Category: Influence

Chambernomics with Don McCoy

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

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Introduction

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

Now, your host he would like to hear what your biggest obstacles are. Right now are your chamber. He’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the chamber chat podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here 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 Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:47
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:01
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Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Don McCoy. Don is the current president of the Fulshear Katie Area Chamber of Commerce in Texas and he has been since its inception in late 2013. Don has played a vital role in growing this local chamber from only a handful of businesses to becoming one of the fastest growing chambers in Texas with over 600 business members. Don is a seasoned marketing professional who brings over 40 years of experience to the table. He is an idea guy who excels at marketing, project management promotions, public relations and event planning. He has the proven ability to mastermind and lead creative teams energized clients and the ability to achieve objectives in an effective manner. In addition, Don is and has been an accomplished actor, director, producer, spokesperson, Master of Ceremonies and motivational speaker. He’s appeared in directed and produced several movie and television programs. He can be heard saying I’m really famous, but nobody knows it. Dan is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University with a major in management, marketing and a minor in Spanish. He speaks Spanish fluently and he’s lived and grew up in Venezuela, Mexico, Scotland, England and Iran. He’s also travelled extensively throughout and around the world. He currently lives in Cinco Ranch Katie, with his three legged Husky Wyatt. Don, I’m excited to have you with me on chamber chat podcast today, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something else interesting about yourself. That’s a great bio.

Don McCoy 3:24
Well, thank you very much, Brandon, it’s a real pleasure to be here. And i i Hello chamber champions out there, I hope today we can give you some nuggets of knowledge that might help you in any way, shape or form. I think you kind of hit all the highlights there i i guess probably some of the things in my background, everything you’ve ever done. And I will tell you this, regardless of where you came from, when you used to say you were an actor, it used to be a really what restaurant you work at, because it’s not necessarily a full time job. But you have seen me you just don’t realize maybe you have but meaning a lot of celebrities direct your lifetime and being in that type of business and even waiting tables. You know, sometimes you’re wondering why why am I doing this or, well, God has that plan. And, and I have found that everything I’ve experienced in my life up to this point, has led me to this job as a chamber, CEO and president. I use all those skills somehow, some way, whether I’m in front of people, I mean, I used to be the king of medieval times performing in front of 1000s of people nightly, and you get used to crowds and and as a chamber. Executive, you need to be able to have that way to ad lib skills to communicate with large, large groups of people or this the ideal person. And sometimes our job Brandon requires a little bit of acting skills, you know, you got to look interested you got to pretend you’re interested in what you’re hearing. and you know all the myriad of questions us chambers get all the time. And it’s important to that person they are they wouldn’t be asking but to yourself behind the scenes you made one. What do you call me about a category or tree for? Yeah, no, yeah. But I always say look at students use it over acting. And always provide a solution, whether I can get the cat out of your tree is inconsequential. But if I can get someone to call or someone that will definitely help you that you can mention my name, and it gets you through the gatekeeper a little bit, then you become a real key person, which we’ll talk about later have influence in your

Brandon Burton 5:38
community. Yeah, like that. I like that response. Before we get into our topic, tell us a little bit about the Fulshear. Katie area Chamber just to give some perspective where you’re coming from, you’d mentioned about 600 members in the bio, but tell us about the staff budget type of work you’re involved with and things like that.

Don McCoy 5:57
Right? Well, right off the bat. It’s, I’m glad my team is in here to hear you say staff, we don’t use the word staff we use. We’re all one team. But it was in late 2013, that this community had a number of businesses, but they felt they weren’t being representative. So representatives. So they wanted to start a chamber rather than being a business division of another chamber. And so I just happened to be at the right place the right time back visiting here at home and my brother had moved out here to Fulcher and Fulshear. Katie, it a lot of people will say we’re out. We’re west of Houston. But I like to tell everybody, Houston is east of us. And they’ll make themselves to start right. That’s right. And, and we weren’t just the Fulshear chamber, but Katie’s and other town, and we have just grown exponentially. This area is a very high growth area. And maybe that’s why our phone is starting to read even more and more. But there it is high net worth high growth. Look it up. It’s crazy. I mean, our town is, I think the second safest town in Texas, I have to do the shout out my brother happens to be the police department Captain here. So

Brandon Burton 7:09
he’s doing his job, then.

Don McCoy 7:11
Yeah. So we started out with just a handful of businesses. And then you know, we kind of picked the low of the low hanging fruit and me not knowing really, I knew what chambers did. But I wanted to make something that was truly different. That was tangible, that was a benefit to the members, and really bring something to the table. And so we did that, and we’ll talk about that a bit. But it started growing and going and it Swilly on personality, there was no cliques, people sit, this is sort of different, I go to the meetings, I feel different. Everyone is welcoming. And I’ve put in a thing called BFF. You know, the best friends forever, we had a we call it a B Fulshear. Friendly. And we kind of stole that a little bit. And then we say, you know by Fulcher and it just started to take off and people gravitated to it and nothing helps you better than word of mouth. And now we’re at 630. Members. And you know, I’m just was naive at the time, even up to this point and going, Okay, we want to reach a it’s not the amount of numbers, it’s the quality of members you have. And, you know, I understand the 630 is a large chamber. Okay, I mean, now that I’ve gone through IOM and everything, I get it, but in the beginning, I don’t know, I’m just trying to help people. And our budget runs anywhere about about 400k a year. So we’re still the least expensive chamber in the area when it comes to your dues. We are on the not tear does. We’re just you got one level, second level third level. Yeah. And, you know, at 325 a year to be to I tell people, we’re never cheap. I hate that word. But I tell folks, we’re the least expensive marketing dollar you could ever spend. And you’re in anything that you do to get your business noticed, noticed and recognized. Because you’d go out and spend money, companies on advertising and things like that. You’ve got to educate what a chamber really brings to the table. Besides being the representative at the table of government, we also offer a lot of tools to really help your business get a foothold and an inflationary times during COVID We were met with all those same challenges, and we continue to grow. So I think that’s a real testament to really focusing on what the needs of your members truly are rather than what yours are internally. He’s right

Brandon Burton 9:49
yeah, so I can tell you’re a marketing guy, you know, just the way you rephrase cheap to be in the least expensive marketing spend. Yeah, yeah. And it’s uh, yeah, There’s a lot of value in that. So that’s a, that’s great. But here’s

Don McCoy 10:03
what’s crazy, you know, Brandon, we we’ve started out with just me. And then I hired another person. And then we had a third person now just had a third person, retire the God bless her and she doesn’t have to. So now it’s back to two of us. And I never thought I mean, we’re finding how to be more efficient and reliant on the technologies that are available to us to manage a 600 plus chamber with two people, it becomes a bit of a challenge, but we’re doing it so don’t negate what the technology can help you.

Brandon Burton 10:36
Yeah. Now I can imagine and I like your introduction to the chamber world, you kind of had blinders on, you know, I don’t care so much what others are doing. I just want to go help people and I do it the best way I know how and it’s really taken off and served served you and your members very well. So that’s. So for our topic of discussion today, we settled on the topic of chamber nomics. So we’ll we’ll dive into what that means and everything as soon as we get back from our quick break.

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Don, we’re back. So chambernomics. Tell us okay, what is chambernomics mean to you as you, as you look at that word, it looks like a word that that’s been made up. So what does that mean to you? It looks like a blend of economics. So I

Topic-Chambernomics

Don McCoy 14:13
gotta give a shout. Rachel, who’s our VP of membership? She’s the one that we were just talking about, you know, training and Euro chamber 101. And a lot of chambers have, you know, when you join the chamber, here’s what you learn how about chamber and what it can do for you. And she came up with this chamber nomics. And I said, that’s, that’s beautiful. And so immediately, I went right to Google, I mean, the GoDaddy and I, it’s available, I bought it. So we own chambernomics.com. And, and then we coordinated that with our back office, software provider, chamber nation. And I now represent chamber nomics. And what that means to us is dedicated to we explore all kinds of issues and ideas relating to your Business, the economy, the community, it’s all written right there at the top. And I’m reading off of it. And, you know, it’s sort of I’m an idea guy, and it’s just an Idea Factory on how to what other things can I bring? Or can we make that or make our businesses really want to be in the chamber? And as we say, in chamber world, you know, those golden handcuffs? You’ve heard that before? Those are the things that if I leave, if I leave the chamber, I lose this. And then so it’s a real retention tool. Now we use chamber that is on a nationwide basis, the Chamber nomics is teaching them how we can you help their business get better. And there’s a lot of links in there that you can go look at and things like that, and chamber nadex.com. Now locally, I use chamber nomics as a as the name of our training. And so we do a chamber nomics class, the first and last Tuesday of every month at a different restaurant, and we eat first, and they happen to have a private room. And then we have video, and I get on, and I show everyone, hey, here’s how you upload your flyer for your upcoming event. Here’s your press release. And when you submit your press release, it goes out to all of our media contacts through our software. We just teach them all the different advertising tools and how to upload your video because sometimes, people learn in different ways. And people learn learn one on one, they also learn by watching a video of something on how it’s done, which a lot of people do and then people learn in a classroom setting. So the chamber nomics locally is our classroom setting. And, but our goal is to teach all of our members what our system does. Now, it’s really some people get a little scared of technology. And it’s not hard. And I say just kind of dive into it, bite it off a piece at a time. But if you do absolutely nothing with our back office system, we’re still creating tremendous search engine optimization for you and you’re getting ranked higher brand that go up. But if you stopped doing, you’re ready, but I’d say I had one number that came in the other day, it was called the Delaney. It’s an assisted living facility that’s in our chamber. And they had forgotten to change the management, but they had to say marketing person, and their traffic capture page that we make for them. It’s called a marketing landing page. In addition to their website, it complements it fell off, it went away. Well, she did a audit on her presence on social media. And they had dropped to the third page on Google without all the ads. And she said, what happened? And they said, Well, you used to have this traffic capture page that was doing a lot of work for you. And since it went away, you fell. Immediately, they popped back on and now they’re back on the first page on searches for assisted living in our area. So it just shows you there’s real power in a lot of online presence and digital presence and

Brandon Burton 18:00
talk to us more about the traffic capture page. So that’s built in with within this chamber nomics program or chamber nomics is really just telling them what all you have to offer kind of a platform of doing that,

Don McCoy 18:12
right. Yeah, chamber nomics is really telling them all we have to offer, but the traffic capture page is really a, you know, a, it’s a system that takes in, you know, you can go to a website and of any business and you get kind of lost because there’s a lot of information there and you don’t know quite where to go, okay. But the traffic capture page is something that is simple, easy, very quick. And if you want to go to their website, from there, you can get links to it. But it is search engine optimized, you can control what kind of photographs you put in there, you can put your catalog page in there, we offer a commission free checkout system, I’ll show you even our chamber, we even have a mobile app that’s very interesting that if you go scan a QR code, this kind of is our chamber. But this everybody gets one of these

Brandon Burton 19:08
I know it’s a little thin, every member gets their own app for their own app, their home address.

Don McCoy 19:13
And all of this takes you to your to your website about you, they can call you from here, they can message you from here, they can even share their business card, I can click this right here and let you scan that QR code and my information will drop into your phone. Nice. These are small, small little tools that are that are so available that you can do on your own or through our back office system. I got to sing their praises. But what happens with our system when you join our chamber, it takes us 10 days to put together your your your marketing system. And we build about 12 pages of stuff about your business. And we take it all off of your website and what we know about you and what you filled out in your app. application, and then you can go in and refine it. But if you don’t do anything, you’re still getting the benefit. So

Brandon Burton 20:07
cool. So what about it’s not as common these days, but every now and then I’ll come across a business that doesn’t have a website yet? Is there still a way of building out those pages to give those members a digital footprint?

Don McCoy 20:19
You know, thank you. Yes, absolutely. Because you would fill out the pertinent information, our team will go get photographs of that we’ve already paid for their, you know, their their commitment, or they

Brandon Burton 20:32
call the stock images.

Don McCoy 20:34
And we own some of the stock images, but we, we examine your business, and we build your traffic capture page. And what’s really cool, is, if you have a URL about your business, but you don’t have a website, you can have that URL point to the traffic capture page. Okay. And then a lot, a lot of our members just use that as their as their website, because it works.

Brandon Burton 21:00
Right. That’s great. So, you know, I think I think initially, maybe when, when Google and the stronger search engines started to roll out, I’m sure there’s some chambers out there that maybe felt a little bit threatened that people could just go to Google and find answers they’re looking for. And rather than seeing that as competition to the value proposition, you have you actually you guys are leaning into it, and saying, let’s provide a lot more information. So doing a lot of the legwork for your members, so they can show up better on search engines, and were like a bigger bang for their buck.

Don McCoy 21:36
It’s even during the pandemic talk about coming up with ideas. You know, we couldn’t go to trade shows for a while. I mean, there was none existing. So what did we do, we went and created a virtual tradeshow booth, which we still have an existence now. And you can it looks just like a table, you have a video insert in the bottom that people can watch, you can go and click here to schedule a calendar meeting or get on their zoom call. And you know, and a lot of our business say, Hey, if you’re interested to learn more about us and want to meet later, just go to my virtual tradeshow booth and, and fill out the information and watch what we do. And then we’ll get in touch with you that way. So it’s always sitting there working for you as a, as a tourist center of your business basically, right? That is awesome. And video and video is now the way to go to I mean, coming from a film and TV background. I mean, nowadays, video is so simple to put up. And then we make it even simpler in our back office, all you got to do is click here, your camera on your on your computer, and you can talk about your business. And that is and then throw into that those key words. And I will tell you just a hint. Any pictures you’re starting to put up right now, any videos, you always see that alt text at the bottom of that, you got to start filling that out. Because just a word of warning that there’s a lot of lawyers out there going after websites and things that if you’re not ADA compliant on your social media or on your website, meaning Language Hearing and alt text for your pictures, you can be sued. And that’s crazy. And so we offer that as well. We have a buttons all over our website where you can we can translate everything we do even on our mobile app, we can translate it to any language in the entire country and let you listen to it in that language.

Brandon Burton 23:33
Wow, that is impressive.

Don McCoy 23:36
It’s pretty cool. It really is

Brandon Burton 23:37
sent you mentioned earlier something about having the importance of having a strong digital footprint.

Don McCoy 23:43
Yeah, yeah, it sounds this. This is something that is really cool. And you guys can look it up anywhere. There’s a lot of companies out there that do what is called key person of influence. And this is something I’ve really latched on to here at our chamber. And what our goal is, is to make every member in our chamber a key person of influence in their industry, and have a true Omni presence on digital, Omni presence. And what this is, every industry has an inner circle, every industry has one, you know even the chamber world brand and has an inner circle. And and these are people of influence. These are people you look to and they whatever they say I mean, I don’t know if anybody knows Pat McCoy out of Idaho, but I fell in love with him at my first IOM a year. And I still stay in touch with him and I treat him as he owns chamber mentor.com Great Guy gotta follow his blog. And, you know, he influenced me, to me, he’s a key person. But what we’re going to start doing is we’re going to have a rather than a leadership type course, we are instituting how to become a key person of influence. And this is something we’re doing here in the Houston area and we hope to expand nationwide with you A couple of folks that I’ve gotten in tune with, but our first one is in November, and we’ve partnered up with the United States, Mexico Chamber of Commerce, us. If anybody wants to check it out and get more deep into it, we’re at kp O, I got VIP. And that means key person of influence that VIP keep KP Oli, and it’ll explain everything there. But you know, we’re always in a state and someone wants said the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement, you know. And so the other thing if you don’t, and this is about a $4,500 course, and it’s going to we’re going to do this, what this will do for you is it will, it’ll read people will regard you after this course, they’re going to regard you as a high value individual, I want to meet that person, I need that person to come talk to my business or whatever your business is, you could become the expert in ice cream, if you have an ice cream store, because when they go search ice cream, you’re everywhere. You’re Who is this guy, and then you’ll get VIP treatment anywhere in the world. I kid you not, my friend has his website called speaking Dubai. And he goes to Dubai all the time he gets invited, he’s going to curse out. And he’s the one that’s helping us put this together. And then you get opportunities out the wazoo presented to you all the time,

Brandon Burton 26:22
you get asked to come on podcasts and stuff like that.

Don McCoy 26:25
Exactly. Yeah, you’re right. And you know what this for me is a another digital asset that’ll be out there. And we even have a questions on our website that you know, am I getting what I what I’m worth? Am I getting paid for whatever you take this, I took this question or take me 10 minutes to do it. And I scored a zero. I thought I was pretty good. You know, hey, I’m in the movies. You can find me on IMDb, but But it’s pretty eye awakening. So we do pre event coaching and all this. And if you’re interested in more about it, I’d be happy to hook you up. But it’s, this is the way to go. And even on our website at Fulshear katie.com. I invite anybody to take a look at grow and protect and when you go to grow and protect, that’s an app that we now have. It cost our members a whopping $1 for an entire year to have access to over 250 lessons and courses that will help you be a better business person. I’m talking how to how to make your LinkedIn and world class. I mean really how to do it. And these are all like 15 minute lessons with a video attached to it. There you go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 27:43
that’s right. Okay, got Frank’s card. He’s on my radar to be yes. So he’ll be on to talk more about grown protect.

Don McCoy 27:50
And I’ll leave it I’ll leave it there. But I’d say Frank is also part of our KPI KPI. He’s part of the key person of influence. And Frank before and he’s 77 years old, and doing what he did on cybersecurity. And this man is such a key person of influence in cybersecurity, he gets they call him out of Dubai say, would you come over and talk to our company, they fly into Dubai, he spends a week there and gets paid for it.

Brandon Burton 28:21
So so this is interesting. So there’s the aspect of helping your members become key people of influence. But how about for chamber executive? How about for somebody establishing their career in the chamber world? How? How should they go about being a key person of influence?

Don McCoy 28:40
I will tell you this is probably one of the most important things because in your in your, in your world, or your community. You need to be that person that everybody looks to for ideas and solutions. I mean, the mayor, the residents, I mean, you really can’t you should not be able to go to any restaurant without talking to somebody, I made a comment. I went to a gala last night. And it was for a local charity. And I went to go get a couple of drinks at the bar down there at the other end of the of the room. And I was bringing a friend back one. And by the time I got back the ice had almost melted. He says Where have you been? I said it took me 20 minutes to walk from the bar all the way across the room because I kept getting stopped by a number of people. But that’s awesome. You can work that. And so if you become even starting out if you’re going to IOM or if you’re going to be ACCE conference or the Texas chamber or any of these executive conferences, make sure you get pictures of yourself talking to the keynote speakers and and create a file on your desktop that has you just drop pictures in there. And then anytime you want to put those up on the internet or put them up on your Facebook and things like that Google loves that new information. So it is thing. And so you put your name with it and attach it to that event, tag yourself. And then you start to become the key person of influence. It’s not that hard, but you’d be surprised you as an executive are in the presence of greatness on a regular basis, whether it be with your look, your governor, your mayors, your representatives, you know, any number of people, even local business people that are well respected in your community. Go out, take them to lunch, get a picture with them, you know, everybody, let’s do a selfie. Okay. I mean, that’s what makes you look at this guy. Look, Brandon is probably got 1000 You probably got 1000 pictures of yourself with notables? Right. Yeah, lots

Brandon Burton 30:41
of them. Yeah.

Don McCoy 30:42
I mean, when I was in the film business, I always got a picture with me and Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson, me and Patrick Swayze. And that and you know, so when I go on auditions, you know, and Oliver Stone sees all the my resume and these pictures before the digital world, but it was actually in my in my portfolio. It was, Wow, you’ve been around, you know, a lot of people that I know. And so there’s a certain sense of confidence and people, it’s what we call pre suasion. If you’ve used that coin, I love the coin these words, and pre suasion as a way that before anyone needs you. They’re already persuaded to liking it, say, and to me, that that, that is half the battle because people judge you within about the first one minute of meeting you face to face. I met Brandon at what we run into each other, but we never really actually met till tccc. Yeah, yeah, and Rocco. And you know, and it’s busy, and we’re all doing our thing. But we connected we finally connected now, I think he’s a great guy, or I wouldn’t be here. Hopefully he likes me too. All right.

Brandon Burton 31:51
That’s right. But

Don McCoy 31:53
he knew about me already, somehow, some way I kind of already knew about him. So I was already pre slated to be interested in Brandon and the Chamber chat. And I asked, How can I get involved and help out. So that’s how this comes, comes to play. And then if you can teach yourself, your team that you work with, and let them they’ll be key people of influence, give them the power to make decisions on your behalf. Nothing can be even if they make a mistake you learn from and grow from it. But give your team that power to do it. And they’ll come in and say and be excited, guess what I did today? And you go, man, that’s fantastic. Oh, no, we got to correct that. But it’s okay. You know, it doesn’t hurt. So executives, start, start looking at this grow and protect, start learning how to be tell your story, tell your chamber story, tell your own story. Because a good friend of mine, Jack working at one day, you’ll get to meet him. He’s a fantastic sales guy. He wrote a book called Life as a sales call. He’s really a good book. And he likes to say that most businesses and chambers, were always concerned about ROI, return on investment. And that’s okay, that’s cool. It’s necessary. But what we got to really concentrate on is our O R. And that’s the return on relationships. And if you don’t have a relationship with everyone in your community, you’re always gonna suffer. So always think of that return on a relationship again, what am I gonna do about the cabinetry, okay, why are you even asking me that, but I’m very interested. And now guess what, I’m a hero to that person. And they will talk my they will sing my praises wherever they go. So I’ve got another salesman working for me out

Brandon Burton 33:44
there. That’s right. Yeah, I like how you came back around to the cabinetry. And your example of how we met at TCC. That’s, that’s perfect. Because I had heard about you, I knew some of the stuff you were doing your chamber, you’d heard about me, we made the connection. The one thing we didn’t do is get a picture. So next time we’re with each other, we gotta get a picture. And

Don McCoy 34:07
now I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna screenshot talking right here. And this is what I’m doing right now on my in I’m doing it right here. A big smile. Brandon here. Yeah. I got it now.

Brandon Burton 34:25
Person one next time. So as we start to wrap up, though, I wanted to ask you if you have any tips or action items based on anything that we’ve covered today, for the chamber listening who’d like to take their organization up to the next level, what would you suggest? Well,

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Don McCoy 34:41
you know, I and I know a lot of the thing is, the status quo is all I mean, you’ve probably heard it a million times is Think outside the box. My team has got a sign on the front of my door hanging above my door. It says Don has another idea. and whether they’re good ideas or bad ideas, it doesn’t matter. Clear your cash every now and then of your ideas, because that’ll let new ones come in. But get them out there. And whether it’s it doesn’t have to be the whole ball of wax. But if it’s just something in that idea that might spark someone else to take it to another level, do it. Don’t be afraid to throw your ideas out there for fear of looking crazier, you know, but when you come from the acting world, you know, you act and you are foolish, sometimes on stage or whatever you do, and you just have to throw that caution to the wind. And people will start to respect you as an idea person. And I think it’s highly, highly important that you continue to improve yourself and find things like this key person of influence, or this grow and protect or just get on YouTube and start watching TED Talks. If you have a little issue, maybe talking to pub in the public. There’s tons of things in ideas and tips. back I’ll give you one right now. Small tip. You ready? Yes. My glasses, say this. But back when I was in film school, Adam Roark was one of my teachers. He was a real famous actor with Hells Angels if you’re older, but me and Lou Diamond Phillips, we’re in the same class together Alibaba guy, right? Yeah. And so he said, there he goes, You know what the difference between a good actor and a bad actor is, and we’re all sitting there going? Experience. He said, eyebrows. Eyebrows. What do you mean by eyebrows? The tip he gave us is watching TV ever go see a bad movie and an actor or even you’re talking to somebody their face never moves. They’re just remembering their lines. And I’m gonna tell you about my chamber, my chamber is best and you need to be part of my chamber. And then you just give that whole thing. But he said if you move, you’re good actors and good salespeople, and people who are passionate about what they do, their eyebrows will move just a little bit before they say anything. So hey, let me tell you about my chamber see it because what that is, so consciously, is telling the listener Hang on, I’m about to say something pretty important. So they automatically tune in to you, if you just move your eyebrows just ever so slightly. Some people do it naturally. Some people have to think about it. But if you watch people on podiums, nothing against our state representative yesterday, but he was the emcee of the gala. But he was sort of deadpan. But if your face is animated, and move your eyebrows just ever so slightly, you You are now persuaded somebody to listen to.

Brandon Burton 37:34
Right? I like that. Now everybody listening is thinking about their eyebrows and what they’re doing. And yeah, I think of the rock. Right? He does that one. Yeah. And it gets your attention. So

Don McCoy 37:46
there you go. And don’t and please don’t think that, Oh, I’m over exaggerating my eyebrows, it will come naturally trust Dan. But if you truly believe in what you’re doing, and find a good software, program, whatever works best for you. But be aware, there’s a lot of software’s out there that work for you, in chamber management, but as to help you manage your database. I like mine, because it not only helps me manage my database, but it also helps have tools for my members to use. And to me, that’s the most important part of it. And some of you may be Richard scalding from time to time he said he was at the event and everything. And he lives in Texas now. So I got him to move from California.

Brandon Burton 38:28
That’s right. And he’s he’s one of the sponsors of the show. So if you want to plug it, you know, Chamber Nation,

Don McCoy 38:34
well, I promise you, you’ll never meet a nicer guy and his wife and his whole team. He’s one of those guys that I brainstorm with. And I say, hey, if your software could do this, that would be awesome. And he goes, let me see what I can do. And sure enough, he came out with it. I mean, we it’s our plaque system. I won’t get into that. But that’s what is so cool about having somebody that you can, whether it works or not get the idea can make it happen. You know, in film and TV, I used to edit on beta Ubaid, remember beta tape, or film years ago, and I didn’t know how to work the editing machine. But I knew the guy that did and I said, I know you can do this. So I want you to make it look like this. Yeah, he doesn’t. So you always need your producer director and then you need the guy. Because as somebody once said, as patent lawyers said, CEOs like us right here, we are working 1015 20 years in the future. Okay, but you need a team that is working in the hearing now your see Oh, getting the job done here in the present. So try to keep that perspective to

Brandon Burton 39:45
like that. That is great. A great tip right there. Speaking of those lines, as we look to the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, how do you see chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Don McCoy 39:57
Well, I’m gonna say they, a lot of us, a lot of them need to change and get with it. Okay? Come into the future and embrace the technology. Because it’ll it’ll, it’ll run right past us so fast, you won’t know what happened. The entire world is going to this is this is this is the world and, and, and if you can’t reach my chamber here or call me or find me or whatever, even Voice Search, I’m people voice search, I am now searchable by voice. And people are using that. But the future of chambers are to still represent your businesses at the table of government, don’t lose sight of that. And to be the community key, whether they call that the kid the last 10. Because if you become that important, and if the chamber went away in your community today, would your community fill it? Yeah, they should. So be that be that chamber of influence in that connector, and that catalyst and the champion for the community, but in the future, embrace all these new technologies coming along, because that’s going to set you up for tremendous success. And as some people retire out of the chamber world, and it happens all the time, technology can replace some of those things and make it easier for the new folks coming in. Because imagine, I don’t know what the average age of a CEO is, in chamber world, I really don’t, that’d be interesting to find out what but I mean, if you’re not up on technology, the next generation, the millennials, in the whatever’s there, whatever their names are, that are highly technical oriented with the Snapchats, and the whole things. They’re the ones that are going to take over in the chamber world, and they’re not gonna want to start at square one. That’s right. They want to see you already have a presence on Facebook, they want to see you have the tick tock, they want to see you have all this other stuff. And that’s going to attract really great talent to your team. That’ll make you even more successful. Don’t be afraid to be the idea person, the executive, but look for that talent that can come in here and work your social media to the enth degree and it’s nothing to them. And you’re sitting here going, what do I do? What is this? That’s where you got to go. Because it’s, it’s important. It really is at 63. I never thought I’d be well versed in but my mother is 83 and she can work Facebook like a charm. It’s unbelievable. So

Brandon Burton 42:30
awesome. I love there.

Don McCoy 42:31
Yeah, just get out there and do it. It’s easy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 42:35
So Don, what would be the best way for any listeners to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about anything you’ve shared? Or how you’re doing things? Their culture? Absolutely.

Connect with Don McCoy

Don McCoy 42:45
My email and my, my phone number is at chambernomics.com. And that’s, you could always call the chamber here and ask for me. I’m very accessible. My phone number is is on the chambernomics website, you can find me on Facebook, Don McCoy facebook.com, forward slash Don McCoy. Go in there and make me your friend, LinkedIn, I try to use it all. I tell you, and if you try to message me on Facebook, what’s at email, and I wish if somebody out there can find the technology to write if you’re if you know that if I get a message on Messenger, WhatsApp, email, this this, and it funnels into one app. You’ll make a million dollars today, I kid you not. But just reach out, give us a call. I’ll call you back. And I’d be happy to walk you through or answer any questions you might have. I’m, I’m here to not only help our businesses, but to help you and which helps America live or not. I’m a big patriot. And this country is fantastic. And we still have the freedom to do business. And so let’s do it. That’s the commerce there’s another website for you called letsdocommerce.com.

Brandon Burton 44:06
Well, I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But this has been a fun conversation. Hopefully it’s percolating some ideas and people listening and take something and run with it at your chambers back at home. But Don, thank you for thank you for being with us today and providing so much value. My pleasure,

Don McCoy 44:24
Brandon, keep doing the good work you’re doing you are a blessed individual, to the community and to our to our community here in the chamber world. And likewise, if there’s anything I can do for you, Brandon or anybody out there, thank you, God bless you all for what you’re doing. We know it’s a tough job, but, uh, keep up the good work and you’ll be blessed every day.

Brandon Burton 44:46

Brandon Burton 44:58
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8 Content Methods to Strengthen Your Storytelling

Does Your Chamber Tell Stories?

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

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

Story Platforms

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

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

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

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

Storytelling Content

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

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

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

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North Tampa Bay Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Hope Kennedy

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

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

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Introduction

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

And now your hosts his Saturdays are full with his daughter’s volleyball and basketball games. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and you’re joining us for a special episode as we interview the 2022 ACC chamber the year finalist in this chamber the year finalist series.

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

Tony Felker 0:47
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:09
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Successful membership salespeople are problem solvers. They ask better questions, uncover more problems and pinpoint how their chamber can help. It’s how they consistently drive better membership sales outcomes. Here’s the hurdle. Most membership salespeople don’t get enough coaching to recruit like this. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round guidance that your membership rep needs to drive growth for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is hoped Kennedy Hope is the president and CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber in Florida. Hope assumed the role of president and CEO in July of 2012 and as a Florida certified chamber professional. Since this time, she’s led the organization through two chamber acquisitions, a name and brand change and a stringent certification process. In 2019, the North Tampa Bay chamber was recognized as chamber the year by the Florida Association of chamber professionals hopes work to support businesses of all sizes fans her entire career. Before joining the Wesley Chapel chamber in 2012. She served Pensacola Chamber members as the organization’s vice president of membership. During her tenure hope was instrumental in the recovery efforts post Hurricane Ivan and the BP oil spill. In this role hope also successfully designed implemented strategies resulting in the engagement of more than 200 of Pensacola businesses business leaders in a campaign to attract Southwest Airlines. Hope has also led membership and business development for United Way and the capital area as well as the greater Jackson chamber partnership both in Jackson, Mississippi. In 2001, her chamber received a prestigious recognition for being a pride business ally from the tampa bay business journal. In 2017, the tampa bay business journal named her as one of Tampa Bay’s most 100 influential business people. In 2005, the Mississippi Business Journal recognized hope as a top 40 under 40 for the state of Mississippi in 2008. ACCE awarded her for outstanding membership and in 2010 The Independent News in Pensacola named Hope a rising star. Hope is an MBA candidate at the University of Florida and earned her undergraduate degree in business from Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, and resides in North Tampa with her 16 year old daughter. Hope I’m excited to have you with me here on Chamber Chat Podcast. First of all, congratulations for being selected as a chamber the year finalist. But why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and yourself?

Hope Kennedy 4:11
Yeah, hello to all my Chamber Champions. Those of us who are doing what I call the Lord’s work. They jack of all trades and the masters of nine. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me here with you today. As you can tell them a chamber junkie. I’ve been doing this started in the basement in Jackson, Mississippi. Um, you wanted me to give a something a lot of people don’t know. In the chamber world. I was bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake. I’m live to tell about it. So there’s my fun there’s more of a story there. Yeah, there’s a very good story behind that of it. I stepped on the little guy and and ended up in ICU for five days. is so so there’s my fun fact of me.

Brandon Burton 5:04
Yeah. Wow, that is that is something interesting for sure that you weren’t expecting that one. No, I get to know people on a different level by asking that question. Well tell us a little bit about the North Tampa Bay chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we get into our discussion, just give us an idea of the size of the chamber type of chamber staff budget, that sort of thing.

About the North Tampa Bay Chamber

Hope Kennedy 5:28
Yeah, sure. I love to talk about it. So we’re a baby chamber, we’re only 27 years old. In the chamber world, we all know that as being a baby chamber. You alluded to it in my bio, we were the formerly the Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce. Back then, I took over in 2012. I like to refer to us with no disrespect to anyone in the industry. But we were the Mary Kay sorority, our chamber was doing all of the the fun stuff, the three P’s. Because we had to because we were the only organization in our community that was organized enough to produce events and these outcomes. As the years have gone by, we have had two mergers with two separate organizations leading us to become a Regional Chamber, we have a very large geographic footprint that we call our service area. But as we all know, chambers do not have boundaries, are you some some do just by geography of their names. But in general, US chambers have service areas. So we encompass a very large service area, just north of Tampa Bay in the city of Tampa. There are many chambers of commerce in our, in our area and our communities. And I, I love to say if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, each individual organization presents something different. And I always try and encourage our members that if you can join all of them, most certainly do that, because you’re gonna get something individualized for each and every single one of them. As far as the size of our organization, we have always been very lean and mean. We are now a staff of three. That includes myself, during the time in which we submitted this application. It is for the years, 2019 and 20. And we were a staff of two, during during that time, we had to make some very hard decisions at the beginning of COVID. We did and those are the reasons that I think that we’ve been been successful, we have just shy of 600 members. Within our within our chamber, we have a very small budget, which I’m actually not ashamed to say we are $400,000 budget. We are at 5% membership dues, which is an interesting model. And I’m sure I’ll have some interesting things to say and people will look at me just kind of a little cross eyed when when we talk about if we get a chance to talk about those things, but I have a very strong conviction that we are a membership based organization and that we should be reliant on our members to sustain our organization. So we set our budget each year based on actual retention numbers. We do not take any funding outside of our our membership organization we have a little bit of non dues revenue streams. But as far as other things we are 85% membership based

Brandon Burton 8:56
Wow. Yeah, that’s that’s not a normal thing to see these days.

Hope Kennedy 9:00
So it’s definitely not and I can tell you that it very much works for for us then in for our members and that’s

Brandon Burton 9:10
what it’s all about. But what works for your for your community. So that’s awesome. So as we do these chamber, the are finalists interviews, what I’d like to do is touch on the two programs you submitted on your chamber that your application and I look forward to diving into these programs with you learning more about what’s making the North Tampa Bay chamber great into the noticed at this level. And we’ll get into that discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Alright, hope we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll talk about the two programs that you submitted on your chamber the your application. So let’s let’s first approach them both from maybe a high level just what the two programs are. And then we can circle back into a little bit more detail on each of them.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Hope Kennedy 12:16
Well, I’ll start by saying this was not an easy exercise to nail down to programs that we wanted to showcase. And ACCE gives you the opportunity to send in your topic, synopsis reel, just a very brief and the first one came back and they loved it. The second one, they were like, No, everybody should be doing that one that one’s not going to move the needle, we want to see something else. So we looked internally to try and figure out what it is what you know, because when you do it all day, every day, and over these past couple of years, you kind of forget what you did that made an impact and what we submitted. Our first one was called the chamber roadshow. And it was a we are open a campaign that happened extraordinarily organically. There was no budget, there was no plan, there was no nothing. It just it just kind of happened. And I’m happy to dive into that and share that. And then our second one was our award show. And it wasn’t because that we took it virtually at all. That wasn’t what we wanted to highlight. What we wanted to highlight is us to focus on business Small Business of the Year Entrepreneur of the Year, new business over the year, Yatta Yatta, yatta. We knew those did not have any significance whatsoever with the year that just happened. So we had to reimagine what the awards would look like we knew that our community needed to have a celebration of sorts. As we were coming out of the shutdown, we we took a deep dive in and said, Well, why don’t we use our core values as an organization to award to our members. So instead of having Small Business of the Year, large business of the year, we went with the innovation award with the collaboration award, the inclusivity award in the integrity award. And so we set all new metrics and criteria for each of those and we spelled it out what those really meant it and then we were able to sprinkle in some community heroes into that as well. So we’re we’re very, very proud of being able to turn that into something that meant that meant our organization was highlighting the things that we hold dear. And we did it again the second year as well and our members have really taken to that in the those awards.

Brandon Burton 14:57
So I’m I want to learn more about both of these. But I have to ask the question, since you told the backstory to it, which one of these programs is one that you got the positive feedback from initially, and I only asked to help other chambers. Yeah, by in the future.

Hope Kennedy 15:12
The chamber roadshow got that one got a thumbs up. Our second submission was not our awards, if we were going to submit for our dei work. And the comments back were that all chambers should be doing that show something that you have moved the needle. Yeah. And so we, again, had to come back and look internally and say, Well, gosh, all of the stuff that we did, we couldn’t show metrics. We didn’t keep track of all of this information, to submit for an award. Just a backup really quick. Chamber of the year, ACC was not on our radar for this year. It it was I just wanted to submit the benchmarking survey. Yeah, to make sure that I was in line, I love ACC, and I love everything that they do. And I love to be able to have that data to show our board to show our volunteers. And so that was all I was doing. I was proud that I completed it, actually. And then we get the note that says, hey, you’re eligible to submit. And I sent it to my board chair, thinking, I don’t know what I was thinking I didn’t really know. I was just like, excited that we could submit. And then I started looking at some of the other applications from the year before and I was like, ready to pull the plug. I was like, we’re not ready for primetime. There’s no way we can get this done. It’s turned around. We don’t have a graphic artists, we don’t do this. Well, thankfully, my board chair who a phenomenal leader says to me and he says hope I don’t own this statement, but you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And so I said, Alright, let’s do this. And so it was a awesome exercise. For for us in being such a small staff. I had four volunteers from my board that assisted with the application.

Brandon Burton 17:22
That’s great to get them involved with the process as well. So

Hope Kennedy 17:25
it was it was interesting, the questions that they came back and asked me, yeah, so you know, it was, again, the whole thing was just a really great exercise.

Brandon Burton 17:35
And that’s awesome. Well, let’s, let’s maybe start with the award show, you talked about reimagining the awards, making it more of a celebration, kind of looking at new metrics and criteria. Tell us how that unfolded. What did some of these new awards look like? How was how were they received, and just dive into whatever you feel would be relevant for listeners? Sure.

Hope Kennedy 18:01
So you know, I had some reservations, at the time of having an award ceremony, we still were not able to gather in the state of Florida, our awards had always been a cocktail attire, celebratory, you know, VIP event prior to just a big production. So we knew that we were going to take that all the way down to virtual in what the virtual looked like, was completely different. None of us knew what was going on. We figured it out. We lived through the logistics of that. And then when we set out for nominations, we explained what each category what we were looking for. So for collaboration, we were looking for programs from our members that showed that they collaborated with somebody else and what their metrics were and how they, they utilized it. The integrity award was more of an internal process than an examples of how they were. They showed integrity during COVID. And we used it for the last for those years. So we wanted to hear their stories about their business and how they were able to do these things to have inclusivity in within their organization when you couldn’t even meet. So

Brandon Burton 19:32
there’s kind of some healing that goes on as they’re able to tell their stories and kind of get that out there and kind of put it behind them as they move forward, I’d imagine.

Hope Kennedy 19:41
Right? And it was cathartic. It was you know and then to be able to celebrate those that were the recipients that hey, you did and do deed do some great things very similar to what you know we’re going through as an organization right now with this award. So it’s kind of like coming full circle. So we do request, nominations. And then the the business that is nominated submits an application. So we sent them the application, the application is six, five or six questions. And every application is in the same format so that it returns in the judges, they all get the same questions. And so they we had a record number of submissions that year, usually will have, I don’t even know the number right off the top of my head, I’ve heard I’ve already buried this one, onto the next thing. But usually, we have about a third that actually submit the application. That year, we had a little bit over half. So those that were nominated, actually took the time to submit their applications. So they are scored by an independent panel of judges. And then the, the judges don’t even come together. They don’t talk about it. It’s just based on those numbers. And then they’re presented. And then we have the finalists. So what we did was we made it into a storytelling opportunity. So each one of the finalists were highlighted within their categories. And so the world that was watching because we did have people watching from around the world, which was great, too. So some of the businesses whose family was out in another part of the country wouldn’t normally be able to attend a chamber award show, was able to attend and participate and watch it live. And then, so we got to tell their stories. And so the business community got to hear more about what they did. And we had watch parties. So people who were comfortable watching together as groups, a lot of the finalists companies kind of had like a company, company happy hour. And we would go we would show pictures from their watch party on the live feed. And it was great. And they were able to actually give acceptance speeches. So it was it was interactive. And, and it was great. But what we’re most proud of is that we were able to tell their stories, and it wasn’t about the chamber. At this point it was about them, and what they had done to come out of it. And you know, if one of the examples of innovation was one of our winners, was a wine company, they sell wine, they did Wine tastings, they did all of these wine pairing events, and all of these different things. Well, they weren’t technologically advanced. However, they managed to figure out a way to do wine tastings via zoom. And they did. And they have been extraordinarily successful. And they were able to get the wine to the people in the cheese, just all of the different components and then do the class online. And then all of these people could could participate. So they tapped into a whole new market that they didn’t know was even there. And so for them to share that story and how they partnered with other businesses in our community to do the same thing. So

Brandon Burton 23:25
that’s awesome. So I I’ve really liked the aspect you touched on about having viewers from all over the world, you know, in these finalists, yeah, these people have been selected to have their stories highlighted. I can imagine them sharing the link that to YouTube, or Facebook or whatever it is, for their family members or friends out of the area to watch. Like what a way to show the impact that a chamber has in a community than a broadcast. And I know we were forced to during COVID to go digital and broadcast things. But I think even going forward, there’s still some value to broadcasting some of these award shows, you know, let these people these recipients broadcast this out to their networks and show what a Chamber of Commerce is and what you do.

Hope Kennedy 24:11
Yeah. And you know, that’s very interesting, because we’re, we’re still doing that we’re able to tap into national speakers now and do in person or live stream or whatever the case is that we wouldn’t have access to had it not been for COVID. So we’re still doing hybrid type programming. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 24:37
And I think at some point, it may go away from being a hybrid, and just this is the program and we have it being broadcast as well. So absolutely, yeah. Just to reach

Hope Kennedy 24:46
out where you’re, yeah. So you have to go where your members are. Yeah, and if they’re stuck at their desk, let’s go to them there.

Brandon Burton 24:52
Right. Well tell us more about the chamber roadshow and what that entails because that obviously caught some attention initially. So let’s say let’s learn more about that program. Oh, well.

Hope Kennedy 25:05
So it all starts with a story. And I think as chambers you’re starting to catch the theme of of our world in those times is we were storytellers. And we have to be able to tell the story of how great we are as an organization, but then also realize that it’s not about us, it’s about our members and telling their story. So after we could go back to the office, during the the height of the pandemic, and we were all at home, I bought the ring light that everybody buys, because I was on Zoom, and my house obviously wasn’t set up for a professional studio. But then I also said, I can’t look like this on, you know, national broadcast, I need to look presentable. So anyways, I had this zoom light, and we had some other video equipment at our office, we had a tripod, and I literally came back to the office when we opened up and I just looked around, and we have a very beautiful office, very big boardroom. It was empty, 100% empty. And I sat there and I just said, I don’t I don’t know what to do. I literally have no idea how to help my members, or what, what to do. We what started. That was my members were calling me saying, Hey, can you help us get our message out about being open? And I said, Well, absolutely. So I called one of our board members who owns an LED truck, you know, the LED signs, change the advertising. And he and I created a we are open logo that was on the side of his truck. And he would go sit in front of our members business that says we are open. So anybody that was open, so I put out a message and said, Hey, if you’re open, let me know what your times are. And we’ll have somebody come sit there, well, they would, they would go and sit there, they take photos, and his guys did some social media around it. And it was great. And then as things started to open back up more, that wasn’t a feasible way of getting the message out. So when I got back to the office and just tried to figure out what we were gonna do, I made a video, and it goes something like this, Hey, everybody, we’re back in the office. But we don’t really have anything to do, because we can’t, you know, put all of these events together yatta yatta yatta. So I’m going to take this show on the road, and I’m going to come to you if you’d like me to come to your business and highlight your business and your protocols for being open. Just give us a call here at the chamber and we’ll get you scheduled. Well, that video started to get that in, let me just share with you is just me in my phone. And my ring light. And the quality is terrible. The sound is awful. But the message got out. And it was organic. I did it in one take for each business and like just tell me what your what you’re doing for businesses, what we need to know about your business. Are you open? Are you curbside? How you know what’s going on? And then I’d kind of tee up at the end, any lessons learned anything you want to share with anybody? I wouldn’t edit. I put up the raw footage on YouTube and then linked it to our social pages. I did 135 videos. Wow. Over the summer two years ago, I was able to tell the story of 135 of our member businesses. My my the last official one that I did on the chamber roadshow, I got to sit down with the president of the university, Saint Leo University and do more of a like a wrap up. You know, what, what did what did you learn? You know, what, what is something that you want to share with the business community. And so it was organic storytelling, and it was natural. It was raw, there were bloopers there were laughs There was cars.

It didn’t matter. I actually had a production company reach out to me and say, Would you like us to do this for you? And I said, No, no, actually, I don’t I want it to be real. Some authenticity. Yeah, it loses the authenticity and or the organic conversation that we have. When we did that. And my staffer at the time, she was at home base, she she doesn’t leave the chamber office and she would feel the call. She’d make the schedule and I tried to do three a day geographically Be respectful and then do that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we trickle out the videos.

Brandon Burton 30:07
That’s awesome. I’d love that. And I know, it’s easier here almost to be able to make those visits and shoot the video. But then to set aside the time to upload it to YouTube and share it here and link it there. That’s where the time consuming part of it

Hope Kennedy 30:21
that is where the time consuming was. And I did not do a fabulous job of hash tagging, and, and all of the, you know, tags and different things. But again, we were learning as we went. And you can see the first one to the last one, there’s a huge difference. And, and what I probably should have led with was that I hated doing videos, I would never do a live interview on TV, because I said videos will live in infamy. Way beyond me. And then all of a sudden, here I was this, I just went into all my vulnerability and said, You know what, it’s not about me, it’s about these businesses. And so I sucked it up, and it did it. And they’re still in infamy. And I’ll live with that. Every time I turn on our YouTube channel, I have to hear my voice. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 31:17
But and I’ve seen some chambers do even a similar thing. But with, they’ll release it as a podcast, you know, go and interview the business in, you know, tell the story, and release it as a podcast. And there’s all these different ways now to be able to, you know, we always hear about chambers need to be storytellers. And there’s now a variety of different ways to be able to help get the stories out there of your chamber, and of your members and your community and things going on, and showing that you’re a convener of leaders and influencers and bring them you know, do those interviews, like you’re talking about at the college and, you know, you’re doing all the things, which is awesome.

Hope Kennedy 31:56
We we are and again it you know, when you’re in it, and you’re in the thick of it, and you know, you’re you’re trying to figure it all out, you don’t none of it was with, I’m gonna win an award, you know, none of this was for that. It was necessity for our business community. And now our members can look back and say, That was value, you provided me a value for my membership that I would not have been able to get anywhere else. You gave me a platform, you gave me a mic gave me an opportunity. And so, again, that goes back to our our being membership focused. And that we have a really good solid base and members that remember that stay members. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:49
that’s awesome. So I’d like to ask you, as we kind of shift gears here a little bit. As a chamber, the year finalist, how do you view the role of your chamber in your community?

Hope Kennedy 33:04
We are in a really unique position, because we are a to county, actually kind of three County Regional Chamber, we have several municipalities within our footprint of our service area. We view ourselves as the connector, the convener and the catalyst, the three C’s. We do those things extraordinarily well. And we we will say we do not have the answer. But we can sure connect you to the person that does for if they don’t let’s be the catalyst for that conversation for change or or or moving the needle as is that seems to be our buzzword here and ACCE land for for this year. And, and that is that is who we are. We are a very strong voice of business. We are extraordinarily good at ensuring a pro business environment. We will also fight against legislation. Anything that’s not pro business focused. And so we are what what makes us great and I share this because it’s it’s important for for other chambers to you cannot do business the way that you’ve always done business. This world is different. We’re not even doing business the way we did business a year ago. So as a chamber of commerce, our board knows that we have to be nimble enough within our strategic plan to be able to change and adapt to the needs of our community and what those needs are Are Not now but what they’re gonna be years from now. We We can’t stay focused on what’s happening right now or or our next event or what this or what that we have to be thinking of what this business community is going to look like, five years from now, we have to be futurist, we have to think about that. And it’s important for our board, when we’re sitting in a board meeting to have that in mind, of what is the future of our community? And how does the chamber fit into that, and some chambers and organizations have not been able to do that. And their their relevance may not be there in the years to come. And if, if you’re you’re focused or fed by one particular income source, or one particular event that’s not sustainable, as we’ve all learned, so being able to look forward and say, what, what are the needs of our community. And I can share our priorities. And because we take a very deep dive each year, when we set our strategic plan in our program of work of what was happening, and what are the effects gonna be, and the folks that sit around our boardroom table are thought leaders, and we are very comfortable being uncomfortable. And that’s part of the catalytic leadership and part of the horizons report, all of the things that I read six years ago are now you know, we’ve been working on them. And so housing and workforce, there’s a direct correlation between those. And that’s a huge priority, not just now, but we can see for the future, proper planning for your community now sets the stage for later. And think decisions that are made by certain municipalities might have unintended consequences that perhaps they haven’t thought about, and what certain actions that a governing body takes is going to have a trickle down effect later on the business community. So make sure that

every stakeholder within the conversation understands how the ecosystem works of the business community. So I think that that is that’s where we excelled and what sets us apart within our community, I do want to give a huge shout out to our region, because we have a, we call them our MOU partners. And so there are eight of us chamber CEOs that are in a partnership agreement together, that we support each other on issues. We don’t have to always agree, but we’re not going to come out against another local area Chamber. It makes a huge difference. When we have legislation in our state, when we, we all come out with a letter with all of our logos on it with all of our names on it, and say, Hey, we are now speaking for the entire region, this business community in it, they pay attention. So so we don’t do this alone in a silo with all of our all of the things I just talked about being a connector convener and a catalyst, we work very hard at making sure that we are bringing together the whole region.

Brandon Burton 38:45
That’s fantastic. Yeah, a lot more impact can happen that way, for sure. Absolutely. Um, what would be maybe a tip or an action item that you might suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Hope Kennedy 39:02
It all starts, it starts with you, as the CEO, as the leader of your organization and in ensuring that you have a really good understanding or a picture of where you want to take the organization with one thing in mind and that your members and the community in which you serve, and then ensuring that your board of directors is there right there with you that they are preaching the they are walking the talk, you know, whatever, whatever you want to come up with. They’re they’re right there with you and that you all have one goal in mind and that is x and that everybody’s there on the same page that there’s consensus or at least conversation around the consensus and just thinking towards towards the future of what? Look at the past of why chambers exist became a chamber in the very first place. And then look at that and start to look further ahead.

Brandon Burton 40:16
I like that. As we wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, I know chambers all over are always interested in the future. You mentioned chambers need to be futurist. How do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Hope Kennedy 40:34
So I think that chambers are in a very unique position right now. Every every one is looking to someone to to help heal, fix, try and make better, whatever was broken a few years ago. So as chambers, I think this is our opportunity to really take the lead in our communities and to really elevate our organizations by coming out with a a plan of action for the future, taking that show to the commissioners, to the City Council, to your legislators and saying, This is what we’re going to do. How are you going to help us get there? Because we are the voice, we’re the leading voice of business and chambers, chambers have a very unique opportunity. And if we don’t seize them, your relevance within in your communities are probably questionable. Yeah. So, so that that’s my that’s my tidbit.

Brandon Burton 41:44
I think you’re absolutely right. But hope I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information. If any listeners wanted to reach out and connect with you about how you guys are doing things in the north Tampa Bay chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Hope Kennedy

Hope Kennedy 42:00
Absolutely, please, I’d love to talk chamber to anybody that will listen, my email address is hkennedy@northtampabaychamber.com case our URL couldn’t get any longer. And that’s the easiest way to connect with me, you can check out our chamber website or social media. I’m very easily Google trouble. You can find Google and YouTube, you can watch all the chamber roadshow videos you ever wanted to watch,

Brandon Burton 42:39
you know what I will. I’ll link to that in our show notes. And see those videos that are out there to live on forever. And I’ll get your contact information in the show notes as well so people can can find that and reach out and connect with you. But hope I appreciate you joining me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you guys are doing some wonderful things there and the North Tampa Bay area and I wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year.

Hope Kennedy 43:07
Thank you so much, Brandon for having me. And we’ll we’ll circle back when we come home with the hardware.

Brandon Burton 43:12
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Zionsville Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Allyson Gutwein

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

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Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host. He recognizes great power when advocacy is done at a regional level. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Matt Morrow 0:45
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:07
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and for this episode, I have Allison Goodwin with me. She is the executive director of the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce. Allison serves as the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce and Zionsville Rhys foundation as executive director in Zionsville, Indiana. With a background in small business development, retention, growth and attraction. She has dedicated more than two decades of her life to creating and supporting small businesses. Allison was named Businesswoman of the Year in 2009. Business of the Year in 2012, was an ACC II national events speaker in 2021. done virtually member of the IC e a Hoosier inner Leadership Academy class, and her chamber is a five time Excellence Award winner with the IC EA. Recently Allison was one of 34 individuals nationwide named to the sixth cohort of the US Chamber of Commerce business leads Foundation, the preeminent program for workforce development in the United States. Alison and her team have gained more members in the Zionsville Chamber of Commerce in 22 months than the previous decade combined. In that same time period they grew their social media reach from 250,000 to over 2 million in 2020 and 2.8 million in 2021. They know that visibility is key element to success as a business and as a chamber. The Zionsville chamber team was recently named and ACCE communications excellent Excellence Award winner for digital content in 2022. Allison is a graduate of Indiana University and has earned certificates and leadership and development grant writing and chamber management from ACC. She has served in the capacity of President for the Indiana University Alumni Club. Herman B will Wells Chapter board member for the Boone County racial diversity coalition board member for the wisdom Hospital Foundation President of Lebanon vitalization Inc. and TEDx Zionsville. Organizer. She is the proud wife to Andrew step mother of two mother and loved one and step grandmother to one. Allison, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Congratulations for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. Why don’t you take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Allyson Gutwein 4:29
Well, I don’t know who you just read that bio from but they sound like a pretty cool check. So I would love to get to know her. No, nice. Talking to all of you today. We’re excited to be a finalist, incredibly excited to be a finalist for the ACC. We’re in the small size chamber of the Year category. We truly are a small chamber here in Central Indiana. But we tell everyone we’re small but mighty and We do a lot of things with very few people by being exceptionally efficient. You know, I love to do a lot of things outside of work. One of the cool fun facts about me is that I am a sixth time Indiana State Fair floral design grand champion. What random stuff people do some people golf, some people go out and play tennis. I make wreaths. And that’s my hobby outside of work. So we all have fun.

Brandon Burton 5:29
Being competitive is in your blood. It’s in your nature.

Allyson Gutwein 5:33
Probably more than I like to admit. Yes.

Brandon Burton 5:36
That’s awesome. Well, it tell us a little bit more about the Zionsville chamber you mentioned, you guys are small and mighty. But give us an idea of what that size looks like of your staff and budget and scope of work that you guys are responsible for.

About the Zionsville Chamber

Allyson Gutwein 5:51
So we are just north of Indianapolis about 20 miles. And if you are looking at kind of Indianapolis as the face of a clock, we’re at about 10 o’clock. So kind of gives you an idea. And you know, we are truly a charming small town, our town looks like it was pulled straight out of a Hallmark movie, and is the top tourist destination in our county, we have a lovely Main Street brick street that really draws a lot of tourism. So our chamber really has some interesting dynamics because that brick Main Street doesn’t have any chain restaurants doesn’t have any chain stores. So we really have the core of our chamber as small business. So our focus for many years has been on what can we do in order to accelerate and advance many, excuse me, many of these small businesses in our area. Because we have really no corporate headquarters for many businesses, we have a couple kind of on the outskirts of our area. But we really are a small business focused chamber. And we love that and you know, the businesses there are larger, understand that this chamber really has this really unique area because of what Zionsville is, it used to be called the village of Zionsville. So it does have that kind of quaint village II feel. And as it has grown, it really has wanted, you know, the people who’ve lived here, we’ve been a chamber for 61 years, we celebrated our Diamond Jubilee last year. And people have really wanted to kind of keep that quaintness as it has grown. And for many years, people have wanted to really make sure that it’s different and unique and charming. And that’s what one thing that really draws people to us here in Central Indiana, but also makes our chamber vastly different than many others. So some of the challenges we experience is, as a small town, where a small chamber doing a lot with what we have as a staff of three, our town really doesn’t have any public transportation outside of a Boone County Senior Services, which allows seniors and some other folks to get around. So we have some workforce challenges trying to, you know, and attract people and help retain folks in the service sector. So we don’t have a lot of workforce housing. So there’s some challenges in our area that we experienced that I’m sure many other many other areas in the country do as well. But we’ve done our best to work through them and find unique and innovative ways in order to overcome those, or at least address them and say, Hey, this is a long term challenge. We know that what can we do in order to kind of look at the long game. And part of that is we created a foundation for our chamber. And I know many chambers are kind of going to this model and looking to see how they can utilize a 501 C three arm in conjunction with their traditional chamber and for us, we just got that paperwork as of last October. So we’re really excel excited. Yeah, thanks to be able to do that. But now it’s standing that up. What does it mean to address kind of challenges that are long term and we use a golf reference that the Chamber itself has kind of a heads down what’s going on today? It’s the short game, but the 501 C three is kind of a long game. And what are we doing to kind of look at the overall picture of how our community is changing so that we can best utilize our C three arm, which has three tenants. One is environmental stewardship. One is D and AI and the other is workforce and workforce initiatives through leadership and development. So what are we doing within our community in order to make sure that not only is our chamber looking to take care of things today, but looking to take care of things tomorrow,

Brandon Burton 10:26
right. Now that that definitely gives us a good a good scope. And for anybody who’s read Dave Atkinson’s book, horseshoes versus chests will understand the importance of having that foundation that see three arm of your chamber especially looking forward as chambers look into the future. So for this, for our discussion today, we’re going to focus primarily on the programs you guys submitted on your chamber the your application. So I’m excited to get into those programs learn more about how you guys are making an impact and influencing the community or the village Zionsville. As soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Allison, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll be highlighting the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber the year application. Why don’t you take us through the two programs just at a high level and then we’ll circle back in a little more detail on each of those?

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Allyson Gutwein 14:27
Sure. So our first program was on micro economic development around small businesses and what are we doing to really look at our our membership very holistically and say, What are we doing to develop this group of businesses that are often easily overlooked? So micro businesses, as deemed by the SBA? Are those with 12 or fewer employees? And many of the businesses that we have in our membership are much smaller even than that Um, so many of you are probably familiar with kind of the standard of SBA as being 500 or smaller as a small business, which, for many people, they look at that and they’re like, that’s huge, especially in comparison to, you know, many businesses that have zero employees are maybe just one or two. So we’ve really taken a look at what we can do in our community to attract and retain those businesses, because many of them are startups that grow into something even greater. And we’re excited to see how that really works and develops as we do more and more of it. But the programs that we’ve put in place for our little staff of three have done a great job of attracting new members. So far, our home based business membership level is now our second highest category of membership in our in our chamber. We just started it two years ago.

Brandon Burton 15:59
Wow. That is awesome. Yeah, that’s, that’s one. What’s What’s the other program you guys submitted?

Allyson Gutwein 16:07
Sure. The second was focusing on a social media and social media series that we started, which was called working for you. So working for you, we literally went and worked alongside our businesses. And we started this before the pandemic, but we really embraced it and leaned in during 2020 and 2021. This business has recovered, wanting to show people, this is what these businesses do in our area. So it’s not just, you know, maybe I want to work in this area. Well, now they know what this business actually does. Or they say, Gosh, I could teach a music class or, you know what, I’ve always been interested in working with equine therapy, I think I could go and volunteer there. So we worked alongside businesses to showcase really what they did, and have continued this as a long term kind of campaign and program in our membership in order to highlight more of our members. But that is one part of our larger social media experience that we have for our members. And we found that that made a lot of sense as a low barrier, especially cost wise low barrier to entry. And great way to meet people right where they are, you don’t have to go out and find a new audience. And you don’t have to even bring them to your website. A lot of times they’ll do that on their own. But if you’re reaching them on social media, and they’re already on Tik Tok, they’re already on Facebook, they’re already on Instagram, and you’re sharing your information. They’re really excited to see that information of faces of their neighbors and friends and business owners that they know, how are we doing the best job of getting that information out about our members, and making sure that it did its job which during 2020 and 2021, was give our members visibility?

Brandon Burton 18:05
Right. So let’s let’s focus a little more on that on the working for you program dive in a little bit deeper on that. So how do you as you implement a new program within your existing social media strategy? How did that fit? As far as content creation calendar wise? And what platform you mentioned different platforms, but sure, I’m curious which ones you’re on and how you’ve grown that social media presence? Sure.

Allyson Gutwein 18:33
So many people who are familiar with social media, Facebook is your largest audience. And we really took to social media. In 2020, whenever we realized folks needed to be seen, they needed to know exactly where, you know. And I kind of say there’s two, there’s two sides to this. There’s kind of the forward facing, which are the customers of the businesses. So we were reaching the customers of the businesses. And then there’s kind of the back side, which are the your Chamber members that you’re trying to help. And there’s often many of our posts, many of our videos were meant to help both but in different ways, right? You’re building loyalty whenever you’re going to a business and you’re sharing their information whenever you’re able to talk about exactly what they do. But all those people in the front side are now seeing it going oh, how can I interact with that business? So you’ve kind of got two two pieces to the same pie that you have to be able to do a good job with your social media having both working hand in hand right? So whenever we started our working for you series, it was really meant to be let’s go inside businesses that people can’t go inside every day. Let’s go inside a plant where I pack beans and I have to wear a hairnet let’s go inside I’m mourning dove equine therapy where I’m mucking stalls. wasn’t talking about their horses, then it became let’s go up inside a church that’s being remediated for over 1000 bats. And I was standing knee deep in bat guano. Because no one had known that there had been bats in their attic for almost 40 years, until the pandemic caused, you know, people to be out of buildings. And then they were starting to see things because people weren’t cleaning the building, as often, they were starting to see that there were probably rodents around, you know, they’re small, mammal rodents. And so, you’ve got, you’ve got evidence now, oh, we needed to get this taken care of. So I went up inside a church, beautiful, historic structure, they were absolutely fantastic people to let us watch this process. But it helped me showcase a business that most people don’t see from the inside out. Most people don’t see what it looks like to remediate, you know, slang types of urine from that. In the midst of this talking about a chamber member, and you know, people want to watch. And that’s what made

Brandon Burton 21:18
me that type of content just draws people in, right?

Allyson Gutwein 21:22
Right, whenever I have a GoPro on, I have a handful of bat guano. And I’m like, it looks like glitter, because it’s all these bug shells that are shiny people are like, show me more. You know, it’s fascinating, and I am not doing anything that any of my members don’t do as a daily part of their business. But what can we do to showcase that? What can we do to say, this might be a career path for you, if you find this interesting, you know, contact these folks for a job, or watch your chamber, because this is what’s happening whenever you need to call these folks, they’re doing a good job of being cognizant of when you can even move the bats out because of breeding season. And, you know, they have to make sure that the bats are taken out in a certain ways to not harm them, because they’re a protected species here in Indiana. So you’ve got all these components that are important that these folks are doing really, really well as part of their daily job. What can we do to showcase that, and it becomes really interesting social media. Now, not every day, am I in McLaren Senna, you know, a hazmat suit, and a respirator. But, you know, there’s so many things that we can show people about our businesses that make interesting content. And that content, where we really put the member out there, as the star of our story becomes why people want to engage, engage with us, as a chamber engage with our members, it really made our chamber kind of rocket to the top of what we could do in social media very, very quickly. And we took that reach, with consistent posting with interesting content with video use, from 250,000 in 2019, to over 2 million in 2020, like you said, and 2.8 million last year. So you know, it’s, it’s all about if there’s anything that people learn about social media, give people content that they want to see, it doesn’t always have to be curated, it doesn’t always have to be those rounded corners, where it’s, you know, perfect. Whenever it goes out. It can be just really interesting content, show people what your members are doing, and people engage. Right.

Brandon Burton 23:51
And I think that often gets over thought when you as for chambers, putting out social media content, especially in the form of video where they feel like it needs to be perfected needs to look right. But, you know, social media gives us so much leniency as far as the content going out there. And really, people aren’t spending hours on that content necessarily. Either they’re scrolling through their feed. So if it gets if it catches their attention and tells a story of a member or something impactful that you’re doing in the community, and getting a portion of that attention, then you win, you know, that’s that’s the goal. And you don’t need to spend all the money and all the time and everything doing all the editing and making it just perfect. Just do it. Get started. It’ll get better as you go and get more experienced, but just get started. Yeah, and we

Allyson Gutwein 24:37
do have a video company that we employ to do some of our videos, but we also do a lot of our videos in house. But you know, the the thing is, the generations coming up, they see things that are a little too perfect, a little too curious, almost disingenuous. So you know Most of what they’re seeing on Instagram, it might be a little edited. But it is certainly not content that someone has always gone through a photo editing program. Not always, they just want to see. That’s right. They always want to see good content. So give your audience good content that they want to see and engage with. And they will engage.

Brandon Burton 25:20
Yeah, so which platforms are you guys on with social media?

Allyson Gutwein 25:24
So we primarily focus on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You know, for a chamber of our size, there’s always so many directions to be pulled. You know, we have done a few things on tick tock, mainly ribbon cuttings, just trying to put something out there in that platform. But Twitter is kind of its own animal in and of itself, it takes so much time to constantly update, we just don’t have the bandwidth available currently in order to be able to do that one well, so rather than not doing it, well, we would rather step back until we have the chance to really engage more on that platform specifically. So we’ve focused on those three, and those three have done a lot for our visibility for our members and for our chamber.

Brandon Burton 26:11
That’s great. Yeah. Well, let’s shift gears a little bit over to the micro economic development. And this intrigues me I just, so this may go a little bit off topic, but I just actually posted a blog post yesterday, talking about how entrepreneurship tends to attract diversity. So as chambers are after, you know, diversity, equity inclusion, you know, putting attention into that area, are we paying attention to the diversity that entrepreneurship brings and provides. So as you focus on these micro businesses, 12 or less, a lot of these are entrepreneurs, people that are putting it on the line to get started and joke about sometimes these entrepreneurs are unemployable in other places, but they go out and hang their own shingle because they need to make a living, or maybe they’ve got a great idea, or there’s a lot of different reasons why. But I’d love to learn more about the the approach that you guys are taking to help, you know, shine a light on these micro businesses and economic development.

Allyson Gutwein 27:16
Well, and that’s an area where I think it is it’s very easy to kind of go after some of the larger marbles in the bag, right. And I think a lot of times, these small businesses are easy to say, oh, gosh, it’s, it’s a lot of work to deal with them. But we have a lot of programs already in place that we’re using to help all of our members, but it’s really quite easy to mix them in with what we do, we have a few programs that we have developed specifically for them. And that also, they’re they’re very complementary to the rest of what we’re offering to our members. So they made a lot of sense to just kind of bulk up our portfolio overall. So we were really excited whenever we first saw our members starting to come in that were home based businesses. So home based business for us is someone who might work from home, they might have this as a side hustle, they might have a business, that’s a full time gig and those go everywhere from financial services to p are to people who are doing jewelry making. So we have a lot of people in this, you know, this sphere that we find encompass a lot of different elements that we didn’t have as a part of our membership. And you’re right, that diversity piece really does allow us to even encourage our membership to diversify pipelines of suppliers, through some of the small businesses that we’re now attracting because of whom, you know, we’re now offering services for that maybe they aren’t able to find elsewhere. So some of the statistics, you know, in the US, the SBA in 2021, said there were 32 point 5 million small businesses in the US, which accounts for 99.9% of all businesses. That’s a lot.

That’s almost everybody. So again, that’s 500 or fewer employees. So that’s quite a few businesses that many micro businesses would say, well, they’re not small, well, the SBA, that is their standard, but then 81% of those of that 32 point 5 million actually have no employees. So I mean, you’re looking at a giant percentage of our small businesses in the US that are exceptionally small. And, you know, the SBA says that micro businesses are 12 or under so I mean, that percentage even grows whenever you’re taking into account those that do have some employees but are still 12 or fewer. But small businesses have created 65.1% of the new job growth since 2000. So as we look at Sectors of growth, and to your point, what were claimed it kind of look at for the the growth of chambers, what are we doing to make sure that these businesses are a part of our chamber? are talking to our other members are feeling supported? are being utilized locally? For many you have a grocery store chain? What are you doing to connect some of those micro businesses, with your grocery shops? What are you’re doing to connect your brick and mortars with some folks that could be local wholesalers mean, now you’re talking about all these individual components that come into it, that’s more environmentally sustainable than having to ship something halfway across the country that’s more environmentally sustainable is to be able to reduce the amount of packaging because they don’t have to use packaging in order to potentially deliver something. So there’s a lot of pieces that feed into this. But if we’re doing a really exceptional job as a chamber, to make connections, we’re able to help a lot of different aspects of business be created. And that’s exciting to see and exciting to be a part of. But for us, it also means that we’re attracting more people now, because we have options, and they’re seeing, hey, my size of business is being supported, I have a place at that table. And we want to make sure that whenever they come into this area, you know, other people are telling that story for us who are also small businesses, whether they’re a tech startup, or someone who’s you know, a mom, and maybe with a side hustle of making jewelry, who knows what these businesses are going to turn into, but we’re going to support them today. So whenever we need to say, hey, we’ve got maybe a new brick and mortar that is opening, who’s interested in going in, we already have a developed pool of candidates that we have worked with, to plug into those openings. So we never really have a gap on our main street, really here in town. Businesses fill those spaces quickly, because we have a curated pool of people we’ve worked with,

Brandon Burton 32:25
that’s awesome. And I can get fired up on this topic. Because this is something I’m passionate about is the influence and the role that a chamber should have with these small and micro businesses in their community. But often what I see is these, you’d mentioned these home based businesses. You know, it’s easy when you see a new business, open their doors, you know, they hang a new sign, and you can approach them about membership. And you know, let them know about the value proposition of your chamber. How do you go about finding some of these home based businesses and expressing the value? And once you get their attention, it’s easy to express the value of the chamber, but how do you get their attention initially?

Allyson Gutwein 33:03
To be very fair, a lot of them find us. And that goes back to our social media reach. Whenever we have a social media reach where people are seeing that we’re sharing information about members and our members are visible, that what we’re doing as a chamber for those members as visible, they find us. So yes, have we gone out and actively sought out? Some businesses? Most certainly, are we finding just as many businesses that are finding us? Yes. So one of the ways that we actually connect many of our home based businesses is through something called micro groups. So think of as a distillation of our membership down into individual components where if you are a real estate agent, you’re going to have different needs different concerns than those that own a restaurant. So what are we doing in order to address those needs more directly and more specifically, and we have a home based business micro group. So peers can really share information share tricks that they have learned in order to make their business more visible, in, in encourage one another through what has worked for them. We actually learn a lot from these micro groups because they’re able to really say, Okay, this is what’s going on in our area. What can you do to support us here and we’re like, man, we wouldn’t have known that. Had we not listened to our micro group, listen to our members. So these meetings go on in these individual kind of little groups, once a quarter. For us, they’re really, not only are they the facilitation of peer to peer communication, they give us ideas for programming for the future. And that is a really important for member loyalty and member retention.

Brandon Burton 34:59
Yeah, And so this next question, I think you’ve addressed it throughout our discussion, but I’ll ask it formerly and maybe have you put it in a nutshell for us a little summary, but how do you see the role of the Zionsville? chamber there within your community?

Allyson Gutwein 35:15
Sure. So we really are a conduit of information and a facilitator for visibility. So for many of our members, we are not only the source of information on how to be able to grow a business, but how do you make your your business seen and heard, once it’s up and running, or once you’re getting it there? What do you do in order to create that kind of solid foundation for business creation of any size. So we truly are meeting with members that run the gambit of large national corporations that are interested in coming into the area to someone who, their sole proprietor. And that’s exciting to see that we’re we as a small chamber are able to facilitate both of those conversations effectively in order to make our membership robust, and unique.

Brandon Burton 36:11
That’s awesome. So and I think that shows with as you’ve been going through these programs on your application of that, that role that you guys have in your community, but I like asking everyone that I have on the show, for any tips or strategies that you might have for a chamber champion listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Allyson Gutwein 36:36
If you haven’t yet embraced the small businesses in your community, and those micro businesses do it, make sure that those those businesses feel as though they have as much place at the Chamber table as any of the other larger businesses. And as time goes on, you’re going to find that those people are some of your loudest voices supporting your chamber, because they feel included, they feel like they have a part of something larger than maybe they have ever felt that they’ve had a part of in the past. Many think gone are the days of, you know, chambers, just focusing on on large businesses, we have to make sure that if entrepreneurs are truly bringing 65.1% of the growth since 2000, what are we doing to be the voice to help them have a louder voice? So we’re the megaphone. We’re the people who are providing that information. And if we’re doing it, well, those folks are going to turn around and be our champions, too.

Brandon Burton 37:47
Yes, that’s what I was gonna come back to is oftentimes those large businesses, or maybe what funds a chamber and a lot of ways. But by being able to focus on those small and micro businesses, those are the ones that it’s kind of a paradox, right, because they tend to be the ones that need the most from the chamber, but can afford to pay the least in as far as their membership levels go. But as they see that impact that you can have on their business, they become some of your biggest advocates and best word of mouth and testimonials, you know, throughout the community to attract more business onto the mission of your chamber. So, Abdullah. So, Allison, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Allyson Gutwein 38:34
Sure. I think for a lot of folks, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a interesting time where they see kind of gone are the days of many people becoming joiners, right, everyone joining a chamber because it was just something you did for the community, you have to show value, you have to show that there’s something there as a real interest to their business, everyone’s busy. And if you can show that there’s something in your chamber that is going to be worth their time and their money, you’re going to be a group that people still want to work with. chambers are vitally important to being liaisons for advocacy, and, you know, information as a whole. But people are saying, well, I can find that elsewhere, not in the same way that you can through a chamber not in the way that you can through networking with your peers, not in the same way that we can help facilitate. And if we can show that value, and long term legacy of, hey, there’s real power in having a singular voice. Whenever you’re trying to advocate for something that will help our members that and telling that story. How do we tell that story going forward? Many of you know our local newspaper that served just our area closed down during the pandemic. So you That goes back to what are we? Where are we reaching our audience? And if that’s on social media, are we telling our story effectively for our members and for our chamber in order to make sure that people are seeing us as a place of value?

Brandon Burton 40:14
Yeah, I like that. I actually, I like to help chambers get started with their own podcast. And one of the things I’ll ask is what void in your community could your podcasts fill. So when you talk about local newspapers, shutting down or, or drastically cutting back, there’s voids all over the community, as far as storytelling and information sharing goes, whether you’re addressing that through social media, or through my my choice of platforms of a podcast, but there’s ways to reach members in your community and fill those voids. And and you’re absolutely right, that Gone are the days of just people joining you need to show the value and, and a reason to be a part of your chamber. So I appreciate that. And Alison, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners that may want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things in Zionsville. And, and to be coached on how to get their social media over to millions. What would be the best way for him to reach out and connect,

Connect with Allyson Gutwein

Allyson Gutwein 41:15
always happy to help because, in fact, we have something coming up soon called Social Media summer school. And you know, we’ve been encouraging even our peer chambers to come join us we want to help. We’ve been able to have amazing amounts of success for a very small chamber, we have 500 members, you know, we we have a small budget, in fact, I’m sure I am sure our full budget are smaller than some of the marketing budgets for our large share chambers and in the US, and that’s kind of nuts. You know, we we can show we have data to show that we outpaced chambers that are many times our size. And that’s truly through our visibility, consistency, and what we post, people want to see interesting content. That’s something that we can show people how to do so please reach out to me, my phone number is 317-873-3836 where you can reach out to me through my email, agutwein@zionsvillechamber.org. You can also find us on please follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. So Facebook is zville chamber and the rest are Zionsville chamber. So we would love to have you follow our content and ask any questions. Sometimes you may say well, why did you post that? Or tell me why you’re posting two or three times in one day? Well, I’ll give you an answer.

Brandon Burton 42:56
Yeah, no, I like that. I appreciate you being generous with the fielding those questions as well happy to do it. I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. And I’ll link to the your social media pages as well. So everybody can hop on and follow and take these tutorials from what designs they’ll chambers doing with their social media accounts. So

Allyson Gutwein 43:17
they’re also one ACC EADS website to

Brandon Burton 43:21
There you go. Yeah. I appreciate you joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and you provided a lot of value and great example, as you guys are chosen as a chamber, the year finalists are setting the bar and doing great work. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of that with us.

Allyson Gutwein 43:39
Thank you so much for having us today.

Brandon Burton 43:42
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Being the Sane Center with Bill Connors

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

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

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Introduction

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

Now your host, he is ready for Summer. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here 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.

Jason Mock 0:45
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 1:01
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

Successful membership salespeople are problem solvers. They ask better questions, uncover more problems and pinpoint how their chamber can help. Successful membership salespeople are problem solvers. They ask better questions, uncover more problems and pinpoint how their chamber can help. It’s how they consistently drive better membership sales outcomes. Here’s the hurdle. Most membership salespeople don’t get enough coaching to recruit like this. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round guidance that your membership rep needs to drive growth for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Bill Connors. Bill has been the president and CEO of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce since June of 2009. Prior to coming to Idaho Bill had broad national experience in the travel, aviation and convention industries. He was executive director of the world’s largest business travel organization, the Global Business Travel Association, from 2002 to 2009. Prior to that post, he was a senior executive for the American Society of Travel Agents and the travel Institute. President George W. Bush appointed bill to two key aviation panels in Washington DC. The Aviation Security Advisory Committee and the FAA is next gen air transportation system Council. Bill served on the National Board of Directors for the convention Industry Council, the travel business roundtable and the travel Institute. He designed and authored the national travel agency proficiency exam or tip test used throughout North America today. He was a key adviser on Marriott Hotels sales specialist program and the certified travel counselor associate designations. He has been on the Board of Governors for the Alexandria Virginia Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and a member of the GBT A’s sports travel Council. He is a longtime member of the meeting professionals International and the American society of Association Executives. As the national spokesman on travel industry issues he has been featured in or on ABC World News Tonight, CNN CNBC, the USA Today, The New York Times, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal. He’s frequently testified before the United States Congress on travel industry issues locally. Bill was appointed by Vice Chairman of the Boise airport commission in 2013. He also participates on the Boise chambers travel industry board. He serves on the board of Boise Convention Visitors Bureau, the Pacific Northwest chapter of ASEA and is a member of sky international Boise. He is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 and has served on the board of ACC. In 2018. He was elected to the board of the United States Travel Association in 2020, he was appointed by the Idaho Senate to the Idaho intrastate Air Service Committee. He was named CEO of influence by the Idaho business review. And the chamber has been named one of the top 10 places to work in Idaho for four years by the same publication. He’s a graduate of St. Lawrence University and holds four master’s degrees. Bill I’m excited to have you with me today here on chamber tap podcast. If you would take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and go ahead and share something interesting about yourself so we can continue to get to know you a little bit better.

Bill Connors 4:50
Sure. Well, thank you, Brandon. It’s a it’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you and I appreciate what you do for the chamber industry by getting the word out there Something interesting that doesn’t show up and that very long resume you just read. I’m kind of a minor league baseball Kook baseball cook in general, but I’ve been to all the major league stadiums and and I’m up to 225 Minor League ballparks across the country. And whilst it’s a odd and somewhat obsessive hobby, it has taken me to places I normally wouldn’t go. And every city has got something interesting going on. I mean, normally I wouldn’t plan necessarily a trip to go to Fargo, North Dakota. Yeah. But I wanted to go see the ballpark in Fargo and you discover Fargo is kind of a cool little town. And they’ve got a cool little downtown going on there. And as a chamber guy as a Metro Chamber guy, now, my hobby, I can almost claim as research because I, I check out cities and see what some are doing well and what some are not doing so well. And you know, a lot of cities have the same issues that we have. And it’s so it’s a fun hobby, but it’s also sort of increased my portfolio of knowledge about metro areas across the country. So it’s, it’s been fun, and my wife puts up with it. She’s been to quite a few herself, but she’s happy to let me go and I let her go out some rural trips. And that’s it all works.

Brandon Burton 6:30
Yeah. Now you beat me to it as far as learning about those communities to where those ballparks are because there’s a lot of research that goes on there. And, and I’m sure you can explain that to your accountant. You know, it’s recently

Bill Connors 6:46
I haven’t been successful in that particular. No, write it up.

Brandon Burton 6:53
That’s good. That is a good good pastime, and a lot of fun. I personally like those minor league ballparks, and you see a lot of personality. And I’ll say as you as you travel around and see that so you

Bill Connors 7:07
see families and like I say you get to know the composition of a city, even a place like Las Vegas, where you go to the minor league park and you actually see people you don’t see on the strip, you see families, the people who work in Las Vegas, and it’s, you know, it gives you a whole different picture of every city USA.

Brandon Burton 7:27
That’s right. Well, before we get into our topic today, I’d like to have you give a little bit of background about your chamber, about the Boise Metro Chamber. Just give us an idea of size budget staff just to give some perspective before we jumped into our discussion today.

About the Boise Metro Chamber

Bill Connors 7:46
Sure. Well, the Boise Metro Chamber is almost 150 years old. We are older than the state of Idaho, we predate statehood. So we’ve been around for quite a while. I’ve got about 2000 separate business members. And they represent about 250,000 employees, and like a lot of Metro chambers and got big fortune 500 companies and I’ve got the little sandwich shop down the road. Size wise as far as staff goes. There’s about 14 members of the chamber staff. We also have were consolidated chamber. We also have the Convention Visitors Bureau with us. And we also have the economic development regional economic development agency with us. So total, we’ve got about 2829 staff here.

Brandon Burton 8:41
All right. Well, that does help give some perspective especially, you know, being more regional and having the Economic Development and Tourism and everything under that umbrella as well. It’s a unique characteristic and some definite advantages that come with that and being able to leverage some of those different things. But for our topic for discussion today, we settled on the the topic of being the same senator, which I’m looking forward to getting into this discussion with you, especially with what today’s political climate looks like. I think this is a very timely topic to discuss. So we’ll we’ll get into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Being the Sane Center

All right, Bill, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion about chambers being the same center. And we hear that saying quite often throughout chamber world. But I think in practice, it can become very difficult when you especially when you have very polarizing points of view on either side. And you guys have introduced a program there your chamber where you can kind of address this head on? Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us about that program and kind of how that’s developed.

Bill Connors 12:19
Sure, we, during the pandemic, you know, when a lot of things were getting pretty dicey politically, not just here, but everywhere, you know, mask mandate versus not mask mandate, people just generally becoming nasty to each other about things. And you would think at a moment in time like that the country would unify itself a little bit, but we didn’t see that. So one of our members, who is a former state legislator, who now runs an association called the association of Idaho cities, talked to us and said, you know, we need to do something to try to create some civility, not just at the statehouse, but you know, within our own lives. So we started a series, a web series called In Search of civility, whereby we had, we invited people from both parties talked about one particular issue, and let the Republican have their five minutes of here’s what I think let the Democrat have, here’s what I think. And maybe have a more conservative Republican, here’s what I think and a more liberal democrat, here’s what I think. And just let him sort of go at it. And by the end of each one of these broadcasts, we, we have moderators that would sort of bring people to the center and say, you know, there are things you can agree on around this issue. What are those things? And like you said, how do we get to that sane center? Because that’s where I think most Americans are. It’s just the far ends of the political spectrum seem to have the loudest voices right now. So it was our attempt to give voice more to the Seine center, that messy middle, if you will, and it was highly successful. We had, we didn’t have any problems getting people to sponsor that we, we have tons of listeners every week. And again, when you’re talking about touchy issues, everybody wants to tune in and hear what’s going on.

Brandon Burton 14:38
That’s why news channels do so well. Right? Is it they’re polarized? So they do it for the negative emotions, where you guys have the polarizing for a positive purpose, which Yeah, that would sell sponsorships.

Bill Connors 14:50
Absolutely. And again, I think what it did is at least bring some legislators who were warring against each other to the table too. At least talk about why they feel the way they feel. And, and learn a little about them as human beings. That’s the other sad thing both I saw in Washington and my time there. And in any state capitol is, it’s become so polarized, people don’t talk to each other anyway, they don’t go out and have lunch together anymore. And if you, if you know people’s families, and you know who they are, you’re less likely to get nasty behind the scenes. And again, this was our small little attempt to, again, try to carve out some sanity in some of these touchy discussions. And again, it was very, very popular, and we’re going to keep doing it.

Brandon Burton 15:44
And I think that’s so key for chambers, especially in today’s world, with social media and everything, you can watch news channels and, and jump on one side of the boat, you know, left or right. And then you follow a group on Facebook, that’s like minded. And even if you don’t follow the group, those algorithms are going to put that more of what you agree with in front of you. And it makes everybody that sees things sees the world differently than you to be wrong. And it’s not a matter of right or wrong necessarily as it’s different perspective. And as that happens, it separates people to where you’re not talking to one another about the real issues, because you’re only talking to others that are like minded, and that causes even more of that division. I’m curious what some of these topics were, if you can just, you know, name off some of these topics that you guys covered in this in search of civility series.

Bill Connors 16:43
Sure. A lot of it around the COVID mandates. You know, we we were fairly open state. But some on the far right, felt we weren’t open enough and requiring masks and the whole nine yards. And pushing against that. And others, of course, we’re on the other side of it. And like you said that our whole purpose was to try to try to have Fox News meet, see us NBC, on our little program. And that’s what it provided, it provided me here’s my rationale for why I think this way. And we tackled all sorts of issues that pop up in our legislature, just like I think it’ll pop up in your Texas Legislature. You know, there’s there’s gun control issues, they’re just issues of every kind, particularly social issues that get people wound up. But again, I think the pandemic probably pitted more people against how are you going to regulate health? You know, we have discussions around who’s got the authority, our health districts, or the governor or the legislature? And, and who, who really, are the authorities? Or do we trust the doctors and the healthcare industry? That’s, you know, to me, the experts? Or do we listen to the extremes on both sides? So, so yeah, lots and lots of different issues. But again, the point is, let’s hear both sides, try to get people to at least know who the other person is. And get them talking. And I gotta admit, and I don’t think it has much to do with us. But this legislative session was much tamer than the last one than last years. And I can’t say that we can take credit for that. But if we move the needle even a little bit, that’s a good thing.

Brandon Burton 18:57
I was gonna ask what sort of outcomes you saw from that? Hopefully, that was an outcome from this. But maybe before I asked that question, Was this on YouTube or what? What platform did you use to facilitate the show this series? Yeah,

Bill Connors 19:13
it was on all of our social networks, YouTube, Facebook, the whole nine yards. We used a service called stream yard. And yeah, like I said, the viewership was was pretty significant. And again, while we were a lot of chambers are kind of shut down in terms of doing events. We created a lot of online kind of programming. Not just this programming, which, again, we’re pretty proud of but but hundreds of programs about how to utilize the federal resources that are coming in. We didn’t want to be one of these places that just posted the federal regulations on here’s how to apply for a PPP loan. We have experts get on Zoom calls and explain, here’s how you can get your application to the top of a bank’s inbox. You know, Pratt going through practically and explaining how to how to fill things out. Because again, if you’re just posting regs, who’s, who’s got the expertise to read through that stuff. So again, using using zoom and using social media, we took full advantage of that during the last couple of years. But I’m happy to say we’re, we’re doing events again, and we will have one up for 600 people next week. So

Brandon Burton 20:36
we’re back in business. That’s great. Yeah, I mean, it’s a brave thing when you go into the world of social media and put this type of content out there, because it’s open up to, you know, comments and criticism and sharing and do whatever else that that goes on there. Did you have to do any sorts of controls or moderation? Or how did you approach that?

Bill Connors 20:58
Yeah, we we had a pretty tech savvy moderator. And if you were able to read everything in the chat, you wouldn’t be in a pretty sight some of it. And we were able to edit out some of the bad stuff. But again, that our purpose isn’t to highlight the extremes, it’s to highlight that, how do we get to the middle ground? So while I didn’t think we were censoring anything, we also didn’t want the conversations to break down into ugly feud. So that wasn’t the purpose of the thing.

Brandon Burton 21:35
So you can take the most ugliest comments, and they can be one of your next guests. You know, you just pit him against somebody on the opposite side. And

Bill Connors 21:43
well, yeah, we did a little bit of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:47
It’s just It’s a never ending supply of content. That’s true. So is this, uh, are you guys continuing the insert disability program? Or is that something that was more focused during the COVID times, or

Bill Connors 22:02
we’re gonna continue, we’re gonna continue it. And as a matter of fact, we’re giving one of our highest awards to, to this gal I mentioned earlier, a former legislator who came up with this idea. And we’re giving her a big award on Tuesday, just to highlight the that particular program. So we’ll keep it keep it going.

Brandon Burton 22:24
That’s great. I know, there’s a former a co worker that I’ve talked with a lot, and we see things very differently politically. But things never get ugly between us when we talk because we’re able to be civil about it, we’re able to recognize you’d have your view of the world, I have my view, and there is a lot more that overlaps than what doesn’t overlap, and to be able to help bring up that common ground, and really just elevate society in general. And unfortunately, these social media companies and new major news outlets, they’ve got so much control over our attention, that it just steals our attention away to tell this negative. So the more positive discussions, positive unity that we can provide is so important in chambers are that place to be that same center and and they say that that’s how, you know if you’re being successful, right? Is it the far right, thanks, you’re too liberal on the far left thinks you’re way too conservative, then you’re doing a good job.

Bill Connors 23:30
Yeah. Well, no matter where you stand on an issue, you’re gonna lose a couple people on either side. Sometimes that’s hard for me to fathom, but that’s the nature of the business.

Brandon Burton 23:43
Yeah. So had any of the discussions or outcomes from these discussions? Help project anything as far as advocacy goes from your your efforts there?

Bill Connors 23:56
Well, yeah, like I said, the this legislative legislative session was a lot tamer, we had a lot of what we called crazy bills that appeared. And most of those were shut down by our Senate, which is a little more rational. And we were able to stop some of the really crazy stuff. You know, that we had a and it not all of it was about the pandemic. I mean, there. Like I said, touchy issues when it’s critical race theory being taught in the universities, that kind of thing. We killed a lot of those crazy bills. And again, I can’t We can’t take credit for our little, our little program. But the discussions at the legislature this year actually produced some bipartisan agreements and some good things for business, which of course is what we’re all about. We got both I used to agree on a personal income tax cut, and a business tax cut, and at the same time increased our education spending to record levels this year, because we had a pretty nice surplus going into this. So yeah, I think I think in general, good things happen when you can get people talking to each other. And as you’ve been talking about, just keep stressing the the majority of Idahoans, the majority of Americans are somewhere in that middle, or not way out on the fringes, even though the fringes might be the loudest. Most of us are in the middle. And that’s where you get stuff done. And we got stuff done this year.

Brandon Burton 25:48
That’s great. And then the trick is, tends to be the fringes show up to vote. So how do you get that that segment of the population that doesn’t show up to vote or to share their opinion to voice or to share their voice? How do you get them engaged?

Bill Connors 26:06
Yeah, and that’s part of what we do, too. We do candidate forums, we do a lot of voter education kinds of things. But you’re right, there’s a, you know, it’s almost shameful. If you look at the percentage of voters in the primary elections, which, here in Idaho, become particularly important. Whoever wins the Republican primary in many areas of the state becomes the candidate. And very few, you know, I think it’s 17 18% of the people who are eligible to vote in primaries. But this is a big one this year for us. And I think we’re going to have our governor has a primary challenge. Our lieutenant governor has a primary challenge. Our State School Superintendent has a primary challenge, our Secretary of State has a primary challenge, our Attorney General has a primary challenge. So when those big statewide offices show up, we make a point of, hey, this is one of the most important elections we’ll have in a decade. So at least as far as Idaho is concerned. So get out there and vote on May 17, which is our primary day.

Brandon Burton 27:21
Yeah. So we currently as we’re talking right now, we have a school bond election going on in our area, and, and we’re in a small community in North Texas, just outside of Dallas, and our areas just been exploding with new growth. And a lot of people from out of state moving here. And we have a very small school district, and there’s a big need to accommodate, you know, all the classrooms are already full. So this bond has been proposed. And it’s a thing, it’s a $380 million bond, I mean, something, it’s a big amount of money. And my wife happens to work for the school district. So some of the early numbers, they could send me you don’t get all the data. But when there, as of about three days ago, there had been 500 votes cast in total. Those 500 votes are dictating $380 million worth of bonds, and then only about 80% of those votes for people that have no affiliation with the school district. So they don’t work for the school. They don’t have kids in the school, they don’t have. And it’s like, I don’t know what you do to get people engaged to vote for what matters show up, because it matters either way, you know, on a bond issue a state, you know, elections, you know, Senate’s governor’s national elections, that all matters, and to get them to see, you know, especially the things and your community level, this is going to affect property taxes, like you need to voice your opinion, you need to go cast your votes. So

Bill Connors 29:03
well, you guys in Texas are going through what we’re going through, and that is, you know, 1000s and 1000s of people moving in a lot from California. We have on the average in 75 people a day moving into the Boise Metro. The majority of those are from California, the rest are from Seattle, the Bay Area. La and you’re right i mean it’s we have to rebuild our infrastructure to to accommodate all these things, whether it’s schools, roads, transit, you name it. And you know, the natives get restless. Let’s face it, but you know, it’s part of the Our job is chambers to let people know that, hey, growth is not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, your property tax free will probably look a little different. But so does the value of your home all of a sudden, you have some way health equity that you didn’t have, you know, five years ago. And I know that’s hard to tell somebody who’s living on a fixed income. But that’s one of the issues, by the way that, you know, we I really think we’ve got to rethink how we fund public education. You know, I hear a lot of it depends on property tax. But our legislature also, more than half our budget goes to public education. And I just think we have to rethink how we fund it. And one of the things we did this year and and it was one of those bipartisan agreements, was offer every school district in the state of Idaho, offer all the teachers to go on the state’s MediCal benefit plan, which is much more robust, robust than some of the local districts can afford. And really was a boon to local school districts in terms of affordability, because it benefit packages are one of the biggest cost centers for, for any school district, and with the state, stepping in to really lower rates significantly, and then 1000s of dollars to every single teachers benefit package. And that was a bill that everybody agreed on, on both sides. For the very issue that you’re talking about, you know, eventually, what you’re looking at is, hey, maybe we don’t have to go out for a bond, if we can successfully funded schools in a creative way.

Brandon Burton 31:36
Right? Yeah, that’s a great point. But I wanted to to ask you, if you might have a tip or action item that you’d like to share for Chamber Champions listening to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Bill Connors 31:53
Well, I don’t think it’ll be any surprise to anybody who your listeners, I think we as chambers, are going to have to, at least in the next five to 10 years really focused on workforce issues. This, you know, shortage of workers is everywhere, in every industry, and it’s going to be a problem for us. And so, you know, talent, retention, talent, attraction, those are going to be key issues. For us. That’s, again, why we’ve invested a lot of resource into some of our young professional programs, because I think, if you’ve got a good effective young professional program, that is a talent retention tool, if you get people engaged, they’re less likely to move from your community to another one. And we have one of the largest young professional programs out there. So I think that’s something that’s got to be on all of our radars. And then here, like I said, we’re fairly unique, there’s only a handful of chambers that have all three entities under one roof, the Economic Development Group, the Convention Visitors Bureau, which we merged in with us a few years ago. And I’ll tell you, it’s, it’s, it’s good for to two big reasons. One, the efficiency you get toward from for the community, you don’t need three sets of accountants and three sets of receptionists and three buildings, and three, you know, we think we give this community a lot more bang for the buck by consolidating. But what I see is more important, is the synergy between the three groups where in a lot of cities, those three groups are separate. They’re all competing for the same resources, and oftentimes are competing with each other. And here, the strategic nature of getting all three of them to work together give a classic example if I if we got time. Yeah. So my economic development guy who’s right down the hall, comes to me a couple years ago says, Hey, we’re getting a lot of inquiries about data centers coming to Idaho. And I said, why? Well, because Idaho has got plenty of water. We’ve got affordable electricity, and we don’t have natural disasters, and that’s what they are looking for. And I said, why aren’t we getting them? Then? He says, Well, what we don’t have that 17 other states do have is a tax exemption on equipment. And these things are very equipment dependent. So the chamber guy and our advocacy group goes to the legislature gets a bill passed to get a tax exemption on equipment. Then I walked down the hall to my Convention and Visitor’s Bureau gal and say, see if you can get the National Association of data center managers convention to come to Boise, who better than to have five of those people walking around town. And sure enough, this year, we just got announced MIT from Facebook, they’re gonna build a huge data centers. But that’s, that’s three other organizations all working together to help get something done. We’re in. Whereas I think in a lot of places, those organizations sort of compete not only for resource, but you know, trying to claim victory for one thing. But we’re all in the same business, we’re promoting our particular city or state. So, you know, my advice, and I know a lot of people don’t like to hear this, but work as closely as you can with your economic development guys and your year’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau people.

Brandon Burton 35:39
I think that’s a great tip, if you are able to get a lot more leverage and a lot more bang for your buck, as you’re saying, by being able to combine those resources as much as possible. So I like asking everyone this question, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Bill Connors 36:01
Yeah, I think we’re always going to be in the role of convener. And, you know, if we ever lose that, then I think we’re in trouble. A lot of what we you and I just talked about bringing people to the middle. That’s the only way you get things done. And I think, chambers have always got to play that role going forward. And like I said, the other thing is, we really got to think harder about talent, and how, how we’re going to fill all these jobs in the future. And think about, you know, does everybody need a bachelor’s degree? Or can you win, you got people out there who go get their CDL license and can make $100,000 a year driving a truck? Maybe we are rethink about, you know, where, where we put our educational resources, our higher educational resources. So, again, I think the Chamber’s roles will always be to be to be effective. We’ll be as conveners bringing people to the middle and getting stuff done.

Brandon Burton 37:10
I love it. So I wanted to give you a chance bill to share any contact information for any listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you. And also if they wanted to check out your In Search of civility program, where can they find that as well? Yep.

Connect with Bill Connors

Bill Connors 37:26
Our websites boisechamber.org. And my email is bconnors@boisechamber.org. Yeah, happy to talk to anybody and I, what I what I do love about this business. And as you said at the head of the program, I’m pretty active in ACCE and the US Chamber and I’ve gotten to know my counterparts all over the country. And we’re very good at stealing each other’s ideas. And that’s, that’s always a good

Brandon Burton 38:02
thing. That’s right. And I’ll get this contact information in our show notes for this episode. But Bill, this has been a great discussion. I’m glad to have had you on the podcast. And I appreciate you sharing this example of of establishing yourself as that same center and the place where all chambers really need to be residing. So thank you for that.

Bill Connors 38:26
Well, thank you very much, Brandon, and thanks for what you do for chambers all across the country.

Brandon Burton 38:31
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

What Makes a Chamber Board Successful?

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

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

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

Chamber Board Selection

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

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

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

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

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

Developing Board Diversity

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

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

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

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

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

Setting Clear Expectations

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

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

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

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

Board Unity

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

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

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

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Continue Your Chamber Board Development

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

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

Book cover-Stop the nonprofit board blame game.

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

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

Please join our email list to receive new blog posts are they are released. You will stay in the loop with any announcements related to the podcast or the Chamber world in general.

Be sure you are subscribed to Chamber Chat Podcast in your favorite podcast app. Subscribers are the first to get episodes as new ones come out each week.

Why Chambers Need a Strong Digital Presence

In today’s world, everyone has a smartphone with them at all times. Thanks to social media and text messaging, we all look to our tiny screens to pass time. If your chamber has not been fully immersed in creating a strong digital presence, then you are missing a huge segment of your community.

Mobile is Everywhere

Next time you are out in public, take a look at the people around you. Look at your own behaviors with your smartphone. Most of society are consumers of digital content. For some this comes in the form of social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. For the younger generation the trend is currently TikTok and YouTube. Podcasting is the digital platform for audio content that people can consume while doing many other tasks at the same time. The gateway to almost everything digital today is done through a mobile app.

I have yet to come across a chamber in the last five years that doesn’t at least have a Facebook page. Most will also have a website. I would suggest that these are the most basic digital platforms to utilize and they also have the lowest barrier to entry. I once heard a quote that said “the lower the barrier, the greater the competition”. There is a lot more ‘noise’ at the lower barrier of entry levels. The Facebook page and website are important digital marketing tools. I believe tools are designed to leverage your efforts.

Leverage Print Media

For example, printed publications are still very popular in the chamber world. They are great producers of non-dues revenue and can often have a digital counterpart. The digital side of your printed publications should be amplified on your website and social media to further spread the distribution of your publications.

Directories, magazines, maps, and digital…
Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.

I would also encourage your members who advertise in your printed publications to leverage their advertising using digital. They can do this by sharing a picture of their ad in your chamber directory on their social media pages and tag your chamber in the post. You can take it a step further by encouraging them to use a specific hashtag to further promote the publication.

Repurpose Other Chamber Content

The same is true with other chamber content. Your website and social media pages should be used to amplify your message. Your digital presence will be much stronger as you identify ways to broadcast your traditional/analog efforts.

If you have a podcast, post each episode to your social pages. Tag any guests in the social media posts as well as their company. Your website could have a dedicated section that points to your past podcast episodes with show notes and links to relevant content and sponsorship partners.

If you have a YouTube channel, the same practice can be applied. YouTube will also allow you to have ‘in video links’ to other relevant content you have on YouTube. You can embed certain videos on your website and share your videos on your social media networks.

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Blogs

As you get caught up in the digital craze, don’t forget the importance of the written word. That is by the way how you are consuming this content right now. Blog posts for longer form messaging can still be highly effective and could be a source of non-dues revenue with sponsorships. You can share your blog posts on social media.

I recently worked on a project with a homeowners association. This was a monthly magazine that was mailed to the homeowners. With a younger demographic moving into the community and in an effort to gain more advertising revenue we decided to leverage digital. We decided to repurpose the articles that were already in the printed magazine as individual blog posts. This allowed us to insert additional advertising content and it allowed the HOA to reach a new, younger audience.

Content Frequency

However you choose to approach your creation and distribution of digital content, it is critical to have a plan. Creating a frequency for digital content will help you stay on track. Oftentimes you can repurpose content in multiple ways. I would encourage you to create a content calendar to plot out how you are putting out content in a strategic way. Izzy West spoke about this in a past podcast episode.

As you create your content calendar, see where you can spread some of your content creation. Maybe staff members could be responsible for different platforms or types of content. You may be able to utilize a board member, ambassador, or another volunteer. One unique way of creating content is to use your members. Holly Allen talked about this in my interview with her as she talked about how her chamber was marketing the thought leadership of their members. Essentially, their members became the experts on certain topics that their chamber then shared on their different platforms.

Summary

I will share a personal thought. As you plan deliberate content, consider the platform. For example, people tend to turn to Facebook to tune out, not to tune in to a message from the chamber. However, a platform like podcasting and YouTube have active subscribers who tune into and subscribe to hear from people and organizations like you. I would not rely solely on Facebook and a website as your digital footprint.

The bottom line is that if you are not actively thinking about a strong digital presence, you will inevitably miss out on opportunities. We are living in a digital first world now where people turn to their phones for answers, information, and entertainment. How is your chamber interacting with people on their tiny screens?

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Relevant & Personalized Communication with Sara Ray

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

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

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Introduction

Brandon Burton 0:00

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14

And now, your host…He encourages chambers to collect quality data so they can better segment their lists.

He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:23

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

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

Kris Johnson 0:50

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

Brandon Burton 1:31
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting HolmanBros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Sara Ray. Sara became the president and CEO of the Douglas County Chamber in April 2018. Sara has more than 15 years of chamber corporate and nonprofit leadership experience including UPS Yancey bros as Strayer University, the Cultural Arts Council of Douglas, and four positions at the Douglas County Chamber. Sara serves on the Regional Business coalition executive committee is Vice Chair for the WellStar Douglas hospital regional board, and as a founding partner in Elevate Douglas economic partnership, a public private partnership created in 2021. She also serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce executives Georgia Academy of economic development, Cobb and Douglas public health steering committee and founding member of keep Douglas County beautiful. Sara received her Georgia certified chamber executive designation in 2021, making her one of only 22 in the history of the organization. She is a graduate of the US Chamber institutes of organizational management in 2015, the US Chamber business leads fellowship Regional Leadership Institute, Georgia forward young game changer, leadership Douglas and is it active in these alumni associations. In 2019, Sara was named by Georgia Secretary of State as outstanding Georgia citizen. She was also named as the West Georgia livings 40 under 40 in 2019, and a top 10 Young Professional in Douglas in 2015 and 2017. Her service to the community does not go unnoticed. She was recognized as Volunteer of the Year for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance in 2010 and 2012 Spirit Award by the city of Douglasville, Sara received her bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When she isn’t working to support businesses and Douglas in the metro Atlanta region. Sara spends her time traveling and being outdoors with their children, Anna and Avery. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, we will take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better.

Sara Ray 3:53

Yeah, well, thank you for having me today. I have thought long and hard about this question. But I think something interesting about me is while I was born and raised in Georgia, my parents are both from overseas. So I’m a first generation American. And my dad is from England and my mom is from South Africa. So a lot of times when people meet me they see you know, cute little you know, southern girl and they don’t realize you know that my summers were spent in Africa and in the wild so so it’s it’s people always kind of that’s kind of throws them off.

Brandon Burton 4:31

So you get together with your family to get a variety of accents going on.

Sara Ray 4:34

Yes, yes. My mom always joke that like when I was in preschool, I came home and the first time I said y’all, she just cried because I had a British accent until I went to school because that was all I ever heard. So

Brandon Burton 4:48

yeah, it’s funny. I can just see that British accent you know, saying Yo she’s like, where did my baby go? Well tell us about the Douglas County Chamber just to give us some perspective, maybe size budget staff, that sort of thing

About the Douglas County Chamber

Sara Ray 5:06

before we get us. Yes. So our chamber is 77 years old. We have about 650 members that are investors in our organization. And we are located in west, west, just west of Atlanta, we’re about 20 miles west. So we are considered the Metro Atlanta region, but still kind of close enough. We always say, you know, close enough to the city to be able to catch a baseball game with our, you know, world champion, Atlanta Braves. But also, we still have plenty of green space and amenities where we can explore and enjoy the outdoors. So yes, so our team we are, we have and we have an interesting kind of space, we are in the process of integrating staff with our economic development organization elevate Douglas, so we share staff, but our full team is about 12 Strong between both organizations. But as far as chamber employees, we have about eight, so I think it was there anything I missed?

Brandon Burton 6:02

No, I think that that pretty much covers it. And so it sounds like you’ve said that before. Yeah. how close you are to Atlanta. And notice you you mentioned Braves and the Falcons but that that’s okay.

Sara Ray 6:17

We got we got UGA we’ve been

Brandon Burton 6:20

you gotta get your highlights, right. Yeah.

Sara Ray 6:22

Falcons fan. I know. I still have like, you know, wounds from five ish years ago. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. We’ll definitely talk about the Braves all day long.

Brandon Burton 6:32

That’s right. That’s right. So as we get into our topic for discussion, today, we’re gonna focus our conversation around creating relevant and personalized communication, which I think is going to be something relevant for listeners as we try to figure out the best ways to communicate with not only our members but people in the community and really, you know, be in that that voice for business community. So I’m excited to get into this discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Relevant & Personalized Communication

All right, Sara, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about communication, creating relevant and personalized communication. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing there at the Douglas County Chamber to do this. Yeah, you know, what, what spurred the thought for this to be the focus of our discussion.

Sara Ray 9:36

Yeah, so I think it’s probably best to start up I’m gonna say the beginning. You know, I’ve been at the chamber as, as you mentioned, for just around 12 years and took over SEO about four years ago. So I felt like I’ve seen a lot of different things and you know, experience different trends and marketing and communications. That was actually the role I started out in being at the chamber so then seeing it grow and evolve. But I would say the beginning of our journey to where we’re at now and how we have moved into a space of having more customized personal communications was like a lot of people during the pandemic. So, you know, as a, an organization that was primarily in person with our events, that leaned into that space we were very accustomed to, like, I would assume a lot of chambers are is casting a net at, you know, at all your businesses, you know, the more people the merrier in a room, you know, that that equated to a successful event. And that was very, very true with myself in spaces, but also with my team. So when we had to go into an environment where we couldn’t do face to face, or, you know, we were just trying to still cast that net, but not being able to have those one on one conversations, we knew we had to do something different. So I remember specifically, we had brought back, and it was probably like late 2021 of our after hours events, it was outside, you know, open air. And I remember, in our, in our after hours, events typically have about 75 to 125 people, this one, there were about 27 or 28 people, and my team was coming up to me, this is a failure, this is not great. This is you know, we’ve lost our you know, our our mojo, this is awful. And I just remember being like, you guys are missing the big picture, look around the room and see what is happening, I said people are able to not come into a space where they don’t know anybody, you know, or they feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, because of the number of people that are there. I said, people are able to come in and have a conversation, they aren’t worried about working the room. And and you know, getting as many business cards out as, as they can, they’re able to sit and have actual conversations. And I was a perfect example of that. I mean, as, as our viewers probably know, chamber execs you’re out work in the room, making sure that everybody feels welcome and included. And I remember sitting down with one of our youth leadership students, high school junior, and having like a 10 minute conversation on their career path and their trajectory, and all of these different you know, like just actually getting to know them. And, and that was a conversation I had with my team. And I was I was like you guys are missing the big picture, like people are having more authentic intentional interactions with one another. And that fosters a relationship and a depth of depth to a relationship that we can’t touch. Like we can’t, we can’t touch that in an email or communication, not the way we’re set up right now. So we ended up working with an organization to do again. So we kind of looked at, we started shifting some our events, instead of being a catch all for everyone. And during the business after hours, we had targeted industries that we were networking with, we had, you know, different themes. So we started a minority business group, we started a women in business group. So we started out with our events, but then what we realized quickly was, how are we getting the information out to everyone in a way that they can, that it that it resonates with them, and that they find value in that. So we went through the process of doing a marketing communications analysis and looked at all of the different things that we were doing email, social website, how we were how people were getting the information, and that was members, and it was non members. So we were polling and surveying our business community at large. And one of the things that kind of came back to all of it was that people don’t like getting the emails that are that are sent to the droves, you know, email was definitely their number one choice for how they wanted to be communicated with and this is in my community could look different. But even with the way that you interact with people on social media, like it’s great that we were posting, you know, we had a content calendar, and we were posting something on wherever, every other day, and we had a process behind that. But people wanted the engagement, they wanted to see themselves they wanted, you know, they wanted to know the stories about people so so we’ve gone through the process of customizing how we communicate with our businesses looking at we’ve created like a preference center. So you know, what Brandon might want contact information on it might be leadership and events and I might want information on policy and economic development. So we’ve created a you know, an infrastructure in our in our communications and how we do our events, that it’s customized and catered to the individuals just so that’s kind of the high level, how we got there. So

Brandon Burton 14:30

I love this. I just in fact, it was a week or two ago, I actually wrote and shared out a blog post about this very thing. Well, when you’re talking about these mixers, it was about that very thing. It’s like you know, so many people show up at a mixer. They’re new to the chamber, right? They show up, got a pocket full of business cards, or they’re gonna get their drink and they stand there totally awkward. Yeah, they don’t know anybody. And then you know, 10 minutes later they leave because Yeah, nothing happens that they’re super uncomfortable and That’s one of the huge value propositions, you know, for joining the chambers and networking. Yeah. Well, if it doesn’t resonate for them, they have a bad experience at first time, how likely are they to come back. So being able to have these personalized, you know, relevant events for them to attend, and really make sure that they resonate with not only the topic, but the other people that are there. So it makes sense to communicate with them.

Sara Ray 15:24

Yeah. And it’s not just about like getting them to the event, it’s the before and after to like, we’ve incorporated pieces into the process where, when they register, it’s, Hey, thanks for registering. And it’s all automated through chambermaster. You know, and it just says, Thanks for registering before you get here, check out our speakers, and we have links to the bios, and then two days before they get an email that’s like, you know, get excited, these are things that we’re going to have here, if we have kind of upcoming announcements or things you need to know before you get there. And then on the backside, we have follow up emails that are thanks for joining, here’s the pictures, here’s the links to whomever was speaking, you know, share your experience, and we put in there literally a copy and paste of post this on so on your LinkedIn, and they just have to drop it in there. So it gives them a good way to engage with us outside of just the event. And we you know, we’ll put in there register for our next event. So it’s all about creating, we call it an engagement pathway. So it’s all about creating that it’s not ever a start to finish. It’s always the what’s next behind things. So

Brandon Burton 16:27

so how do you go about in your, in your database to segment your lists? You’d mentioned you know, what their interests are I, the way I’ve envisioned it is you have a conversation of sorts, and in some of these, you probably have to guess if they’ve been a member forever, and maybe they’re not super high, you need to make some guesses. But as you onboard a new member to be able to have a discussion of what’s your expectation from the chain? What are you joining for? Is that how you guys go about it? Or what does that look like to be able to Yes,

Sara Ray 16:59

I’m going to call I’m going to call it bite sized pieces, I’m getting an email about like this long, you know, like, four pages long, is very inundating and overwhelming for someone. So we’ve actually shifted to I would call it like a drip campaign. So when they get their first email, it’s, you know, Hey, welcome to the chamber, we’re so excited to have you, here’s your login, be on the lookout, we have this next thing coming up, your next email will be about XYZ and then the next email that they get is, hey, we want to learn more about you. Right, so talk to us about the things that interested you in joining the chamber. And we capture some of that through our member application. But then it’s getting more into the space of what did they as the primary contact one, the next email is, hey, tell us about your team, let’s make sure and add in anybody that you have that as a part of your team that we need to include in our conversations, because, again, Sara raise preferences, and Julia in my office, it might be different. And the things that they find value in as a member would be different. So we’ve shifted instead of it just being this one dump of information into small videos and and kind of little snippets, that cycle out, I would say at least once a week for the first month, and then we kind of lag it out a little bit. But that way, it gives them the information kind of on a consistent basis without overwhelming them. Because that was another thing people don’t want to read through, like I said, five pages of information. So we’ve we’ve just shifted to that kind of little bite sized piece of information. And then there’s some other things, we mail them some stuff too. So they’re getting that attention, we send we have somebody that does a phone call. So we have a whole process in place. But yeah, identifying their specific needs and interests, we do that some through the main contact through when they apply. But then it’s part of the process. And we just capture that through our CRM. And then we actually connect it into the campaign system that we use for email marketing. So and then you can go into if we’re getting super granular, like the tags and segments within your email marketing system. So then you can go through and kind of pick and choose and say, hey, I want to send this piece of information to people who are tagged that they like information about women in leadership, or it could be about policy. So we kind of lean on those different tools to to segment it out, because there is information you want everybody to get and know about your big signature event or your upcoming event or training that you have. But then some of the information, you know, might not be relevant to you know, a solopreneur that’s never that doesn’t need to hire anybody doesn’t necessarily need to have all the information on how to post a job on our on our job site. So yeah, it’s just trying to try to funnel down and fine tune that information to where it’s what they find this value in. And then you can track it all on the back end through analytics and see again, and we drive almost all of our activity, I would say all of it to our website so that we can track the analytics and know where people are going, what information that they’re actually likely looking at and learning from.

Brandon Burton 19:54

I love that and I think this is going to be one of those episodes that people go back and listen to or at least You know those last few minutes? Like, okay, take notes, and how did you do this step to the next day? So, simple question, what, what email platform do you guys use?

Sara Ray 20:11

Yes. So, we have tried a few, we use Constant Contact for a long, long time. I know as chamber people, we get it for free, which is great, but I and I mean, contact is wonderful. But there are other paid platforms that can give you more. So we actually investigated using Campaign Monitor, but then ended up going with MailChimp. So it integrates with chambermaster, which is our CRM that we use. So and has a lot of capabilities and even the visibility, the open rates are better with MailChimp than some of the others just because they don’t automatically pop into your junk folder and things like that. So we have some great partners that we work with, that are investors with the chamber that helped us kind of work through all that process, it wasn’t, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I will say to that doesn’t mean what works for us will work for everyone. And Constant Contact has does have some great tools that are associated with it, if you’re on a little bit of a tighter budget, but that was we ended up moving forward with MailChimp was what we ended up going with.

Brandon Burton 21:11

So and I wanted to highlight that just so listeners when they talk about when they hear you talk about segmenting tags, and all these things like, Well, my software doesn’t do that, or where do you find that? So it’s within MailChimp that you’re doing those things. Yeah. So I love the way that you go about with that kind of introductory email, you know, here’s some things to look forward to. And then the follow up as to, you know, what kind of things are of interest to you? Where do you do you see, as people, you know, have a longer time with the chamber with their membership or investment where they learn about new offerings that the Chamber has and to be able to add that to their interest. So they’re getting those those pieces of information? How do you add that in along their membership journey,

Sara Ray 21:59

oh, you’re gonna laugh at this one, we have a nickname for how we do that in my office. So um, you know, we’ve used MailChimp for a lot of our you know, we use that for our I would say standard, we do a top five email that goes out on Mondays, you know, we have social that we post we did videos, those kind of things. If we are in a space, and we want again, because a lot of people just see chamber emails, and they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna keep clicking through. So what we learned, and I honestly don’t remember how we got into the space. My team calls them, Hey, friend emails. And it’s literally me, emailing our entire database through chambermaster. And I write them just like it’s coming from, I mean, it is coming from me, but I read it just like I’m emailing you directly. And the tone and the language behind it is just as if I was writing to any, you know, any of my businesses that are members. And it’s, Hey, how are you very generic entry. Hey, there, and it’s, you know, I always try and make some kind of interesting subject line, like, got a second or one quick thing for you. And then I go into, hey, hope you’re doing great. Getting ready for the weekend, or whatever, you know, whatever, just some kind of little intro, but like, I just wanted to make sure, I don’t know if you saw the emails, but I want to make sure you knew about XYZ event or training or whatever that we’re doing. That’s coming up, I think it might be great for you. You know, we’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And we’d love to see, see your face at it. If it was an event or whatever. If there’s anything that you need from me, you know, I’m always here, have a great day. And I literally, that’s basically what are our response rate? And people like people have no idea? Well, some of them start picking up on it, they have no idea that it’s sent to 1000s of people. So I get responses from people. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, it’s been so long since we talked hope you’re doing well, thanks for checking on me, you know, so we call it Hey, friend emails in my office. And that’s a great way because then we’re able to go back. And if I get an email from someone, like I said, that I haven’t heard from in a long time or haven’t seen an event, and they’re responding to an event that we’re talking about, you know, going to our cap the state capitol, then I know that that’s piqued their interest in some space, if they’re choosing to respond to me, Hey, I hope I can make it please keep sending me the this this way, you know, would love to have this in a virtual format like we get we I get honestly I get better open rates on those than any other email platform that I do. And again, nobody knows what I mean. A few again, a few now know the secret, but for the most part, but that’s the bottom comes in. I have to be so let my team is there. There’ll be like, can you send a hey, for an email? I was like, I’ve already sent one this week. Like we’ve got to limit or they lose their hour. But yeah, so yeah, so Hey, friend, emails work really well. I actually had one of our state our congressional senators offices call me she’s like, I need to set up a meeting with you. She goes are those emails like really to everyone? Or is it just to me, because she said she forwards them out to her team every time and it’s like This is how we need to communicate with our business, you know, with our constituents, and it started as a random thing, but that’s kind of our, our secret sauce that you know, we have our templated emails. But if we need to pull a friend one out, then it works almost every time.

Brandon Burton 25:16

And I imagine that those Hey, friend emails are also going to help with your open rates and deliverability of the emails going out through MailChimp to see that those are getting delivered and opened and responded to, they’re gonna deliver more of those inboxes. Exactly. That’s, that’s awesome. But then, so you’re taking those manually those responses and saying this members interested in this and then updating their profile

Sara Ray 25:39

that, yeah, I have somebody on my team that I’ll just forward them to. And it’s also a great way to make sure we have bad emails that are coming through or bounces or changes in role, you know, because there’s lovely member info updates that we all try and send are only so successful before we have to get on the phone. So this is a good kind of consistent way to kind of work through that process. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:59

So one of the other things he had mentioned, I want to make sure that I understood it, right. It sounds like one of those follow up emails and member first joins is saying who else in your organization would be interested in XYZ. So you’re, you’re getting other contact information for each business, but then also able to further the segmentation to that person’s over HR versus, you know, over, you know, the CEO, as the company, they’re going to be, you have different interests, so you’re able to touch them on different levels at the same

Sara Ray 26:31

business. And I was trying to add something, we always add some language like, if this isn’t for you, please feel free to share with share it with somebody, you know, and make sure a lot of people and I know that you’ve heard this before, but they think that they’re the only person that’s a member of their chamber. I’ve had several conversations with our school district. I’m like, every teacher, every educator is a member of the chamber. So you know, like, use that leverage that leverage that bandwidth. Oh, yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:57

Yeah, no, I think that’s key. Yeah. They think whoever was the one that signed up to chat. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, crazy. Yeah. Or just the owner. But yeah, it can. And obviously, every chamber is a little different. But most chambers that I’m aware of is opened it. Yeah, buddy within their business. So good point. I think this topic is so important. I’ve mentioned this a few times. And I think it’s worth mentioning again, just with the topic is my background is in chamber publishing says I would go out and meet with different Chamber members. And they find out that I’m not actually with the chamber, but they open up to me. Yeah. It’s like, I’m a bartender, and they just start telling me, you know, this is this last experience, this last event was awesome. Or I get way too many emails from the chamber. You know, I’ll ask them, Did

Sara Ray 27:46

you get to see my, like, little chamber therapist?

Brandon Burton 27:48

Exactly. They’re like, I get so many emails from the chamber. I probably got it. But you know, yeah, I deleted or I just opened it moved on. So yeah, being able to segment make it highly personable, I think it’s so important. And that’s, that’s the age we’re in today. Anyway, I mean, if you’re just doing a blanket email, there’s, there’s a purpose for it, you know, at times, but if that’s your only communications, a blanket email, you’re missing the boat, and you’re missing opportunities to connect with members. So yeah,

Sara Ray 28:17

and our ultimate goal is to, for people to have value in what we do, right? Like the end game is for someone to say that they got what they were looking for out of their membership. And if you have simple tools in place to be able to pinpoint that so a year in you can say, Hey, you said you wanted information on policy, or you wanted us to go to bat for you, as the voice of business in our community, you can go back on that and say, You, this was what you you know, this is what you said you find value in here. Here is how we took that, like, let’s talk about that. So being heard is so important for businesses.

Brandon Burton 28:52

How do you use the information that you get? I’m calling it segmenting, just for maybe lack of a better term? How do you use that information to create content or plan future events? Do you ever look into it to weigh that into what you’re doing?

Sara Ray 29:08

Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, so think of Okay, so we’ve had events, okay. Our breakfast series is a great example. So we used to have a, you know, you know, just a networking breakfast. It was just putting people in a room together. And that was it. Like there was no agenda. I mean, we will get up give door prizes, you know, that normal kind of, Hey, everyone, thanks for coming. And we shifted that and based off of feedback from people saying, you know, what are you doing for minority owned businesses? Why can we have women’s programming we’ve done you know, we did surveys and focus groups talked with our board, of course, and then we’re able to create those events and then solicit feedback on Did you like this, what did you think? And then just continue to craft our programming to meet the needs of our members? You know, we’re a member driven organization as all chambers should be, and so meeting the needs of what our business is our and that looks very different than two years ago, it looks very different than 10 years ago. So just continuing, you know, I am, I am always a proponent of new and different, and sometimes I think exhausts my team. But at the same time, the things that were relevant, you know, three or four years ago are very different. Now, we were never in a space where we thought we’d be relying on Zoom to do, you know, a majority of our work for six or eight months, so. So I think just being open minded and nimble listening to your members, and then and then being okay with adapting and changing, you don’t have to go and completely rebrand your whole organization, you can do it in small spaces, do a beta test of something, try it out, see if people like it, get their feedback. And then you can look at expanding that. So we do a lot in that space of trying things with small groups of people before we pull it into a larger space.

Brandon Burton 30:49

Yeah. And I think as you gather that information on what their expectations are, as they join the chamber, you’re able to then speak their language. And then when it comes time to renew memberships, it’s very hard for them to say, you know, the Chamber didn’t do anything for me, I didn’t see any value out of the chair, if you’re sending them those direct communications and talking to them in exactly what they’re looking for. So yeah, I hope everyone’s taking notes. Yeah, and

Sara Ray 31:15

I think you one more thing, because you asked me about like sharing information, articles and things that you’re what we’ve what we do is we do a lot of alcohol, like inbound marketing. So sharing resources, I’ve always been a firm believer, we don’t have to be the doer of all things, or the creator of all things. So we have a huge focus on building partnerships with other organizations. So we have a great partnership with the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, right? We have, I’m going to call it a language barrier with dealing with our Hispanic business community, they are successful at that. So why would we sit and recreate the wheel in bringing that into the mix. So we have a lot of content that we gather from our members, subject matter experts, we partner with our colleges and universities, you know, they’ve great economists that work at colleges and universities, why not lean on them to do our economic development reports and things of that nature. So I think that that’s very important. Even with trainings and professional development opportunities for businesses, you don’t have to create things. It’s it’s even thought more highly of if you partner with others, so we have gone that direction. Our new our new tagline is where partnerships and businesses thrive, because that’s the environment that we try to create. So it’s a lot easier to than trying to recreate the wheel on things.

Brandon Burton 32:27

That’s right. I love that. So as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you what might be one tip or action item for chamber champion listening that they could do at their chamber to help take them up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Sara Ray 32:40

Yes, um, so I would say, and this is a super simple Hey, friend, email that basically anybody can send out is send an email out, I did this, I tried to do it about once a year. But send out an email to your membership and from from your executive, or whomever you deem that you think would have the baby could even be your board chair, and ask them how you what, you know, kind of three questions What what are you getting from us that you love? What are some things that you need from us? And what can we do differently? You know, and just get that feedback from them. It doesn’t have to be this highly calculated survey. And again, if you go with that personal approach of how can I best support you? I guarantee I remember the first time I did, I got like, 300 emails back and I was inundated, but took the time to respond. And because it was coming from me, it wasn’t again, this, it doesn’t have to be this robust, well thought out process, just zap out an email, ask them how they’re doing how you can best support is there anything I can do to support your business? And you’ll be amazed at the results that you get, it’s super simple, but I promise you, like people find value in that kind of thing.

Brandon Burton 33:47

Absolutely. lets them be heard. Yeah, yes, that’s awesome. Then you

Sara Ray 33:51

can just make a list. And then you know, and you have your marching orders for the things that you can look at adapting and changing. So yeah, and listen and listen to them. And share that information back with your members is also important. Don’t just take it all and keep it in a dropbox folder somewhere, share out with people what, what, you know what your membership is saying. So,

Brandon Burton 34:09

for sure. So as we look to the future, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Sara Ray 34:18

Oh, um, you know, I’m sure you’ve chatted with my buddy Casey Steinbacher. Before. She is a great friend of mine. And, you know, she preaches a lot about going from being relevant to being essential. And I think that and I have others that have kind of lived in that space. And I feel like that’s the environment. The things that we have done in the past, as far as chambers go, you know, think 30 years ago, chambers used to be the place that did parades and you know, they might have done ribbon cuttings every now and then. And now we have chambers that are moving the needle in Washington DC advocating on behalf of businesses and helping businesses stay afloat, you know, during the pandemic. So I think I think where I see it going is just continuing to move into that space of being essential. And that looks different for every community. And for every business. You know, during the pandemic, I had a business that was it, they it’s like a kind of like a farm of like a petting zoo farm. And she needed to feed the alpacas on her farm. And the only way she raised revenue to do that was by having visitors and she couldn’t. So helping her figure out what was essential to her helped her us be essential to her. Does that make sense? So. So I think that where we’re headed is into a space of, I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s a space of humanity, it’s listening to people, it’s talking to them. It’s providing a space where they can have those open, honest, intentional conversations, whether that’s about diversity, or whether that’s about you know, growing a company, I think it’s just giving people that personalized attention, where they feel that there is not another option than to be a part of the chamber. I think that that’s kind of the direction that we’re headed in. And that looks different for every business, and it looks different for every community. Yeah, it’s been open to that, too, is important.

Brandon Burton 36:07

I love that you brought up Casey, and in her book, you know, relevant to essential. And if anybody hasn’t read it, it’s a it’s an e book. So look it up on Amazon. terrific book, but I mean, she talks about being relevant to your members becoming essential to your community, which really changes perspective, as you read through the book and read, you know, see the ideas that she shares in there. Yeah, changes perspective. So thank you for that. What would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you if they have any questions about, you know, how you’re doing things their communication wise, or they couldn’t keep up with what’s the best way to reach out,

Connect with Sara Ray

Sara Ray 36:48

I get excited, and I talk fast. So I would say the easiest way is on LinkedIn. And it’s just my LinkedIn profile, you can search at Sara Ray. You can also get to us through our very snazzy new chamber website. It’s DouglasCountyGeorgia.com. Or I’m happy to share my information with you. It’s ray@douglascountygeorgia.com is my email where you can look you can look me up anywhere.

Brandon Burton 37:14

That’s right. And we’ll get all your contact information in the show notes for this episode, which will be at ChamberChatPodcast.com/episode166. But Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and talking to all the Chamber Champions about this great work that you’re doing and really moving your your chamber forward with your communication channels, and really being more essential to the businesses in your community. I appreciate that.

Sara Ray 37:40

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 37:43

Brandon Burton 33:56
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Advocate as the Voice of Business

You Have Seen One Chamber

As the old saying goes “if you have seen one chamber, you have seen one chamber.” I understand that every community has different needs. They are different sizes and have different problems. They also have different things that make them uniquely great. I often wonder about the confusion of business owners who belong to multiple chambers.

Hypothetically, a business could be a member of a larger, more robust chamber that has multiple events each week and several ways to educate and market their business members. This same business (maybe a secondary location) could also be a member of a more rural chamber who has a totally different vibe. Both chambers are doing what they feel is best for their community. However, this hypothetical chamber member is having a very different experience with each of these organizations.

Common Member Experience

One way that every chamber could offer a similar experience for each of their members is through advocacy. Many chambers claim to be the voice of business for their community but what does that mean? Do their members know what that means for their business?

Some chambers tend to shy away from jumping into the advocacy arena for fear of offending people. They may worry about losing funding from a city contract or a large sponsor. Some worry about losing members because of the chambers stance on a topic.

Advocacy Creates the Voice of Business

If chambers could agree to represent the voice of business in their communities by promoting pro-business candidates and policies, then their members would better understand the value that they get from their chamber. They would understand why the chamber is branded as the voice of business.

During election season, I have seen chambers invite local candidates to be interviewed on the chamber’s podcast. This provides a platform for residents to hear the ideas each candidate offers up, especially as it relates to business in their community. (If you are interested in starting a podcast for your chamber, see my free resources at chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.)

I really like the idea of chambers in the same region banding together to support certain causes. This way as you advocate at your county or state levels, you can leverage the numbers of businesses who feel a certain way about proposed legislation that would impact their business. You can do this type of advocacy on your own, but a regional effort carries a much larger impact. This could even be taken to a national level as you bring chambers together across your state, province, or territory.

Advocacy Examples

I recently did a podcast interview with Marc Cohen, Chief of Staff at the Greater Rochester Chamber in New York. Marc offered up a great tip that may serve you well with your advocacy efforts. He suggested rather than trying to meet with the elected official, it is very effective to connect with a member of their staff instead. It is often easier to get a meeting with one of the staff members than it is to sit down with the elected official. If you can successfully create a relationship with the staff member, then you can create a great advocate on the inside.

When I visited with Roy William, and Brad Hicks on Chamber Chat Podcast, they both mentioned the great value of their chambers having political action committees. Setting up a P.A.C. requires more commitment and legal help but it can also become another source of revenue for your organization.

Here is a list of some ideas of ways to incorporate advocacy at your chamber. You may be doing some of these things already, and this list is not exhaustive by any means.

Learn about proposed legislation, taxes, regulations, or expiring regulations.
Talk to your business community/take polls about the expected impact of these proposals.
Look up who all of your local, county, and state elected officials are and start introducing yourself and your chamber to these leaders and explain who you represent. Write them each an email of encouragement and optimism of working together with them to represent their constituents in your community.
Coordinate letter writing and phone campaigns to show support or displeasure for certain proposals.
Organize or join a group on a regional or state level with other chambers to leverage your numbers.
Interview candidates in a forum to share their views to inform voters.
Endorse pro-business candidates and policies.
Consider creating or supporting a political action committee.

Summary

Your chamber does not need to set up a P.A.C. to make an impact advocating for the businesses in your community. But you should be doing something to make the voice of business heard in your area. I would encourage you to not let fear deter you from standing up for what is right for your business owners, their employees, and their families. Hold public forums, conduct interviews on your chamber’s podcast, YouTube, or Facebook page. Conduct polls to get real feedback from your business community. All of this will allow you to collect the information you need to help pro-business policies and candidates thrive in your community.

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