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Category: Community

Regional Coalitions with Glenn Morris

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

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Introduction

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 0:59
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Guest Introduction

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

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

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

Glenn Morris 4:19
Very good.

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

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

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

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Topic-Regional Coalitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future of Chambers

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

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

Connect with Glenn Morris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 38:45
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Dallas Regional Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Dale Petroskey

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

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

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Introduction

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

Now your host during hot Texas summers he is always grateful for air conditioning. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Matt Morrow 0:47
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:09
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another one of our special episodes in our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series, and our guests for this episode is Dale Petroskey. Dale is the president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber. Dale has more than 35 years of leadership experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. In April 2014, he became president and CEO of the Dallas Regional Chamber, one of the largest and most established business organizations in the state of Texas. The Dallas Regional Chamber works to strengthen the business community by attracting companies and talented workers from around the world. improving education, advocating for pro growth public policies, and enhancing the quality of life for all in the Dallas region. Dale’s career also includes service as assistant White House press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, Senior Vice President for mission programs at the National at National Geographic and president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Dale is a member of numerous boards, including the alfalfa Club of Washington DC SMU is Lyle School of Engineering and Dallas medical resources, educate Dallas Clayton Kershaw’s challenge, the Dallas Mavericks Advisory Council and the Texas Rangers baseball foundation. Dale and his wife, Ann both graduated from Michigan State University and live in Dallas, they have three married children. Dale, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions. And if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, Brandon,

Dale Petroskey 3:00
thank you for having me. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the Dallas Regional Chamber. And and it’s just going to be fun. One thing you should know about me is that I’m one of nine children. And you don’t run across a lot of folks these days who have eight siblings, but I do. And they’re all from the same parents. And I’m the second oldest, I’m the oldest son and the second oldest of those nine children. All right, yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:29
you’re right. You don’t come across that very often these days. So that is interesting. So why don’t you Well, first of all, congratulations, being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It’s a great accomplishment. And I know you’re in great company with others in your category as well.

Dale Petroskey 3:47
Appreciate that. We’re very excited. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 3:51
Why don’t you take a moment and tell us a little bit about the Dallas Regional Chamber just to give us some perspective as to the scope of work, the size of the chamber staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

About the Dallas Regional Chamber

Dale Petroskey 4:04
It sounds great. Thank you. First of all, there are Dallas is a big market. Dallas, Fort Worth is a big market. 7.8 million people here. It’s the fourth largest market in the United States. And there are 175 chambers in Dallas Fort Worth, believe it or not, we’re the largest. And number two is half our size. And all those 173 are below number two. So we’re twice as large as number two. We have 55 full time staffers. Our budget is $12 million a year. And we have our own research team, which very few chambers do. But we have a very sophisticated research team, you know, staffed by professional researchers, which really helps our work. And why we’re very different than a lot of chambers is that we don’t take a dime from any public entity. We don’t take a dime from the city. We don’t take a dime from the county. We don’t take a dime from it. anybody except our member companies. And that gives us independence. And it allows us to do what we do. So we are the Regional Chamber. So all we care about is that companies and jobs come to this region. And they that there’s the best fit for them when they do come here. So when we go to California, and talk to companies who are thinking about moving to the Dallas area, we’re the ones they talk to, and they say, we’d like to go up and we’d like to have a campus. So we take them up to Plano and Frisco and introduce some of the folks up there where most of the campuses are in this area. That we want to be in the research area. So we take him to Richardson, where a lot of the research is done, we want to be near the airport, we take him to Irving and hand them off to Irving. Whatever the need is, whatever their wishes are, we want the best fit for them. We’re like a point guard and basketball, who’s dishing off to the guys who can score. And so as a result of that, we’ve been very successful since 2012 200 headquarters have moved to the Dallas Fort Worth region 200 In the last 12 years, and 1.3 million new jobs in the Dallas Fort Worth area in the last 12 years. Those are crazy numbers, those there no other market is even close to those numbers. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been so successful is that we have this model of sort of the artists broker, us making sure that these companies get the best fit. And they go up and work with these economic development organizations in all these great areas in the Dallas Fort Worth region, who can make them feel right at home in their areas. So that’s our reason for being is economic development. But for that to happen, we need to do three other things very well, one talent. So we do a lot of work in education, and workforce making sure that every youngster has a chance for a good education. So they can have a good job and a good life. We also attract talent from the outside, talking about the virtues of Dallas as a place to start your career, continue your career move up. Because we have so many companies we have 23 fortune 500 companies 43, fortune 1000 companies, lots of opportunities here. So we’re always looking to attract talent here as well. So number one is talent. Number two is public policy. And that means having a business climate that is strong and welcoming, low taxes, low rate, low regulations, and welcoming, welcoming for everybody. And then our third leg of the stool for supporting economic development is diversity, equity and inclusion, because we’re not going to reach our full promise as a community until everyone can participate in the prosperity that’s going on here. And we have in some ways, some areas where people don’t have those opportunities. They don’t have the educational opportunities, they don’t have the job opportunities. So we work really hard in that area as well. So that’s a little bit about the scope of our work. Yeah. Hey,

Brandon Burton 8:17
I appreciate that. And, on a personal note, I appreciate the work you guys are doing here in the Dallas region since I I’m a part of that here in the Dallas region, I get to benefit from a lot of that work you do.

Dale Petroskey 8:28
Appreciate that. I’ll pass that along to our great staff.

Brandon Burton 8:31
Yes, please do. So as they do these chamber, the year finalist interviews what I like to spend a good majority of the discussion on is around the two topics that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application. And what I’m thinking we’ll do is we’ll just we’ll touch on what those two programs are just at a high level. And then we’ll circle back and go into a little bit more detail on each of those problems. Each of those programs not problems. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Dale, we’re back. Do you would share with us what the two programs are that you submitted on the chamber? The your application?

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Dale Petroskey 11:59
Yeah, happy to do that. Brandon. The first one was a vaccination program for communities of color during the middle of the pandemic. Okay, the second one is something called P TECH, which is our businesses actually being embedded in our schools, to work with students to tell them about their industries, their companies, give them internships, give them opportunities to get a leg up in the work world. So those are the two basic programs.

Brandon Burton 12:30
All right, let’s say let’s start with the vaccinations for people of color. And that’s a that’s a program that I haven’t heard of other chambers tackling. So I’m interested to hear kind of what brought that to the forefront and how you guys approach that.

Dale Petroskey 12:47
You know, early last year, we were sort of in the middle of the vaccinations in a big way. And you know, the pandemic had started the previous March, and people were getting sick. But there were no vaccines available. And finally vaccines became available. And yet, they were not reaching everybody that they should have reached either folks didn’t want to take them, or people didn’t know how to get them or didn’t know enough about what the rules were around, signing up for them, registering for them going to get them and so forth. And we thought, what can we do most at this moment in time, to help our community and help our business community. And we realized that communities of color, were dying at higher rates than anybody else. They were going to the hospital at higher rates than anybody else. They were losing their jobs at higher rates than anybody else and losing their businesses at higher rates than anybody else. And so we started to look into this. And we realize that a lot of folks in those communities either didn’t have any information about how to get vaccinated, or they were getting wrong information about vaccinations. And so nobody asked us to do this. Our board didn’t even ask us to do this. We just believe it was the right thing to do. So we embarked on a campaign that had sort of two prongs one was public service announcements, aimed at communities of color that were on there were messages on billboards, on television, and radio, in doctor’s waiting offices, and in pharmacies, about the vaccinations and if you chose to get them how it would protect you and your family and your jobs, basically. And so we worked with we put out an RFP request for proposal to a bunch of marketing agencies, and we chose one so that was one piece of it. The second piece of it was the ground game. So we worked with another organization marketing organization that works very closely with communities of color here, in order to micro target those areas and get that get them the information they need, and set up clinics on site. So if people chose that they wanted to get a vaccine, they can go right there and get their vaccine. Okay, we set a goal of getting 600,000 More people vaccinated between June and September last year, basically the summer. And by September, we had 660,000 More vaccinations in the Dallas area, most of them in communities of color. And the our budget for this was close to a million dollars. Again, nobody asked us to do this. But we thought it was the right thing to do. And we because we are very careful with our money. And we’re very good about keeping reserves, and in our, every year putting some money into our reserves, we actually had the money to do this when it was needed most. So we’re very proud of that program. And it was a great community service to our to our, to our folks and to our business community. I’ll mention one other thing, Brandon, we enlisted the help of a lot of our member companies or businesses, to get the word out to their employees, and to share information with their employees about how they could get vaccinated because there was a lot of misinformation, or people just weren’t paying attention. It was complicated. You remember the messages that were going out. And so we tried to simplify it, get it out. And our businesses are very appreciative of the educational role that we played in all of that.

Brandon Burton 16:52
That’s great. I love hearing how, you know, partnering with other organizations that service these demographic of people of color and being able to really, you didn’t mention it directly, but it’s data driven, you know, when you’re looking at who are the people most affected right now, with the pandemic? How can we make the largest impact? And the data was pointing to this program, and you guys listened and responded. So

Dale Petroskey 17:18
I think that’s what we try to do. We try to listen, we try to decide and then we try to act. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:25
So let’s shift gears. And tell us about the you say it was called P TECH getting the businesses in the schools. Is that primarily with high schools? Or is it different levels, it’s always about that.

Dale Petroskey 17:37
It’s high schools. And, and, you know, several years ago, the Dallas ISD, Dallas, Independent School District, you know, was struggling, and like a lot of urban school districts. And we have a very innovative superintendent here, Dr. Michael Hanna HOSA, actually just retired. And, but he was always wanting to partner with with everybody he could, okay to get things going in the right direction for Dallas, Independent School District. And he came to us and we came up with the idea of reaching out to our big companies mostly, and getting them to work, to adopt a school and to work in that schools. So for example, AT and T, you know, they adopt a school, they go, they send him plays into that school every day. That’s their job to work with those kids on technology, and what it might be like to work at at&t, maybe not in a technology role, but an accounting role, an HR role, showing young people, the future, showing them that what a job looks like, what working inside a company looks like. And then at&t provides internships for a lot of those students, and ultimately jobs for those twos. Okay. But we have companies like Frito, lay, Boeing, you know, gosh, Texas Instruments, all the big companies of Dallas are involved in this. In fact, 90 companies send people into these schools every day to work with these youngsters to provide internships, job opportunities to teach them skills. And as a result of that, more companies work in Dallas ISD schools than any other school district in America. And literally what it is if you think about it, you know, most of us were in high school, we don’t know what we want to do. We only know what our parents did. And so so often what happens is people go into jobs into the the industries that their parents are in because they don’t know anything else that’s out there. This gives them a chance to really see See some other things, test some other things and be exposed to other companies, other industries and know more about what, what the possibilities are on the job market, and what they might be going to college to study for. So that when they come out, they’re a little bit more targeted.

Brandon Burton 20:19
I like that. So when you talk about these businesses being on the campus every day, is it the same employee going to the campus every day? Do they have multiple Pete is that their full time job is to be the campus representative?

Dale Petroskey 20:33
Yeah, most of the time? Yeah. It’s varies a little bit. But yes, that’s their job to be a math

Brandon Burton 20:39
school. And then they get worked into the curriculum for the different classes to

Dale Petroskey 20:44
kind of show. Yeah, they were the counselors, work them in teachers work them in, so forth.

Brandon Burton 20:52
That’s fantastic. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, very innovative,

Dale Petroskey 20:55
very innovative. And, and as far as I know, one of a kind, at least at this scale.

Brandon Burton 21:02
Yeah. Whenever I hear these programs of chambers, getting involved with education and showing these job opportunities, I’m always a little jealous that I didn’t have that when I was growing up to be able to, you know, see what the world has to offer.

Dale Petroskey 21:16
No question, you know, what I, when I was growing up, I grew up in the Detroit area. And, you know, I didn’t know what was out there at all, really, and my wife says, she said, I think you could have been a great architect. Because you know, you’ve got a good sense of space. You aren’t you are good with pen and paper, you can draw, you know, I’m not a trained artist in any way. But it comes easily to me to draw and sketch things out. And she says, You would have been a great architect. When I was growing up, I had never met an architect, I didn’t know there was a job, such as architect, right. Or when I went to Washington, and I started working, you know, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and, and I would see people who are in the Foreign Service, you know, who are diplomats or working in an embassy, I never knew that those jobs existed in high school. But I might have loved to have done that. So the more we can expose kids to various things that maybe fit their capabilities and their interests, the better off we’re all going to be,

Brandon Burton 22:24
right? Absolutely. And it sounds like both of these programs make a huge impact in the Dallas region. I’d like to ask as a chamber, the year finalist, and you kind of alluded to this earlier with your your metaphor of being the point guard, you know, getting those assists. But how do you see your role with the Dallas Regional Chamber within your community?

Dale Petroskey 22:48
Yeah, I think Dallas Regional Chamber is viewed in our community, as a go to organization. When when when things need to get done, people tend to go to us, because they know that we have relationships all throughout this region, with other chambers, with economic development organizations, with political leaders, with business leaders, and we are a great convener, to bring a lot of people together. And other folks, in many ways don’t have that scale or that that perspective, to bring all those folks or those relationships to bring all those folks together. So I think that’s, that’s one way that we are seeing, I think the other way we’re seeing as an organization that steps up, and something needs to get done. We’ll take it on, just like the vaccine program. Nobody asked us to do it. Nobody expected us to do it. If we didn’t do it, nobody would say why are you not doing that, but we just knew it was the right thing to do. So we did. And so you know, it’s a great, we feel like we’re in a great position. And I’ll say this, it’s, it’s building your reputation and your brand every single day in order to be in that position, that it was you have to be trusted. So you have to you have to do good work. You have to work with people, you have to they have to know your hearts in the right place. Right. So that you are trusted and and can have that kind of oh, I don’t know. Brand in order for people to want to go to you or to say they’re the they’re the natural organization to go to on this.

Brandon Burton 24:38
Yeah. And I think that’s so important is that the showing up every day and being an impact in the community. So when a real crunch time comes or real crisis, people know who to turn to for answers.

Dale Petroskey 24:50
I’ll say this to Brandon. You know, my we have a staff of 55 and everyone here is taught and believes say that we are here to be of service. We are a service organization, we are here to help people. And so whatever needs to be done to help them. That’s what we’re here to do. Okay. And and that’s, uh, and you know, that’s the way you’ve got to look at it to be so public servants.

Brandon Burton 25:20
Yeah, absolutely. So I look at all the chamber the year finalists as kind of being organizations that are, you know, doing great things right now, making a huge impact. And I like to see if you might have any tips or advice action items for listeners that might want to take their chamber up to the next level, what

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Dale Petroskey 25:44
would you suggest? Yeah, I would say, you know, it’s so hard to give advice to others, because so many people are doing so many good things, right? I would say, to be very, to be very good with your finances, you know, so you, you’ve got members, you want to serve those members in the best possible way. But make sure that you are paying attention to the bottom line, so that you can put money in the bank every year, so that when times get tough, or a crisis happens, you have something to draw on. So for example, during the, during the early days of COVID, I was scared to death, I thought we were you know, we were gonna face $2 million losses in our budget, and we’re gonna have to lay people off and, you know, all these kinds of things. And in the end, and I went to the board and proposed that, okay, we’ll take salary cuts for, you know, as long as it takes. And we, you know, I took the most and it went down by, you know, great, and so forth. But in the end, we didn’t have to do that, because we were able to manage our way through it, okay. But the fact is that we had money in the bank, so we had a cushion, to get through this. And that’s from years and years and years of paying attention to the finances and being good with your finances. So I think that is a an important piece of this. Because, you know, having money in the bank gives you a lot of flexibility and gives you a cushion, when you need it, or gives you the money to do things like a vaccine campaign, when when the time comes. So that’s, that’s number one, I would say number two is just really try to get to know as many people as you can in your community, and build trusted relationships with them, provide programs that will want them to join your membership. So that you’ve got a great base of support among your membership, that allows you to do a lot of things, if you have relationships with a wide array of companies across the spectrum, you know, and try to think about what you offer, that maybe they need, right, the various people in various sectors of the economy need, so that you can build this broad base of support among a lot of folks, you know, and then I would say, third, from a staffing standpoint, is just hire the best possible staff, you can treat them really well. You know, make it fun to work here. Remind them every day. This is a privilege. It’s a privilege to work for a public service or focused organization, and that they’re doing really important work, I often will relate to them. My favorite quote is by Teddy Roosevelt, who said, the greatest prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. And I remind them often that we work hard at work worth doing. And that not everybody out there comes to work every day, able to work hard at work worth doing. They are working off and at things that need to be done. But we actually get to work hard to make this a better community and to to really move the needle during our time here.

Brandon Burton 29:26
I love that. And I think all three of those tips that you suggested they really they position an organization well to be able to serve their community in the best ways. You know, when you’ve got those connections in the community, you’ve got the great staff you’ve kept track your finances and prepared for the rainy day. It makes you available to make clear decisions that are not fogged up with some of those other things that could get in the way and distract you.

Dale Petroskey 29:52
Yeah, well said Brad. I love that.

Brandon Burton 29:55
So I like asking everyone that I have on the podcast about the future of chamber. So how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Dale Petroskey 30:05
Yeah, I think, again, as some people have a notion of a chamber as sort of a dusty old place that’s for the past, we feel just the opposite of that, you know, we believe that chambers really are the central point, it shouldn’t be the central point in a community that people go to, and for resources or to for help to get things done. And so that’s the sort of the incoming, the other piece of that is for chambers to be always having your ear to the ground with their community, and saying, what needs to be done? How can we best help? So there’s a little bit of defense, like, we’re here to help. And there’s a little bit of offense, which is, here’s what needs to be done. Let’s go out and do it. And I think if you keep in mind those two things, you’re going to be a very relevant and very important organization in your community.

Brandon Burton 31:08
I love it. Great advice. So I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody listening who maybe got intrigued about any of these programs, or the way the Dallas Regional Chamber is doing things, what might be the best way to reach out and connect or to learn more, what would you suggest that? What’s the best way to reach out and connect with you? Yeah,

Connect with Dale Petroskey

Dale Petroskey 31:29
I think probably the easiest thing just send me an email at dpetroskey@dallaschamber.org. And I will you know, I’ll be initially answer it but I’ll get it to the right person, my organization who can help them the most.

Brandon Burton 31:50
That’s perfect and we’ll we’ll get your email in the show notes for this episode as well. So people can look that up and and connect with you and learn more if there’s something they they need to dive in deeper with. But, Dale, I really appreciate you spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. Again, personally, thank you for what you guys are doing to the Dallas region. I wish you guys Best of luck to you and your team as chamber the year and I look forward to seeing you in Indy. Well,

Dale Petroskey 32:21
it’s been great fun. Thank you, Brandon and appreciate your what you do, and love the questions you ask.

Brandon Burton 32:29
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Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Charlie Clark

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Charlie Clark. 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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Introduction

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

Now your host he recently took his dad to shoot machine guns. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Kris Johnson 0:45
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:26
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another special episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series, and our guest for this episode is Charlie Clark, Vice President of Communications at the Hilton Head Island Bluffton Chamber in South Carolina. Charlie is a proud Island graduate and has been in the chamber industry for over two decades. She serves as Vice President of Communications for the Hilton Head Island Bluffton chamber which is also a three time winner of accs chamber the Year award. As a combined chamber and Visitor’s Bureau. She oversees all communications for the organization as well as leading the charge for public relations efforts for the Hilton Head Island destination which hosts over 3 million visitors annually. During her tenure, she has helped Garner national broadcast coverage for the destination with the today’s show, Food Network, CNN Good Morning America and many others. She has also earned coverage from a variety of other media outlets including New York Times, USA Today Travel and Leisure and the Wall Street Journal and more. The chamber is the proud winner of numerous awards for communications excellence from ACC including the coveted Grand Award. In addition to awards honoring the Chamber’s efforts from the SE tourism society, HSM AI Adrienne awards and national awards for broadcast excellence. She’s a frequent public speaker committed and involved in her community having served on the boards of a number of organizations. She and her husband Tom are the proud parents of two sons, Brennan and Cameron. And, Charlie, I am excited to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. Why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you better.

Charlie Clark 3:24
I’m so glad to be here. Brandon, as we were sort of talking about earlier before the before the podcast started. I love podcast, I listen to yours, as well as many others and it’s just such a great resource for information especially when you’re on the go. So, gosh, something interesting about myself. I think most people are often surprised to know that I actually moved to Hilton Head Island from Wyoming of all places. Wyoming after one too many good vacations, you know, I thought I was so original in moving to hills and hatches chucking it all and moving to this destination and found out that the island was full of people who had done the exact same you know, most people do for a job or they move for family. I literally moved just based on the sheer beauty of this place. And my husband I’ve always said you know, we will we will figure it out when we get there. And sure enough, the communications position popped open for the chamber and I said I think that’s what I’d love to do. And I’ve been doing it ever since and that was over 20 years ago.

Brandon Burton 4:24
Yeah, talk about a leap of faith and nothing against Wyoming. There’s beauty there’s just a different kind of beauty compared to the beach and you know, everything else that you guys have. It’s a

Charlie Clark 4:35
little it’s a little snowy or the last year I was there. I it snowed on June 27 Oh my God. I said you know, I think it’s time to go. So yeah, the only thing Yeah, the only call was the ice in your drinks here as they like to say so. living on the island. It’s wonderful.

Brandon Burton 4:52
That’s great. Well tell us a little bit about the Hilton Head Island Bluffton chamber just to give us some idea of perspec Did as to scope of work the size of your chamber staff budget, things like that, just so we have an idea of as we go into our discussion,

About the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber

Charlie Clark 5:08
you know, I think people are often surprised that they help them out. And Bluffton chamber is as large as it is we are almost 1400 members at this point. They have a staff of about 25 budget of about 8 million. We’ve been we’ve been at it for gosh, almost 60 years. So very entrenched in a community. And as you know, as you mentioned earlier that we have over 3 million visitors a year. So our chamber from a scope of work perspective is a chamber in the traditional b2b sense. And also combined with our visitor and convention bureau. Because when your economy is so heavily based on on tourism and is here, and for the state of South Carolina, and as a whole, it just makes great sense to combine those two organizations.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Absolutely. Guys have a lot of great chambers. They’re in South Carolina as well. So as far as a destin destination, you guys are, you know, supporting each other very well. From what I can say the

Charlie Clark 6:06
Carolinas do have very strong chambers very strong, very connected. It’s a great place to do business and chambers really do work well together here.

Brandon Burton 6:16
Absolutely. So with these chamber there finalist interviews, what I like to do is focus on the the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber through your application. And what I like to do is just go at it from a high level at first just what the two programs are. And then we can dive into a little bit more detail in each of them as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Charlie, we’re back. If you would share with us what what are the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber that your application

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Charlie Clark 9:29
is always interesting when you decide what programs to submit for your synopsis? I mean, it’s always wondering what this year it honestly it wasn’t as difficult based on the you know, the couple of years we’re all coming through with COVID. Two things we did one was called the path forward readiness plan. It fell under the sort of the heading of cataclysmic leadership. Just a comprehensive strategy for reopening our community post COVID You know when you have a community that is so heavily based on tourism Wow. what a what a game changer COVID was and how do we how do we reopen safely? How do we do that? So what we did is we we formed immediately we had 150 people on nine different task forces, everything from you know, churches and childcare to hoteliers, small business, retail service industry, you name it, we had it on those task forces. And as we were all just sort of starting to reopen and try and get back to business, which South Carolina did very quickly, by the way, but it’s just how do we how do we develop these industry specific protocols that ensure the safety of our residents, our workforce and our visitors? How do we make sure we’re all comfortable with that? So in a short amount of time, we convened those task forces. And they came up with those safety protocols. Those were then reviewed by a steering committee. And it just it just turned out to be such a great way to launch people back into business safely, and it worked really well. And the other. The other synopsis that we entered was a program near and dear to my heart that we did call them help for hope. We partnered with again, that word partnership comes through, I’m sure for a lot of award entries. Help for Hope was something we did in partnership with the Waterson Family Foundation and the Community Foundation of a low country. If you remember back when when COVID really hit was scary. It was a scary time when you have a workforce as many of ours here are and elsewhere as well. Going paycheck to paycheck, where your next meal was coming from was a reality. It was an actual reality here for workers, not just in f&b and restaurants, but in a variety of different when hoteliers are closing down those types of things. So we developed this plan that actually, you were given like your family, a community card for help for hope you could take that car to a restaurant, we had over 50 participating restaurants handed over, they’d give you a meal for four. And then the restaurant in turn, would take that to the Community Foundation of the low country for reimbursement. So restaurants were supported. People were getting fed. And you know, there was also a contingent of people who wanted to give, you know, how do I help if you remember that everybody wanted to dive in and do something this was a very tangible way. We had, we had donations from over 37 states. Coming in, in addition to corporate and people within our own community, people have a love affair with Hilton Head Island. And that really showed they had their favorite restaurants. They wanted to make sure that they felt supported. So those two programs were the ones we launched for synopsis and just just really, really great for our community and a great game changer for all.

Brandon Burton 12:47
Yeah, so let’s let’s start with that one with help for hope to just dive in a bit deeper. How did it get started? Like who who approached to with the foundations that you partnered with? How long did it take to develop the plan to actually work and then that, you know, broadcasts that out to the community to those people that needed it to, to either donate or to be a recipient of?

Charlie Clark 13:11
Well, I don’t know about you, but it seemed like during during the pandemic, things happen slowly and they also happened at lightspeed, you know, things just started moving. It just some conversations that got it started really and we looked around at our workforce and thought, you know, we knew we’d already on the on the kind of the bandwagon with the path forward and just really putting together those programs. But this was an issue hunger became an issue. We had some of our self help our Bluffton self help and soup kitchens coming to us and letting us know that oh my gosh, we’re inundated. So we thought how can we do this for this workforce? Who is really quite frankly, not used to utilizing those resources? So that’s how helper hope began. And originally, I remember when we first started this, it was somebody said, Well, what paperwork are we going to have people fill out for their, you know, to their meal? We said, there’s no paperwork. We’re not we’re not doing any paperwork. People who who come we were just going to give that handout that meal. And then the other thing was is how do you distribute it? Right? How do you get these community cards into the hands of families who needed them? We knew that that that wasn’t going to happen in the traditional way. We knew that some of those workers who had never been to a soup kitchen or bluffed and self help weren’t about to start now. So with this partnership, we launched popups, we launched pop ups and parking lots. And if you remember early days of the the pandemic as well, there was that no contact that type of thing. So we launched drive thru pop ups, and I’ll never forget, we launched our first one in a restaurant parking lot. One of our participating restaurants, had no idea put it out through social media, no idea how it was going to go or if anyone was going to show up. And the lines just started forming, snaking around the parking lot. And we ended up having to grow from larger and larger and larger venues because the word spread in the domain When was that great, we gave out over 19,000 meals, 19,000 meals distributed. And over, gosh, almost a quarter of a million dollars donated one of our restaurants who was participating in this, let us know that, you know, during during the help promote days, on the days those cards were distributed, he would see a 20 to 30% bump in his, in his restaurant traffic, which for his restaurant was was great too, you know, keeping those revenues and keeping people employed and, and getting paid. So it made a big, big difference. By the end, I knew we had something going when the second pop up we did. We had the sheriff’s department come and say we got to help you manage traffic. There’s too much traffic out onto Highway 278. So it was just a great, you know, feel good. I think for everybody involved, the folks who were in it was a happy, you know, help for hope. We had T shirts, it’s in hope dealer. You know, these pop ups? Yeah, these pop ups were very uplifting. You know, we were a little worried of like, oh, is this gonna be a downer, but we had music going smiles all around. And it just was. I mean, it just people were so grateful restaurants were grateful those receiving the cards were grateful. And it was just, quite frankly, one of the most rewarding things that that we’ve had the opportunity to be a part of.

Brandon Burton 16:18
Yeah. And I like how you guys remove the hurdle of having the paperwork to fill out and applying for program and all that. How did you identify who to target as people that may be in need for this? And then did it just spread word of mouth? Or how did you get the word out?

Charlie Clark 16:36
You know, social media, social media, social media, that became a conduit of information, we had a help for Hope website, we had help, perhaps social media, we had the restaurants themselves, we had businesses who were pushing out for their employees, hey, if you need this, take advantage of this, this is a great thing. So really, really spread that way. Could also could kind of gauge as things were happening, maybe there were restaurants who weren’t seeing as much traffic. And we were using social media to say, here’s the list of restaurants participating. Don’t forget about this one or that one, they’re doing this meal or that meal. So it became really through word of mouth and social media. And as we knew it continued to grow to the point where our last help for Hope drive thru pop up was in a university parking lot. That gives you any idea the size that was needed?

Brandon Burton 17:28
Yeah, well, I can imagine because just thinking back in those early days, the pandemic where there was so much uncertainty going on, that we didn’t know how long this is going to last, we didn’t know what businesses would survive, we didn’t know if your own job would be around, you know, a month or two from then. So being able to be to keep money set aside, as you know, the storms keep coming or you know, however, just to be prepared, it’s nice to be able to have some kind of relief like this even just to go out and enjoy a meal. And I can anticipate even especially in the Hilton Head area where you’ve got a lot of hospitality and tourism based businesses that there was probably even a higher level of uncertainty with a lot of people where this became a great program of rescue.

Charlie Clark 18:16
We all forget that too. We forget the early days of the pandemic, you know, we all seem so settled in now in terms of knowing what’s what and what’s going on. But those early days were scary. Yeah, they really weren’t for a lot of people. So we just sort of this as many communities do you just bootstrap you roll up your sleeves, you partner with your community and and you make things happen. And that’s what I think chambers, the role of a chamber can be so so beneficial when when times of crisis are around.

Brandon Burton 18:43
Yeah. And it could have been easy just to sit back and say, well, maybe this will be over in a week or two. But you guys didn’t you got together, you rolled up your sleeves and you acted and then maybe kind of transitioning into the other program to path forward readiness. The term has been overused but the these are unprecedented times. Right. So to be able to navigate your way through, you know, something that we’ve never seen before. You talked about 150 people nine dis different taskforce How did that develop? How did it evolve? What What kind of outcomes Did you see as you roll that out in the community?

Charlie Clark 19:27
You know, it came about quickly. I think a lot of us were like different timeframe when it came to putting programming together. During this time and putting we just again, we had we did a thing also that kind of leads into this Brandon which was we launched a thing called Power Hour power hours a once a week call where people could kind of get unfiltered information about everything from the latest COVID news to the community to what was happening and we weren’t finding that in the media a lot. You know, this kind of unfiltered there were those headlines that were or built for click throughs not for information. And it was a real need. So once we developed that, we saw that people, I think one guest in particular, we had Peter Greenberg on who was CBS News. He’s does all their travel coverage nationally. And he said to us on this call, he said, people who are coming to your destination, they know you’ve got great beaches, they know you’re a beautiful place. They want to know they’re safe. They want to know, they can travel somewhere where they’re gonna be safe. And again, the residents as well. They wanted to know we’ve coexisted with visitors since the 50s. They wanted to know that this was going to be safe for them as well, and the workforce, those people who were working with our guests, they needed to know so when you convene those task forces in every industry is different, what’s going to work for childcare isn’t going to work for a restaurant. So we brought together those task forces that were also made up of not only industry, peeps themselves, but also residents in the community when we wanted everybody to be involved, and have a voice in what safe look like in those early days, the pandemic and they did it. They came up with those safety protocols by industry. We had a steering committee that was overseen by medical professionals, and by the hospital CEOs in our community to to sort of say, Yep, this is this passes muster, this works. And then we immediately put it into action. We had businesses involved, we had hundreds of businesses do what we call take the pledge, they signed a pledge that said, here are the safety protocols, I adhere to. Those protocols were available on our website in English and Spanish. And you were given a seal to put on your door now that was actually adopted by many other communities. We saw that happen. We were sort of early in that game, the state of Florida through vacation rental Management Association, they adopted that for their locations in California and in Florida. So it kind of took off other communities as well. We’re interested in in doing that. And it really did Garner its fair share of immediate as well over 126 media outlets picked it up. And I think one of the best quotes we had was just that, you know, this is a community that’s doing it safely. This is a committee that knows what they’re doing. And that came out of Redbook magazine, Yahoo. So it really did it was great to see people coming. And then people actually asking going into business is going where’s your seal? Versus your seal? I’m not coming in without that. So that was a catalyst to

Brandon Burton 22:26
Yeah. So as things evolved, and coming through recovery and so forth, did you guys have to go back and re address some of those? Look, I’m struggling for the right word, but the the plan of action, the safety protocols and everything. How often were you guys addressing that?

Charlie Clark 22:49
We could convene those task forces really quickly. And as you know, we all became Zoomers, right, that was a whole different ballgame. So we could Can we still we still convened those task forces to this day when it comes to issues affecting their industry. So we also immediately set up resources, Zoom rooms, different things that we had here at the Chamber of studio that could help in that process. But yeah, it was it was honestly a process that we evolved over time. It wasn’t unusual at all for us to reconvene just to ask questions and to garner feedback, what’s working for you what’s not working for you? And times we put too fat task forces together so they could speak to each other so they could talk and I get the needs and and issues from from, for example, what does what does the hotel industry need from childcare? What is how those two work together? So it was a rewarding, rewarding part of what we do. I think like I said, I think it was the Redbook magazine said Hilton Head Island paves the path forward for fun and safe family travel and vacations. What is that big we were we were concerned for people that are going to come this summer and turns out 2020 occupancy for us was actually down only about 2.9%. Over the prior year. Our Yeah, our July of that year was up 17% over the prior year, because the word was out. And this was obviously wide open space. It’s a safe place to be families were coming and they were remotely working. They were remotely schooling, and they felt safe doing that.

Brandon Burton 24:28
Wow. That’s great. So it sounds like the task forces are still operating. The program’s still going for I was that was gonna be my next question. If it’s still operating, or if you’re able to sunset some of these task forces, or maybe hibernate them for a little bit as things get better. But how’s that landscape looking? Now?

Charlie Clark 24:48
Definitely, definitely. You know, we as we all did, we evolved as as the pandemic evolved, and we’re able to sunset implement whatever we needed to do on that front. So we’re just really, you know, proud of our business community for stepping up to the plate and doing it very quickly. I think speed was at the essence, because there were so many unknowns as COVID was making its way through our country. And I think that really did help a lot as well. Right.

Brandon Burton 25:15
So I’d like to ask how you guys at the Hilton Head, Bluffton chamber, how do you view the role of your chamber in the community?

Charlie Clark 25:26
You know, I think, I think in any community, and especially now the Chamber’s they’re really the ones that are getting it done. The one sort of doing the impossible what others say is impossible. Chambers often say, No, I think we can handle that. I think we can get that done. And we do it in partnership. And I think chambers are really often put forth those initiatives and programs are sort of game changers. For us, I know whether that’s attracting Southwest Airlines to start flying out of our area what you know, big, hairy, audacious goals are usually things that chambers don’t shy away from. And I think our role became even more pronounced as Chambers as we’ve gone through the last two years.

Brandon Burton 26:09
Yeah, I like that response. That’s great. I love that chambers are the ones that get it done. That should be a slogan on every Chamber of Commerce.

Charlie Clark 26:18
Yeah, as the other slogan, you never waste a good crisis. I think leadership always rises to the top. And I think that was definitely true for a lot of chambers across this country, during the past few years to take that leadership role was an important one for chambers.

Brandon Burton 26:36
That’s right. So I’d like looking at the all the chamber the year finalists as those kind of setting a benchmark in the chamber world, as far as you know, areas of work and the example you’re setting, if you were to provide maybe a tip or an action item for for those listening, who would be interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Charlie Clark 27:02
Well, you know, I think first and foremost is to utilize all the tools in your toolbox, I mean, utilize the incredible resources we all have with ACCE, and with the US Chamber, you know, the mentioned earlier about the power hour, we just pick up the phone and call and say, Curtis Dubay, chief economist for the US Chamber, could you be on our Power Hour and explain inflation? Yes, I can. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s great. And then it’s a two way street, you can ask questions. I mean, it’s not every day, you get to ask questions from the chief economist or epidemiologists with the hack during the height of it. So I think utilizing those resources, whether it be web based resources, it’s just it’s all out there. And it’s really, really helpful. I’d also say, in terms of, you know, chambers, going to the next level is know your voice, I really encourage you to we encourage chambers to know the power and behind what we represent as chambers, you know, we always like to talk and our number of businesses or a number of members, but sometimes it’s easy to forget their their jobs and faces behind those businesses. Each business represents the livelihoods of so many people. And so I think to just know your voice to know that what a critical role that chambers play in the community and not be afraid, you know, to shy away from that, that, that we are the ones who who make change in our communities. And I think it’s hard to sometimes I think, for chambers to take that 40,000 foot view that often it’s easy, as I like to call it to major in the minors, you know, chambers are often held responsible for everything. And, you know, just you know, we get it done, and so

Brandon Burton 28:43
all credit for very little credit.

Charlie Clark 28:46
Right. So sometimes I think it’s hard to to look at your community from that 40,000 foot view, and not major in the minors because it’s easy to get get packed by those. And in addition to, you know, our mission statement, which every chamber has, we have a set of guiding principles, and we believe in only taking on endeavors that that we can do better than others in the community that we have a voice to pull people together to convene the community. So I think that’s an important aspect of of being an excellent chamber as well.

Brandon Burton 29:18
I love that. I love that response. So I like asking everybody who I have on the show about the future of chambers. And so how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Charlie Clark 29:32
You know, I think chambers are now more relevant than ever. I think the last few years have been a proving ground for chambers and boy did we all step up to the plate. We actually gained members during during the pandemic, at a time when economic uncertainty was tough for a lot of businesses based on our response and our ability to connect the community and offer information that was relevant. So I think the future of chambers is bright. I think we’ve been I’m more prominent in terms of our community leadership, I think we are viewed in our communities as as, as I said, conveners connectors of people in a world that while we seem to be more connected than ever, we’re really more disconnected than ever, in so many ways. And I think chambers do a great job of, of really having a coalescent community that you can actually, you know, take action and make change in your community, on those big, scary goals that often bring, you’re always gonna bring, you know, good and bad, you know, your goal is headed in the right direction when it comes to whether it’s a, you know, infrastructure problem or a piece of legislation which we all handle, you know, you’re doing something, right. If you have a little bit of a balance of people going yay, on that front, big, big projects always have that. So I think the future of chambers going forward, we feel it’s a really great time to be a chamber and a great time to make a

Brandon Burton 31:00
difference. Yeah, I think a lot of chambers, almost were surprised that they gained members during the pandemic, because you figure things are shut down, businesses are struggling, but they forget to remember that, that there’s a need, you know, and there’s that stress going on with these businesses, there’s a need. And so that bump and membership and then whatever, you know, recession we have that’s being talked about coming up on the brink of us. I think there’s going to be more businesses that are returning to their chamber to to figure out how do I navigate through this now. So we

Charlie Clark 31:38
saw we saw you know, we, we saw in our surveys, everybody our membership surveys, which we do each year, we saw some changes, which was interesting to see as the pandemic went on. That just speaks to I think, what’s happening and going to happen in the future chambers. Um, as you mentioned, with a potential recession, what’s happening economically is that we saw really rise to the top, the benefit for chambers for, for us being the ones to convey relevant, timely information, they want information, they’re starving for information, many of us are no in a world filled with it, you know, how do you localize that? How do you make it mean something to your business community in a way that makes a difference, and I think that’s going to be in a really important factor coming up as well,

Brandon Burton 32:21
and being trusted information. That’s key. Charlie, this has been a lot of fun having you with me on the podcast today. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about these programs that you talked about what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Connect with Charlie Clark

Charlie Clark 32:41
You know, I would love for people just to reach out directly to me. I would love to have those conversations other chambers I can be reached easily at cclark@hiltonheadisland.org or you can always go to our website as well. hiltonheadchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 33:02
That’s perfect. Now I’ll get them both in our show notes for this episode, so people can find it easily and have to write while they’re driving or anything like that. So Charlie, this has been great. You guys are definitely making an impact in your community there and appreciate you spending time with us today. And I wish you and the and all of your organization Best of luck is chamber the

Charlie Clark 33:25
year. Thanks, Brandon. I’ll see you in Indy.

Brandon Burton 33:28
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Eugene Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Brittany Quick-Warner

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

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

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Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host, he realizes that the next generation is already doing commerce in the metaverse.

He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman brothers membership sales solutions. Let’s hear Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

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Brandon Burton 1:02
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and for this episode, we’re joined by Brittany Quick-Warner. Brittany is the president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber in Oregon. Brittany has successfully served in multiple capacities in her seven years with the chamber. Beginning in late 2016. Brittany served as interim president and CEO during the sudden medical leave and passing of the long term president and CEO and was ultimately selected in September 2017. To serve as the next President and CEO of the Eugene chamber. Brittany is the youngest and first known woman to lead the 1200 member organization. She has been active in the community since her arrival, serving as board member for several organizations including onward Eugene, travel Lane County, the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene, bring recycling, better Eugene Springfield transportation and the Junior League of Eugene, as well as serving on the Eugene sustainability Commission and the Lane County poverty and homelessness board. She currently serves on the board of directors for WAC II and ACC. Brittany, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast and congratulations being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. I’d love for you to take a minute to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Brittany Quick-Warner 2:41
Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it. Super excited to be here with everyone. Like Brandon said, my name is Brittany and I have the honor of being the chamber CEO here at the Eugene Oregon chamber. I have actually been with our chamber for nine years, I realized, as you read that my bio, um, the small things that you’ve never remember to do. Yeah, so it’ll be nine years this summer. And when I got into this job, it was one of those things I definitely never knew or thought I would be a chamber staffer. I really honestly came into it not really knowing exactly what Chambers of Commerce do so. But I very quickly caught the bug and have been incredibly honored and blessed to have opportunities within the industry that have really kept me here because it’s a little bit sticky once you get really dug in. So something people don’t know or might not know about me. So I’m from the Midwest, I grew up in Kansas City. And my whole life I was a huge weather nerd actually got my bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science and was on the tornado chasing team. And that’s one of the I think most um, I don’t know, one of the saddest things about moving to the West Coast is we have much more boring weather.

Brandon Burton 4:02
We don’t have tornadoes, and yeah, exactly

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:04
my husband’s like, Okay, you have a different bar than most people. But yeah, and actually, I worked in emergency management before I moved to Eugene. So I work for the State Emergency Management Office in Missouri. And it is remarkable how many of the skills that I learned in that job, I deployed over the last couple of years as chamber CEO during the pandemic, so you never know where those previous lives will come back. So

Brandon Burton 4:30
yeah, so I’m in the Texas area. So I know what it’s like when these tornadoes pop up. And it is very interesting. And I’ll have family and friends call me and say, Are you okay? And I am on my back porch watching this thing, you know?

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:45
Yeah, it’s funny when I talk to people and worrying about that. They’re just like, wait, what? How are you kidding? I’m like, no, that’s just when you’re from the Midwest. You just kind of get used to it.

Brandon Burton 4:54
Let’s roll with it. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the Eugene’s. chamber, give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

About the Eugene Area Chamber

Brittany Quick-Warner 5:09
Yeah, of course. So our chamber has about 1200 Members, we have kind of bounced around between second and third largest chamber in the state of Oregon. We have currently 15 staff. When I got into this position five years ago, we had about six staff. So we’ve grown really quickly and pretty significantly in the last five years. We our budget this year is about 1.9 million. And it’s pretty split between a couple of different revenue streams. So we obviously have our membership base, which is about 30% of our income. We also just a couple years ago, which we can talk a little bit more about launched onward, Eugene, which is the economic development kind of entity for our region after a lot of turmoil in that space as a community for a while. And so a good portion of our income comes through the management of that entity. And then our sponsorships are about 35% of what our revenue is and and then we do a handful of events that bring in a little bit of revenue to

Brandon Burton 6:20
Alright, that’s good. Yeah, that that really helps to kind of set the table for discussion. So as a one of these chamber the year finalist episodes but at what I’ve been doing, what I like to do is focus on the two programs, the program synopsis included on your chamber the year application, and I look forward to learning about these programs and sharing some of those details as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Brittany, we’re back. If you would just take us through what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application, maybe just from a high level and then we’ll we can circle back and go into some more detail on those programs.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Brittany Quick-Warner 9:52
Yeah, of course. So this was our first time applying for chamber of the year at least in my tenure, and honestly we were pretty intimidated by the process for a while. And I will say it’s not an easy or it’s not a quick process. There’s a lot of time and effort that has to be put into it. But for those of you listening who think, oh, gosh, I don’t know if I could ever do that. It’s totally worth it. And I will say that because one of the things is it forces you to really think about, okay, where have we found success? And what programs do we have that are really cutting edge, and we’re really kind of pushing the envelope. And I think as chamber executives, we, we sometimes often move on to the next thing very quickly, without celebrating like, hey, we actually are doing some good stuff here. And we should, we should think about that. So it was hard for us to kind of whittle it down to a couple of programs that we really wanted to highlight. But the two that we did choose, one of them is last year, we launched a freemium membership model. So a basic membership that is 100%, free to, to folks to join the chamber, and took a lot of time to really analyze that decision to do that. Think about pros and cons. But ultimately, the reasoning behind it were was a couple of reasons. One, we were diving really deep into work on equity, inclusion and diversity and really trying to analyze internally, what can we do as an organization to really create a more equitable, membership and organization and more inclusive, and have a lot of listening sessions with bipoc members in our community and businesses who maybe weren’t members of the chamber and giving some perspective as to why. So that’s one piece. But then we also do a lot of advocacy as an organization. And we wanted to make sure that we could really bring in as many businesses as possible to help advocate on their behalf. Which leads to the second synopsis that we applied, using, which is the work we’ve been doing around homelessness. So the city of Eugene and Lane County, which is a county we sit in, we have more than 4000 individuals living on the streets of our community on housed. It’s one of the highest per capita in the country. And it is a really, it’s a crisis. And it is growing. And it’s feels to a lot of folks in the community like it’s completely out of control. And that was an issue that our businesses really kind of stepped up and said, we have got to do something and where is the chamber out on this issue? And how are we influencing the future of, of our community and the prosperity of these individuals who have living on the streets. So we dove in really deep, and we can talk a little bit more about the details of that program. But ultimately, what we ended up doing was releasing a really extensive report on the state of homelessness in our community. And then that has catalyzed a ton of things that have come out of it. One of it being a business leaders taskforce of over 100 businesses who’ve come together to really say we want to provide leadership in this space. So I can go into more detail about

Brandon Burton 13:09
let’s, let’s start with that one. So homelessness, and the focus you guys are putting on there, because I think there’s, there’s so many unique traits and attributes, you know, they go across that topic that, hey, and you guys probably ever realized there’s no one one size fits all right, for all the different reasons why somebody may be homeless. So as you dug in, and did research and and looked at what the problem is, what are some of those things that you’ve discovered? And have you gone about addressing it?

Brittany Quick-Warner 13:42
Yeah, good question. So when we decided that we needed to have some sort of voice in this, I very much said to my board, I don’t know what our role should be. At this point. There’s a lot of places where it feels like, we need improvements. And I don’t know what the Chamber’s role is. And I think we have two options. One, we can either just get really mad and angry about the state of this crisis and marched down to City Hall and pound our fists on the table and tell our city councilors, you have to do something about this. Which if I looked, you know, if I fast forward five years, and I looked back at this moment, I could not honestly say that I felt like that would make an impact on the number of people sleeping on the streets. And the other option was to get really deep and strategic and to to flex that problem solving muscle that a lot of chambers have that they might not feel like this is their problem to solve. But the reality is it’s impacting our businesses. It’s impacting our local economy. It’s impacting the overall livability of our community. And those individuals living on the streets obviously are in dire need of someone to advocate for better quality of life as well. So we decided to go that route. It was the harder of the two options. But what that looked like was, was us as it’s chamber has staff going out and having individual conversations with over 200 people in our community to really understand the issue deeper and to try to help suss out what are some of the barriers or the roadblocks that we’re facing in our system that has gotten to this point, we talked to unhoused individuals themselves, we talked to business owners to every nonprofit that works in this space in our community, which there’s a lot of them. We talked to communities across the country to try to find out best practices, what others are doing. And ultimately, what we had was about 250 pages of notes from all of these conversations that we realized we needed to do something with. And we knew we weren’t the experts on this. But we had gleaned an enormous amount of information that we really felt like if we could summarize this down and boil it to a handful of recommendations, just based on what we’ve learned from all these experts in our community, that we could bring a lot more clarity to the conversation. And so that’s what we did, we’re gonna release this report, which is a living document where, you know, we’re kind of always sort of going back and finding ways to improve or other ideas. But one of the things, you know, that we heard a lot in the community is we don’t know what’s happening in this space, or whatever is happening isn’t working, or we don’t think anything is happening at all. And all of those things were leading to this sense of hopelessness amongst community members that we will never be able to get our heads wrapped around this problem. So out of that, what we came up with was eight recommendations that we felt like if we could focus in on these eight areas, and move some initiatives forward together as a community, that we can make a real, real dent, in in that enhanced number. And a couple of key areas that we really pushed on is one, better accountability and transparency. Our city and county officials are the entities that control really the conversation around homelessness and services and funding. And they’re doing good work. But there’s not very good communication or transparency coming out of those entities. And so it’s causing this sense of hopelessness. The second was, there was no, there is no clear shared vision, every person we talked to had a different idea of what the end goal was. And we all know that without a really clear shared vision for what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re going to be going in different directions. Even if we all have the same sort of, you know, good hearted intentions.

We also knew that our community needed to take a serious look at how we’re holding people accountable. And that was something that we knew was going to get us a little bit of pushback, because a lot of times in this space, people don’t want to associate crime and homelessness. And we weren’t trying to by any way, say that we’re trying to criminalize homelessness, but there is crime happening on our streets that people need to be held accountable for. We also talked about good data, about wraparound services and how individuals we might be getting them into shelter, but we’re not providing them this the services they need to actually get well. So those eight recommendations came out. And one of the biggest ones that we’ve been pushing all along is this crisis is bigger than our city and our county can handle on their own, it’s bigger than our nonprofit community can handle on its own. It is to the point where it is truly the entire community’s issue that we all have to come together around the table to try and solve. And we’ve honestly, I think, gotten a surprising amount of pushback from some of our local park or government partners in sort of letting go of of some of those pieces and allowing private sector to come to the table to say, What could we be doing to contribute positively to this conversation. So that idea of collective impact and a shared vision is one that we’ve really been trying to hone in on as a chamber and to try to convene enough voices to actually achieve that shared that shared vision, or identify and then achieve that shared vision. So all of this really like capacity building community building work, is exactly where I think chambers should be in their communities. And while it feels maybe like that’s not a space that we should operate in, I think it 100% is if you’re living up to being the convener, catalyst champion chamber for your community, right. And there is a bottom line impact on businesses. So I do think there’s an argument for the chamber being involved in that conversation. We’ve been able to catalyze some really cool projects out of this. We’ve had private sector folks who are now coming to the table who’ve never been engaged in this and they’re coming up with these really big visionary ideas that they have the resources to execute on, that no one else had even thought about, including that person in the conversation and now they’re adding to the pie instead of splitting it up amongst other nonprofits. So it’s been a year Ever since we really started digging into this, and we’ve already, you know, we’ve already seen about 200 temporary, but emergency shelters open up that private sector individuals gave their space to be used for that, that were not happening before the chamber got involved in this conversation, we have a couple of workforce pilots, where we have a local business owner who’s starting an entire different business line specifically, and only for hiring unhoused individuals and building a workforce pipeline for them to get trained into other industry jobs in the community. We have really great communications out to businesses about how to protect their properties, how to report issues, if they have them resources for if they do have crime, or an incident happen. So, you know, we’re some low hanging fruit, but then also some really cool. Like I said, visionary projects that wouldn’t have happened if the chamber hadn’t has said, Hey, let us bring all these businesses to the conversation as well.

Brandon Burton 20:59
Right now, as I think of this topic, I view it as an onion, right, it’s got all these layers to it. And I agree, I think the chamber is the perfect entity to peel back those layers and to convene, you kind of reorganize and put put things together and get those right, you know, example together and look at what the real problems are. Because it for whatever reason, and you know, various cities throughout the country. Homelessness tends to be attracted to certain cities, for whatever reason, you know, for a variety of reasons, we’ll say. So to be able to identify what those reasons are, and then why you go about trying to solve the problem, to not make it more attractive for you know, to drum. It’s it’s a, it’s a balance and multiple layers,

Brittany Quick-Warner 21:46
for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I think just setting the table, like I said, for more people to come and sit and contribute positive ideas, and that’s something we’ve been very intentional about is this is not a space for you to come in to complain or event, right. We’ve all done that. We all know what the issues are. This is a place for you to say, okay, given all this information, I have here some ideas that I want to bring to the conversation. And it’s we’ve been really successful in that. And I think that’s one thing that even if there’s skeptics out there about the chamber, really leading this conversation, what we’ve gotten is great feedback that they feel like, okay, this is definitely constructive. It’s, you know, it’s moving us in the right direction, and not just distracting us from the overall goal, which has been really rewarding,

Brandon Burton 22:31
right. And in the end, it makes a huge impact on the community as a whole. So I think that’s a great, great program, great area of focus, for sure. Let’s shift gears a little bit over to your freemium model. Curious, did you guys reach out and talk to like Tom Baldrige or any of these other chambers that have rolled out freemium models in the past? Yeah, so

Brittany Quick-Warner 22:55
we, there was a couple of chambers out there that we knew when we started doing this research. And so we did we sit down, we sat down Tiffany Esposito down in Florida. And I believe my staff might have talked to Tom as well. Just to say, like, you know, you’re a few few months ahead of us, like, how’s it going? And we got good feedback from them that, you know, so far, so good. And our board was definitely interested in, in just looking at membership structures overall differently and trying to say, like, are we being proactive in the way that we’re sort of selling ourselves to the community. And it helped, I had a tech CEO as my board chair, during the time that we were having this discussion and, and he’s, he was the first one to say, like, our business model is totally based on freemium, you know, applications and services that we then convert into paid customers. And so you know, he really encouraged us to look at that at that model as not a way to give away our membership. But to bring more people in who we maybe wouldn’t have had the hook for prior to offering an option that really does just expose them to all the things that they could be investing in, right.

Brandon Burton 24:08
And chambers often say they’re the voice of business. And to be able to say, we’re the voice of business, but not your business, because you’re not a dues paying member doesn’t really seem right either. So I like the idea of a freemium model and being there as a support for all the business in your community. It’s just a matter of making it work to where the revenue still works out and your chamber can still function, right? Yeah. And

Brittany Quick-Warner 24:31
the Yeah, honestly, the pandemic was a big motivator for us because what we did is a lot of our a lot of our programs and the training and the information resources that we were putting out to the community, we took down that paywall for all of it during a pandemic. We wanted anyone and everyone who has a business to be to hear about and to have access to these resources. We did a lot of web hours and trainings on all of the federal regulations and you know, grants and all all of these things that were coming out. And we were not restricted to just members in that space. And so what we saw was a lot of people that had never engaged with the chamber, and then also would have never heard about any of those resources, if it wasn’t for the chamber reaching out to them, even though they weren’t a member saying, hey, take a look at this thing. And so that is what really inspired us to say, like, Okay, we could do this, we could open it up, we could bring more people under the umbrella. And then it’s on us as chamber staff, and as you know, our board leadership to show the value of their investment. So they hopefully transition up to a paid member, we’re just coming up on a year of this program. Actually, July one is when we launched it last year. And so right now, our membership staff have a strategy for getting, you know, obviously, they’ve been coordinating or engaging with those members all year, but making sure to sit down and have those sales conversations about hey, come in at this other level. And here’s the benefits we can provide. And here’s what your investment is getting you. And so that was one of the other motivations is it’s a built in sales pipeline, right? How many Tony chambers have sat there and sort of like bang their heads against the wall saying, where’s my leads? How do I get more leads in my sales pipeline, and we have 150 new members that are in our premium membership that now are built in sales pipeline for selling paid memberships. So, so far, we’ve done good, and in some of those conversions, we’re still sort of waiting on the big kind of number of how many of those people transition in the first year. So preliminarily, the numbers look good as far as our ability to retain and to bring in new members. But you know, jury’s still out a little bit to see how it ends up after a year.

Brandon Burton 26:52
So as you rolled out this program, the premium model, how did you go about informing the businesses in your community? Did you get a business list from the county and just do a mass mailing? Or how did you go about the messaging to get that out?

Brittany Quick-Warner 27:07
Yeah, good question. So our community, I think, is disadvantaged in that we don’t have a business license program. And so there is no formal like registration here locally for businesses, which would be so fantastic. And I’m we’re trying to convince our city, that’s a good idea. So it’s been really word of mouth, we leaned heavily on our board and some of our other members to sort of say, hey, invite somebody that you know, who maybe wants to consider the chamber, we had a really strong sort of marketing strategy, that first three months of the program, we did radio, we did TV, we had commercials, I was kind of going around and speaking to rotary clubs and other entities that have business affiliates, or memberships. And we had, we saw a lot of folks start coming in, and that in that first three months with just that general promotion, and then we’ve kind of just left it open. And as we’ve engaged folks, we we didn’t set a strong sort of number. On the freemium side, if we want to hit X number of members, we have an overall membership goal. And so, you know, that freemium membership will help us get to those numbers that we’re trying to achieve that way. But, you know, we were pretty regimen in the whole process, you know, we did a lot of deep work with our board to help them, you know, make sure they were comfortable with it, talk to other chambers laid out what the program would look like, got very specific on the benefits for that free membership, it’s very scaled back from what are other benefits offer, obviously. And then we did a lot of kind of focus groups talking to folks and got their feedback on it and, and then ultimately launched it. And it has helped us save some members, too. That wasn’t the main goal. But we have some businesses that you all know, did not fare well during the pandemic, and they appreciate want to continue to support the chamber. But financially, they aren’t able to, we’re able to bump them down to that freemium level, and then flag their membership database to like, get them back up, hopefully the next year. So instead of losing them all together, we get to keep them in the chamber kind of channels and networks, and then hopefully come bring them back up to a paid member later.

Brandon Burton 29:19
Yeah. And as far as to sharing information with them, and keeping them in the loop of what you’re doing advocacy wise, and things like that doesn’t really cost anything, you know, timewise so why not just keep them involved?

Brittany Quick-Warner 29:31
Yeah, and the other thing that, you know, that we have, we’re monitoring as well is the non dues revenue that they bring in, right, so our freemium members, now we’re on our email list, they see all the events that we have, and they’re paying to attend those events that they wouldn’t have been before they are a member. So we are seeing a good amount of of non dues revenue coming from those free members who are now advertising and they have a higher cost for advertising because you’re not a paid member for attending events. So yeah, there’s a little bit of that happening too, which is good, because we’re at least capturing some sort of revenue from that additional base of membership.

Brandon Burton 30:07
Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. So I wanted to ask you, Brittany, if How do you see the role of the Eugene chamber there in your community?

Brittany Quick-Warner 30:20
How do I see the roll? So, for those of you who are not familiar with ACC II, came out with the Horizon Report a handful of years ago. And in that report, there are a handful of sort of realities that they were predicting that chambers and associations and just sort of the world in general were leaning towards. And one of the things that really stuck out for me in that Horizon Report in which I, you know, I’m constantly going back to with our staff, is this idea of being the sane center. And, and not being afraid to dive into issues, but really, truly trying to bring a non bias perspective to the conversation. We have done advocacy for a long time. But even more so in the last couple of years, have really leaned into this place of being able to, to pull people from all across the community together to say, Look, our overall goal is economic prosperity, and people living happy, healthy lives in this community. And to do that we can’t be, you know, politically, ideological in one way or the other as a chamber. And so we want to represent the st center, the place where I feel like we can find some alignment. And I really think that in our community, our chamber has been really respected for that. And it’s a place that I’m proud for us to be we’re very data driven, we want to see the the actual impacts not just this hyperbolic kind of fear mongering. And because of that, I think we’ve been really successful in our advocacy because people really do respect how much kind of deep research we do on issues before we come out with a position or try to advocate.

Brandon Burton 32:02
Yeah, and I think being the same Senator goes back to the chamber, just seeing a trusted resource to like you had mentioned through the pandemic, these small businesses not knowing where to turn for some of these answers. And you could look at a social media post, or you could look to the chamber who’s done the research. And and same thing with being the same Senator, you can watch these polarizing news channels, or you can look at the Chamber who’s looking at the data and looking out for your interest as a business in the community.

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I you know, not to downplay, it’s not easy, often hearing that voice, because it takes a lot more work to actually have done your homework and, and to seek out multiple sources and to really hear both sides out.

Brandon Burton 32:41
And to put aside prices, right? Yep,

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:44
exactly, exactly. However, I think it gets us further in the long run. So it’s worth the extra effort upfront.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Absolutely. So Brittany, what might be maybe a tip or an action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Brittany Quick-Warner 33:03
Oh, my goodness, I think one of the things that I did early on that really kind of opened my eyes to what’s possible, is I I sat down and like very methodically went through chambers and other communities that I felt like, I wanted to be right, who we aspire to be like, and almost every one of them was in a community that was bigger than us that had more resources than us that had more members. And they weren’t able to do bigger things. Because of that, that level. And I think often if we just kind of look at the folks who are our peers, or who have are similarly resourced, we kind of keep our minds kind of close to what we could be doing. We implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or Eos, which is explained in a book called traction. And Jane Clark at the Michigan West chamber was the speaker at an ACC conference about five and a half years ago that I heard talk about this. And I was absolutely, I just felt like, oh my gosh, someone just planted this in front of me the exact time that I needed it. We were in chaos art, my CEO had just passed away. We were trying to get our feet together under us. I was a new CEO. So I had never managed an organization before. And I desperately needed a tool to help us just like organize and set goals, and just get really strategic with our work. And that US process has helped us do that. But one of the things in that process is looking at 10 years out on a horizon and then backing up three years in one year, and actually visualizing what your organization will look like in 10 years and putting numbers to it. We put a revenue goal, we put a member size we put a retention rate, we put the number of staff that we wanted to see. So and then we backed up In three years, so 2022 was our three year or three year out picture for when we started this. We had envisioned 14 staff in our organization. And we were six people when we started doing this. Here we are in 2022. With 15 staff members, we envision a $2 million revenue. Here we are 1.9. I’m hoping we we beat our budget, and we get that 2 million we envisioned applying for and winning chamber of the year. So we’ll see, I think the honor of at least being a finalist, and you can look at it from three years ago, it was on our list of like, what is what do we imagine for ourselves? And it was remarkable to me how much just that sort of very specific visioning helped us actually get there, right, like putting an actual number to it. And then creating a roadmap to hit that number. And chambers of any size could do that. Right? It’s not it doesn’t have to be like, Oh, well, they’re a big chamber, or they, you know, have X number of members or whatever. Absolutely, you can do that as a one person, staff, volunteer staff member, you know, you can say, in 10 years, what I want to look like in three years, and then how do I get there? So to me, I feel like I we I owe a lot of credit to James Clark is with us process. And then just to our staff for being willing to dream big. We like to, I like to think about it as well, not how sometimes we we How the heck out of things, but we just need to sort of say what is our big vision, and let’s not tear it apart the first time it gets thrown out into the world, and then figure out how to get there. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:38
I love that creating that vision, it shows you what’s possible. And then as you create that roadmap, it aligns the resources to make it happen. Yeah. And as it comes together, it’s kind of like, holy smokes, how did this happen? Together, but we have a cup of

Brittany Quick-Warner 36:53
staff who are not with our chamber anymore. They’ve graduated out into the community, I like to say, who wrote me when they saw we post about the chamber of the year, nom, and they’re like, that was on our three year vision, like we actually did it. So it’s kind of fun to like, pull back in some folks who had been there. And they were a part of that. And they remember

Brandon Burton 37:11
that, too. It was impactful that they remember the timeline, and they know that it’s happening. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Brittany Quick-Warner 37:27
Oh, gosh, I think a lot about this being on the WAC and ACC board. I feel, and we’ve heard this from leaders in the industry over the last couple years, I feel like chambers are more valuable and more needed than ever right now. And a lot of it is because of so much just polarization in our world. And I think if chambers can rise above the fray, and really play that same center role and take that problem solver role seriously, communities are going to be desperate for someone who they can look to who’s local, who understands their local issues. It’s not some, you know, outside of the community, who has the interest of everyone in the community at heart and who can who can convene, and do so in a way that people respect and they want to they want to be a part of it. So to me, chambers of the future are not, I think will always be interested in in businesses and representing businesses, because I think the private sector is one that desperately needs to be a part of the solution. But I think that we’re going to be challenged to with solving bigger community issues than just sort of taxes and opposing taxes or supporting taxes, right. It’s homelessness. It’s our housing crisis, its climate and energy. It’s, you know, some of these big hairy issues that our country is facing. If all our chambers got together and really pushed out an agenda around homelessness at the federal level, I think we could do an enormous amount of good at actually impacting this crisis. So that’s where I feel like the future of chambers are is solving those big community issues that are desperate for someone with with respect to step up and solve them.

Brandon Burton 39:11
Yeah, well, everybody heard it here, first Britney’s vision of the future. So we’ll see. What’s the timeframe on this year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:18
Three years, give me three years

Brandon Burton 39:21
will solve all the world’s issues, at least the country’s issues and three. So Brittany, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things here in Eugene, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with

Connect with Brittany Quick-Warner

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:39
you? Absolutely. So my email brittanyw@eugenechamber.com. And happy to also have folks give my cell phone or my office phone a call. If you go to the Eugene chamber website on our staff page, you can find those numbers as well. And I Absolutely love connecting with other chambers. I was very lucky to have other CEOs who said yes to me when I was new in this role, and still do for me to pick their brains. So I love returning the favor.

Brandon Burton 40:11
It’s so important. It really is. Well, Brittany, this has been a great discussion. I’ve had a lot of fun learning from you and and learning about these programs you guys are implementing and really making a difference there. And Eugene, so thank you for spending time with us today. And I wish you and your staff Best of luck as chamber the year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 40:31
Yes, thank you so much for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 40:34
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Conway Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Brad Lacy

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

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

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Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
Now your host he prefers taking notes with a pen and paper, he’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.

Tony Felker 0:46
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:08
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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Guest Introduction

This is a special episode and our 2022 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist series, and our guests for this episode is Brad Lacy, the President and CEO of the Conway Area Chamber in Arkansas. Brad is a native of Ida Arkansas and began his economic development career in 1997 with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission as a community development consultant and later as a project manager where he worked to recruit companies to the state. Brad has served as president and CEO of the Conway Development Corporation or CDC, the city of Conway’s nonprofit economic development entities since 2000. In December of 2006, Brad became the president CEO of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce. It marked the first time in nearly two decades at the chamber and CDC had been under the same leadership, the leadership of the same person. The combined management of both organizations brings the city larger staff to focus on economic development activities. In 2013. The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce was named chamber the year by ACCE and in 2018, was named runner up. Brad holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Central Arkansas, the Masters of Public Administration from the University of Arkansas Little Rock. He’s a graduate of the Community Development Institute at UCA, the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management. Brad is a former member of the University of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees and has served two terms on the Board of Regents for the US Chamber West Institute of organization management. I’m excited to have Brad back with me on Chamber Chat Podcast, he was a guest way back in episode 103, where we talked about the way they go about their annual meeting. So if anybody wants to go back in the archive and check that out, it was a fantastic episode. But Brad, welcome back to Chamber Chat Podcast, go out and say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Brad Lacy 4:01
Yeah, well, thanks for thanks for asking. I’m not sure I’m all that. Interesting. Maybe the most interesting things that I’ve been in the job over 20 years and have only been in one community that doesn’t seem to be very common these days in the chamber world. So that’s true. Yeah, maybe maybe that’s the interesting thing.

Brandon Burton 4:25
Good deal. Well, tell us maybe some background, this specs, if you will, on the Conway area, chamber size, location, budget, staff, that sort of thing, just to give us some perspective.

About the Conway Area Chamber

Brad Lacy 4:38
Yeah. So first, just a little on the city. So the city Conway is part of the Little Rock North Little Rock Conway MSA so we’re the Northern Gateway to the Little Rock MSA. The city has about 70,000 people. It is a little bit of several things. So it’s a College Town it has has three colleges and universities. A percentage of our population commutes into little rock to work every day. But most of our people stay here because it’s very much a business center too. So it’s not exactly a suburb, it’s not exactly a college town, it’s kind of a little of four or five things all mixed up, which makes us a little bit interesting. The Chamber itself has been around since 1891, and was formed to recruit the colleges here. So we’ve always had a real tied to the educational community here. And through the years, there have been a series of sister organizations that spin off from the chamber. So the other the biggest one being the CDC, as you mentioned in the intro, which is an economic development entity that spun off in 1959. And that was the that was the organization that initially hired me 23 years ago. And so today, what you have is really this collection of organizations that are tied through management agreements. And so the staff, which there’s a staff of 18, we manage, really, the assets and the work of those several organizations, budget is going to be anywhere from five to $7 million a year, which is a pretty big budget, especially for our community our size. But when you put all of those organizations together, that’s what that’s what it looks like. And on the economic development side, there’s a lot of property that’s involved. So land leases, building leases, land sales. And so that’s where a lot of that revenue comes from. But it’s an extremely diverse revenue stream, which is really by design and helps us sort of navigate changes in the economy or changes in one member, you know, leaving or whatever. So it’s pretty good model we think,

Brandon Burton 7:11
yeah. Sounds like from the wide scope of demographics even of what makes up Conway really creates a great personal identity as a as a community, it seems like for sure. And you mentioned 18 staff and I got to meet some of your staff at the Mako conference. And you’re surrounded by some great people so for sure you’ve got a good good people there around you. So that that always helps.

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Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

So as we’re doing these chamber, the year finalist interviews, what I like to do is focus on the two programs that you submitted on your application for chamber the year. So maybe just from a high level what’s address what those two programs are and then we can go in a little bit deeper and have you share some of the more nitty gritty about each program.

Brad Lacy 10:07
Sure. So the first one is a visioning committee wide visioning process called Conway 2035. We do a community wide visioning process every decade. Well, not really decade if you’re looking at the census, but every 10 years, so we did well, I guess it is, it does line up with the census. So actually, 2010 was the first year that we did that it was extremely important for us as a community. Because it really marked the first time that any entity had asked the community at large what they wanted to see for the city. And what happens is you get some agreement from larger groups of people on where not only the chamber, but city government. various nonprofits should be focusing their time and energy. And we did a lot of really great things in that decade between 2010 and 2020. So, and there was sort of a mid, mid, mid like 2015, we we convened sort of a smaller group of people to do a little bit of a correction to the plan to see, you know, what have we accomplished, were there some things that we needed to change, based off of things that were happening in the in the country. So 2020 Mark, really the year that we were supposed to renew that. So we had gotten everything ready, we had pulled our steering committee together, and we’re getting ready to meet with them. And it was a week, really after everything closed down. So that first program was really how did we do that? How do you how do you do a city wide visioning process when you can’t convene people? Because we did, we did it and we finished it. So the second one is our festival so we have a very oddly named festival, Toad Suck days. That is, that’s the name of it,

Brandon Burton 12:20
set that head on with the name. So that is what is Toad Suck days.

Brad Lacy 12:25
So my my EVP, Jamie Gates says that no southern city that’s worth anything, doesn’t have a festival named after a food or an animal. And so ours is named after toads, believe it or not, it’s a it’s a festival that volunteers started 41 years ago. And it really turned into something big. And as is the case in many communities, when things outgrow volunteers, they give them to the chamber. times you may not want them. This was one that you know, ended up being really good. It’s a very iconic festival in Arkansas, with a funny name. But throughout the history of the festival, we’ve raised $2 million for primarily educational nonprofits in the city, and some community development. So the festival is really the conduit through which we do a lot of charitable giving. But it also helps pay, you know, helps pay the bills because 100 to 125,000 people come to the festival. And there’s a lot of revenue that comes from that. So

Brandon Burton 13:48
sorry, I was maybe let’s just go deeper right now and untold sick days. So as you go about the planning of it each year, as its annual festival, do you know which nonprofits you’re targeting to support as you go about beginning it? Is their target goals going into it? How do you go about your planning and in strategy of

Brad Lacy 14:12
it? So historically, the money was earmarked for college scholarships for County students who were choosing to go to one of the three schools in Conway. So historically, that’s where all the money went. Internally, we decided to take a different course probably 10 years ago, with the creation of the Arkansas scholarship lottery. Voters approved a lottery in Arkansas. All of the proceeds from that are going to scholarships. So really, if you want to go to college here, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get some help, for the most part, and we didn’t really think that maybe our money now needed to go to scholarships. So we started investing heavily in pre K. And STEM education for elementary school students. So there’s some various various programs that we put money into, that really hit on those, those topics. Now, we also do a decent amount of money for downtown Conway, because that’s where we have the festival. So believe it or not, not everyone’s a fan of us closing the heart of the city down for three days. So, so we, we buy about 20, to $25,000 worth of hanging baskets that go up in downtown after the festival and the city partners with us on that, and takes care of them through summer and fall. And so our downtown is sort of known for those, those hanging baskets. So, you know, we can do between probably, in a slow year, maybe 60,000, upwards to 80, or $90,000, in charitable giving directly from the festival. Now, the other thing that has happened through the years is we will sort of approve what we call sanctioned events that are allowed to use the festival name. And so this is where other nonprofits benefit. So the Kiwanis Club, for instance, has done a 5k 10k for years where they raise money. And that’s the Toad Suck 5k 10k. There’s a literacy organization that does the tour to Toad, which is bike race. So there’s all these, there’s all these other things that are happening, as well as we have nonprofits, that we have a certain number of vendor spots available for free to nonprofits, to help raise money. So the festival is really much bigger than just what it does for us. In the community loves it and region, really so.

Brandon Burton 17:12
So with the charitable giving, is that structured through a foundation or just directly through the chamber? How does that look?

Brad Lacy 17:21
So the festival itself is a 501 C three, organization that is wholly owned by the chamber. All right.

Brandon Burton 17:34
So I know, in particular, with your chamber, that your application, you had some unique challenges, around DedSec day should particularly during the, you know, the COVID, shutdowns and whatnot. So tell us about how you guys address that and how you navigated through still being able to do the good work that you did and bring community together when you come together? How did you approach that?

Brad Lacy 18:01
So and by March, when things shut down, and when you look at the way that we raise money. Most of our big sponsors were in place by that because the festival happens the first weekend of May. Okay, so we had all these commitments from corporate sponsors to, you know, be a part of the 2020 Festival, and then you figure out, well, we’re six weeks away from festival that we’re not going to have. So what do we do? And I think our first, you know, maybe our first inclination was that we’re just not going to do anything and then give the money back or not kill these people or whatever. Because I think like many people, we were just in a state of shock, right? I mean, like, you know, I was thinking, how are we going to survive this? You know, how do you how do you survive when at least part of your revenue comes from being able to convene people and you can’t compete with people? That’s a real problem. But what we what we decided was that we could pivot and we could do a series of things we could sort of deconstruct the festival and offer people experiences which in fact, they needed and wanted because after, you know, a few weeks, your your cabin fever sets in, and, and so we sort of deconstructed the festival and figured out that we could do some of the best parts of it. Regardless if we had a traditional festival, so we came up with some new things. So really, one of the first ones was an airplane parade where we partnered with the Pilots Association, that is here. in Conway, and we asked them if they would do an airplane parade throughout the city. And this was several weeks into the lockdown, and super safe, everybody can just stand out in their yard. We, you know, promoted it heavily, not only on social media, but our local newspaper promoted it. And I mean, there were 1000s of people in their yards. And we had dozens of planes that participated in we had planes that came in to participate, you know, some fighter jets did some formation type things. And so, you know, we had some sponsors attached to it. So we actually made some money off of that, that we needed at the time. And so that really, I think, gave us some confidence that we could, that we could do this festival in pieces. And so another one was, we did a Nature and Science drive thru. People were, you know, hungry to do stuff with their children. So we partnered with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Little Rock zoo, the Museum of Discovery, and maybe a couple of others to do these big exhibits. We put them in the middle of one of the university campuses. And then

we internally called it the drive thru zoo, that you know, the rule was you couldn’t get out of your car, but you could certainly drive through and you could see the penguins from the Little Rock zoo, you could go past the giant aquariums that Game and Fish broad. You could drive through these exhibits. And once again, people were hungry for it. They wanted to do things with their children. And we were going to do that from like three to six. Well, by four o’clock, the queue was so long wrapping through the campus that we had to start turning people away, because it was going to take us two hours to get everyone through the queue and see things. So we really started started building some confidence that we could provide some things that the community and really the region needed, would allow us to monetize it so that we could survive. And then we turned to television to we started buying blocks of time on network TV and the Little Rock market. And so we did a virtual concert one night where we asked friends that had really Arkansas based performers to perform for us and do a virtual concert at a particular time on the CBS affiliate and another great success. And so we just, we put a lot of different things together. That late spring and summer. That became the festival,

Brandon Burton 23:08
isn’t it, that’s about how long of a span that is.

Brad Lacy 23:11
So that was probably over three months that we did all of those things. And then you get to 2021. And things have loosened up a bit. But we still weren’t quite ready to go. First. As I say, you know, we were the first week of May. I didn’t want to be the first festival to you know, go forward. So it was the 40th anniversary of the festival. And so we decided we would again deconstruct the festival and do 40 days of Toad Suck. And so we brought the airplane parade back, we brought the Nature and Science drive through back except at this point, you didn’t have to drive through you could walk through because things were different than they were a year before. And we actually did our first real concert in person in a venue. We brought country music artists, Jimmy Allen to town and did a concert on UCaaS campus. And really, I think there there were several things there. One, it allowed us to continue to do charitable giving, which I wouldn’t have thought we could do. It allowed us to survive. Because we always take us you know 100 I think about $135,000 is what we end up charging back as a management fee from the chamber. So if you lose that chunk of money,

Brandon Burton 24:44
yeah, that makes an impact. You’re cutting salaries

Brad Lacy 24:47
or you’re cutting positions you’re doing something so you know, we did not want to do that and we did not want to use reserves and we did not do any of those things. We managed to survive and and that and ever lay anyone off. And then also just, it means so much this is kind of interesting, but it means a lot to the community to do the festival. Children love it. I mean, it’s really built around kids. And so to not do it, and not sort of recognize the legacy of it just seemed to be, you know, a terrible idea. And we should at least do our best to keep it going until we can have it for real. And, you know, the good news is, we had it for real this year. And it was crazy. I mean, it’s the best year we’ve ever had, we were very blessed. We had perfect weather, which we almost never have a full weekend at perfect weather. But we did this time. And everything was just more, you know, more revenue, more shirt sales more this more that. So there was definitely pent up demand for it.

Brandon Burton 26:03
That is awesome. Well, let’s circle back for a few minutes on your on the Conway 2035, the visioning program there. It is understand similar kind of circumstances when you need to be convening people together. First of all, I was glad to hear you say that you guys are revisiting like you get your 10 year vision, but then you’re revisiting it at the halfway point and kind of taking a barometer of seeing where you’re going because politically, things change, right technology changes, community demographics change. So there’s a lot of lot of reasons to kind of check the temperature, if you will. But take us through that in the next couple of minutes of how the the visioning program came together.

Brad Lacy 26:50
So in a normal year, what you do is is, well, the really the first part of it didn’t really matter, because the the important. First component of this is, is pulling together a diverse steering committee that represents sort of as many aspects of the community as you can get. So not only race, ethnicity, gender, and age, but things like how long have they lived here, like we always try to have one person on the committee who’s moved here in the last year or two, because they certainly have a different perspective about Conway than someone who’s lived here their whole life. But we have one of those people who’ve lived here their whole life, because their perspective is important, too. So we had we’d spent a lot of time and we had, I think, a 13 person steering committee that was just a cross section of the community. And we were getting ready to convene them when the pandemic hit. And obviously, we didn’t, well, by early June, I think we decided to at least get them together in person, and let them make the call on whether or not we were going to try to go through with this thing. And so we took we took a ballroom at UCA and had the I mean, it was like Vladimir Putin trying to meet with 20 people when you see those pictures of him with all this distance between Yeah, yeah, you know, so imagine putting 30 people in a gigantic Ballroom in a in a square table, where we add, you know, I don’t know, 40 feet between people are so dumb, it was crazy. But it was the only thing we could think of that would really be safe. So you know, we all meet wear masks, we put them at this table. And we just said, Look, should we move forward with this? Should we not we’re going to do what you want us to do. And if you tell us to go, we’re going to figure out how to do this. And to have one every one of them said we have to do this, like this is the most important thing we can do. We cannot we do not need to stay focused on what’s happening. Now. We need to come out of this stronger as a community, we need to give people hope. We need to ask people questions about what they want on the other side of this. And so Absolutely, we need to we need to do this. So the next part of this is the same regardless if it had been pre or pre pandemic or pandemic and that is we do a survey tool, just really through Survey Monkey, where we asked people to look at a list of like 40 to 45 topics, things like job creation trails. police fire. Anything almost that you could think of is pretty exhaustive list about things that might be important in a in a community. And we simply ask each resident who wants to fill it out to checkmark all the things that they think are important that we should focus on. So if you want to check 40 boxes, you can if you want to check to you can well, then we asked of these, what are your top three priorities? And then do you want to participate in writing plan? And if so, pick one section that you would want to help, right. So if you go back to 2010, we had 1400 people that participated at that level when filling the survey out. This time, we had over 1800 people that participated. And of the 1800, we had a few 100 that said they wanted to participate in writing plan. So here’s where you’re, you know, here’s, here’s where you hit the nitty gritty, like, how do you pull those people together? Because normally,

you would have four or five in person meetings, I mean, what we would normally do is take every volunteer that wanted to write the plan, meet in an auditorium and go over I mean, here’s how we’re going to do this, you know, and then we’re dividing them up, and they have their first meeting, and then they set subsequent meetings for the next three months. And they really craft this plan. Well, obviously, we can’t do that. So what do we do? So we reached out to the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, which is a partner of ours that is in the neighboring community, and they do strategic they help communities with strategic plans really all over the place. And we just said, Look, we don’t know how to do this. Now. We need we need professional facilitators, because obviously, we’re going to have to use Zoom. And so that’s what we did. We hired Winrock to do that for us, and had a series of zoom meetings that took the place of the in person meetings. And it worked. I mean, it was, it was bizarre, because you were, you know, you somebody would be in their bed on this busier,

Brandon Burton 32:28
because there’s a quiet place in the house, right? When you

Brad Lacy 32:31
always have them after work anyway, you’re always doing them, you know, six or seven, because that’s when people can meet. So you’re really getting this glimpse into people’s lives, you know, like someone’s cooking dinner and is, is talking about, you know, soccer park, or whatever. And so, so we did that throughout the remainder of 2020. And then they really put it all together for us. And then by April of 2021, we had a summit at their facility. They have a big meeting facility with hotel rooms and a restaurant and everything. And so we convened over 50 community leaders in April, and we were all still masks, I’ll never forget it. We still had masks on. And took that plan and kind of did the final what for on it. And then that steering committee ultimately put their blessing on it. And by the early fall of 2021, we had a community wide visioning plan again. And who would have thought I mean, who would have thought that that we can pull that together? It really sets the stage for all of us to do the work that we want to do. So now. We’re in the process of all the various economic development boards in our organization. Our boards have done kind of the dot exercise where they’ve gone through all of the goals and said this is what we should concentrate on. And so our FY our strategic plan comes directly from that. The city for instance, did a $35 million. One my I think it’s probably maybe $40 million community center with pickleball volleyball, indoor and outdoor aquatics and soccer Park proposal that went to voters in February. Well, that checks off more than half of the parks goals that were developed. So that went to voters in February and it passed with 80% of the vote. And so what we would tell people is working that process is the most important thing, because what happens in a lot of communities is, well, meaning people think that they know what everybody wants. And they just move forward with an idea. And then they end up getting hammered at the ballot box. And it’s not because the idea was bad. And it might not even be that people disagree with it, but you never asked them what they wanted,

Brandon Burton 35:32
right? Just is a huge, such a huge factor.

Brad Lacy 35:36
So with this, you know, 1800 people spoke. And it’s pretty clear what they want. Yeah. And so we’ll use that as a guide, you know, for the next several years,

Brandon Burton 35:50
when really to be able to get their input, when you’re in the midst of a pandemic, like that, I’m sure is what spurred so many more people to participate in the survey, because they had more opinions, because we’re fresh, and they you know, and they, I’m sure appreciated that you’re reaching out and asking for their opinion asking if they want to be involved with the process. So I think the timing, although it didn’t seem great, on the surface, probably couldn’t have been better to get that for sure. Feedback from your community.

Brad Lacy 36:17
Yep, for sure.

Brandon Burton 36:19
I think that transitions well into my next question for you is, how do you view the role of your chamber there in your community?

Brad Lacy 36:31
I think we are often the middle ground that people are looking for these days. You know, Conway is pretty purple town politically. There’s a section of it, that’s very blue, and there’s a section of it, that’s very red. And I think we tend to be this place where a lot of the different sides can come to agree on things. And so we do our best to stay there. I’ve never seen a liberal or conservative person who didn’t think that job creation was important, right? I’ve never seen a liberal or conservative person who didn’t think quality place and quality of life was important. So I think chambers have the opportunity to play this part of, of helping bring both ends to the middle. Now, the extremes you’re never going to bring, because they don’t want. They don’t want to come to the middle. But the reality is, I think most of us are not the extremes. And so I think what we do is we help remind the community as a whole. And you’ve seen this, I think with our annual meeting, the annual meeting is really about helping people remember what we can accomplish. When we work together, it’s helping people understand why we’re special, it’s seeing their friends and neighbors on screen who look different from each other, who think different from each other. But they’re still working toward this common goal of building a world class city in the middle of Arkansas. And so I think that that’s the role we play is, is just this middle ground. Let’s roll our sleeves up and get the work done. And stay out of the, you know, crappy stuff that seems to dominate the headlines

Brandon Burton 38:39
like that. And, you know, you mentioned where the the ultra conservative or liberal like they both can agree that job creations are important. And and it’s not the chambers are looking for topics to grasp on to that are not controversial. But it’s topics that matter. And that can move the needle in a community and both sides can see where you know, something like job creation, and that example can move the needle. And I think

Brad Lacy 39:04
if you do those things, well, if you have a history of doing those things, well, there are things that you can get into. So for instance, and I don’t think this should be controversial, but I think it is, you know, the DBI diversity, belonging, equity and inclusion. I mean, you heard us present on that. And that would that would be controversial for some people. But we felt very strongly that we need to plant a flag there. And, and we have and we did and have, did we take on a little bit of water with some people in the community? Yeah, probably. But for the majority. I don’t think so. I think that they want us to speak on things like that. Because if it’s important to the business community that it’s important to us.

Brandon Burton 40:04
Absolutely. So Brad, I wanted to ask you if there if you might have a tip or an action item for listeners to help take their organizations up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Brad Lacy 40:16
Well, I think being ambitious is the biggest one, the main expecting more. I think that that probably guides us more than anything is that we expect more from ourselves. And we always think that we can get better. And we compare ourselves to the best. Which is part of the reason you do things like chamber of the year, you need to compare yourself to the best people out there. And you’ll always learn something from that, you know,

Brandon Burton 40:50
even just a benchmarking survey itself, that whole process, yeah,

Brad Lacy 40:54
right. And we do that as a community really, like we compare ourselves to other cities that we think we can learn something from, and we do that in a really formal way. So I just think being ambitious is is big. I think it’s so easy to just get caught up in the day to day activities of of what you do, and you just lose sight of trying to have some vision and and be the force that helps push your community in that direction.

Brandon Burton 41:28
I like that answer. So I’d like for a so many of your responses just flow right into the next question. So good. I like asking, yeah, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Brad Lacy 41:43
I think they’re incredibly important. And I think as important as they’ve ever been simply because of what I said before on this, this middle ground, that chambers should be able to be for people. Because of the interesting nature of our work, I mean, we represent the business community. Well, what the business community has to say, should be very important to whatever community they’re in, because if the business community disappears or go somewhere else, then you don’t have a community anymore. And, and so I don’t think that you have to be apologetic for having an opinion. If your membership is backing you up on it. I mean, that’s what you’re there for. However, I do think that the majority of things that we work on should be something that the majority of the people in your community can gravitate toward. You, you know, I’ve often said, in the 23 years that I’ve worked here, I have boards that have some of the most liberal and some of the most conservative people in the community on them. I have never in 23 years heard them argue or fight about national hot button political issues. I’ve never heard them talk about Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Joe Biden. I’ve never heard them talk about abortion, or any other all of the issues like I’ve never heard that. And the reality is, we don’t do that. That’s not what grows, the city of Conway, and so confer a common goal. That’s right. I mean, the stuff that we worked on is something that almost always, both sides can agree on. And and when you when you win together, it makes those harder times a little bit easier, because you end up knowing this person. And when you know somebody, even if they think differently than you. You can’t vilify them because you know, that you, you know, you’ve had lunch with them, you know, their families, you just you just think about the world a little bit differently. And so I really think chambers have this ability to can, again, it’s what we’re best at convening people, why we convene people better if we’re doing our job, we convene people better than any other group or organization in our community. And there is a power in that. There’s a responsibility in that. And so I think the future’s bright for chambers.

Brandon Burton 44:45
Absolutely. So Brad, this has been great having you back on the podcast. I’ve really enjoyed it. I wanted to give you an opportunity to put any contact information out there. So if anyone wanted to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things there and Conway, how should they have? Should they reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Brad Lacy

Brad Lacy 45:03
Sure, I mean, emails probably the easiest. And then if we want to move into a phone conversation or bring some other staff members in, we’d be happy to and that’s just brad@conwayarkansas.org in Arkansas spelled out completely.

Brandon Burton 45:18
That’s perfect. Now I’ll get it in the show notes for this episode as well. So people can go there and find it and shoot you an email and learn more about Toad sick days, you know? Absolutely. Well, Brad, I really do appreciate you coming on here with me and I wish you and the Conway area Chamber Best of luck, this chamber the air.

Brad Lacy 45:37
Thank you, we appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 45:38
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8 Content Methods to Strengthen Your Storytelling

Does Your Chamber Tell Stories?

How does your chamber show up as a storyteller in your community?  What types of stories do you tell?  Our current social media environment shows us that people love to consume stories.  Infact, some social media platforms are shifting from “social media posts” to “stories”.  We often hear how Chambers of Commerce need to be storytellers.  This is because we live in a world where facts and benefits about your organization are important but largely overlooked if you don’t have good stories to back up what you offer.  

I have seen many chamber websites and membership brochures that list the key benefits of and reasons why a business should become a member of their chamber.  While these “lists” have their place, showing the impact and value of your chamber is done much more effectively when done through stories.

Story Platforms

Your storytelling can take place face to face.  Stories can be shared in newsletters, emails, or on social media in snippets.  Some chambers may have a talented staff member who can shoot and edit video to tell their stories.  As you might guess, my preferred method of storytelling is through podcasts.

When thinking of the stories you have to tell, think about who is the ideal audience you want to share the story with.  Where are they?  Where do they hang out digitally?  Do they prefer printed text, pictures, video, or audio?  Are your stories better formatted towards a specific media?

Many chambers like to go straight to social media to tell their stories.  So do a Facebook Live video.  My observation and opinion is that people open their social media apps when they are bored, tired, or stressed.  Social media becomes a mindless activity to pass time without truly engaging on any kind of meaningful level.  For this reason, I would strongly recommend NOT having social media be your primary medium for telling stories.  By all means, use social media to magnify and perpetuate your stories but choose another medium to host and share your stories from.  You may choose to repurpose some of your stories on social media as a teaser or an advertisement for the story in its entirety.

For most chambers, this would leave two primary content mediums, video and audio.  Of course YouTube is the place to host any video content as viewers can subscribe to your channel to receive any updated content.  For audio, podcasts are the place to be.  I have a whole podcast course to teach you how to get started with a podcast.  Every iPhone comes with a podcast app already preinstalled.  This makes it super easy for your audience to listen.

Storytelling Content

Once you know what platform(s) you want to focus on to share your stories, you can then dive into the content for story creation.  I have identified eight types of stories you can tell through your podcast or YouTube channel.  You can choose as many as you feel are relevant to your community or that would add value to your members or attract new members.

  1. Member success stories or member spotlight.  You can interview your own members and have them share how your chamber has helped their business find success.  You can also go a little more generic and have your members tell you about their business or entrepreneurial journey.  People love to hear a good original story and it ends up being a great commercial for your member business as well.
  2. Impact of nonprofits.  Identify and interview other local nonprofit organizations in your area to tell the story of the impact they are making.  You can make the connection of how your chamber helps to support these nonprofits or ways you have partnered with them.
  3. Community Partnerships.  Community partnerships often need a bit more of an explanation for the general public to understand why the partnership exists and what the combined mission is about.  There are often success stories that can go along with partnerships and the impact that is being made in the community.
  4. Advocacy Efforts.  In a very generalized sense, many of your members are still transactional members.  They want to know what the chamber can do for them and if they don’t see it on their bottom line, then they don’t see any value.  By sharing the stories of your advocacy efforts and the direct impact to each member of your chamber, you may sway some of your transactional members to become transformational members.  Promoting your advocacy work also will show your community that the chamber is about business and what is good for business.  The chamber is the sane center where both sides of the isle can come together for the good of your community.
  5. Impact of Events/Initiatives.  If you have people in your community who complain about why the city and/or chamber of commerce shuts down traffic each year for a festival that runs the whole weekend, then it might help to share why.  Telling of the economic impact, increased sales tax revenue, and hotel occupancy in addition to the other positive outcomes of your events might help your community better understand what the chamber is about.
  6. Staff Spotlight.  Do your members and your community know your staff?  Do they understand what the role is of each member of your staff?  If they have a need, wouldn’t it be nice if they felt like they knew the person they were reaching out to?  Doing regular staff spotlights will lead to building stronger relationships with your members which should help with your retention numbers.
  7. Why Members Join.  You are well aware that there are always businesses in your community who don’t know what a chamber of commerce is or why they should be involved.  Collecting and sharing stories of why businesses join your chamber can help to tell a better story or what your chamber has to offer without producing a long list of member benefits.  Remember, people have short attention spans and taking time to highlight just one or two reasons businesses join your chamber at each time will have the most impact.
  8. Testimonials.  A while back, I had Shari Pash on the podcast to talk about testimonial strategies.  This is actually a very simple way of telling very short stories.  Testimonials can be used in many ways.  From reading a testimonial on a podcast episode to including a member testimonial in your email signature, you should be gathering and sharing testimonials all the time!  Testimonials create credibility, social proof, and help with recruiting and retaining members.  Feel free to leave a testimonial or review for Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts and see how I might integrate your testimonial into my storytelling strategy. 🙂

You are now equipped with eight strategies for your chamber to be a storyteller.  Now, you just need to lean into your medium of choice (audio or video) and then amplify your stories on your social media channels.  You may find it beneficial to tell some stories over video while others are better on a podcast.  If you utilize this strategy, you can also cross promote your platforms to each other and continue to grow your audiences.

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Eliminate the Question of What Your Chamber Does with Chris Russell

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

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

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Introduction

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

Unknown Speaker 0:14
And now your host, the rich of his podcast has far exceeded what he ever imagined.

Voiceover Talent 0:20
He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:46
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:00
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Chris Russell. Chris joined the Nixa Chamber as the president and CEO and that’s Nixa, Missouri. He joined as the president CEO in March of 2018. Prior to his role, he spent several years in the real estate world with Keller Williams as a trainer, business coach and Team Leader of local ever local office. Chris also spent six years serving on Nixa city council, in addition to his many years volunteering at various capacities in his community, including 25 years as a high school football announcer. Currently, he not only serves the chamber, he serves on many other boards in the next area, the next chamber was a struggling chamber that really needed a boost. When he took over they had around 325 members and now have over 550 members and I’ve increased the annual budget by over $200,000. The Nixa chamber hosts on average about 110 various events from ribbon cuttings, groundbreaking ceremonies and luncheons are actually shows her thinks that luncheons are boring networking events, and they took over the town’s annual festival, that in 2018 was on the brink of being cancelled to now an averaging over 25,000 people in 2019, and even more in 2021. They also hold an annual business expo called Nick’s bow, which brought close to 4000 in just last month, and last year, they brought back the town’s firework show that had been gone for nearly 10 years. His latest thing he’s working on now is to bring the chamber world into the VR world, which sounds very interesting. Chris, welcome to Chamber Champions is share something interesting,

Chris Russell 2:51
Right and thank you so much. Well, here’s an interesting fact talking about Nixa. We’re the only Nixa in the entire world. Located right here to southwest Missouri. So if you know where Branson Missouri is, or Springfield, Missouri, we’re actually about 10 minutes south of Springfield and about 20 minutes nor I actually probably 3035 minutes north of Branson, but there’s parts of Brandon and get to pretty quick. So we sit right here in the center of the Southwest Missouri hub and glad to be here on the show with you today. Brandon only mix in the world. And another fun fact, we’re the home of Jason Bourne actually in high school. His name was David Webb. So if you ever watched the Bourne Supremacy, movies, all that kind of stuff, they say, Jason, whenever your front name was David Webb, you’re from Nixon, Missouri, so Yeah, fun fact.

Brandon Burton 3:29
I didn’t know that. Yeah, that’s

Chris Russell 3:31
yeah. The movie theater, watch the movies. He goes, You’re from Nixa, Missouri. When I went. I was like, What the heck? You know, that’s kind of crazy. I

Brandon Burton 3:38
know where that is. Well, tell us a little bit about the Nixa chamber. Yeah, besides being the only Nixon in the world, maybe sighs. You mentioned budget staff.

About the Nixa Chamber

Chris Russell 3:50
Yeah. So I have a staff of for two full timers and one part timer. We have a retired person. She’s also serves on the city council, but she comes in and covers lunches. So we can go do various events and activities and those kinds of things. And then I have an Events Coordinator, which she’s frantically preparing our big, huge Secretary music arts and crafts festival coming up in two weeks. And then we have our operations and membership director, which is at Christiana, and she course takes care of all membership related stuff, making sure our sponsors get taken care of those kinds of things. And then of course, my job is to kind of be that logistics guy, the big thinker guy, I’m in all the economic development meetings, planning meetings, of course, I’ll step in and meet with members and kind of puff them up a little bit. And then, you know, really, I love to sit down with our businesses and have one on one discussions. I had a new business startup come in here yesterday, we did a coaching session for about an hour about all the things that she needs to be doing to get prepared. So that’s kind of my role and kind of kept keep keep the ship moving forward, if that makes sense. Yeah, we have right at 557 Members, I think is what it was last week at our board meeting. We’re growing. We’ve actually continued to grow through the last two years, I think in the year of COVID we to 2020 122 new members As, and we have about a 91% attrition rate or mean, retention, retention rate, I don’t want to do

Brandon Burton 5:06
anything, you don’t want to brag about what you

Chris Russell 5:08
were there. And you know why? And here’s the thing, right? And it’s not me. I mean, yeah, we have some energy. And I bring a lot of fun ideas. But, man, I tell you what, I’m just really proud of the way that our community rallies upon around our chamber. And it’s all of our great board members are ambassadors, and we work with them, we do fun things for them, we encourage them and, and that is something that I’ve found that is really the lifeblood of our chambers growth is creating those great big fans out there and giving them a chance to be leaders to be seen to be to to listen to them to take their ideas and implement them and and make it one big family because that’s that’s where chambers really grow is when you have great support from the members and the community.

Brandon Burton 5:51
Absolutely. And I think that is a perfect segue into what our topic for today is, which is, chambers all over get asked the question whether to their face or behind their back of what is the chamber do? So the point of our discussion today, you guys are very active with events and activities. So the topic that we settled on is eliminating the question of what is your chamber do so we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Chris, we’re back. So as I teased with the topic for this discussion, eliminating the question of what is your chamber do? When was the last time you were asked? What is the next chamber? Do?

Topic-Eliminate the Question of “What does Your Chamber Do?”

Chris Russell 8:34
You know we still get it? Um, the lady who came in yesterday just to pop in she wanted to know what a chamber does, right? I mean, but they she was new, and she was new to entrepreneur, one wants to open up a juice bar here in town and really wanted to know what the next chamber was. The funny thing was, is that her food supplier, which is like us foods or something, they told her that she needed to come to the next chamber. And so I thought, well, that’s the first time that’s happened. You know, not a lot of times we get referrals from other Chamber members, but from a national distributor saying you really need to go in and I hear great things about the next chamber. And that that made me smile that made me happy. So So we still get that question, but we tried to eliminate that, you know, one of the things that I think we were already moving in this direction of really being not only business to business, that’s a big part of what chambers do, right? We create those networking opportunities. We create those training opportunities, we create those you know, the luncheons or whatever and those type of events, ribbon cuttings, of course, and that’s a lot of that business to business and we need to still do that. That’s that’s good old fashioned chamber one on one right there. What I noticed is that especially in a town like Nixa so we’re our population here in the city limits about 25,000 people. We look in the zip code, we’re about 32,000. But we’re tucked right up next to Springfield, which is 180,000 people and their chambers about 1300 people members and we’re we’re about 550 and what we noticed is that when you’re when you’re in a town this size, and we’re really in that suburb of Springfield, we have a lot of that service sector businesses we don’t have that many businesses that that actually attract people from around the area to come in here we have a handful, right? What I mean is that I’m not passing this franchise in Springfield to come to the franchise and Nixa. Does that make sense? Yeah. I’m not passing that dentist in Springfield to come to the dentist in Nixa. We do have a few Nick’s of hardware, it’s kind of renowned that they’re they track regionally, a lot of people that come in. So we started taking on this idea that if we’re going to help our small businesses grow, then we need to create an avenue or a platform that also connects to our community. So if I’m, so if I’m a small business, and I’m a, my, my primary customers or clients are coming from the next a proper, I don’t I can’t afford to go spend on advertising on radio or TV that you’re paying to hit a reasonable reach. Does that make sense? So I’m paying a lot of money, but I’m also going to be reaching out to a 60 or 70 or 80 mile radius. I don’t need that my customers are coming from right here Nixa. So that’s where, when we decided to take over the town festival, when we decided to take over the printing of our directory, our printed directory right here in our chambers of outsourcing it. When we added the firework show when we decided to take our business expo to a new level that was so that we’re creating a way that our businesses have a resource right here we become the media for them to reach the clients or reach our citizens. And that that really was a game changer for me. And we saw our revenues go up because they saw that as a valid resource. I think that’s one way that we’ve kind of answered that question on what are the Chamber’s do well, we create them a platform, through our events through our activities through our new experience Nick’s app, which is this a city wide garage so we can an extent we’ve been utilizing the app to do scavenger hunts with that for people, we made this big, long list, Brandon, of all these crazy things you might find at a garage sale, and find it was actually kind of fun making the list. But oh, yeah, I remember those. And they The goal is for people to go out with a garage selling to take a picture of it, upload it to the app, and then they’ll have a chance to win some prizes on Monday. Well, that’s another

Brandon Burton 12:06
word chambers providing the prizes to engage families in the

Chris Russell 12:10
that’s people shopping out there. Right. So. So that’s one of the ways that we’ve done that. And I know that a lot of times you see, what’s that? What’s that comment parades, or whatever, you know, it’s which one do the

Brandon Burton 12:23
three P chambers and pancakes and parades and pancakes, right?

Chris Russell 12:26
And here’s the thing is that, I think, especially in our community, when we’re so close to a major metropolitan area well, and Springfield is not even that big when compared to like St. Louis, Kansas City or Tulsa. But it’s still that in our scale of things, that’s that’s how we look at it, we have got to be that resource that is also giving our citizens and a chance to connect with our businesses. And that has been the game changer, which means a little bit more work. But honestly, it’s it’s fun. I mean, yeah, it’s a lot of work to do a town festival, it’s a lot of extra work to do an app and, and to create those resources for our businesses to connect to our community. But man, they appreciate it so much.

Brandon Burton 13:04
Yeah, that’s the end, you got to know your community. So I mean, it doesn’t work necessarily for every community, but understand your community. I think the example you gave the proximity of where you are to Springfield, and what’s going to draw people into your community, you need to have those events, those things that draw people in, and then once they’re there, you’re engaging with them, you’re providing great, whether it’s entertainment, like a show or a luncheon type show or so share with us maybe some of these things that you’re doing. You mentioned the app, which I think is fantastic. And and I imagine you can get creative with that too, with even plugging in some member restaurants or something, you know, find these things and scavenger hunt and eat lunch or whatever. And but what are some of these other activities or events that you guys put

Chris Russell 13:51
on? So let’s look at let’s look at this get back to the basis of a chamber right so a couple of things that we do. One of them is you know, the Chamber luncheon, right? Everybody has a lot of people have a chamber luncheon as well. luncheons to me are boring. I mean, you listen, let’s just let’s just play this out. And I’m not saying anything about about those who had the traditional luncheon because they they are normally very informative. But they’re very, they’re very scripted, if you will. So you walk in the network for about 20 minutes, and they sit down. And then you already have your cheesecake or the chocolate cake there and you get your salad plate there. And somebody stands up and they say thank you for coming. Thank you to our sponsors. Hey, we’re back in about 20 minutes with a guest speaker today. Enjoy your meal. You sit there with your table, eat for a little bit. And then finally here comes a speaker and let’s pray together good, right? And then you’re there for 45 minutes listening to them talk about a topic that you may or may not be interested in. And then you get up and as fast as possible. Can you leave that’s that’s the typical lunch. That’s the format that we’re all used to. Well, I like it and there’s there’s a time in place for that. Absolutely. But we decided that and of course a little bits of all my personality. You heard my bio that I’ve been doing, you know football games for 25 years. I mean when you when you’re a high school football announcer any kind of an announcer MC, there’s an element of a show that goes into that. So I decided that let’s let’s change this, let’s engage as many people as we possibly can at a luncheon and let’s do it in a talk show format. So I literally if you watch like the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon or any of those late shows, you know, What’s he do? He comes on? He has his opening monologue. Well, those are jokes. We call it. Good news Nixa. So I have a segment in there sponsored actually by expose marketing here Nixa, they sponsor that segment. And I tell about good news stories, I might play a video I might tell something that happened at city council meeting, I just was at a meeting went yesterday, one of our nonprofits kind of $35,000 grant from Delta Dental to help provide additional dental services to at risk kids. So that’s a good news story. So we’ll tell that for about 10 or 15 minutes. So that’s the opening monologue. And then we usually have our sponsor break, you gotta have a spotlight sponsor. But even then, unless that person’s a rockstar speaker, I will do q&a with them with a few slides, and I engage in them. And I’ll ask questions, and I’ll talk to them and have a conversation. And they see that so much more relevant than just getting up there and having to sit there make sure that they have their seven minute time, walked out perfectly with all these slides. And that has been more powerful. And that’s why those sellout each and every year, because they feel less pressure to have to do a presentation when it’s more about me doing an interview. And then of course, we get into some other segments where will we always have a transitional video. So when we go from one element to the next, I play video, because our school system is really good about making school videos, I will go grab one of their videos and we’ll play it right there like something that’s that happened at Nexus schools or something the city of Nixa did, or I’ll make a recap video of a chamber luncheon that we did a ribbon cutting that we did, and we do all of our ribbon cuttings on Facebook Live. And so it gives us a lot of content. And then after that we get into the sponsors, then finally, we’ll get into the actual meat of the subject. You know whether it’s last month it was I had, we did some grants for one of our Community Foundation. Well, that was fun. We were giving out free money at the Chamber luncheon. The month before we did an update with what the county’s master plan is for the next five years. Well, again, me and the county commissioner doing a q&a talking about it talking about the impact that is more of a show than it is a luncheon. And it involves so many people that they feel like they’re engaged, and we sell out each and every month. That’s just one of the things that we do differently.

Brandon Burton 17:18
That’s awesome. And that sounds a lot like a podcast to me. Now the way you do the interviews. Yeah, transitions. Yeah. I mean, you’ve got the all the elements that you’re selling tickets to you’re filling a room and you’re creating a great experience.

Chris Russell 17:31
And when you walk in, we’ve got it we got pumped up music plan we’ve got normally when you walk in, it’s not that hard to make videos, you know, these days to throw a bunch of pictures of your last month, until a little loop video. And we’re walking in there’s there’s energetic music, it’s fun, they’re dancing, we actually have somebody who announces the names and when they walk in. So my main sponsor of the annual sponsor, the lunches is GenCon, CPA and Kailyn. She’ll go And now ladies and gentlemen, welcome from the chamber podcast. It’s Brianna. And then we have our ambassadors are there with pom poms, and they’re cheering them on. There’s applause when everybody walks in, it’s like you’re walking up to bat at a major league baseball game. That’s awesome element that’s different. And it’s exciting. And it brings energy and people love it.

Brandon Burton 18:18
And it breaks down some of those, you know, resistances and barriers that people might have at a typical networking type function where you’re just sitting at the table trying to small talk with the people there, like you’re having a common experience and building upon it. So I love that. You

Chris Russell 18:32
know how a lot of a lot of chambers will do like raffle drawings at a chamber event. And they usually wait to the very end, they do the raffle drawings and nobody leaves. No, we do it. First. We want to get people excited right off the bat plus, it’s a nice transition to get everybody into their seats. And as you start the raffle drawing, so that was an element that we changed as well. And that was kind of a cool thing. So there I have an ambassador comes up, she gives out the raffles. And that kind of gets everybody ready. And then all of a sudden here come to the show and bring energy and it’s just a different way of doing it. But however, I see it working Brandon and people like to be there. Our chamber luncheon next week is I told Christiane, our operations that you might want to send a reminder email and she goes, Well, we’re almost full. Are you sure we need to? So we’re selling these things out? Well in advance and people and we do season passes, too. But so that’s that’s the excitement that we bring with that event, because we do have so many cool announcements that goes on during that chamber show, not the luncheon.

Brandon Burton 19:26
spend just a minute talking about the the annual pass. I think that’s yeah,

Chris Russell 19:30
no. So yeah, yeah, it’s really been a Well, I think we had 60 Some of them sold so you can buy your annual passes. Now, the way that we do our funding, Brandon, is that we do the total resource campaign model. And that was another big game changer for us. I know a lot of chambers use that. They also use like different campaign styles. By us having 30 to 40 volunteers go out each and every year and sell our inventory for us on non dues revenue. Those are 30 to 40 Cheerleaders that are out there talking about the Nixa chamber and saying here Here’s why you as a business need to be engaged. Well, we introduced with that the season passes so that they can buy an annual pass. Businesses don’t want to have to worry about logging in each and every week or month, I’m sorry, and making sure they have their ticket for the monthly luncheon or chamber show. And so they they’re more than happy to spend a couple 100 bucks and just buy that season pass at the beginning of the year. And then that way, they know they have a ticket each and every month. We do that with our working women and Nixa, our networking group, and then also our chamber show, and I think we’ve got, I think it’s 60 or 70, I’d have to go ask my operations, exactly how many we sold last year, but we have a guaranteed built in base each and every month because they just buy them. And if they can’t make it, they’re able to take their QR code and give it to one of their colleagues in our office.

Brandon Burton 20:43
Okay, that’s all right. Great idea. So you had mentioned at the beginning about the 91% retention rate, which is great feedback, you guys are providing value, your members see the value, they understand what you do, what are their feedback, so you get back from these returning members as they renew where they see in the most value from your chamber.

Chris Russell 21:03
You know, my favorite chamber member is not necessarily the one that we see all the time. My favorite chamber member that tells you as a chamber that you’re doing a good job is that company or corporation that you hardly ever see, because they see the value, but you never see them. So they know they want they read the emails, they see the Facebook posts, maybe they check the website, occasionally, maybe they’ve downloaded the experience next app, or they’re seeing the activities that we’re doing. And each and every year, they continue to write that check for six or $700 for them to be a member of the chamber, depending on their level, our lowest is 225. And our highest I think is 700. We do that we do that Fair, fair market value model with a mix of tears. So it’s kind of a combo. It’s a hybrid model. And that that that right there tells me that your chambers healthy when they’re not worried about what they get out of the chamber. And that’s a compliment. And I love to see those windows. I love to see the renewals of those who are engaged as well. Don’t get me wrong, there’s there’s value to that too. And as new members come in, and they get engaged in the chamber, that that’s new energy, it’s new blood is new volunteers. It’s new ambassadors. But again, when you have those members who say, hey, Nixa chamber, we see what you’re doing. Thank you so much. Here’s your annual check, no questions asked. That to me tells you that you’re doing something right. Does that make sense? Brandon?

Brandon Burton 22:16
Yeah, that’s another form of feedback that speaks volumes for sure.

Chris Russell 22:21
It does. And occasionally, you’ll see them show up to something big that we’re having, which is great. We had a groundbreaking for a $4 million new business coming into downtown Nixa a few weeks ago. And that brings out people that you don’t normally see. So that was fun. But that that to me, tells us that we’re doing the right things. You know, I think I think most people know that in my community that that I’m pretty engaged. I mean, I have I grew up here, Brandon, I went to high school. If you can’t see it, we’re on video here. But we’re not on video on the podcast. But right behind me. That’s my football helmet, you know, football helmets right back there. I played quarterback for the Knicks eagles. I’ve announced the games. My dad was a fire chief in town. For many, many years. I served on city council, I volunteer a lot and a lot of areas. So this is this is my bread and butter. There’s no doubt about it. However, you still have to maintain that this doesn’t mean you get a free pass, you still have to go out there and earn the respect. And they see that I’m at the city council meetings, they see that I’m I’m in these these these committees like the Nixon Community Foundation, the downtown revitalization group, they see me emceeing events promoting our community. And I think there’s a lot of that said that, that that’s another reason they want to get behind what the Chamber’s doing, not necessarily because of me, but because they see the overall efforts. And then I see how I engage and bring people up to be leaders. And that’s that’s what’s really been powerful for us is that finding those ambassadors, finding those board members that we are highlighting and showcasing and showing the community that it’s not just about the chamber, that we’re actually giving opportunities for other people in our community, to be seen and to have the spotlight and to take ownership of whatever they’re doing. You know, I mean, like our secretary music arts and crafts festival, we have 13 different nonprofits that we work with for that event. I have organizations running the dog show for the love of canines. I got the local FFA. That’s one of the the petting zoo. I’ve got the Arts Council that’s running the art show. I mean, so we engage a lot of different groups that they get ownership of that and therefore they get the highlight and the spotlight and it makes them feel good. And then they want to be a part of our chamber.

Brandon Burton 24:23
Yeah. So you’ve mentioned soccer days a few times for those people that are not from Nixa was a soccer days is. Yeah, it’s

Chris Russell 24:31
funny is that back in the 1950s. I mean, literally the entire town. I got to there’s a poster over here my wall that shows that it’s our history panel we used on our kiosks. But anyway, it talks about how the towns close going fishing or something like that. And the 1950s I mean, they would all go down to the river and sucker fish is a native, well, they’re sacrificial all across the world, but it’s one of those Ozarks traditions that they spawn in the fall or the spring and the town will go down and try to catch a bunch of sucker fish and they would actually A camp and celebrated the river. Well, in 1957, they brought the tradition back to Nixon started an annual fish fry. And with an annual fish fry, it kind of grew from there. And in 2018, the event was ran by the traditional good ol boys group that that held the festival. And it really had taken a turn where just wasn’t, it wasn’t very good. And people actually made fun of it. And they were they were going to shut it down. And I was at a breakfast with me and the committee and the mayor. And I was like, Guys, just let me think on this, just hold on. I grew up the Saturdays, this is my hometown. And I went back to my board of directors and said, I’m going to take over Saturdays I said, we as a chamber, I said, they went wack in at that time, I was fairly new. So I joined in March 2018. Sucker days in 2018, was May, I made the decision in June, so March, April, May, June, three months into the role and I’m going we’re taking it over. And the board was like, Are you sure I said, guys, I said I got a model. And I think we can do this. And it’s going to create an opportunity for more of our businesses to be exposed to our community. And it’s actually been pretty powerful and it’s really wonderful. It’s a wonderful event in a bring 25 to 30,000 people in downtown Nixa for three days and it’s a little downtown block. It’s not even that big and it’s just fun and it’s like a Hallmark Channel event. Like a Hallmark Channel movie right and so we have the Little Miss Main Street pageant. We have the Secretary King and Queen and we do all these fun things. We’ve been doing a new thing this year, the sucker day dog king and queen we got these cute little crowns today. So you know it’s just really really engages our community and my goal was to create as many opportunities for exposure for Nixa and we have several high school groups that are engaged. We have the marching band, we have the theater department, we have the art club, we have the FFA we talked about we have the JROTC so we have all these different groups of the high school kids that are getting engaged, and to be a part of it. So it’s really, it’s really become a cool thing. It is a lot more work. And we have to dedicate a lot of time to it. We do have a great committee, but in the end, it comes down to what happens here behind the scenes to make it happen. But it’ll generate 50 to 75. Probably I think I looked at the p&l the other day, I think we’re up to depending on weather, of course, right? We know whether an outdoor festivals, if we have a great weekend and we do a lot of ride tickets, then we should generate somewhere around 70 to $75,000 in revenue.

Brandon Burton 27:21
That’s great. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s big.

Chris Russell 27:24
So it’s a big no. Our next, our next boat generated our business expo generate about 40,000 revenue this year. And that was 108 booths for six hours and our high school that we did our business expo. And I think the the it was 38,000. And something I had the p&l here the other

Brandon Burton 27:40
day, 36 hours. That’s yeah, pretty good. Good bang.

Chris Russell 27:44
We were sold out event. And again, the traffic was just unbelievable. That day, it was just nonstop traffic all day. And our businesses really liked that event. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 27:53
Well, I wanted to ask you is if you have any tip or action item for listeners to Yeah, they can do to make sure that they stay relevant. Make sure their members know what their chamber does. What would you suggest?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Chris Russell 28:06
I’ll give you a couple of things here. First of all, unlimited thinking. I see as I talk to a lot of chambers at conferences and on some of the panels especially, you know, 2000 22,021 as we’re all kind of figuring out what was next I unlimited possibility unlimited thinking, you know, one of the very first things that we did when we found out that the city of Nixa was going to more than likely locked down the town like all of us went through, the very first thing that I did was I pulled in my staff and we re re rebuilt our master plan. We went straight to the drawing board and said, Okay, this is going to happen. How do we become more relevant? Now? The good news is, is that the next chamber I’m kind of techie, and that’s an advantage. I don’t disagree. I really am. We were already in the video world at a high level, doing Facebook Live videos with graphic overlays. And that was kind of fun things. And but we decided that it was time to take that to the next level that we weren’t going to let a lock down to slow us down. And we got creative on certain ways that we did things drive in chamber luncheons, right. I mean, we literally had everybody drive into a parking lot. And we had everybody even the cars were six feet apart. I mean, come on. But you know, the funny thing was, that was June of 2020. The funny thing was because we’re in the Midwest and southwest Missouri, and it’s a little little different than other parts of the country. So I respect that. I remember we were parking all these cars six feet apart. We had people out there with poles, making sure the cars were six feet apart. And we had our volunteers and we had box lunches were in basically hazmat suits to hand them out in June of 2020. And then what happened was as soon as they got there, you know what they did? They jumped out of the car and went jumped in with their friends. I mean, it is what it is. But it’s always thinking outside the box. What can we be doing different, right? And that’s like, you know, you and I were talking off camera before the podcast about Andre from Bentonville. And I hope you do get him on here. I look forward to that podcast. The guy was at it. We were at Mako conference and he brought up the VR headset. And I’m like, dude, I got to talk to you because I’m already there horizon worlds and meta is spinning billions upon billions of dollars creating this metaverse. And if we as chambers, don’t figure out how to grasp on or get ahead of that and get there now before everybody else does. We have local churches in southwest Missouri that have already built, already built their Metaverse church. And in addition to that, Wendy’s just spent like tons of money to build the first virtual reality world, Wendy’s, and there’s other companies that are following suit. And I’ve actually been talking to some other industry leaders don’t Hey, how do we capitalize on that I actually built within and learn how to build the world because it’s all user created content. I built one of our local parks and after Saturday’s, we’re having a virtual reality world meet up for all those who have headsets in the community. Then see the Facebook post and the invites to come in and check it out. Because we find that you can actually connect with the community easier in the VR world, you’re you have less boundaries, and how can we create that next step to connect with with Nixa. So that’s something that we’re doing. But the other thing too is, is that my other big tip is what’s been a game changer for us too, is what I call a video on the go live video on the go with graphic overlays good audio, I have taught this class to chambers all across the country, I’ve done one on one conversations, I’ve been on webinars done on the conferences, if you need help really, truly learning how to make professional looking videos, within 20 minutes when rolling up and a live ribbon cutting, I highly encourage you to reach out to me, I’d be happy to show you what we do. You go and check out Nick’s at chambers Facebook page, go to our video section, you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re talking about rolling into a mower shop the other day, getting some quick B roll and then making a professional looking video within about 20 minutes. And so that’s something that I really think can be a game changer for your community is figuring out how to capitalize on Facebook Live video and not just a just holding up a camera and hitting record. That that has been a big game changer for us as well.

Brandon Burton 31:51
That’s awesome. So I asked everyone I have on the podcast this question and you’ve kind of been addressing it already throughout this interview. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Chris Russell 32:04
Well, that’s a weighted question. You know, I think you know, you’ve been talked about that a little bit of Mako and I know I had that conversation. Again, what’s that common saying that you hear when you see in one chamber, you’ve seen one? Right? I think the biggest thing is understanding your position in your community. I think that’s step number one. I’m I also know that a chamber of commerce needs to have solid relationships with all entities in your community. And I’ve talked to so many chambers who don’t have a great relationship with their city or their school system, you need to fix that you got to fix that that’s, that has to be cured that there has to be something that you focus on and making sure that those relationships are solid. But the other one is you you know we have in our mission statement to be the premier business organization and it goes on and on, will be the premier business organization. If that means you need to have events for your community than have them. And that means you need to have networking events that have them. That means that you need to be techie. And you need to be the leading edge when it comes to showcasing because you are the example that a small business who moves into your town or start does a start up in your town. They’re looking at the chamber and how they function. And if we’re not functioning that that way, then how are they expected to function that way? I have the same conversation with businesses each and every month. I say, when I’m doing coaching, I say do you close out your your books each month? And they’re like No, I said, well guess what chambers? Do we have to close out our books each month and give our p&l statements right or our current budget statements to our board for review? Well, why businesses don’t operate like that? Well, if you’re not operating like that, and you’re not doing it at a high level, then how can you expect a business to do that? So I think the future of chambers understanding where you’re at in your town, and then being the most premier business that you can, and being techie, I think you’ve got to be techie. And you got to be innovative and figure out a way to connect with your audience. All right, that makes sense. That was a lot, dude, I just don’t, that was a big break.

Brandon Burton 33:52
It’s a podcast that can hit that backup, 30 seconds button a couple times this

Chris Russell 33:56
slow down button to you know, on the podcast, you can either speed it up, you don’t need to speed up my podcast, I

Brandon Burton 34:01
was thinking, you know, I usually stick to about 30 minutes on these podcasts. But these people, their listeners are getting about 60 minutes worth of value as they listen to you.

Chris Russell 34:11
I love helping I love I love what I do. And I looked and I love to help other chambers and I think that we only get stronger. I mean, I’ve had powerful conversations with like April Bragg and Georgia and some of these other chamber pros and when I go to these conferences, I’m there to learn. And when I find people are doing things at a high level like Bentonville, Arkansas, man I become a I become a sponge. I mean he he gave us some of those tech tips. We’ve already implemented three of them, right we’re slack, there’s slack in the right now I mean there it is right there I just got another message sitting here we’re already implementing other things that we can learn from each other. If we can help each other grow with our through leadership that was another thing great about Mako was a lot of leadership portions. We all go to these these these conferences and economic development Workforce Development what to do about childcare. I don’t take care of your members. No, we need more leadership opportunities to grow as people. That’s, that’s my, that’s what I love to do is help people grow. And that’s that’s and we do it for our businesses and we should be doing it internally as well.

Brandon Burton 35:12
Absolutely. So Chris, I wanted to give you a chance to put any contact information out there for anyone that wants to reach out and connect and ask him more questions about how you’re doing things. Absolutely.

Connect with Chris Russell

Chris Russell 35:20
I’m on MySpace. MySpace is my favorite place to go to MySpace. Yeah, we’re still there. No, I’m kidding. Literally, find me on Facebook. Look up. Chris Russell Nixa, Missouri. Of course, my phone number you want to text me Call me? 417-773-7678? I’d love to talk to you. Of course, we can do. email chrisrussell@nixachamber.com, actually, probably not on the email me email sucks. I hate that platform. It’s terrible. It really is. I mean, we’ve got to figure out a way to get past email. I mean, it really is becoming a burden. I think for all of us. Would you not agree, Brandon? memb. Yeah, me emailed me the other day about the bio and I didn’t even see it. And it took you a reminder email for me to go in and type the bio out. Yeah, yeah. It’s just not a great connect. So call me or text me, that’s probably the best thing.

Brandon Burton 36:07
Okay. I’ll get that in the show notes for this episode. So people can check that out and connect with Chris and he’s got lots of ideas, lots of energy, and he loves to share these ideas too. So do reach out and connect with him. Learn from him, let him learn from you. And, you know, make everybody better.

Chris Russell 36:25
I want to learn from you too, man. I want to find out what you’re doing. That’s, that’s the main thing. You just never know what you’re gonna learn. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 36:31
Well, Chris, this has been great, great discussion. I appreciate you being with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast and provided a ton of value. Appreciate it.

Chris Russell 36:40
Oh, thank you for having me, Brian. Appreciate it. Great job on your show too. It’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 36:43
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Community Building with Karen Riordan

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

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

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Introduction

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

And now your host she believes imagination brings the future into the present, he’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

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

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

Kris Johnson  0:48  

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

Brandon Burton  1:29  

You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Karen Riordan. Karen serves as the President and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber in South Carolina, where she spends her time working with the business community and driving tourism. Karen brings 30 plus years of marketing and business management experience working as CEO for the greater Williamsburg chamber and Tourism Alliance, as well as at top marketing firms in Washington, DC and Boston. Over the course of her career, Karen has led marketing programs for leading brands and tourism including visit Williamsburg, the hub the Bahamas, Ministry of Tourism, Royal Caribbean International Amtrak Choice Hotels, international and Celebrity Cruises. Karen graduated from Boston College with a BA in speech communications and English. She was recognized in March 2021 is the first female president and CEO of the chamber at the city of Myrtle Beach’s celebration of Women’s History Month. In 2018, she was named chamber Executive of the Year by the Virginia association of Chamber of Commerce executives. She is the 2013 recipient of the American advertising Federation Silver Medal Award for service to the community and a 2012 honoree of the Washington Business Journal’s women who mean business when not working on branding Karen’s passions include traveling animal welfare, walking the beach, and all things made of chocolate. I think we could be best friends. No. I’m glad to have you with me today. Karen here on chamber tap podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and you hear something interesting?

Karen Riordan 3:18
Yeah. Hello to everyone and chamber world Chamber Champions. As you just heard, I do have a few core passions. I need to do all that walking on the beach to break even with all the chocolate that I eat. So that that other obsession right now and I feel like I absolutely have the dream job because it’s such a great honor to work in a tourism destination doing community work via the chamber. When I’ve had such a personal passion for travel my whole life. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always wanted to see the country and see the world and I’ve been very fortunate to take my grandmother’s sage advice when I was young and tried to do that every chance I get so to again get to do this for a living his dream. So I feel very very fortunate to be able to promote beautiful Myrtle Beach South Carolina and get paid to do that.

Brandon Burton 4:16
That’s right it it is beautiful. I love Myrtle Beach. It’s an awesome place. Share with us a little bit about the Myrtle Beach chamber and its size, the staff budget kind of scope of work just to set the table for our discussion. Yeah, so

About the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber

Karen Riordan 4:30
the reason we have area in our name is Myrtle Beach area is that we are considered a Regional Chamber we actually have a pretty large trading area all the way from the northern part of our state that need is just a setting there underneath the North Carolina border up in Little River all the way down to beautiful Pawleys Island and then the entire west of the waterway as we like to call it which is Conway into Loris and Aner which encompasses Our entire county or county, so it’s a large trading area, we have about 2300 businesses, the 78% of the businesses that are part of our chamber are small business with 50 or less employees. So people think of Myrtle Beach and they think of tourism and they think of big companies. And yes, we do have some of those big companies as our members. But they said most of them are small. And a lot of them really are mom and pop. We have a lot of independent companies. Here in Myrtle Beach, it’s kind of part of our DNA. To serve those 2300 members, we’ve got 39 full time employees. And then we have five part time employees that work in our visitor centers. So we have a visitor center out at our airport, we have another visitor center located at our chamber. And then we have a mobile Visitor Center, which is a really awesome van that travels around the whole trading area, especially during event season popping in and giving away great Myrtle Beach swag to tourists and residents alike. So it’s a, it’s again, it’s a big chamber, it is a hybrid, in that we are both at Chamber of Commerce, and we’re also the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. So with that we have a huge responsibility to spend the public money that we do receive from our state and our county and our city’s well to you know, bring folks here to come and visit. So our total budget is about $65 million this year. So we do have a large budget to work with, which is a blessing.

Brandon Burton 6:34
Yeah, that is uh, I had no idea your chamber was so large 35 full time or 39 full time employees in the five part time in the the mobile visitor center. That is that’s creative. That’s something I haven’t seen before. Very productive, I’m sure to getting out to these different events currently. So we’ll be focusing our our topic for discussion today around one of those topics that really is core, I believe, for chambers of commerce, which is around community building. And that’s really how chambers got their start and kind of the reason why chambers exists throughout the country and really throughout the world. But I’m excited to get in this discussion with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Karen, we are back. So as far as community building is concerned, how is the Myrtle Beach area Chamber approaching the task of community building?

Topic-Community Building

Karen Riordan 10:13
Great question. We’ve done a couple of different things in the last few years that actually began during the pandemic, or a little bit before. And even though it was more challenging to do community building, when we were quarantining, I really think that it makes a lot of sense that we continue to be as engaged as we possibly can with all of our stakeholders. So we actually have an official committee of our chamber, that’s called community engagement. And we have a several board members, that chair and vice chair that committee, and then we have lots of volunteers. So in addition to sort of a classic role as an ambassador that many chambers have, we have these additional volunteers that do have name tags that identify them as community engagement Council folks, and we go to neighborhood meetings. So we go to Hoa meetings, we go to city meetings and county meetings and civic meetings, and are constantly trying to engage with the business community, but also the residents. And that’s really, really important in our minds, because we do have a number of people now that have moved to Myrtle Beach in the last 10 years or so, that are retirees. Many of them are great captains of industry that have a lot to offer through programs like score and mentorship. But they’re not actively working in the business community anymore. So many of them are not Chamber members anymore. And we feel it’s really important to stay connected to them and have them be really educated and informed about what we’re doing at the chamber. And just things that are happening because Myrtle Beach is changing rapidly. And it’s hard to keep up with it if you don’t, you know, have sort of some constant communication. So the community engagement Council has been really important for us, as have our strategic efforts in diversity, equity inclusion, so we’re really looking to be able to reach out to more members of our community to make sure that our chamber board or chamber staff, our chamber membership really reflects the diversity that is here in the Myrtle Beach area. So those are those are two sort of things that I think most chambers would agree are important, and that they’re working on. Where we really kind of taken it beyond though, is to launch a new Chamber of Commerce Foundation. And we are calling that foundation partnership Grand Strand. One of the reasons we chose partnership, no surprise is because when we started doing feasibility interviews and community needs assessment interviews, the number one word that kept coming up in our interviews was, you know, we need to be better partners, we need to collaborate more, we need to make sure that, again, our governmental entities, like our city council’s and our County Council’s, even our state delegation, is really connected to the private sector and what the business community is thinking and feeling, as well as the resident community. So this has been a year and a half in the making. Or as they said, we started with a lot of research in serving and interviewing and focus groups, then we decided that we needed to do a feasibility study to see, you know, is this really something that the Chamber of Commerce should take on? Or is this better done, and led, say, for instance, by our economic development corporation here in the county, and overwhelmingly, we saw last fall when the results came in that people trusted the Chamber of Commerce. They believe that we had the right group of individuals here on our board in our membership to really make a go of it. So our board of directors voted in the fall of 2021, to proceed. And then we immediately started working on marketing materials and prospect lists and all those kinds of things and embarked on a quiet phase of a capital campaign to fund that foundation. We’ve just come out of the quiet phase and on a big public kickoff, with our goal of raising $3 million to fund five years worth of activity in the foundation. So very, very exciting. This is new territory for our chamber, we really leaned into what other chambers across the country have been doing in this area, and really did see that some of the most cutting edge and progressive chambers in our country, we’re really starting to move in this direction, to raise funds to do some of those projects that don’t ever seem to quite get done on our chamber repertoire because we’re so busy doing educational seminars and networking and legislative advocacy. And so we’re super super excited about this new chapter of community building.

Brandon Burton 15:04
Yeah. So I love I’m gonna take a step back just a little bit there. I love how you talked about involving the retirees in your community, a lot of people moving to Myrtle Beach as they retire. And for anyone who’s read on if you’ve read the book 13 ways to kill your community. And it was popular among chamber professionals. But one of those ways that communities and killed themselves is they ignore their seniors. And in the book, it talks about, you know, these seniors, they often have the time to volunteer, they they have an interest in the community they have experienced, they often will have money that they can help contribute to some of the causes and things you have going on. So I’d love to hear that. I mean, a lot of chambers are doing the D and I work, but to have that focus on the the retiree segment of the population, I think is huge. So I didn’t want to didn’t want to brush that over.

Karen Riordan 15:58
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. And the last thing I would add to that is that they both are very committed to the political process, and they do vote. And so they really do have the power to start to shape who are elected leaders are at the city level, the county level and the statewide level, which is really important. We want to make sure that folks that are you know, voting for different candidates, that those candidates are business friendly, that they are pro business, they, again, growth is a big issue in our area, just like it is in so many parts of our country, or a county has been named the second fastest growing county in the US. So with that growth comes a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of challenges. And so we do need to be all looking at ways to work together to make sure that the growth we have is manageable, and that our infrastructure can keep up with the growth that we’re experiencing right now. So yes, we absolutely ignore seniors at our peril, because they can also be such a force multiplier here. As you said, our local SCORE chapter, helping entrepreneurs start new businesses, you know, their whole mission is to recruit retirees that have run their own businesses, and teach that next generation of entrepreneurs, how to write a business plan, how to you know, how to set up how to get incorporated, how to hire folks. So I think we need to lean into the expertise that is in that community,

Brandon Burton 17:33
for sure. So I also wanted to touch on when you were talking about the foundation, and coming up with the name, partnership Grand Strand, you had done these surveys and got feedback and everything. And I can tell you have a marketing background because you use the language right that they were using in the surveys to help them resonate. So as you roll out the foundation, partnership, Grand Strand, you’re using their language, so resonates with them. And I think that’s a good lesson for chambers, you know, whatever programs or initiatives you’re trying to roll out, get feedback from people and use their language, when you go about launching it, whether it’s officially part of the name or just part of the material marketing.

Karen Riordan 18:14
You’re absolutely right, because that’s a way for them to to understand that they’ve been listened to that we’ve heard them. And that we also agree in this particular case, that partnership is a critical component. We, our community in years past has been accused of not being unified in sometimes not being able to progress the way we want to because, you know, one city squabbling with, you know, with a neighboring city, and we really are 14 communities along the coast. Many people who’ve never been here are shocked that we actually have 60 miles of coastline. And again, those 14 communities, which means I have 14 mayors to get to know and 14 city councils to attend and so forth, in addition to a county council, so it is a lot of work. But putting the time into building those relationships and understanding where they’re coming from and what they’re looking to do, and then trying to convene. I’m just a huge believer that a critical role in Chamber Leadership is to be a convener, to be able to bring different people together who may not agree on much, but try to find common ground on something. Sometimes we start with just the love of the beach, right? We all live here at the beach, we love the beach. We may disagree on taxes, or we may agree, disagree on this bill or this program, but we can start there with our love for the beach, and then try to move on and find some more common ground.

Brandon Burton 19:37
You’re making the other 90% of the country that doesn’t live at the beach, very jealous, right.

Karen Riordan 19:45
It is a perfect place to live and work.

Brandon Burton 19:48
So the thought that came to me is we focus our discussion on community building. You know, you could argue we’re much more of a global community now the internet is kind of taken down A lot of those barriers that we had and communities of the past, we’re not divided so much, you know, by geography or anything like that. So why is it important for a chamber of commerce still to focus on building strong communities?

Karen Riordan 20:16
Again, I think it’s just so critical, I happen to also believe that, you know, all politics is local. And again, we can’t really be getting the kinds of things done in Washington, DC, or at our state houses, if we’re not first and foremost, paying attention to what the folks on the ground in our local communities care about. And so it’s just again, building from the inside out, I have that same philosophy when it comes to enacting any kind of program, I want to do it first, internally, like Dee and I, I want to make sure that our staff is all bought in that we’re all rowing in the rowboat in the same direction. And then of course, have our board of directors be aligned, and then it just makes the job so much easier to go out into the local community. And again, find those points where people are in agreement and work, you know, from that position of strength, instead of, I believe, too often people are focusing on what sets us apart, or what makes us different, or what we don’t agree on. And that’s a very, very short conversation. And, you know, once those happen, it’s very hard to move forward and get any progress. So I just think, again, doing that work, it’s not maybe glamorous, but it is really, really important to also be be in touch with the community. So part of my style here as CEO, is to walk the halls a lot in the building, but also be walking in the community. Today, we did an Artwalk. And we were downtown, seeing all the murals and the public art that’s out there. And talking about that, and using that for additional social media content that we’ll share out with the local community. So if the residents don’t know about a great new mural, they just went up on Ninth Ave. And, you know, part of our job is to make them aware of it and hopefully activate that and have them come down and check it out. So I just again, think working from the inside out, creating that alignment. Getting people on the same page is a big part of what chambers at their best are trying to do.

Brandon Burton 22:24
Absolutely. So I know you guys have a focus as you do your community building efforts and work. Take us through what those those four pillars are of your your area of work.

Karen Riordan 22:37
Yeah, well, not surprising. In the end, this won’t be unique. I’m sure there’s many communities and many chambers that are grappling with some of these, what gets unique is sort of the secret sauce of the the nuance of the community. But I mean, the first thing that we really saw here in our destination is that we have too many of our eggs in our tourism basket. And I can I can say that also running the DMO. And no, that may sound crazy for people to hear us say that. But right now we have 74% of our economy is somewhat tied to the tourism and hospitality industry. And we saw with a pandemic and also with Hurricane Florence, which we experienced in 2018. That we’re putting our economy at tremendous risk, having so many eggs in that tourism basket. And so we really believe that a first pillar in this community building effort is to use the strength of a chamber our chamber, to go out and try to help diversify the economy, we have target sectors that we want to go after. And we’re going to be talking to those micro businesses, we are not doing the economic development work that our authority does. That group is really going and you know, talking to site selectors and investors and bringing people into the Myrtle Beach area. Those tend to be you know, bigger projects that could bring in 200 or 300 jobs at a time, what we’re really talking about is going to talk to those amazing entrepreneurs maybe that are working out of their home right now. Because they can, they can do that remote work. But they aspire to be the next Google and they’ve got a business plan to do that. And they may only have two employees now. But in a year, they want to have five employees and five years from now they want to be 100 person, you know, technology company or whatever the the industry may be. So part of our job will be to really focus on working with those companies understanding what’s holding them back. Do they need better ordinances in town so that, you know business licenses are more affordable, or do they need resources to find space for their business to grow? Is it talent that is holding them back because they can’t find the right people for critical positions they need. So that’s the first pillar, of course, to diversify the economy I just mentioned we need talent. The whole A World Needs talent. Right now we’ve all talked about and read about, you know, not just the great resignation. But for us in our economy, too. We’re also seeing the great retirement, we’re seeing 55 year olds that, you know, bully for them have done amazing things in their, their career, and they’re ready to retire now, and they have the financial wherewithal to do that. And they decide to retire here in the Myrtle Beach area. Could we again, convince them to come and be a mentor to other entrepreneurs who want to start a business? Could we have the mentor talent that wants to move from middle management into senior management. So we’re going to get really, really creative on talent, working with the K through 12 system, but also our educational institutions, to grow the talent we need, but also, if necessary, recruit the talent outside of South Carolina to come here to the coast. So we can’t really accomplish everything that we want to do with our economy, if we don’t have those critical, you know, pipelines established in terms of talent, so, so that that’s another really, really big pillar for us.

Brandon Burton 26:09
Absolutely. And I know that’s a focus for a lot of chambers is growing and recruiting talent to their area. But I like the approach you again, tying in the seniors, the retirees, I’m thinking of a young entrepreneur in your area, how lucky are they to be able to have so many options for mentors in your community, and to be able to market that and show these people were successful, great careers, they’ve got their full of knowledge they can share with you. So I mean, for our whole discussion to focus on retirees, but there’s

Karen Riordan 26:46
a lot of it again, it’s using the assets we have, we do have a great four year institution here. You know, again, graduating wonderful people, but like so many other communities, we have brain drain, a lot of those folks think, well, I’ve got to go work in Atlanta, I’ve got to go work in Charlotte, I’ve got to go work in, you know, bright lights big city. And, you know, part of our job is to convince them that we do have great opportunities here for them to either work in an existing business and grow their career or start a business. And part of that too, and especially attracting that 20 Something group is we have to give them a great place to live if the quality of life is not here. If our downtown is not vibrant. If we don’t have new fun clubs and bars and restaurants and things for them to do, they are going to pass us by and choose, you know, other communities that they think are more vibrant. So we’ve been in a situation where we’ve really built to the west and to the north, in terms of entertainment complexes, sports complexes, things to do, and they’ve been really thriving for the last 10 years. But unfortunately, we’ve done that at the expense of our core downtown. And so it really has suffered from benign neglect, where so many businesses left that area and went to some of these other you know, quote unquote, cooler places in the Myrtle Beach area, like the market common or some of our other sectors. And so we really do need to work very hard to bring that downtown back, it is our front porch to the world. We do welcome close to 20 million visitors a year and they come downtown Myrtle Beach, they walk the boardwalk and we want to have the right assortment of shops and businesses and restaurants and retail there. So we are very fortunate that our city has just entered into a public private partnership with an entity that is called the Myrtle Beach downtown Alliance. And so the downtown Alliance, his job really is to completely revitalize downtown if that means new landscaping and lighting and, of course, economic development, attracting new investment there. So the Chamber’s job really is to get out of the way and not duplicate efforts there. But really once again, amplify and support what the downtown alliance is doing. A good example is last week, we had a new business that came decided to locate downtown. They have their corporate headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina, we’re all excited to welcome them here. And we did a joint grand opening and ribbon cutting and mixer with the downtown Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce and we had over 100 people come see this space, you know, meet the partners of the new firm. And not only were we showcasing that firm and welcoming them to the community, but we’re also showcasing downtown and sending a message through our media outlets that downtown is coming back and look at look at this wave of this is you know the fifth new company that’s that’s come in since the end of last year. So it’s it’s creating some momentum and that’s again where The chamber’s knowledge of the community, our relationships with the businesses already in downtown. And our marketing ability allows us to tell some of those stories and really help the downtown, hopefully go further faster. With this redevelopment, we’re hoping it’s going to be really, really quite robust in the next three to five years.

Brandon Burton 30:21
Yeah. That sounds great. Is there anything that we’re missing as far as community building wise that that you want to make sure you share?

Karen Riordan 30:32
Well, yeah, the last pillar that’s connected to these three is infrastructure. So I’ll just talk about that briefly. You know, we can’t attract great people to come to our community, we can’t diversify the economy. And we can’t create a great place to live unless we have the right infrastructure. And specifically, we need transportation infrastructure, we need to be advocating for the roads that we have to be repaired to be widened to be improved. We are advocating for new interstate, that would come from the beach and go all the way up to the North Carolina border. And then on Interstate 7374, actually goes through six states, all the way to the Canada Border. So that’s a big, big project we’re working on. But again, we’ve got to have the roads, the bridges, the walkability and bikeability, that makes a good place a great place. And so that’s the last pillar of community building that we’re working on.

Brandon Burton 31:27
Yeah. And I think the way it is, is that road comes from North Carolina down into the South Carolina beaches right now, right off the off, it doesn’t go out and comes in, right.

Karen Riordan 31:40
From Rockingham, but it’s a critical highway, because we don’t have it now. And with evacuation, should we get another bad storm on the Carolina coast, which, unfortunately, is one downside of living in the Carolinas. You know, on any given day in July, we could have literally hundreds of 1000s of people that we need to evacuate both residents as well as visitors. And so having something like that to speed up the evacuation route would be much needed and appreciated.

Brandon Burton 32:12
Yeah, I was I was out there and South Carolina for Hurricane Floyd in, I guess it was 1989. And that’s a real thing need to be able to get out of town in a hurry. So

Karen Riordan 32:25
clearly, when a governor makes that, that announcement and says you’ve got you know, 48 hours to evacuate, you really need to do it. And the last thing people want to do is sit in a traffic jam for six hours. Especially with the price of gas right now. Right? You know, it’s just the whole thing is a little scary. And so we as a chamber are always advocating for people to leave the coast and get to safety, stay with friends and family and so forth inland. So that’s another important reason that we get the transportation infrastructure that we need.

Brandon Burton 32:56
Yeah, for sure. Well, what would be maybe one tip or action item that you could share with Chamber Champions listening that they could do to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Karen Riordan 33:07
You know that that’s a great question, I would continue to say connect with the wider community. I know, we’ve touched on this already. And it does seem like an emerging theme, do not ignore your residents, particularly your seniors, but also your youth. Go out of your way to talk to people that are not members of your chamber right now. When I came into the chamber world, the best piece of advice I got from my mentor was that every business that you meet is a potential chamber member. So even if they’re not members today, if you treat them with kindness, and you show concern and interest in their business, chances are very good that as they get to know your chamber, and all the great things you’re doing for the community, they will want to be a part of that. So it’s like, you know, never met a stranger. It’s like, well, I’ve never met a non member right, at some point. Hopefully, they will, you know, they will join us. But that just being in the community like that hearing their issues is totally invaluable. If we understand what they need, what they’re looking for, we can be a better chamber. So I’m just very big on that and think that it can be hard to do because we’re all in our lane and our heads are down and we’re looking at the 50 things we’ve got to get done this week. And of course, we have to take care of our member investors. You know, they pay our dues, they pay our bills, but it is it’s kind of refreshing to lift your head up and and get to know some people that are not yet members and hear what their concerns are and also what their ideas are. They could have an amazing idea that we want to adopt. We just haven’t listened. So I think that’s really important right now.

Brandon Burton 34:52
Yeah, great tip. So I’d like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce how to use See the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Karen Riordan 35:02
You know, I think the chambers are more important than they’ve ever been. In my entire business life, I’ve always belonged to a chamber. But I have to say that particularly in the last two years, going through what we’ve all gone through with, with the pandemic, I believe our team, and I’ve heard this from so many other chambers here in South Carolina, we are more mission driven than ever before. Because when the business community is hurting, and they’re looking for information, and they’re concerned about whether their business is going to be viable, and all of these things really did happen in all of our communities, and 20 and 2021, you have a renewed sense of purpose to help because you realize, oh, my gosh, they’re turning to you at the chamber. And they do expect that if you don’t have the answer, you’re going to go call your congressman and get the answer or your get, you know, you’re going to find out about that bill, are you going to find out about why their PPP loan, you know, didn’t go through, and you know, and talk to folks in the banking community, whatever it may be, I mean, our phones rang off the hook during 2020 and 2021, with people saying Help, my business needs help. And I think as a result of that, we just feel such a strong sense of what we do matters, it really matters, it really helps a lot of businesses. And when we help a business community, we are lifting the tide for the entire community. So I think the future for chambers is very, very bright, as long as we stay very mission driven, and very focused and never forget, again, the businesses that we’re here to serve. So I feel very optimistic about that. Right.

Brandon Burton 36:42
I appreciate that, that response and that perspective, for sure. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information. So if there’s listeners out there who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about your efforts of community building and things you’ve shared with us today, what would be the best way for him to reach out and connect with

Connect with Karen Riordan

Karen Riordan 37:02
You can reach out to me at Karen.Riordan@VisitMyrtleBeach.com. And that’s my my email address. You can also check out our chamber website, MyrtleBeachAreaChamber.com. But I always welcome talking to other colleagues and hearing their stories. And if I can offer a bit of advice or fill in more detail as to what we’re doing in community building. I’m happy to do that.

Brandon Burton 37:36
Awesome. I appreciate that. I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode171. But Karen, I appreciate you being with us today and sharing your examples and and perspective as to how you guys are going about community building and, and especially in those important segments that you touched on as well. So I think it provided a lot of value for our listeners. Thank you.

Karen Riordan 38:03
Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 38:07
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What Makes a Chamber Board Successful?

What Makes a Chamber Board Successful?

Have you had any formal training on how to develop a strong, diverse, effective chamber board?  My guess is that most chamber executives who are reading this blog post have not been trained on board development.  Many find themselves in the chamber industry by happy accident.  What makes a chamber board effective anyway?  While I am by no means an expert on board development or management, I will share what I have learned from experienced chamber professionals and non-profit board experts.

When it occurred to me how many chamber leaders find their career in chamber work by accident, it prompted me to do a survey to ask chamber leaders about their experience working with boards before starting with the chamber.  The results were interesting.  Only 27% of chamber leaders surveyed had worked with a board previous to entering the chamber world.  37% had no experience working with a board at all while another 37% had served on a nonprofit board.  I think we could all agree how the perspective changes from serving on a board to being on the other side as the chamber executive.

Survey results about board experience.

To start, it may be helpful to understand what an effective board is.  I would argue that an effective board is one that will engage in meaningful discussion which leads to action.  These outcomes of these actions should support the mission of your organization and further build your community.

Chamber Board Selection

As I recently attended the MAKO (Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma) Chamber Conference, Dave Adkission was one of the speakers.  Of the many topics that he covered in his talk, he spent some time talking about the unique qualities of a Chamber leader.  He shared how you are often the only person in your city or town who does what you do.  You may have colleagues in neighboring towns but you are typically the only Chamber Director/President/CEO in your community.

Dave also talked about how as a Chamber Executive you have a new boss each year, of course referencing your board chair.  With this understanding, it is not very common in the workplace to have a say about who your next boss will be.  However, in the chamber world, you can be intentional about building your board of directors with people who share a similar vision for your community.

When it comes to board selection, you may be tempted to look to those business leaders who can be a strong source of revenue.  You probably want people on your board who are well connected.  Oftentimes the people who make up a chamber board are some of the most influential business people in your community.  This can lend more credibility and influence to your organization as a result.

On the flip side, by having your board filled with high level business leaders, there is a good chance that their time and resources will be stretched thin.  They are probably serving on other boards in your community.  They are most likely being asked for money from other organizations.  They will likely notice that they are being asked to participate on various boards because they are well connected and have access to money which can change their perception of your organization.

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You want to be very intentional about recruiting for board service as you build relationships with other leaders in your community.  Be mindful of what mindsets and skillsets are missing or underrepresented on your current board.  Have discussions with some of these leaders who you think would be a good addition to your board to plant the seed or idea in their mind about the value or perspective they can provide.

Developing Board Diversity

In the past, at least in the United States, most chamber boards were composed of older, white males.  As demographics change, as social justice and awareness are more front of mind, it is important that chamber boards reflect the makeup of the community which they serve.

With chambers having a sharper focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are starting to see more of this shift in board seats.  As there are more women owned businesses, having the voice and perspective of women on your board is important.  As you develop your chamber board, notice if your community tends to have a younger demographic, you may want to recruit board members who represent your younger business owners.  Your community may have a larger makeup of hispanic, African-American, Asian, or Pacific Islanders.  This should be reflected on your board.  

As a chamber leader, you are expected to know your community and to have a pulse on what is important to them.  Should you focus on having more veterans on your board or people from the LGBTQ+ community?  Although the development of your chamber board should be very intentional, you should be careful not to recruit board members simply because the check a box. Each board member should bring specific skillsets to make your board whole.

It is important as you recruit new board members to work towards filling seats with the people who can help move your community forward and not just who has the money and influence.  Ultimately your chamber should carry the influence in your community that you are looking for.  You should be leading the way in showing what is important to building a stronger community and why each segment of your population is vital to this vision.

A while back, I had Matt Morrow on the Chamber Chat Podcast.  Matt is the President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri.  Matt talked about the lessons he learned from a book titled “The Wisdom of Crowds”.  The main takeaway message was that more often than not, a diverse crowd of people can, together, come up with the most correct answer to problems than any one person or any one demographic can on their own.  This is because the diversity brings different perspectives which help point to the most correct answers.

Setting Clear Expectations

Communication and expectations are key to a functional board.  It may be tempting to complain about an underperforming board member.  You might get frustrated when the ball gets dropped on certain action items that come out of a board meeting.  Are certain members always late to your board meetings or not engaged?  These board members may not clearly understand what is expected of them and how important their role really is.

From their perspective, they may be complaining to themselves, a spouse, another board member or a co-worker about how unorganized and unproductive the chamber board meetings are.  They may not have clearly expressed what their expectations were from you as a chamber leader.

Either way, if the dysfunction is coming from the chamber side or from the board side, this will quickly result in a disengaged board.  Have open and honest communication about expectations.  Be intentional with the onboarding process for new board members so they clearly understand the importance of their role.  While in your board meetings, try to spend the bulk of your time in discussion about things that really matter for your community.  You will likely have some of the most influential leaders of your community in the same room so don’t waste their time.  Find out how your board members prefer their communications.  Do they want detailed drafts for each meeting or a simple outline? By defining expectations up front will save you a lot of frustration later.

Along with clear expectations, always be mindful of your board member’s time.  These are often busy people who live by a schedule.  Be as concise, yet thorough with communications and meetings to keep up the level of engagement.  As soon as you notice any disengagement, have an open conversation to assess the load your board member is carrying and encourage adjustments with assignments as needed.

Board Unity

It is not abnormal to have very strong personalities among a group of business and community leaders.  This is not a bad thing at all.  Oftentimes, these strong personalities are what land these individuals in the positions of influence where they currently reside.  However, some personalities can be like oil and water as they repel each other.

Be intentional about creating opportunities for board members to break down barriers and to get past personalities.  This could be done by providing opportunities for these individuals to serve directly with each other and to learn from each other’s experiences and skillset.  This is often facilitated through board retreats and training.  

If you can build buffer time around your board meetings to allow for your board members to socialize for a few minutes before or after board meetings, you will see more ideas generated once they are outside of the formal setting of a meeting.  A good signal of board unity is when you see several board members linger after a meeting to continue discussion ideas or even just getting to know each other better.

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Continue Your Chamber Board Development

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I am not an expert on nonprofit or chamber board development.  However, I have learned a lot as I have worked with chambers over the past 15+ years and as I have been interviewing chamber leaders on Chamber Chat Podcast for over 3 years now.  

One of the best people I have interviewed on the podcast about this topic is Hardy Smith, author of “Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game”.  I would encourage every chamber executive to read this book.  You will learn key insights about managing your board that you have never thought of.  

Book cover-Stop the nonprofit board blame game.

I would also encourage you to continue learning from others, whether that is through conferences, regional chamber meetings, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, or by reaching out to others directly who you admire and feel like you can learn from.

Chamber service and board development is a continual iteration as our tools become more refined and as the world continues to evolve.  

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