Category: Culture

How to Manage & Lead Change with Lynn Turner

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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.

“Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. This powerful platform is designed to help chambers like yours support and elevate local businesses in a digital-first world. Whether you missed our recent webinar or want to dive deeper, visit bringinglocalback.com to learn more. Discover how you can enhance visibility, generate non-dues revenue, and truly make an impact in your community. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to drive meaningful change—explore the Bringing Local Back platform today!”

Our guest for this episode is Lynn Turner. Lynn is a formally trained business coach, facilitator and people analyst with over 20 years of experience in her business Core XP Business Solutions. Lynn focuses on the core of business people and culture making them stronger and more agile so they can stay competitive in in today’s ever evolving landscape, and lead and change innovation and create better experiences for all those involved. Lynn believes that without a strong core, the best strategies and action plans will be difficult to execute, wasting precious time, money and energy. Her many years working with a variety of businesses in different industries, and unique approach helps organizations build a stronger foundation so they can not only survive, but thrive in these unusual times. Over the years, Lynn has helped individuals and businesses gain clarity about their intentions to make informed decisions so they can achieve their goals and vision for life and business. During this time, she’s helped businesses and boards facilitate strategic planning and thinking sessions innovation and change management and initiatives and high performing teams, utilizing her certifications within virtual collaborations, graphic facilitations, the Lego series, play methodology and innovation management and strategy through wobi, which is world of business ideas, and the Kellogg School of Management, certified in a variety of assessment Tools. Lynn recently attained her Master Practitioner certification with Agile brain, a revolutionary new assessment based on neuroscience that transcends traditional cognitive measurements. Lynn also volunteers her time in a variety of workforce and entrepreneurial development initiatives across the Commonwealth that focus on underrepresented populations, including women bipoc and neurodivergence. But Lynn, I am excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Lynn Turner 3:19
Sure, I’m really excited for this opportunity and to get a chance to talk with you, Brandon, as well as your chamber champions, this is really exciting. I know a few individuals that have been on your podcast and and really admire the work that you do. As far as something interesting, I guess I’ll, I’ll share what we were talking about a little bit earlier. So for anyone, if you’re Googling my name, you might want to try Lynn Whitney Turner, because there is, there are lots of other Lynn Turners, and one out there actually happens to be a mass murderer. So I just want to clarify that I am not that person. So that’s why I use Lynn Whitney Turner, and

Brandon Burton 4:07
this is why we have middle names, right? So you could differentiate ourselves.

Lynn Turner 4:11
Absolutely, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 4:16
Oh man, I can imagine the confusion.

Lynn Turner 4:18
Yes, yes. And I, and I did, as I mentioned to you, I did have somebody that googled my name and said what they found. And I said, Yes, don’t drink the Kool Aid. So yeah, yes, actually, that person did pass away while in prison. So

Brandon Burton 4:35
okay, so no chance of them being confused with you now. So, yes,

Lynn Turner 4:39
exactly. Okay,

Brandon Burton 4:41
well, I know I, I touched on a little bit with your bio, but tell us a little bit about your business and kind of what your focus is, especially as it has to do with when you work with chambers. But what, what is core XP business solutions and and your focus and kind of center of work? Yeah.

Lynn Turner 4:59
Yeah, yeah. So the name core actually came out of something of my my past life, once upon a time, I was a certified aerobics instructor and personal trainer, and that has stayed with me and has really influenced my approach to the current body of work that I’m using, as well as it was influential in the name of my business. You know, with our bodies, I look at business very similar to our bodies, right? And developing a strong core helps us to become stronger and more agile, and that is really, in my opinion, what is needed in today’s landscape. I talk a lot with businesses about VUCA, and VUCA, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a term that actually came out of the military back at the end of the Cold War, of of all things, and our military, at that point, with the dismantling of Russia, became very concerned with who is our enemy. And then if you kind of fast forward from there to 911 that was really one of the things that they were really scared about. And VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. And it’s now been adopted by the business world. Because I think many people can when they hear of VUCA, they’re like, yeah, that really explains where we’re at in the current landscape. And it’s not really necessarily about change. It’s really more about the pace of the change our world is speeding up faster and faster, and it’s really about helping individuals and organizations stay ahead of that change, if possible, so not just managing the change, but hopefully leading the change. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:09
well, that’s a perfect segue into what our topic for our conversation will be to stay is around managing and leading change, specifically in a Bucha world, you know, where there is so much change and volatility and uncertainty and ambiguity, how do we approach this and how do we move through it? So I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic. As soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Attention all chamber of commerce leaders! Are you looking for a powerful tool to help grow and manage your chamber? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our comprehensive platform provides all the features you need to streamline membership management, host events, communicate with your members and provide amazing services to your members. Plus, our expert team is always available to provide personalized support. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level at a price you will truly appreciate. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Lynn, we are back. So right before the break, you I think you did a really good job in introducing, kind of what our topic is for our discussion today, on managing and leading change. And I know whenever change is introduced, there’s always that pushback. You know, there’s always people in the group, whether it’s in a board or maybe it’s the lead of the organization that pushes back on the change, maybe it starts at the very top. So as you work with organizations on leading and managing through change, what’s your approach to try to help get everyone on board that? You know, change is a necessity. Change is always happening, whether you want it to happen or not, and especially in today’s world, in the Bucha kind of world, what? What’s your approach to help get their mind wrapped around it? Absolutely.

Lynn Turner 10:13
And you, you brought up some really good distinctions, right? So, change, everybody has a re a response to that word change. In fact, we, in working with an organization on a change initiative. The owner of the company was was pretty resistant, and it really even came down to language. We ended up changing the word change. And instead of calling it change, we called it continuous improvement, because that’s really what we’re looking to do through change. Most leaders and there is a distinction too, between leading change, you know, because if we’re leading change, we want, we’re we’ve already embraced it, and therefore we’re ready to move forward. But to your point earlier, for some of us, it’s being imposed upon us, and typically in those situations, we do push back. Each of us has a different propensity for change, especially if it’s being imposed upon us. And I’ve really been digging down deeper into this. As you mentioned earlier, when you were introducing me, I am a people analyst, which is basically just a fancy way of saying, I utilize a lot of different assessments. And over the past 20 years, I mean, there’s tons of assessments out there, and I follow a lot of Peter Drucker’s work, and Peter Drucker is of the belief. And Peter Drucker is a business management guru who was ahead of his time. He passed away several years ago, but he really was ahead of his time. And one of his quotes is you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So that’s really where the assessments play a role, because if you can measure something, now you can better manage it. And if you’re looking at individuals, we each have a different style, whether you’re using Myers, Briggs, predictive index, I happen to utilize disc each of us has a different style, and each of those styles respond differently to change. So it’s really too about understanding, having that self awareness about how we how we deal with change, but also understanding how others may deal with change.

Brandon Burton 13:04
Yeah, and I like the approach of changing the word change. And I thought that before, before you even said that, that I wonder if there’s a better term we can use for the word change, because there is such resistance, it can be a scary word to hear. Hey, we’re going to change this. There’s a safety in insecurity and in doing what you know has been working, right? So when you change it, there’s, there’s some insecurity that comes with that, but to look at it as continuous improvement, say, Yeah, I think we can all get on board with that, right?

Lynn Turner 13:37
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Brandon Burton 13:41
So as we talk about leading and managing change, I assume you’re working with the leaders of these businesses and organizations to kind of get their head wrapped around how to communicate this to their their staff, or to their organization, to their members, so they’re whatever the organization is that you’re working with, so talk to us a little bit about that. But how you help them manage that that change or lead through that continuous improvement? Sure,

Lynn Turner 14:14
yeah, and it’s about understanding what is the purpose of the change. You know, why is it necessary? So it really is important to set context for for change. Is it change for the sake of change? If so, you know, people may not feel comfortable in doing that, because, as I mentioned earlier, we each have a different propensity for change. You know, some people really enjoy changing things up. Other people like things a little smoother and steadier. And there has been work done by Gallup where they looked at what are followers looking. From their leaders, and they’re looking for four key things when they’ve surveyed followers, and this can be, you know, they’ve done it for large groups, and they’ve been doing this study for many, many years, but four common themes seem to come up. One of them is trust. The followers want to trust in their leadership and trust in their decisions in the direction that they’re going. They’re looking for stability. They are looking for that stability to know that things are going to be okay. They’re also looking for compassion. They want their leaders to kind of understand where they’re coming from and understand what they’re going through in their day to day, and how this change may impact them. And then they’re also looking for hope. And hope is about what is that? Direct. Where are we going? Give me, you know, is it a positive? You know, give me something to hope for, something bigger than myself. So it is about understanding how followers what they’re looking for, before you’re in, helping to set that context about the change and how does it address each of those areas?

Brandon Burton 16:25
I like that. And I imagine followers in different organizations might have maybe different values slightly, but it’s going to stick, you know, pretty traditionally, I would think with these four categories that you talked about as a as a leader, do you need to adopt or really focus on all four categories? Or if you’re really good at two or three, can you lean into those and maybe carry through maybe a weaker category that your followers are looking at?

Lynn Turner 16:57
Yeah, and I think you have to one understand, you know, the type of leader that you are, right? We’re not. There isn’t one set type of leader, right? And and, you know, part of understanding VUCA too, is things are moving so fast that it’s going to require a village. It takes a team so understanding our own strengths as leaders, but also understanding maybe where we don’t have strengths, and building our team accordingly, so that you can hit each of those aspects with regards to what followers are looking for from leaders. And you know, one of the things that I do talk with leaders about, there was a term that I came across, I think it’s from the book talent IQ, and they talk about strategic humility. So strategic humility is knowing, at least having an idea of where you want to go, having that, you know, that strategic purview, if you will, but having the humility to say, You know what, I’m not exactly sure how to get there, and I’m willing to ask for help. So that’s also to the the name of my company is core XP that so I explained core. Core is really about developing that core. And for me, the core of your business is your people and your culture and and that’s what drives your business, that’s at the heart of your business. And everything radiates out from there. It radiates out into how you do, what you do, your internal operations, systems and processes, into your products and services. And that’s what interfaces with your customers and creates your brand image. So that’s the core. And then then two, the core for individuals is emotions. We are driven by our emotions. Those are at our core and their subconscious, and they influence our mindset, in our attitudes, which also influence our behaviors. And our behaviors are what people see. So it’s really about understanding our core and I’ll explain a little bit more about that, but that XP process is actually a process that an intellectual property that I’m developing, and it really about creating an innovative culture and mindset for individuals and organizations, and it’s really steeped in curiosity. So it is about helping you know leaders to be to really lead with curiosity, because we can. Have all the answers. It’s impossible today, in today’s Bucha world,

Brandon Burton 20:03
right? And that, if you’re looking for answers within your followers too, that that creates more buy in and and appreciation of them, seeing feeling valued and noticed by their leader, looking to them to help with that continuous improvement.

Lynn Turner 20:20
Absolutely, yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:23
Okay, so talk to us a little bit more about the core. You said, come back to that and more on that focus. Yeah,

Lynn Turner 20:30
yeah, yeah. So I mentioned earlier about the assessments, and as I had mentioned to you, I utilize disc. Disk is about behaviors. So that’s kind of in that outer ring of the individual, if you will. Because we’re onions, right? Individuals, people, humans are very complicated. We are very complicated, but our behaviors are what people see, our motivators. And you did talk about kind of those motivators. That’s another layer of us, and that’s not seen. That’s why we do what we do. Behaviors are how we do what we do, but motivators are why we do what we do, and we’re each motivated by different things. So you kind of talked about that, that you know, understanding what motivates people can help them work through the change, if you will, or that continuous improvement, but really at the core of individuals, our emotions, and that has not been an area that we’ve really been able to measure up until recently, I recently, as you shared earlier, I’ve become a Master Practitioner with a very new tool. It’s it’s revolutionary, called Agile brain. It’s based in neuroscience. It’s literally taken 125 years of motivational theory and condensed it into a pretty simplistic, not simple, but simplistic model that we are really finding incredible for for one understanding unmet needs and motivators for individuals, and also for understanding culture within an organization, because a lot of times, traditional surveys are asking you to think about how you feel, and there’s A lot of flaws in that which I can explain.

Brandon Burton 22:43
Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating, the the flaws in thinking about how you feel. And I, I’m guessing, there’s some maybe expectations that maybe you shouldn’t feel this way or shouldn’t feel. So if you give too much thought into it, it’s like, well, what’s the expectation on what I should feel, and it’s kind of skewing. Is that kind of the along the right paths of,

Lynn Turner 23:07
Oh yeah, yeah, you’ve kind of nailed it. So, you know, a lot of organizations do employee satisfaction surveys, or with chambers are doing member surveys, right? And the challenge becomes, we’re asking people to think about how they feel, and they may not share. So there’s reasons that the answers you get may not be accurate. One is, people may be trying to please, so they’re going to kind of share that very rosy picture of things because they’re trying to please others. Others may not be completely honest because they may not feel safe sharing. But the other piece of it is through the neuroscience, our emotions come from the limbic part of our brain, and in that limbic part of our brain we have no language. So I don’t know Brandon for you, but I know for myself, there have been times where I don’t even know how to explain how I’m feeling, and it’s because it’s wrapped up in that limbic part of the brain, and it’s really not until it gets to the nearer cortex, the frontal lobe, until we’re able to make sense of it and put language to it, because that’s the rational side of our brain.

Brandon Burton 24:35
That’s fascinating. I think, going back to the VUCA world, where we’ve got so many, you know, volatility and uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity. There used to be a time where maybe it, maybe it’s more of a perception than a reality, but people seem to be pretty cookie cutter, right? Like you go to school, you get a. A job. You work there your whole life, until you retire, and then you move on, and once you start introducing feelings into this like, as a leader, what are you supposed to do with somebody’s feelings? And that’s a whole nother discussion, I think, to be able to train and help leaders understand how to deal with the feelings and then motivate. Because even though even the motive, the motives that people have for why they do what they do, being based on feelings, not everybody has the same motives for showing up to work and doing their task and what it just kind of opens a can of worms that it’s a can that needed to be open. So how do you work with the leaders on this, on on managing that that change,

Lynn Turner 25:44
you brought up a few, a few different things that that are pretty interesting. So first of all, I do have to forewarn individuals with regards to Agile brain. If you’re looking to do culture work for your organization, it is not for the faint of heart. So I forewarn leaders, do not go down this path unless you are really want to know right? Don’t ask the question unless you really want to know the answer. So first of all, otherwise, I don’t recommend it, and unless you plan to do something with that information. So it’s not just about, okay, now we know whatever you gotta do something with the information, but it can be, it can be, it can be scary, right? Because maybe you weren’t ready to hear this information, but the, you know, there’s a I’ve had the opportunity to see Alan Mulally speak. Alan Mulally was the former CEO for Boeing many, many years ago, and then he got he started working with Ford, and that was during the the financial crisis, and they were the only one. They were the only car company at that time that did not take the bailout. But Alan Mulally had a belief that you can’t manage a secret, so you really have to get to the heart of things if you’re really going to solve the challenge or the problem or come up with solutions. So agile brain really helps you identify specific areas that may need some assistance. And sometimes it’s just communication. It’s not it and sometimes it’s things that the company offers, but employees aren’t aware of it, so having this information just helps you build a stronger core, if you will, of of people and culture.

Brandon Burton 27:52
Yeah, I like that coming back to the core. So how does agile brain? How does it work? Is this like, do you put on, like a helmet? Is it a test? What does it look like to actually perform this neuroscience on these followers and organizations?

Lynn Turner 28:09
Yeah, yeah. No, no helmet required, unless maybe for afterwards, when we do debris, but no helmet required for that. It’s actually, it’s really quick, and that’s part of the neuroscience. We don’t want people to have time to think. The other thing is, it’s image based, so it’s not no text. There is a prompt, and we can customize the prompt to help, you know, really get at what you’re trying to get at for the organization. So if it’s around culture, we would do it about how people feel about working at XYZ. And then basically, these pictures flash in front of you, and it takes three minutes, and you’re done, and it will show what we would call activation in different areas. So it’s basically broken down into four domains of self, which is that world within us, material, which is the external world of work and play, social, which is about our relationships and our connections, and then spiritual, which is about higher ideals and principles. And then there are three levels. There’s the foundational level, which is about being, there’s the experiential level, which is about doing, and then there’s the aspirational level, which is about having. So as you can see, I mean, Maslow’s is probably the most widely known or understood. So it does pull from Maslow, as well as a host of other bodies of work, but those are kind of the four, four domains and three levels that it looks at.

Brandon Burton 29:54
Okay. Well, that helps, because I’m picturing like nodes and stuff hooked up to your brand, and I. Like in the laboratory, all sorts of stuff. No, that that makes sense. So I’d like to ask, as I have people on the show for those listening, they’re typically leaders of chambers of commerce. For these chamber leaders who are looking to elevate their chamber to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them, especially as it relates to managing and leading change? Yeah, so

Lynn Turner 30:29
with leading change, so, you know, we talked about VUCA, and we kind of talked about that ominous volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, there is a flip side. So the way to fight VUCA is with VUCA. So it is about developing a vision. It is about having understanding of both your internal and your external worlds, and then also having clarity and creating clarity for those inside your organization as well as those outside your organization, and then building in agility. So these all need to be built into your organization, into your culture. But one of the biggest things that I talk to leaders about is shifting that mindset, because I think a lot of leaders felt that they need to be experts, and there’s a lot of pressure to be experts, and as I think you need experts within your organization, but as you rise through The ladder and become a leader. It’s more about being an explorer and leading with curiosity. So that’s kind of the shift that I’m I’m suggesting to leaders of all kinds, whether chambers, business world leaders even, is to really shift into curiosity. And one of the reasons, when we are genuinely curious, we are void of judgment. So if we’re void of judgment and we have that curiosity, we’re able to make better decisions, because sometimes we want to get we’re too attached to certain things and improving our expertise, if you will. And that can sometimes narrow the aperture, and in today’s world, we really need to widen that aperture.

Brandon Burton 32:37
I like that. I love the idea of curiosities and void of judgment and, and I think it may be helpful even to put that out there as you ask questions and try to learn more, to say, look, this is coming from a place of curiosity, so there is no judgment attached to it. I want to learn more about you and what motivates you and and being able to create the flip side of VOCA, the vision understanding clarity and agility. I love that. So Lynn, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you, from your perspective, how would you look at the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Lynn Turner 33:19
It’s an important question, right? And I have been working with several different chambers, and, you know, I think it does. I’ll go back to Peter Drucker. He’s got a slew of different quotes that just really resonate. He really was ahead of his time, but he asks a couple questions, What business are you in, and what business do you want to be in, or what business will you be in for the future? And depending on how you define yourself, can tell you a lot, because if we say we’re a buggy whip company. Well, then I if we’re locked into that, that may not give us an opportunity for future growth and expansion if we’re so attached to being that buggy whip company. So I think it is about really taking a good hard look at who you are, what you do, and why you do it. What is that purpose? What is that vision? And for chambers, it is a difficult time. You know, there’s a lots of different competition out there. And I mean, where I am, we have, we have chambers in every town, if you will. So there’s a lot of competition, and the businesses only have so much, you know, so many resources as far as time, money, energy. So where do they? Want to best spend that time, money, energy. So I think it’s really about also asking yourself, what problem are you trying to solve for your your members, your community, whatever it is.

Brandon Burton 35:12
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. This has been a fun, interesting conversation. Admittedly, it’s gone some directions I did not expect. So this is hopefully listeners as well, are taking some notes and thinking of different perspectives, different angles that they can take with their their followers, with their members, with their staff, their board, to be able to figure out what, what are the emotional aspect that drives their motives to their actions, that they see to further drive engagement and participation. So I appreciate the perspective you brought your expertise and ability to speak so clearly to this topic. I did want to give you an opportunity, Lynn, to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more or figure out more about your work. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Lynn Turner 36:13
I’m sure they can email me at lynn@corebusinessxp.com and that is the web website as well, corebusinessxp.com so either way is, is fine. And you know, the biggest two thing too, I would say, for chambers too, is getting that alignment with you, with your board, making sure everybody’s on the same page and has the same understanding of language, too.

Brandon Burton 36:47
Yes, I think that’s key. Well, I will get this in our show notes for this episode so people can can find you there. But again, Lynn, this has been a fun and a fun conversation. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m sure as I go back and re listen to this episode of I’m going to pick up some other things too that kind of sink in the second time around. So I appreciate it, and I see a lot of application into the chamber world. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Lynn Turner 37:15
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Brandon, it was great conversation with you.

Brandon Burton 37:20
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.

Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Greater Phoenix Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Todd Sanders

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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.

“Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. This powerful platform is designed to help chambers like yours support and elevate local businesses in a digital-first world. Whether you missed our recent webinar or want to dive deeper, visit chamberchatpodcast.com/bringinglocalback to learn more. Discover how you can enhance visibility, generate non-dues revenue, and truly make an impact in your community. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to drive meaningful change—explore the Bringing Local Back platform today!”

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist Series. And our guest for this episode is Todd Sanders. Todd is the President and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber in Arizona, and was named that that role in 2009 before assuming his current role, Todd represented the interests of businesses and community at the Arizona State legislator and Phoenix City Hall as Vice President of Public Affairs. In that role, he enhanced the Chamber’s position as a statewide leader in immigration policy, initiative reform and pro business tax policy. Prior to joining the chamber, Todd acted as a Research and Policy Analyst for the Arizona House of Representatives, serving several standing committees in the areas of taxation, Environment, Energy, state trust, land, counties, municipalities and international trade. He also acted as a liaison to the Arizona Mexico commission on behalf of the house represent, House of Representatives, and currently serves as board president for the Arizona Mexico commission. Todd is a native of Bogota, Colombia. Holds a Bachelor of Science in political science from Northern Arizona University, and he and his wife have a son and live in Phoenix, Arizona, Todd, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. Want to start by saying congratulations to you and your team, what a honor and accomplishment, and want to allow you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better, you

Todd Sanders 2:45
bet. Well, thank you for that, for that introduction. I think if my mom were here, she would be certainly proud, but I certainly embarrassed by all of those. Although those details, thank you for taking the time. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are here in Phoenix to be in the running for a chamber of the year. It is, is a tremendous honor. And as soon as we were notified, the whole chamber was, was just overjoyed. So really appreciate the opportunity. In terms of about things about me, usually, I usually tell people Sure, I was born in Bogota, Colombia, kicked out for bad behavior, but, but the I will tell you something that I think probably 99% of people don’t know. So you mentioned that my name is Todd Sanders recently, well, I shouldn’t say recently. About three or four years ago, we were at a family reunion, and somehow our family tree came up, and we mentioned my brothers and I were saying, Well, we know that my mom’s side was from Scotland, and dad’s side was from Italy. And someone piped up and said, Italy, you know, what are you talking about? There’s no Italian blood here. And and we were just we were so confused that dad’s not with us anymore. And what we learned was, what actually happened is, generations ago, a we actually my our great, great grandfather migrated from, I believe, Mexico into the United States, settled in California and and at that time, decided that probably would be more advantageous to have a more Anglo Saxon sounding name. So he and some friends who sort of came up with this idea, put some names into a hat, and they drew, and my great, great grandfather drew the name Sanders previously. And I guess, I guess you could say, currently, our name had been Sepulveda. So actually, you’re talking to Todd Sepulveda, but by accident, or, I guess, because, of a set of circumstances, Todd Sanders, so something that most people don’t know about me and then, and of course, Todd Sepulveda doesn’t really roll off the tongue. That’s

Brandon Burton 4:47
right. I wonder if your first name would have been different if it’s

Todd Sanders 4:50
still I wonder, yeah, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 4:54
Might be talking to a whole different person. But that’s that’s interesting. I like hearing the family history. And how names change. And my last name is currently Burton, b, u r t o n. But again, his family immigrated into the states. They came from France through Canada into Maine, and at the time it was b, e r t i n, and of course, everybody’s illiterate back then, so they said the name, it got written down, b, u, r, t, O, N, and here we are still today. So yeah, it’s, that’s the way it works. That’s right. Well, tell us about the greater Phoenix chamber. That’s what we’re here for. So tell us about your your organization, size, staff, budget, scope of work, just to set the stage for us. Well,

Todd Sanders 5:38
you bet Walt, thank you for that opportunity. So we have interesting history. Unlike most of the the folks that are listening to this, this podcast nationally, where states have been around for a while, Arizona is a relatively young state. We were formed in 1912 so, so, you know, we just had our our centennial chamber was formed in 1888 so prior to statehood, some some visionary business leaders at the time, formed the Phoenix chamber, and obviously through that time, it has evolved into the organization it is today. So as of, as of now, we have about 2400 members, ranging in all sizes. Our budget is is split between two entities. There’s the chamber side and the foundation side. And when you put those two together, it’s shy of about ten million with the foundation being slightly larger. The staff, our staff is currently close to 70 and and a lot of that serves some of the needs that we’re addressing through the foundation. Yeah, in terms of programs of work, as you mentioned, I come from a policy background, so I’m I can’t get away from that. We do a lot of the state legislature. We work a lot with our city, our city council, and more and more, especially with our friends at the US Chamber, we’re doing work at the at the federal level, there’s also an economic development component to the work we do now. Like, like most of us, we aren’t an attractor. We have a statewide attractor and a county attractor of businesses into the valley. But certainly, as as most chambers do when we get businesses come into town. How do we keep them here? How do we keep them growing? And then finally, as an outgrowth of that work, there’s a workforce component to it, and that’s really where the foundation comes into play,

Brandon Burton 7:30
yeah, but I’m glad to hear that you guys have a foundation. I know that’s kind of the trajectory that we see. Chambers are encouraging chambers to go to be able to really further the work that they have to do. But so typically, on these chamber the year finalist episodes, what I like to do is focus the majority of our time on the programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application, and dive into kind of the origins for those and and the impact that they’re making in your community. And we’ll, we’ll dive into those programs for the greater Phoenix chamber, as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a way to grow and manage your chamber of commerce more effectively? Look no further than Chamber Nation! Our innovative software provides everything you need to streamline operations, engage members, and increase revenue. With features like event management, membership directories, advanced membership tools, mobile apps, community kiosks, and financial reporting, Chamber Nation makes it easy to run your chamber like a well-oiled machine. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your chamber to the next level. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation today!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right. Todd, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll we’ll dive into the pro. Programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. I understand that the first kind of scope or program of work will say, covers several programs, kind of in one container, we’ll say, but please introduce that to us. Let us know what those programs are, and again, what the origins and the reason it kind of how this developed?

Todd Sanders 10:25
Well, thank you for that. You’re right. The first, the first set of programs, is sort of under one category. And I think about it as sort of this idea of belonging, my my philosophy, my leadership philosophy really revolves around an abundance model, which, of course, isn’t isn’t blind to the fact that we have to compete, but there’s also a lot of room for us to work together or to bring people in. And so one of those is really revolves around our strategy relating to helping small and mid sized business understand what the road to diversity and inclusion looks like for their companies. Large companies really don’t have a big challenge with implementing these kinds of programs within their within their organizations, but small and mid sized companies tend to have challenges with that. And this goes back eight years ago, July 7, by the way. July 7, 2016 was the day that this all started for me. I had a member of my board, Frank Reed, African American gentleman, who called me and said, Todd, I need to go to lunch. And can we, I need to get on your calendar today, which I thought was was interesting. But we did it. And he and our chair, we sat down and and he said, today in my hometown of Dallas, five police officers were shot for a race related reason, and we can’t let that happen in Phoenix and and part of that is because we’re not we’re not bringing people in, we’re not having conversations, and we’re not really thinking about belonging here. And he said, I need the chamber to engage and but that that lunch, we said, All right, we’re going to do that. And that was the start of something, I think, really impactful, which which began with this, this toolkit that, for instance, our for our friends in the Billings Montana chamber are using as well, where we’re giving small, midsize businesses a roadmap just to start to bring people in and have conversations about how we can all belong, and we built up a toolkit. One of the first things that that occurred was that we decided that staff’s not going to build this thing out. My members of my executive committee built this thing out with with help from us and more of logistical support. And the product, I think, was remarkable. Now it’s in the second iteration, and and and the discussion at that time was, well, what do we do with this? And we immediately decided we’re not monetizing it, we’re giving it away. And you can imagine my sales people. We’re thrilled with this idea, but we felt like it really important for us to learn from what happened in Dallas, and this is before, certainly George Floyd and all these other things. But how do we start bringing people in and just talk to each other, right? And so we decided we would give it away, whether you remember or not, we want to help people in, and we’ve we formed a committee that really what we do is we help businesses along the way when the way they have want to have conversations about, how do you include people? And how do we, how do we make that a part of what we do every day? That’s the toolkit that we use. So that’s one part of it. There were some existing programs that really got wrapped into this. We have an Athena program, which I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with, with the Athena international program, and that’s really how we look at women leaders in our community, that balance, obviously, leadership positions. They also are mentors, and they’re making change in their community. And we’ve had this for 38 years now. It’s a really important part of who we are. There’s also a bit a business, a Women’s Alliance, where we’re bringing women leaders together on a monthly basis, and we really promote what they’re doing. They They network with each other, they lift people up. And it’s a remarkable, remarkable program. Never leave one of these programs without feeling inspired and and really wondering how you didn’t know about this person in our community. And then finally, our Valley young professionals. We, when I became CEO, I really made it a goal to make this a program that was going to be worthwhile, not just something where we were checking the box. And so we really thought about, how do we make this impactful? And part of that, obviously, is giving people coming into their careers an opportunity to really understand what it’s like to serve on a board. What’s a nonprofit all about, what’s your role, what’s the what’s the role of the organization? And and it was working really well. We had really strong leaders, which I think is part of the key, right? But then I there was something was missing, because they there was always this idea that there’s the vyp board, value professional board, and then there’s sort of, quote, unquote big board. And I thought, why do we Why do we have that? And going back to this idea of abundance, I said. Let’s do this. I want to make the leadership so the Chair and the Vice Chair, I want to make them full fledged members of our board, and that means they’re voting members. They’re not junior members that are observed, but they’re full fledged members of the board. That really sort of changed the way young people were looking at this committee and engaging in this committee. Now, what’s interesting about it, you know, how you so you’re thinking about influencing and really bringing up a sort of a set of people as we started to incorporate them into the board, we started feeling significant benefits from having completely different point of view on the board, so much so that at our board retreats, we actually invite the the vyp board, the full board, onto our into our into our retreats, along with our foundation, because they’re adding so much to the conversation. So really, this, this whole idea, and all of these programs are, we’re all wrapped around this, this thought that there’s, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of abundance out there, and how do we start to share that, and how do we start to bring people up? And as a consequence, it’s made us stronger, it’s made us healthier, and it’s and I think in a lot of ways, it’s the reason why we’re here today, talking to you, because that’s the kind of thing that really starts to move a community forward. Right

Brandon Burton 16:21
now, when you think of inclusion and making sure people feel welcomed, I like to think if somebody walks into a room and they don’t feel like they belong there, whether it’s whatever group, you know, segmentation you want to, you know, put the focus on, if they don’t feel like they belong there, they’re out, you know, they’re not going to stay, they’re not going to come back, they’re not going to engage. They’re not going to go to the next level with engagement with your organization. So it’s so important to be able to really highlight these areas, to make sure that people from all different walks of life as they come in, that this is a place for everyone in your community to be involved.

Todd Sanders 17:04
You Ben

Brandon Burton 17:06
with a thought, do you, I know, unfortunately, dei gets kind of a political spin put on it. So how’s the approach that you guys have? Or have you gotten any you know, received any feedback from people on the outside saying, what’s the chamber doing getting involved with these things, and how do you address that with them?

Todd Sanders 17:26
You know, I haven’t gotten the the angry emails that I’ve that I’ve heard about, and I think part of that is because we really look at it from a practical standpoint. I’ll give you an example Frank. Frank read the gentleman that I talked about, you know, provided such an important example, and we’re seeing this, for instance, today in Phoenix, there are literally more jobs than people, so we’re having to do everything that we can to really fill these, these critical slots in our economy. One of the things that that this applies to is the workforce side, obviously, and his story was that they had a really high level position in a company that they were trying to fill. And they they brought they were thinking, Alright, we need more women leaders. They brought in these five. I mean, these were top notch, Ivy League type folks that any one of them would have been incredible for this position. And so they brought them in. They did these interviews. And you know how these, these things work, it’s not generally one person, it’s probably a panel of folks and and they all five women, declined the position in succession, and finally, Frank decided to call a couple of them, and what they said was, you know, it seems like a great company, a lot of opportunity there, but I don’t see myself represented there. There was just a bunch of bunch of men on this in this panel, and I didn’t think I belong there. And for him, it was a really interesting wake up call. And said in the sense that if you want to bring people on board, make sure that they feel like they have a place there. And I think when we talk to companies about how you’re going to look for this top talent, as we’re thinking about $40 billion worth of semiconductor dollars coming into Arizona, and what’s going to be needed in terms of top talent, you got to make sure that that people feel like they got a place at the table if you’re looking to fill these really critical roles. So I think for us, it’s been looking at this from a practical perspective. Same thing goes for the young professionals, the when I think about way back when, when we started this group, there was one particular person who who was their their chair at the time, and she was a complete standout, just amazing. Went through that process, left the vyp group because she’d sort of graduated out and was chair, and had done everything that could be done. Then she became a member of the board through her company, and two years ago, she was my chair. She was the chair of our board, and an incredibly catalytically or who brought so much to the table. So I think when people start to see this as not a political exercise, but this idea that all we’re doing is making sure. Sure that there’s room at the table for everybody. You tend to win.

Brandon Burton 20:03
Yeah, that goes back to your, your thought on abundance, right? There’s room for everybody, and let’s, let’s show them. I, I’ve heard it, and I think I’ve shared it before on the podcast, but when you walk into a room and you see people gathered together, they tend to be in in a circle, right, talking to each other. And that to be inclusive. Instead of a circle, create more of a horseshoe, right? Leave it open, let people in be able to let them feel welcome and like they belong there.

Todd Sanders 20:27
Well, it’s true. And I think, you know, part of that is came from this idea. You mentioned, I was from Colombia, and it’s odd, because when I’m in the States, I always feel like there’s a part of me that’s that doesn’t belong, because it’s true, right? I’m, you know, people you were born somewhere else, and when I’m in Colombia, people like automatic people like, automatically think I’m

Brandon Burton 20:45
American, because, yeah,

Todd Sanders 20:47
I don’t use the simple but a name down there, and so it’s an odd thing to it, so it gives you a sense for what that’s like. But, but, yeah, it’s been, it’s been really rewarding in terms of how far this has gone and the impact that it’s had, not only on the chamber, but in in organizations throughout the Valley and in people, yeah, oh,

Brandon Burton 21:07
that’s great. Let’s shift gears a bit into the other program that was submitted on your application. And if you could tell us what that is and what the origins and the purpose was behind that,

Todd Sanders 21:19
well, you mentioned the foundation, and I’m really glad you did. And I’m encouraging other other chambers to certainly look at foundations. And I will say that we call it the 10 year overnight success story. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 21:31
it takes most are right 100%

Todd Sanders 21:34
I’d love to say it was two years. But, you know, a lot of that work was was built on, you know, the things we had done in the past, and when I mentioned the the Retention and Expansion work that we did, what, what I assumed, when we started talking to businesses, that they would tell me, Todd, the big issues here in Arizona are, are taxes and regulation and and as we talked to business leaders, none of them said that, Which was really shocking to me, and this is before workforce was was cool. They all said we don’t have the qualified talent that we need today and and that was a big wake up call for us. Part of the part of that also was a visit we had with a what would be a fortune 200 company locally that was moving about 200 jobs that paid six figures outside of Arizona because they couldn’t find enough people who could pass the series seven exam. And okay, hold on. We’re the we’re the fifth largest city in the country. That doesn’t seem possible, right? So we figured out very quickly that there was a role for us there. We needed to do more in this space, and so that’s how we got into workforce. And as we as we had a few years under our belt with workforce, it became really clear that we there wasn’t a good method or a good pathway for kids in high schools looking to college and career either or right. I know it’s black and white, but it’s not, it’s college and or career, because they’re interchangeable in some ways. And so I’ll tell you the story real quick. We decided we really need to learn. And so there’s a really great program in Nashville, and kudos to to the Nashville chamber and all the work that they do out there a program in Nashville where they have these Academy an academy model. And so we took a group out to Nashville, and we said, we want to learn about this. And by happenstance, the Phoenix union board actually ended up there as well. We had no idea they were going to be there. We bumped into each other, and it was weird, because we didn’t know each other really well. It was a lot of distrust. Why is the chamber here? You know, what is this board doing here? And we started talking. Go figure, right? We started talking. And by the third day, we were kind of a unified group. And we left there saying, we don’t know this is our model, but, but if, maybe, if we decided to work together, maybe there’s something here for us. And so we did. We decided that we would start with one school, and what we would do is we would see how we could create pathway opportunities for kids in high schools, especially in Title One high schools. And so that was, that was a about four years ago. Three years ago, we started with our first school and and district, and that started to grow over time, and it is something that now has grown to 20 high schools in Arizona and 1000s of kids through that work. One of the things that we we found, among other things, was that a lot of these kids had the the skills, they had the ability, they certainly had the right to engage in some sort of dual enrollment opportunity, but they weren’t doing it, partially because they didn’t know it existed, and mostly because they didn’t have the funds to pay for the dual enrollment. So this is what I love about this sort of project, because it engaged the. Foundation that also engage the chamber. Remember, I told you, we do a lot of the at the legislature. So last year, we got together with some of our partners and and petitioned the legislature for an appropriation that would allow our our kids, our Title One kids, to get at least six credit hours, usually 12 credit hours of dual enrollment before they graduated. It was an interesting issue because it was, believe it or not, bipartisan. There was both sides. It was weird, right? This was a good idea. It was, it was odd, but it was a great, a great thing to sort of be curious about the this bill passed, and now there’s an opportunity for these kids to not have to worry about the financial barrier and think about what this will mean going into into college. You know, if, if they have these 12 credit hours, it means they’re probably going to continue on into the community college system, get a get a two year degree, or a four year degree in industries or in areas where there’s a huge demand in Arizona. So that first year we did it, we saw 40% increase in dual enrollment in 20 in 20 High School. So a significant number. This year we’re seeing a smaller increase. And we had to ask ourselves, what’s going on here? We obviously have a lot of kids out there that haven’t seen this opportunity. What we found was, and probably what we’re seeing in a lot of communities around our country, where we’re actually have a shortage of teachers who are certified in dual enrollment. So we were able to get funds together, and we’re actually providing incentives for teachers to get certified. They have to do that. They have to pay to get certified. So we’re helping them get certified. Our goal is to get get them certified through the system, and then next year, bring those numbers up again. But it’s an interesting sort of process, from where we started with us in Nashville, looking at how we can work together, to today, looking at very specific numbers and the families that we’re helping on a generational basis.

Brandon Burton 27:02
Yeah, well, that goes back to, you know, raising the tide, you know, raises all ships as well. So in both of these programs, I see examples of that. So with this one, you’re focused on the employers making sure they have the pipeline coming in, but in doing, in focusing on that, you’re enhancing the life of these young people going through high school and looking to the that next step in their their life, their, you know, work or college, or both and, or both, right?

Todd Sanders 27:28
I agree. And then the schools,

Brandon Burton 27:30
the schools are being elevated, and the teachers are being elevated. So all around it’s great. They

Todd Sanders 27:35
really are and, and I’ll tell you, you know, a big part of this was internships, right along with a dual enrollment opportunity. And you can imagine what the reaction is from a lot of businesses when you tell them we want to live and have some seniors come in and do an internship, especially in areas like healthcare or or advanced manufacturing, like Honeywell. And I’ll use Honeywell as the example. They were very polite, and they said no, and we finally convinced them, three years ago to take three of our kids. And they said, okay, they have to be over 18, so they’re in their spring semester. We’ll take three. Let us see what happens. They took three, and at the end of it, they said, You know what these kids are, they’re pretty good. We’re gonna hire them. Awesome. So they hired these kids last year. They took six, and they erased the 18, the 18 year old rule. Well, let me fast forward to today. How many do you think they’re taking?

Brandon Burton 28:32
I I’m gonna say at least 12, if you just keep doubling, right? Or is 24 How many years is this now? This will be the third year. Third years, I’m gonna, I’m gonna guess 1288,

Todd Sanders 28:45
we’re taking 88 of our kids now. Here’s the here’s the awesome. I’m gonna bring this all back to where I started, in terms of abundance. All right, so here’s, here’s the story. So earlier last month, we met with the representative money well, when he was telling us that they’re gonna increase to 88 and he said, I need to tell you what happened in that first cohort of kids, there was one kid who was on the bubble, looks like he wasn’t going to graduate. He wasn’t engaged. High School just wasn’t his thing. And the school and Honeywell decided, let’s let’s see what happens. Well, you know what happened, right? Honeywell hired him at the end because it really seemed to work. Well, guess what? Today? Well, not today. Last month, he brought his he bought a house for his family. Wow, yeah. I mean, think about that as a kid who’s on the bubble, probably not going to graduate all of a sudden, he’s got this incredible job of Honeywell. And today, I mean, my kid’s 20, he’s not buying a house for his family. This kid just bought a house for his family. That’s not political, that’s amazing. How do we start to create an abundance mentality in our community and really create opportunity for everybody, including Honeywell, by the way,

Brandon Burton 29:54
yes, wow. That just blows my mind. The 88 interns now that great story, great. Success, yeah,

Todd Sanders 30:01
a lot of those. Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 30:03
bet we can go on for a couple hours trying to some great stories. And I’d love

Todd Sanders 30:08
to say that, you know, kudos to the chamber, no, kudos to those companies. CVS just did 20. Yeah? So it’s great to, it’s great to see that impact, and it’s great to see companies stepping up like that, yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:19
well, and for those who do go the route of higher education after high school. It’s a huge help to have those dual credits going into college and university, and being able to kind of have that head start. And my son just graduated, and he got it, got out of high school with 30 college credits, like, that’s awesome going into as a sophomore, right? So it’s

Todd Sanders 30:41
you think about the financially for you. I mean, that’s yeah, you just saved

Brandon Burton 30:45
a year. Yeah? I recognize it, yes, yeah. Well, Todd, I like asking, especially as a chamber of the year finalist, for listeners who are tuning in, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them as they look to take their chamber up to the next level?

Todd Sanders 31:06
Well, I, you know, I’ll go back to the 10 years ago when we decided that we wanted to, we needed to raise some money to make this happen. I think our goal was, was, was about a million dollars and and that was, that’s a big number. It’s a big number today. And as we were talking to business leaders, I think there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s always a lot of skepticism about a new program, and you’re coming here to help. And we hear this all the time. And I think one of the things that we said that I think made a big difference when we when we made our pitch, I said, Look, something in what I’ve just talked about is going to go wrong. Something’s not going to work. I promise you that is going to happen. But I’m also going to promise you that we’re going to take that, we’re going to learn from it, and then we’re going to pivot, and we’re going to make sure it does work. And I think we’ve, we’ve gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable, and that’s in all parts of our chamber. I mean, it’s so easy to say, I don’t know, that’s kind of scary. Well, we maybe we tried that before, or that’s never going to work, or we’ve always done it this way. We do it too, but if you give yourself permission to fail, you’re going to succeed.

Brandon Burton 32:18
Yeah, I love that. If you give yourself permission to fail, you’re going to succeed. It’s that’s a t shirt. That’s a t shirt, right? Yeah, so,

Todd Sanders 32:26
but you fail a lot and and that that’s what makes us successful. It’s

Brandon Burton 32:31
right. That’s right. You learn, right? You bet. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Todd Sanders 32:41
Well, you know, I really feel like chambers are in such a good place right now. I feel like, you know, we’re looking at ourselves in a way that is probably different than we had even 10 years ago. You mentioned foundations. I think there’s a renewed emphasis on how we are really the heart of our economies. And I think probably covid was terrible. We wouldn’t want to go through it again. But I think covid really gave us a moment to really understand the importance that chambers serve in our communities. We are at the heart of our economies and our communities. And that certainly was reinforced during that time, and I think it gave us a new sense of what we need to be and how we need to do things, and how we talk about ourselves. We are economic developers. That’s chambers are the original economic developers. I don’t care how you slice it, that’s how the community sees us now. I think that’s tremendous, but we’re also taking that a step further and looking at things that we hadn’t traditionally looked at, like, like education, like foundation work. And I gotta tell you, I love this industry and and I’m so proud to be a part of it.

Brandon Burton 33:53
I love that, yes, every chamber is an economic development. Doesn’t matter what the city contract says you are involved in developing the economy in your community. Well, Todd, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn how you guys are doing things there in Phoenix, and maybe dig in a little deeper. Where would you point them? Absolutely

Todd Sanders 34:17
Happy. Happy to help on that side as well. You can also, you can always go to our website, PhoenixChamber.com a lot of information there about all the programs we talked about, including a few others that I didn’t my email address is tsanders@phoenixchamber.com so feel free to reach out there as well. And then, certainly if you want to have a conversation, 602-495-6460, 495-6460,

Brandon Burton 34:43
that’s perfect. We will get that in our show notes for this episode too, to make it easy to reference and have people pull it up and find you there. But Todd, this has been great having you on Chamber Chat Podcast. I wish you and your team the best of luck in Dallas as Chamber of the Year, and keep up the great work. Work you guys are making a huge impact.

Todd Sanders 35:01
Well, thank you. We will look forward to seeing you

Brandon Burton 35:05
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Bend Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katy Brooks

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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.

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

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

To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 31:52
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Michigan West Coast Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Jodi Owczarski

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you a community leader or Chamber of Commerce looking to grow your non-dues revenue around your core community? Are you in an area not already served by a chamber of commerce? Look no further than Chamber Nation’s new platform, Pippily. Pippily is the perfect solution for adding commerce to areas where a chamber may not exist or to expand the reach of a regional Chamber. With Pippily, you can easily connect with local businesses and promote your services to a wider audience. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to expand your reach and increase your revenue. Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more about Chamber Nation and Pippily today.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jodi Owczarski 28:11
That’s right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 30:38
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Chamber Churn & Balance with Mike Throne

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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.

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

Our guest for this episode is Mike Throne. Mike is the President and CEO of the Chillicothe Ross Chamber in Ohio. Mike has always been a storyteller has a sixth grader near Sandusky, Ohio he arrived home from school one day proclaiming he wanted to be a journalist when he grew up. He wrote stories as a child and use scrap paper stapled together to produce his first official issue. A five pager including a recap of pickup baseball game he and his friends played earlier that day. Sales were not good. After graduating from Bowling Green State University. He began nearly 25 year career in newspapers starting as a rural reporter and becoming an editor of two newspapers picking up numerous local state and national awards for himself and his staff. But he found his passion in Chillicothe. He as a small town from southern Ohio, he yearned to become part of the renaissance of Ohio’s first capitol. In 2018, he became the president and CEO of the Chillicothe Ross Chamber of Commerce. And again, the story of the resurgence of the place he called Ohio’s best small town. In addition to his chamber duties, he co hosts the feels like home podcast, which furthers his efforts to tell his community stories. He also serves on several boards in the community, including chairing the Board of Trustees for the pumphouse Center for the Arts. Mike, I’m excited to have you with us today, you’re on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself that maybe wasn’t included in your bio. Well,

Mike Throne 2:52
Brandon, first of all, thank you for the invitation. And it’s an honor to be on the show. And I think it’s important to note that I’m so good of an editor that I edited out the two homeruns that I hit in that pickup baseball game. But, you know, I’m really excited to be here because I think the chamber life has been pretty transforming for me. And so I like to share parts of my experience. And I think it’s just one of those things where the more I can really my mom and many people that I’ve talked to have always said I should have been a teacher I should have because summers off really sounds like a great idea, but but I like the fact that we have forums like this and other forums where we can share our experiences and help chamber executives and their staffs really grow their knowledge and and again, as you said earlier, just serve their members better. Yes, I

Brandon Burton 3:51
appreciate that. And I I like platforms like this. I may be a little biased, but I think it energizes those that listen and participate. Because you get to hear what the other guy’s doing and be able to take things and scale it for your chamber and and hopefully make your life a little bit easier. That’s that’s kind of the goal. Absolutely. Well tell us a little bit more about the Chillicothe, the Ross chamber just give us an idea size staff budget scope of work, you guys are involved with that sort of thing just to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Mike Throne 4:21
So the Chillicothe Ross Chamber of Commerce has been around since I guess, since since the 1880s when it was first formed as a Board of Trade. But in the early 1900s It became an official Chamber of Commerce, transferring its name to a chamber of commerce. So we’ve been around for 100 plus years. And we currently have about 775 members. We’re located in southern Ohio about midway between Huntington West Virginia or Kentucky depending how you look at the tri state area, and Columbus, Ohio. We’re only about 40 minutes south of Columbus, Ohio. And so we’ve kind of got a niche is sort of a Regional Chamber. We draw a lot of members from around around the surrounding county areas. But predominantly, we focus on the Ross County area, we have a staff of three, that’s myself on events and marketing person, and membership, person as well. We bring in about, on average, about $240,000 of dues revenue each year. And total income of probably right around 375,000. We just made a switch this year, we had three, we’ve always had three positions. But we have traditionally not had an events and marketing person split out, I had my membership and events all under one when I arrived in 20, late 2018. And so this year, we had an opportunity, somebody left. And so we thought, well, this is the opportunity that we have to make our membership person a true membership person and split off the events duties. So that’s been our biggest, our biggest change this year. And so in many ways, you know, it’s only we’re not even halfway through the year yet. So we’re still trying to navigate what that looks like. And but it’s been, it’s been really successful so far. That’s

Brandon Burton 6:25
good. Yeah, I can see where membership and events and marketing where there’s a lot of overlap, and where one person may feel like they kind of need the control over all of it. But there’s definitely enough work to spread it out to two or three people maybe even but being able to have that coordinated effort between them to make sure we’re all moving in the right direction, right? Yep.

Mike Throne 6:49
Yeah. And I just felt like there was a lot of stops and starts, every time we’d have a big event. It was sort of like okay, membership meeting, slow down or pause. And I just felt like, you know, the membership duties being segmented out. We could just focus on membership for 12 months a year. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:06
that’s smart. So for our topic for our conversation today, for this episode, we focus or we decided to focus on discussing the chamber turn that we’re seeing throughout the chamber world. And part of that some of the balance and some of the work life balance that we need to be mindful of to try to retain us as a chamber professionals and not get too burned out and be adding to that churn too quickly. So we will dive into this discussion much deeper as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Exciting news! Introducing Pippily by Chamber Nation, the innovative solution to manage and promote your community for unstoppable growth.

Joining the Chamber of Commerce means one thing: COMMERCE. Businesses want to thrive, and Pippily is here to make that happen.

With Pippily, your members can experience remarkable benefits even if they can’t attend events. It’s a game-changer for retention.

Say goodbye to ordinary directories and embrace a transformative Commerce Management System. Unlock the true power of commerce management.

Picture a centralized Pippily dashboard, combining top mobile technologies for subscriptions, event registration, community communications, and more. It’s incredible!

Don’t miss out. Visit Pippily.com to learn more. That’s P-I-P-P-I-L-Y dot com. Schedule a demo at RichardsCalendar.com. It’s affordable and delivers more.

Pippily by Chamber Nation – your community’s future starts now!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Mike, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about chamber churn, but also the work life balance aspect to try to help support those chamber champions that are out there. I know from my my vantage point, my point of view from especially since the pandemic, I think that was really an accelerator of seeing this churn of chamber executives and, and staff were, you know, it was everything 100%, you know, during the pandemic, and I think at least it led to a lot of burnout, it led to a on the other hand, a lot of satisfaction, because chambers were able to see the value, the community was able to recognize the value of the chamber, but I think the the balance got out of whack a bit there. But from your perspective, what have you seen and what what comes to mind, as you see think of chamber churn. But

Mike Throne 10:59
I think it hits really, really close to home to me, in fact, of the five or six county area around me, I have one county to my north, that is churn their leader three times since the end of 2020. Another chamber that’s churned its leader four times since the end of 2020. And another county near me that has turned it three times since 2020. And then if you look around, some of the folks that I got to know in my first year, they’re gone in their predecessor, or their their successor, are also gone. I’m part of the chamber executives of Chamber of Commerce, executives of Ohio CEO group, which is a group designed specifically for executives. And we haven’t really run the numbers fully yet. But I would say, venture a guess that half of the positions and there are, you know, a lot of chambers in Ohio that have churned leaders over that span. I think COVID was a part of it. I think COVID was a very big waking event for people, to let them see just how aggressive their schedule was, and how hard they’re working. And, you know, I come from this from from the perspective of spending 25 years in the journalism business where the last three years or two years, I was the editor over two papers, and I was strung out and really just stressed out, I get home and my young kids were already in bed, and I hadn’t seen them all day, and I just really needed, I needed a change, I didn’t enjoy my work anymore. And so, you know, I had applied for this job five years before it came open. Didn’t get it then. But when it came back open again, I was a little reluctant to do it. But the more that I’ve looked at it, the more I felt like this is a good a good change for me. And I have the opportunity to work with my board to set the realistic goals, boundaries and values that will allow me to have that work life balance. And so, you know, I guess from the chamber churn perspective, I look at, you know, Glenn Shepards, report every month and see all these people that are leaving, or going from one to the other. And I just even look at my IOM class from last year, I’m currently in my second year. And the number of people that have left from that class alone just gives me great concern about who we’re getting for leaders. And then I think, how we address that, you know, I’m five years into this job, I don’t really consider myself a veteran, like many of the other folks that do this job. But we’re going to need to invest in those leaders to make sure that they don’t fall into the same traps. And I think the other part of it, too, is to create for our own selves. The boundaries that we know will help sustain us to go deep into this career if we really want that.

Brandon Burton 14:07
Yeah. So you’ve quickly become one of the old timers as everybody around you. It’s kind of

Mike Throne 14:14
a joke. You go from rookie to veteran real quickly in this industry, right? That’s

Brandon Burton 14:20
right. And at the same time, there’s those veterans that have been around, you know, their majority of their career that have a ton of value to offer to those who are new to the industry and and hopefully having platforms like this and state conferences and associations and IOM you know, that it’s opportunities to be able to learn from those that that have good stuff to pass on. What really stood out to me he had mentioned a couple of times these boundaries and values that allow for you to hopefully try to strike a balance between your work and your life. What does that look like? I guess her something because he had mentioned personal boundaries, but also that your board has been amenable to accepting boundaries and values that that you have as well. Can you talk to that a little bit? Sure.

Mike Throne 15:12
So I read a book few years ago called sacred rest, and it’s by Dr. Sondra, Dalton Smith. And she and that book talks about. And it actually came at a really important time. For me, it was produced in 2017, this was at the height of when I was really burned out. Emotionally, I loved being a journalist, I loved being an editor, we did great work, we served our community well. But inside, I was just really, really tired. And mentally, I really was going through the motions every day. And I read this book, and I started really, I didn’t really have an opportunity to apply a lot of the things that were in the book, until I kind of left that career because it was just such high energy, always on always, you know, you’re always worried about the stories that you don’t miss, and so on. And so in the book, Dr. Dalton Smith talks about getting seven types of rest. And they include physical rest, mental rest, social rest, spiritual rest, sensory rest, emotional rest, and then creative rest. And I realized very quickly, that creative rest was not something that I did not do much of, I was always just going and always in a in a, you know, an office setting. And, and so even though the journalism business can be very creative, I never took time to get outside of the walls of the office and appreciate the community that I live in, or, you know, we have great trails and other things around us. Not none of that stuff was I doing? And so I had to figure out how to get the seven types of risks, and you’re not going to get them every day. But how can I work them into my week and work them into my mental schedule. So that way I can, I can tell, you know, that I’m, I’m getting too out of balance in one area. You know, sensory rest is very, very important. Taking a break from social media, I think we need to all do that quite a bit, turning off your notifications, one of the ways that I do it is at nine o’clock every night, my notifications shut off, they don’t come back on again until seven in the morning. Most of my good friends and my work my co workers and people on my board know, if something is really really urgent, you know, they can get to me somehow, usually through my wife, they’ll call but you know, that sort of thing is where we, we need to sort of set that boundary and create that situation where you know, and in all honesty, I think it’s limiting your video meetings as much as possible to because the more we’re in front of the screens, the more I feel like it’s a little bit more draining, you have to, you know, it’s a little bit more of a challenge to do some of those things. So I really started to look at what this book offered to me. And started taking it piece by piece for one week, I would just think about, okay, how do I get physical rest? You know, and I found that I was sleeping five to six hours in the night. Yeah. And you know, I’m 55. Now I’m not 25. And it’s just not working. So how do I get more rest. And part of that physical rest, too is I do stretching, you know, I try to get up and around and in those types of things. So I think those are the things that I have really locked into. And I think the number one thing is to make sure that you enjoy your work. I have talked, you know, we talked earlier about the fact that I was just not I loved the journalism business, but I was done with it. And it was done with me. So did I enjoy that work, I enjoyed the people that I worked with, and that’s what I miss, I miss the big story. But I don’t miss the day to day grind of it. And that’s why I had to leave, I didn’t enjoy it anymore. And so, you know, I think when we sit down and we look at our daily tasks as chamber leaders, it’s about making sure that you enjoy the work, knowing your values, knowing your boundaries, setting realistic goals for yourself. You know, if you if you’re a if you’re a new chamber director, you know, anywhere is up, right? So you might say to yourself, maybe you know, 200 new members in a year is a great goal. Is it realistic, and have conversations with your board about that? And then the last one that I’ll say is that you have to create a self care plan. You know, for some people, it might, it might look like taking a walk every day for other people it will be, you know, a massage or, you know, buying yourself an ergonomic chair or, or things like that, but what is your self care plan? So that way, you know, hey, I’m kind of stressed out, I need to take a step back and say, You know what I would really like, I’d like to go for a nice long hike today, or if you’re a runner, take a nice run. And part of that self care plan is getting, you know, sometimes back in the gym, you don’t have to lift weights and get buff, but, you know, take, take a little walk on the treadmill, or, you know, work out some of the stress of your life. And so I think those those types of things can help us as we go through the daily grind of the of the job. And look, there’s some times that it’s easier than others, right? If you got a big event coming up, it’s probably going to be a high intense, you know, very arduous time, you probably are going to be lacking in some of those things. But trying to figure out how after that event is over, or that big push that you have on his over to try to get yourself back in balance.

Brandon Burton 21:12
Yeah, yeah, there’s gonna be Sprint’s for sure. We’re, it’s all hands on deck, and you got to give it your all for, you know, maybe a few weeks there, leading up to a big event. But I think that the nature of chambers, and I don’t know that it has to be this way. But it tends to be what’s evolved, at least into what chambers are where, especially as a chamber executive, you’re out and about in the community, people see you, you see people, you need to say hi, and it make those connections, make sure you have good reports as business owners, so they don’t say, man that Mike is a jerk, you came in here and didn’t even say hi, and he probably doesn’t even know I’m a member, right. So you always have your chamber face on. And then inherently there’s, I don’t know, many chambers out there who don’t have a business after hours, right. And that gets into some of the boundaries where you know, or it’s the before hours, they are the breakfast mixers or things like that. And it’s good to have these opportunities for people to gather and network and, but you probably don’t need to be at every single one of them, right. So schedule a rotation with your staff or with board members or have a schedule to where you don’t have to be the face at every one of those events. And I think that that would play well into the balance. And I think to your point on the self care, we need an outlet, right, we need to be able to have a healthy way to let go of some of the stressors that that we carry. And unfortunately, a lot of people will turn to things like alcohol to be able to numb out and get through to the next day. And then that just compounds on the issues that they see day to day. So I think these are great points, as

Mike Throne 22:57
well. And there’s a great way to know that if you go to rest quiz.com r estquiz.com. You can take a quiz, and find out what type of rest you really lack, to live your best life. And that’s Dr. Dalton Smith website. And in all honesty, like taking that quiz was very eye opening. And I I always encourage people to take that quiz because you don’t know where you’re lacking. You think you do, but you don’t know where you’re lacking. And I want to touch on a point that you said as well, you were talking about, you know, the the member that thinks oh, they probably don’t even know if I’m a member. So my first couple of months into this job. The journalism job is a very, very head down, push forward, do your thing. And so when I came here, I had certain habits. And one of them was when I lock into a project or if I’m locked into learning something, I am always going to be head down plow forward. And I was in my office here one one morning and really not aware of what was going out on outside the lobby and I came out and went and walked past somebody as I walked by, and then did my thing came back in my office and just plowed forward again. Hours later, I got a call from my board chair and he said, Hey, I just got a call from the person that was standing outside. And she said that you were rude to her that you didn’t even acknowledge her and so on and so forth. And I was like, I don’t even recall there being you know, like an entity as I walked by. And long story short, she just lost her husband about a month earlier. Literally, I could probably reach out and touch the building that she works in next door. Never met her. And then I realized you know in that situation I had caused hurt her in pain right on top of the hurt and pain that she already felt from the loss that she had. So immediately, I went over and apologized to her. And I mean, we’ve had a great relationship ever since. But you know, those are the things that sometimes we get locked into, when we’re still trying to do all the things that we’ve got to do, we have to remember that this job is ultimately first about relationships, and about how we make people feel, I can tell you a million times that the chamber is here for you. But if I walk past you, right after you’ve lost your husband, and I don’t even acknowledge you, all of that goes out the window. And so, you know, I always have people around me, I’ve got a group of friends that I trust to say, you know, you probably need to spend more time with your family, you probably need to spend more time doing this or that. And I’m blessed with that I’m blessed with a great staff, as you mentioned earlier, to send to other to have a rotation that we can do things because honestly, it is it’s too much to do all by yourself.

Brandon Burton 26:08
Yeah. Back to the thought that comes to mind is to don’t be a busy chamber exec, you know, it, yes, you are going to be busy. But what I mean by that is don’t show the busyness as you interact with people, or have the stress on your face, you know, as you have those interactions that needs to be warm and genuine with those that you come in contact with. Because you don’t always know, you know, when they’re having that bad day, or when they really need the chamber. And just to be able to be that genuine face that really is there to support them is so valuable. So I think the boundary part, though, so as you’re out in the community, you know, if you and your wife go to dinner, this is a it should be quote unquote, you know, personal time, right? A date night, you know, but how do you set aside? Or do you have to go to dinner outside of the community? I don’t know. What do you do to be able to straddle that line of balance to where your wife feels like she’s getting what she needs, and then those in the community that you interact with, feel like they’re getting what they need.

Mike Throne 27:19
So just in case my wife listens to this, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to be honest. So my father in law, owns a business in town, he’s on school boards, and is a well known figure in our community. So if we go to dinner with them, My in laws, and my wife, my, my wife, and my mother in law, know, to just go to the table. And we’ll work our way to where they always hope that we get seated fairly close to the entrance. Because if not, we’re going to see a million people that we know, and we’re going to chat for a little bit. So I’m not great at that. However, you know, if somebody engages me with a bigger issue that I know is going to take time, I will always say, hey, look, let me give you my cell phone number, call me tomorrow morning. Why don’t I send you a text and we can connect and have coffee or lunch or breakfast? Something like that. Now, if it’s something that’s super urgent, I’ll go back to the table and say, hey, look, this person really needs to talk that maybe might have happened twice in the last five years. Yeah. But they were pretty important issues. And, you know, people are really I think we we, we always think that people aren’t going to be as respectful as they are. I think people understand sometimes. And we don’t think they do. And so if you say to them, man, I want to be fully engaged in this conversation. Because that’s what you’re telling them when you say, we can’t work through this whole thing right now. But let’s do it tomorrow, or the next day or something like that. They want your full attention. And so we just got to remember that they’re asking us because one they know we can help. And two, they want your attention. And three, they think that you’re going to help them with possible solutions. So why wouldn’t they want you to be engaged? So you know, I’m always glad handing and you know, kissing babies. It’s almost like being a politician, right? Like, you know, I’m always doing that. But at the same time, if it’s really urgent, we’ll take the time and then if it’s not, let’s let’s catch up. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:27
I think that’s that’s good advice. And I think it all plays back into the chamber churn. I mean, if you’re constantly being stretched in all these different ways, and your family’s not getting what they need out of you, you’re not getting the rest, that you need to be able to be rejuvenated and to give your best self. It’s all going to lead to burnout and the you know, looking for that escape hatch to be able to get out and move on. So I think these are important things to consider. And as we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask if there’s any A tip or action item that you might share for a chamber who is really interested in taking their organization up to the next level? What would you suggest for them?

Mike Throne 30:08
Yeah, you know, I think it’s, it’s the same. I always tell people, like, don’t be afraid of nothing that you don’t know something. And always be learning. You know, I learned from your podcast from listening to other people, I’ve learned a ton by going to our state conferences, I go to, you know, if you can’t afford to go to ACC, I really do. You know, encourage people to go to that conference as well find ways to connect with your fellow chamber executives, or let your staffs network with their their similar positions near you. Because that is less intensive, it might just cost a lunch or coffee or breakfast or something like that. But I mean, I have learned so much from the folks that I just picked up the phone and said, hey, you know, I’m new to this job, or I’m new to this problem. But I hear that you’ve gone through it, or that you can be helpful. You know, and since I’ve, you know, again, jokingly, we said that I’m now a veteran, but like I’m getting those calls now. And you know, when you when you look at those, those folks calling, you can’t see it as an annoyance. Again, if it’s a boundary issue, then I think it’s really important to say, I can’t give this the attention that it needs to have today. So let’s catch up tomorrow or at our first opportunity to do so. But reach out to those that are maybe they’re brand new, like you and say, let’s tackle this together. Or, you know, there’s strength in numbers. That’s the number. That’s the number one thing I can tell people, I could not have done this, and achieved what I’ve achieved so far. If I just tried to do it all on my own, I would probably still be with my head down, making all my members mad. And, you know, and not not achieving anything. Although I don’t think the folks out in that. Office would let me do that for very long, I guess. But, you know, I just think it’s really important. You don’t know what you don’t know, that was advice that was given to me in my journalism career, probably 20 years ago. So don’t act like you don’t like you do know it, reach out and get the help that you need to start to whittle away at the the issues that you see in your community, and be a help.

Brandon Burton 32:29
Yeah, I love that. I like asking everyone to have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Mike Throne 32:41
Well, I’m excited about you know, I think we have changes and challenges that we’re going to have to meet right, but I’m excited that this business provides for us an opportunity to help every help people every day. And I think that’s not going to change. Now we’re gonna have to change with the things that are, you know, that are changing along with it, AI is going to be a huge challenge. You know, membership dues and the way they get they get computed and, and paid are a challenge. And so the purpose of chambers has always been to convene and connect. And that’s not going to change. But the way that we convene and connect, is probably going to have to change, one of the things that we have been doing quite a bit of in the last year is instead of blanket, throwing out an event to folks targeting the folks that we think need to be in the room. Because it used to be you could just throw a BA B and tell everybody to come, you could, you know, have a chamber educational session on any myriad of topics and 20 people would show up, and it was no problem. It’s less of that now, people are busier, they’re still dealing with the after effects of COVID, and workforce issues and childcare issues and transportation. And so you’ve really got to figure out should this you know, if you’re going to do an educational event, should it be hybrid or virtual or in person? How long should it be? If it’s going to be in person? How long should it be if it’s going to be zoom? And just have really smart conversations with your folks about what events look like in 2024 and beyond. Because we want to connect as many people as we can, and we want to convene as many people as we can. But we don’t want to bore people to death. And you know, my former profession did a bad job of that. We still did the same stories about the same things and didn’t change for a long time. We didn’t buy into electronics and we didn’t buy into technology. And by the time we decided to react all that stuff, it was far too late. We Can’t let the chamber profession do that. And it’s my hope that folks will start asking better and smarter questions about all aspects of what they do. Because it’s the best way for them to really, and and again, you know, you’re going to have to ask that of your members, don’t sit in an office with three people in a room and say, Hey, what do you think we should change, because we think we’re great. But other people might have great input to offer there. And so find ways to engage those folks in your membership that will help, you know, provide the best way to fulfill your purpose moving forward.

Brandon Burton 35:36
Right, I love that. And they, to your point about connecting and convening those in your community and your members. There was a book I read a while ago called you’re invited. And it’s all about the the art of extending the invitation. And so that blanket email to all the membership to really handpick and say if we’re going to do some kind of a summit on real estate, you know, let’s have all of our Realtors and our lenders and title companies and really handpick who’s coming if we’re going to do something on, you know, a certain aspect of employment, you know, let’s make sure we’ve got a restaurant sector and connect those people together so they can talk about what are the struggles that they’re seeing what’s working for them, and to realize that they can all be there to help and support and, you know, the the networking part, if we go to a networking event, and everyone’s there trying to sell us insurance, that doesn’t really do much for everybody else there. But if you can really connect and network those people that support each other’s businesses, that’s where the magic happens. Yeah, so absolutely. So Mike, I’d before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you as a, as a mentor. Just learn about how you guys are doing things there at the chilla coffee Ross chamber.

Mike Throne 36:58
I appreciate it again. Thanks for the invitation. This was great. So yeah, we’re the Chillicothe Ross Chamber of Commerce in Chillicothe, Ohio, our website is ChillicotheOhio.com that’s C H I L L I C O T h e ohio.com. I know only five communities in the whole country have a Chillicothe, so you may not know how to spell it. My email is just my first initial and last name. It’s mthrone@chillicotheohio.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, on Facebook. The Chamber itself is on Facebook and LinkedIn. And you can reach out to any through our channels there as well. I also you mentioned the podcast earlier in the in the broadcast. But yeah, it ‘Feels Like Home’ has been we’re in our fourth season right now. It’s basically we just want to spotlight the great stories that are going on our community, people that have started businesses, people that are making an impact in the community through service or things like that. So you can find us on pretty much anywhere you get podcasts, Spotify, Apple podcasts, we use Buzzsprout as our feed. So you can find this on Buzzsprout as well. But we would love for folks to take a listen. When I went to the ACC conference a couple years ago, I was talking with someone from Texas, and they said, Hey, I heard you on a podcast. What what is it? And I said what it was? And they said, Oh my gosh, I listened to that podcast, and it blew me away. I felt like a quasi celebrity for a little while. So that’s right. Listen, please give us a review and send us an email. We’d love to hear from you. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 38:48
So that’s awesome. We will get all that in our show notes for this episode. And I’m a huge fan of chambers doing podcasts. I think it’s a great way to storytel Tell the story of your community interview those businesses as influencers in your community. And for those who haven’t seen it, I do have a chamber podcasting guide. It’s a free resource for you to learn how to get a podcast started. It’ll be linked in the show notes as well. But feel free to check that out.

Mike Throne 39:17
I did a session at CCO a couple years ago on podcasting and I used your your podcast as an example and pointed folks to your guide. So awesome. Thank you. I learned a lot from that guide. So I appreciate you. Awesome,

Brandon Burton 39:30
appreciate that. But Mike, this has been fun having you on chamber chat podcast with us today. I appreciate you coming on and being candid with the experiences that you’ve seen and and these lessons you’ve learned to find that balance in your life and to be able to find that that meaningful rest. I really appreciate you.

Mike Throne 39:48
Thank you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 39:51
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Engaging the Younger Generation with Sarah Sladek

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

Our guest for this episode is Sarah Sladek. Sarah has been referred to as a social equity expert and recognized as both a global leader in strategy and talent economy influencer, organizations worldwide have relied on her insights to plan their futures foster cultures of relevance and belonging and realize growth. Sarah studies belonging through the lens of social change and generational influence alongside trends and shifts in organizational cultures, workforce development, consumerism and economics. She refers to this comprehensive approach as next gen intelligence. Using this approach, Sarah has successfully turned organizations around bringing them to a place of increased relationship building and revenue generation. She is a founder and CEO of XYZ University, a training and consulting firm advising organizations worldwide. She is an author of six books as well. In addition, Sarah is a web show host podcaster, one of my own heart member of Forbes, Business Council, and contributing writer for boardroom magazine. She was recently named to the Global list of women who advanced associations, and she’s prominently featured in the jobs of tomorrow Docu series, currently streaming on Tubi. Her expertise has been prominently featured in international media, and she’s keynoted events throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. We’re excited to have Sarah with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Sarah Sladek 3:46
Oh, fantastic. It’s an honor to be here, Brandon, and hello, Chamber Champions. I like that little saying, because if you work for a chamber, you have to be a champion. I’m saying that because something about me. I started out my career, one of my first jobs was working for a chamber. It was a hot mess. And that kind of set me on the trajectory that I’m on now in terms of my career. And then one other interesting thing I will share about myself is just a few weeks ago, I was invited to the White House for an inaugural Business Leaders Summit. So that was kind of cool.

Brandon Burton 4:26
Nice. That is exciting. That is really cool. So I’m curious and I’m sure listeners are curious. What what kind of role did you have when you started in your career at at a chamber? What were you doing?

Sarah Sladek 4:38
Yes, I was the Director of Media and Communications. And, and this was in I’m gonna date myself just a little bit here. But this was in bridging late 1990s, early 2000s. So it was kind of a crazy time anyway, you know, we We’re seeing at that time, a lot of people were saying, Oh, are these Gen Xers, they are not joiners, they’re very difficult. We were seeing technology really start to take off, I went to a couple of ACCE conferences, and one of them they talked about, oh my gosh, we’re gonna have this fandangled new thing and a couple of years, you’re gonna have a computer in the palm of your hand. And everyone went, Oh, my gosh, what, you know, crazy like no way. That’s a joke, like people thought that’s not real.

Brandon Burton 5:33
shapers are saying take it back. Take it

Sarah Sladek 5:37
back. Exactly, exactly. So it’s just a time of transition, there was less staff turnover, and it was just, it was just a time of change. Really,

Brandon Burton 5:46
that is a lot of change going on at that time. So I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, that timeframe. And in that role director, media communications, that’s a lot crossing your plate at that time that’s new, and trying to digest and understand, which probably set you up well, for the career path you’re in now with being able to see things through that lens. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do with XYZ University? And just kind of a little bit of your background? Maybe we didn’t touch in the bio, just to help set the stage for our conversation today.

Sarah Sladek 6:20
Sure, absolutely. So yes, I can really harken back to that experience at a chamber. Because I had a light bulb moment while I was working for the chamber where I kind of thought to myself, Okay, wait a second, where are all the young professionals? Why are we struggling to get younger members involved? Everyone on our board is over the age of 50. And I just had this moment where it was like, Wait a second, if we are really intentional about succession planning, what’s that mean for the future of our organization. And where we were also at that time, there was a lot of buzz around our member companies saying, Gosh, we’re having a hard time engaging in talent. And so that seemed like a big problem that the chamber at that time should be helping to solve. But in any case, I kind of had the proverbial pat on the head that Oh, sir, it’s very interesting thinking about succession planning and the next generation, but we don’t really have to worry about those things. And I was convinced we didn’t need to worry. So fast forward, I started my own business called XYZ University XYZ standing for generations, X, Y, and Z University, meaning we do a lot of research training on this topic of what organizations and communities need to do to engage the next generation. And that, of course, has burgeoned into a real challenge for a lot of organizations. And so that’s what I do.

Brandon Burton 8:02
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. So one thing that you really touched on that kind of struck a chord with me is when you talk about that, as a chamber, say we’re really struggling to engage the younger generation or even as a board wipe, you were noticing they’re all over 50. And I think chambers, for the most part, I think, have taken a hard look at the board and trying to especially through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, they’re trying to make sure that the board represents the greater business community. I think I’ve seen a lot of chambers making adjustments to have younger board members on there. But as far as the overall membership, that still tends to be a little bit of a struggle in trying to resonate, what’s your the value proposition is that their chamber to this younger generation, who, maybe they’re starting off without a lot of funds, maybe they’re trying that they’re an entrepreneur trying to do it all on their own? Maybe they don’t realize that they need a team yet. Maybe it’s the language that’s being communicated to them it could be a whole slew of different things that are missing the mark with this younger generation. This I’m excited to dive in deeper on this topic with you today as we dig in on engaging the younger generation going forward. So we will dive into this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Exciting news! Introducing Pippily by Chamber Nation, the innovative solution to manage and promote your community for unstoppable growth.

Joining the Chamber of Commerce means one thing: COMMERCE. Businesses want to thrive, and Pippily is here to make that happen.

With Pippily, your members can experience remarkable benefits even if they can’t attend events. It’s a game-changer for retention.

Say goodbye to ordinary directories and embrace a transformative Commerce Management System. Unlock the true power of commerce management.

Picture a centralized Pippily dashboard, combining top mobile technologies for subscriptions, event registration, community communications, and more. It’s incredible!

Don’t miss out. Visit Pippily.com to learn more. That’s P-I-P-P-I-L-Y dot com. Schedule a demo at RichardsCalendar.com. It’s affordable and delivers more.

Pippily by Chamber Nation – your community’s future starts now!

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Sarah. So I I teased it before the before the break there that we’re talking today about engaging the younger generation. So from the chamber lens, from the experience, you’ve seen from the things that you’ve gathered throughout your career with with XYZ University? What are some of those ways that a chamber can really focus in on that younger generation? And? And is it the language they’re using is the way they’re communicating? Is it the value proposition? What what are those things that they need to be mindful of when trying to attract and speak to the younger generations?

Sarah Sladek 12:18
So it’s all of the above. And we could spend probably hours talking about this, but I’m going to try to boil it down to just a couple of things. One is, I think chambers, membership organizations overall, just need to be very intentional about making room for young people. So I’ll give you an example. Um, well, we have one person under 30 that sits on our board. It’s, but that’s not enough, right? It’s like, we think we can just check a box and be done. But no, what we have realized over time, is that radical change is needed in order to create room for younger generations and actually succeed at engaging them. So what I find in a lot of organizations, is it number one, there’s a lot of guessing, and a lot of stereotyping. Well, we have a young person in our firm, so I think all young people want this, I have a kid this age, and they’re so into this. And so this is what we should do. And so they you know, rather than put the time in to organize a focus group, I think tank, do interviews, do surveys, do the actual research, to find out what young people want. There’s just like guessing, and often when we’re just guessing or not making the right choices. So that’s one thing, you know, knowing for sure what young people want, being intentional about outreach should be the second thing, and actually creating room for them. And that means making sure that young people actually have a voice and the seat at the table. And that, you know, it’s not limited to one or two people who are younger, but actually being intentional about what’s our outreach, what’s our strategy, to begin to engage new people, new voices. So

Brandon Burton 14:18
I think that’s important. And one thing, a question that came to mind, because you talked about a lot of guessing and stereotyping that goes into addressing the younger generations. And instantly, I thought, you know, what I observed with some younger generations, I thought Hold on a second. What is the difference between observing the younger generation and stereotyping the younger generation? I think there’s a difference there. But I think it’s a fine line for sure, where you take the one experience or a couple experiences of observation and apply it across the board. One of the things that I have observed is it seems that the younger generations There’s a lot more things for them to be interested in, there’s a lot more things vying for their attention and their time. And to be able to try to grasp a little bit of that attention when there’s so much going on, I think is some of the struggle. Is that something that you’ve observed? Or am I am I applying a stereotype? I don’t know. No,

Sarah Sladek 15:24
no, no, no, it’s so true. We’ve moved into an era where time Our time is our greatest commodity, it’s one of the only things we can actually control, who we spend our time with how we spend our time, whether it’s a valuable use of our time, according to our opinions and experiences. And that, you know, we we started to covet our time and really try to manage it. When things when more technology took hold, and no society started to feel like it was spinning out of control, we had more awareness of what was going on in the world because of access to more information and technology than ever before. And so we started to see, and especially during COVID, as well, this, you know, I’m going to covet my time and hold it dear and precious. And absolutely, there is more competition than ever before, it is easier than ever, for someone to start their own networking group or their own, you know, business support group, or what what have you community building group? And so chambers are experiencing more competition, which is why it’s more important than ever to be really in touch with your members and constantly asking, what is it that you need want and expect? Something I remind organizations all the time that I think they sometimes forget, is that really the primary reason people join and get involved with an organization, research has repeatedly shown, the primary reason is because they believe you can help them solve a problem. So and problems shift and change according to Career Stage, according to whatever is happening in society, you know. So it’s on the chamber leaders, it’s it’s their responsibility to know, what challenges are our members currently facing? And are we doing a good job at responding to those and attempting to solve those challenges? All

Brandon Burton 17:31
right, well, that sets the stage for the next questions. How do we, how do we engage with them, and in a way where we can gain some of that feedback, to be able to speak to them in the right language and to address what their problems are? And help craft solutions to those problems? Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 17:49
You know, it’s interesting to think about, but we are really not in the practice of asking for feedback. Yes, we serve a but I’ve I often hear from organizational leaders, whether it’s chambers or other membership types of organizations, well, we can’t do too many surveys, we can’t ask for too much feedback. You know, there’s like, there’s a fear of what will people say? What will they think if we’re asking their opinions? Is it too much? You know, so on and so forth. And I think, you know, we’re living through this era of tremendous and very rapid change, which means, again, the needs and interests of our members are changing, and business is changing. And so if we aren’t really attentive, and really in conversation and dialogue all the time, with our, you know, consumers, members, leaders, volunteers, whatever you want to call them, our audience. If we’re not in communication, things change, and then our organization’s already behind. So we have to be anticipating change. So your question was, what are some of the ways we can do that? Well, there are so many ways, it can be quick polls, it can be longer surveys, it can be a monthly sit down with the Chamber CEO and bringing in 10 new members each time 10 People get chosen to come in have coffee with the CEO, and share their feedback or ideas. It can be you know, focus groups think tanks, there’s just so so many opportunities to actually engage in dialogue. It’s just simply we’re not in the habit of doing it. But we need to get in the habit.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Yeah, I guess. And I liked that idea of bringing in 10 new members with the Chamber CEO and have that cup of coffee and just have a conversation. Just listen. I guess when I’m thinking of the membership at general, if we’re noticing that there’s not a lot of that younger generation in the membership How do we reach them? How do we how do we engage with those ones that are not part of the organization already? And I guess part of it is you’re getting feedback from hopefully their peers in that our members to be able to see what we can apply, you know, to the greater business community, that younger generation, but I think that seems to be the trick of how do we reach those people that we’re not currently reaching? And being able to attract them to the all these great offerings that our chamber has to provide? Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 20:32
So I think a lot of times organizations make the mistake of thinking it’s all about social media. And it is certainly not, um, we find in our research with younger generations, they’re actually craving those relationships with individuals, not just social media, yes, a check social media, but that’s not really what’s forging those emotional connections and those engagement practices. So reaching young people really is most effective when you’re involving them directly, as I just mentioned, you know, doing those feedback circles and outreach efforts. But also when peers are reaching out to one another, and it’s grassroots. And then third, I would say it’s being intentional about mixing people up, at least for a time being here until we get really used to having inclusive cultures. So an example I shared earlier, well, we have one young person on the board, which isn’t enough, you know, and yes, we’re making strides in these areas. But it needs to be really, really intentional and strategic, and really a commitment. So a best practice I often share is an organization that changed their bylaws, and said, from here on out, at least 30% of any decision making group, whether that’s a council, a committee, a board, whatever the case may be 30% need to be comprised of individuals that fit into that young, professional category for this organization. It was we want people within their first five years of a career. But it could be a little longer than that. It just depends on your chamber, and what is the right fit. But by changing those bylaws, you’re putting a stake in the ground, and you’re saying, this is important, this is a priority. Community Building is important. And then you’re bringing people together in there, you know, you have experienced leaders, learning from very new leaders, you’re getting that diversity of thought going, you’re learning and teaching from one another, you’re creating empathy for one another, building relationships with one another. But also, we find that the more diverse cognitively, which includes age diversity, and more diverse groups in leadership roles are considerably more innovative. And when you have all these voices represented, you’re able to really truly represent the best interests of the chamber going forward and innovate, to some of the challenges that face the organization together. So good stuff, good stuff, and we but we just need to make the effort to say no, this is important. And we’re actually going to take the extra step of revamping some of our methodologies and practices to make room for young people.

Brandon Burton 23:44
I like the example of changing the bylaws and having a clear definition of what this these younger leaders, the younger generation are, because the question coming to my mind was, okay, if you’re 65 As a board member, and you’re like, we need some more young blood, and you get the 45 year old, because that’s younger than 65, right? It’s missing the mark on the 25 year old who’s there that’s got great ideas. So having these different segments, but I like the idea of saying somebody within the first five years of their career, I think is a great way of framing that. Instead of saying we need so many under 30 That may not be the right marker, and depending on the community, depending on who the person is. So there’s different ways you can frame that. I think I always, always give that little disclaimer with when it comes to changing bylaws, make sure it’s something that’s sustainable, right? Because this is the way that your organization runs. So think through that clearly that if you say a certain age demographic to make up your board or these decision making groups, make sure it’s sustainable going forward.

Sarah Sladek 24:54
And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to also Bringing outside perspectives. Not everyone on the board has to be a quote unquote member, it’s also good to get some new ideas or if you’re uncomfortable with having them on the board, then bring in some guests occasionally, whether they’re guest presenters or guest observers, or having a ancillary focus group that meets with report whatever, they, you know, get creative. But whenever we’re literally in an echo chamber, just continually hearing the same ideas tossed around, we can get in these ruts, you know, and we get overly comfortable doing more of this thing. So anything that and young people will push you out of that comfort zone, hopefully, but also outside perspectives. You know, and I, obviously, in chamber world, it’s a great practice when boards go to other cities, and they’re learning from other but you know, and some of those inner city leadership visits, so cool. But you can do something similar within your own community, too. And then you’re also fostering those relationships outside of your network and getting insights about why people haven’t joined and forging those relationships. And now all of a sudden, people are rethinking that decision not to be involved.

Brandon Burton 26:23
Yeah, I like the idea of bringing in guests to a board meeting. And the thought that I had is maybe it’s a committee of young professionals, that you bring in on a maybe it’s a quarterly basis, maybe it’s twice a year, once a month, whatever the interval is, make it a regular thing to bring them in and say, what are some of the things that you’re saying now, what are the things we need to be aware of try to draw on that experience, and let them feel valued that they’re bringing, you’re bringing them in, they’ve got a seat at the table, hopefully, there’s other people in their same age demographic that are on the board as well. But to be able to bring in that combat committee of sort, to be able to have those different perspectives, I think, is invaluable. That’s a great idea.

Sarah Sladek 27:10
And you know, as long as we’re talking about it, I think it’s also key to actually, this might sound really basic, to actually ask your board members for feedback. I have recently joined a board of directors, and I’m just kind of, it’s it’s intriguing, because every board, every organization has their own culture, right. And it’s just been intriguing to me to kind of watch this unfold, especially given my background, um, that every board meetings really present information, present information. It’s almost like a lecture or a teaching, you know, you’re in a classroom. And the board’s asked to vote on certain things, but actual conversation, and dialog is really limited. It’s kinda like we come there for for a class. And then do you agree with this content? Yeah, you know, sure. Okay. Great. See you next meeting. There’s never these, you know, and I feel like, Man, this is a missed opportunity. You just brought all these people together with their various experiences and

Brandon Burton 28:27
schedules. Yeah, yes. And

Sarah Sladek 28:29
tap into that. And not only, you know, because some people might not be comfortable giving actual information, you know, blurting out I hate what you’re doing here. But also, you know, ask for feedback, but also, I think, occasionally, anonymously survey the people on your board. What do you aligned with? What do you not because people will speak up in those private formats as well. And, man, it’s a missed opportunity not to be asking for feedback.

Brandon Burton 29:00
I think if you’re well organized, going into a board meeting, you can do a lot of that presenting ahead of time. Now this goes back to take a step back into your board selection and and how you’re, you’re comprising your board, you want to make sure that they’re engaged members. But if you can do some of that informing before the meeting happens, whether it’s sending the report the financials, or whatever, it may be ahead of time, getting the time to look it over, they might send you an email back, but the feedback or look at this and let me know what you think about this. And then the time and the meeting can really be used to drive something forward to have some conversation that goes forward.

Sarah Sladek 29:42
I and I Okay, one more thing. I will just, I needed a soapbox for this. One more thing I will say is that at that board meeting, in my initial board meeting, I received a board binder that was no joke like eight inches thick like just It’s

Brandon Burton 30:00
huge and wait to read it right? Oh, man, Paper,

Sarah Sladek 30:03
paper Paper, right? Everything printed out. And I nearly had a heart attack partly because it’s so huge. And there’s the expectation or tradition of disseminating this, but every board member got one. And it’s like, okay, that’s the first thing a young person’s going to say is why are you printing all this paper? It is not environmentally friendly. It is not technology friendly. It is not how we do things. Now. It’s a sign that they have really become disconnected from a younger audience as so. Great

Brandon Burton 30:45
point. Yeah. I think if that could be on a web platform where you’ve got topics that could expand, you could do a search for what you’re looking for. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Sladek 30:55
Ellie’s something, yeah. Not Oh, my gosh, all the trees, all the trees.

Brandon Burton 31:05
So, with with you being the expert on generations, I’m curious what things are standing out to you that are important to the younger generations right now. You mentioned the trees, all the paper. So yeah, are there other things like that, that might strike a nerve that, that you’re seeing and being careful not to stereotype, but from data and feedback that you’re getting? What are some of those things that are important to the younger generations right

Sarah Sladek 31:30
now. So what we’re seeing is a strong, strong, I’m gonna say among Gen Z, especially strong desire, they’re holding as their organizations accountable. And they want the organizations to stand for something. So, you know, when you think about like, Gen Z, I’ll give you just a little perspective here. But Gen Z is the first generation be raised with social media. So when you literally think about brain development, social development, they’ve always been able to use their voice for change. Through social media, they’re more likely to protest. And we’re seeing that Gen Z’s are really they’re coming into membership organizations. And they’re asking, What are your values? What do you stand for? What are you doing to make this a better place, but they and they really will see through any BS, they are like demanding, you know, things like dashboards. And again, this harkens back to how Gen Z was raised. They were raised when you have social media, yes. But they were also raised with technology in the classroom, like they could go into a little app and see their grades, you know, 24 hours a day. So they learn to kind of dashboard progress. And we’re seeing them bring this into workplaces and membership organizations, and they’re saying, Well, wait a second, how are you performing? Are you successful? How do you know you’re successful? If I come in, and I’m part of your organization? How do I know? You know, all the various ways to get involved and how I will be successful? So who, right? That’s gonna change things, but this, this desire to see and know how well you’re doing kind of thing, and holding organizations accountable is really, really big. Speaking of environmental, I’ve also heard from several now several membership organization executives, who’ve had young people come in to interview for jobs, and ask, what is your stance on climate change? And what are you doing to save the planet? And each of these executives said they were completely caught off guard by that question. And you know, said, Well, that’s not really what we do here. Like, we were a chamber or, you know, we were a healthcare organization, we’re about membership. And literally, in each of these situations, the young person said, then this isn’t the job for me and got up and walked out. So where’s we’re going to see that accountability factor, really, really raised. And being able to not just say we were successful this year through an annual report, that’s not going to be enough anymore. Yeah. So that’s something important

Brandon Burton 34:36
and I don’t know that they need to be huge changes, but as a company as an organization, just to be mindful of what are the things that are important to them? And then like you mentioned, the dashboard, call it the wanting to be able to track progress well to be able to do that you need to collect data along the way. So why not start trying to collect some data on things that are kind of those key into caters. And then you have something to build something from as you need to or as as things evolve. But without without something to begin with, you’re left with your your hands up in the air not knowing what to do. Oh,

Sarah Sladek 35:12
gosh, yeah. So things like value, you know. And along those lines, we’ve seen increasing intolerance to intolerance, right? So obviously, equity, inclusion, diversity, all those things are absolutes for younger people, and they will leave. But also we’re seeing more and more age diversity come to the forefront. So once again, when you look at their upbringing, shifts in parenting shifts in technology, education, all of that, you know, Gen Z was raised having a voice and a seat at the table, they were there, we it started with the millennials, but really in the 1990s, late 90s, we shifted to become a child centric society. So like it or not, we raised children to have opinions and express those opinions and to ask a lot of questions. So when they join, and what’s interesting is we’ve seen the cycle to engagement actually shift. So it used to be you join an organization, or you go to your chamber event or whatever. And if he were below a certain age, you were kind of expected to sit and observe, like, just learn about the organization, you can actually lead anything. Yeah, you watch any observe. And now we’ve seen that flipped on its head, and young people are saying, If I’m choosing to show up, if I want to get involved, I’m making a real, I’ve already thought about it, I’ve already researched it, and I’m making like this. It’s like an extension of my personal brand. Like, I believe in this and I’m so I’m affiliating my name with it. And I expect to immediately have the opportunity to get involved and to do something of substance. So they, they want a voice, they want a seat at the table, they want the opportunity to do things like produce content. That’s something a lot of people don’t know about Gen Z, Gen Z creates and consumes more content than any other generation. So they like the idea of being able to come in and help with content generation, you know, and they want to learn, they want to lead, they want to make a difference, and they do not see age as a barrier. So if your chamber still has kind of those hierarchical systems in place, that you have to wait your turn, you need to be rethinking that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 37:53
that’s interesting. I was enjoying just sitting back and hearing you, yeah. You all these, uh, good insights that you’ve learned about these younger generations. As we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask, for chambers that are listening, what tip or action item might you share with them as they look to take their chamber up to the next level?

Sarah Sladek 38:18
Oh, man. Remember, remember two things, I’ll leave you two things. Number one, you your organization was founded, to represent a community, right. And I think in recent years, we, you know, chambers, membership organizations, as a whole began to lose sight of that. And began to just introduce, you know, really kind of hold steadfast to things like tradition. And we’ve always done it this way. And we need to let some of those things go to be able to evolve, stay relevant, and literally be by the members for the members. And that doesn’t mean just a few select members. That means everyone in your membership community, including younger generations, which would be the second thing I will note, I think it’s really, really important. If you want to create something sustainable and relevant for the future, you got to live in the future. So that means, you know, being mindful of trends that are on the horizon. I’m talking to business leaders about What trends are you seeing what what changes? are you observing what what’s likely to come down the pike and impact your business? Not just in the next year, but in the next five years? What are you worried about what’s keeping you awake at night, but also talking to those young linger individuals about some of the same things, and really bringing in and paying attention to not just why college students are doing. But high school students, middle school students. And the reason I say that is because everything in society has a trickle up effect. So we most of the trends that we have today, they didn’t just blindside us and pop out of nowhere. We saw younger generations, because those are usually the ones that introduce and influence trends, using certain things like let’s just say tick tock, for example. And then eventually it trickles up and influences all of us. So if we can be ahead of the curve, in anticipating trends, we’re not at risk of falling behind. And, and I think those two things are really, really intertwined. If you’re holding steadfast to tradition, if you’re not really, really talking to members, not only your current members, but your future members, you’re at risk of falling behind. And one of my favorite quotes that I’ll just leave you with is from Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs used to always tell his employees at Apple, you know, he used to challenge them. And he’s, he’d say, is the decision we’re making right now? Is this going to position our company, a generation ahead, or a generation behind? Because I want to be a generation ahead. But that’s a very, very different mindset. And it requires totally different, you know, processes and practices, it’s entirely doable. But you’re gonna have to rethink how you’re spending your time and who you’re spending your time with.

Brandon Burton 41:46
Yeah, I love the idea of living in the future. So you can anticipate those trends, see what those things are that are coming and doing that will attract those younger people? It’ll they’ll see, okay, you you’re with the times you understand what’s going on. I love that. So sir, I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sarah Sladek 42:12
Well, I think that I see the future of Chambers as being incubators. And I’ll explain what I mean by that. There. There’s a in New York, there is a incubator company, that they’re a design company. And basically, they they evolved out of the needs, they started to recognize that people within this fashion design world had no place to like go and grow their businesses get guidance, also hands on training, share best practices. And so basically, they created this big warehouse space, which you can be a member of, and you go there, and you literally get to roll up your sleeves and work in community, with other people who are trying to grow their business, but at the same time, swap ideas, swap leads. And I just think, Man, that’s a great idea. Like, I think I love what chambers do, obviously, and I worked for a chamber. And I think there’s some unmet needs within chambers and some opportunities for real creativity and innovation. And chambers are one of the most powerful organizations our country has, because they’re really uniquely suited to bring together business leaders, community leaders, government leaders, education leaders. And I don’t think I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say, I think chambers have become completely mired in detail. I think I can get away with saying that because I work for a chamber mired in detail with, you know, when are we having our annual conference or annual golf outing and things like that. And we’ve lost sight of some of the really amazing opportunities to bring all these leaders to gather, to collectively problem solve, and to be a literal space where businesses can come together and actually innovate and CO create. So that’s what I’d like to see for the future of chambers to get, you know, rediscover their roots and adapt for what the current marketplace needs.

Brandon Burton 44:34
I love it. It’s a trend live in the future. Right. VA incubator. Yeah, I love it. Well, Sara, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for those who are listening that might want to reach out and connect to learn more about you your offerings, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect Yeah, you

Sarah Sladek 44:54
can find me at XYZUniversity.com. You can also reach out to me directly by sending an email to Hello@SarahSladek.com. That’s Sarah with an H S L A dk.com.

Brandon Burton 45:12
That’s perfect. And we’ll get it in our show notes as well so people can look it up there and and say hello. Thank you for being with us today setting aside some time to be with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing your insights and the things that you’ve learned about younger generations and to help the chambers listening to live in the future and attract those, those younger members, employees, board members, everything across the board. It’s been a great conversation and glad to have you on the show. Thank you.

Sarah Sladek 45:45
Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 45:47
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Overcoming the Vocal Minority with Janet Kenefsky

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Janet Kenefsky and Janet is the Vice President of Operations for the Greater Vancouver Chamber, overseeing the Chamber’s day to day and strategic programming and internal operations, creating structured processes for the organization to strengthen its core mission and becoming the inclusive and innovative provider of programming and resources. Janet brings over 20 years of experience in nonprofit leadership and organizational strategic development, along with a strong background in government relations and international trade development. She is the business community representative for Clark County’s Law and Justice Council sits on the lodging and Tax Committee for the City of Vancouver and recently selected for and completed the US Chamber Foundation’s workforce fellowship. Her passion and volunteerism are focused on providing greater economic opportunities for businesses and employee growth in the workplace. Janet, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Janet Kenefsky 4:12
Well hello to everybody out there yet my Janet Kenefsky and I represent the Greater Vancouver chamber recently the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce and like many we drop the commerce but we’re still a b2b organization um, something about myself and I think maybe it goes into some of the interview today. When you look at personality wise, I am a strong Enneagram eight I’m Clifton Strengths I lead with strategic so a lot of the discussion we’ll have today falls within my my personality traits and I’ve tried to own up to him and so it might differ from from others that that I work with in the timber industry, but hopefully I’ll use that as a strength E and TJ You extrovert. Yeah, it helps. It helps guide a lot of what I do in the chamber world and be comfortable with how I lead. That’s

Brandon Burton 5:08
great. Well, it definitely will be a leadership focused episode here on the podcast today. So that lean into your strengths there for sure. Tell us a little bit about the Greater Vancouver Chamber. You mentioned you guys recently dropped the F commerce off the title. But tell us a little bit more about the chamber, Scope of Work size staff budget things you guys were involved with, just to kind of give us a little more perspective, as we get into our discussion today.

Janet Kenefsky 5:36
The Greater Vancouver Chamber so we’re located in southwest Washington, for those who who don’t know where Vancouver, Washington is. We represent a community. I’d say we’re about 415,000 that are in the Vancouver city. And then we represent around 511 512,000 that are in the county that we represent. We have approximately 1200 members, another 400 members that are part of programming, some entrepreneurship, training and nonprofit. We do have about 116 nonprofits as part of our membership. So it’s pretty large. We represent four legislative districts 12 policymakers that we work really closely with on the state level. And then we have various programs. We have nine full time staff and then an outside accounting firm that we work with. And we are a great team.

Are you struggling to manage your chamber of commerce and build a thriving commerce community? Chamber Nation is here to help! Our all-in-one platform allows you to easily manage member information, events, and communication. Plus, our community engagement tools help you connect with local businesses and residents to drive economic growth. With Chamber Nation, you’ll have everything you need to succeed. So why wait? Visit www.RichardsCalendar.com to learn more and start building

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Donna Novitsky 8:11
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 9:06
Alright, Janet, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned that the topic being overcoming the vocal minority, so oftentimes, this minority, they tend to be the loudest in the community that and it may be easy to lean into the few voices that are really expressing their discontent with whatever’s going on. And think that that represents the greater whole of the business community. So I would love to hear in your time at the chambers, changes that either you guys have implemented or changes that you guys have removed. And maybe where some of the that opposition. It’s kind of surface its head from the vocal minority.

Janet Kenefsky 9:51
Yeah. So I think first of all, the vocal minority comes from passion. So we recognize that we can we can approach the vocal minority and get frustrated with them, try to push them out. But we recognize early, it is a good thing that they have such passion passion for the program passion for the chamber passion for their community. And sometimes it’s just not directed in the right way or, or they feel like they’re losing something. So we have, there was a I pulled it up here. So there was a quote that I saw on on Facebook, this was many months ago. And it just left me It says, cities that avoid change to keep a few people from being upset today. And sure that everyone will be upset tomorrow. And that’s that summed it up that that talks about, if you’re reluctant to change, because maybe it’s a couple of people on your board, maybe it’s a couple of people that are on your own, or maybe it’s your ambassador team, maybe it’s people that go to your morning networking and show up every, you know, week for free coffee and doughnuts and networking, and they don’t want to see it go. If you if you’re afraid to let those go, you’ll never be able to find programming that really benefits the wider community. So for our chamber in 2019, is when I joined. So I was able to give a fresh perspective to what was happening, what the programs I attended. And I noticed something right off the bat, there were the same people going to the events. And while to some people that might look good, like, wow, we have 2030, you know, 40 people going to this event every single month. This is amazing. But what I was recognizing was it was the same 20 3040 people going to events every single month. And mind you we’re in 500,000 people in our community, surely we can pull 2030 people, but to some you fill a room, a small room of 2030 people, it looks good. And that’s what success is. And your friends are there and everybody feels good. But remember, we’re part of economic development and opening up the tent for more. So. So I looked around at some of our events, and when new people were coming, and we were proud 20 new people registered for this event, then the next week, 20 new people 30 new companies signed up for this event. And then at the end of the month, Brandon who should be there, you should have hundreds of people there of all these new people. But what was happening was we were getting excited about the new people signing up. But the new people signing up weren’t coming back. Right. So you have to recognize that that some of the programming just wasn’t being adopted by a wider audience. And some reason they felt uncomfortable coming back or felt this is not for me. So what do we do? We cut programs, we look we ask people, we find out where are people meeting? Where are where are they doing their connections, if not at a chamber event. And so yeah, we we made a decision off the bat, to, to rebrand to just kind of reflect our community a little bit, or a lot better, and make sure that our programs shouldn’t have 2030 people, and then we should have 200 people in them. And that’s where we are today. And we can talk a little bit about that. That’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 13:09
That’s a great setup. And I wanted to circle back a little bit at the beginning and said something about these people, the vocal minority, they have a passion. And I love that that’s identified because you’d much rather than have a passion for the chamber and things you’re doing versus being disengaged. But as you come across these individuals with passion that don’t want to see these things change, how do you help redirect that passion, help them catch that vision of what you’re trying to build, it’s bigger and better. That has led to now having these events of 200 plus people in attendance. So

Janet Kenefsky 13:47
I’m going to be honest with you, and we recognize the passion, we provided an opportunity. And it wasn’t a surprise, they wanted nothing to do with it. So when we look at our our ambassador program, I’ll give an example. People in the community would say I don’t want to join the chamber. It’s a clique. It’s, you know, you hear the same words in the chamber industry. They don’t represent us too. Clicky. And maybe I didn’t know what they were talking about until I saw it firsthand. It was just it became a beast of themselves. And then when you looked at our social media, when you looked at the Chamber’s branding, over decades, that we had ambassadors that were bright red blazers that were front and center on every company on every picture, every posting on our website, it was everywhere it was read, read read, and then we started looking at some of these posts and it wasn’t about the company anymore. And the chambers we can fool ourselves by saying no, these are historic programs, the Chamber ambassador program, we can never get rid of that. Well it became a click and it became not about the companies that we were trying to promote. It became about those red coats trying to get front and center getting their picture you know taken and let isn’t less about those organizations that we were supposed to be celebrating? So when we took away that program, we and COVID helped. We offered an application process like many others, and and we had expectations out there and 100% of our maybe 2530. That ambassador said, Yeah, peace out. That’s not going to happen. We want nothing to do with it. Okay, that’s fine. And then we thought, Should we redesign this? We need to have one, right? We’re a chamber, we need to have a program. Maybe we just call it something different because the word Ambassador now in our region is not a great one, because it was cliquish. So how do you get revive an ambassador program with the same brand and the same, you know, connotation? So we thought maybe we’ll call it chamber champions, maybe we will call it something else. And then we, yeah, we have diplomats, chamber diplomats and whatnot. But then we thought, why do we need one? Yeah, why? Why do we even need one to begin with granted, we need volunteers, we know that. And that’s really the role that they serve. But as an extension of our organization, we’re very keen on ensuring that our branding our image, our messaging is exactly on point. And it’s difficult to do with ambassadors who are out there speaking for you. Right. So we have volunteer programs. And what we did is we just posted a volunteer signup page on our website, said, here are some really great programs, who wants to volunteer US Bank, Chase Bank, small businesses, we want you to show up and wear your logo on your shirt, bring your entire team. And guess what we have hundreds of people that say I want to come out for your lemonade day program, I my team wants to come out and volunteer for your golf tournament for your women’s golf tournament. So we have no shortage. And now we have passion. And now they can represent their own company while showing they’re giving back to the community. So it’s, it’s it’s a way that we’ve evolved. And I will tell you, I looked at and many chambers around here. And I would encourage you to do this. If you’re a chamber listening, we looked at the amount of administration that took part in trying to organize, get ambassadors to fill out forms and to go to locations and show their sign up and some have point systems and it took a full time staff person. And I think we had 890 email messages like in a two month period, just trying to coordinate our old Ambassador crew, to give you an example of just how intensive it is. We thought I could use that staff personnel their time and energy into something different and working on our programs and not managing people that had jobs that were now taking 110% of their time post COVID. Right. So these ambassadors remember, are part of your community and working full time jobs. So we needed to be very careful with the demands on our volunteers.

Brandon Burton 17:53
Yeah. So I love first of all, the idea of having the volunteers come and having them wear their T shirts that their logos and promote their business while they’re supporting whatever the event is that the chamber is sponsoring or putting on. I have to ask as far as the old ambassador program, it’s what kind of feedback did you get? Like you said 100% of them said, No, we don’t want to be a part of that. So was there something just that repulsive about it? Or just because it was so different? What was the what was the stark difference besides the red coat and being in front of, you know, front and center in the pictures? Yeah.

Janet Kenefsky 18:29
So. So our ambassadors liked to drink, they like to drink at events. So of course, the ambassador’s wanted to be recognized for all the hard work they did. So they wanted you to pay their membership and whatnot. But they, they were it was just very inclusive. And it turned out it wasn’t about the community again, they didn’t, it was about themselves, how could they get together? So they weren’t happy? I will tell you, they weren’t happy. They didn’t go quietly Yes, I said they pieced out but you know, they call the newspaper. One of them was on the newspaper in team so they call the newspaper a newspaper called the board and I told our staff who were very nervous because again a lot of the staff at that time didn’t like change and and they knew what the ambassador with the red coats meant to the community because they’re very visible for decades might do so not everybody knows the ins and outs of what what’s happening. So, so yeah, the the newspaper did an article on it, and it went away. So we started the year off with no ambassador program. It hit the newspaper, the announcements were made, and then nothing. No one cared brand and nobody cared. What happened. What happened was we started getting we started getting members coming out of the woodworks and when I say Woodworks, I made the Woodworks. We started getting professional organizations, accounting firms, engineering firms, legal teams, all starting to apply for chamber membership. We got a lot of emails and our team Got a lot of communication saying it’s about time. And we would never have known that. Again, they never told us that to our face, but they told us in their lack of membership. So when I say we weren’t representing the community in which we served, they were waiting for us to level up, they were waiting for us to get more inclusive, they were waiting for us to get more contemporary and represent them. And we were in a position where we had people applying to us where we used to have to go out and ask them, and they politely say, not for me. Not right now. So yeah, it it, it told us a big story. And it was a really great lesson for our staff who, who understood that you can make tough decisions. And really, you know, you can anger a few people, but the community is watching. They’re waiting for the chamber to step up and lead. And, and good things can happen from it. It’s not always bad. So you know, it’s it was a good lesson for everybody. We held our breath, for sure, trying to figure out what the community feedback was going to be. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:06
So I know a lot of times in the chamber world, we’ll talk about how important it is to listen to your members, which is super important. It’s important to you know, listen to data, collect data and listen to make data driven decisions. This example you gave with the ambassador program, your members weren’t telling you anything. I guess you could say data as far as participation levels, but they’re up right. Yeah, yeah, lack thereof. But what specific triggers, you’d mentioned looking at the photos of the different like ribbon cuttings and whatnot. But were there certain triggers that stood out to you guys as a chamber that says, hey, we need to address this, like, this is not working the way it’s intended? Or we’re not getting the results we’re looking for? What What was that trigger that made you guys go down that rabbit holes?

Janet Kenefsky 21:55
There were a couple of things. So I come from I have an HR background. So I look at things as are we going to get in trouble? Is this even legal? Should? Should they be drinking during during hours? What are they what are they actually providing to our other members in the community? So at the beginning, when we tried to say, Okay, listen, ambassadors, we’re going to use you to go out and talk about some of the legislative priorities, you don’t need to know about them. But just let it you know, companies know that there’s something out there and we, we got a big middle finger from that, like, that’s not what we’re doing. We’re here just to have fun, and we’re family. So there were a lot of things that told us one insurance was not if you talk to your insurance provider, and we had one on our board, who was very supportive of getting rid of this program, because they’re like, this is a huge liability. They your ambassadors as an extension of working on your behalf should not be drinking at your events, your staff should not be drinking at your events. No, you should not have a bar inside your chamber office to have drinks during board meetings. out on the golf course, we had, we had an ambassador that was drunk on a on a golf cart, taking advantage of the adult beverages that were on the course for the golfers. And that was a huge liability, because they’re getting in a car leaving. And so we’re very lucky that nothing happened. But when you start looking at the liability issues, if nothing else, the perception and the visibility of how they’re representing you. And this is your chosen group. I mean, that’s literally the word ambassador, they are you that that it just wasn’t a good look. So we needed to, we needed to put a stop to that. And that was something that was pretty black and white on on the legal aspect on the insurance aspect. And a lot of people say nothing’s happened so far. So as long as nothing happens, but it will, it will end and we just didn’t want to be around for that. So we

Brandon Burton 23:49
if it’s not broken, don’t fix it right out. There are some indicators. It’s like, no, we need to fix this before it does break. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you talked a little bit about these, like networking events where you would have the same 20 to 30 people and now you’re 200 and upward from you know, at these gatherings tell us what does that look like now besides you know, you need a bigger room. There’s more people what’s changed in the messaging and attracting more participants to those events.

Janet Kenefsky 24:20
I think it’s pretty holistic when you look at at the same time we did away with programs we rebranded we were very vocal about our programming. So whereas a lot of visibility comes from chambers, ribbon cuttings, right, we put that on our social media for our chamber now it’s like less than 5% of what we do 3% of what we do, but it looked like everything that we did, right so now we’re very intentional of showing different programming different types of people that are attending our programming. Our morning networking, the coffee connections, we always wondered if you look back. Okay, so there’s a roomful of sales, people and realtors Selling to each other, you know, with a couple like how did how does that work when then we realized it was a way for them to gather, they just wanted to gather there wasn’t like real work happening or networking because they’re all salespeople selling to each other, it doesn’t happen. So that’s why they weren’t growing because people weren’t finding a need for them. So we did away with that because less and less people other than those realtors and banks and whatnot, community liaisons. They didn’t, they didn’t network in the morning, the people that we wanted, there didn’t know work in the morning. So you have to go where they’re going. Happy hours, having our business after hours, was a really good one. So when we scrapped the morning networking, you know, those 20 people who went we heard from them for a couple of weeks. And then never again, we don’t have people pounding down our door saying, Hey, when are you bringing this back? But what we did do our business after hours did grow. But like many chambers, we had an opportunity to take a look and say, Okay, what is our business after hours now? Yeah, we had 60 7080 people attending, but now we decided, Okay, how are we going to get these business after hours, month after month that finding a location and finding a host was really difficult, Brandon, our staff was going out and asking people would you please host next month, and the nominal fee was like $400, to host a business after hours. And you bring food and beverage and we’ll bring the people. And then when this transition happened when our rebranding happened when we started reprogramming, and showing that we were an inclusive provider, we were a big tent, people started coming out in droves. Coming out in droves, I’ll say that several times, because we were really surprised at the number of people coming out. So then we started looking at our business after hours and saying, here’s the deal. This is we’re undervaluing our programs in a big way we’re bringing a lot of people, we have a lot of connections, people are looking to us now as leaders. So we’re going to hold our business after hours, once a month, we’re going to charge almost $2,000 to have a business after hours. And then we’re going to bring the people and the company will invest another 1000 2000 $3,000 in food and entertainment. And we are currently booked through 2025. So we’re taking host, we have down payments for every single business after hours, 2024 and 2025. And we have half of 2026 built, built out. So they are becoming the place to be we have probably a minimum of two 300 People at some of the locations that have limits, but we’re seeing this last one, we had about 350 people in attendance and the social media is going wild on it still and we’re we’re days about a week out from it. And yeah, it’s it’s, it’s something people want to attend the vibe is there. They’re meeting new people, we’re now seeing more executives than we ever have. And when I say executives, I mean those organizations that are 20 3040 people and above, not our smaller business executives, which are very important to us. And they’re certainly coming out as well. But our board is made up of executives. So we have a high level board at our chamber, we’re very specific and who we have on there. Typically we say they’re the ones that sign the front of the checks, right. So and and they’re coming out and they’re meeting people and they’re seeing the vibe in the community. Whereas before business after hours, and some of our programming doesn’t really resonate with with top C suite of organizations. But it does now. And from there, we’re able to parlay that into now we have CEO groups, we have an executive Women’s Council made up of 80 of the top women’s C suite in the region and policymakers in addition to that, so yeah, it’s there’s a whole new vibe, a whole new energy, and with a little discomfort, came a lot of growth in rewards. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:50
I like to have a little bit of discomfort comes to growth and rewards. And as you’re telling the story of that experience, what stands out to me is the investment. So you said going from about $400 to host an event like that to about 2000. Plus, they’re investing another couple 1000 into food and entertainment and drinks, whatever. But that really up levels, the quality of the event, where before if you just showed up and you got a coffee and donut, there’s not much to it, you don’t walk away saying wow, that was a great event. But if the host is they’ve got a lot more skin in the game. You can bet it’s going to be a high quality event, you know, probably nine out of 10 times that people will walk away from they’ll take pictures from they’ll share it with others. It’ll spread, right.

Janet Kenefsky 29:34
Yeah, there’s a lot of FOMO that’s happening out there. Absolutely. And now we have big developers that are coming building businesses building high rises and developments that are securing us for the location when they so that they can unveil it and and attract new tenants attract so it’s, it’s for for companies to be able to showcase but other companies can come and enjoy. So I think we offer In times and chambers, we undervalue everything, we apologize for everything. We are our own worst enemy in the industry. And just one of the things that I’m passionate is about is, is stopping this victim mentality. And I’m huge about that. And if I can go to the grave, you know, fighting that it’ll be stopping the victim mentality we have in this industry.

Brandon Burton 30:23
So I know you’re passionate about pet Share, share a little bit more, if you don’t mind about stopping the victim mentality, I think it’s so important, especially in relation to this topic. Yeah.

Janet Kenefsky 30:34
So here’s, I come at it this way. Um, again, I know it can be tough at times, and we I’m okay, making those tough decisions and, you know, pull up your bootstraps, but oftentimes, and you’ve said it in a chamber, chat podcast in the past, that sometimes we, we don’t always have the executive directors with experience, right. And with inexperience comes major mistakes, and a lot of a lot of undervaluing both yourself as a leader. And because this could be your first job, out of the gate, and and it’s going to be difficult for you. And we apologize a lot. And we, we look to our our board members and others that you know, for leadership, help and experience. And we wonder why we don’t get respect, and we don’t get people coming to us? Well, it goes hand in hand, you know, people respect an organization that has a leader that can stand up and, and really understand the industry and support. And I understand that small communities don’t invest in their chamber, and you get what you get, and I get that. But what happens is a lot of these chambers, they form communities where they complain, and I get it, we all need peers to complain. But what the others do is they go, you’re right, you know, you’re right. It does suck to be a chamber, we’re underrepresented. And we’re never thanked and this is a thankless job. And, and I cringe every time I hear that, and I want to ask every chamber out there, stop it. Stop it, stop it right now. Because this is the only industry I am aware of that talks like that about themselves. It’s the only industry I’m aware of that hires a 24 year old as an executive director, first of all, who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And granted, I understand why it would be sexy, I would take it to, but then we complain about it. And we support that person for their misery. And we say You know what, if you’re going to be a chamber executive, it’s going to get, it’s going to suck, you’re not going to get paid, you’re going to be overworked, and everybody starts cheering we’re in the same boat together. And I want to say stop it. Because we you should be acting like a business you should be setting the standard. Our staff is is well paid, we have great benefits, we have huge respect in the community. We love it, we get applications to join our chamber every single week that are unsolicited. Some stalkers, I want to be a part of it. But I you know, I go back, Brandon, stop it if we can stop that mentality. Because one of the things I’ll see and I’ll give you an example, when we inadvertently want to create community, even in our chamber, peers, that’s what we’re doing is we’re creating chamber community by misery, right. But it it tells the community that’s watching, this is not an industry you want to be a part of this is not something that’s sustainable are going to grow. And then companies like ours, organizations like mine, our chambers are going to end up taking over these smaller chambers, because they’re going to they’re going to create their what they’re manifesting, right, so we need them to stay around. We need chambers to be around forever. And it’s really important that we stop that. So yeah, I’m very passionate about that. We have an example. There was a chamber I heard talking about how their board of directors were talking about them in a side meeting without them. Well, yeah, that’s a problem. And that wouldn’t happen in most organizations. But there’s there’s lack of trust there. Right. And the chamber community came out and said, You should hire a lawyer. This is ridiculous, this discrimination, you should you know, you should quit and then you should sue them and blah, blah, blah. Well, what they didn’t know was that chamber executive who was complaining about this was being investigated for embezzlement, right, so So you have a chamber executive that were rallying behind saying, we poor you, you know, you, we get it and you don’t you don’t know what others are going through. So if we can keep it positive, if we can support him with education, support him with podcasts like this, support him with with real truth and not join the pity party. I think we’re gonna do much better for our industry.

Brandon Burton 34:43
I love that I wish there was a way I could take that snippet and just share it with every chamber board of directors out there. So the next time they’re going to hire an executive, they know what to look for and to kind of give that pep talk instead of falling into that victim mentality and it’s gonna stink and yeah, we can’t afford it. as much but you know, really build them up and help them recognize the true power that a Chamber of Commerce has, like chambers have a lot of power. They’re not elected, you know, but they wield a lot of power with the connections and being able to convene people together and have a seat at the table and bring people together. So, yeah,

Janet Kenefsky 35:19
I think if you’re a chamber and your comfort level, is creating a board with your friends, and the small businesses that you’re peers with, that you’re comfortable with, that’s never a good board, you need a board that is used to strategic planning, you need a board that is used to making tough decisions, you need a board, that’s going to give you the pros and the cons play devil’s advocate, that have financial savvy, that tells you know, that secures your next 10 and 20 years on this planet, you know, so we get ourselves into real huge issues by creating boards that tell us yes, that our friends and then wonder why they turn on us and vote to, you know, vote you off the island. And we shouldn’t be surprised at that. But that’s our comfort level sometimes. And we need to get outside our comfort level, and really build a mastermind people around us that will make sure that we can strengthen an organization not through drama, not through bad decisions, but real evidence based business decisions that will help bolster the chamber industry, both professionally and strategically in the future. That’s it’s imperative.

Brandon Burton 36:27
Yeah, I love that. Well, as we begin to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, I got a couple questions I like asking everybody I have on the show. So one is as if you have any tips or action items, for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, you just gave a great tip about overcoming the victim mentality. But is there something else you might want to offer to the listeners,

Janet Kenefsky 36:50
I would say surround yourself with, with people that can help you with that visionary. So I recognize that through the pandemic, for example, we thrived. We had chambers across the country closing their doors, we had chambers across the country that were, you know, slashing their their prices, because you couldn’t be in person and, and giving, you know sponsors a break on, on money, we doubled our prices, we doubled our prices, we didn’t apologize for it. But also, what we recognized was I came to the table as a visionary. And I adopt that role. And that’s one of the things that I do for our chamber is build programs and kind of figure out what that value is for the for the community. But a lot of people don’t have that. And so if you don’t have a visionary on your team, and if it’s not you surround yourself with it, whether it’s on the board or a confidant, you need to surround your team with people that are unlike you. So a lot of chambers may not have had a visionary at the helm. But they had a board executive member or something that was able to step up and help them with that. So leaders come in all shapes and sizes, leaders come with all different backgrounds. You don’t have to be a visionary to lead. But if you’re not comfortable with certain aspects, make sure you have that at your fingertips. So that for me is really important. And it could be an ambassador of yours, it could be anybody that you have access to. But if you don’t like change, that doesn’t mean don’t change, it means you’re gonna have to do it in order to get more relevant, but you need to have support and others in the community that can help you manage change. That’s why it’s a whole department Change management is is a is a degree in itself. Right? So yeah, surround yourself.

Brandon Burton 38:35
Like the same says, you know, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right, right. So, but as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? So

Janet Kenefsky 38:47
I see the chambers and the purpose going forward of being the place for business, you should be there first knock on the door, there is no wrong door, when it comes to trying to get services and area, but we want to be their first request, you should be the organization that if anybody has a question 10 out of 10 people say, Oh, go ask the chamber. That’s your business resource provider. So we’re going to be a really big presence, it might unfortunately mean that we’re going to be less of the small mom and pop chambers and more of the regional chambers, because, you know, we try and level up our friends around us and all communities. But we are going to be the the resource for business for connection for advocacy work and, and I see us as being the go to for all of our legislators, if they’re going to need the pulse of the community. They’re going to be they’re going to be our best friends in the fight going forward. So yeah, the one stop shop.

Brandon Burton 39:45
I love that be the place for business. I love it. But Jana, this has been fun having you on the show. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing Anything that the Greater Vancouver chamber, how would you suggest that they reach out and connect with you?

Janet Kenefsky 40:04
We have VancouverUSA.com, our social media handles our greater Vancouver Chamber. We’re on Instagram, we’re on LinkedIn, something I highly recommend for all chambers to be on so that people can easily find you. And I’m on LinkedIn as well under Janet Kenefsky. So I invite anybody, and I watch our social media channels. That’s a good way to see what other people are doing. Go ahead and start following us and you’ll start seeing some of the things that we do that might differ and might give some inspiration. I know we checked other chambers out for that same inspiration.

Brandon Burton 40:42
Yeah, I love it. That’s a great tip as well follow other chambers. Oh, Janet, thank you for setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast, you’ve presented a really great perspective and I love the approach you guys have taken the kind of the unapologetic way of overcoming that vocal minority but doing it in a way to really up level your chamber really giving more meaning to the rest of the membership and and really, as you’ve demonstrated through these different examples, boosting the engagement of your members, this has been fantastic. Thank you.
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

New CEO & Change Agent with Ali Rauch

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Ali Rauch. Ali is the President and CEO of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce. While she’s celebrating just three and a half years in this role, she is not new to serving in the Opelika Chamber. She has served many years on the OPA like is 20 Under 40 leadership program board of directors as well as the Women’s Business Council and total resource campaign. In just three short years, she’s led her team to at best of the best five star accreditation to the US Chamber of Commerce raised two and a half million dollars for the Chamber’s forward Opelika good Strategic Community Economic Development Initiative and with the support from her team led a record breaking reach sponsorship campaign in 2022. She also spearheaded a comprehensive brand refresh. Additionally, she was selected to the US chambers business leads fellowship program, and is in the midst of her IOM certification all while changing the landscape and scope of services they open like a chamber offers to their community. Prior to her role at the Chamber, she worked in a wide array of industries including software manufacturing, higher education and most notably franchising and food services, where she served eight years as the director of marketing for Chicken Salad Chick vs had a hand in helping the brand grow from just three stores to 160. She brings a unique perspective to her leadership role at the chamber. Ali is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned a Bachelors of Science in speech communications. She also holds an associate’s degree in communications from Lakeland College. She followed loved hope like it were her future husband, Todd chose to attend Auburn University following his military career and they’ve called up like their home ever since an Ali, I’m super excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better. Well,

Ali Rauch 4:09
thank you so much, Brandon, it is an honor to join you today. My bio is quite comprehensive. So some of my little facts are certainly in there. But I think what I’ll do since I’m looking at your San Francisco helmet, my fun fact is going to be that I’m a shareholder for the Green Bay Packers and I am a massive fan grew up on grew up in the Midwest, actually in Illinois in the middle of bear country. But we were the one Packer family in our town. And so I’m a very, very passionate fan and very much looking forward to our opportunity to win and get into the playoffs this weekend. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 4:50
Yeah. And I’ve been I’ve been impressed with Jordan love and him stepping right into that role and they’ve done a great job. So yeah, awesome. Well tell us a little bit about the scope like a chamber, just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work. You guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today. Yeah,

Ali Rauch 5:12
you bet. So Opelika is in the Auburn Opelika MSA. And so what that means is, if you’re not familiar with Auburn, or Auburn, or Leica, it’s in the southeast in the kind of east central portion of Alabama. So Auburn is home to Auburn University, that college town, and we are that sister city, that has long since been the kind of hub for business in the area. They’re kind of the hub for education, and we’ve been the hub for business, we’ve got a community college in our town, we have a massive amount of industry. And over the past, you know, 20 years, our city has really focused they manage our economic development. So they have focused a lot on diversifying our industry. So we’ve just got a really healthy business community in our town, we have a population of about 33,000. But if you look at the overall surrounding community, we’re between 120 and 180, depending how far you go out in terms of total population, and our chamber, although 33,000 is our town, and if we were to just really cover that, I think we would be considered to be pretty large, we have a membership of just under 1000. In fact, we are looking forward to breaking that 1000 In the next couple of months, we’ve been very, very close. And we have an annual budget of just under a million dollars. And that has almost doubled since I took on took over about three and a half years ago. And so when we talk about kind of the the massive amount of change that we have undergone, that has been part of it. And let’s see, we’ve got a staff of eight, just became a staff of eight, we started as a staff of four, now staff of eight with our most recent hire, which is a business and Workforce Development Director, which we’ll get to when you talk about some of the projects we’ve worked on. And yeah, I think I think that about sums it up.

Brandon Burton 7:17
Very good. That is exciting kind of teaser, you know at that membership growth, and then just about doubling the budget. And so hopefully everyone’s ears are perking up about what what did these changes that you brought into the chamber. And we’ve we’ve titled this episode as new CEO and change agents. So as Ali’s come into this role as we went through her bio and everything, she’s brought a unique perspective to the chamber world, and taking what she knew and working with the chamber and being able to take what she heard knowledge from the outside chamber world and kind of marrying these two together has really been a great change agent. And I’m excited to get into what some of these changes are and how you’ve been able to introduce them and just the experience that you’ve had. But I also want to just put it out there for listeners that it always can feel maybe a little overwhelming when you hear about all the change or things that you need to be doing. And so for those listening, you don’t need to do at all, you know, just listen and see what makes sense for your community. And maybe none of it is things that you need to apply right now maybe you’re already doing a lot of these things. But as we know change is inevitable. So we need to always be looking for what changes and adjustments we do need to make within our organizations to continue staying relevant. So we’ll dive much deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

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

Gina Rozier 10:45

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

Donna Novitsky 11:13

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

Brandon Burton 11:25
All right, Ali, we’re back. I’d love to just hand you the microphone. Tell us what are some of these changes, I’m sure you’ve got a long list there that you can just barely rattle off some of these changes that you’ve helped drive since you’ve come in this role as CEO. But what are some of those more notable changes, and what has been kind of the the impetus for that?

Ali Rauch 11:47
I think the biggest change that we have really undergone at the Opelika Chamber has been just the overall direction of who we are as an organization. The chamber has been around for 82 years. So it is long standing, it is trusted. It has been very well taken care of for many, many years. But it was very much in a state of complacency. Everything was fine. But it wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t I don’t know, it just it was just there, you know, and I loved it, I was involved. So it wasn’t bad. It was all good things. It just, I come in with a lot of energy. I don’t know if you can feel that for me. But I am a very energetic, very positive. And so one of the first things that I did was to dive in, of course, you got to look at your bylaws truly understand those. But the first thing that we did was we we changed our mission or vision or core values. I rewrote our personnel manual, a ton of policies about the overall direction is what was that first major thing. And honestly, the thing that forced my hand to do that was our accreditation was due with the US Chamber of Commerce. And so this was nine months into my first year as CEO, I’ve got all this paperwork to do. And I’ve done it in my life. And so I was able to take a look at the last 15 years worth of like you do accreditation every five years. And so I was able to look at the last three applications and really get an understanding of where we’ve been. And then I took that as an opportunity and gave myself a deadline and said, Well, you know, we need a new personnel manual, when we need new HR policies. We’ve got to make sure our branding is on point. All those things were kind of sparked by that accreditation change. And so I did not ever think we could possibly get to a five star accreditation and for us to have jumped in my first time to go from four to five star was just I celebrated a lot.

Brandon Burton 13:58
That is awesome. Yeah, it

Ali Rauch 14:00
was huge. But so kind of the core foundation was a big initial change. And we change our vision to be a leading catalyst for a better Opelika. So it really widened our umbrella of what we can do on behalf of our community. While our mission actually changed to be strengthening our community as the champion for business, because we really found that people have no idea what a chamber is literally no clue. Most of the time they think we just do business after hours or cocktail parties or ribbon cuttings. And we wanted our team, our board, our volunteers, everybody to be able to have a simple, singular line that says what is the chamber, we strengthen our community as the champion for business. And so changing that was was a big moment for us and making sure that business was the leading edge element of that. It’s very, very easy to try and serve everybody. But you have to remember, we’re here to serve the business community.

Brandon Burton 15:07
Yeah. I love that just that little tagline that slogan, you can say to we strengthen businesses a champion. We’re busy for our business community. Is that right? Is that how you said it

Ali Rauch 15:18
strengthen, strengthen our community as a champion for business? Yeah, yes,

Brandon Burton 15:22
yes, I had the essence there. So that’s something that every chamber can take, though, you know, do your R&D, you know, take that simplified phrase, that’s something that your board that your volunteers that your staff that new members should be able to understand as a part of your organization. This is what the chamber does. And then from there, obviously gets into mission and vision, things like that. But I love that just having that simple phrase of what is the chamber do, this is who we are, you got that simple response. It’s true.

Ali Rauch 15:53
And one thing that was really great about that, too, is not only did we update our mission to say that, but then our work reflected that. For me, I came from the private business sector, my whole career had been in business. And I also was a marketer. And so I had this unique perspective about what businesses want. And they they are joining the chamber most of the time, to help build awareness and to build relationships on behalf of their business. So because I had that marketing perspective, and understood what they are looking for, from an ROI perspective, we changed a lot of what we offered and what we focused on, so that we could deliver what the businesses need, you know, sometimes you gotta kill those sacred cows and do things they Oh, well, we’ve always done them. But is that what your business community needs? That’s a good question to ask. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:47
I was gonna ask you about that, with your marketing background coming into the chamber world, I know that there’s a there’s some overlap, but there’s also you come into it with eyes wide open of this is what businesses are looking for. And here’s an organization you’re coming into that has been doing, I’m guessing a lot of the same things for a long time, and maybe needed a refresh. So being able to take that, that vision that you’ve had that experience and being able to apply it to the chamber, or there may be some other areas where you’re able to apply your marketing background into creating the identity for your chamber and, and phrases like that, that you just shared? Where else have you seen that background and marketing come in handy in this role,

Ali Rauch 17:30
literally everywhere. So you mentioned in my bio, that we did a a brand refresh, that was huge, you know, I had had been a part of brand refreshes for two different years, I built a brand from the ground up at Chicken Salad Chick. So coming in, I knew we needed that fresh face. And I had high expectations and kind of I want I mean, it needs to be relevant and modern. And today. And so redoing all of our email newsletters, all of our communication, we launched a brand new website last year, we refreshed our magazine, and that one, an ACC e communication and excellence award last year ACC which was amazing. But I think one area that is probably out there that I’ve been able to use it that is unexpected is that we created a conference, it’s actually coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s called the All Things marketing conference. It is just literally a baby that I have created, that my team has come on board and helped and we have made it happen. And and so it’s a one day JAM PACKED conference that people can attend from all over, you’re welcome to if anybody wants to check it out, go to a black chamber.com. But so, you know, like, like a regular conference, you’re gonna pay a fee to attend and include your meals, but you’re gonna listen to a lineup of speakers. And for me, I was getting questions from businesses, especially restaurants, all the time asking for my marketing expertise. And I realized I can’t teach everybody one on one. What if we were to actually teach everybody at once and this became an annual thing. And so I, you know, grabbed grabbed a few of my members who I consider to be really great marketing experts for their specific fields, pulled them together, created a committee and said, This is what I want to do, what would it look like? And so the one we have coming up on January 19 has, we’ve got two keynote speakers, six different breakout sessions, plus a bonus section session, and we’re going to teach everything from traditional marketing to digital advertising to content creation. And numerous people are not only active chamber volunteers, but also former chamber employees like we get it and our keynote speaker is a lady named Lena Trivedi. And if you haven’t heard her story, I encourage you to go to Apple TV and watch the beat The bubble starring Elizabeth Banks. It is essentially the story of how Beanie Babies became what they were. And Lena was an employee at PTI at the time and was really a pioneer of E commerce. And so she’s going to come down and speak and share her story. And, but we created that from the ground up. And now, you know, that’s the opportunity for us to serve 200 to 220. Businesses, if not more, we’ve got the room to grow. But we have an opportunity to teach our business community what they need to know to be better marketers, which is, I would say, 75% of what the businesses need our help from is marketing, because they just most of the time, don’t know what they’re doing. And, and they are an entrepreneur, so they’re passionate about what they’re passionate about, but not necessarily marketing. And so my skill set has just really come in here to create this conference from the ground up. And it’s awesome. It was just this moment of pure, like, Joy. And like, I just, I couldn’t believe it. We did it last year. And now we’re on our second year, and it’s gonna be

Brandon Burton 21:06
awesome. That is awesome. And I think that, you know, strikes a resonance with, with businesses, small businesses, especially where we had talked before we hit record, that the reason that I started the podcast is really to help small businesses that ultimately, that’s what it comes down to my whole career. And chamber publishing has been about helping small businesses and, and there’s some chambers frankly, it becomes more of a membership organization that it kind of stops there and the help, it’s hard to see that connection of where that help and support is for small businesses. And the businesses recognize that I mean, just the honest truth, as I’ve met with Chamber members in a wide variety of different chambers over the years, a lot of them have a hard time making that connection. So having a conference like this, it really offers that direct support for marketing, which is it’s a tangible thing that they can take back to their business and see positive results, see an increase in sales, see that that needle move from efforts at the Chamber is putting out there and making available these opportunities for. I also know in my background with with chamber publishing, I’m talking to businesses about advertising. So I’m seeing what their strategy will call it. And or lack thereof, or lack thereof, most of them don’t have a strategy and any advertising they do. It’s more maybe branding, you know, they’re they’re putting a branding ad out there. But there’s no call to action, there’s no way to collect any information and remarket it like there’s so many different layers that you can put on to marketing and advertising that the small businesses either they don’t know, or they don’t have the bandwidth, or they don’t know the tools that are available. And I just love that you guys are doing this. This is a this is what chambers should be doing to help small businesses be successful. So kudos,

Ali Rauch 23:04
and meanwhile, thank you, I appreciate it. Meanwhile, it’s also an opportunity for us to feature a few of our businesses that will then gain clients as a result of this conference. We sell sponsorships for this conference through our annual reach or total resource campaign. And and then we have ticket sales. So like, this is also like a revenue generating opportunity. And it’s just bigger than what chambers have traditionally done in the past. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:32
yeah, for sure. So, as you have helped to introduce a lot of these changes the brand refresh this marketing campaign, that magazine, there’s been a lot of things. I’m sure there’s other things we haven’t even touched on yet. As you go to introduce these changes, do you find that you have some autonomy just within the organization, you and your staff, or our most of these things? Indeed get Board approval? Or where does that threshold come at your organization?

Ali Rauch 24:05
We, I am very blessed to have a board that trusts me. Pretty implicitly, it’s wonderful. So I have a very supportive board. Typically what will happen is that myself and my team, we do a lot of things together. So this is not like the, hey, Ally’s done all this now. I couldn’t do it without them. So we, we will come up with our ideas and we’ll say this is what we want to do. New programs, all things marketing, Summit, things like that. That was just us. We decided to do that no board approval or anything like that. But with you know, the mission and the vision and things like that. That was something that our staff decided on and the set and then presented it to our board for approval. And so that was certainly a big honestly, it was very easy discussion. It was a unanimous vote. So that made it because we’re being Very thoughtful and doing our homework in advance. They trust us and support those decisions. You know, one of the biggest things that we decided to do that was very involved for the board of directors was our forward over like a campaign, which was our strategic economic development initiative to raise money. Because we are, you can’t tell I’m I’m actually sitting in my office, which was a home that was built in 1895. And I’ve got, I have turned two closets into what we now call co offices, because you just got to make it work. And we’re at max capacity. And, and honestly, we also don’t have a space that our businesses can actually use the way they need it. And so what started out as a need for more meeting space or business space, but also kind of transformed into, hey, let’s start tackling bigger challenges in our community. And so our Florida Blanca initiative raised were actually 3.1 million right now. And that’s going to enable us to work on workforce development for our region, build out some more entrepreneurship training programs, and then also move into a renovated building that will host not only event space for us to be able to host most of our own events, but there will be a visitor center, a boardroom and a business incubator and other things. And so that was very much a, I hired a consultant, we worked with power 10 to do that. But all of that the board was very involved with because I needed them to actually execute it. Because you know, you think about a lot of your board members are going to invest in something like that. But they also have to be willing to put their name and face on it. To say, Yes, we support this. So that was one that was very, very high, highly involved from our board of directors.

Brandon Burton 26:55
Yeah. And it’s awesome to have such a supportive board of directors. And I know a lot of listeners out there do have very supportive boards. So hopefully those relationships are good and cohesive and allow for that autonomy that I’ve set. I was going to ask you about the capital campaigns that you kind of alluded to there, as well as your total resource campaign. So are both of those newer things implemented since you’ve taken the role of as CEO? Or is there have had those been part of the organization before? So

Ali Rauch 27:28
our total resource campaign had actually been a part of the organization for quite a long time, I think we were in year nine, when I started, and I was a volunteer for our total resource campaign for two years prior to joining the job or joining the chamber as the CEO. So that one was long standing. However, we learned, you know, I inherited a team that had had been there for quite a few, I mean, 1415 years, they they were tenured and experienced, and also a little bit tired. And and so when some of the changes that I made, encouraged the retirement or moving on other people, you know, I’m I’m young, I’m aggressive, energetic. So I just kind of changed things quickly. And that became uncomfortable for some some people. And so when they decided to move on to other things, that was the first one, I actually got on a conversation with Jason from YG, MCRC. And he just straight up told me he’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not what I recommend. And I was like, Oh,

Brandon Burton 28:42
I love that. Jason. Yeah.

Ali Rauch 28:45
Well, I have to be right there with it. But it was true. We we had just been, you know, Hey, turn on our website. And that was it. And there was not strategy, there was not thought and so we are conducting a capital campaign, which is brand new, very aggressive, we need to raise $3 million happening right over here. And we started asking for money in March of 2021. That year, September of 2021. We did a brand new refresh of our reach campaign. So first, wait, no, wait, I think we maybe it might have been a year apart. But either way, we had a total resource campaign going on and our capital campaign going on simultaneously, which was stressful. But it’s doable, because typically that money comes from different buckets, you know, a total resource campaign, those dollars are typically going to be coming from your business’s marketing budget, whereas a capital campaign those dollars are going to be coming from a higher level investment perspective and you’re talking to different people to sell those things. But the capital campaign was certainly new but that reach campaign we saw We now call it reach not a TRC. But thinking of all the branding changes that we do, but we did a brand refresh of our reach campaign, which means that we not only renamed it, but we took away every like week started as if we were brand new client with Jason. And YGM. Because we realized we needed to think more strategically about what we offer and what our price points were, what the benefits were. And so although it’s been around for 12 years now, it was new brand new two years ago, because of that refresh that we did. And that’s really where we went from averaging about $175,000 in sales for the last five to six years or so, to. Let’s see, I think we got up to Oh, 368,000 that’s where we ended. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:56
Yeah, that’s awesome. That is awesome. Wow. So you’ve touched on a lot of things here. I can see for for listener out there, maybe that the overwhelm sitting a little bit, but hopefully, they’re taking notes and just seeing some things that might they might want to revisit at their, their chamber. But I wanted to ask you, for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, maybe give them a little bit of a refresh, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to implement and try to maybe reinvigorate life in their organization?

Ali Rauch 31:36
I’m gonna make two recommendations. And the first one we talked about before we pressed record, read Horseshoes vs. Chess by Dave Adkisson. That was, I was a brand new CEO just a couple months into my job when that book came out. And I read it. And it made me think big. It may he outlines the future of chambers, which, you know, we’re not going to be those if we’re going to be doing what we should be doing for the future. We’re going to be working on meaningful things, not just ribbon cuttings and after hours, and so read his book, and process and think, What does your community need? So that would be recommendation number one. And then my second recommendation, I actually is firsthand advice that I was given by Jim Page, who was the longtime CEO of the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce in Tuscaloosa. Because the first conference I went to, I just, I had so many pages of notes. And it was like drinking through a firehose, and I was like, I have so much work to do, what am I going to do? And he literally sat me down and he said, Pick 123 things. That’s it. 123 things that you want to try and work on. Nothing more, because you can, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, you got to you got to pace yourself? You’ve got to prioritize and tackle

Brandon Burton 33:01
three bytes at a time, right?

Ali Rauch 33:03
123? Yeah. No, that doesn’t help ask you to you know,

Brandon Burton 33:09
that’s right. That’s right. Now Jen has excellent, excellent mentor and to take advice from him that that’s very wise. And, and Dave’s book, Horseshoes vs. Chess. For those listening, you know, for a long time he was on an episode and 111 when the book first came out, kind of gave a synopsis of the book and how it came to be. But it really is that book, I think, is the definition of what a chamber is or should be. And as your role as a chamber CEO or Executive Director, whatever the title is, leading a chamber really gives a great definition for what your role should be what your work should look like, and what the future of chambers looks like. So that kind of leads right into the next question, actually, is I’d like to ask and everyone I have on the show that how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ali Rauch 34:04
I think the future of the chamber is really about doing bigger, more meaningful work. You know, for us, we have never in a million years had the responsibility of making sure our businesses have the people resources that they need to be successful. And we just a few months ago, were, you know, given the reins to lead our region for workforce development. That’s a huge job. And that’s a big deal. But there’s also opportunity for funding that comes from both state and federal levels that can help grow our organization significantly, not just as an organization, but the impact that we’re making. So I think the future is just very doing more meaningful work and thinking about that meaningful work. I think that the Chamber of Commerce And I’ve learned in this role, we have a significant amount of influence and prominence in our community. You know, I have great relationships with the mayors in the area with our state representatives and our senators, you know, our, our kickoff for our Florida like a campaign after we had raised just over $2 million was Katie Britt, who at the time was the president of the Business Council of Alabama and running for Senate. And now she’s a state senator from the state of Alabama. And so we have great relationships from an advocacy perspective that we can contact and, and talk about those bigger challenges. So, advocacy is a key part of it. But I still think that although that might always be a part of what we do, doing the more meaningful work that achieves what your business community needs, which is going to vary for everyone. But that’s where I see the future of chambers.

Brandon Burton 35:59
Absolutely bigger and more meaningful work. I love that alley. This has been a fun conversation, energetic it’s full of life. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and maybe learn more about some of these changes even from implemented and how you’ve gone about introducing them and getting buy in and all that good stuff that we didn’t get to touch on every aspect or in this conversation today. But what would be a good way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Ali Rauch 36:31
Yeah, I I certainly welcome this was. This was almost like draining a firehose of all the things and so please don’t get overwhelmed by that I am I am here as a resource. I would love to either chat with you chat with your chamber, whatever whatever it is that I can help with. You can find me my email address is Ali a li at OpelikaChamber.com. You can find me on all the social social channel channels. You can find me on all the social channels at Ali Vice Rauch. So a li v ice ra uch. But really, I mean I’m an I’m an open book and give me a call shoot me a text my cell is 334-737-9354. And all of this can be found on my website or on our chamber website. OpelikaChamber.com. Very

Brandon Burton 37:24
good. And we’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode too. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you. But Ali, this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast and wish you the best with the future chambers that future changes that you have to implement. They’re at your chamber and and going forward into the future. Thanks a lot.

Ali Rauch 37:46
Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 37:49
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Culture for Huge Results with Bryce Riggs

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

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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Bryce Riggs. Bryce currently serves as the executive director of the Seneca Regional Chamber of Commerce and Destination Seneca County, the county’s Visitors Bureau. Since taking this position in July 2020. Both organizations have received a breath of fresh air and a surge of energy. The chamber has significantly grown their membership by making it the highest membership it’s ever seen. Historically, the chamber is on its way to becoming one of the strongest in Ohio. While destination Seneca County has become the one stop shop and trusted resource for the community and visitors of Seneca County. The Seneca Regional Chamber of Commerce received the 2023 outstanding chamber of the Year from the Chamber of Commerce executives of Ohio, and destination Seneca County has received six statewide awards from Ohio Travel Association within the last two years. Bryce, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the listeners and to share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better. Perfect.

Bryce Riggs 3:07
Hello, all Chamber Chat Podcast listeners, as Brandon said, I am Bryce, I think interesting about me is I got a vast background in terms of I’ve worked in economic development, I’ve worked in development work with fundraising, and now the chamber and I think, you know, they always say there’s not one job that prepares you for the kind of role like this in the chamber. But I think I’ve been fortunate that I kind of see the business background side of things. And I’ve seen, you know, the kind of development as we all know, without fundraising and raising those dollars for our organization, we really can’t do that fun and transformational things that we want to do always. And so fun fact about me is that, you know, only 30 years old, but I’ve had some really unique experiences that have kind of helped me prove it prepare me for this role with the Chamber of Commerce. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:55
awesome. Yeah, there’s not the perfect resume per se to to become a chamber executive. But you know, certain things do tend to give you experience that you can definitely lean upon as you go about that as a career. So take a little bit of time to get a few minutes. Tell us a little bit more about the Seneca Regional Chamber size of the chamber scope of work you guys are involved with, obviously, you’ve got the tourism side as well. Staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for discussion. Yeah,

Bryce Riggs 4:26
we were unique as as a chamber because we do do the tourism side as well. We see especially in the state of Ohio flow a few of us left because I have to say there’s kind of two different missions and for both organizations in the chamber and destination, Seneca County, so it’s been a joy of keeping many folks happy across the board from our chamber partners as well as our tourism partners. Staff right now three and a half team members. We’ve historically been but three team members, majority of the time of the existence of the chamber We brought on a part time marketing specialist within this last year, and we’re pretty fortunate from a staff level wise. And we have one employee that’s been there for 20 years, who’s our voice of reason we call her and our seasoned vet. And obviously a lot of institutional knowledge we have, that’s Denmark, Toronto, we have Marissa Stevens, who’s the movie organization now, going almost three years, and then for me almost four years with with the organization, but three and a half years. But with that, and then also with the Chamber budget for 2024. I’m proud of the kingdom of outspending, but also the king of raising additional dollars. So $322,000 for the budget for the chamber, for 2024. And then for destination Seneca County, about $170,000. We have for the budget for destination Seneca County, really big thing with us is like the setting, you know, really, the value that we provide back to our membership is, you know, we’re big about listening and understanding their needs. We do a membership survey every year where we understand, hey, what’s important to you. And the big thing is just as things change, as times change, making sure that we have the information, we have the tools, we have the programming that makes sense. As an organization, we’re unique, where we put out all our events for the for the following year and our annual meeting in October, as we do our ama in October, we release a full slate. But you know, as things change, for example, the Damar Hamlin situation with the NFL last year with a cardiac arrest in the field, we were able to do a CPR, AED and first aid training within two weeks close with that scenario. And so we’ve continued to keep that as part of our plans. But we just I think, you know, like any other business partner we work with, we want them to be nimble and make decisions quickly. And I think that’s kind of what we’ve been good at is just, you know, being accurate, the community being very transparent and being, you know, engaged.

Brandon Burton 7:05
Yeah, I love that example. I like having the kind of that map for the year saying, here’s our main events and things that we’ve got scheduled but to be able to be nimble enough and not so rigid that when something of importance comes up, you can say yes, let’s fit that in and have some focus on that. And not have it derail the rest of your plan for the year as well. So I think that’s super important. So as we kind of settled on a topic for this this episode, we’re going to focus most of our conversation today around creating a culture for huge results. And we’ll get into you know why we came across that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Howdy it’s me, Donna from Yiftee again. Today we get to hear from Christine in upstate New York about her Shop 716 Community card program. She was able to use sponsorship funds for a generous Buy One, Get One program that benefits her whole county.

Christine Langenfeld 9:44

Hi this is Christine Langenfeld with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce located in Buffalo, New York. We have partnered with Yiftee on our Shop 716 e-gift card program that has been incredibly, incredibly impactful for our small businesses. So happy to have incorporated this program in our shop local initiative here in Western New York. I highly recommend them and give them a chance to show what they can do.

Donna Novitsky 10:13

Thanks, Christine. So folks, check us out at yiftee.com and sign up for a demo or shoot us an email at sales@yiftee.com.

Brandon Burton 10:24
All right, Bryce, we’re back. I mentioned before the break, we’re recording to focus our conversation today about creating that culture for huge results. And sometimes it takes a different perspective, maybe an outsider’s point of view, to be able to see where there’s some gaps and opportunities within an organization. And I may be making some assumptions, but you guys have seen some significant growth in a variety of different ways. Since you’ve come on board there at the at the Seneca Regional Chamber. So I’d like to maybe have you highlight what some of those big growth areas are. And we can kind of dive into what has kind of fueled that growth and the culture being built there at the chamber.

Bryce Riggs 11:10
Probably the big thing is, I should have noted this early, earlier, but membership wise, about 540 members give or take. But you know, we’ve seen since I started in July 2020, we unfortunately, 65% increase in membership. And for me, it’s increasing membership is nice. You know, we have other chamber partners that, you know, do those membership drives, and they really get people out. And they’re really kind of one time, some folks or one time infusions of cash into an organization, which is nice to keep things afloat. But the big thing for us is the retention standpoint, you know, once we get them on, do a process. And we’ve kind of created a process within the last year and a half about the onboarding and making sure that you know, everyone kind of gets the same experience when they come on board. And that’s kind of help with our retention rate 94% retention rate that we’ve had consistently over the last few years. And, again, you know, influxes of cash are nice for the organization. But how do you keep those coming back and keep you know, our partners happy membership services are great. We’re, you know, we get a lot of responses on that, that allows them the opportunity to dialogue with us. You know, ours is all anonymous, so you can kind of dialogue and kind of put it all out there, my feelings don’t get hurt. Because we only grow as organization, we realize our shortfalls. And then really the big thing is T we’ve seen with a membership growth has been kind of non dues revenue has grown over 164%. Within the last, we moved to a new sponsorship model in the end of 2020 2021, where we asked our partners one time for sponsorships, when I started in July, with COVID pushing things back, it’d be like five events and basically five months and it was, you know, I was the guy who was calling and saying, hey, it’s Bryce. I’ve fortunate part of this community. So it wasn’t really much of an introduction, but it was, hey, we have this event, the golf out and you think you can make an investment to help support us? Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Okay, then, you know, the coffin takes place. And then the educators practice, hey, it’s Bryce again. Can you cut me another check. And so like, like anything in life, that asked me a better way. It’s we moved to a one time ask model in 2021. And that’s been super successful for us. We have 14 years platinum $3,000, gold 2000, Silver 1000, and then bronze 500. And we just package everything else we’ve done in the past. And we just said, Hey, this is the price tag of $3,000 are our largest donor, historically have given us 2250 On average, every year, and it’s okay, let’s bump up to $3,000. And we’ll do it one time mass model. And that’s been super successful for us. As an organization right now, we’re actually going through our our fundraising model kind of drive at the end of the year. And you know, last year, I’m gonna pull it up real quick. Last year, we raised $175,000. And literally one month this year, we’re still at $165,000 gotten to the end of the year. I’ve a few that will over will do. Oh, I’ll do what we did last year. were fun, obviously, with inflation and other factors muddies the water tight, but I think the biggest thing for us is the chamber. It’s more relationship relationship based, rather than the monetary aspect will me get through this. It’s basically Hey, Steve, this is Bryce with the chamber. You have a team and the golf outing. Just let me know who your four golfers are and then you know we’re looking forward to seeing you and then you know, the conversations over with and so when we call it’s no longer oh my gosh, the

Brandon Burton 14:47
Chamber if I may check the budget. Yeah. What

Bryce Riggs 14:50
do they want, you know, they want to call in again for the golf outing or con for this up it’s really allowed us to take our relationship with our members more to that, you know, prefer Hold to the more personal because they realize now that like my call, if I’m gonna ask me for anything is, I’m gonna ask them for money. It’s like asking them how we can help her, Hey, I saw you’re doing this about can we stop by and take a picture to help promote it? Hey, you’re doing this? How can we help you with that? And so it’s kind of allowed us to transform the organization a little more than we’ve done in the past. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:23
that’s great. So on the membership, and maybe I misunderstood, but how did you? How did you go about that big increase in membership? Did you guys do a membership drive? Or is that just built kind of grassroots? had had you guys approach that?

Bryce Riggs 15:40
The biggest thing is no membership drive is all grassroots. And I always said, when the chamber gets you energy gets new leadership, there’s always an opportunity to, you know, say that first year, and in my opinion, is the most important year, it’s, you know, sometimes you’ll take over a chamber that maybe in the past, it’s been stagnant, or very successful. And it’s like, okay, you have to pave your way on why you’re different. What’s your value proposition? And so for us, a lot of it was, you know, what, before, when we meet with a new member, our value articulation was not great. It was like, Hey, join the chamber, because it’s good for the community while when COVID hit, and things hit the fan. People love the community, I love the community, but real relook at our budgets. And it’s like, okay, this is good for the community. But this is also good. And this is good. And so now you’re kind of in a match with other great community organizations. But okay, my getting returned value back. And so we kind of lost our four point approach in my first month and said, Hey, look, this is the four reasons why you should join the chamber, where we had some kind of topics underneath each one of them. And the time, I’d say it was kind of crazy, because some of the stuff didn’t really make sense, because we didn’t build the plane yet. We just kind of like, found a bag of goods that we, you know, had yet done it yet. But it’s like, look, this is where we’re gonna go, we’ve lost trust in us. Again, I’m from the community. So for me, it was I’ve had a track record of doing things the right way. And so with us, it was just like, how do you articulate that value back to someone. And then I think it just became, you know, my first month, we had like, 15, new members, my next month, it was 15 new members and kind of like a forest fire. Once you create that spark, it’s like, Look, you have to take advantage of it. And our biggest thing is that we will not accept a new member of the Chamber of Commerce until we meet with you in person. And so it’s not just me. We have other chambers, it’s their membership director, or their membership coordinator meets with them, the CEO doesn’t. To me, I think it’s like the worst thing you could do. And so for me, I take my staff, my entire staff, just the three of us, the part time employee, this now that the three of us go out, and we go to their business, we meet with them on this morning, I was at a museum that was 45 minutes away. And we traveled there as a team, we came back as a team, because the day they knew who we all are, I think call the office and I’m not in and don’t answer the phone. They’ve met them before. Dan knows who they are, what’s important to them are the four points, how we can best assist them, if they run into Mrs. On the street, corner, residence, who they are, what their balance and organization. And so for us, it’s again, how do you take those relationships pass the professional, the personal side of things, I think is huge. And that for us? Again, it’s that it’s that wildfire that we’ve just continued to keep it going. And we just you know, for us, when someone goes to kind of check to the chamber at the end of the year, in July, it’s you know, I want them to look at us as a staff and saying, Hey, right, when I don’t cut this check to the chamber, it’s not at the chamber. I’m not gonna check the price to debt to Marissa. And I think it’s that personal touch, that kind of, you know, makes the ties a little bit stronger between the

Brandon Burton 19:03
organization’s for sure definitely helps with that, to have that 94% retention rate that you guys are seeing now. I mean, when you have that personal touch, you meet the members, you have that introduction, they get to know all the staff, you better understand their business. I love the example the the museum this morning, you gave this 45 minute drive there and back all together as staff. Imagine on the way back, there may be some discussion and ideas shared amongst staff about how to help this new member, you know, who can we connect them with? Or what would help make them successful? And there’s so much value in traveling together and doing that, you know, as a team. So

Bryce Riggs 19:47
I would say you know, there’s that I think we all are bought into it. And it for us it’s like look, you know we all where we see someone we know who they are what they do while they’re doing it and it’s the lie on to say that why this one is what makes the difference? So

Brandon Burton 20:02
I’m anticipating people listening are like four point approach. Okay, what are these four egg? Do you mind giving us the pitch real quick? What your what the four points are? If you’re granted, every chamber is different, you’re offering different things, potentially. But what? What are those four areas that you focus on when you are approaching a potential member?

Bryce Riggs 20:21
Yeah. So when we dive in, you know, we kind of enters we are first as a staff and home or the personal side of us again. And then without my destination said, I didn’t count because when I first started, the tourism bureau wasn’t very active, it was kind of the inactive arm of the chamber. But for us, we kind of explain who they are, what they do, why they’re important to the bigger picture. And then, you know, we flip over to the four point approach. And we talked with the membership survey, and we say, like, look, we don’t, we don’t determine what’s important to you, we listen to you, we understand, when we can talk more about their business, they can understand where their gaps are at and how we can help fill those gaps. And then we kind of go through the four points. And based on their story, we kind of dive into like, for example, the museum, they’re getting ready to go through their new location, there’s moves. And it’s what’s the promotional side of things, and we kind of dive in here, we’re an information source, we get a ton of phone calls, but we do a ton on social media, last this year actually will reach 2.6 million people on all our social platforms for our reach. And then for the visitors bureau, we have an additional 2.9 million will do as well. So we kind of talked about quantifying that the personal experience. And so when we talk about our members, we talk to them as people not as businesses, it’s kind of how it all connects to each other. And then we’ll step up you know, for them ribbon cuttings, bread and butter of a chamber, which we do things a little bit differently. We’ll do last year we did over 40 ribbon cuttings last year, we have a photographer, we invite elected officials, our ambassadors, which are super engaged our board, most were mechanics, we do our we have over 30 to 40 people attend each one. So there for us, it’s an it’s an energy opportunity. It’s the excitement people kind of bought in. And one thing I should know, too, we sent out a calendar invite for all our first contacts for every organization that’s, that’s a member, we send out a calendar invite with a description for all events we do, including ribbon cuttings, so even if you can’t go you at least understand new business, who owns it, where they offer, what are their hours, we said to our political officials, our media, and so those are always a good thing as well. And then we’ll jump to like relationships. So we have after five networking events, like most chambers do, which I won this last week, our golf outing, is wildly popular, we had 55 teams are out in last year, and then two flights sold out. And then we’ll talk about our Casino Night that we do as well. And then just different membership engagement opportunities to build relationships. We have flank. networking groups, like a digital Management Council we have. We’re both the Human Resources association. So kind of different people within the organization can be engaged as well. We have resources and savings is our third point usually talked about, and that’s obviously saving people money in which people appreciate. So we run a chamber cash program that looks just like a cheque. And a lot of people are moved to like 50. And there’s other things but we’ve been fortunate in the last last year, we sold over $110,000 in chamber cash, which keeps money locally infuse our community with a member a member benefit card that we do as well. It’s been really popular 55 different discounts different restaurants and businesses for the community and our big sales when I first started, we engage often with like the top tier management, so the CEO, CFO, CEO, but okay, how do we take the chamber message and bring it down to the employees. And so we now have the stack slammed, and it looks like gift cards. And we can all remember businesses, their employees inside joke, I’ll be at the local watering hole, and three people in front of me will plug the chamber card and get their 50% off at the at the restaurant. We’re there. And so it’s kind of nice to see, I joke, it’s kind of a call at that point, but I’ll take it. But it’s again, the Chamber messaging of this is the chamber and every time they scan it, it goes to our website. And so it’s that name ID not just with top tier, it’s through the whole organization. You Your energy programs, your you know, health insurance programs, as well thought of that. And then last is education, where we do power hours, which is the professional development from our members to our members. We’ve had to talk about like, you know, like AI is a topic for January, we have one with Canva and in March, we have a CrossFit crash course in June. We have a golf one on one event. So just some fun, professional personal opportunities. We Someone says, which is more than a personal. So it’s like the Myers Briggs test, you take it, we bring someone in, it kind of puts people in groups, you can talk about what the results mean. And then like leader, substantive accounting, which is our leadership group, and other educational opportunities we offer to our members throughout the year as well. So you’re really that’s kind of the four point approach. And then we kind of, you know, based on what they tell us, we say, hey, based on what you said, this is probably a good fit for you, we’ll get you connected, we’ll make sure you get the info. And then it’s like, again, as many as you can, how do you connect the chamber to the organization provide that values when they go to renew, when they decide they want to join, there’s enough value there that they’re like, hey, this makes sense. I have to I have to join. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:45
makes a lot of sense. I love that it’s condensed down enough to four points. So hopefully, any member of the staff can take that and kind of tell the story of the benefits that your chamber has to offer to these businesses that are considering joining. So that’s awesome. So let’s say maybe shift a little bit and talk about, you know, things that you guys do maybe organically there at the chamber to keep the passion for the staff on a high level to keep them engaged and, you know, involved with the community and really just loving what they do. Yeah, I

Bryce Riggs 26:20
think it’s the biggest thing is, that’s kind of our our sweet spot. That’s our secret sauce I tell people is that our staff here is fantastic. And I don’t live in a world we live in, it’s as a as a nonprofit organization, it’s hard to pay quarterly, it’s hard to make the opportunities available to our staff. But my biggest thing is like look itself from the top down as us and so my, my staff sees me out in the community, they see me community events, they see me out, you know, all these opportunities that exists. And, you know, the big thing with us is that we invest in our staff to go to these things. And so if I have done, I really don’t want to go to this event, and the chamber will pay for our staff to to go do continuing educational opportunities to go to community events. We’re fortunate with some of the non dues revenue increase that we’ve had over the years, that, you know, obviously, it pays to play to a lot of these events. And it’s tough, because it’s like not every chamber has the budget to be able to do this. But for us, it’s just like, we get along well, we communicate well. We keep things fun. And that’s for us. It’s it’s important. If it starts with the staff, if your staff is energetic engaged, it’s kind of hard to go sell, sell something that you don’t believe in my staff, we do gene Fridays we do you name it, right? I buy flexible hours, if you work in the evenings, which a lot of my staff does, you know, you can take some time off here and there throughout the throughout the week come in at 10. Like that. One thing is we do as well, three o’clock Fridays, and close the office every eight to five, Monday through Thursday. And then Friday, we do three o’clock, I kick you out. I don’t care how much work you have left to do. I don’t care how stressed you are. I kick you out. Because I think it’s like, Look, you gotta go live life. As is. It’s crucial. And so like for us, again, I’ll say it just starts with the staff. And you know, if you don’t pay your staff, you know, livable wage, that’s great to talk to my staff, and do we do yearly reviews. I do all my yearly reviews, in conjunction with the budget. So line rock conducted in November, I sit down the staff, I ask them questions, I send them a Google Word document, they type in their responses, and it’s a dialogue. I put their stuff and I put my comments and we meet for lunch. One on one and we discuss kind of like your thoughts, my thoughts. And then if Yannick I say looking, you know, next year, this is what we’re able to do based on your, you know, health insurances issue, okay, great. Based on that issue, we’re able to do this. And so my biggest thing is, if you unify consistent feedback, reviews aren’t supposed to be surprises. But for us, it’s important to say you got to show the nonprofit role you can pay them, you can allow them to grow as humans, you can model them have fun. But that’s the big thing is like, Look, you don’t take care of your own team. You’re not gonna go very far as an organization in the, you know, on the chambers or one, one man one woman shops, and so I you know, I fortunately have a board that allows me to do what I do. And so I just, you know, I, I told us that the board with a discussion this last year that said, Hey, how much you’re gonna give your staff increases? And I just said to him, Hey, I love you, but it’s, that’s not your role. My role is to determine based on what their performances, this is what I’m able to do and the performance bonuses every year, but I’d say give me the freedom and flexibility to pay my staff the way they should be compensated and we don’t, and I’ll ask, I’ve put in the budget and then you know, he gets approved as a overall bigger Make sure I

Brandon Burton 30:01
like that. I like being bold enough to say, yeah, let me invest in your business, right? Stay in our lanes, right?

Bryce Riggs 30:09
Correct. Yeah, the day the executive committee is responsible for my executive review and my salary, and let’s, let’s be talking about that within this framework. But just know that, you know, my job is to get my staff in a place where they’re making competitive wages, and their benefits are great. We just launched a simple IRA this year for 2024. Based on again, concerns and needs for for additional benefits. We’ve done, you know, again, I’m willing to invest my staff and they go to war for us every day. You know, my job is to go to work for them so that they can get what they need to be successful.

Brandon Burton 30:47
Yeah. I love it. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask if anyone listening what who’s interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what maybe tip or action item might you have to offer them to elevate their chamber and kind of play it at that next level?

Bryce Riggs 31:09
So the biggest thing is, I always indicate, you know, be consistent, be persistent. When I started out, I was fortunate that I was kind of given the opportunity and said, hey, you know, you have, here’s the keys to car drive out you want. I’m not ignorant in the way that I understand it, is you have guidelines, and I have for a framework to do that within. But I would say like, Look, if you’re trying to be transformational, do things differently. It’s like, you got to be consistent with your approach, be persistent with our approach. Our big thing is community, community community. If you read our newsletter, you’ll know it’s from our community, you’ll know the people that are in it. If you see our social media, you’ll know it’s about the people. So everything is just like, look like push the pace. What do you get told now want to figure out how to get around it? You know, some sense knows, you know, doesn’t mean No, today, but might be like a maybe a later thing. Or maybe there’s another way to get to it. So you know, my first job, I was a telemarketer I was always taught you to do to rebuttal before you finally hung up the phone, and I very much live by that model. And so my thing is just people, you know, to make chambers that I’ll be honest, that we interact with, don’t push the pace, you know, our final status quo, which is great, but I think COVID kind of allowed folks to see kind of see through that. Our job is, you know, often the world that we live in the chamber world, the economic development agencies are here, and the chambers are here, or the community development is here. And chambers is always below it. And so my big thing is like, look, when we get talked about in the community, I want people to know that, like, look, we’re on the cutting edge, we’re doing things differently. And that, you know, we’re doing what’s best for the community. So people be persistent and be consistent and just have fun. That’s the big thing is, I’ve been here for three and a half years. And you know, early on, we’ll see I’ll Bryce you’re gonna burn out, you’re gonna do this. It’s like, yeah, there’s some days on central office. And I’m like, this sucks. But you know, I would say it’s not, it’s not hard work, it’s a lot of work, just power through. And if you set yourself up, put your bets out there. You know, like, look, I gotta do this, this, this, and this to get where I need to go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:28
I’d love the honesty of some days. It just sucks. Yeah. Gotta move forward, you have a bigger picture of why you’re doing it. And I love the idea of consistent being consistent being persistent. And there’s so much value in that. And it leverages a lot of power if you’re consistent and persistent on pursuing those goals and, and the potential of your organization. So as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers and their potential or their purpose going forward?

Bryce Riggs 34:01
Yeah, I would say, you know, that really, the big thing is, again, that that personal touch. I think if you two things I find is that shortfalls with the Chamber World Industries, people run their nonprofit, like a nonprofit, I say I run my organization, like it’s a business because it’s a business and you got to invest in your people invest in your marketing, you have to invest in everything, right. I remember my first year I started and we didn’t have you know, anybody at all, but here I am, like, look, we’re ordering, you know, 5000 folders for new members because guess what, we’re gonna we’re gonna go out there, we’re going to spread the word and we’re going to tell people what we got going on. I think that’s the thing is don’t you know, you know, don’t the day you stop investing in marketing this day, you stop investing in your peoples that day that you know, things are on the decline. You need to keep doing that. And I say that really the big thing as well as getting into that personal touch. You know, You gotta stand out a lot of organizations are in need United Way’s you name it right that a lot of Salvation Army’s, they need money and you’re you know, to say that we’re on the same playing field as them but sometimes we are as chambers. And so we do things such as you know, every Christmas card we do holiday cards we send out, we send to all our members home addresses, because again, it’s you could send a Christmas card or holiday card to their their business. But it’s great, you know, it’s that the business relationship, we’re trying to get the next thing. So I just say, you know, if you’re consistent persistent with that personal touch and approach, that’s why the Chamber’s gone is that, you know, we got to stay competitive in the marketplace in terms of funding domestic competitive for, you know, even like the tourism side of things, right? We pick, we have that arm of us. And that makes us more competitive, because we can offer a different service than maybe another chamber couldn’t. So sometimes in communities, that tourism site opens up. And that, you know, huge opportunity to get those dollars, go out there, go put yourself out there and really go for it. You might have to hire another staff member to get those dollars. But the more things you can add, and the more things you can do to be a resource to the community, I think that’s where we’re going is that you’re going to find only a few organizations are going to do the key things in the community. And you got to be willing to change and adapt to it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:25
I think that’s an interesting twist you had mentioned with the the Christmas cards to send them to their home address. So you’re obviously collecting that information when they join the chamber? Or do you ever get any pushback and somebody’s like, I don’t want to give a home address. And this is about business organization.

Bryce Riggs 36:42
This is why I tell you that I’m a little creepy. So three years ago, I started I started doing white pages. And I started an honors office and I started going through and finding things and I’ll be honest with you, if we don’t ask them for their home address. It’s you know, that’s available on the internet, you can do that. This last year. We just said December, was sent last Thursday, our cards went out and got people’s addresses on Saturday. Most of them did. But for us, it’s like look like I bought look at that information. It’s a nice surprise. People are like, Oh, I never gave them that address. But it’s together that touch. So

Brandon Burton 37:22
then are you putting it in your membership software with their accounts. So the next year, it’s got

Bryce Riggs 37:26
its color Christmas card address, it’s a separate one. So okay, it just moved to gross within the last year. So with that we’re making the adjustments and add ons, but I’ve spent many long hours doing that from finding information to some people might be, you know, meaningless. But I come in late at night, and I just kind of churn and burn until I get thrown. But it’s important because again, people come to us and say, Hey, I have your card in my house. That’s really nice. And we’re always first card. And it’s all we go to their house. So it’s always important and

Brandon Burton 38:00
awesome. I love that touch. Well, Bryce, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect about some of these approaches or how you guys are doing things there at the Seneca Regional Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Bryce Riggs 38:17
Yeah, go ahead and call my cell phones 419-889-3932 And that’s my cell phone. Just reach out to me. We weren’t happy to share information about you know what we have going on or you can reach out to me and briggs@Senecaregionalchamber.com and shoot me an email but I you know, there’s a lot of different folks that I’ve met along the way. I do a monthly zoom with people across the country, their chamber professionals because like, look, you know, the day you think you’ve figured it out, as you know, that uh, you run your nonprofit, like a nonprofit is the day to day, life becomes a lot more difficult for you.

Brandon Burton 39:00
Yeah, for sure. But we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode too. So people can can look it up and reach out and touch base with you and learn more. But I appreciate you spending some time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I love hearing these stories of you know, you get a fresh approach and an organization and throw some fuel on the fire and watch it burn. You guys are doing an awesome job. So keep that momentum keep that consistency and persistence. And I think there’s going to be even bigger numbers. Yeah, a year from now or two years from now. So I appreciate you sharing these insights and experiences with us today.

Brandon Burton 39:25
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.