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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.
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Our guest for this episode is Heather Lebischak. Heather is a dynamic and accomplished leader dedicated to driving growth, fostering collaboration and advocacy for her community. As President and CEO of the North Jefferson Chamber of Commerce in Fultondale, Alabama, Heather has been instrumental in championing local businesses and enhancing the region’s economic vitality. Under her leadership, the Chamber has flourished, offering innovative programs, member centric initiatives and impactful events that contribute to the area’s growth. Heather’s passion for service extends beyond her role at the chamber. She serves on the board of directors for the Central Alabama theater group, the North Jefferson Rotary Club and the Fultondale library. Additionally, she plays a vital role in shaping the future of education as a member of the Career and Technical Education and culinary advisory teams for Jefferson County Schools. Heather also contributes her expertise to the Central Alabama redevelopment Alliance Advisory Council, advocating for sustainable development and revitalization in the region, a dedicated community advocate. Heather combines her professional experience with her her personal commitment to making a difference as the group fitness director at Gardendale Civic Center, she promotes health and wellness while connecting with individuals in her community. She also serves in the nursery at our church, church of the highlands, reflecting her commitment to nurturing and supporting others. Heather’s innovative spirit, ability to build meaningful relationships and unwavering dedication to her community make her a respected leader and influencer in North Jefferson. She’s passionate about creating opportunities for others, promoting civic engagement and fostering a collaborative environment where businesses, individuals and organizations can thrive. Heather continues to inspire those around her with their tireless efforts to enrich her community and empower future generations. And Heather, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself. Maybe we didn’t share in the bio already.
Heather Lebischak 3:21
Yes, so I’m very excited to be here. I If you had told me 10 years ago, I would have been reporting a podcast for a chamber, I would have said, what the hexa chamber? This is not a world I ever saw myself in. I was a very happy legal secretary slash paralegal. Plan to retire there and there’s, I won’t bore you with the details, but a few changes along the way led me to chamber world, and it’s a world I absolutely love. It’s very different from legal, where everything’s proprietary and protected. In chamber world, we’re big on collaboration, so that’s one of my favorite things about chamber world, but it was the hardest thing to get used to, because I’m used to protecting information. That’s the legal side of me. So it is definitely a world I did not know existed a few short years ago, but that I always see myself in now. That’s
Speaker 1 4:10
right. That is a interesting contrast from your previous experience and and then entering the world of R and D, where everybody’s ripping off and duplicating or collaborating, as you said, that seems
Unknown Speaker 4:22
better. I like R and D better. Yeah.
Speaker 1 4:26
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the North Jefferson chamber, just to kind of give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Absolutely
Heather Lebischak 4:36
so about a little over a year ago, I was approached by three cities in the north Jefferson Community, Fultondale, Morris and Kimberly, with this idea of a Regional Chamber of Commerce to give a bigger voice to their communities. Fultondale has a lot of businesses. MORRIS And Kimberly do not, and separately, they didn’t feel that they could individually sustain a chamber. But together, they thought they could and that it would be, as our motto says, stronger together, to have a bigger voice for this community. So that was in about October, November of 2023, and we officially launched the North Jefferson Chamber of Commerce on January 5 of 2024, and also have to be my wedding anniversary. So it was a date I knew I could remember we launched last year. Since that time, we just had our first birthday, there is nothing I won’t do in the name of chamber or community. So our first birthday featured pictures of me with a smash cake like the first birthday should be with cake all over my face and pigtails and all the things. But it was an amazing first year we had around that we had 130 members. Our Facebook reach had grown. We were profitable. Year one, we were able to hire someone part time. When I first started the chamber, my guess was that we were five years away from our first hire, and I’m actually in the process now setting up interviews for our third hire, our first full time hire. So we have been very successful. It showed nothing to do with me. I have an amazing board, and it was a need in our community, and I have the backing from three amazing cities looking to add more. We have city members, but as far as our funding cities, it’s those three, Fulton, no Morris and Kimberly, but we are meeting with some others next month to see about bringing them on board, because the more the merrier.
Speaker 1 6:29
Well, you guys have a vision, obviously, the direction you want to take this and and it seems to be gathering some steam, both the membership and the attention of other cities, other communities, to pull in. That’s awesome. Yeah, we’re, we’re kind of at a stage in chamber world where a lot of chambers are celebrating their 100th anniversary, or a few, maybe even 150 so to just celebrate in one year like it’s it’s going to bring a whole new perspective to the conversation that we have today. I know a lot of people if they were to say, Well, if we redid this chamber thing all over again, we would do it differently. So I’m excited to learn what are some of the approaches that you took in establishing a new chamber. And maybe some of these things are things that still can be ripped off and duplicated in an existing chamber that’s celebrating 100 years, but there’s also bylaws and things like that to deal with, so depending on on where you are and and you know what some of these things are, it’ll be interesting to get your perspective today, but our focus for our conversation today will be focused around building a chamber that’s right for your community. And I think that’s very fitting giving your background, but we’ll dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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All right, Heather, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today, we’re talking about creating a chamber. It’s right for your community. So you come into this where you’ve kind of got a blank slate, I assume, I mean, I guess, tell us the story. So you’d mentioned these three different cities approached you, but what was the vision? What kind of parameters were you given? Were you able to just dream big and go at it? What’s it like? That
Heather Lebischak 11:29
was the beauty of it. They I came from a neighboring chamber that was like a 35 year old chamber. It was fantastic. They were amazing. But when I was approached about this new chamber, I was actually, on a personal level, doing a fast with a friend of mine. And so for anyone that’s ever done a spiritual fast, it comes with a lot of clarity. And so when I was approached about this, I immediately knew, prayed over and knew that this was something God was calling me to do. And so I stepped out on faith. And by faith, I mean I felt very convicted that God didn’t even want me putting numbers on paper, so there were no dollars on the table. Guarantees anything when I signed on for this, but it was they had saved me, because we were a neighbor community. They saw what I did there. They knew what I was capable of, and so when I came on board, there were no parameters, and that was a beautiful thing. They just wanted me to strengthen their businesses. They wanted to show their businesses that we’re backing them, because they’re going to back you, which is a beautiful thing for a city to do. That’s what cities should do. They should make it easy to operate within the city. And so all three cities were fully on board from the very beginning, both not just financially. Obviously, I needed money, that’s a biggie. But even today, some of the councilmen and some of the council women and the mayor, they’re the most frequent shares of things on social media. They advocate for me. They promote me. They’re putting me in conversations and at seats, at tables that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And so there really were no parameters other than do what we’ve seen you do, and so I heavily relied on them. The first thing I had to do was start a board. There’s no handbook for starting a new chamber or a new business, for that matter. But chambers particularly are tricky, because we are, as we all know, we are a 501 c6 there’s stuff for 501 C threes out there, 501 c6 look, gets left out of all that. So there’s a lot of policies and procedures that were like, Oh, we think it’ll follow that, but we’re not sure. So there was a lot of guesswork in the beginning. I had just gone through the accreditation process with my last chamber for the state, and that included updating bylaws, drafting policies and procedures and employee manual, all the things. There’s about 40 items here. I had just gone through that with my former chamber, so it was kind of fresh on my mind. So I actually, literally yesterday, just finished it up for this chamber because I wanted us accredited after one year. Like, I wanted it to be like, that’s the first thing we do. So the first Biggie was forming a board, and I was coming into cities that I wasn’t as familiar with. The Chamber I came from was a neighboring city, but these communities I didn’t have a stronger tie, so I relied heavily on the city council and the leadership in the and the mayors in the cities to recommend people for the boards, because I wanted equal representation from all my cities, as well as all the other intersectionality points you want in diversity within a chamber board. So relied heavily on them, but they truly just said, come in, do your thing. And it was out. And by the way, do you need an office because here’s free space. So they were fantastic. I have a free office, fully furnished, a free boardroom. I have a huge venue I operate in that I can use for all of our events. So they were in all three cities. They don’t all have the same capacity as far as space, but they have all offered space on whenever i. Need it. So that’s a huge hurdle. I know a lot of chambers have to deal with, is renting and stuff like that, and that is not one I have luckily had to face.
Speaker 1 15:08
So are you in a city office, a city building then? Or so the city of
Heather Lebischak 15:12
Fultondale purchased it. Used to be an outdoor shop. It looks like a big barn on a hill. It’s a beautiful building, but the city purchased it and uses it as an event center, and there just happened to be an office and boardroom side by side that were fully furnished, that they weren’t using. So they’re like, here, you want to go there. And hey, we got extra copy machine. You want it? And the venue is fabulous. It’s gorgeous. I could not ask for a more beautiful venue. So I operate within the venue. And so when we have events, everything’s right here. Yeah,
Speaker 1 15:43
that’s awesome. So yeah, I can imagine it being a little bit maybe intimidating, you know, creating a board from scratch and not knowing the connections, and you know, who the those players are in these different communities. So did you have an idea, as you went to the different cities of what you were looking for as far as representation from each city, or were you just looking to get recommendations from them as to who they think would be a good fit for the board? What was your What was your approach to that? Yeah, that was definitely
Heather Lebischak 16:14
the scariest part, because the board is who you answer to, who you’re held accountable to, and in chamber world, boards aren’t always super familiar with the operations of the chamber. It’s just a very different world. And so answering the people that don’t know the inner workings is always hard. So you want people that are going to trust you, empower you, not get in the weeds with you. And I just didn’t have any connections to know who those people might be. I knew I wanted diversity among industry for sure, and diversity among other aspects as well, but I heavily relied on the city leadership for who those were. I wanted prominent people in the community. So I have a fantastic board. We started with the board of six. We now have eight, but we started with the board of six, all of which I consider friends now, none of which I hardly even knew when they signed on. So four, let’s say four of them, came by recommendation. One actually asked me to serve, and I’m so glad he did. He is in the nonprofit world, so he kind of gets what I deal with. And then one of them was just a kind gentleman who sent me an email when I left my last chamber and said, Hey, we’re with you. We’re Where are we going? We’ve seen what you do. And I was like, Oh, that would be a good guy to have to my corner
Speaker 1 17:30
for sure. No, that’s awesome. So you had mentioned that these three cities kind of came together, approached you about this, so there must have been some sort of a vision of what they wanted to see be accomplished. Were you able to expand on that vision? What? What kind of room? Yeah, did you have with that? And how’s that evolved?
Heather Lebischak 17:50
Right? So there, as I mentioned, fultonville has a lot of businesses. Was there, so theirs was more on the business support, pulling me into economic development discussions as they are, courting a business, pulling me into those discussions, having me help with those some help with event planning. MORRIS And Kimberly are not as business heavy. They’re more I can’t say the word rural. It’s a very hard word for me to say, but they don’t have as many businesses, so Theirs was a little bit different. Theirs was more on the event side. So I help them more with events, and a lot of the vendors at those events are my businesses, but theirs is more on the event planning side. Kimberly, especially Morris, has more businesses probably than Kimberly, so I do have the businesses there. The biggest thing I’m excited about with Morris is they are starting an incubator space that they are going to have available, and we will have space within there that we can operate and do trainings, and they are going to target minority owned businesses for that space to give them a inexpensive place to get started while they’re getting on their feet and getting their business off and running. So all of them had very different needs and so but I had fantastic luckily, I did have fantastic relationships with the leadership to know up front, what those needs were and be able to meet those needs, adapt as I went and realize even more needs than they thought they knew, that I can get plugged into and help out with.
Speaker 1 19:17
And I’m sure as you go about recruiting members, you’re hearing more of what the needs are as well, so you can continue to evolve and adapt, but tell us a little bit about that as you approach members. So you’re in an area where it sounds like there wasn’t a chamber that existed currently. So as you approach businesses and talk about the value proposition of a chamber and help them get the buy in and the vision of of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in the community. What’s that pitch like? How do you how do you make that approach to these businesses familiar?
Heather Lebischak 19:53
Right? Well, particularly Morris and Kimberly, they were very unfamiliar with the Chamber concept. So the first and. You know, as I mentioned in the beginning, if you’d asked me maybe seven years ago, I would have been like, what? What is a chamber? I have no idea what that is. So the first thing is, is I felt like, before I start trying to get you to join, I need to get us established. I need us be active, a good website, active on social media. I need you to see me at some things and see what I can do before I ask you to pay me money to offer you services that you don’t know what are. So we spent a lot of time building that up. We started in around, actually, December, 8 or ninth is when I officially started here. So I spent that whole first month really building our brand. Mission Statement is huge to me. I tell my board, I drill it into my board. They’re probably sick of hearing it. But everything we do is viewed under the lens of our mission statement, which is we advocate, connect, educate and fight for businesses in the north Jefferson Community, and in doing so, strengthen the communities we serve. So we do want to strengthen the communities, but it’s always a byproduct of the business community, because that’s what we’re here for. So I spent that first month we didn’t even start accepting memberships until January 5, and that was intentional. One, if I’m being completely honest, taxes were a lot easier to wait till the next year when we were so close. Yeah, but the other reason is I wanted to spend some time kind of showing them who we were and what we had to offer. And so January 5, we launched, and I believe, Oh, don’t quote me on this, but she says that she’s recording a live podcast, right? I think we had around 36 founding members. So 36 joined on that first day. And so a lot of it is just putting together materials to educate them on what we have, relying heavily on referrals. We have, we actually have cards. We deliver that say, join us. We’re awesome, and it kind of goes through what we are as a chamber. Now that we’ve got a year under our belt, those cards also reflect a QR code with our 2024, annual report that shows everything we did last year, from our social media reach to our audience to our members, to our events, so that they know kind of this is what they accomplished. Last year, I’ve twofold, one for new members to see what I can do, and two for existing members to see where their money went, because I take that very seriously,
Brandon Burton 22:13
yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 22:14
as well as the funding cities, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 22:17
So as you talk about creating an organization where you can be that voice for business. Are you approaching advocacy at this point? As far as legislation? Are you getting into that at all? Or
Heather Lebischak 22:31
yeah, so it was part of my plan, from the beginning, was to get and initially I wanted to have some kind of government relations field. I’m in my I’m coming into my final year of IOM, which chamber people will know as institution for organization management. And so I met with someone last year to get some insight on how to launch that because it is not an area I know anything about. And so in meeting with her, she was fantastic in recommending one avoid the word government. And I was like, okay, noted, so we did launch last year our public policy committee, so we are not on the advocate side yet. As far as lobbying or anything like that, we exist right now solely to inform particularly I know everybody the boi report was back and forth and back and forth. And so we were keeping our members informed of that, most of which had never even heard of it. And at the time, it would have been a big deal, because it was an enormous fine if you didn’t pay. And so right now, our Public Policy Committee is strictly to inform. We hosted a state of the city event in Morrison Kimberlin last year, which, to mo everyone’s knowledge is the first one they’ve ever had in that community. We did that under public policy. We educated on where to vote, how to vote, how to register to vote, how to do absentee ballot, all of those things. There was a group of we. Were a group of us from the chamber actually in Ireland over the election, so we all had to do absentee ballots for that, but mainly just to keep them informed of policies that impact them. I do feel like in the future as a Regional Chamber, I do feel like we will take that step towards being a voice to advocate for our businesses when it comes to legislation, and maybe even going as far as to hire a person that that’s their job to handle that. Because I do feel like I do want to be that voice for businesses, not just at a local level, but as a state and federal level as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1 24:26
it’s exciting to see, you know, a chamber starting from scratch, and you can really go any direction you want to and and you don’t have to do what every what other chambers are doing, either right, like you can right kind of chart your own path. Are there? Have there been any unique approaches as you’ve kind of crafted this custom model of a chamber for these three cities that you’re like you know from my past experience in the chamber, I want to get rid of this, or I want to bring this in. What are? What are? Maybe a couple examples of some unique approach.
Heather Lebischak 24:57
Biggest one I came into i. I came from a 35 year chamber, and they were fantastic. It was a great city, a great business community, and but there wasn’t a lot of records like if you try to look back and see who won this award last year, who was even the executive director, I ran across a piece of paper in my desk that had the founding date, and that’s the only reason I knew the chamber was 35 years old, and it wasn’t neglect on anybody’s part. It’s just nobody thinks to write stuff down. And so that was one of the things. When I went into this, I was like, I’m writing everything down. Every event we have, we’re gonna know if we had a women in business luncheon last year, we’re recording the winners. We’re gonna know from year to year, and that annual report I did, it’s basically a chamber scrapbook. So for every year, they’ll be able to look and see who did what. So that was the biggest thing I took with my old chamber, was to record everything, and the other one was to create a very good not just a Policies and Procedures Manual, like a formal document, but a obnoxiously detailed, one of how to do everything, a how to mingle. We put on this event. We send them postcards on this day, we get sponsors on this day, we get posters to where, you know, heaven forbid I walk out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. They’ve got that document to know how to do, and it makes training a lot easier, as we’re looking to hire. But just the importance of doing that, taking the time, and it’s hard, because I started off as a one man show, so there wasn’t a lot of extra time, but taking that time to draft that document just a simple bulleted list of how to do everything we do.
Speaker 1 26:34
Yeah, and even, I mean, as far as creating policies and procedures in today’s world with AI and everything like, there’s tools that help with that process as well that will, you know, if you start a process from start to finish, and AI can watch you do it, and then, you know, write the bullet points, and here’s the detailed steps of how to do it. It’s pretty cool stuff. So you’re it’s a good time. Knows
Heather Lebischak 26:58
me well, I will say, though, when I first so if you were to look at, if you were to Google chamber by laws, you’re going to find the same ones. We all use the same one. Same with policies and procedures. And part of that’s how collaborative we are. We are happy to share. But when I was doing the policies and procedures at the time, I wasn’t AI was still, oh, the robots are going to take us over. Don’t use it. So I did, actually, if you look at my desk, I had five of them spread across my desk, and I literally typed them from scratch, picking out the pieces that I wanted from each one. Now my background, as I mentioned, was illegal, and what we did was draft these long planned documents. So it wasn’t super foreign to me, but it was a tedious process. Now, I do rely heavily on AI and particularly chat GPT it I told I made the mistake of saying yesterday, I was like, it does 80% of my job. And I was like, let’s word that better. It allows me to be 80% more efficient and do other things, which is the truth of it, the times I would spend drafting social media posts when I really should be doing something else, as opposed to worrying about putting something cute. I’m 44, years old. I’m past that. I don’t know the cute things or the hashtags or all that, so I rely heavily on that for when it comes to social media.
Speaker 1 28:16
Yeah, that’s That’s great. Good takeaways. Any other lessons from this, the last we’ll call it, year and a half of kind of ramping things up and first year in a chamber, any other things stand out to you that may be beneficial for other chambers listening to, you know, as they do their R and D, things that stand out. The biggest
Heather Lebischak 28:39
one for me is I learned a lot of patience. I am a microwave. I want it quick, quick. And I’m going to build a plane as I’m flying it, and I’m totally okay to do that. And if we land on one wheel, that’s okay. We got down. Um, but I did learn there are things where it’s okay to not do immediately, let it, let it simmer just a little bit. Think on it a little bit more, whether that’s responding to emails, putting up events, planning events, I like to I have been known to plan an event with a week’s notice when I get a good idea, and so sometimes that works out, but I have learned to slow down and think it through, talk it out, especially now that I do have a colleague that works with me who is fantastic, and she brings out things that I didn’t think about, which is fantastic. She is a perfect compliment to me as far as putting events together and programming and so as we’re looking to hire, I’ve relied heavily on her, because the things she’s looking for and asking are very different from the things I am but equally as important right now,
Speaker 1 29:36
that’s that’s good. Um, well, I like asking everyone that I have on the show for maybe a tip or a strategy for chambers that are listening and trying to take their chamber to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them?
Heather Lebischak 29:54
I think the biggest one, and it goes back to I have vivid remembers, vivid memories of being a chamber. Me and going to my first chamber event and listening to somebody talk about this $100,000 banquet they just threw and totally freaking out thinking, oh my gosh, I’ll never get there. I’m doing this all wrong. Take everything with a grain of salt. Everything’s scaled. Well, I say that everything is not scalable. You’ll hear that all the time. It is not true. Not everything truly is scalable. Not everything is for your chamber. Yeah. And so I think the biggest takeaway is is, does it fit your culture? Number one, does it fit your mission? Like I said, I drilled that into my people. But just take everything with a grain of salt. Take it all in and then figure out what it is that your chamber needs to do. What does your chamber want to be known for? And do those events align with that?
Speaker 1 30:46
Yeah, I’m glad you made that designation, that everything is not necessarily scalable, scalable
Heather Lebischak 30:52
because you heard me say it, because I just hear it all the time, but I was like, and I’m guilty
Speaker 1 30:56
too. I’ve said it before, but you’re right. You know certain things are not for your chamber, and you need to know your community. You need to know what where the value proposition is and what’s worth your time. You know what are you going to put your time and energy into, and what’s really going to have a return and be valuable to your members and and to your larger community? So thanks for mentioning that. We all needed to hear that. But Heather, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Heather Lebischak 31:30
I think they’re going to continue to be more and more relevant multiple as people become, like I said, I came into a community where a lot of people didn’t know what the chamber was, as they realize as the complexities of starting a business, it’s hard. It’s difficult unnecessarily. So in my opinion, one of my goals is to sit down with our cities and create a how to of how to start a business. When you come into Fulton Hill to start a business, this is how you do it. And also in that process, figuring out that we really need this. And so I’m hoping chambers can play a bigger role in that, not just encouraging them to come but helping them to get started. And so as we can offer trainings or advice or expertise in that field, I do think that we’re going to become more and more relevant as chambers and more and more needed, and as people realize, like, I really this is something I need. This is a business expense that is a must for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1 32:25
so earlier, you said there’s not a guide for starting a business. That sounds like you’re writing it. So maybe you know, version two is the guide of how to start a chamber. I
Heather Lebischak 32:35
hope so. Like, we’re about to do taxes, and I’m like, please don’t screw up anything. Too bad.
Speaker 1 32:41
That’s right. Well, Heather, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about how you’re doing things, the approach you’re taking. Where would you point people and what? What’s the best way for for them to react?
Heather Lebischak 32:56
So our website is NorthJeffersonChamber.com, and then my email address is president@northjeffersonchamber.com. I am a Gen Xer, so I regularly check my email. I will respond. It’s definitely the best way. I’m a texter too, but email is probably the best way to get in touch with me, and I would love to hear from anybody, answer any questions, anybody looking to venture out and do this thing? I have not yet had anybody to share this with, because it’s just like you mentioned, most chambers are 100, 150 years old. No, I was in a board meeting the other day, and we were, I’m on the state board of directors, and our director, who is amazing, was talking about growing the state board and reaching out to the existing chambers. And she made the comment, she said, I mean, it’s not like we can just create new chambers. And was like, one of the ladies was like, well, Heather did yeah, they’re not, but it’s just not something that happens. And so it would be cool to be able to help someone else through the process, even if it’s just a lending an ear to know, yes, I know how frustrating it is, yeah, and there’s not answers. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 34:01
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