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Category: Event Planning

Innovative Partnerships with Kris Adams

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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.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

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Brandon Burton 0:54
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Our guest for this episode is Kris Adams. Kris is the is with the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce as the director of Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit, Kris comes to the chamber from a career of service with nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining the chamber team, he served as the director of development for restoration village, a local Women and Children’s Shelter. He holds a master’s degree in Strategic Communication from Arkansas State University, a Master’s of divinity degree from Union Presbyterian seminary, and an undergraduate degree in religion from Liberty University. Kris believes that technology can be a force for good to improve the lives of everyone.

Kris, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Kris Adams 1:59
Hi, everyone, it’s a pleasure to be part of the podcast and know the interesting thing about me that was alluded to and my introduction is I know that a lot of us come to chamber life from from different backgrounds. And mine took a really interesting route through really starting off with schooling and training in religious studies and theological studies, which I know sounds like an odd mix to jump into technology, and chamber work. But really, it’s all about community building, about finding ways to engage with people, break down barriers and get people to collaborate together. And so it was a really good sort of start and set up to get me ready for the work that I’m doing today here in Bentonville,

Brandon Burton 2:44
right. No, I there’s a lot of similarities, I believe with religion and churches and the structure of community is in crosses over into chamber work to build communities and strengthen each other. So absolutely. I see the parallels there. So why don’t you take a moment to share us with us a little bit about the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce for those who’ve been listening to the podcast for a while may remember, we had Graham cod, who was the former President CEO of Bentonville chamber on an episode 114, where he talked about the value of placemaking in your community. But Kris, tell us is kind of the scope of work for the Bentonville chamber size, budget staff, that sort of thing. Just to give us some perspective. Yeah.

Kris Adams 3:35
The greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce is situated in the northwest corner of Arkansas. Our claim to fame is that we are the home of Walmart, Tyson Foods and JB Hunt. It’s a it’s a wonderful community that really most people don’t even realize exists until they come out and visit and see really what we’re known for. But beyond those big local players, one of the big draws to Northwest Arkansas is of course the university that is in Fayetteville, and we’re getting to be known as the mountain biking capital of the world. So it’s a really picturesque part of the natural state if you’ve never heard of it before. Our chamber has about 1100 members with a retention rate of about 88%. We have a budget of about 1.8 million and a seven person team guiding the ship and moving things forward here in the greater Bentonville area.

Brandon Burton 4:38
And I can attest to it. I’ve been to Bentonville several times and it is a beautiful place. And really you guys have a great corner there in Northwest Arkansas. So we had a kind of a roundabout way how we got to having Kris on the podcast. So I’ll give just a little bit of background last year at the Mako conference One of his colleagues, former colleagues, Andre, I had was part of one of his breakout sessions. And he spoke a lot about technology and how their chambers implementing a lot of these systems and whatnot into their, their office into their, their ecosystem there. And I had reached out to Andre and found out that he was no longer at the chamber. And as we got talking, he’s like, You really need to talk to Kris, like Kris is working with the, with the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit. And he’s really, you know, a big driver for a lot of these things that we’re doing and that we’re involved with. So Kris is here with us today, we’re going to focus our conversation around technology around you know, some of these things that can be implemented at your chamber, but also, and probably more, more of a focus around partnerships that you can make with those in your region in your city and your community around innovation. So we will dive in deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:00
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 8:56
All right, Kris, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we will be talking about innovative partnerships. So I’d like to learn more, and maybe have you you know, tell the audience what the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit is to kind of give us an idea of of what that’s all about. And maybe that will kind of guide us in the direction as to developing those partnerships.

Kris Adams 9:21
Absolutely. The NWA Tech Summit, as we call it for short. Started 10 years ago, this will be our 10th year going in. And it serves as the premiere Technology Conference in the heartland. And it originally began as a collaborative work of small business owners and leaders in the local community who wanted to get together to talk technology and really discuss how they could stay ahead of the curve with all the different things, excuse me all the different things that were happening in the tech world that was impacting their businesses, and over the years it’s grown exponentially from this grassroots level work to include all of our larger local corporations, Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, the University of Arkansas, to include a lot of the tech players who have hubs and offices in this area, and do business with those groups. Everyone from Google to Intel and IBM, Red Hat, and Microsoft. And what’s really a joy is to see how all these different tech companies collaborate and work together through our committee through our planning, and in the conference itself, to put together just some stellar content that is applicable for everyone from high school students that attend all the way up through CEOs of these organizations that join us at the event. The event itself is multi day and runs about we had over 1700 Total registered attendees last year, about 137 presenters and 27 states beyond Arkansas were represented in our attendance. Wow. So that’s the event in a nutshell.

Brandon Burton 11:07
Yeah, that’s quite the scope. So the origins for it What? What was the kickoff to say we need to formalize a summit around technology here in Northwest Arkansas?

Kris Adams 11:20
Well, 10 years ago, we would have been coming on the back end of things like the the.com, boom and of the 90s. And watching Social Media sort of just in its heyday. And I know a lot of organizations were trying to figure out, you know, beyond those things, what was what was coming down the pike, I think one of the early slogans of the tech summit was this tagline of what’s next after next. And not just this idea of being prepared for the future, but being prepared for what’s what’s after the immediate future. And coming in the next three to five to seven years. And in our area, with the organizations and companies involved supply chain has always been a tremendous issue. And really COVID helped bring that again to the forefront of a lot of discussions. And so a lot of our technology, discussions revolve around ideas of supply chain mobility, how to how to stay relevant in those areas where we’re just seeing massive changes and shifts in technology impacting companies, both large and small, in our area and beyond.

Brandon Burton 12:35
So as you as you guys have developed this Tech Summit and in develop some of these partnerships, and are you needing to reach out to some of these businesses to be involved, or imagine you’ve got several of them kind of knocking on your door at this point, saying we want to be involved, how’s that developed?

Kris Adams 12:54
Well, you know, it’s really interesting how some of these relationships develop organically. One of the interesting bits of news that happened this last year was about some of the partnerships being developed between the state of Arkansas and Oklahoma, specifically in the area of new mobility and future mobility. So things like autonomous drones, drone delivery, there’s a good working relationship happening between the two states, as you know, we’re really trying to be a part of that push into what’s coming next for delivering goods, transforming the way we think about how you get places and move things. And, you know, we have good friends connected to the to the summit over in Tulsa through Tulsa innovation labs, and some of those partnerships that and the things that they’re working on over there. They just lend themselves to really great organic connections, where we’re doing a lot of the same work less than two hours away. And we see it as a really an opportunity to be collaborative partners and help further this conversation that can better benefit both of our areas, really the region as a whole, this northwest corner of Arkansas, and the quarter of Oklahoma that includes Tulsa, and then up into Missouri as well. And we even see some attend from Kansas City. So there’s this really unique desire to see this little corner of the world that we’re in this region here in the heartland develop and become our thought leader. Some have already started saying that they want to see this area become the Silicon Valley of mobility, specifically that that’s a goal for Arkansas. And I think that’s an A wonderfully ambitious goal. And so as we’re all trying to chase some of these shared dreams and visions for what technology can do for our local areas, it just makes so much more sense to collaborate together to share our thought leaders and our innovative approaches, so that we can all learn from each other and better that from the the insights that each of us are gaining.

Brandon Burton 15:03
Right? So you mentioned about the Tulsa innovation lab. So that being a partnership and collaborative partnership, how is that? Is it a formal partnership structure? How is how are these relationships built and developed?

Kris Adams 15:20
Yeah, a lot of these organizations come on to our event as sponsors or providers of content. They help us put together dynamic presentations that really speak into, you know, what their organizations are. Experts in Tulsa innovation labs spoke both on these automated delivery systems like drones, but they’re also well known for cybersecurity and the work that they do, trying to research how to keep platforms secure. And so their unique spin on content for us was, how to secure those autonomous drones and what that looks like in the future. And so, really, it’s it’s this unique play of us figuring out who’s the experts in which area, and getting them to be able to share to a crowd of individuals who probably have some really interesting perspectives on how they, they might be able to roll out things like this for their organization, and get them to share their insight and their wealth of knowledge. So that we can all kind of learn together from the best of the best that are already doing the work. So they provide a really unique and interesting viewpoints. When they come to speak, we have another good working relationship with a lot of our public school systems. in Bentonville, there is a program for juniors and seniors called Ignite, where it is technical training everything from kids who are juniors and seniors getting their licensure and certifications to be able to work in the hospitals, to getting their FAA certifications that they can get at 16, to fly drones, to all sorts of other business marketing type innovations. And we actually had students from that group come and present at the Tech Summit to speak about the innovation that they’re learning about. And we had some of our partnering companies then present to this same group of students, how they could move up throughout their careers in the area, through getting internships, finding ways to get into their company, post college, and then the careers that they could eventually have and stay and live and work in this area for some of these larger organizations that call the greater Bentonville area home. So there are some really unique partnerships that we develop that we highlighted the Tech Summit where everyone shares their expertise, and kind of their niche for what they do in tech and how it benefits the community.

Brandon Burton 17:58
Right. So as you’re talking, I’m thinking not necessarily every chamber needs or can even justify doing a Tech Summit, right? Every chamber is different. You’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, right? But as you look at your community, what is that thing that you can get behind? What is that thing that is unique to your region, to your community that you can maybe build some sort of a summit like this, where you can develop those partnerships, because really, what it comes down to is, as Kris is just talking about these things, and partnering with the school district, you’re you’re working on economic development, you’re working on workforce and talent attraction, and in recruitment, and really just continuing to build your region and and attracting people to it. There in Bentonville just happens to be around technology. But it’s exciting. Everybody likes to learn what the latest and greatest what the next next. That’s right.

Kris Adams 18:57
You know, I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, it’s not that the goal is to replicate a tech summit at every chamber. I think the goal is to really listen to your your Chamber members and your constituency to find out more about them about what they do, and what they’re, what their commonalities are, what binds them together. And where were those shared threads of interest and expertise, because that’s really how the Tech Summit developed was, it was a natural fit for the organizations and members in our area. And so I think that the chambers do well to really listen to their members to get to know them, to find out what their passions and their interests are, what what are they working on that gets them excited and gets them up in the morning and then trying to see where that connects with all those organizations that are part of your membership that you know, maybe your top 10% of engaged members, you know, what is it that that is that commonality between all of them And then trying to build something big and unique based on that, because where there’s a shared love, and a shared passion and a shared interest, that’s when it’s going to be most natural, and people will get behind it so much quicker. I think you hit the nail on the head there.

Brandon Burton 20:14
And maybe continuing on this thread. There in Bentonville. You’d mentioned Walmart, JB Hunt, you know, you got some big companies that logistics and transportation that are their big issues and ways that need to be, you know, innovative going forward. So for the listeners, if you look in your community, think of who are your major employers? Who are those big manufacturing firms in your area? What other businesses support those other big manufacturers or big employers? And how can we align some of these resources to be able to help support them help support the community in general, because I see that kind of a model that you guys have taken here of saying, here’s the big industry in Bentonville. There’s a lot of other industries that support that. Now let’s build something that can support all of them to further develop and create a stronger community. So it correct me if I’m wrong, that sounds like the kind of a template that you guys follow.

Kris Adams 21:17
Oh, that’s, that’s absolutely it. And the beauty of it is to that there are just so many issues that revolve not just around around tech, but just workforce in general. It’s always about talent, attraction, retention, how to benefit not just all that the larger organizations, but the small to mid sized, that are participating in the community as well. And then really assisting those who need help getting access to to be part of this community group, you know, we provide through the Tech Summit, complimentary access to students, educators, entrepreneurs, military and veterans, really just trying to be able to bring the community together around the things that unite us, even those who may not necessarily have thought they could have access to something at this level, and making sure that they feel included and that they can be part of the conversation as well.

Brandon Burton 22:12
Yeah. And I think we’re you guys have really, you know, struck gold, we’ll say or struck oil struggled. For you guys a strike oil is where you found that niche for those those companies in your region. But you, you found that common ground that people can get excited about, you know, people want to sponsor the event, people want to show up, they want to learn they want to know what’s going on. So again, for those listening, what can you build excitement for? But maybe let’s, let’s talk more about the tech summit itself. So you had mentioned it being the largest event of the year for you guys 10 years into it? You obviously have sponsors for it. You mentioned how many people registered and attend and speakers. As far as putting on that event, so it’s multi day? are you renting out facilities? Are you selling tickets to different events within it? Are you just tell us more of the structure of the event itself?

Kris Adams 23:13
Yeah, so the events really revolves around a simple structure for programming. When we do plenary sessions, it’s everybody either all in one room, or all watching one group of people and then a live stream of that to all our other sites. That’s why we did it multisite last year, and focusing just on one thing, one program happening at that moment. And then we do that for a couple sessions, and then move into our breakout sessions where we have multiple tracks going on at the same time. And those tracks then sort of revolve around whatever’s current and trending in tech. This year, we’re looking at some new tracks that we’re going to be bringing out to address sort of the innovation that’s happening now. And it’s in the news every day, we’re focusing on automation and AI, security and privacy, retail innovation, which is the perfect fit, knowing sort of our local community and makeup track on starting up and scaling up for entrepreneurs in the area. And then I track on data science, and analytics is really what we hope to put together. So the event revolves around those big large group sessions, smaller breakout sessions where you can dig in a little deeper on a specific topic. And then one of the things that we know all of our participating organizations love our demo boots, getting to showcase their products, their their toys, the cool things that they’re doing in tech. And so this year, we’re running with the theme of the year of the machines because we want to see everybody bring all their cool tech out last year. We had drone up bring one of their their drones to show off which they They’re a lot bigger than people imagine. They’re pretty hefty. For for flying around. It’s not the Toy Drones that buy off Amazon by any means. We had Tyson Foods bring out one of their robots that actually is automated and moves some of their chicken pieces. And they demoed that and show that off. We had a robotic dog that came out last year, from our friends up near Joplin, Missouri. They came down with some of that really cool tech, people who were really concerned as to what was going on as we had two or three robotic dogs running around the square in downtown Bentonville. Tech Summit, people just haven’t seen that. And so it was, it was fascinating to see. And then, yeah, just lots of lots of cool things like that. Ganic, which if you don’t know them, they do autonomous vehicles, and delivery for Walmart. They’ve had one of their autonomous trucks that drives itself parked outside part of the Tech Summit so that people could take a look at it, and see all the cool little bells and whistles with that. Just fascinating piece of machinery. And just like that’s, I’m a tech fan. I look at something like that. And it scares the living daylights out of me, because I don’t I don’t understand how we even begin to piece something that complex together. Because it all relies even on the smallest of parts comes down to the cameras that read and interpret the road. And then all the sensors. Yeah, yeah. So it’s, it’s so it’s so much more interesting now that we’re post COVID We’re back fully in person. It’s it’s tech that you can touch, see and feel. And that’s really cutting edge and really just fascinating to, to see and hear people share their expertise about, you know, how it works, what it does, and why it’s so vital for what’s coming in the future.

Brandon Burton 26:54
Yeah, yeah, hearing about the the see touch and feel the technology, I can’t help but think of, you know, what used to be the world’s fairs, you know, people would come out to see the, you know, the first ferris wheel or the light bulb or the washing machine, you know, these these things that just blew your mind at the time. And now there’s, you know, technology, it seemed to kind of level out there for a while, and now we’re having more leaps and bounds and technology, and people are excited to see what the future holds. So I’m curious, how do you guys go about advertising the summit? How far reaching Do you try to attract people and vendors and sponsors and so forth,

Kris Adams 27:34
it’s really interesting part of it is that we’ll see a lot of natural growth that happens just as word spreads. As you know who’s coming on and who’s talking at the event. We were blessed this year to have some really high level presenters from Walmart and Tyson and Red Hat that had some great social followings that were kind enough, you know, to help share the event, promote it, we do a lot to promote it within the within the chamber itself to share it among our members. And then we we did some targeted email marketing, television spots, some partnerships with local other organizations, our chamber does not include our sort of tourism department visit Bentonville or our downtown area, which is downtown Bentonville, Inc. But we work collaboratively with them to help get the word out about the event and promote it to people who may be in the area to to those who live and work in Bentonville and make sure that it was on their radar. And so it was really a multi pronged approach as we tried to get the word out and make sure that people knew that the Tech Summit was happening. This year, we’re going to be doing a lot of the same and we really hope to capitalize on some of those people that have brand new tech looking to show it off, we’ll be reaching out to to new companies that that have that shiny, new, amazing toy that we really want to show off. And we hope that if there’s anybody listening, who’s got something like that, that maybe isn’t on our radar that they’d reach out as well. Get in touch with us and let us know what cool tech they’re playing around with. That would be a good fit to show off and demo and talk about at the Tech Summit.

Brandon Burton 29:25
I was waiting for you to come around today. You’re going on these podcasts and promoting it and advertising right. Now, as we start wrapping up here, Kris, I’d like asking everybody that have on the show if you know from the things that you’ve experienced and learned in your time with the chamber, what might be a tip or an action item that you could share with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level?

Kris Adams 29:52
You know, I am I’m a fan of always being willing to to take other people’s opinions and insights and perspectives into putting together an event like this, I think that, you know, when we silo ourselves to a couple people to a couple of voices, we can end up with with events that are good, but really don’t reflect the broader creativity that exists when we engage in dialogue with others. And so whether it’s me being the crazy one around the office, shouting ideas into the sounding board and trying to get feedback from my wonderful team, that seriously has no end to great insights, that they’ve spoken into this event, to our committee, our chairs, some of the local players, you know, in specific tech areas, you know, just asking them, you know, hey, what do you think about this track? How can we make it better? What can we do to get really on point with our pro, excuse me our programming, because that’s not my area of expertise. I think dialogue like that is crucial, because that dialogue just makes everything so much more robust and stellar, as we get different opinions, different insights, different voices, at the conversation table to make things more diverse, more interesting, and really make it more collaborative people. People want to come to something that they’ve had a part in building. And so that’s, that would be my challenge. And tip is to engage as many as you can bring as many seats and voices to the table as possible, because you’ll be surprised at how how creative and wonderful people are in contributing to an event like this if just given the opportunity to

Brandon Burton 31:44
Yeah, yeah, embrace that. The ability to be a convener, I would say, yeah. And to be able to lean on the counsel of others to be able to develop something great. So the other question, I like asking, and I’m curious to hear what your response would be being that you’re, you’re tied in so much with the technology space. But as we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kris Adams 32:15
No, I think the future of chambers is it really, it’s going to parallel a lot of what we see in technology, chambers are going to need to find ways to position themselves as as useful. And as current with what’s happening in the world around them. We’ve, we’ve seen technology come and go so much quicker than we ever have before. We were joking around when we were talking about the tech summit about how fun would it be? We do giveaways of like tech prizes, you know, like VR headset or something like that. We said, How funny would it be if we gave away as gag gifts, like some of the old outdated tech that either never took off? Or that only those of us of like a certain age would remember like it would be great to give out a Walkman. Because it’s no dated now. And I think that that that’s like the prime example of, you know, what, what chambers have to do, they have to find ways to stay current to stay moving forward. And really to think bold, and, you know, dare to dream some of these really high and lofty dreams for how they can continue to best serve their members in in ways that maybe they hadn’t before. I think that’s going to be the continued push for not just chambers, but for all organizations is how do we stay relevant and move forward with the times while maintaining our identity and for chambers, our identities and our it’s not just in our chamber, but it’s in our members in our local communities. And I think that’s that’s the tension that we’ve got,

Brandon Burton 33:42
for sure. Yeah, the the old piece of tech that came to my mind was remember the old Sony memory sticks like not a card but a memory stick that Sony had. But I think you guys should do that you should start collecting the Walkmans and disc men’s and the CD, all kinds of good speakers, the mini disc players, laser disc players. Yeah, just you guys can have a great pool of prizes. So yeah. They might be valuable at this point to I don’t know,

Kris Adams 34:10
it could be collector’s items. You never know. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 34:13
Well, Kris, if anyone listening wanted to reach out and connect with you learn more about the tech summit or anything you guys have gone on there and Bentonville what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Kris Adams 34:23
Yeah, if you want to learn more about the event, you can visit NWA tech summit.com To learn more about our chamber you can visit greater bentonville.com to connect with me directly. You can find me on LinkedIn or you can shoot me an email at Kay Adams at greater bentonville.com I love to talk tech with you about chamber things in general and religious Get Connected always. Like I mentioned always want to hear another great voice and opinion to chime in to the conversation. Who knows what a great idea you might have to share. Love to hear it.

Brandon Burton 34:55
Awesome. Well, we will get all of your contact info in our show notes for this Episodes and people can look it up and reach out and connect with you. But, Kris, I really appreciate you setting aside some time and joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing about the exciting things going on with the NWA Tech Summit. And things you guys have gone on there in the Bentonville chamber. I really appreciate it. Thank you, 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 and welcome to chamber chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Our guest for this episode is Matt Hunter Matt joined the Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber of Commerce in Idaho in June of 2005 as the president and CEO Matt has a business administration degree from Washington State University and an AAS degree from West Valley College and Saratoga, California, in food service and Restaurant Management. In his role at the Chamber, Matt is responsible for all operations with special emphasis on government advocacy work, and the financial health of the chamber. Matt serves on many boards throughout the region and state. These include the Idaho State University College of Technology Advisory Board, as well as multiple advisory boards within the College of Technology. He also serves on the eastern Idaho Development Corporation board, the southeast Idaho Council of Governments board, the Idaho chamber Alliance executive committee, and on the Idaho nonprofit center board. Matt and his wife Shawn had been married for 37 years have six children and three grandchildren. They love the Pocatello community and made the jump from the hotel industry to the chamber industry so they could stay in the Pocatello area long term. Matt and his family loved the outdoors, including fishing and camping and Matt really enjoys getting out and meeting Chamber members as well as being involved in many community activities. Matt, we’re 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 who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Matt Hunter 2:37
Well, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate being on the show, Brandon. Yeah, I have worked at the Chamber now for about coming up on 18 years. I enjoy the work that I do. And it’s it’s great being part of the community. So when I was a young man, I grew up in the Bay area of California. I marched in Drum and Bugle Corps which some of you might be familiar with. Some of you might not be national champion car from the Santa Clara area and won a couple national championships with that I’ve traveled pretty much every state in this country, mostly on a bus and stopping and playing music. It was a blast. And it’s something interesting about my early years in life

Brandon Burton 3:22
yeah, no that is great. And for those listening they can’t see this but my background. I entered mentioned Santa Clara I got my my Niners helmet in the background, big Niners fan and grew up in Sacramento myself. So we’ve got that in common. So well hopefully, hopefully,

Matt Hunter 3:41
you see all nighter stuff on my wall behind me. There’s quite a few nice

Brandon Burton 3:45
things well, it’s good to have a fellow Niner fan on here. So tell us a little bit about the Pocatello Chubbuck chamber just to give us an idea size, scope and scope of work, budget staff, that sort of

Matt Hunter 4:02
thing. Yeah, happy to so the Pocatello Chubbuck community is located in the southeast corner of Idaho. So we’re about two and a half hours north of Salt Lake City. We’re about three hours east of Boise, Idaho, Yellowstone parks nearby it’s it’s a beautiful high mountain area. Love it here. The communities of Pocatello Chubbuck are pretty much combined. Literally Walmart’s in both of them which is kind of fun cutting, you know they’re right on the line, right kind of fun. But about 75,000 people are chamber serves about 750 members $650,000 A year budget. And I have five and a half staff members including myself that operate in the downtown Pocatello area is our office so that is kind of a quick shot of our chamber.

Brandon Burton 4:57
Yeah, that sounds great that that def really helps set the table give some perspective before we get into our conversation today, which will be focusing our discussion around your hybrid sponsorship program and I know oftentimes chambers hear sponsorship program their ears perk up, they want to know more about you know what other chambers are doing to bring in the money right. So well speaking of money, we’ll we’ll take a quick break and we’ll come back and dive dive deeper into this topic.

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All right, Matt, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re gonna focus on your hybrid sponsorship program. So first of all, what does that mean? What is your hybrid sponsorship

Matt Hunter 8:26
program, a lot of chambers run what they call sort of a tiered dues that includes events and stuff like that we don’t we run a standard dues based on employee count. And so our dues run from about $325 for a very small business to about 5000 for our very large companies that we have here in the area. None of that includes sponsorships. So we sell a separate sponsorship package, and we call it the one ask sponsorship program. So I’ll sit down with a company one time a year, we have a packet that includes all of our events, prices for all of them. And there are four tier levels, bronze level sponsorship, silver, gold, and then a platinum. Each of those events can be picked and chosen as they wish. A good example is if you’re a silver sponsor, you can pick any three of the nine events that we have in our in our sponsorship bundle. You can be a silver sponsor for that, including whatever a silver sponsor yet might be a Table event might be a hole at a golf club and a golf tournament. But you get that variety of things and you can pick any of those that you want to be a silver sponsor for and then there’s some marketing that goes into it. You’re on our website, you’re on a pull up in our lobby or on a pull up that said all of our event, you’re on a weekly newsletter that goes out and so they’re there Quite inclusive of any type of membership, the top level, the platinum sponsorships are $12,000. They include being a premier sponsor for one of our events, and then being gold sponsors for other one. And obviously they get more events they can be part of as a platinum sponsor, you can be part of five different events. And it includes other things like our all member meetings, you get tickets included to that you can do a business after hours as part of your sponsorship package. So it works really well. We bring in about $110,000 a year of our $650,000 budget. So it’s a big chunk of our revenue stream. And it’s been around since 2015, and continues to grow each year. So it’s a good program. And if you got some specific questions about it, I’d be happy to answer him, sir.

Brandon Burton 10:55
Yeah, so my first thought is, pricing Pricing is always a something of, I don’t know, people are scared sometimes to talk about price to set price to do do, you know, discounts as you do bigger packages. So as you look at the different packages with the one ASP program, is there discounts if you do multiple things? Or do you just say, here’s the prices, we’re just presenting it all at once, and you can decide what you want? Or how do you go about the pricing structure,

Matt Hunter 11:26
there’s obviously more value built in as you as you go to the larger packages, but the top package, as I said, as a $12,000 package Pocatello is not a large maybe I know people that pay it $25,000 sponsorship to be part of an event at the Boise chamber and I love those folks. And and I learned a lot from them about sponsorships. But you know, really a top sponsorship for one of our events, if you just bought that sponsorship alone is about 3000. Well, when you buy this package, you get about five of them. And so there for 12,000, you’re getting 15,000 value, you get all the marketing that I mentioned that that comes along with it, you get the the other couple of added events, like the old member meetings and stuff like that, that you get free access to. Below that you go to the gold sponsorship was about $8,000, you generally get about 10 to $11,000 in value when you buy into that one. So it’s in it’s just less events, and less hierarchy. If those events, you know, our events are structured, you’re you’re a gold sponsor, you get front seedings. So we’re sponsored behind bronze sponsor, you know, and and then the general public grab seats where they can get them. And so all of the levels do that. So you got 8000 at the Gold level, you got 5000 at the silver, and it’s got about $6,500 in value, and you get about 3000, the bronze, and it’s three to $4,000 in value. So the the added additional value obviously goes up as the level of sponsorship. And we’ll even do more. So the one ask gets you this many events, but I’ll sit down with a member if they really liked the one ask because I sit down with them and bug them once. Right not I’m going to call you every other week on they sometimes hear everything too, right? Everything’s there. And it’s it’s all laid out. And some of them will say well, we want all of this stuff that’s included in the package. Plus, we want this, this and this. So they’re still for it might be $15,000 because they bought extra stuff. And once again, I bug them one time. And they’re done dealing with their sponsorships for the year. So really well for us.

Brandon Burton 13:48
So let’s talk about how you go about bugging them. One time a year. So 750 Members, I don’t imagine you’re sitting down with all 750 to go through the ass. So how do you identify the ones you are sitting down with? The ones that sponsored the previous year? Did they get first right of refusal? How do you how do you approach it?

Matt Hunter 14:09
Yeah, exactly that. So initially, at most of our events, not all of our events, there’s the annual sponsor. Messaging is there, because you’re recognized that all of our events, at least with the banner that’s there, I always mentioned it, if you’re interested in talking about this, I’d love to meet with you. I’d love to talk with you about it. And so that’s sort of the first one at our big annual awards banquet. We really recognize them all give them a plaque for being part of it, you know, for the year and that’s where I make a little more sales pitch of this is what this program is love to talk to you about it. We also just do some general emailing about it. But there is first right of refusal. So if you’re the sponsor, premier sponsor of our governors banquet, you own it until you decide you don’t want to be the premier sponsor of that event. Yeah, And so yeah, and all of our events are like that. There’s only about nine events on there. There’s only one premier sponsorship for each one of them. And so there is a little bit of competition for folks that want to get their hands on one of those. So.

Brandon Burton 15:18
So and that brings up another good point. So the competition for those, especially those premier sponsors, how do you address pricing from year to year? I mean, especially right now, or inflationary times where pricing tends to increase in a lot of areas? Do you feel stuck at all in pricing? Are you able to increase pricing, we have felt stuck

Matt Hunter 15:39
at pricing. And and I think we would have been justified doing a price increase this year, we did not. We had a discussion, we actually had a very good year last year. And we probably shouldn’t make that decision based on that. Because all of our events, costs have gone up. But in the meetings this year, I pretty much told everybody these are going up across the board next year, every every level is going to go up all of our events are going to go up the only thing we really increased individual pricing on this year was our golf tournament. Because it’s I mean, it’s in July, I think I’ve got 10 spots for teams left in it. I mean, it’s already almost full. And so we felt there was just such demand for that, that we increase the price. And that that will go into more price increases for all of our events, the premier sponsorships are probably going to go 3500 instead of 3000. So I see everything already kind of working on what this is going to look like. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:43
As you mentioned, sometimes there’s competition on these premium sponsors. Do you open it up at all for bidding on on some of these prime spots are just first come first serve?

Matt Hunter 16:57
Yeah, I have not done that. It really is first come first serve. And there are not all nine of those events are owned every year, though. So there is still some availability on you know, some of the baby. I’m not gonna say all my events are highly valuable. But some members, the membership sponsors don’t value as much as other maybe based on attendance or other things. So there always is, uh,

Brandon Burton 17:25
maybe they’re just better aligned with other programs.

Matt Hunter 17:29
They like, you know, I mean, our Gate City brew fest, phenomenal event. Not every business wants to be aligned with a brew fest. But luckily, we have some that do. And so we have premier sponsors for that and and all of our other events. So it works pretty well. But the the competition side, it gets you’re juggling renewals, so a lot of them renewal in January, and you’re like, I need to get this renewal renewal done. Because if you’re not going to take this premier sponsorship, I already got somebody asking me about right. So I’m not trying to pressure him, I’m just saying I need to get it done. You don’t want it. That’s fine. I have people jump around between platinum to gold, the silver up and down each year, some of the companies move up and down. But and then that makes things available for other folks. But the gold and silver and bronze, I can sell 50 of them for any event. So those are very much.

Brandon Burton 18:21
Okay. So that was one of the other questions on my mind is how do you juggle that? So if, if you haven’t heard from one of those premium platinum sponsors, and you know, you’ve got two other people vying for that position, at what point do you just say, Okay, we got to move on at risk of hurting feelings.

Matt Hunter 18:40
And I actually did that with one of them this year. And they were, they were a premier sponsor, or platinum level sponsor and a premiere of one of the events. And I did have somebody else interested in that. And it took a little while for them to make their decision, but they downgraded from Platinum, and gave up that event and somebody else picked it up. So it really is just like, I’ve got to get all these books, I need your help, you need to make a decision on this and staying in touch with them. These products. I mean, there’s 17 of them in my community that are that are across the sponsorship levels. I think the first year we did about eight, so but I stayed very closely in touch with those 17. And if they’ve got questions or problems, they know what I’m going through with the other ones. And generally they know who the other folks are, that would like those events. So they make their decision. And sometimes they keep it because they don’t want that competitor.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Right. And I imagine a lot of their businesses that are doing these big sponsorships, they’re they’re on board with the mission and vision of the chamber and they’re they’re invested heavily you’re not dealing with, you know, a $300 investment level because those ones are going to be you know, not as committed to the long term right? So is your January just packed with trying to meet with all these businesses?

Matt Hunter 20:06
So I actually start this process in November, okay. Because, you know, by January, we’re starting to do events. So but I mean, I literally right now I have two that technically renewed in in January that are not finalized. And it’s the big events they’ve got, those are nailed down. But they’re trying to decide whether they want to be a sponsor of the law enforcement barbecue, or the CEO breakfast series, and they haven’t made that decision. And that’s a little more fluid. I don’t have to know that right. Now, we can do that at the end of January, still, we can manage that last little part. So I’ve got two of them that I’m still working with that are still in the final decision process.

Brandon Burton 20:50
Yeah. So is there ever a point where you think, you know, I need to reach out to these five or 10 businesses and encourage them to get more involved with with every

Matt Hunter 21:01
day. That really is how this program started, it was a number of businesses that were interested in being more engaged. And I came up with this program, I think I said in 2015. And since then, it’s like, you know, somebody comes into the, the community, they start doing a lot of stuff. And I’ll sit down with him and say, you know, you’re doing three events with the chamber, you can throw that into a sponsorship package, and get all this marketing that comes along with it. And that seems to work very well. I’ve done that multiple times over the years. That’s where how we got to the first eight, where we have 17 today, and some have gone out, we’ve had some that have done a year. And and backed away from it. We have some that had been in it since the beginning. And I’ve been there the whole time. So that different folks value it and it’s they spend their marketing dollars on other things. I had one that wanted to upgrade at this year. And then well, we’re doing this stuff over in the Boise market, we’re gonna stay at the level we’re at, you know, and that’s fine with me, I just, I want to serve their needs as well as I can.

Brandon Burton 22:09
Right. So maybe for clarity sake. So you have the one ask that you get these packages for but then as you have these events throughout the year, are you still offering sponsorship levels throughout the year for those who are not participating in the one ask program?

Matt Hunter 22:26
Yes, we are. The only thing you can’t buy without being in the one is programming. To be a premier sponsor an event, you have to be in the one ask program. But you can buy a gold table at February fantasy which is coming up next Friday. You can be a silver, you can be a bronze. There’s a lot of other sponsorships available for all of our events. And you can buy any of those as one offs. And so I think a gold sponsorship for most of our events is about 1500 bucks. A Silver’s 1000 and a bronze is $600. So yeah, most of our stuff is in about that range. There’s a couple of larger ones. But yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:07
I like that that gives you a pool of people or businesses in the future the see if they’re sponsoring three or four different events. Yeah. Hey, let’s I think our deeper conversation.

Matt Hunter 23:17
Yeah, our February fantasy, you know, there’s probably six or seven sponsors that are involved in the one ask that are part of this big dinner we’re doing next Friday night. And, but there’s 20 sponsors. So a lot of folks have come on as added sponsors for the event without being in one ask program. Okay,

Brandon Burton 23:37
gotcha. So has there been any lessons that you’ve learned through gone through this one ask program that you’re like, oh, this worked really well. Or if I wouldn’t do that aspect of it again, or you’ve had to tweak along the way,

Matt Hunter 23:50
the biggest mistake I made at the very beginning. And it’s still there, but we’re starting to work around it. One premier sponsorship for every event. And it was so you get exclusivity. You don’t end up with two competing banks or two competing credit unions or whatever, as top sponsors. But I wish I had said you get exclusivity within your sort of tear of influence. So maybe I could have hospital be a premier sponsor. And our big credit union being a premier sponsor together. And it has limited my ability, obviously to sell premier sponsorships. We had nine major events. I have nine I can sell. And I’m out and I think I could sell more. And I’m actually starting to talk to those premier sponsors about would you be willing to do this with this other partner to open up more sponsorships? That’s probably the biggest lesson. And then I probably should have done more regular price increases on it because it has made it harder to do that small chunk and price increase, you know, we increase our dues every year to 3%. Every year, folks don’t notice you’re not coming after for a 50% increase all the time. It’s the smartest thing if you don’t increase your dues every year, folks, because your dues every year anyway. But I wish I had done more of that also to stayed up with the pricing in the market instead of locking it in. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:25
And are you the exclusive person meeting with all the the one ask potential spy,

Matt Hunter 25:32
right now, I’m actually going to transition to this as a commissioned piece to my membership salesperson, we’re in the process of doing that right now. And the meetings that I do, as we go through because they’re not they don’t all renew in January, I didn’t make that clear. I’ve some that renew in October and some of that renew in July, because you can sign up anytime during the year. The big ones all renew in January. But so when I have some of the smaller ones renewed during the year, maybe four of them that don’t renew in January of the 17. I will take that salesperson along and teach them the process and help them understand how that program works. So yeah, that’s my plan, I need to transition away from it. I spend more time on government affairs than I do actually on selling sponsorship right.

Brandon Burton 26:23
Now, I think you’ve covered a lot of a lot of great stuff here and really painting the picture how you guys are working your one ask program? Is there anything that we’re missing that we haven’t covered that you think is important for listeners to know?

Matt Hunter 26:37
Well, you know, you always have just sort of extra events come. And so you say it’s one Ask, and you really don’t want to bug them about something. But if something pops up during the year, well, we’ve got to once every year we get to bring the legislature to Southeast side. Well, this is 23, we’re bringing the legislature to South I have to raise a lot of money to bring the legislature here, we fund everything. So you do have special events that are not part of the one ask and just working through that. Because then it’s like, well, I’m going back to Farm Bureau and I’m saying, I got this other event and y’all want to be part of it. Generally, they’re all pretty good about it. But you know, if that’s another something that comes up every once

Brandon Burton 27:20
Yeah, I thought of that earlier in our conversation of as you do have new events that come in, do you just kind of earmark it and say we’ll add that into the calendar for next year. Or if you try to get it in as they come from time to time, you really do I mean, I,

Matt Hunter 27:35
you’ll in my budget, there’s three lines of that one event to event three, that are just potential things that may come up that year that you didn’t budget for the year, they’re extras, and at some point, somebody wanted your help with something, you you decide to be part of it. And you need a funding area for it an expense area for it. So you just write it into the budget as you go along. Got it.

Brandon Burton 28:01
So as we start wrapping up, I wanted to ask if there’s any tips or action items that you can suggest for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest for them?

Matt Hunter 28:12
Well, there’s two that I would really suggest. I came to this industry from the hotel industry. I’ve been involved in chambers for all 20 years, I worked in the hotel industry, but never closely. So I almost immediately the second year I was here, I went through the IOM program to the US Chamber of Commerce, phenomenal program. If you haven’t been through it, I would definitely suggest folks go through it. And then after I got done with it, I was like, Well, where am I going to get my learning now, I need to stay up on things need to be involved. And I get a lot from the Idaho chamber Alliance, which I’m part of, and I’m past chair of and we meet and we got 20 chambers in Idaho that meet together and talk about these kinds of things and operations and sponsorships and all kinds of stuff like that. So if you have a State Chamber, be involved with your State Chamber. And then finally I attend ACC every year. It’s been a great conference, I started going to I think I might the year after I finished my IOM I started going to ACC II and it’s every year I come home with something from that conference that we implement that makes our chamber stronger. Not always a financial thing. It might be something else. But always something comes out of that in in programs and benefits and something that I can implement to support this community.

Brandon Burton 29:39
That’s right. And that’s actually where we met was that ACC conference. So it’s correct. Yeah, something good came out of that. So. So, Matt, I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Matt Hunter 29:57
Well, I think they’re Purpose going forward is just being super involved in their community. And it’s something where we haven’t done a great job in the past. And we’re and we’re reaching out more into not just my membership community, but the whole community and working on things as, as a community partner, involved with the United Way involved with early childhood education, things like that, that we have gotten involved in. At the other real thing that chambers have got to get much better out is figuring out how to engage the younger population, we Scott, we have for years, I wanted to start a young professional program. And we did we just started one about a year and a half ago, and it was actually the Boise Metro Chamber that helped me had one of their people that runs theirs, come over and talk to my board about it and get a group together and really help us get one up and running. And sure we have funding for it. That’s now part and it really is helping engage the younger community with our chamber of commerce. And that’s very important.

Brandon Burton 30:58
Yeah, if you want to stay relevant going forward, you got to start with them while they’re young, right. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about your one ask program, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you,

Matt Hunter 31:18
you could reach out to me two ways matthew@pocatelloidaho.com. That’s Pocatello and Idaho just spelled out very easy. And then the chamber office numbers 208-233-1525, happy to chat with anybody happy to share the literature I have on our one as program. And always happy to talk about anything else in chamber world. You know, people say that chambers are all the same. But I am a firm believer of the common if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, you all are doing great stuff that I know nothing about. And we might be doing some good stuff that we can help you with. So love to chat

Brandon Burton 31:59
with folks. Very good. And I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. And if it’s alright, maybe we could just link to your one ask program material that you have is there on your website that we can just point him to and those show notes. Maybe maybe not. Or reach out to

Matt Hunter 32:21
the updated version may not be out there say

Brandon Burton 32:25
that’s fine, that’s fine. Just Just reach out to Matt to get the latest and greatest. This has been a great conversation and I know chambers listening are getting value from this and their minds are spinning as to how they can implement something like this to simplify things but also to to make it easier on those those bigger sponsors as well. And I really appreciate you setting aside time and joining us today on chamber chat podcast and sharing this experience and insight with us.

Matt Hunter 32:53
Thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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