on in the the introduction, those who have been in chamber work long enough, have figured out how hopefully, they figured out how to get a seat at the table, how to be involved civically, but those who are brand new, maybe we can just, you know, work it into the conversation as to where they can feel the ownership and the responsibility to really take charge. You

Candance Brake 11:30
know, and I do think, and this is coming from a female perspective, but I do see, you know, a lot of chamber presidents around the country, this, this disposition is being occupied predominantly more and more by more females, I think. And that’s just anecdotal. But women have a harder time of getting sometimes just taking their seat at the table. That’s what we do. That’s what we need to do. So you know, it’s not a matter of asking for it. It’s just taking it. And, you know, stepping out of our comfort zone, we’re representing the business community, we’re representing nonprofits, and people who want to make things happen. And, you know, to me, anytime I would feel hesitant on getting that seat, I think about this isn’t about me, this is about all the people that I’m representing that write a check to my organization to fund our work. And I have to do this for them. Right.

Brandon Burton 12:22
Yeah. I think that’s a really good perspective to bring that it’s not about you, you gotta get over the uncomfortable kind of situation and just take charge and realize it’s for the people you represent.

Candance Brake 12:33
And that makes it a lot easier to be to push your way in the day when you realize it’s this isn’t about me. This is about, you know, it’s about all those other folks.

Brandon Burton 12:41
It is and as you push a certain agenda to it’s not about you or your political views at all. It’s about representing the business community. So yes, yeah. So tell us a little more about the Leadership Institute, then about what that involves. And kind of the the origins of that and how it’s how it’s become what it is now spun off into its own nonprofit. It

Candance Brake 13:00
was really an origins of, of business community and business leaders around our table and nonprofit execs and higher ed leaders and people that were seeing that we had. We don’t if you don’t know how to say this in a constructive way, but a lack of intergenerational leadership in our community. The majority of our elected officials at that time, it was actually a maybe all of them were white men, Catholic, over the average age, I think was 71. That’s

Brandon Burton 13:35
normal, right?

Candance Brake 13:38
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s city and county. Okay. That was all of our elected officials. Local. So, you know, it’s it was a matter of of the chamber going, Okay. This is not working for us, you know, we have to bring everyone to the table. Everyone has a unique perspective. And we have to create a city where people want to be if we’re going to compete, and we’re all saying this, and everybody that’s listening to it is shaking their head, because this is what we all deal with every day. But but the Leadership Institute was formed on that knowledge and the foundation that we have to do something we can’t be passive, and wait for someone else to do something. A cultural piece in our community has been really over the last 30 years, is to look to elected officials to lead and to kind of acquiesce, the role of citizen engagement to them. So our leadership institute is it’s more about Grassroots Leadership. It’s involving everyone and teaching people in their role as citizen teaching them how to get power for things that matter to them and that they feel like matters to the community. We have bases on the Kansas leadership Center’s adaptive leadership model And we do adaptive leadership training quarterly for people who have been in other leadership programs in the community that are interested. And that’s been really, really interesting and cool to watch. People, the light bulbs come on in people’s eyes, you know, like, oh, I don’t have to be an elected official, I don’t have to make this change. And we have some really great things happening now because of that.

Brandon Burton 15:23
Yeah. So personally, you took civic engagement to another level, right? You worked at the chamber, and then became an elected official for a time period. And all right back to the chamber. And I understand there in Owensboro, there’s a little bit of a history of, of a chamber staff becoming elected officials. So but I’d love to know what perspective that brings for you, as well, from having the chamber point of view. And then as the elected official, and then bringing it back to the chamber. Yeah.

Candance Brake 15:53
And also with the county, because I was on the county staff to was their administrator for a while. So yeah, I think the local government experience as an elected official, but also as a staff person, it gives it really gives you an inside an inside knowledge on the nuances of how they operate, first of all, you know, but also, you know, it’s kind of there’s no mystery in it kind of takes the veil off. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s representative government, and they’re here to represent us. And, you know, that’s all I don’t know. So that’s, you

Brandon Burton 16:27
know, that’s, that’s good. In that experience, was there talk about chambers of commerce that are trying to get the local chamber involved at different things are very siloed. No, the

Candance Brake 16:40
chamber, the chamber was always, what’s the chamber going to think about this? What’s the chamber gonna say? And then, when we did our we did that massive economic development placemaking strategy piece downtown, the Chamber support for that was critical, because we did write attacks to find it was $150 million in infrastructure improvements, and then 40 million from the federal government’s thanks to Senator McConnell. But but we had to raise those, we had to raise taxes. So the chamber coming to that meeting, when we raised it, and we had a, we had a City Commission chamber full of very angry, very loud, as anyone can imagine. And there was, it was one of the toughest meetings I’ve had, and I’ve had some tough ones. But having the chamber there to stand up and support us, was invaluable. It didn’t slow the den of the The cave people, the citizens against virtually everything. But it did, it did. It did give us the wind, I don’t know, in the courage, you know. So as a chamber president, now I know how important our role is, to those elected officials and to the staff, you know, because sometimes the staff are doing things that the elected officials don’t like, but the chamber wants them to do it. So it, you know, we have an important lobbying role within all the things that happen in the community,

Brandon Burton 18:04
right. And every community is so different on what their needs are and what those hot topics are at the moment. But for, for somebody who may be newer in the position, what would be a good first step to try to maybe level up there or get involved civically? And really? No, it’s about taking the seat, but really making the introductions trying to go to lunch with somebody like what what would you suggest, like tactic wise, to try to get involved?

Candance Brake 18:33
So I think I think the adaptive leadership model is the most important, you know, because your core constituents are going to depend on what issues you know, and if you were moving into a new community, I think that would be one of the more difficult chamber roles to take, because you have to find out, you know, who, where’s the power? And who are the players? Who can you trust that you have to do a lot more listening? than speaking for I would say here, you know, and that’s what I did you have to learn the rollback, but you do have to learn? who’s listening to whom, and, you know, who are the experts in what areas and and who are the, you know, we’re the hidden roadblocks or the hidden. I don’t say enemies, but the people that are going to try to kill projects in progress.

Brandon Burton 19:21
Yeah. So do you find that as a chamber, you’re taking issues to your local governments? Or are you seeing what the local governments do and trying to get behind those things that support local business? Or does it go both ways? How does how’s that relationship?

Candance Brake 19:35
It’s absolutely a mixture. You know, it’s there every day is a different, you know, piece of our partnership, but some days, it’s them coming to us and some days, it’s our going to them. But regardless, it’s that partnership is is very important to all of us here. And it’s the only thing that we can when people stopped talking, we stopped moving forward,

Brandon Burton 19:56
right, right. Now I think that’s so key. You So I always like asking this question. So for listeners who are out there who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item, might you suggest that they can maybe try implementing at their own chamber to see some positive results?

Candance Brake 20:17
Well, I think, for smaller chambers, one of the problems is that we don’t have, we don’t have the time to do things that we need to do. And I think one part of what what I did when I got into this position was we had all of these active committees. And I have a different philosophy on that of the committee meetings, because I worked on the echo chamber days where we had small business committee that had to meet once a month, we had to have the programming we had to do, and then staffed for other committees, and all I was doing was staff and committees, and not doing work, or not doing the important work for the community. So we have, we did an essential, basically an inventory on really where we are the chamber, we are a small business committee, I there’s there seems to be, so we eliminated things, and then we shifted to programming. And that has been, that’s been something I think that’s made us very successful. It has helped us engage a different group of people in the community through our programming. And it’s also given us an opportunity to develop some non dues revenue potential. And I mean, we all know that the non dues revenue is very important to our, to our existence.

Brandon Burton 21:32
Yes, no, I think that’s such a key point to touch on and, and really just taking that inventory of, you know, what is it that’s that’s sucking all your time out? Doing

Candance Brake 21:41
this? You know, why are we doing this? And is this really feeding our mission the way it needs to? Right? Yes.

Brandon Burton 21:46
So it’s not only the time, but it’s the energy that gets sucked into, like you were saying these different committees, right. So then when it comes back to that important work of really moving the ball forward, there’s nothing left in the tank. So I think being able to reassess, eliminate, shift those priorities and programming, I think you guys are, that’s, that’s great. A great tip. For listeners to really take inventory and see what they can do.

Candance Brake 22:12
You gotta be brave to do it, because it ruffles feathers. And you have old timers who have had been on the Small Business Committee for 35 years. And you know, that’s that was their thing. So, you know, but you got to find a way to get those people can onboard to. That’s

Brandon Burton 22:25
right. In fact, we just we did an episode a few weeks ago about overcoming the vocal minority. So if you miss sang, go back and listen to that, like

Candance Brake 22:34
we can do. I think we need to know a lot about that. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 22:38
Absolutely. So I like asking everybody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Candance Brake 22:49
Well, I think as our local communities across the country become more nationalized in our politics, I think chambers are going to be more and more important than ever, we have, we have an existential piece, particularly in in areas like islands burrow, where we have lost corporate headquarters, and those corporate headquarters, when they move to other communities around the country, they lose that loyalty that they would have to their local chambers. You know, Walmart was thinking that they’re not members. But we do, you know, everything that we do helps Walmart, and but you look at so many different companies that have taken chambers off of their radar screens. And in essence, what they’re doing is making money in a community. And throughout, then they’ll give some money to a non charity, and then think that checks their block when the chamber is doing the heavy lifting for the charity as well. So we have to figure out how to articulate to those those corporations, why we are important, and get people to understand that and care about it. So I think that’s going to be a real challenge. But the scary part is there’s that big challenge there. But there’s also the vacuum that we have to fill with the leadership piece. And you look around the country, and I look at my colleagues and the great work they’re doing. And and I believe more than ever, you know, and I, I believe that chamber chambers of commerce, can can make our country better I really do. Because they don’t care what party you’re in. They don’t care what your private agendas are. We’re just trying to move the community forward. We’re to me with a great example of, of really how, how our country can work, you know better.

Brandon Burton 24:41
Yeah, no, and I think you hit on something there with really getting that that messaging down to these big corporations that are more national national chains because they do they look at the bottom line and what’s going to make the most profit and then they’ll give something back to the community but it’s not. It’s not hitting where it counts the most. Yeah, it’s for show. It is it is. It’s for show. And I’ve seen that and seen the messaging that these big corporations put out about, essentially just that it’s about the bottom line. Yeah, yeah. So if if anybody hits on something that works well, there, you know, please share it with us. I’ll have you on the podcast, and we’ll talk all about it. Yeah. Both candidates for for anyone listening who would like to reach out and connect with you or learn a little bit more about how you guys approach your civic engagement there in Owensboro, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Candance Brake 25:38
My email, which is cbrake@owensboro.com. That’s love to hear from from colleagues from around the country. Yeah, energizing and empowering because we are really all going through. And I will say one more thing that I would give to a younger or a new person in the chamber world is find another chamber executive, somewhere that’s leading that’s similar to your organization that you can call, and you might be calling to cuss about the the mayor, or you might be calling to cry because your board chair, you know, did something, you know, but But it’s having that person that you can trust. And that really understands, because, as we all know, nobody understands like how insane this world is, until they’ve been in it and the complexities and the balancing act and everything we do every day. There’s just there’s not a lot of folks that understand it. Yeah. So when we talk to chamber time, because chamber time here, you know, one week is actually about two years, it feels like right, I mean, yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:42
so now it’s true. And I think that’s such a great piece of advice. And I would even add to it that as you look to the other chamber executive, the other chamber professional to connect with and have your chamber time. Look at where you are professionally and look at someone who’s maybe a step or two ahead of you, however you determine that. But there’s some real icons in the chamber world. It may seem unattainable to get to where they’re at, if you try to connect with them right away, but look at somebody who’s a step or two ahead of you. That’s doable. You can you can get there and you can look to the adding more people to your chamber time,

Candance Brake 27:21
we all know and we all know Brandon and I know you feel the same way we all know that, that it’s feels makes us feel just as good to be that person that’s called the younger and the more aspiring and makes we could just as much as all of it, you know, as we do when we call the person that’s two years or two things at the wrong from us. It’s yeah, it takes all of us

Brandon Burton 27:40
you get all those reminders of when you were in that position a few years before and like, oh, yeah, that’s why we do this now. Right?

Candance Brake 27:47
And also, you know, it always works out.

Brandon Burton 27:49
That’s right. That’s right. Well, I will get your email in our show notes for this episode. So anyone can look you up there and connect with you. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time today amid your busy chamber schedule to view with us and offer your experience and insights especially on this important topic of civic engagement. So thank you for being with us today.

Candance Brake 28:12
Thank you so much for inviting me and thanks to everyone else for all the great work you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 28:17
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State Chamber as a Resource with Amy Cloud

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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.

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Our guest for this episode is Amy Cloud. Amy currently serves as the Executive Director for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executives. In this role, Amy maintains the level of professional development services that KCCE makes available to the local chamber executives and key volunteers. She activates statewide business advocacy and grassroots networks of local chambers and member companies. She plans and executes her annual conference and several smaller educational events each year. Amy also oversees the KCC e communications advises chamber executives and supports other local chambers in a variety of different ways. Amy has also previously served as executive director at the Jessamine County Chamber and at the Girard County Chamber. That Amy, 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 if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Amy Cloud 3:03
Hey Brandon, thanks for inviting me on your show. This is wonderful. Like you mentioned before I have been in the chamber industry it’s been about 17 years I got my start on a fluke at a chamber in Middle Tennessee and beautiful McMinnville Warren County in Tennessee, so shout out to them. It’s makes me feel old and I’ve been in this industry so long. But anyway, a little bit about me. I’m a proud graduate of the University of Kentucky Go Cats, farm girl at hearts, got a farm with some sheep and cows and horses and my amazing Border Collies got a great partner in crime my husband of almost 30 years and two great kiddos, one’s a freshman in college, and one is a junior in college. So just a little bit about me chamber. Life is in my blood. And it’s great to find a job that you’re passionate about. I’ve been fortunate enough to not only work as a volunteer to chamber be a member of a chamber as a business owner, but also direct a couple three chambers and now work at the state level. So this is definitely my passion and definitely my career.

Brandon Burton 4:08
Yeah. So you mentioned you came into it as a fluke. I love hearing the origin story of how people came into chamber world if you don’t mind sharing what that Fluke was.

Amy Cloud 4:19
Well, sure. I got a great opportunity as a 20 something to join a large corporation in their marketing department and moved me from my home state of Kentucky to Middle Tennessee. It was in like I said the marketing department. Six months after I started they had a corporate restructuring. So our facility closed and moved to Mexico and the marketing department was reduced from seven to one which was my boss. So I lost my job in a new city in a new state with my first home. My husband was first time out of state as well. And I answered an ad in the local week. The paper for a public relations marketing professional, and that ended up being the Vice President of Operations for the McMinnville Warren County Chamber of Commerce. I don’t even know what a chamber was when I went to the interview. So it was a great experience. And I was hooked. I was hooked after that.

Brandon Burton 5:16
So you come from that perspective of not knowing what a chamber was, and now being over communications and being able to help relay what that story is, is very helpful. I’m sure. It is. It is it love it. Well, tell us a little bit about the KCC II just give us an idea of kind of everything that you’re involved with. I know I touched on a little bit of it with the bio, but there is a lot to it. So if you don’t mind helping to set the stage for listeners just to understand what what your role is, and, and what the organization is all about.

Amy Cloud 5:49
Absolutely. KCC E is a resource to local chambers. We offer professional development. For the staff, we offer board training for their volunteer board members, or their volunteer Ambassador group or committee chairs, whatever that looks like strategic planning services, networking opportunities, we are a resource, so they don’t feel like they’re alone. So many local chamber professionals feel like an island because no one else in the community does what they do. A Chamber of Commerce is the only organization in town that is solely dedicated to the prosperity of the business community. Other people have that as part of their plan, you know, banks, banks, or community colleges, or whatever that looks like. But the sole business of a chamber is the business community. And so I feel like we try to be that partner for them that champion for them. They can call on me for advice. A lot of them just say, Hey, this is what’s going on, what would you do, as opposed to, hey, we’re planning this new event, and we don’t want them to reinvent the wheel. So we gather up continually resources as people do new projects, new activities, new events, they rewrite their bylaws, they have new policies and procedure manuals. I mean, all that in the weeds kind of stuff. And we make sure that we don’t allow other people to reinvent the wheel, there’s no need for it. It’s a joke around our industry that plagiarism is Latin for Chamber of Commerce. It’s the highest form of compliment compliment for one chamber to steal another chambers idea. So we certainly encourage that. And we do a lot of r&d, which is ripoff and duplicate. A great thing in Kentucky is I’m a full time staff member at the State Chamber. So that makes a great relationship between our local chambers, and our State Chamber and that empowers them to be even bigger and better than ever.

Brandon Burton 7:52
Yeah, no, I love that. And that leads in well to what our topic for our conversation is today about using your State Chamber as a resource. So listeners across the country as they listen to this obviously will have their own State Chambers. So you don’t necessarily represent all of them. But hopefully this gives them ideas of how to utilize their State Chamber and to see the great power that can be there as having that advocate and that that resource to go to. So we will dive much deeper into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Amy, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about utilizing your State Chamber as a resource. So from your vantage point, you’ve been on both sides of the desk, so to speak, where you were, you know, at the the local chamber level, and now as a State Chamber employee and and KCC II, how do you see the value or as a local chamber? What should they be looking to the State Chamber and organizations like yours to support them? Absolutely.

Amy Cloud 11:20
And I’ll speak coming from Kentucky, it’s a little bit different in every state the relationship that local chambers have with their State Chamber, as well as their state association. Not all state associations are in house with their State Chamber, that shouldn’t keep anyone from building relationship with both. A great advantage with being connected with your State Chamber is your grassroots advocacy. Your State Chamber is probably one of the largest, if not the largest lobbying efforts in your state at your state level of government. They know the players they know the constitutional officers like your governor and your Secretary of State. They have great relationships with the representatives and senators from across your state, not just yours at the local level. They understand what’s good for business across the state because they get input from folks across the state, the state chamber membership has members just like a local one, that varying from single owner businesses to the fortune 500. So by having a relationship with your State Chamber, you can get a lot of that information about bills and laws that are being passed or being defeated. At the state level without a lot of legwork on your part. You can also encourage your community to have a voice and to be an advocate. That’s why it’s grassroots advocacy. It’s from the root up. And the root is the local community. Having a voice holding your elected officials accountable, is what we all need to do as voters in our country is we need to exercise that right. And I believe chambers can do that without being a political entity. local chambers don’t need to be political entities supporting individual politicians, but they can certainly be a public policy entity where they educate the voter. Let the voter know what’s going on at the state capitol at the National Capitol. What’s happening in government, what’s good for business, what’s happening that’s good or bad for business and how they can be proactive about it. I can’t say it enough, how engaged our local chambers are in Kentucky because of the relationship they have with the Public Affairs Department at the State Chamber through KCC II.

Brandon Burton 13:47
As far as the grassroots efforts, part of it goes with the with the chamber. And by definition, I picture these topics, these pieces of legislation, maybe the need to get a little more traction are coming from a lot of the local chambers up to the State Chamber and then maybe you help disseminate it to other local chambers. Is that how you kind of see that model typically working? Or what’s that flow of information look like?

Amy Cloud 14:15
grassroots advocacy works both ways. We want to hear the pain points of our local communities, and we count on our local chambers to share that with us. That’s grassroots, you know, from the root up, we certainly want to hear things that we should focus on that will be beneficial to their business community. And we count on that relationship for that. Likewise, we also have information that we have researched that we have heard about that our councils at the state level have taken into account and helped with Bill writing and supportive bills that our legislators come up with. And we know it’s good for business community statewide. And so we share that to them downwards. So it works both ways. As we we have lobbyists that actively during session are at the Capitol and are talking to the legislators and pushing this agenda for the State Chamber. We have researchers that understand the bills, these bills can be 80 pages long, and nobody has time to sit around to understand that bill. But we have researchers that all put it into two or three paragraphs that we get to share with our local chamber. So they understand really what the bill means who it’s good for, who it’s not good for, if it’s something that they should be supporting, or something that they should be against. We offer that to them. So it’s almost like on their staff, they have researchers and on there, they have lobbyists, we certainly don’t encourage local chambers to be political as in supporting a political candidate, the State Chamber does that we have a political action committee, that that’s kind of what we do. We’re a lobbying organization, local chambers, we want them to be public policy, which is different than political, because public policy is educating your voter. And we all know what happens when you don’t have educated voters. So the more we can educate the public, the better. And we utilize our local chambers for that. We encourage them to come to the Capitol, we host our local chambers, all year long, to come to the Capitol to have meetings with our constitution officers to meet with their local legend. Legislators, excuse me, Senators and Representatives, we help facilitate that. We don’t want that conversation to be easy. We want them to hold their elected officials accountable. And a way to do that is just by keeping that relationship and that communication open. And the State Chamber is very good at doing that for our local chambers. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:44
So you had mentioned about the wanting to hear about the community pain points. And and I just had this vision in my head of there’s different ways that that gets translated and that information gets to you. And is there a more effective way of sharing community pain points with your State Chamber and state associations where it doesn’t come off as whining or complaining about whatever’s happening? But to be able to really go to you as an advocate and say, here’s what we’re seeing in our community? And does it ever come across that way? Where it’s just whining and complaining? Or?

Amy Cloud 17:18
Of course it does, and that’s okay. But I mentioned before, you know, relationships are the key to everything, you know, if if a local chamber has a good relationship with the State Chamber, whether it’s me, or someone on our public affairs team, work with our foundation, whatever that is, I think that it can be a an adult conversation with, Hey, this is what’s going on, hey, this is what’s happening. They can say to someone who is probably complaining to the local chamber about something, here’s a friend that I have at this State Chamber, give them a call we we virtually hand out our emails and our cell phone numbers. So that local chambers can be the convener, they don’t have to be the communicator, they don’t have to be the, you know, the one with all the knowledge. But they can be the convener and say, Hey, let me share this person with you. Let me share this list of priorities the State Chamber has with you. Let me share with you what this bill looks like broken down. Let me ask them about this bill. I’ve not heard of this bill, look chambers, or I might even say that, let’s find out. So it gives them that next step to be that all inclusive community organization that wants the business, you know, businesses grow. So it gives them that next step of saying, Hey, we don’t know the answer, but we know people who do and what a great organization to have locally that you get you understand your friends with you trust you see every day, as opposed to someone at the State Chamber or someone in the legislature that you don’t know at all, and would be afraid to ask the question do not even know how to ask the question to our local chambers or that information booth. And they can share with us and then we can share stuff back with him.

Brandon Burton 18:55
Yeah, no, that is great. The relationships are so key and being able to have that level of trust to where yeah, it might seem like you’re complaining, maybe like you said maybe to another local chamber, but they have those relationships and put you in touch with people that can help and, and all All in all, it’s a very supportive effort. So it

Amy Cloud 19:16
makes us look good. It makes us look good. You know, I mean, we can be superficial about stuff. If people are supporting the state chamber and supporting KCC II communities. We have 120 counties in Kentucky, every county across the state. The people then will recognize when we are talking when the State Chamber is talking. We know what we’re talking about. They trust what we’re saying, because they’ve heard in detail what we’re doing because our local chambers have given the testimonial to that. They believe in us because who they believe in believes in us. So it’s a whole relationship even if they don’t know me. They understand that a local chamber professional believes in me and knows that I’m Gotta give them good information. So they trust me, even if they don’t know me. That if that makes sense. It’s just it’s that relationship. It’s all about everybody understanding, we’re all on the same page. We’re all after the same results. And we’re at a higher level, because it’s not just local government you’re dealing with when you’re talking about advocacy, its state and national government where you feel like as a local community, you have true representation.

Brandon Burton 20:24
Yes. So as a state as a resource, state chambers for local chambers advocacy and supporting those grassroots efforts is so vital. But I know that’s just a percentage. So what are some of those other benefits that local chambers can turn to you for as as support?

Amy Cloud 20:45
Absolutely, yes, that is just a little bit. But it’s important. That’s why I wanted to make sure we talked about it. We do offer professional development opportunities. KCC II is a huge supporter of Institute of organization management. It’s a national program that the US Chamber puts on, we are a huge supporter of ACC and the national convention that happens every year with them, as well as different programming throughout the year. So our association and our State Chamber offers scholarship opportunities for these folks to be able to attend programs outside the state. That is, that only makes them a better version of themselves. So then the chamber is raised to a higher level, we offer networking opportunities for folks to get together and share, like I mentioned earlier, you know, you feel like you’re on island, when you run a local chamber in a local community. But understanding there’s people just like you and every community across our state, that might have some of the same pain points, or be champions for each other that they want to share in the winds. And they want to steal a great idea. And they want to do regional partnership, and they want to do stuff together. And they can’t wait to see each other and get caught back up again. And they you know, they utilize each other now for judging awards and for coming to different summits and different Angel dinners. And you’ve formed that relationship with people that get you, you know, people support you and a local community as a as a chamber director, but they don’t get what you do. They don’t sit behind that desk, even your board members don’t. But connecting with people who get you is rewarding. And it’s it’s a stress reliever, because you know that you can pick up your phone. And if you can’t talk to them, you can certainly talk to me, but you can say, oh my gosh, this is what happened with a board member today. How would you handle this member? What would you do if this event didn’t work? Or how do you? What do you do when this event is overwhelmingly successful? How do you capitalize on it, you’ve got people across the state from every size community, and the tiniest to the biggest that will talk to you and share with you and be your best friend and partner, when you’re trying to figure out next steps for your local chamber. Other than that, like I said, we have word resources, and a huge server at work full of information, whether it’s bylaws or evaluations or how to do a golf tournament. You know, do you have a copy of mission statements, whatever, you name it, we’ve got some sample from somewhere and I collect those from all over the country. So people can form their own, but they have a sample of what someone else has done before them. Let’s not reinvent the wheel, we don’t have time for that. I do strategic planning for chambers. It’s a it’s an additional fee. But it’s a four to five hour strategic planning session that I offer our local Chambers as well as board development training, to help get their board on board to help the volunteers understand what’s expected of them at the chamber. It’s not a nonprofits, it’s a it’s a not for profit, and what the difference means when you say that, but it is to be a 501 C three, as opposed to a 501 C six, you know, there’s the difference in those two things. Understanding you know, what your mission is and how you support your paid staff. And if you’re a volunteer chamber, how you step up as a board member, so there’s resources like that, that that people use constantly and I love it. I want them to people like oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m calling you on Saturday afternoon it’s like that’s what I’m here for. You know, I know most of their most of their issues and most of their stuff comes up after work hours you know they they deal with their day and then they need to know I mean that’s why to add such everybody my phone I’m like I got my cell phone with me all the time if I’m awake, and not on vacation because I don’t answer my phone a vacation. I will answer you text me call me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Just because I know what it’s like I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to go oh my gosh, what I do what I do, I’ve been a staff of one. I’ve had a staff around me as well. You know you there’s a lot of plates in the gear and you want just a group of people are someone to say am I doing this right? Is this okay? And at the same time I also constantly want to tell my chamber professionals you are rockstars I tried to be a chair linger for them, because I know what it’s like to not have cheerleaders, you know? So there’s a lot. That’s just kind of in a nutshell, I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of stuff. But oh, that’s,

Brandon Burton 25:08
that’s terrific. And all of it in the end is it’s helping to raise the bar of the local chambers and making them better be more successful represent their business community in a much better way. And that’s all based on resources that you guys are able to offer.

Amy Cloud 25:25
And, you know, we can brag a little bit they award at national chamber of the year, ACC. And the last statistic I had was that Kentucky has the most applicants, the most finalists. And I think we still might have the most winners since it started in 2007. Little mini all Kentucky. Yeah. So I mean, we want people to be proud, we want them to be proud of their chamber. We want them to utilize best practices, which you have to in order to apply for awards like that. We always have one or two people on the 40 under 40 list every year for executives in the chamber industry. We have at least two people enter IOM every year. So we have eight to 10 people in the institute program every year. We’re just proud of our chamber professionals, and we try to do everything we can to make them better, because then it makes their chamber the best version of itself if their leadership is the best version of itself, if that makes sense.

Brandon Burton 26:28
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Not only make us

Amy Cloud 26:30
look better, yeah, they only make us look better when they are achieving at top notch level. It makes us look good. And we count on them as a resource, you know, the better they are, the better we the better information we get.

Brandon Burton 26:41
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I’m glad you shared that that tidbit there. As a for chambers that are listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, you’ve offered a lot of great counsel, I’ll say resources using your State Chamber. But what other maybe tip or action item might you have for listeners who are looking to elevate their chamber to the next level?

Amy Cloud 27:08
Oh, goodness, I keep saying this word. But you know, build, build relationships. I don’t care what other people say about an elected official in town, or someone who runs a large company or a small business, you need to form your own relationship with them and make it work. You need to be proactive and say, what’s going to work for you? What do we need to do for you, you’re a service organization. So make sure you’re servicing your members, they invest in you, I’m encouraged chambers. So not say you have dues, but you have investments, what is your annual investment, because when people talk investments, then they also talk about return. So you want to be able to give a return on your investment and ROI to your members every year. And that’s a relationship that’s an asking and listening of what can we do for you. Let’s try it. We tried it, it didn’t work. We tried it, it did work. That’s a relationship. Gen Y and Gen Z are go getters, they just don’t understand why they have to pay to pay to be a part of an organization. That’s your next group of leaders, Gen Y and Gen Z are the ones that we’re gonna fix into be CEOs in the next five to 10 years. So for me, I think chambers needed to find a need and fill the need. What do they need? And how can you fill that need? Where do you offer expertise that isn’t common knowledge that they would be willing to in vast, the ROI invest in their local chamber? Where they wouldn’t be able to get that opportunity anywhere else? How can they help entrepreneurs? How can they help small businesses in a way that no other group can? And that you can’t do it by yourself? That’s a big thing for me is understanding that next generation of leaders and how the chamber can still be a relevant organization for that group of

Brandon Burton 29:01
people. Yeah. Which that that leads right into our next question. So you’ve seen in worked with chambers of all different sizes, and focuses of work, we’ll say. So as you look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Amy Cloud 29:21
There’s there’s room there’s room for chambers. I think the more that chambers become public policy chambers that people understand it’s a well rounded organization. Just as recent as 10 years ago, a lot of local chambers were considered the like the the Welcome Wagon. They did the Christmas parade and then they took, you know, welcome goodie baskets to a new business. They might have done ribbon cuttings, you know, it was kind of a Hospitality Group. And in the last 10 years or so, I think people have seen how it is changed into And truly, what can we do to make our businesses better? How can we help with economic development? How can we help with public policy? What needs to change at the local level to make our business community more successful? How do we need to help recruit businesses? How do we need to help keep people, you know, working with the school system, working with local government, working with transportation, housing, you know, you start you’re starting to see that local chambers are taking on more of that responsibility. But that’s good, because like I said earlier, they’re the only organization whose sole purpose is for the growth and prosperity of the business community. And that doesn’t just mean economic development. That means you have to support employees, and what they let what kind of environment they live in, is there good housing? Are there good schools? Are there good roads, so they’ve been able to expand their reach, because they are being asked to handle those situations. I think that if they continue to focus more and more on that, than they will be growing into that business organization, that people need them to be, as opposed to the hospitality organization that they are on the front end.

Brandon Burton 31:10
Yeah, I love that. And they even said that, we’re kind of refined it down to that sole purpose of fostering that growth and prosperity in their community. And I know every chamber should have their their mission statement. And hopefully, that’s embedded somewhere in their mission statement, and in one way or another. But Amy, I wanted to give you an opportunity for those listening, especially those in Kentucky that need to reach out and connect with you but but even others who are just curious about what you know what all you guys offer or tips direction, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you? Oh, goodness,

Amy Cloud 31:48
um, you can reach me on my phone. Emails really good. My email address is acloud@kychamber.com. You can find resources that we offer on the Kentucky Chamber, a website, KYChamber.com. You’ll see under local resources, there’s a KCCE website. Reach out to me, I’m happy to talk with anybody about what I do. And I would love to learn what other people are doing as well. I like to be a student as much as a teacher, and pride myself. I’m trying to learn something new every day. So if anybody wants to share some great ideas that Kentucky can be doing, I’m happy to hear that as well.

Brandon Burton 32:31
Yeah, let’s get the information going both ways. I love that. Absolutely. I appreciate you being with us today on chamber chat podcast has been a great conversation have provided a lot of insights and hopefully, maybe open the eyes to some local chambers about what resources they can tap into at their State Chamber organizations. So thank you for sharing all that with us today. And hope you guys continue doing great things and making a huge impact in Kentucky.

Amy Cloud 33:01
I appreciate it, Brandon. Thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 33:03
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Clean Energy & Chambers with Ryan Evans

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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 Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Ryan Evans. Ryan joined the Chamber for Innovation and Clean Energy in March 2019 and serves as the executive director. Prior to being named Executive Director Ryan was a member of CICS National Advisory Board for six years. Previously, Ryan served as president of the Utah Solar Energy Association for three years, which is a trade association he co founded was an executive for 13 years with the Salt Lake Chamber, which is one of the largest chambers of commerce in the country, and served as the Executive Administrator for the Utah State Chamber of Commerce. Ryan is a recognized leader and regional speaker both locally and nationally on renewable energy policy and economic impacts of air quality community engagement and relationship building. Ryan is an IOM graduate, and now serves on the US Chambers National Board of Trustees. Ryan attended the University of Vermont and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Utah. Ryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ryan Evans 3:12
Thank you, Brandon, appreciate the opportunity to be on the chamber chat podcast. Listen to you a bunch of times. And this is great to actually be able to speak with you and speak with the Chamber Champions listening in today. Something fun for me, I guess, in terms of interest for me, I’ve been in the chamber and association industry for just over 20 years now. It’s kind of crazy how that journey started. I was an entrepreneur. Prior to being in the chamber industry, I own my own restaurant, I was a trained chef at one point when that when I left that partnership as a lot of restaurants don’t, you know, have the tendency to fail. I was one of those. One of those cases, started looking for a job that would maybe help given or maybe work given my managerial background, but not something that actually I didn’t want to start from scratch again. So I started looking for sales positions, knowing that at least that way, if I worked hard, I could make money. And sure enough, the Salt Lake chamber was hiring at the time. And little did I know that that would lead to a 20 year career after starting they’re making $13,000 An hour plus or $13,000.

Brandon Burton 4:18
Are they still hiring? Let me sign up

Ryan Evans 4:22
1000 a year plus commissions and I made it work pretty good. But yeah, 30,000 hour would be one heck of an opportunity. That’s right. So I know that that all steamrolled into, you know getting into clean energy and eventually this role here where I get to meld both the clean energy world and the Chamber history that I have, and it’s a great relationship. So it’s been great. Absolutely. It’s

Brandon Burton 4:44
like your background has been perfect for this union to bring into the chambers for innovation to clean energy very much. So speaking to that, tell us a little bit about the chambers of the chambers for innovation, clean energy, just kind of The size, the scope of work staff, just give us some perspective of where you’re coming from, with the organization to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Absolutely, thank

Ryan Evans 5:10
you. So chambers renovation and clean energy as we affectionately like to call it, CIC II, as you alluded to Brandon, we are a national network of about 1300 chambers and economic development associations across the country, doesn’t mean we work with every single one of those every single year. But those are the groups that we stay in touch with quite a bit that we work with. Our whole role is to help advance the clean energy economy, at chambers innovation in clean energy, we’re not an environmental group, we’re not anti anything, we are strictly clean energy experts, and help to look to educate chambers on how they can capitalize on this growing segment of our economy, how they can be better involved in promoting good clean energy policy, how they can what what they need to know, to better understand the technology that exists and how to get past a lot of the misinformation that’s out there, whether Pro or negative regarding clean energy, we do a lot of best practice sharing of what chambers are doing across the country. And then we’ll get in and we’ll even advise chambers on particular public policy issues at the state or local level that they may be experiencing. firsthand. So again, we you know, our whole role is to work with chambers. And we do that for free. We have funding in place that allows us to work with any chamber anywhere. Typically, I mentioned 1300. But typically we work with we try to work in about seven or eight priority states at one time. And he states where we spend a little extra time, given that they’ve got more opportunity for clean energy or more challenges being presented for clean energy. And so we sort of rotate that out on on any given year. But as of right now, the states where we spend most of our time are Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina, Virginia, and in some work in the Northeast as

Brandon Burton 7:04
well. All right, well, that definitely helps give some perspective as to the kind of work you’re involved with and the the approach you take with some of the these chambers and 1300 chambers that you work with. As we focus our discussion today. I’m kind of halfway joking. But when I say we’re going to talk about clean energy and chambers, even if they don’t think that it matters or something that they care about at the moment, we’ll talk about why it does matter. And how your local chamber can get involved, why you should be involved, what opportunities are out there. And we’ll dive into this discussion much deeper as soon as you get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:33
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 10:27
All right, Ryan, we’re back. So as I alluded to, before the break, today, we’re diving into how chambers can get involved with with clean energy, why they should care, maybe that’s a good starting point, as far as why chamber should care about focusing on clean energy. And then you mentioned a couple items, you know, before the break is to, you know, the economic impact and things like that. But talk to us a little bit about why chambers should have clean energy on their radar and be intentional about trying to promote clean energy in their communities.

Ryan Evans 11:02
Sure, thank you. You know, honestly, this conversation would have been pretty different five years ago. But now, I think there’s no doubt that anybody, you know, nobody has a doubt that we are in the midst of an energy transformation in the United States of America and across the across the globe, really, we are, over the last several years, clean energy speed between solar and wind have been responsible for more than 90% of new electric generation built across the country. So in other words, we still have a lot of our electricity coming from natural gas, which is the number one on the fossil fuel side. And again, we’re not anti anything, we’re all of the above, we just truly know that the Clean Energy Economics will win out in the end, as natural gas started to actually overtake coal. Many years ago, when coal was the workhorse for electricity, then it became natural gas. And it still is natural gas. But now it’s really starting to shift towards more renewable energy sources. So that’s sort of number one is that we’re looking at the future of America being very much powered, whether it’s 100%, like some people think, or at least very high into the 80s, a 90%, by some sort of cleaner energy than we have now. So that’s a significant number one. Number two, your members care about their utility bills. That’s one of the highest costs of doing business in any state. So what is your electricity and heating bills look like? And where is that source of that pain point coming from? In most states, that’s still natural gas. And for a long time, natural gas was a great lower cost option for communities. Now, however, we’ve seen, especially in the last two years, the fluctuation within the volatility of natural gas pricing. So a lot of corporations are really being attracted to the fact that solar and wind are now the cheapest form of electricity you can get. And when you enter into a contract for these corporations that again, are members of chambers all over the country, they’re locking into those price points that they sign these contracts for, for anywhere from 20 to 35 years. So there’s absolute predictability in their electrical costs going forward, at least for that segment that they’re getting from clean energy. The other factor that I’ll mention is it just brings it back to home wherever you are, there are clean energy jobs being created on a regular basis. There are more people in employed in the solar industry alone than all of fossil fuel industries combined. That’s just solar. That’s not wind, that’s not electric vehicles. That’s not batteries and energy storage, and energy efficiency. So clean energy is a job creator, like no other. And then it brings home capital investment, it brings home economic opportunities and tax revenues for communities. So there are lots of reasons why chambers should engage or at least be interested, and at the very least be willing to provide good information to their communities, because there’s just there’s a lot to it. And a lot of voices get heard. And I think it’s given the amount of opportunity and challenges there are, it’s just important to at least be a good provider of information for your members and your community as a whole.

Brandon Burton 14:32
Right. So it’s been a couple of years ago now but our electric provider, I’m in Texas in our electric provider, we’re part of a co op and each year they do a brisket dinner, you know so we can go and as a member of the Co Op, they provide the brisket dinner, they do a little dog and pony show about the work they’re doing and at this particular dinner I was at they put up on the slideshow, this solar farm that they had and like, Wait, that’s like, right around the corner from my house. And I had no idea that the solar farm was there. And sure enough, I’m pulling up the Google satellite images, and it’s, you know, probably a mile from my house, and had no idea. But if it was a natural gas plant or something else, like, other things would definitely stand out, and you would notice, but um, just the clean energy can make such an impact in a community without being, you know, super noticeable. But so I think that our Electric Co Op did a good job of explaining that. But as far as the chamber goes, he said, you know, most importantly, even if it’s just sharing, you know, accurate good information with their community with their members. Obviously, we can point them to you to your organization to get some that that good information to share. But as the chamber looks to get involved and say, Yeah, this is important that we create jobs in clean energy, because that’s where the future is going. Or it’s important for us to help lower those utility rates for our member businesses, and for just our community in general to be able to thrive more and have more discretionary income, all these different points that you touched on the job creation. If a chamber wanted to get involved, where do they start with being able to try to move the ball try to move the needle, so to speak in their community?

Ryan Evans 16:27
There’s, there’s quite a few places you can start. And actually, I want to jump back really quick if it’s okay, Brandon, and just common, Texas, just because you brought up Texas and you brought up two things that I’m pretty passionate about. One is realistically, most solar installations you don’t notice. So you’re absolutely right, there’s a lot of misinformation that they’re obstructive that they’re an eyesore. But yet, most times people have no idea that they’re within a mile or two of their home, because they have that low profile, and you can put up trees around them, you can put up shrubs and bushes around them. So I appreciate and love the fact that you didn’t even notice not necessarily. But then also just on Texas really quick. It’s Texas is one of my favorite stories to tell because even though they have been traditionally one of the the number one oil and gas state in the country, and they are known as an oil and gas state and Houston particular huge oil and gas market, right. Yet, Texas is the number two state in the nation for most solar installations in terms of size of those installations combined. And number one, as far as wind, this is a state that truly embraces the all of the above energy form, you know, mentality in an incredible way. And, you know, chambers, like the Greater Houston partnership, for example, are all in on this all of the above factor and even looking at new technologies like carbon capture, and all these other great things that we see out there. So I just want to throw my you know, throw a shout out for taxes just in terms of, you know, that typical state that has learned that they don’t have to just be dependent on that fossil fuel economy that there is this huge other opportunity out there for the state and for electrical ratepayers and whatnot.

Brandon Burton 18:07
I will say if you ever drive between Abilene and San Angelo, you will see the wind. As far as your eye can see, you will see windmills. So

Ryan Evans 18:16
yeah, there’s a lot of places around the country that are like that, where you just see them. But a lot of cases, there’s really not much else there. So they may as well, Saturday. Right, right. And you know, as far as how you get involved, there’s lots of ways number one, I guarantee that almost every single chamber in the country has some sort of clean energy industry a company within their membership, it may not be a solar installer, it may not be a manufacturer of solar or wind turbine parts. But it might be somebody who supplies workforce to that it might be a company that is a fencing company that puts up temporary fencing around renewable energy installations as they’re going up. So there’s, it’s incredible the supply chain that exists out into the clean energy world. So one, look at your own membership and see who’s there and see what the important issues are to talk to your utility. I always recommend you, you know, work with your utility on clean energy, because ultimately, they’re going to be the one that does a lot of it outside of the private companies that develop. But don’t also take the utilities word for it completely ask questions, look for what might be the best opportunities for your entire region and start a business Coalition for you know, that looks at sustainability and clean energy by starting a committee like that. It’s amazing what you’ll learn from your members in terms of what they’re doing to either procure clean energy on their own or through the utility, what they’re doing internally to improve their emissions outcomes so they’re more sustainable. It’s it’s pretty impressive to see what businesses do and it’s one great thing chambers can do is promote what their businesses are doing. Proactiv basis as well, that’s that’s just a great thing. Another thing that you can do, if you want to get involved is reach out to us, of course, I’m not going to give a sales pitch there. But that’s what we do. If there’s, you know, we’re happy to chat with any chamber anywhere all the time, just to say, hey, here’s the hotspots that we see, maybe this is a chance for you to engage. And lastly, look in your state for some sort of a state level clean energy or solar industry association. So prior to, as you mentioned, in the my introduction, I was the president and founder of the Utah solar industry association, we worked with chambers all across the state, trying to help educate them on solar policy and clean energy policy and how they can help protect the jobs that, you know, we’re being built by this industry within the state. So look to those associations and bring them as partners or ask them to be members, so they can kind of make sure your members are informed on the hot topics of the day regarding the clean energy industries. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:58
So I don’t mean to keep going back to stuff to this example, in Texas. So chambers are known for being conveners, right. And as I see a lot of this land, like with these wind farms that we’re talking about, not only are they wind farms, but they have their oil rigs that are going, they have their cattle that are grazing on the fields. And so they’ve got multiple streams of income using this land that’s very agricultural based. And if a chamber can see and recognize these opportunities, be that convener to make some introductions to help introduce some of these clean energy capabilities. On to that, that rancher or that person who has an oil rig set up or whatever it may be, I mean, we’re talking things that are very hyper focused in Texas, for sure. But other parts of the country, the land may be used for something else, but it could also be used, in addition to for wind or solar. So that convener make those introductions. Yeah,

Ryan Evans 21:58
no, that’s a great point number one. Yeah. So always and chamber should know this. And they do know this. And mean, chambers are conveners of the voice of business, the, you know, the, they’re the convener of the business communities, and realistically for their whole community. So there is an opportunity just to talk to people about what is possible. And yeah, in Texas, you will often see wind turbines right next to oil rigs, and maybe cattle grazing as well. In Ohio, you may see a solar installation, where, you know, maybe 5%, of a generational farm is being utilized for solar energy along with 5% of another farm nearby them and 10% of another farm nearby them. But those, that five or 10% of the farm property is actually giving annual revenue anywhere from 100,000 to $300,000. A year to those farm owners. And a lot of cases, it’s helping keep farmland in a family name and helping them not to have to sell it off, or because it’s a lease arrangement, or even turn some other land into a subdivision for homes. I mean, that’s, that’s just and once you put homes in that property’s gone with a solar installation for, you know, for example, in a rural farming community, typically those panels have been in the ground for, you know, 30 to 35 years, but at the same time, like you say, you’re farming on the rest of your property, you can still do some agriculture underneath the solar panels. And a lot of case you can still graze animals like sheep throughout an entire solar area. So yeah, there are lots of other ways that you can promote the land and utilize the land for economic or just community benefit.

Brandon Burton 23:40
Right. And from the farmer perspective, I say, you know, there’s a lot of government subsidies for farmers to either not grow a crop or to grow, you know, more, you know, mono cropping, you know, which has its own issues. So to be able to introduce another stream of income for these farmers could really help them actually farm what they need to and want to farm versus what the government’s paying them to do. And it gives them a lot more freedom. Absolutely. And

Ryan Evans 24:07
if you get farmer start on this, a lot of them are going to tell you, this is a property rights thing. If I want to put solar on my farm, I want to put solar on my farm, and they get pretty passionate about it speak out in lots of different state houses across the country on their property rights. And it’s don’t get in the middle of a farmer and their property rights. I’ll tell you that much right now.

Brandon Burton 24:25
That’s right. So for chambers that are listening, I’d like to hear maybe a an innovative example or two where you’ve seen whether it’s a chamber stepping into introduce clean energy policy or just implementation of some sort. What are some of these innovative things that you’ve seen across the country as as people try to lean more heavily into clean energy? Yeah,

Ryan Evans 24:52
there’s, I don’t know if I can go to innovative on how chambers participate, but I can give some really Good examples of how chambers have engaged. Okay. Oh. And that’s it’s just sometimes tough because chambers are generalists for the most part, right, they need to know a lot about a lot of different industries. And so sometimes it’s really hard to dig really far into one particular topic or subject matter. But you know, in the case of chambers, one thing that we are always encouraged by is when we see coalitions of chambers that stand up for clean energy. So we’ve seen it in Ohio, when Chambers as a collective whole, all stood up and spoke out against negative anti renewable energy legislation a few years ago, in the Northeast, and now in the southeast, we’re seeing a lot of rallying by chambers to support the possibility of offshore wind development, off the coast of the East Coast. And we’re beginning to see a little bit of that in the, in the south er, in the in the south, and in the West, and the Gulf Coast and off in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, and Oregon and Washington. So we see a lot of this convening and working together. We’ve seen everything from electric vehicle ride and drive and demonstrations, to clean energy industry, hosted forums and conferences, all around renewable energy and sustainability. We’ve seen energy tours. So in Utah, where I used to live, the Salt Lake chamber had few years in a row had done energy tours, where they took their members out to various energy installations. And one of them was all about clean energy, taking them to wind taken to a solar farm, etc, etc. In and, you know, clean energy, sort of a broad topic, but, and even just a couple of weeks now, the St. Pete chamber in Florida is doing a sustainability and resilience tour, they’re going to take some of their members down to see how, amongst other things, clean energy benefited certain areas to keep the lights on, as well as other resilience efforts from some of the other communities that they can bring back to St. Pete to learn from so that they are a more resilient, more resilient community for future storms. So lots of different ways that chambers have been engaged, whether it’s op eds, whether it’s events, or just, you know, fighting for good policy at a state house or the federal level.

Brandon Burton 27:29
Very good. Those are all really good examples and ways that chambers can definitely get involved. So this question may be coming from left field for you. And if you don’t want to answer it, we can edit it out. How have you seen any integration with with Bitcoin miners? And no, there’s been a lot of talk about the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining. And then Bitcoin miners trying to make the argument with clean energy and using some of these resources to offset some of those carbon emissions and whatnot. I’ll be

Ryan Evans 28:09
honest, you may want to edit this out, I don’t know Brandon, I can give a little editorial on that. It’s, it’s a tough sell, because it is high high energy usage. So we, however, did see you know, in for a little bit in Miami, we started talking about it because the local government in Miami was really trying hard to attract some Bitcoin industry there. But that energy usage was really tough, because, you know, Florida can only expand so much in terms of their energy development, their energy usage, etc. And, you know, one of the selling factors was they have such a huge nuclear, new as nuclear energy is such a huge part of their overall energy resources. And, you know, the Bitcoin it was trying to sell that, but all of that energy was already being utilized for something else. So all of this would have just been, they would have had to develop new energy. And at that point, you’ve for the most part, it’s going to make sense to build solar. So I think in general, when it comes to Bitcoin, it’s great. There is an opportunity there, but it should not be done trying to sell it as utilizing existing resources. I think in a lot of ways. If you are going to law and try to get some bitcoin manufacturing and mining going on in your communities, you really do need to look at how are we going to provide new generation to, to supply that particular operation? Yeah. All right. Well,

Brandon Burton 29:40
we’ll we’ll see what we do with that. So I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, if there’s any tips or action items that you’d be willing to share with those listening, if they wanted to maybe get involved more with clean energy in their communities or We’re maybe something totally off topic, but for these chambers who want to take their organization up to the next level, what would you offer for them?

Ryan Evans 30:07
Thank you. Yeah, I’ve got a few things. So number one, if not every chamber is engaged in advocacy. And I understand that, at the very minimum, though Chambers as the voice of business and conveners in their community should look to be a good source of reliable information. And much like a lot of other things in the world, there’s so much misinformation put out in the world about clean energy. There are so many groups that are not local, yet, they’ll bring in people from, you know, from far away to come in and fight renewable energy projects in small communities, and make it seem like this opposition is so loud, we call them NIMBY groups, so not my backyard groups. So if nothing else, I think it’s really important that chambers look to be sources of good third party reliable expert information. So that those that actually live in the community can, you know, can really look at the facts and say, We want to make a good informed decision. So that’s, that’s sort of number one. Another just sort of tip and maybe a tidbit that I want to throw out there. There is, you know, chambers by nature tend to really love bipartisan policy. That’s sort of how we work right, we bring people together so that we can find the common ground, what’s best for the business community, what’s best for an economy, an advocate for that, whether it’s coming from the AR side, or the D side, it doesn’t really matter, we try to find the best possible policy for business businesses in our state. You know, and we certainly saw a really good example of that in the bipartisan infrastructure package that was passed two years ago, phenomenal is twice something 20 years in the making, it’s something we should all be proud of in the chamber industry that we’ve all fought for it. And that’s going to lead to everything from bridges and roads, but also to transmission lines for more utilities, for more electric vehicle charging infrastructure out there in the world as we make this transition. So there’s lots of clean energy angles on that. But the tidbit that I want to share that, yeah, I built it up to get to it. There was, you know, not a lot of chambers love the fact that the inflation Reduction Act was passed on a partisan basis. And I understand that, and I completely agree, this is a tidbit that I think is really important for people to understand. If you take away all of the other aspects of the inflation Reduction Act, and only look at the clean energy provisions within that which, you know, amounted to about a $379 billion package way, way less than what that quote unquote, green New Deal was being presented as many many years ago. But that particular legislation, just the clean energy provisions, almost every single major component of that policy has a history of bipartisan support. And a and a lot of them have a proven return on investment for that type of state tax incentive. As a lot of people say that inflation Reduction Act is really carrot heavy, and very stick light, meaning it’s all about the incentives trying to you know, trying to drive innovation and spur this new aspect to our economy, rather than penalizing and putting out more regulatory efforts that none of us really like to see in the world. So again, just I think it’s really important that something that I’ve been very passionate about is saying, if you just take out those clean energy aspects, you will see that so many of them either had bipartisan support, or suggested by and promoted by Republicans versus the Democrats that voted for the package. So really just go beyond the talking points of partisan and say, Ah, actually, there’s some really great stuff in here that’s proven value, and has proven to be supported by both sides of the aisle and people across the country.

Brandon Burton 33:56
Right. I appreciate you sharing the tips and tidbits with us there. As we look to the future of chambers, and I see a lot of the work you’re doing is future leaning. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers in their purpose going forward?

Ryan Evans 34:15
I think chambers have a more important role now than they’ve ever had before. We’ve, you know, been building up the chamber industry for 100 years, you know, over the last 10 years, I think they’ve gotten more and more influential. Really, there’s so much within the industry that’s really looking to lift up chambers, whether it’s a rural chamber, a State Chamber, a Regional Chamber, whatever it may be. But I think now is maybe more important a time than ever, because there is so much that at least that I see legislation that tends to move from state to state and Statehouse to statehouse and so it’s an opportunity not only to really stand up for your business community and those things in your state or your region that you see as important to your quality of life. But it’s, you know, it’s really this chance to look and say, Hey, what’s happening over in this state? And is that going to come to my state? Because chances are these days it is. And I bring up things in my own mind when I say this, but things like dei policies, so you know, something that the Chamber world has been super passionate about, and very much engaged in terms of advocating for more dei within their communities within their businesses and building up certification programs around Dei. Yet, in a lot of states, we’re starting to see anti from various administrations and now maybe state houses of the legislature, we’re starting to see sort of pushback on that dei work. And it’s, you know, this isn’t even in the world of clean energy for me, but it’s really important to chambers, and therefore, it’s sort of just a good example of things to look for, that you can learn from other states, what they’ve already gone through and say, Hey, is there a good chance that’s going to come to my state? And how do I either fight it off or engage it depending upon what the policy might be? How do we best represent the business community, rather than being caught off guard, let’s make sure that we’ve got our best arguments upfront and ready to go to help be, you know, again, that longtime voice of business for our community and represent our members the best we can. I

Brandon Burton 36:27
love that perspective. And that’s really one of the greatest opportunities of living in the United States is you’re able to look at other states and the models that they do and, you know, be in these individual laboratories and saying, This is what worked well there. And this is didn’t you know, and as we apply it in our communities in our state, this is why it could be good, or why it would be a disaster and really be able to make a good argument based on facts and data. So I think that’s a great perspective. Well, Ryan, this has been a for me at least, it’s been a fun conversation. It’s been an eye opening conversation, I’m sure for many, but for any listeners who wanted to reach out and connect with you to learn more about what the Chamber’s been have raised innovation and clean energy can do and, and how you can maybe work with them, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? hit

Ryan Evans 37:16
our website, which is ChambersforInnovation.com. Feel free to email me directly my email is revans@chambersforinnovation.com. More than happy to chat with anyone, whether it’s just a question, you want to do more, you’ve got something that you’re just not sure about whatever the case, the issue may be, and again, this can be anything from electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging, to offshore wind supply chain to solar and wind, whatever it is, if we don’t know the answer within our team, we certainly can point you in the right direction to some some great experts out there in the world, that can be a really good news resource for you.

Brandon Burton 37:57
That’s awesome. I will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well. So people can pull that up and get in contact with you. But it’s been great to have you on the podcast. Ryan, I appreciate you setting aside some time and and to share some of these insights with the Chamber champions that listen and to really help sharpen their focus on why focus on clean energy in their communities is important. So thank you for being with us today.

Ryan Evans 38:22
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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Gwinnett Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Nick Masino

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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.

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Our guest for this episode is Nick Masino. Nick is the first Gen X President and CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett. At the helm, Nick is known for a strong leadership commitment to Gwinnett and more than two decades of making an impact in the community and economic development arenas. As President and CEO Nick shepherded the most diverse board of directors and chamber history, reinvigorated its public policy focus, implemented new strategic plan and is currently overseeing a massive renovation of two Georgia’s largest Chamber of Commerce facility. He also led like Gwinnett Chamber to receive its first ever Five Star Accreditation rating from the US Chamber of Commerce in 2010. In 2022, the former Chief Economic Development Officer for partnership Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Chamber, Nick oversaw the business recruitment and retention efforts for Gwinnett and the implementation of partnership Gwinnett strategy. The chamber led initiative has since delivered roughly 357 company expansions or relocations, representing more than 28,000 new jobs and $4.1 billion in private capital investment. Prior to these achievements, Nick was an executive in the recruiting and staffing industry while serving as Georgia’s youngest mayor in the city of Suwanee. In addition to his day job, Nick serves on a plethora of boards including the Regional Business Coalition of Metro Atlanta, the Coalition for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber and the Water Tower Global Innovation Hub Aquanet. His influence in the greater Gwinnett region has earned him many accolades such as most named Most notable Georgians, power 100 Most Influential Atlantans, and 100 most influential Georgians. He holds a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal, interpersonal and organizational communication from The Ohio State University and resides with his wife Suzanne, in Suwanee, Georgia, and they’re the proud parents of three adult children. Nick, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Nick Masino 4:29
Awesome. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. And I’m sorry, you had to bore everybody with my bio. But I appreciate you introducing me. Interesting thing about me I’m, as you mentioned in the bio married to Suzanne Masino. And we actually met in a swimming pool in eighth grade. And she went on to become my high school, college sweetheart and we got married about six months after college, and we’ve been married for 29 years. In two Sundays, so really excited about that.

Brandon Burton 5:03
That’s awesome. Congratulations, you must have been a mature eighth grader because usually those interactions at a swimming pool don’t turn out well. So

Nick Masino 5:13
I don’t know that I was, but he was also only in eighth grade too. So that helps. That helps. Yeah, I think he was forgiving.

Brandon Burton 5:22
Well, and tell us a little bit about the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership when and just to give us an idea of the type of chamber scope of work you do size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Nick Masino 5:35
Sure, absolutely. So the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce is located in Gwinnett. County, which most people have never heard of before. We’re situated directly northeast of Metro Atlanta. Gwinnett has a million residents. In 1987 8889, percentage wise was the fastest growing county in the United States. For three years, we’ve been in the top 100 fastest growing counties for the last three years, we average about in the last 10 years, I think we’ve averaged about 18. It’s probably 17 to 18,000 new residents, that’s births and relocations. I’m one of those. I graduated, as you mentioned, from the United State University. And about four weeks later, I moved to Gwinnett County, and I was in search of a job and a career and the Olympics were happening in Atlanta in 1996. This was two years before the Olympics, and there just seemed to be a lot of energy. And I don’t think I was alone. I think at one point, we were the the we had the most the highest percentage of Gen X’s of any metro area, the United States. And I just think it was a lot of people from the Northeast and Midwest. They were looking for something new and a little warmer. And apparently for about a 10 year period. We all moved to Atlanta. Some people moved, moved back home and some of those state. So I’m here in Gwinnett, lived here for 29 consecutive years. I live in the little hamlet the little city of Suwanee, Georgia, of which I was a mayor for eight years, and really, really enjoyed Gwinnett is made up of 16 municipalities, but the most of the counties unincorporated. But we have like every suburban area, we have jobs here we have about 24,000 companies 10,000 sole proprietors. And so we’re a really large suburban chamber, we have 32 to 34, based on the time, full time employees, we are in a 60,000 square foot chamber building, I do believe outside of the US Chamber. It’s the largest chamber building in the United States. We own the whole building, and we’re overseeing a massive 23 year update to the building and which is involving $4 million worth of construction. And hopefully in November, they’ll be delivering a million dollars worth of new furniture. And we’re really excited. With this reinvestment into this incredible building. We’re really unique. We’re right next to an arena and a convention center and to full service hotels. And we also have this is really unique. We have a first class steakhouse on the top floor of our building and a private club. The Chamber members the board members started the private club in the year 2000. The same year, the Chamber building was open. And we introduced in 2017. The Steakhouse and it is first class is the top five to top five revenue producing restaurant in Georgia. So it was really unique little hub of activity here in the middle of Gwinnett. County.

Brandon Burton 8:46
So does the chamber still operate the club and steakhouse or is that been going off?

Nick Masino 8:52
Well, we’ve never operated it. We just our board members started it. I mean, I’m the landlord. I’m a board member. I’m an executive board member of the private club. We have the lease agreement between the private club and the steakhouse. So it is like I had some guests up there for lunch yesterday. And they were like, Oh, this was really nice. And we’re like, yeah, we’re really that’s a really nice cafeteria bars.

Brandon Burton 9:18
That’s fantastic.

Nick Masino 9:19
It’s pretty awesome. It’s some of my peers at ACC. I was able to host I think it was in the summer of 21. I hosted a peer group of about 20 CEOs and I actually forgot to tell them we had a steakhouse. I just said, Oh, we’re going to dinner and I just told them where it was, but I did tell them it was on the third floor of the chamber. And they thought I was sandbagging, like as a show off. And I was like, Oh yeah, they were like Nick, you brag about everything. You didn’t brag about the steakhouse.

Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s awesome. I love it. Yeah, so you mentioned as far as the size of the building so had is it just like over the years hearing the size of a They’re chambers buildings, he kind of benchmark, you know, and where you guys kind of fall in there. It’s really

Nick Masino 10:05
interesting. I think in like 2007 or eight, we had that that years Chair of the US Chamber doing a road show. And he had been to like seven teen, like large suburban and Metro chambers. And he said, he said, I have been to almost every large chamber, you know, of a certain scale and above, he said, This is by far the biggest building. And so that just got us interested. So we’ve been kind of on the lookout for a building that might be bigger than ours. And we’ve yet well, we did find it, it was the US Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. We actually have two buildings in DC, which are both bigger than ours. qualify it?

Brandon Burton 10:47
Yeah. That’s good stuff, though. So you guys, obviously you’re involved with economic development, though? twos, as far as the chamber work goes?

Nick Masino 10:55
Yes, absolutely. i It’s funny, I failed to mention that, because you asked me. And I did lead our economic development initiative for almost 13 years, called partnership Gwinnett, which is a community collaboration between the county our municipalities or school system, or in community improvement districts, and then the private sector and the chamber. And we lead that effort. And it encompasses about 10 of our 34 employees. And they get up every day to recruit, retain and expand businesses, both domestically and internationally.

Brandon Burton 11:28
Awesome. Awesome. Well, what I the way I like to kind of structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs. So you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application, so if you could just tell us what those two programs are at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and go into more detail on each of them.

Nick Masino 11:49
Sure, absolutely. And so we really just set the stage for the one of the two, which it was our partnership with that initiative. And this is the community initiative. As I mentioned, it has three goal areas, recruit goal one, goal two, is to make sure we have the right workforce in place. And then goal three is all those it’s kind of that bucket that holds everything else from community development, to transportation to redevelopment. So it’s a three legged stool, economic development strategy, not uncommon to other large chambers. And then our second section that got us to where we are is our public policy initiative. And I think that that one probably is not super unique to large chambers. I think what was unique for us is, in our five US Chamber fivestar audit, for the previous audit we got, I don’t know that we got to zero, but I think we got to 20 out of Ardrey. So that’s pretty much a failing grade. And and then a few years later, when we really focused in the three years we were we went we’ve hired a full time public policy person put a lot of effort in initiative. And not only do we have the effort, and the action and activity, we have results, and we and then the US Chamber recognize that and gave us 100%. So we went from 20 I think it was 20% to 100%. So ACC the they recognized all of what I just mentioned. And I think we also did a really nice initiative this year with our state, House and Senate. I’ll talk more about that and follow up questions on on the Gwinnett day at the Georgia Capitol. And they went over really well. Yeah, no,

Brandon Burton 13:39
that’s great. So that that gives us a good idea what the two programs are. What we’ll do is we’ll take a short break, we’ll come back and we’ll dive in deeper on both of these programs and learn more how you guys structured them and maybe some of the origins of them as well.

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Brandon Burton 17:06
All right, Nick, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned what the two programs are, if you don’t mind, let’s let’s dive in a little deeper on the partnership when it and you had mentioned it has kind of the three legs to that program. And maybe just tell us a little bit more about the program, the evolution of the program, kind of how you got to where it is today to be recognized on national stage.

Nick Masino 17:32
Thank you so much. I’m really proud of it. Because I was hired as the first partnership with that chamber employee and Ay, ay ay, ay, took the strategy. And then I hired all the employees raised the funds. So it was really, it goes back to 2007 When I started here at the chamber, and it was kind of my baby for 13 years. So it started in 2006, where Gwinnett County government, again, one of the fastest growing counties in the 80s that continues in the 90s got to the point by 2006 that they said, Hey, we probably need to have an economic Recruitment Policy. So they created their first ever economic incentives. And it was basically crickets for six months. And they thought, well, if we create it, they will come. Well, they didn’t because there wasn’t someone getting up every day, beating the drum to say consultants, corporate consultants, doing recruitment real estate consultants. So they said, Okay, we need to do something. And in communicating with the chamber, and the private private sector industry, there was a there’s a company, which everyone’s heard of is called Cisco. They have a major presence here in metro Atlanta, and then a huge office here in Gwinnett at the time, and they said, Okay, we’ll write a $50,000 check to do an economic study. And then that was matched with another $90,000. And they hired a consultant, they did a nine month strategy. And out of it, we came partnership on it, which is as as mentioned, and 2007, we rolled out this, it was a five year strategy. It had a three legged stool, which was focused on we need people to get up every day and targeted industries to recruit. So goal one is to recruit, recruit, retain expand jobs in our targeted industries. Number two, make sure that we’re aligning all of the workforce efforts, from K through 12, to post secondary to retraining retooling into those five target industries. And then make sure that we have a safe, clean, vibrant community that is continually redeveloping and investing in itself with new roads and infrastructure. And those three things if we stay focused on that we should have economic success. And so we implemented that strategy in 2007 to 12 months later running into Great Recession. We’re like so ready to go. And that was a bit of a pitfall. And we retooled. And it actually brought Market Street back and we said, hey, just 16 months ago, you said we’re supposed to create. It was something like 40,000 new jobs in five years. And they were like, Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen now. So they gave us, they brought him in for a couple of months. And they re told us a little bit, and we got going again. And it was really awesome. Because right out of the gate, in our first five years, we ended up landing NCR fortune 500 headquarters. And then literally, four months later, we landed Asbury automotive, another fortune 500. And then two years later, we landed and retained the merger of two companies, which became rock 10, which was another fortune 500. So we started the recession with one fortune 500 company and ended it with fours. So people were like, Oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Let me tell you, we’re really good. But a lot of it is happenstance and being at the right place at the right time. And it all just worked out for us. And we have a lot of success. And we continue to have lots of success. But we went from like the high of here we go in 2007, to the low of eight, nine, to end that first five years with having, in our time starting the recession, with one fortune 500, ending with four it was, it was an amazing rollercoaster ride. But we’ve continued on an every five years, we brought in a consultant to do a top to bottom soup to nuts review of our strategy and our community. And we roll out a five year strategy plan, we then do a fundraising campaign behind it, to raise the money to fund the strategy that we’ve done that now for almost 20 years. We’re in year, I guess, like 17 or 18.

Brandon Burton 22:00
Wow. So as you kind of talked about the origins of it back in 2006 2007 kind of timeframe. And thinking, nowadays, a lot of things, you know, rely on social media to help, you know, perpetuate a message or, you know, whatever messaging you’re putting out there to try to attract and retain and everything. So at that timeframe that was before, I mean, that’s still like MySpace days, right, like 2006. And so there has to be different strategies starting off and building that momentum. Right.

Nick Masino 22:33
Yeah, 100%. And I have to say, I’m gonna be very quick. So I want to I’m sure you’re familiar with IEDC, the International Economic Development Council. So I was very involved in that as an economic developer. And I went to my basic 101 training. It was actually right here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. And we had a session on social media. So the social media I knew was LinkedIn. Yeah. And, you know, we’ve all been on it, our resumes there. I was in the recruiting industry for 12 years. So I knew LinkedIn. Well, I left that session, and I was signed up for MySpace, and Facebook. We know how all that worked out. But it was funny is it 2008? Like, I’m doing all kinds of like, a posting stuff on Facebook, about the community. And my wife’s like, what are you doing? You’re wasting time. And she’s giving me such a hard time for being on Facebook. And then I could I love the like, two years later, she gets on it. And she’s like, Oh, okay, I was such a hater to Facebook. And I kind of didn’t understand what you were doing. Right. And of course, my face was completely creepy. And two weeks later, I turned the thing off. Never went back on it. Because of IDC, that course and we got super focused on creating Instagram. And we I think we maybe had one of the first Twitter economic development accounts. And we actually won an IDC award for like the best social media of a large IDI organization in the country. So like around 2010. So we’re really proud of that. But so yeah, there was really just that was just the beginning of social media. So I’m not kidding. We must have done a dozen a month of these community meetings that some like two people would come to and we were really pumped when we’d have double digits and people would come. And we had to just do it. I was I was at every rotary every cuantas club, every community HOA meeting, just tell them the story. This is what we’re doing. And not even I wasn’t really trying to raise money. I was just trying to get awareness out there. Yeah. It was really interesting. You know, people asking, you know, raising their hands. Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? And it was really awesome, because professional meanings people aren’t going to really put you on the spot, go to an HOA meeting. The hard questions and they’re like, they almost like revel in it. But it really helped me with my talking points and And after my first year of doing that, I was like I could take on any talking point I was. So I was like, excited to go out to public meetings.

Brandon Burton 25:06
That’s funny. Yeah. So with the three legs you talked about, the one that really stands out to me that I’d like to learn a little bit more about is how you approach the you’d mentioned aligning the workforce efforts from kindergarten on up to be able to keep and retain them in the community and have that workforce pipeline, what are some of those key things that you do to help align those workforce efforts?

Nick Masino 25:30
Absolutely. And I will tell you in 2008, to 10, really, up until almost it feels like the beginning of COVID. This was completely unique. People were barely talking about this. Now, every chamber in the United States, it’s their number one priority. And it’s very innovative to talk about the last three years. But in 2006, and seven, when we were kicking this off, it became very clear that we were pretty good at already doing this. But we had to create some formality around it, which was committees and goals and Task Force and action committees around getting the talent creators together with the employers. And so we literally started this, I guess, you know, 18 years ago, projecting, hey, we’re starting this new division. And we’re going to need this type of workforce. And we started at the same time creating career academies in our high school. And even now, it’s actually now all the way down to middle school. We that was one of the epitomises to start what we call the Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology. We went to go visit one on a peer tour outside of DC and Fairfax County. And we created it a year later in Gwinnett. And it’s been the number one academic school in Georgia, for the last 11 years. We’ve since because of this connection between the workforce, and in education, we now have four STEM schools, one focused on AI, and it’s actually a K through 12. Ai, integrated system. So a whole school cluster on AI. But we’re, we’re probably year five or four on our engineering STEM school. So if you want to be an engineer, mechanical, electrical, you have a specific engineering school. And then the last one is health, and it’s anywhere from EMT to a doctor, if you think you’re gonna go to medical school or become a nurse or a PT or an OT, you could go to this school. I also think it’s important to point out we have 183,000 students, and our K through 12 public school. And then we have a municipal school. And we have some very large private schools. So we have well over 200,000 students being educated K through 12, not including our college, and our 12 or two year technical school. So we have a lot of people like this past May, we grant we had we had 15,000 graduates in Gwinnett. County between all those school systems. So we don’t leave out the private schools or the city schools, the alignment, and we do the same with the technical college and the four year college.

Brandon Burton 28:12
Wow, I love how you refer to them as talent creators, instead of just schools, not just the school system and their talent creators. And I think if they can really adopt that, that title, it puts out that that talent and workforce with a specific focus on what they want to do and what they want to become when they grow up. Right?

Nick Masino 28:32
Yes. And in two weeks, I will be in front of 1500 new teachers, just because of turnover and our system is so large, it’s about 12 to 1500. And it’s the big orientation of all the new teachers. And I’ll go, they gave me five minutes as tamper CEO, and when I was Chief Economic Development Officer, and I just do five minute pitch on them. And they’re the future is on their shoulders, because the future workforce or Gwinnett. County is in your kindergarten class or is about to graduate in the next nine months. So that the talent creator, I’ve been using that for some time, and I give them I hopefully inspiring speech about what their impact is in the classroom, what it means to Gwinnett County’s future.

Brandon Burton 29:14
Absolutely. There’s so much focus these days on content creation. So to be a talent creator, that’s important. No, no pressure to those teachers, you know. But let’s shift gears a little bit over to the public policy initiative that you guys had on your your application for chamber the year and tell us about that. And, and what makes that stand out?

Nick Masino 29:36
Yeah, and just briefly, the standout is we were doing very little, and we started doing some stuff at a quick fast paced level. I always say whatever you put in your budget is what you do. And so we budgeted for a full time employee and we budgeted for them to have funds to invest. And right out of the gate, was it The first year of our first new leader in public policy. And almost seven years, we were up against a big community vote to for one cent sales tax to fund capital improvements for our cities in our county, which means police departments and 911 centers and parks and libraries, in roads and sidewalks and bridges. And so we said, we’ve got this, we’re going to take the take this on, we’re going to, we’re going to lead this effort through our newly staff position. And we raised monies and hired money and we hired consultants. And we actually at the end of that vote, we actually had that was the highest vote yes, in the previous three campaigns. And so that was huge. And then we said, well, we need to start doing one that Day at the Capitol again, and go down there. And we did one last year, which was pretty COVID centric. Last year spill, we’re very limited, but we were there. And we did it was within the rules of COVID. But this year, those rules were removed, and we’re all back to normal. And we’re trying to find the date that worked best for them. And for us. It actually ended up being Valentine’s Day. So our awesome marketing and communications graphics team came up with you remember in elementary school you gave Valentine’s out? Yeah, yeah, we created Quinn net loves Georgia, Valentine’s. And we’re giving it to all of our legislators with candy. It’s awesome. It is awesome. And I just say it’s cording, but apparently no one had ever done that before. And I was really shocked. Because our we have a state legislature that needs annually, and it meets from January to March. So Valentine’s Day is always there. Like, how are we the first I think it is, but we have a really, really creative marketing team. And they came up with it. And I thought it was 100% corny, but I didn’t want to do it. And they were like, no, no, we got to do it, we’re really gonna stand out. And I was like, I don’t know if we’re gonna stand out for good or bad. But well, we’ll go for it. And everyone loved it. I was wrong. They were right. It was it was super positive. And all the photos were super cool. And it was it was really memorable, which is what was important. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:21
it’s nice when you can have a little bit of humble pie when something really, you know, is well accepted. And it’s okay, you know, to accept that and give your team all the credit for their good ideas, right?

Nick Masino 32:34
Oh, yeah. If they would have listened to me, we would have would have not done it. And we would have not been a finalist in the ACC. I give all the credit other places? Absolutely not, I

Brandon Burton 32:45
think you hit on something important that you know, where you put the budget is what gets the attention, right. So being able to align your intentions, you know, fiscally towards public policy, you’re gonna see more focus and more attention and more results by doing so. So I think that’s a good leadership note right there for others to take note of that if you don’t budget for it, it’s not going to happen. So

Nick Masino 33:11
totally agree. That’s, that’s definitely one of my mantras.

Brandon Burton 33:15
Yes, for sure. Well, Nick, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any tips or action items with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level. What piece of advice might you offer to them?

Nick Masino 33:33
Absolutely. I think this one’s actually I’ve read it. Like he first stopped me when it when you kind of gave me the heads up, I needed to answer that question. It but I think the answer is so obvious. Because this is what I’ve done for my entire career. When I was a mayor, I got involved in the Georgia Municipal Association, surrounded myself with peers learn best practices. And I think just as important is to avoid the mistakes that they shared with you that they made. Then I became an economic developer, and I joined the International Economic Development Council did the same thing. And it literally, I started on as the chamber CEO, July 1 of 2019. Two weeks later, I was in Huntington Beach at the annual conference, learning best practices. And I literally showed up like I took a flight really early, so I could go attend the board meeting of which one I was not allowed to attend because I wasn’t on the board. And I tried to play the well no one said I couldn’t do it. Let me sit in I just like I like if I’m going to do something I’m all in and they were like Well, sir, sorry, you cannot see. First of all welcome, but you’re not here. You can be here I need to be just not in this office. So So I went I you know, I went to the new member orientation and then I went to the big welcome ceremony, and it was all awesome. And the next day I got on a peer group I have which I’ve been on for four years, I’ve met some incredible chamber leaders from literally across the country across. There’s great folks from Canada as well in the Caribbean. And it’s been awesome. And I have learned so much. When anytime I dive into something, I want to hear what the people that have done it, what they what, like, we didn’t have a foundation at our chamber. So I’m sitting there in a room with 40 CEOs, me and one other CEO did not have a foundation, I immediately went back, why don’t we have a foundation sound out we did. And we had created our Community Foundation 20 years prior, we just found it out. And they were doing a really unique, important work of the community. But it wasn’t around business. So we actually created a chamber foundation focused on helping businesses that have owners that have been historically left out people of color women, veterans that haven’t been given their fair share of the pie. So we’re focused on that group, because nobody else was doing that work. And so that those peer groups are so important. You never know what you can learn. And also, just as importantly, what you can avoid. So sorry, that was a long drawn out answer is join, well join ACC, get on one of their peer groups in there based on the size and complexity of your chamber. So there’s a peer group for anybody, any chamber CEO,

Brandon Burton 36:23
right. And that’s one of the main reasons why this podcast became what it is, is to be able to share some of those best practices, get to know others in the peer group and learn from mistakes and successes of others. So do do all of the above as far as learning from your peers and those best practices to adopt those. I appreciate that. Nick, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Nick Masino 36:53
Well, I see a bright future for chambers. I do think that that’s a complex question, because it really depends on the community. Because not there is no cookie cutter chamber. They are as different as the individual communities. And I think it’s a great question every chamber leader needs to ask themselves. For us. We’re a very, we’re the fifth most diverse county in the United States, again, a million people, a quarter of them 250,000 People were born outside the United States of a million people on my community. And so we’ve been super intentional about inviting people into the chamber. Because if you don’t know a chamber, you’ve never been involved with one. A lot of people think chambers are government. And we find people that are first generation American, don’t have a lot of trust in government. And so we have to be super intentional about inviting people. That was what it was for us. And we knew that our physical structure of our chamber wasn’t super inviting. So we had to make it more open and bright and welcoming. So we’re doing a $4 million renovation right now. And that’s what it meant for us. But I think, you know, view as 10 chambers that question, you might get 10 different answers. But I think what’s important is you’ve got to think where is your community headed? And are you headed? Are you in a parallel direction, because if you’re going east and your community is going west, that’s that’s not good for your chamber. You’ve got to be mirroring your community have what they need. And that means thinking differently, as your community might be changing.

Brandon Burton 38:24
Right now, that is such a great answer. So every chamber is right yeah, every chamber every community is so unique. And you need to be able to listen to that community see what direction you need to go and, and it’ll kind of chart the course for you. But every every answer is slightly different. As I asked that, you know, now in 238 episodes, we get different answers from everybody. So I love it. Nick, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things or when it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Nick Masino 39:02
Sure you go to GwinnettChamber.org I will point out when that is two ends in two T’s by the way, Gwinnett you’ve never heard that name before. It is one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia. You’re gonna love this the guy’s name was button. Bu t t o n button good at

Brandon Burton 39:27
just don’t name their kids Button anymore.

Nick Masino 39:29
No, I know it’s such a classic thing. So what net chamber.org You can reach me at Nick@GwinnettChamber.org Pretty, pretty simple.

Brandon Burton 39:39
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy for people to find you but Nick, this has been great having you on the show and hearing about the exciting work you guys are involved with. I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year and it’s been great having you on the show.

Nick Masino 39:55
Thanks so much. It really was an honor. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 39:58
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Pearland Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Jim Johnson

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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.

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Jim Johnson. Jim has worked in the chamber industry for over 12 years and is currently the President CEO of the Pearland Chamber of Commerce in Texas. In his role, he oversees the daily operations, strategic planning and partnerships with multiple community organizations. Jay Jim came from Georgetown, Texas, where he was president and CEO of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. Prior to Georgetown, he was the president and CEO for the Lufkin Angelina County Chamber of Commerce and the Lufkin Angelina Economic Development Partnership. He started his chamber career as the Vice President with the Pearland chamber. He currently serves as faculty for the US Chamber of Commerce Institute organizational management program, and as the Chair for the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives. He previously served on the board of directors for WACE and for the Texas Association of Business. He holds a bachelors of arts and history and a minor in Political Science from Texas State University. Jim is a CCE from ACCE and IOM designation as well from the US Chamber of Commerce. He was recognized as a 40 under 40 in 2021 by ACCE and Jim is married to his wife, Jasmine and they have one son, but Jim, I’m excited to have you back on the podcast before we hit record, we realized that you were you were on the podcast way back in episode 22. And as this releases we’re on 232 now so it’s been a minute but wow. Yeah.

Jim Johnson 3:48
That’s so congratulations to you, Brandon. I mean, that’s, you know, we’re, you know, still going strong and still great resource out there for the chamber profession.

Brandon Burton 3:55
Well, that was the hope that was the hope when it started and it’s still going so love to give you an opportunity, Jim to to say hello to everybody listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jim Johnson 4:09
Yeah, that’s great. I glad to be here. Glad to be back here on the chamber chat podcast. Something interesting always is a US palsy go what is something interesting? I will say I’m in Pearland Texas, it’s interesting to me is that it though it’s a town about a fruit. I was thinking today I can’t think of a single place in town where there is a pear tree even though we are parallel and so maybe it’s not interesting about me but interesting about the town I’m in right now. So we’ll go with that.

Brandon Burton 4:43
Yeah, that’s good. Sounds like a project for the chamber.

Jim Johnson 4:46
Yeah, right. You know, I thought about and I’d like to do pear trees even grow in parallel and so to be determined for for Chamber Chat Podcast when I come back and another 100 or so

Brandon Burton 4:57
that’s right. That’s right. Well, we’ll get an appt and see how big those trees are then. Yeah. Well tell us a little bit about that parallel Chamber of Commerce, the size staff Scope of Work budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Jim Johnson 5:12
Wonderful. The Pearland Chamber of Commerce is a town located directly south of Houston, Texas, our northern border is the South border of Houston, Texas. We are a have been a fast growing community that times rated one of the fastest growing in the United States, and continues to be a growing in our business in our population. Our chamber has a annual budget of over $700,000 a membership that this year eclipsed the 700 mark. And I have a great team with me. And we have including, myself six full time staff members.

Brandon Burton 5:57
All right, that definitely helps kind of prepare us for our conversation. I like to think, you know, these programs that we’ll talk about as a chamber of the year finalists should be able to be scaled up or down depending on the size of the chamber and the community. And, of course, the relevancy for your community as well. So thank you for for sharing all that. The way I like to structure these chamber, the year finalist episodes is to really spend the majority of our time focused in on the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application. So what I like to do is just at a high level, have you explain what the two programs are? And then we can circle back and dig a little deeper into both of them. Wonderful.

Jim Johnson 6:40
Yeah. It’s always a great process going through the ACCE chamber the year because when you get that notification that you’re a finalist, you pause and think what are the two projects that we really want to focus on in showcase and for us to really stood at the front. The first one was a local opportunity to engage with the public sector and our local city council on a proposed fee proposed storm water fee that was designed to help solve our drainage issues. But during the discovery, and I know we’re talking about this more we uncovered, businesses weren’t aware of the fee. They weren’t engaged in the process. So over a period of time, we engage with our local public City Council, to educate them on the impact of the fee on the businesses to remove that fee from consideration and to move them towards a bond study. That was a bond study and a bond to really have a true solution to drainage, and our community. And our second one focused on workforce related to the large amount of people being a suburb of Houston, that leave Portland every day for work. And with unemployment under 4%. In our community, we recognize that one of the best ways to fill jobs in parallel in was to showcase the jobs to local residents, and created a comprehensive resource board of career opportunities in our community. That wasn’t your traditional hey, here’s a job posting allowing folks to interact with companies allow them to search jobs. And on the flip in, allow the employers to tap into and see the job, the applicants in our community as well.

Brandon Burton 8:40
Awesome. Now two very worthwhile programs and interested to learn more about both of them. First of all, we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dig in deeper on both of those.

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Raquel Borges 11:30
Hi, I’m Raquel I work with Yiftee to help over 500 chambers cities and downtown’s across the US keep local dollars local and support their small businesses. Our CEO Donna Novitsky and I will be at the ACCE Conference in Salt Lake City from July 31 to August 3, and we would love to meet you swing by our booth to say hi and learn about our community gift card program, Community cards are custom branded for your community, and can only be used at your Chamber members businesses, plus the program is free. You can learn more by visiting yiftee.com. That’s yiftee.com or emailing us at sales@yiftee.com. See you at the ACCE Conference.

Brandon Burton 12:19
All right, Jim, we’re back. So you kind of piqued my interest when you said a storm water fee. Like we’re who comes up with ideas to charge people for storm water? Like, how does this come to be? And then to pick a fight with the Chamber of add it right?

Jim Johnson 12:36
Yeah, um, you know, Pearland is a, we’re a coastal community. And after Hurricane Harvey, in 2017. It, our community recognized that we needed to be more proactive with drainage. And throughout this local elected officials uncovered a way to do a storm water fee. And what that was, was a charge on impervious coverage in our community, a monthly ongoing fee per 1000 square feet of impervious coverage. And that doesn’t sound like a large amount. And so it was just kind of dripped to us in conversation, and it perked our ears that council had taken action to place this. This was in August of the year that it was gonna be placed on the ballot for voter approval the next May. So about 10 months down. And over time, we learned this is a no clue. And that that small fee of $1.79 per 1000 square foot adds up over a period of time for the average business that had 10,000 square feet is gonna be a little over $200 a year. But as we dug deeper into this and started talking to businesses and started pulling our members and gaining and listening to them about the impact. It wasn’t just $200 for some companies, it was $10,000 For some it was $100,000 a year. For some it was over $400,000 a year, every year forever. Right. And we listened and that was shocking and alarming to us in our businesses.

Brandon Burton 14:13
Yeah, and so often once a fee like that is in place like you say it never will go away and and oftentimes it may even increase over time. It’s like you’re already getting some let’s go back to the well and get some more like all these water analogies that the information is drip to you going back to the well, storm.

Jim Johnson 14:34
You’re absolutely right. And that was we realized that that was a concern. And we wanted a true solution to drainage in our country. We don’t want our residential and our businesses to flood and in the event of natural disasters. So it started a true education process and information gathering for the chamber. As we looked at the overall impact this would have On our businesses, and then the challenge of trying to educate counsel on the impact would have businesses, it was a five two vote in favor to place this on the May ballot in August of that year. And I’m proud to port Brandon by over a course of time. In February of that year, we’ve we changed that to a seven Oh, vote against the storm water fee being placed on the May ballot, and to move towards a bond study, which would lead to a community wide bond, which would be a more comprehensive solution to drainage in our community.

Brandon Burton 15:38
Yeah, that’s, that’s two big wins right there. Because just by having it ended up on the ballot, you know, to be able to have, you know, propose for businesses to pay for this. If you’re not a business owner, and you’re like, yeah, let them pay for it, you know, it’s off my plate, if I could see it very easily passing that way. But to be able to shift it as a bond, where everybody has buy in, in the community, really is much more equitable way of approaching it anyway. So as far as the bond process goes, did you guys go about educating the community about it? Because it was a big win with Ryan? So what was that process? Like?

Jim Johnson 16:17
Absolutely. So you know, we we over that that first initial period are asked to council was to postpone the storm water fee, and to do a bond study. The bond study, what was nice about us being proactive in this public engagement, is that the chamber it was a close committee of a roughly 11 individuals, and two of those people on that bond scope committee, were appointed by the Chamber of Commerce. So we had a seat at the table allowed us to share the impact on it. And over that that bond study group came back with a little over $100 million storm water bond, our largest bond package related to drainage projects in our community, the Chamber came out fully supported that package, because bonds, those tax rate increases was smaller than the original storm water fee, and over a period of time would be paid off, and would not be forever. And then on May 9 of this year, that bond related to drainage pass with 65% voter approval in our community. So it was a great win in a lot allowed us to truly work with our public sector. And, and live up to what we say we want to our tagline is, we’re the voice of business. But we have to speak up for business. And we it’s comforting to know that when we were at Council multiple times talking to about this, the room was packed, and it was business leaders in there. Some of them don’t have a vote in our committee because their businesses here, but they live in another community. And that was humbling, but spoke volume for our credibility as a convener of individuals throughout parallel.

Brandon Burton 18:00
Yeah, no, that is awesome. That visual of having a roomful of business owners saying, hey, this, this matters to us. That’s absolutely Oh, that’s awesome. But let’s, let’s shift gears a little bit into the other program that you guys submitted work in parallel. And you kind of gave a little bit of background on that. But maybe go back to some of that origin of you see people, you know, leaving and going into Houston to work and things of that nature. How did how did that evolve to be the program that it is today?

Jim Johnson 18:33
Absolutely. So our chamber in partnership with our economic development corporation or higher ed partners or workforce issues, did a comprehensive Workforce Strategy. During this input about what our workers were doing what was taking place, a stat stood out to the chamber. And it was that 38,942 workers commute outside of our community every single day. So we’re losing roughly 40,000 people. At the same time, we recognize our unemployment was less than 4%. So we have low unemployment, but mass exodus of people going into the fourth largest city of the United States for work. And so we wanted to showcase careers and opportunities in our community. And it actually started with a business trying to convince the chamber to buy a massive billboard on a major highway. They say stop driving on your road work in parallel. And it sparked interest in our staff and our board and our leaders to say how can we show folks to work in parallel and so we started researching different platforms for job postings spraying and you know, I mean, you can turn on the radio or anything. There are lots and lots of companies out there that focus on job postings, and we wanted to find a way that we could do it differently in our community to be hyper focused on jobs in parallel. And so that was the creation of work in parallel, which is a free standing standalone website. That is comprehensive job board, an employer Resource Center. So what we mean by that is you can go there and see over 200 job postings at any given moment. But also, if you’re an employer going there, we want you to come to this site, because we can highlight resources that are beneficial to you grants, training opportunities, childcare for your employees, so they can know were going on. But even better, you can look at all the applicants that are on the site, all those job seekers that are on there, and you can engage with them. This is 24/7 Metaverse, ability to interact schedule interviews, chat, share information, all through a virtual platform, all focused on pair land, and all absolutely free to businesses in our community. Because if we can move that needle and fill jobs, we can truly make an impact and see that large, almost 40,000 People start to work here locally.

Brandon Burton 21:09
That’s right. I like that. And it’s a two sided part with the website. So you get the job seekers, you know, with the job boards, and they can put, you know, fill out applications and whatnot. But to be able to track the employers there with these things, like you said, the grants and resources and everything for them. And then while they’re in there, they’re just kind of that stickiness factor of let’s see what else is in here, you know, resource wise, including, you know, workers, you know, staff. So I think that the billboard idea that that is interesting with that, you know, the origin there, it’s like, yeah, that that can be impressive. Like, you don’t need to convince anybody that a commute is terrible, right.

Jim Johnson 21:50
And that’s what’s great, Brian, I mean, you’re so this the platform, we chose what I remember, when we were researching platforms, this one you go to, and it’s it reminds you of a virtual trade show. I mean, that’s what we created an ongoing 24/7 virtual trade show. But what’s great is when you log into the site, the first thing you see is the exterior of the country, the virtual Convention Center. And there are billboards all over the place. And we’re like, that is our platform that we’re choosing for this site. And he talked about commuting, and part of the conversation that we uncovered during our research is that the average commuter spends 45 minutes one way in their car. And so we dug into that if you work locally, it’s about 15 minutes. So that’s 30 minutes, both ways. If you commute twice a day, we uncover that that leads to about 240 hours a year that you spend commuting, and I can do math, but 30 divided by eight, that’s 30 days, or 240 divided by eight, that’s 30 days, you get back, or 10 full days, so 30 working days, or 10 full days, you get back by working and living in the same community. And and that’s part of our message to folks is like, yes, you might want to spend time in your car, I don’t, I want you working in parallel at these great companies. And that’s what it does. It’s ongoing showcase of these great career opportunities for talented people.

Brandon Burton 23:17
Ya know, I love it when people are in cars listening to this podcast. But other than that, it’s a it’s not a fun thing to have to commute a long commute like that. And so with the work imperiling website and I’m intrigued, just because you said like, there’s a lot of companies out there that focus on, you know, hiring needs, right and matching employees with employers. So to be able to make this different and unique and targeted for parallel? And what are some of those things that are really driving traffic to it that are getting that attention that are making it stand up and above what other sites might be out there? And because I imagine some of these job seekers are probably on, you know, some of these other sites as well, in addition to work in parallel and but what makes it stand out in your opinion?

Jim Johnson 24:08
Yeah, a couple different things. Your absolute we’re competing with major companies in recruiting, we’re trying to showcase a job board when companies out there spending millions of dollars in marketing. What was the for our screen, this is the first time that we’ve gotten into Google advertisements in targeted that so we’re trying to be very proactive, like our businesses are in place ads, but actually what makes this stand out is we’re getting community wide buy in, in this process, or school districts or cities or elected officials are out there utilizing this message of work in parallel and.com And because by getting their involvement and recognizing to make it success, we need our major employers and our major stakeholders to show it out. That’s how it stands out. And We are seeing every month that this man has established astonishing growth. Like I mentioned earlier, over 200 jobs posted on the site at any given time, nearly 1000 applicants are already on the site looking for jobs interacting. It’s, it’s, it’s exciting. It’s, it’s our first, we’ve always had a job board. And I think that’s you what chambers can do, you’ve always had a job board, it’s been known as a member benefit, you can post your jobs on your website, we flipped that narrative and said, This is a community benefit. This isn’t just for you to post your jobs. This is a community wide benefit to know that if you’re looking for a career in our town, all the major companies are on it, all the major stakeholders, you go to one place and find all of their jobs. But the second fold, is it always the booths, the interactive side of it, you can learn about these companies. So you might not find a job with XYZ company right now. But you can learn about their culture, their benefits, their resources, and guess what, if you can interact with them, say, Hey, I’m in your community. Now, when there’s an opening that fits my skill set, I’d love to chat with you about more.

Brandon Burton 26:08
Yeah, and I just pulled up work in Portland website while you’re talking and, and I see you’ve got some of the major employers in your community that are sponsors of the website, and what a great way for them to get in front of these people who are job seekers to sponsor the website, be their front, you know, front and center, and help make some of those connections.

Jim Johnson 26:31
And, you know, the Chamber Leadership, our board through this process is we live our mission to serve business, promote growth and empower our community recognize that this is, it is it is non dues revenue for us, it is that we do have sponsors, as you mentioned, but we believe this is the lane we need to being going forward, we need to be the hub of information, we need to share this data that we have of careers, and send that back out to our community because the success of this is yes, we’re interacting with our businesses, we’re gonna fill their jobs. But the majority of our audiences, the community at large, an area that chambers traditionally don’t get into, unless it was a festival, this is our lane to say, This is why we exist. And we’re here to help our businesses by showcasing those shops.

Brandon Burton 27:17
Right. I love it. So you had mentioned kind of at the beginning of that part of the discussion that the in parallel, you had like a 4% unemployment rate. It makes it too early now to be able to see the change. Like I know, this is all pretty new. But yeah, it’d be interesting to follow that and see, you know, gee, bring it down to 1%. Or yeah, how does it right, and

Jim Johnson 27:38
that’s the greatest. Yeah, that’s the greatest thing about this, this this site is the we’re able to use metrics, we want to see that percentage of unemployment continue to go down, we want to see the next time we do a comprehensive study on commuting patterns that we want to see less folks commuting outside our thing. We want our companies to continue to see applicants come from our local area, we want to see continue to see people hired through our site and current or awareness of jobs in here. That’s that’s the approach is we have great companies, we’re a large community in the Houston area, and we need to showcase those jobs and get those individuals to live and work here so that ultimately their quality of life goes up to.

Brandon Burton 28:21
That’s right. I love it. It’s a great vision, and you guys are executing very well. So great job. As we start to wrap things up here, I like to see, you know, for those listeners who are out there, who are really interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have to offer to help them in accomplishing that goal?

Jim Johnson 28:45
Yeah, I, I, this whole journey for us, was very strategic. And I think too often people look at strategic planning data. As a, as something that is scary or not what they should be doing it, I wouldn’t encourage and say it should be required that if you don’t have a strategic plan and a roadmap, not staff, that is truly as a not staff driven staff should be driven on driving it. But that’s, that has community wide support that has your stakeholders in your community and your board involved. That will allow you to continue to be a catalyst in your community. And if we hadn’t had a goal of two years ago to get 75 job postings on our website, and to recognize then that it was working but it wasn’t meeting that need to modify that to look at third party sites. We wouldn’t be having this conversation today Brandon about work in parallel. And so get a get a strategic plan and get a roadmap so that you can see truly be a a chamber that is moving in the right direction?

Brandon Burton 30:04
Yeah, no, I think that that’s so important. You need to know where you’re going right? You need to have goals need to be able to have that clear mission and vision. As we look forward to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jim Johnson 30:20
I think chambers, I think engaging with the public sector is so important of the future. And it’s not always advocacy, I think, as you engage and truly work with the public, the community, in your community, is that we have to recognize that we have to be involved with more than just what we do. And if we do that, you’re going to uncover more opportunities for your chamber to be a problem solver. Because they’re gonna look at us for those those issues, and ask us to step up, and if it aligns with what our community needs, what our chamber needs. That that’s the future, we’re gonna we saw that during the pandemic, you’ve had many podcasts talking about, chamber stepping up. In that area, during the pandemic, we build on that momentum, continue to be the person continue to be the trusted resource for information, truly, truly the trusted problem solver and community. And we want to say we do that. But you got to engage with the public sector, your elected officials, your community partners, your stakeholders to really make that happen.

Brandon Burton 31:37
Absolutely. That’s a great vision. And I like the idea of aligning your organization with those needs in your community. And I think that goes right along with your idea of having that strategic plan and, and that that needs to be part of it is being in alignment going forward. Well, Jim, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners out there who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things, or maybe to do a little R&D with working in Pearland, and what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Jim Johnson 32:14
Sure. I’d always encourage people to go to their website, PearlandChamber.org, because you’ll find under our staff section, my email, and my LinkedIn profile link either ways to connect, but because we’re on a podcast, and people can pause and make sure they write it down appropriately. It’s jim.johnson@pearlandchamber.org. And Brandon, I always think you at the beginning because you knew this a Pearland and not pearl. And that those that would I know, it’s the sales call, because they think we’re the land of pearls. But like I said, we’re the land of pears. asterik not really

Brandon Burton 32:48
fruitless pears, right.

Jim Johnson 32:51
There are a lot of those fruitless pear trees here that, but I don’t think that was your original idea with the message.

Brandon Burton 32:56
That’s right. That’s right. So I’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode makes it even easier to find you and reach out and connect. But I want to wish you and your team have first congratulations but wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year and I look forward to seeing the results in about a month from now in Salt Lake.

Jim Johnson 33:18
Yes, sir. Thank you, Brandon for hosting me again. Thanks for bringing me back on and let’s make sure it’s not 210 episodes before the next time we do this together.

Brandon Burton 33:26
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Addressing Challenges Facing Businesses with Rick Wilson

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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.

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Rick Wilson. Rick is the President and CEO of the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce, and has been since 2019. Rick comes from a 16 year career working at the YMCA organization in a variety of different roles from facility manager to executive manager. He’s an active Rotarian, and is involved at different levels with several local organizations and board of directors. But Rick, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Rick Wilson 2:37
Well, thank you, Brandon. And it’s exciting to be on the show here. And hello, everybody out there. All those interested in what goes on at chambers of commerce. And again, my name is Rick Wilson. I’m the President CEO for the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. I’m very excited to be on here today to chat a little bit about what’s going on with chambers of commerce, especially here in Southern California and hopefully, some great storytelling on will help you guys moving forward on some of the things you’re looking to do as well. But a little interesting about me. Born and raised here in Southern California, I went to school for a little bit in Australia for about a year as well as in Virginia, of when I was in high school and then went to college at UC Santa Barbara. And then was lucky enough to come back to San Diego to work for the then San Diego Chargers. And that was a great experience for seven seasons traveling on the road working in coaching and working in the business department. But since then, I’ve moved on was at the YMCA, As Brandon mentioned, and now landed over here at the East County Chamber of Commerce for about the past four years and really excited to continue to help our business community.

Brandon Burton 3:38
That’s right. And you you came into the chamber world at just the right time get about a year of experience under your belt before they really put you to work, right?

Rick Wilson 3:47
Yes, sir.

You know, got hired in May of 2019. And about March of 2020. We all experienced the same thing and stay at home orders and the 100 year pandemic and there was no playbook for anybody on what to do during 100 year pandemic, especially for Chambers of Commerce. So we definitely rolled up our sleeves and dove into it and just went after it. Absolutely. But tell us a little bit about the San Diego East County Chamber just give us an idea of you know where you’re coming from. So things like the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work you’re involved with. And that’ll kind of set our table for discussion. Great. So yeah, the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce was founded back in August of 1912. So we are now in our 100 and 11th year of operations here at the chamber. So that’s quite a few generations that have really looked at our chamber as the go to resource in that community, whether it’s business related or not. And we definitely really love that and appreciate that and want to keep that up our staff size. We’re fully staffed. We have five employees. And we have two longtime volunteers one for about four years and one for about 11 years now. And that’s really helped us out our budgets, just over half a million just

over 500,000. And we’re looking to continue to grow our membership is right around 600 members. And so we’re looking coming out of the pandemic continuing to grow that we had a great program and a great plan going in 2019. And then as I mentioned earlier, the pandemic hit and for everybody, it just kind of changed the way we did business, but really excited about what the future holds. And as a chamber of commerce, we want to be that resource in our community to help everyone out.

Brandon Burton 5:26
So I know it’s in the name. So the San Diego Regional East County team, what all the do encompasses geographically?

Rick Wilson 5:35
Now, that’s a great question. So well, first off, I’ll start off by saying that as a chamber of commerce, we don’t really see boundaries or barriers. We’re a global economy. So we’ve gotten members in other states here in the United States, Northern California, and then obviously a lot in Los Angeles in Southern California, but we are in San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. So if we had borders, we would say we go as far east as Borrego Springs as far south as Spring Valley as far north as Poway and as far west as La Mesa. But we do things all over San Diego County, we partner with tons of chambers of commerce here in San Diego. And the whole goal of that is to bring our businesses together, it has nothing to do with poaching, membership or anything like that. We kind of believe that, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships so we can work together as chambers of commerce, we can help the business community even more, and that’s really what we’re looking for. So as a Regional Chamber, we’re not just regionally for each county, but we are regional throughout San Diego County doing everything we can to help.

Brandon Burton 6:33
Okay, I know that that makes a lot of sense. So I appreciate the the extra explanation of the name, right?

Rick Wilson 6:40
Yes, it is a little bit of a sentence. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 6:43
So as we get into our discussion for our topic, today, we settled on the idea of talking about how chambers can really be a resource and a help for businesses who are facing struggles and some of those struggles that businesses face. So we’ll dive deeper into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:43
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 9:37
All right, Rick, we’re back. So leading into the break there we introduce the topic for our discussion today being addressing challenges that are facing businesses and specifically how a chamber of commerce can help with addressing some of these challenges and and I think it’s kind of an inherent thing for Chambers of Commerce to be involved with being problem solving. versus their community. But as we approach this discussion, what what are some of those things that are maybe top of mind for you when it comes to a chamber of commerce helping businesses that are facing certain struggles?

Rick Wilson 10:13
Absolutely. Well, first off, thank you, Brandon, the Chamber of Commerce exists because of so many businesses that exist in our society, right? We are in a capitalistic society. So Chamber of Commerce has are here to really help businesses small, medium, and large size. And some of the challenges that we’ve been seeing over the past year and a half, two years coming out of the pandemic, obviously, is workforce, getting employees, I would say, the middle of 2021, coming out of the pandemic wooden restrictions kind of lifted up was definitely a challenge. Definitely, in Southern California, we saw, restaurants half empty, and they’re not serving the other half, because they can’t get enough employees, cooks, waiters, you name it. And so a lot of stores or retail, or manufacturing, or anything that we can think of have struggled with getting workforce. So as a chamber of commerce, we are definitely working with the Workforce Partnership in San Diego here, working with the Economic Development Council, working with government, local agencies, to make sure that we are doing what we can to help get that workforce back into our society back into working, that really is the machine that makes everything go. And so Workforce Partnership is incredibly important workforce development work with, like I mentioned, all those agencies, that’s been really big for us, and we’ve not arrived, we are still looking to do that, I would say we’ve gone from getting bodies in there to now really needing to look at incredibly qualified people getting back to where we were pre pandemic. So looking for those qualified applicants now and really getting them placed into our workforce out here in East County and throughout San Diego County. So that’s, that’s one of the big topics that we’ve seen.

Brandon Burton 11:49
Yeah, so the workforce issue, I think it’s taken on a whole different approach, a whole different issue, you know, coming out of the pandemic. So before, I think, you know, we’d see jobs shift from one region to another, or different states, navy, whatever political climates or incentives there are for employers to be in certain places, but the pandemic when everything shut down, and people kind of got creative in different ways to bring in an income, and especially those in the service industry, if they weren’t, you know, super high income earners to begin with. And maybe they’d created their own side gig or side hustle that became something. I mean, it just really created a different need and that time of their own employment, but then it leaves a huge void today, right? So as we look at trying to help with the workforce issues, is that something you guys are seeing there in the San Diego area? How, how are you trying to approach it to fill that void? I’m sure others are looking at a similar situation.

Rick Wilson 12:56
It’s a really good point, we have seen coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people who were employees of organizations, nations looking to kind of go on their own. And so we’ve had a lot of people come into the chamber of commerce, and we’ve worked with the Economic Development Council to help them start a business are starting to realize to during the pandemic, that a brick and mortar isn’t the be all end all that you know, it really expose the fact that those who were not comfortable with people working from home, for the pandemic, really were forced to see this results. And as many saw, you’re getting the same production, if not more, with some of those people working from home, which has really, you know, allowed. The word I’d like to use this pivot, we talked about that a lot during the pandemic is businesses looking outside the box re looking at their business model. You know, what if I use an example of one of our local companies here was heavy, a barbecue place, heavy seven days a week in their restaurant pandemic happen, they changed their business model pretty quickly. And they jumped all over the fact that all of our hospitals, and all of our health care, were starting to feed their people on a 24 hour basis, because remember, during the pandemic, and people working 12 hour shifts, 15 hour shifts. And that pivoting of that model for that restaurant, just as little restaurant completely blew them out of the water. They’re doing better than they’ve ever done. They’ve looked at their model. Now they rent out their facility three days a week for parties and events. It’s less staff that they need to put on the front end with not sharing what’s going to come in and able to load up their staff or catering their chefs. So pivoting was really one of the biggest things that we worked on during the pandemic to try to think outside the box to help businesses think of something different and individual employees who were unemployed during the pandemic, who maybe didn’t fall into the wonderful PPP program, working with them if they wanted to start a business on how we could get this going, especially during the pandemic and we’ve seen some really great results with that.

Brandon Burton 14:50
Yeah, so yeah, I guess that’s that’s a whole nother aspect of the the workforce issues all the money printing and all the money that got put into the system and I Um, stimulus checks and things like that that made work optional for people for a time. Or give them that flexibility to explore the opportunities to so yeah. What are what are some of the other challenges that you see businesses facing that a chamber of commerce can help with,

Rick Wilson 15:18
especially coming into 2023, two of the big things that we’ve been seeing is obviously, the supply chain, we all hear about this challenge that’s been happening. And then obviously, inflation. So with inflation, you know, businesses looking at their total package, what they’re offering, you know, most that we know how to increase pricing, depending on what service it is that they have, or what industry they’re in, as our chamber of commerce worked really hard coming out of the pandemic, and in 2022, really made some great strides. We were able to as a decision this year with our board of directors to not raise our pricing for our membership, do the fact that everyone is it totally makes sense to do it. You know, this is the time that you can argue and say, Yes, but if you’ve been able to do some really great things and make some really great decisions that have benefited you financially, as an organization, we’d like to turn that around, and give that back to our members by being able to say for 2023, with the inflation going up, and pricing going up and everything being like it is we’ve been able to hold our pricing at membership for 2023, which we’re incredibly proud of. And we’ve been getting incredible feedback on that, knowing that in 2024, we will have to look at an increase, but we just we’re talking at the end of 2022. What can we do for our members as they go through supply chain issues, inflation workforce challenges. So we’re really proud of that. And if you know, organizations are able to do that, whether through grants, whether through donations, whether it’s due just smart strategic and what you’re doing with your events as a chamber, you know, that’s a great way to give back to your members without actually taking it out of your pocket.

Brandon Burton 16:56
Right. So I think those are two key things that the chambers can can work on. And I think that we see a need across the country with both supply chain and inflation. And I commend you guys for being able to take a look at your budget and say we don’t need to raise price. And I’m sure your members appreciate that. As far as addressing the needs of the members, I mean that that’s one way of addressing that the inflation, but are you guys providing any feedback or data or anything as far as inflation goes? Or to be able to provide resources with supply chain issues? At what’s the approach on those two things you guys are taken?

Rick Wilson 17:37
Yeah, partnerships are very big for us at this Chamber of Commerce, we feel like we are able to reach more and do more by partnering. So when you’re talking about data, yes, we work with several groups here, not only in East County, but throughout San Diego County to keep our eyes on what’s going on with the economy. And so with related to inflation, what kind of data can we push out what kind of suggestions, so we’re not the be all end all as a chamber, the more partnerships we have, the more research verses we’re able to give to our members and non members just in the entire business community. So really, partnerships are what’s big. And so working with those groups, we can give those resources out. One of our big partners, and I think for most chambers is the Economic Development Council. They work on a lot of similar items that we do. So we try not to duplicate what we’re doing, we try to work together to make sure that together, we’re pushing out those resources to the community. So we’re very proud of that. And also continuing to work with other chambers really makes that partnership with other outside agencies much easier. Because we’re all trying to do the same thing. We’re all trying to help the business community. And it’s not a competition, it’s really about if, if the business committee is doing great tax dollars are rolling in coming back to your city in your county, it just makes a better place where we all work, live and play. And that’s what we’re really our goal is to go towards, right.

Brandon Burton 18:56
So the thing that comes to mind, you know, oftentimes, chambers are very involved with important work, you know, and oftentimes, they’re not seeking the credit, you know, the the partnerships, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit, necessarily, as long as the work gets done and information gets out there and everything. But at the same time, it’s important for people to understand what a Chamber of Commerce does, right. So there’s that definition of what a chamber does. So I’m curious as you guys work to address the needs, the the issues that are facing businesses, obviously, it’s best to have, you know, success stories, you know, individuals who are telling others that word of mouth spreads. But are there other ways that you guys are trying to educate the community about the work that you guys are involved with, and specifically with sharing some of these success stories of helping businesses overcome obstacles?

Rick Wilson 19:52
And that’s a great question. I think that’s probably one of the number one challenges most chambers have is pushing out the information and the resources on what they do. I think most people will think they know what a chamber of commerce, I probably have exactly one of those before I got the job. And then when you dive in, you realize that, yes, it is about the business community, but in that respect of the business community, how are you going about helping them. And in my opinion, there’s multiple branches on this tree of how you get to that success. So like, we talked about partnerships are partnering with government partner with leaders in your community, partner with big organizations that are looking to give back to the business community. So there’s multiple ways that you can do that, obviously, during the pandemic, we had program grant programs that came out in the county, the states and the cities that we all live in work in. And that was kind of a band aid to help, you know, get to a certain point. But it really wasn’t a solution. It was really about talking with other groups and making sure that we’re working to be successful, and not just saying, we as an organization know what is happening, we need to get a vibe of what’s going out throughout our county. And that is the best way to get those results and get those two people or organizations or businesses that we work with. Could you follow up again, with the second question? There’s another part to that question?

Brandon Burton 21:10
Yeah, that’s a good question. Mainly about just how you guys go about sharing the success that you guys create for businesses and beyond the word of mouth of businesses that have been impacted, telling others? How are you sharing the message of what a chamber does? And specifically with addressing the challenges that face businesses? And a great,

Rick Wilson 21:35
that’s a great question, and I appreciate you kind of falling back up with that. So for us, you know, when we look at, yes, social media, that’s where people live, right? So social media is incredibly important that we’re, we’re pushing out the word, a lot of people are using Twitter or Instagram to find out their information, we know a lot of our media, really still follow Twitter, that’s really kind of where they get their information. So we’re pushing out as much as we can on that we have a weekly newsletter that goes out to over 2500 businesses, but we only have 600 members. So we know the business community has their eye on what’s going on with us. And we want to help. And when people find themselves in an alignment with what we’re doing, then fantastic, they can join our chamber. But our goal is really to help the business community. And so looking at these opportunities, success stories. I mean, there’s lots of them, I think of stories that we constantly tell people and educate, reach out to the chamber when, when you have a question, we can probably help you. And a lot of it is businesses with permitting and cities in the areas that they’re in. Well, we’re working with all these cities. So we can call in sometimes it’s just as easy as the permit is ready. But someone didn’t press the button within that city organization, because they’re so busy themselves trying to get things done. And Souplantation was a huge organization here in San Diego that died in Southern California during the pandemic. And we have a business owner who’s bringing that back and working with the city to bring that back. And people are very excited about that. And I’ll just share one little simple story on that is, she also is running a different business in there until she can bring Souplantation back. So she didn’t want to take the big signs down there on a 30 foot pole, the ones on the buildings. And if you’re not running the business at the time, you need to do that. But there’s also a clause that you can also put a wonderful canvas over it. And so she went from oh my gosh, this is going to destroy my business to oh, I can just have put a canvas over it until we get Souplantation open again. So working with your chamber communicating with your chamber. That’s the biggest thing, the more we hear from our businesses, that voice of what’s going on, the more that we can push that towards government write letters to the state, work with local entities, you know, deregulation, you name it. But when we hear from our business, community, especially our members, that’s the biggest thing. So one of the big tips I would give to anyone listening out there is reach out to your chamber, your chamber is there to serve you. And I know that it’s very difficult, you’re running your own business, you don’t have a lot of time to be engaged. But I used I like to use the analogy of a gym membership, right, we all kind of have a New Year’s resolution, we get that gym membership, we put it in our front pocket, but we never go to the gym, not to say that you can achieve your goals. But it might be a little bit more difficult to achieve your goal. If you don’t go to the gym. Well, if you join the Chamber of Commerce, the chamber is going to do everything it can for you, it’s going to mark it for you, it’s going to reach out to you it’s gonna have touch points, it’s going to share resources. But if it’s not hearing from you, and it’s not engaging with you, it’s harder for that business to achieve its goals. So my suggestion always is try to be engaged, try to be involved in Do not hesitate reaching out to your chamber, they have more resources than you would think.

Brandon Burton 24:34
Yeah, that’s great advice for business owners. So maybe I will shift that it says a good tip for business owners. What tip or action item might you have for a chamber that’s listening that would be interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? So

Rick Wilson 24:51
they I love this question. This is one of my favorite answer is that chambers definitely in their areas is you know the the environment in the communities that they’re serving. He will be strategic on that. But for us, the bigger picture is we’re all inclusive. We care about everyone in the business community. So for us, it’s not about getting our membership to 1000 by next year. And what are we doing strategically to do that? If we’re pushing out that information, and really being all inclusive, when I say all inclusive means that you’re willing to partner with other chambers, you’re not we’re afraid about another chamber, oh, they’re talking to someone on the side and taking my member. That’s if that’s what’s happening, then that chamber is not really driving and doing what it’s supposed to what it’s supposed to be doing is collaborating, working and bringing all these resources to the business community. So the first thing I would suggest is, open your doors to all chambers, try to partner with mixers, any opportunity that you have. Look at that we have a meeting next week, we have our women in leadership luncheon that we’ve been running now for 21 years. And there’s a huge group here in San Diego called mana, which is Latino business women in that group has 400 Women in that association. Well, we want to see what opportunities there are for our very successful event that has over 600 people that attended every year, we want to partner with other groups to find out what might we be missing. So always be as a chamber be open to hearing other ideas, doesn’t mean that you’re going to move forward on every idea. But we’re that crazy chamber that believes if we throw 100 things on the wall, and one or two stick boy, we are going in the right direction. But if we don’t vet those opportunities, if we don’t look at that opportunity, then we’re going to kind of be the same chamber that we’ve always been. And we are a chamber that wants to be innovative. Were the first chamber of commerce in North America to have a personal assistant robot that Tammy robot that you’re starting to see in airports, restaurants and things like that. So we want to be leaders in our community, we want to be innovative, if and the only way to do that is to open our doors, and work with as many organizations, government agencies and chambers of commerce as we can so that we can all succeed. So in my vision, if the chambers in San Diego County, which is about 30, or 40. If they’re succeeding, then we’re all succeeding than the entire business community. So be open to working with other chambers of commerce. And there’s incredible ROI for that.

Brandon Burton 27:09
Awesome. So circle back, tell us about that personal assistant robot. Everybody’s all over AI these days, right? Yes. What can this robot do for you.

Rick Wilson 27:22
So interesting. Back in 2019, when I got the job, I met a gentleman who was a member of virtual reality for Main Street. So he kind of saw the technology, which is kind of already here. But he wanted to help chambers kind of grow with that. So we started a program called chamber innovators that did okay. But really, when the pandemic hit, chamber, innovators, all of a sudden became one of the number one programs in San Diego, we’re putting, excuse me, we’re putting it on virtually once a week. And we have people all over the nation with innovative business practices, innovation with technology. And so we had a lot of members throughout San Diego County that were members of other chambers jumping on this free program, and really started driving us in that technology innovation Avenue. Coming out of the pandemic, we had the opportunity to get one of these Tammy robots. And so if you walk into our office, the first thing is you’re greeted by the robot, it will welcome you. We bring it to all of our events. So it’s like anything else, you got a program and for whatever you wanted to do. But we had all our sponsors that are big EC honors event that we just had last week. And all the sponsors love that, that is robots talk, going around and talking about the sponsors. And, you know, it was definitely just a different way of looking at things. And as time goes on, we’re seeing airports restaurants using these not to replace employees, but to really use it as an additional tool to make the organization more efficient and better. And I’ll give an example. I was just at a restaurant three weeks ago, where when you walk up the person that greets you and says oh table for four great, they send the robot to take you to where which sends a message to the waiter that now your table for is ready and the robot sat you down. And the restaurant we weren’t at didn’t have the robot serving. But I have seen that. And so the personal robot assistant is really an assistant, it’s not a replacement of any employee that we have is to really build on what we’re doing and become more efficient in what we do. Plus technology’s kind of cool. So everybody does like it.

Brandon Burton 29:18
That’s right. Yeah, that reminds me, I was at a Chick fil A in in Texas, a small town in Texas. And we sit down and they had to have these robots that would bring the food to you. So they’re taken at the counter, put the tray on this robot and they would go right to your table. And it was pretty slick. I mean, everybody’s in there just watching the show, right? Technology is cool. But so does this robot. Does it collect any data, or is it just delivering data? How is it interacting?

Rick Wilson 29:50
Yeah, so so far, we have one of the first models that came out, t Mi, Tammy. And so there’s all kinds of new ones like I’ll just segue real quick into there. There’s ones that it’s, uh, the, the stamp, I guess you could call it is a refrigerator. So if you had one at home, you would still need to stock it. But you could call on your robot anytime to bring you a beverage or anything like that. And for us, it’s not collecting data, it’s you program it to do anything and everything that you want. I do believe that that is the future. And I’m sure some of the newer models that have come out do have that it’s an evolution. But the first model that we got out really has one little platform that we put some waters on, it greets our members when they come in or non members. It shows them a few things in our lobby or business cards, you know, materials of our members, sit them down in our conference room and let them know someone will be with them right away. Then it goes to each one of our offices until we say hello. Oh Rick’s not in hope someone else is not in this person’s in and lets them know that someone’s there. So it is helping us being more efficient. But right now, we’re not using it as a data collection. We’re putting information into it, depending on what day it is what event it is that we have going on. But mostly Monday through Friday. It’s a it’s a welcome robot that welcomes people when they come in. And what I wanted to have happen is happen, people who walk in, they walk out and word of mouth is Have you been to these County Chamber recently, they’ve got a robot in there. And so that’s kind of one of those spread of word where people just want to come in the postal workers now don’t just drop off the mail, they want to come in everyday because they want to be greeted by the robot.

Brandon Burton 31:26
That is great. Any any of these things that can draw that attention and positive positive comments? That’s great. So I like asking is another good segue I like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rick Wilson 31:45
That’s a really great question. I’ll just say this, if chambers aren’t innovating and thinking outside the box, they could get left behind. If you’re doing it the way it was 1015 20 years ago, exactly the same, you might get left behind with all the innovation that’s coming out. So my suggestion is that what we’re doing is looking at all the tried and true practices that still do work, yet open to all kinds of opportunities to look at what the future has, as technology gets better. As as partnerships grow as bigger, or organizations are looking to partner with smaller organizations Chamber of Commerce are ripe for that. So continue to look for partnership opportunities, continue to try to partner with chambers of commerce, and be open to innovation and new ideas that really is what’s going to continue to take chambers to the next level. Because we are not going to be the same in our community, especially after the pandemic. So looking at business models, really looking at the way we do things, the way the business community operates, be flexible and right along with them to help them achieve their goals.

Brandon Burton 32:54
I like that. And I think look into the future. Some of those things that are on the horizon right now, obviously, is artificial intelligence. Already, a lot of buzz around that. But also look at things like blockchain and NF T’s and the business models that go along with that, because it’s going to change the way a lot of businesses operate. And if as a chamber, we need to know, you know, how do these things work?

Rick Wilson 33:20
Correct. And to your point, AI, as well as augmented reality is starting to become really big. If you went to our website, you’ll see, about two years ago, we had created a virtual Chamber of Commerce. So you could go to our chamber of commerce, virtually, you could go into different rooms, different lobby areas and get services and get stuff that would traditionally be on our website. And now we’re starting to see an augmented reality avatars that are walking around you create your own avatar, and building Chambers of Commerce is our businesses or, gosh, what do I even say like, imagine a conference but you’re you’re you’re you’re in downtown San Diego at the wonderful conference center, where you’re doing it 100% virtually don’t have to actually fly out and get a hotel, you can be a part of that. And we’re starting to see that becoming reality. During the pandemic, we did a couple job fairs like that, that were incredibly successful, where we weren’t sure how people would react to having a little avatar and go into different rooms and sitting down and having interviews virtually. And we didn’t know how it worked. But we had about 350 participants in that and it was incredible. And so I think it’s the more that you do the stuff in technology, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, you name it, the more comfortable you get into I am someone who’s not a techie. And so for me, it’s like I get the concept. I want to be innovative, but I’m not your leader. That’s gonna say this is how you do it. Here’s, here’s all the logistics. But I tell you surround yourself with people that do you know what’s going on that are leaders in that industry, and they can hold your hand and take you with them to because for us, we’re one of the chambers in San Diego they’re looked at as Wow, look at all this innovation but it’s Because of the partners that I have, is why we’re there. It’s not because of myself, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that stuff except saying that looks super cool on the screen. That’s

Brandon Burton 35:10
great. So Rick, I like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things at your chamber, and maybe addressing some of these challenges that businesses face, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Rick Wilson 35:28
Yeah, so I’m pretty transparent on everything. I’ll give you my email address, which is rickw@eastcountychamber.org. Our website is eastcountychamber.org, you can contact us here at the office 619-440-6161. And I want to be here for any chamber, I’ve learned a lot from other chambers, people who have been CEOs for 2025 years and Chamber of Commerce’s throughout the United States. And I want to be that reference and resource as well. And I’m sure whoever contacts me, I’m going to learn from them as well. We continue to learn from each other continue to evolve and grow our chambers of commerce, they’ve come a long way from 100 years ago. And as businesses pivot, and as they look at new ways of doing things, looking at their business models, we as a chamber need to be flexible as well and coming right along with them, hearing their voice and sharing that with our local government.

Brandon Burton 36:21
Absolutely. And that’s why we do this. That’s why we encourage people to reach out and connect and build that network and learn from each other. So thank you, Rick, for joining us today on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experiences. And it’s been a fun conversation and something that hopefully in re energizes those that are listening to do that important work at their chamber, and especially when it comes to facing those difficult challenges that their business members are facing. So thanks a lot for for being with us today.

Rick Wilson 36:51
Well, thank you so much, Brandon, for the opportunity to be on chamber chat. What a great opportunity to share resources, but also let everyone know that we are here to help and we want to learn as well. So if you have something incredible and innovative that you’re doing, I would love to learn about that as well. But thank you so much, Brandon. Great to be on chamber chat.

Brandon Burton 37:08
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The Impact of State Chambers with Lew Ebert

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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.

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Lew Ebert. Lew is a seasoned State Chamber executive and CEO with over 40 years leading statewide business organizations in three different states and Pennsylvania, Kansas and North Carolina. Over a long and successful career, he’s developed a proven ability in business development, revenue generation capital and political fundraising, communications, and leading transformational change. As a nationally recognized State Chamber leader, he’s developed a unique set of best practice skills, what works and what doesn’t work and a deep expertise working with top professionals in our industry. Lew, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself. So get to know you better.

Lew Ebert 2:47
Wonderful. Thanks very much, Brandon, great to be with you and appreciate the opportunity. I love the title. By the way, I mean, chamber leaders are champions, and they’re leaders of an important movement, no matter where they’re working. In my case, as you indicated, over four decades, I’ve had a unique opportunity to kind of work in a number of different states. But more importantly, really been very fortunate to get to know a lot of great leaders and a lot of great mentors, and even in our profession, learn from some of the best in the business. So part of what I’m now doing in my second chapter, if you will, is kind of category you know, kind of collecting intellectual property and sharing best practices and ideas. But it’s a it’s a wonderful opportunity to help leaders make the kind of impact in their state and regions like I found in my career. So good to be with you.

Brandon Burton 3:40
I love it. We’re in the same business just maybe in different mediums, right. sharing best practices. Yeah,

Lew Ebert 3:47
absolutely. Yeah, we’ve lived at the intersection of business, politics and the economy for over four decades. So it’s been kind of an exciting journey. And I’ve obviously seen a lot done lot figured out what works and what doesn’t work, as you’ve indicated, and someone told me a long time ago, I think was Mark Twain suggested that the definition of a consultant is you know, we have to learn from other people’s mistakes, because we won’t live long enough to make them all ourselves.

Brandon Burton 4:13
That’s a great point. I love it. That should be a t shirt. Well, and tell us a little bit about the consulting work that you do just to maybe set the stage a little better. I think you shared your bio and everything. But what I didn’t share is you worked with over half the states in the United States as far as their state organizations go. So tell us a little bit more about that and the type of work you do.

Lew Ebert 4:38
Well, you know, as you indicated at the outset, I’ve had a chance to work in three different states, you know, red state, blue state, big state, small state. So kind of have unique perspective. I think it’s often said, I’m sure you’ve had guests on your podcast suggest if you’ve seen one State Chamber, you’ve seen one state chamber or chamber in general, but I think what I’ve been able to kind of connect is one of the things they all do when All. So regardless of size, regardless of geography, regardless of their economy, regardless of red state, blue state, purple state, whatever the demographic looks like politically, really helping them navigate, you know, kind of a path for success, and ultimately have an impact. I think the common thread is that most chamber leaders, including State Chambers, leaders kind of see their job as really doing three big things. They raise awareness to, you know, challenges as well as present problem, you know, solutions to those problems, they raise money to address those. And ultimately, they try and find a way to have impact, whether it’s job creation, economic growth, or moving their state forward from a competitive standpoint. And that’s mostly what I’m working with, as I’ve worked around the country with big state, small states, New States Chamber leaders, you know, there’s sort of not a common body of knowledge about how this business works. Because I think unlike a local chamber, state chambers have to sort of navigate all the different dynamics, with governors with legislative leadership, people of different parties, you know, kind of the unique regional business communities, even in the state where I am here in North Carolina, where I finished up my chamber career. You know, you got a wide disparity of regional challenges, you know, rural urban, in my case, you know, Raleigh, Charlotte. So, again, you’re sort of bringing together, you know, what are the what are the most impactful ideas that can move the state forward?

Brandon Burton 6:35
That’s right. And I think that actually sets the table very well for our discussion today as we focus our conversation around the the impact that state chambers are making across the United States. And we’ll dive in deeper on this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky

Hey everybody, Donna from Yiftee here today, just like Brandon, we’re bringing you a guest speaker. First up is Gina from Durham, North Carolina. We’ve sold more than 3300 community cards in Durham, that are being spent at 51 different merchants. There’s something for everyone.

Gina Rozier

I’m Gina Rozier, Director of Marketing, Communication and Peacekeeping for Downtown Durham Incorporated. And I’m a very happy Yiftee customer. We’re the Bull City, and we created our spendable community card with Yiftee years ago. Our participating businesses love it and we had our best ever sales figures last year. Yiftee is great to work with. They help with marketing the program and it is truly turnkey for us in our businesses. Choosing Yiftee has been a great decision for downtown Durham.

Donna Novitsky

Thanks, Gina. Wondering how you can have your own community card for free. Check out yiftee.com for next steps. Now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 9:38
All right, Lew, we’re back. So tell us I like the idea of you’re taking these best practices as you work with states across the country. You’re seeing some of these differences that you mentioned. You need to work with governors you need to talk to you know, work with people, different political backgrounds, different things, you know, businesses regionally and And yet, there seems to be some things that maybe float to the surface that are common amongst all the the State Chambers. What are some of those maybe keys for success or things that you’re seeing these chambers do effectively, to share some of these best practices, and then we can go the direction of impact that they’re making.

Lew Ebert 10:22
I tell you, Brandon, sort of the handbook for my career everywhere I’ve worked. And even when I meet with new leaders across the country, it’s an old book, but it’s still very timely. Jim Collins is the author of a book called Good to Great. And it’s sort of in my career, it’s been sort of a handbook on how to build high performing teams, and ultimately have an impact everywhere I’ve worked and even where I’m consulting with folks, and I kind of mentioned seven quick points. And we can come back and talk about any one of these that you want to. But I think the first line of the book talks about Good is the enemy of great. And I think, you know, most of us want to work somewhere. That’s great. I think it’s critical to know your why. So Jim Collins talks a lot about your hedgehog concept. What are you deeply passionate about, and something you do better than anyone else in your community in your state? I think the third thing is have a clarity of vision, you know, why are we here? What what’s our main purpose? You know, why do we exist? The fourth thing, I think, everywhere I’ve worked need to have a B hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal. And in many cases where I’ve worked, it’s how do we become the best state for business? How do we become more competitive? I think that hedgehog concept, the fifth point provides not only clarity of vision, but it also turns your flywheel. And Jim Collins talks about that in terms of how generates revenue. Because at the end of the day, you need to attract revenue to hire the talent to accomplish the mission. And that’s never changed over my career. I think the other thing that chambers sometimes are afraid to do, but I think it’s really important. The sixth point is the Stockdale principle. Admiral Stockdale was the highest ranking POWs in a Vietnamese POW camp. And he, he, he became very focused on, you know, kind of recognizing the sober assessment of their current reality. And he saw over his time in incarceration that the POWs and embrace their reality, and realize we’re gonna be here for a while, tended to be the ones that make it, the ones who didn’t, didn’t seem to make it out of the camp. And then the seventh thing I found in my career experience is, you’d have the right people on the bus and in the right seats. So it’s an old axiom that people are your best asset. And the only thing I would put kind of put a fine point on that Brandon is the right people in the right jobs are your best asset. So those are probably the things that I’ve kind of seen that has been kind of a kind of a Northstar for my career, you know, leading and running and working in State Chambers, both as a CEO and also working with leaders in our profession.

Brandon Burton 13:02
So I think some of these chambers get now I’m trying to figure out there why having that clear vision as you. And I think these two points are kind of related to the good being the enemy of great and having that big, hairy, audacious goal, right? So you can have these goals. And as you work towards them, sometimes you let good get in the way of great along that way. Do you mind touching on either one of those points, or maybe a combined just maybe some things that you’ve seen throughout your career that would point to those as examples?

Lew Ebert 13:34
Yeah, I think probably the best example, when I look at what some of the best state chambers in America are doing right now, the way they embrace both of those concepts, you know, Good is the enemy of great and driving and leading changes. They’ve sort of evolved from, you know, not just advocacy organizations, but they’re really becoming seen as agents of change. And there’s at least a dozen State Chambers in the country that have pretty impressive blueprints or visions for the future of their state over the next 10 to 15 years. And many have positioned themselves as the state’s futurist. So they’ve really sort of elevated their importance in estate. And when you think about it, you know, governors come and go, and in most states you can think of, but the constant is the State Chamber in the business community. So what many states have done is a sort of move from good to great to say not only do we want to focus on how to be great, but we have a plan to make our state great. And I think that’s where the profession has evolved. So it’s no longer about just you know, working with the legislature to defeat bad legislation, which is still important and beat up on the trollers in unions, but it’s really about how do you bring solutions to move your state forward and make a big impact on the most pressing issues in many states kind of holding them back? And that’s where I think states chambers at least have embraced not only their new role, but actually put a methodology in place. Ways to drive and lead and keep track and grow and keep change front top of mind, and also hold politicians accountable. So I think in a lot of states, it’s no longer, you know, what the state legislature wants to get done for business. In many cases, the State Chamber is sort of setting the tone for the kind of change that has to happen to make their state great and more competitive. Right. So

Brandon Burton 15:25
as we look at change, like you said, having these goals trying to make your state great, and your community great for those local chambers listening, you mentioned the Stockdale principle. So there’s got to be a fine line somewhere of Yeah, realizing and accepting your the sober assessment of your current reality, as you put it, or as Jim Collins puts it, versus having a healthy dissatisfaction for your current reality and wanting to improve it. Can Can you talk to that a little bit?

Lew Ebert 15:55
Yeah, you know, random, in my experience, most powerful tool is data. And there is just dozens, if not hundreds of data points and studies, that kind of, you know, surface some of the challenges. And, you know, everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve, you know, I’ve used member polling data to surface these challenges. I’ve used state to state competitiveness data to surface these challenges. So it’s never been my opinion of what needs to be addressed. But it’s like, here’s what business thinks needs to happen. Here’s what state competitiveness metrics show. So if we’re in a state, we’re in the sort of the bottom third of every major ranking known to mankind, you know, we’re not going to make our state great by not talking about that. So there has to be a way I think you’re making a great point. You know, we don’t want to be sort of the the chamber of bad news, right. But we do have to, you know, going back to what chamber leaders do, they create awareness. And in some cases, the awareness is, you know, we have some things we got to work on. But but right beside it is they’re also bringing solutions. So they’re not just sort of throwing a flag saying we’re bad. But here’s how we get better. And then bring the resources to the table to help make that happen, and ultimately have impact because you’re absolutely right. I mean, just drawing attention to, hey, we’re 38th in this ranking, whatever that is, you know, that’s a data point. But what are we going to do about it, and I think that’s where chamber leaders are now kind of leaning into, we have to get better if if we have a B hag to be a great place for business, or the best state for business, or go from good to great, you know, you can’t, you can’t get from good to great, by only getting better at what you’re good at. Right? You have to eventually get better at what you need to work on. And I think state chambers have a role in sort of surfacing both, you know, here’s what we’re good at. But here’s some things we have to work on.

Brandon Burton 17:51
Yeah, I like that approach. Because I can see some, some chambers, maybe in certain circumstances where they say, our governor just is not business friendly. And there’s nothing we can do about that until the next election, and almost use that as an excuse of your, their current the sober assessment of their current circumstance. But I like the idea of still having those goals, still trying to press forward, still trying to make that case. So even when that next election does come around for the next governor, or whatever that elected position may be, to be able to say, here’s some things that are important to the business community in our state.

Lew Ebert 18:31
And I think, Brandon, you’re making a great point. I think, business wants to see these things, politicians when I see these things, but what can we be for? And I think chambers have a responsibility to be for things, not just against things, and being forward thinking and proactive and future focused. You know, there’s a lot of things chambers are for. But there’s also things along the way that we have to be against, because they kind of moved the state in the wrong direction. But I think at the end of the day, most business leaders and CEOs want to see an organization that’s stepping forward indicating what we’re for.

Brandon Burton 19:05
Yeah, I like that. It keeps a positive approach on it, for sure. Absolutely. So as you look at these states that you’ve worked with, we’re talking today about the big impact that you’re seeing State Chambers make in their communities. And I mentioned before we started the recording, I recently had Glenn Hamer on the podcast from Texas. So he talked about some of the things that they’re doing in Texas. But maybe as you as you talk about the impact these state chambers are having maybe through the lens, how local chamber can get more involved with their state chamber as well and supporting that work.

Lew Ebert 19:44
That’s a great point, Brandon, and again, over my career when I first started doing this my first job out of college, you know, four decades ago, which seems like forever, you know, local chambers and state chambers were really seen as competing for membership competing for mindshare. and had a very similar role. I think in most states in America now, it’s pretty clear that they’re both different organizations, but they complement each other. So in many states, State Chambers of Commerce have, you know, put together kind of a chamber Federation, where they have local chambers sort of working hand in hand with the State Chamber, on the most pressing issues affecting the economy. Because I think at the end of the day, if I was running a local chamber, anywhere in America, I don’t want to be working with the statewide chamber, because the kinds of issues that are happening in state capitals affects my members in my community. But there’s no local chamber anywhere in America, that has enough political clout, and even enough votes to move the needle on anything at the Capitol. So being part of a statewide Federation, if you will, of local chambers rolled up under a State Chamber banner working on the big issues, because when when you affect change in any state and improve your competitive position, you know that that helps every community in the state. But I think where local chambers have become more aware, I think is, you know, lobbying, advocacy, political action, getting big things done at the capitol is kind of what State Chambers do. And local chambers play an important role. And plenty of things they do locally, moving their community forward. And even you know, as as the world has evolved, they’re picking up a lot more community based groups that they’re being, you know, leading the kind of non government groups and being forced to do more than they used to be able to do. So I think recognizing that there’s a statewide advocacy organization that can be part of and on that team is a compliment rather than a competition.

Brandon Burton 21:44
Right. So throughout your career throughout maybe the history of State Chambers, local chambers, and it’s a long history looking back, but do you feel like there’s been a shift, and maybe the the mission and purpose had mentioned before, they were kind of seen as being competition to, to local chambers.

Lew Ebert 22:03
I think at the end of the day, many of them have the same last name. But I think the roles we play are different. And I think that’s just evolved, given the nature of how things are happening. And what I like about how the evolution has happened is partially it’s happened, Brandon, because where the action is, now, it’s no longer in Washington, DC. So when I first started doing this 40 years ago, the sea was sort of the epicenter of all things that affected business. And now I think what you’re finding is with the level of acrimony, and somewhat dysfunction, the action is now in the States. And I think some of the states that that you will have on this program have sort of figured out how they can crack the code at their state capitol, and really improve their business climate in such a way where they can become a lot more attractive for job creations and economic activity. So that that’s probably where local chambers and state chambers have figured out, hey, wait a minute. If we work together, we create economic opportunity for our state. And at the end of the day, that’s what all of our members fill in the blank state want to have happen, we want to have a big impact for our state, create jobs and more economic opportunity. So and in many ways to Brandon, the, the major members they all have in common, are really kind of very intent on making sure that focus happen. So I think the customer is also driving the need to work together to make the kind of big impact of the state level that’s needed. Right.

Brandon Burton 23:30
So maybe this may be a step back a little bit in our discussion, but going back to one of those points that Jim Collins made, so the hedgehog concept and the revenue for maybe a local chamber who maybe you know, I’m sure they see their State Chambers a good ally, but maybe they still do see that certain level of competition because they take some of the same big members from their community. Can you talk a little bit to how some of these State Chambers go about their their budget, their financing to maybe clear some some money? Why would they local chambers that might be confused on it?

Lew Ebert 24:07
Yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, a typical local chamber, probably 80% of their members have less than 10 employees. And for a State Chamber, it’s just the opposite. So I think the big trend over time, State Chambers in most states only have about one to 2% of all the companies in his state are members of the State Chamber. But I think what’s happened over time, Brandon is across the board, most state chambers have seen a decline in the number of members, and a pretty significant increase in the revenue per member. And I think that just recognizes how they’ve grown their business model. And also, you know, the mission they have in terms of their hedgehog concept. You know, not a lot of businesses 99% In some cases, don’t really embrace the mission and vision of why a State Chamber is needed. So it’s kind of been necessary to say okay, well If we need more believers in the cause of advancing economic growth in our state, and a lot of states have been very attractive, very successful and attracting Cornerstone investors from major companies, as I suggested earlier, they’ve eliminated the competition of, in many cases, attracting small businesses. And they’ve effect effectively said the local chambers. You know, anybody under 10 employees, for example, is automatically a member of the State Chamber. So they’ve created a grassroots network to effect change. But they’ve also sort of gotten out of the business of saying, we’re not going to hire a bunch of salespeople to come into your town to recruit small business members. But because at the end of the day, we’re still back to what what State Chambers do well is making impact on the big issues that affect business in their state. And it’s just not cost effective to use a lot of those resources to go find money, it’s more effective to aggregate the resources to make a big impact on the big issues that affect businesses in the state. And that’s where most of the chambers are spending their time and resources.

Brandon Burton 26:05
Yeah, and I know every chamber, I’ve seen one chamber seen one chamber, but a lot of chambers have very similar missions and purposes behind the work they do and, and it should align very well with their state chamber. So I hope that those local chambers may see a conflict of interest with the State Chamber. I hope that’s fewer and fewer. Today, I know what it was in the past and building a stronger relationship, because oftentimes is the state chambers that are putting on a state or regional conference, you know, to share some of those best practices and help support the local chambers.

Lew Ebert 26:40
Absolutely. And again, I think you pick the right issues. I think a lot of State Chambers, local chambers have a lot in common when you start talking about how we can make our state more competitive and attractive to business, how we can address workforce and education and talent issues. How can invest more in infrastructure? Those are at least three issues where I would guess most local chambers in America and most state chambers in America would say that that’s kind of a sweet spot. No disagreement here, let’s figure out how to do it. But I think most of the chambers would say quickly, we can’t do it by ourselves. And most local chambers would probably also admit we can’t do it from our community. But collectively, we can make the kind of impact that’s needed. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 27:22
That’s a great way of summarizing that. So Lou, I like asking everybody I have on the show about maybe it for a tip or an action item for listeners who want to take their chamber most been local, or maybe regional chambers, but I’m taking them up to the next level. What What tip or action item might you suggest for

Lew Ebert 27:43
them? You know, I would suggest if they haven’t read, good degrade, you know, go get the book. It’s not a new book, but I think it’s sort of a handbook on how they can develop their organization and, you know, accelerate and create more opportunity and have more impact. And then the other thing I would suggest, and I know many of them do, I’d invest in knowledge acquisition benchmarking. So I’d really, as I’ve done over my career, you know, what are the best organizations in America look like? And how can I learn from them. So it’s, you know, get your CCE certified chamber executive credential, you know, become a cAe, if you want to certified Association Executive, many of them go to institute and get your IOM certification, some participate in a SAE, or ACC. Those are all great organizations to really put leaders of any level and I found even late in my career. There’s always great new ideas, great new learnings, and the profession keeps evolving. So I think have a great sense of awareness, it’s important to know what you don’t know, as well as to know what you know. And I think that people that are sort of open to understand like, Hey, I just don’t know how to do this. But let me go figure out how to do that. And who can I learn from, I think is a great skill that continue to evolve.

Brandon Burton 28:59
Yeah, I like those tips. I always like when you get a bonus tip like that, too, you know, not just one. So there you go. So the other question I like asking everyone I have on the show is as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going

Lew Ebert 29:15
forward? I think we’re just sort of hitting stride in terms of the importance and the role they play. And I think a lot of it is not just, you know, our politics in DC, but I think politics in general, you know, we live in a more divided time than probably ever before in our history. And I think the common denominator chambers of all varieties bring to the table is their kind of the common sense, middle. They represent a business community, they represent leaders that want to figure out and kind of come up with solutions. You know, they’re not partisan. Usually. They’re not philosophical. There’s sort of the pragmatic, common sense middle. And I think that role, you know, you know, probably 20 years ago was probably not as important as it is today. But there has to be a way and a place where business politics and the economy can kind of intersect. And right now more than ever, it’s the Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton 30:09
Right? I like that. And I would agree with that, too, is that the future chamber? We are hitting that stride right now as far as importance and relevance and keep leaning into it. Then Lou, I’d like to ask if there’s, for those listeners who want to maybe reach out and connect with you learn more about the work you’re involved with? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Lew Ebert 30:33
Yeah, my email is EbertLew@gmail.com. Or you can call me on my cell phone. And if I’m awake, it’s on 919-614-2810.

Brandon Burton 30:46
All right, and we will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well. So anybody shows up and get that that contact information. Great. I really appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, you bring a great perspective, from the experience you’ve had working with a number of a wide number of chamber of State State Chambers across this great country. So thank you for sharing that, that insight, some of these lessons that you’ve learned, and I think we’re all better for it. So thank you.

Lew Ebert 31:14
All my best all your viewers. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 31:16
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How Local Chambers Can Work with State Chambers with Glenn Hamer

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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.

Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him.

Kris Johnson 0:41
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:23
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Our guest for this episode is Glenn Hamer. Glenn is the President and CEO of the Texas Association of Business which serves as the Texas State Chamber of Commerce. Glenn is a torchbearer for business for the business community and he’s a he has a proven track record for success in the public policy arena. He testified before the 87th legislator on his second day of the job and made meaningful contributions to the passage of the top legislative priorities for the business community, including broadband expansion, keep Texas trucking pandemic liability protections and preventing astronomical increases in unemployment insurance. Since the pandemic and Glenn has made it his mission to visit more local chambers than anyone else on the planet. He connects businesses small and large with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to protect Texas’s pro business climate. Glenn is proud to be part of the Texas Camino Real district Export Council, American Society of Mexico and National Immigration forum. He also serves on the board for the US Chamber of Commerce and chairs its committee of 100. Glenn came to TAB or Texas Association of Business after 14 years as CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where he played a central role in major tax education, legal and health court health care victories. He was at the forefront of the business community’s advocacy for the US for the United States Mexico Canada agreement. Glenn is a highly regarded international issues expert and has joined governors mayors and the US Chamber on trade missions to China, Taiwan, Mexico, Canada, Israel in the United Kingdom. Recognizing the global race for talent to keep our economy’s strong Glenn is also recognized as a champion on immigration reform. Glenn has also served as chief of staff to Arizona Congressman Matt salmon, Executive Director of Arizona Republican Party legislative assistant to Senator Jon Kyl, and executive director for Solar Energy Industries Association. Glenn is a graduate of Cornell University and Arizona State University’s College of Law. Glenn is married and has three daughters who exhibit strong entrepreneurial spirit. Glen, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. We have quite the bio. Vin. Well,

Glenn Hamer 4:33
Brandon, I am 125 years old. Right. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate your program.

Brandon Burton 4:40
Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward we’ve been working to get you on the podcast for some time. You’re busy man all over the big state of Texas. Fed. Glad to have you on and want to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting then we can get to know you a little bit better.

Glenn Hamer 4:58
Well, hello Brandon. And the first thing I’ll say that our mission, these people ask, how’s our chamber different than a lot of the other chambers? Well, we’re united in the sense that we’re all part of the chamber community. And in my opinion, the the chambers are one of the most important civic institutions on the planet today. And one of and certainly one of the best respected, you do any sort of poll. And the second that you identify as a chamber, you have credibility with people of all different political persuasions, at the Texas State Chamber, our mission. And our purpose is to champion the best business climate in the world unleashing the power of free enterprise to enhance lives for generations. And, you know, Texas here, here’s for all of our listeners, all the listeners and people watching this podcast across the country. Here’s the truth, as and I say, this is a guy who came from Arizona, Texas is not a state, it’s a country. It’s a big place. And everywhere that I go, there’s great optimism about where this state is going, and the power of of of chambers to enact meaningful change.

Brandon Burton 6:19
Absolutely. And, you know, to be clear, Glenn has a job to do. You know, he promotes Business and Economic Development and so forth throughout Texas. But as a fellow Texan, I deeply appreciate it. So thank you, Glenn. But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what the Texas Association business does as you work with local chambers? And what is the scope you shared kind of the the mission statement there, but what kind of work are you involved with?

Glenn Hamer 6:45
Well, in terms of you, you hit on a number of the things that we were able to contribute to over the last couple of years in Texas, but we’re an advocacy group and our our charge is to keep Texas, the most competitive state in the country to do business. So we’re located right across from the state capitol. So our day job is really to advocate for for the meat and potato issues that benefit businesses of all kinds from every part of this state. So for example, you mentioned unemployment insurance. Well, we felt the need to get engaged in this because if we weren’t able to get state allocation of funds to replenish our state’s on an uninsurance Trust Fund, it could have meant increases of up to 300% for our businesses across the state of Texas. So working with the governor working with the legislature working with chambers across the state of Texas, where we were able to get something done to avoid what could have been very large tax increases. That’s, that’s one example of how we work we work with our chamber partners to enact meaningful policy changes at primarily at the Texas State Capitol. We also do get involved from time to time on local matters, and increasingly, on federal matters, particularly when it comes to trade and National Immigration Policy.

Brandon Burton 8:20
Very good. That definitely helps to set the table. Right. Well that will focus our discussion today around more so how a local chamber can work with their state chamber on some of these bigger issues. And we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Richard Scully 9:48
We all know there are three words in Chamber of Commerce. So we suggest that you manage the chamber and will manage the commerce between both teams will deliver a lot more value back to members. We invite you to take a look at our Let’s Do Commerce Program by visiting www.letsdocommerce.com. You’ll be able to engage and promote membership like never before. And with our integrated chamber kiosk and community clicker program, the potential is enormous. To schedule a visit with me that works best for you, please visit RichardsCalendar.com. As we like to say here at Chamber Nation, join the chamber and get results.

Donna Novitsky 10:32
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:29
All right, Glenn, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll be talking about how a local chamber can work more with their their State Chamber and I loved as I went through your bio, you make it a point to visit as many local Chambers as anyone else on the planet. I’m curious if you’ve been keeping count of all your visits, you get around to like you said Texas is a country not a state.

Glenn Hamer 11:54
Yeah, it’s it’s it well, I’m usually meeting outside of Austin with a couple of chambers in Texas every week. And then also because our legislature is in session this year, that legislature in Texas meets every other year, we have many chambers that are coming to the state capitol. So and we always welcome our our local chamber partners in in terms of how chambers can get involved. And whether you’re in Texas, Arizona, Michigan, or you name the state, the best way to do that is generally speaking changed, State Chambers will have advocacy committees and State Chambers will, for example, the state art State Chamber, we have a biweekly call with Chambers from across the state of Texas, where we’re simply able to discuss advocacy, we’ll we’ll talk about the top items that are on our agenda. And we’ll also solicit items that are on the agendas of our local chamber of partners. Those are critical because State Chambers, by and large are going to be focused on advocacy. By and large, they’re going to be in the state capitol. And they are always eager to have the help and assistance and input from local chamber partners across the state. The reason why is it’s generally speaking, it’s the local chambers that have the best relationships with their elected officials from their respective areas.

Brandon Burton 13:29
Right. So an advocacy is so huge as the State Chamber and I think of all these local chambers, some of these, you know, chambers that are being run by one staff or part time staff and some situation situations. Advocacy can seem like something really tough for them to take on and handle. So how would you suggest for maybe a small chamber like that to get involved with their chamber and to get involved with advocacy where they might be a bit intimidated on the thought of it?

Glenn Hamer 13:59
Good? Great question. The first thing I would do would be to connect with the State Chamber and see what are the high level agenda items of that state chamber because our job is to make sure that the policy items that we’re championing have broad benefits. They’re they’re not the types of things that just benefit one industry, or one part of the state, the core items of a State Chamber agenda are going to be benefit beneficial across the board. And then what will generally happen and this is the case with us with the Texas Association of Business is we encourage Chambers from around the state to sign on and to support the agenda that we crafted by the way crafted with the help of a lot of chamber leaders from across the state as well as other business leaders. So the easiest way would be to contact State Chamber and to say What’s your business agenda and then to see from those items, the the top ones that would be of interest to that community. One quick example, we’re advocating on behalf of increased funding tied to increased results. For our great community college system in the state of Texas, we have 50 community colleges in Texas, there was just a very important report that was released, in terms of the need for additional funding tied to performance metrics, that practically is going to mean an ASQ of about $650 million from the legislature, it has the support of the leadership in the legislature, the governor is supportive of increased opportunities for community colleges. And the key now is getting as many chambers as possible from around the state rallying around that, that has broad benefit. And a smaller chamber, even a mom and pop shop, could simply lend their logo, to the advocacy materials that are likely being led by the State Chamber.

Brandon Burton 16:13
I love that that kind of leads into what I was going to say or bring up next, which is if you are one of these smaller chambers and trying to communicate value to your members of the work that you’re doing beyond, you know what they see on a day to day basis on Main Street or wherever you’re located, to be able to communicate that value through those efforts that you’re making with advocacy. It sounds like Texas Association of Business provides some of this material they can send out to local chambers to be able to help communicate some of that value and the work and the momentum, I’ll say that the chambers are trying to get behind and building bigger numbers together to be a larger voice at the Capitol.

Glenn Hamer 16:59
coalition’s are so important, we get asked by lawmakers all the time, you know, how do other business groups how to other chambers, particularly in their communities look at up look at it a policy. And your chances of getting that lawmaker to agree, increased dramatically. If you have the support of the local chambers. And Brandon, this probably this will just give sort of a sense. It’s I know it’s not coming off well, because of our background. But these are our core priorities for this legislative session. And, you know, be happy to share them with you. Because it’s a pretty good model of how most State Chambers operate in terms of putting together core actionable agenda items that generally speaking most chamber small, medium or large, would support.

Brandon Burton 17:50
Yeah, if you could share that with this. Since this is a primarily an audio podcast, I can share that in the show notes so our listeners can can pull that up and see some of those main points that you guys are covering this legislative session. But yeah, having those coalition’s I couldn’t agree more. It’s a it’s key for building building a bigger voice. Yeah.

Glenn Hamer 18:13
And Brennan, I also want to say is that you know, the day job for the for the smaller chambers of keeping the communities connected and keeping their businesses as healthy as possible and giving them increase opportunities to to earn and provide opportunities for the workers and the and the people the community. That’s, that’s noble work. And and, you know, that’s important, we don’t do that activity. That is that is incredibly important. Our job is on the policy side. So wherever we can help for those chambers that are doing such a great job of keeping their communities going. It’s our small part, our small contribution to their great efforts.

Brandon Burton 18:56
So I’m curious for myself on it from a state perspective, are you reaching out to the local chambers to see what issues what advocacy efforts are important to them? Are they coming to you? Or do they come to you? And then you put it out more broadly across the state? How does that communication flow?

Glenn Hamer 19:14
It’s it’s really two ways. And you know, Brian, and I think we met at the Texas Chamber of Commerce executive meeting in Rockwall, a year or so ago. And that was an opportunity where we had a number of advocacy sessions where we had a chance to talk about the items that we thought were going to be important to the next legislature. And our chamber partners also had the opportunity to talk to us about what was important, and I’ll give an example of where this two way conversation is so important. When I go around the state of Texas, I pick up different themes in terms of what different communities share in common. The number one issue number one issue Far and Away. Drumroll please workforce doesn’t matter where I go, its workforce, there’s the need for better skilled workers that meet the needs of the modern economy and more workers. So how does that practically translate to our work? Well, it translates in that we need more career and technical education in our high schools. We need the community college curriculums to be tighter, more tightly aligned with work with the workforce, which which they are being as we speak. And it also means we need more workers. You know, we have two jobs open basically, for every job opened in this country, even with, you know, higher interest rates and the economy slowing in certain areas doesn’t feel like that’s the case in Texas, by the way. But we have more jobs open and people to fill them. So we need more workers. So that’s why we fight for good federal immigration reform, better visa programs, as well as Second Chance hiring, you know, for people that have served their time in the state of Texas, we want to provide a path where they can productively reenter society, and contribute. So we came up with our agenda really based largely on many conversations with our local chamber partners.

Brandon Burton 21:20
Fantastic. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So just having those conversations to be able to see what what is. Those are the key issues in a community and to be able to see, okay, this has a trend throughout the state. And like you said, workforce, anywhere you go, that, obviously is something that needs to have more focused attention. And then there’s all the different layers to the workforce, right. So you can peel the layers and the layers of the onion and get real deep on that

Glenn Hamer 21:48
lot of layers. There’s the higher ed, there’s childcare layers, there’s, there’s, you know, even, you know, we’ve like most chambers, particularly where there’s a strong rural population, things like broadband infrastructure pop up, you know, it depends, you know, on a state like Texas, Brandon, we’re about 900 to 1000 people move here on net each day. That’s a staggering number. You know, that also impacts the agenda items and makes things like expanded infrastructure, more important than it might be in in some other states.

Brandon Burton 22:31
No, it’s true. And we see like you mentioned broadband, we see that like, through COVID, when schools are forced to do you know, remote learning and whatnot, you see the strain on the broadband system and networks. And if we’re really going to be able to grow and continue to have that sustained growth, we need to be able to look at some of these things on the horizon before they become a big issue.

Glenn Hamer 22:53
Well, exactly, and that’s another one where just having these conversations with our chamber partners has made a has made a huge difference. There are certain communities that I go into where broadband is an issue, but it’s not the issue, or maybe not even top three or four b Why? Because it’s penetrated the community. It’s just not an issue. But there’s other times where I go into rural Texas, where this is the issue, and you know, whether it’s education or telehealth, you know, things that a lot of us take for granted. If you don’t have a, if you don’t have that strong internet connection today, it’s difficult to fully participate in, in the modern economy.

Brandon Burton 23:41
Absolutely. And I almost wonder, I mean, it is direct directly related to workforce as well. But you see more the connectivity and then people feel like they don’t need to go into an office. It is the dominoes in the in the layers, the end. So it just it just keeps going.

Glenn Hamer 23:56
I’ll just say for the listeners out there, you should, if you can, health wise, go in. And it has a lot of benefits socially. You also think about downtown’s and you know, a lot of the businesses that have suffered because people haven’t been into into normal work areas. Zoom and other types of things like that are very good tools. But there is absolutely nothing that replaces human interaction. And commercially it’s very important and I’ll tell you employers are telling me left and right we want our workforce back back in person with more flexibility, but by and large back in person.

Brandon Burton 24:44
Yeah. No, I would totally agree with that. There’s benefits and and there’s ways to leverage it but but where I can to be there in person for sure. Well, Glenn, I like asking everyone I have on the show if for A listener who is at a local chamber, they want to take their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have for to suggest to them to be able to do that?

Glenn Hamer 25:10
Join, the first thing that I would say is that most states have at a Texas Chamber of Commerce executive platform of some point of some sort, that is vitally important. We’re very lucky here that we have such an entity it’s run by Drew Chevrolet, who is a chamber veteran. This is this is important because it goes well, the advocacy is not the main feature of this organization, it’s how to run a chamber, it’s how to put together staff, it’s how to do board meetings, it’s how to have the correct bylaws, the first thing is you have to make sure that you have a structurally sound organization. So I would say whatever state you’re in, is, please join whatever that entity is, of chamber executives, that that’s a must had, particularly if you’re a mom and pop, but chamber.

Brandon Burton 26:04
Absolutely. In fact, when I started this podcast, I came from the chamber publishing industry. And as I’d go around, I would meet small chambers that would really struggle, I’d meet other chambers that were they may be small, too, but they were doing really well. And I started the podcast as a way of sharing some good practices, best practices and ways of doing things. And then I found out that those ones that were really struggling, weren’t members of their state association. And that is such a key tip right there. And there’s other resources, but you can’t overlook the value of the state association. Well,

Glenn Hamer 26:39
and it’s the peer network, that’s very important. So you know, it’s socially brand. And we we got together and, you know, it’s it’s a social situation, you get to meet your peers, and you get to share different ideas. And in the chamber world, we all sort of joke, one version or another. There’s no pride and authorship, we steal each other’s good stuff all the time. And we try to avoid the pitfalls all the time as well. So joining that type of organization and participating, and having colleagues that can help you. We all need help. I mean, I’ll just say, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I rely on a network of chamber leaders across the country, and across the state of Texas to help me and I’ve been doing this for a while. So, you know, build, join the right organizations get engaged, and it will pay massive dividends. And it will be fun.

Brandon Burton 27:37
Yeah, well, that peer network brings different perspectives than what you see yourself. And it lets you be able to see the world through different eyes and come to better solutions. So chamber leaders

Glenn Hamer 27:47
are fun people,

Brandon Burton 27:49
they are there. Yep. Exactly. So Glen, I like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers in their purpose going forward?

Glenn Hamer 28:03
Very bright. We know that, unfortunately, so many major institutions in this country have taken a hit in terms of the public’s credibility. chambers are one of the few institutions where if anything, it, it pulls chamber work polls higher today than it did in past years. And here’s the reason why, if you think about it, just about every person in the country has some sort of association with some sort of chamber and their community. And it’s probably a very positive one. Because chambers really exist to support their business communities, which are supporting their communities, they may be supporting the local hospital, they may be supporting little egg chambers in this country are one of the backbones that make, in my opinion, America, the greatest country in the history of the world. So I want to thank all of the chamber leaders from all around the country who are engaged in this work. It’s honorable, it’s inspirational, and you’re a critical part of what is keeping America together during a very difficult time.

Brandon Burton 29:17
Amen to that. And that’s, that’s why I’ve grasped on to the chamber industry myself is just I see that value that these chambers all across the country provide and providing better lives for their communities.

Glenn Hamer 29:29
And Brandon, what you do is vitally important because it creates a record where we could all learn from from each other.

Brandon Burton 29:38
I appreciate that. That’s the hope that’s the goal is to get it out there and everybody takes some tidbits from from each episode. Glenn, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about what the Texas Association of Business has to offer or anything in general that you’ve touched on today. What would be the best way for them? I have to reach out and connect

Glenn Hamer 30:02
sure to two ways my cell phone is the best way to reach me. And that’s 737-336-6590. The second best way is my email, ghamer@txbiz.org cell is far better. I sometimes joke if you don’t want me to see something emailed to me, because I get a little bit over loaded there. But I’m pretty responsive when it comes to people texting me,

Brandon Burton 30:31
man I lucked out, then we set this up over email and he happened to see it. This is great. Well, thank you, Glenn. I appreciate you setting aside some time to join us today here on chamber chat podcast and to touch on this topic of how local chambers can get more involved with their state chambers. I think it’s such important work and to really, even at the local level to take on that work of advocacy and and really communicating that value to members and community at large. So thank you so much.

Glenn Hamer 31:01
Thanks for having me on.

Brandon Burton 31:03
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