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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 Mark field mark is the Senior Vice President and membership at the Knoxville chamber and has been since 2004. Mark oversees investor development and relations events and programming, Marketing and Communications. He previously was the vice president development for the initial group and East Tennessee provider owned Managed Health Care Network. He has over 35 years of experience in sales and marketing. And he’s been very involved with several boards throughout the community as he’s an active member of his community. He is a 2011 graduate of leadership Knoxville he graduated southeast Institute in 2009, past chair of the US Chamber southeast Institute Board of Regents member of the Board of Trustees for the US Chamber Institute. And Mark is married to Vicki he has two step children and seven grandchildren. But Mark I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so they can get to know you a little better.
Mark Field 3:09
Yeah, hello everyone. It’s great to be on the podcast. Brandon, thank you so much for the opportunity and I hope everyone’s having a great day. Something entered interesting about me so a lot of people might not know that for about seven years. I was on the competition barbecue circuit. And so I still love to cook barbecue obviously, because of that it got a little bit more time consuming than I had originally anticipated and a little bit more cost prohibitive than I’ve anticipated as as barbecue became more popular and but anyway that’s that’s something that I used to do a little bit of and still like to cook so that’s that’s something that a lot of people don’t know about me.
Brandon Burton 3:55
All right, so I have to ask I’m in Texas now. I spent some time in South Carolina I grew up in California barbecue is different everywhere. What is barbecue like in Tennessee?
Mark Field 4:06
You know our barbecue really kind of takes a lien from from both Kentucky and from Georgia and Memphis you know, we Knoxville Tennessee, you know kind of sits in the middle. A lot of people like the Memphis dry rub for ribs and a lot of people like the more Georgia sweet and tangy style for their pull pork sauces, so and then of course the great vinegar by sauce from Kentucky and and North Carolina are at you know, have a big influence here as well. So we’re a little bit of a melting pot on what kind of barbecue people lack in this region.
Brandon Burton 4:39
Yeah, you get the best of all of it. I didn’t hear any brisket in there, but you know, you get the best of
Mark Field 4:44
you know, it’s kind of funny. Granted, the very first brisket I cooked was a cross between what I would say a hockey puck and a conveyor belt. But But I learned I learned and so now it’s pretty good and I don’t I really don’t like any sauce on my bread. Should I really dislike my brisket? I’m a purist on that. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 5:05
we may need to talk offline. I’ve got a good Brianna rub. So well tell us a little bit more about the Knoxville chamber just to give us an idea of size, staff budget scope of work, things you’re involved with, just to kind of give us an idea of if to set the table for our discussion.
Mark Field 5:20
Yeah, gosh, the Knoxville chamber has been around since 1869. We’re old organization, old established organization, our community started as an actual board of trade. You know, and, and I would say just like any chamber, we’ve we’ve been through a lot of evolution. You know, do very well in our community have about 1900 investors. You know, our penetration rate, I’m gonna say somewhere around 10 to 15% of the businesses in our marketplace, with so for a large community that’s about standard for the industry, I think. We have 27 employees, some interns and some fellows, as well. So around 30 folks in the office, on and off, we do economic development, as well as Investor Services, investor relations. And we also have the downtown Knoxville Association. And we have the US Department of Commerce and our Tennessee small businesses wellness center all in one office. So there’s about 50 of us in the office. But chamber wise, we’re at about 30. associates.
Brandon Burton 6:28
All right. Well, there’s plenty of work there to keep those 30 Associates busy. So there really
Mark Field 6:34
are our budgets around $5 million. All in so that that’ll give you an idea.
Brandon Burton 6:39
Yeah, no, that’s great. So as we settled in on a topic for our discussion today, we wanted to focus on how the Knoxville chamber went from being more of a membership organization to more of a driver of community economics. So we will dive in much deeper into this conversation and the how that happened and what things look like now as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 10:06
All right, Mark, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about how the Knoxville chamber went from being a more of a traditional membership organization, to more of a driver of community economics. So tell us kind of what that evolution looked like, obviously, we know what a kind of a traditional chamber looks like and see them all over the country. But what was that signal that said, if we need to get involved with more important work than just membership and business structures?
Mark Field 10:37
Well, I will tell you, Brandon, three years ago, we got a new CEO, our CEO, retired, and they did a national search. And they landed on Mike Odom, from the Round Rock chamber in Texas who had that previous year had one chamber of the year in their category. And Mike was a bright young chamber professional that was really the guy for the job, no, no question about it. Mike came in and took about six months and went around, met with about 200 stakeholders in our community and, and asked for real candid feedback from them about, you know, what does the chamber do in our community? You know, what should we be doing? What kind of value do we really deliver to you as an organization that invests with us or considers itself a member and you know, where’s Knoxville, in their opinion, in its evolution of growth and success from an economic perspective, and came back and set our senior leadership team down. And I gotta tell you, the notes weren’t pretty. There were a lot of folks that were confused about our purpose. They were confused about exactly what they got from their investment with us. There were a lot of people that said, you know, we think you’re a good organization, you have a good staff, we know you’re doing some good things, but we can’t really put our finger our mind on exactly what it is that drives the economy going forward, and what you do specifically for our business, now, we did have a lot of small businesses that said they enjoyed our networking events and our our education oriented Vance, those kinds of things, but, but the the folks that drive the community, the larger stakeholders, the banks, the health systems, those kinds of folks were, were really confused about our mission, and purpose going forward. So we sat in the room for several hours and talked about that, what were we gonna do, Mike made a statement that I think kind of shocked all of us. And that was that he believed everybody in the Knoxville region deserved an equitable opportunity to be prosperous. And that basically means get a job, have a job available, if you want, why, and it’s really driven around that. Get an education, put your kids through school, have a have an affordable place to live, be able to get from place to place to do what it is you need to do. All those quality of life issues. Now we know that people are all people aren’t going to take advantage of that. But But certainly, it should be available to them. And they may ask the question that really catalyzed to get to your point, what what changed us as an organization? And he said, can anybody tell me what that has to do with membership. And when he said that, you know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years now. And for 16, or 17 of those years, it was all about membership. For me, I was a membership guy, I was all about features and benefits, I was all about the events, all about trying to figure out how to drive more features and benefits to our members. But when he said that it resonated with all of us. And I gotta tell you, it was a real catalystic moment for all of us to realize that if you’re a small business in our community, it really doesn’t matter if you’re a minority business, or are you just have one employee or two employees or whatever else it may be can’t afford and or don’t feel comfortable being a part of a big membership organization like ours, you still deserve to have the support you need to be successful in our community. And so it’s really not about membership. And so we transitioned at that point over time, over about a 18 month period of time, away from being a membership organization, to an investment oriented oriented organization that really deliver service to any business in our community that needs it. So whether it’s a small minority business, or whether it’s a large business, we don’t ask you to invest with us to help you. We say what do you need us to do? What are issues that you’re dealing with? Let us weigh into them, think about them that figure out what we can do about them if it is something we need to be involved in. And then we rely on people in our community and our businesses in our community to invest in that work. And so that’s been the transition And that we’ve made very successfully over the last three years into being more of an economic driver and economic development oriented organization, our community versus a membership organization.
Brandon Burton 15:14
That is a bold step, right? I mean, as you look at the structure of a chamber, so much of the financing is based on your membership, and if you say, let’s step away from membership, and the structure can kind of be similar, going from membership to investors, but just that approach of what’s in it for me as the member, you know, versus you guys going and saying, Let us help you what are the things you need, and then asking them to invest back in the community to be able to help others to be able to find that that equal opportunity to be prosperous,
Mark Field 15:45
I would be lying to you, Brandon, if I didn’t say I was the one person that in this organization that had been here the longest in on the membership side, obviously, that was not really excited about it, to be honest with you, I mean, it, it scared me it it, I was fearful that it might not be received, and that the communication of it would not be received as well as we had hoped it would. But I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In that fear, in that our community did realize that there were things in our community that needed work that we weren’t focusing on as a chamber. And frankly, no one else in the community was we’re talking about attracting the right kind of talent to our region, keeping the college graduates in our community, affordable housing. Skilled let you know, making sure our high schools and our community colleges were turning out the right kind of skilled labor to meet the needs of the businesses in our community. broadband access. During the pandemic, we found out that there were 6000 households that had children in them in Knoxville, that did not have broad but had no access to broadband access. And so that’s unacceptable, you know, reading and, and lesson planning and doing the coursework they needed to do in the hybrid environment, our school system went to, it’s unacceptable. So those are not things that the Chamber historically were ever involved in. And all of those things are front and center with us.
Brandon Burton 17:23
Right. So I think for a lot of businesses, like you mentioned, they would maybe appreciate the chambers, they are a good organization do good work, couldn’t put a finger on it. But they might think of the chamber as networking, ribbon cuttings, you know, that forward facing work that you see chambers do all the time. So talk to us more about the messaging of how you went from changing from that traditional view of what a chamber is, to more of this more important kind of mission driven work?
Mark Field 17:53
Well, I, you know, I think the thing that that I was most fearful of is, you know, how will that messaging be accepted? And, you know, are we doing it in the right way. And there was no better way during the pandemic, as we were making this transition, then to get on the Zoom, and have conversations with people. And that’s what Mike had done. You know, he went out and met with those two other stakeholders. And so the pandemic offered us this really great opportunity for people to take a few minutes out of their day and get on Zoom. And us have those conversations with them about transitioning away from this event oriented features and benefits oriented chamber, to an organization focused on things that prac practically no one in our community was, was thinking enough about, and to talk with them through it. So not really just push message down to them, which which in the past was our, our more of our model, right sentiment, email sentiment newsletter. But this was more of that one on one. Hey, don’t you think everybody in our community deserves an equitable opportunity to be prosperous? Will you admit it’s hard to find employees where you admit your employees are having trouble finding affordable housing? Will you admit that there are the economics in our community are not growing at the rate it should, we need more high wage talent, we need more entrepreneurial activity. We need more of our bigger businesses doing business with the vendors that are currently in our marketplace. All of those things as we talked about them and had a conversation, you know, resume. And so what I was fearful of is that that that one way communication that we were so accustomed to, would not be effective. But what we found out was is we didn’t have to worry about that because we decided to have conversations with people. And in those conversations, the message resonated.
Brandon Burton 19:58
Right. Yeah, we Those one way conversations often don’t even get opened or read.
Mark Field 20:05
Our open rates are in the 30% range. Right? So 30% of the people are hearing the message on average. So
Brandon Burton 20:12
so as you do have those one on one conversations with with your members or investors now, do you get some of the feedback that they want some of that traditional chamber stuff, still some of the networking some of the events that you guys traditionally involved with? Did you totally cut them out? Are there things that you still maintain?
Mark Field 20:30
Yeah, you know, I think they would like to have both. You know, and we talk a lot about the the, the difficulty of being able to manage a staff that needs to do research work and needs to be boots on the ground on these affordable housing issues, and these tax issues and these talent issues, versus having three or four people inside an organization, the size of hours working on the bands. And so we just have to have just as a business, you know, I’ve had this conversation 1000 times, as a business owner, you have to decide what are we going to focus on. And we just don’t feel comfortable right now doing both. Now, in the future, may we do a little more events than we’re currently doing. And we still do events, they’re just around, the educational type events are around those ecosystem issues. Now, we’re talking about affordable housing, we’re talking about talent attraction, trying to give employees help in regard to how to attract employees, and how to retire. But the traditional things, the networking type events, we just don’t do anymore. We we don’t do any morning coffees, we don’t do any business after hours. We hope that people will network around these educational issues when we bring them together. But yeah, I mean that we had some negative folks that felt like, you know, this is just not what I want, for my best mentor from our membership. And, and we have certainly lost some of those smaller businesses. But what we have done is we have offset that investment, by great measure with those organizations that historically were never members. And I did that in quotes, air quotes, members of the organization in the past against small manufacturing facilities, you know, research and development companies, those kinds of companies don’t have the time and never came to chamber events and therefore weren’t members, those kinds of companies are investing in our organization heavily. And when I say heavily, it’s not unusual. And not Not to brag to be very factual, it’s not unusual for us to go meet with a small manufacturing facility just did that two days ago, who had never been a member of the chamber, and never saw the value of that features and benefits model who gave us $5,000, as an investor, toward the work we’re trying to accomplish, because it affects his business in a great way. So that’s, so I have less $500 members, which is our lowest tier, and I have more members, and I always say hi, and but I would say have more small or less than 50 employed businesses that historically weren’t Chamber members now invested in the organization.
Brandon Burton 23:26
I love that that answers that question I was going to have as far as the funding goes, because he’s step away from that traditional stuff. And a lot of those are moneymakers as non dues revenue generators. So stepping away from, you know, having a bunch of the $500 members to more of those mission focused members that really are investing in the work that you’re doing is is a big part of it. What other I guess from the budget finance side, how else are you guys funding the work that you’re doing? And beyond the membership?
Mark Field 23:59
Again, the majority of that funding is coming now from, you know, from targeted funding. So we, you know, for instance, we have had some folks come to us and say, Look, I’m investing x with you is what I consider my membership dues, my investments, right? And we don’t we call them investments. Now, as I said, not semantically, it’s it, they really are investing in our work not being a member, because, you know, that’s just not our model. But we’ve had a lot of them come and say, you know, my company has a foundation, or are I’m really interested in this certain project that you guys are involved in. And I want to give you some additional funding toward that targeted project. We didn’t do that before. You know, we didn’t we normally you know, we would do sponsorships, right. But but we didn’t have companies come to us and say, Hey, I really feel strongly about this project you’re doing to increase digital literacy in our menorah A community and help them get broadband access and give them access to Chromebooks so that they can find a job and help their kids with their lessons. I really liked that. So I know I’m giving you $5,000 As my investment. But here’s another $5,000 to put into that project. We, that’s a new happening for us, right? It’s it. We didn’t used to have a lot of people come in our office or call us and say, Hey, I’d like to give you more money. Yeah, it just didn’t happen. But because of the mission work, and because of the projects that we’re involved in, that that is happening. And it’s refreshing. I mean, it’s people want to spend the dollars that they’ve made in their business, that have leadership capacity in their organizations, they want to see the community get, and they want to see those economic issues resolved. And so it’s it’s been, it’s been good to see that that kind of, and we still, we still do some signature events, we still do our our annual awards for the best businesses in our community. We call them the pinnacle Business Awards, we still do endeavor, which is our young professional Summit, where we bring them together to understand what’s going on in the community, and how, what what an important role they play. We stood up still do peel and eaten and politic in, which is our shrimp boil political advocacy event. So we still do those big we have for signature events that we did. And we still have sponsorships. But now our sponsorship model is an umbrella sponsorship over one of these ecosystem issues. So we have hired issues that that they can sponsor and they sponsor, anything that happens in that if we release a white paper, their names on it, if we do a an event, their names on it, if we have a speaker, their names on. So we have those five ecosystem umbrella sponsors now. And so that that has, again offset some of that business after hours, morning coffees, education, small education, small business education stuff,
Brandon Burton 27:14
right now. That’s great. So this work that you guys are involved with now, it’s big work, it’s important work that needs to be addressed. And it was being ignored largely. And you guys have stepped in and really taken ownership on that. So that’s a big responsibility. Because if things don’t happen, now, the fingers pointing back to you, right, as an organization. So my question is, what, what sort of touch points are you having with your investors throughout the year so they can see the work you’re involved with? A lot of times these advocacy type topics are kind of hard to see that, you know, movement happening, because it doesn’t happen overnight. Right. It’s a lot of the research and, and things like that, like you had mentioned. So how do you keep your investors apprised as to the progress of the work?
Mark Field 28:02
A couple of ways. And again, this was new for me. So I’d been at the Chamber 1617 years before my came along. And so we have issued six white papers. In the last three years, we had never issued a white paper before, we had never taken a solid stance on an issue in our community. Even politically, we always tried to ride the fence like a good chamber work, right. And so we’ve issued white papers around some of these economic issues, the most recent being transitioning the Knoxville economy into the innovation and digital age, which talks about things like high wage talent, more entrepreneurialism, more, more and better civic furniture, you know, more things for to attract young professionals to our region, and high growth companies research and development, life sciences, biosciences, those kind of things. So anyway, so we issued those white papers. And we, you know, obviously, a lot of people don’t want to read white papers, but so usually when we will, on our touchpoints, with with our investors, whether it’s through our newsletter, or just our emails or whatever else, we usually will mention, have you read? Do you know, maybe a lot of Do you know, kind of stuff? Did you realize that in our region, we only retained in the last 10 years 4% of people in the 25 to 54 H group and Do you realize what kind of effect that has on our economy? So a lot of that kind of, I guess what I would call attention getting statements about Were you aware that these things are happening in the community that again, you know, a lot of people you talk to in our community or so what’s your I would not Knoxville is a great community. We got a great college. We’re actually winning in football. Now, you know what’s wrong when Doc’s? Well, the reality is, is we’re not growing at the pace of some of our peers, and we don’t have the the economics that we should have for a community our size and with the assets we have. So we’re looking at Raleigh and we’re looking at Greenville, South Carolina we’re looking at at Tulsa, we’re looking at places like that, who has had that high wage talent and, and high growth companies located there. So So those to answer your question, I mean, we, we ask provocative questions that, that make them look at some of that information we provide to them. We do a lot more roundtable discussions now than we ever did. It’s where we’re bringing in different parts of the community together to I guess, you could say debate, those issues middle, we have become more of a convener where we shine the bright bot spotlight on an issue and and then bring people in that affect it, and collaborate and partner with them. Brandon, in this new world we live in the hardest part of our jobs, is figuring out, do we lead on an issue? Do we follow on an issue? Do we collaborate? Do we get out of the way? On someone that’s doing it well, and just promote them? That that’s a new role for us. But you know, I think Mick talked about this in the horizon initiative with ACCE, you know, chambers really can and shouldn’t be the conveners. With all the social political fragmentation in communities, certainly we have our share of that. And so we now can become that place. And that organization that says, we should be thinking about this, now we can figure it out together. But the fact of the matter is, this is an issue, and we’ve got to deal with
Brandon Burton 31:56
it. Right. Now that addresses it. Well, and as you talk about how you have those touch points was brought to questions as thought provoking questions, I guess, I see, you can leverage that in several different ways, right through through newsletter, through an email through a video posts through a social media posts, you’re able to, those are great. I hate using the word teaser, but it gets people interested, right, it provokes their interests where they want to learn more, they want to dive in a little deeper. So I appreciate you sharing some of those examples of how you’re helping to stimulate that discussion further. I wanted to ask you, if for those listening, what kind of tip or action item might you have for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level?
Mark Field 32:44
You know, the greatest lesson learned, you know, we were doing well as a chamber financially. Prior to this, this shift. You know, I think our community is better now, for us having made the shift in a big way. But that was all catalyzed around listening to our stakeholders. And and you can’t really survey him. You know, we do surveys, I’m not saying that you don’t survey, but you can’t use like a, what I would call the old traditional memberships are by what do you want? What should we do more? What should we not do any, because I don’t think people can have that candid conversation with you about what the real issues that they’re dealing with are. And people are not going to sit down and take 30 or 45 minutes on a survey and get the entire essay top paragraphs for you. I would just say a really strong tip to any SAS chain, whether you’re making the shift or not, is to go on a listening tour. And sit down and have open candid conversations with their stakeholders. And be willing to accept that feedback and make decisions based on that, as opposed to sitting in the office in the ivory tower, so to speak, and make decisions based on what you think your knowledge base or your experience tell you. I will tell you I couldn’t be I couldn’t have been further wrong. In my perception of what we were delivering to the community and the value of it, then what we heard and call it fall on the sword or whatever else you want to call it. I’m glad that we heard the news we heard because I think our community’s better now, having realized that we probably weren’t as effective in our community as we should.
Brandon Burton 34:52
Yeah, that’s big to admit that to that.
Mark Field 34:57
It was tough. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine A lot of what I call weeping and gnashing of teeth are
several months, right? What do you mean? We’re not doing it? Right? What do you mean? I don’t like it? What do you mean that appreciate it. But again, I mean, you know, your customers, you know, a lot of really great organizations, Apple being probably the lead that we all recognize, listen to their customers and give their customers what they want.
Brandon Burton 35:23
And I’ll say the surveys, you don’t need to scrap them all together. That might be the big one initiates that listening tour, it gives you that focus on who to go listen to first. And maybe it’s those people that aren’t responding to the surveys. Maybe they’re the ones who need to go listen to first.
Mark Field 35:38
Yeah, I think the people that we have been the most surprised by are people that were never engaged with us, that that have given us really good ideas, given us investment, have been more engaged in this new model that we have. That that’s been a really pleasant surprise is to see plant managers and owners of small manufacturing businesses weigh in and become more a part of what we’re trying to
Brandon Burton 36:07
accomplish. Right. Now. That’s great. So I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?
Mark Field 36:19
Well, you know, I think, again, the horizon initiative that came out several years ago that MC was instrumental in in, you know, getting together, and that Sheri Ann has, has certainly continued to press on all of us that it’s important to look at what the future looks like. I would simply say there are a lot of ways that people can engage with chambers and membership organizations, and receive the kind of benefits that that we have driven to them in the past, whether it’s, again, small business education, or whether it’s networking events, and things like that. Those can be duplicated by other organizations. What can’t be duplicated, is finding out what the real core economic issues in your community are, and doing research and trying to figure out how to convene the people that can fix those that is unique for every community, what’s a problem in Knoxville may not be a problem in Chattanooga. And there, they may intersect. And if they do, then you have collaborative opportunities to learn. But I would just simply say the future for us is chambers, and I’m on the backside of it. Surely, the future for us as chambers is to listen, and to understand our marketplaces better, and affect them in a real way. As opposed to just throwing some features and benefits and services at a and calling that a day.
Brandon Burton 37:49
Yeah, gone are the days to be in a cookie cutter organization where what you’re doing is good for everybody. You need to listen and customize and, and really be willing to pivot you know, if your work isn’t resonating any more with the needs in your community, take a look at where you do need to be involved. Thank you for for that insight. So as we finish up here, Mark, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for those listening who might want to reach out and learn more about how the Knoxville chamber went through this transition, and especially those who may have a little cold feet, it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.
Mark Field 38:28
Yeah, and I would say you know, for us, it was about a two year process so it wasn’t quick. So I would just encourage you to go to Knoxville chamber.com There’s a lot of information about what we’re doing there. And those white papers exists there. And you can see how we’re trying to drive information and, and resources for our businesses on our website. I certainly am happy to have this conversation in more depth or around specific issues and so you can reach me obviously at mfield@knoxvillechamber.com. And I’m happy to you know, again send you any kind of printed material that we may have or or give you any conversation opportunities that you might need to help clarify and look forward to hearing from folks.
Brandon Burton 39:18
That’s great. And now I’ll get your your email and the Chamber website in our show notes for this episode so people can check that out and reach out and connect with you. But Mark I really appreciate you spending some time with us today here on chamber tap podcast. And in really this transition you guys have made is really something that chambers all over should be looking at. I’m not going to say they shall do it because every community is a little different. But they should be taking a look at what is the the important work you’re involved with and are you still being relevant. And this is a great example of that. So thank you for for sharing that with us today. I really appreciate it.
Mark Field 39:55
Right and I appreciate that appreciate your your podcast. You know we learn from each other That’s the best way for us to learn is to learn. We don’t there’s no sense of us all having to make the same mistakes over and over again and, and certainly I’ve learned from so many great chamber professionals and your podcast is another great way to learn from Greg chamber professionals operation.
Brandon Burton 40:15
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