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Category: Economic Development

Clean Energy & Chambers with Ryan Evans

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

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

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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Ryan Evans. Ryan joined the Chamber for Innovation and Clean Energy in March 2019 and serves as the executive director. Prior to being named Executive Director Ryan was a member of CICS National Advisory Board for six years. Previously, Ryan served as president of the Utah Solar Energy Association for three years, which is a trade association he co founded was an executive for 13 years with the Salt Lake Chamber, which is one of the largest chambers of commerce in the country, and served as the Executive Administrator for the Utah State Chamber of Commerce. Ryan is a recognized leader and regional speaker both locally and nationally on renewable energy policy and economic impacts of air quality community engagement and relationship building. Ryan is an IOM graduate, and now serves on the US Chambers National Board of Trustees. Ryan attended the University of Vermont and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Utah. Ryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ryan Evans 3:12
Thank you, Brandon, appreciate the opportunity to be on the chamber chat podcast. Listen to you a bunch of times. And this is great to actually be able to speak with you and speak with the Chamber Champions listening in today. Something fun for me, I guess, in terms of interest for me, I’ve been in the chamber and association industry for just over 20 years now. It’s kind of crazy how that journey started. I was an entrepreneur. Prior to being in the chamber industry, I own my own restaurant, I was a trained chef at one point when that when I left that partnership as a lot of restaurants don’t, you know, have the tendency to fail. I was one of those. One of those cases, started looking for a job that would maybe help given or maybe work given my managerial background, but not something that actually I didn’t want to start from scratch again. So I started looking for sales positions, knowing that at least that way, if I worked hard, I could make money. And sure enough, the Salt Lake chamber was hiring at the time. And little did I know that that would lead to a 20 year career after starting they’re making $13,000 An hour plus or $13,000.

Brandon Burton 4:18
Are they still hiring? Let me sign up

Ryan Evans 4:22
1000 a year plus commissions and I made it work pretty good. But yeah, 30,000 hour would be one heck of an opportunity. That’s right. So I know that that all steamrolled into, you know getting into clean energy and eventually this role here where I get to meld both the clean energy world and the Chamber history that I have, and it’s a great relationship. So it’s been great. Absolutely. It’s

Brandon Burton 4:44
like your background has been perfect for this union to bring into the chambers for innovation to clean energy very much. So speaking to that, tell us a little bit about the chambers of the chambers for innovation, clean energy, just kind of The size, the scope of work staff, just give us some perspective of where you’re coming from, with the organization to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Absolutely, thank

Ryan Evans 5:10
you. So chambers renovation and clean energy as we affectionately like to call it, CIC II, as you alluded to Brandon, we are a national network of about 1300 chambers and economic development associations across the country, doesn’t mean we work with every single one of those every single year. But those are the groups that we stay in touch with quite a bit that we work with. Our whole role is to help advance the clean energy economy, at chambers innovation in clean energy, we’re not an environmental group, we’re not anti anything, we are strictly clean energy experts, and help to look to educate chambers on how they can capitalize on this growing segment of our economy, how they can be better involved in promoting good clean energy policy, how they can what what they need to know, to better understand the technology that exists and how to get past a lot of the misinformation that’s out there, whether Pro or negative regarding clean energy, we do a lot of best practice sharing of what chambers are doing across the country. And then we’ll get in and we’ll even advise chambers on particular public policy issues at the state or local level that they may be experiencing. firsthand. So again, we you know, our whole role is to work with chambers. And we do that for free. We have funding in place that allows us to work with any chamber anywhere. Typically, I mentioned 1300. But typically we work with we try to work in about seven or eight priority states at one time. And he states where we spend a little extra time, given that they’ve got more opportunity for clean energy or more challenges being presented for clean energy. And so we sort of rotate that out on on any given year. But as of right now, the states where we spend most of our time are Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina, Virginia, and in some work in the Northeast as

Brandon Burton 7:04
well. All right, well, that definitely helps give some perspective as to the kind of work you’re involved with and the the approach you take with some of the these chambers and 1300 chambers that you work with. As we focus our discussion today. I’m kind of halfway joking. But when I say we’re going to talk about clean energy and chambers, even if they don’t think that it matters or something that they care about at the moment, we’ll talk about why it does matter. And how your local chamber can get involved, why you should be involved, what opportunities are out there. And we’ll dive into this discussion much deeper as soon as you get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:33
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Brandon Burton 10:27
All right, Ryan, we’re back. So as I alluded to, before the break, today, we’re diving into how chambers can get involved with with clean energy, why they should care, maybe that’s a good starting point, as far as why chamber should care about focusing on clean energy. And then you mentioned a couple items, you know, before the break is to, you know, the economic impact and things like that. But talk to us a little bit about why chambers should have clean energy on their radar and be intentional about trying to promote clean energy in their communities.

Ryan Evans 11:02
Sure, thank you. You know, honestly, this conversation would have been pretty different five years ago. But now, I think there’s no doubt that anybody, you know, nobody has a doubt that we are in the midst of an energy transformation in the United States of America and across the across the globe, really, we are, over the last several years, clean energy speed between solar and wind have been responsible for more than 90% of new electric generation built across the country. So in other words, we still have a lot of our electricity coming from natural gas, which is the number one on the fossil fuel side. And again, we’re not anti anything, we’re all of the above, we just truly know that the Clean Energy Economics will win out in the end, as natural gas started to actually overtake coal. Many years ago, when coal was the workhorse for electricity, then it became natural gas. And it still is natural gas. But now it’s really starting to shift towards more renewable energy sources. So that’s sort of number one is that we’re looking at the future of America being very much powered, whether it’s 100%, like some people think, or at least very high into the 80s, a 90%, by some sort of cleaner energy than we have now. So that’s a significant number one. Number two, your members care about their utility bills. That’s one of the highest costs of doing business in any state. So what is your electricity and heating bills look like? And where is that source of that pain point coming from? In most states, that’s still natural gas. And for a long time, natural gas was a great lower cost option for communities. Now, however, we’ve seen, especially in the last two years, the fluctuation within the volatility of natural gas pricing. So a lot of corporations are really being attracted to the fact that solar and wind are now the cheapest form of electricity you can get. And when you enter into a contract for these corporations that again, are members of chambers all over the country, they’re locking into those price points that they sign these contracts for, for anywhere from 20 to 35 years. So there’s absolute predictability in their electrical costs going forward, at least for that segment that they’re getting from clean energy. The other factor that I’ll mention is it just brings it back to home wherever you are, there are clean energy jobs being created on a regular basis. There are more people in employed in the solar industry alone than all of fossil fuel industries combined. That’s just solar. That’s not wind, that’s not electric vehicles. That’s not batteries and energy storage, and energy efficiency. So clean energy is a job creator, like no other. And then it brings home capital investment, it brings home economic opportunities and tax revenues for communities. So there are lots of reasons why chambers should engage or at least be interested, and at the very least be willing to provide good information to their communities, because there’s just there’s a lot to it. And a lot of voices get heard. And I think it’s given the amount of opportunity and challenges there are, it’s just important to at least be a good provider of information for your members and your community as a whole.

Brandon Burton 14:32
Right. So it’s been a couple of years ago now but our electric provider, I’m in Texas in our electric provider, we’re part of a co op and each year they do a brisket dinner, you know so we can go and as a member of the Co Op, they provide the brisket dinner, they do a little dog and pony show about the work they’re doing and at this particular dinner I was at they put up on the slideshow, this solar farm that they had and like, Wait, that’s like, right around the corner from my house. And I had no idea that the solar farm was there. And sure enough, I’m pulling up the Google satellite images, and it’s, you know, probably a mile from my house, and had no idea. But if it was a natural gas plant or something else, like, other things would definitely stand out, and you would notice, but um, just the clean energy can make such an impact in a community without being, you know, super noticeable. But so I think that our Electric Co Op did a good job of explaining that. But as far as the chamber goes, he said, you know, most importantly, even if it’s just sharing, you know, accurate good information with their community with their members. Obviously, we can point them to you to your organization to get some that that good information to share. But as the chamber looks to get involved and say, Yeah, this is important that we create jobs in clean energy, because that’s where the future is going. Or it’s important for us to help lower those utility rates for our member businesses, and for just our community in general to be able to thrive more and have more discretionary income, all these different points that you touched on the job creation. If a chamber wanted to get involved, where do they start with being able to try to move the ball try to move the needle, so to speak in their community?

Ryan Evans 16:27
There’s, there’s quite a few places you can start. And actually, I want to jump back really quick if it’s okay, Brandon, and just common, Texas, just because you brought up Texas and you brought up two things that I’m pretty passionate about. One is realistically, most solar installations you don’t notice. So you’re absolutely right, there’s a lot of misinformation that they’re obstructive that they’re an eyesore. But yet, most times people have no idea that they’re within a mile or two of their home, because they have that low profile, and you can put up trees around them, you can put up shrubs and bushes around them. So I appreciate and love the fact that you didn’t even notice not necessarily. But then also just on Texas really quick. It’s Texas is one of my favorite stories to tell because even though they have been traditionally one of the the number one oil and gas state in the country, and they are known as an oil and gas state and Houston particular huge oil and gas market, right. Yet, Texas is the number two state in the nation for most solar installations in terms of size of those installations combined. And number one, as far as wind, this is a state that truly embraces the all of the above energy form, you know, mentality in an incredible way. And, you know, chambers, like the Greater Houston partnership, for example, are all in on this all of the above factor and even looking at new technologies like carbon capture, and all these other great things that we see out there. So I just want to throw my you know, throw a shout out for taxes just in terms of, you know, that typical state that has learned that they don’t have to just be dependent on that fossil fuel economy that there is this huge other opportunity out there for the state and for electrical ratepayers and whatnot.

Brandon Burton 18:07
I will say if you ever drive between Abilene and San Angelo, you will see the wind. As far as your eye can see, you will see windmills. So

Ryan Evans 18:16
yeah, there’s a lot of places around the country that are like that, where you just see them. But a lot of cases, there’s really not much else there. So they may as well, Saturday. Right, right. And you know, as far as how you get involved, there’s lots of ways number one, I guarantee that almost every single chamber in the country has some sort of clean energy industry a company within their membership, it may not be a solar installer, it may not be a manufacturer of solar or wind turbine parts. But it might be somebody who supplies workforce to that it might be a company that is a fencing company that puts up temporary fencing around renewable energy installations as they’re going up. So there’s, it’s incredible the supply chain that exists out into the clean energy world. So one, look at your own membership and see who’s there and see what the important issues are to talk to your utility. I always recommend you, you know, work with your utility on clean energy, because ultimately, they’re going to be the one that does a lot of it outside of the private companies that develop. But don’t also take the utilities word for it completely ask questions, look for what might be the best opportunities for your entire region and start a business Coalition for you know, that looks at sustainability and clean energy by starting a committee like that. It’s amazing what you’ll learn from your members in terms of what they’re doing to either procure clean energy on their own or through the utility, what they’re doing internally to improve their emissions outcomes so they’re more sustainable. It’s it’s pretty impressive to see what businesses do and it’s one great thing chambers can do is promote what their businesses are doing. Proactiv basis as well, that’s that’s just a great thing. Another thing that you can do, if you want to get involved is reach out to us, of course, I’m not going to give a sales pitch there. But that’s what we do. If there’s, you know, we’re happy to chat with any chamber anywhere all the time, just to say, hey, here’s the hotspots that we see, maybe this is a chance for you to engage. And lastly, look in your state for some sort of a state level clean energy or solar industry association. So prior to, as you mentioned, in the my introduction, I was the president and founder of the Utah solar industry association, we worked with chambers all across the state, trying to help educate them on solar policy and clean energy policy and how they can help protect the jobs that, you know, we’re being built by this industry within the state. So look to those associations and bring them as partners or ask them to be members, so they can kind of make sure your members are informed on the hot topics of the day regarding the clean energy industries. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:58
So I don’t mean to keep going back to stuff to this example, in Texas. So chambers are known for being conveners, right. And as I see a lot of this land, like with these wind farms that we’re talking about, not only are they wind farms, but they have their oil rigs that are going, they have their cattle that are grazing on the fields. And so they’ve got multiple streams of income using this land that’s very agricultural based. And if a chamber can see and recognize these opportunities, be that convener to make some introductions to help introduce some of these clean energy capabilities. On to that, that rancher or that person who has an oil rig set up or whatever it may be, I mean, we’re talking things that are very hyper focused in Texas, for sure. But other parts of the country, the land may be used for something else, but it could also be used, in addition to for wind or solar. So that convener make those introductions. Yeah,

Ryan Evans 21:58
no, that’s a great point number one. Yeah. So always and chamber should know this. And they do know this. And mean, chambers are conveners of the voice of business, the, you know, the, they’re the convener of the business communities, and realistically for their whole community. So there is an opportunity just to talk to people about what is possible. And yeah, in Texas, you will often see wind turbines right next to oil rigs, and maybe cattle grazing as well. In Ohio, you may see a solar installation, where, you know, maybe 5%, of a generational farm is being utilized for solar energy along with 5% of another farm nearby them and 10% of another farm nearby them. But those, that five or 10% of the farm property is actually giving annual revenue anywhere from 100,000 to $300,000. A year to those farm owners. And a lot of cases, it’s helping keep farmland in a family name and helping them not to have to sell it off, or because it’s a lease arrangement, or even turn some other land into a subdivision for homes. I mean, that’s, that’s just and once you put homes in that property’s gone with a solar installation for, you know, for example, in a rural farming community, typically those panels have been in the ground for, you know, 30 to 35 years, but at the same time, like you say, you’re farming on the rest of your property, you can still do some agriculture underneath the solar panels. And a lot of case you can still graze animals like sheep throughout an entire solar area. So yeah, there are lots of other ways that you can promote the land and utilize the land for economic or just community benefit.

Brandon Burton 23:40
Right. And from the farmer perspective, I say, you know, there’s a lot of government subsidies for farmers to either not grow a crop or to grow, you know, more, you know, mono cropping, you know, which has its own issues. So to be able to introduce another stream of income for these farmers could really help them actually farm what they need to and want to farm versus what the government’s paying them to do. And it gives them a lot more freedom. Absolutely. And

Ryan Evans 24:07
if you get farmer start on this, a lot of them are going to tell you, this is a property rights thing. If I want to put solar on my farm, I want to put solar on my farm, and they get pretty passionate about it speak out in lots of different state houses across the country on their property rights. And it’s don’t get in the middle of a farmer and their property rights. I’ll tell you that much right now.

Brandon Burton 24:25
That’s right. So for chambers that are listening, I’d like to hear maybe a an innovative example or two where you’ve seen whether it’s a chamber stepping into introduce clean energy policy or just implementation of some sort. What are some of these innovative things that you’ve seen across the country as as people try to lean more heavily into clean energy? Yeah,

Ryan Evans 24:52
there’s, I don’t know if I can go to innovative on how chambers participate, but I can give some really Good examples of how chambers have engaged. Okay. Oh. And that’s it’s just sometimes tough because chambers are generalists for the most part, right, they need to know a lot about a lot of different industries. And so sometimes it’s really hard to dig really far into one particular topic or subject matter. But you know, in the case of chambers, one thing that we are always encouraged by is when we see coalitions of chambers that stand up for clean energy. So we’ve seen it in Ohio, when Chambers as a collective whole, all stood up and spoke out against negative anti renewable energy legislation a few years ago, in the Northeast, and now in the southeast, we’re seeing a lot of rallying by chambers to support the possibility of offshore wind development, off the coast of the East Coast. And we’re beginning to see a little bit of that in the, in the south er, in the in the south, and in the West, and the Gulf Coast and off in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, and Oregon and Washington. So we see a lot of this convening and working together. We’ve seen everything from electric vehicle ride and drive and demonstrations, to clean energy industry, hosted forums and conferences, all around renewable energy and sustainability. We’ve seen energy tours. So in Utah, where I used to live, the Salt Lake chamber had few years in a row had done energy tours, where they took their members out to various energy installations. And one of them was all about clean energy, taking them to wind taken to a solar farm, etc, etc. In and, you know, clean energy, sort of a broad topic, but, and even just a couple of weeks now, the St. Pete chamber in Florida is doing a sustainability and resilience tour, they’re going to take some of their members down to see how, amongst other things, clean energy benefited certain areas to keep the lights on, as well as other resilience efforts from some of the other communities that they can bring back to St. Pete to learn from so that they are a more resilient, more resilient community for future storms. So lots of different ways that chambers have been engaged, whether it’s op eds, whether it’s events, or just, you know, fighting for good policy at a state house or the federal level.

Brandon Burton 27:29
Very good. Those are all really good examples and ways that chambers can definitely get involved. So this question may be coming from left field for you. And if you don’t want to answer it, we can edit it out. How have you seen any integration with with Bitcoin miners? And no, there’s been a lot of talk about the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining. And then Bitcoin miners trying to make the argument with clean energy and using some of these resources to offset some of those carbon emissions and whatnot. I’ll be

Ryan Evans 28:09
honest, you may want to edit this out, I don’t know Brandon, I can give a little editorial on that. It’s, it’s a tough sell, because it is high high energy usage. So we, however, did see you know, in for a little bit in Miami, we started talking about it because the local government in Miami was really trying hard to attract some Bitcoin industry there. But that energy usage was really tough, because, you know, Florida can only expand so much in terms of their energy development, their energy usage, etc. And, you know, one of the selling factors was they have such a huge nuclear, new as nuclear energy is such a huge part of their overall energy resources. And, you know, the Bitcoin it was trying to sell that, but all of that energy was already being utilized for something else. So all of this would have just been, they would have had to develop new energy. And at that point, you’ve for the most part, it’s going to make sense to build solar. So I think in general, when it comes to Bitcoin, it’s great. There is an opportunity there, but it should not be done trying to sell it as utilizing existing resources. I think in a lot of ways. If you are going to law and try to get some bitcoin manufacturing and mining going on in your communities, you really do need to look at how are we going to provide new generation to, to supply that particular operation? Yeah. All right. Well,

Brandon Burton 29:40
we’ll we’ll see what we do with that. So I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, if there’s any tips or action items that you’d be willing to share with those listening, if they wanted to maybe get involved more with clean energy in their communities or We’re maybe something totally off topic, but for these chambers who want to take their organization up to the next level, what would you offer for them?

Ryan Evans 30:07
Thank you. Yeah, I’ve got a few things. So number one, if not every chamber is engaged in advocacy. And I understand that, at the very minimum, though Chambers as the voice of business and conveners in their community should look to be a good source of reliable information. And much like a lot of other things in the world, there’s so much misinformation put out in the world about clean energy. There are so many groups that are not local, yet, they’ll bring in people from, you know, from far away to come in and fight renewable energy projects in small communities, and make it seem like this opposition is so loud, we call them NIMBY groups, so not my backyard groups. So if nothing else, I think it’s really important that chambers look to be sources of good third party reliable expert information. So that those that actually live in the community can, you know, can really look at the facts and say, We want to make a good informed decision. So that’s, that’s sort of number one. Another just sort of tip and maybe a tidbit that I want to throw out there. There is, you know, chambers by nature tend to really love bipartisan policy. That’s sort of how we work right, we bring people together so that we can find the common ground, what’s best for the business community, what’s best for an economy, an advocate for that, whether it’s coming from the AR side, or the D side, it doesn’t really matter, we try to find the best possible policy for business businesses in our state. You know, and we certainly saw a really good example of that in the bipartisan infrastructure package that was passed two years ago, phenomenal is twice something 20 years in the making, it’s something we should all be proud of in the chamber industry that we’ve all fought for it. And that’s going to lead to everything from bridges and roads, but also to transmission lines for more utilities, for more electric vehicle charging infrastructure out there in the world as we make this transition. So there’s lots of clean energy angles on that. But the tidbit that I want to share that, yeah, I built it up to get to it. There was, you know, not a lot of chambers love the fact that the inflation Reduction Act was passed on a partisan basis. And I understand that, and I completely agree, this is a tidbit that I think is really important for people to understand. If you take away all of the other aspects of the inflation Reduction Act, and only look at the clean energy provisions within that which, you know, amounted to about a $379 billion package way, way less than what that quote unquote, green New Deal was being presented as many many years ago. But that particular legislation, just the clean energy provisions, almost every single major component of that policy has a history of bipartisan support. And a and a lot of them have a proven return on investment for that type of state tax incentive. As a lot of people say that inflation Reduction Act is really carrot heavy, and very stick light, meaning it’s all about the incentives trying to you know, trying to drive innovation and spur this new aspect to our economy, rather than penalizing and putting out more regulatory efforts that none of us really like to see in the world. So again, just I think it’s really important that something that I’ve been very passionate about is saying, if you just take out those clean energy aspects, you will see that so many of them either had bipartisan support, or suggested by and promoted by Republicans versus the Democrats that voted for the package. So really just go beyond the talking points of partisan and say, Ah, actually, there’s some really great stuff in here that’s proven value, and has proven to be supported by both sides of the aisle and people across the country.

Brandon Burton 33:56
Right. I appreciate you sharing the tips and tidbits with us there. As we look to the future of chambers, and I see a lot of the work you’re doing is future leaning. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers in their purpose going forward?

Ryan Evans 34:15
I think chambers have a more important role now than they’ve ever had before. We’ve, you know, been building up the chamber industry for 100 years, you know, over the last 10 years, I think they’ve gotten more and more influential. Really, there’s so much within the industry that’s really looking to lift up chambers, whether it’s a rural chamber, a State Chamber, a Regional Chamber, whatever it may be. But I think now is maybe more important a time than ever, because there is so much that at least that I see legislation that tends to move from state to state and Statehouse to statehouse and so it’s an opportunity not only to really stand up for your business community and those things in your state or your region that you see as important to your quality of life. But it’s, you know, it’s really this chance to look and say, Hey, what’s happening over in this state? And is that going to come to my state? Because chances are these days it is. And I bring up things in my own mind when I say this, but things like dei policies, so you know, something that the Chamber world has been super passionate about, and very much engaged in terms of advocating for more dei within their communities within their businesses and building up certification programs around Dei. Yet, in a lot of states, we’re starting to see anti from various administrations and now maybe state houses of the legislature, we’re starting to see sort of pushback on that dei work. And it’s, you know, this isn’t even in the world of clean energy for me, but it’s really important to chambers, and therefore, it’s sort of just a good example of things to look for, that you can learn from other states, what they’ve already gone through and say, Hey, is there a good chance that’s going to come to my state? And how do I either fight it off or engage it depending upon what the policy might be? How do we best represent the business community, rather than being caught off guard, let’s make sure that we’ve got our best arguments upfront and ready to go to help be, you know, again, that longtime voice of business for our community and represent our members the best we can. I

Brandon Burton 36:27
love that perspective. And that’s really one of the greatest opportunities of living in the United States is you’re able to look at other states and the models that they do and, you know, be in these individual laboratories and saying, This is what worked well there. And this is didn’t you know, and as we apply it in our communities in our state, this is why it could be good, or why it would be a disaster and really be able to make a good argument based on facts and data. So I think that’s a great perspective. Well, Ryan, this has been a for me at least, it’s been a fun conversation. It’s been an eye opening conversation, I’m sure for many, but for any listeners who wanted to reach out and connect with you to learn more about what the Chamber’s been have raised innovation and clean energy can do and, and how you can maybe work with them, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? hit

Ryan Evans 37:16
our website, which is ChambersforInnovation.com. Feel free to email me directly my email is revans@chambersforinnovation.com. More than happy to chat with anyone, whether it’s just a question, you want to do more, you’ve got something that you’re just not sure about whatever the case, the issue may be, and again, this can be anything from electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging, to offshore wind supply chain to solar and wind, whatever it is, if we don’t know the answer within our team, we certainly can point you in the right direction to some some great experts out there in the world, that can be a really good news resource for you.

Brandon Burton 37:57
That’s awesome. I will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well. So people can pull that up and get in contact with you. But it’s been great to have you on the podcast. Ryan, I appreciate you setting aside some time and and to share some of these insights with the Chamber champions that listen and to really help sharpen their focus on why focus on clean energy in their communities is important. So thank you for being with us today.

Ryan Evans 38:22
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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.

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Economic Mobility with Beth Rhinehart

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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 Beth Rhinehart. Beth is the president and CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce serving both Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. The Bristol Tennessee and Virginia Chamber is a five star accredited organization and has been a leader in economic advocacy since 1909. Prior to joining the chamber in 2015, Beth spent the previous 10 years as Director of Government Relations for wellmont health systems, building key relationships and oversight overseeing Virginia legislative processes as they applied to hospitals and health care. Beth currently serves on the boards for several or local organizations, also including the Virginia Association Chamber of Commerce executives. Beth is a native of Bristol, Virginia, and earned her BS degree from Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Masters of Arts in Teaching and Masters of Science in Counseling degrees from John Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and an MBA from King’s College in Bristol, Tennessee. She’s a 2010 graduate of the Sorenson Institute political leadership program and earned her IOM certification in 2018. She is currently a fellow of the ACCE foundation economic mobility cohort. She completed a fellowship in the ACCE education and talent development division in 2019. And recently completed a business leads fellowship with the US Chamber of Commerce in 2022. She’s a member of the US Chamber of Commerce distinguished committee of 100. And she recently earned her CCE being one of only 172 nationwide out of over 7000 chambers of commerce. Beth, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Beth Rhinehart 3:53
Good morning, Brandon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. The chamber world is an amazing world to work in and to find so many collaborative partners to work alongside. So it’s always an honor anytime we can work together. And this is a great platform to be able to do that.

Probably some that would say probably of most interest would be that have no background and what people would most often think of as a chamber leader. I don’t think any of us wake up or grow up thinking I’m gonna be president of a chamber one day, it’s not one of those sought after careers that most people even don’t always know what a chamber does. So it’s one of those evolution careers in my opinion, where I think the toolkit that you develop and the skills and relationships you build throughout your life lead you along this path and I encourage anybody who’s not a chamber employee to always consider that the the opportunities The exposure, the growth that you experience, because of all the places you touch, as a chamber organization, I highly encourage anybody to consider that.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Yeah, absolutely. So I know, you know, there’s some chamber leaders out there where you can look at him and say, Man, they were really born to be a chamber leader, you know, chamber executive or CEO. And I, and that may be the case, but usually it isn’t evolution and you kind of grow into it. So you might have been born for it, but you still have to grow into it. So good point well taken. Why don’t you share with us a little bit about the Bristol chamber. In your bio, we shared the uniqueness of you covering Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. So kind of having that literal border through your community. But um, tell us more about the chamber size staff budget scope of work, just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

Beth Rhinehart 5:53
Absolutely. So we are 114 years old this year, we were established in May of 1909. We our five star credited chamber, which we’re extremely proud of. If anyone’s gone through an accreditation process, you know how challenging and grueling that can be, but it’s certainly worth every minute of time you put into it. We’re the oldest accredited chamber in Tennessee and the second oldest in Virginia, we we serve to one community, we say it’s one Bristol, but across two state lines. So our downtown historic Main Street, which is called State Street, the yellow lines that run down the center of our community, that’s the actual state line. So businesses on one side, you can be eating in a restaurant on State Street looking at folks in our restaurant or bar on the other side of the street, and they’re in a different state. So pretty unique opportunity that has its challenges for sure. You can imagine we have two local governments to fire departments, to school systems, to police stations, all of the above. So as a chamber, we often become that convener and facilitator for issues that impact the entire community, whether it’s the community at large or our business members. But we you know, that convening role, and the collaborative nature that we bring is critically important, I think, for all chambers, but especially for a community like ours. We have our budgets around one and a quarter million if you include our foundation side. So we have our chamber side of the house, we also have a foundation that owns our facility, but also houses, our leadership and education programs to name just a few. We have seven full time staff and have about 525. Members. All

Brandon Burton 7:49
right. So I’m I’m curious, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked into it to see how many cities there are across the country where there’s literally have the state line going through the middle of the city? Have you ever looked into that? Or is Bristol one of a kind? And I think

Beth Rhinehart 8:04
we’re I think we are one of a kind in the respect that our our remain thoroughfare and our historic downtown that those center lines are the state line. I know there. Are there plenty of border communities and, for example, St. Louis and others that, you know, you you have on both sides of a state line. But I think for us that downtown uniqueness is unique to us.

Brandon Burton 8:32
Yeah, absolutely. It is very unique and intriguing. Just to see how that works with like you said, having to local governments and to fire departments and police it, it just is very interesting to say the least. I would

Beth Rhinehart 8:47
if I could add one quick thing. You know, talking about how times we’re doing COVID, which I hate going back to again, but I think it speaks to the uniqueness here. We had two governors, one in Virginia, one in Tennessee, who approached those safety measures and closures very differently. And so for our downtown and our business community that was very disruptive. And so we played a large role in in helping make sure that everyone could continue to be successful and thrive. When you’re looking out your window at somebody else who’s open till two in the morning and serving customers and their cash registers are ringing when you’re shut down. So it brings about some interesting dynamics.

Brandon Burton 9:33
Yeah, well, it puts you in a tough spot as a chamber leader to at trying to advocate for those businesses with two different governors and two different approaches, but definitely some choppy waters to navigate. So as we get ready to kind of dive into our topic for conversation today, we decided to focus our discussion around economic mobility And I know you guys were recently awarded a grant from ACCE to focus work around economic mobility. And I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 12:05
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Brandon Burton 12:53
All right, Beth, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around economic mobility. And maybe before we get too deep into the conversation, I know there’s a lot of newcomers into the chamber world and specifically chamber staff who are listening. When we talk about economic mobility, what does that mean to you? What what is that covering in that scope of work before we go down that path and the discussion

Beth Rhinehart 13:21
started laying and my you know, very high level definition of that would be it’s allowing and supporting and finding ways to promote folks to greater, greater sustainability but personally, professionally for, you know, life stability, it’s it’s, for example, if you have low income workers who by by their own situational background and current situation, need to find a better way to sustain themselves and their families. economic mobility means that you’re supporting them moving from what I’ll call, not necessarily instability, but maybe a point that’s not sustainable to a point of greater grounding and funding and sense of self to where they’re able to live in a manner that that’s the quality of life for them and their families. Right.

Brandon Burton 14:26
So maybe tell us a little bit about the the application process for this grant that I mentioned, you guys were awarded from ACCE and kind of what went into that and know the the work is specifically around low income earners in the community. But what went into that application process and ultimately qualifying you for the grant.

Beth Rhinehart 14:48
Certainly. So a lot of the work that went into this was talking about what we do here from the chamber and in partnership with some Any new work in this field, because as we know, we don’t do this alone. We are a collaborator and a convener. And so we look to really partnering with a lot of folks, especially being that we serve two different states through the bristal lens. So I think it’s really working to find the data that’s available. So we had to do a lot of data mining to find, you know, what’s the average and median salaries, what programs are currently in existence? What are we doing as a chamber to really help folks find the skills they need to maybe to build that pipeline, find opportunities for people to upskill or rescale, and move to different jobs, what jobs are currently available in your community where the skills gaps needed to be supported? So a lot of the work was research and collaboration and finding who those best partners would be to help us throughout this grant process. So writing the grant, of course, describing all the demographics of our community in our greater region, and then goal setting for, you know, are we going to get be able to get people across that finish line and how we’re going to do that? So

Brandon Burton 16:14
you had mentioned goal setting? How do you set goals around this objective of economic mobility? What are some of those key indicators and and benchmarks to show that you’re succeeding in this work?

Beth Rhinehart 16:27
Force? And you’re asking the toughest questions? That is, the toughest question to answer really is, how do you put a number on how many people you’re actually going to get across that finish line? And what defines whether you have been successful? Maybe you don’t fully cross the finish line? If that’s a benchmark, or, you know, how do you get people moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of those, those those key performance indicators for us, included, you know, how many students are we able to fully engage, and I’ll call it graduate from some cohort programs, for example, our manufacturers Excellence Program, which is a boot camp for high school students to go through in partnership with all of our manufacturers, where they end up with at the end of that program, exposure to the manufacturing jobs in this community. And also to have a toolkit of things, they might need to start on the job once they graduate, for example, steel toed shoes, protective eyewear, and ear protection, things like that. So I think that’s one of the ways we look at it and successfully completing programs, how many students have done that, for us, you know, the, the cohort that I ended up in the grant itself is broken into several subgroups, the subgroup that I am in is actually creating a community wide strategy for how our community collectively and collaboratively finds a solution and a path forward. And that was really important, I was really pleased to be able to end up in that group, because for us across that state line, that collaborative necessity, is really at the top of what we need to be working on. So

Brandon Burton 18:18
let’s talk strategy. You had mentioned working with students and exposing them to some of those manufacturing jobs. And I know that would play a part into that strategy. And you’ve mentioned these partnerships and collaboration. But as you approach this work, I mean, are you identifying the individuals that you’re going after to try to help improve quality of life? Or are you presenting the program that hopefully attracts them and draws them into it? How do you approach it? And what does it look like?

Beth Rhinehart 18:50
And great question. And, you know, if we if we go back to the foundation of the group that I’m in, it’s really to create the strategy. So we’re rather than creating specific programs, the identification of programs, and the implementation of those programs is part of this. But the most important goal of the committee or the cohort that I’m in, is truly creating a strategy for how we as a greater community and region define the pathways for folks to move through economic mobility. So the really the goal of the work we will be doing is identifying what programs currently exist. Where are the skills gaps, or the the gaps in the programming for example, for those who are all the players that need to be to the table? As I mentioned earlier, we don’t necessarily do all the work. We are often the facilitator and collaborator for those who do the frontline work, for example, community colleges and four year higher education institutions. As our K 12, our workforce investment boards, our economic developers, all the folks that that have an impact on the population that we’re trying to serve, I think our goal is to create a strategy that has a defined pathway from beginning to success.

Brandon Burton 20:19
So, at what point did you guys jump in with both feet, so to speak, in this work of economic mobility? Is it a newer venture is that something that’s been on your mind, and then you’ve got more gas to throw on the fire? How’s that developed?

Beth Rhinehart 20:38
It’s a little bit of both of those. And I will say that this grant and fellowship application, it was, it was the sweet sauce we’ve been looking for, because it really gives us a focused approach to doing that with the funding attached. And, you know, all of us are resource limited to some degree, you know, we know what work gets done is the work that’s funded. So to have this opportunity of funding by ascending through a CCS Foundation, was really, it couldn’t have come at a better time, we’ve been focusing for a long time in our community on looking at generational poverty that exists. And for our youth, you know, if you have a lot of, of youth in your community, who are third and fourth generation, poverty, situational, they may grow up in a family where they’ve never seen an adult get up and go to work during the day versus living on public assistance. So the key to that mentorship and showing students that pathway, showing our youth that there is a different way, and the value of that and then how to achieve that is critically important. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece, we work very closely with our United Way here, and and they’re very focused, as I know, United Way’s across the country, if you partner with them, they talk a lot about Alice, families, which are asset limited income constrained, employed. And that breaks down to a lot of families who are living at or below the poverty line, are in that ballpark anyway. And very often they are working two to three part time jobs, to try to pay their bills. And the stress that that creates on families, the the inability to afford childcare, that’s quality childcare, you know, access to a lot of the things health care insurance. When you live in that Alice population, there are many challenges to overcome. And the choices that those families have to make are not choices any of us would want to have to make. So that that population of folks who have a lot of those struggles are also a target for folks that we want to try to move to that at average or above salary, which for our community, means you’re able to sustain your family. So there are going to be a lot of different approaches we look at. And I have to you know, give a little disclaimer too. We just started this. So we’re literally fresh on the heels, we just got our award letter. And the last month we’ve had our first kickoff meeting, as a cohort, there’s 11 of us from around the country who were selected for this project. And so it was beautiful to be able to receive that letter and to know that we get to participate in this. So it is very fresh on the front lines of this. So we have a lot of work to do. And I don’t have a lot of the details of what this will look like at the end. But I can tell you that we’re committed and excited to get to work.

Brandon Burton 23:53
Yeah. Now I’d love the idea of helping to create a vision, especially with these youth that don’t have that example to look to of what their real potential can be in what they can do is you know, career and to be able to support a family instead of you know, living off of assistance, like you mentioned, but I see it right now in my own son, you know, he’s finishing his junior year right now, as is looking to college and everything and, and just some of the limiting factors in a vision that an individual youth has for themselves. There’s so you know, bias really on what they’ve seen. And they they’ve lived a short life up to that point. And if they haven’t been exposed to different opportunities or know that some of these opportunities exist, they’re going to be in that same rut as as some of their predecessors. It still blows me away. Sometimes when you hear somebody being a first generation college graduate and their family. I mean, it makes me smile every time I hear it, but it blows me away that you still hear it as often as you do, and helping to grow Right, that vision, I think is, is instrumental in helping people realize their potential and moving forward. So hopefully you guys have some innovative ways that you can roll that out as the program develops. I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody out there listening who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or strategy might you offer for them?

Beth Rhinehart 25:27
I think you know, for us here, I can speak to my experiences here. One is, make sure that you have an extremely engaged and supportive board. I am so blessed here to have that opportunity. You know, we have that doesn’t mean we always agree 100% on everything we’re working on. But I think having your board engaged to where they understand what you’re trying to do, they can provide that fiscal oversight and that strategic vision to help you move your organization forward. So you’re creating the greatest benefit and value to those members. I think that’s a really key part. And that there’s a lot of intentionality around that it’s there’s intentionality around having diversity around the board table. There’s intentionality around how you as a director of your organization, how you engage them. And I think building a very strong trusting relationship is critically important. I over tell if there is such a thing, I always make sure that my board members know more than they need to know really, if there is such a thing, so that they’re never blindsided, but that they know the good, the bad and the ugly, because that’s how we all get better in what we’re doing. And when you feel like you have to hide something, it never leads to a good place. So I would just encourage you, if you have challenging things you’re working on, bring your board and let them help you. Right,

Brandon Burton 26:56
you’d never want your board to be surprised by anything you’re doing. Yes. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Beth Rhinehart 27:12
I would say and it’s something we’ve worked really hard on, moving from the traditional membership model into a tiered investment model, I think is critical. And the reason it’s critical, it’s not just about those investment dollars, it’s really being very mission focused, and how you are delivering benefit and value to your members. So I encourage you, if you haven’t looked at that, please do. So there are so many folks in the chamber world who have gone through it or working on it. There are consultants that are great partners, to chambers, who can help you navigate that, but also lean on each other. There are a lot of people, as I say, who who are happy to share and really help all of us become better at the end of the day. I think that’s important. But I think, you know, another important piece is advocacy. I firmly believe that government relations, advocacy as a business leader, focused community is also one of the greatest values you can provide to your members into the larger community and region. I think folks need to know how to do that. They need to know what the pressing issues are, how to resolve those, and they need that connectivity to the elected members at your local state and federal levels to help you so I encourage you to look to those areas is really your greatest resources and I think value to membership. Absolutely,

Brandon Burton 28:40
I think those are two great. Oh, I’m gonna say tips. But it’s part of that vision of the future of chambers is to if you haven’t already explored the idea of going over to a tiered use model for your membership. There’s, there’s a lot of businesses out there who are willing to pay more than what they are being asked to with the traditional membership model, because they see the work that you’re doing in areas such as advocacy, and they see the value that you provide to the business community and really just community building in general and they want to be a part of it. So I would agree with that part of the vision and and really having a focus there. But that as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and connect with you and learn more about things you’re doing in Bristol or about the discussion that we covered today with economic mobility, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Beth Rhinehart 29:34
Of course and I welcome any outreach and hope that whatever we do here if it can be a value to anyone, my door is always open my phone is always available to be answered. So I’ve been blessed with a lot of people who have done that for me so my email is, brhinehart@bristolchamber.org and and my phone number is 423-989-4850 and our mailing address is 20 Volunteer Parkway, Bristol, Tennessee 37620. And more importantly, come and visit us we are door’s always open. We would love to have anyone if you’re ever traveling through our area please stop and say hello.

Brandon Burton 30:23
Absolutely and I will get that in our show notes for this episode so listeners can go and check it out and connect with you. But I appreciate you being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and putting out there your experience so far around economic mobility and and the the work you’re venturing into with it. I think it is such an important topic and for every community to really see those areas to really uplift and bring everybody to a higher level in their community as far as their living standards and economic status goes. So thank you for for sharing that with us and being with us on the podcast today.

Beth Rhinehart 30:59
Thank you for the opportunity. Love what you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 31:04

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.Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast? Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today.
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!

Keeping Local Dollars Local with Donna Novitsky

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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 Donovan ski Donna is the co founder of Yiftee Donna has combined her interests in local community building and her interests in high tech to co found nifty to bring profitable business to local shops and restaurants. Yiftee has grown to more than 500 communities now 15,500 merchants and helped to keep $45 million local to help small businesses just the last three years. Prior to giftee. Donna has led several startup companies and worked with top tier venture capital firm. She teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University and frequently speaks on topics related to entrepreneurship and women in business. Donna holds a BS and industrial engineering with distinction from Stanford University and a Harvard MBA. And Donna, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Donna Novitsky 3:05
Thanks, Brandon. And hello chamber champions. It is such a pleasure to be here. I’ve really enjoyed meeting many of you at the ACCE show and on zoom over the year, last few years. But let’s see something interesting about me. Well, I guess depending on how you count them, as As Brandon mentioned, I’ve been in tech. So Yiftee is my third or my 19th. Startup. out right. So I guess you could say I’m an entrepreneur at heart. My dad taught me that word when I was 12. And it kind of stuck. So I love starting new things and helping others do so too. So I end up doing a lot of coaching and mentoring of young people, which is super fun, because they’re always challenging me to learn new things.

Brandon Burton 3:58
Right now that is that is interesting. I like getting these little facts about people. And I’m sure we could dig in deeper on on how you count those businesses that you’re part of starting. Well, before we dive into our topic for today, why don’t you take a few minutes and just tell us a little bit about Yiftee what Yiftee is kind of the purpose the vision with it. And then we can dive in a little bit deeper on on how it all works.

Donna Novitsky 4:24
Okay, great. So we launched Yiftee over 10 years ago, and for the first five or six years, the business went through the typical startup rollercoaster. In 2018. We did the first what we now call community cards. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But then the pandemic hit in 2020. And many chambers were worried about losing all their small businesses and they were looking for ways to help their members and we happen to have a solution for that. So calm cards as We call them took off. And as bright as Brandon mentioned, were in more than 500 communities and 15,000 local businesses. So I guess you could say we got here with hard work, a lot of stubbornness and even more luck, because who would have predicted a pandemic? We’re a small team. We are 100% remote and our headquarters in the Bay Area. And we have teammates in California, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Florida and Puerto Rico. So we’re all over the place just like you guys.

Brandon Burton 5:35
Awesome. Now that definitely gives a good introduction to what Yiftee is, and I’m excited to get in a little deeper on it as we settled on our topic for this discussion. Today we are going to talk about keeping local dollars local. And as I mentioned in your bio, you guys have helped keep over $45 million local for small businesses and communities across the country. So I’m excited to dive in deeper on this learn how the program works and help tell chambers how they can help keep dollars local in their community as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 8:28
What if you could keep holiday shopping local this year? Launch a community card with Yiftee. And you can. Hi, I’m Raquel from Yiftee. Yiftee works with over 500 chambers, main streets, cities and downtown associations providing custom branded electronic gift cards that can only be redeemed at your local businesses. This program is free for you and your participating businesses. And if you sign up now, you’ll watch your local businesses thrive this holiday season. Email sales@yiftee.com to learn more, that’s sales@yiftee.com.

Brandon Burton 9:08
All right, Donna, we’re back. So tell us what with Yiftee How does it work? You’d mentioned these comm cards. So what is a comm card and how does it work and how does it lead to keeping dollars local?

Donna Novitsky 9:23
Okay, a comm card or community card. It’s a digital gift card and it is branded for a city town or neighborhood and can be redeemed exclusively at the local shops and restaurants in that area. So shout out to Spartanburg South Carolina chamber who was our very first chamber customer back in 2018. Followed by Lake Zurich, Illinois, Niles, Illinois and DeWitt, Iowa. If you’re out there thank you guys. Chambers often make the program a member benefit because they Control specifically which merchants can participate in it. It’s kind of like next generation chamber checks. But we do all the sales, customer service technology and financial management. And our chamber partner in each community promotes the program and recruits the merchants. So it’s a real partnership with the chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:23
So what does the recruitment look like as the chamber goes out to recruit businesses to participate in it? Is their marketing material that’s provided as their scripts is their coaching that goes along with it? What does that look like?

Donna Novitsky 10:36
Oh, that stuff. So in terms of getting the program up and running, we all they have to, there’s no cost. First of all, for the program, the chambers don’t have to pay anything. And the merchants don’t have to pay anything to participate. And it’s backed by MasterCard. So any merchant that takes MasterCard can participate in the program, and there’s no special equipment or integration with their POs that they need. So all they have to do is sign the agreement. And then we’ll have their portal set up within 24 hours. And we start sending lots of materials, there’s a four week launch program with lots of materials. So we’ll give you the copy to recruit an email to send an email message out to your members to invite them to the program. And then when you’re ready, we send what we call an activation card to the merchants, which is a 10 cent prepaid MasterCard, they process that they get the dime. And that registers their POS with us. And that’s how we limit the cards to be used exclusively at your members businesses. So we’re providing a lot of information along the way. Honest, to be honest, the long pole in the tent in terms of getting the program running is, is recruiting the merchants because they are just super busy. And you got to get their attention. So

Brandon Burton 12:05
Right. So in your experience over the years of launching these community card programs, is there an ideal time of year? Or does it depend on the community? Or how did how do you see the most successful timing maybe as far as rolling out a community card?

Donna Novitsky 12:22
Well, as you guys might know, gift cards are the number one requested holiday gift. So that means that your merchants are probably paying more attention to gift card programs at the holidays. So the ideal time to launch it takes about four weeks to launch in general, you can do it faster, but would be probably around September, October, because that’s when your merchants are starting to think about gift card programs. And you’ll it’ll be easier to get their attention. So we do six months worth of business in the month of December. So Oh, wow. By far the high point of the year for for the gift card business.

Brandon Burton 13:15
Yeah. So can you talk to us a little bit more about the digital gift, gift card aspect of it. So it’s a digital gift card in nature. So how does that work? Does it go on their phone? How do they do the transactions? How do they make the purchase? How does that? How’s that all of that structured?

Donna Novitsky 13:32
Right, so this is an all digital program. That’s how we can do it without any cost to the chambers or the merchants. So there’s no little plastic cards. The way that it works is people you’ll have a website where that we host for you, but it’s branded for your community, so you don’t even see it on that website. It’s all about your local community. And people you put a link on your chamber page, a button that says buy our community gift card, and go there to buy the gift card. And it’s just a really simple process that they go through to buy that card online. They can either send it to whoever they want to send it to through email, or they can print them out. So if they want it put it in somebody’s holiday stocking, they just print it out and put it in the in their holiday stocking. Then the recipient will get that either on a piece of paper or through email. And they take it into the shop. When it’s by eat if it’s on paper, they can also save it to their phone with a QR code. And they take it into the shop or the restaurant and show their phone to the say one of your merchants who is participating in the program. They will process that MasterCard, it’s a MasterCard so that merchants gonna process it like a like a phone order. So they would enter that the code from the MasterCard, MasterCard immediately validates that transaction And they know they’re gonna get paid in their normal nightly settlement with all the other credit card transactions from that day. And then the balance on the phone will change. So if you had a $25 card and you bought a cup of coffee, now your phone’s gonna say you have a gift card for $21. And I could go next door to the next shop and get my nails done or buy something in a boutique. So it’s multi use card, just like a MasterCard gift card, but it only works at your members stores.

Brandon Burton 15:31
Yeah. So I see, you know, similarly, I’ve got kids in high school, and every year that football team does their little, they do a fundraiser where they’re selling coupons to local businesses, and, and this year, they went digital with it. So it’s on your phone, you got to go show, if you go to the restaurant, it’s not nearly as high tech, you’re literally showing them the screen. And then they go manually enter it and it’s done. But I see this as being much more valuable in the fact of you have $1 amount that’s fixed with this gift card with this community gift card. And then you have your list of vendors that you can go spend it on whatever you want with any of these vendors, right, like you’re not limited to redeeming, you know, $5 off after a $25 purchase or anything like that. It’s not a confined it’s an actual cash on a card,

Donna Novitsky 16:23
right to build just like any other gift card, but it works at multiple different stores. And you know, until the money runs out on the card.

Brandon Burton 16:31
And then is all the list of vendors is that just kept up to date on the website, or is that within? How do the users of the gift card keep up to date on who’s participating? Yeah, we

Donna Novitsky 16:43
maintain that. So if a merchant if a new merchant joins your chamber and they and you want to add them to the program, they will automatically show up on the website once they run their activation card. And the all the people with cards out there in your community can just click on the card itself, scroll down and see all the participating merchants so it’s automatically updated.

Brandon Burton 17:07
Okay, so as a chamber rolls out a community card program, who are the typical people who are buying the gift cards and why?

Donna Novitsky 17:18
Well, that actually we had some surprises on that. So of course, when you think gift cards, do you think consumers so there’s a healthy chunk of consumer business of the people who buy cards, but also where a lot of our business comes from is bulk purchases. So again, if you have chamber checks, you know you sell a lot at the holidays from local businesses who buy them for their employees so they can keep their money in the community. Well, that has happened in spades with this program so schools will buy them for all the teachers in the school. Kent State University bought 10s of 1000s of dollars for their faculty of the Kent Ohio card. We’ve had Spartanburg had their local hospital buy cards. Frankfort, Kentucky and Riverdale Park Maryland have government programs for low income families where the government funds cards for these families and all the money stays in the community. Realtors and developers in Mountain View California give them as welcome gifts to new tenants and homebuyers. A nonprofit in Bullock, Arizona buys them for their volunteers, employers in Detroit and lots of other cities buy them for employee reward programs. And of course, there are huge corporate orders or holiday gifts. So that was we didn’t understand when we started this company that things you learned that about a third of the 180 $9 billion US gift card market is corporate purchases. Before this program, all that money was going to the big box stores and E commerce like Amazon and Starbucks, right? So now those organizations have a way to keep their dollars in the community. And that has been a great opportunity for us

Brandon Burton 19:23
that really turn the light on in my head going through that explanation because especially at the holiday time, a lot of these major employers, a lot of them are going to be big supporters of the chamber financially, you know, maybe some of the major investors, but they also have a lot of employees in the community. And around the holiday time it’s a normal thing to see whether it’s bonuses or some kind of a gift or maybe they give you know Amazon gift cards or Starbucks gift cards like you’re saying and if they can make that shift and say here’s a community gift card that you can use it any one of these men ders, that’s listed in the community. And instead of sending all of this, you know, purchasing power to Amazon, let’s keep it in our community and have it keep turning over, you know, time and time again. That’s very powerful. So I’m curious it with an individual chamber running their community card program, are they able to keep track? Or is there like a running total of how much money they’re keeping in their community?

Donna Novitsky 20:26
Yeah, there is. So we give them they can run reports anytime they want. As I mentioned earlier, they have a portal and you can log into your portal and run a report and see everybody that has purchased cards, and their how much the dollar value of the card and how much remains on the balance of that card. And they actually have marketing rights to that information. So if you have a chamber newsletter, you could add them to your newsletter or something, you know, contribute to building your community. But my favorite report is the gifts redeemed report. Because in that report, you can see every single transaction that was spent at each merchant in the program, so I could see that $4.27 was spent for a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop, I could see that someone went to a boutique and spent $92. So I can’t we don’t tell you who had the coffee or went to the boutique, that’s a privacy issue. So we don’t share that information. But for your members, you have reports of exactly how much business you have walked into the door in their stores. So yeah, program, you can really show the value added.

Brandon Burton 21:42
Yeah. And there’s really there’s no cost or no downfall really for business to participate to if you’re that local coffee shop or retailer. There’s, there’s no downside to it, it just gets access to more people coming in and to be able to get a report from the chamber saying we’d sent X number of dollars to your business over the last year, whatever the timeframe is, that can be pretty powerful, and and create that stickiness factor with your members with your with your chamber. Yeah, so I can imagine, you know, over the 500 communities that you’re working with, and over the years, that there’s probably been some pitfalls in rolling out a program. What are what are some of these things that you see that maybe get overlooked? Or maybe assume maybe something’s too easy? What are some of these pitfalls rolling out? The community card program?

Donna Novitsky 22:38
Yeah, life happens, right? Go. So honestly, the hardest thing about the program where the snags can happen is on the merchant recruiting side, you know, you think it makes so much sense, because it’s all upside for them, it doesn’t cost him anything, and we’re going to drive business in the door, but they are busy. And this is something new, and it needs to be explained. So sometimes that takes more time than the chamber anticipated. And it just doesn’t happen. Or it doesn’t happen as quickly as they wanted. So that’s one thing to be prepared for. And we’re always upfront about that. The cool thing is, as we and then I guess I would say the other thing is, you guys in chambers wear so many different hats, right? So the program will get launched. But then you’re off to planning, you know, the labor day parade or the Halloween festival or whatever is happening next, because there’s never a dull moment in the chamber. So the focus on marketing the program locally in the community wanes, and then the community forgets about it. So what we’re doing is, since we’ve been able to grow, I’m beginning to have started hiring some people on the 50 end, to help out our chamber partners and help them recruit some of those bulk purchasers or do some local marketing for them, or even help recruit those merchants. So as we grow, we will continue to be able to put more resources into ongoing sales of the cards and training and recruiting of merchants.

Brandon Burton 24:16
Yeah. So the thought just came to me as I say, for example, a chamber says we want to do a community card program. What is the onboarding process? Like? Do you try to get a certain number of vendors on board with it? So there’s some value as you start selling the cards or where’s that balance where that trade off is like Okay, now it’s time to turn this on and start selling the cards.

Donna Novitsky 24:39
Yeah, it’s a chicken and egg thing, isn’t it? Right? You need merchants you need card buyers. So we always say for the merchants. The best way to recruit is every community has two or three trendsetter merchants, you know the ones who are out there ahead of the pack and the other merchants really respect them generally So you start with those guys. And then they can help you recruit the next wave, we’d like to say we’d like to see around 15 to 20 merchants on the program at launch. And that’s plenty. And then it just grows from there. So they can get added in over time as as they figure out what’s going on in want to jump on board.

Brandon Burton 25:21
So that definitely makes sense. And there are those trendsetters and those individuals in the community that have some influence that that can bring others along with them. So great strategy. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask, I’d like asking if there’s any tip or an action item you might have for chambers who are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what what piece of advice might you have to offer?

Becki Womble 25:50
Let’s see. Well, there’s

Donna Novitsky 25:53
one more aspect to the program that I wanted to make sure and cover, which is which was also I mentioned at the beginning that we got here through a lot of luck. This is another part of the luck piece. So since 2021, when the US federal government issued $350 billion to the cities all across the country, 19,000 cities, and in the American rescue plan act, some of that money is still floating around out there. It doesn’t have to be spent until it doesn’t have to be allocated until 2024, or spent until 2026. And a lot of those dollars have found their way to this program. As a bonus program. So for instance, buy $100 card, get a free $50 card. And that is a win all the way around. Because to the merchants, they’re going to see it’s going to triple the grant money, right? To the consumer, they’re getting free money. And also to the merchants, it’s driving foot traffic into their stores, which is what they really need long term is the community shopping there and developing those new shopping habits. So I just want to throw that out there. Because I probably should have mentioned it when you asked about who buys the cards, because that has driven a lot of purchases lately.

Brandon Burton 27:22
Yeah. We also want to circle back to that.

Donna Novitsky 27:25
Yeah, we also have seen some programs sponsored by banks or realtors will sponsor bonus programs. So while it while that’s still that money is still available, it might be worth speaking with your City Office of Economic Development to see what might still be out there on allocated.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
That’s good. Yeah.

Donna Novitsky 27:50
So back to your other question of what to think about now? Well, you know, of course, I would love to, we’d love to chat with you and see if this kind of a program would be a good fit for your community. So that would be the next step, I guess.

Brandon Burton 28:05
Yeah. Well, and as many of you know, EFT is one of the sponsors of chamber chat podcast and the shows only here because of the sponsors that keep it going. So love for you to reach out and check out EFT and see if it’s a good fit for your community. But Donna, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Donna Novitsky 28:34
So like, as I mentioned, we attend various chamber events like the ACCE and some of the regional ones. And it’s clear to us that chambers are really community builders. They bring residents, merchants, employers and city government together for the betterment of the community from a business point of view. And this program is something that we think is that is truly actionable and provides measurable results to the Chamber’s members, both for the employers who purchased the cards and the merchants who redeemed them. So I just see chambers can continuing to do what they do, which is, you know, build their communities from a business point of view. And hopefully, we can be a tool that helps them do that.

Brandon Burton 29:25
Awesome. So why don’t you share with everyone how they can reach out and connect. If you have any other questions about how the community card programs work, and how to get in contact with your team and get things started in their community. What would be the good next step or where would you point them to?

Donna Novitsky 29:42
Sure Yiftee.com and you can sign up there for a demo. We do them three days a week. And usually there’ll be a couple other chambers or sometimes main streets or downtown’s on the demo, which is super fun. It’s like little zoom party we have. And everyone gets to hear each other’s questions. And I love the collaborative nature of this community of chambers. It’s such a joy to work with people. And from there, you’ll get plugged into me or probably you’ll meet Raquel or Tyson on my team. And they’ll be doing a live demo. So you can ask all your questions. And we go from there. We’re happy also to do webinars or demos for your board of directors or whatever helps you.

Brandon Burton 30:33
Yeah. So another question I thought of Do you ever see a chamber and a Downtown Association, Merton to come together in a program like this to really leverage the the impact they both have all the time? Awesome, good deal? Well, I’d encourage everybody to reach out and and check out the demos they offer the FDA offers and just you know, explore it, see if this is a way that you can help keep local dollars local in your community and make a bigger impact as you and your chamber continue to build your community. Donna, I appreciate you coming on with us and spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast and, and I hope a lot of people take you up on the offer to check out what you guys have to offer in their communities.

Donna Novitsky 31:22
Thank you so much. And thanks to all the Chamber Champions out there for what you do. It’s amazing.

Brandon Burton 31:27
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Orlando Economic Partnership-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Tim Giuliani

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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 Tim Giuliani. Tim is advancing the pace of change and altering the perceptions of a place best known for tourism by reconceptualizing. The Orlando region’s economic future as the President and CEO of the Orlando Economic Partnership, Tim is leading the multi year pursuit to create a new model for economic and community development that changes the status quo and establishes a new path forward towards broad based prosperity for all. Before joining the partnership, Tim was the president and CEO at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. He also led the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce and Council for Economic outreach. He lives in Orlando with his wife and three children. It Tim, we’re excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as chamber the year finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tim Giuliani 3:06
Sure, appreciate you having me on. Certainly appreciate the recognition from ACCE for our organization. And as far as something interesting to start with, I guess, in the ways we use our free time, if you want to call it that. I coach a softball team, a travel softball team made up of 11 11 year old girls, and that’s a nice fun activity and development activity I get to do, you know, a few times a week.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Yeah, so any free time you might have had is the slug dried up with that. I know how those travel teams go. Yeah, it can be all inclusive, for sure. Yeah,

Tim Giuliani 3:51
these girls are serious. And I think I learned a lot growing up about leadership through baseball. And I think it’s a wonderful way to learn a lot about drive and determination and consistency. coachability teamwork, all of the things that are required in the workplace are things that you can learn on the softball field.

Brandon Burton 4:10
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Orlando economic partnership just to give us a maybe a better idea of the type of chamber you are the size staff Scope of Work budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Tim Giuliani 4:27
Yeah, our organization is only about seven years old. It was the result of a merger between the EDC of Metro Orlando and the Central Florida partnership which included the Orlando Chamber of Commerce. So we’re, we’re essentially a consolidated if you will, you know, economic development and Regional Chamber. We were given kind of white canvas as to what sort of chambers need to be doing in the 21st century without so much attachment to the to the legacy ways of do Doing business. And so we’re loving million dollar organization, we have a staff of about 45. And we’re just, you know, all focused on advancing broad based prosperity in Central Florida.

Brandon Burton 5:14
I love it. I love the name to Orlando economic partnership. So it’s not just focused on economic development, but it’s really is the partnership with the businesses. And in general, AMC can adopt set convener ability of chambers of commerce by encapsulating

Tim Giuliani 5:28
focuses on it focuses on that we don’t offer a lot of things that I’ve done earlier in my career as it relates to networking, or, or marketing and advertising. It’s much more, you know, a smaller group of companies that are interested in making change and improving the economy here. And they choose to do that by partnering with us.

Brandon Burton 5:50
Right? That’s great. So the way that we like to structure these chamber the year interviews is, I’d like to have you tell us what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber, that your application just at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and dive into each of them in much more detail.

Tim Giuliani 6:10
Here, the first project is that we created the first of its kind, regional, digital twin. And so you have several 100 square miles of Central Florida. And when we host companies, or market executives or executives from, you know, corporate that’s looking at expansion, or asset allocation within central Florida, we’re able, instead of having to worry about driving them around all of Central Florida, you know, from the Space Coast, to UCF, to the airport, to our summer to conduct our cluster, etc. You know, we’re able to immerse them in a in a digital twin of our entire region. And then we overlay, like 80 data sources on top of that. So almost any question that anyone has, can be answered in a very engaging way with a digital twin that was largely made in Orlando. So it is an authentic representation of our tech community, which something that we have in spades. However, that’s not part of the brand that people know Orlando for, in most cases. So it allows us to put that technology forward, and then use it in very practical ways.

Brandon Burton 7:23
So yeah, I want to learn a lot more about that. I’ve got a lot of questions for you on it. But what’s the other program you guys submitted on your application?

Tim Giuliani 7:31
Yeah, the other program is part of part of an ongoing 10 year effort to build a semiconductor cluster here in Central Florida. There’s only about 17 states that really have semiconductor activity. You know, now, it’s a lot more popular than it was six, seven years ago, when we were in the throes of moving the ball forward. But in this in this last year, we were successful at attracting a $50 million federal grant that’s locally matched. So it’s a total of $75 million investment in all things to build that industry cluster here. So it’s a big shot in the arm a big step forward. And so we focused on the benefits and the work that we put into attracting and winning that federal grant out of there was like 570 Something applications nationwide, we won the only award in Florida. So that’s pretty remarkable. That speaks

Brandon Burton 8:34
volumes for sure. So I’m excited to dive into both of these programs in much more detail right after this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 11:01
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 11:19
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 11:48
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 12:00
All right, Tim, we’re back. So let’s let’s circle back and tell us more about this digital twin, I want to figure out how you guys did this. What sort of platform are you using? Is this? You know, to use it on your phone? Do you need a headset? Like how does this work?

Tim Giuliani 12:17
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, it’d be easier if you were an older listeners, we’re just kind of sitting in the same room in front of our display. But essentially, what we’ve created is a digital reconstruction of the region. And so you’ve, you’ve seen something similar on Google Maps to give you a frame of reference, okay. However, the magic is really, in bringing that to life in more three dimensional ways. And also overlaying all of the data. On top of sort of that that terrain or that map, we partnered with Unity Technologies and unity. You know, if there’s any 10 to 13 year olds listening, they’ve just got excited because they know unity, because they play their games all the time. And unity is a gaming platform. So essentially, we created a video game of Orlando. And it allows, you know, the use of a tablet, and standing in front of a full 180 degree LED wall, LEDs coming out of the floor into translucent panels. So you get a three dimensional perspective, you’re able to tour the entire region, dive into it, go down to more street level, and then see all the data on top of it. Whether you’re wondering about home prices, you’re wondering about income, educational attainment levels, prices and availability of commercial real estate buildings, classes of commercial real estate buildings, almost anything that you can look up in an Excel spreadsheet we have for our audiences live. And so currently, we’re we’ve executed phase one, which means it’s available in our office in our Marketing Center. It’s also available on a headset. So you put on an Oculus, and you get to enter the digital twin. It’s made on a platform that’s viewable almost anywhere. So tablet computer, Oculus, the Apple vision pro unities development, you know is the platform you can develop for that new product. So as essentially, as we get into phase two, and it comes off essentially our servers and goes into the cloud, it’ll then be accessible from anywhere.

Brandon Burton 14:35
Wow. That’s a that answers my next question. I was gonna ask if there’s a link that we can share in this episode where people can check it out and see what it looks like. That sounds like that’s part of Phase Two as I think

Tim Giuliani 14:48
but we put together a site orlando.org/digitaltwin, where you can really understand the capabilities and what it looks like and how we use it. You So there’s, it’s surprisingly, I mean, it’s got a lot of press, it’s very leading edge, we partnered with unity. Obviously, this is very applicable across the country across the world as cities, think about, you know, all the sensors that are out there all the data that’s out there. How do you visualize that and use that in in ways that help your current business and this for us really check that box.

Brandon Burton 15:27
So you had mentioned, basically anything you can find on the spreadsheet you can find on this digital twin as you kind of explore and dive in a little deeper throughout the whole platform. I imagine a lot of that is plugins on the back end. So as data is inputted and it gets updated live within the platform, I would assume. What about other updates along the way, when there’s new businesses or new development? How does that get implemented into the platform?

Tim Giuliani 15:56
Yeah, so the interesting thing about this project was it, you know, as we talked about it, as we were seeking to enable, you know, over the last six years, we built up reserves, and we ran, sort of net positive on our revenue. And so we had to make an investment. And we had to convince our, our board our finance committee, this was a smart investment for us to make. And so the challenge, though, was describing something that doesn’t exist, right. And so what we realized, you know, there’s gonna, there’s almost unlimited use cases for our members, community leaders to you to utilize this technology. But it was so hard for them to conceptualize without seeing it. So we move forward with phase one. And essentially, now you can see it, understand it, see its capabilities, understand how it can work for your business. And now we’re at a phase, where we’re talking to all sorts of partners, from transportation agencies, to utilities to developers, about taking this digital twin to the next level. So it’s really, you got to see it to really appreciate what it can do.

Brandon Burton 17:07
Yeah. Just my background has been in chamber publishing. So like, one of the things that we would do was maps, right for cities. So this kind of strikes a chord with me, because we would do digital versions of the maps. And there’s different plugins, like you’re saying, like, as it evolves, you can go to transportation kind of plugins, and you can see, you know, kind of live traffic updates and things like that, which is, it’s super intriguing to me. And I’m sure it’ll continue to evolve, too. But I can see this as a great tool as far as attracting, you know, economic development and showing available space and just that tour of the city. Do you? I don’t know exactly how to ask this question. I know some things you can definitely portray in that digital format. Some things you just have to be there. Right. So what percentage maybe do you think covers the check those boxes? As far as? Yeah, maybe you don’t need to be here in person or it gets a person so far, to where they say, yeah, now we need to plan a trip to come to Orlando and actually be there and see things in person? Or do they need to? I don’t know.

Tim Giuliani 18:18
Yeah, no, it’s changing, right. We landed a lot of projects during COVID, where they made like one quick visit. Yeah. So I think I think that’s changed a little bit. There’s two real answers I can give you. One is when we put it in the headset, and we’re in New York, and we’re talking to executives or site selection consultants, they could put on the headphones, the headset without ever visiting Orlando, and they could really get an immersive perspective on available sites and buildings, and their their relative connectedness to the rest of the community and what we have to offer so yeah, so that’s an example where someone doesn’t have to visit, they can get an initial look. And it’s much better than a brochure. Right, right. Second case is so pretend you’re visiting Orlando, and you’ve got, say, 24 to 36 hours here, which is typical. You know, we’re able to give them a great geographic orientation, because one thing I can assure you is that most people listening this podcast that don’t live in Florida, I really view it as a blob with Miami at the southern tip. And what we’re able to do is geographically orient people to the connectivity because, you know, Central Florida is really founded on its connectivity, not only from Disney’s perspective as sort of the crossroads of Florida, but over to the Space Coast, and our our particular longitude, latitude, and its ability to get to space. So we’ve benefited from that. So that continues to drive decisions and we want to show that connectivity which we can do, and then we can show them the have the sort of communities and areas which they’re considering. And then we get in the car and we can go to, you know, two or three places. So it just creates an opportunity to give someone a much better picture of Central Florida without putting them in the car and boring them with hours and hours of driving around to see things, we can just do that in our marketing center.

Brandon Burton 20:24
So when you say you get in the car in this virtual sense, what does that look like? I imagine you can just really shortcut a lot of the traffic and the distance and everything and say, Okay, now you go, here we head south. And here’s this place.

Tim Giuliani 20:37
Yeah, it’s just a flyover. And it’s really, you know, if we were standing in the studio, I’d be holding a tablet. And you’d be standing, you know, 1015 feet away from the monitors. And, and we would be pinching and zooming just like you do on your phone. Right? When you look at a map, and we’ll be showing you and, you know, taking you to UCF and showing you the second largest university in America, and then sort of driving along i Four into downtown Orlando and giving you that perspective. So then when we get out in the car, you know, we can only maybe we visit two or three sites, as opposed to having to make 10 or 11 visits around the region. So it just narrowed down. Yeah, I think when companies are looking at cities, they’re not just looking at one, they’re looking at multiple and so you’re trying to create a competitive advantage and a better experience. And we think this creates a better experience when someone’s considering an investment here in Orlando.

Brandon Burton 21:34
Right? Yeah. And I can see, as you, you know, do a presentation like this, obviously, you want to show the highlights, right, those things that are going to attract the business. And I know Orlando has no downsides to it, right. But I mean, some cities out there, they might have some spots that they might want to cover up and not show. So just to be able to kind of narrow things down and say, here’s the highlights and pique the interest of bring a visit, I think is a huge key in the selling factor.

Tim Giuliani 21:59
Yeah, and actually, for some of the areas, you know, that you kind of casually mentioned, that haven’t gotten a lot of investment over time, we’re actually partnering with some of them as well, so that they have the ability to make the same type of presentation to investors. Because some of those areas are very well connected to the the infrastructure of Central Florida, they’re very close to higher education institutions. And so they’re, you know, overlaid with opportunity zones and other special tax districts and that provide benefits to companies. So it actually not only enables us to show the highlights of Central Florida, but it allows us to showcase the opportunities that may have been overlooked, because maybe they weren’t part of that brochure, or that website in the past. So you know, it’s still early, but it’s an interesting way to think about showcasing the entire community,

Brandon Burton 22:51
right. So we’ll get the link to the digital twin in our show notes for this episode for listeners that want to go and check it out and kind of play around and see what it looks like. I think that would be good to get some visuals on it. But let’s let’s shift gears over into the second program focused on the semiconductor industry and creating that cluster there. Before we got on the podcast and started recording, I’d actually kind of poked around your guys’s website, and I noticed you have a good number of staff that are dedicated to the semiconductor industry. So this is definitely something that’s an area of focus and of importance to you. But tell us more about that. And the focus you guys have with semiconductors.

Tim Giuliani 23:36
Yeah, actually, this, this win that we featured in our application allowed us to build a team focused on semiconductors, because I can assure you, I cannot go through the supply chain dynamics, the parts, the tools, it’s a very specific knowledge base of which you need to be able to communicate with these companies. Because what they do is so highly technical. And, you know, over the last 10 years, we’ve there’s this piece of property, it’s 500 acres, just south of Orlando, in Osceola County, and the EDC at the time, and the county decided to come together, they kind of had two options, they could invest in a new spring training site for Major League Baseball team. Or they could go a different direction and do something to try to diversify their economy in the technology space. And so that’s the path that they went down. And over time, you know, now if I drove you over to what’s called Neo city, you’ve got 500 acres that the county owns. There’s all the infrastructures laid roads, utilities, water, stormwater, etc. There’s a fab. So that $160 million facility that currently is leased by sky water technologies. They’re a semiconductor, global foundry that their US owned. So they have an important niche in this whole semiconductor conversation and DOD. Many people don’t know that Orlando is actually heavily invested in by Department of Defense. And we have a long history of military instalments and investment. In fact, they’re all the branches of the government have offices here, some rather large, all around the areas of modeling and simulation. And all of that uses technology nowadays. And so we have a big defense base here. So the semiconductor you kind of think space, you think defense, and now you begin to understand sort of a niche that’s available here in semiconductors. And over time, we’ve worked to build that cluster. And then we were awarded a $50 million grant, through the regional build back better challenge, there was over 500 applications, I think there was about 25 announced winners, we were one of those 25. And so that combined local match and federal dollars, it means a $75 million enhancement, to those cluster building activities here. So we’re really excited about the path we’re on to provide a niche to the semiconductor industry that’s looking to restore, particularly as it relates to space, and defense. And as it relates to if you want to get technical into advanced packaging, which is a an area of product that’s provided by that industry.

Brandon Burton 26:36
So I guess that leads into the question I was gonna ask as to why you got you guys wanted to get into the niche of semiconductors. And that makes sense that the space aspect with the Department of Defense and looking into the future, are there other opportunities, you are kind of targeting in the semiconductor spaces, in addition to what’s already there? Yeah, I

Tim Giuliani 27:00
think that, you know, those are some industry verticals that they’re interested in. But I think as it relates to the technology and the product offering, you know, I don’t see us landing the next $10 billion Intel plant. That’s not, I don’t think that’s in the cards for us. What I do think is in the cards is, you know, advanced packaging. So think about when you were younger, you took apart a radio, and you found a really solid green board with the chips and transistors and connections on it. Well, that hard piece is the packaging. And so now the advanced packaging is when you’re putting multiple chips together. And that board has now become bendable. So it’s they can go into a lot more devices and helmets and different different things. That even though, you know as we seek to onshore or restore more chip manufacturing, you know, China still has about a 98% market share of this advanced packaging process. So we think that this important niche, so you need specific tools that are multimillion dollar tools that are in our fab here. We think that this advanced packaging component of the supply chain is a niche that we could do well in here in Central Florida.

Brandon Burton 28:24
Yeah. Oh, yeah. China’s got 98% of the market, if you can get most of the market share in the in the States, then you’d be winning in our country, so that’s great. So these are two great programs, obviously making a big impact in driving Orlando forward and making an impact in the community, especially as a chamber the year finalists, I like asking this question as far as chambers that are out there looking to take their chamber up to the next level. What tips or, or advice or action items might you have for for someone trying to accomplish that goal?

Tim Giuliani 29:06
My suggestion, I think, coming up in the industry, and I’ve been in this line of work myself for about 18 years. What we’re taught is a lot of what’s called strategic planning. And I think that there, you know, that’s a part of the strategy, but to really get a forward looking strategy, I really believe you need to adopt a strategic foresight process. And the planning can certainly come later. But I think you’ve got to really understand from the outside in, you know what, what’s going on in the marketplace. The world is quickly changing, and what are those variety of trends that are out there, and then pare that down to a set of drivers of what’s really going to impact our work. In our region, and understanding what what’s driving change, and then be able to think about what what you do to achieve your goals in the face of that change. So I just think it’s a different perspective and mindset that strategic foresight brings that enables, you know, the idea of coming up with a digital twin came directly out of that process. And it’s, it’s really digitally transforming our work as we speak. And we’re only in phase one. I mean, there’s unlimited ability. Now, as it relates to you know, transportation is one of our big priorities as it is for a lot of chambers. And as it relates to making future investments, you know, we’re now able to put in to the digital twin scenarios of what a new train line would bring, and what that would do to traffic and how to communicate that to elected officials in the larger media and public. So I think it just, you know, it came out of that strategic foresight process of understanding what was coming online from a technology perspective, and then being able to see how that relates to us. And then we were able to build a plan off of that.

Brandon Burton 31:13
That’s awesome. Yeah, I’d love you know, hearing the the other uses for the digital twin to that’ll, that’ll help with advocacy and those things that are important in the region. So that in the terminology is Strategic Foresight process, is there a formal process that you go through that kind of a structure that you follow? I don’t know if you’re prepared to speak to that, but that it is very intriguing to me.

Tim Giuliani 31:38
Yes, absolutely. There’s, you know, if you if you’re interested, there’s some online courses, the Institute, the future has a great online course kind of Crash Course and understanding strategic foresight. You know, it’s, it’s also, you know, what futurists use. And I know, some people may have preconceived notions of what that might be, and how many eight balls that entails. Right. But I can assure you it’s a it’s a business process. A lot of leading companies are leveraging this technique or this mindset in their companies to really think of whether it’s consumer insights, strategic foresight, so there’s definitely a process. I went through a program at the University of Houston. So University of Houston, University of Hawaii are the two universities in the US that have for decades had programs focused on strategic foresight. So there’s, there’s obviously books, websites, courses, higher education, certifications, etc. To help anybody become more familiar with that process.

Brandon Burton 32:41
Yeah, that’s great. Great, I love it. So speaking of futurists, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tim Giuliani 32:53
Well, I’ve, I’ve always maybe had a slightly different take on things. And I really feel that the sort of things we’ve we did 15 years ago, and I did them too, you know, I’ve created directories I’ve edited. I’ve gotten the calls when we, you know, put the wrong phone number address, you know, I understand sort of those things that have been consistent in our industry. But I think, you know, over time, some of them have gotten commoditized and easily available online, through LinkedIn, through meetup through a variety of sources. And I think we’ve got to keep innovating in a way that’s just focused on impact, you know, what is going to drive the future of the region? What needs to be undertaken? You know, how do we set priorities for the community, that’s to the benefit of everybody. And I think we play an important role as chambers in setting those community priorities, by convening, and by, you know, kind of being the same center or the one that is able to be focused on progress and a longer time horizon than most elected officials have. And so I think we have that niche of we bring the community together, we help to set priorities or longer term, in our perspective, and then building programming and advocacy and work that’s tied to that mission, in my opinion, is a better and more sustainable technique than trying to be all things to all size companies and all parts of the community. I don’t I don’t think that’s actually attainable.

Brandon Burton 34:38
Yeah, I think you’re I think you’re right, figuring out what that impact is and setting those priorities, convening and be in the same center I think is spot on. Well, Tim, as we, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about the digital twin and Have you got that going or anything that we’ve talked about today? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Tim Giuliani 35:05
Yeah, absolutely. I think LinkedIn is really the best way. I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn or communicate, at least initially that way. But LinkedIn, I think the easiest way to get in touch with me

Brandon Burton 35:20
good deal, and I’ll have your, your profile linked on the well, so yeah, that’ll work.

Tim Giuliani 35:28
It’s not many of us. So under that name, so should be easy to find.

Brandon Burton 35:31
That’s right. Now well, we’ll get that in there. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time to spend with us today. You’re on Chamber Chat Podcasts and wish you and your team Best of luck is chamber the year and congratulations on the great impact you guys are making.

Tim Giuliani 35:46
Thank you really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 35:48
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.

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Bowling Green Area Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Ron Bunch

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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 Ron Bunch. Ron is the President and CEO of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce a five star accredited chamber, which has been invited to apply for Chamber of the Year by ACCE for nine of the last 10 years, making it to the finalist stage five of those years. You can see so or listen to some of Ron’s past appearances on chamber chat podcast and episodes 24 and 182. But since Ron has joined the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, their community has announced over six and a half billion dollars in capital investment and more than 12,050 new jobs. Bowling Green has been ranked in the top six nationally by site selection magazine for the top 10 metros for new new and expanding facilities for populations under 200,000 for 10 consecutive years, including number one overall in 2018 and win three consecutive Matt Conway awards from site selection magazine, which recognize the team as a top 20 economic development organization in the country for their performance in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In 2022, the community announced its second largest project in the history of Kentucky, a $2 billion in 2000 jobs.

Ron, I’m excited to have you back with us today on Chamber Phat podcast. And first of all, congratulations to you and your team has been selected as a Chamber the Year finalist again, I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Oh, great.

Ron Bunch 3:50
Thank you so much for allowing me to be on here. And I really do appreciate this opportunity. We’ve been very blessed as a chamber and a community. And so thank you for having us on and talk about that. But I’m not that interesting. So let me let me see if I can get a more current thing. So both of my daughters got married last year. So two and one year and then I became a grandfather. About a month ago now for my oldest daughter just had a little girl so I got to be a grandpa so I’m excited about that.

Brandon Burton 4:22
Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome. Just start calling your grandpa Ron right. That’s exciting. So will tell us all a little bit more about the bowling green area Chamber sizes, chambers scope of work staff budget, just give us that perspective before we get into the programs that we cover in this episode.

Ron Bunch 4:45
So we’re fairly complex chamber, we actually run six different companies, our chamber part of our businesses about a $2.4 million annual budget. Got her Around 1300 partners or members, as many would call them. And we do a VOD wide variety of things with other organizations that we also run. We have a staff of about 18 to 19 people with about how you look at contract work. But we do everything from land, securing land, designing land, preparing land, building speculative buildings to the traditional things you would understand where the chamber or networking events and other activities, so pretty broad range of things, and those six organizations with six different boards.

Brandon Burton 5:38
Yeah. So in your, between that explanation, and your bio, you guys are heavy in the economic development work, which is awesome, you guys are making a huge impact there. So just for the for the listeners out there, that kind of the format that I like to do with these chamber, the year finalist interviews is I like to focus on the two programs that you included in your chamber, the your application for 2023. Maybe at just at a high level, tell us what those two programs are. And then we can circle back and dig a little deeper in both of them.

Ron Bunch 6:14
Sure, you know, and and the two different programs. One was the trans Park, which is the industrial park that we develop through the intermodal transportation authority that we run, it’s about a 2000 acre park and we landed most recently, envision in that park. Envision ASC. That’s the $2 billion 2000 job project. So we’ve talked about how we expanded the park and landed the project. The second summary was about what we’re doing with SC K, which is our region South Central Kentucky launch, which is learning about unique and new careers here. The portion of that program that focuses on eighth graders when young people are really learning their interests and aptitudes we help bring a real detailed look at what’s in the economy, what types of jobs and careers are here so that we can match that up with our interests and aptitudes greening that happens at the school level.

Brandon Burton 7:15
Awesome. Yeah, so I’m excited to dig in a little deeper on both of these kind of learn the details and maybe the origins and how you guys got to where you are now. First of all, we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dive in a little bit deeper.

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Donna Novitsky 9:50
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Brandon Burton 10:44
All right, Ron, we’re back. So let’s let’s go in a little bit deeper about the this trans Park project and the Envision project. You don’t that you guys attracted there. Tell us what what is the scope of this project? What were some of the origins and evolution of it to get you to where we are today with this big economic development when?

Ron Bunch 11:09
No, I appreciate that. So, you know, the beginning story really is us continuing our engagement with the public sector. The ITA, the intermodal Transportation Authority that owns the park is funded by the city in the county and we operate that public entity. And we’ve thanks to the success we’ve had, we found ourselves in a place where there was a scarcity of land that needed to be developed. And although it was during COVID, we approached the city in the county to go ahead and issue bonds so that we could acquire more property to be ready for prospect activity during COVID. And they support us with a $46 million bond issue. As we began bringing that property on our pipeline for projects was very active. We’re actually meeting with four or five different evey battery projects at the time, shortly after we were acquiring the property. And we narrowed down to our conversations with Envision. And in those conversations, we determined we needed to buy some additional property. And so we had to go back to the city and the county to get almost another $12 million of investment just to acquire the property we were going to need cite the project.

Brandon Burton 12:30
Because it was fun to go back and ask for more. Right.

Ron Bunch 12:34
They first thought we needed 25 million and ended up being 46 million, then we came back for another 12. So we have an amazing relationship that we’ve built over the years with our city and county government. So they knew the kind of return they would get. So even during COVID, when not many people were bringing the property to the market. We had their competence, and we were able to do that. So I mean, we could do probably a whole show on that that conversation how we got there. But those kind of numbers. But so now we’ve acquired the property, we’re in deep conversations with Envision, we finally put together the package to get him get them here. But in that we determined we needed around almost 60 million and infrastructure improvement. So we got with our lobbyist, and then we went directly to the legislature met with Senate and House convinced them for about $15 million dollars in road improvements. And around 43 46 million in water and sewer improvements that would position us to land the project. And through all that collaboration, we’re able to pull a project together now instead with the governor and everybody else on stage. And at that time, it became the second largest investment in the entire history of Kentucky, obviously, our largest investment in the history of laundry in Warren County. So 2 billion in 2000 jobs. And the other great news is that the way we’ve configured this site, there can be further growth. So it’s entirely possible this could be much bigger than it even is today.

Brandon Burton 14:17
So it’s great to be able to make an announcement of this big win of the financing, being able to come in the infrastructure, the improvements, the attraction of corporations coming. What is the timeline look like from when when that’s announced to you know, the hopefulness I guess, I’ve seen I don’t want to say completion, but maybe completion to this part of the vision because there’s that room to grow and continue into the future. But what’s the timeline looking like from forget best estimates?

Ron Bunch 14:55
Excellent question. So I mean, we announced that around April of last year in April 22 and the 1.6 million square foot tad is developed, steel is up skins going on building, there’ll be soon delivering equipment will have on offer somewhere around 300 individuals that come here from another country to help install the equipment. So by, you know, the December timeframe, they ought to have equipment set and be well along in their hiring so is a very fast moving project. And that’s, you know, one of the things that we’ve prided ourselves on being able to move quickly from announcement implementation, which helped us win that project.

Brandon Burton 15:40
Yeah. So what are some of the maybe the, let’s say, the coattails of the project, or some of the maybe lagging indicators or, or secondary benefits of a big project like this coming? Like you mentioned, 300 employees from another country coming to help install it? I mean, that’s hotels and restaurants and everything else. What other impact are you seeing through this?

Ron Bunch 16:05
Yes, it’s a tremendous amount of activities on both of the things you’ve mentioned, you know, I’d say we probably have about 1000 contractors there. And then you have another 300 equipment, installers come in, you know, obviously, I’ve been there, you know, a little over a year now. And so the overall impact and all the shopping all the businesses happening at our local companies, food trucks that are coming out, you know, just a tremendous amount of chamber activity and other spillover benefits and multiplier effects. But then on the other side, this industry needs a whole supply chain with it. So we’ve been courting a number of other companies that would be in our market, in order to supply and interact with this particular major project. That’s awesome,

Brandon Burton 16:53
that it’s one of those things that every community dreams of having that that big, you know, economic windfall, so to speak, of having all the jobs the, you know, the infrastructure, everything that comes along with it is such a great thing for the community. And I guess in in our audience, yeah, who people were talking to and see it that way. Have you had any kind of pushback from anybody in the community of you know, we don’t need this kind of thing? And did and how do you address any any negativity that may come with it?

Ron Bunch 17:26
That’s an excellent question. So we also run what we call the plant managers roundtable. So I do our existing business calls myself, and we host that plant manager roundtable every two months. And with that kind of ramping up of manufacturing, hiring alone, there has been some concern among other companies and being able to find talent, because, you know, in the US right, now, you’ve got to open jobs for every individual position. And so that’s been, you know, a thing we’ve had to navigate through, and helping them understand. Because many of our companies that have been here a long time, are as aware of how we build a custom talent sourcing strategy. And so it’s given us an opportunity to go back with them and help walk them through all the different pieces and parts we’ve put together to help them find and develop talent. And so it’s led to a lot of good conversations. We really haven’t had any other pushback on the other than how do we help our existing companies retain their talent and find new talent. And, you know, through some convening we’ve done our city and county are vested in about a quarter million annually, and a talent recruitment campaign that’s been ongoing for two years now. And so we’ve got many of the parts put together. It’s just growing on that success now as what we’re working on.

Brandon Burton 18:43
Yeah, that is great. Because there’s usually those those NIMBY people, right that don’t right in their backyard, and, and it sounds like those relationships have been built. And in the timings, right, everything is just developed at a rate, you know, the right cadence for this 10 fold the way it has, so congratulate,

Ron Bunch 19:00
are really excited about it, too, because we’re, we’re about 18% manufacturing in our economy, that’s, you know, at least twice the national average. So manufacturing has really embraced here, and quite a bit of that as automotive related with Corvette being located here, Holly being headquartered here, and, and other suppliers. And so having this new generation of propulsion for vehicles here in our community was something that was very welcomed.

Brandon Burton 19:29
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I would imagine that some of that workforce kind of plays in well to your STS SC K launch program as well, if I’m not mistaken. Do you want to gears over into that and tell us maybe how the two are related?

Ron Bunch 19:47
Absolutely. And actually, SEK launch. That program was instrumental in us winning this project. So it was something they cited compared to other states that made a difference in their decision to come here and That program has been great for a number of years now, we’ve actually had a hiring event, I think for four or five years now a high school hiring event. And this year, it was phenomenal. So many direct hires right out of high school. We also started a kind of somewhat related, heavy equipment program over the last year. And those first students got hired. And we had 23 students in the initial class, and every one of them got hired, we had a signing event that was extraordinary. So SEK launch has been just instrumental and all that we’re doing in the community. And really, it’s given us a different brand image in the community, because of the amount of investment and how long and how deeply we’ve been engaged with the education, infrastructure, our community, we’ve been doing, you know, making investments, I’m working on SDK launch for about 11 years now. And I’ve been here a little over 13. So it’s been awesome. Our other summary related to just a portion of that. So SDK launches really detailed, go to career program that is all day every day in every school, K through 12, in Bowling Green, and Warren County. But the one we chose to focus on was the eighth grade portion. Okay. And so with the eighth grade portion, we’ve actually hired a curriculum developer some years ago, and who came from education help us build out modules for every core sector of our economy. So we run the data on what jobs are open every month. And we use that to inform how we look at our sectors. And so she’s developed a curriculum that’s shared with not just every eighth grader in Bowling Green, and Warren County, but every eighth grader in our whole labor market. So for the first time ever, when eighth graders get assessed on their interests, and aptitudes, every eighth grader and our regional labor market, we’ll learn about careers and manufacturing careers and healthcare careers and business professional services. And then they’ll come to what this year was a two day, hands on career fair. We’ve had so many students, we had to extend it to another day. So now we have two full days. We had about 35 30/608 graders go through the event. 45 businesses, hundreds of volunteer, so it’s a big event. And just the excitement around it is is amazing. As you see eighth graders, explore a career and then see that light turned on, they get excited about a job in a career that they never even knew existed.

Brandon Burton 22:48
Yeah. So I know a lot of eighth graders out there have no clue what they want to know what a high schoolers until they get into the later part of their senior year, and reality is hitting them in the face. And they’re needing to start making some decisions. Right? So how does that with the focus on the eighth graders? Had you talked about the aptitude test and everything? But what what sort of things are playing into this to really help them catch a glimpse of what their future could look like? And what direction they’d want to go?

Ron Bunch 23:19
Yeah, I mean, the curriculum for each sector is crucial. So we are looking at, you know, how many open jobs whether they pay, what’s the pathway, you know, what positions can you get into with just a certificate, so really maps all that out for me really well. So that’s their first glimpse into really how broad the economy is, as well as the educators teaching it. And so that prepares them for what they then see. And we broken the experience up into different worlds. So there’s a world that we would call it for each of the sectors, and then that you’d have equipment and employers and so like in the healthcare sector, every eighth grader in our labor market would be able to come in and see robotic surgical unit, and, and interact with it. And so it’s that kind of hands on, they get to see law enforcement and, you know, get into the vehicle and check that stuff out. So it’s it’s very hands on, and we create a competition among the sectors where the students would get to vote, which sector they liked best. So it creates a kind of competition among the companies each year to up their game. Things that are more and more engaging for the eighth graders, because again, we want them to be excited about what they can go to and we want to create more of a poll. And then those eighth graders after they do that, they begin selecting their career pathway for the whole high school experience. And so if you have discovered, oh, wow, I really think I want to be in healthcare, then you get in that career pathway starting in ninth grade. And we’ve invested in for example, having an ambulance in the classroom and so you’re taught On the actual equipment that you will see in the field, through your high school career at your home high school. And so that’s the second part of the money we’re gonna raise beyond the 2.6 million is to put more and more of those hands on Career Exploration things in each high school.

Brandon Burton 25:17
That is awesome. And just to be able to get that that hands on experience, like, you know, how often do you hear somebody who is committed, and they decided to go to law school, maybe and then they get into for a year of practicing law and realize they hate law. Right. And they never spent any time in a law office before they got, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars in debt. And now they’re, they’re committed. So providing some experience when they’re young, I think is so valuable.

Ron Bunch 25:43
And I think we can all relate, you know, if you’re doing something, you have an interest and an aptitude to do, you’re going to enjoy it more. We’ve all had to do some things that maybe didn’t fit her interests and aptitudes and our careers as professional, but to find out in eighth grade, sort of how you’re wired and then be had that opened up to you at that point. And then we do I mean, you touch on that other part, we do an externship program. So we take educators into business to inform them more so that they can reach the students and help them know. But we also do a hands on career exploration for the high schoolers. So we seek to and have every high school or be in a business engagement, career exploration, in addition to the what they’re gonna get in the classroom, so they’re physically in a business during their high school career.

Brandon Burton 26:38
So I guess a question that comes up for myself is as they go along this career exploration, if at some point, they realize this really is not what I want to do, right, are they able to make that shift and somehow within the program, kind of realign with their values, and their division is awesome. Yeah, that’s

Ron Bunch 26:54
the great part about it. We’ve, through our engagement with the schools, in addition to guidance counselor’s our school that prioritize and put in place career counselors are so much better to learn during high school when it’s not going to cost you anything to switch career pathways. Yeah. And so they they’re able to work with their schools and take the lessons they have the in the credits they have gained, and then shifted over into another pathway that can get them to graduation.

Brandon Burton 27:21
All right, that’s great. Well, right, as we begin to wrap things up here, obviously, you guys are making a huge impact in your community. And that’s what what every chamber should be doing. But I wanted to see for for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have to offer to help them accomplish that?

Ron Bunch 27:45
Yes. Now, when I read the Horizon Report, I think the focus on catalytic leadership is really that the thing while it may be risk, to be out front, and actually lead change that your community needs, and then finding a way for it to connect with your business plan, we’ve found that when we take that role, which we do quite a bit, in a lot of different activities, it’s really paid dividends for our community. And it’s changed the way the committee looks at the chamber and looks to the chamber. And then we’ve been able to find ways to make that work for us financially to so that we can have a growing prospering organization, and it’s, for me, personally, it’s very rewarding to be able to do those kinds of things to do things that have not yet been created that do in fact, solve a problem for groups of people and groups of businesses.

Brandon Burton 28:43
Step in there and be a leader for change for sure. How to use as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ron Bunch 28:55
I think the core of what we just talked about is that the you know, for us the thing we’ve started using, because I wanted to have more of a specific approach for both chamber activities and non development activities. We use spin situation problem. And so when you interact with GE with each investor, and you’re really probing to understand, what drives your business, what do you need? What keeps you up at night? What things can we help solve, when you do it on an individual basis annually, and then you begin to aggregate those things. It’ll point out some opportunities for you. And so I think the more we do those sorts of things with our business communities in our area, then you apply that catalytic leadership to bring things to market that haven’t existed before. I think there’ll be a natural evolution to chambers and what we deliver how we look at programs and events, and that sort of thing, and it’s changed with us to our programs and events are shifting. The affinity program that we bring on are shifting and we’re getting More and more value to the investor so that they get a good return. So it’s it’s increased engagement, and it’s decreased appreciation because they know they’re gonna get something back in relation to what they’re investing in. They know that we’re going to be responsive.

Brandon Burton 30:14
Right? I think that I think that’s great. Ron, I wanted to to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to learn more about the things you guys do in there and the bowling green area Chamber or anything else you touched on today, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Ron Bunch 30:36
They’re sure the either myself or my executive vice president Meredith Rozanski. It will be ron@bgchamber.com or meredith@bgchamber.com. Anything that anybody liked to discuss that would help their organization we’d love to engage with them. So just shoot us an email. Our main line is 270-781-3200 if you want to call us, we love engaging. We’ve got some upcoming visits by other communities to look at different facets of what we’re doing here.

Brandon Burton 31:11
I’m sure you do. I’m sure that’s a you’d be a great location for a leadership trip, for sure.

Ron Bunch 31:17
Pretty nice, too. We got some Corvettes here and you can get on a track and make sure you don’t forget the visit. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 31:25
Well, Ron, I appreciate that. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But one I wish you and your team best of luck with chamber the year and congratulate you for all the great work that you guys were doing and really making an impact in your community. So appreciate all that.

Ron Bunch 31:42
Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing all these things so that we can all benefit from one another.

Brandon Burton 31:47
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Winter Park Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Betsy Gardner Eckbert

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Betsy Gardner Eckbert. Betsy was raised in Winter Park, Florida, where she came full circle in January 2017 to become the president and CEO of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s focused on innovation and closing the relevancy gap to modernize the organization earning the 2018 chamber Innovation Awards grand prize. Previously in 2009, she moved her family to London, England, where she became Director of Business Development for a mentor consulting limited a UK consulting firm advocating for gender diversity at the board level. She would go on to co found an International Children’s luxury brand of UV protected swimwear long wave apparel limited that was marketed in 14 countries. Building a successful career after taking several years off to raise her two children led Betsy to create relaunch career reentry for professional women at the Chamber of program with more than 100 graduates, many of whom have rejoined to the workforce. In April 2022. The Winter Park Chamber of Commerce released its prosperity scorecard, and ESG embedded scorecard with a commitment to values beyond simply the financial bottom line. Betsy is a graduate of the University of Florida where she was named the 1991 outstanding female leader and has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. She was also a previous guest on Chamber Chat Podcast back on episode 66. For any of you who want to go back and listen to that episode again. But Betsy, it’s a pleasure to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 3:55
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having us and for giving us an opportunity to highlight the work we do that serves the Winter Park community and boast a little bit about the dedication of our team to enhancing the quality of life and business in Winter Park. I really appreciate having this opportunity. And I was reflecting on how much better the conditions are meeting with you today than they were back in the early days of the pandemic where I did a podcast with you from my kitchen, a place I thought I’d be working from for two weeks, which spanned into about four or five months. So we’ve really come a long way since then I’m grateful for the opportunity to be doing this from my office and having a more business like climate for responding to these questions. You know, I think an interesting fact about me is one that my mother hated. And that is a back in in 1999 I took a six week leave of absence from my job and I hiked the Appalachian Trail which my mother described as an unladylike thing to do. Because I was basically living in the woods for six weeks, but it was a really transformational journey for me. I brought a lot of focus into my life, and I was able to move on with intention into the next chapter. But it also taught me a lot about how things don’t go to plan. What happens when you gotta hike through the rain, and when you can’t find the campsite, you’re supposed to find or setting things up in the dark or getting blisters, how you work through and push through some of that stuff has been really helpful for me moving on in through my life. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:31
that is really interesting. In the Appalachian Trail, it definitely builds character and a lot of people who spend any time on it. So that is, that’s fantastic. I think that’s awesome. You took that time to do that. I’d love to hear more. But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Winter Park chamber just to give us an idea of the type of chamber you are the size staff budget scope of work you guys are involved with and kind of go from there to set the table for our discussion.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 5:56
So Winter Park is one mile from the Orlando city line. So that city line is one mile from my office. So we we have we use the Orlando airport we shop at Orlando malls, we drive on Orlando Roads, we’re very much integrated into the Orlando MSA. But Winter Park itself is a 29,000 person community spanning nine square miles. However, we are a $4 billion a year economy. And a lot of that is driven by our top industries health care, higher education we have to higher education institutions within the city of Windsor Park. We have financial services, professional services, real estate, restaurant retail are some of the biggest players in our economy. And what’s interesting is that we’ve got about $130,000 of gross regional product per worker in our economy. So it’s a very robust engine. Even though we’re small, we’re mighty, because primarily a lot of Central Florida CEOs live and to some degree work in Winter Park. So what we lack in size, we make up for an influence. And we’re awfully proud of that. You know, one of the other things to frame for our listeners today is that, you know, our job growth has been 10% over the past five years, which has outpaced the nation by almost 7%. And so what’s happening in our community is a real window into the explosive growth that’s going on in the region. And the wraparound problems that come with explosive growth are ours to solve. So that’s a little snapshot of what we have going on here in Winter Park.

Brandon Burton 7:35
Oh, that’s fantastic. I think he just energized everybody to think how can we be like Winter Park, right? He hasn’t done a great, great work. What

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 7:42
I what I didn’t say is that we’re a category two competitor, which means that we’ve got 15 people on our staff about seven FTEs. And we’ve got a $1.2 million operational budget annually.

Brandon Burton 7:55
All right, that’s perfect. So typically, the way I like to structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application. So what I’d like to do is, is have you tell us at a high level what the two programs are, and then we can dive into each of them a little bit more in depth.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 8:18
So program, one is our relaunch program, which you referenced in my bio, but not just that we started it, we underwent an enormous transformation in the way we delivered that program. And that was to move it from a five session of four hours in length each session live delivery to an online delivery, which we began beta testing in late 20, moving into 21. And then we made the actual launch of the kind of this official model and 2022 was our online platform for delivery, which meant that so much of the curriculum had to be moved to self starting work at home and homework that would come back to our sessions online. We started beta testing this during COVID, naturally, because we couldn’t meet live and in person. And we were concerned that we there was going to be a kind of loss of emphasis or focus or impact to what we were teaching and presenting when we moved to an online model. More importantly, we thought that there was going to be a deterioration of the safe space that’s created for our participants who are struggling with confidence gaps is the reason why they’re not really approaching the job market. And if we don’t have some kind of vulnerability and authenticity in the unpacking of these confidence gaps, we’re not going to help these women close them. So we were concerned moving to an online format would be two dimensional, and it wouldn’t have a sense of togetherness that we had created so well in the classroom. And we were ably served by our vice president of programs, who used her significant get an understanding of program delivery, certainly online delivery and how adults learn to help us create a model that not only worked but exceeded the one that we were delivering before. And we got higher engagement from the women in the class because we mandated Facebook group participation. So people are now connecting to each other for coffee in between classes, and they’re sharing, you know, vulnerabilities and struggles and strengths. They’re sharing when they get hired to be an inspiration to the other people in their class. And so and that lives on those Facebook groups live on and they’re private, of course. So we’re really proud of the way that that that has delivered on our core promise to the people that take the class. But what we hadn’t realized was that we were going to start creating regional and national impact with this program. And, you know, when I came into this role, over six years ago, the board asked me to turn my focus and the focus of our staff to a more regional focus, instead of this parochial Winter Park nine square miles focus, we don’t live, you know, they’re not borders that are sealed off here commercially, or otherwise. So we’ve got to live regionally. So when we offered the class online, we started getting people from all over Florida taking it. And then from there, we actually moved into I think it’s five states total that we’ve delivered the program to now. And chambers over the years have come to us and said, Hey, can you help create this class for us to use and actually, unintentionally we did, by making it available through this online learning platform. So now it’s open to anyone who wants to do it, we do an application process to make sure there’s a good fit for this program, because what I will say is that there are well meaning people who realize that we’ve created an amount of networking, capital, and social capital in this program that people want to take advantage of that don’t quite fit the profile of the woman who’s been staying home with children. And so we want to make sure that we’re filtering for that and filtering for professional women who are well educated about 45% of our participants have advanced degrees, that means Master’s or, or doctorates, who, if you can imagine, are struggling with a confidence gap and failing to re approach the job market because of that. So we desperately need their talent in Winter Park, because our job growth is outpacing our population, which is creating strain on our infrastructure and otherwise, and so we we need these talented women to come back to work. It’s a workforce solution that meets the needs of our community. Because there’s enormous demand for degreed, highly sophisticated, polished professionals to serve in the types of jobs that we have in this community.

Brandon Burton 12:50
Yeah, so there are I love so much about this program. One is it, it was something you had started before the pandemic happened. So you have the in person model, you’re kind of, you know, your hand was forced a little bit to reinvent and reimagine what this could look like. So as you compare the old structure to the new structure, I’m sure there’s things that have stood out to you. But what are some of those main takeaways that you see with with moving to the structure being online?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 13:18
Well, I think it gives. So one of the things that we say to the women who take our classes, we are not going to find a job for you, we’re not going to take the thrill of that away from you. We’re going to teach you exactly how to do it yourself. And then you’re going to feel the pride and satisfaction of knowing you did this on your own. So I think when we shifted the model to have more homework based and less, no one’s going to sit on Zoom for four hours, right? I mean, maybe somebody will, but I don’t know who those people are anymore. So we want to make sure that we’re using our zoom time incredibly preciously. Because it’s very hard to keep adult learners engaged on a zoom platform. And we know that so what we’re trying to do is make sure that you know, we’re doing the the work of, of the women teaching each other what they need to learn in that platform. And we play the role of sophisticate, I’m sorry, a facilitator, and teacher. But what I will say is, having the work shift at home, gives them an even greater sense of ownership of the process, which I think is an as a consequence, we couldn’t have anticipated when we did that. And then I also think they’re getting the opportunity to we make them present a vision board on a video and put it into this Facebook group. And we make them basically interview online, which for many people is going to be their first entree into a career search experience. It’s a zoom interview or a recorded interview. So we make them present themselves on Zoom. And we make them present themselves in recorded videos where they’re presenting who they are, what they’re about, which are actually strategically advantageous to our candidates because they’re probably going to have to do that in the real A world. Now these are technophobes because they’ve been at home. That’s one of the greatest divides between women who are in and out of the workforce is they feel that there’s some big technological boogeyman, that that is going to make it impossible for them to return to work. So when we close those gaps by presenting the recorded interview that is recorded on your phone, or we do the Zoom based interviewing, they no longer have those fears. And they’re much more likely to re approach so that that was one of those sort of unintended consequences that we found that we get asked all the time, when are you moving this back to live? And the answer is never, because it’s much more powerful to deliver it this way. And we’re getting a better result. So with intention, we’re keeping it this way. And it’s really funny, because you know, they only see me on Zoom. And then we’ll end up having live events, because we do recall events with our community, we’ll get together for kind of what we call after care events, they’re, they’re called power ups will bring in alumni and prospective women to come and have hear a topic about something like the imposter syndrome or topics that are relevant to this population. And when they see me for the first time, it’s like they’re seeing somebody from TV, and I’m like they’ve never been in person. So it’s really interesting, that dynamic, but what I do love is that the groups that are forming in these classes have got a greater sense of authenticity and connectedness, because they’re doing shorter touches more frequently on their Facebook group, we just had one get on Fourth of July and was wish everybody Happy Fourth of July, their class ended three months ago. So they’re still very much in touch. And the powerful thing is, when one of them gets a job, it’s role modeling for the rest of the people that get jobs, because it usually takes about six months after our class for them to get hired, on average. So it’s really that’s a really powerful consequence. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:52
So I think one of the other things you had mentioned about being intentional about this program is that it’s about building that confidence, or rebuilding the confidence in these women who’ve been out of the workforce for so long. And I see where the online platform, it removes some barriers, where they may not have the confidence to show up to an in person, you know, the seminar event kind of situation. But when it’s online, it the threshold is a lot less to get involved. But then there’s more of a stickiness factor that kind of keeps you in there as well. So I’m sure there’s been examples of that, that you’ve seen people coming out, or maybe just more registrants. And and so maybe talk to that and and also talk about how you broadcast this to the women in your community to attract them to the program.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 17:37
So I really love that you seized upon that, because we we say internally, we measure our success with relaunch in tears, for a woman to come to grips with her competence gap is inherently vulnerable and sometimes terrifying. Maybe it’s a sad process, you know, not all of the women that go through the program are undergoing a fracture in their marriage, but some of them are, and they’re coming to grips with some really painful features of their lives. And so when they can come to us and unruly, sit with that, and kind of let it wash over them and they can work through it, then they’re by the end of our five week course, ready to have the confidence to go back to the workforce. So we they cry more from their own house. So when we’re on the inverse is I didn’t like interviewing with you in my house, but I like interfacing with you in my office versus true for relaunch, they feel much more comfortable at home. And they’ll share more about what’s at the core of their competence gap, which is when the magic happens, that’s when we can really work to close it. So I think that dynamic of being able to, to feel comfortable in their home and they’re each in their homes, they’re all in a way in the most comfortable place they can be it’s private, they’re not exposed. The other piece is in the beginning. They don’t feel like they belong at the Chamber of Commerce building because they’re not in full time work or part time work. So for some of them even. And so, you know, they feel like you’ve got to be a member of the club to come to the chamber, but like you have a right to be here. What’s really interesting is that many of them report because they get member rates on our events a year after they complete our program, as they say the chamber feels familiar and comfortable to them. So they feel like they’ve got a right to come. So it removes that barrier of just physically arriving at the chamber, which I think can be intimidating to some of our participants as well.

Brandon Burton 19:32
Yeah, I think that’s great. As far as the how the program is facilitated? Is that chamber staff that facilitated is it alumni you bring back in? Is it accommodated? What does that look like?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 19:43
Now one of the things we do is we survey every single class so we feel really confident about our delivery model and I teach every class and then our programs manager is Ashley billings, and she helps deliver the class so she’ll do all of the admin she’ll do all of the work of getting everybody there. So each week they get a PDF of their whole workbook. So we, we send them a whole workbook, which we have them get a notebook. And they are meant to print out the PDF worksheets, and fill out their worksheets from the week before and their homework packs. And so Ashley does all of that connective tissue so well, and she’s kind of like their, their concierge, their captain of their ship, and they have a deep connection to her. And I just kind of shoot in and teach the class. One of the things that I think is essential is nobody wants to believe us, we tell them that we can help them. And I think if I didn’t have the authentic journey of my own 13 year career break to stay home and focus on my children and the soul crushing and arresting experience of going back to work and feeling really terrified by it. They wouldn’t they sometimes they don’t even believe me when I tell them that that I can help them right. And so I think Ashley and I are both returned to work moms. And I think if we didn’t have that journey, we wouldn’t have a secret sauce in this program. And I think they have to trust us that we can help them. Because there’s just a shockingly low level of self belief for women who’ve made the choice to stay home with their children. And this is something that’s been documented by reports by McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, this is a very big problem. Because this is what’s called the leaky pipeline for talent. And what we really can’t afford to do, it’s like losing a customer. Once you’ve paid the acquisition cost of a new customer, you don’t want to lose them once we’ve put people in a talent pipeline. And we all know how hard that is to do. And that’s core chamber work to put people in a talent pipeline, the last thing we want to do is lose them. And that’s exactly what happens with women who stay home from work. So it’s hard for us to find these women, you asked about how we find them, it’s hard for us to find them. And we have to buy Facebook ads we have to go through we do presentations at PTA meetings, we reach out to places of worship, we reach out to preschools, but the big most effective thing we do is we ask every woman who completes the class to fill her seat because they all know somebody. And when someone comes to you as a stay at home mom and says, I think this class can help you to it did this for me. That’s the most powerful way for a woman and we create the power up programs so they can come kind of check it out and see the shop window. We also have a luncheon in April every year, where we pay tribute to our woman of influence our woman of influence is a woman who’s in full time work, who has made a difference for bringing other women along in the community. And then we also are now giving our lifetime achievement award to a woman who’s probably retired but still making a significant contribution to the community. I’m pleased that we were just able to honor the former Lieutenant Governor of Florida and that way and so when we’re honoring those senior members of our community, their friends come out. And that’s when we have a graduation ceremony for the people who’ve completed the program so that our participants can meet senior women who can help catalyze career growth and promote awareness of the program.

Brandon Burton 23:21
That’s a great idea. I love it. Well let’s let’s look at shifting gears into the other program on your chamber the your application as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 25:50
Hi, I’m Raquel I work with Yiftee to help over 500 chambers cities and downtown’s across the US keep local dollars local and support their small businesses. Our CEO Donna Novitsky and I will be at the ACCE Conference in Salt Lake City from July 31 to August 3, and we would love to meet you swing by our booth to say hi and learn about our community gift card program, Community cards are custom branded for your community, and can only be used at your Chamber members businesses, plus the program is free. You can learn more by visiting yiftee.com. That’s yiftee.com or emailing us at sales@yiftee.com. See you at the ACCE Conference.

Brandon Burton 26:39
All right, Betsy, we’re back. So I love everything you had to share with the relaunch program that you guys have is that focused on workforce and bringing women back into the workforce. Let’s shift gears over on to the Winter Park prosperity scorecard what that is and kind of how that came to be and what what all that it encompasses.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 27:01
So as I spoke earlier, we’ve got tremendous pressure on our local economy that wants to grow, and is growing, but not in the way we need it to. And the kind of growth that’s happening is creating enormous strain on our infrastructure. So every time we have a municipal election, which is every year in March, we have the number one issue that rises to the top is traffic. So of course we’re sitting in this area of explosive growth, and you can expect traffic to be a problem. So if you ask people, especially retirees, what do you think is the biggest problem and Winder Park others too much traffic? Well, the reality is we’re operating a $4 billion a year GDP. So there’s a significant enterprise and Winter Park. And we have healthcare needs. We have a hospital here we have two higher education institutions and Winter Park. And there are people who need to get here. Now the reality is Winter Park has 6000 more jobs than people to do them. So how are we going to get them here, they’re going to drive and clog up our roads. So until that changes, we’re going to see a continued strain on traffic infrastructure, road infrastructure and quality of life, quite frankly. And so what we’re looking at is a holistic approach to not only managing growth, but to promoting it, and making sure that we’re taking all the factors into account that we can, as we try to deliver growth that aligns with the values of our community, high emphasis on quality of life, high emphasis on arts and culture, high emphasis on, you know, historical way of doing things. Florida is really about a 70 year old state. And actually, with the advent of air conditioning, that’s when things exploded here, obviously, right? There were bits of Florida for a very long time that still had a frontier feel to it. Now we’re experiencing our centennial this year. And that means that our chamber was founded in 1923, when margins around Winter Park were frontier feeling. And so we’ve had a sustained presence of supporting the business community here for a long time. And we have people who are committed to making sure that winter parks quality of life stays high. But that very little changes here. And so that’s a mismatch with what’s going on one square mile or one mile from our office with respect to Orlando. So we have all these strains on our community. We need to support the growth of our businesses, we need to make sure that we are driving economic growth and not just helping people fight for market share, but actually grow the pie and you do that one of two ways. The first way is you grow in population and the second is that you increase productivity. And so if we’re going to grow in pop violation to meet this delta between 6000 jobs and people, we have to use land differently. And we do not currently permit land use to allow for dense multifamily units, mixed use, that’s just not in our land use code. And so that’s put there by a group of people who are committed to making sure that we don’t have that here. So we can do what keep real estate prices high. Well, they’ve gone so high that we can afford now to welcome innovators, certainly persons of color, people who are new onto the property ladder in Winter Park, because within one year, our single family home price on average rose from $771,000 to 1 million. Wow. So that has long term consequences for our community. And we’re trying to create a and we have created an ESG embedded scorecard that looks at what are we doing with our governance models? Are we taking in people who are previously unseen? Are we making them seen in the models that we’re creating to make this a better double? Or at least triple bottom line community where we’re not just focused on? Are we all making a lot of money? But are we actually creating opportunities for the environment to thrive? Are we doing the right strategic planning to make sure that we’re taking a leadership role in the region on sustainability with respect to energy, we own our own power company. So we have a role to play there? Are we doing the kinds of things that take into account people who are previously not at the table? Again, we grow the pie by increasing population. And certainly when we increase the population of people who haven’t previously been engaging our economy, it’s a competitive advantage to pursue diverse persons to come and participate in our economy. And so that’s a strategic priority for us. And we’re working with our local government to embed these as priorities. But we can’t do that from the perspective of we’re right, and you’re wrong. So we’re trying to move past that binary system of winners and losers, where there’s always a turf war between growth and no growth, we really want to move past that we want to say, Look, these are our community’s problems. Here they are, and they’re data driven, we’re giving you the data so that you can see, these are in fact, our problems. You can’t, you can’t solve for a 6000 delta between jobs and people without creating solutions for that, that are strategic. And so that’s what this scorecard that we released last year, is designed to do is help us strategically plan for the future.

Brandon Burton 32:37
Yeah, with a city the size of yours being nine square miles, I picture it, it can very well be a master plan, community of sorts, you know, where you can go into it with intention, you have to get all the players involved on the same page to be able to present the data, say, here’s where we are, here’s the direction things are going. And here’s how we get from here to there. And to be able to facilitate and convene those people together to really take that lead as a as a chamber, and kind of chart the direction that your community needs to go to service, those needs that are there, like you had mentioned with the traffic and the workforce shortage shortages and things like that. But also looking at the housing and everything else that is tied to that. So I think it’s very forward thinking for you guys to take the lead on this. And since releasing this scorecard, what kind of feedback have you received? What kind of conversations have come out of this?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 33:36
Well, I think it’s, it’s great, because it’s dovetailing with our centennial celebration, and we’ve been able to get a lot of engagement and a lot of community buy in from this. People are excited about it. I think it’s signaling a different kind of look from the chamber than anybody’s seen before. And we’re just really excited about the impact that it’s starting to have in our community.

Brandon Burton 33:59
Awesome, awesome. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, I like asking everyone I have on the show for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you offer to help them accomplish that goal? Well, we’re

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:17
big believers in partnership. And we want to make sure that we’re always aligning with people who can make one plus one equal three, four or five instead of just two. And I think partnership is the key way to get that done.

Brandon Burton 34:30
I would agree partnerships that you can leverage a lot more of your your assets and everything by partnering together and seeing a much greater outcome than just the sum of the parts. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:50
So I think it’s important for chambers to be problem solvers going forward. I think it’s important for us to move past the model of of kind of the coffee club. You know, we’ve got to be measuring our ROI and our outcomes. And I think that we’ve got to be anticipating the needs of our members and ideally getting there before they, they can even figure out that it’s a problem for them with a solution.

Brandon Burton 35:17
Yeah. And oftentimes that brings work with it. So you can’t be afraid to work if you’re

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:23
able to do that. We’ve got an incredible team here and very proud of so yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:27
absolutely. Well, Betsy, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about your relaunch program or how you went about the scorecard or anything else, you guys are doing their Winter Park, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect,

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:44
I’m pretty easy to find at WinterPark.org. My email address is on the staff section, which is under the about tab. And also, I’m on LinkedIn. So I would love to link in with people. I’m very happy to speak to what we do here and help out in any way I can.

Brandon Burton 36:00
Very good. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well make it easy for people to find it. But Betsy, I am so glad we’re able to get you back on Chamber Chat Podcast, you guys are making an impact in your community doing some great work, I can tell the enthusiasm that you have for this work. And I appreciate you being with us today and sharing about these programs. And I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 36:25
Thanks, Brandon, we really appreciate that have the opportunity to share what we’re doing here in Winter Park with the Chamber community. So thank you so much for the time today.

Brandon Burton 36:33
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Governance with Jeremy Arthur

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeremy Arthur. Jeremy currently serves as the executive director of the government and Economic Development Institute at Auburn University. He serves as the chief administrative executive responsible for the total operations of the organization that provides guidance training, professional development, leadership, community development, research and Civic Engagement endeavors across the state of Alabama. Jeremy began his career at the Economic Development Institute at Auburn University and then went on to serve as president of the Pratt Ville Area Chamber of Commerce in Alabama, where he led community development initiatives economic development efforts, tourism plans, and many other programs. Most recently, he served as the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce association of Alabama, and represented all the local chambers of commerce across the state providing guidance training, professional development and leadership and advocacy. He serves on several boards and organizations on the national level state and regional levels, both it within communities and in the chamber industry as well. But Jeremy is a two time Auburn University graduate and is currently a PhD candidate in public administration and public policy. He also holds the CCE designation, which is held by less than 4% of chamber executives nationally. Jeremy, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I know you’ve been on my radars, as we talked about before we got on the recording for some time. And it’s great to finally have you on the show. So love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Jeremy Arthur 3:43
Hey, Brandon, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I love the term chamber champion, because that’s exactly what Chamber of Commerce executives, professionals and leadership are they are champions to me. I lived in that world for a long time, I still get to play in that world now. Even though I have moved back into higher education, but, uh, thank you for what you do and the service that you provide, just to connect chambers and really celebrate them. It’s been great. I have loved my chamber career, again, ran up to about 1000 member chamber for about 10 years, the largest suburb right outside our State Capitol in Alabama, in Brattleboro and then went on for another eight, nine years to run our State Chamber association 120 chambers in the state. So I’ve done a little bit of everything from lobbying to leading to training to serving to you name it, so put those hats on, so many of your listeners do every day. And I will know that so it’s fun. It’s great to be with you. And thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 4:47
Absolutely. So yeah, you’ve got you’ve got a little bit of experience over your career of doing you know, touching on all these different areas of work. So currently me So tell us a little bit more. I mean, you touched on the panel chamber and, you know, leading the chamber association there in Alabama. Tell us a little bit more about your current work, the University of Auburn and your current position as Executive Director of Government Economic Development Institute, what what does that entail? What does your work look like these days? Right.

Jeremy Arthur 5:21
So really, it expanded my scope and scale of work to add the government piece. So I would say essentially, we’re a training institute. So we do whether in the government arena, whether you’re an elected official, whether you’re an appointed official, whether you’re a merit employee, or when a bureaucrat, and I don’t use that term negatively, that just means someone who works for the government who has a career in the government. We do all sorts of certifications, accreditations career trajectory, basically, professional development, continuing education, all of those things, county commissioners, probate judges, and then whether you work at the DMV, or that you’re a tax assessor, we run all them on the government side of the house. And then our economic development side of the house still keeps me connected to the local Chambers of Commerce. We have certification programs, for chambers for chamber execs, for economic developers all in that arena. So I’ll lump that in and call that community development. And then that even touches on tourism that touches on hospitality. So all those quality of life issues, but then also the professional execution of those duties. That’s what we do at our office as the Training Institute, we have a research arm, because obviously, we’re an institute of higher education. And so we do some publications, looking at issues facing Alabama, that really transcend from one end of the state to the other that a lot of our chambers in the state are trying to tackle that really are issues across the country, whether we’re looking at inflation, whether we’re looking at Medicaid, expansion, Medicare, whether we’re looking at prison, population, education, etc. So that’s a little bit about what we do. And then we offer some community assistance projects partner with a lot of folks to just try to increase wealth and increase training, we do some entrepreneurship, training for businesses, very involved in Main Street. So again, all that is going to bring very clear with chambers steel.

Brandon Burton 7:16
Absolutely. And I appreciate you given that background and in the work that you’re involved with now, because I know, I know, when you announced that you were leaving the chamber to go back to the universe out there. I know there’s a little bit of heartache amongst the chamber professionals, like Jeremy’s leaving, but he’s not right. He’s just he’s not employed at a chamber directly. But he’s still very involved with with chamber work and community development, as he just explained. So the he’s still here, he’s still connected, and he’s on the show today to provide some of that knowledge for us. So thank you, you are too

Jeremy Arthur 7:49
kind. I appreciate that. Some of my literally my best friends I have made through this profession, all over the country. And so I’m very blessed and appreciative of

Brandon Burton 8:00
them. Absolutely. So as we get into our discussion, our topic or area of focus for our discussion today is going to be around governance. And I know you know, people across the country chamber professionals, they may have heard you talk and present on governance at different conferences and so forth. But there’s a lot that haven’t yet. And even for those that have this may be a good you know, good thing to be able to earmark and their podcast player and go back and listen to it again and and reference it often. So I’m excited to get into this conversation with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:23
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Brandon Burton 11:18
Alright, Jeremy, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, I know you’ve you’ve presented on governance a lot. So as far as the topic matter goes, I would definitely default to you as far as what what to cover here. But I’d like to just hand the mic over to you and maybe talk about what are some of those key things as the chamber looks at governance and how they work, you know, in connection with the board, and where are those areas of responsibility lie? What are some of those key factors that chambers need to be mindful of, and in running a successful organization?

Jeremy Arthur 11:58
Brandon, I know we laugh. And we started this, I said, it’s hard to make this topic sexy. As much as you said, you know, the evidence is just not that flashy, you know, set the world on fire. But to me, it is critical because you’ve got to get your internal house in order before you can build your external house. And really the sound governance structure is necessary at all levels of the organization, we certainly apply it to the boards or the council’s or our governing authorities that we serve, typically elected about our membership, but really it stretches out to our volunteers what they should know, and how they can support and help with our own governance issues. And then certainly there are key documents that people don’t even think about or related to governments, to governance as a whole. You know, I would start by saying there’s some some board basics and and you’re right, I’ve been blessed. I’ve worked in 14 states. And I just finished one in Virginia two weeks ago, doing board retreats and board orientations and working on government’s governance strategies, I was very fortunate to teach and still also chair, the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management board of trustees. And so I finished that year before last as chair and so taught at all the institute sites and, you know, I work with ACCA, and, and all of our partners and so I’ve done about 300, I think plus of these, and really, it’s if you start fundamentally, it’s it’s with duties. And so when you’re looking at governance, it’s the duty of care. That means as a volunteer leader of an organization, as a board member, let’s say that you are going to make all the decisions you can based on the material that’s available to you and the information that you have, so that you can make a decision in good faith, using the best judgment, you have to reach a reasonable conclusion. So that’s the fundamental definition I think that we’re dealing with. And then subsequent things duty of loyalty, you know, you want to protect the interests of the chamber that you’re serving, don’t do any harm or injury to it. And then I would say you’ve got to review and approve function. So that’s a primary function of a board or a governance entity, where you’re looking at all things relating to the organization to the chamber, the mission, the vision, the strategic plan, the budget, you know, policies and procedures, all of those internal workings. And we’ll talk about bylaws, I’m sure later one of the key governance documents, but then just overseeing those and making sure you’re compliant. And then I guess, kind of maybe two or three more, you’re going to select the board really hires and fires or evaluates the chief staff person. So whether that’s an executive director or President CEO, and then that chief staff person hires and fires evaluates the rest of the staff and

So that’s a key component for them. And then I guess the last piece, I would just say, in basics is that they’re just monitoring the organization and the performance of the board themselves. It’s self governance, it’s peer accountability. So again, being ethical, being fair, being transparent, avoiding conflicts of interest, working for the best interest of the organization, setting that strategic direction, that’s all fundamentally, what a board should be doing. Now, how do you do that? Well, you know, there’s, I would say, there’s,

Brandon Burton 15:38
that’s what we have here for today. So

Jeremy Arthur 15:41
first and foremost, you always hear me talk about the mission statement. And so that is really who you are. It’s usually brief. And it really does guide the actions of the chamber, it states your overall purpose, why you exist, it’s supposed to give you a sense of direction and help guide your decision making. Most of maybe you don’t know it is required by the IRS to have a mission statement. It can be changed, but it’s submitted annually. Certainly, you know, most people are probably familiar with the form 990, but form 1023, or 1024. And again, it really does guide you and that’s what I was gonna say, if you’re doing things that are outside of your mission statement, to me, that’s a red flag, you’ve kind of got that mission drift or that mission creep. You know, fundamentally, I guess, just to organize, you got to have articles of incorporation in most states, and whether that’s done with the Secretary of State’s office, or whether that’s done with the Department of Commerce or whatever. It’s just a legal document that allows you to organize, state your purpose, usually register as a nonprofit, in most cases, a C six above a one C six, which again, is just a tax designation. It really just kind of defines your purpose related to kind of state government. And then I think the key document is your bylaws. There’s a reason if you look at that word, it is by law, though it is your set of rules that you agree, the good thing about it is, most states give you some sort of nonprofit statute to follow. But you’ve set your own rules. It’s how you’re in relation, how you work with your members, how you work with your investors, your partners, and it governs and relates, and regulates your internal structure. So it’s how you do business there. It’s kind of typically broad and very general. But it’s your procedures for your meetings, it’s your boards, it’s how you select your board. It’s how you amend the bylaws, and you know, those kinds of things, all those steps that kind of govern you internally. But please make sure you do what are in it, what’s in that document. And we’ll talk about that, because that is the surefire way. In theory, well, really, in practice, if you violate those bylaws, and it’s pointed out, you can lose your nonprofit status. And so that’s a downer in an overall upbeat Chamber Chat Podcast. But that’s how serious this is. And so, you know, I’ve seen bylaws that, that haven’t been updated in 30 years, you know, that were the original set of bylaws when the chamber was organized. And it still says, you know, we’re going to notify our members of our annual meeting 10 days prior to the meeting via the United States Postal Service, and you know, all those kinds of things and just sort of outdated and it really needs to be updated, refreshed. In fact, our best practice I would say with your bylaws is we instituted an operations committee that meets every third year, because that’s how our board rotation was that theoretically, we could have a third of our board members new every three years. And so this just took an operations operational approach to say we’re just gonna look at all of our operating documents and make sure we’re following them, make sure they’re up to date, make sure they’re current and making helping us meet our mission. And then that leads you know, your policies and procedures, make sure you know policies are not procedures. For example, the policy may be any check over $2,000 has to have two signatures Okay, that’s the policy. The procedure is then the CEO signs it the treasurer signs it you know, it’s been processed through this account, etc. So make sure you know, those are really consistent, but that they also mesh with the bylaws and that none of these documents conflict. You’ve probably got a strategic plan and outlines your your goals and your objectives what you’re trying to do. If you think about it, your budget is even a governance document, because it is your income and expenses. It’s approved by the board. It’s documented oftentimes with line items. And then if you’ve got sort of an annual work plan, I guess that’s kind of the final document in my mind. Just how you can track your progress. Are we meeting our goals? are we implementing the strategic plan? And here’s how we’re doing that? Are we including those performance measures and responsibilities? And are we are the goals in place to help us accomplish that? So all those things are kind of in a solid governance structure model? I guess.

Brandon Burton 20:40
So as you went through a lot of these different documents, these as pieces of the structure, is he talking about budget, and to me that that seems like a commonplace thing to you know, you review your budget on a regular basis, call it a monthly basis, make sure your income expenses are what you expect, and there’s not any surprises coming up. And I know a lot of chambers, they look at their strategic plan, maybe on a three or five year basis, but then review it annually to make sure they’re staying on track. Any guidance as far as how often to be reviewing a mission plan or a mission statement? Or you mentioned the bylaws? You know, maybe the suggestion was every three years, maybe depending on the structure of your, your board and your organization? But correct, what are some of these maybe good practices for keeping these things up to date and making sure that you’re staying on course,

Jeremy Arthur 21:37
that’s why we codified it in our bylaws, you know, if you put a committee in your bylaws, and that committee has to meet. And so that’s why we said, Okay, we’re gonna make sure that this committee meets and ours happens to meet every third year it could meet annually. to really look at it, I mean, I wouldn’t envision that the total direction of a chamber would change that often. I mean, you can get some broad language and a mission statement. But I put the mission statement at the top of every single one of our board agendas, because it gives us focus. And really, I would challenge our board, the boards that I’ve worked for, to say before you make a motion, read that mission statement, and is the action that you’re proposing to obligate the chamber to fulfill, can you find a place for it in that mission statement. And to me, that’s the ultimate way to prevent mission drift or mission creep, and keep you focused on what the task is at hand. Again, the mission statement is your very purpose for being I’m a big fan of moving things into consent agendas, if they don’t require action of the board. But there are board reports that the board needs to be aware of, you know, being a board member is an active process. And it requires an obligation on both parts. And not only the professional staff, of which I was and your listeners probably are. But if you’re a board member, it also requires you to participate and read the things that are sent to you because again, you’re the governing authority. And so if there’s no action item, but it’s important, so that you know the work of the chamber, put it in the consent agenda that requires one motion, again, and it can be voted on that way. And it really streamlines your board meetings, you know, right. And I’ve always said, serving on the chamber board should be a positive experience. And I know when I facilitate a lot of these, I will oftentimes in fact, I think I’ve said it in probably everyone. If the serving on the chamber board is not a positive experience for you, there is no harm, no foul, in bowing out. And for whatever reason, you may have personal circumstances that have changed professional circumstances that have changed, or you’ve just lost the passion. That’s okay. Our lives are constantly changing. And I promise you, you’re not doing that chamber of favor, by hanging on to that board position, just step back for a little bit, we’ll replace you and let’s reconsider you in the future. That’s a hard decision, sometimes a hard discussion, but it shouldn’t be. Because again, you want what’s best for the organization. The leadership wants what’s best for the organization. And so I think we need to really take a look at that. But going back to that mission statement, and those really, if a Motion is made, that’s going to obligate the chamber into an action, make sure it lines up and doesn’t violate your bylaws is within your scope and your scale and really follows your mission statement. So I think that’s some actionable takeaways. Hopefully.

Brandon Burton 24:39
Absolutely. And as you talk about board members and being actively engaged with the board, I think for any any chamber listening to be mindful of that too, as you recruit board members to think is this somebody who has that bandwidth to be actively engaged or is it a status symbol, you know, for them to be on the board?

Jeremy Arthur 25:02
Are they checking a box right? In front of I’m a huge proponent of written job responsibilities and roles for a board member. Give that perspective board member a job description, I’ll send you a sample reach out to me. I mean, there are tons of samples you can Google on, ACCE has tons of samples. Again, to me, it’s the highest compliment and utmost show of respect. Because I’m asking you, here’s what I need from you, potential prospective board member. Here’s the time commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the potential financial commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the attendance requirement that I’m asking for, here’s what I need you to do. Can you objectively look at that, and say, I can do it. Now also, in that job description, is what the chamber Exec is going to provide to you. I’m going to be respectful of your time, I’m going to make sure that our board meetings only last an hour, I’m going to make sure that I’m really seeking your input and your guidance, and I’m not just providing a report to you, I need your I need your expertise, I need you to lead for me. So it is you know, it’s a two way street. But to me, it’s the ultimate show of professionalism and respect so that a prospective board member could determine whether they can say yes or no. And then also during their term, they can continue to evaluate if they’re able to meet that job, responsibility, write it down. It’s not meant to be overly legalistic or, you know, you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that. It’s just again, an agreement of how we need to move forward together.

Brandon Burton 26:42
Right. And like you said, it goes both ways. And I can picture you know, most board members are busy people, there’s some of the busiest people in the community. Right, right, right, you don’t want the person who’s just looking for time to fill, right? Correct. So it says you have busy people on your board, and you’re recruiting busy people, you need to be able to give them some kind of an outline. Otherwise, you’re just saying, hey, we want you on your on our board. And then as you have things come up, you’re getting frustrated, because they’re not responding in a timely manner, or they’re not meeting your expectations. Because you’ve never shared what those expectations were to begin with to see if it was reasonable for them. So I think that is a key point to to apply in your recruiting of board members. Are there other I’m sure there are there are other things that we need to make sure listeners are considering when it comes to governance at their chamber and, and working well with their board and in. And specifically, I’m thinking towards the bylaws and making sure it’s not a fun thing, right to go back and read through your bylaws over? Absolutely. At the same time, you know, animals think of it as is a quite literally a religious practice, right? So that’s somebody in religion, you have your book a scripture, you have your Bible or whatever, you don’t just read a passage of scripture once and then forget about it, right? Someone who’s religious goes back to those scripture passages over and over to ingrain it and make it be part of them. And I see the bylaws kind of being something similar, where you need to go back to it often to become ingrained as part of you and your regular practice.

Jeremy Arthur 28:22
That’s the perfect analogy. And it is incumbent upon really staff more so than board, although it’s applicable to the board, because that’s the rules they follow. But it’s really on you as staff to make sure you’re doing that. And that’s why it’s just good to review them. Again, I think as a as an exec in a chamber, you got to know those bylaws like you said forward, backward, upward, downward, you need to know everything in there. And again, it’s not to be you know, I want to say this and put a disclaimer on there. They couldn’t really be quite vague. So as membership based organizations, while he’s specifically in the state of Alabama where I am, if you can’t tell by my accent, I’m sure you can, you knew it was somewhere in the south listener. But, and Alabama is a membership organization, we’re required to have an annual meeting, at least some event, some opportunity where the entire membership is invited. And typically it looks like when we have a change of officers or an awards banquet, you know, that’s typically where we incorporate that. But it has to have an opportunity and it is a business meeting for all members of the organization to be invited and also have a chance to address the assembly as the whole address the board. Most of the time it doesn’t happen but you understand that but to me if you put that in the bylaws, you can just simply say our organization, our chamber will have an annual meeting period. And I’ve seen so many bylaws that say our annual meeting will be on the third Thursday of September. It will start at six o’clock and it will be at the Civic Center. Well, you just set yourself up for failure if something happens on the third Thursday of September, and the Civic centers booked, I mean, you know, and that sounds trivial. But in theory, you are in violation of your bylaws, you have broken your own rules. And that sets you up for, you know, not good. And it can go as far as litigation, you know, those kinds of things if you have a disgruntled member, and again, I’ve seen things that were not malicious, they were just innocent, I’ve seen people focus on an end date, rather than our pre process, and kind of skirt some things. And again, not malicious at all, but violated the bylaws. And so automatically, you broke your own rules that govern your relationship between you and your members. And when that happens, you lose trust. And it just kind of spirals from there.

Brandon Burton 30:54
Yeah, I can see where we’re leaving a little bit of vagueness, because it’s helpful to be able to have that flexibility to stay within your bylaws, but also be able to adapt, you know, as times change, and if you’re set to be on the, you know, the third Tuesday of, you know, at the Civic Center, and then your your chamber size, you know, doubles in size, which hopefully you can’t fit in the civic center anymore, you know, so

Jeremy Arthur 31:19
and that’s why I said a periodic review of your bylaws is key, because then you can adapt to the changing circumstances you find your chamber in just the prime example you

Brandon Burton 31:30
just used. Right? Very good. Well, Jeremy, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if you might have any tip or action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest for them?

Jeremy Arthur 31:45
Well, I’m biased, I’m going to tell you the start to go to institute. First and foremost, the Institute for organization management with the US Chamber. Like I said, it just finished my term as Chair of the Board of Trustees, but multiple sites multiple times across the year is really a great foundational program. And then it led me to pursue my CCE, like you said, less than four or 5% of of execs in the country have a certified chamber executive designation. Same way with ACA II and their ca they’re certified Association Executive, all in this realm and arena. I mean, that’s your professional designation and your certification. And it also shows your continuing education. You know, I’m biased now I would say partner with your local University, if you’ve got a regional or a statewide, I happen to have a statewide footprint. And we are all the time they’re Institute’s like mine, whether it’s called a similar name, or something different office of public service, again, professional continuing education, at institutions of higher education, whether it’s a community college, whether it’s a technical college, whether it’s a four year institution, you name it, that can be a great resource. And that also has access to resources that can help you and be a great partner. And so that’s a shameless plug, given what I do now. But it also helps me and, again, keeps me connected to that. And so I think that’s great takeaways, review those documents, don’t let, it’s not a daunting task, reach out for help. We have a great network, your listener, base, your followers here, you can make connections. And then I would say continue to invest, listen to this podcast. I mean, I’ve just listened just recently, we were talking, I travel a lot. And so it’s great for me to be a podcast listener in a car, or on a plane as much as I travel. And so just continue to really benchmark those best practices. And don’t be afraid to ask this community across this country is so helpful, is willing to, I mean, literally counsel, you share best practices. And I’ll be the first to say you call me I’ll tell you where I messed up. And I’ll say, Hey, don’t do this. I did it. And it didn’t work. It might work for you. But let me help you avoid some pitfalls. So I hope that helps, too. But just again, make sure your internal house is in order. Because when it’s in order, the sky’s the limit what you can do externally.

Brandon Burton 34:21
Absolutely. I love those tips. So you can just keep going all day with these lessons you’ve learned. So Jeremy, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeremy Arthur 34:37
I think they’re more relevant now than ever before. But I think their roles and their definitions are changing. We’re no longer just an entity that networks we should be an entity that convenes, facilitates and leads and we’re doing just that. When you look at the innovative things that can entities are doing across the state led by their Chamber of Commerce. Because the chamber is seen as that convener of bringing partners together, of making those connections to truly solve real world problems. obvious example here in Alabama for years, our business community and our education community tucked at each other, not with each other, and not to each other. They talked at each other. And we have broken down the silos to really say business community, how can the education community help you? How can they help you train your workers? What do you need to tackle these workforce development issues? What are programs we need to do and again, the Chamber’s across the state, led that charge and are leading that charge. And I will also say, you know, unfortunately, we do find ourselves sometimes in a divisive culture, where you know, that sensational bad news sales, and we have so much good news to sell. And to talk about that we need to, we need to be there, we need to be the front line, for every negative headline, generating for positive headlines because they’re there in your community. And also don’t shortchange yourself, and don’t undersell yourself, something that may you may consider trivial, and it’s just a part of your job, can really be life changing to a lot of people. Tell your story. Tell your story. It’s hard, we’re busy doing the work. So we don’t have time to tell our story. We’re doing the story. But don’t forget to tell your story. Because it’s important, and people should hear it.

Brandon Burton 36:48
Absolutely. I love that great, great vision of the future but also you know, chock full of more tips too. So well thank you Jeremy, for for sharing this, you know, great, great information with us. I hope this is a an episode that listeners go back to often as maybe as you know, a regular basis as they go back to look through bylaws, go back to this episode, I went to Jeremy Slater here, and just you know, jot down your notes and make it a regular practice. But Jeremy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you learn more, and just maybe a dive in a little bit deeper. Where Where would you point them to reach out and connect with you?

Jeremy Arthur 37:31
Absolutely. Hey, you can follow me, I’m on all the social media platforms. So Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, our institute, the government and Economic Development Institute, if you just go to auburn.edu, you can find us there. It’s technically auburn.edu/outreach/ged. And you can find us there, we would love to, you know, I will help you if I can help you. Certainly we cover the state of Alabama, but my reach is much broader and much more in scope than that. And I’m willing to help you. And if you’ll reach out to me anyway, also my email just my first initial last name, jarthur@auburn.edu. And I think I’ve given my my employer and my alma mater plugs by saying that Auburn University, so but again, reach out to me if I can help you there are free resources on our website as well that anybody can use. Specifically, I’ll just put a plug, there’s a you’ll see a tab on our website, called know your community, free and open to anybody has great demographic research of literally every community in the country. You can be a comparative research. Again, look at that. And if we can help you, thank you. And then I would just encourage folks, continue to listen to this chamber chat. Even if you see a topic that you say, well, that doesn’t really apply to me listen to it, because I promise you, you will take away something from your guests and their experience. If you listen.

Brandon Burton 39:07
I appreciate that. Jeremy. We will. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, the website I encourage everybody to check out the Know Your Community tab. That sounds like great, great resource there for for anybody listening.

Jeremy Arthur 39:22
So it’s free. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:24
it’s free. You can’t beat that. I love that. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us today provided a ton of value for listeners. And this is a the perfect type of programming that we’d like to have. You’re on the podcast. So thank you so much.

Thanks Brandon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Sarah Davasher-Wisdom. Sarah has served as President and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc since January 2020. Sarah has been with goI since 2014. Rising from leading July’s government affairs activities as Vice President of Government Affairs, to now as president CEO. GeoEye was named National chamber of the year in 2019. Personally, Sarah’s also been the recipient of several notable awards at the local, regional and national levels. Sarah has held previous roles in government and public policy including manager of Government Affairs for Tennessee Valley Authority, Strategic Communications Officer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Community Development Coordinator for Congressman Lewis. She serves on the boards of several local organizations as well as on the US chambers committee of 100. Sarah is the first woman and youngest person to serve as president and CEO of GLA. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 3:13
Oh, hello, Brandon. I’m excited to be on the chamber podcast as well. Then looking forward to this conversation. I think that that bio certainly said a lot about me. So thank you for reading that so eloquently. But the real story goes beyond that. And you know, a lot of people will say what’s something that people don’t know about you or what something that tells more about you personally, and I always like to share that my husband and I are serious ballroom dancers. Between the two of us. We have 50 years of dance experience. And it’s how we met. So we’ve been dancing together for 10 years of which will actually 11 years we’ve been married for 10. And that’s something that not a lot of people do. And not a lot of people know. And it’s something that we’ve continued. Despite any sort of changes in career or relocations, or anything else that we have done, we’ve always remained committed to our dancing.

Brandon Burton 4:09
Awesome. That is, it’s great that you guys have been able to keep that up and have that common bond together. And that that interests. So thank you. I like learning these tidbits about people as we have them on the show and learn those facts that so I had mentioned to you before we started recording, but this is a first for me to have. Three, you’re the third person from Greater Louisville Inc. to be on Chamber Chat Podcast. First time, I’ve had three of any organization on the podcast, which speaks volumes to the great work and impact you guys are having that you keep rising to the top to have different members of the organization on the on the show. But for those that are Thank you, yeah, yeah, for sure. So Those who’ve been listening to the podcast since the beginning. may remember at Kent Oyler on back in 2019. When you guys were Chamber the Year finalists and won Chamber the Year and more recently had Jordan Clemons on talking about using LinkedIn to grow membership and they both are fantastic episodes so encourage anybody to go back and listen but I just I mentioned that because those longtime listeners may be a little bit familiar with with GLI, but for those who may not be just give us a little synopsis, I guess about what GLI is all about, you know size, the Chamber staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing, just to set the table for our discussion.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 5:43
Sure, well, Greater Louisville Inc. We have a staff of about 30 people. And we serve about 1800 members. We are also the Regional Chamber and we are by state so we cover 15 counties, five in Indiana and 10 in Kentucky. We’ve got everything from Fortune 500 companies located here to small retailers and suppliers. We are the home of Humana, and UPS Airlines. And those are two of our biggest companies here. Our main goal was to grow the regional economy. And we do that in several ways through traditional economic development, talent attraction, advocacy and DNI. So our goal is to do all of those things in the best way possible to make our region the strongest for growth. So that’s a little bit about GLI we have a great team, our budget is 5.7 million.

Brandon Burton 6:38
Very good. So you touched on one of the things that we’ll focus our conversation on today. And as you mentioned, those focuses of your work, one being talent attraction. And I’m excited to dive in a little bit deeper and learn about how GLI goes about talent attraction. I know that’s a hot topic for chambers across the country. And you’re so kind to share some of the tips and strategies you guys are using there in Louisville. So we will dive into that conversation much deeper since we get back from this quick break.

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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  9:21  

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  9:50  

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 10:01
All right, Sarah, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today about how you guys are focusing your work around talent attraction. And I know there’s different approaches, you know, chambers go about this work in different ways. But I’d like to learn a little bit more and have you share how how you guys are GLI are going about talent, attraction, and really making your economy there is something that’s really thriving. And I know you’ve mentioned the DE&I efforts as well. And it is a very diverse community as well. And I think that plays into talent attraction. So I anticipate that those two will overlap a little bit. But I don’t want to steal your thunder. So I’ll hand it over to you to to share how you guys are going about this work?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 10:47
Sure, well, I’m really excited about our talent attraction programming, because we’ve had a lot of cities come to learn more about it, because they want to replicate it. So it really has been one of those. One of those things that we are known for in Louisville, our program is called Live in Lou and we developed it in 2016, to really show what it was like to live work and play in the greater Louisville region. And the platform itself showcases all of the assets that really differentiate us as a community, we highlight the availability of good jobs and career opportunities, the quality of life and the sustainability, to raise a family and the suitability to raise a family I should say. And then the ability to make a difference. And the reason that we highlight those three things is because in 2016, we did a lot of data, a lot of research into why people want to live in our community. And those were the three reasons. So we target our marketing around those three reasons. And one of the places that people go to learn about a community is on social media. So we use our website and our social media channels to promote feel good stories about the community, new businesses, opening up favorite restaurants. Because we have a fantastic culinary scene here. It’s one of the things that people love to visit for. We also showcase restaurants and festivals. So those are some of the things we really try to highlight. We have also been doing private label campaigns for companies under our live in loop programming. And we basically will look at where there isn’t what jobs are needed for that company. And then where there is an area in the country or even internationally, where that skill set exists and may not be paid as well there as it is here in Louisville. And so then we can geofence and do some targeted marketing, highlighting those things I mentioned earlier, and really go out and connect the the job seeker or the potential low avillion to the job opportunity. And we can use the marketing from the company itself. So it’s a really innovative way for us to recruit individuals to move here to work for a specific company. So it helps our community because we’ve got residents moving in, and it also helps our companies. I love

Brandon Burton 13:10
that name that Lou avillion that just that flows. So well. I love it. Can you share with us some more about the geofencing? So how do you go about that and targeting the right people like the parameters you set on it? Certain radiuses maybe some people aren’t familiar with what geofencing is just give us a little bit of background on that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 13:33
It’s really a technology that we pay for. So we identify what geography we would we would want to highlight usually by ZIP codes, and then the firm actually does the geofencing. But it’s basically a way that you can put information on phone like you’re capturing phone data so that then you can advertise. Because when people are moving in and out of that zip code, you’re capturing that data out that makes sense.

Brandon Burton 14:01
Yeah, it does. Are you guys identifying specifically people that don’t live in Louisville currently that based on the phone data, so when they come and visit or pass by or how does that? How does that

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 14:15
yes, we definitely are targeting out of town people so that we can get them to move here and and maybe because our goal was talent attraction, we don’t have enough people here in Louisville to fill the open jobs. And so that’s why we’re trying to really focus on talent attraction. We’ve grown the social media channels from 200 followers to 53,000 followers in five years. So there really is a lot of momentum to live in Lou. And then we also have a group of volunteers that we call city champs. It’s kind of a human Welcome Wagon to help people get connected to the interest that they have in the region. The volunteers are incredibly passionate. Excuse me, and If they really want to showcase the best parts of our community and make connections, so the new residents kind of have a friend immediately, when they when they move here. So we train the city champs on all of the things in the community, it’s about a four hour training. And then they identify what interests they have. So we can put on our website that this person is a trained city champ, and this person is interested in interested in parks or ballet, or whatever the situation may be, so that when we have prospective residents interested in those same, those same things, then we can make that connection. And there’s automatically an interest in sharing information so that the person is more likely to relocate to

Brandon Burton 15:42
a level like that it kind of creates a friend, right? They come into the community. And as they’re saying, this reminds me when I was in high school, I moved across the country. And it was a kind of a traumatic thing as a junior in high school, across the country. But the new high school I went to, they had a program at the school where they would match another student up with new students to kind of show you around, and it made all the difference. So I see these these community are the city champs, these volunteers, really being able to be that tour guide of the city, you know, sharing some common interests, really helping to help these new people feel at home, I see that as being a key attribute to being able to really attract and retain these these new people to the community. You had mentioned I mean, the social media following is great. I mean, 253,000 followers is in that short amount of time is amazing. You had mentioned a few examples of some of the things that you’re doing on social media to leverage that and tell the stories of the little bill. Are there some examples that have really taken off that you’re aware of that, you know, I guess you could say have gone viral that they got more traction than other things on your social media stories.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 17:03
I think the real life stories of people that have followed live in lieu and actually move to the city have been the most powerful. And that, you know, those are like, really kind of rare, but also that doesn’t negate the success of the platform, it’s just that we don’t always have somebody love it so much that they post about it, you know, I think people often will look at it. And I think, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. But they don’t necessarily write a big story about it, we actually had a couple write a big magazine article about it. And that was that was really a thing that went crazy on social media, particularly locally, people were talking about it. Another thing that has really gotten a lot of media interest on our live and live platform is our newly launched workforce ecosystem hub. And it’s a compilation of all of the workforce development resources. So we have our talent attraction, part of living, Lou, but we also are trying to get people that aren’t working now into the workforce, or people helping them to upskill. And since 2014, when I first moved here, I was hearing about all of these different workforce development programs in the community. And I kept saying, Where is the one stop shop, like work, and I read about all of these in one place, and that that resource just didn’t exist. So there were a lot of programs that were going on utilized and not not utilized to their maximum potential, I should say. So we, for two years, we work to compile all of those resources. And we launched this ecosystem hub on the live and lose site. It’s liveinlou.com/work. And it has 245 organizations and their programs listed. We’ve got a portal for job seekers and a portal for employers, the employers can go on the site and identify any sort of training programs, some of which are free, and funded by the state actually funding from the state available that you can apply for on the site. And that that funding and those training programs are for their employees. So we have a manufacturer, they may be able to get funding to do a certain certain upskilling initiative, and all of that is listed on the site. It also includes different organizations that are helping to remove barriers to work so the employer can help identify those for the employee. A lot of HR offices will use it if they have an employee that’s having difficulty with transportation and or childcare availability. I mean, it’s childcare, transportation, all sorts of barriers that exist out there. And we have all these organizations in our community that are working to overcome them. And now there is one place that you can go and access that on the job seeker platform, you can still you can still see the barriers to work resources and because a lot of job seekers are, you know, trying to figure out ways to manage that themselves, but they also can apply for jobs on there and see what financial assistance may be available to do certifications or apprenticeships or going back to to get a college degree even. So, we’ve really taken a collaborative approach to all of this and worked with the organizations to make sure that the right information is being shared. And we’ve had a lot of hits on it. And the media has been going crazy about it locally, they’re calling it Google’s version of LinkedIn. So we’re excited about it. That is

Brandon Burton 20:36
great. As you’re given that explanation about how live in lieu works, and the job seekers and employers portals, the thought hit me why why do communities, you know, outsource to these big job seeking websites, when they have a chamber of commerce, who’s connected with employers know the needs know that those barriers, they really can give a kind of a white glove service to help match future employees with employers. So I love that how you guys have set this up and strategically having those are calling out what some of those barriers are, and approaches of how you guys are working to overcome those things. And community partners to help overcome those things. As a going about the job seekers, the employers on there, I imagine that you have a wide range of different employment opportunities. It’s not any one type of industry, obviously, but what are what’s kind of the the range of employment opportunities that you see happening through the live in lieu website,

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 21:48
we’ve got everything from, you know, clerk position, to a nurse position, I mean, every sort of job imaginable is on there. We also with some of the jobs that we learn about some of the jobs that our employers post are also very skill specific, highly technical. And we do have a partnership where we can seek out those highly specific skills, because there are some jobs where you may only have a handful of people in the country that have the ability to do the job. And through a partnership with LinkedIn talent insights, we can seek out those individuals. And that’s more of a specific employer request. It’s not, I mean, they’re usually posted on live in lieu as well. But in those instances, it’s less likely that somebody with that skill set is going to be posting for a job, they probably they’re gonna wait for recruiters to call them. So we find them and call them.

Brandon Burton 22:45
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. Because there’s those highly skilled labor that you need to kind of seek them out and, and maybe even try to take them from another company. And we won’t say that too loud. But that happens, right?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:02
Well, we don’t do that from local companies only when we’re trying to get people to move here.

Brandon Burton 23:07
That’s right. That’s right. Now just say this program, it seems like a real game changer, especially in the talent and workforce development space. Is there anything that we’re missing from the live in loop program that we haven’t touched on?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 23:23
Um, I would say that, you know, we do overcome objections to moving to Louisville sometimes. And this is where the DNI aspect of this comes in that you mentioned earlier. We in in 2020, we were the epicenter of the Breonna, Taylor, killing and the protests that followed that really showed us that we needed to expand our scope of work. So recruiting diverse talent has been a little bit more difficult. But since 2020, I have been saying all this time, this is also an opportunity for us to show that this time, it’s different and it should have been different every time before but we have to show that the business community is committed to creating an inclusive economy. So we have really expanded our work in the DNI space. And that helps our talent attraction initiatives. So some of the work that we do, and includes a minority business accelerator called power to prosper. We’re getting ready. We’re taking applications for our third cohort right now. And it provides small businesses with knowledge and resources and networks that will help their businesses scale. We also have during 2020 launch a racial equity pledge that identifies five different ways that companies can can make their business more inclusive. And that includes things like diversifying their vendor spend, creating a safe space for conversation ones that are about inclusion. It also includes hiring diverse talent. I mean, and we then with that pledge, we launched a toolkit. And I was, I was excited about the number of companies that signed the pledge, it was over 200 companies. But then I was also excited about the toolkit because the toolkit gave businesses, the tools, they needed to do that. So we didn’t just say, Hey, we’re signing this pledge, we also said, Now, here’s how you go and do these things that are in the pledge. And as our as an organization, we have diversified our own vendor spend in ways that we never thought possible, because we’ve been so intentional about it. And my hope is that every company that sign that pledge has been equally intentional, and that we’re seeing a lot more things have, or a lot of great things happen as a result. Another thing that we do, and then we started doing it 2020 is a procurement matchup event called power to prosper. I’m sorry, I’m forgetting the name of it. It’s not that’s the minority business accelerator. Progress through procurement is our procurement event. And we identify what needs companies have in our community. And then we bring in diverse vendors to and match them up. And then sometimes there’s still a contracting process involved, but it is helping both the employer that has this, this need for a vendor and then they they’ve been having trouble finding a diverse vendor. So then we’re connecting them to a diverse vendor, and hopefully good things come from that. So those are some of the things that we’ve done in the DNI space. And like I said, that also helps our talent attraction and helps our economy grow. And all of the things in a chamber seem to work together cohesively. And I like that about chamber work.

Brandon Burton 26:48
Absolutely. So one of the things that stood out to me is you mentioned that you guys are often involved with overcoming object objections. And occasionally certain objections will rise to prominence. But, and oftentimes, we don’t even hear about some of the objections. So how do you guys go about soliciting feedback of people that may be hesitant of moving to Louisville to understand what their objections might be? So you can address that and learn how to better maybe fine tune this program?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 27:18
Well, most of the time, the HR recruiters at our companies will tell us what the objections are. And that’s, that’s really our source of information. There are times that we’re talking with individuals directly, particularly when they’re those highly skilled individuals that we’re seeking out for employers. But most of the time, the HR managers will tell us what stories they’re hearing and a lot of it relates to Louisville, being in Kentucky, and people here, Kentucky and they think that we are not as sophisticated as a place they would like to live. And Louisville is actually very sophisticated. I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a great culinary scene. We’ve got all five types of art organizations. I mean, we really do have a fantastic city is a great place to live and not just a great place to raise a family. I mean, it certainly is that but I mean you can be single here and you can really have a fantastic life. It’s a fun place to be. So but Louisville often gets branded with Kentucky and the demographic and the psychographic of talent looking to relocate is looking for, you know, a city that’s fun and exciting. And Kentucky doesn’t have that brand nationally. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:33
Kentucky is a great state though. Okay, yeah. Is it beautiful? Yeah. Well, Sara, you’ve hit on some great points here. As far as talent attraction goes, and I’m sure people listening or are taking notes and seeing how they can make some tweaks to their own talent attraction programs. I’d like to ask if there maybe is any tip or action item that you’d like to share for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 29:05
Well, I would suggest getting your CCE I’m a big believer in the certified chamber executive program for several reasons. Number one, there is an application process that requires you to really get out there and give speeches and also sometimes like IOM counts. So that’s a training program where you’re networking with other chamber professionals. And through IOM and through CCE which came later for me, I’ve met so many incredibly smart people. And being able to reach out to those individuals being able to hear about their programming as I went through IOM and CCE really, really helped me to know different ideas and different ways to navigate community issues and different ways I could take Our chamber to the next level. And so as a result of my experience being so positive, I have said, anybody that goes through IOM has to commit to doing CCE as well. The CCE process, what I liked about that was beyond the application process that I just described with you, you get to meet so many people, you learn about their programs. There are there’s a body of literature that one has to read that really focuses on governance and finance and making sure the chamber is in good operational order. And I believe that’s incredibly important, because all of the programs that we talk about that are exciting. We can’t do if our chamber isn’t in good operational order. If we don’t have the money, we don’t have the right money in reserves for a catastrophe. I mean, there are all of these things that seem boring to a lot of chamber people, but they’re incredibly important to enabling that programmatic aspect that can be very exciting, and fun to be part of. So that would be the thing I would say, to take your chamber to the next level, because you’ll learn so much as you go through that process.

Brandon Burton 31:06
Absolutely. Anybody who’s been sitting on the fence debating whether or not to get over that hurdle, go go do it, go after your CCE apply, go through the process. And like Sarah said, there’s so much development that comes out of that to benefit your chamber, but also you professionally as you move on through your career. So Sarah, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 31:37
Well, I see the purpose of Chambers as being incredibly important. And you know, I’ve heard speculation about this, but I believe in chambers very, very much. I think there is a role for chambers and the big community issues of the day. And we’re really starting to see that more and more. I mean, there is no other organization where you can go to and and say that they represent the voice of the business community chambers do that chambers, or that one stop shop you can go to and the people who enjoy being in the chamber world are just ready to help. And to say yes, attitude, and all of the big community issues that we’re so interested in. I mean, everybody wants to figure out how. And so I think that chambers are so so incredibly important. And I think that the people who work in chambers have a real passion for community growth. And it’s becoming a lifelong career for a lot of people. You see that more and more particularly at the CEO level of the chamber world. And I like to see that. I think that there are some incredibly smart chamber leaders out there and I enjoy talking to them frequently. I think chambers are really important to making sure community issues get solved.

Brandon Burton 32:55
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And I I also agree with the scene, people who are making the chamber industry a profession, you know, it’s a career choice for people now, especially at the executive level. But we’re it’s not just a job in their community that gets filled because somebody needed a warm body, but it becomes something that they go after these trainings are IOM, they’re CCE and really develop and help take their community to the next level, which is what it’s all about. But Sarah wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about the living loop program and how you guys are doing things there at TLI. What would be the best way for people to reach out and connect with you?

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 33:40
Sure, well, I’m happy to provide my email. It’s sdavasher@greaterlouisville.com. And my phone number is 502-625-0073 happy to talk with any chamber leaders about these programs or anything else bounce ideas off of each other. I’m always happy to connect.

Brandon Burton 34:02
Very good we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can access that to connect with you. But Sarah, I want to thank you for spending time with us today here at chamber chat podcast provided a lot of value and some great things for listeners to think about and and see what how they can implement and take their chamber up to the next level and provide a new level of competition on the talent attraction front. I appreciate that.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom 34:30
Happy to do it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 34:32
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Impact of Community Teamwork with Kyle Spurgeon

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

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

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kyle Spurgeon. Kyle is President and CEO of the Jackson chamber in Jackson, Tennessee. Before joining the chamber, Kyle was vice president Corporate Relations for Jackson Energy Authority. He has also served as marketing director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. He’s helped facilitate project locations representing more than $2.5 billion in capital investment. He holds a BS and public relations marketing from Murray State University. He is past president of the Tennessee Economic Development Council, past president of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce executives, past board member of the south of the Southern Economic Development Council, and past president of the Tennessee economic partnership is also a board member of several other local community organizations. Kyle is a 2017 graduate of leadership Tennessee. He was recently named the 2019, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce Executive of the Year. Powell is married to Melissa together they have five children and one very happily spoiled dog. Enjoy running and traveling the tile. I’m happy to have you with us today here on Super Chat podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:18
I didn’t realize you’re gonna read that entire bio,

Brandon Burton 3:21
we got to get the good stuff, you know.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:25
Melissa and the dog go smiled when you get to the very end. So Leila was wagging her tail? Good. Yes, something interesting. I guess it’s not in that and maybe the reason I enjoy doing these kind of podcast is in high school and college. I was at a radio disc jockey records, and I was a sportscaster and read the news. And so that, you know, as we started getting into the podcast area, that something that just not I’m not gonna say was natural, but it’s something I really enjoyed. So I look back on my days working in radio in Paris, Tennessee, that’s probably where this comes from.

Brandon Burton 3:59
Yeah, that sounds great. It’s your you’ve kind of got that natural comfort with that, I would say so. Well, I hope so. Yeah. So before we just jump into our topic, I’d like you to get some more background on the Jackson chamber. Just give us an idea of size, your chamber staff scope of work, budget, things you’re involved with, just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah, so our

Kyle Spurgeon 4:23
chamber we have are running at 1050 members and budget of 1.6 $1.7 million, a team of seven and that word team is all capitalized because we all work together extremely well. And I look at our chamber and over, particularly the last four decades, we’ve been recognized as a chamber that’s very, very effective at recruiting new jobs in industry, to Jackson in West Tennessee. What has changed really over the last decade is we’ve maintained that standing and that influence in the community and that’s the SAS but were looked upon more, for addition to that term, our leadership programs our assistance to small business, in really since the announcement of Blue Oval city working with our city and county and others, in making sure we lead community development efforts with them, either we lead those were on the team, because that’s becoming an extremely big part of what we do. Our chamber was founded in 1905, we’re accredited by the US Chamber, we’ve got a four star designation now we’re going to be pursuing that five star designation, I think, later this year, or in 24. And as you know, when you’re accredited, by the US Chamber you one of the top 3% of chambers in the country. And that’s something we are extremely proud of. I’ll conclude this by saying just about a decade ago, our chairman at the time, told him he was talking to a group of people about the chamber and he said, one of the things I’m most proud of, is this organization has a seat at every major discussion that goes on in our community. That’s something that we don’t take for granted.

Brandon Burton 6:08
Right. And I think that’s going to lead in well to our topic for our discussion today as we focus on the impact of community teamwork. So having a seat at all those major discussions, being you know, right there, the driver of economic development and community development. I think we’ll have a fantastic discussion around that today. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 9:34
All right, Kyle, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re focusing on the impact of community teamwork. So when you were talking about the chamber you brought up blue oval city. I’m familiar with it. I’ve heard you heard some great things about this set this huge economic development win. But if you would just fill the listeners in on what what is blue oval city and they maybe a little bit of background about how that came to be. And I think that’ll lead well into our discussion today.

Kyle Spurgeon 10:06
Sure. So blue oval City is a 17 year overnight success story as it took a while. And I’ll give you some background on that in a second. But it’s a $5.6 billion investment of Ford and SK Innovation to build the world’s most advanced assembly automotive assembly plant in battery plant. 3500 acres between Memphis and Jackson. So we sit right on Interstate 40. We are an hour from a Shelby County and two hours from Davidson County, which is which is Nashville. So Jackson is ideally situated. That project started back in the early 2000s. When Governor Phil Bredesen and the commissioner of economic and community development, Matt kispert, worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority and identified a site that would be great, what they would call a mega site because TVA had started that program. Two years earlier, local folks in Haywood County, the chamber, President CEO at the time, Paul tour was part of that effort. And those were the early people. You know, in our business, a lot of times when you make the announcement, the folks who were there at that time get all the credit. Well, if it wasn’t for the folks early that identified that property and caused it to be purchased project would have never happened. And what is happening now a blue oval cities under construction, Ford plans to be rolling their new electric vehicle off the assembly line and 25, which is crazy to think about it. That’s two years from now. And you’ll start seeing supplier announcements this year, the project announced again 5800 jobs $55.6 billion in capital investment. That’s really just the beginning. We’re starting to see those supplier locations, the tier one and tier two folks looking at Jackson and other parts of West Tennessee plus the projects that will need to be situated on site. But every piece of that project happened because of teamwork. Mark Herbison is President and CEO of HTL advantage. So that’s Haywood, Tipton Lauderdale counties. Haywood County is actually where the Megasite is it spans Haywood County and Fayette County, Mark led that effort. I tell folks, he has created more jobs, personally per capita for a staff than anyone probably in the world and economic development because he he led that project with two people. Our team, it’s a Jackson chamber in the Memphis chamber, were part of the negotiation process and helping to close the deal. But Mark was the guy day to day. And so when you take what Mark did what we were able to do with the Memphis and Jackson chamber and TVA in the state, in no one caring who got credit, you know, we were able to close that deal. And it turned out to be, you know, obviously one of the largest economic development projects in Tennessee’s history and one of the largest in the country.

Brandon Burton 13:14
That is fantastic. So as you’re, as you’re talking about this, the development of the site just yesterday. So I’m in Texas, but yesterday, I actually drove past the news Tesla facility that’s being rolled right now. So in my mind, I kind of I can kind of picture what this is looking like just a massive space, massive building, the technology that goes into it, and as you mentioned that the discussions of this started in the early 2000s. So almost 25 years from when the first cars will roll off the assembly line. But the evolution that’s happened in that amount of time, from having the focus on batteries now versus just what cars were in the 2000s. If you see an early model in 2000, f150 versus what’s going to roll off and 2025 They’ll be vastly different for sure. Being able to keep up with that, that evolution, that involvement. But let’s let’s focus more on this the community teamwork effort. So you’d mentioned that the teamwork part from an economic development standpoint, working with different counties, different cities, be able to pull together as a team. What are what are some other examples how things have have worked together as maybe you guys have been the convener of some of these, you know, throughout the community to drive some of these wins throughout the Jackson area. You

Kyle Spurgeon 14:43
use that great chamber award convener, and you know, we all successful chambers do that extremely well. The reason and focus it on the economic development piece first. The reason this community has been successful for 40 years doing economic development and recruiting Companies like Delta Faucet, Toyota, Stanley, Black and Decker. Kellogg’s is here, all the Pringles in North America are made in Jackson, we’ve always had that stance, no matter who was in an elected position as one of the mayors, or who ran Jackson Energy Authority, which was our utility, who read who ran the hospital here, we never care about who gets credit. And whoever is Mayor allows the chamber to be the quarterback for all economic development activities. And we everything we do is built around that team concept. But we also don’t have to pick up the phone and call a mayor’s office or a chairman’s office to, you know, direct every single move that we make, because we’ve got enough brand equity in the success that we’ve had. And that’s something we we protect, you know, if you’ve ever were to see a member of our team try to step out and make it all about themselves, instead of the community, that team member is going to get called back and pulled back and probably not gonna be on the team anymore. And so again, I think we’ve used that success model. And as we’ve had to expand our reach, I guess, and the different projects we’re working on and in different communities, we just make sure again, that it’s just all about pain.

Brandon Burton 16:21
Yeah, I like that. And I see the importance of that, I wonder if there maybe is some tactics or ways that you go about whether it’s dealing with your team internally there at the chamber or broader throughout the community to help build a sense of team. And and you’ve touched on a little bit there. But what what some of that mindset and maybe tactics around building that team mentality.

Kyle Spurgeon 16:45
Yeah, one of the ways is making sure particularly your elected officials are not surprised, in that they give us a lot of leeway to work on projects, again, because not just the team we’ve got in place now. But we’ve always been successful doing that. So just Just imagine if you had a mayor in office, and all of a sudden you’re about to announce a project and he knew nothing about it, that’d be a surprise. But for us to be able to do that our elected officials and everyone on the team has to understand the confidentially the confidentiality involved in those projects. Excuse me. And so by bringing them in early, and us respecting the fact that they understand that confidentiality allows us to do that. And then when we have a new chairman, coming into the role within our organization, again, bringing them in early, helping them understand how projects occur, because if you’re not an economic developer or been involved in projects, you probably have some misconceived notions about it. And so it’s education and making sure people don’t get surprised. So

Brandon Burton 17:55
I’m curious, as far as not having these elected officials be surprised. Is that something that you had to learn through experience? Or like, ooh, we should have plugged them in a little more along the way? Or is it just something that it kind of made sense to you from the beginning? So you just a good practice to follow all along?

Kyle Spurgeon 18:13
Yeah. When you said, Did I learn that from experience in a roundabout way? Yes. You mentioned I worked at Jackson Energy Authority. And I remember firing someone without our CEO knowing it. And John made it very clear to me that his name was John Williams at the time, that he needed to know that because he went to church with the guy’s mother, that we had just fired. And so you learn real quick, and he came back the next day sick out, you and your team did the right thing. God needed to go. But I can’t be surprised. So I’ve always taken that with me in terms of you know, when you announce a project, or you’re doing some community initiative, and it’s successful, you will get your elected officials and your investors up there announcing that project? Again, you don’t want them hearing about it a day before or a week before without having any Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:13
or worse as things are even more developed or the read in the paper social media. Yeah, so yeah, I think it’s neat how some of those lessons kind of stick with you and with whether it’s something professionally or personal lesson that carries over, and it’s something that is important to you, that brings a lot of value to others that are listening to and you can provide that experiences. So I appreciate you being willing to share that. I know it’s not always easy to to share from past experiences like that, but

Kyle Spurgeon 19:43
it’s that thing about everyone makes mistakes. And as long as you learn from that mistake, not gonna say it’s not bad, but it’s a heck of a lot better if you learn from it.

Brandon Burton 19:53
That’s right, and learn from the first time hopefully. So I Want to know if there’s maybe tips or action items for those listening who maybe want to build a better community or teamwork effort throughout their their community and take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them to try to implement and to sharpen that focus,

Kyle Spurgeon 20:20
like an easy thing to do is sit back. First of all, you have to have a strategic plan. And any organization is trying to build a to build their brand and build on success or initiate some success, you have to have a strategic plan. And then once you get that, identify a group of people that you know, like and trust that you can work with, and then slowly help them find their way onto your board or your executive committee. And then look at that group as your core team folks that you can pick up the phone and call and know that they’re all pointing in the right direction. And can you know, they can alert you so that you’re not surprised? on things that might be going on in the community, either business wise, or political wise, but I think it’s that first step, you know, every chamber CEO, if they’re moving, taking a job somewhere else, my belief is, the first thing you need to do is look at that strategic plan. If the community doesn’t have one, make sure that’s one of your first action items. Because if you don’t do that, then everyone’s going off in different directions. You’ve got to have a North Star, something everyone can focus on. And so you can build that team effort that way.

Brandon Burton 21:36
Right? Well, I’m glad you went that direction. With that with those, we’ve seen a lot of change in the chamber industry right now with leadership and everything. So for those who are new to community, I think that’s key advice and make sure that there is a strategic plan. And if not, do focus on getting one ASAP. But you had mentioned finding those people in your community that you can know, like and trust. So when you’re new to a community, any tips on how to find those people, because there’s certain people that want to be found, right? For good, for better or worse, they want to be able to filter out Who are those ones that you should know, like and trust?

Kyle Spurgeon 22:12
Well, I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had to go through a search process in 13 years, but just think about it. So if I’m in Jax, and if I was moving somewhere out west, or wherever it was going to interview with the search committee, you’re not going to take the job unless you have confidence in the organization in that search committee. So that’s probably the best place to start. Those are the people that because they’ve accepted that position on the search committee are obviously vested in the community, and the folks in the community or organization, trust them to make the right decision, identify one or two members of that, or the entire committee, and just tell them that who are the folks that I need to understand can best influence our success moving forward.

Brandon Burton 23:01
I love that piece of advice. So yeah, I have that that deeper conversation with that search committee once you get that job and seek their their counsel. And I’m sure it’ll be valuable. I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future changers and their purpose going forward?

Kyle Spurgeon 23:24
But maybe your toughest question that you

Brandon Burton 23:27
bring out your crystal ball and see what it looks like I

Kyle Spurgeon 23:31
think we’ve seen it in I can only speak to our organization, something that has changed, you know, early, particularly I say early, three to four decades ago, and we’re all the way up into the 2000s, early 2000s. We could have encouraged someone to join the chamber, just because we were successful, creating new jobs and capital investment, they just want to be a part of that. Now, they’ve got to experience something. And so Chambers of Commerce, the our events, you know, our social media presence, it’s networking, and it’s an experiential type, membership. And people will no longer write you a check just because the chamber is great in your community, your your membership sales team has to build relationships with them. You have to support your existing industries, you have to run leadership programs. So you really have to be in tune with the folks in your communities and the business leaders. So I think moving forward chambers, just like you know, something that you look at, it’s a negative look around the country at the civic organizations and how their membership has declined. Well, it’s those civic clubs that have changed a bit who have been able to stabilize their membership and in any chamber organization. If you look at the average age of the men First, they may be skewing upward. Well, you’ve got to make sure you’re running young leaders programs, under 40 type programs, because those are the folks that are going to sustain your organization moving forward.

Brandon Burton 25:14
I like that I think I just had my own little aha moment because he gave that response. And so when you when you mentioned that, you know, today, people have that need to experience something. And it makes me think of just the connectivity that we have the the instant gratification, the, especially as you look at the younger generations coming up right now, if they can’t get Amazon to deliver whatever it is, you know, next day, or today would be even better, then it’s not good enough, right. So to experience something, you can’t just talk about doing something you can’t just, you know, have a good organization, they need to experience something they need to kind of need that dopamine hit right to be able to want to come back and have more. And if you’re able to provide some small wins along the way where they can see, okay, I’m seeing the value here, okay, I’m seeing where this is helping the community, I see how this impacts my business, leading up to those big wins is big economic development, contracts, things like that. I think it’s important for every chamber to be thinking about those small, small wins along the way to give that feedback loop of the what you’re doing is important, and they feel involved. So

Kyle Spurgeon 26:31
you know, one thing to do is make sure not only celebrate the successes that your chamber has in the community, but just think about ribbon cuttings, those in another, you’re celebrating the success of a small business or big business. So being a part of the success without taking credit for it of other organizations to where you attach your brand, to their brand. Because everyone loves attention. And if you’re a small business, we’re doing a ribbon cutting for you. They love seeing their faces and their names on our social media feeds, on the traditional media, news stories, and so attaching yourself and supporting other folks success without taking credit for it. And that’s a big help.

Brandon Burton 27:16
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve heard some chambers getting away from ribbon cutting somewhat, but I think there’s still a great value there with giving that that positive feedback loop so well, Kyle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for those who are listening that want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson, or learn more about Blue Oval city and how they can, you know, bring somebody else to their community because they’re not going to get forward right. What would be what would be the best way for them to to reach out and connect with you?

Kyle Spurgeon 27:56
Yeah, my favorite way actually is through LinkedIn. Really, all social media is not great all the time. But our team finds LinkedIn to be a fantastic source to connect and share information. Other than that, my email address love to give that out. It’s kspurgeon@jacksontn.com. And you know what our business you learn from other folks, we’ve, in the last several years, we’ve been to Wichita, Kansas, Greenville, South Carolina and Monroe, Louisiana, Franklin, Tennessee a few years ago, just learning what those communities were doing in their chamber and economic development teams. And yeah, we’re stealing ideas and bringing those back, we just are going to hopefully be able to announce a $34 million training center that our governor has put in his budget. The idea from that training center, pain from a visit to Wichita, Kansas.

Brandon Burton 28:56
That’s awesome. Yeah, those leadership visits as you know, inner city visits are, they’re very valuable. So by learning from each other, you know, those listening, reach out, talk to Kyle, you know, learn learn from him, and, and even take it to the next step and schedule a visit to another city and see how things are being done there. So that’s a whole other topic we can dive into right. Yeah. But Kyle, I appreciate you spending some time with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, I think you’ve provided some great value for those listening to really maybe just take another look at how they are building a sense of teamwork throughout their community to lead to some of these big wins. So I appreciate you sharing your experience and what’s going on there and Jackson, thank you.

Kyle Spurgeon 29:43
Thank you Brandon. Great questions and appreciate having the opportunity to be a part of it.

Brandon Burton 29:48
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