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Category: Community

Navigating Contracts with Angela 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 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 Angela Wilson. Angela is the President and CEO of the Greater Muskogee Area Chamber of Commerce. Angela provides the overall daily management of all departments of the chamber and works with the Chamber’s board of directors to ensure the Chamber’s mission is achieved. She became the Chamber’s President and CEO in November of 2019 after serving as Vice President and Director of Programs for six years, she oversaw all of the Chamber’s programs and events and all non news revenue projects, which make up approximately half of the Chamber’s annual operating budget. Angela has worked at the Muscogee Chamber Since 2012 after serving as a tourism director and executive director for the Chamber of Commerce in Coffeyville, Kansas for four years. Angela began her career with the Muskogee chamber as the program and sales director in 2016 was promoted to Vice President and Director of Programs. Angela has a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado. She is an IOM graduate and a graduate of leadership, Coffeyville leadership, Mugi OCC chamber Management Institute, OK, CNP, non profit management and Dale Carnegie effective communications and human relations. Angela currently serves as chair on the OCC board of directors, Mako Conference Board of Directors, and the President of the Board of Trustees for the Muscogee public schools, education board of directors. Angela, I’m excited to have you with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Sure.

Angela Wilson 2:52
Thank you for having me today. It was an honor to be asked to do this. I should could throw rich Cantillon. We used to be with the Ponca City Chamber in Oklahoma, throw him under the bus for signing me up for this that he deserves it. And though I love to share, I love to help other chambers. So in any way, I hope someone takes maybe just something from this today to help them

Brandon Burton 3:17
absolutely, and I’m sure that’s, that’s what the whole purpose of this is, right? Is to bring people on and their perspectives from their their part of the world, their part of the country, and their scope of work at their chamber and and we’ll, we’ll flesh out those things that can be a value to others listening. So tell us a little bit about the greater Muskogee Area Chamber, just to kind of set the stage. Give us an idea the size of your chamber staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of prep us for our conversation today.

Angela Wilson 3:48
Sure, and those of you don’t know we are Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. You might have heard a song before okie from Muskogee, from Earl haggard. That’s usually what people associate us with. But we are located, for those, again, that don’t know, in eastern Oklahoma. We’re about 45 minutes from Tulsa, so we kind of sit out. We are a micropolitan community of about 35,000 people. Our chamber has about 375 members. We know, give or take those, our budget is about a $375,000 budget, and we have, right now a staff of three. I’m in that little transition where I’m down one staff and so again, we’re like all chambers. Do we reevaluate if we want to fill that position, or if we think we can, obviously we all know we can take on more work, because we always think we can, but we’re kind of in that time where we’re reevaluating if we want to fill that so normally we’re a staff of four, and we are again solely just a chamber. And. Yeah, we

Brandon Burton 5:01
love it. So I think it’s probably fair to say most chambers are operating one or two staff people below what they need, right? So probably, probably put you right in the right the sweet zone, right there. So

Angela Wilson 5:13
yeah, we always take on more work. For some reason, I It’s really weird. Yes, we can do it. Yes, we can

Brandon Burton 5:19
do it. Yeah, chambers have a problem with saying no or problem saying yes. Maybe is what it

Angela Wilson 5:24
is yeah that we need to go to get help for saying yes to everything

Brandon Burton 5:28
absolutely. Well, I’m excited for our topic today. It’s something we haven’t really spent much time on in over 300 episodes of Chamber Chat Podcast, but it’s a focus of navigating contracts. So I know a lot of chambers out there have either tourism contracts or economic development contracts or maybe a Downtown Association contract of some sort. But all these variety of different types of contracts may or may not come across the desk of the the chamber, and the Chamber might seek them out. They might be sought out in some cases, but either way, I think it’s a good opportunity for us to have a conversation about how a chamber can go about navigating and maybe even negotiating some of these contracts as a as they appear. So I think there’s going to be a lot of value for listeners today, and look forward to getting to this with you right after this quick break.

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All right, Angela, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our conversation today around negotiating contracts. As you introduced the greater Muskogee Area Chamber, you mentioned that you’re solely a Chamber of Commerce. I know that hasn’t always been the case, but if, if you want to take the mic and kind of give us the background and evolution of of the Muskie chamber, just to kind of set the table for us. I think that may be helpful, sure.

Angela Wilson 9:08
So when I started in 2012 we had a contract with the city for tourism, and we had a tourism staff of about, I think, three other people, and again, the Chamber has an administrative fee that we take off that contract, like every contract that we have. Well at the time, every year, that contract auto renewed. We went to City Council, we did our presentation. What we did that year, we went about our way. The chamber was very heavy in tourism. We were known for having fun, doing all these parties, entertaining, you know, at all these big events that tourism was hosting, and the Chamber kind of took a back seat to that. Well, fast forward about five or six years, and that tourism budget was. Is over a million dollars. And so when people see that, oh, I can do that, they make it look so easy and so fun. And there was always people, every year, probably since I’ve been here, that thought they could do it better. And so, come about 2017 18. There was a lot of pressure from City Council. They were, they were feeling the pressure from outside sources to kind of put their thumb on what tourism was doing. And so, you know, around here, we batten down the hatches. We jumped through tons of tons of hoops. I think our president and CEO of the chamber at the time, she spent probably 85% of her time dealing with tourism, and so again, the Chamber suffered from that. So I’m over here as vice president, holding down the chamber because we’re dealing with all of this outside noise for tourism. They completely changed. Our board completely made. You know, everyone track their time like just everything was ridiculous, almost, um, and so, you know, my president, CEO, she left, and at the time, I’m thinking, Oh, God, do I want this job? Do I want it? Do I want it? And my kind of analogy of it is, I know it was a bowl of crap, and I’ve decided to eat that bowl of crap when I applied for this job. So that’s go to 2019 I accept this job, and, you know, the pressure is still there, the red tape we’re dealing with non stop. And then COVID happens, and then I’m really thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, what did I really do? Well, when COVID happened, we didn’t know what our budget was going to be. We didn’t know if people were gonna they’re not traveling, like, oh gosh, you know, layoffs, whatever. We just didn’t. Nobody knew. And so, um, we worked. I spoke with my board, and I said, you know, guys, is this really worth it what we’re dealing with, and our chamber is suffering. Um, our Chamber members. They just think we do tourism. They don’t know what they get as a chamber member. And so with kind of all of that background and just everything going on, we decided to part ways with that contract. It wasn’t easy. It was some difficult conversations with my board, with the city manager, with the mayor, but we decided we needed to do what was best for our chamber, and letting that contract go was what was best for our chamber. Now it came with a loss of that administrative fee, loss of jobs that I had to lay off people, and so it wasn’t a fun time. And you then COVID still going on. So you’re like, oh God, we can’t do events. Oh god, you know, what did we do as a chamber? Are we going to be okay? So the fall of 21 was October of 21 was the end date for that contract. So we gave it back to the city on a silver platter, and said, Here you go. Good luck. We’ll be here if you need some help, but have fun and take it on. And so the city took it in house for a little bit, and then they re contracted it back out to a third party again. But, you know, as a chamber, it was our time then to rebrand as a chamber and say, Where do we want to go from here? What do our Chamber members want? So we sent surveys out, we visited with members. We kind of rebranded of what we do. We had a whole new program of work. Just everything was completely new, and it was scary, very scary, but it took us about three years to recuperate that admin fee is about $30,000 so we took us years, you know, just biting away each year at a time, and we did it. And it was a very rewarding kind of deal to be a part of, to be like, we’ve done this, we’re okay. We never had to pull money from reserves. We never had to do any of that. And you know, it was just a time, and our members recognized that, hey, they’re really asking me what I want as a member. And so we put some new programs out there. We got rid of a couple programs, and so looking back now, is the best thing we’ve ever done. We are, I say, we live our best life. We have no other contracts. We don’t do the economic development contract. So we are solely a chamber on our own, and it is very nice. So we answer to our members. We do what we want. We want to make up something and do something. We do it. We don’t want to. We don’t, don’t, don’t want to. We don’t have to. We’re not on purse strings or Puppet Strings of any entity, if it’s a city, county, whatever it might be, just our members. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 14:59
Yeah, and I can see where it can be difficult to serve two masters, right? So if you’ve got your chamber board, you’ve got a tourism board, and they’re wanting different things, and you’ve got staff that are allocating time different ways, trying to keep all that straight. It can be a headache. It can be a burden. I can see the benefit, of course, to be able to synergize, you know, the efforts that the chamber is doing with tourism and trying to bring that all under one focus, I can definitely see that and and we’ve had episodes where we’ve talked about where that can be a huge benefit, but when it’s splitting time going different ways, it has you not able to perform to your capabilities, really, as a chamber, they mentioned for your members to be able to understand what they get as a chamber member, I think is so important to be able to put that focus back there. So since that separation, the decoupling of the tourism contract, we call it a divorce

Angela Wilson 16:01
and the COVID, I guess I don’t know,

Brandon Burton 16:05
good terms, right? Do you have visitation? Yeah, we

Angela Wilson 16:09
have. They come visit every now and then. That’s

Brandon Burton 16:15
funny, but I imagine I mean, you still have an interest in tourism, right? I mean, a strong tourism in the Muskogee area is going to benefit your Chamber members as well. So there’s still win win within that, but not having that that burden or that weight upon you to perform in certain ways and to have the expectations that you need to meet. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that approach has been like since then, and involvement with tourism now that it’s not you know that that weight that’s on you as well,

Angela Wilson 16:45
sure, and I will say when it got really bad. I mean, we had open records requests from people for tourism. The Attorney General’s office was calling me that we were embezzling all like it was just to the point where you’re like, This is crazy things, and nothing came of any of it. So you’re like, Well, we know we’ve had audits, and we do our audits every year. We’re okay, but you know, just going forward, we’ve been there to help them. When they transitioned over, they would call us to say, how did you guys do this? Or what did you do about this? And they’ve had a couple tourism directors since then. So each time they get a new one, they call us and you know, we’re there. If we need to be, we’re going to partner. We’re going to do what’s best for Muskogee at the end of the day. But do I ever want it back? I don’t think so, unless it’s just really that bad that we need to take it back in. But it was just an opportunity for us to be us and not be everyone just associated us with tourism before we were I mean, at one time, there was all women here, and they were the chamber chicks, but they were the happy go lucky face of Muscogee, because they were tourism, and so we needed to be a more professional organization and here for our businesses and be taken seriously, be at the table on serious conversations, and not just, you know, fishing tournaments and this and that and this, parties, fun things. So we have kind of really stepped it up as more of a professional organization. You know, we still have fun, but we try to be, you know, that pinnacle the top of what we can be in Muskogee, when we do things, we want to be the best at it. But with tourism, you know, we’re all partners. We all try to partner with things, with our economic development, with the city, with the county, we definitely try to break down those silos and partner and move forward and do what’s best for Muskogee. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:50
I can see we’re after the divorce to be able to focus more on the 3c versus the 3p right as a chamber and your focus. What would you say for chambers out there that are either considering a partnership or considering dissolving a partnership? What are some of those things that need to be thought of and really calculated into to making these sort of decisions? I know sometimes the decisions are made for you, but if you’re if you still have a seat at the table and you’ve got some input, what are some things to be considered sure

Angela Wilson 19:25
if you aren’t considering it, my top piece of advice would be, make sure that contract is strong, strong, strong, and you have your best interest at the very front of that. Because, you know, for ours, was just auto renew, auto renew, the good old boy system. Well, then all of a sudden they wanted to have batten down and hatch down this contract. And it was just, it was a waste of everyone’s time and money and effort for things, I get a contract. But looking back. Hindsight, there’s different things of who owns what. We’ve gone through that with a logo and a branding, does tourism own it, or does the chamber own it? Buildings? Did they pay rent? If they had, you know, put money into the building? Who has what desks like it is very simple, things you don’t think about. And then if your logo, if you’re going to dissolve it, if your logo has chamber and tourism, well, guess what? Your chamber is going to have to pay for all new branding, all new envelopes, all new signs, whatever it might be, business cards. There’s a lot of just little things you don’t think about that that logo and tourism was on, so make sure that you set yourself up as a chamber. Set yourself up right and solid. Consult with an attorney. Please do that before you sign any contract. Don’t just let the city or the county hand you one and say, sign this. Have those conversations with your board of if we weren’t to do this tomorrow, what would we look like? Can we still keep our doors open? Can we still be successful or and make sure it is tourism is one side and there’s a high wall of chamber on the other. Do not merge those. It can get muddy. It can get very gray, and you don’t want you don’t want any part of that either. So keep things very clear, separate, a separate checking account for your tourism, a separate checking account for your chamber. I know there’s some out there that blend those two and Good gosh, makes me cringe, but they are separate, separate audits. Just make sure everything is very clean financially. So you know, if you do have an open records request, here you go, and you’re clean. And that is another perk right now, is we don’t have, we’re not subject to open records, not that we’re doing anything shady, but yeah, but we can say no, if we really need to, but at the end of the day, make sure the chamber everything is secure for the chamber, and that’s what look out for the chamber at the end of the day. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:11
on a smaller scale, it makes me think of the small business owner who may be commingling their personal funds with their business funds, and, you know, working out of their other house, but not paying themselves rent, and then they go to sell a business, and, well, what do you have to sell? What? What’s here? And so keeping things clean, and, like you said, having the contracts really buttoned down, to be able to know, you know, is the tourism or is economic development? Are they paying for rent? Are they do they own certain computers and desks, and being able to have that, that separation, but within the same umbrella, Giving definition, I guess is, is the way to say it. But I

Angela Wilson 22:49
think document everything. And you know, most of the time you should have on tourism side. If you’ve purchased the desk computers, you know all that. So if you have it, but make sure it’s very clear who owns what in your office, because we had to spend many times of like, okay, this desk has been sitting upstairs. Who bought this? Or you just don’t know, sign on the side of the building, who owns that you don’t know. You know it’s one of those things. So definitely keep track of everything.

Brandon Burton 23:25
Yeah, I can see when you take on a contract, it can be exciting to say, look, we’re getting a new sign, new business cards, new website like all this to rebrand. And you know, this is a new, fun, exciting thing, and there should be an influx of of income coming with that to the chamber. But on the opposite end, when you’re separating, not only are you losing the contract, the administrative funds, but also the cost to go through and change all those things too. Yeah, may not be less exciting. It’s a different kind of excitement, I suppose, yeah.

Angela Wilson 23:56
And when you have to, you know, if you have delay people off, tourism employees, it’s going to affect your the Chamber’s unemployment rate for a couple of years that happened to us. So there’s just little things that trickle downhill. But at the end of the day, looking back, it was on my end. It was worth it, if I were to take on again, like we’ve said, another contract or something else, if it was be a main street or an economic development I know now to make sure that that contract is solid. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 24:30
absolutely. So. As you’ve seen this, the separation, the divorce, the uncoupling, the de burtoning, how have you been able to see the focus on the members. What’s the member response been like? Has you been able to focus on them and the value that they get as a chamber member? Now, sure,

Angela Wilson 24:50
one of our first things we did in the spring of 22 we did a membership Blitz, and we went and visited 100 members. I. Was our goal, and just sat down with them and just said, what’s going on? What can we help you with? We don’t want anything. We don’t want any money. What are you dealing with? What can we do better? And so a lot of them just appreciated that they hadn’t seen people from the chamber in a while. They hadn’t had a chamber voice in a while. And so we took some of that feedback and just built a better chamber for that. Or people, you know, hey, I would really like you to bring back this or this. And so we’ve tried to implement those things, and people have really appreciated it. And they’re like, you know, you guys are doing a great job, and I appreciate you. Guys have been more attentive to us, and so just those little things in, you know, making what we do more relevant. This is what the chamber is. This is what our mission is. This is what our program of work is, and that’s who we are. And what can we do for you is really what we spent that next year saying, what is our chamber want? What do you guys need? We’re here for you. We’re open. And we got so much positive feedback of that, of just those little conversations. And you know, I was driving yesterday home from a meeting, I’m thinking, I think I want to do another one of those membership blitzes again, just to go out and just visit people that we don’t normally get to visit with and see. But that was probably the most impactful thing that we did, was just visiting with people and asking what they want, not what we want, what they want. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:37
and another listening tour sounds like a great idea, and be able to being able to see now that about three years post separation, if I if I’m doing my math correct, yes, it’s not, it’s not hard math, but I want to make sure I got the dates right to be able to do another follow up listening tour like that. And I would be curious to see what’s the the image of the chamber. How has that changed over those three years? Sure people

Angela Wilson 27:03
take us more serious. Now we’re not just the party, fun, happy, go lucky. We’re here for our members. We’re intentional about what we do. We’ve made some other changes internally of our processes for new members. We just are really intentional about what our members want, and we’re more professional level of what we we want to do, what we need to do. We’re there. And, you know, people recognize that. They say, you know, the Chamber events are always the best events, and we always try to be, you know, creative when we do our events, of the best advice sometimes I ever heard was, if you don’t want to be there, probably they don’t want to be there as well. So I was take that into consideration when we’re planning events or planning programming. Good gosh, I want to be there, and if I don’t, probably nobody else really does and not being able to don’t be afraid to try new things. Try it if it fails. So what you tried it, and you can go on down the road if something’s not working. Don’t be afraid to get rid of it. That’s probably my biggest piece of advice of as a chamber of when I came on the first time I tried to get rid of a program, I was scared to death. I thought I was gonna lose my job. Thought people were gonna run me out of town. And people came back and said, Thank you for getting rid of that. I thought it was waste of time. I was like, Oh, thank you. So that would be my thing is, don’t be afraid to change just because I hate saying this, but you’ve always done it that way. Doesn’t mean you have to continue doing it that way. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:43
we’ve got a whole episode about burning sacred cows, so you can go back in the archives and listen to that and and learn how you can get rid of some of these programs that are not serving you or the chamber anymore. So if they’re not serving the chamber, they’re probably not serving anybody else, and people are doing it out of obligation or guilt, and you can level it up and do something much more effective and impactful. So yes, amen, good. Good comment. Well, Angela, as we start to wrap up, I always like asking for listeners who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them to try to accomplish that goal. You just mentioned one. But does anything else come to mind that you’d like to share? Probably,

Angela Wilson 29:26
again, I would just echo, don’t be afraid of Chinese things and look out for the best interest of the chamber. Be that arm, be that solid pillar in the community. Not everyone’s gonna like everything you do, but that’s okay, at least they’re noticing what you’re doing and do what’s best for you. At the end of the day, you need to have your back, your board needs to have your back and your chambers

Brandon Burton 29:54
absolutely and I’ve mentioned it several times in past episodes, but if you’re focused. On what’s good for the business community. In your community, it’s hard to go wrong, and it’s hard to have too many people upset with you if you’re at least the people you’re serving are not going to be upset with you if you’re focused on on how to best serve the business community. So

Angela Wilson 30:14
yeah, I always say too, you know, I don’t know everything. We don’t know everything, but we know people who do, yeah, and so. And you know, you do want to say no to people sometimes, but I think telling giving them the resources and helping them along, they appreciate that, and they recognize the chamber did help me. You just, you just picked up the phone and called it another person, maybe, but to them, that was a game changer in what they were trying to accomplish. And they really look back about, oh gosh, the Chamber really helped me out. And then they’re going to start showing up to stuff and being there for you and having your back. So it’s just little intentional things, I think, as well being very intentional on the little things, yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:55
absolutely, totally accurate. So I like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Angela Wilson 31:07
I think chambers even looking back on, good God, I’d hate aging myself, because, you know, I look 20, but I’m getting in the 40s now. But you know, we have evolved over the time that I’ve been in the chamber world, and it’s exciting because it’s something new every day. And I think just being relevant and keeping up with those trends of what businesses need, what communities need, what you guys are, the chambers are the forefront. And so we need to be those leaders, and we need to have that creative mindset of what’s next. And so, I mean, chambers are still going to be around, but we’re different than we looked 10 years ago. We’re different than we look 20 years ago and even 50 years ago, when people just paid their dues because it was the right thing to do. But I think it’s just exciting, because you it’s up to you as a chamber you can do what you want to do, and what your Chamber members want. So it’s kind of exciting that you don’t always have to do the same thing every day or every year. So I think just making sure you’re on that cusp of what’s you know kind of what your members are wanting, and stay ahead of them one step so you can provide those services for them, but chambers are always going to be around. What they look like in 20 years might be completely different. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:27
I would argue, even from four years ago, from through COVID to today, chambers look different so well, Angela, this has been a good conversation. I think it’s provided a lot of value for listeners, and I appreciate you getting a little, you know, authentic and raw about an experience at your chamber that I’m sure was full of difficulties and challenges, but being able to rise above and come through on the other side with some lessons learned that are valuable for others that have been listening today. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Angela Wilson 32:58
Thank you for having me, and yeah, there was a lot of wine along the way going through that transition, wasn’t it always

Brandon Burton 33:05
rainbows and butterflies? Yeah, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect. And say, how’d you get the courage to move forward with this, or whatever it may be, what’s the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Angela Wilson 33:19
Absolutely, please contact me if you have it’s not a dumb question. No questions are dumb. We’re involved contacted peers. That’s what we rely on and how we survive sometimes. But you can visit our website, Muskogee chamber.org, or you can email me at angela@mugicha.org, or if you go onto our website, you’ll find our contact or phone number on there, and yeah, email me, call me, whichever. I’m always open, and that’s one of my favorite parts of my job is helping other chambers.

Brandon Burton 33:53
Yeah, it’s such a great profession for being able to do that. Yes, we’ll, we’ll get the website and email and our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find you. But again, Angela, this has been great, and thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your experiences and insight with with those that are listening.

Angela Wilson 34:10
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 34:14
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Advocacy that Bolsters the Community with Michael Guymon

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Michael Guymon and native tucsonan The new word for me. Michael’s 25 year professional career has primarily centered on political strategy, business development and advocacy and organizational management. As president and CEO for the Tucson Metro Chamber, Michael is responsible for developing and implementing the goals and vision for the chamber to fulfill the Chamber’s mission and champion and to champion an environment where your business thrives and our community prospers. Michael’s previous positions include vice president of regional partnerships for sun corridor Inc, the executive director of Metropolitan Pima Alliance, chief to staff to Tucson city council member Fred Ron Stan, Assistant Vice President for governmental affairs for the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and political consultant to the bridges, a 360 acre mixed use, mixed use infill development that includes tech parks Arizona, Geico regional headquarters, housing and 111 acre commercial development. Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Arizona. On a personal note, his passion is baseball, and he was named the official score for the Tucson Padres triple A baseball club from 2011 to 2013 the team moved to El Paso in in 2014 But Michael, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Michael Guymon 2:48
Yeah, absolutely. Brandon, thank you so much for that, that great introduction, and I’m happy to be here to talk to all of our team chamber champions that are out there. I guess one other little fun fact is, as much as my passion is baseball, I actually play ice hockey. So a lot of people ask me, Wow, a native tucsonan That plays ice hockey. How the heck did that happen? And when I was in college, my buddies and I were just kind of bored playing too much hockey on Sega, so we decided to buy some stick, a puck, and some roller blades, taught ourselves how to play, and that ultimately morphed into playing ice hockey. So So yeah, I am also an ice hockey player, and I still play in the adult league here in Tucson and and it’s a lot of fun. It keeps me, keeps me busy and and it helps me get, you know, some of that pent up nerve that some chamber CEOs can can experience out on the ice.

Brandon Burton 3:46
That’s right, that’s a I would not have guessed that, you know, baseball and hockey. I would not have guessed, you know, but yeah, that that’s awesome. Glad it keeps you active, keeps you involved,

Michael Guymon 3:56
absolutely.

Brandon Burton 3:58
Well, tell us a little bit about the Tucson Metro Chamber, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff, budget, scope of work and all that, just to kind of give us your perspective.

Michael Guymon 4:10
Yeah, you bet. Thank you, Brandon. So our chamber has been around since 1896 and we have been the voice of business in a variety of forms for those 100 and now 28 years. So we are a staff of 11, budget of about 1.8 million, and we have 1400 members, and those members are everything from restaurants to Raytheon. Raytheon is our largest private employer here in the Tucson region. Aerospace and Defense is our biggest, not only employer, but also just from a economic impact part of the economy, our biggest player, between Raytheon, with its 14,000 employees and 200 companies that make up our airspace and defense. Sector here in in the Tucson region. So so that’s that’s a big component, but so are a lot of our small businesses here. And of course, the chamber is the main organization that helps to advocate and be the voice for those small businesses. So So it ranges, really good range, but that that’s kind of what makes up our chamber?

Brandon Burton 5:21
Very good. And I know Raytheon is a great company to have in your backyard there. We’ve got a campus probably about 15 miles from our house here in Texas, and they’re great employer and great community player and just a great one to have have on your team there in Tucson, absolutely well, as we try to hone in on what our focus for our conversation is going to be, today, we decided to focus our the majority of our discussion around advocacy, but more specifically, advocacy that bolsters the competitiveness of your community. And 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, Michael, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about how advocacy can bolster your community’s competitiveness as we take that approach, what does that mean to you as far as advocacy and keeping the maybe the relevance in your community and staying on the cutting edge? Just tell us what that means from you and your approach to advocacy in this with this focus. Sure.

Michael Guymon 8:19
So you know, advocacy really is it really is our main value proposition for the chamber. We, as I mentioned before, we are the voice of business, and part of being the voice of business is making sure that we are that bold advocate for a lot of things that relate to the business community and really try to push pro business policies through our city and county, and actually, when I became CEO of the chamber about three years ago, I shifted our focus to purely local, local advocacy, because we did have staff member, various staff members who would go up to Phoenix to lobby positions at the legislature. But I felt it was there. There’s plenty of work to do within the city of Tucson and Pima County that we really needed to focus our efforts locally and address the pro business policies that would help bolster our business community here locally and partner with those organizations like the greater Phoenix chamber and the Arizona chamber that has a stronger presence of the Capitol. And if there are ways that we can, that we can partner with them on state legislation that addresses pro business policy, then we’ll do that. But the chamber is really going to take the lead here locally and and we’ve been very successful at doing that. So, so when it comes to competitiveness now, it really dry there, there are, there are main components to that. Competitiveness. It it comes down to workforce and talent. It comes down to transportation and. Infrastructure comes down to public safety, comes down to housing affordability and quality of life. Those are, those are the five sort of pillars that we look at when we are talking about our competitiveness. As a former employee of our economic development organization, the big thing that I learned there is that talent and workforce and labor drives 99% of the relocation expansion decisions, and it also helps drive whether companies decide to stay within a community so as the retainer of business now at the Chamber I when I was at our economic development organization. I was it was my job to help companies expand to relocate to Tucson now at the Chamber, it’s my job to make sure that they stay here. Talent drives a lot of those decisions, and so working on workforce development and making sure that our educational institutions, our post secondary educational institutions and our K 12 system, quite frankly, are laddering up to the skills and positions that are needed within our companies. Is critically important to make sure that those connections are made. So we do a lot of that work. We have collaboratives in healthcare. We have collaboratives in mining. We have collaboratives in that are focused on construct the construction industry, and then we partner with those organizations that address the issues in and around some of our other targeted sectors and industries. But but addressing workforce development is a big component of making sure that we are competitive, not only for companies that are looking to expand, to relocate, but also those companies that are here and want to expand here in our region

Brandon Burton 11:45
that is so important, and it’s kind of the chicken or the egg, right? Like you want the big business there, you want the companies to relocate, but they need to have the workforce. And at the same time, you’re trying to build the workforce, and kind of think, if you build it, they will come kind of a sense, you know, if there’s your baseball tie in, right? Very good. But I’m curious with the approach, with this, the schools, the, you know, school system, the secondary education, what, what approach is the chamber able to do from that advocacy effort to make sure that these students are being prepared to enter the workforce, and specifically in these key we’ll say categories, these key industries you’re looking to have workforce for. What’s that approach look like?

Michael Guymon 12:34
So Brandon, really, it’s our job as a chamber to make sure that the industries and the companies are engaged. You know, I’m not. I’m not here to tell our community college system or our university who do incredible work in our community and our true are truly our economic drivers of the community. I’m not here to tell them what to do. But what I can do is bring, come more, more and more companies to the table, for them to say, here are the positions that are open. Here are the skills that I need. Here are the skills that I think are lacking in our community, to have those conversations so that our post secondary education institutions understand what the needs are, in hopes that they will help address them. So it’s my job as a chamber to encourage those companies to be a part of those conversations, and we’ve been successful in that we have a lot of companies that are at the table. Could I use more? Absolutely, it’s imperative that I have more and more industries at those tables so that they can express the types of challenges that are they are facing from a workforce standpoint. But outside of that, you know, a lot of the issues that we hear, especially at the retail level, are related to public safety, they’re related to transportation they’re related to housing affordability these days. I mean, boy, you know, this is a topic that is certainly not unique to Tucson, but it is something I am hearing more and more chambers talk about how we need to make sure that we address our housing affordability. And the recent term I’ve heard is income. I don’t think it was income based, but basically, you know, income based housing, so making sure that we’re that we’re addressing the various aspects of housing, because it is diverse, we want to make sure that our housing options are diverse, but but those are, those are issues that our communities are facing, and we as a chamber, making sure that companies are at The table to be a part of those conversations and dialogs. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 14:44
I imagine having the companies at the table specifically with workforce and talent, is trying to keep some of that talent in the community. For whatever reason, it seems like a lot of maybe high school students see that they’re the. Horizons are somewhere else, right where they need to go away, leave the community, to go to school or to find a job and to be able to show them the opportunities that are right there in Tucson, I think is key in what you guys are after with this approach, absolutely,

Michael Guymon 15:13
and it’s, I’m glad you mentioned that, because we’re having conversations right now, particularly with our university, about that, whether it’s, you know, seen as a brain drain or a brain gain, and the ways that we can address that we used to actually host an event called the career crawl, and this was getting local companies and students connected. Because a lot of the jobs fairs that occur on college campuses are companies that are from outside coming into our community and saying, Hey, we got a great job for you the Bay Area, or we got a great job for you in Chicago. And they and those students leave because of that. Well, we wanted to create a local job fair so that students could have a better understanding of what that local job opportunity looks like. And the U of A the University of Arizona actually picked that up. They now have a have an annual and actually sometimes twice a year, Job Fair called Tucson jobs now. So they took our idea and they created their own job fair that focuses on local job opportunities. And what we’re seeing now, we’ve actually seen some of those statistics shift. It used to be that that a quarter of our of our graduates stayed here in Tucson, which is a really low number, because in some communities, it could be upwards to 50 and 60% that is now inching up. We’re now seeing that number is now 35% of our graduates staying here in Tucson. And so from a statistical standpoint, we’re actually seeing a brain gain over the last three to four years as a poor as opposed to a brain drain. Could we do better? Obviously, we could, but we’re at least sitting seeing those those graduates, stay here more than they have in the past, and and we’re hopeful it’s because of things like that, where we’re opening more doors to local opportunities.

Brandon Burton 17:14
It’s trending the right way, for sure,

Michael Guymon 17:18
absolutely.

Brandon Burton 17:19
I love the approach of local advocacy and in these areas that you talked about with transportation and quality of life and public safety and housing, and can you talk to us a little bit more about some of the different approaches? Maybe in these other categories, we spent some good time on the workforce and talent development, but talk to us a little bit about the transportation or quality of life and things of that nature? Yeah,

Michael Guymon 17:43
absolutely. So I’ll start with public safety. So couple, two and a half years ago, I created our coalition against retail theft. It was small businesses, even, oddly enough, one of our one of our mortuaries, as well as you know, places like CVS and Walgreens were a part of this coalition because they were experiencing retail theft today, more than they have, like, extremely, more more than they have in the past. And so we created this coalition to address a lot of those challenges that those companies were facing, and we brought in local law enforcement, we brought in our city and county attorneys. We brought in a lot of the individuals to be a part of those conversations, direct conversations, so that we could come up with with solutions. One of the solutions that we did come up with, we were the recipients of a local grant that awarded small businesses micro loans, or actually, sorry, micro grants. It wasn’t a loan a micro grant to put in new lighting, to put in new vegetation, to put do things with on their own property, to discourage retail theft and and vandalism and things that would happen, you know, private property vandalism. So so we were successful in that, and we want to do more of that. And so now our conversations have grown outside of retail theft and are really focused on public safety and things that we could do to to make sure that we are addressing public safety, and a lot of that comes down to making sure that we’re hiring more police officers and other things to to address public safety in our community. As it comes to trans transportation, we have a reauthorization that’s going to be on the ballot next year of our Regional Transportation Authority. This is a 20 year half cent sales tax that was approved back in 2006 it will sunset in 2026 so next year we’re placing on the ballot an extension of a 20 year extension to that half cent sales tax. And that, again, is just Pivotal, especially in a state where we’re seeing. Fewer and fewer state shared revenues coming toward transportation. If we don’t reauthorize that we locally are going to be in a world of hurt, and we know how important transportation is to our economy, to deliver the goods and services that companies and small businesses depend on, it is absolutely critical that we maintain a robust transportation network. And so that’s that’s some that’s a huge, going to be a huge focus of ours going into next year. And

Brandon Burton 20:31
I’ve seen chambers, you know, in other areas, have a lot of success with taking on initiatives like that transportation to get it on the ballot. And this is a renewal. So hopefully it’s a little easier to tell that story. But for the person that says, Well, I don’t take you know public transportation well, but a lot of the people that are you know, serving you your dinner at the restaurant, they do, and if you are not participating in this, you’re going to pay a lot higher or not have a wait staff, or whatever it is. I mean, there’s all different industries that have employees that rely on public transportation, and you see that across the board, for quality of life within a community, if you don’t have a strong, you know, transportation, says public transit system, then you suffer. So hopefully that’ll, you know, get that momentum you need, get it across the finish line and renew that and keep your community thriving. Are there other areas you touched a little bit about housing? What are some of the the approaches that you guys are taking on with housing?

Michael Guymon 21:35
So when it comes to housing, we are working with mainly our our county. So Pima County is the county that serves our region, and our Pima County, believe it or not, is the same size as the state of Connecticut. So counties in Arizona are quite large. We only have 15 we’re the sixth largest state, but we only have 15 counties. So our counties here are pretty big, but so Pima County does a lot of work. In fact, it does a lot of work that counties typically a lot of urban work that counties typically don’t do to counties typically provide rural services, but our county does a lot of urban services. So they’re pretty big player in terms of making sure that we continue to to establish a pro business environment here in the region. But when it comes to housing, they have established a Housing Commission, and we are looking at various proposals and initiatives that would that would help address that some of it, quite frankly, Brandon is going to come down to to public support, but we can also look at ways in which we lessen some of the regulation. So regulation is a big, big issue when it comes to being able to provide the housing supply. And as we all know in the chamber world, supply and demand, economics is a real thing, and understanding that is pivotal for communities as they’re trying to address some of these issues. And so the better we can lessen regulation, or at least address regulation in the right way that provides the ability for developers to build housing stock is going to help address the supply and demand issue, and if they’re able to build more supply that meets the demand, then those housing prices are going to come down. It is just basic economics. So So our focus has been and will continue to be on the regular regulation side of things. And there are some great examples out there. We’ve learned some examples in the Minneapolis area. There are some examples that are going on in California that really address that, that supply issue, and so we want to enact some of those things outside of sort of public support for for housing.

Brandon Burton 23:54
Yeah, no, that’s that’s great, and it really gives some ideas about how housing can be approached. Again, the local approach to advocacy, I think, is so important. And like you said at the beginning, it’s normal for chambers to have staff that are tasked with going to the state capitol or going to Washington, and there’s a place for that, absolutely, but be able to turn the advocacy internally within the community, to build that that place making really within your community, to have it be a place where businesses want to be, where people want to live, where you have that quality of life, is so key. Yeah. So I wanted to ask on behalf of listeners who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they try to get after that goal?

Michael Guymon 24:46
Yeah, I would say just make sure that you are providing the right kind of value proposition, whether it’s serving your members on a regular basis or, you know, one of the one of the actions that we took was. So knowing that our advocacy was a primary driver for companies, small, medium and large to join the chamber, we actually embedded our Public Policy Council into our bylaws. So you know the normal committees that you would find in bylaws of it, like the Finance Committee and the Governance Committee, but we actually put our public policy council committee in our bylaws because we knew how important that was to our members, and by putting in the bylaws, that means that a board member of ours has to chair the public policy committee. So it’s that direct link between Board activity and our what we consider our number one value proposition for our members, and to demonstrate how important that is, our community, our connections important. Of course, they’re important. We’re going to continue to provide events. We’re going to continue to provide mixers and breakfasts and ways in which our businesses can connect and connect, whether that means connecting with leaders so that they can share their thoughts or connecting with each other so they can do business with each other. We want to make sure that we’re continuing to do that, but we are also putting together our next three year strategic plan, and as it stands right now, it has yet to be approved by the board, but we’re we are having conversations with all of our committees, our board, our high level investors, and at the end of the three years, we’re looking to have 80% of our funding go toward our advocacy efforts. That that’s a big percentage, that’s that’s certainly more than most chambers would be comfortable with accepting, but again, that is something that our members are telling us is important to them, and they’re willing to shift and maybe even grow dollars on the advocacy side of the of the of the staffing coin, so that we can be that stronger advocate for for the region and and part of that is because of what we are up against in Tucson, maybe different from and unique from other communities. We have a a government that doesn’t see the value in in business, thoughts and opinions, and so we have to push harder than some other chambers have to when it comes to our local governments, to say, This is why the business voice is important. This is why you need to include the business community in a lot of your conversations as you develop your ordinances or your initiatives. And so because of that push, because of that added push, we’re going to have to add resources on that side of the ledger, and our board seems to be comfortable in moving that direction.

Brandon Burton 27:51
That’s great. Just between the board and your members recognizing the impact and seeing you guys move the needle with your advocacy efforts to want to lean into it even more. I think is huge. So yep, Well, Michael, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Michael Guymon 28:14
Well, it’s interesting. You say that because we are in a due diligence process right now to potentially merge with our economic development organization, the very same one that I used to work for, and I was there for seven and a half years. I’ve been to the chamber now here for for six years. And so I’ve seen both sides, and what I truly feel is and I and in my conversations with chambers across the country who have got who have actually successfully merged with their economic development organization to have the expansion slash attraction and retention arms under one roof, I think, is powerful. So I see, and again, based on a lot of the conversations and a lot of the trends that we are seeing in the chamber environment across the country, I see more of that happening. And so I think the trend to answer your question is moving in that direction, to to establish a merged relationship with economic development organizations, I think, is going to be the future of chambers. To be, not only that advocate for a pro business environment, but also, like we’ve talked about, be that advocate for their community’s competitiveness, because it is a much more competitive world out there. Companies are moving and relocating more today than they have in the past. And so for chambers and economic development organizations to be aligned in their messaging, be aligned in their content, I think is going to be not only the trend for chambers moving forward, but also to establish a more powerful organization. That can bring all of those services to bear and be that advocate for pro business policy and for competitiveness in their respective communities. So

Brandon Burton 30:13
out of curiosity, and I know it’ll look a little different in each community, but how does a conversation like that begin when you talk about a possible merger with the chamber and Economic Development Authority, yeah,

Michael Guymon 30:26
based on a lot of the conversations that I’ve had, some of them are like, like us. It’s come down to there are too many business organizations in your region, and sometimes it’s hard for that collective, unified voice to exist, and the more dispersed voices that you have in a region, sometimes can dilute that voice as you’re trying to advocate and lobby for a pro business environment. So sometimes it starts there, other times it starts with and I’ve had these conversations with other communities as well. It started with an exiting of of a senior official, like a CEO of either a chamber or an economic development organization, where, when that person exits the community, kind of takes a step back and says, Okay, well, that person’s exiting maybe now, maybe the timing is right now for us to take a look at whether or not these two organizations should should be under one roof.

Brandon Burton 31:27
Yeah, I think that’s helpful, just to be able to keep minds open and perspectives open, to see when that opportunity, when it makes sense. I would argue in a lot of cases, it does make sense, but to see when that timing matches up and how to start those conversations. Yeah, well, Michael, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information you’d like to put out there for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Tucson. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? Yeah, happy

Michael Guymon 31:58
to do that. So our website is TucsonChamber.org and my email address, should anyone want to email me, is mguymon@tucsonchamber.org happy to love answering emails. I’m definitely one of those individuals that gets back to folks within 24 hours. So love to communicate, love to learn, love to share ideas. Love to share best practices. And just love to communicate, like I said earlier, with other chamber executives. Because my way is not always the right way, but I can share what works for us, but I can also learn what works for others. So happy to do that absolutely

Brandon Burton 32:48
well. We’ll get that in our show notes to make it easy to find you and for listeners to connect with you, but I do appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcasts and sharing what is working for you guys there in Tucson, and thank you for being with us and sharing your perspective with us today.

Michael Guymon 33:06
Thank you so much. Brandon. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 33:08
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Success Through Involvement with Derek Rusher

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Derek, rusher from the Kearney Area Chamber in Nebraska as president and CEO of Nebraska’s third largest chamber, Derek carries a fun and creative energy with him as he walks through the doors of the office each day. He believes in bringing about positive change and by fostering a can do attitude in those around him, and is proud to serve and promote the quality of life in their community. Derek maintains a strong commitment to leadership and public visibility, recognizing that both are essential to grow and sustain the mission of the chamber. He actively works to expand the Chamber’s reach with his hands on leadership style and innovative troubleshooting. This can be seen through how he relates to various organizations, through his interactions with the chamber, with Chamber members, individuals from the Kearney community chambers around the state to oversee their own day to day operations. Derek also serves as a chair for the State Chambers small business policy council, and an ex officio board member for the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Outside of the chamber, Derek is the founder and president of a nonprofit business impact art. Impact art is known for a variety of large murals in the Kearney community. He is subdivision threes representative on the board of directors for the Nebraska public power district. He possesses more than 15 years of experience as a teacher and many more former collegiate athlete and coach. Altogether, Derek is passionate about supporting the growth and education of others. His favorite motto is, do right. His attendant he picked up from his father. He lives with a beautiful wife, Maggie, and Derek continues to pass his teaching on to his five daughters. But Derek, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Derek Rusher 3:08
Yeah, absolutely. Well, well, thank you, Brandon, it’s definitely blessed to be on your podcast. Excited to talk with you today and talk with the listeners, and I love the chamber world, I think, you know, going back to my bio, when you’re reading, you know, I was a, I was an art teacher for 15 years, and I was a former collegiate athlete, and there was not a lot of athletes that were art majors. And so that was pretty unique in itself. But I remember when I was was probably first hired back in January of 2018 and I’m sure a lot of our Chamber members and past leaders and current leaders were reading my bio. They’re like, what are we doing? We’re hiring a, you know, art teacher to lead our chamber. And so, you know, I was, yes, an art teacher, but obviously, you know, athletics had taught me a lot of leadership skills. I went through our local leadership class here in Kearney. And, you know, I started building my business at QM, actually through impact art, which was part of that, I was actually working part time for a company called Team concepts, where we where we will, do we, we did a lot of employee engagement, leadership development, some school programs, just team building in general. And so my background was actually pretty diverse, and I was always one to, you know, make sure I was, you know, stayed involved in continuing my own education. I was getting my master’s in administration, so I was building, you know, kind of my more professional development there and personal development. So yeah, in the day, if you just maybe saw art teacher, you would have been like, oh, man, what are we doing? But yeah, I got the, I think one of the things. That is a strength of mine, is my diversity that I that I brought to the chamber and also art. It’s that creative mindset, and I think that’s one thing that I brought to the chamber too, is kind of my creativity as a leader.

Brandon Burton 5:12
Yeah, I think there’s definite parallels without the creativeness that comes from art into the chamber world. And I don’t know why that needs to be a it seems to be a sticking point for people, and they’re like art like they don’t see it as a real major or anything or real career, but it is. People do, people do art, people teach art, people make a living with art, and it definitely brings that creative mindset.

Derek Rusher 5:34
No doubt I could, I could probably have a whole podcast on why the arts are great for kids and students and, you know, proven, there’s, there’s actually a lot of stats out there that prove that your test scores are better when you’re involved in the arts. So not just, you know, painting or drawing. I mean, it could be music, any kind of performance art as well. So, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 5:54
So I’m curious, what type of athlete were you? What sports did you play?

Derek Rusher 5:58
I played them all growing up, anything that I could, you know, swing a bat, throw a football, shoot, shoot a basketball. I did get into golf later on in life, but, yeah, so I went to college to play football, and I was a quarterback, and then transitioned into wide receiver. I did. I dabbled in a little bit of high jump, actually, on the track team, but I went through a core workout for track, and I was like, holy cow, I’m here to play football. This isn’t too much setups and crunches and everything else. And so I went back to throwing the football during spring. Yeah, but no, it’s a great experience, and great teammates, and just the long life relationships that I have from my college teammates. You know, that’s, it’s pretty awesome. That’s

Brandon Burton 6:44
awesome, fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about, I think I pronounced it wrong earlier, Carney area, chamber, yep. All right. All right, yeah. Tell us about the the chamber, size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah,

Derek Rusher 6:58
absolutely. So Carney is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the United States. So Kearney, Nebraska is right on Interstate 80. We’re positioned really well being on the interstate. I think that’s one of the advantages we actually have over our peers. But so Kearney is about 33,000 people, and our county is about 55,000 we have members from all over, but mainly, obviously in the Kearney area and then Buffalo County. Our chamber size is about 870 members. We usually hover right around that number. We’re we’re about a million dollar budget pushing that. I think one of the things that’s exciting is how we’ve grown as a staff and a team. And I think when I first started, we were about five staff. Now we’re going into six. I like big teams. If my budget could afford it, I’d have even more teammates. But for Nebraska, you’ve got the Greater Omaha chamber, the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, and then the Carney chambers, is the third largest chamber in the state of Nebraska. And so, yeah, we’re two hours west of Lincoln. If you’ve ever driven down I 80 and driven under an archway, we’ve got an archway monument that crosses over the interstate there, and so that’s that’s Carney right there. Alright,

Brandon Burton 8:28
fantastic. Well, I will be focusing our the majority of our conversation today around the topic of finding success through involvement and what that’s meant for you throughout your career, and we’ll dive deeper into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Derek, we’re back, and as I mentioned before the break, we’ll we’re going to focus our conversation around finding success through involvement. So you’re coming with this art background, you found ways to get involved, to transition that into a chamber career, but talk to us a little bit about that, that story, that transition, but how involvement has really helped to catapult your career in the chamber world.

Derek Rusher 10:52
Yeah, I think what I found is, you know, I’m a people person, and I always wanted to be around other people and then let lend a hand, whether it was through, you know, an artistic skill or whatnot. But at the end of the day, I just felt that, you know, I was always driven towards to be on a committee or be on a board or help out, however I could, whether it’s through our church and serving, or what it might be. So when I was actually teaching at the facility that I was teaching at my my last stop in my education career was actually at a juvenile detention center, and we had an accredited high school there, but I got involved in about everything that I could at that facility, Teaching these juveniles of Nebraska, and we built a confidence course, basically an obstacle course. We did landscaping with my students there, and then I would get involved in our gang team. And so we had a lot of kids that got caught up in gangs and so. And then I eventually led our gang team. I was on employed development groups. I was part of our teachers association out there, and so I just continued to get involved. And people saw, you know me as a as a leader there, like, like I said in my intro, I started our facility administrator asked me if I wanted to go through our leadership Carney, our local leadership group. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I did that, and continue to just find ways to get involved. And then I started kind of learning more about the extra the Chamber of Commerce, not knowing the job was even open, and at that time it wasn’t. But I had a friend that was on the board of directors, and so it would attend some ribbon cuttings, and just started continuing to build my network. And again, it was just making sure I was, you know, being involved in different things. A funny story, my my art classroom had a a lot of murals. We were actually in a shop, and a somebody from leadership Carney had toured my classroom because they knew I was alumni, and so they’re like, Hey, can we come tour the facility and come tour your classroom? I said, Yeah, absolutely. So as that person from the city of Kearney was walking through my classroom, they’re like, Hey, we were looking for a muralist, and I was pretty naive at the time, and they’re like, Hey, would you like to paint a mural? And I said, Absolutely. So I had a good friend that I said, Hey, do you want to? Do you want to help me do this? And his sister was actually an art major at the time, and so we tackled a mural, and that was our first mural, and we were not impact art at that time. And then after that mural, the VFW asked, Hey, we want to paint a flag on the front of our building? Who did that mural? So they put us in contact. And then Coca Cola was delivering beverages to the VFW, and they need a mural restored. And so we started that. So at that point, I’m like, Okay, this is a business. I need to get a business plan. So I wrote a business plan, and went through that whole process. And again, I started building my business at you, that board member that I talked about being on the chamber, him, and I hit it off. We had some different things that we shared, and one of them was the Clifton Strengths Finder, and he was a Gallup certified coach, and I just love leadership development. And so we started working together, and he hired me to work part time as a teacher to do different, you know, workshops with him, team building, employee development, employee engagement, leadership, and I still take a lot of those things today, and definitely helped me. And so all those things kind of catapulted me into this position. And the board member said, hey, when that, when this job opened up for the chamber. He said, Hey, I think you should apply. But he’s my friend, right, right? So I was like, okay, you know, thank you. But I actually had two emails that got in my inbox, and they were from just my network. I did not know the two people that well, but basically the gist of their emails were the same, yeah. Hey, this job’s open. I think you’d be really good in this position. You should apply. And that’s what really put me over the edge. And when I do things Brandon, I go all in. And so, you know, I did what I did, and now I’m here, so six and a half years later, I love it. And when I first joined the chamber, we had accreditation due for the US Chamber. That was a big thing for our chamber. It was the first year. I remember my board members said, Well, we’ve been four star. Probably can’t get to five star because of our size and different things. And I said, challenge accepted, right? And we were fortunate enough to get to a five star accreditation. So that was the first time in our Chamber’s history to be a five star chamber. That was a great learning experience for me. You know, I did not come from the chamber world and kind of that non profit sector, and so it was a great learning experience. But, you know, that’s just what I wanted to show, kind of our our chamber and our business community, to say, hey, here’s here’s how we’re going to operate, and we’re going to operate with excellence and and like I said, it kind of the rest is a little bit history. And what I love about my involvement and how I found success through that, that’s obviously one of our Chamber’s pillars, right? Is involvement and making connections and and networking. And then how can we help as a chamber, do that with others, and so I found success that way. Now I’m able to help our Chamber members find success as well through involvement. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:30
and you’ve been involved with with boards as well, that the it’s the State Chamber and the public power district. And how are some of these things that impacted your career and be able to help you, whether it’s connections or leadership skills or whatever that you’ve taken out of these experiences that have helped you be successful and really a relatively short time in the chamber world.

Derek Rusher 16:56
Yeah, it’s a great question. I would say that right before I was with the chamber, I got asked to be on our Junior Achievement board. And they do financial literacy with kids. And when I went through leadership, Carney, I had a one of the speakers. I’ll never forget, he told us, don’t be on a board just because someone asks you if you need to be passionate about that board was basically his, his talk to us, and so you’re going to get asked as leaders to be on boards, right? Everybody. A lot of nonprofits need boards and things like that. A lot of organizations need board members, but they said, make sure you’re passionate about it. And so that with that tie to education and working with kids, I was like, Yep, I think that’s a good board. Well, since I got on the chamber, as you can imagine, chamber presidents get asked to be on a lot of boards, and so right away I was like, oh man. And so I actually had to kind of sift through some of them and tell some of them no. And I served on one for one year, and then I told the director. I said, Hey, I said, I actually have a I actually have a chamber employee that’s way more passionate about this, and they would be a better fit. And so we did that transition. And I think it’s just knowing that you don’t have to do everything as a chamber president, right, as a chamber executive and and make sure you’re passionate about it, make sure it’s, you know, something, that you can add value as a board member too. Now going through boards, you know, you learn a lot of things, and I think probably the biggest step I made in my career was the decision to be an elected official, and that’s through our public power. So Nebraska has public power, so I was asked to be a representative on the board of directors for Nebraska public power district. I had a campaign talk about learning a lot about campaigning and politics there and all the things that go along with it. Obviously, there was a lot of parts that I liked about campaigning. There was a lot of stuff that I did not like, and it’s just some of it’s ugly, but in the day, going through that process was a big learning experience, and something that I definitely do not regret, and I’ve been on that board since it’s about about 20 months now. And what a fascinating business, because it’s, you know, power, the the energy industry is probably the most capital intensive industry there is, and so the sticker shock was a little crazy, right at first, because we’re dealing with millions and billions, and I’m not used to that as a chamber of commerce, right? And a little impact art business as a nonprofit

Brandon Burton 19:33
guy over here, yeah, yeah, I remember

Derek Rusher 19:38
one of my first meetings, they were saying, we’re going to refurbish this piece of equipment, and it was like 900 some $1,000 and I’m like, wow. I’m like, Well, what’s a new one cost? And they’re like, 5 million. I’m like, okay, refurbish. It is. And, you know, as as as I want to be the best BOARD MEMBER I can be, you know, and that preparation, I’ve found a way to. Uh, you know, get through all of the board packets and all information and just educate myself. And it’s been wonderful. And then the board meetings itself and how they prepare, and just their organization. It’s such a robust organization. I’ve taken some things that they’ve done and tried to right fit them for our little chamber of commerce. And so it’s definitely added value there. And again, I think having a business representative on that board, having a, you know, somebody that’s tied in and has a pulse in the business community, I think it’s really added value that way, as well, on that board of directors. And so it’s been a great experience. It’s a six year term, so I would love to stay on that board for probably two terms. I think that’s probably the right amount, but it takes a long time. I mean, talk about drinking from the fire hose when I started the chamber, yeah, mppd was nothing like that. I mean, it was just, it was like three fire hoses. It’s crazy to learn all the ins and outs of that, but I would say my advice for I think the chamber executives that are listening would be be on a board, not just because you got asked, make sure you’re passionate about it, make sure that you’re able to add value and then take something away as well. We should always continue to learn. I’m a lifelong learner. I believe in that. That’s my education background. That’s why I got my administration, education Education Administration degree. I got my master’s when I was still here at the Chamber of Commerce. Because there was a multiple reasons. I started it, I wanted to finish it. There was a lot of things that overlapped. I mean, every single Master’s class I had talked about communication. And so there’s a lot of great things that I learned through my master’s classes. And I also want to show my kids, you know, I got five daughters. I want to show my kids. My kids that, hey, education is important, and it still is. Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 21:47
especially like your your thoughts about board service and to only serve on boards you’re passionate about. And for any chamber executives listening they they know the headaches of working with a board member who’s not passionate about the chamber, or, you know what they’re supposed to be there, showing up for and executing on, you know, plans of action and things like that. And if you’re not able to show up and give your best self, it’s okay to say no, it’s okay to delegate to somebody else. It’s okay to pass up an opportunity if it doesn’t align with, you know, the mission that you’re, you know, being driven by, in this case, with the chamber, or personal values even, but it’s okay, and I think that organization would appreciate no thank you versus a Okay, I’ll do it on top of my already busy plate, and I’m not really going to give it all the time and effort and Energy it deserves, right,

Derek Rusher 22:41
right? Well, I think that’s part of my reason to be on the small business policy council, because I know it adds value to our Carney businesses. And so at the state level, we have a representative, and I’m actually pregnant is only serve one more year there. I’ve talked to the State Chamber, and I’m going to serve one more year because of just timing of things. And I’m ready to, you know, hand over the reins of someone else. You know, there’s someone else that definitely has earned that spot to be the chair of that business council, but I think that’s that at the end of the day, yeah, just be passionate about the boards that you’re serving on and making sure you can add value for sure.

Brandon Burton 23:15
So in this involvement with these different organizations, different boards, nonprofits, these different ways you’ve you’ve been involved, you’ve been intentional about being involved. Can talk to us a little bit about how your network has been affected, and kind of rubbing shoulders with people in these groups, and just how that’s impacted you. Well,

Derek Rusher 23:35
my kids don’t like to go in public places with me. You know, I didn’t do it really, to, like, selfishly, honestly. I mean, I did it because I truly, I think I love serving, I love what I do, and that’s why I ran for the Nebraska public power district board. Yeah, I didn’t understand everything in the industry, but I just felt like pulled to serve, and so that’s really has been my intent. Now, what it’s done, obviously, is my connections and network has grown tremendously, and I don’t know everything. And so now I have a phone with friend, but I’ve got a lot of friends that I can call on or email and contact and say, Hey, have you guys ever dealt with this, right? And, yeah, there’s forums out there, you know, there’s Facebook groups out there that you can, you know, put a put something out there and get some responses. But when you have a closer relationship, right? And you’ve maybe served together or been on a committee together, you know, that’s a lot easier to get a response from. And so when I can pick up the phone or shoot an email over to somebody or text them, that’s what it’s really done. Because, again, I don’t know everything, and I don’t claim to know everything, and I’m I’m always one that’s always saying, Hey, you. What I like this idea, but let’s see what this chamber is doing, or let’s see what this business is doing, and how can we operationally be better? Because that’s me. I’m I’m in, I’m competitive, and I want to be the best, and so maybe that’s a little bit of my servant leadership, I suppose, and why I want to be on different boards and committees and be involved. But I’ve also, I like leading. I like, you know, being at the front and leading. And I’m a very visionary guy. I’ve got big ideas. I like to move fast. And I know my cons of my leadership too. I know what I’m, you know, moving fast is not good for all my teammates, so I have to slow down. And I don’t I remember, when I first started the chamber, I would present a bunch of ideas, and I’ve learned to present one. Hey, here’s something I think we can focus on, because I’ve got leaders that are very supportive leaders, right? And they’re, they’re the ones that are great at getting all the details and all those things. Well, if I present all these ideas, my other leaders and my on my team are going to be like all the work. They don’t see that. And I’m just, I’ve got all this, you know, this big picture stuff. And so I think it’s, I think it’s wise of me to understand the pros of my leadership and my strengths, but then the cons, right? And maybe what I’m not good at, right? We’re all Swiss cheese, right? We all holes. And I’ve got a great team right now that fills the holes of my leadership and my strengths and what I need to improve, or my weaknesses for lack of better words. And that’s where we are, and we really focus on that. We focus on our strengths as a team, and I’ll continue to do that with any committee I’m on and and knowing people that way. And it’s definitely I found success that way.

Brandon Burton 26:45
I can really appreciate you kind of bridling your your creativity, your ideas, and being able to instead of taking the list of 10 or 15 ideas to say, here’s one for your team, and really as a leader, that’s going to drive your team to be creative and to be leaders as well. Because introducing one idea at a time, they might catch the vision and say, what if we add this too? And it may be something you had on your list of ideas, but letting them drive that helps to build them up as well, which I think is super important,

Derek Rusher 27:18
and that’s the chamber world we’re in right now, right? I think we need to be creative and innovative.

Brandon Burton 27:24
Absolutely. Derek, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for chambers listening who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them and trying to accomplish that goal?

Derek Rusher 27:39
This is a great question. Um, obviously very subjective, but I would hope that all Chamber members just love their current members. One thing I learned right off the bat, I had this lofty goal, right? I’m competitive. I wanted to grow our membership, and so I had a membership growth goal, and then I had a retention goal as well. And then I would say, shortly, and probably less than a month, I squashed the growth goal, and I said, You know what? If, if they don’t want to be Chamber members, whatever, I’m going to spend way less time on recruiting, basically, and I’m going to spend time on retention, and I’m going to love the members that are investing in our chamber now, and we will grow organically, because I believe everyone wants to be part of something great. And so if we can be great and we can show that we are adding value, then we’ll grow, and we have slightly right? There’s the ebbs and flows, as you know, the members come and go, and we feel that in Kearney as well. But, you know, just loving your members. And then I would say the other part of that is, I kind of reference it is being innovative. I mean, AI is you need to embrace it as a Chamber of Commerce. My marketing director, Riley Mills, is phenomenal in social media and AI and all those things, right? And I just love the things he’s doing. We’ve got some really neat, innovative things with making like tiktoks and reels, and he would explain it way better than I but he’s making custom songs for businesses using AI, and it’s awesome, so cool. It’s so cool. And so, you know, there’s a lot to it. I know you can, you know, you got your your recording meetings and all those things. And obviously, I think everybody’s using, you know, chat, GPT and things like that. But you need to embrace, I think, AI. But then also, what else is out there, right? It’s not just AI. We can’t drive our chamber with AI. And how can you continue to be authentic but innovative? And what is next? How can we kind of stay above that business community and see what they’re doing, what trends they have? And I think that’s going to be important for us. And one of the ways that we’re doing it, besides just looking at trends and trying to. Stay up to date on technology is we’ve actually decided to look at our facility, and we sold our building about a year ago, and we’re building a new building, and it’s a major investment, and we ran a capital campaign, and it’s taken a lot of work, but our new building is going to be a collaborative environment for our team. It’s going to allow our Chamber members to come in and work, maybe not quite have a straight incubator space, but there’s space for them to come and work. So we have small businesses, obviously, freelance and that work from home. We didn’t embrace that sector. How do we help the business that’s selling shoes on YouTube and making more money than all of us? Right? How do we help that chamber member now? Right? And then we’ll have a media room where you can do a podcast, you can do video, you can do photo. There’s flexible spaces where you can hold meetings or interviews and things like that. And so that’s kind of our strategic plan is looking at, how can we continue to add more value to our Chamber members through even a facility? And I think we’re super excited. We’re about 30 days away from moving in.

Brandon Burton 31:01
That’s awesome. I can feel the excitement. Well, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Derek Rusher 31:14
I think it’s I think it’s relational. I think it’s really having close relationships with your Chamber members, the the adage that I’ve seen in our industry of businesses joining chambers because it’s the right thing to do, yeah, that’s starting to go away, right? And I still think though that, because still

Brandon Burton 31:36
the right thing to do, but Yeah, correct. Yeah, 100%

Derek Rusher 31:40
but now it’s like, well, what do I get, right? I’m going to invest in in the chamber. Well, what do I get? And how can we continue to add value? So we always look at, what other benefits can we give? And obviously, every industry is a little different, right? Banks need something different than insurance agents and so on and so forth. And so I would say that I see chambers going just more like on a relational and so building relationships and finding opportunities to, you know, have those opportunities where you can just continue to get to know your Chamber members, not on just a Hey, thanks for paying. And here’s your invoice and just a transactional relationship I’d call you need, I think then intimate relationship is going to be a healthy way to run a chamber. And then how can I knowing that chamber member better, you’re going to be able to help them better, because our answer is always yes. That’s our motto, right? That’s a chamber. How could can you do this? Yep, and then we figure it out. And so whether it’s marketing or education or advocacy or involvement. We’re going to tackle those things for those Chamber members. But you need to know them, right? And you need to get to know I mean, just be like your family, right? And that’s, that’s what we call it. We call it our chamber family. And if you know your family members well enough, then you can help them when things are good, when things are bad, whatever it is, and that’s what we need to do for our chamber. And so that’s that’s a tough task that is not easy, but I think that’s really where chambers can hopefully thrive in the future, is continue to build those relationships that you have. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:16
I think that’s key. Well, Derek, this has been great to have you on chamber chat podcast and share your your story, your experience, how being involved has helped lead to the success you’ve seen in the chamber. Or listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Carney. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Derek Rusher 33:38
Yeah, I would say our website, obviously, is a stand, you know, a standard there, so kearneycoc.org, but then our Facebook, I think, is probably still our go to on social media. Yeah, we’re on, we’re on all the channels, but seems like our social media for Facebook is probably the go to there, but feel free to reach out. Even via email. You can find my email pretty easy on our website when you go to our team page. But we’ve got a lot of things going on. And you know what I love about the chamber world is you’ve got the old saying of R&D, rip off and duplicate. And so, you know, we’re looking at other chambers around the around the United States and seeing what they’re doing well, and we’re going to see if we can duplicate that and right fit it in Kearney, and that’s what we do. So yeah, I definitely welcome that for others.

Brandon Burton 34:29
That’s awesome, and we’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy to find you and easy to connect. But Derek, this has been great. I appreciate you and appreciate the experience you shared with us today. Thanks a lot. Well,

Derek Rusher 34:43
thank you. Brandon, appreciate you.

Brandon Burton 34:46
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Fox Cities Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Becky Bartoszek

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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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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Becky Bartoszek. Becky is the President and CEO of the Fox Cities Chamber in Wisconsin and having relocated to Wisconsin in 1998. And Becky’s previous experience included vice president of the Great Lakes for Alltel wireless market leader for the q ti group, and small business owner of a State Farm Agency. Becky currently serves on the ACCE board of directors. The new North board of directors, Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce executives is the current chair WMC board of directors and is currently appointed by Governor eavers to his Advisory Council on Workforce Investment, Becky and her husband Brian, or freedom residents, and they have the two of them together have two adult children as well. But Becky, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I need to start by saying a big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a chamber to their chamber of the year finalists. This is exciting and, and reflective of the great work you guys are doing but wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Becky Bartoszek 2:31
Well, thank you so much brand new appreciate being here today. And yeah, it is really, really exciting for our team to be able to celebrate being nominated as a finalist on our 100 and 50th year anniversary or ever chamber. So we’ve been able to do some really cool things bringing in past board members and you know, doing time capsules and everything this year, it’s been just a blast. So thank you for the you know, the background information. It’s I think people are always interested or find it interesting that my I actually grew up living in a convention center. So the chamber, our local Chamber of Commerce, would have events almost weekly at my house. So that was quite the preparation for getting into the chamber industry. Ultimately, when it was just kind of a normal everyday thing, the way that I had grown up. It’s quite

Brandon Burton 3:26
the training ground. I mean, most people enter the chamber world and they didn’t even know what a chamber was. And they started but you grew up with literally it all around it. So that’s absolutely, yeah, that’s cool. I think that’s a first for us on the shows having somebody that grew up in the in chamber. Yeah.

Becky Bartoszek 3:43
So next time when somebody’s clearing your plates at the dinner. I think that could be a future chamber.

Brandon Burton 3:49
Exactly. That’s right. That’s right. Well, and tell us a little bit about the Fox Cities Chamber just to kind of give us some perspective, the size here chamber staff budget scope of work, just to set the table for our discussion before we dive into the meat of this topic.

Becky Bartoszek 4:06
Oh, sure. Absolutely. The Fox Cities Chamber is hard to find on a map because the largest community in our in our region is Appleton, Wisconsin. So think of it this way. We are south of Green Bay and north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We serve two and a half counties. So we’re pretty good size, footprint. And we are not only the chamber, but we are the regional eto as well. We are current even though we’re the fourth largest community in the chamber, we are the second largest chamber as far as member count. We are over 1400 On our way to 1500 members currently, and we have a staff of 12 that most times 13 right now because I’m an intern, right revenues a little under 2 million about 1.8. And we just continue to grow and grow. In addition to our our traditional Chamber members. yours. We also have about 700 young professionals that have membership with us as well.

Brandon Burton 5:04
That’s awesome. So that’s in addition to the 1400. Members, that’s a different type of membership within the organization. That’s great. I know there’s I’ve heard of other chambers out there that are trying to get young professionals or even high school students involved with the Chamber in some degree, and trying to figure out a model for that. So that’s that’s

Becky Bartoszek 5:25
worked well, for us. We went from 140 to 700 in a year.

Brandon Burton 5:29
Yeah, I would say something worked. Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, on these chamber the year finalist series, I like spending the bulk of our conversation really diving into and discussing the two programs synopsis that were included on your chamber, the year application, and we will, we’ll take a quick break and when we get back we’ll dive in deep on what those two programs are and how they’re moving the needle in your community.

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Alright, Becky, we’re back. So as I as I mentioned before the break, we’re gonna dive into the the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application, if you would just tell us what the what the first program is that you’d like to highlight. And we’ll we’ll dive into that one. So

Becky Bartoszek 7:55
everybody’s always intrigued by our Connect free model. And that is a program that we started exploring in February of 2022. Basically, we brought in Sherry And Kelly from ACCE to do some strategic planning with our board of directors. And there was a great discussion about how we could come together as a community and specifically a chamber and really move the needle with the resources that we have, in our community, our biggest challenges, we just don’t have enough people for the growth that we’re experiencing. So in the state of Wisconsin, in general, if you remove international immigration, we’ve been net negative population growth for a while now not specifically in our market, but overall is it state. So we were trying to find a way that we could attract more people to want to come and live work and play and the Fox Cities Wisconsin area. Now we know that people can get a job anywhere now. And it’s really people decide where they want to live. And then they find a job. So it’s truly quality of life driving it. And we know that is driven by the small business environment. Nobody’s saying, Boy, I want to find the biggest Best Buy. And that’s where I’m gonna move. They want that fun restaurant shopping, kitschy experience. So we came up with a program that we launched six months later, which is called Kinect free. And it is a completely free membership for small businesses that have five or less full time employees, nonprofits that have 10 or less full time employees and all freestanding restaurants. So for example, if you’re a restaurant in a casino, it’s not free. But if you’re a freestanding restaurant, we just have a great robust package that we can provide you to help you get to the next level and to help track people attract people to our community.

Brandon Burton 9:55
So yeah, tell us tell us more how that model works. Oh, obviously, we can’t all work for free as nice as that would be able to do that. How does it operate? A? Are they you see them and participate in different programs and events that do have a cost to it? Or do they move on to a different membership tier? Or what how do you how do you make it work.

Becky Bartoszek 10:19
So that was our biggest challenge. And of course, I was I was very nervous going into this. So we had the first discussion with the board. And the first thing they asked us is, model this financially model it and see if we can make it work. So we spent three months modeling it, and the way that the financials work on this free membership model, from a chamber perspective, now you’re getting more members, you’re touching more people, so your marketing is worth a lot more. So that helped us to be able to recoup revenue, because we were able to sell our marketing at a higher value. In addition to that, you have more people that are invited to your events. So your membership revenue goes down, but your event revenue makes it up. And the only thing that’s not included in our free membership model are things like we don’t do free ribbon cuttings for now for free members. So they have to pay us for that. If they want to use our building or our meeting rooms, they have to pay us if they want to have discounted health insurance through us, that’s an additional add on fee. So there a lot of little ala carte functions that they all want to receive or benefits they want to receive that are an additional fee. So there’s a lot of reasons why somebody would want to get up to the paid level. Now, when we modelled this, we did anticipate number 150 year old organization, we did anticipate a lot of net negative, you know, revenue from migration to a free model. We anticipated on the on the higher end, it can be 80 to $100,000, right away in the first year. And what we’ve actually experienced over a two year period, we’ve only had less than $12,000 in revenue from people dropping down to the free model. And we’ve also seen a lot of our larger investors come forward and say I’m going to give you a larger economic development contribution to help pay for those free members. So it’s worked out quite well.

Brandon Burton 12:28
Yeah. Have you guys made any asks to any of those larger corporations to like that for the economic development? donations? Absolutely.

Becky Bartoszek 12:37
So we did see those contributions go up. And we didn’t know how it was gonna go. First of all, when we when we launched it, we were we were concerned about that. So we did spend another three months, making sure that we can market it correctly. So during that time, we actually did a full rebrand, and launched a new website, because we really, the the biggest challenge with a free membership model is it can’t be a big lift on your team. It has to be something that’s mostly automated. So we did spend about three months, you know, we did probably three years worth of work in six months to launch this. And I can tell you, we had a huge splash for the launch of this event where we actually invited the press in, we invited the politicians in the board, community leaders major investors, and made this big announcement. And we were the lead story on all of the local TV channels that night. And we had boy, probably about 100 Plus applications within the first few days. So that

Brandon Burton 13:42
was my next question. So the business still has to fill out an application. They’re not just getting a membership because they have a business in the Fox Cities area. So so they fill it out is is there any kind of approval process? Or do they fill it out? And then the remember or what you like you mentioned that the automation process, it has to be there. So it’s not too much of a load on your staff? Where Where does the staff interaction take place? What parts are automated, just to kind of give us an idea of how this works? Well,

Becky Bartoszek 14:15
the one thing that we did learn pretty quickly. Yeah, they fill out the application, and then it has to be approved. And the first thing that we were worried about was we were worried about upsetting the chambers around us. And so we were really trying to monitor that you had to be in our footprint to qualify for that membership. That was a crazy lift on our team because you know, we cover half a county here and you know, cities are split in half. So it took us not too long to figure out. We’ll just go and meet with the Chamber’s and talk to them about how to sell around us. And so we we actually did move away from monitoring that everything was in our footprint because it wasn’t a huge to impact but it was taken a lot of time. And then, you know, we are currently transitioning software systems so that more of our marketing touches, as follow ups, you know, 3060 90 days outreach can just be automated. But you know, of course, our ambassadors and our team, you know, we’re reaching out to everybody as quick as they could, especially when the first big group came in, I can tell you, the program has been launched by I think, about 22 months right now. And we have 632 small businesses that we’re supporting today that we weren’t in the past. Wow.

Brandon Burton 15:39
And I love that approach. Instead of we have 632, free membership level, free members, it’s 632 businesses, you’re able to support that you weren’t prior to this model. And that’s huge, because those are often the businesses that need the most support. And they’re underserved and, and end up being the ones that kind of go by the wayside and, and maybe don’t stay in business as long as they would have hoped so. And the cool

Becky Bartoszek 16:07
part, too, is that we’re finding partners in our community that want to do more with us. So for example, the YMCA came to us and said, We love your small business program, we’re going to put together a discounted package for you, so that we can work on the health of our small business owners. And then we had an insurance company that came to us and said, We see this as a great opportunity, we’re gonna offer discounted insurance for your members. So there’s, there’s been a lot of the community that stepped forward and says, We love what you’re doing. How can we help? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:41
yeah, I love that. So let’s shift gears a little bit into the second program, if you want to introduce that and tell us what it’s all about. Sure.

Becky Bartoszek 16:52
Our largest program that we hold each event that we have each year is a huge Oktoberfest event. So it’s actually two days. So on Friday night, we have a huge car show. And that car show is completely dry event. But it brings in about 100,000 people on Friday night. Wow. And then on Saturday is really the big event that we have. And that is a full blown Oktoberfest. But it’s not a lot of Oktoberfest bands. It’s not your traditional Oktoberfest with the German bands. We actually have really popular kind of pop pop bands fans

Brandon Burton 17:33
that people want to listen to. I’ll say it Yeah. And

Becky Bartoszek 17:39
we bring in it’s, it’s estimated between 200,200 20,000 People that day. And we started, the event actually starts at nine in the morning, with a big craft vendor business expo at one end. Then we have a ton of food trucks throughout the event. And then 13 hours of live music forum Friday night through Saturday. So

Brandon Burton 18:09
how long have you guys been doing the search? I guess first of all, is there a name branding it? Or is it just is it October fest is that just it’s

Becky Bartoszek 18:18
Appletons Oktoberfest so what we’ve actually talked about in our in our application for the award is focused on the past two years, because that program has Appletons Oktoberfest has been going on for 42 years now. And we were always involved, but it was always run by a community steering committee. And when ochman COVID hit, and you know the world shut down. Obviously, we didn’t want to be known as the super spreader events of the Midwest. So we didn’t have it the first year. And at the end of that first year, we lost most of our steering committee. And we also lost a lot of our volunteers. And to pull this event off the way that we have been doing it. It took about 1200 volunteers each year to make it happen. So come second year of the event, the world is starting to open up again. But our community was really scared about a surge. And we really didn’t want to put people in harm’s way. And some of our largest investors in our organization are our health care systems. And based on their input, there was a second year that we cancelled Oktoberfest. I mean, we planned it right down to the last minute. And we just could not make it happen because we didn’t have the volunteer population come out to do it well, and it would have been the 40th anniversary. So at that point, we took a step back and basically had to revamp the entire program. Now what’s is all about our Oktoberfest is it’s a gigantic give back to our community. So think of this as a street long or a mile long venue that’s just jam packed with people. And, you know, it’s free free admission, nobody pays to get in. But every food vendor that’s there has to have a sign in front of their location, saying which nonprofit they are sharing their revenues with. And then all of the money that is raised by beer sales, which we don’t tell people how much beer we sell that the proceeds from that go into a large grant fund, and those dollars go back into our community to support our nonprofits. And for many of our nonprofits, that’s their biggest fundraiser of the year. That

Brandon Burton 20:52
is huge. I love seeing chamber being able to sit to partner and support other nonprofits and their missions, and what a great way a big community driven event, and you’re gonna get the foot traffic, people are gonna buy food, they’re gonna buy beer, they’re going to do all the things, right. So being able to tie that in. And I imagine each vendor has the choice of which nonprofit they want to support. Do you provide a list to say, here’s our local nonprofits to choose from? Or can they go outside of a certain list of parameters? Or how is that structured?

Becky Bartoszek 21:28
No, it’s completely up to them. And if they come to us and say, Do you have somebody we can make a connection for them, but it’s really up to them to decide which nonprofit they want to support. So you know, we do we see everything from wrestling teams to the police department, you know, the police and fire departments are they’re, you know, challenging each other and, you know, chili cook offs, and everything else. But for us to be able to make this happen. And that’s really what our focus on the application was, we had to change some things, we had to bring really the bulk of the lift into the chamber directly to make this happened. And we bought a new software program where we were able to really get get our hands around the complete management of the of the process. In addition to that most of the food vendors historically that had been there were the nonprofits themselves setting up food booths. Well, we changed it so that it was food trucks and restaurants coming in to support those nonprofits and do revenue sharing. So our need for volunteers went from 1200, every year, to closer to 800. To have the same impact.

Brandon Burton 22:44
Oh, wow, that that helps. I mean, 800 is still a big number. But that’s that means 400 less, so that’s good. So you mentioned the software that you purchase, is that an event specific software? Or?

Becky Bartoszek 22:57
It is it is it helps us map out just about everything you can need on the mile that we’re putting together it, you know, historically, you know, the steering committee would have a spreadsheet and the first time we went through it afterwards, it said, you know, ice for Oktoberfest, okay, there’s ice for 200,000 200,000 people, you know, six bags or six trucks? It really, you know, helped us how was all of the information that we needed to know, to make sure no, no matter who we had on the team at the Chamber, that there was a footprint to follow. Yeah, and for years to come. So those are just a couple of the changes that we just really did a deep dive to help increase the efficiencies. Ya know, we even started doing surveys of people that were our food vendors, and getting net promoter scores on whether they would recommend that their peers and other people join the event. And that helped helped us fine tune a lot of the things that we were doing as well. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 24:00
that’s huge. Go get that feedback and be able to make those adjustments for year to year and really improve the overall program that the the event, that’s great. So each of the vendors who they register with you imagine they have to to be able to get everything in order and be able to have their spot and be able to, you know, tie it into whatever nonprofit and all that stuff. Exactly. It’s

Becky Bartoszek 24:26
quite a process. Because think about it this way it’s taking over our main street. So we have food vendors that we need to very carefully map this treat, so that we’re not putting a pizza vendor in front of a pizza restaurant, you know, and we do work with those local restaurants to give them the first opportunity to be on the street and to be able to capitalize on making the most revenue that day.

Brandon Burton 24:51
Yeah, so and I imagined whoever’s in front of, you know, whatever booth is in front of their business or restaurant, it’s still going to drive people in door ers into their shops, hopefully beyond to use the restroom. Right? Exactly. Spend some money, hopefully. So, exactly. Well, that sounds like an amazing event and being able to fine tune it and make improvements on it like you have that’s, it sounds like a fun one to to attend. So

Becky Bartoszek 25:21
well. And to tell you a little bit more about the economic impact. Now with the new software and partnerships that we’ve created, we’re finally able to figure out a little bit more about what the event is doing for our community. And working with our tourism, convention Bureau and state analytics, we’re able to get a better idea, but not completely. So this is a cash only event. So when we can track the actual dollars that are spent on credit cards, and the dollars that are spent on overnight stays, we’ve been able to find out how many people are coming to our community, where they’re coming from, and they’re coming from all over the Midwest for this. And we know before we even look at the cash input implications that this event is having, on average of $43.2 million impact on our economy.

Brandon Burton 26:14
Whoa, that is huge. That’s way more than I would have guessed it would have come nowhere close to that. Wow. So as we, as we start to wrap things up here, you guys are obviously moving the needle and making an impact in your community. And being a chamber the year finalist, you guys are kind of at the top of your game at this moment. And I wanted to ask for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item or piece of advice you might share with them to try to accomplish that goal.

Becky Bartoszek 26:51
Well, you know, it’s funny, I was new to the chamber industry about five years ago. And I can tell you what, what worked for me and what worked for us. I actually did a deep dive into all the information I could find a both chambers of the year. So for example, when Ocala was the chamber of the year in our category, I stocked their website, I looked at everything they had. And I found that videos were really working well for them. And I thought, well, I don’t really have the resources to do that. And we talked about it as a team. And we actually went to the local TV station and said, Now, come on, your tagline is we are Green Bay, but you’re covering our market work with us. And it resulted in us for the past two years, having the opportunity to bring a guest onto a local show, and spotlights something going on in our community and having beautifully professionally done videos for zero cost. Yeah, yeah. None of that would have would have happened, had we not been looking at what the chamber of the years were doing. And it’s just given us great ideas to make them our own. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:03
but those news agencies are always looking for stories. They’re looking for content. And if you can provide bring a guest on and provide some valuable content to their viewership. Yeah. They cover your market, why wouldn’t they do that? So that’s great partnership and very budget friendly. So I like that I like Yeah. And Ocala is a great chamber, obviously being a chamber the like, they’re, they’re great. Kevin and his team, there are amazing. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Becky Bartoszek 28:41
You know, it’s funny, because it’d be in our 100 and 50th anniversary this year, we always talk about our mission today. This is the same as it was 150 years ago. And it’s bringing our business community together to help those businesses thrive, but to create a better place in our community for people to want to live work and play, obviously. But you know, realistically, I think that that mission is going to continue, but we just need to continue to evolve. You know, when we’re looking at 2025. You know, we’re looking at cutting back awards programs, and launching AI opportunities for, you know, a summit and things like that. And it’s just constantly evolving, and really keeping an understanding of what’s impacting our businesses and our lives and making sure that we remain relevant. And I think as long as we can do that, now, we’re hopeful our chambers got at least another 150 years.

Brandon Burton 29:38
That’s right. That’s right. That’s great. Becky, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in the Fox Cities Chamber and more about the programs. You talked about what would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you?

Becky Bartoszek 29:59
Absolutely. So Obviously all of our information is on our website FoxCitiesChamber.com. My contact information is on there as well. And you can always reach me at bbartoszek@foxcc.net.

Brandon Burton 30:12
Very good, and we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well. But, again, just big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a finalist this year for chamber the year and I wish you guys the best of luck in Dallas.

Becky Bartoszek 30:27
Thank you so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 30:30
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Bend Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katy Brooks

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Below is an auto-generated transcription. 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.

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.

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.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE chamber the year finalist series. Our guest for this episode is Katy Brooks. She is the president and CEO of the Bend Chamber of Commerce in Oregon. Her vision for the chamber is to catalyze and environment where businesses and employees and the community thrive. The chamber supports a collaborative business environment and leads efforts to resolve tough issues like affordable housing and childcare shortage, assisting businesses with resources and advocating for businesses at the local and state level. Katy’s background and economic development coalition building and government relations enables her to understand public policies and issues in order to advocate for the businesses of band as well as forming partnerships and alliances that support a growing business community. Her career has included over 20 years working in public affairs and economic development for the ports of Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. She has been a public affairs and strategic planning consultant for public and private organizations in Oregon, Washington and Alaska and manage Community Relations for the Oregon Department of Tourism. Katy is a member of the Oregon State Early Learning Council and has served on numerous regional, state and city boards and committees. Prior to coming to bend, Katy served on the Public Affairs Committee for the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, and the board of directors for the Washington State Business Association. Katy received her BS at Southern Oregon University with and graduate studies at Portland State University. She’s received extensive training and facilitating public issues and resolving conflict her and her family reside in Bend. But Katy, I am excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast. And first of all, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a 2024 chamber, the year finals. That’s a huge accomplishment. But please take a minute to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Katy Brooks 3:25
Well, thanks. I’m really, really honored to be here. It’s just so terrific. Being a finalist. And in this fabulous industry that we’re all in. I have been in the chamber world for about eight years since I moved from the coast and port world working for port authorities for a long, long time. And it’s been a great transition. I live here with my family, we do a lot of mountain biking enjoy a bit of a higher elevation than what I was previously at. And for those of you haven’t been to this part of the world is quite beautiful. And it’s full of great things to do outside, which is what we’re all about.

Brandon Burton 4:09
That’s right. It is a beautiful part of the country for sure. Well, please take a few moments and tell us a little bit about the Bend Chamber of Commerce. What makes you guys so special, what’s your your chamber look like the work you’re involved with? Size staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of give us some perspective as we get into our discussion?

Katy Brooks 4:33
Sure. Well, we’ve had quite a bit of population growth. So the business sector has grown as well. We are population of about 110,000. We are on the east side of the caste range. So we are a little bit removed from where most of the population of the state is. So bend is kind of a it’s a mountain community but it’s really a self sufficient ecosystem here. That’s really unique. And it’s something that we take into consideration. Anytime we put any of our strategies together. We have great networking programs. Here we have a really strong advocacy program because our state capitol is in the valley. And to lift up our voice from Central Oregon, we align with a lot of partners here. We build our leaders, we concentrate quite a bit on how we support a system of of leadership and workforce development that can sustain our growth, not just in population, but our business growth and several industry sectors that have taken off here. And we look for our niche initiatives, we look for ways to take on things that we see and our members see as obstacles and impediments or opportunities. And really try to capitalize those and bring up solutions. And I’ll get into that here in a little bit of what that actually looks like.

Brandon Burton 6:04
Yeah, well that’s the crux of the Chamber’s to solve those problems, right that face the community. So very good. Well, as we focus on these chamber, the year finalist episodes who really like to dive in, in more detail on the programs that were submitted on your chamber that your application, I think those are a really good indicator of the type of work you’re involved with and, and where you’re seeing those levels of importance to be able to make an impact in your community. So I’m excited to dive into what those programs are and all those details as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Katy, we’re back. As we dive into the meat of this episode and talking about the programs that were submitted on your chamber, that your application, please share with us what what the first program was? And we’ll dive into that and save the good stuff on second program for for a few minutes.

Katy Brooks 8:52
Yeah, it’s always hard. I’m sure everybody else who submitted an application feels this way, it was hard to choose in some respect. Because we just do so much. And as with all chambers, we have changed so much over the last several years. So when you look at at our programs, it looks like like today rather than yesterday. And it looks like what the key issues are that we’re struggling with here, rather than some of the more traditional things you think about in chamber world. But I’ll I’ll talk a little bit about Ben 101. So Ben 101 was established in collaboration with a bunch of folks from the community from several industry sectors, who said essentially, you know, we are growing faster than any other city in our state we have the more more jobs per capita than any other city in our state and we’re losing touch with the culture we worked really hard to establish we’re very bootstrap kind of a community here. We were lumber mill industry, which declined dramatically in the 80s, we reinvented ourselves. Now we’re biotech, health care sciences, outdoor industry, product development, high tech, all sorts of things are happening here that frankly, didn’t exist 10 years ago. And what happens when you bring that many new people and new industries together, you kind of lose touch with everyone, you go from a small little town to, you’re actually a small city. And that’s got a different dynamic. So Bend 101 brings in key leaders from our community to tell the story of our history, tell the story of our culture, which is be nice, you’re invent, and we’re collaborative, we’re dolphins, we’re not sharks. And we have a lot of ways for people to plug in. So it’s like getting a turbo charge in everything you would want to know if you move to a new place. And not only do you get the information, but we match you up with people from the community in various industries, from the workforce. So it’s not like insta friend, but it’s close to it. It’s it’s hard introductions of folks that you might find really interesting and want to have coffee with later. And then we work with the human resources, folks to really make sure that we follow up. How do your folks feel about this? Did they meet somebody there that they didn’t get to connect with that they want to and really make those connections meaningful? So you have the background information, you know, where we’ve been where we’re going to, and you have access to the people who made it that way? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:45
So I think it’s interesting to to inform newcomers on the culture of Bend. And I imagine that’s a tough task to try to infuse culture. But what is it? What does it look like this with Bend 101? What’s the format? How do you? How do you structure I love the overall the, you know, the high level view of making those connections and welcoming those newcomers. But when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, what what is the structure of it look like? Well,

Katy Brooks 12:15
we use a lot of humor, because we have some idiosyncrasies and little things about them, like every community does that are pretty funny. And one of ours is our claim to fame is roundabouts. They’re everywhere. And anybody who’s new to bend goes what is going on. You can’t get anywhere without going in a circle. So we kind of poke fun at ourselves, we have a really great welcoming video, where we talk about how friendly we are and kind of help people navigate the why of things and kind of laugh at ourselves a little bit. But then we we give the overall here’s how the city operates. And here’s some information for about 1015 minutes. And then every time we hold a one on one, we do it three times a year we fish feature a different part of bend. For example, last time we did this, we featured our healthcare system, educating folks on what that looks like, how do you access it? Who are the leaders there? Who should you know, what should you know, this month, we are, in fact, this week, we’re holding one that features our park system. Our Park system is amazing. It’s very robust, very well funded. There’s mountain bike trails, literally hundreds of miles you can ride and it connects different communities in Central Oregon. So we’ll share all that information. And then talk a little bit about, hey, this is everybody’s chance right now to reach out to somebody you don’t know, unless make those connections happen. So it’s kind of infusing that cultural welcome as much as we can. It changes a little bit every time we hold the event, depending on the information we share, but the outcome is the same. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:57
So does anybody come to multiple sessions have been one on one? How does that like if you want to learn about the parks? And you didn’t get that in your session? How does that work? Oh,

Katy Brooks 14:07
totally. We have repeat offenders. And because it’s really fun. And we are beer town, we have 14 breweries. And so that’s some fun, people just enjoy showing up and interacting folks that have been here for a really long time. They like to show up. In fact, we reach out to them. We want them there. Because how else are newcomers going to meet the establishment? Right? And so you need some of those people to come multiple times. And really mix it up with the old the new the the in between. And if folks are new, and they think hey, that was great. I want to learn about a different sector because I’m thinking about getting involved, then that’s great.

Brandon Burton 14:49
Yeah, that is that’s fantastic. I love that. The idea of it. I love the execution of it and making all the connections and really welcoming people to a community that really sets them up to thrive from the beginning. And I’m sure there’s success stories that you can share with people that have come in and been able to make those connections and, and be able to get their feet on the ground much quicker so to speak. Absolutely. So as we, as we move along, let’s let’s shift gears into what the second program is it was submitted on your chamber the your application. Yeah,

Katy Brooks 15:26
our workforce housing initiative. So I’m co chairing the ACC II horizon initiative that Sheri Ann is, is heading up. And I was so intrigued by this, and I’ll tell you why it matters to the workforce housing issue, asking people about what is the most pressing issue and opportunity in front of you right now? And then saying, Alright, so in 10 years from now, what would that look like? And how do we get from point A to point B, I think is a really useful thing to do. And we’ve essentially been doing this for a few years. And every year, both in the front windshield and 10 years down the line, people are worried about housing, a little bit of background about bend, it’s, it’s quite lovely here, and I’m sure everybody’s community is. But we we experienced something in Cote COVID that a lot of us didn’t see coming. Obviously, nobody saw the pandemic coming. And that is a lot of folks who are professionals who could work from anywhere, say, why not live in Bend, and they came in during COVID, much of the housing stock has been occupied, and it drove prices up 75% In about two or three years, wow, it’s kind of ridiculous. And we looked around and said, Holy smokes, this is not, we knew it was bad. But now we’re 5000 units behind in a community of 100,000 110,000. That’s, that’s significant. So we hear this from our, our business partners and members all the time, we can’t hire biggest thing that’s deterring us is folks can’t afford to live here. So we started out about three years ago with research. And the research was alright, how do we assess how ready Ben dites are to address this population issue in this housing issue, and we ask questions around density. Because this is, everybody has a little yard and your little house and or it’s a cabin or whatever, and started that conversation about so we’re gonna have to go up, we’re gonna have to get more dense, people are going to be living closer together in certain parts of town. And we’ve tested that. We tested what made everybody accept it and feel better about it. And we use that information to form our platform. And one of the things that we ask that I think is really important is who should be leading this effort. And in that public poll, business sector came out at the top, as did the bend Chamber of Commerce, more than government and more than Housing Authority, nonprofits, etc. So we decided to take this on. So we developed several, several, I guess, strategies from they’re all based on research. And one strategy was alright, what we learned from the initial poll is, folks are hesitant to really talk about densification of a community that was an old mill town. But when we talk about what you get in exchange for that, they’re really willing to do it. So we launched a social media program called I Am bent, trying to educate folks on what this is, we’re not talking about everywhere, we’re talking about places in Bend, that are designed for people for community for Makerspace for art, and also here are the people we want to live in this. It’s a full range. And we would feature nurses and firefighters and massage therapists and artists and restaurant managers, the folks who could not afford to get a place here, rent or to own definitely not own. So we started that education process about two or three years ago, and it’s been going really well. So that’s one piece. The other piece was, what is the go fast button? And how In other words, how do you get more inventory out there as quickly as possible? accessory dwelling units. ADUs are one of those ways. If you have extra property, which a lot of people do here in Bend. If you put a small living unit back there, you can create some income for yourself and help solve the workforce housing issue. So we put together a website on how to build an adu. How do you finance it? How do you permit How do you manage it over time? And it’s just an easy step by step process and then we’ve partnered with the city of Bend to have pre approved plans. And we’re going to be starting to populate that here in the next couple of months of choose your style. And you go through a streamlining process streamlined process. So you’re permitted and ready to go much, much faster and much more less expensive. So the adu is another strategy. The other strategy really dovetailed with our advocacy program. How do we raise our voice as a region, the state level and at the federal level, on the need for affordable and attainable housing. So we met with the Tri County leaders in our area, it’s a pretty big area, and came up with one platform that we went to our legislature with, and it was very effective housing was top of mind with Governor Tina Kotek, this session, and a lot of great programs came out of that. And then finally, we brought in expertise from across the country to really take a look at our zoning, and look at our methodology of getting homes on the ground that are affordable and quickly, and use that person and those methods to inform policy at the local level too. So that was pretty successful. And during this time, we also wanted to do the thing, not just talk about it. And so we raised money, we raised a couple 100,000, and just did an initial investment in a nonprofit Land Trust, who was doing an experiment and the experiment was getting some subsidized housing and a cottage style. So for a lot that’s like 6000 feet by 3000 feet, which is typical city a lot you could put in maybe three to four cottage style homes in there. And so they built these, put it on deed restricted property, but lowered the price enough. So folks in in a below area median income could actually afford the downpayment and to purchase that house, and own the house, not the land, but the house. So we bought down that cost, those homes are net zero, they’re worth about, probably about 600,000. Here, we got it under 200,000. Wow. And all of those homes are now occupied by people who work invent. But the real unique thing about this was we decided we wanted to take a risk. And we wanted to demonstrate how employers can actually participate in solving this problem. So what happens is when you donate money for a certain amount per house, you get extra points preferential points in a lottery. And that lottery is alright, if I own Katy’s ice cream shop, and I give X amount of money to one of those houses, I know one of my employees is going to get that house as long as they qualify. And those qualifications included, you have to earn under 80, ami, you have to have had a job and bend for a year, you have preferential points if you’re a minority, and so on, and you have to be pre approved, you’ve got to be able to buy this house and pay pay the mortgage, that

Brandon Burton 23:13
I was gonna ask about that about the qualifications to purchase that house because I could see somebody say, Oh, what a great deal, like get a $600,000 house for 200,000. But the criteria and the application process for that. And I imagine so the the businesses that help pay into that fund, kind of get first dibs, so to speak as far as their employees being able to apply for that routing, is that correct?

Katy Brooks 23:37
That’s absolutely right. And it’s deed restricted for 99 years. So if the house ever sells the same restrictions apply to the next buyer. The great thing is that shit, that preferential chick comes back to you as an employer. So another one of your employees get a shot at qualifying to buy the house. So we bought down four houses. And instead of using it for my employees at the Chamber, we pushed it out to do a demonstration project with any business event. So if you agreed as a business at Brandon’s candy shop, if you said okay, I’m going to pay $2,500 down to help my employee with the closing costs. And here are my five employees that qualify, you would have had a shot and those employees would have had a shot and that’s what we did. And so, folks all throughout the city, radiology technicians, manager, Windows Store, folks who you think of when you think of middle class or or entry, you know, mid level that had access to this home these homes and it was so successful, that they built 50 more this year. They’re in the process of it, and almost all those 50 homes have been subsidized by employers. They built another 100 You In the adjacent neighborhood, to the west, and another 100 plus to the north of us in another community, and they’re doing the same methodology. So in one year, we went from let’s experiment with four houses and just put these these opportunities out as an employer subsidized formula, and proved a concept that is now over 200, or over 100, no 200 homes that will be occupied and subsidized by employers in the area for 99 years. That

Brandon Burton 25:32
is awesome. I can see it being a template, even that some of these bigger employers might might do their own system, right, where they do housing for their own employees, and almost like a military base used to see you know, military housing, but you could you could do something similar with some of these big

Katy Brooks 25:50
kids so that that people earn equity, the whole point to home ownership. Is that generational wealth, yeah. And so that has to be a part of this and doing it with a partner who’s a nonprofit on deed restricted property was the way to go. And we’re just now rolling out our next investment. We raised about a half a million so far, we’re trying to get over the million for a revolving loan to help nonprofits and builders just put more mid market product out there on deed restricted land. So we’re doing our next experiment. Yeah. Which is what chambers should do.

Brandon Burton 26:34
I love these creative solutions. I mean, starting with the the adu website and encouraging people to build the smaller dwellings on their existing land. I mean, that’s, I think any community would rather see that than a big high rise apartment complex or something, you know, it fits in the community a little better. And then, you know, this path with housing and being able to help people own it own a house is amazing. So kudos to you guys for thinking outside the box and really taking ownership of this and finding a solution. I love this. It’s a it’s a great model that can be followed in other areas, as well. So yeah, as we begin to wrap things up here, these chamber the year finalist episodes, I think are special because you guys are top of the game at the moment, right? So for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what can a tip or or action item might you suggest for them to employ to try to accomplish that goal?

Katy Brooks 27:38
Be willing to take risks, have a have a board? That is you bring along, work with your board? And identify, ask the hard questions identify what the issues are, that’s preventing folks from growing or the opportunities that would help businesses grow, and go for the ones that are gnarly and tough to do that require convening. And a lot of work to bring partnerships online. That is what we are made to do. And get people on board, do your research and make it happen. Because I think there aren’t very many organizations like chambers, who are built for this. And that’s how we’ve all changed right over the many of us went through COVID. And that changed a lot. But I think it’s much, much bigger than that, over the last 10 plus 20 years, something like that. I think that as businesses change, we have to be the first ones to we have to see it, identify it, predict it and do it.

Brandon Burton 28:46
Yeah. On those gnarly goals. That’s what people can get behind. Right? If it’s just something that’s barely going to move the needle, it’s hard to get get their interest and getting behind it. But yeah, there’s big hairy audacious goals, right, that that’s what people can get behind and and get some ownership in. I love that. So I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future. And I understand you’re working on the horizons report as well. So you might have some additional insight. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see their future and purpose going forward?

Katy Brooks 29:22
So I think chambers are the leading edge. I think that we have an intrinsic design of who we are, to convene, to go beyond partisanship, to ask the harder deeper questions and take things on that don’t have an apparent immediate answer. There aren’t any other types of organizations who can do that in the private sector is a huge responsibility and it’s super fun, by the way. And so I think that is our Our future is asking that what’s 10 year out? Question? If it’s 10 years out, what are the signs? Read it? If you don’t know, ask somebody. That’s the other thing that we do is ask a lot of folks with great expertise. We don’t have to have the answers. We just need to know who to ask. And we have to have the the fortitude to identify things that make sense for us to take on that really requires collective effort, and foresight, and a little bit of risk. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:32
I love that chambers being the leading edge and taking on those things that don’t have an apparent answer. And that is the the DNA of what a chamber is, though. And especially when you think of AI and advancements in technology, like there’s there needs to be that continuing purpose of a chamber. And that’s it right there. I love it. So Katy, you mentioned asking if you don’t know as somebody so I’d like to see for people listening who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn a little bit more about how you guys are doing things, doing things in band, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Katy Brooks 31:11
Well, anybody can give me a buzz but my email address is katy@bendchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 31:22
Easy, we will get that in our show notes for this episode as well to to make it easy to look up and connect with you. But Katy, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast and again, huge congratulations to you and your team being selected. As a finalist. It really is a indicator of the impact you guys are making in your community as as indicated through our discussion today. So you guys are are moving that needle and big. Congratulations to you guys.

Katy Brooks 31:49
Thanks so much. We’re so thrilled.

Brandon Burton 31:52
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Michigan West Coast Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Jodi Owczarski

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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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You’re joining us today for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Jodi Owczarski. Jodi is the President and CEO of the West Coast Chamber in Michigan. For the first five years the West Coast Chamber Jodi was accountable to provide leadership and all areas of the organization as well as serving as the integrator within the EOS framework. As a vice president and CEO, Jodi was responsible for all human resources, accounting and finance functions, as well as managing the staff, Facilities and Operations and directing the West Coast leadership program. She was made president and CEO of the West Coast chamber on September 1 2020. To Jodi’s limitless capacity for solving math problems has been essential to creating budgets and balance sheets. And her inviting personality and quick humor combined with our strategic thinking give her the edge when making when managing staff committees, volunteers, Jodi’s contagious energy ripples into our business community, and today will ripple into this podcast episode. But, Jodi, we’re excited to have you back with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. For those who are regular listeners she was with us almost a year ago, as I look back on it, she’s back in episode 244. But we’re excited to have you back with us and give you an opportunity to say hello to everyone listening. And I like asking for an interest. Interesting tip. Interesting fact about us so we can get to know you a little better.

Jodi Owczarski 2:49
I love that. Brandon, thank you. I’m honored to be back, especially as a finalist for chamber of the year. That’s something we’ve aspired to for a long time. Well, I almost had to ask the staff an interesting fact about me. But I guess as it relates to being part of the chamber world, I actually started at the chamber as an ambassador, and was an ambassador when I was hired on back in 2017. And was in the leadership class. And part of my new role at the Chamber was to be the director for the leadership program. So I started directing the program that I was still a member of the class were so that was an interesting twist on being a part of that program.

Brandon Burton 3:30
Yeah, very meta, right, like, and leading it. You took good notes at the beginning so you can have some idea what you’re doing. Exactly. Well, tell us a little bit about the West Coast chamber, give us an idea of the type of chambers kind of work, you guys are involved with size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation.

Jodi Owczarski 3:52
Absolutely. The West Coast chamber is on the west shore of Lake Michigan. We are based in Holland, Michigan, a community of about 120,000 people in the greater Holland area. In this space, we have 1233 members, as of today, every member counts. And we’ve recently expanded to a staff of eight team members. interesting for us. We have found that we are a very fertile bunch over here. We’ve had four maternity leaves in six months and a fifth one coming. So our small team has been put to the test. Seems like we take having babies two at a time around here. So we’re growing our chamber membership. One, one baby at a time.

Brandon Burton 4:44
Wow. Yeah, your your team is it’s like doubling right. Is called Workforce Development. You bring them yeah,

Jodi Owczarski 4:53
we’re dedicated right to the workforce development. We’re all growing our own.

Brandon Burton 4:58
That’s right. I love it. Well Yes Congratulations to you guys for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It is a huge accomplishment I know even to to be selected and I on these episodes I love diving into the programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application. So we’ll spend the majority of our time today talking about those. And we’ll dive into those programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Jodi, we’re back. So why don’t you tell us what the first of the two programs is that you’d like to highlight today? And we’ll dive into the details of it and learn a little bit more.

Jodi Owczarski 7:32
Absolutely. So I mentioned that I was in the West Coast Leadership Program, our community based leadership program. And as I was trying to reimagine what that program could look like, I really worked to reevaluate that last day, the program that we had called graduation, and really thought about trying to discover ways that we could do a better job of tangibly launching those leaders out into our community. And so the first year I had them go around and volunteer around town. And the group of 25 or 30 people in the class at that point, had a great time. And from that, we discovered that we there’s a little something here. And so the next year, we did it again. And we allowed them to invite a friend or colleague along and internet, we had almost 100 people out serving. And that’s when the idea really hit that we could do something bigger. And from that our first initiative was born, which is called Community Impact day. So in 2022, we decided to take the afternoon of the last day of our leadership program, and facilitate volunteer opportunities with people throughout the community that were willing to serve. And so this could be anything from painting to spreading woodchips to helping stuff, mailers for nonprofit. And so we reached out to our nonprofit organizations, we set that up. And in 2022, we had 250 People go out and serve that afternoon. It was awesome. And as we were debriefing at the end of the day, my team was kind of energized and I had that post event high and threw a a b hag out there and said you know what, let’s do it again. And next year, let’s go for 1000 people and and so we did we we went for it. We ended up with 983 which of course is short of our goal, but it felt anything but short of the goal last year when I drove through the town and could see nearly 1000 people out volunteering all wearing our community impact a blue shirts, and and we knew that something great was really underway. This year. We did it again may 15 2024 And we had over 1500 15 122 people serving this year. And next year, we’re shooting for 2025 and 2025. So it’s so much fun. And our hope is that we’re going to get other chambers across our region across the state and even across the country, leaning in and doing this ideally, even on the same day, when that’d be

Brandon Burton 10:24
cool. That would be awesome. So you thought 1000 people out in the community serving was it be hag right? Yeah. And look at your look where you are now, right like that. It almost seems like a small goal, looking back on and seeing the growth and where the vision is going today. I love how you talked about creating something to be able to launch these leaders into the community. So what is their role in this these these leaders that go through the leadership program? Yep. What’s that launch look like?

Jodi Owczarski 10:57
Great question. So I knew that going from 200 to 1000, I had to do some creative things. And the leadership class played a big part in that. So we have a class of typically 25 people, they were each responsible for choosing a site that they were going to volunteer at, and being the leader at that site, which also meant identifying all of the volunteers that were needed for that location. So they had choices of where they could go, but each site needed at least 10 volunteers. So now I knew I was going to have 250 volunteers just with a leadership class. It also gave them a great opportunity to lead at that spot. Undoubtedly, the group of volunteers moved through the volunteer projects quicker than what the organization expected. And so we always need somebody on point to say, what more can we do, and hey, let’s go over here and do this next, and just kind of take charge and continue to make things happen. And so they’re able to serve in that way. Once we saw that model work, we expanded that same thing to our board of directors into our ambassadors, so that you get another, here’s another 150 volunteers coming, here’s another 400 volunteers coming over this way. And so it was it was a quick, repeatable way to gather groups, when you start seeing teams come right from businesses, etc, that it’s the whole IT department from this manufacturer, or, you know, fill in the blank with who that is that they’re coming out as a group to do that together. And in the benefits that they see in that come right along with that. Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 12:44
can see where certain Chamber members is different businesses in the community could see it as a corporate responsibility, kind of a thing to come out and give back to the community so they can create their own teams. And I could see, you know, competition coming out of this at some point for sure, the earning or something. Yeah,

Jodi Owczarski 13:01
there’s some other pieces of this as well, where it’s like, you look at the younger generation, and what we’ve studies are showing is that investing in the community, volunteerism is critical for them. And if they see their employer investing in that way, and allowing them space, to be able to go do that as a part of their work, their retention is so much higher. And we’re hearing that from our employers. We also worked really hard on inclusivity. This year, as we went from 1000, or 983, to 12. To 15 122, we wanted to look at who’s often overlooked in this process. And we went to Senior Centers where we were sending volunteers to go serve these senior citizens. But we also went to them and said, Yes, and we’d love to take your senior citizens out. And we believe that they’ve got great value to contribute, let’s find opportunities that they can serve, maybe it’s not spreading wood chips, but we’ve got some other things that we could create that could be meaningful for them to do. And so we had that happening. Same thing for an organization that serves adults with a challenges and sent the group into serve there, but also brought that group of participants out to come and serve and it was just the coolest thing to see the pride that they had in the work that they did out in our community.

Brandon Burton 14:32
I love it. You’re answering the questions that I have before I asked them about how you grow Yeah, so exponential exponentially like that. But it’s it’s getting you know, those leaders from the leadership class involved and then extending it to the board and the ambassadors and then kind of cross pollinating with those that you’re serving also providing service and I love it. I mean, you guys are just have your eyes wide open to opportunities, and inviting and being inclusive and What What kind of outcomes are you seeing through the community as you guys implement these, these community impact days?

Jodi Owczarski 15:07
You know, there’s there’s these easy, tangible outcomes, right. So if we look at the city of Holland, for example, we went and did two big projects. Last year for the city of Holland in 2023, we built a playground, for them that was replacing an old kind of broken down one and put in a new inclusive playground, that children of all physical and cognitive abilities would be able to utilize. We also went out and painted railing along the seawall and painted miles of painting of railing along the seawall, and for the city of Highland in that three hour time block, we saved them over $120,000. It’s just remarkable right to be able to do that. And it’s, it took us very little effort. But it’s a tangible outcome on on our city. So there’s those kinds of outcomes. Our nonprofits are seeing additional, we’ve tried to coach them up along the way to say, Man, this is an opportunity for you to have all of these people learn about your organization. So as they come there, and they’re ready to get started, take five minutes, give them your elevator pitch, right? Tell them about what you do and why you do it, and what your biggest needs are. And what we’re hearing from those organizations is that the relationships continue beyond this one afternoon. They’re coming in to volunteer on an ongoing basis. They’re becoming donors and, and financial supporters of the organization. They’re becoming advocates and helping to tell the story and grow awareness of these organizations. So it’s cool to see that happen as well. And then we see the impact of the investment of the volunteers themselves. They feel differently about the community when they go to the park where they built the playground, or where they painted the railing. That’s their park, they’re gonna pick up garbage that they see on the ground, right? They’re gonna take their family there with pride, because this is a place that they had an impact on.

Brandon Burton 17:18
I love that skit and people involved. Do you ever see people wearing the T shirts just around the city?

Jodi Owczarski 17:25
I love saw it yesterday, the first time that it happened, I made a fool of myself, I was giddy. I took a picture. Covertly, I’m yelling across the street, I love your teacher. The person looked at me like I completely lost my mind. But we’re intentional and buying a shirt that people are going to want to wear. They’re super comfortable. They’re beautiful blue color. And so we see them all around town. So there’s no charge to participate. That’s the one expense that we have. But the sponsor dollars have come in so readily, that it’s an easy thing for us to do. So you drive through the town, you see the shirts everywhere. And it was fun even to see some of the Facebook groups, you know, if your community has a for us, it’s a Holland informed group, right? It’s where all of the the gossip and things happen. If you want to know what’s happening in the town, this Facebook group, there was a number of questions about, Hey, what’s up with all the blue shirts in town today? And then reading the responses right at the people saying, oh, my gosh, it’s the coolest thing. This happened. And I want to do it next year. And, you know, how do I get involved? It’s it’s going to take on a life of its own. This, this project has legs, and I hope that I’m going to be 80 years old and coming back to participate in community impact day.

Brandon Burton 18:47
That’s great. I love it. Love it. So let’s shift gears a little bit into your second program. I know it’s somewhat connected, but introduce us to it. The second program is you submitted on your application. The

Jodi Owczarski 19:02
two tag team really well, although they were created in separate ways. Our second initiative is called West Coast Connect. It’s an online platform that we’ve created, that has a directory of opportunities for leaders in our community to serve at board elected or skilled committee types of opportunities, as well as a directory of individual leaders who are raising their hand and willing to serve. So our community did a deep dive a couple of years ago to look at what are the top issues facing our community. And at that time, we were going through a pretty big political upheaval and realized that we were going to be late to the game and having adequate candidates for some Local elected positions, and realize that we can’t be late to that, again, we’ve got to be more prepared and identifying and equipping those leaders in advance. At the same time, we’re looking around and seeing generational leaders that are at the same tables over and over, right? You see the same people. And we know from our West Coast leadership program, we have about 1000 people that have been through this program, why do we see the same 20 people serving everywhere, it’s because they’re top of mind, we know that there are far more people willing and capable of serving, we just have to get them more top of mind. As a chamber professional, I regularly would get a phone call saying, Hey, I’m looking for a board member. And here’s what I’m looking for. Right? Ideally, it’d be a female, if that person could be a person of color, that’d be fantastic. We really need somebody who has some financial acumen and, and so you kind of scroll through your brain and you think about the people you see, and you give the same list. This helps us go so much deeper into the list of potential people serving throughout our community. It can be self serve, our organizations can go. And not only post the opportunities they have, but also source their potential volunteers. But they can also come back to us to ask for, like, who do you know, in this directory, and give us the parameters. And we can pull some reports to make sure that we come up with, you know, a list of great people for for them to be able to connect with and explore whether or not they’d be a good fit. So

Brandon Burton 21:45
I know with a platform like this, the one of the struggles at the beginning, it’s like a chicken or the egg and everything, right? If you’re trying to match the two sides together, you need to have, you know, one or both sides populated to be able to make it useful. So how do you get started with creating a platform like this to be able to matchmake? And no, you’ve got kind of that list in your head that maybe you can start with populating that. But then it said that same list that you’re always putting out there, right? So sure, what’s the approach? Yep,

Jodi Owczarski 22:15
great question. We started with our current West Coast leadership class, right there in the class, because they want to serve in the community. And so they were the first 25 people to populate, then we went back to the three most recent classes and had them do it as well. Because we knew, again, they they were looking for those same opportunities. Once we had some of those built out, we could send it out more broadly. And people could see what they looked like what that looked like, and could see themselves in it. And so at this point, we have over 227 individuals that have raised their hand and are currently on this site. So

Brandon Burton 22:55
do they create their own profile, upload a picture and kind of a resume of sorts of you know, what their background is?

Jodi Owczarski 23:02
They do. So we knew for this to be successful, it had to be a couple of things. We were we run lean as a team here. So this couldn’t be something that required a lot of intervention on our on our part. And we needed it to be as self serve as possible. So we built it on our growth zone platform that we already use for our CRM system, they’ve got logins for their accounts already, they could create them right in there. We do allow non members to be a part of this, because it’s really more about the community than just the chamber. And so we’ve set it up so that they non members could could log in and create this as well. So they can update their profile at any time to keep that relevant, if they’ve gotten a few opportunities, and they’re no longer looking for a new opportunity, they could take themselves down, put themselves back up again, when they have fresh opportunity or capacity to grow that. And it’s the same thing for the organization, right? They can log in, they create the whole list of what it is that they’re looking for. And we just approve it, clean it up to make sure it looks good. And get it posted on our website. So it’s it’s very simple.

Brandon Burton 24:16
Are the organizations that are searching, Are they members or is that open to? That’s

Jodi Owczarski 24:22
open as well. Okay. Yep. Yep. Again, we believe that this is bigger than chamber, right? This is this is whole community. And we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to be able to do this. So you know, when elections are coming around, we have more data behind the screen than what you can see visibly, we’re not going to share people’s personal home address in some other personal information, but information that’s helpful for us to be able to look and see, hey, I need someone in ward three for city council, who lives in that area that It has self identified as someone who cares about advocacy, and may be willing to run for run for a seat on city council in this in this geographical area, we can pull that up and and dive into that a little deeper.

Brandon Burton 25:14
Yeah. So right now it sounds like it’s been filled with leadership class participants, right? Is there any application process for anyone else in the community that wants to be involved? Do they need to go through the leadership class or what’s, how’s that structured,

Jodi Owczarski 25:31
they do not need to go through the leadership class. This too is open to anyone. We the third leg of this stool is education. So we will offer educational opportunity. So if they’ve not gone through West Coast leadership, or they’ve not served on a board of directors before you could come to a how to how to serve on a board class, right? So you understand what it is that you’re signing up for. We’ve also run things like how to run for office and had the County Clerk come in, to help equip people for what does that process look like? What are the financial obligations? What are the deadlines? What are the do’s and don’ts. And so we want to make sure that an educational component also comes alongside this so that we can help equip whoever is willing and interested to serve.

Brandon Burton 26:20
Well, that seems like a great solution. And way to think outside the box to play matchmaker there, if you will. As we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for those chambers who are out there listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you offer them? And it might carry a little more weight this time, especially with you guys being a chamber, the year finalist?

Jodi Owczarski 26:50
You know, that’s a great question. And I think, I don’t know what chambers are going to look like in the future and even day to day, they continue to evolve, right the way that we need to serve our community. And it’s very easy to get up on the treadmill of just continuing to churn out what we’re doing. My tip would be to take intentional, we call them clarity breaks, built in time into your schedule, on a regular cadence that takes you outside of the business. So you can think bigger, you can pause to reflect on everything from like, how’s my confidence? What am I procrastinating on? What do I need to? What do I need to get rid of or focus on? What do I need to make sure my board chair knows, I have a whole list of questions that I’ve worked through. But also pausing to think about how can we serve differently in our community? What needs are we seeing that are going unmet? And A is it something that is inside of our lane? And be how can we then approach it? If that answer is yes, it’s it’s something that we need to focus on. It’s one of our lanes, taking that time to pause and build that into a regular schedule is so important.

Brandon Burton 28:07
Yeah, I like that idea and having a name for it. And clarity breaks.

Jodi Owczarski 28:11
That’s right.

Brandon Burton 28:12
It allows you to to think bigger, and work on those bigger goals. I love it exactly. So I know you just said you don’t know what the future of chambers look like. But I always ask the question. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jodi Owczarski 28:27
Yeah, I don’t know what it looks like. But it’s not because we’re not thinking about it. So part of our regular processes is always having a 10 year target. The 10 year target for our chamber is that we will be a trailblazing organization that creates a tidal wave of positive impact. Note that it does not say Chamber of Commerce, I don’t know if we’ll still be called a Chamber of Commerce in 10 years. But if we’re doing things that are causing a positive impact in our community, that I think we’re doing the right things. So we’ll continue to adapt and to learn and to grow in ways that our community needs. So that we can show up and meet those needs in whatever way that is. Two years ago, as I as I moved into the CEO seat, we changed one of our core values from Think Big be great to be a trailblazer. We knew that thinking big and being great was not big enough, it wasn’t great enough to be successful. We’re going to have to blaze a trail, we’re gonna have to go places we’ve never gone before. Maybe the other chambers have not gone before, if we really want to be able to make an impact for our community. And so that’s the mindset that will continue to take into the future so that we can make a positive impact.

Brandon Burton 29:45
Yes, it’s all about making those big swings, making a difference. Yeah, that’s right. I love it. Well, Jodi, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys how you guys are doing things there at the web. East Coast chamber what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you

Jodi Owczarski 30:03
know, our websites a great spot WestCoastChamber.org. All of our contact information is on there. My specific email is there as well. And that is Jodi with an jodi@westcoastchamber.org. We’d love to connect.

Brandon Burton 30:20
Very good. We’ll have that in our show notes for this episode. But this has been great having you back on the podcast and it says for a really good reason. So I’m excited for you guys and wish you and your team best of luck in Dallas.

Jodi Owczarski 30:34
I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 30:38
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Co-Workspace Initiative with Moe Belliveau

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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 Moe Belliveau. Moe has more than 22 years of experience in small business and entrepreneurial management experience including five years in retail management. Two years leading a privately owned nonprofit organization and nearly 20 years as a small business owner mode joined the chamber in 2014, bringing a unique set of skills in administration financial management, community relations, business development, grant program development and administration, economic development and collaboration with other organizations and municipalities. She embodies big picture thinking without losing sight of the details. She is currently the past president of the Massachusetts Association of Chamber of Commerce executives. After rising in the ranks of leadership. She has been a commissioner of the city of East Hampton economic development and industry commissioned since 2015, and advisor to the Hampshire County Regional tourism Advisory Council since 2014. And as served as a member of various boards across the region. She and her husband Mike live in East Hampton with their dog Pearl, and spend their free time working on the land and their farm stead, Hendricks Harvests. Moe, I’m excited to have you with us today. Here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Moe Belliveau 2:41
Well, hello, Chamber Champions. I’m delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Brandon. And something interesting about myself. I don’t know if this is interesting. But I am a fiddle player.

Brandon Burton 2:55
All right, fiddle player, you don’t run into fiddle player every day, you might you might run in those circles that don’t run in those circles that fiddle player. So yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, very good. I should have mentioned as I went through your bio, that you are the Executive Director for the chamber, the Chamber of East Hampton in Massachusetts. So that should help give some context as well. Yes. But tell us a little bit about your chamber just to give us an idea of size, staff budget, scope of work, all those nitty gritty details so we can kind of get our mind shaped around what you present to us today. Sure.

Moe Belliveau 3:33
So we are the Chamber of Greater East Hampton, located in East Hampton, Massachusetts. I our membership hovers around 151 75 200 kind of bounces around. And our budget is about 175 180. there abouts. What else do we need to know we are an office. So we’re tiny, right? So it’s, it’s myself and a part time admin person. But I like to say we’re tiny but mighty.

Brandon Burton 4:07
I love it lean and mean tiny and? Yeah. That’s right. Yes. Yeah, no, oftentimes, it’s chambers, I have to run lean and mean like that, that often will lead to some of these innovative things that are of interest to be able to share here on the podcast. So

Moe Belliveau 4:26
I like how I like to think of myself as being agile, you know, we’re not yes, so big that it gives us flexibility to try a lot of things. You know, not everything always works out. But I’m happy to say most of the time it does and get to be we can turn on a dime if something’s not working out or doesn’t serve our membership or the community or whatever. So that’s the plus side of being tiny. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:50
being agile and that also goes to your board trusting you and being able to work well with the board. You get too big of chamber. I don’t wanna say too big but some of the have really large chambers where they might have 60 or more board members. And that becomes tough to make quick decisions or to pivot. Yeah. There’s value there, but it’s different for sure. Yeah. Yep, for sure. So for our topic of conversation today, and you guys have been behind an initiative of creating a co workspace, their communities. So I know this is something that some chambers here and there have kind of dabbled in. And I see it as a way of really building a sense of community, usually among other small business owners and people looking to get stuff done and looking to collaborate. So I’m excited to dive into this conversation as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Moe, we’re back. So let’s dive into this. I want to hear all about this co working space that you guys have this initiative that your chamber is behind tell us where it got its origins, what it’s about who it serves, all of the good details, the

Moe Belliveau 7:50
nitty and the gritty. So we started talking about the work hub on Union, the CO workspace before COVID hit. Yeah, we own our building here in East Hampton, which is kind of unique also, I think amongst chambers. But in in this area anyway. And so we were tossing around, you know, this isn’t really the best use of this space, you know, it’s 1100 square feet, and it’s just myself and a part time person in that space. And essentially, it was two desks in a gigantic conference room, you know, not driving an awful lot of traffic. And we just wanted to have add more life and you know, serve a broader purpose. And so we were lucky, so COVID to, to kind of propelled us into this direction in the direction of economic development. So we’ve evolved our mission also around economic development, professional development and leadership, education, technical support, entrepreneurialism, all that sort of thing. And so this kind of falls underneath that umbrella. And we consider this to be a program under the Chamber’s umbrella. And we were kicking this idea around, and we were lucky enough to we applied for a massdevelopment grants a seed grant to help us with market feasibility and design feasibility. Once upon a lifetime ago, I used to be a corporate interior designer, space planner and project manager person. And I kind of figured that we could probably maybe fit maybe 10 people in that space, various situations. And as it turns out, we can fit up to 18. At any given moment, we have a conference room, and a little phone booth so that if you need to make a private phone call, you can do that. But we ended up so we had the seed grant, and that kind of got us started. It was the information that came back from the marketing feasibility study. He was yes, this is the program, this is the project that this chamber needs to be involved with, do it do not pass go run. So the board said, Okay, let’s take the next steps. And so we were also very fortunate enough to receive another grant from massdevelopment to help us get started along with some state funding, through an earmark through our legislative team. And that kind of got us on our way. So that’s kind of a little bit of a background. But you know, when people think of CO workspace in this area, I think maybe in particular, because that’s what we have around they’re very large. And I don’t compare us to that it’s we’re only 1100 square feet, it’s again, tiny bit mighty. And it also is, in conjunction with a an entrepreneurial program, which is, we just signed on to the I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of CO starters, but it’s a entrepreneurial program, nine weeks as a licensed program, we just purchased the license. So it says they’re going in, they’re working in conjunction with each other hand in hand in entrepreneurial support. Our focus with the CO workspace will for both programs really is those folks who are in the shadow economy, those folks who are working out of their basement at the kitchen tables, and trying to give them support so they can move from informal businesses to formal businesses. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 11:33
and I think there’s in every community, there’s a, there’s a lot that are shadow businesses, as he called them, they’re operating at home, or maybe don’t feel like like they’re doing some business or bringing in some revenue, but maybe they don’t see themselves as a, quote unquote, real business because they don’t have a staff or they don’t have a building, or they don’t have a meeting space, or any of these kinds of things that might hold them back from really excelling and growing to that next level. So being able to create a workspace like this, really, I can see where it pulls them out and helps them leverage what they already have with other other people other skills, but the chamber just really adds fuel to the fire. Yeah.

Moe Belliveau 12:15
And it’s, it’s exciting. So you know, it’s we’re really working on, you know, creating an innovative co working space where local professionals, they can converge foster collaboration to meet the needs of solopreneurs, freelancers, home based businesses and entrepreneurs and creating small businesses that think job growth while addressing downtown revitalization, because we’re also experiencing a piece of that going on on our street. So yeah, you mean it’s perfect,

Brandon Burton 12:48
right? So is, what’s the what’s the model look like with the coerce space? Is it? Do people pay a monthly fee to kind of use the space? Do they get it in a lot of desk? Like, what access do they have.

Moe Belliveau 13:03
So this is really exciting, because it also gives an opportunity for the chamber to offer opportunities for members as well as non member. So the membership, if that’s what you want to call it, I haven’t even really nail that down and when you want to call it out, but the membership structure is around. If you’re a member, it’s one you can have one pricing, if you’re a non member, you have another pricing, and we hope that you decide to become a member, but you don’t have to, you still have opportunity to participate and engage. And yeah, it will be more of a like a like a like a gym membership, sort of like you know, you get a key cat card, you can come and go. It will be like I think it’s I don’t know how to say this, but three days at a time. So you can be three days for 24 hours. So that’ll break it up. So that’s kind of how it’s looking so far. Okay. Yeah. And I think it’s a good opportunity to give a give a an insight look to what we’re up to what the chamber is thinking about how we’re planning for the future, because the chamber will also continue to operate out of that space. Yeah. So there will be chamber Access for All right. Yeah. So

Brandon Burton 14:28
and no, you had mentioned there’s that private phone booth in their effort of some chambers even doing like a podcast studio where they can rent that out and maybe model are there other other perks that you guys have to offer with the CO workspace or

Moe Belliveau 14:43
no, there will be there’ll be coffee, there’ll be snacks they’ll be you know, we’ll have photocopying that sort of thing. I hope I believe once I get this piece settle down, there will be a virtual office opportunity as well. So if you need an address or that sort of thing, you Yeah, we’re looking to figure that out. So lots of opportunity. Lots of opportunity. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:06
that virtual address I think could be a huge that could be kind of a game changer with the whole structure. So

Moe Belliveau 15:12
yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of things that I need a little details that I need to iron out at this point, because we’re looking at wrapping up construction probably within the next two weeks or so. And then furniture will be moving in. So it’s, it’s speeding up. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:29
So you had mentioned about the the entrepreneurial programming, the licensee has purchased. Talk to us a little bit more about that. And what the program is, he said, it’s a was a nine weeks, six weeks? Yeah, nine week program. So

Moe Belliveau 15:43
yeah, it’s the CO starters program. It’s a national program. There. I believe they’re based in Texas, I think, I think it’d based in Texas or Tennessee, I think it’s Texas. So um, and it’s a curriculum of over the course of nine weeks, which gives the participants which, which they’re called co starters, because we’re starting something together. Yeah. gives them the basics, you know, and it’s a progressive program. So, you know, so you’ve decided that you want to start a business? So what does that mean? What does that look like? Who is your customer? Who is what is your market? What is? Why is it important to have legal representation? Why do you want to talk to a payroll company, perhaps, you know, an accountant. So all of those little details, you know, cost of goods? And how do you figure that out? And what does that mean for you. And so it’s really very exciting. This is our very first cohort, and it’s moving right along, we have two more weeks left, and then we’ll have a big celebration in May to celebrate them, and they get to share with our guests what they’re up to, and what they plan on doing, and we get to celebrate them.

Brandon Burton 17:04
So I’m always curious, because for a chamber, it’s easy to focus, the businesses that are on Main Street Are those your new businesses that open their doors, and you’re welcome and do the ribbon cutting and the whole thing, but to find those entrepreneurs that really need the support that a chamber can offer, that are working out of their home that are working in the shadows, like he had mentioned before? How, what’s the secret sauce to to finding these shadow businesses, those people that could benefit from this CO starter program? And from this co working space? How do you find them? How do you attract them? What? What’s that look like? Well, that’s

Moe Belliveau 17:46
the challenge. And we have a marketing partner here. The daily handshake is that they’re going to be helping us work on that and helping to get us helping us to get the word out. But it’s a it’s an it’s a lot of excitement that’s being that’s organically arising from the community. Our board is excited and chatting about this and sharing why it’s important. Why is it important for those who, who may not even use the word cup? Right? Or, or who might not even use the customer’s program? Why is that important? Well, economic development in our city is very important in our region, it’s very important, right? It helps to stabilize a lot of things like, you know, food insecurity, you know, if you if you don’t have steady income, that, you know, a lot of things become unstable, you know, your family will family’s well being job security is also contributes with job, you know, providing jobs as these folks grow and continue to what’s the word I’m thinking of expands, but there’s another entrepreneurial word there. So the scale. So all of that’s important because of those things and the life that’s going to be driven that’s going to be participating in the light. I mean, in the work Hall, you know, it adds to the economy to the economy around us right now, utilizing services, restaurants, you know, there’s cleaners, there’s, you know, folks can just conveniently dropped in they come to work. And so all of that just ripples, ripples, ripples. And the most beautiful thing is, is that it’s not only for the here and now. It’s it’s ripples out for, you know, potentially decades. Right, right. I’m explode. It’s so incredibly excited about the CO starters program because we’ve also coalesced a team of we regional local resource. So supporters or resource team. So like the Small Business Association, the SBA, and other other local regional partners, and they’ve all come in support of that program and the work hub, so that we can be. So all everybody kind of does their own little bit of programming. And we’re not looking to recreate any of those wheels, what we want to do is try is to highlight into raise up, all of us together all of our resource partners. And so as they go through the post orders, the participants go through the program, they’re being introduced to these folks, they can put faces to names, you know, they can participate in these other programs. And then, at the end, when they’re done with all of these things, they’re not just standing there going now what? Right, because the now what team is ready for them? Yeah, who they are. And so

Brandon Burton 20:58
now what team have?

Moe Belliveau 21:02
Yes. So you know, now they know who they are. And maybe they connect and give a call to our friend, Roberto Nieves from common capital here in the area. And if, you know, maybe he doesn’t have the answer, or isn’t. They’re not ready for him at that moment. But he knows who they can connect them to. Because we have an ongoing monthly meeting and roundtable that we get together so that we can learn more about each other. That’s awesome. That’s support.

Brandon Burton 21:32
Yeah. So with this, you mentioned, you’re kind of wrapping up this first cohort. I’m curious if you don’t mind sharing, but how many business owners you have in this first round. And we have maybe some examples of where they came from how you found them. I’m just saying I get the the thoughts going with those listening of where they might be able to find some of these businesses that are operating in the shadows.

Moe Belliveau 22:00
Sure, sure. So we have six participants within our, our cohort, my goal was to have 10 We have two facilitators who are just incredible. I’m delighted to be working with both of them. And I’m a super excited for our participants, because they get to be led by these two incredible women. And and we put it out through social media, we had, you know, it was mostly social media that we put that out to, and we had, you know, quite a bit of, of applicants come in, but through that A, we ended up with six was very excited about that. And they vary, they vary. There’s a couple who have been in business for, you know, maybe a year or so. So they’ve started their venture, but realized, you know, what, I need a little bit of focus, I need a little bit more of a foundation, and then the others are in various stages we’re at in various stages of ideation. Okay, so at this point, they’ve become more clear and more more focused as to what it is that they’re trying to do and how they’re going to do it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 23:15
So can you share with us a little bit about the facilitator aspect of it and where you find the facilitators? Do they need to go through certain training to be able to operate under the license? How does that work?

Moe Belliveau 23:27
Yep, so our facilitators, they’re both local. We have Cynthia West, who is a small business owner here. She is the owner of sonnet and Sparrow, right here in the center of East Hampton. And then we also have Angie Montalvo Greene, who is the regional director for the LGBT chamber here, who is also located there. Western Mass office is also located here in Massachusetts. So she’s on our team. And it’s amazing. So as part of the program, they are, they get a stipend for their time and their dedication. And it’s in they go through training. Yep, they’re trained by CO starters. They’re certified by CO starters. And it’s it’s the real deal. It’s, yeah, it’s not just Mo, like, oh, well, let’s just let’s, let’s build a business plan. I’m really excited about the program. It’s really amazing. I

Brandon Burton 24:29
love that that creates a team effort to in it’s not like you said, it’s not just mo reach into these businesses. This is so right. There’s curriculum, and it’s a it’s a real deal.

Moe Belliveau 24:41
Yeah. And it’s a method and it’s a logical progression, and it’s building and building and building. So that’s

Brandon Burton 24:47
right. Now, I will say at the beginning of this recording, you had mentioned the revitalization of downtown and I had a little vision that you know, maybe the chamber occupies one of those For bigger co workspace as he continued to grow and develop this thing, I could just see it snowball. So well, I

Moe Belliveau 25:06
have to say, and I’m very excited about this. But the woman who worked with us on the marketing feasibility study, she said, you know, my biggest fear for you is that you’re going to fill up so fast that you’re going to wish you had more space. Yeah. I said, Well, that’s a problem I’ll deal with when I get there. Yeah. cross

Brandon Burton 25:25
that bridge. Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, yeah. Well, I would like to ask for chambers listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them and trying to accomplish that goal?

Moe Belliveau 25:43
Oh, dear, well, you know, ah, these times in chamber, we have, I think, really worked hard. to, to, you know, what, let me back up a minute, you know, we’re living in a time, right, where they change, constant change, we had a major disruption in 2020. And, and ever since then, change has been in our face, and it’s not going to stop, it’s just going to keep on going and keep on accelerating. And chambers all over the country really rose to the occasion, and really stepped into a void, I think, which was really pretty amazing. But I also think as we move on, and move further away from 2020. Being open, and and moving forward with curiosity, and learning, where it’s just going to be constant. Learn, do learn do as opposed to once upon a time you could learn, do the thing, and then you retire. Right? But now it’s going to be now I, in my opinion, learn do learn, do learn do, and if we don’t keep doing that, so you know, learning from our, our, our membership, you know, what is it that they need, be willing to change and let go of what maybe it’s not working and take a risk to see what might right now like, this is all scary stuff. I’m like, Oh, I’ve never done this. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 27:20
Well, and the halls learn, do learn do for a chamber? Yes. So you’re going to learn, do learn, do. But also keep in mind that your members are doing the same thing, like that environment is constantly changing. And we’re in a world where the education the learning is I like to think of it as just in time learning. Yeah, you need to learn how to do a podcast, because that’s the thing. Now there’s courses, there’s ways to do that right now. Yeah, if you need to learn how to do XYZ, there’s YouTube videos, there’s trainings, there’s people, you know, mentors that you can learn from, there’s all these different resources where it used to be the hand to go and get the formal education, you learn, you do and you retire, like, like you said, now it’s learn, do learn do, and you need to constantly be able to find those resources. And hopefully, the chamber is one of those resources to keep these business members up to date on latest trends and to help them learn on demand when they need that, I

Moe Belliveau 28:19
think to being a role model, right? Leading by example. Yeah. Yeah, model it. Right.

Brandon Burton 28:28
So and that that may be leaning into the next question I have is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Moe Belliveau 28:39
Oh, my goodness. What do I yay, how do I see that? I think it just goes back to the learned, learn, do and we need to be aware, and listen and hear. And if we can do that, I think we can’t be afraid of changing. Yeah. And I like to say that, you know, the East Hampton chamber is not your grandmother’s grandfather’s chamber anymore. You know, and I think, once upon it, you know, how we have been in the past served those times well, but I also think, too, that we get to a point that it’s, it’s can be nerve wracking to let go right. And

Brandon Burton 29:24
things didn’t move as fast. You know, years ago, 60 years ago, things did not move as fast. Now, today, when you mentioned the further we get away from 2020. I mean, here we are for over four years from when the pandemic started, and it’s starting to become a memory and now what we are in the throes of right now, but I think, you know, my son, my oldest son was he was ending I guess he was in his last year in middle school, getting ready to start high school when the pandemic started and now he’s graduating. And so like there’s, there’s time that’s passed. And we’ve learned a lot through the pandemic, after the pandemic, and just that changes constantly there. So we can’t be our grandmother, grandfather’s chamber, because we need to stay current and stay up to see that the times. Yeah.

Moe Belliveau 30:19
And there’s going to be, you know, there’s going to be disruption. Again. Yeah, you just don’t know when and so I think, you know, yeah, I think that, you know, and it’s just going to accelerate, you know, I’m also discovering, too, as I move along, you know, not only is the change, you know, accelerating, it’s the rules that were attached to what was right are changing as fast as the change is happening. If that makes any sense at all.

Brandon Burton 30:48
It? It does. And who writes the rules is changing, too. It’s all upside down now. So

Moe Belliveau 30:56
I think to what I’ve learned is that, you know, 2022 took the extra step, just sketch. Yep. Right. But now we get to do whatever. Right, each chamber is different, although, basic, in some ways, the same, but different per per their community. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Yeah. But no, this has been a fun conversation. I love the the innovative work that you guys are doing with it around entrepreneurs and creating this CO workspace and training these businesses that are operating in the shadows, help them pull them out, make them legitimate, make them make them be the real businesses that have that confidence to go out there and mix and mingle with others and scale and, and there’s that word scale, scale their business. But thank you for spending time with us today, sharing your example sharing some of these trends that you guys are setting right now. And, and I can see where other chambers are gonna hop on this this type of model in the very near future if they’re not already. So.

Moe Belliveau 32:04
Thank you for inviting me.

Brandon Burton 32:05
I wanted to ask you if there’s any contact information you’d like to share for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more from you? Sure.

Moe Belliveau 32:13
So you know, our website is EastHamptonChamber.org. You can always connect with me. I’m happy to chat with anyone regarding any of this. I’m at moe@easthamptonchamber.org. Um, yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:30
very good. I will get that in our show notes for this episode, so people can find that and reach out and connect with you. Thank you. This has been great.

Moe Belliveau 32:40
No, I appreciate it was fun.

Brandon Burton 32:42
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Civic Engagement with Candance Brake

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

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.

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.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 13:35
normal, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 28:17
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