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Category: Innovation

Chambers Leveraging AI with Kaytee Lorentzen

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

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

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kaytee Lorentzen. Kaytee is the Director of Communications and events at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. She spearheads the Chamber’s multifaceted marketing communications initiative engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders including Chamber members, the public media board and staff members. Her role involves closely collaborating with every department to craft coherent and compelling communication and marketing materials that cater to their unique needs. Beyond communications, she meticulously organizes and oversees the myriad of events that the Chamber orchestrates ensuring that they align with the organization’s objectives and standards. Kaytee has been a part of the chamber team since May of 2021, initially as a marketing and communications coordinator before stepping into the role as marketing and communications manager in January 2023, and subsequently evolving into her current position in September 2023. Before joining the chamber as a staff member, she was a member of the chamber with her photography business for four years. Kaytee holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from Ball State University. She’s a graduate from the Indiana chamber Executives Association, who’s your chamber Academy in June 2022, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Purdue University. And Kaytee, I am very excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I would love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Kaytee Lorentzen 3:37
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on. I’ve been listening to your podcast ever since I have been a chamber professional. So I was super excited to get this opportunity. You helped me grow into this position. So I appreciate that. And everyone that’s been on the podcast as well. Just a little something interesting about myself. That isn’t in my bio. If I had a you know, a separate universe life, then I probably would have been a detective. I love true crime stuff. It’s kind of weird. Much I Love it. But even growing up I was, you know, doing forensics, trying to figure out fingerprinting and putting clues together. So that is what, but I would be in a different life. That’s

Brandon Burton 4:21
That is interesting. And there’s something to that the thrill of solving a mystery. You know, my my wife, she works at our kids elementary school. She’s the front desk receptionist and every now and then she’ll come home from work and say, I should have a detective badge. Like my GED today, you know, usually it’s some you know, kid in the neighborhood that’s caused some mischief, and they get caught on a ring doorbell camera or something. So the police will bring it to the school and say Do you recognize this kid? So she solves the mysteries. But there’s there’s something to that at the thrill of solving a mystery for sure. Oh,

Kaytee Lorentzen 4:55
yeah, like watching it on television shows I’m all about okay, I wonder if this happens. Next. Right,

Brandon Burton 5:01
right. Well tell us a little bit more about the greater Bloomington chamber just to give us an idea of the size staff scope of work. The tight you know, what kind of work you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 5:14
absolutely. So the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce is located in Bloomington, Indiana. We are the home of Indiana University. So go Hoosiers, which is very ironic considering I go to Purdue University for graduate education. We Are Rivals so that’s really fun to be a part of. But the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, we have six full time staff members and one part time staff. And all ton of interns. Currently we have one high school intern to undergrad scholar intern. So they’ll be with us for all four of their undergrad years, and two grad fellows which are also going to be with us for their whole grad program. So that’s how many we have a ton of people here. And we have about 850 members currently, Bloomington itself, the size is about 80,000 people. And then Monroe County, which is the county that Bloomington resides in is about 140,000 we say we are the greater Bloomington So yes, we do have a lot of Bloomington businesses but also more Monroe County and surrounding.

Brandon Burton 6:25
Very good that that definitely helps to give some perspective and even going through your bio just in the marketing communications as you’ve had different roles, shows you guys are you’ve got to you’ve got a good amount of staff and get a good team there to work with. So that’s awesome. Well, our topic that we’ve settled on for today is very relevant and timely for all the buzz that’s going around right now around chat GPT and AI and generative AI and so we’re gonna dive in deeper in that discussion today. Katie has done some some great presentations on this at different conferences. So we’re going to kind of tap into her her wealth of knowledge to be able to share some of that, with all you chamber pros as we as we move forward in this conversation. We’ll dive into that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:03
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Brandon Burton 9:57
All right, Kaytee, we are back And so I’m excited to learn how you’re using generative AI and just AI in general, as a chamber professional, where you see the use cases and where it’s helped to save you time make your job easier. And does it save you time at this point? You know, or is it just the learning and everything, but it ends up making your job easier. I’d love just to hear how you’re integrating this. And hopefully spark some ideas for listeners maybe want to explore some of these aspects of utilizing AI at their chamber.

Kaytee Lorentzen 10:32
Absolutely. So first and foremost, like artificial intelligence is just this plethora of things. So it pretty much all ultimately is intended to make computers do things that when done by people are described as having indicated intelligence. So I was very skeptical at first, I’m not one of those people who typically jump on bandwagons. So in November of last year, or sorry, to it would be November 2022. At that point, when it came out, I was like, I don’t know about this chat. GBT, it kind of seems a little not in my realm. Then I tried it. All I did was just asked a few questions. And I was like, wow, I just opened the door to something that’s going to make my life so much easier, just by asking it simple questions. And the more I’ve been using it, the more I have learned how to write the prompts that are necessary for it to generate the kind of answers that I’m meeting. So for example, the one thing I use it a lot for is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. It sounds very dated, and some of its not customer focused. And that’s more of what it needs to be. You want it to say, like I asked it, this is what we currently have on our website for our membership benefits. Can you rewrite this in more of a customer focused realm or point of view, and also give some examples of why it’s important for somebody to join the Chamber of Commerce. And they will give you a full list like, a lot of the time, if you ask it for list, it’ll give it to you. And now that I’ve used it so much, it thinks that I like list all the time. So it will continuously give me list until I say please stop putting into the list. I just need a paragraph. Yeah. And then it typically apologizes. It goes, Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me fix that for you. Right, right. The big thing that I’m doing right now is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. I’ve also used it for social media copy. I’ve even asked it to create social, like a social media plan. Small Business Week was something I was like, Okay, I want to do something different. I don’t just want to say, yeah, it’s Small Business Week, let’s celebrate small business. Let’s actually make some sort of content with it. And so it was able to give me five different days of social media content that all I had to do was just pretty much copy and paste and find some graphics and photos to go with it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:59
So talk to us a little bit more about rewriting the website copy. Are you literally are you copy and pasting paragraphs from your website, login in chat? GPT? Are you able to give a link to the website and say, scan this page? And tell me how how does that interface work for those listening?

Kaytee Lorentzen 13:15
Yeah, it depends on what program you’re using, and what version of the program you’re using. I know, some websites will do that. But not all of them, like I primarily use to actually btw and chat GPT for. So I use the paid version. But I don’t put a link in there. I literally copy and paste the exact information so that way I like because a lot of our content is pretty long website page. So I just was like, No, I just want this section rewritten in this point of view, and then obviously, the main thing is, I always say, double check, it’s work. Because you never know what is gonna pop out and you want to edit it. I don’t ever think that you should copy and paste directly from whatever chat GBT or you know, whatever generative AI system you’re using, you need to go in and, like have oversight, it gets you 80% of the way there. But you need to go in and edit and finesse it and make it more your voice.

Brandon Burton 14:16
Yes, so you shared your experience in November of 20 I guess it’s 2022 right when chat GPT was made public and available for everybody to use. And I remember going to Thanksgiving dinner my brother in law was like Oh, you gotta check this out. And he’s he’s a very loud in your face kind of person anyway, so he’s shoving his phone everybody’s facing you ask it a question and just very excited about it and like, Okay, calm down. You know, so I asked him a few questions and and really the responses I got back because I was asking business related questions. You know, how can I create a social media posts from my podcast or tell me about a chamber of commerce, like what Chambers of Commerce do and just that feedback I was getting from it initially. You needed to verify, you know, the stuff it was kicking out. And granted, this is Chad GBT three. So it wasn’t it hadn’t scanned, you know nearly as much of the of the web and things like that. But an example of just this last week, I’ve got a daughter in fifth grade, she came home with a math problem in her homework that she wasn’t able to figure out. And my, I think it was my son who’s a senior single as chat GPT. And, like, first of all, it seems like cheating or, and then your homework to plug it in. But like, we worked through the problem, got the answer? And then I’m like, I’m gonna try this, you know. So I asked chat GBT exactly how the question was on the homework. And immediately it spit back an answer. And it wasn’t the right answer. So I gave it some clarifying, you know, prompts along with it, then it apologize, spit back and other answer, and it never came up with the right answer. And after verifying, like more and more of the criteria with it, it kept apologizing, but then we kept giving me the same answer over and over. And like, okay, and this is still catch up three GPT 3.5. So it wasn’t the paid version, maybe that would have gotten me better results, but goes to the point of you need to verify you can’t just trust everything that it puts out as being doctrine, like you got to, you got to really read it, you got to make sure it’s accurate. And some may say, Well, does that really save you time then? So how would you approach that with if you need to verify everything? How does that aspect work and time saving, or you know, the application into real world scenarios?

Kaytee Lorentzen 16:36
I think it varies on what you’re planning on using chat GPT for so if you’re using it for research, that can definitely still take you some more time, it hasn’t been able to scan everything, and it’s still learning, it’s still, you know, it’s still a child, and it’s learning new tech. Yeah, it’s still a baby, it’s still trying to figure out what it’s doing. But for me, I use it more for things that I know are fact based, like hard numbers type of thing. I use it more for like the colorful language. For an example, there was one way someone emailed us and I was trying to explain to them, I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say. But also saying it in a much better way. Because right, there are some times where your brain just you know, when that clicker icon just keeps going on a blink word screen. That’s how I felt with this. I was like, I don’t know how to say this. So I just asked chat GPT. And it gave me a much better way of writing it. That actually was exactly what I wanted to say. But I just didn’t have the words or the sound mind at that point. I think it was like 430 on a Friday or something. And it put it all together and flowed nicely. So that was something I more use it for is earliest for chatty BTW I use it more for that aspect. Even if you asked it to give you a source, sometimes it makes it up. So but at least if you can look up and see if that source even exists. And that sometimes works. I think I’ve only used it a few times with statistics. And then what I’ll do is I’ll just copy and paste this statistic that it gives me and look up where it is in Google. Yeah, just to verify, make sure that’s fine. But yeah, it varies, because I’ve also heard similar situations with homework, where someone it was I think it was NPR that I was listening to. And they were saying, Well, my daughter was doing homework. And they and I’m a history major. And it asked if this particular person in history was pro separation of church and state or against it, and it gave the wrong answer. And they were like, That’s not right. So I if you ever ask it fact, based information like that, then I would at least just copy and paste what it gave you and ask it as much question as you can to get where they got it from, quote unquote. And then you can find it on the internet pretty quickly. So

Brandon Burton 19:10
is there a value to giving it feedback to say that’s not a correct answer? Or yes, I’m gonna challenge the answer a little.

Kaytee Lorentzen 19:18
I think so because it’s learning based off of what you are giving it as well. So like if you there’s even after every single prompts that it gives you, was this, what you were looking for? Was this not and then there’s a thumbs up, thumbs down and you just put that in there it actually is teaching it. That’s another way that it’s learning on giving the correct answers. So if other people start asking similar questions or something like that, it’s it’s now learning based off of our responses, right, right.

Brandon Burton 19:49
And I think you know, although some of the information you get may not be totally accurate need to verify if you’re having some writer’s block going on or looking for ideas Just to be able to put a prompt in and receive, you know, a ton of ideas and, you know, pretty much instantaneously, things that will get those creative juices going in your mind, again, that I’ve heard it said that it’s not to replace your own thinking in your own mind, but it’s to supplement it’s to add to what you’re already doing. Yes. Yeah. I know, in an example that I had, there was a chamber professional that I mentioned, how much they enjoy the podcast, and you know, very nice email about what they have appreciated. So this is great. Would you mind putting this as a review on Apple podcasts? And they try it and try it couldn’t figure it out? Like, can you tell me how to leave a review? Like, let me ask Chet GPT. So I just did, how do you leave a review for by and just copy and paste it? And I could have typed the response and said, Here’s how you do it. But to look up each, you know, the website and give a link and here and there and back and forth? Just that plug it in chat? GPT it was all right, copy, paste, send and it was done. And it was easy. It was easy.

Kaytee Lorentzen 21:05
Yeah, as long as you just review it and be like, Yeah, that’s exactly how you do it, then you can just copy and paste, which is nice. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. Even for scripts for videos that we do. I’ve asked it to make it you can even ask it. Can you make this more of a TED Talk style, and it will completely read rewrite it? I did that actually the first time I presented this at the Indiana chamber Executives Association Conference. Hi, how do you write my intro? I didn’t like how it was like, have a we tried TED Talk style? Yeah, very different. It was, it almost felt like when you were reading it out loud, exactly how it starts. Right. Any TED Talk? So

Brandon Burton 21:50
maybe let’s talk about that a little bit about the prompts that we put into to any AI, generative AI assistant. What kind of things do we need to consider? Because I think we’re very much a lot of the public is very much still in the mindset of Google, right? You put in? What is this? He put in a question, get a response. So talk to us about a prompt, and maybe becoming a prompt engineer, so to speak.

Kaytee Lorentzen 22:17
Yes, yes. So that is something I’ve definitely been trying to hone my skills on, is learning how to create the best prompts. I always say, garbage in, garbage out. So whatever. If you give it like subpar information, it’s going to give you a subpar answer. So you want to make sure that it has as much information as you can possibly give it. Like if you’re trying to make a all do something pretty simple, like a social media post, if you tell it your audience exactly who it’s supposed to cater to, you can even tell it more of like your customer persona, it will give you a much better answer and a less generic answer, it’ll become more personalized. So that’s a lot of the time why I copy and paste a lot of our content when I’m asking it to rewrite it. So I say take this and move it to something more like this other thing. So that could be you know, saying it needs it needs to have more colorful language, can you make it sound more professional, this needs to be more towards small business owner, not necessarily the big business, so you can change up exactly what you’re wanting it to do. But the more specific the better it is.

Brandon Burton 23:37
Yeah. So as you’re given that response reminds me I had recently read a book called The AI whispers method. And it it’s a, it’s an AI generative fiction novel. So it takes the whole hero storyline and plugs it into to teach you how to use AI. And it talks a lot about generating prompts. And even asking, like, for example, with Chet GPT, to act as a math teacher or act as a math professor to give me an answer to this problem or act as a sports historian and tell me why, you know, this scenario is happening or so being able to get that context of act as if or act as a different, you know, expert in different fields, it’s able to tap into different resources and really understand what it is that you’re looking for. So as I played around with that there’s a lot of power in the act as prompt when you plug that into chat. GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 24:45
Absolutely. That’s actually something I do for our customer journey type of thing. I said to chat GPT act as if you are a brand new business. You’ve never heard of the Chamber of Commerce. You We are interested in it because someone mentioned that it’s a great thing to join, why should they join? What are their pain points? What are their objectives? What are the rebuttals to those objectives? So you can really start tailoring your content to better address their pain points and why you’re the solution to their problems.

Brandon Burton 25:19
Right. I love that. So let’s, let’s maybe circle back a little bit more to the generative AI. Discussion. So you mentioned you, you’ve used it to rewrite website content, you use it for social media posts. What other applications are you seeing in the chamber world, specifically for using generative AI? That

Kaytee Lorentzen 25:40
is a fabulous question. So for me, I have been using it more obviously, for the marketing aspect of it. I’ve even asked it to write event descriptions. So what makes people come into the event more? What makes it more appealing, besides just saying, you know, come to this chamber event at this day, on this time at this place, we look forward to expanding your network hope to see you there. It sounds the exact same every single time. So how do I change it up and make it sound more exciting? What makes that chamber member have to be at that event. So I use that a lot for to change up the descriptions. I’ve also asked it to make correct like full social media campaigns, not just the captions itself. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the market research different emails to members. So like how, like, if you’re saying I want people to fill out this survey, what makes someone fill out this, if you ask to attribute it, right, this email, enticing people to fill out this survey that doesn’t. Obviously, we’re all nonprofits, we don’t have a whole lot of money to give out as an incentive. So without incentives, I’m creating different types of plans for customer journeys. The one that I’ve used the most often is writing up ours, we have a sponsorship book that we do all at one time, kind of like why GM does. And so I’ve asked it to rewrite our sponsorship book and why people should sponsor it and why it’s important to sponsor it. And then lately, I have noticed AI disclosures on your website, writing a disclaimer for your website, we actually didn’t have quite a few like the privacy policies, those things that you’re supposed to have on your website. And so I was like, I’m gonna see if Chad GPD can come up with something very like simple and then obviously run it by our lawyer, just to make sure everything sounds great. But it really helps take out a lot of the guesswork for us. We didn’t have to do you know, how many hours of research trying to make sure that what we had in there? Would it be? Sound for us to use, even if it’s just like a blanket one? I think ours is our AI disclaimer is probably two paragraphs, just saying, you know, we use AI, there are things that may be generated by AI that come out here, but there’s always human oversight, ultimately, is what it says but in some more legalese term. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:15
Like that. So I guess that brings up a good talk at a good point to talk about as well, where I know I’ve been at chamber conferences and breakout sessions you you lead some these breakout sessions, where we talk about AI? And the question always comes up as far as the legality, the copyright issues if you’re especially like image generation, right? So if you’re asking generative AI to produce an image for you, who owns the rights to that, is there copyright issues if you’re bringing in certain elements into that? So if you would speak a little bit to the legality and regulations around AI and what we need to kind of be aware of and kind of look out for as we kind of navigate through this new world of artificial intelligence?

Kaytee Lorentzen 29:03
Absolutely. This is definitely something we need. As chamber professionals. If you’re using AI just to keep up to date on there are quite a few websites that you can track legislation. And there’s a lot on AI. Currently, right now, as of August 30, of 2023, the US Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register on copyright. And AR pretty much just means they’re going to be studying it to see kind of whether legislation or regulatory steps are even warranted, and also just steps to advise Congress on any legislation that does come through. But anything right now made by something other than human is not protected by copyright. So if I like the API disclosure I was talking about I can’t if someone else wanted to copy and paste it and use it, they legally can. And I can’t cry that that’s copyright. So that’s it. One thing that we have to look at, right now a lot of people are getting frustrated with the image portion of it, I haven’t used that aspect too much, because I still feel like there is a lot of stock photo that I can use in that aspect. And I don’t need to just create an image that we don’t have. But other people are saying that it’s very unfair to the artists, which I do, as someone who’s a photographer, I get that completely. And it takes, you know, scanning my work to use someone else’s yet that’s not exactly something I’m a fan of. But I am interested to see where that’s going to be going and legislations and any what Congress is planning on doing on that. And I do think that they’re in a very interesting position right now. And I think they do need to take that whole issue very seriously, that AI is here, and it’s going to, it’s, you know, people are still scared of it. But it was very similar to like, when the internet happened, it, everyone was scared of it, it was this big thing that everyone’s like, this is going to change the world. It did. But now if we look back, if you don’t have a website, you’re not really relevant. Or you’re not considered trustworthy. So if that’s something similar what AI is gonna do, that’s, I’m just very interested to see where it’s gonna go, what regulations we’re gonna have. So just keeping up to date, making sure that we are using it legally, then that is something that we do need to do, and do our due diligence on it, as you know, people that are in the community seen as a trustworthy and leader.

Brandon Burton 31:42
Yeah, for sure. Now, it’s definitely important to keep that on the forefront with any legislation that comes out. But I think to your point with the internet, you know, if you didn’t adopt the internet and have a website, now, you’re kind of irrelevant. And I see a very similar course with AI. And just the AI technology has been adopted quicker than any other technology in the history of mankind. I don’t know, besides like the fire, maybe I don’t know. But. But as far as the technology goes, it’s been adopted very quickly. And I could easily see in five or 10 years maybe doesn’t even take that long, that there’s going to be two types of chambers, right? There’s going to be the ones that use AI and the ones that are no longer around, essentially, because they’re not relevant. And they’re not able to really leverage the power that comes from Ai, especially when you’re dealing with limited budgets, and being nonprofits and all that. There’s a lot of leverage. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 32:38
and I completely understand why it would seem intimidating or scary at first, because I was in that same exact boat. But as soon as I tried it, I was very surprised at the fact that I felt like it was something that anyone and everyone can use. Even if you’re just asking simple questions like, can you give me a recipe for a very simple meal like something, it’s something you can just play around with and have fun. And the more you use it, the more you find things that you can use it for? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:09
I’ve heard people will take, you know, just random ingredients they have in the refrigerator and say I’ve got these seven ingredients, give me a recipe of something, I can make it it’ll do it. So where would you suggest somebody gets started with a journey in AI and just kind of getting their mind wrapped around it? Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 33:28
I would say just pick up like one or any of the generative AI tools that we have available. Google’s version is Bard. And then there’s chat GPT. There’s all just, obviously, Google, because Google or cert, go in your search engine, and ask it for a generative AI tool, and just start asking it questions. And the more you do it, the more you’ll get better at asking the I don’t want to write questions, but better questions, you refine the questions, you refine the questions to get the answers that you’re looking for. And then you start, that’s when your wheels start turning and figuring out where can I apply this in my professional life? Right.

Brandon Burton 34:10
So I didn’t give you a heads up that I was going to ask you this question. So if we need to edit it out, we can but I’m curious. What are you excited about on the forefront that you see coming with AI in the next weeks, months years?

Kaytee Lorentzen 34:24
I’m just excited to see the evolution of where it’s going. It just reminds me of like when the first iPhone came out, like and just seeing how it evolves and where it’s at now that it’s pretty much a part of our daily lives. If you’re an Apple user, obviously. It’s something that I am just excited to see where it’s gonna go. I’m excited to see how our legislation will take this and you hopefully use it for the good obviously, there’s always some bad actors, but I think Oh, For all this is going to be something that’s extremely well received in, in our world. Right?

Brandon Burton 35:07
I think there’s just a world of opportunity available. And quite honestly, I don’t know if legislation can keep up with the trends and the way things will develop. But we need to be plugged in and not be burying our head in the sand pretending like it’ll go away because it’s not going to go away. Well, Katie, as we look to the future, actually, let me back up before I ask that question for a chamber who’s listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share for them to try to accomplish that goal?

Kaytee Lorentzen 35:42
I would say, the tip to use is embrace playing. I know that sounds so weird, but embrace that it’s something new embrace change, it will make a world of a difference. Because I can even tell you even in my office, as soon as people started embracing this tool, it was a game changer. Like our membership director, she now uses that a lot to help personalize each individual sales email, instead of just having like this copy and paste mentality of the same type of email, she can personalize it a lot more saying, this is the industry this person is in. And now she says that she really can’t go without it. Our operations manager uses it to help create some Excel documents, like it’s different things, the more you play with it, and embrace the change that it can bring, the better I think we’ll all be.

Brandon Burton 36:41
Absolutely, it reminds me. Last year, our church, we were putting together a fundraiser for our youth program at church. And I was trying to get the text together for the flyers that we’re gonna go out and promote on social media and everything. And I was just having the hardest time trying to make all the words fit on this flyer without being crowded and like telling what we’re trying to accomplish. And I told my wife, this Super Chat GPT will say I plug it in, give it the prompts, and it spit back and answer those beautiful, perfect, and we use that going forward. Like if I would have just done that from the beginning, it would have saved me so much time and headache and just beating my head against a wall trying to figure something out. That wasn’t coming to me. And it was it’s a great tool. So I would encourage everybody to embrace the play and embrace the change. Because I think initially, you and I both had this similar initial reactions I get I’ll know about this chat GPT steps, the more you get into it, you see more and more applications where it can assist you and make your life a little bit easier. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kaytee Lorentzen 37:53
You know, it’s funny as I was like, you know, how do I answer? Because I knew this one was coming, right? Because I hear from everyone. So I asked chat GPT what they thought. And it gave me a gave me a list of nine different things. But I would like to kind of summarize what because a lot of it is things that I thought of but I was like how do I make this sound? Great. I do see a lot of the future of chambers using innovation and technology adaptation, obviously, for me using AI and GPT. I do see that. And I think with that we will become leaders in the business space in general. I think it will bring forward I’m trying to think of the correct word that I want to use. But it will bring forward this leadership of how the standard should be set on business and how they can embrace it as well. And I think that we’ll have a lot of Gosh, I’m trying to figure out

Brandon Burton 39:04
here, but you can plug it as chat GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:09
Pretty much yeah, just focusing on the technological changes focusing on small business and it’s going to just help leverage that and just, you know, promote this business atmosphere that I think will be that will occur encourage all of that.

Brandon Burton 39:33
Yeah, I can definitely see that and we need to be embrace the innovation that comes with technology. Yes.

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:43
You pretty much said exactly what I was wanting to say. All

Brandon Burton 39:45
right, well, whether you know it or not, you said it at some point in there because I wrote it down and he said well, Katie, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more, maybe Do you see some of the slides or anything you’ve shared at different conferences or whatever you’re willing to share and help out with them? What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Kaytee Lorentzen 40:09
The best way is probably through either email or through LinkedIn. So my email is just klorentzen@chamberbloomington.org. And my LinkedIn, you can just find me, Katie Lorentzen, and I spell it differently. So I’ll spell it here for you guys. It is Kaytee and then my last name Lorentzen. And either a message on either of those are typically the best way to get a hold of me just because I am all over the place. And my phone is always on me. So those two apps right there for me.

Brandon Burton 40:45
That’s perfect. And we’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can pull that up and have easy access to reach out. But I appreciate all the value you offered to listeners today here on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experience of exploring and being innovative using generative AI and I just, you know, it’ll be fun to look back at this episode a year from now and be like, Wow, things have really advanced in the last year. So I know I’m excited. Yeah, but thank you for being with us today. This has been a fun and enlightening conversation. So thank you.

Kaytee Lorentzen 41:18
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 41:19
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Data & Technology with Jaime di Paulo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Jaime de Paulo. Jaime is President and CEO of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a prominent organization dedicated to networking advocating for and developing the Hispanic business community in the Midwest. Since assuming leadership and 2019. Jaime has spearheaded numerous initiatives and collaborations positioning ahcc as a finalist in the 13th world chambers Congress, the largest economic forum for chambers and businesses worldwide. Jaime’s exceptional exceptional leadership and contributions have garnered recognition and accolades. He became a distinguished member of the Economic Club of Chicago and infinite influential organization connecting leaders in Chicago’s economic circles. The government of Mexico officially acknowledged him as one of the most influential Mexican Americans in the Midwest, highlighting his significance with the region’s economic landscape. Moreover, he received the 2022 American Mexican Association’s Leader of the Year Award, which celebrates his dedication to the community and his role within the broader Latino community. Driven by his commitment to empowering Latino entrepreneurs, Jaime has worked to strengthen the Latin X incubator program in collaboration with 1871, a renowned business incubator. This initiative supports young Hispanic tech companies, fostering innovation and providing them with opportunities to secure capital funds. Outside of his professional pursuits, Jaime is married and is a proud father of three sons and a daughter. Hi, man, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Jaime di Paulo 4:01
thank you, Brandon. I want to thank you first for inviting me to this wonderful chat and thanks to the listeners because we are out there doing the good work or that empowers more businesses. And, you know, feel proud of what we do. I mean, I would just sharing with you that the Our job is very significant, and it means a lot to small businesses. So kudos to all my chamber colleagues out there listening. You know, I was born in while I had I Mexico, I grew up in the United States. My father was American. And you know, when I was when I went to high school, I went back to Mexico, and I became a DJ. I was a renowned DJ back in the late 80s in that club in Acapulco called the baby oh, so some of you have been there some of you have not but if you compare it the baby oh, it was the comparison to studio 51 in New York City and next. So it’s a it was a big Back in the day, so you know, I lost my hair since then. But anyway,

Brandon Burton 5:05
that is awesome. I love getting these these fun facts about people and never would have guessed it. But that’s a, that is a great fact about you. So thank you. Well, tell us a little bit about the Illinois Hispanic Chamber, size of the chamber scope of work, kind of airy cover staff, that sort of thing. Just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Jaime di Paulo 5:29
We one of the bigger chambers around we have 19 staff members, and we’re about to hire eight more we just announced last week. So we just, you know, we do a lot of government contracting. Our main focus is making sure minority owned companies have access to government contracting, because we see that as the future of our companies to scale. So that’s the reason why we are a bigger chamber than the norm. We have for example, we have an SBDC. In our Office of Small Business Development Center, we have what is called a PTAC. It’s not it’s called Apex which is a Procurement Technical Assistance Center, which helps minority owned companies get certifications so that so they can access government contracting. We contract with the United States Department of Transportation, for example, we in Region eight with we represent six states we help minority owned companies access us do T contracts, including water and airports and, and you know, and highways and all that. And then we also have a big contract with the Illinois Tollway, which is the, the you know, the Tollway authority here in this in the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois. So we make sure minority owned companies get hired and started working for them to scale this company. So we are a little bit bigger than a normal chamber. We have all these programs in between that’s why we bigger we our budget is about five and a half million dollars a year including that one and a half million dollar grant thing that just got to the beginning of next year. So we are growing certainly, since I started with a seven employees now we are you know 19 plus a couple full times 27

Brandon Burton 7:09
Yeah, I was seven so we put a big. Wow. Yeah, you guys are rockin and rollin and get your work cut out for you. That’s That’s awesome. I love it. So personally, I’m excited to get into our topic for discussion today. And as we kind of went back and forth a little bit we focused on the the areas of data and technology. And I know those are kind of hot topics for individuals and chambers at this time, especially with the emergence of AI and you know all sorts of things in that realm. But we will dive in much deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:09
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:07
All right. Hi, me, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around data and technology. And I know as a chamber, it’s super important to be able to make data driven decisions, right as we go about, you know, working in our organizations and knowing what the course of action to take on different things. But I’d love to know how you guys are implementing data and technology. And I know they’re related, but also kind of separate at the same time. So feel free to just take us whatever direction you’d like there and and we’ll we’ll go down that path. Certainly,

Jaime di Paulo 11:42
we belong to a small niche group called the Aspen Institute that help us download data. I was in New York City last week with the McKenzie group, and they just released new data on the state of Latinos in the in the United States. So everything we do is related to that particular data. So we got to make sure we have a significant impact on that data. For example, when this when the SBA talks about small businesses, they’re talking about 500 employees or less is a quick fact that in nationally, Hispanic or Latino businesses are under 20 employees. So when the SBA talks about small businesses, we’re not I believe, we’re not even on the picture, because we’re so small, so Chambers of Commerce just becomes very, very relevant to help those businesses scale, right. So everything we do, every program that we implement, everything we do is related to data, we and then in the technology side, we are fortunate enough to have our our offices at 1871. If you Google 1871, you’re going to see is the one of the number one or two incubators for technology in the world for businesses. So our office is right there. And the where the technology is made with it, technology happens. And we believe in technology. And we also believe that minorities should have an opportunity to develop new technologies, new applications, or whatever are solutions, and have the venture capital injected into those companies. And because we are offices there at 1871, we’ve been able to move that up a little bit. For example, 90% of new technology companies a surface every day in the world are Hispanic owned, but what percent of those Hispanic owned 90% Get get capital injected to it. So there’s a big disparity. And so our job here is to make sure the venture capital gets injected into minority owned companies awesome. We realize the data for example, we created a policy institute in our chamber. And we figured out how to create a scorecard using artificial intelligence. And in because of our 30 years in business that we have, we have a lot of data. We actually know what a procurement means and everything in between. So every bill that comes to the state of Illinois, we track and then we can create a scorecard for our legislative elected officials. So now we know who’s our big champion and who is and who we got to work with AI in terms of legislation stuff, using artificial intelligence, web scraping and all these other tools and utilizing the same model. We match it into contracts, for example. Right, so now you’ve seen we create a program called Kodama, you mentioned I was in Geneva and the world in the world Chambers of Commerce symposium and this past summer and because of that particular program that week, that particular solution that we curated is called Kodama contract radar Maximizer, which basically it matches contracts with capability statements in seconds. You know, when I mentioned we 20 employees or less we are busy working, we don’t have the staff or the knowledge to go search for contracts or government contracts, right. So This tool is going to revolutionize how people, you know, access those contracts because now you have everything on your hand, you just give me your capability statement or match it with the technology. And we’ll put in front of you contracts. So you basically qualify for it. In seconds. We are testing it right now, we did a couple of pilot programs in Lake County in the northern Chicago, we working with the City of Chicago to disclose our spending money. So now we know what kind of bunch contracts are happening. So we gonna be able to match him with companies. So we are about to launch a nationally and this thing is going to be an incredible tool tool for me chamber to use to help their

Brandon Burton 15:38
whims. That’s awesome. He said, It’s called Kurama.

Jaime di Paulo 15:41
What am I CLR AMA, contract radar maximize your website is there.

Brandon Burton 15:51
So let’s hone in on that a little bit more. I mean, I’m just full of excitement as I hear you talk about that and match in the contracts. And so when you have a chamber member, what would their experience be? Like, you know, applying karama? How would they access it how what what information they put in to get that instantaneous, almost feedback.

Jaime di Paulo 16:13
For example, if you, I’m sure everybody has heard of the government, federal government, they have what it’s called next codes, right? Every every, for example, you in construction, there’s a special number they gave you. So when you search for contracts, you use that particular code to identify yourself as a construction or, or cement or brick layer, or landscaper, or whatever it may be. So now utilizing that code and web scraping stuff analysis, or vectrus was called vectorize, which something I don’t understand, but my team does

Brandon Burton 16:51
have a team. Yeah, young people that

Jaime di Paulo 16:53
do the technology, we’re now able to if you put everything in like a company comes to us, we teach them how to do a capability statement, which is basically a one pager of who you are in one piece of paper and that particular. So it has different codes and different keywords that we can run into the system we came up with in the system will will search and will spit out the contracts you actually qualify for according to what you told us who you are as a company. Okay.

Brandon Burton 17:24
And then as far as going after those contracts, you guys provide any kind of support to help them figure out how to do that. And you had mentioned that earlier helping them get contracts? Yeah, how’s that process? Look,

Jaime di Paulo 17:38
we have what is called a PTAC, Procurement Technical Assistance Center that actually helps you have staff that will take you by the hand and show you how to apply. We’re working on technology right? Now this is going to actually self populate the application at what point the what you told us, so it’s coming. I mean, we a little bit step below that. But you know, a year or so we’re gonna have that on hand. So what I’m envisioning in nobody here, you’re gonna be able to fill out 80% of the application automatically. So yeah, finances and you know, that kind of stuff. But that’s something we, you know, you got to work with you on accountants.

Brandon Burton 18:17
So what kind of advantages do you see for your members in utilizing this type of technology and these tools that you’re making available for them?

Jaime di Paulo 18:28
Well, you know, when you go to even the playing field, for example, you know, that these huge companies out there, they have personality, all they do a search for contracts, now, we’re going to have the necessary tools for zero small companies have access to those contracts. So we’re going to revolutionize how the United States does government contracting, for example, right? So if you are a minority, like Hispanic, African American women, veteran or Asian, you are considered a minority in the United States. And so those are the guys who try to push so they can even they play? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:03
I’m glad that you said that that way, even in the the playing field. So I think that’s what AI that’s what it does, you know, a lot of people have the concept of AI is for the big companies are the ones that have the budget and understand how to use it and all that. But really, AI is going to level the playing field across so many different platforms. That I’m glad that that’s the vision is it levels, the playing field and brings your members up to a competitive level across the nation.

Jaime di Paulo 19:30
You know, AI can be a scary thing, but it can be used properly. It’s a wonderful tool, and nothing we use in it properly. Right? So who knows what AI is going to take us in the future. But at the end of the day, we need to take advantage of those tools and use it to the event to to scale our companies, right?

Brandon Burton 19:48
Yeah. So do you have somebody internally that’s working on the technology with the AI to develop these these platforms, or do you consult with somebody or how’s this being developed? So, within your chamber,

Jaime di Paulo 20:01
we actually have to two engineers, you know, just coding full time and the director of the program. Wow.

Brandon Burton 20:11
So not everybody has that on their staff. But where would somebody get started, you know, maybe a local chamber, you’re wanting to implement some of these things? How would you suggest they get started,

Jaime di Paulo 20:24
we, we don’t we still working on the model, we don’t know how we’re going to do it, we license it or just give it away, or we got to make a little money on it. But our intent is to bring up our companies and across the United States, we’ve been in conversation with Walmart, for example, you know, in government contracting, every contract is public information. Private is not so having this tool, access private corporations, like for example, Walmart, Target and Home Depot, whoever it is, we need to create partnerships directly with those companies. So we will talk into Walmart and the Google and some other companies so they can have access to this to this tool. So they can do some hiring. But it’s gonna that’s gonna be a little bit more difficult, because it’s not public information, those contracts. So yeah, work to be done.

Brandon Burton 21:18
Gotta get them to play along with you, right? That’s right. So the the technology incubator, I’d like to maybe hear some of the things that you’ve seen, you know, birthed out of that incubator there. I get excited here and about this technology programs, and you know, what people are into and what’s kind of cutting edge, but what are what are some of these things that you’ve seen come out of there? No,

Jaime di Paulo 21:45
it’s amazing what goes through our, our offices there, we got companies, for example, we have a Latina woman, micro cycle is her company, she she basically figured out that I mushroom eats concrete, how I have, but she’s been taking marketing that technology, and it’s a solution for the landfills, for example. Right? So she’s been scaling at a pace you have never seen, right? We have a company that, you know, that connect hero, it’s using utilizing technology in the retirement homes, and connecting them with families. It’s an amazing thing. And these two companies, for example, they’re they’re growing big time. And those are companies that we helped start, you know, so it’s, and we have, you know, work, we just graduated a cohort of 25 companies last week. So, you know, we have about 400 companies we’ve worked with, and 80% of them are still still in business trying to get that capital so they can scale up. So some of those, like, cycling clinic here on it, and a few others are beyond that, right. So it’s very cool. Spot hero, for example, I don’t know if you heard of that, that came out of the incubator. It’s not a Hispanic guy, but it came out of the incubator, I had an opportunity to meet him, it’s a tool you use for to find a parking space, low costs around, okay, Spot hero, so, so as many companies like that,

Brandon Burton 23:21
I like it, I like hearing these these different ideas. And it’s got to be a sense of pride, seeing these people come with an idea and watching it grow and watching them be successful and looking for that additional funding to continue, you know, adding fuel to the fire, so to speak.

Jaime di Paulo 23:37
And he was a good one, there’s a guy whose name is Ricky, like a loud, young Latino guy. His family has a cleaning, Office Cleaning Service, right? So thinking outside the box, this guy actually created the technology in training, so so he can help companies, show people how they can become a cleaning company, so they can have access to cleaning contracts, and the guy is making millions for that app. And so who I wish I would have thought of that. I mean, that. So it says good example, that this guy probably and I want to go pee in offices. But he kept the family business with using technology. Now they’re scaling up big time. So that’s the goal here because you know, in our communities, for example, in Chicago, there’s a famous street car 26th Street, which is basically 99% of those businesses are Hispanic gone. But those are immigrants that came to United States with nothing and they started a business and now what’s happening their sons and daughters are graduating from high school from from college and they don’t want to go and work at that particular restaurant. They want to work in technology downtown. So how you combine both right so that’s been a big issue in our chamber. How are you going to encourage your sons and daughters to take over the business and using technology? This So restaurant guy that has 45 restaurants in the city, Chicago, and the sun just to cover the businesses, what are they doing, they kept the business, same recipes and everything. But adding technology now they’re they’re packaging tacos and put them on grocery stores. So that’s the kind of stuff that we’ve seen. And we’re very excited about keeping the restaurant as it is, but using technology to scale and policing design and data that went to college. Right. So that’s, that’s pretty encouraging. That’s very cool.

Brandon Burton 25:28
Yeah, that is very cool. I like that all these examples that you’re you’re showing, or they’re helping others continue as well. So it’s not it’s not replacing another business is not, you know, harming another industry, but it’s, it’s bringing everybody up to a higher level,

Jaime di Paulo 25:46
leveraging that technology for the own use. Really? Exactly.

Brandon Burton 25:50
Yeah. So is there anything else as far as the data and technology that you want to make sure we hit on before we we move on?

Jaime di Paulo 26:01
No, I think you know, chambers should use technology to I mean, you we have a lot of tools out there that can enhance our chambers to the benefit of the members, right? Databases. I mean, the keys are chambers keeping your database and then the, everything you do is not in writing in them or happen. So that’s how we created the technology we created. So this tool, the Kurama tools, because we have 30 years of data. So now we actually know what a pig, what’s a contract that based on data and notes. Right? So that’s how you do it. Really? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:37
Yeah, I guess, to your point, when you’re training an AI model, to do something for you, you have to feed it data to be able to learn what it is you’re looking for, and what it needs to put out. So as long as you can, can collect the data up front and all along the way, every interaction, every touch point should have a data point to it, that you can go back to and be able to plug it in, as you see applicable down in the future.

Jaime di Paulo 27:07
You using key words, for example, saving those key words, it’s, it’s called web scraping. So you can actually take a document and show the document, identify this key words, and then it’s tracks that key words and puts it somewhere else. Now you have a you know, now you chamber instead of being, you know, business incubator, at the small business incubator for businesses, you take out the then you just keep small businesses and incubator and those two words are keywords. So now the tool searches for those key words and legislation. And if any bill comes out or any of those key two key words you identified, it flags it, and now you have a couple of key words you can track and you can lobby or whatever.

Brandon Burton 27:53
That makes a lot of sense. That

Jaime di Paulo 27:55
was easy. Well, it sounds easy to explain, but you need to have the back office doing it.

Brandon Burton 28:00
That’s right. That’s right. And then get that machine up and running. Right. And once it gets going, just just keep feeding it that good data. So as we, as we start to wrap up here, I like asking for chamber listening, who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to consider implementing it their organization?

Jaime di Paulo 28:28
Well, you know, first, you know, as every chamber knows, we don’t we don’t we don’t do miracles, right? You get out of the chamber, when you put into the chamber, you know, it’s like, uh, you know, like, I tell my members, look, this is Mina chamber member is like having a, you know, a gym subscription, right? If you don’t go, you don’t, you’re gonna you’re gonna see results. So, partying from that, we need to, you know, people do not come to you just because you name is the Chamber of Commerce, you need to have parents, right, you need to have programs, classes, events, whatever it is to attract people to the chamber. I think that’s the key. So I call them carrots, right? So you wiggle the carrot, and then they’ll come, but you need to Google it. Good, right. So for example, you need to make sure this, you know, chambers were known for network events. Right? Now, it’s a lot of competition and network events. So we’ve got to start thinking outside of the box and how to do events, very more unique and those events because there’s a lot of groups out there doing, you know, after our event, so think outside the box, get some more carrots, encourage corporations to get involved in actually, you know, encourage those corporations to hire those small companies that you represent. That’s the key. And then for example, what I try to do is, for example, a big corporation comes on board as a corporate member. I actually have like, a piece of paper that encourage them it’s not a legal document or anything Ellison just make him sign something as promised, I will give an opportunity to your members to apply for right something that is good to sell to the small businesses so they can come in and be part of the chamber. Sometimes it’s good sometimes they don’t. Right. I

Brandon Burton 30:16
like that. Just a commitment to Medicare and Yeah,

Jaime di Paulo 30:21
nothing. Nothing about it. It’s just on paper, right?

Brandon Burton 30:25
And of a pledge. Yeah, I like that. But I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers. And I feel like we’ve been talking about this throughout this whole episode here. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jaime di Paulo 30:43
Well, chambers are the key. There, they’re a necessary tool for small businesses to scale, we have the knowledge, we have the connections, and we have the access to well to your clients, or contracts or whatever it may be, your members need. So Chambers of Commerce will never go away. Because of that reason. Everybody needs somebody, you know, you if you’re an accountant, to focus on your accountant, but you don’t know anything about marketing, we can help you do that. We can help you bring clients to you, we can help you promote your business, we can help you do other things. But you need to focus on your business and give us give the chamber an opportunity that can help you business scale. So it’s like an artist, you know, an artist should be should be drawing pictures, right? Not marketing themselves. So you need to, you know, understand that. That’s what chambers do we help you market your business, we help you scale your business, we’ll help you with connections with with financial, financial institutions. Because the number one thing is small businesses. theme is access to capital. One is me, not every bank is suit for anybody. So we have many we have like a smorgasbord of banks, we can actually know what the what’s the right banking institutions for your particular business, right. So that’s the kind of stuff we bring to the table, the chamber, so we never gonna go away. I mean, if you don’t work, you’re gonna go away. But if you add value to those businesses, you’re good,

Brandon Burton 32:15
right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea of, you know, chamber is necessary for businesses to scale. And if your chamber believes that, if your chamber is promoting that, if you’re putting that out as a carrot to attract the businesses, because you have what it takes for them to scale, then you’re right, chambers are not going to go anywhere, and they become necessary in their communities. Okay, we

Jaime di Paulo 32:40
create example. Right? And then we we chambers do a lot of workshops, right with our members, but we never had something structured certified. Right. So we went to the city colleges, which is a local community college. So I told the chancellor, look, let’s create a curriculum, I certify curriculum and and show people how to run a business properly. We did that. So now we launching you know, we had two cohorts or two classes, it’s a 4040 hour class that teach you about finances, marketing, legal stuff. Inventory. So now you we have a certified program, you can people actually go and get a credit, credit, credit, college credit, take this particular class and you when you graduate, you know how to run a business properly, because we know that businesses get into businesses because many reasons and not necessarily everybody is suitable to run a business. So teaching them how to use to how to run a business properly is the key to the success of your business. And so you utilizing the local colleges, you know, get you all members can become teachers, the classes, it’s a win win for everybody, really. So.

Brandon Burton 33:51
Yeah, absolutely creating those good partnerships. Well, as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who might be interested in anything you talked about and maybe wants to learn more or just connect with you in general, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jaime di Paulo 34:11
Well, our website is, you know, IHCCBusiness.net HCC meaning Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. My personal email is jaime@ihccbusiness.net. Those two if you Google our chamber, you can find me on LinkedIn Jaime de Paulo. We have I’m very active on LinkedIn. Our website, you can find me there and you can you know, access all the programs or you can email me for sure and then I will get back to you.

Brandon Burton 34:48
That is perfect. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can pull it up and reach out and connect with you. But Jaime, this has been great having you on Chamber Chat Podcast. I appreciate your time. Taking the time and, and telling us you know what you guys are doing in the realm of data and technology and these AI tools, and you guys are just full of exciting stuff going on right now that really, I think will end up being models for other chambers to follow. So thanks for blazing that trail and sharing some of these insights with us today. I really appreciate it.

Jaime di Paulo 35:19
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate your time and you know, don’t give up.

Brandon Burton 35:23
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Workforce Training Center with Jeannie Hebert

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeannie Hiebert. Jeannie has been President and CEO the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts for 15 years. Under her leadership that BVCC has grown and developed into a chamber that works hard for business and the economic vitality of the region. often dubbed the queen of collaboration. Jeannie sits on several business and community boards and meets regularly with local state and federal legislators to make sure the valley voice is heard, and funding is appropriated to support their economic development and small businesses. Since her reign, the BVCC has become known as the go to place and resource for business owners and entrepreneurs to find assistance and funding to grow and develop their business. She has been honored with several awards, including the central Massachusetts outstanding woman in business power 50 manufacturing champion and Central Massachusetts economic development leader. Through her guidance, the Chamber secured over $1 million in funding to build the Blackstone Valley hub for workforce development. A Workforce Training Center located in the Chamber’s Linwood mill building, offering classes focused on advanced manufacturing. These certificate courses are offered to students of all ages throughout Central Massachusetts to help close the work skills gap and provide skilled workers to the region’s employers. Jeannie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jeannie Hebert 3:43
Here, Brandon, thank you. I’m excited to be here today. Hello to everyone, all of our chamber colleagues there. And I am also an animal rights activist and help with rescuing animals in need. I do have you know dogs of my own. But I did rescue for African elephants. And they lived with me for two years. And we were able to secure some good homes for them. One of them Willie my favorite. He was the largest working African elephant in North America. And we found him a great home at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So I used to go visit Willie there. So they were wonderful animals. It was a once in a lifetime experience. And I’m happy that we were able to find good homes for them because they had a terrible beginning.

Brandon Burton 4:41
So I have to say this is a first year the first guest on the podcast who’s rescued an elephant let alone for so. That is amazing. And I’m sure the stories about these elephants could go on for days. Lots of a unique experience. As a fan, I’m sure

Jeannie Hebert 5:01
they’re a unique experience they very intelligent, fun animals. One fun fact is I used to, you know, we used to wash them in the morning. And I would spray them with the hose. Use that big, big brush that you use when you wash your car, then grab the leaf blower to dry them before they would roll in the dirt and get dirty again. And invariably when I put the hose down, another one of the elephants would pick it up in their trunk, and they would spray me I thought that was a funny thing.

Brandon Burton 5:35
They got a sense of humor.

Jeannie Hebert 5:38
sensitive when we interacted very well, they were they were like my kids. So I missed them terribly. But they they needed to be in places where people who were better to take care of that could happen. So they had good lives. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Blackstone Valley Chamber. Just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Jeannie Hebert 6:09
Sure. Our chamber we have about 500 members. We were very active, we mean business and we listened well. We we listened to the needs of our members. And we’re very proactive in meeting their needs. That’s how the hub came about. We our service area is 13 towns from Worcester, Massachusetts, which is the second largest city in New England, to the Rhode Island border, just to kind of give you an idea of where we are central mass is kind of cow. It’s the belt to the middle of Massachusetts. And we work with everyone in Massachusetts. We collaborate a lot, you know, Queen of collaboration. But there is a field gap across the state and I think across the nation, really. And we found that a lot of the covenants of vocational schools because of a program we have here called the MKS. That funding is attached to it. So why are the MCAT scores on the more funding the schools are getting? So vocational schools have unfortunately changed their covenant and they are accepting more epidemic with superior students over vocational and superior students and the public schools. You have an influx of students who really want vocational training, they’re looking to go to work, and they’re not able to get it at public school level. So when we found this out and working with many of our manufacturers, the Blackstone Valley is the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, who Samuel Slater, who came here and started textile mills. And the mill is actually where we are, it’s a converted former textile mill of the whitened family. We’re in Waynesville named after that family, when we we would run the job fairs like everybody dies, and, you know, help them and it just wasn’t working. They weren’t getting skilled labor. And I was hearing, you know, I didn’t know this work, I have to turn it down. So when I found out that this was happening at the vocational level, I spoke with our legislators started doing some digging. And we were able to secure some funding from the Department of Education, and took on the legislation set the chamber, we take on the task to build a workforce training manager and said, yes, so long behold, we took over part of the middle, we didn’t build that out. And we have a design lab, we’ll hang on filling computers with CAD, and we have computer lab and we have a great fabrication laboratory. And it has 3d printers, augmented welding. We have mills and lane that start out with manual and it also has the coding, but the students learn how to use them manually. And they learn how to code. And we’ve recently just taken over the other end of the mill and put in a full electronics learn. And we’re building our robotics lab right now. So we’re meeting as the needs of our members change and evolve. We are meeting their needs well over now. million dollars in investment now.

Brandon Burton 10:02
And it’s typically for the hub,

Jeannie Hebert 10:04
specifically for the hub, but it helps us to grow our chamber. Because we’re training the workforce for many years, our members, and even those that are outside of our region support our chamber because of that constant with other chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:26
So I’m curious staff size, when you take on a project like this, just for all the chambers listening like this sounds great, but I’m sure she’s got like a huge staff to take this on. Right. So what is your staff size look like? The chamber

Jeannie Hebert 10:38
staff, there’s three of us. Okay, okay. And for a while. for probably a year when we were dealing with the billing, and so forth, there was no other staff. So I was doing two jobs, and it was exhausting. But it was very rewarding. But once the school was able to open, and we were ready to accept students, I hired an executive director, or the third Executive Director right now. She’s amazing. Um, I now have an operations director. He’s amazing. He’s, I’ve been tapping into retirement pool. He’s a retired engineer that worked in was head of Northeast for Thermo Fisher. So he’s got a wealth of information. And honestly, he can take anything from it to put a lock on a door for losing meeting diverged. In Bob ovens, our Executive Director, Ashley Bregman. She is a graduate of WPM, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And she was also teaching robotics. She’s has an engineering degree, obviously, academic or teaching. So she’s perfect as an executive director. And we have several teachers, Instructor of some are retired vocational teachers. And some teach at night when we for the night courses, and they teach at the local vocational school. And one is an engineering teacher at one of our high schools. And we’re growing to the point where we’re building campuses in our high schools in the area, we’re up to 22 districts. So obviously, we’re working with high schools, but it’s not that we’re servicing. And we also teach incumbent workers. So some of the manufacturers who hire people with no skills, we listen to them, and we build a custom curriculum for them. And they will send their workers to us. And we do like a six or 12 week course for them. So when they go back, and they still work that you know, it’s worth studying. But when they finish their course and get their certifications, they’re more than an entry level here or mid level. Yeah, it really makes a big difference for them. So in the fall right now, because this year, Nast mass fire, who handles all the career, work with people who were looking for Jones, across the state awarded us the Youth Works grant, which means we’re now working with 16 to 23 year olds who are in a disadvantaged financial state, to their families. And we find them jobs and almost apprentice programs. We do have an apprentice program too. So we hired people to handle that under the umbrella. And we just received the connecting activities grant, which is K through 12. So now we’re working with elementary school students too. So we have at the hub 15 employees now running the hub, thank goodness, I would need to never ever sleep again. And we threes that work at the Chamber, but we interact all the time. So it’s, you know, it’s one big family, and we were growing so fast. At one point, someone would come in and like go Who is that? What is this name? What was this?

Brandon Burton 14:36
Do? Yeah, that’s great. Well, that definitely that helps to set the table for more of our discussion. I’ve got a lot of follow up questions for you about the hub and we’ll dive deeper into this in the whole topic of developing a workforce training center as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 16:40
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Brandon Burton 17:34
All right, we’re back. So let’s dive in deeper. I want to know more. So tell us your when did the idea get presented to you for developing the hub? How did things unfold to see the vision come to pass? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 17:52
we’ve been open and seeing students for five years now. But it took a good two years to get it going. Because we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do. We knew there was a huge problem, especially in our area. For our you know, manufacturers just couldn’t find any employees and we’re in, as I said, job fairs were not working at all. It just wasn’t working. And I went to a skills America conference at the vocational school. And the superintendent, there was bragging that 90% of his students were going to college. And then I went what’s going on here? And I spoke with one of the students who was given who had a display on being electrician and I said, Oh, why are you going to be electrician? Because that week I want a grid. I like to have an electrician in my office crying because he’s done pretty good in Okay, location of school that he wanted to pass. And, you know, they were telling us they had a waitlist of six months students. And I talked to that student and I said, Oh, you’re gonna be an electrician. Oh, I’m going to Cornell. I’m going into sports medicine. Oh my god. You took up four years that that gentleman son could have had to become an electrician. So you know, a light bulb went off and said we need we need an we need somewhere where these students that the public school system parents that can go for training because the superintendents were telling me they didn’t know what to do with these students that will be coming discipline problems. They didn’t have the vocational training that the students wanted. The dropout rate was going up. So we aligned ourselves in office and I went to the legislators told them the problem. We have great legislators very approachable in our area. And we put together a plan And they connected me with our patients Department of Education. We applied for a work skills grant. And our first one skills Grant was half a million dollars. And we, you know, put together a plan to do the build out. It takes it does take a village, it really does. I mean, I can say, Oh, I built a school. I didn’t do it alone, and had a lot of help. And it was a process and even the middle owner. You know, our landlord was very understanding, very cooperative. And we all work together, and everyone was looking forward to it. They came together, I had some naysayers. I have one very prominent business person, say to me, you’re a dreamer. It’s never gonna happen. This is not going to work. So when, when I got last year, I got the manufacturing Champion award. I said, you know, I told that story. And I actually have a little locket that, like, my significant other gave me that people say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. And I said that to, to the audience, it was all out there. Most of the manufacturers told them a dream or been looking at, you know, I can see. Yeah, you know, span, so that really fit in perfectly. But, you know, that’s how it started. And we’re growing like crazy. And it’s wonderful to see these students, they come to us dejected, because they couldn’t get into the school they wanted to get into. And when they learn the skill, then amazing picture. They just have that vocation. And the brain is wired, for whatever it might be the body aches or electronics or CNC machining or, you know, developing coding, CAD, and we even have a shop where they we have businesses come to us that want merchandise, personalized, we’ve believed a quarter and upstream we have I hate to say it, but our biggest customers in the cannabis industry distilleries and breweries, they went through classes to action, the cannabis industry, they want human doors with their logo on it. So the kids do that. And then they buy from us and the money goes back into school and help to, you know, pay for another student. So it’s terrific.

Brandon Burton 22:31
Face the mill, you had mentioned it is a previous manufacturing mill, before you guys moved in with the hub, was it actively being used before then had it sat vacant for a while, like what was the the revitalization of the the space? How did that look?

Jeannie Hebert 22:51
That was very interesting, because that bill was that mill was slated to be demolished. So ironically, we were located in the same town but a few streets over in another building. And we worked with the our landlord, now the mill owner to connect him with an amazing grant writer. And they were able to get a grant and start renovating. It was a cartel. Everybody else fell away except for these two people bill and Patti gianopolous, who believed in the project. And they partnered with another organization for over 55 subsidized housing. So above us three floors above us is over 55 subsidized housing. And I have an interesting story. They are how we interact with them. But it’s it came together over a period of I think two and a half years that they were able to renovate the mill. It’s beautiful. It has great architectural elements for big, huge wooden beams that have all been sanded so that they’re natural. Now, you know, they they were painted that hospital clean beautiful granite and brick in the windows of huge and it’s just really, really lovely. So they’re above us were below and we said why don’t we move in the mill and we moved into the new in 2016. And then 2018 We started the school. So a lot of history and had the elements or pictures of what it was. And there’s several mills in the town that were in northbridge and throughout the valley, and a lot of them were owned by the whitened family. And so our area of North there just called whiteness fell. So it’s really beautiful. It has a tower or any house out which is It’s a cute little shop now. So it’s, it’s, it’s bustling. We have. We’re there. We at the school, we have a physical therapy, we have a gym, we have a barbershop that’s run by naturalized citizens, former immigrants, and we’ve just helped them with their expanding. We have Girls on the Run. We have we were named the National Park by President Obama. So we have our rangers are there that national heritage corridor and the National Park is located there. So the national park rangers have a brewery in one of the other buildings because there’s a number of buildings usually. So it’s a pretty busy place. Oh, and beautiful woman owned business. That is a crepe or a company is another modern day Helsinki. And it’s a great little restaurant that’s been restored and invest. You know, it looks industrial. But it’s so it’s a unique place. And it’s a wonderful gathering place for the community interaction. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:16
that sounds awesome. So as you’re talking about how it came to be, it sounds like in the collaboration, I see where you get the title mokwena collaboration, but to be able to have, you know, somebody who’s familiar with grant writing, to be able to help see a vision and help bring things together to to see these things come, you know, kind of unfold and come together. Two of the things I wanted to ask you about, you’ve mentioned them, but I wanted to dig in just a little bit more. So there’s these certificate programs that the students come through, I imagine that there are varying lengths depending on what their focus of work is. So if you could touch on that, and then also touch on how you work with the schools, you had mentioned the K through 12. Now with these districts, what does that look like with those relationships and, and interacting with them?

Jeannie Hebert 27:06
Sure, well, the certificate programs are varied, some are custom that we utilize for incumbent workers. And some are standardized. Like we have, as I said, the Miller augmented augmented welding, that’s six to 12 week course, depending upon the type of welding, but it’s industry accepted, we would not have purchased them if our manufacturers didn’t try them out and say, oh, yeah, this is just like real world. And they do after they get their certificate, we bring them to one of our couple of our partners yr fab and package steel systems, who make metal buildings, all for all over the world. And invariably, they will say to the students are so come see me, you know that so they have great skills. So that’s one certificate we have. We have an OSHA, obviously, we do OSHA 10, everybody gets an OSHA 10. Everyone, we have a reentry program as well with the sheriff’s department. So we start teaching OSHA in the jail before they’re released. And when they’re released, they come to the school, and they get hands on training, that everybody gets OSHA training, we have what’s called Mecalac, which is a Massachusetts certificate, and it’s through mas MEP, which is manufacturing extension partnership. So this brings you through all of the steps of what manufacturing needs, like would have shot now. It would teach measurements, believe it or not, we’re finding graduates of high school have no idea how to use tape or read a tape measure or ruler. And they cannot even tell turn on the clock unless it’s digital. If you say to them, it’s quarter. They’ll go and they don’t know what that is. We had one guidance counselor say they had a disqualifying when they were monitoring the number six certificate examinations, because he pulled out his phone and I said, take out your phone. He said I wanted to see what time it was. They said there’s a clock on the wall. He said I can’t read it. No one ever taught me how to read. Like when we went to school first grade, they had the clock remember you

Brandon Burton 29:37
missing the mark somewhere, right? Yeah, I remember. I remember doing worksheets like that. Yeah. Don’t

Jeannie Hebert 29:42
do that. More than he is on job no more curse if they can’t. I was talking to a business that we were helping out. yesterday. She it’s called hair jewelry. She’s an archaeologist and she had an intern from one of the quality If he didn’t know how they couldn’t read the report from the patient because they didn’t know how to read cursive, so we’re really missing the mark in our schools. So these are the things that we try to address. But back to the certifications, we have those certifications with custom certifications. And then at some of the campuses that thought like Brookdale campus, which is one of our close up spirit campus, which is another one of our towns, their certifications. outsprinting is focusing on carpentry. Newbury is also property Hopedale, a cyber security. So we get certifications for those types of industries where the students are learning we even started, we help them get and I always say this wrong. And in a Tom baton, table, virtual. It’s almost like mines, US operations,

Brandon Burton 30:59
operators. That’s how I was gonna guess when you said that? Yeah, it’s a real body,

Jeannie Hebert 31:03
but they have a human meaning male, human woman, dog, cat, rather, Frog, which I love, because now they might have dissected me animals. But it’s very realistic. Students were showing me their skills. And I said, I was getting woozy and you’re doing a great job, right? I gotta go to the next. It’s like, Oh, yeah. That table alone costs $100,000. So we were able to help the school right grant, so that they have that. So Arginine is we helped a lot of the schools get DNS. So maybe you go to help deal, but you want to take manufactory. So you have to close the hub, or maybe your middle bring you to market sure you want to do you know, introduction to some kind of medical research. And that’s it helped. So we do is we’ll move the kids around. So they will take these courses together. The one principal said to me, it was hilarious. He goes, Yeah, these kids are all working together in class. And then on the weekend, they beat the heck out of each other on the football field. Because that’s great. So we put classes together, not necessarily by school, but on a subject. So the students get to even try it out, we’ll do a trial. You know, they’ll come and say, Oh, I think I want to do this. And they might try it and so on. That’s not Well, maybe you want to try that? Oh, yeah, that’s a better fit for me. So we do that, too. So that’s so it’s some of the certifications that we offer, I’m sure there’s a lot more that escapes me right now. But the K through 12 that we had the smaller kids, I think a good example would be rewarded grant kind of nothing for the energies that it was for younger kids to learn about engineering. So we had camp over the summer. And kids would come in the morning, and they’ll have a little bite to eat. And then they would learn about engineering and mechatronics and robotics and make make something. Mr. Evans, our engineer ran this program. So they’d make something and they put it all together, they do it on the computer, and they’d make it. And he would say to them, did you have fun? You know, you did you know what that was? Well, they have engineering. And the robotics is we have these really cute little robot, these, this is very key in first, and second graders, paying them. And they were like, they know, control robots, but they had to program them to make them work. And they were able to do that. And we have these little robots that look a little Michael Jackson, they had a damn thing. They were dancing with each other. And they were doing tasks and picking things out, handing them to each other. But it’s a natural for these kids. They blow me away. And it’s amazing. And then some of the middle school kids, we had codons, which are cooperatives are going to occur in an industry. They do the stuff where people say, Oh, robots are gonna take my job. Well, did you really want to keep ticking boxes and putting them here? You know, you don’t want to do that. You want to be the one telling the robots to do that. Use your brain. So what these students were doing, I went in after they kind of let a they taught them how to work, how to program them. They could like Legos out so they could build make the robots build. And then I they had free time. So I went in and they began to have the robots and they can like be stitched in Your hands. And I go, What are you doing the courts very proud of their sword fighting.

So I mean, this is a concept thing, maybe learn through having fun, but it’s part of what they would do in a job situation, they would have to program the robots to do a task. And some of them have 345 robots interacting with each other and completing a task. And that’s pretty complicated. For like, an eighth grader, too. So I just like I said, they blow me away. One of the older kids, it was a birthday, what’s what was like three of them, they came in, and they gave me these beautiful stainless steel shakers that had an unusual shape, then you throw them on the machine. And they gave her to me, it’s a birthday gift. And they said, Missmiss look, we even put pain on the top. So you can tell which is which. program that and have the drill press drill, drill it, and then had Christmas was just from a piece of aluminum or stainless steel that they had. And they design them themselves and made those, then it was just amazing that they did pocket some of the kids from shoestring High School, which is my hometown, they were making Christmas ornaments out of brought up some of the metal and like drill guns, and they were beautiful. And then they made dreidels to the trails are gorgeous, they were intricate, they were terrific. So it was, you know, it’s a fun, fun thing to learn. But while they’re learning there, we say to them, you’re an engineer, you just love

Brandon Burton 36:55
that. I love it, they have these opportunities, and they get that confidence and explore these these future career opportunities. This is such a invaluable resource for your community. So applaud and Pat, pat on the back to you guys and your team for for executing this and integrating it into the schools as well.

Jeannie Hebert 37:14
Thank you. We have a great team. We really do. I’m really fortunate really blessed. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:19
So as we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask if, if you might have any tips or action items for chamber folks that are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you offer for them? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 37:34
I think you know, you need to listen to your members, which you know, most of my chamber colleagues do. Every region is different. What works for me might not work for you. But if you listen to what your members need, or what your municipalities are your region, we work very closely with all of our municipalities and our legislators in and listen and get advice on how to meet those needs. And then you know, collaborate with the great resources that you have in your region, we have wonderful educational institution, terrific educators, innovative people on and, you know, we’ve worked together and they’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work. So I think, you know, sometimes you look at a project and you think that’s really daunting. But when you you know, I hate this analogy, but how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Brandon Burton 38:37
Especially after your introduction today, no, no elephants on the table.

Jeannie Hebert 38:43
And your chamber will grow. We are gaining members inside and outside our region. Because of the services that we provide, and I’m not stealing numbers from anyone, what we do is, if I see that I’m getting a number of members, someone, you know, reaching out to me, I reach out to that chamber and say, You know what, I’ve got like five industry people that have come to me, why don’t we do a collaboration and we have an affiliation with like seven other chambers, and will offer a discount, but you have to be a member of the region’s chamber first. And then I’ll give you this note to join us. And we’ll provide everything but we do provide a lot of services without membership to and I know that I get criticized from some chambers for that, but it comes back, you know, comes around and it’s a pleasure for me to work with a number of people to help them and you know, it’s great to work together but no, just listen to your members or You read and see what the needs are and think about and seek out people with resources that I can drop in on how to develop focus to meet those who

Brandon Burton 40:11
have that so important. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeannie Hebert 40:22
I think we’re going to have to really prove that we are a worthy organization. And you know, we’re going to, to be a good resource for your members. It’s not, as we all know, already, I’m preaching to the choir here. It’s not like the inundating myself, the fog of news best attitude where Jimmy Anderson would say, I’m going to the chamber dinner, you know, like everyone already knew how to join the Chamber of Commerce. There’s too many people into the new organizations billing for the that dues that dues revenue, and I don’t think that dues revenue is going to be our is already isn’t our main revenue stream, we have to find other revenue streams. And it’s going to be to run instances

Brandon Burton 41:21
of it. Good advice. Jeanne, I want to do give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the hub and how you guys went about this, this great big project, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jeannie Hebert 41:44
Well, through email, which is jhebert@blackstonevalley.org. So that’s email. And if you want to learn about, you can go to our website, which is BlackstoneValley.org. And you can also check out The Hub at be thehub.org. And if you go to our website, there’s a tab and it’ll bring you right over to the hub. And I’m happy to share any information to help with anything, any resources and, you know, whatever we can do to help you with programs. And if you want to take on a project like this to go get them and we’ll help you every any way I can.

Brandon Burton 42:42
I love it. Thank you so much. So this has been great having you on the podcast today. I love getting these insights from chambers that have taken on a unique projects and have a neat approach to it. revitalizing a building that was set to be torn down and really changed the outlook of the community. I love it. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these experiences and insight and, and I’m hoping it gave you know a few people out there that drive to take on some of those big hairy audacious goals. Thank you for being with us today.

Jeannie Hebert 43:15
Thank you very much. Thanks Brandon for the opportunity we really appreciate you’ve ever thought my way I’d love to give me a tour.

Brandon Burton 43:22
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Innovation & Experimentation with Mary Byers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Mary Byers, Mary is co author for of Race for Relevance, Five Radical Changes for Associations and Road to Relevance, Five Strategies for Competitive Associations. She’s the former director of communications and Member Services for the Illinois Dental Society, and served in that capacity for nine years prior to starting her consulting business in 1998. Mary specializes in working with volunteer association leaders and chief staff executives to help define their roles and clarify their vision through leadership conference programming, facilitating strategic planning retreats and coaching. Mary is a certified Association Executive and a certified speaking professional. She is also the author of nine books. That Mary, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Mary Byers 2:58
I appreciate that. Brandon, I’m delighted to be here. And I love the impact that chambers make on the business leaders in the community and the communities themselves. So extra special day for me in terms of helping encourage your audience. Something interesting about me that not many people know is that I am a frustrated tap dancer. I love it. My feet just don’t move as quickly as I would like them to. And I’m also a amateur improv lover. So that’s I’ve been taking some improv lessons lately. And I’m looking forward to more. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:38
awesome. I can see where the speech and improv have some correlations and some crossover when you’re on the stage and needing to think on the fly. So that it goes along with professional development, right?

Mary Byers 3:51
I think it definitely for in my case, especially Sure, right? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 3:57
Well, normally, I would ask you how you know about your chamber size staff budget, but since you’re not a chamber, let’s just tell us a little about a little bit about the consulting work you do kind of who you try to work with impact to try to make the kind of course that you take and just give us a little bit of background.

Mary Byers 4:18
I started as an association staffer for one state level organization and one for an international organization. And that led into the work that I do you have now and I work with a wide variety of organization, trade associations, professional membership societies, and I work with them of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked with over 400 of them. And that gives me a view of what’s happening, what’s challenging organizations but I also recognize that each is unique and they have their own culture, history and traditions. So I love being able to encourage Association chamber professionals. to share what I’m seeing in the marketplace, and then to provide some resources for them so that as they grow in their roles and in their organizations, they have some resources to help them do that. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 5:12
That’s great work you’re involved with. So for our topic for our discussion today, we settled on the idea of talking about innovation and experimentation. And I love this idea because chambers of commerce, as you’re probably aware, and and I would venture to say associations in general are always looking to what they can do to remain relevant to their members and and the people they serve. So I think innovation and experimentation is crucial to remaining relevant, and we will dive much deeper into this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 7:42
Hi, it’s me, Donna from Yiftee. Have I mentioned that we’re working with chambers and other leaders on community cards in more than 500 cities across the US. Yiftee is the undisputed leader in community cards because we did it first and have learned a lot and because it’s free for you to set up and free for your members to participate. Plus, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Many chambers have chamber checks or other similar programs. Imagine the benefits of those without the extra costs of staffing, creating and tracking checks and reconciling payments. Community cards are all digital, sold online and always available on the cardholders cell phone. We provide tons of training and marketing materials. Come check us out yiftee.com or email sales@yiftee.com. Back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 8:37
All right, Mary, we’re back from our break there. And as I mentioned, before we we took that pause. We’re focusing our discussion today around innovation and experimentation. And I know you as the author of the book race for relevance, this correlates very well. But I guess first of all, what what should chambers and associations be thinking about? Now as we’re sitting in 2023? And, and I hope we’re safe and saying post pandemic? What are what are some of those things they should be focusing on?

Mary Byers 9:13
Okay, first of all, let me define how I think about innovation. If I walked into the room and said, I want you to come up with a new program and service from scratch. That’s intimidating. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to do. So when I talk about innovation, I’m really talking about doing something differently. And when you look at it that way, we’re looking at small changes, possibly making big differences. We’re looking at experimentation, as you mentioned, and we’ll talk more about that as we go along. But But small risks, calculated risks, and then learning from the market as we take some of those small risks. And then the other thing that I would encourage people to be thinking about is What I call the 10% pledge. And that is committing to evolve 10% of what you’re currently doing, whether it’s 10% of your fundraising, 10% of your programming, 10% of your special projects, 10% of your communications, that way, you are engaged in continuous innovation or continuous improvement, which some organizations call it, and it doesn’t become a thing that we have to go to the board and ask for permission to do, it becomes something that becomes part and parcel of who we are. And we know that member’s needs were changing prior to the pan damnit, as I like to call it, because I think that’s just an apt description of what we’ve been through. And they’re, they’re changing as a result on the other side as well, too. And if we are continuously evolving, then we don’t have to engage in these big projects or big programs or big changes, and there might need to be some revolutionary innovation. But I think evolutionary innovation is more realistic for chambers, quite honestly. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:12
In fact, as you’re talking about that 10% pledge, I think, as chambers often, if they have an event or something of that nature, they’re conducting surveys and collecting data, either along the way, or post event. And, excuse me, collecting that data is perfect to put into that 10%, as you’re talking about to build to make those incremental changes as evolutionary changes, to continue improving and staying relevant. So I think that’s a great tip.

Mary Byers 11:41
And I’m surprised by how many organizations do surveying, especially post event serving, and then when it’s time to plan next year, somehow that data has stuck at it. We don’t look at it, we don’t use it. And yet, if we’re really listening to our market and our members, and we’re hearing what’s being said, many of the ideas that would help us innovate, are there. We don’t even have to come up with them. We just have to respond to them. Right?

Brandon Burton 12:13
Yeah, absolutely. So and I think that’s, that’s great. So the explanation you had there about how you look at innovation and experimentation, I think is great for kind of setting that mindset as we go about our discussion today. But maybe going back to that question about what what associations and chambers need to be thinking about, as we’re in this post pandemic timeframe.

Mary Byers 12:39
If I were sitting in a leadership role with an organization, I would be asking several questions. One wouldn’t be have members needs and expect expectations changed? And if so how? I would be asking, What can we help members do that they can’t do for themselves? Because I think that helps lead to our value proposition. And I would also be asking, how can we help members work less stressfully more profitably, and more productively? And I think one of the things that challenge chambers quite honestly, is you don’t have just one type of business, represented in the chamber, you’re not all restaurants, you’re not all retail stores. And every group has different needs. And so it’s, I guess another thing that I would encourage them to think about is segmenting their membership, and taking a look at the different categories represented. And then if you think about a Venn diagram, you know, that harkens back to grade school or high school, what are the commonalities, so if you do have restaurants, and you do have golf courses, and you do have retail shops, where are the common needs, and then if you can focus on those common needs, you’re going to be relevant to more of your membership, rather than being fragmented. And when everything is important, nothing is important. So I think an exercise of this nature helps focus. And when we focus we can make more of an impact.

Brandon Burton 14:18
Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree more and trying to figure out what are those common needs and and oftentimes a Venn diagram is a good way to visualize that see, where all that overlap is and where to where to focus that that time and effort. I think as we are recording this for May of 2023. Technology is abuzz right now with all sorts of things from blockchain to AI to you name it, but how do you see technology, the relevance of technology for a chamber and you know the relevance of it in adopting it and experimenting with it.

Mary Byers 15:02
Base for relevance came out in 2011. And in 2021, we produced an anniversary 10th anniversary edition. And one of the things I’m proud of, is the fact that the chapter on technology completely changed the base 10, meaning that technology is extremely important to how we deliver programs and service was the same. But we had new case studies, new data. We believe that this has to be an important aspect of strategy for organizations. So in addition to his strategic plan, I believe all chambers should also have a technology plan. I years ago, a friend of mine who’s a realtor suggested that we look around every year in our house and ask if we were going to sell our home this year, what would we need to do, and pick one project and do it. And the reason she suggested that is then we could enjoy the upgrades while we were living in the home rather than waiting to upgrade before we sold the home. And we also would be ready, then when it was time to sell the home, there wouldn’t be a long list of things that we had to do, because we had been keeping up with it. And I think the same thing is true with chambers, I think each year, we need to look around and say if we were going to upgrade our technology, what would we do? And then we need to go do it. We actually in 2011, we took a look at what percentage associations were spending on technology, it was 4.1% of their budgets. And when that got to that it was actually 1.6%. And yet, when you look at the impact that technology has on how we can deliver member programs and services, it’s huge. So our research show that for profit companies, we’re spending around seven to 8% of their gross revenue, not their net gross ology. So if we were to even aspire to half of that, we would be in a better position. So not only do we need a strategic plan, we need a technology plan. And we need to know and most know, most technology plans are going to last longer than a year, because technology is changing constantly. And as you said, new things are being introduced AI, we’re still looking at the impact of that. But part of the challenges for many or Chamber organizations, especially they are they’re varying sizes, and they have varying budgets, but we must double down on our commitment to technology. Here’s a question and additional question to be thinking about, and that is, how can we take the chamber to members, rather than always asking members to come to the chamber? Right. And technology’s one way to do that?

Brandon Burton 17:56
Absolutely. So I think that’s fascinating looking at the percentage being spent on technology in associations versus, you know, in the the for profit world. And yeah, I guess there’s the caveat with that is a lot of these technology, software’s will say, and we’ll have a free or maybe a nonprofit rate. So there’s reasons you could justify why they spend less and, you know, be be resourceful, by all means, but the point is to start integrating some of that technology. In your research and case studies, Were there certain things that stood out to you that would maybe be that, like, going back to your analogy of getting your house ready for sale, right, like a kitchen bathrooms, those things have the biggest ROI, right? So as you look at associations, what kinds of things technology wise, would you say, have the most ROI to try to implement implement sooner than later,

Mary Byers 18:55
making sure that you have a database that is flexible, so that you can actually pull data that you need and can use without investing a lot of time into that. I think a lot of associations don’t even realize what kind of data they’re sitting on. And so they’re not using, that’d be the first thing that making sure that your database is robust and flexible, so that it will help you with what you need. We also want to be thinking about automating and systematizing. Most chambers have smaller staffs. I’m surprised sometimes by the way that we are still manually taking registrations handling new dues or you know, new members. So anything that would help us streamline our workload, because we want to free up our staff to do the things that staff does best and that is relationship building, interfacing with members troubleshooting, solving problems getting out into the community. So any thing that would free up staff time, I think would be an important piece of it. Right? Our web presence absolutely needs to be modern, easy to search. Friendly. If you think about it, it is our first impression. When members are interested in joining, they go to the website. So how user friendly is it? We have to think about the member experience, when I find what I need, when I need it? Are things streamlined? Is it frustrating? How hard is it to use that I always tell people go try to join your organization. And pretend you have never seen your website or your processes before. So see it with fresh eyes, and then find the places that are frustrating. And then start with those.

Brandon Burton 20:49
I would say I would add, you know, have somebody who’s totally not in the chamber world. Look at your website, you know how? Because then you’ll know is your website telling the story of what your chamber does, like will that individual have an understanding of what a chamber is or what your chamber is? In your points on that the automation, I think of the example of the dentists you know, who goes to dental school, they learn how to be a great dentist, that’s what they do is they work on teeth, but if they have to spend, you know, 50% of their day, doing paperwork and moving things along the process, when there’s tools out there that will move it along. And that that would be the equivalent of the chamber being out there in the community and helping businesses be successful. And there’s tools like like Zapier, you know, that will connect a lot of these other technologies to be able to move things along in the process automatically. And, and relatively inexpensive. So you need to be exploring those different options, because there’s, there’s a lot of great tools, but you got to set aside that that 10% of the time to study it, research it and explore it, right. Yeah,

Mary Byers 22:00
and that’s one of the great things we’ve seen change in the last 10 years, since the first edition of the book was written, we now have more options, more apps, more plugins, it used to be that you would have to do a huge technology upgrade. And we’d go to the board and we’d get money. And then we would go through all the stress and strain of getting the new application installed. And then we would just live with that until it was time to do another upgrade. But you know, much like looking around your house and seeing what needs to be done. We can do that with technology now. And we can, we can say this is working, this isn’t we need to change this out, we need to plug this in. So we’ve got more flexibility. And now that we’ve gone to service as a subscription model, it’s more affordable. So rather than having a huge upfront commitment financially, we can basically pay as we go. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s gotten, you know, so much cheaper, that technology isn’t going to take a bite out of our budget. But I think we have to recognize the power of technology, and make sure that it is creating the kind of return on investment that we deserve for that, for that investment that we’re making

Brandon Burton 23:19
on that pay as you go model allows you to experiment a little more to and see if it really does work before you commit to buying a whole big price tag package. So I know you had shared a tip earlier on this. But I wanted to ask specifically about how to build a culture of innovation at a chamber. You know, there’s the old saying of you know, things have always been done this way. And of course, you want to break that mold. So how do you create a culture where people are thinking kind of what is that next step? What is what is the thing we can do to improve what we do here at our organization.

Mary Byers 23:58
The first thing I think we have to acknowledge is the importance of innovation, because the only way we’re going to change is by innovating. And this became an area of interest to me after the book was written because I started noticing the difference between organizations that were thriving, versus those that were just surviving. And those that were thriving, were actively innovating. They had a not only a verbal commitment to it, but a strategic commitment to it. They recognize that innovation requires experimentation. And so they change their language around how they even talk about it. They don’t talk in terms of success and failure. They talk in terms of success and learning. And so that takes some of the stigma away from innovation. So there has to be a commitment. There has to be it has to be part of the cultural value. We have to recognize and reward innovation, rather than punish it when It doesn’t work. And honestly, the board really has to have buy in for that, because the board’s role is to make sure that the Chamber has the expertise and the funding that they need to innovate. So some organizations actually have a line item in their budget, dedicated to innovation so that the staff doesn’t have to go to the board every time they want to try something new. They also other organizations will earmark a percentage of reserves, perhaps each year toward innovation. So we want to make the barriers to innovation as low as possible. And if I have to beg for money, every time I want to try something new, that certainly doesn’t encourage innovation, it actually discourages it. So the board has to really understand the role of innovation, they need to support it, and they need to adequately finance fit.

Brandon Burton 25:54
Yeah, I like that. I like the whole mindset of success and learning. So it’s not success and failure, success and learning. So I wanted to ask you, you’ve got a phrase called dual transformation. So how can dual transformation help a chamber remain relevant.

Mary Byers 26:12
So this is actually a concept from the for profit world. And dual transformation really means that you service today’s business model, while you’re building the future of the organization. So I’ll give you an example of what this might have looked like for a group at one of my clients actually explained it to me is flying the airplane while you’re still building. Yeah, and that’s, I think that was kind of a good metaphor. And, you know, very picturesque when you think about keeping a plane afloat while still building it. You know, we’ve seen a moved for, for some organizations to go to a tiered membership model. So this isn’t a chamber, but the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association adopted a tiered model in 2016, because they wanted members to essentially be able to choose their own adventure. So they have three package levels. The first level really was for those who were just getting started in veterinary medicine maybe didn’t have a lot of financial resources, but they wanted to offer them a home, and access to some education and resources that would be beneficial to them. The middle package was the one they expected most members to take advantage of. And it was the package that offered what previously had been available for their membership. And then the third package essentially was for the whole practice. So you pay more, you can enroll as many people in your practice as you want into the membership. And they built the model that way that other organizations have gone to a subscription model from a membership annual membership model. They’re billing on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis. And again, it’s flexibility. They’re letting their members choose how they want to engage. So those are some examples of small changes that have had a big impact. One group that I’m familiar with, when they went to the subscription model, the monthly model actually increased their membership by 11%, just by offering them flexibility. So it wasn’t a huge change, although they had a few things they had to do on the back end with the technology. And they had to do a little bit of experimentation there to see how that was going to work. But that’s one of my favorite things about it, quite honestly is a small changes can have a big difference. But the dual transformation idea is that you are doing everything you need to do in 2023 to meet members needs, simultaneously, thinking about what your membership model is going to look like what the business model is going to look like in 2020 before 2025 2026. So it’s actually made things a little bit more complex, because we have to worry about today and tomorrow at the same time. But it’s a concept I think that is worth borrowing from for profit, America, especially when we talk to our boards about the complexity of the environment. One of the other things that we’ve seen change in the last 10 years is competition has heated up and it is coming from all sorts of places. I think we have to acknowledge how that’s challenging our models and use innovation to mitigate the impact on chambers.

Brandon Burton 29:49
Yeah, I like that. The dual transformation doing what you need to do today, while also looking at the future reminds me though the Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going right. He’s in the game. He’s doing what he needs to do, but he’s going to where the puck is going. And I think that’s so crucial for us to have our eye on the future and not be left in the past. So no, admittedly,

Mary Byers 30:11
Wayne makes it sound really easy, right. So I think he had a sixth sense that a lot of other hockey players didn’t have. And I’m pretty sure he had eyes on the side in the back of his head, too, because that’s almost what it takes to be able to skate to where the puck is going.

Brandon Burton 30:28
And he already knew that I escaped. So that’s a big accomplishment.

Mary Byers 30:33
I would agree with that. Right.

Brandon Burton 30:35
So as we begin to wrap things up here, I like asking if you have any tip or strategy or action items that you would suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Mary Byers 30:49
So this is going to sound too simple, and counterintuitive, but it’s the best tip I have to offer chamber professionals. And that is get away from the office on a quarterly basis. I’ve been doing this since 2016. And I actually found a retreat center that is close to me. And I check in with a pad of paper, my calendar and a pen. And I try to minimize electronics. And even if I have a cell phone with me, I put my Do Not Disturb on and I try not to look at it until it’s bedtime on the first night. And then I usually work until noon or late in the day, second day. And essentially what I’m doing is I’m dividing my year into quarters. And I’m looking at what needs my attention over the next quarter. And the next year. And I’m making some longer term plans. I’m making some longer strategy plans. One of the first things I did when I started this is I went back, and I chunked my career. Okay, what was true about the start of my career, what became true about the next piece of my career, and essentially, I was able to identify pivot points. And I think this has value to a chamber exec as well set aside some time to go back and look over the past couple of years past five years, 10 years, your whole your chambers whole history. Where were there strategic decisions made. That allowed the, the chamber to get momentum, or to really make an impact. And understanding backwards will actually help you strategize forwards. So that was the long way of saying, I think chamber execs need to get out of the office for at least a day, four times a year, no phones, no members, no interruptions, and strictly think about how they think about strategy. And to look at both the past and the future, and to look at where they can get pivot points that will help accelerate the value and relevance of their chambers going forward. So

Brandon Burton 33:12
as you do this, how long do you take when you Is it two days, three days a week? Usually,

Mary Byers 33:19
I do it overnight. And I plan on the first day and I spend most of the second day. So I would say on average, it’s a day and a half. Okay, so I’m spending three what is that day and a half day and a half, three, six, I’m spending six full days a year outside of my office, away from any interruptions. And I find that the more time I spend on the front end, the more I gain on the back end. So when I do it, I’m strategizing about my own business. But I’m also strategizing about my clients and how I serve them. And so the equivalent for a chamber would be strategizing about their role, their personal role in growth and development, and then also strategizing on behalf of how the organization serves members and how that’s changing. And I really believe that the changes we were seeing before the pandemic have been accelerated. But the pandemic gave us a tailwind. And now we have a choice coming out of this. And I think of it as no longer business as usual, but business as unusual. And how can we harness what’s happened for the good of our chambers. I also like to think about whether what we’re seeing is for now, or forever. So we’re coming out of the pandemic now. And so some of the trends that we’re seeing now may or may not be in existence in two, five or 10 years, that if some of the trends are in existence in two or five years, what does that mean for your organization? For a lot of chambers, they became more relevant because they were answering questions for members about, can we open? How can we open? When can we open? What does that look like, depending on what state they were located in? So that crisis actually increased our relevance. What can we learn from where we leaned in, during the pandemic that will help us going forward in our chamber?

Brandon Burton 35:21
I love that. That’s a great, great tip there. Say, I like asking all the guests that I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Mary Byers 35:38
I am very bullish on the future of all associations and chambers. However, in order to remain relevant, we’re going to have to continuously evolve. I do not think that if we stayed the same, that we will be as meaningful. Comfort and complacency are the enemy of relevance. And that’s why I think every chamber professional needs to be focused on continuously evolving what their business model looks like. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:11
and that’s so difficult, right? We say comfort and complacency are the enemy and, and that’s all human nature wants is to be comfortable. They don’t want to do the hard thing. You don’t want to do the painful thing. But those are the things that see growth and positive change is being able to push through and get out of that comfort zone. I think that’s it,

Mary Byers 36:32
I think, because there was so much stress and pressure and innovating on the fly. I think for many people, we’re sort of like, we’re in recovery mode. Right now. We’re sort of like who, wow, we made it through that. But we also build resilience muscles. And my biggest fear is that we our desire to go back is stronger than our desire to create a proactive go forward strategy. So I do think there is a role for rest and recovery. But we have to be careful that that doesn’t become our modus operandi. You know, we were tired, we were overwhelmed. We got through it. Now we got to keep going. Right? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 37:16
Well, Mary, this has been a great conversation, I appreciate the the point of view and perspective that you bring to this topic, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more and connect with you what would be the best way for them to do that?

Mary Byers 37:34
I appreciate that. Brandon, thank you. It’s simply my marybyers.com. There are resources there. And I also have AssociationInnovation.today. We did a report with loyalty Research Center, where we took a look at what high performing innovative organizations are doing. And there is a free report there. So anybody that’s interested in building an innovative culture in their organization can access that report. There’s a lot of food for thought. We talked about weak innovation, culture, strong innovation culture as we talk about how its funded. And we just talked about what you should be thinking about if you want to be an innovator.

Brandon Burton 38:19
Awesome. Yeah, everybody needs to take you up on that and go see that that free report. So well. We’ll have both of those websites linked in our show notes for this episode, so people can hop on there and click through to the websites. But Mary, thank you for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your insights and, and the future looking vision that you have for associations and chambers of commerce. I really do appreciate it.

Mary Byers 38:47
Thank you. It’s been my privilege to be here. And thank you for the work that you do because I believe that educating, encouraging, connecting, and allowing people to tap into other people’s good ideas is where many forms of innovation come from. So thanks for your work as well.

Brandon Burton
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Clean Energy & Chambers with Ryan Evans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Donna Novitsky 9:33
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 38:24
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Small Staff, Big Impact with Jodi Owczarski

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jodi Owczarski. For the first five years at the Michigan West Coast Chamber Jodi was accountable for providing leadership in all areas of the organization as well as serving as the integrator within the EOS framework. As the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jody was responsible for all human resources, accounting and finance functions, as well as managing the staff Facilities and Operations and directing the West Coast Leadership Program. As of September 1 2022, Jodi was appointed as president and CEO of the Michigan West Coast chamber. Jodi’s limitless capacity for solving math problems has been essential to creating budgets and balance sheets, and her inviting personality and quick humor, combined with our strategic thinking give her the edge when managing staff communities and volunteers. Jodi’s contagious energy ripples out into our business community. Working with the Chamber is a perfect combination of all Jodi’s previous work experiences, including as a self employed small business owner, serving as the community center director at a nonprofit working in HR for a large manufacturer and overseeing operations for an international consulting firm. Jody currently serves on a variety of boards and throughout the community and including ACCE Jody is an enthusiastic Spartan, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with an emphasis on Human Resource Management from Michigan State University. Jodi, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jodi Owczarski 3:41
Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. Truly, it’s an honor to be able to be a part of your podcast. I’ve been a fan for a long time and thrilled to have the opportunity to share what we’re working on at the West Coast chamber. I don’t know what more I have left. I feel like I could have you’ve summed up my whole life. You know more about me now than maybe my mom would even be able to say so. Thanks for the detailed intro. i Yeah, I’m honored.

Brandon Burton 4:10
Yeah. Well, we get personnel on here. So yeah. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Michigan West Coast chamber just to give us an idea, you know, size of the chamber staff budget that all play well into our discussion today, but also touch on the scope of work that you guys are involved with.

Jodi Owczarski 4:28
Yep, absolutely. So we’re located in Holland, Michigan. I’m glad you said Michigan West Coast chamber, because often if we’re called the West Coast chamber, people think we’re over in California. The West Coast chamber came about about 10 years ago actually when two of our chambers merged to make the West Coast chamber and that’s been a just a great process for us since that time, we have about 1200 members and recently grew our staff to seven so we’ve had a pretty small but mighty team by Stand the number of members that we serve. We are proud to be five star accredited through the US Chamber of Commerce, and hope to get that re accreditation status again when we reapply at this time next year. One unique thing perhaps about our organization is we run on something called EOS. The Entrepreneurial Operating System is maybe not as unique anymore. I think we were the very first chamber in the country to start running on EOS. But we’ve been evangelists because of the game changing that that has been for our organization. So we’re super active in our community, we say that we’re a catalyst for business growth and development. We’re a convener of leaders and influencers and a champion for a thriving community. Maybe not so unique, and we hear that often throughout the chamber community

Brandon Burton 5:51
right. Now, that is great. And I’m glad you mentioned the EOS system. And occasionally I’ll hear it in other podcasts that I listened to entrepreneurial bass podcasts and they’ll bring up the EOS system like the Michigan West Coast team or uses it Yeah. setting a good example with it. So hopefully, through our discussion today, we’ll have an opportunity to explore that a little bit and, and maybe how you guys implement that and along with our topic today. So as we focus on our topic that we’re covering for discussion today, it’s around small staff big impact. And that’s all relative, right? So each community, and staff sizes are all relative to you know, like Jodi mentioned, they’ve got seven staff but serving about 1200 Chamber members. So that is a relative small staff to that size of membership. Right now, some listening might have a membership, two or 300 and maybe be the only one but we’ll talk today about ways to make a big impact with a small staff and really getting the best bang for your buck as we go throughout this conversation today. And we’ll dive into that a little deeper as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 10:06
All right, Jodi, we’re back. I am anxious to learn more about how you guys make a big impact, especially with your staff size and leveraging opportunities there in your community to serve your Chamber members. So what are some of those fundamental ways that you leverage that impact?

Jodi Owczarski 10:27
You know, the big thing for us, Brandon, I think is that part of Eos is being super clear on who you are, and what your focus area is in for us. When we look at making an impact, we really look at five different areas for us to work in the first being advocacy. I know that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For us, that means that we promote a business friendly environment, through access to elected officials and education on important business related issues. That’s, that’s a big focus for us. The second is business building, we want to help provide visibility connections and resources for business success, that really comes into play with our smaller businesses that are in our chamber. Third area for us is community impact, we think that we can maximize the community, the impact on our community through collaboration and innovation, right? Not everything that we do is business focused, because we know that if the community is strong, business is strong, and vice versa, right? Strong business leads to strong community strong community strong. And so we want to make sure that we’re right at that intersection, to make sure that we can help provide a thriving community. Fourth area for us leadership and talent development, we deliver education and training opportunities for employees to just grow their abilities. This has become especially important threw out this kind of post pandemic time staffs are stretched, thin, people have been pushed into positions that perhaps they weren’t quite ready for, or they’ve not been trained appropriately for, we want to fill that gap and provide opportunities to help develop the leadership and talent skill set within our employee base. And then the last one is inclusivity. We want to foster a culture of belonging within our business community, we want everyone to feel not only like there’s a seat at the table for them, but that we expect them at the table, we welcome them to the table, we’ve got a seat for them, and we want their voice to be present.

Brandon Burton 12:41
Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s imperative, I would say to be clear, and who you are and what your areas of focus are, to be able to know what your day to day tasks and responsibilities are. Right, if you’re not clear that you just kind of wander?

Jodi Owczarski 12:57
Well, and I think honestly, Brandon is the chamber, when people don’t know where to go with something, where do they go, they go to the Chamber of Commerce, right. And so we get inundated with all kinds of I’ll call them opportunities to to be involved. And some of those things are fantastic. But if we don’t know who we are, and what our purpose, what our niches, it would be really easy to just get pulled into a ton of different directions and be less impactful. Knowing what our niches what those five things are that that we’re going to work on. If it doesn’t fit in one of those five, we’re gonna have to say no, for us, and our role may be just helping them find others that might be better suited to help with the work that needs to be done.

Brandon Burton 13:46
Yeah. And you often hear oh, but it’s great exposure. Yeah, the chamber is great. But you know, and I have to remind myself that people also die of exposure, so you need to channel that right,

Jodi Owczarski 13:59
I’m gonna I’m gonna hold on to that one.

Brandon Burton 14:04
So it helps being able to narrow down what that focus is. So you can kind of weed out those extra opportunities or exposure and really hone in on what your work what what you guys are focused on. So once you have that clear identity and focus, taking the staff that you have, how do you leverage your staff into delivering in these five key areas?

Jodi Owczarski 14:28
Yeah, you know, the big thing for us, honestly, Brandon, as we start before, considering staff, and look at what work needs to be done, and then creating those roles. So whether you have a staff of one or a staff of seven, you’ve really got to clarify what that work is. Usually it should be kind of those three to five main pieces of work that need to get done, and then find the right people to do that. And so for us, we work off an accountability chart, so that we’re all on The same page of who’s accountable for what looks a lot like an org chart, but really works more from this accountability standpoint. And once we’ve got that clarity, when all of those other opportunities and exposures come up, we’re again focused back on what are the three to five most important things that we need to focus on. And so we really leverage our staff in that way to make sure we continue to stay honed in and completing the most important work, because there’s always more to do. And I

Brandon Burton 15:33
love that approach of really being, you know, clarifying the work. And as you mentioned, finding the right people. And I’m thinking for those with a really small staff, if they’re a staff of one or two, it may not be where they’re finding the right people to do it. But maybe it’s finding the right time and blocking out the time in their schedule to focus on those areas of work. So really blocking in clarifying what that work isn’t needed needs to be done and assigning the time or the people to that, I think is key,

Jodi Owczarski 16:03
for sure. Further to that, for us, we work in 90 days segments. So we work at a quarter at a time. So at the end of each quarter, we look back and review, how did we do this last quarter accomplishing what we needed to get done. And what’s the most important work that needs to happen in this next 90 days for us to be successful and on track. And so there may be additional tasks and projects and things that bubble up that needs to be tackled in that 90 days. And as we assign those to an individual, it also gives them that clarity and permission really to reprioritize their tasks and know this is my number one priority in this 90 days, this has to get done. And so that that additional clarity really helps keep us on track.

Brandon Burton 16:54
I like that idea gives you a little kind of Sprint’s to be able to be accountable for exact area of work. And, and I’m sure that all fits within those 90 day sprints, or focus all fit within the mission of the chamber as well, it does. I’ve seen as we’re recording this, it’s March of 2023. And we’re coming off of these, these Silicon Valley Banks and everything that have crashed and, and as I’m diving into that a little bit just learning about it. All these banks are public banks, and they look at one quarter at a time to try to perform for their shareholders. But they don’t have that driving mission that’s driving that organism. And you can get in real trouble if you’re just you know, looking at the next month or 90 days or quarter, or whatever it is, without that bigger mission. That’s right purpose and focus. So

Jodi Owczarski 17:50
sure. For us, we back our way in right. So we start with a 10 year target of kind of where do we want to be 10 years from now? And then, if we pictured three years from now, what would be on track to get us to that 10 years, right? And then here’s our one year goals. Here’s our one year plan of what do we need to accomplish in the next 12 months to keep us on track towards that mission? That way any of those 90 day sprints or projects, we call them rocks? align with that to make sure are we on track to meet our goals for the bigger picture, right for that one year plan? And what do we need to do in the next 90 days to make sure we hit those goals?

Brandon Burton 18:32
Yeah, I love that. It may be helpful for listeners who I think a lot of chambers that have heard of the EOS system. But maybe it may not be so easy to just summarize in a nutshell, but maybe give it your best shot just so if someone’s listening and like what is EO that it will just save them a Google search and and just hearing from the chamber that implemented it first. What is it and what how does that work? Yeah.

Jodi Owczarski 19:01
ELS just really takes all of the best business practices from a variety of sources and puts it in one easy to follow kind of recipe or cookbook. For us, it means that we have absolute clarity on who we are, what we’re called to do, what our goals are, and what we need to accomplish those those things. So it’s not anything super unique. It’s just taking all of those best principles and putting them all together in in one place. So it’s it’s having that clarity. It’s giving you a long term vision. Our our strategic plan is really a kind of a two page document that’s called a VTOL vision traction organizer that just has everything in one place. You can ask anyone on our team, what our goals are, where we’re going and what our core values are, and they could just knock those out like this right it’s it’s not That’s something that’s a document that’s put away and we pull out every three years to see if we’re on track. It’s living and breathing in driving the work that we do.

Brandon Burton 20:09
So, for those listening, you may hear Entrepreneurial Operating System and think it’s an app or a program or something, it’s really just more of a framework to kind of structure the organization around and keep you on track with your, your purpose and those core values that you mentioned.

Jodi Owczarski 20:25
Absolutely. There’s a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. That’s the cookbook. So yeah, it’s a pretty easy, a pretty easy read. But once you kind of work your way through that, it’s like, Ah, this makes sense. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:43
So for those who are listening with the smaller staff, and I feel like every chamber out there can really, you know, hone in on this, because I feel like every chamber is always understaffed for everything that’s going on. Once they, you know, kind of focus in on their their areas of work their their areas of focus of purpose, I guess, clarifying the work and who’s going to do the work? What next steps would you suggest or what, what’s the next thing to try to really maximize the impact that they have with their limited staff?

Jodi Owczarski 21:17
You’re exactly right, you gotta have clarity and your purpose and your needs, you’ve got to find the right people, right, that can do that work. And then you’ve got to build the culture that are keen to keep your all stars in place. So it’s really easy, especially for chambers to just burn out, right? Chamber work is that eight to five, Monday through Friday. Chamber work is all encompassing 24/7, if I go to a wedding, I feel like I’m still representing the chamber, right, and so it never ends. So it’s also creating those boundaries for yourself to make sure that you continue to have gas in the tank, to be able to do the work that is so incredibly important for our community. For us, I sound like an EOS evangelist, I swear they’re not paying me to say these things. But a game changer for us this year, is we read another book called The EOS life. And essentially, it boils down to five questions and whether you do EOS or not. I love this self reflection to make sure you stay on track. One is you have to say yes to all five of these questions. Are you doing what you love? Are you doing it with people that you love? Are you making a huge difference? Are you compensated appropriately? And do you have time for other passions? We hold ourselves accountable to those five questions. Because if any of those answers are no, our time here at the Chamber is likely going to be short, right? If we’re not loving the work that we do, we’re going to end up finding our way out. The biggest issue we’ve had, frankly, is time for other passions. And so we continue to put guardrails and bumpers in place to make sure that our team is getting out. And they’ve got time for other things. And I’m asking them, what what makes you happy? What brings you joy? And we’re actually tracking on a scorecard. Are you doing those things? Are you filling that part of yourself so that you can continue to feel vibrant, joyful and prepared to do the work?

Brandon Burton 23:26
Right? Now, that’s so important to avoid that burnout and make sure in developing that culture, make sure people are enjoying life, make sure they enjoy coming to work, that they enjoy the work they’re involved with. And if not, you know, let’s make some adjustments. Let’s see, you know, what does bring them passion, let’s encourage them to take some vacation days, let’s encourage you know, those things that are going to help to sustain you know, a good, a good healthy balance, if there is such a thing.

Jodi Owczarski 23:56
And you know, and there is and I think if you’re a staff of one, you might think that’s almost impossible to do. But I would challenge and say it’s more important than ever, that you can say yes to all five of those things, right? Because it all does boil down to you. So if you can’t say yes to all those things, if it’s if it’s a time issue, then figure out what what has to come off your plate, you can’t do everything. Right. So goes back to knowing what your purpose is, and and making sure that all of your time is spent on those things. And kind of peeling away the rest.

Brandon Burton 24:33
And if you’re a staff of one, just feeling totally overwhelmed, you know, utilize your board, utilize your volunteers, you know, do you guys how do you utilize volunteers in your board there at the West Coast chamber?

Jodi Owczarski 24:46
Great, great question. We’ve really changed the expectations that we have for our volunteers. We had a huge ambassador program we had I think over 100 ambassadors. They were ineffective. It was cliquey. Anybody who wanted to be an ambassador could just be an ambassador. It was more of a social club than anything else. And a couple of years ago, we decided that that just wasn’t representing who we were as an organization. So we pushed pause, and completely flipped that program, we took what we do for our organization, from an EOS clarity standpoint, and put that same principles into place for our ambassadors. And so they had to know who we were and what their purpose was. And we had expectations for them. We’ve started an application process and an interview process for them to be a part of this important team for us. We’re down to I think, 40. Now ambassadors, and they are doing such incredible meaningful work for us that I can’t imagine not having them as a resource, and an extension for our team, we have a very robust member engagement process, we call them journeys. Here, it’s a defined track of what a member can experience, the touch points they’re going to have with our organization. We don’t want them just hearing from us once a year when it’s time for them to write another check, right. And so we’ve got the structure journey, that would happen throughout the year, we can’t do all of those touch points for 1200 members, with a staff of six or seven, not in that do it well. And so we engage our ambassadors to do a lot of that outreach and engagement. And it’s a great opportunity for them, right? It grows their connections for their own job outside of the chamber. But it also provides the that meaningful contact from the Chamber’s perspective, and gives us the insight that we need so that if a membership is at risk, we know about that before, it’s just a lack of payment for an invoice. And so we can get on that issue earlier.

Brandon Burton 27:00
Right now, I love the way you guys are have changed that Ambassador program and really creating that that honed in focus. Do you know how did that transition go go from going from 100? down to four? Because I can just see, listeners be like, yes, that’s our ambassador programs, clicky. It’s way too big and effective. But you don’t want to, you know, push people away. So how do you do that transition?

Jodi Owczarski 27:27
Great question. So the first year, we allowed, we provided clarity on what the new expectations were going to be. And we allowed everyone who was currently an ambassador to reapply, or to apply and be accepted in that first year. But they did have to apply. But we weren’t going to turn any of them away. Some of them with the new expectations in place. They’re kind of like, yeah, that sounds a lot like work to me. And I think I’m out. And so that was great, right? They self selected out. Yes. Others kind of came through that first year and thought, whatever, you know, they they knew how it was going to be. And after that year of clarity and expectations. They’re like, yeah, that felt a lot more like work. I’m out this year. And so it wasn’t an abrupt change. Others, we had to have some direct conversations like, it might be time, you know, you’ve served us well, we’re so appreciative of the number of years of service you’ve had. But it might be time to let somebody else have this opportunity. And that really had gone over pretty well. But you know, it probably took three, three years or so to really get it down now to this just all star all star team of ambassadors.

Brandon Burton 28:45
Yeah. I’ve been intrigued with all these different Ambassador programs that different chambers do and from applications and interviews to I’ve heard of some that, you know, the ambassadors pay to be part of the program. And it really helps to kind of not weed out but really qualify those who are really there to show up and do the work.

Jodi Owczarski 29:07
Absolutely. We’re turning them away now. Right. I mean, I saw the list of I’m thankful I don’t have to make the decisions, because I was like, Oh, are you kidding? This person doesn’t get to be an ambassador. But it’s it’s the right thing. Right. And so now you’re raising the bar and creating it to be something that people aspire to. What a mind shift,

Brandon Burton 29:26
right? Absolutely. And really, if you’re not qualifying those ambassadors as volunteers, somehow it really ends up just creating more work for you either damage control or hands on with each of those volunteers. And so help yourself by by helping to qualify those who are volunteering.

Jodi Owczarski 29:48
100%. You know, that makes me think of something else. Brandon, I think that so often in the chamber industry, we think about we’ll just we’re just grateful for anybody that will help or any members that will join. And we’ve kind of changed that mindset here. So even from a membership perspective, we raid our members a, b, c, d, if we’re clear on who our ideal members are, we spend more time going after those ideal. And we’d spend more time trying to retain those ideal, because we found that we spent so much of our time and energy chasing and dealing with these problematic members that were paying the very lowest tier membership dues, and really weren’t well aligned with chamber membership. Well, we take their money for a membership, absolutely, well, we support them 100%. But we’re not going to spend the same energy chasing after them. And once we gave ourselves that permission, we were so much more impactful. So I mean, we’ve been retained last year, we retained our membership at over 92%. Right, you find the right the right recipe, and it works. The same thing is true. From the volunteer standpoint, I kind of identify and define what’s your ideal Ambassador look like? And go after those people and raise the bar, don’t just be like, oh, we’ll take whatever we can get. Because those problematic ambassadors that don’t align with those expectations. Oh, they are soul sucking, right? It takes all of your time, all of your energy, and they don’t. And you don’t get anything for it. It’s just a double negative.

Brandon Burton 31:33
Yeah, well, and you can go another step with recruiting your board, right? It’s it across the board, whether it’s a member of volunteer board member, and the example he gave with the members, it’s kind of the membership paradox, right, like those that need the most help that need the most attention, can’t afford to pay more than just the basic entry level membership. So being being clear on that is very helpful. Absolutely. So Jody, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, if you have any tip or action items that you might suggest for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you offer them?

Jodi Owczarski 32:14
You know, I think one thing that is often a struggle for people is kind of making decisions based on data. And so I think don’t let data be something that is carrying you use that to inform your decisions, and your work, whether it’s to go to the board and say, I need another person, or if it’s to define new opportunities for you, or if it’s to kill the sacred cow, right? It’s that program that you’ve done forever, use data to help drive those decisions. We have a very robust scorecard system, that we go over once a week as a staff, with those key metrics that show us whether we’re on track or off track. And we use that really to drive the decisions forward, what are we going to continue to do? What do we need to stop doing? Or what additional resources we need to take things to the next level? So don’t be afraid of data really can be your friend?

Brandon Burton 33:14
Yeah. Especially as you go to your board and say, I feel like we need to get rid of the sacred cow versus we need to get rid of the sacred cow look at you know, what it was five years ago? This is what we’re getting now. The engagements not there. The money’s not there, whatever it is, it’s not aligned with our mission anymore, basically.

Jodi Owczarski 33:33
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, sometimes killing those sacred cows are the best things that you can ever do. Because it gives you opportunity, space capacity to do something new that might be more meaningful for your organization, for your community for your members. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

Brandon Burton 33:52
Right? So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jodi Owczarski 34:03
Now, that’s such a great question. I was talking to somebody about that. Yesterday, I talked before about the fact that we’ve got a 10 year target, right? Where are we going to be 10 years from now. And our 10 year target does not include the words Chamber of Commerce, we say that we’re going to be an organization that, right, because I don’t know what this is going to look like. And I don’t want to restrict myself so far to say that I do know what that is. Maybe it’s a chamber of commerce. But we know that we want to be the essential business resource and leading connector in the middle of a thriving and prosperous community, whatever that might look like. I think that that the needs from our business community are evolving so quickly, that we’re going to have to continue to change to be relevant and important for the community to continue to lean out in that way.

Brandon Burton 35:01
Yeah, I like that. I had a thought just as you’re given that response that has never really crossed my mind before. But when you talk about not necessarily being married to the term Chamber of Commerce, I’ve seen a lot of chambers make that shift already, right, where they’re, they’ve changed, they’ve taken chamber out of their name. But, you know, in today’s world of digital, you know, keyword research and you know, as people look at terms they’re find found on search engines. Chamber has multiple definitions, right? If you do a search for chamber, I mean, who knows? What’s going to come up? Right? Is there a more defining word or term that can be coined to really encompass what a Chamber of Commerce does? Right? So more clarity and more focus on allowing the community to understand you know, what this organization does,

Jodi Owczarski 36:05
right? I don’t know what the answer is to that, frankly, and maybe we’ll still be a chamber. But we want to be open enough to the fact that that might not be the same label that we have. But we’ll continue to evaluate that year over year. Regardless of what we’re called, I think that there’s a need for an organization, like a chamber of commerce, to be at the core of, of any community to really help it thrive, and to be the best that it can be,

Brandon Burton 36:37
for sure. But God, this has been a fun conversation. I’m sure people have been jotting notes as they’ve been hearing your talk. But for the listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you maybe learn more about the EOS system, or just in general how you guys are doing things Sarah at the Michigan West Coast chamber, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jodi Owczarski 36:58
Absolutely, I we love that. I love it. Personally, our whole staff does. So I would encourage you to visit our website, WestCoastChamber.org. And take a look, feel free. All of our contact information is on the website on our staff page. So if you’re a membership person and want to connect with Jess or Britt, reach out, they’d be happy to hear from you. If you want to talk to me about chamber in general, or anything about EOS forward thinking, click right there on the LinkedIn, contact me directly there as well. We truly are passionate about the work that we do, and are always honored to have the opportunity to talk with other chamber professionals to help support the work that you’re each doing in your own individual communities.

Brandon Burton 37:45
That’s perfect. We’ll have of course links to your website and staff page and everything in our show notes for this episode. So anybody can can find you there as well. But Jodi, thank you so much for being with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your experience and how you guys are doing things there at the West Coast chamber. I really do appreciate it.

Jodi Owczarski 38:05
Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 38:07
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Keeping Local Dollars Local with Donna Novitsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Donna Novitsky 11:01
Hey everybody, Donna from Yiftee here today, just like Brandon, we’re bringing you a guest speaker. First up is Gina from Durham, North Carolina. We’ve sold more than 3300 community cards in Durham, that are being spent at 51 different merchants. There’s something for everyone.

Gina Rozier 11:19
I’m Gina Rozier, Director of Marketing, Communication and Peacekeeping for Downtown Durham Incorporated. And I’m a very happy Yiftee customer.  We’re the Bull City, and we created our spendable community card with Yiftee years ago. Our participating businesses love it and we had our best ever sales figures last year. Yiftee is great to work with. They help with marketing the program and it is truly turnkey for us in our businesses. Choosing Yiftee has been a great decision for downtown Durham.

Donna Novitsky 11:48
Thanks, Gina. Wondering how you can have your own community card for free. Check out yiftee.com for next steps. Now back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Giuliani 35:46
Thank you really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 35:48
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Addressing Challenges Facing Businesses with Rick Wilson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Rick Wilson. Rick is the President and CEO of the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce, and has been since 2019. Rick comes from a 16 year career working at the YMCA organization in a variety of different roles from facility manager to executive manager. He’s an active Rotarian, and is involved at different levels with several local organizations and board of directors. But Rick, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Rick Wilson 2:37
Well, thank you, Brandon. And it’s exciting to be on the show here. And hello, everybody out there. All those interested in what goes on at chambers of commerce. And again, my name is Rick Wilson. I’m the President CEO for the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. I’m very excited to be on here today to chat a little bit about what’s going on with chambers of commerce, especially here in Southern California and hopefully, some great storytelling on will help you guys moving forward on some of the things you’re looking to do as well. But a little interesting about me. Born and raised here in Southern California, I went to school for a little bit in Australia for about a year as well as in Virginia, of when I was in high school and then went to college at UC Santa Barbara. And then was lucky enough to come back to San Diego to work for the then San Diego Chargers. And that was a great experience for seven seasons traveling on the road working in coaching and working in the business department. But since then, I’ve moved on was at the YMCA, As Brandon mentioned, and now landed over here at the East County Chamber of Commerce for about the past four years and really excited to continue to help our business community.

Brandon Burton 3:38
That’s right. And you you came into the chamber world at just the right time get about a year of experience under your belt before they really put you to work, right?

Rick Wilson 3:47
Yes, sir.

You know, got hired in May of 2019. And about March of 2020. We all experienced the same thing and stay at home orders and the 100 year pandemic and there was no playbook for anybody on what to do during 100 year pandemic, especially for Chambers of Commerce. So we definitely rolled up our sleeves and dove into it and just went after it. Absolutely. But tell us a little bit about the San Diego East County Chamber just give us an idea of you know where you’re coming from. So things like the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work you’re involved with. And that’ll kind of set our table for discussion. Great. So yeah, the San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce was founded back in August of 1912. So we are now in our 100 and 11th year of operations here at the chamber. So that’s quite a few generations that have really looked at our chamber as the go to resource in that community, whether it’s business related or not. And we definitely really love that and appreciate that and want to keep that up our staff size. We’re fully staffed. We have five employees. And we have two longtime volunteers one for about four years and one for about 11 years now. And that’s really helped us out our budgets, just over half a million just

over 500,000. And we’re looking to continue to grow our membership is right around 600 members. And so we’re looking coming out of the pandemic continuing to grow that we had a great program and a great plan going in 2019. And then as I mentioned earlier, the pandemic hit and for everybody, it just kind of changed the way we did business, but really excited about what the future holds. And as a chamber of commerce, we want to be that resource in our community to help everyone out.

Brandon Burton 5:26
So I know it’s in the name. So the San Diego Regional East County team, what all the do encompasses geographically?

Rick Wilson 5:35
Now, that’s a great question. So well, first off, I’ll start off by saying that as a chamber of commerce, we don’t really see boundaries or barriers. We’re a global economy. So we’ve gotten members in other states here in the United States, Northern California, and then obviously a lot in Los Angeles in Southern California, but we are in San Diego Regional East County Chamber of Commerce. So if we had borders, we would say we go as far east as Borrego Springs as far south as Spring Valley as far north as Poway and as far west as La Mesa. But we do things all over San Diego County, we partner with tons of chambers of commerce here in San Diego. And the whole goal of that is to bring our businesses together, it has nothing to do with poaching, membership or anything like that. We kind of believe that, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships so we can work together as chambers of commerce, we can help the business community even more, and that’s really what we’re looking for. So as a Regional Chamber, we’re not just regionally for each county, but we are regional throughout San Diego County doing everything we can to help.

Brandon Burton 6:33
Okay, I know that that makes a lot of sense. So I appreciate the the extra explanation of the name, right?

Rick Wilson 6:40
Yes, it is a little bit of a sentence. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 6:43
So as we get into our discussion for our topic, today, we settled on the idea of talking about how chambers can really be a resource and a help for businesses who are facing struggles and some of those struggles that businesses face. So we’ll dive deeper into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:43
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 9:37
All right, Rick, we’re back. So leading into the break there we introduce the topic for our discussion today being addressing challenges that are facing businesses and specifically how a chamber of commerce can help with addressing some of these challenges and and I think it’s kind of an inherent thing for Chambers of Commerce to be involved with being problem solving. versus their community. But as we approach this discussion, what what are some of those things that are maybe top of mind for you when it comes to a chamber of commerce helping businesses that are facing certain struggles?

Rick Wilson 10:13
Absolutely. Well, first off, thank you, Brandon, the Chamber of Commerce exists because of so many businesses that exist in our society, right? We are in a capitalistic society. So Chamber of Commerce has are here to really help businesses small, medium, and large size. And some of the challenges that we’ve been seeing over the past year and a half, two years coming out of the pandemic, obviously, is workforce, getting employees, I would say, the middle of 2021, coming out of the pandemic wooden restrictions kind of lifted up was definitely a challenge. Definitely, in Southern California, we saw, restaurants half empty, and they’re not serving the other half, because they can’t get enough employees, cooks, waiters, you name it. And so a lot of stores or retail, or manufacturing, or anything that we can think of have struggled with getting workforce. So as a chamber of commerce, we are definitely working with the Workforce Partnership in San Diego here, working with the Economic Development Council, working with government, local agencies, to make sure that we are doing what we can to help get that workforce back into our society back into working, that really is the machine that makes everything go. And so Workforce Partnership is incredibly important workforce development work with, like I mentioned, all those agencies, that’s been really big for us, and we’ve not arrived, we are still looking to do that, I would say we’ve gone from getting bodies in there to now really needing to look at incredibly qualified people getting back to where we were pre pandemic. So looking for those qualified applicants now and really getting them placed into our workforce out here in East County and throughout San Diego County. So that’s, that’s one of the big topics that we’ve seen.

Brandon Burton 11:49
Yeah, so the workforce issue, I think it’s taken on a whole different approach, a whole different issue, you know, coming out of the pandemic. So before, I think, you know, we’d see jobs shift from one region to another, or different states, navy, whatever political climates or incentives there are for employers to be in certain places, but the pandemic when everything shut down, and people kind of got creative in different ways to bring in an income, and especially those in the service industry, if they weren’t, you know, super high income earners to begin with. And maybe they’d created their own side gig or side hustle that became something. I mean, it just really created a different need and that time of their own employment, but then it leaves a huge void today, right? So as we look at trying to help with the workforce issues, is that something you guys are seeing there in the San Diego area? How, how are you trying to approach it to fill that void? I’m sure others are looking at a similar situation.

Rick Wilson 12:56
It’s a really good point, we have seen coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people who were employees of organizations, nations looking to kind of go on their own. And so we’ve had a lot of people come into the chamber of commerce, and we’ve worked with the Economic Development Council to help them start a business are starting to realize to during the pandemic, that a brick and mortar isn’t the be all end all that you know, it really expose the fact that those who were not comfortable with people working from home, for the pandemic, really were forced to see this results. And as many saw, you’re getting the same production, if not more, with some of those people working from home, which has really, you know, allowed. The word I’d like to use this pivot, we talked about that a lot during the pandemic is businesses looking outside the box re looking at their business model. You know, what if I use an example of one of our local companies here was heavy, a barbecue place, heavy seven days a week in their restaurant pandemic happen, they changed their business model pretty quickly. And they jumped all over the fact that all of our hospitals, and all of our health care, were starting to feed their people on a 24 hour basis, because remember, during the pandemic, and people working 12 hour shifts, 15 hour shifts. And that pivoting of that model for that restaurant, just as little restaurant completely blew them out of the water. They’re doing better than they’ve ever done. They’ve looked at their model. Now they rent out their facility three days a week for parties and events. It’s less staff that they need to put on the front end with not sharing what’s going to come in and able to load up their staff or catering their chefs. So pivoting was really one of the biggest things that we worked on during the pandemic to try to think outside the box to help businesses think of something different and individual employees who were unemployed during the pandemic, who maybe didn’t fall into the wonderful PPP program, working with them if they wanted to start a business on how we could get this going, especially during the pandemic and we’ve seen some really great results with that.

Brandon Burton 14:50
Yeah, so yeah, I guess that’s that’s a whole nother aspect of the the workforce issues all the money printing and all the money that got put into the system and I Um, stimulus checks and things like that that made work optional for people for a time. Or give them that flexibility to explore the opportunities to so yeah. What are what are some of the other challenges that you see businesses facing that a chamber of commerce can help with,

Rick Wilson 15:18
especially coming into 2023, two of the big things that we’ve been seeing is obviously, the supply chain, we all hear about this challenge that’s been happening. And then obviously, inflation. So with inflation, you know, businesses looking at their total package, what they’re offering, you know, most that we know how to increase pricing, depending on what service it is that they have, or what industry they’re in, as our chamber of commerce worked really hard coming out of the pandemic, and in 2022, really made some great strides. We were able to as a decision this year with our board of directors to not raise our pricing for our membership, do the fact that everyone is it totally makes sense to do it. You know, this is the time that you can argue and say, Yes, but if you’ve been able to do some really great things and make some really great decisions that have benefited you financially, as an organization, we’d like to turn that around, and give that back to our members by being able to say for 2023, with the inflation going up, and pricing going up and everything being like it is we’ve been able to hold our pricing at membership for 2023, which we’re incredibly proud of. And we’ve been getting incredible feedback on that, knowing that in 2024, we will have to look at an increase, but we just we’re talking at the end of 2022. What can we do for our members as they go through supply chain issues, inflation workforce challenges. So we’re really proud of that. And if you know, organizations are able to do that, whether through grants, whether through donations, whether it’s due just smart strategic and what you’re doing with your events as a chamber, you know, that’s a great way to give back to your members without actually taking it out of your pocket.

Brandon Burton 16:56
Right. So I think those are two key things that the chambers can can work on. And I think that we see a need across the country with both supply chain and inflation. And I commend you guys for being able to take a look at your budget and say we don’t need to raise price. And I’m sure your members appreciate that. As far as addressing the needs of the members, I mean that that’s one way of addressing that the inflation, but are you guys providing any feedback or data or anything as far as inflation goes? Or to be able to provide resources with supply chain issues? At what’s the approach on those two things you guys are taken?

Rick Wilson 17:37
Yeah, partnerships are very big for us at this Chamber of Commerce, we feel like we are able to reach more and do more by partnering. So when you’re talking about data, yes, we work with several groups here, not only in East County, but throughout San Diego County to keep our eyes on what’s going on with the economy. And so with related to inflation, what kind of data can we push out what kind of suggestions, so we’re not the be all end all as a chamber, the more partnerships we have, the more research verses we’re able to give to our members and non members just in the entire business community. So really, partnerships are what’s big. And so working with those groups, we can give those resources out. One of our big partners, and I think for most chambers is the Economic Development Council. They work on a lot of similar items that we do. So we try not to duplicate what we’re doing, we try to work together to make sure that together, we’re pushing out those resources to the community. So we’re very proud of that. And also continuing to work with other chambers really makes that partnership with other outside agencies much easier. Because we’re all trying to do the same thing. We’re all trying to help the business community. And it’s not a competition, it’s really about if, if the business committee is doing great tax dollars are rolling in coming back to your city in your county, it just makes a better place where we all work, live and play. And that’s what we’re really our goal is to go towards, right.

Brandon Burton 18:56
So the thing that comes to mind, you know, oftentimes, chambers are very involved with important work, you know, and oftentimes, they’re not seeking the credit, you know, the the partnerships, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit, necessarily, as long as the work gets done and information gets out there and everything. But at the same time, it’s important for people to understand what a Chamber of Commerce does, right. So there’s that definition of what a chamber does. So I’m curious as you guys work to address the needs, the the issues that are facing businesses, obviously, it’s best to have, you know, success stories, you know, individuals who are telling others that word of mouth spreads. But are there other ways that you guys are trying to educate the community about the work that you guys are involved with, and specifically with sharing some of these success stories of helping businesses overcome obstacles?

Rick Wilson 19:52
And that’s a great question. I think that’s probably one of the number one challenges most chambers have is pushing out the information and the resources on what they do. I think most people will think they know what a chamber of commerce, I probably have exactly one of those before I got the job. And then when you dive in, you realize that, yes, it is about the business community, but in that respect of the business community, how are you going about helping them. And in my opinion, there’s multiple branches on this tree of how you get to that success. So like, we talked about partnerships are partnering with government partner with leaders in your community, partner with big organizations that are looking to give back to the business community. So there’s multiple ways that you can do that, obviously, during the pandemic, we had program grant programs that came out in the county, the states and the cities that we all live in work in. And that was kind of a band aid to help, you know, get to a certain point. But it really wasn’t a solution. It was really about talking with other groups and making sure that we’re working to be successful, and not just saying, we as an organization know what is happening, we need to get a vibe of what’s going out throughout our county. And that is the best way to get those results and get those two people or organizations or businesses that we work with. Could you follow up again, with the second question? There’s another part to that question?

Brandon Burton 21:10
Yeah, that’s a good question. Mainly about just how you guys go about sharing the success that you guys create for businesses and beyond the word of mouth of businesses that have been impacted, telling others? How are you sharing the message of what a chamber does? And specifically with addressing the challenges that face businesses? And a great,

Rick Wilson 21:35
that’s a great question, and I appreciate you kind of falling back up with that. So for us, you know, when we look at, yes, social media, that’s where people live, right? So social media is incredibly important that we’re, we’re pushing out the word, a lot of people are using Twitter or Instagram to find out their information, we know a lot of our media, really still follow Twitter, that’s really kind of where they get their information. So we’re pushing out as much as we can on that we have a weekly newsletter that goes out to over 2500 businesses, but we only have 600 members. So we know the business community has their eye on what’s going on with us. And we want to help. And when people find themselves in an alignment with what we’re doing, then fantastic, they can join our chamber. But our goal is really to help the business community. And so looking at these opportunities, success stories. I mean, there’s lots of them, I think of stories that we constantly tell people and educate, reach out to the chamber when, when you have a question, we can probably help you. And a lot of it is businesses with permitting and cities in the areas that they’re in. Well, we’re working with all these cities. So we can call in sometimes it’s just as easy as the permit is ready. But someone didn’t press the button within that city organization, because they’re so busy themselves trying to get things done. And Souplantation was a huge organization here in San Diego that died in Southern California during the pandemic. And we have a business owner who’s bringing that back and working with the city to bring that back. And people are very excited about that. And I’ll just share one little simple story on that is, she also is running a different business in there until she can bring Souplantation back. So she didn’t want to take the big signs down there on a 30 foot pole, the ones on the buildings. And if you’re not running the business at the time, you need to do that. But there’s also a clause that you can also put a wonderful canvas over it. And so she went from oh my gosh, this is going to destroy my business to oh, I can just have put a canvas over it until we get Souplantation open again. So working with your chamber communicating with your chamber. That’s the biggest thing, the more we hear from our businesses, that voice of what’s going on, the more that we can push that towards government write letters to the state, work with local entities, you know, deregulation, you name it. But when we hear from our business, community, especially our members, that’s the biggest thing. So one of the big tips I would give to anyone listening out there is reach out to your chamber, your chamber is there to serve you. And I know that it’s very difficult, you’re running your own business, you don’t have a lot of time to be engaged. But I used I like to use the analogy of a gym membership, right, we all kind of have a New Year’s resolution, we get that gym membership, we put it in our front pocket, but we never go to the gym, not to say that you can achieve your goals. But it might be a little bit more difficult to achieve your goal. If you don’t go to the gym. Well, if you join the Chamber of Commerce, the chamber is going to do everything it can for you, it’s going to mark it for you, it’s going to reach out to you it’s gonna have touch points, it’s going to share resources. But if it’s not hearing from you, and it’s not engaging with you, it’s harder for that business to achieve its goals. So my suggestion always is try to be engaged, try to be involved in Do not hesitate reaching out to your chamber, they have more resources than you would think.

Brandon Burton 24:34
Yeah, that’s great advice for business owners. So maybe I will shift that it says a good tip for business owners. What tip or action item might you have for a chamber that’s listening that would be interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? So

Rick Wilson 24:51
they I love this question. This is one of my favorite answer is that chambers definitely in their areas is you know the the environment in the communities that they’re serving. He will be strategic on that. But for us, the bigger picture is we’re all inclusive. We care about everyone in the business community. So for us, it’s not about getting our membership to 1000 by next year. And what are we doing strategically to do that? If we’re pushing out that information, and really being all inclusive, when I say all inclusive means that you’re willing to partner with other chambers, you’re not we’re afraid about another chamber, oh, they’re talking to someone on the side and taking my member. That’s if that’s what’s happening, then that chamber is not really driving and doing what it’s supposed to what it’s supposed to be doing is collaborating, working and bringing all these resources to the business community. So the first thing I would suggest is, open your doors to all chambers, try to partner with mixers, any opportunity that you have. Look at that we have a meeting next week, we have our women in leadership luncheon that we’ve been running now for 21 years. And there’s a huge group here in San Diego called mana, which is Latino business women in that group has 400 Women in that association. Well, we want to see what opportunities there are for our very successful event that has over 600 people that attended every year, we want to partner with other groups to find out what might we be missing. So always be as a chamber be open to hearing other ideas, doesn’t mean that you’re going to move forward on every idea. But we’re that crazy chamber that believes if we throw 100 things on the wall, and one or two stick boy, we are going in the right direction. But if we don’t vet those opportunities, if we don’t look at that opportunity, then we’re going to kind of be the same chamber that we’ve always been. And we are a chamber that wants to be innovative. Were the first chamber of commerce in North America to have a personal assistant robot that Tammy robot that you’re starting to see in airports, restaurants and things like that. So we want to be leaders in our community, we want to be innovative, if and the only way to do that is to open our doors, and work with as many organizations, government agencies and chambers of commerce as we can so that we can all succeed. So in my vision, if the chambers in San Diego County, which is about 30, or 40. If they’re succeeding, then we’re all succeeding than the entire business community. So be open to working with other chambers of commerce. And there’s incredible ROI for that.

Brandon Burton 27:09
Awesome. So circle back, tell us about that personal assistant robot. Everybody’s all over AI these days, right? Yes. What can this robot do for you.

Rick Wilson 27:22
So interesting. Back in 2019, when I got the job, I met a gentleman who was a member of virtual reality for Main Street. So he kind of saw the technology, which is kind of already here. But he wanted to help chambers kind of grow with that. So we started a program called chamber innovators that did okay. But really, when the pandemic hit, chamber, innovators, all of a sudden became one of the number one programs in San Diego, we’re putting, excuse me, we’re putting it on virtually once a week. And we have people all over the nation with innovative business practices, innovation with technology. And so we had a lot of members throughout San Diego County that were members of other chambers jumping on this free program, and really started driving us in that technology innovation Avenue. Coming out of the pandemic, we had the opportunity to get one of these Tammy robots. And so if you walk into our office, the first thing is you’re greeted by the robot, it will welcome you. We bring it to all of our events. So it’s like anything else, you got a program and for whatever you wanted to do. But we had all our sponsors that are big EC honors event that we just had last week. And all the sponsors love that, that is robots talk, going around and talking about the sponsors. And, you know, it was definitely just a different way of looking at things. And as time goes on, we’re seeing airports restaurants using these not to replace employees, but to really use it as an additional tool to make the organization more efficient and better. And I’ll give an example. I was just at a restaurant three weeks ago, where when you walk up the person that greets you and says oh table for four great, they send the robot to take you to where which sends a message to the waiter that now your table for is ready and the robot sat you down. And the restaurant we weren’t at didn’t have the robot serving. But I have seen that. And so the personal robot assistant is really an assistant, it’s not a replacement of any employee that we have is to really build on what we’re doing and become more efficient in what we do. Plus technology’s kind of cool. So everybody does like it.

Brandon Burton 29:18
That’s right. Yeah, that reminds me, I was at a Chick fil A in in Texas, a small town in Texas. And we sit down and they had to have these robots that would bring the food to you. So they’re taken at the counter, put the tray on this robot and they would go right to your table. And it was pretty slick. I mean, everybody’s in there just watching the show, right? Technology is cool. But so does this robot. Does it collect any data, or is it just delivering data? How is it interacting?

Rick Wilson 29:50
Yeah, so so far, we have one of the first models that came out, t Mi, Tammy. And so there’s all kinds of new ones like I’ll just segue real quick into there. There’s ones that it’s, uh, the, the stamp, I guess you could call it is a refrigerator. So if you had one at home, you would still need to stock it. But you could call on your robot anytime to bring you a beverage or anything like that. And for us, it’s not collecting data, it’s you program it to do anything and everything that you want. I do believe that that is the future. And I’m sure some of the newer models that have come out do have that it’s an evolution. But the first model that we got out really has one little platform that we put some waters on, it greets our members when they come in or non members. It shows them a few things in our lobby or business cards, you know, materials of our members, sit them down in our conference room and let them know someone will be with them right away. Then it goes to each one of our offices until we say hello. Oh Rick’s not in hope someone else is not in this person’s in and lets them know that someone’s there. So it is helping us being more efficient. But right now, we’re not using it as a data collection. We’re putting information into it, depending on what day it is what event it is that we have going on. But mostly Monday through Friday. It’s a it’s a welcome robot that welcomes people when they come in. And what I wanted to have happen is happen, people who walk in, they walk out and word of mouth is Have you been to these County Chamber recently, they’ve got a robot in there. And so that’s kind of one of those spread of word where people just want to come in the postal workers now don’t just drop off the mail, they want to come in everyday because they want to be greeted by the robot.

Brandon Burton 31:26
That is great. Any any of these things that can draw that attention and positive positive comments? That’s great. So I like asking is another good segue I like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rick Wilson 31:45
That’s a really great question. I’ll just say this, if chambers aren’t innovating and thinking outside the box, they could get left behind. If you’re doing it the way it was 1015 20 years ago, exactly the same, you might get left behind with all the innovation that’s coming out. So my suggestion is that what we’re doing is looking at all the tried and true practices that still do work, yet open to all kinds of opportunities to look at what the future has, as technology gets better. As as partnerships grow as bigger, or organizations are looking to partner with smaller organizations Chamber of Commerce are ripe for that. So continue to look for partnership opportunities, continue to try to partner with chambers of commerce, and be open to innovation and new ideas that really is what’s going to continue to take chambers to the next level. Because we are not going to be the same in our community, especially after the pandemic. So looking at business models, really looking at the way we do things, the way the business community operates, be flexible and right along with them to help them achieve their goals.

Brandon Burton 32:54
I like that. And I think look into the future. Some of those things that are on the horizon right now, obviously, is artificial intelligence. Already, a lot of buzz around that. But also look at things like blockchain and NF T’s and the business models that go along with that, because it’s going to change the way a lot of businesses operate. And if as a chamber, we need to know, you know, how do these things work?

Rick Wilson 33:20
Correct. And to your point, AI, as well as augmented reality is starting to become really big. If you went to our website, you’ll see, about two years ago, we had created a virtual Chamber of Commerce. So you could go to our chamber of commerce, virtually, you could go into different rooms, different lobby areas and get services and get stuff that would traditionally be on our website. And now we’re starting to see an augmented reality avatars that are walking around you create your own avatar, and building Chambers of Commerce is our businesses or, gosh, what do I even say like, imagine a conference but you’re you’re you’re you’re in downtown San Diego at the wonderful conference center, where you’re doing it 100% virtually don’t have to actually fly out and get a hotel, you can be a part of that. And we’re starting to see that becoming reality. During the pandemic, we did a couple job fairs like that, that were incredibly successful, where we weren’t sure how people would react to having a little avatar and go into different rooms and sitting down and having interviews virtually. And we didn’t know how it worked. But we had about 350 participants in that and it was incredible. And so I think it’s the more that you do the stuff in technology, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, you name it, the more comfortable you get into I am someone who’s not a techie. And so for me, it’s like I get the concept. I want to be innovative, but I’m not your leader. That’s gonna say this is how you do it. Here’s, here’s all the logistics. But I tell you surround yourself with people that do you know what’s going on that are leaders in that industry, and they can hold your hand and take you with them to because for us, we’re one of the chambers in San Diego they’re looked at as Wow, look at all this innovation but it’s Because of the partners that I have, is why we’re there. It’s not because of myself, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that stuff except saying that looks super cool on the screen. That’s

Brandon Burton 35:10
great. So Rick, I like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things at your chamber, and maybe addressing some of these challenges that businesses face, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Rick Wilson 35:28
Yeah, so I’m pretty transparent on everything. I’ll give you my email address, which is rickw@eastcountychamber.org. Our website is eastcountychamber.org, you can contact us here at the office 619-440-6161. And I want to be here for any chamber, I’ve learned a lot from other chambers, people who have been CEOs for 2025 years and Chamber of Commerce’s throughout the United States. And I want to be that reference and resource as well. And I’m sure whoever contacts me, I’m going to learn from them as well. We continue to learn from each other continue to evolve and grow our chambers of commerce, they’ve come a long way from 100 years ago. And as businesses pivot, and as they look at new ways of doing things, looking at their business models, we as a chamber need to be flexible as well and coming right along with them, hearing their voice and sharing that with our local government.

Brandon Burton 36:21
Absolutely. And that’s why we do this. That’s why we encourage people to reach out and connect and build that network and learn from each other. So thank you, Rick, for joining us today on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experiences. And it’s been a fun conversation and something that hopefully in re energizes those that are listening to do that important work at their chamber, and especially when it comes to facing those difficult challenges that their business members are facing. So thanks a lot for for being with us today.

Rick Wilson 36:51
Well, thank you so much, Brandon, for the opportunity to be on chamber chat. What a great opportunity to share resources, but also let everyone know that we are here to help and we want to learn as well. So if you have something incredible and innovative that you’re doing, I would love to learn about that as well. But thank you so much, Brandon. Great to be on chamber chat.

Brandon Burton 37:08
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