Category: Advocacy

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.

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.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

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Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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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
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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.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

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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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

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Gina Rozier

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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.

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Kris Johnson 0:41
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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
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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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Increasing Your Membership through Advocacy with Kate Bates

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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 here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Our guest for this episode is Kate Bates. Kate serves as president and CEO of The Arlington Chamber of Commerce in Virginia. Kate was appointed to this role in June of 2014. After an extensive national search, Kate began her tenure with the Chamber in 2007, serving in areas of increasing responsibility. Under her leadership, the Chamber increased their business advocacy efforts with notable state and local successes, as well as growing significantly in membership. Prior to joining the chamber, she worked for women in government and national nonpartisan association of women state legislators. Kate serves as chair of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce executives. She also serves on the Arlington Economic Development Commission, the Arlington Alexandria Workforce Investment Council, the Leadership Center for Excellence board of directors, and participates actively in a number of additional regional organizations. Kate was a 2014 recipient of the Outstanding Young Virginia Anna award from the Virginia Jaycees and was an inaugural honoree for the Leadership Center for Excellence 40 under 40. In 2017, she was named a Washington Business Journal 40 under 40 honoree in 2019. She was recognized by ACCE as a 40 under 40 honoree for significant contributions for community as well as the chamber industry. Kate is a graduate from the George Washington University with a BA in Political Science and International Affairs, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s IOM program. She is also a graduate of leadership Arlington and leadership Greater Washington, originally from small town, Illinois, Kate and her husband, Ronnie have made Arlington in their home. Kate, 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 then share something interesting about yourself so they can get to know you a little better.

Kate Bates 3:06
Thanks, Brandon. And it’s great to be here with you. Again, I love connecting with the Chamber industry and other chamber professionals. I think that’s one of the things that’s so great about our industry that you often see the surprise from people coming from other industries when they enter the chamber world is that we are one of the most supportive industries that everyone wants to share best practices and lift each other up. It’s really not a competitive industry. You know, if somebody’s coming from another chamber area, they have a great experience that’s only going to increase everything for our industry. So really happy to be here with you this morning. The fun fact questions always a tough one. But taking something that wasn’t in my bio that you read. I am a diehard Washington Capitals fan despite being from Illinois, I both my husband and I have fully adopted the caps as our team to the point where I several years before the caps won their Stanley Cup. Our wedding cake was actually made to look like the arena and had a tiny little Stanley Cup as our cake topper.

Brandon Burton 4:02
Wow. That is you guys are all in? Yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, no, I the the comments you made about the industry and being very supportive of each other. I was kind of surprised when I started the podcast about four years ago that there wasn’t a podcast out there already to share best practices and tips amongst other chamber professionals because it is, you know, so reciprocal, you know, amongst other colleagues. So thank you for pointing that out and sharing that, that fun fact about you. I’d love for you to take a moment to share with us a little bit about the Arlington chamber just give us an idea of perspective, you know, size, staff budget, scope of work, things like that, just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Absolutely. So

Kate Bates 4:46
the Arlington Chamber of Commerce is about 750 members, and our members really ranged in size from small startups, all the way up to large corporations like Amazon, Boeing and Nestle. And really every thing in between. So it’s really reflective of the business community here in Arlington. For anyone who doesn’t know Arlington, Virginia is located right outside Washington DC to the point where if you land at DCA airport, actually everything surrounding you is Arlington, I think they give the airport a DC address. But literally, as soon as you step one foot in any direction, off the airport, you are right in Arlington, so you know best known for the cemetery, probably. But there’s so much else going on in Arlington, it’s really a great place that has sort of a lot of those amenities that you get from being in an urban area, but has a lot of the benefits of you know, that placemaking that comes with other communities that are a little bit more on the small town space. Our chamber budget for 2023 is about 1.3 million. We have a full time staff of seven including myself and three part time members of our staff as well.

Brandon Burton 5:53
So yeah, this is kind of a unique, your chambers and a unique situation where a lot of the listeners have probably been to Arlington as they come visit the nation’s capitol where a lot of the chamber people that I interview are from all over the country and you know, maybe a small town Idaho or something maybe you haven’t been to but a lot of people have been been through Arlington so. So that definitely helps to set the perspective for our conversation today. And I kind of alluded to it as I went through your bio, but you’ve had an impact with advocacy there at the Arlington chamber and directly seeing an increase in membership tied back to the advocacy efforts that you guys are making. So we’ll be focusing our conversation today around increasing membership through advocacy. And we’ll dive into that a little bit deeper as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Kate, we’re back. Tell us kind of the origin I guess as you started there at Arlington chamber and kind of really boosted up the advocacy efforts. What did that look like? And at what point was the membership growth intentionally tied to it? Or how did you see that correlation and lean heavier into that?

Kate Bates 9:56
Great, so I’ll pick things up actually when I became CEO in 2004. tin again, I’d been at the Chamber for about seven years prior to that. But moving into the CEO role obviously presented some opportunities for me to be the one with the vision for the organization. So actually, in the interview process, I presented a new staff org chart. And it had two new full time roles. And the idea was to get there within five years, and we did very proud of that. But the first was a membership engagement role. So we had one membership person, and no matter how great that person was, as the chamber pros on the call, no, you know, it can be very hard. If you’re in charge of everything, recruitment and retention, you end up focusing on recruiting new members, and then also calling members when their dues are late. So that doesn’t leave a lot of time for taking care of your existing members unless they’re reaching out to you. So I knew that that was the role. I wanted to add first, chronologically, but equally important on this org chart I presented was a government affairs manager position, that, you know, I had some of that background from, you know, my education and my previous role prior to joining the chamber staff, but really saw that as the area, you know, where our chamber could grow and really be more relevant moving forward, we were in a great position, when I came in as CEO in 2014, you know, very strong organization, the good culture, a good foundation financials, in order are respected in the community. But I saw that opportunity for us to really lean into our mission more, and really have that impact for our Chamber members and our greater community as well. So I knew that it was important, I did, you know, however, kind of deliberately start with the engagement to get some more of the revenue to ultimately be able to add this role, which we were able to add in the fall of 2018. But really, you know, both in between that time, before we had the full government affairs professional, and even after, you know, it took a little bit for it to get going. But now we’re at the point where, you know, our government affairs person will not a salesperson at all, is absolutely instrumental to membership retention, and can be a really big asset for our membership team in terms of membership recruitment, as well.

Brandon Burton 12:05
So how does that work strategically, when you say they’re so impactful with membership, although they’re not salesperson? So do you have it time somehow, as they reach out to certain businesses as membership comes up? Or just because of the touch points along the way throughout the year? What does that interaction looking like to show the value that comes to the advocacy to those members to retain and to bring on new members? Sure, a minute. So

Kate Bates 12:31
I’m gonna bring that up a level first and talk a little bit more big picture. And then we can sort of sure dive into tactics a little bit more. So in terms of the advocacy broadly, you know, what we do falls into two bucket areas, you know, we do policy positions, and then we do member support. So policy positions are positions that the Chamber takes, you know, on behalf of the business community, there’s of course, a process that we go through to adopt those, you know, we did have a government affairs committee already in 2014, we grew that committee, and we added actually more meetings and now meets twice a month. So that group was working on that. And then policy positions are ultimately adopted by the Board of Directors, again, as chamber staff, you know, we we help them through this process, but they are the ones who are actually formally adopting the positions. So the value of those from a membership standpoint is, you know, it’s an opportunity for businesses to have a seat at the table on issues that they care about. So some chambers have their policy committees, application only are restricted, we do it a little bit differently, where ours are open to any member who wants to attend. So even if you know, if you have a company, if three people from your team care about an issue, they can come that day. And that is done. So you know, if we’re talking about child care regulations within the county, perhaps HR professionals will come to that meeting. If we’re talking about, you know, zoning in light industrial areas, we might get a different group of members. But we want whoever shows up to be the people who are impacted by those issues as well to make really good policy positions. But that also serves the benefit of having our policy work be beneficial to an even wider range of members. So we’re doing that broad work. But then we also do what we call member support. And that’s where we do the individual work and advocacy on behalf of businesses who are having issues typically at the local level. Virginia has what’s known as a Dillon rule state so that means that any authority not given to missa palette is stays with the Commonwealth. So we probably do about 20% ish of our work at the General Assembly level. But really, the bulk of it is at the local level and Arlington’s a county, not a city with no cities within it. So you might hear me refer to the county board for other folks that might be their city council or, you know, similar bodies there. But that member support can look like anything from you know, a business is having issues getting a signage process, getting their sign put up on their building, and they’re getting buried in County red tape, and we’re able to reach out and make those connections for them, and help them get their problem solved, or very least get it expedited and get to the right people. And what we often talk about is if you can solve one of those individual issues like that, you’ll often have a member for life.

Brandon Burton 15:13
Absolutely. So yeah, I think that really helps to break it down into what those two buckets look like. So let’s circle back with the on the policy side with the the committee meetings that you have there. So as you said, that’s open to any members who want to come, are you just broadcasting that through email? Or you’ve got your your regular set dates twice a month? And just an open invitation? And how do you moderate, that goes?

Kate Bates 15:45
Absolutely. So we they are open to all members, we do members can opt to sign up for the distribution list. So then you get the full information on a week out of who the speaker is going to be. It is a set date and time so you can mark your calendars with them. We do also for the bigger and more popular topics, we will also include an article about it in our regular E newsletter. So if you’re a member who isn’t already on that distribution list, and you’re interested in attending, there’s a way to do that. So early on, when we really beefed up our advocacy program, we separated them out. And we would usually have one that was more speaker focused, and one that was more working session focused. We’ve shifted and really most of them meetings at this point other than where we’re drafting our annual positions. Do you all have a speaker so often, you know, we set the agenda with our government affairs leadership, or our two committee chairs. And then we have a representative on our executive committee, who’s our vice chair for business advocacy. And our staff will work with them. And we set the agenda for the year, we always leave blanks because there’s always things that come up, and we want to have those spaces. But for example, we always start in January, we already had our first meeting with the county board chair. So the county board chair comes and gives, you know, probably about a 15 to 20 minute, talk about you know what’s going on for the year, especially what pertains to business. And then we open it up and do a moderated q&a. So this committee actually used to be in person pre COVID, when virtual during the pandemic was actually our first meeting to go virtual, we pulled that off quite quickly. And then we’ve actually kept other than, you know, a few special meetings, often our work sessions are better in person. But we’ve kept the bulk of those meetings virtually, because we’ve found that really that moderation is even easier to do on the Zoom than it is in person. We also have some members who you know, the commutes in these areas can be a little tough, there can be some bad traffic around and we’ve got not all of our members live or even work in Arlington. So having the Zoom really makes it more accessible for people as well.

Brandon Burton 17:42
I love that you pointed out that it has been done over zoom, because that was going to be a question as as it’s open to any chamber member, how do you have a room big enough to accommodate anybody that wanted to come, especially some of those hot topics come up? So glad to see that you’re still utilizing zoom and being effective with it and not just having the Zoom burnout?

Kate Bates 18:03
Yeah, the networking again, we we listened to our members, and it was very, very clear that the networking events, you know, we made it work virtually when we had to when things were really shut down. But no people want to physically be together for the networking. But for some more of the the meetings tend to work well virtually for us.

Brandon Burton 18:21
So this policy meetings, are they being operated by a chamber staff? Are you running that? Or is it a somebody from the government affairs that runs that? How does that? How does that work?

Kate Bates 18:32
So a mix between the two, so each of our chamber committees has a staff liaison. So again, prior to us, that is our government affairs manager. Now prior to us having a government affairs professional, I was doing that, you know, so I was the primary staff liaison, and then ultimately tapped one of our other team members to help with just some of the administrative when we’re in person, the sign in sheet and that sort of thing. But we do have a staff member for it, who’s often opening and doing more of the logistics of things. And then we also do have our co chairs who are kind of more of the public face for a lot of these things. So they’re the ones who are giving the welcome. We’re introducing the speaker with support from our staff.

Brandon Burton 19:10
Awesome. So maybe shifting gears a little bit, then over to the membership support side. So I assume your government affairs position that you’ve hired for is engaging with the members to find out what their needs are there. What what is that? How does those How did those interactions work? As far as engaging with the members? Is it reaching out to them as a waiting? You know, are there enough people coming to you with issues? Is it what, how does that direction work?

Kate Bates 19:39
Great question. So that’s really where the integration with the rest of the team and the membership team in particular comes into play. So you know, we always put you know, information, all of our newsletters, we have you know, in our print newsletter, which we still do occasionally you know, now we’re down to quarterly on that. And when we do the advocacy section, we add information that if you’re having any policy issues, please reach out Our government affairs manager, John musoni, has contact information. So we do have some of those static things. And you know, we do often when we onboard our new members, we make sure that they know about John as a resource, but really a lot of the specific ones. So some of the members who’ve been around for a while will know or who read, you know, their newsletters will reach out. But often, you know, it’s our membership team. And we have two full time and now one part time membership professionals as well, that when they’re talking with our members, and just the regular interactions, if they hear anything, then they make the connection there to our government affairs manager. So that’s how a lot of that happens.

Brandon Burton 20:34
I could see where there may be some bleed over with different positions with among chamber staff, where, you know, not everybody is a membership person, but at the same time, if somebody wants, you know, inquires about membership, you’re not going to say, well, I can’t tell you anything, right? You’re going to, you’re going to help them where you can and then make that transition. So is there specific training that you do for different staffers, it just kind of learning on the job and just kind of learning the different vernacular and what those important topics are to address members?

Kate Bates 21:06
Yeah, I mean, we’re all in the membership business, no, anybody’s in the chamber business is in the membership business, we like to say, in terms of, you know, training for membership and Government Affairs sort of working together there. A lot of it. So whenever we onboard any new full time team member, a big important part of that onboarding process, is they meet with each other team member, or sometimes by department. So we’ll meet with the membership team together and talk about how they work together. And what that looks like, will often also have, you know, especially for the government affairs, roll, them just sort of sit in on a membership meeting once or twice, we also have all new staff members go to our chamber one to one, so that they hear how we’re messaging membership to new and prospective members. But a lot of that integration to with the selling, you know, so our government affairs manager, you know, if he’s looking through a county board agenda, and that’s kind of a pro tip for any of the chamber professionals, if anybody is trying to figure out, you know, they’re not sure where to engage, look at your local government agendas, and just start reviewing them and see what topics are applicable to businesses. So there may be broad topics coming up, or there may be individual businesses that have business going before that your government body. So when that happens, you know, our government affairs manager will if it’s a member, reach out to them, if he hasn’t heard from them already, and ask them, you know, how are things going? Is there anything we can do to support you in this, you know, if they’re hearing that they’re having some problems, or they’re not sure how the vote is going to do, that’s where we would engage more, if it’s a prospective member, if they’ve got a bigger item coming before our county board, then that’s when, you know, our government affairs manager and our senior director of membership will talk together, they actually have regular meetings together and figure out a strategy, you know, who it makes sense to reach out to the prospective member and offer support from there.

Brandon Burton 22:54
So, as you have these two advocacy buckets, do you see pretty well split 5050? As far as getting feedback from members, and where the value where they perceive the value to be? I guess, because I see the value there being very, pretty equal. But the perceived value, I guess, from members, does it seem to be pretty evenly split? Or do you see one way or the other having more perceived value and impact on your membership?

Kate Bates 23:23
So that’s hard to say, again, there’s certainly more of the policy position work, and that will impact more members. But the member support will impact the business more deeply, if that makes sense. So if you’re one of those individual businesses, that’s where you will never forget, you know, I mean, I was at a just out to dinner with my husband on Friday night at a local restaurant. And the owner came by and was talking about some of the challenges he’s having and some of the new ones that he had just brought to our government affairs managers attention the day before, but just talking about some of the other work and really talking about how he saves so much by not having to call his attorney for every single question about the county, because he has us as this resource. And you know, that is a member that I would be shocked if that renewal ever doesn’t come in for us, just because he has felt that value so strongly if chamber membership. But the policy position work is also incredibly important. Because again, you know, for larger businesses, it gives them a place to engage. And for the smaller businesses, they don’t have the capacity to have somebody looking at all of these things on their behalf. And a lot of it can be playing defense as well. You know, there’s a lot of other, you know, advocacy groups, we have a very active community, which is a wonderful thing. There’s something known as the Arlington way, we’re really anything that’s going to happen as to go through a big process with lots of community input. And if nobody is watching those things, from a business perspective, a lot of things can happen with unintended consequences for business. So especially, you know, for those reasons, really the policy positions are broadly probably, I’m using air quotes that our listeners can’t see but more important, but Can the member support is more impactful to those who are directly impacted?

Brandon Burton 25:04
Right. And I know sometimes the policy stuff is a little harder to communicate the value to members like, once they see something really happened, some real traction happens. And they’re like, Oh, we’re so grateful our chambers doing this. But a lot of the work kind of happens behind the scenes, in a lot of cases, maybe not with the large companies and things like that, that are able to engage in different level. But I can definitely see, you know, where we’re at each has a place. I guess the basis of that question is where I was thinking, maybe for the smaller chamber out there one or two staff, but they want to get involved more in advocacy, like, where should they start?

Kate Bates 25:41
So, Senator, it depends on what their starting point is, I mean, at minimum, setting up, a government affairs committee is a good place to start. And maybe your committee doesn’t have to meet, you know, twice a month, or even once a month, maybe it could be quarterly, that could be a great starting point for people, and really that convening power, you know, two of the things we haven’t talked about so far are convening and access. You know, even if it’s not your chamber, doing the advocacy work, providing the space to connect your businesses with the elected officials, is hugely valuable, and making your chamber that central place where businesses can come to and connect with the elected officials, and equally important with the county staff, so or city staff, or whatever your configuration is within your local government. But you know, both the people who are the official leaders, but then there’s also often the, you know, the people who really get things done within the county or city government. For businesses, that might be a specific role. But it might not be it might be somebody in a role that you might not think but you realize that any issue you’re bringing forward, they’re the ones solving, you know, and providing that access to your members is a huge benefit. That doesn’t have to be a huge left.

Brandon Burton 26:54
Absolutely. So and I love the pro tip that you gave of looking at the your, your county or your Government Board agendas to see what those hot topics are that are coming up to be able to stay engaged with what matters to the businesses in your community. As we start looking to wrap up here, I wanted to see if you have any other tips or action items for listeners that maybe they want to take their chamber up to the next level, maybe they want to get more engaged with advocacy, what what would you suggest for a tip for them.

Kate Bates 27:25
So I love the one takeaway idea. And whenever I give presentations, I always ask people at the end to try to take one thing especially we’ve thrown a lot of information at them. For this topic, it’s really hard to make it one takeaway that works for every chamber, not knowing where every one starting point is. So if you’re newer to this space, I would offer you know monitoring what your local government is doing. And looking at those agendas for items that impact business and pick one to weigh in on you don’t have to start if you’re brand new to this and feel like you need to make an impact on every single thing. Just pick one there. Another option would be hosting a session with your membership could be virtual or in person with a local official or a top staff person. Again, it doesn’t need to be too much work on that agenda if you’re just asking them to come in, talk about what’s relevant to businesses, and then give a forum for your members to have that back and forth interaction with them. If you’ve been in this space for a while, at action items could range from finding a new way to communicate your work, whether that’s an advocacy, specific communication or newsletter, or maybe doing a better job of integrating your advocacy work and wins into your regular newsletters and communications. It could also be doing some relationship maintenance with your local elected officials or local government staff. And if your team is big enough that you do have a separate person or people handling government affairs and membership, an action item could be to encourage them to meet and see how they can work together more and how that government affairs person can support the membership efforts.

Brandon Burton 28:55
I hope everybody had a pen and paper ready to just write it or you can back up on the podcast 30 seconds, 60 seconds and write those down again, because those are some great tips. I also been a fan of podcasting for chambers that do have a podcast, I think being able to share your advocacy efforts through your podcasts, having a little advocacy moment or segment in each episode I think would be very helpful just to help spread the work that you’re doing. And because a lot of that is behind the scenes, and they don’t really know that you’re doing it unless you say something about it. So Kay, I like asking everyone that I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kate Bates 29:38
So I love that question. And we’re at an interesting reflection point right now for our chamber because next year, we actually turn 100 years old. So I was recently asked a similar question about as our chamber hits the 100 year anniversary. What do I think that you know, our founders would think about how things look now, and I think the two questions really come connect together. So you know, I think the why remains constant. But the how of what we do obviously looks quite different than anyone could have envisioned 100 years ago. And really looking forward at our industry more broadly, as long as the Chamber’s focused on the needs of our members and how to evolve the suit those, there will absolutely be an essential place for chambers. I think that the pandemic really showcased how vital chambers can be to the businesses within their community. We were again, a little short on time, so didn’t even dive into this. There’s so many different facets, but really a subset of the advocacy is being that resource for information for your members. And chambers really shone so brightly in this area during the pandemic, as new regulations were coming out and small businesses didn’t have the resources to keep up on their own. Now, we repurposed our government affairs professional, who was still advocating, but also to discern that information and distill it in a way that could be understood by the businesses so that they knew everything that what they could and couldn’t do and where to go for all the information as well. So that’s an example of the evolving, but you know, I think, absolutely, there’s a place a strong place for chambers, as long as we continue to look to our members, and see how they’re adapting and make the Adapt adaptations to help them moving forward.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Absolutely, man, when you gave that responsive, you know, the question you were asked about, you know, 100 years looking back, you’re kind of reflective of your chamber. Think 100 years ago, 1923. You know, we’re

Kate Bates 31:29
24, so we get out

Brandon Burton 31:31
there, yeah, so but the world has changed a ton, you know, in in those 99 200 years, and even looking forward, like, we have no idea what its gonna look like 100 years from now, and, but you know, if we can go one day at a time, one year at a time, maybe five years and look into the future and, and see what’s important to your members, see what’s important to your community to business, keep them strong and thriving. That’s what we’re all about. So thank you for that. For that perspective there. I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for you as well, like you mentioned, we were a little bit short on time as they’re going through this, we could talk for probably an hour and a half I bet on on advocacy. But if anyone wanted to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things, they’re in Arlington, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect.

Kate Bates 32:20
So I can be reached by email at president@arlingtonchamber.org, or I’m also on LinkedIn as well and can be found there.

Brandon Burton 32:27
It’s all right. And I will have those in our show notes for this episode as well. So if anybody’s not familiar, you can just hit your little notes, show notes on your your podcast player, and then it’ll have a link to actually the page on my website that has the full show notes and transcription. So we’ll have it there. But Kate, thank you for joining us today on chamber chat podcast. And he provided a lot of value and perspective and would encourage anyone listening to reach out and connect with Kate to learn more about advocacy and how that can help impact your membership as well. Okay, thank you very much.

Kate Bates 33:03
Thank you so much, Brandon. It’s really been a pleasure.

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5 Lessons Learned in 2022

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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For this episode, I decided to do a top five lessons learned in 2022. Now as I record this, it is Christmas Eve 2022. And this episode we’ll be releasing on the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years. So purposely, I want to keep this episode a little shorter, just so you can still get some good value out of it and ideas. But I want you to be able to spend time with your family and get those things done around the house that you don’t normally have time to do because you’re your normal busy schedule. So before I get into those top five lessons learned now some of the lessons that I’ll share are ones that were directly related to podcast episodes that I’ve I’ve put out over this last year. And some are just lessons from observing the world and things going on in the environment. So keep that in mind as I go through the lessons. But before I get into those lessons, I wanted to share a personal lesson, I guess you can say that I’ve learned and that is that over, I guess almost four years now doing the podcast, I have reached a point where my time is being stretched very thin, a lot of responsibilities on my plate. And I’m at the point where I need to bring on some help somebody to help to edit and produce the podcast episodes, just to free up a little bit more of my time to where I can focus more intently on getting great guests on the podcast and other projects and special interests that I have to develop that are related to the show. So with that I’ve in you’re familiar as a chamber professional is you see a need for growth within your chamber. The next question is how do you go about providing the financial backing to justify it. And we just had a great episode last week, I believe it was last week where we had Susan Williams on. And she talked about staffing. So that episode came at a really good time for me, as I’m thinking about things that I need to do to staff up the podcast, and create a better experience for all of you as well. So continue to serve, you know, bigger and better going forward in the future. So as I was trying to figure out the best way of doing this, we do have some regular show sponsors. So I would love for you to support them and, you know, buy their product support their businesses, because that keeps their sponsorships coming to Chamber Chat Podcast. But I also, over the years have received messages and emails and ran into some of you at conferences, who have expressed the great value that that you find out of the podcast that lessons learned the way you’re able to stay and be able to stay engaged and continue to learn within the chamber space. So if you are one of those people, and you would like to find a way to support the podcast, a way to continue to see the growth of it. What I decided to do was I created a page on my website so chamberchatpodcast.com/support where you can become a sponsor yourself.

So when I created the podcast, the goal was to always have it be free. And that is still my goal to have this be a free resource, especially for those chambers that don’t have the resources to go to chamber conferences and be a part of their local or state association. I wanted to create a resource for them to be able to learn best practices and tips and strategies so they can better serve their business community. Ready. So this will always be free. What I posted on this page on my website, though the support page is different options if you would like to provide some financial support. So this suggestion, and these are just suggestions, so if you wanted to give a different amount, you can reach out and and contact me and we can set up a different structure. But just to make it easy. The suggested amounts, if you are a single listener, be $5 a month. And if you are comfortable doing that, I would appreciate that it would help to you know, if we, if we get several of you doing $5 A month that would definitely help to pay somebody to produce the podcasts for me. Hopefully, you are also sharing the podcast with your staff. So if you have different staff sizes, if you have a smaller staff, maybe two to five staff members, maybe you do $10 a month for your medium size in you know, five to 15 staff members, maybe $20 a month. And if you’re a larger staff more and there’s even a Superfan option. So if you want to check those out, see what makes the most sense for you. Maybe it comes out like as a single listener, maybe the $5 a month comes out of your personal credit card. If you’re doing it for your staff, maybe that becomes an office expense to help support and train sustain your your staff. So I’ll let you decide what what works best for you and your situation there. But with that aside, we’ll we’ll move on to the top five lessons that I’ve learned in 2022. And we’ll get into that as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, we are back. So the top five lessons that I have from 2022. Again, these are these are no particular order necessarily. They’re just what stood out to me as I look back on the year. So one, the first lesson that I’ll highlight is the importance for chambers to be advocates, while also remaining as a sane center in their community. So Though we had an episode 162, Marc Cohen from the Greater Rochester Chamber was on and he talked about the role of chambers and advocacy and policy. And it was a great episode, I would highly recommend people go back and listen to that one. But also Episode 175, we had Bill Connors, on from Boise talking about being the same center at your chamber. So not being too extreme one way or the other, but really listening to what those needs are of your members. And then creating programs around that supporting candidates and policies that would enable strong business in your community. So there’s a lot of good that in those two episodes right there.

The second lesson that I wanted to highlight was the great value that comes out of collaborating and creating partnerships with others. So these may be collaborations or partnerships with other chambers. They may be another organization in your region, maybe a Convention Visitors Bureau, maybe an economic development, maybe your city itself. But what really came to mind is like created the CIO, or came up with this lesson learned. It was from a reflection, as I look back on some of the chamber, the year finalist interviews that I did this year. And a couple of those chambers, partnered with local banks through the COVID pandemic to help get funding to their members. And as we know, funding was extremely important at that time. And that was a very good strategic partnership for those chambers that took advantage of that. So keep your eyes open, keep them peeled for opportunities to create collaborations or partnerships that make sense to benefit your members.

The third lesson from 2022 that I wanted to highlight was actually an episode all in itself. So it was episode 188, with Jordan Clemons from Greater Louisville Inc. And he talked all about LinkedIn, for growing your chamber membership. And he has a great strategy. If you haven’t heard that episode, I would encourage you to listen or at least have your your membership staff listen to it, as he has a whole strategy of how he uses LinkedIn specifically, to put posts out that really highlight your community and drives a lot of engagement. And then he’s able to see who engages with those posts, learn more about them through their LinkedIn profile, and then reach out to them and create a dialogue that’s already a warm conversation because they’ve already interacted with his post. And by utilizing the strategy, he’s exceeded his sales goals year after year, and really done a great job for GLI. So getting that was episode 188. If you’d like to go back and listen to that one again.

The fourth lesson that I wanted to highlight was the importance of leaning into digital to create relevant and personal communication channels, or strategies. And we had a great, great episode with Sara Ray, and Episode 166, where she talked about just this, about creating relevant personalized communications, specifically through email. So when you look at your email response rate, your email engagement, you’re probably not as satisfied as you’d like to be, if you’re like any other chamber, but by creating relevant content. So as you look at what, why did this member join your chamber? What are they expecting? What are their expectations? What are they looking for what needs do they have to support their business. And then if you can customize your communication to these members based on their needs and desires, that will put your engagement through the roof, both on the digital front with email engagements or social posts, but also for having people show up to events that are relevant to them. That way, they’re not just tone, you know, tuning out everything that comes from the chamber because so much of it’s not relevant to them. Now they’re only getting things that are relevant to them so they pay more attention and engage at a much higher level.

The fifth lesson fifth and final lesson that I will highlight from 2022 is really a personal observation as I look at business environments, economy trends, I see a future where chambers Of Commerce can really benefit by embracing cryptocurrency and NFTs. So for those of you who may not be familiar, NFT stands for non fungible token, meaning there can only be one of that token. So think of it as maybe a coin or an image or some kind of a digital asset that has kind of like a stamp on it that says this is a one of one one of a kind token. And with that NFT’s initially kind of rolled out as expensive JPEGs. So, people would put out these digital images of cats or, you know, different cartoon type characters, and they would sell them for ridiculous amounts of money. It made zero sense to me, I can’t understand why anybody got behind that. But as I learned more about it, and heard about people creating NFT projects, they really focused on the community building aspect of NFT projects. And then my ears perked up. And I had somewhat of an aha moment. Right that anytime I hear the word community, I think Chambers of Commerce need to be involved. So when you look at building an NFT project, creating a community around it, how can a chamber of commerce utilize this? So here’s an example. I recently came out with a chamber podcasting guide to teach chambers how to create a podcast. About the same time I was creating that, that course that chamber podcasting course, I was learning more about NFT’s. And I thought, I wish the technology was developed enough that I could release this course as an NFT. So in other words, if I had access, I launched this course and I have 10 tokens, let’s say that are NFT’s non fungible tokens to access this course, then I can sell them to chambers, as a chamber takes a course learns how to podcast, then they don’t need the course anymore, because they know the material that’s in there, they could then turn around and resell that NFT to another chamber, who can then learn to podcast and that first chamber can get, you know, some or all or more of their investment back of what they initially paid. And within that NFT there are smart contracts that are involved. So within the smart contract, I could write in there a commission. So every time that NFT is resold, or every time that course is resold, I could get a 10% commission, let’s say, based on whatever the sale price was. So think about how would that apply to your chamber? Do you have programs? Do you have courses? Do you have tutorials, do you have different resources, that could be packaged as an NFT, that would allow for your members to market your product and services that would allow them to regain maybe their initial investment in that in that token, and continue to promote that to other businesses in your community. So that is a thought that I had had. But as I continue to think of chambers of commerce utilizing NFT’s many of you already have a tiered dues membership platform. So maybe you look at offering membership as NFTs. So if you have a different NFT for each level of your membership, and you have a certain number of NFT’s for each level, as a chamber member maybe levels up to a higher level of membership, they can sell their initial membership to another member and become an advocate for bringing other businesses into the chamber.

If a chamber were to move out of the community, they don’t have to just lose their chamber benefits but they could resell their membership to another business, there could be a whole other resale market. And with that, you can have the smart contract involved where you’re making revenue off of that every time that membership is resold. But my thought with this is you end up having your members become advocates who are out there are ambassadors we can say that are out there really promoting the value they get from the chamber especially as they go to resell their NFTs and level up their membership. So I don’t know that the technology is ready For Chamber’s to jump right into the NFT space, but something to keep in mind is as we look to the future, look to the kids look to the youth who are playing video games. They’re playing games like Minecraft, and Roblox and fortnight, you know, games like that you and I may look at them as games. I don’t play them. I don’t know much about them. My kids play them. And what I do know is that lots of commerce is being done within these meta verses. So dropped a couple of words there. So commerce when I hear commerce, I think Chamber of Commerce, how should a chamber be involved? There’s commerce happening in these digital platforms. And it is these games are levels of Metaverse where they’re buying and selling digital goods, whether it’s a skin or clothes, or a gun, or some sort of a weapon or a horse or whatever these things are they’re buying and selling and trading. Commerce is happening in the digital landscape. How can your chamber be involved? So have that in your mind? Because we hear these promises of the metaverse coming, which would be kind of an all inclusive digital landscape. I I don’t know I have some reservations about a full full blown metaverse. But there are definitely Metaverse landscapes that are out there. So pay attention to those see if there’s any way that makes sense for your chamber to be involved, especially as these youth aged up into the working class, the the the people that are being employed in your communities, what can your chamber do to be involved in that space? So with that, it may come back to NFT’s as NFTs even in these games. There can be NFT’s that are bought and sold that are a hat or some kind of a article of clothing that is an NFT but it can be utilized within the metaverse. So there’s a ton of opportunity here. So I guess moral of the story with this lesson number five of the future of chambers, embracing crypto and NFTs is learn about it. Be ready as the shift comes to your chamber can stay relevant. That is the biggest advice that I can give you right there. But with that, that summarizes the top five lessons that I have to share with you from 2022.

And again, I’m going to plug it if you would like to take a look at being a supporter of Chamber Chat Podcast. That website is chamberchatpodcast.com/support to see the different sponsorship levels that we have available there. So if you could check it out, I’d really appreciate it. Otherwise, we will look forward to see you again next week, and I wish you all a happy and safe New Year.

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

Endorsing Political Candidates with Scott Ashton

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Scott Ashton. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
Now, your host he traveled to Colorado on a mission to find his favorite ice cream. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
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.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Matt Morrow President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri to learn how the Holman Brothers provided value to his chamber.

Matt Morrow 0:45
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:07
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Scott Ashton Scott is the president and CEO of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce in California. He has been on the staff at the Chamber since 1996 and took on his current role in November 2016. Scott is originally from Massachusetts, and began his career at the South Shore chamber while attending graduate school at Suffolk University in Boston, where he earned his Master of Public Administration degree. Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the chamber industry in a variety of sales and management capacities. Scott serves in volunteer and or advisory capacity with numerous local organizations as well. Scott resides in Oceanside and enjoys reading, hiking, walking and studying health and nutrition.

Scott, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m happy to have you on the show now. And this has been a work in progress over several months. But for glad we can make it happen. Why don’t you say hello to all the Chamber Champions and and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Scott Ashton 2:20
Sure, grant. And thank you for the opportunity. And like you said, and now this has been a long time in the works. Thank you for your patience and bearing with me to find a time that works for both of us. So something interesting about myself. Well, you know, one of the statistics that I heard recently is that people entering the workforce now will have 14 different careers over their lifetime. And I don’t know if this is interested or not. But I’ve had one career in the chamber industry is all that I’ve known my entire career. So I remember growing up as a little boy, and I couldn’t think of anything else other than wanting to work for our chambers Sunday series. I’m just kidding about that. Okay.

Brandon Burton 3:07
How did you get exposed? Tell me more.

Scott Ashton 3:10
But I guess like, like most people I’ve met, you know, the, just kind of something that we fall into. So I went to I was born and raised in Massachusetts. And as of right now, I lived almost exactly half my life, the first half of my life and Massachusetts and the second half so far in Southern California, so that I went to college as a criminal justice major with a minor in Spanish, got out of college still didn’t know what I wanted to do is I went right into graduate school and had to find work while I was going to graduate school at night. So my friends, my friend, Kristen said, let me introduce you to my dad, he runs the Chamber of Commerce, and he knows tons of business people and can help you find a job. So I took her up on that I went and sat down with her dad who ran the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, which is on the south shore of Boston, one of the largest, I think it’s still to this time, one of the largest chambers in that in that state. And I sat with him for a while and he said, Well, you know, until you find something else, why don’t you just sell memberships here at the chamber? I was like, Okay, I’ve never sold anything and have no idea what a chamber does, but I’ll give it a try. And turns out I had some skills that I never would have imagined that I had and I had some success in selling memberships. I stayed at that chamber for about two and a half, two and a half years and then the membership director position opened up at the Cambridge chamber which is had an office right on Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge about halfway between Harvard and MIT, so is an amazing opportunity. I was fortunate to get hired for that position, and did that for about two and a half years. And then my wife, who had grown up in Southern California wanted to get back here. So what I knew as a chamber career, so I just got on the phone started calling chambers and asking if they had any openings. And I connected with Oceanside, they did not have an opening, but there’s apparently something in that conversation, a conversation that intrigued them. So they invited me to fly out and have a conversation with their CEO and couple board members. And they created a position for me in 1996, doing membership and business development, which I did here for about 20 years. And then when the CEO position opened up, I really wanted it. Most of the board members at that time were people that I already had built a great relationship with. I had worked with them over the years. Some of them I had sold them their membership to the chamber. I just started reaching out to the board members and letting them know how much I wanted to position. Thankfully they hired and internally and now it’s been six years that I’ve been in the CEO role at the chamber.

Brandon Burton 6:18
Yeah, I love hearing how people come into the chamber industry because it’s always you everybody falls into it a little different. So it is yeah, it is funny most of it’s by accident, most of it yeah that’s what I say falling into it and not not that they found it or you know went after but they fell into it and but luckily the chamber world tends to attract the right people. So glad you found it. Glad you’re here will tell us some about the the Oceanside chamber just to give us some perspective like sighs staff budget type of work, just to give us some some perspective before we get into our conversation.

Scott Ashton 6:55
Yeah, so our size is about 620 or so members. budget right now is a little over a million dollars. We have a staff of eight, couple are part time The rest are full time. And last year, our chamber celebrated its 120/5 anniversary of serving the business community. So we’re we’re one of the oldest chambers in San Diego County. And I the year that I started at the chamber it was its 100th anniversary. So I was here for the 100 and 120. Pets. It’s really another

Brandon Burton 7:37
25 years and yeah,

Scott Ashton 7:39
I do not

Brandon Burton 7:43
come back as a by standard then I guess maybe yeah. Maybe a member of some sort. So yeah.

Scott Ashton 7:50
Hope to be around and be able to celebrate, but not in this position. 25 years.

Brandon Burton 7:59
Well, that that does help. As far as type of work. Are you guys chamber only? Are you tourism? Are you economic development? What what do you guys cover?

Scott Ashton 8:09
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So when I first started at the Chamber, we ran the we ran the tourism operation for Oceanside. And about 12 years ago, we helped, we helped create a separation where they are now funded through through a transient marketing districts tax. So it’s a hotel tax of I forget the exact amount, I think it’s close to 2%. It funds that operation where previously, every year or two we had to go to city council and and request a portion of the T ot taxes in order to be able to fund the visitor operation. But now they have a steady stream of income. And makes me wish at some point that we we had handled that a little differently and didn’t give up that operation because now they have a budget that’s three or four times times the size of our chamber budget. But we work really closely with them. I’m on their board. They’re CEOs on my board, we’d have a great working relationship. So yeah, so while we’re not the point of contact or the main, you know, the the main organization working on tourism anymore, it’s still a very important part of what drives our local economy. So we’re of course involved in it. Workforce development is another key area for us. Small business advocacy, which I’m sure most chambers you’re talking with, are engaged in that and then political action is is the other key element that I think we’re gonna be talking about shortly.

Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s right. And so that’s a good transition right there. So our topic for conversation today people may have seen as they look at the title of this episode, but we’re going to be talking about chain Bruce endorsing political candidates. So I know that’s a topic that some chambers you know, want to shy away from or maybe they are interested in getting into, but they don’t know where to start and there’s some fear or maybe they’re doing it and there’s something they can learn and adapt or maybe it hasn’t gone well and maybe it went really well. So we’ll we’ll dive into our discussion around that and what you guys are currently involved with as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Scott, we’re back. So endorsing political candidates. How did the Oceanside chamber come to the decision that you guys wanted to endorse candidates?

Scott Ashton 13:31
Yeah, it was a it was a slow evolution. When I when I first started at the chamber. I don’t think it’s anything that they would have even imagined taking on at that point. But at some point along the way, we started doing candidate forums and getting warmed up to that realm a little bit. So fast forward to 2018. Where we had we had done our candidate forums were that year were heavily engaged in trying to defeat an initiative on the ballot, I was the land of local to Oceanside land use initiative, which was basically for ballot box zoning, which we did not want to see happen. So we got heavily engaged in that and fortunately defeated it. So we we exited the 2018 elections with a sense of boldness and wanting to see how much further we can go in the political realm. So in December of 2018, we did a survey to our members and asked them, you know how helpful the information that we put out on that ballot measure was to them and you know, making their decision on voting and got really good feedback on that. And we asked some other questions on the survey about the candidates that have won the election. You know, do you think this person is business friendly or not? And you And then we worked our way to the question on how important is it to you that the Chamber be involved in helping elect business friendly candidates. And it was almost 90% of the survey respondents indicated that it was important to them that we help elect business friendly candidates. So, I know that can mean a lot of different things, you know, that can mean doing forums or publishing scorecards. But what I and our board took that to mean is that, Hey, we should move forward and considering endorsing candidates. So we took those survey results to the board, and our board was, you know, boldly decided to move in that direction. So when we did that survey, we also asked, Hey, would you be interested in being part of some more extensive conversations on this topic? And we had quite a few members that said yes to that. So in 2019, we started holding focus groups with small groups of our members to ask them, what was important to them. And in city council candidates, what what are the things that you want them to address and what what you want them to do. And so we were able to gather a lot of data on what was important to our members, and what they wanted to see and the candidates going forward. And from there, we will use that to develop our policies and procedures.

Brandon Burton 16:30
So I know you as you try to speak as the voice of business as as the chamber, you’re taking a collective of voices, whether it’s staff or board members, or your members, in general, to say this is a candidate that we support, or we’re behind this candidate. Did you have to work through any, you know, putting aside you know, personal feelings? Or, or maybe a board member that didn’t necessarily agree, how do you manage some of those waters that can get a little bit muddy?

Scott Ashton 17:05
So that that is a great question. You know, we have a very diverse pack. And it’s purposely set up that way where we have equal number of seats for for Republicans, Democrats and no party preference. And while when you start to talk about state national issues, there would be strong separation amongst those people. But we find that on local issues related to development. For us, you know, sand retention on our beach is a big issue, housing, workforce development related issues, that there’s really strong unity across parties on that. So. And one of the points that are, you know, when our PAC is going to make a recommendation to the board, they do make a point to remind them that, hey, you might have some personal thoughts on this. But remember, you’re wearing your chamber hat right now. And, you know, please approach it from that perspective. So, and I know we’ll talk about some of the specifics of the elections a little bit, but in the two election cycles that we’ve endorsed candidates, we get have unanimous, unanimous approval from our board of directors. So our PAC has done their homework in both election cycles.

Brandon Burton 18:27
That’s great. And I think it’s good for other chambers to hear that too. Just a reminder of once he started talking about things on a local level, it’s a lot easier to gather consensus and people around one common goal. So take, take that charge and go do it. So. So as we’re talking right now, it’s beginning it’s beginning of December 2022. So we just came off of an election cycle. And you’re just talking about that fed a couple election cycles now to go through with endorsing candidates out, how have those gone? Have you? You know, from the candidates you didn’t Dorse the process along the way the outcomes? What’s the experience been like?

Scott Ashton 19:08
Yeah, so it all goes back to 2019, where we put in that worked with our members, we had those focus groups, we found out what was important to them. And then we developed policies and procedures as to how we will approach the endorsement of candidates. And so far, it’s been just sticking with city council races, you know, here in Oceanside. And so we had this all put in place prior to 2020. And then, when 2020 came along, candidates started piling and so on. We had these policies and procedures in place that allowed us to send out questionnaires to the to the candidates that had filed just to get their feedback on business related issues. And from there, we decided who we would interview or do a personal interview with at the next step because of what happened in 2020. The personal interviews ended up being zoom interviews instead. So we couldn’t sit across the table from them. But what we decided to do, because of the volume of candidates was relatively low. We invited everybody that filled out our survey to come in for an interview, even, you know, even if they’re there, they didn’t have the exact answers to the questions that you know, that we are hoping to hear from them. We still invited them in for an interview, and we were able to manage that volume of candidates. So in 2020, we had three races, and we had two city council races and neoral race. The mayoral race became complicated because we had two business friendly candidates that had been good friends of the chamber, that they couldn’t agree for one of them to back out. And they both stayed in the race. And we basically said that we’re not going to choose between them. We just made a statement that both of these candidates have been good supporters of the chamber and of the business community. And we left it at that. So we focused our effort on the two city council district races, and I 2018, I think was our first year and going to two districts, city council races used to be city wide. So the two district candidates were incumbents that had were in their current seats by appointment. And they had been business friendly. And it was a very easy decision for us to get behind these two candidates. They both ended up winning their races. One was, I think, by less than 1000 votes. So I think we really had an impact there. And we were able to donate, I think in the range of about $12,000 total that we had raised through our political action committee. And we were able to help them out with their to get across the finish line. So we were we were successful in that in that first run, and that embolden us to keep moving forward. Very good.

Brandon Burton 22:12
So do you feel and I don’t know, maybe you have some data to back this up? Or not? Maybe it’s just a feeling but how do you feel the impact of your chamber supporting candidates? How has that helped to motivate people to vote? I mean, to me, it’s always discouraging when you see such small numbers, turnout for elections, and trying to engage that that big population that just doesn’t vote? Do you? Do you have any feeling or any data on how maybe that needles moved over time?

Scott Ashton 22:45
I really don’t. I think we were a little early on in the process to see if we’re making any impact on on voter turnout. But I think we are, you know, the Chamber brand is very well respected in the community. And as we’re able to put forth our candidates, I think people pay attention to that. The other part of it is we have found common ground with there’s two other major organizations in Oceanside that endorse candidates, and that is our Police Officers Association, and our Firefighters Association. So going back several years, they used to endorse the candidates that would basically tell them, you know, what, what they wanted to hear that they would be taken care of. But these are the same candidates that were opposing development and gross. So one of our PAC members had a conversation with with both of the unions and, and just, you know, shared with them that, hey, if you if you want to get paid, what you should be paid, we need growth in our community, we need that development, we need to expand our tax base. And they have been really on board with that and supporting pro development candidates. So you know, the we’re going into it where it’s not just the chamber endorsement, but it’s our candidates have been endorsed by the chamber by the police and fire associations. And that’s a big deal. And in a relatively small city. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 24:13
I love that. And I like that you guys are doing interviews too, with these candidates to be able to help share the story, what their vision is, and give a more informed option or choice to voters. Yeah, I know, not every community is has done that or is equipped to do that unnecessary or maybe they don’t think they’re equipped to do that. But I see a tremendous value because I mean, most times you go to the ballot, and you see names of people that you don’t know who they are. And the especially the common person in the in the community has no idea who some of these names are set to create some exposure and some connection as to what these people stand for besides an R or D next to their name, I think is very helpful. So Do you have any any tips for chambers who want to maybe get their toes wet in this as far as conducting some of those interviews? Or how to get started?

Scott Ashton 25:12
Yeah. So just for clarification, are the interviews that we do are just for our path or not public interviews? So we’re asking them, you know, the questions are important to our business community and how they would approach those issues. And that’s, that’s what we’re using as to decide on where we’re going to put our endorsement. But there are, you know, there are other great resources in our, in our community, we have a local TV station that allows for, for each election cycle for a candidate statements, and, you know, people in the community can hear from the candidates directly on that. But what we’re doing is we’re doing our interviews we’re bringing, we’re bringing our recommendation to the chamber board of directors, and then we’re sharing that with the community in a variety of ways. One of the things that we have is, we do a quarterly magazine that gets mailed out to a lot of the business people and residents. So what we’ve done when we have endorsements, is we target the distribution of our magazine into that district. So ideally, you know, most if not all of the residents in that district, are hearing from us and on who are endorsements are and those endorsements are on the front cover of the magazine.

Brandon Burton 26:35
Awesome, awesome, great idea. So, overall, I like to asking if, if you have any tips or action items for listeners who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them? And maybe it has something to do with endorsing candidates, maybe it’s something totally different.

Scott Ashton 26:58
I would say, ask your members what they want. And that’s how we get started on this path, is we you know, we decided to just reach out to the members and see if they wanted us to be engaged in this. And like I said earlier, I know there are a variety of ways for our chambers to influence elections. And it can be just, you know, doing forums, which we did, and publishing scorecards, which we’ve done, not so consistently over the years. But I feel like endorsing candidates is a chance for you to have a real mark on on the elections and to make a real difference. But the starting point is to ask ask the members. The other important tip is to know when to stay out of a race. So I mentioned in 2020, how we stayed out of the mayoral race. This year, we had two districts up for election, one of them was a was a pro business incumbent that we chose not to endorse because of some complications within that race, not the least of which was somebody from her same party, that that would not back out of the race. And we just mathematically didn’t seem like there’s really any path for her to win. So instead of us, and she did not win. And so instead of us, you know, diving into that race and potentially burning a bridge, we stayed out and now we’re trying to build a relationship with a person that that did win that race and with some success. And but the race that we did indoors in one of the districts was a retiring fire chief, who is very well liked in the community, the chamber, police and fire associations all got behind him and he had a strong victory. And that was our first time getting involved in doing an independent expenditure, is there now caps on how much we can donate directly to a candidate. So we put some money into a mailer to support the candidate and there’s no limitations and how much you can spend on independent expenditure on behalf of the candidate.

Brandon Burton 29:09
Okay, so I know, chambers that are listening there, they’re having questions like, but what about this? What about that? What if so, has there been any negative fallout for that’s come from endorsing candidates?

Scott Ashton 29:24
Nothing measurable. You know, it’s interesting going back to that mayoral race, in 2021 conversation I had from a member that was upset was that he couldn’t get out of his mind that he kept selling me you guys endorsed selling science like No, we didn’t endorse in that race. But I guess the fact that we put out a statement saying that these two candidates have both been business friendly was enough to digital but no, the feedback has been great. I think people appreciate that. We’ve taken that had a bold step to put ourselves out there. And they were very thoughtful about how we approach it and try to be very transparent. And we share why we’ve endorsed the candidates and how they aligned with the goals and objectives of the chamber. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:17
I think that makes a lot of sense. When with the feedback from your survey, like I said, 90%, saying, yes, if they wanted you to endorse, I didn’t imagine there’d be much negative fallout. So as we wrap up, I wanted to ask you, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Scott Ashton 30:39
Yeah, I, the direction has certainly changed a lot. And in COVID, certainly had had an impact on that. For us. We’ve slowly moved away from being dependent on events. In the coming year, we actually are doing away with our largest event that really just did not have a strong connection to our mission, and our vision as an organization. So in the event represented about 12, or 13%, of our gross revenue, and so so that’s, it’s hard to let go of something like that. But it’s the right thing to do. So but what what’s freeing us up is, it’s given us the opportunity to focus more on the things that are essential to our business community, the the advocacy, the political action, workforce development, and also, we’ve created a Leadership Academy. So by turning away from some of the things that that brought in money, but didn’t have a strong value to our business community, it’s given us a chance to create some some new programs that do bring value to our businesses. Right.

Brandon Burton 32:00
That’s great. And that is a bold step to step away from from that, that much of your income.

Scott Ashton 32:08
Yeah, and I’m, I’m seeing, you know, just in general, because I know you weren’t just asking about our chamber, but I’ve seen that with other chambers too, and just moving in that direction of being problem solvers in their communities, and, you know, focusing your efforts and using that, to drive revenue opportunities rather than events.

Brandon Burton 32:31
Right, keeps you relevant. That’s for sure. So Scott, I’d like to give you an opportunity for anyone listening who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about how you went about this process to decide to endorse and the whole process what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Scott Ashton 32:51
Yeah, so well, and I love talking about this, I hope people will not hesitate to, to give me a call. So best thing is just pick up the phone call me at the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce as 7607 to 21534.

Brandon Burton 33:06
Very good, I will. I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well, so people can look that up and give me a holler. But um, Scott, I appreciate you hopping on here and visiting with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast for your bold leadership and being willing to share these experiences you’ve had and how things are going there in Oceanside. Thanks for coming on and joining us today.

Scott Ashton 33:30
Thanks, Brandon. I really appreciate the opportunity. If you

Brandon Burton 33:33
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Regional Coalitions with Glenn Morris

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Glenn Morris. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

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Introduction

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.

And now, your host, he likes to explore new automation tools. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here 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 Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:45
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 0:59
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Glenn Morris. Glenn leads the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce in California and developed in delivering on its mission to be a catalyst for business growth convenient for leaders and influencers and champion for a stronger Santa Maria Valley. The chamber is the leading business support Economic Development and Tourism Promotion Agency in Northern Santa Barbara County. Prior to joining the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, Glenn served as president and CEO for the Visalia Chamber of Commerce, which is also in California leading the chamber through a complete update of its programs, while establishing the organization as an influential voice and local policy decision making. In addition to his work with chambers, Glenn has professional experience in economic development, tourism and business advocacy. He brings nearly three decades of experience and leadership to bear on his passions of community organizational excellence, and the power of collaboration to achieve goals. His experience includes leading nonprofit organizations in Utah, California and Nevada. As a community leader, Glenn has been involved in a number of local and national organizations working on issues ranging from access to the arts, improvement of local schools and youth leadership development. Glenn has also been part of a number of community based political campaigns. Professionally, Glenn has served on a wide range of local, regional and national boards focused on business advocacy, economic development, workforce issues and youth career preparation. Glenn has served in numerous leadership and training positions for His church, community and professional organizations. He finds great joy in being a husband to Shana and as a father and a grandfather. Glenn, I’m excited to have you with me on Chamber Chat Podcast today, I’d love for you to just take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Glenn Morris 3:06
Well, Brandon, good morning, and thank you for this invitation. And the chance to chat about chambers, I think. I think chambers are just critical organizations and communities. And I was fortunate that kind of midpoint in my career to find myself in the chamber business and found my real home professionally. So I love that, that that you have this opportunity to bring chamber people together and help us all learn and, and grow together. So that’s wonderful. You know, something else about myself, I you know, I do a lot of work. But But I love all of it. But you know, I think the thing that makes it all worthwhile. At the end of the day, you mentioned the grandkids and that and that’s just you know, that’s the payoff in life, right? When you when you get those opportunities to see your family growing and thriving, and we’re really blessed in that way.

Brandon Burton 4:05
That’s right. I always like to say that’s how, you know you got your priorities right. You know, you can get at work and and all your responsibilities to be able to reflect on that. That’s where that that’s what matters. Yeah, indeed.

Glenn Morris 4:19
Very good.

Brandon Burton 4:20
Well, tell us a little bit about the Santa Maria Valley Chamber just to give us some perspective, midsize budget staff, that sort of thing is we get your discussion

Glenn Morris 4:29
today. Yeah, so Santa Maria Valley Chamber. We are the chamber for the city of Santa Maria and the surrounding. There’s a fairly large unincorporated community in our neighborhood. There’s a smaller city just down the street. So we kind of covered that regional area. We’re in Northern Santa Barbara County, so that three and a half hours north of LA for something south of San Francisco, right on the Central Coast. We, we think of it as God’s country. And you know, the we I joke with folks that I live in the land of the eternal 70s is that it’s really just a beautiful place to live and work. We have a wine country here that that’s a big draw for our tourism side. But there’s a significant amount of manufacturing in this area, as well. And so it’s a very diversified economy communities about 100. And, oh, if you take the all of the neighboring areas that we serve, it’s probably 150 to 160,000 people, kind of one of the last, growing communities along the central coast with with still some opportunity for new new development and new growth. Our chamber is a we think of ourselves as the one stop shop for all business needs. In addition to the traditional chamber functions, we are the tourism marketing organization for the community. And we are the economic development organization for the community. So we work with our city and the county in our area to lead in all of those areas. So we really are kind of a one stop shop I have a team of depending on the day 10 to 12 folks that lead those three functions. We have about 850 members of the chamber and our budget all in is gonna probably be in that two and a quarter million this next year. All right.

Brandon Burton 6:43
Well, that does help to give some of that perspective especially as we get into what our topic for our discussions today around regional coalition’s. We’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Regional Coalitions

All right, Glenn, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’ll focus our conversation around regional coalition’s and your responsibility or your chamber there, like you mentioned, as you kind of gave that background about the chamber is your typical chamber work you’ve got the tourism arm as well as economic development responsibilities, so you guys stay busy. But also that gives you the need really to reach out and, and work with others in your community and the region. So I’m always curious to hear how different chambers go about reaching out and working with other organizations because it can be, you know, competitive on some levels, but also, you know, rising tide raises all ships as they say. So, I’d love to kind of hear your philosophy and strategy as to how you approach that.

Glenn Morris 11:06
So this is a this is an issue that I’m really passionate has been kind of my, my new to the topic I’ve been evangelizing on in our community for since I got here. So good, let me give you a quick story, because it’ll set some context for how we came to this this approach, I joined the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, just over just right at eight years ago, came from another community in California, and moved over here, Santa Maria is the largest community in our region. But it’s not the county seat, right. So it’s not the political center of the county, that would be Santa Barbara. And San Luis Obispo, which is about 40 minutes to the north of us is the home to the regional university. And so you know, as you can imagine, I’m sure that this will ring true for many communities, when you’re the kind of the second community that you know, there can be a chip on the shoulder, right, we don’t get our fair share, some disapprove. Yeah, and so when I moved to the community that that perception was really clear that, that this community had felt for a long time, like it was a little isolated from resources and decision making power, and all of those kinds of things. I joke with people that when I moved to town that, you know, community leaders would discuss, you know, would say, Well, you know, the community is bounded by, you know, the Rio Grande and the Grand Canyon, there’s a riverbed on the north end of town, and there’s a kind of a choke point Canyon, you have to go through to get from us to Santa Barbara. And it was their way of kind of describing this sense of a little bit of isolation, right? Not being from the community and carrying some of that emotional baggage, I decided to my role was going to be you know, I would tell my board, you know, if there’s a moat around the community, my job is to build bridges across and, and to go out and create relationships that would benefit our community. But also knowing that we could bring value to the greater region where the where the workforce home, so many people in our community can move out to neighboring communities for work during the day, where the retail center, so people that live in those outer communities on either side of us come here to shop, and, you know, so that we add value to bring, but we also needed, you know, the health of the region. And then as we really got into that we really, you know, came to the what’s probably an obvious right realization, but but, you know, took us a while as a community to acknowledge that, that we’re, you know, business doesn’t care about political lines, right? The economy doesn’t stop at a city boundary or a county line, or probably even a state guide, right? That, that people’s lives flow across that right, you may live in one community, but work in another right and your business may be in one. But your customers are coming from, you know, three or four others, you certainly are going to have suppliers that are in other communities, you’re going to have, you know, all of that economic activity flows back and forth in really natural ways that have nothing to do with the way we organize for governments. Right. And so we’ve worked we’ve been working for that eight years to really create those relationships with those economic institutions. So initially, it was probably the universities that are one university 40 minutes to the north and another 170 miles to the south. But as we got into that, what we really found worked best was when we reached out to the other chamber Vers, in those communities that said, let’s stop competing and start working together, particularly on the things that matter, like, head of household jobs, and, you know, infrastructure, and you know, all of the housing, job bows, all of those kinds of things, right, we can fight over where the next, you know, cool retail store goes, but but when we come to, you know, where are the head of household jobs, we can work together to land those.

Brandon Burton 15:31
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I, the thought that comes to my mind as he explained that because I mean, to me, it makes it like I said, it makes a lot of sense to work together to build a stronger region, because, like you said, the politics don’t stop, you know, certain lines, economies don’t stop at, you know, city boundaries. And even having a university, you know, in the community next door, doesn’t meet. Yeah, so there’s a lot of this crossover. But the question that comes to my mind is, how does one defined community these days when the world seems to be shrinking, and we have so much crossover into in these different areas and elements, that it makes sense to work together with other communities? But what defines a community anymore?

Glenn Morris 16:25
You know, that’s a good question. And I think it’s changing, right. And I hope that that, in my belief is that it’s expanding. Right. So, you know, I think you can define community by the neighborhood that you live in, I think you can define it by the city that you’re engaged in civically. And I think you can define it in that region that you live you that you really live your life and right, and where you do, you’re recreating, and you’re working, and all of those other kinds of pieces. And I think when you really think of it as kind of that Patchwork, right, with different pieces, it really adds a richness, and you know, a lot of value, right? You know, the you may not have every kind of thing you’re looking for in one in one of those boxes. But if you can pull that lens back just a little bit, you probably find, you know, what you’re looking for, right? And, you know, we would, we would have conversations about, you know, well, we don’t have this type of housing in our community, but you know, what, the guy five miles down the road does. And so, you know, if I’m selling, you know, if that’s what the, if that’s what somebody’s looking for, we can point them to it. Right. So, yeah, that, you know, the set the idea of community, I think, is really evolving, and, and hopefully growing. Right,

Brandon Burton 17:51
yeah. I like how you brought up the richness and the value that comes as we expand community and be more inclusive of others in those, you know, traditionally, bordering communities. And, you know, when, like the example you gave of certain housing, you know, you got to play with how the fields striped at the moment. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t help to redefine where the stripes go right over time.

Glenn Morris 18:17
Yeah, and, you know, we really, so Well, you know, a big part of our role in the community is economic development. Right. So we’re all we’re engaged in business attraction. And, you know, often we would get ourselves into these conversations with prospective businesses about, you know, well, we need we need more of this particular type. We need engineers, and, you know, in your city data, we don’t see enough engineers. Right. But But again, I pulled that lens out 40 miles, and I one of the top engineering schools in the country, right, just just across the river. Right. And, you know, so it’s like, the real, we got him, right. You may not see him as you walk down Main Street, but we got him. Right. And, and, you know, that held true for, you know, housing, it might hold true for available land, right, maybe they want to put a factory in, and, you know, my neighboring communities having that conversation, and they don’t have the 10 acres the guy needs, but I do right, but in so you do that. And I think this kind of an approach is critical on business retention. I’ll give you one quick story right before I moved to the community, we had a business that that moved 20 miles away. And people in the community when I moved into town, they were just really still upset about this, right. It had probably been about two years. And they were really still ticked off about it. Right because we lost the business. And as I thought about it, I thought, you know, okay, they you know, they’re fizzle. cool facility is 20 miles down the road. But all of the people that live in our community that work for that business are still in our community, they have a little longer commute. Right. But they’re still here, their kids are still playing on our kids soccer teams, they’re still volunteering on our local nonprofits. Right. And they’re still, you know, in, in our, you know, in our churches. So, did we lose? You know, I don’t know. You know, if, if people are your greatest asset, I’m not sure we lost, right. And, you know, maybe the city lost a little property tax, I don’t know, you know, but, but in the grand scheme of it, I think, because we were able to stay in the region. You know, I don’t think I don’t know that I would chalk it up as a loss.

Brandon Burton 20:50
And say, especially with that example, keeping them in the region, just 20 miles down the road, there is a facility that’s available now, for somebody that move into so yeah, the perceived loss is also a gain on another side, as well, bringing new people new resources, new, you know, everything else.

Glenn Morris 21:10
And, you know, the reason that they had moved was they needed to grow, and Mike tanned at that moment didn’t have a building they could grow into. Right, and, and I think without a regional kind of an approach, when the next one of those comes to me and says, you know, I need another 10,000 square feet, and we just don’t have it in the market. You know, I think without a regional approach, the risk is that they start looking at other states, right? Or completely different markets, where my neighbors who work for them are either going to have to make a choice to relocate, or find new employment. Right. And so, you know, do I want them to stand my town? Yes, I do. Right. But if I can’t make that work, and I can put them in the town next door, that’s a better outcome than, you know, letting them, you know, load a truck up and go someplace far away.

Brandon Burton 22:05
Exactly. So and those are tough decisions to make, too. And they need to do that. But maybe let’s talk a little bit more tactical. So as you started reaching out to some of these neighboring chambers, and saying, Let’s collaborate together, let’s work together, let’s not compete anymore, let’s, you know, level or let’s let’s raise the bar, I would say, How was that received? How did you approach it? And is there anything formal that’s come out of it as far as like a regional round table or something like?

Glenn Morris 22:37
So? So I think it starts with relationships, right? It starts with chamber CEOs, you know, having lunch with other chamber CEOs in the area, and building that relationship that you can get some trust, right, that, that if I need that business, I need to find that business that 10 1000s extra square feet, I can call you, and and we’re going to work that out together. But you’re not going to use that as an excuse to come poach to others or Mike. Right. Right. There’s that trust that you have to build there. And that’s really one on one. And then we found that, that one of the areas that we could, that was easy to collaborate on early in that process was around legislative advocacy, right? Because now we’re all fighting the State Capitol. And that’s, you know, a common, you know, foe maybe or, you know, and so it wasn’t about, you know, balancing between us, it was us all together, yeah, against an external thing. And so that got us started working together, taking common positions, collaborating around advocacy, kinds of discussions. And then from there, we’ve been able to move to more of the Economic Development kinds of things. But it’s also, you know, spun off into we do some joint staff development things and you know, all of those kinds of things, once you start working together, you can find lots of opportunities. But we do now have probably three formal Regional Chamber, you know, elaborate so we have one that’s around this advocacy piece, that actually is about 30 chambers in a three county region that come together for that. We have a another chamber group that is more more on MRI on local kinds of issues. That is what eight chambers in in one particular end of that region. And then we’re, we have a two County Economic Development, collaboration that started as the chambers and as actually now, we’ve actually stood up a new organization to really lead regional economic big development initiatives. So, you know, that was probably the one that became the most formal as it really just kind of became a new entity. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:12
Now, I love those examples and being able to put some numbers to that about what that looks like at the regional advocacy, you know, 30 chambers come in together, I mean, the power that comes with those kinds of numbers, and you go to the state capitol and say, Look, you know, 30 chambers representing I don’t know how many 1000s of business owners we believe strongly in this, you know,

Glenn Morris 25:34
it gets, you know, in my town, I have one member of the assembly, right, and I have one, Senator. But if I bring that Tri County group together, it’s like eight members of the assembly and three or four state senators, right. So all of a sudden, we have more people we can talk to. And so you know, that that gives us a different kind of a voice.

Brandon Burton 26:00
Right? So as far as the approach with with your membership, I know, there’s always going to be somebody that will find a problem with whatever the Chamber’s doing, you’re going to hear those voices. But hopefully, there’s more that are seeing the bigger picture of how you’re working with neighboring communities. What type of feedback are you getting of a note and a lot of times, so maybe preface that a lot of times members don’t see the work that’s happening behind the scenes. But with that in mind, what what type of feedback do you get from your members with taking a more regional and collaborative? Yeah,

Glenn Morris 26:40
so yes, you’re right, most of them probably don’t know what we’re doing. Right? Because because they’re focused on on much more transactional business and their day to day and that’s great, right. That’s what they should be doing. And we try to support them in doing that. But, you know, the most of our community leader level folks, you know, appreciate the, what we’re trying to do. And they see the bigger picture. You know, occasionally when, you know, we’re, we’re celebrating what they to them looks like a neighbor’s win. Right. You know, they can kind of go explain this to me one more time. Right. And so we have to be really good about telling the bigger story. Right. And so, you know, particularly with local elected, right, city council members who, by definition, should be passionate about their, their little spot in the world, right? Yeah. And, you know, so it’s important for us, if, if we’re celebrating a business location in a neighboring community, that we’re highlighting the jobs that are going to be, you know, filled by residents of our community, or, you know, the supplier relationships that our small businesses will not be able to have. And, you know, so you do need to localize the the impact and the benefits, you know, for folks so that they see themselves in, you know, what, on the surface can feel like someone else’s when, right, yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:12
help help them see where the insane fall, I usually fall out to negative connotation. But yeah, a positive fallout. The windfalls that come from a neighboring win? Yeah, yeah.

Glenn Morris 28:25
There’s a we have a nuclear power plant 30 miles north of us that is slated for closure. And, you know, when that was announced a couple of years ago, you know, people started ringing alarm bells, right, because it’s a significant economic driver, 1200 highly paid jobs, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And we jumped in and said, you know, this is a problem, and we need to help figure out what we do next. Right, what, how do we respond to that issue? And we got folks that were like, that’s, that’s their problem, right? We don’t, you know, city, folks, were saying, we don’t get any taxes off for that, right, that the taxes all go to the other county. And we them, yeah, but we have, you know, three or 400 people in our community that work there. We have, you know, a dozen businesses that are in the, you know, local supply chain that provide services and products to that facility. You know, so you just started have to figure out and, and just constantly be repeating that local impact of monies being

Brandon Burton 29:34
spent in your community from those jobs and mine, like how much of your communities receiving their power from that right plan? Yeah,

Glenn Morris 29:43
you know, so there’s those macro issues, but, but there are going to be local issues in regional impacts,

Brandon Burton 29:50
right. That’s a great example. So I wanted to to ask if you might have any tips or strategies that you could offer for a chamber champion, listening they can do to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Glenn Morris 30:04
Well, you know, and I recognize that, that I’m in a little bit of a unique position, I, you know, we started this with kind of the, the DNA of our Channel by chamber, right. And I shared that I have a team of 10 to 12, you know, full time employees who helped me do the day to day work. That’s a blessing for me, because it frees up some of my time to go and do these other kinds of things like building relationships with regional partners, and some of that, and I, I’m fully aware, that’s not every chambers, reality. Right, right. But I do think that there are ways that, you know, we have chambers in our regional coalition’s that have, you know, a CEO and one staffer, and, you know, maybe a part time, you know, kind of helper, right, so we have some very small chambers that are part of this as well. And they they add value, they add, they add really important context to our discussions. And so, you know, I would say, Don’t worry about your size, if you can have a conversation with people, you can begin to become part of a regional coalition. The, the pandemic is awful, never want to do it again, there were definitely some benefits that came out of it. And one of them for us, was it really took what was it these fledgling kind of regional issues, you know, partnerships, and made them essential, right. So from the very beginning, we all started to go, you know, you can remember two years ago, we were immediately the kings and queens of webinars, right? We have information and our members need it, and we get it to him, and there’s no way to put them in a room. So we all learn how to do webinars on Zoom really fast. And we really quickly went, you know, they’re eight chambers right here in a 30 minute radius, we don’t all need to do the same webinar. Right, I can do the one on Tuesday, and you can do the one on Wednesday, we can both promote them to all of our members. And so we were able to share workload, right and, and provide consistent information. The reality is our businesses are members of multiple chambers. And if they’re getting different messages, that’s confusing, right? And in a crisis, confusing is not helpful. And if you’re not helpful, they don’t need you. Right, they’re going somewhere. And so I think we helped all of our chambers be more essential by doing it together, right. And so, you know, and it didn’t cost us anything fact, if anything, it probably saved us all, you know, some resources because we could share. So, you know, if you’re, if somebody’s really looking to start this kind of a journey, you know, I start with

Brandon Burton 33:15
all right, not sure what happened there.

Glenn Morris 33:18
The beauty of zoom, all of a sudden, you just stop moving,

Brandon Burton 33:22
as you’re talking it up about how great it is for these webinars and everything and just boom, it’s gone. Yeah, no,

Glenn Morris 33:29
you know, the point I would make is, you know, during the pandemic, it became you sent, it became really important that we all were doing consistent messaging, sharing resources quickly. And it became, you know, to try and do that all by ourselves, it was overwhelming. But if we could share the load, chamber, one takes Monday, we take Wednesday, somebody else does Friday, all of a sudden, we all looked better, and we’re more valuable to our members. Absolutely. And so, you know, if somebody’s really thinking, you know, I really should work more closely with the chambers and or other economic development, tourism or whatever, in your region, you know, I’d say, pick one issue, right, pick something that you have in common. And, you know, figure out how you can do it together, and then you know, it’ll grow from there.

Brandon Burton 34:30
Yeah, I think that’s a good tip. And you know, you started that answer by talking about not everybody has the luxury of you know, going and meeting but as you brought in the zoom, you know, there is the ashes you get to know these people, you don’t need to have the commute time just hop on a zoom call with the neighboring, you know, three or four chambers around you and talk about the latest stuff.

Glenn Morris 34:52
You know, when I when we started that the legislative advocacy group, we met in person, right and So the days of those meetings, you know, depending on where that was a, you know, hour and a half meeting became a half day commitment. Right. Now it’s back down to the hour and a half. Because we can do it on Zoom. Right. And that just creates a lot more opportunities.

Brandon Burton 35:17
Absolutely. So Glenn, I like to ask everyone, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Glenn Morris 35:27
Well, I think chambers are currently essential, and I think they’re going to be more so in the future. But I do think that there are some, there’s some risks out there, I think, if chambers aren’t becoming really focused on what matters in their community. And, you know, I think for me, that really is all about economic vitality. It’s about jobs. It’s about wealth creation, it’s about quality of life. If we’re not doing those kinds of things, businesses can find a lot of the other things that we used to be, you know, their provider for right, networking will always be part of our DNA. But there’s other ways to get networking, you know, general information about business, there’s a lot of resources out there. What chambers can do uniquely is be a convener to bring your leaders together, set economic and community priorities and then rally, you know, as a catalyst really bring the resources together and focus on that economic growth. Right. So I think, I think the future for chambers is really strong. If we’re really focused on what is, you know, essential to our businesses and the, you know, the people they employ.

Brandon Burton 36:49
I love that response. It’s a very well concise and good summary about the importance of being the convener of leaders, and then becoming that catalyst for those actions throughout the community. Glenn, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, if anybody listening wanted to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you’re doing things at the Santa Maria Valley Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Glenn Morris

Glenn Morris 37:16
Yeah, absolutely. So our website is just SantaMaria.com. One of my predecessors early in their life, grabbed the best URL possible in our town for the chamber. So just simply Santamaria.com get a good price for that these

Brandon Burton 37:34
days, I’m sure. Yeah, exactly.

Glenn Morris 37:35
I think my city manager probably was like, how do we. And in the spirit of keeping it simple, our email, my email is glenn@santamaria.com. Right.

Brandon Burton 37:50
That’s perfect. And I will get that in our show notes for this episode. But Glenn, I appreciate you joining me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, this has been a great discussion. And hopefully some of these things just, you know, remind some of these Chamber Champions listening of, yes, I need to reach out and connect with, you know, one of those neighboring communities, or we need to form some kind of a more regional coalition together. So hopefully, this is a catalyst for them to move forward and do some of those things. I

Glenn Morris 38:19
I think what you’ll find if you as you do that, and you start to tell your businesses, particularly your, your primary, you know, Head of Household job businesses that you’re doing it, they’re gonna go it’s about time.

Brandon Burton 38:33
For sure. Yeah, I totally agree. I appreciate it, Glenn. This has been a great discussion. And again, appreciate your time with us today on the podcast.

Glenn Morris 38:43
It’s been my pleasure, I’ve enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 38:45
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Henry County Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Joe Henning

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Joe Henning. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

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Introduction

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.

And now your host He is disappointed that I identify as a Buffalo Bills fan. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

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

Kris Johnson 0:47
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 1:28
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another special episode in our 2022 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series, and for this episode, we have Joe Henning with us. Joe is the President and CEO of the Henry County Chamber in Georgia. Joe has served as president and CEO of Henry County Chamber since 2019. Prior to that, he served 14 years as president and CEO of the aurora Regional Chamber in Illinois. Joe is a 2009 IOM graduate. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations and a master’s degree focusing on organizational development from Northern Illinois University, as well as a certificate and not for profit management from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’s served as chair of the Midwest Board of Regents in 2012 and 2013. In 2017. He served as chair of the National Board of Trustees for the program and continues to serve as a faculty member. He’s taught on collaboration industry forecast, strong chambers for the future and marketing membership. In 2007. The Aurora chamber received its first accreditation through the US Chamber of Commerce with a four star distinction. In 2012 and 2017. Joe led the reaccreditation efforts and successfully achieved consecutive five star distinction. In 2015, the Chamber received chamber of the Year from the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce executives as well as the three star chamber of valor. In 2010, he received his accredited chamber executive credentials from the ice IACC II, and served as Chair of the board of directors in 2012 and 2012, he also successfully sat for and received his certified Association Executive designation from ASAE. In 2014, he was named chamber Executive of the Year by the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce executives. Joe completed the basic economic development course through Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2008. In 2013, he completed the economic development essential course through University of Oklahoma. He served on the advisory board for ACC EAS education and talent development division, and is a graduate of the US Chamber Foundation’s business leads fellowship program inaugural session. He served on workforce development boards Illinois and Georgia and was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to serve on the Illinois 21st century Workforce Development Fund advisory committee in 2012. He supports and serves on the boards of a number of organizations that impact equity, inclusion, mental health, among others. His background includes business development, strategic planning and organizational development. If any of this sounds familiar to you, this is because we recently had Joe on chamber tap podcast back in episode 159, where we talked about some industry trends if you want to go back in the archives and check out that episode. It was a great one. But Joe, I’m excited to have you back with me on Chamber Chat Podcast, please say hello to all the Chamber Champions. And as usual, share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Joe Henning 4:51
Brandon, it’s great to be back. It seems like just a few months ago, but it’s a pleasure to come back and especially with this topic. You know, I think And the interesting thing is that I think my mother is the only one that appreciates that entire bio. So if anybody else made it through it, thank you. You had mentioned the whole strategy and organizational development. And that really is my passion. And we did a couple years ago, here at Henry, we did the Clifton Strengths. And for my top five strengths were all around strategy. So I felt validated through this, this this process for timber the year really, really hits home in that strategy and organizational development process. So it’s a great opportunity to be a part of it. Yes. And

Brandon Burton 5:41
congratulations, of course, being selected as a chamber. They are finalists, great, great honors just in that and being selected.

Joe Henning 5:48
Absolutely. When I look at those peers out there in that in that category we’re in it’s it’s, it’s a tough, it’s a tough group to be in. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 5:57
For sure. Well, tell us a little bit about the Henry County Chamber just to give us some idea, size and scope of work and staff budget, that sort of thing before we our discussion.

About the Henry County Chamber

Joe Henning 6:08
So we’re about a $1.5 million, maybe a little bit more than that. Budgets, we are comprised of both the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau for Henry County. We’re located about a half hour south of Metro Atlanta, right along 75 So anybody traveling from the north down to Florida is going through Henry County. And we have for the chamber side we’re sitting at about 800 members and we have four full time employees on the chamber side and three full time employees on the CBD side

Brandon Burton 6:43
all right. That sounds good and that helps especially as we trying to release these episodes with the the appropriate categories and so consecutively so you fall right in line with with your your your companions in that in that category. But as we go through this discussion today the chamber the year finalist series what I like to do is really focus our discussion a lot on the the two programs synopsis you guys submitted on your chamber the your application, and we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Alright, Joe, we’re back. So what I’d like for you to do is just at a high level, tell us what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your application. And then we’ll circle back into some more detail on each of them.

Joe Henning 10:16
Sure, thank you. Our first synopsis was on advocacy and issues. And so the first one, we successfully advocated and passed two different tax referendums one in the spring one in the fall in 2021. And then the second synopsis was continuing our dei process along and working with our hospitality partners, from from hotels and accommodations to restaurant and retail, and addressing customer service and dei components within that.

Brandon Burton 10:52
Very good. That’s alright, I think I’d like to start with that one with the

Joe Henning 10:58
doesn’t everybody wants. Nobody wants to talk about ballot measures.

Brandon Burton 11:04
You’ve got a fair point there. So if we can take all of the time talking?

Joe Henning 11:10
No, that’s fine. I think, you know, for us, you know, we’re proud of the advocacy side, but this this. So back in 2019, right after I started here, the board passed a dei and inclusivity statement. And so as we were rolling into 2020, our program of work, we were looking at how we could advance inclusivity conversations with the pandemic and and the civil strife of 2020. There was a lot happening in Henry County, there was a lot happening in Georgia, and there was a lot happening throughout the country. And so we began some community dialogues, as we were still virtual. And wherever we could meet, we’d meet virtually fast forward to 2001. And we knew that we still had to do something, either virtual or hybrid, because we were still in the in the midst of the pandemic in early 2001. But we knew we had to take it another step. And so the CVB group, with the with the partner, relations manager that we had hired just at the end of 2019, began talking with our hoteliers, and other hospitality partners. And they wanted information training on customer service. And, if possible, what we could do around the DEI conversation. And so we, we really dug deep into that really looked at the needs. And we came out with a six part series, the first one on customer service, and then the last five different segments of inclusivity.

Brandon Burton 12:50
So what caught my, my ear when you mentioned what this, this program is about is a while back, I interviewed Doug Griffiths, who’s the author of 13 ways to kill your community. Yes, I know a lot of chamber professionals are familiar with that book. But towards the end of the podcast interview, I asked him about a tip or strategy for chambers and, and he had mentioned for chambers to train the employers in their community on customer service. I thought what a difference that would make you know, as people, you know, their first interaction in your community will often be at a hotel or some tourist destination, right? So what what made you guys land on that focus with hospitality, and then tying in the diversity and equity inclusion part? There

Joe Henning 13:39
were a couple of different factors there, Brandon. Right before I started in 2019, they just completed a an audience study, a segment study on the different tourists that come through Henry County, both planned to come through I just happen to stop, as I said, we’re right on 75. A lot of times people want to get through Atlanta on their way to Florida, and they’ll stop here around Henry County. And so that that study showed some some great positive pieces, but there were also some segments of, I guess, comfort. Not necessarily I don’t want to say safety, because I don’t want it to sound, you know, so so far off. But a little discomfort on whether or not they would be accepted. Okay, in the community. And I think and I think for the most part, they’re the it’s a great issue throughout the country, you know, where you can go and feel comfortable. The second part was just were asked. So, Atlanta motor speedway is is is right here in Henry County. And so we’re fortunate the last few years that we get to NASCAR races each year so hundreds of 1000s of people are traveling through here for different reasons and stopping and so we want to make sure that But whereas as inclusive as we can possibly be. And so we also, you know, taking that into account for the customer service side, looking at some of the demographics of who, who were part of the study, as well as who make up residence of Henry County now, we looked at some of the different diversity issues and components that we could look at, and looked at the impact the economic impacts that each of those demographics has on Henry County. So that’s where we fell into this six part series.

Brandon Burton 15:36
So as you kind of go through the six part series, what does that look like? How does it roll out? How does how do you incorporate it? Well,

Joe Henning 15:45
they’re primarily available out there online, through registration, they’re free to all of our hospitality partners, if they’re in, you know, the hotels, restaurant, retail, or our attractions. And we’ve had a great deal of interest from non hospitality businesses. And so we’re trying to figure out, you know, how to scale it up, that will be our big piece for that. But the first section is culture of customer service. And it is led by one of our local coffee proprietors, coffee shop proprietors here in Henry County, and very outgoing personality, very wonderful to work with. And so I believe that’s about a 45 minute video. And then there is a 10 question test if they take it, if they’re taking it remotely. But we are also able to now offer it in person. So if, you know, the manager or owner wants to do all at once we can do a small group facilitation of the program and have conversation around that. That’s step one, the other five sections, they don’t have to be, they don’t have to follow the first one on customer service, they can flip flop depending on what they are comfortable with. But the fifth one is the five part series is very exciting. It includes looking at the target visitor audiences of African American customers, Asian customers, Latino, Hispanic customers, LGBTQ customers, and the one that’s often overlooked is those with different abilities. We’ve got some attractions that are wonderful attractions, but they might have gravel driveways, or they might not have, they might have stairs and not a ramp. And so we’re trying to help many of our attractions and even our businesses to be more accommodating to that demographic as well. So those are the those are the six segments within that series.

Brandon Burton 17:43
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. And then the different abilities is it, it’s a big one, there’s a family that I’m really close to, they have two sons that are they’re in their late 20s Now, but they’re both wheelchair bound, and, you know, they’re very limited on even a restaurant that they can go to, the parents have to go ahead of time and kind of scope it out and see if the wheelchairs can fit through. And it’s just, it’s a lot of effort for them to get out. And the more businesses that can be aware of that and be accommodating, really welcomes people to your community. You know,

Joe Henning 18:14
it’s a, it’s a great point, because, you know, they also have a great spending capacity. And if we’re limiting them to two restaurants, and maybe one or two attractions, that that discretionary, that’s going to that, that small pot, I mean, they’re making out well, but but we’re sitting here, you know, like I said, we’ve got, we’ve got some great agriculture tourism pieces around here. But based, you know, based on their nature, it’s very difficult for wheelchair bound individuals to navigate and even even, you know, even if you’re just on a crutch, we also have the beautiful Panola mountain trip bikes and trails and that and so, you know, the, the accessibility there is limited. And so I think the more we can raise awareness, you know, the more we can make the entire county accommodating. And, you know, it just reminds me that, you know, all of the difference, you know, areas of, of the diversity, this is the one that I might not be in today, but boy, tomorrow, I might fall into that diversity category of different abilities. And I can change overnight for any of us.

Brandon Burton 19:30
Very true. Yep. And I like the idea that you have these these courses, these trainings online. And ideally, I mean, I see a company adopting that as an onboarding process for new employees and, and get their existing employees up to speed as well. So I think that’s a great way as a chamber to be leading the way in that effort.

Joe Henning 19:52
Thank you. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 19:54
So let’s, let’s switch gears over to the really exciting topic. Right admin issues. And we say that

Joe Henning 20:04
we will now

Brandon Burton 20:06
can we both understand the importance of it right. And chambers need to take that lead. So talk to us about the the two tax reforms and how this came about and how you went about doing that.

Joe Henning 20:17
So in Georgia, it’s they’ve got they’ve got legislation that’s just over a decade old, I guess, a little bit more than that. But but it allows you to take referendum back to the county residents and increase a penny, or add a penny tax in there for special purposes. And so the county in 2019, the county successfully repast is a five year limitation. So after five years, you have to ask again, we successfully passed the I believe it was the sixth, fifth, fifth or sixth class blas special purple, special purpose local option sales tax. In addition, the school districts can also pass a request as floss and those are East floss education spots. And so that came up in March. And I believe this was their sixth, and to be used for accommodations in schools, expanding some of the schools due to the demographic growth and population growth that we’re seeing here and some additional school busing, things like that. You know, we all know it’s tough, it’s tough to pass tax referendum. You know, we, you do it, you do it, because you are looking out for your community. If you’re going to be a catalytic leader, sometimes you got to make those tough decisions. And those tough take on those tough roles, and advocate for something that may not be popular. And so we, we worked with the school districts committee to get that passed in the in the spring, it passed, I believe, the kind of two to one margin. And so we were happy with that. We’ve already begun the process of what some of those project lists were on the on the east blast side. Henry County, then fast forward to the fall, Henry County had never had a transportation SPLOST. And so they were looking to do that in the fall, we had agreements with the four municipalities in Henry County, so we can go for the full Penny, it would be a five year commitment. So we took the lead and partner collaborated with Georgia transportation Alliance and a few others to help get the word out and get that passed successfully. In the fall. It was a that was probably the most tough of the three referendum that I’ve that I’ve worked on at the chamber here. Because it was new, it was an additional party, the others were renewing of the penny. And so those were a lot of the conversations. But one of the biggest, what I when I first started here, back in 2019, one of the biggest problems that I noticed and when I asked around to business leaders and employees and just community members, you know, what is our biggest issue, it’s transportation, there’s, there’s a lot of difficulty, we’re fortunate that we have the visitors traveling through on 75 and stopping to, you know, stopping at gas stations and restaurants and hotels. And we’re fortunate that we have some great warehouse and advanced manufacturing members located here in Henry County, but that also adds to additional traffic congestion that we have. And so our, our conversation with with our voters was simply that, you know, we have to get this done, we have to fix the transportation problem, it’s not going to get better if we don’t, it’s only going to get worse with the more cars the more people that we have in the county, and the more businesses you know, it’s a win win. And, and so that we passed, I believe that might have been the two to one and I think education was three to one and passage. So we were very happy, very, very fortunate with that. And so we’ve begun looking at what those projects were listed, but now we’re looking at, you know, how we’re going to roll out the conversation around that. So yeah, that that was the excitement of 2021 For me it was getting to tax refering the past

Brandon Burton 24:29
and I can see when you’re uh, you know, a school district, for example, to be able to focus on that the education tax reform, right and push that messaging out, but as a chamber when you’re looking at, you know, three different tax reforms, you’re trying to approach and tackle and show the benefits and educate voters and, you know, encourage voters to get out and participate in the process. I mean, it’s a it’s a heavy lift to take on all three of those. Did you guys hold forums or how did you go about educating the public?

Joe Henning 24:57
We did online forums. We did some Direct Mail, we did a lot through social media, kind of rolling with, you know, people, we’re still very, very much focused on, on social media in that as we were writing it through the pandemic, and that so we really relied heavily on that. You know, you’re right bread, talking about the kids and talking about the future. And it’s kind of hard to say no to little kids face. But you know, when you’re asking everybody to add a penny to every dollar that they spend, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can add up. And I think part of our messaging for both, and this is this is one that we’ve we started in in 19. With the regular spouse was, we’re fortunate with the amount of visitors we have to Henry County, not just tourists, but you know, people working here in Henry County that live elsewhere, and will be stopping for gas or stopping for food on their way home. And so really, you know, we’re paying about, we estimate, somewhere around half of the collections will come from Henry County residents, the other half will come from visitors from outside of Henry County is kind of our projection. And so, you know, we’re really asking others to help us pay those bills. And so that was the communications bullet points that we kind of went with was, you know, if not, if we don’t do this, we might get stuck with, you know, Henry County residents alone being asked to pay for the burden. So all right,

Brandon Burton 26:29
and I see that, you know, where you have other people helping to pay the bill, as you said, and and having everybody have some skin in the game, rather than, you know, just an increase in property tax. But exactly, exactly. Yeah. So it could be a good good solution for absolutely needs, especially when you have the like you said, people coming in that don’t live there. And so I wanted to ask you as as the chamber, the year finalist, I kind of look to you guys to all these finalists as those that are kind of setting the benchmark for other chambers right. Now, how do you view the role of the Henry County Chamber there in your community?

Joe Henning 27:15
You don’t I think in looking at the two programs that we we submitted this year. And looking over the past three years, I would say, you know, we’re convener. We like any chamber, we know we have limited resources from staff to time to financial. And so we really want to convene those leaders that can help us get something done. And in the case of this floss, we worked together and collaborated with the government with the Board of Ed with other organizations that had messaging that they could use that we could, you know, kind of that win win win win. All around. And so what, you know, We’ve convened that group to get that done. In the case of the the diversity for hospitality sections, you know, we convene the hospitality groups together, the different entities that make that up and work with work with them in partnership to provide these services, these trainings that they’re looking for. And I think, you know, the key to both of those, you know, in any success that we’ve seen here in Henry County, it’s just really looking at that need. We can, we could have put together a program on customer service, or any number of the programs that we’ve done in the past year, but if we don’t engage the targeted audiences that we want to work with on that, we don’t know, you know, we think we think we know what they want, or what they need, but we don’t and I think that’s part of that conversation and bringing them together with us and, and finding out really what the details are of how we can support them. And so that’s kind of where I feel that we fit in the game. No, I

Brandon Burton 29:05
think that makes perfect sense. So I’d like asking the question, I know I asked you this question. Last time I had you on the show, and I’m not going to hold you to your previous answer at all, but I was gonna see if you have any tip or action item for Chamber Champions that are listening who’d like to take their chamber up to the next level, what might you offer to them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Joe Henning 29:29
You know, I think both ACC II under their chamber of the year page and I believe the US Chamber is coming out with their their latest announcement of accredited chambers. Under their accreditation section, they have some best practices. You know, for people looking at where to begin with policies or or budgeting or even the advocacy side of it. You can find a lot of resources there. There’s There’s a huge wealthy library at ACC as well that you can just kind of search in there for topics that you might be looking for support. I think I think the key is, realize you’re not in this alone. You know, it’s I just got back from Madison last week and was teaching up there for the Midwest site for Institute for organization management. And there was, every and I love going back every year, there’s always that aha moment where you are the only chamber executive in your community. For the most part, I there’s, there might be some communities that have to but but for the most part, we’re sitting here alone, and it can feel lonely. But realize that you’ve got a great peer network of what nearly 7000 chambers of commerce around the United States and Canada, there are plenty of people out there that you can rely on. And so admit that you don’t have to do it alone, and that you’ve got people out there that want to help you succeed. And mate might have already gone through the the difficulty that you’re trying to fix, and help in your community. So there’s resources there. You know, I think that, you know, if they reached out to you, Brandon, I think any of us that have been been available, and you’ve so graciously allowed us to share our thoughts and our work. You know, I think if people reached out to us, we’d be willing to help, too. And so I think, just realize you’re not alone in this?

Brandon Burton 31:28
Absolutely. I think that’s a great piece of advice. And there is so much you can learn from others and not have to go through those growing pains yourself. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Joe Henning 31:45
You know, I think I think 2020 2021 taught a lot of us that there was a need for refresh. And it allowed us to make some of those changes that we thought we needed to make, you know, everybody, for the most part, everybody went virtual. And so I think that allowed time for redesigning some of the different things that we were working on. And so I think that that flexibility, that adaptability is going to be the strength for the successful chambers going forward. And to be able to make those changes as they need to as their community needs are changing. And that’s the other piece is that chamber, professionals need to be very engaged with their community, because, you know, things can change in a minute, and what the needs might be, and we’ve seen some great catalytic chambers, you know, in Bowling Green this last year in Edwardsville, Illinois this past year, where tornadoes have gone through, and they’ve stepped up, and they’ve been the leaders within their communities, to help facilitate both the employers and the residents. And so I think being responsive to the community is really where our success is going to lie.

Brandon Burton 33:19
Like that being responsive and flexible and adaptive. And I think there’s probably more changes, you know, oh, yeah, up here in the next year to the suspects. Yeah. So be ready for it, you know, be ready to be flexible. And and I would say I would urge you to be forward looking and see where those trends are going, see where those business trends are, and educate yourself on those things. So you’re not caught off guard when they can?

Joe Henning 33:48
Absolutely, you know, I think we all have resources from ACCE, and ASAE. But we all have our state or regional associations that can provide us additional training, insight and information. And, you know, I think, you know, I know sometimes some budget budgets might not allow for the national groups. If you can swing it, I definitely encourage that. But if nothing else, I, you know, I implore chamber professionals to have membership in their state associations, because that is a great deal of resourceful information that’s available to them, but it’s also a great network. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 34:31
But Joseph, we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for Chamber Champions who want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things that Henry County Chamber what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Connect with Joe Henning

Joe Henning 34:45
I appreciate that, Brandon. Yeah, I think if anybody wants to connect with me or my team here to get more information on any of that or any other things we’re doing, HenryCounty.com is the website that includes all of our email information as well as our phone numbers. And otherwise, we’re also on Facebook and LinkedIn. And I don’t know, several other social media platforms that are just beyond me. But I know definitely Facebook, we respond to message direct messages there quickly. And then on LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton 35:19
That’s perfect. And I’ll I’ll put links to those in the show notes for this episode. But, Joe, this has been great having you back on Chamber Chat Podcast, I joked with you, before we got on the recording that it’s always reaffirming to me to have a past guest be selected as a finalist for chamber of the year. So

Joe Henning 35:39
it feels good to be back. It feels good to have the recognition. I think, you know, it really to me, it’s not so much the, you know, it’s not me, it’s my team. And it’s my leadership volunteers that, you know, guide us through this, with the governance in that but from, you know, you asked about the future of chambers, and I think if we’re if we’re not looking at opportunities to improve our organizations, that’s where we’re not going to see them in 10 years, there’s either going to be somebody else, they’re taking up their space, or, you know, worse.

Brandon Burton 36:10
So, yeah, absolutely. Well, Joe, this has been a fun conversation. And, again, grateful to have you back with me on the podcast here and wish you guys best of luck in this chamber the year.

Joe Henning 36:23
Thank you, Brandon. I hope to be back soon to see you again. We’ll figure out another reason for you to come back. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 36:28
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