Category: Leadership

Rebuilding a Troubled Chamber with TJ Sullivan

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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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Our guest for this episode is TJ Sullivan, after three decades as a top college leadership speaker, TJ Sullivan gave up his top airline status to become a chamber executive. TJ is currently the President and CEO of the Parker Chamber of Commerce and Foundation in Denver, Colorado area. He’s received CEO of the Year honors from the Colorado Chamber of Alliance. He graduated W, A, C, E Academy in 2023 and he also runs a Tuesday night bowling league. So, TJ, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and hopefully I didn’t steal your thunder, but, yeah, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

TJ Sullivan 1:56
Well, hello everybody. I was, I was teasing Brandon before we got on here that, you know, there’s probably, he’s probably done 8000 of these interviews, and he finally got to the to the to the dregs. So it’s nice to be here. And greetings from Colorado, where it’s a 68 degrees and sunny today, so in December. Yeah, and you put some pressure on me, say something interesting about myself. Um, okay, so here’s my favorite one. I tell at parties. I ate at the very first Chipotle on the very first day it was open. I was working at the time at the University of Denver, and Steve Ells opened the famously opened the chipotle literally across the street from my office. And we thought, oh, look a cute new burrito place. Let’s go check it out. And, oh, my God, I wish I’d quit my job immediately and gone to work for him. I think his net worth is now $500 million so, man, if I, if I had known, if I had only known, but I went back to my white collar job across the street and felt sorry for the people putting burritos together. Those people are probably billionaires by now. So, yeah, yeah, that

Brandon Burton 3:00
that is pretty cool though, you know, yeah, first day, first Chipotle. Then, yeah, if

TJ Sullivan 3:06
you go into any Chipotle back by the restrooms, you’ll see a picture of the very first Chipotle, and you can just picture me walking in there the first day, going, hmm, chicken or steak. You know, that’s

Brandon Burton 3:14
right. Hopefully you made a journal entry that day. Yeah, July,

TJ Sullivan 3:19
July of 1993 Good Lord, I’m old. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 3:25
Well, tell us a little bit about the Parker Chamber of Commerce. Give us an idea of size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion today? Sure.

TJ Sullivan 3:33
So like in back when I back around my 50th birthday, I decided I just couldn’t travel, like I had been traveling 200 nights a year for almost three decades, and I was looking for a job here in Denver where I could sleep in my own bed and and, you know, have a more normal life. And I got a job at the superior chamber, which is up in Boulder County, up close to Boulder, very a one person show in a cubicle, doing literally everything. Did that for two and a half years, and then COVID hit, and we, we actually did really well during COVID. Surprisingly, we were one of the few chambers in Colorado that grew significantly during during COVID. And then the folks down in Parker needed a CEO, so they, they recruited me down there. So Parker is about 20 miles southeast of Denver, if you imagine the Denver Metro area as a clock face. I used to work up at 11 where Boulder is. Now I work down at five where, where Parker is in very red Douglas County, and I’m a nice Denver blue guy, so that was kind of interesting to be recruited down there. But they hate being lumped in as a Denver suburb. But as growth continues to happen, it’s just sort of inevitable that we’re becoming this affluent Denver, suburban, exurban, type of a city. They still like to think of themselves as something very unique and separate from Denver. But the Denver influence is there very small business ecosystem. It’s we don’t have a lot of big corporations manufacture. Dollars. It’s a it’s sort of got a bedroom community type of feel to it. We have about 475 business members, which translates to about 1100 humans that are attached to those memberships, and about 300,000 or so in membership revenue each year, for about 43% of our annual revenue. So we do about, we in 2025, I think we’ll do about $680,000 budget. So, and I just hired my fifth staff person to very exciting. That’s a, that’s who we are.

Brandon Burton 5:30
Did you say today? Yeah,

TJ Sullivan 5:32
literally, this morning I call, I called a, called a nice guy. I don’t know. He hasn’t accepted yet. So by the time this comes out, he might have told me to, you know, go pound sand. But yeah, we and the funny thing is, it’ll be a three men and two women in the office, so we have a little bit of a male dominated environment going on for some reason. I’m not sure how that, how that’s happening, but, you know it’s happening. So, yeah, it’s pretty fun. You

Brandon Burton 5:55
just hit the scales today with that. That’s, I know, it

TJ Sullivan 5:58
wasn’t even my choice. I let my membership VP, choose, you know, between the between the candidates, so it wasn’t even my fault, although I’m sure I’m going to be blamed for it. So right?

Brandon Burton 6:08
Well, I’m looking forward to our discussion today. I think it’s a discussion that a lot of chamber leaders can resonate with, as they’ve either been in this position or they might be in the throes of it right now, but we’ll be talking about rebuilding a troubled chamber and yeah, looking forward to hearing about your experience with this and how you’re able to overcome and all the the ins and outs of that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right. TJ, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about rebuilding a troubled chamber. And sounds like maybe this might be something that that you’ve had some. Experience with at one point or another, but yeah, it might be something close, close to home for you. But tell us what’s your experience been like? And I know everybody has their own story of, you know, the Chambers as they’ve come into them, and the approach they had to take.

TJ Sullivan 10:15
I, you know, first, I want to say that when I go to a lot of chamber conferences, we see or ACCE, it’s amazing how many new chamber executives you meet who are who are there and introduce themselves as someone who just took over a month and a half ago, and they’ve got no money and they have no idea what they’re doing. And please help me. And so I see these people, these well meaning people who are thrown into these impossible situations all the time. And having been through that a little bit, I I always feel like, man, get ready. Buckle in, because you’ve got a, you’ve got a journey here in front of you, you know. So maybe somebody listening right now is, you know, is one of those people who is like, What the hell have I done? You know, saying, Sure, this, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so for those of you that resonate with this topic, you know, I understand where you are and what’s what’s ahead of you. When I got to Parker, it had gone. The Parker chamber had gone through about 40 years, 40 or 50 years of just boom and bust, boom and bust, boom and bust and and, like a lot of chambers, it depended on who was in charge of the chamber, and how they handled money and and the economy and all the different things that affect, you know, how chambers do? When I got to our chamber, we had about $110,000 total in the bank, 80,000 of that was encumbered it. We have a big festival called the Parker Days Festival, which is about a $2 million enterprise every summer. And when COVID happened, the festival was canceled. But there was about, you know, 100 grand that had been collected from vendors and different, you know, businesses before COVID Shut it down. So about $80,000 worth of those businesses said you can hold on to the money, unless you don’t bring the festival back at some point, then we want our money back. So imagine, like, you know, basically having 100 $100,000 in the bank, and 80 of it, you know, you can’t, yeah, or if you do, you’re, you’re spending the credit card. So the the chamber had hired, had, had fired their entire staff, except for one person who is now my VP of membership. And she basically cleaned house, stripped everything down to the studs. She saved the chamber. She got the annual budget down to less than $200,000 a year. She had found, you know, so many storage units full of stuff that the previous executive had purchased. And it was just, it was just a financial she had managed to stop the hemorrhaging, but we had to rebuild, and we had to decide if we were going to start that festival back up, otherwise we had to give that money back. So it was a pretty precarious situation. And when I went in there, and even when I was up in Superior same sort of thing, it was very, very small. It wasn’t really in crisis, but it was very, very tiny, and there was a lot of ambition to grow it. So I guess, because I started my own company and ran it for 16 years and bootstrapped the whole thing, I guess I just have an orientation toward, I like to make money. I like money in the bank, and I like to be able to pay for what we’re going to do. That’s sort of my ethic. And so those are attributes, by the way, yeah, yeah. But I also, but I’m, but I am pretty ambitious when it comes to money. You know, I’m not afraid to ask for money. I’m not afraid to to charge a fair ticket price for something, and so I’m not timid about that kind of stuff. Yeah. So anyway, that was the challenge. I just had to basically, we had a lot of potential and a lot of opportunity. We had to decide if we were gonna do that festival, and that I had never done a festival before. Oh, my God, we’re talking like 40 carnival rides and 200 marketplace vendors and, you know, dozens and dozens of food vendors, three stages. I didn’t know I had never done any of that. So it was crazy. So that was a big, scary challenge, but we, thank God, we pulled it off in 2023 we 2022 2022 we brought the festival. Back. We ended up making, you know, several $100,000 we we got back on solid ground, and then we could start building so for those people out there who are walking into a mess and a really, really sad bank account, you can do it. You can do it. You just have to figure out what your assets are and where your potential is, and go hard,

Brandon Burton 14:22
yeah. So some of these people coming into these situations, it can be a variety of different things. It could be just, you know, poorly managed, you know, ahead of time. It could be a toxic board member that’s Yep, or several, or several, yeah. It could be conflict with a city manager, or something, you know, something internally that is really, you know, given a bad name to the chamber, we’ll say. So there’s a lot of different ways that things can, can kind of go awry. But as you, as you come into a chain, or maybe even before you come into a chamber, are there things. It looking back that you would want to know more about before taking a job, or questions that you would ask, or just, even if you took the job, just going into it eyes wide open, of knowing you know kind of what you’re getting yourself into.

TJ Sullivan 15:15
Well, I think, I think one of the keys for me when I took the Parker job was that the the man who was hiring me, who was the chair of the board at the time. He was super sharp and very smart and very transparent, and I liked his vibe, and I trusted him. Immediately, I knew that the board was about half people that wanted to hire me and half that wanted to hire somebody else that was very different, very very established, old school type of thing. But it just so happened that Brian was the chair, and he made my hire happen, which, in a blessing, made all the old school cranky people quit the board. So I ended up being hired by the good guys, and then the good guys were able to recruit more good guys onto the board, so good guys and women. So yeah, it was just, it was, I got lucky that I did not walk into a toxic board situation. I don’t think I would have taken the job if I got that vibe, though, I am not interested in being told no, a lot, and I’m not interested in having stale, you know, ideas, stale, stale, pale and male, as they say, right? I I’m a big booster of women business owners and minority business owners and and, yeah, I just want, I want to see a lot of diversity in in the membership, and a lot of excitement and entrepreneurship. And fortunately, the person who hired me said to me, if you take this crazy job on, I promise you will support you. And that was, that was key. Man, I couldn’t have done it without that.

Brandon Burton 16:43
That is huge. Yeah, and having that supportive board, and being able to pale still and males, it’s good to be able to move away from that, have some of that diversity represents the greater business community. That’s the way to do it, and to be able to have that confidence of your of the board chair, to be able to say, hey, you take this and we’ll we’ll support you. I see those that take positions that are being micromanaged by their board and and that’s that would just be frustrating because they’re tired. I don’t even know how you could turn it, turn around a program that never micromanaged that way.

TJ Sullivan 17:25
Well, I guess people who come into these jobs come from lots of different places. I was I came from it from having owned several successful businesses, so I had that entrepreneurial mindset. I hadn’t worked for anybody for 30 years before I took the job in Superior so I was, you know, fortunately, they knew what they were getting when they hired me. They were not getting someone who was timid, you know, they were getting someone who was fairly aggressive. So, you know, they knew what they were hiring. And thank God they they committed to that, right? I don’t think I would have been a good hire for a lot of boards out there who had a lot of ego wrapped up in things. Because, you know, the first thing, one of the first things I think you have to do when you have a troubled chamber that you’re trying to get back on the right track, I think is just to take a real hard, data driven look at the events that you’re doing. I am. It’s kind of funny that in Parker, I that one of the first things I did in the first three weeks I was there was I killed the town Christmas parade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For some reason it had fallen to the chamber to do this parade. And you know, here we were in end of September, and I looked at the I was like, show me the sponsors. Where’s the money, where’s the numbers? And, like, it wasn’t there. And I did my calculations, and I was like, we’re gonna lose $60,000 that we don’t have on this thing. So I killed the parade, and you can imagine how popular I was after doing that. I have people in downtown Parker who still aren’t members of the chamber and still hate my guts for that, but, but in a twist of irony, they

Brandon Burton 18:52
were the big sponsors, right?

TJ Sullivan 18:54
Well, they were on the committee who felt like this is something we need to do, but they hadn’t. They weren’t treating it like a business, you know, and, and so, in a twist of irony, tomorrow, I’m, I’m one of the announcers for the Christmas parade, for the 2024, Christmas parade. So it did come back, but, uh, but I killed it the first year. So, yeah, that was, but, you know, looking at the events, I mean, God, so many chamber executives walk into, into their jobs, and there’s these, just these events that make no sense, that they just have to do because everybody’s so emotionally attached to it, but the money isn’t there. And I think some if you’re not willing to go in and slay a couple sacred cows, you’re you’re gonna have a tough time turning that chamber around.

Brandon Burton 19:34
So let’s talk about that for a minute, because as somebody new to a community, new to a chamber that, yeah, you got fresh eyes, fresh perspective, taking your knowledge and experience from from where you come from, and taking it to this new community. Are there things you need to be careful? I mean, you can look at the data, you can look at the numbers, you can look at the math like, does this make good business sense? Are there any considerations beyond. On that, like, are you gonna, are you gonna make people upset, that are gonna make your job harder, and all the other aspects, or what other things need to be considered? Yeah,

TJ Sullivan 20:07
yeah. And that’s part of being a good business person. I mean, when you have, you know, if you’re we need to run chambers like businesses. I mean, I was like, I told you at 110,000 in the bank, 80,000 encumbered, and I was gonna lose $60,000 on a parade, like, There’s no way. And, and when I went to my board and showed him the numbers, I’m like, somebody tell me where I’m wrong here. And they’re like, No, you’re right. This is a mess. And I said, Okay, I’ll take the heat. And, you know, I’m not afraid to take the heat. Yeah, I was my the joke around town for about two years was, was calling me parade killer. That was my nickname. But, you know, I don’t care. I put PK. I got, I got a shirt with PK on it, you know, as my nickname. Like, yeah, I’m the parade killer. That’s cool, you know. And you know, when you, when you, when you, when you say, Do you want to see the numbers? And here it is. You know, people have a hard time arguing that, especially business members. There were community members who are very upset. Oh, my God, we love the parade. I’m like, well, good. Hand me a check for $25,000 and we will do it. Yeah. And so, you know, people don’t like being told no, but you know, if you’re going to be successful in business or successful in nonprofit management, you got to be able to stand up for the right decisions, especially when you have the data to support it. But yeah, no, you’re not gonna be popular all the time. Like I said, there’s still people who don’t like me in town, but then, you know, that’s all right. I, my board likes me, and they like the fact that we, we have money in the

Brandon Burton 21:23
bank. Now, you’re positive now, yeah, and I can, I can see the chamber member or the community, you know, just the average citizen saying, Oh, who’s this? You know, this hot shot coming in from out of town, thinking, oh, yeah, best, you know, oh, a Denver

TJ Sullivan 21:38
guy, a Denver in a list game. I still live in Denver. I live in Denver. I come from the, you know, the horrible city down to this, you know, Bucha, like small town, and I’m ruining everything. But, yeah, no, you know, I mean, again, I think it, and I’m not trying to say it. Say, like, it’s an easy thing to do, it’s a very hard thing to do, and you hurt a lot of feelings and and people are disappointed in the whole thing. But you know, maybe you don’t kill it if it’s if the numbers much smaller, you know, take a pause. So, you know, we need to take a year off and figure this out and and especially if you just came in and a damn event is happening in two months and you’re gonna lose a bunch of money on it, my goodness, you know, like, that’s not your fault. You walked into that. But right? You know, I that’s, I’m just putting that out there as a really hard thing to deal with, because when the event is over and it lost a bunch of money, they’re going to look at you and go, you know, how did this happen? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:31
So are there other obstacles you had to overcome in coming in here in Parker, or, yeah, yeah. We had

TJ Sullivan 22:40
to, we had to write, we had to right size our pricing. I mean, our pricing was a disaster, you know, because, speaking of not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings, it was a lot of fear of raising the cost of the membership. So I had to, I had to quickly, you know, do a quick survey of what other chambers in the in the county especially, were charging, and make sure we were on parity. That’s a simple way to drive in some income. And, yeah, you lose a few members. But you know, whatever, everything go everything goes up in cost. And if you work really hard to provide the value, then you know, you don’t hear that much about it. In fact, I’m raising my prices right now for 2025, by $30 at every level. And I haven’t heard of peep so

Brandon Burton 23:17
I mean, and a lot of people say $30 like, how can you do that? How it can be scary as a chamber to raise your your dues by by $30 but when you talk about $30 for the year, yeah, really, that’s what we’re crying about,

TJ Sullivan 23:30
yeah? Well, we made a big move also to moving to recurring billing. So, you know, we move all those small members that that $400 level, or whatever that everybody has, that’s the majority of their members, we move. We’ve moved about a third of them to monthly charges. And the nice thing is, it’s taken off a lot of heat on renewals, because we just they automatically renew and keep going at $42 a month, or whatever it is. So the recurring billing and taking some of the pain out of the renewal processes is another really good move to do, because, you know, most of these struggling chambers are dealing with with not enough staff to get done what needs to be done. And so if you can get people on a monthly credit card charge and get used to the cash flow implications of that, then it can be that can be a really good strategy, too. So

Brandon Burton 24:12
that also makes it easier raising dues in the future, since at a 42 a month, maybe it’s $44 a month, and you’re not going to miss $2 Yep.

TJ Sullivan 24:20
I mean, I think, you know, another thing that we did that I think was is important, is I am a big what’s the right word? I a big critic of the commission based membership person. I believe that if you’re a membership organization, doing membership right is the most important thing you do. If you don’t do that, then why are you even in business? So I believe in paying the membership person. If you’re fortunate enough to have a membership person, I’m a big believer in paying them a competitive salary and moving on, you know, like this, this commission stuff, and people rotating in and out every three months and selling bad memberships to that that aren’t even real. I mean, there’s a Yeah. I believe in having a well paid membership person. My person at Parker is well paid. She’s a rock star. She does amazing work. Everybody in town knows her. She’s She’s phenomenal. You know, I generally, I just really believe that you have to put the money where the most important things are, and that’s the people that are actually making things happen. So I spend a little bit on board development, you know, I spend money on volunteer, you know, making sure volunteers feel valuable. I kind of tend to put the money more into people than events, development, publications or things like that. I mean, I’m more into like, people because, you know, yeah, so

Brandon Burton 25:39
I’m sorry, I kind of took the head there. You’re in the people business. So that makes sense. And as far as the membership person goes, it makes sense to not have to compete among staff, and who gets credit for the deal too, the new member. Well,

TJ Sullivan 25:53
when I got to superior, it said, you know, oh, Target’s a member, and Costco is a member. But I was like, no, they’re not. Like, I can’t find anybody there. Somebody went and, like, got a $50 gift card from Target or something, and then called them a member. I’m like, No, that’s, that’s not how we’re doing things here. So, you know, when I got to, when I got to Parker, first thing I did was, was chop about 50 non members out who hadn’t paid in over a year, and we’re still sitting on the books because, you know, oh, we got to have John the the attorney as a member, I’m like, No, we don’t. If John’s not paying, John’s out, like, done, and we’re gonna add a $50 application fee. So when John wants to come back, he’s gonna pay a penalty for that. So, you know, just you gotta, you gotta come and play ball, man. You know the chamber, chamber, chamber takes some courage. Chamber takes some, uh, some uh, guts. I think if you’re going to do it right and really succeed. So, yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:43
for sure. So there’s some, some pretty fun obstacles they had to overcome. And it seems like you’re, you’re still alive, you’re, yeah, they still run you out of town yet, either. So

TJ Sullivan 26:55
no, you know, you get. Gotta get people to the table, ask them what they want, you know, celebrate new ideas, try some things. Yeah, you know, we, we first thing. First thing I’ve done at both chambers that I’ve that I’ve run, is I analyzed every single event. I looked at the money, I looked at attendance, I looked at, you know, my friend Jim Johnson from down in a down at Pearland would be very, would be very impressed with my with me talking about data, because he’s a data geek, and I am not, but, but, you know, like we looked at the basic numbers and we’re like, I’m like, why does this event make sense? It’s gone. Okay, this one is good. How can we make it better and bring five more sponsors in? So you really have to do that financial analysis of your events, not just the big ones, but even the small ones. You know, your after hours and different things. Like, could you we took one of our after hours, for example, and first of all, first thing I did was get rid of the idea of that after hours mixer has to be monthly. We do five a year now that’s it. And and we make them good, you know, we make them really fun and good, and people look forward to them. But we also get them sponsored, and we turned our November after hours into a member appreciation party with a band and then a bar and the whole thing. And we had 200 people at it. We had 200 people at it a couple weeks ago. So, yeah, you know, just fix, fix what’s not working. Inject some new ideas, take some chances. I mean, people get excited about being part of an organization that feels like it’s winning. You know, there’s nothing worse than writing a check to an organization you feel is limping along. So, you know, big part of turning a chamber around is put some wins on the board, man, and celebrate them and make sure people are excited about it, and do one good event instead of four terrible ones. You know, those kind of things. I mean, again, I know it sounds easier to say than do, but I’ve done it, you know. And it can be done. It just takes time. It’s a

Brandon Burton 28:39
really good point, though, when you consider renewing a membership and you’re like, I don’t know if this organization is even going to be around for a whole year, but yeah, here’s my check, you know. But if you see, if you see positive things happening, you see these good things, it makes it a whole lot easier to check and sponsor things so well,

TJ Sullivan 28:57
people want to affiliate with winners. I mean, I, you know, I know that sounds very I sound like a, like a basketball coach, but people want to affiliate with winners. You know, you go to any college in this country and look at the football program. If they’re winning, the stands are full. If they’re if they’re losing, they’re not, you know, this is, this is a basic here. So, yeah, yeah, I think it’s really important. And then, and then you have to put in, like, some good procedures, you know, like at the Parker chamber, I got rid of all nobody goes for free. Nobody goes for free. Board members. You know, if we have an event that costs $10 board members pay. Everybody pays, unless you’re writing a sponsorship check, everybody pays. That was, like an ethical change. I had to put in place. You know, they were used to like, Oh, I’m on the board. That means I get free this, free that, like, no more. We’re not doing that anymore. So you know, some things like that too are really important to bring the integrity up of the organization. So

Brandon Burton 29:46
yeah, I think that’s good. Just updating policies, even just the way you approach things, it takes a bold stance. It takes some courage, like you were saying, it’s not for the weak and heart, for sure. Her, but I said you’re still standing. They haven’t run you out of town yet. So I

TJ Sullivan 30:05
think a big part of it too for me, as I take care of my people, even our team is really loyal, and we all have a good time at the office. We we don’t have office hours. That’s one of the best I wish every chamber would do this. On the front of our door says, staff available by appointment, and we might open on Tuesday at eight o’clock. We might open at 10 o’clock. We our staff makes our own schedules. We give them lots of flexibility. We don’t have office hours. People sometimes will drop by at 430 and go, oh, there was nobody at the chamber. I’m like, Yeah, because we are not working at 430 on on Thursdays. You know, that’s not what we do. So you know that those kind of things also, you know, like, be more like a modern business. We, our staff doesn’t work Fridays in the office, unless we have an event. We work from home on Fridays. And boy, my staff loves that. So, yeah, you know. So we do some, you know, what are the, what are the competitive businesses out there doing? And, you know, take, take lessons from what they’re doing and replicate that, you know, so we don’t have a visitor center. That’s, thank God we don’t have a visitor center. You know, different story if you did, yeah, if you have a visitor center and you have a contract, you have to be open from this hour to this hour. Okay, that’s a whole different ball of wax, which I’ve never done. But, you know, no, we’re, we’re off running around, selling memberships, setting up sponsorships for events. You know, I’m sometimes at home putting the directory together. You know, God knows, we work where it makes sense, and we control our own schedules, and boy, that’s done wonders for staff morale and every you know, you treat people like adults, they act like adults.

Brandon Burton 31:33
I’d always say, building the team culture, but also being able to attract people where it fits our lifestyle. To be able to be able to work something like that instead of you need to be clocking in now and can’t leave until, you know, and they’ve got kids or whatever else that they got to deal with. So some of

TJ Sullivan 31:49
my board members had a tough time with with with that policy that I put in place. But I was like, Okay, well, you enjoy it. Why shouldn’t? Why shouldn’t my staff enjoy it? And, right? And, you know, yeah,

Brandon Burton 31:58
and then collect your data, and you’ve got your evidence to justify it. Yeah, we’re growing, you know, and then you can make Jim happy too. So that’s right, that’s right. Well, TJ, for the chamber leaders listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tips or action items or just what would you encourage them to maybe try to work towards that goal of advancing to the next level?

TJ Sullivan 32:27
Well, I feel like I’m going to say something that a million people have said, but if you’re a chamber executive, you need to make sure your board is investing in your growth and development. I cannot believe how many chamber execs don’t go to things like WAC or ACCE or their State Chamber association because they’re like, oh, you know, I can’t afford a night a hotel. You know what? You got to go to your board and say, you got, you got to invest, at least in sending me to something where I can meet, interact with my peers, find out their best practices, find out what the new trends are, you know, and and, and invest in yourself and your chamber by going and learning something, you know. I, you know, like I said, I was over 50 years old when I started this chamber thing, so I felt like I was, you know, I came in with a lot of experience, but, man, I had a lot to learn about what goes on. What the hell is chamber Master, you know, all these different things. And, yeah, I went to WAC, went to ACC, asked a million questions, met some cool people, got some people that I could call on, invest in that it is the one of the best things you have to demand from your board is that they find a couple grand to let you go to something where you can learn. And if they’re not willing to do that, you know that tells you mostly what you need to know about where your board’s priorities are because, you know, there’s so much benefit. I’ve never come in, I’ve never come back from one of those conferences without an idea that just dramatically affected the income bottom line, I always come back with ideas that change, change how we do things. And can I tell you one story that’s really interesting? I went to a round table type thing at WAC one time, and everybody just went around, and the question was, What’s the best thing your chamber does? And I’m like, it was a bunch of events and a bunch of other things, and one exec, and I wish I could remember her name, I don’t think she’s in the field anymore, she said, Well, we every, every two months or whatever, we just take, you know, six or eight of our members out for lunch and just do kind of a lunch with the CEO and just casually listen to them. And I was like, Oh my God. And, and so I wrote that down and took it back, and we instituted that, and we’ve been doing that for two years, and it is hugely impacted our sponsorships and our revenue and and different things simply by going to lunch with a small group. And, uh, boy, I never would have gotten that idea if I hadn’t gone to WAC. So, you know, invest, invest in your knowledge. You know, you don’t know everything. You certainly aren’t expected to know everything. Go, go listen to people who’ve been doing this for a while. So I’m

Brandon Burton 34:51
so glad you gave that as the tip that’s really the root of why this podcast exists is, I came across so many chain. Members that their boards wouldn’t, wouldn’t budget for, you know, career development for the for the chamber exec or any of the staff. And I saw the podcast as a way to be able to share best practices that didn’t tap into their budget, right? And they get to hear from people like you that’s that give that courage to approach your board, tell them you need this. You need to develop as a leader. You need the training that’s offered at these different conferences, and it’s well worth it for the organization. So I appreciate you giving us that tip, because it’s a it resonates with me very well. The question I like asking to everybody I have on the show is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

TJ Sullivan 35:50
Well, again, with the answer that I think everybody’s probably saying, I think we have to be serious about advocacy. We have to become quasi lobbying organizations. If your chamber doesn’t already do that, start small, form a government affairs committee. You know, there’s a lot of chambers in every state that are killing it on government affairs. And that’s what brings the big dollars in, that’s what brings the big the big corporations, the big employers in, is when you can make something happen. We, we, I, when I came in, there was nothing. And we started a Government Affairs Committee, and in the second year, we decided to take on a ballot, a bond initiative that gave a big pay increase to the teachers in our area. We framed it as a workforce issue and and that same bond issue had failed three times in previous elections, and we got the chamber to go gung ho on it, and we got it passed. And now every teacher in Parker, you know, stops me and goes, thank you for what you all did. And when you have the teachers, man, you’re you’re doing well. So no, I think, I think, I think government affairs is the future. We’re going to our next big, huge hire, hopefully will be someone who is doing business advocacy, because that’s where that pays dividends. And so the future chamber is in advocacy and and when people say, Oh, I don’t like politics, I’m like, Well, you better learn, because you better start learning to like it and be that same center that’s that’s the big buzz phrase now is, you know, part of the chambers being the same center of a polarized society, there’s money to be made there, there’s there’s influence to be made there. And in my mind, that is the future of chambers. It’s not the networking with cheap Chardonnay. It’s, it’s, it’s going to your state representative and saying, let’s get a law passed that that’s more exciting,

Brandon Burton 37:35
yeah. And as you give that answer, I could, I know some are intimidated by the idea, but there’s ways to do advocacy that’s that’s very low barrier of entry, and just dabble in it. Get your feet wet, grow rely on your State Chamber. Rely on other chambers, regional chambers, get support there. And I think you’re right that that definitely is going to be a huge part of the future of chambers. And

TJ Sullivan 37:59
you know, if you’re not ready to take stand on issues or or take on a campaign or endorse candidates, that’s the big, scary one for everybody. You sure can be the the educational place where people go to learn about the issue. You know, you don’t have to take a stand on the new blah blah tax, but you sure can hold a town hall where you bring in people to explain it and discuss it, and that’s advocacy. That’s advocacy. So even if you’re afraid of of government and politics, there is a place for your chamber to to get noticed for making a difference in that area. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 38:33
absolutely. Well, TJ, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe be a lifeline if they’re at a struggling chamber right now, get some some other tips and strategies. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

TJ Sullivan 38:50
Well, LinkedIn is easy because it’s just LinkedIn forward slash TJ, Denver, that’s easy to find me there, or I think the more fun way is on Instagram. My handle is ParkerChamberCEO, all run together. And I, you know, Instagram is fun. It’s a little little lighter, a little more fun, and I love seeing what other people are doing. So I’d say those are the two best ways to interact with me. If you’re super serious, go to LinkedIn. If you’re more, you know, light, fun and silly. Go to go to go to Instagram.

Brandon Burton 39:17
All right, we’ll get those both your accounts linked in our show notes for this episode, so make it easy to find. But and if

TJ Sullivan 39:26
I only get two new followers, I’m gonna, I’m gonna let you know, Brandon that you know, please do not generate the followership that I was hoping for as as a huge social media influencer that I am. So that’s right.

Brandon Burton 39:39
Well, TJ, this has been fun. I appreciate you carving out some time and joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and getting real about some of your experiences and struggles and triumphs and things that you dealt with to overcome and to be where you’re at now in your chamber career, I appreciate that and the state you’re offering to others.

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Non-Profit Collaborations with Crystal Narr

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Crystal Narr. Crystal is the Executive Director of the Chillicothe Area Chamber of Commerce in Missouri, not to be confused the other Chillicothe chambers. We recently had Mike Throne in Chillicothe, Ohio, so but Chillicothe, Missouri, and she had attained her bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from Missouri Western State University through her many community minded interests, Crystal found her niche in the nonprofit sector, leading downtown revitalization efforts with Main Street Chillicothe for six years before accepting her current role in 2014 she serves in volunteer leadership roles in numerous community and state organizations, including Chillicothe Rotary Club, Livingston County Library Board, Bright Futures Chillicothe, a plus Advisory Committee and the Grand River Technical School institutional advisory board. She currently is serving on the Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce board, also known as MAKO. She is the current vice president of Leadership Missouri, and will be the 2025, chair of the 19 County Regional legislative event, great Northwest Day at the Capitol. She also served as the 2021 President of the Chamber of Commerce executives of Missouri, and held a seat on the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry board of directors. Crystal enjoys raising her three sons alongside her husband, Travis, on their farm outside of wheeling Montana. Crystal. I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Crystal Narr 2:56
Well, I’m honored to be asked to be on this podcast. Super exciting. I know that you meet with many individuals all the time that share their knowledge and experience in the chamber realm, and so I’m glad to be added to that list. You know, most of my bio covered, kind of moving forward all the different things that I’ve been involved in. And it’s something that I’m truly passionate about, is that once you become a more I will say tenured chamber executive is being able to give back and help the people that are new and coming into the industry. Because I think we can all agree that it can be overwhelming at times and feeling like you’re drinking through a fire hose. So anytime that I can help ease some of their worries and show how I’ve been able to, you know, make the best of it over my 10 years in my current role. I consider that a win both ways. So something fun about myself is that in my previous lifetime, I like to say I actually was a dancer and had the opportunity to perform at many different locations that have some, you know, familiar name recognition, like Disney World, Disneyland, Bush gardens, Navy Pier in Chicago. So that’s one of my claims to fame, although it’s been several years back, but still fun to reminisce. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:17
so tell Can you tell us a little bit more, what kind of dance were you brought in for performances? Or were you putting on costume? What were you doing? So I

Crystal Narr 4:26
was raised here in Chillicothe, so this, it just goes to show you know that if you have great leadership in any sort of role you know within your community, big things can happen for youth, and that’s something I still try to engage now in my role as a chamber professional, because I just had some great I love dance. I was also in show choir, and because of the leadership within those groups, they sought out opportunities to get youth, you know, into those arenas. And so it provided us some great opportunities and experiences. It long before I even turned, you know, 18, that I got to experience. So

Brandon Burton 5:04
that’s awesome, and it just gives you experience. It kind of opens your eyes to possibilities, and being able to travel a little bit and see some different parts of the country. That’s awesome.

Crystal Narr 5:16
Absolutely, has served me well, because we actually, we won’t necessarily talk a lot about that today, but our chamber actually has a trial a very successful travel program, and I’m the person that gets to assist with those from the start to finish booking, picking the locations, all the way to traveling on the trips with our travelers. So developing that love of travel and experience culture has served me

Brandon Burton 5:40
well. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Chillicothe area Chamber. Give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Crystal Narr 5:51
So the Chillicothe area Chamber is located in northwest Missouri. We are about an hour drive to the Kansas border and about an hour drive to the Iowa border, we are currently sitting just shy of 300 members, which is the highest number of members that we have had in my 10 years. So we’ve seen a lot of growth through 2024 that we’re very proud of. Our budget fluctuates each year, as most do, but we have seen it grow, which I’m grateful for. So annual operating budget sits this year right around $220,000 and then our staff is actually fairly small. We are full time two people, and we do have one membership coordinator who only works one day a week, but makes the most of those eight hours each week. So yeah, and our town population is right around 9500 with our county population being about 15,000 so our Chillicothe holds the bulk of our county population and is the county seat,

Brandon Burton 7:01
yeah? All right, that definitely helps. So are you guys just chamber? Do you have any economic development or tourism, or what? What’s that scope look like? Yeah?

Crystal Narr 7:10
So that’s, I think, what led to the discussion that we’re going to have today about synergy among non profits. You know, within a community, especially what I would consider a smaller community like Chillicothe, and how that can work to everyone’s benefit, because we actually are a standalone organization. We are only the chamber, and there are separate organizations, separate you know what I mean? Boards, budgets, 501, c status for our tourism, our main street organization, economic development, community development corporation, arts organizations, everyone is completely separate, all

Brandon Burton 7:52
right. Well, that definitely helps set the stage for our discussion today, as we’ll focus the majority of our conversation around non profit collaboration. So how you as, as you said, just a chamber, I argue you’re more than just exactly, but how you as as a chamber focused organization, right? How you are able to collaborate with other nonprofits throughout the community? So it’s going to be a worthwhile conversation for for everyone listening, and I’m excited to dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick

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All right, Crystal, we’re back. So before the break, you’d mentioned that you guys are very chamber focused, but you have to rely on these collaborations with the other nonprofits in the community, whether it be economic development or tourism or downtown or arts. Talk to us about how that’s structured, how you go about building those relationships and collaborating, and especially when everybody’s reporting to different their own respective boards, operating within their own budgets. How do you try to lead with that synergy, to try to bring everybody together with the same goals and focus and in those areas that align for everybody to be on the same page?

Crystal Narr 12:21
I will preface this entire conversation that we’re about to embark on with a couple things. One is, I’m not going to pretend that we have it completely together, but I do know that we have figured out what works and what doesn’t work. You know, through trial and error over a long period of time within our community, but then also always coming back to the cliche, you know, quote of a rising tide floats all boats. A rising tide lifts all boats, however you want to say it, because truly, when you get right down to the heart of what everyone’s trying to do it is for the betterment of our community, no matter where you’re located. So that is really the heart of it all, and what we try to focus on. But that being said, it’s not always easy to get all the players around the table. That takes it takes work. It’s not something that happens overnight. So I already use the word synergy, and I probably will use it several times, but really that is what I try to focus on when thinking of these collaborative relationships within Chillicothe. You know the importance of nonprofits working together is basically to create a larger impact than what any of us individually could create, right? Yeah, so, and there are within each of our organizations a lot of shared goals, shared missions, even, you know, within each of our own independent silos. So there are just many facets that work because we are already closely aligned. So it just naturally makes sense for us to work together. We just have to cultivate that relationship to really be able to dive into it.

Brandon Burton 14:16
That makes a lot of sense. How do you do it, though? And I’ve seen it. I’ve seen in a lot of communities where there may even be a sense of competition, you know, between the chamber and another organization within the community and other it may even be another business association. Yeah, you’d mentioned the Downtown Association. That might be a point of competition, in some sense. But how do you get past the competition part and see the synergy part?

Crystal Narr 14:49
Okay, so you know kind of talking about how, like, you’re overcoming the obstacles to get to that point. So here are the things that are probably, dare I say, slightly taboo. Do, and so I’m going to choose my words wisely, and hopefully everybody understands. You know what I’m getting at here, but first of all, it requires a very open line of communication. Now, we all know within our organization there’s some confidential conversations that can’t be had with people outside of our executive board or our board of directors staff, that sort of thing. But outside of that, I truly do feel it’s important to have a very open line of communication with those other entities. Because I can tell you from experience, there have been a few things that have happened where we didn’t have that open line of communication and we were another organization ourselves. Were simultaneously working on a project, both of us, but there was this barrier between us. So, you know, we had opened up, and it wasn’t because we were trying to be secretive. We were just had our blinders on, and we’re, you know, working on it, and they were doing the same thing, and we actually both launched this project the same week, wow, on our social media streams, and then it just was, it was bad PR internally, because it really showed that we were not, we weren’t not communicating whatsoever. So things like that that, you know, just show the importance of having an open line of communication. One of the ways that has been done for us over the years is establishing we have done them monthly. We have done them quarterly. So you could just have to find what works for you and your schedule. But meetings among those entities, a lot of times, it’s over coffee and someone’s boardroom, everybody kind of comes with their calendar of events, their work plans for you know what their to do list looks like for that month, that quarter, whatever it is that you’re planning out. So then, number one, we can all be aware of what’s going on. Number two, we can provide assistance. Number three, we can help promote and number four, we don’t step on toes. You know that everybody is doing their own thing and aware of what everybody else is doing. So that’s kind of my first thing number. I

Brandon Burton 17:05
will say even, even when you were working in your silo with the blinders on, at least it’s a proof of concept, right, like you both saw the importance of working on the same goal, yes, and so just trying to find the positive in this, to be able

Crystal Narr 17:17
to Yes, absolutely. And I will say that because of having a positive relationship between our organizations, that when that happened, it wasn’t like there was some big blow up, disgruntled, you know, situation that ensued following it. Luckily, it was, it was our main street program that we that that occurred with, and it was just this past July, and they ended up being very willing and kind of did this version, you know, and changed it to where then it all worked. We were doing, like a member showcase series of our Chamber members. They were doing the same thing with like downtown spotlights, and they quickly changed it and focused it, instead of the business, on individuals who worked within downtown businesses. So we both still completed the mission of what we were wanting to do, but they kindly altered theirs to just focus on the individuals instead of the businesses. So it still all worked out, if that makes sense, yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:18
which brings a whole a neat perspective within its own So, exactly so.

Crystal Narr 18:25
So here’s my thing, that I’m like, I think everyone will understand it when I say this. But one of the key factors to making it work, especially in a smaller community, but it’s it works on any scale, is that every organization has to, has to stay in their lane. You have a mission. You have to abide by that mission. You cannot deviate from that mission, because if you do, it’s inherently going to step on another organization’s toes, you know, so that that depends like using our kind of our three main nonprofits that we work with. You know, locally the chamber, I always say our main two pillars are business and community downtown. Their focus is going to be confined to the defined district of the downtown and the members and events and everything that takes place within that area. Then we had tourism as our third, you know, leg of the stool of kind of our different entities that partner together, and they’re really focusing on everybody outside of our community and getting them here, right. But really, if you think back to what would that be middle school math, whenever you’re learning about Venn diagrams, right? We are all interconnected in that center piece of the pie, basically so. But we have to make sure that that center piece of the pie doesn’t keep growing to the point that the parts that exist solely to us that that part is bigger because. Then we’re losing sight of what our original mission is. So again, I think that staying in your lane ties back into having that open line of communication and really strong connections with the partnering organizations. So

Brandon Burton 20:18
about staying in the lane, and I can see the wisdom, the value in that. And I think in your structure, where you have all the nonprofit organizations to gather together on a regular basis and go over calendars and what you guys are working on, that definitely helps to see where those lines are drawn. But like you said, that Venn diagram is going to have overlap Absolutely. You all have buy in on certain things, but I can see that being where you’re supporting tourism in this, you’re supporting downtown in this, you have your buy in in that part of the Venn diagram, while helping them in their lane. Is that kind of the approach that you take with that, or is there more to that?

Crystal Narr 21:03
Yeah, no, you really kind of hit it, and it works just in different ways, depending upon each individual scenario. But for instance, our tourism organization, they offer tourism grants that support some of chamber led initiatives or events. Same thing for our main street program. So we are helping them by tourism is not having to put on the events, which we all know is nice when you’re not the one running to organize. But yet, they are a big supporting partner by offering up funds, because we all know we need money to make these things happen. So that’s a win win. It’s a great example of how we can utilize that. But at the same token, when tourism needs support for input, for things that they’re trying to do new initiatives, they’re trying to pursue stock photography that we might have you know on hand, that are, you know, essential to our events, we’re also paying them back by doing those sorts of things to provide support for them as well. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:02
I’ve seen in communities where stock photography becomes an issue where, you know, tourism has the rights to picture and, you know, chamber might want to use and say, oh, you can’t use that. That’s our pictures really like, aren’t we all building the same community. That’s it. So, yeah,

Crystal Narr 22:18
that is actually a good segue into kind of the next component of, you know, overcoming those obstacles, which is building trust. Yeah, um, it is key to this whole thing. If you don’t have trust, you’re not going to have synergy at any point, unfortunately, um, and one of the things that makes a big difference with that is personalities and making sure that the players who are coming to the table can come to the table and can be trustworthy. Our supporting partners for each other have everybody’s best interest at heart, not just their own. I think we probably all can relate to scenarios where somebody had an ulterior motive, you know, whenever they’re getting involved with something, and you kind of have to clear all those, you have to check those at the door and make sure that people are truly coming into these conversations with everyone’s best interest at heart, and not just to steal ideas and the manipulator that sort of thing. Something I’m not going to say, this is a little bit of one of those like, do as I say, not as I do, but we, we’ve had it in the past, and do a little bit still, but something we could continue to work on is having either the opportunity for even if it’s not the executive director or CEO of the organization themselves, but having someone in that capacity, maybe it’s a board member that can serve as an ex officio on each other’s boards, so that they are a part of those conversations early on. I think that is a great idea to keep that open line of communication, is something we had the opportunity for locally, and I I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Was one of our organizations actually was in a period of transition and was hiring for their next Executive Director, and their board had the foresight to reach out to myself and the other entity and say, Would you please come be a part of this interview process and gave us that opportunity, and I will tell you that was it worked incredibly well because that board saw the importance of keeping a Very positive relationship, knowing that our roles are very comparable. And so we could say, oh, this person has the traits, you know, the things that you can’t train a person on that just need to come in and be able to, you know, pick up the reins and take off. And it worked really well. So I think that’s another takeaway, that if. People are willing to initiate that. It, it can work really positively. It’s

Brandon Burton 25:04
a great idea. It’s, it’s a little harder to to outs the person who’s there with the alter your motives and who’s there to, you know, steal ideas and whatnot, but to try to have those open conversations, to build the trust. But then when that typically, those people are not the people that last, right, right? Right, absolutely, there is a vacancy to be able to try to get these boards to come together and say, you know, it would behoove all of us to be able to have each other sit in on these interview processes to create a stronger community. I love that idea, yeah, for sure. So, any other ideas, though, for when there is that disruptor, you know, in the groups where not that you’ve experienced it at all. I mean, I don’t want to put anybody under the bus, but if there is, you know, you get a distractor. You know that that’s within the group, how do you go about trying to build the trust? How do you how do you move the ball forward with that person in that in the mix?

Crystal Narr 26:03
Yeah, we have had a couple different scenarios over my timeline, because you, you know, mentioned in my bio that I actually worked for the chamber as the assistant, and then went to the main street program and was the executive director there for six years before returning to the chamber, and now I’ve been in my role here as executive director for 10 years. So I was fortunate that I came to the table. I’ve worked in both realms, and so I inherently have some institutional knowledge of both, which has, in my opinion, served us well. But at the same point, whenever we do have those conversations with entities that or leadership, you know, in those entities that might not come in with that synergistic attitude and personality, it can be trying at times. And so there are times that you do just have to step away a little bit and figure out ways to cultivate those partnerships. We actually do a few events within our community that are all of us together, and initiatives that are all of us together. So Chillicothe, Missouri is the home of slice bread, right? We were the first place to commercially pre slice and sell loaves of bread. If you can believe that

Brandon Burton 27:24
you guys have made life so much easier, let me tell you, I mean, greatest

Crystal Narr 27:27
city since I you know, we’re trying to live up to our claim to fame, but we actually host annually a sliced bread day, and that is a unified effort that all of us carry some portion of to see that come to fruition each year. And so we have meetings all throughout but again, it is the prime example of everybody staying in their lane, making sure that what we are doing aligns with our mission. It could be even so far, is where the events are located. Downtown. Handles anything that’s located there. Tourism is really focused on the outreach component, getting people to Chillicothe on that day, and then we really handle promoting it locally, an additional component of a concert that brings everybody together to a local business that evening, bringing back local musicians that maybe have since moved away or are still here. And we call it our slice of home concert so and there are other partners that you know, our local museum, our art Guild and gallery, our library, like everybody, kind of has a piece of the pie, but it it’s just one of those things, like it couldn’t work if it was just one of us, but everybody coming together makes that work.

Brandon Burton 28:50
Samples, yeah, yeah, yeah. We

Crystal Narr 28:52
also, this has been several years back, but all came together to host the tour of Missouri, which was basically one step down from the Tour de France bicycle race that everyone’s familiar with, but it was here in Chillicothe as a part of their race across the state of Missouri. And it was huge, I mean, a huge staging event here, and that was really the first of something we have seen of that scope. And so once again, it took a lot of players all coming around the same table to make sure that that happened, and that when people left Chillicothe, they felt like, wow, that community knew what they were doing and were welcoming and gracious, and we would love to go back there again. So it’s just one of those things that, again, everybody stayed in their lane, knew their role, but was also willing to contribute and support others.

Brandon Burton 29:44
Yeah, great examples. I love it. Are there any other aspects that we need to consider when working with non towards collaborations with other nonprofits?

Crystal Narr 29:54
I one of my things that has come up more recently, that. Hopefully other communities are already doing this, but if not, maybe it’s something that would be a new idea for community our size and many other probably even big cities. I think that there’s a saying that you know, if you want to find something done, find the busiest person in town, or that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Sometimes I feel like it’s probably more 10% do 90% of the work. So in a town our size, we are constantly tapping the same people over and over and over again, whether it’s financially or for volunteer time. So we have collectively started talking about creating a list of community volunteers, and that might even have a component of people who sign up but maybe don’t have the best track record of actually following through. That’s kind of what prompted this conversation between our entities, because there was a volunteer for a main street event, and they said, we said, Oh, do you have enough volunteers for this, you know? And she was like, Yeah, I think so. She was like, we have this, this and this, you know, person that are coming. And we said, oh, she list off a name. And we said, Well, we hope that they show up, because they didn’t for our event, and we were kind of left in the lurch. And she was like, oh, man, I wish I would have known that before I let them, you know, sign up for it, and I didn’t book somebody else with them, so I’d have a plan B. So that’s what started this conversation of possibly creating a cohesive, a collaborative volunteer list, and then also the same thing for maybe financial and that one would be a little bit different in that trying not, you know, to always have all of us hitting up the same five businesses over and over to try to get more creative and see who else is pulling money from them. So then we can try other avenues, so really being collaborative on those sorts of avenues as

Brandon Burton 31:52
well. Yeah, and at the same time, yeah, you want to be careful, because some of those people that do sponsor and donate to these different things, they look forward to that and want to do that, and if they don’t have the opportunity, then you’re going to hear that end of it. So yeah, yeah. Well, Crystal, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for chambers listening who are trying to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you offer them to try to accomplish that goal? My

Crystal Narr 32:20
favorite quote is that change is debilitating when done to you, but exhilarating when done by you. So really trying to make sure that people can be a part of the process and to not be afraid of change. You know, I’m nearly 20 years in in some role of nonprofit leadership, and Change is the only thing that I can continue to count on every single year. We really try not to be stagnant. We really try not to fall into that bane of, well, we do it because it’s always been done that way. We are really always trying to reinvent, keep the things that work, but then change the things that need to be changed, to consider us progressive minded. And so that’s my one takeaway for any don’t be scared of it, and make sure that you’re taking people along with you for that change, so that they also want to embrace it, and that includes your board, your membership and your community.

Brandon Burton 33:28
Yeah, there’s so many dynamics to change, and that quote wraps it up very, very concisely. I love that. 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?

Crystal Narr 33:44
So we actually have really started having conversations about what it looks like moving forward, and just like I said, embracing change, my board of directors in our retreat, preparing for 25 really took a lot of what we were the feedback that staff was providing them about lack of engagement, lack of attendance, and really took that to heart. And so we have initiated a lot of change for this year. We have always been a chamber that has had monthly chamber luncheons every single month, third Wednesday, and we have seen a really drop off in that. We think part of that is just strain on our members financially. We think part of that is strain on time commitment. And, you know, the financial part kind of plays into, you know, we’re seeing wages going up, and that that means that now our members are having to pay employees to attend a chamber luncheon, while also paying to attend a chamber luncheon. So we are just trying to be very mindful and meet our members where they’re at. So we’re cutting back on how many we’re having a year. So. Same thing with our networking events. We’re also trying to restructure them so that they are held at the times that work the best for our members. So again, embracing change, initiating some new things, like industry roundtables that don’t cost anything for people, but still give them a voice. Stepping up our game and our advocacy efforts to help our businesses in ways that they might not feel prepared to actually, you know, lead the charge themselves. So really, just changing the way that our chamber has functioned, and taking some baby steps to get us to where we need to be, to be progressive.

Brandon Burton 35:40
Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of looking forward like that, leaning forward into that and and really kind of punch, punching above your weight class, we’ll say absolutely like it. Well, Crystal, this has been fun having you on the podcast, and I appreciate the the insights and perspective you’ve shared. Wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the approach you’ve taken with working with other nonprofits. Where would you point them? What’s the best way to connect with you?

Crystal Narr 36:13
Anybody can reach out to me at any point in time. My email is chamber@chillicothemo.com and our website is just www.chillicothemo.com as well. So I’m happy to chat with anybody, and hopefully I can even glean some information from them along the way.

Brandon Burton 36:35
That’s what it’s all about. So I’ll, I’ll get your information in our show notes for this episode to make a nice nice and easy to find you and connect with you. But again, thank you for being a little vulnerable and sharing some of these experiences you’ve had and working with other nonprofits. I know it can be sticky at times, but you guys have seemed to find a way that works, and I know it continues to be an evolution, but I appreciate you sharing some of these tips and strategies that are working for you.

Crystal Narr 37:03
I appreciate you asking me to be a part of the chamber chat podcast and look forward to listening to the many other ones so that I can continue my lifelong learning that I hope to always initiate in my chamber profession.

Brandon Burton 37:19
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Chamber Turnaround with Warren Call

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Warren. Call Warren is the President and CEO of Traverse Connect, the economic development organization focused on advancing the economic vitality of the Grand Traverse region in Michigan. Traverse connect hosts the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, a coalition of 18 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations representing over 7500 businesses across northern Michigan that advocates for economic competitiveness and pro growth rural business policies. Warren’s role is to lead strategy for the organization, advocate for area businesses, represent the region globally and collaborate with local, state and national organizations on critical issues related to economic development and regional competitiveness. He holds leadership roles in several public policy initiatives dedicated to economic expansion, and was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Board of Directors for the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. Prior to joining traverse connect, Warren served as vice president and regional manager for Huntington National Bank with oversight board investments in private banking across northern Michigan. He holds an MBA in international finance from St John’s University, and a BA in history from Michigan State University, where he was the captain of the Michigan State University Alpine Ski Team. Warren, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah.

Warren Call 2:45
Hello, Brandon, thanks for the opportunity, and welcome all the chamber champions that are out there listening. It’s, it’s a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, Warren, call from, from Traverse, connect in Traverse City, Michigan, kind of maybe a little bit of background for me. The as you mentioned there in the in the bio ski racer, skiing is kind of my thing. I grew up in in a ski family. My parents both worked in the resort business, so we, we kind of lived there. And so I grew up skiing all the time. I was a high school and college racer. Worked in the ski business for a while in Utah, as well as in in Michigan. My brother was it was also chief of course for World Cup races in Colorado. And so we do a lot of traveling for skiing. We ski a lot here, and then been in a number of avalanches due to, due to my skiing experiences. Wow,

Brandon Burton 3:49
see, I’ve never been much of a skier. I’ve been snowboarding a couple times, but nothing. I can’t do it. It’s just not me. And I see videos of these people to get caught up in avalanches and like, that’s why I don’t do so that is interesting, though, and definitely an address adrenaline rush, I’m sure, absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit more about traverse, connect, give us an idea of size, scope of work, staff, budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation today.

Warren Call 4:22
Yeah. So for anyone that’s not familiar with with Traverse City, traverse City’s Northern Michigan, the northern lower Michigan. So there’s the university the Upper Peninsula, the up, as we call it. We’re in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The pinky of the mitt is, is basically where we are from a map standpoint, right on Lake Michigan. We’re about four hours north of Detroit, six hours north of Chicago, one of our claims to fame, Good Morning America, named us the most beautiful place in America due to Lake Michigan and the dunes and all that kind of stuff. Um. We’re Travers Connect is a hybrid entity. We’re both a Regional Chamber of Commerce and a regional economic development organization covering the five counties around Traverse City are, we’re we’re a small town, we’re a small region. We’re a Micropolitan Statistical Area. So think about 150,000 people in kind of the the micropolitan area our our chamber organization has 1000 member companies here in our in our five county footprint, we have about a $3 million budget and a staff of 11 here in Traverse City, we have a brand portfolio, as we call it, because again, we’re, we’ve, we’ve expanded beyond being just a traditional chamber. So we have under the traverse connect brand. We’re, we both have the five County Chamber of Commerce services as well as direct economic development for for this region. So business attraction, business retention strategies, you know, incentives for for business relocation, things like that. We also have what’s called the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, as you mentioned, and proud to report that it’s now 19 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations across the footprint. So that footprint is basically the northern half of the mid northern Lower Peninsula, and then all of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So the reason for that is from an advocacy and public policy standpoint. When our team is in Lansing, the capital of Michigan, or in Washington, DC, we’re not speaking on behalf of just Traverse City or just our micropolitan region. We’re speaking on behalf of all of Northern Michigan with a unified voice. We also kind of going through that band, brand portfolio further we’ve got, we house the Traverse City young professionals organization. We also have the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council. So that’s a subset entity that’s obviously focused on manufacturing. And then we run what’s called Michigan’s creative coast. That’s a talent attraction program for our region that is nationally, trying to attract talent to to Northern Michigan, so that that’s, that’s kind of us in a in a very brief nutshell.

Brandon Burton 7:36
And we could do, we could do about eight or nine podcast episodes and all these different branches that you guys are involved with within your your brand portfolio. It’s fascinating. I imagine, with the the 18th chamber now in the northern Michigan Alliance, that you’re probably close to 8000 businesses or so that are being represented on that, that advocacy front.

Warren Call 7:58
Yeah, our, our Director of Government Relations was actually just looking at that yesterday. She’s She’s put out a updated survey to all those those organizations, because we do want to make sure that I think we’re probably close to, or maybe over 8000 at this at this point. So you know, that’s, that’s a lot of businesses and a lot of organizations that we represent. And again, from an from an from an advocacy and public policy standpoint, you know, Northern Michigan, as with many rural areas and rural communities, you know, you can sometimes get lost in the mix. From a standpoint of, you know, in Michigan, Detroit speaks pretty loudly. Grand Rapids speaks pretty loudly. We want to make sure that policy makers know that the rural areas of northern Michigan are important too, and so we have that unified voice to speak on behalf of the rural areas.

Brandon Burton 8:50
I love it. It’s a great idea and a great strategy. So our focus for our conversation today is we’ve titled The episode is chamber turnaround. So we’re going to dive in deep onto to how traverse, connect became what it is today, and kind of the background story to that and and I’m sure a lot of the story can resonate with other chamber leaders across the country as they hear it, but we’ll dive in deep into that story and experience as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Warren, we’re back. So tell us, what is the background? What’s the story on on traverse connect, how did it come to be and and this whole idea of chamber turnaround, I think it’s safe to assume that things maybe weren’t as ideal, and then things had to happen to to get it on track to where it is today.

Warren Call 12:56
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting Brandon, because what what we face here in the Grand Traverse region, the Traverse City area is unlike a lot of Michigan, or actually a lot of the kind of the industrial upper midwest Great Lakes region, we’re actually growing. We have really been on a pretty good trajectory from a growth standpoint, for a while, and what we needed was we had a lot of great institutions and a lot of great initiatives that were they were they were they were well intentioned, and they were well meaning, and what they weren’t is they weren’t modernized for our environment. So what we really needed to do is we needed to take kind of that big picture of Chamber of Commerce, services, economic development, and we needed to modernize our approach, or for the region. And what that really related to was we had a lot of organizations that were doing good things, but a lot of it was siloed. So there wasn’t a lot of coordination across some initiatives there wasn’t full coordination across the region. And so what we looked at was an opportunity to reimagine what business support services, in kind of its most general sense, looked like in our region. And it became, frankly, a wholesale reconstruction of of our organization and of of the approach to economic development and and Chamber of Commerce services for the entire region. So, from a from a background standpoint, it really, it really started back in in probably 2016 2017 there was, there was a number of initiatives that had kind of gone by the wayside. So a kind of an older, traditional public sector, county led Economic Development Corporation had gone dormant and didn’t have a lot of operations in it at the same time. Um, 100 plus year old Regional Chamber of Commerce, I wouldn’t say had, had certainly was still functioning and well functioning, but it was pretty traditional, and it was perhaps even a little bit stale in its approach.

Brandon Burton 15:15
I’ve heard that before from chambers have been around a long time. Yeah, right. And fantastic

Warren Call 15:21
legacy, very successful legacy, but needed, needed a refresh, basically, yeah, and then we had a number of initiatives that had newer initiatives that were important, so, especially in innovation and technology. So a new tech incubator had been stood up. A couple other good initiatives, but they were, they were in their own silos and not plugged into some of the other things that were going on. So a number of us, and I should, I should probably point out that I have no background in economic development or Chamber of Commerce services. So back at this point, I was actually working in the in the finance industry for a national bank with I was overseeing their northern Michigan operations. So I was involved in these things, but as a as a volunteer board member, yeah, so I was a volunteer board member on the Economic Development Corporation and on the technology incubator, and I was involved in one of the committees through the chamber, and there was things like that. But so we work, we were working as a community to re envision what economic development and Chamber of Commerce services should look like. And it there was a couple of retirements at some of these different organizations, and so we looked at that as an opportunity to kind of rethink what it what everything should look like. And at that point, I got asked by some of the people that you know, they said, well, great, but if we’re going to reconstitute everything, we want you to move from being a board member to being the guy in the chair. So I didn’t expect to be in that role. But that’s, that’s how it happened.

Brandon Burton 17:02
It sounds like maybe you spoke too much in these board meetings. I think so. I think, I

Warren Call 17:07
think I shared my opinion a few too many times, right? So what we ended up doing is the county’s Economic Development Corporation was reformatted with with new board members. I was, I was, again at that point, the volunteer chair of that organization, when we reconstituted it. And what we did is we, we built a strategic plan for rebuilding everything. And so that that process happened through 2017 2018 and then in 2019 I stepped into this role at traverse Connect, which at that point was a kind of a community development organization that hadn’t really found its footing. And so we, we, then my job was to work with a consultant that we had hired and build a strategic plan, not just for my organization, but for the entire region. So this really was a soup to nuts kind of approach. We had community wide forums, we had a listening tour. We had a steering committee made up of key leaders from business industry nonprofits from across the region, kind of, as I call it. That was our big shots group, right? We had prominent CEOs and other leaders who, you know, have influence. And what we ended up doing is through, through those public listening tours, those, those, those the kind of the road show as it was, the industry forums that we, you know, we brought together the manufacturers, and we brought together the healthcare providers, and we, you know, all these things. We ended up basically opening the hood, ripping everything out, and putting it all back together again in a new in a new structure. So we merged Travers connect and the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce together into one entity that’s now called Travers Connect. We spun off a couple of of subsidiaries that were no longer, you know, relevant, and we we then merged in over time, we merged in some of these other things. We expanded that chamber Alliance. It had gone when we went from 12, now up to 19 members. We also brought in and merged the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council as a now a subsidiary of our organization. And really what it was was we took all these outdated structures and we were trying to address the fact that we had growth in the region, which was positive, but we also had a lot of growth challenges. So we’re a very popular. Destination for tourism. We’re a popular destination for second homes, and those are very valuable aspects of our economy, but they’re not our only aspects of our economy. We have actually a lot of technology. We have a lot of advanced manufacturing. We actually have more employment in manufacturing than Michigan’s average. And for anyone that knows Michigan, there’s a lot that says a lot, right? So people think of us as a great place for vacations and beaches and cherry pie, but what they don’t realize that there’s also a lot of other things going on in manufacturing, in technology, in agriculture, so advanced value added agriculture, right? We, you know, if, if your kids ever eat, go, go squeeze, you know, applesauce in the packet that’s made right here in a very massive facility here, matern, the French company that has their their location here, we make a lot of wine that gets shipped all over the world, etc. So we’ve got a lot of things beyond tourism and and second home ownership, which are important to us. But one of the challenges there is we have a high cost of living because so many people want to either be here part of the time or be here, you know, for vacation, etc. So we have workforce challenges. So while we’re population was growing, our working age population was declining. Yeah, so 35 to 49 year olds, that core working age population, the people that run businesses, that you know, teach school, that have kids in the school system, that you know sit on nonprofit boards that kind of your core working age population that had declined by 7% between 2010 and 2019 Wow. So you can’t have a vibrant year round economy and community if you don’t have the people that are here year round working and, you know, getting their kids into snow pants and out to school the next day, right? It’s, you’ve got to, you’ve got to have that, that that year round population. So that was a wake up call to our region that we needed to do something. And so that was kind of all of the the work we did to institute a new structure and develop a new a new strategic plan was focused on the fact that we need to be a year round economy so and I can go into more more detail about, kind of, some of the key highlights of that, but I wanted to pause and see if,

Brandon Burton 22:33
yeah, I think that’s important to dive into some of those key highlights. I’m always curious as well, when there’s restructuring like this that goes on as to it. And you gave a great background about you being sitting on, on the two boards and ideas, you know, bubbling up. But you know, when you put the rubber to the roads to have the traction to actually implement these changes, it can be kind of sticky. You know, when you’re dealing with with leadership, with other organizations, multiple boards. So as as you talk to your next point, if you can try to work some of that into about the approach and and for a chamber listening, you know, not everybody’s has that perfect timing where everything aligns to just make it happen, but the vision is there of this is the direction our community needs to go. So if you can kind of speak to that a little bit too, as you in your response, yeah,

Warren Call 23:30
and there, there’s, there’s a lot there. But certainly, I think the key things here that we learned were that over communication. And I just mean complete, over communication and repeating. The reasons why we’re doing this were really key aspects of our approach, I think, because what we found was that, you know, people, people fear change. Yes, and organizations fear change. But really, when it comes down to it, there’s actually not a fear of change. They fear change because they fear loss. People equate change with loss. They think that the change you’re making is going to result in some kind of loss for them. And so we had to really do our homework to show that this change was not going to result in loss, it was going to result in gain for the community.

Brandon Burton 24:28
That’s a great framing. I like that. So

Warren Call 24:31
really thinking about, again, what you need when you’re going to implement big change like this, especially with 100 plus year organizations, and you know that legacy of the Chamber of Commerce and things like that, you’ve got to show that you’re respecting and building on that legacy and enhancing what it’s going to do going forward, not taking away from it. So part of that is, again, like I said, over communicating. So. Part of that is having a clear enemy. So again, from our perspective, that clear enemy was we lost 10% of the working age population between 2010 and 2019 right? I think I said 7% before, but it was actually 10% we lost 10% of that working age population in that that time period that got people’s attention, and that was the enemy, and we were able to focus our efforts around that enemy that allowed organizations to really work together. It allowed, you know, we had a business leader meeting with a county commissioner, meeting with a nonprofit, you know, hospital leader, all of them could agree that if you lose your working age population, you’re in trouble. So that that focused everyone’s mind, and it allowed us to do a couple of key things. Number one, I think it helped everybody kind of check their ego at the door, because it wasn’t about their organization or their project, it was about defeating that, that enemy, and then it also allowed us, I think, some latitude to what we ended up calling slaughtering some sacred cows. It’s

Brandon Burton 26:12
important, yeah, because everyone

Warren Call 26:15
realized that if we were going to address this issue of work, losing the working age population, we had to to come up with some new solutions. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the framing that helped us. I also think it was important that we did a lot of listening first. So we, we hired, sorry, we formed that kind of, what I called the Big Shots group, the key leaders across community as a steering committee, people that are trusted across business, industry, nonprofit, etc, that that helped. Then that steering committee was the one that gave me direction, and gave our consultants direction, and then we did these community wide forums, we did the listening tour, we did the workshops that were open to everyone. So we really we incorporated everyone’s feedback. And I think it’s important to do that regardless of what you’re doing. But here’s the thing you got to think about. And I think chamber professionals know this, you’re never going to make everybody happy, right? So that our new solution, our new structure, our new strategic plan, I think it’s well done. But of course, there, there’s going to people, be people that are going to not like some aspect of it, right? But being able to say we asked everyone for their opinion was really important, right? Even if we didn’t incorporate their opinion, maybe they didn’t like the final product, but we asked everybody. Nobody was nobody was on Ask. Everyone got tired of hearing my talking points because I repeated them so many times, and our steering committee repeated them so many times, but at least everyone felt like they were, they were heard.

Brandon Burton 28:03
It goes back to that over communication. And nobody can say, you know, I didn’t know this is happening, right? You’re talking about it, and you’re not catching them by surprise,

Warren Call 28:13
right? So that’s, that’s what resulted in, for example, the decision to have a hybrid structure, you know, our our leading private sector businesses were really tired of the chamber asking them for money and sponsorship and dues, and then the economic development corporation trying to get some funding, and then the tech incubator and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, one entity that that has a really, you know, clear mandate. Now, you know, my private sector business leaders can say, I’m writing a check to traverse, connect, to do this, this and this right, so that, that we came really clear. And so it gave us, it gave us focus and clarity too. And we were, we were really intentional. And the end result of that, that hybrid structure and our strategic plan outlined exactly where we were going to lead, where we were going to support and where we weren’t going to get involved. So our focus became, you know, Travers Connect is going to our mission is to look at the economic vitality, strengthen the economic vitality of this region by growing family sustaining careers. So family sustaining careers year round. You can afford to live here. You can afford to put your kids in child care, etc. You can afford a house, a family, sustaining career is kind of the North Star. The way we do that in our three pillars of primary focus is the economic competitiveness of the region. Number one, strengthening that. Number two, direct support for business. Businesses, number three talent, making sure we’ve got talent attraction development and that continuum of of talent development, then we were really specific about where we’re going to support. We support the technology incubator in early stage company development. We’re not the leader in early stage. They’re the leader. We support them. We’re not the leader in housing development, but there’s an entity called housing north. They’re the leader in housing development. We support their efforts. So we’re really clear about, you know, some of those, there’s a community development. So some of the kind of more societal, environmental things. Yeah, we’re not the leader in that, but we support the community development coalition that is the leader in that. Okay,

Brandon Burton 30:51
this is all super fascinating, and I could see it’s a big undertaking as well, but being able to align the needs within the community to be able to say what’s important. How do we want to, you know, advance the future going forward, you said, create these family sustaining careers. Can you talk a little bit about some of the the outcomes that you’re seeing from these changes? How is the the temperature change? How has the mood changed in the community by implementing this. Well,

Warren Call 31:24
certainly, you know, again, as chamber professionals, know you’re never going to make everybody happy. So there’s still the same things that we always have, right? We still have challenges with with, you know, elected officials not agreeing with each other and different priorities. And always that tension between managing appropriate growth versus maintaining our character and our charm of our communities. Those are always things that continue to be items of debate. But I think where there’s where there’s really clear success in there’s probably three things I would touch on that have really been been clear success. First of those is under that, that banner of the Northern Michigan chamber Alliance, the opportunity to to leverage the connection between economic development and public policy, that that’s been really helpful for us across all of Northern Michigan, so that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and other kind of policy leaders know what our priorities are, and they know that we’re we’re focused on it. They know that we need funding for our initiatives. They know that when we’re when we’re out there trying to recruit an advanced manufacturing company to come to Northern Michigan. They know that it’s part of a concerted strategy. So I think that that was one really, one really big win, especially since, you know, again, we’re a fantastic place to vacation. We’re a fantastic place for second homes and so a lot of policy leaders downstate, Michigan, that’s what they think of when they think of Traverse City. And that’s great. We want to, want them to continue to think about that, and that to be continued to be a strong part of our economy. But also we’re a great place for an advanced manufacturing entity to relocate. So that that’s one thing. The second thing is, it’s allowed us to leverage some unique attributes of our community to focus on cluster development, industry. Cluster development, we’re not going to be a place that Ford or GM are going to set up a huge production facility. That’s not the right fit for us. That’s the right fit for downstate Michigan, the right fit for us, from a cluster development, is freshwater research and innovation. We’re on Lake Michigan. We’re a great place for research and development as it relates to water technologies, marine technologies, things like that. We’re a great place for value added agriculture, as I mentioned, we’re a great place for testing and deployment of drone technologies. Our our local college is is a leader in the Midwest for drone technologies, and the way that drone technologies are need to be developed for rural communities. Think of agricultural uses. Think of rural healthcare delivery, both with drones and with telemedicine. Those are things that are unique to our region. So we’re leveraging our unique things to develop these industry clusters in rural health, in drone deployment, in marine technologies, to again, Grow family sustaining careers, right? We want, we want, you know, if, if some company is going to build the next, you know, advanced underwater drone research product, we want that to be, to be done here, right? Because we the. This is a good place to do it. And then the final thing I would talk touch on is Michigan’s creative coast, our our talent attraction initiative. We, I think we, we had a good plan and we built a good program. We also got really lucky Brandon, because we built this nationally focused talent attraction brand, and it went live about three weeks before the pandemic hit, wow, and one of our big initiatives as part of that was with remote work and technology. If you can work anywhere, why wouldn’t you want to work here? And our timing could not have been better, because all of a sudden the world realized they could do things from anywhere, and it’s been a huge growth for us. We’ve been able to attract entrepreneurs, remote workers, technology, biopharmaceutical entities. It’s just been phenomenal from a standpoint of attracting talent and attracting entrepreneurs,

Brandon Burton 36:03
that is huge. Yeah, I appreciate you touching on those three areas. And when you’re talking about economic development leveraging, you know, working with the public policy, the thought came to me, it used to be that the media kept government in check and made sure that, you know, trying to keep them honest, we’ll say, Right? But now I see that shift being more with with chambers and economic development on the advocacy front to keep governments in check. And if they know that you’re you’ve got your eye on these, you know, policies that affect business, then it’s hard to get something past a group, you know, of 18 chambers that are, you know, form this alliance to to make sure that business is being protected and it’s a fertile place for business to grow and thrive. So these, these are great areas, great successes that are, that are coming out of this and and I feel like in the format that we have for this podcast, we might have bitten off a little more than we could chew, because I could, I could listen to you for a couple hours, you know, going in depth with all of these, you know, different aspects and the the winds that are coming out of this. But I appreciate you being able to try to condense this to to work with this format, and kind of give a glimpse of what’s possible as you align resources and ideas and and getting you know the stakeholders involved, and really convening them all together to to create a good cause going forward in your community and region. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to see if there’s any any tip or action item that you would share with the Chamber who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What would you suggest for them? You

Warren Call 37:51
know, what I learned in this process Brandon was, I think the key thing is leverage. Chamber leaders have way more leverage than a lot of them that real they realize or that they use. And I think, you know, chambers, chambers, and chamber leaders oftentimes are kind of the key servant of the community, and that’s that’s an important role, but I think it’s important to remember that it’s a servant leader role, and I think there’s an opportunity to have a bit more swagger in your community and and take the initiative. Be bold, you know, be authentic, but also be the authority, because, because the chamber knows more of what’s going on than most other people in the in the region, yes, build a vacuum, fill the vacuum of leadership, and really leverage that. And I think you can do that with your staff. I think you can do that with your board, your community, obviously, elected officials. So that’s what I would say. I think the best way to do that is, is to quantify things. And so metrics and quantifying helps you to leverage your authority.

Brandon Burton 38:58
I like that having the data to back up what you’re trying to accomplish and and I love that word leverage too. It brings power, quite literally, as you apply apply a force with leverage, you’re able to do a lot more than what you can do on your own. Absolutely, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, you know,

Warren Call 39:22
I think it’s gonna be really interesting. I think that, you know, as a as an industry, you know, as everyone knows, you know that that struggle for for member retention, I think, is always gonna is, is always gonna be there. And we don’t need to get into all the kind of the traditional things about, you know, retention and non dues, revenue and all that kind of stuff. But the key thing is, the chamber was always thought of as the authority, traditionally on business issues. Then the internet comes along and business leaders feel like they can kind of get information from other sources, so they don’t necessarily need to be involved. In the chamber, they don’t need to be members. I think that’s been a struggle over the last, you know, 20 years. I think maybe, and I don’t know for sure, but maybe as the internet becomes less of an information source and more of just a confusing mix of everyone’s opinion, maybe there’s a need again, for kind of that trusted authority, that authentic, trusted authority. And I would, I would love to see chambers and economic development organizations fill that role, because I think it could be kind of a full circle thing where, you know, there’s, there’s a million websites, and you really don’t know what’s going on, so you might need to just go talk to your local or regional chamber to figure out what’s really going on with business issues.

Brandon Burton 40:46
Yeah, I like that. I’ve never thought of it in that context before, but I like that. It gives you something to think about and see that that full circle come back around right? Well, warm for for those listening who may want to reach out and learn more about how things have developed, there at traverse connect, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? You

Warren Call 41:10
know, I’m, I’m 100% against email. I think it’s a waste. There’s, there’s actually a really good book called world without email. If you haven’t read it, you should my cell phone, 231-651-9174,

Brandon Burton 41:27
alright, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for for people to reach out and connect with you. But Warren, this has been great having you on and thank you for you know, kind of pulling back the curtain and showing what took place to create travers, connect and aligning all those desires, interests, abilities, to be able to bring them in under one roof, and also shut off some of those sacred cows that may weigh you down a little bit. This is a great exercise that probably every chamber needs to go through on some regular basis, maybe not to the same extent, but to really see what the purpose is and what’s driving them. But thank you for sharing your experiences with us today. This has been fantastic, and I really appreciate it. My,

Warren Call 42:18
my, my appreciation to you, Brandon. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having

Brandon Burton 42:24
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Engaging Partners in Purpose with Carl Blackstone

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Carl Blackstone. Carl has a deep knowledge of working with small and large businesses as a well as well as professional trade associations on local, state and federal levels. Carl has served as the former manager of the State Government Relations for the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce and as a district field manager for Mark Sanford when he served in the US House, Senate representative, in addition to other community roles, currently, he serves on the board of the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and the South Carolina State Chamber of Commerce as the President and CEO of the Columbia Chamber. Carl’s focus is creating a strategy to make and to help make the region more competitive for the next 20 years. Carl, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, greetings

Carl Blackstone 2:06
and from South Carolina. Great to be with you today, and thanks so much for having me. You know, this chamber world is so small. I’ve met so many folks from around the country. They’re in chambers, but I haven’t met you. I apologize, but look forward to one day, but I’m just a boring guy from the southeast. I got four daughters. They’re in college, and so I’ll be working forever. But I love what I do and enjoy it very much. But otherwise, I’m just a boring guy,

Brandon Burton 2:35
a boring guy. Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got three daughters myself, son and three daughters. So I can, I can sympathize with you a little bit. It’s great, but, yeah, we’ll be, we’ll be working a long time. That’s right. Well, Carl, tell us a little bit about the Columbia chamber. Give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Carl Blackstone 2:56
So we’ve been around. Were found in 1902 and so we’ve been around for 125 years or so. We have we’re mid sized chamber. We’ve got a staff of about 15. We’ve got a budget little two, two and a half million dollars, and about 12, 1300 partners in our under the umbrella Columbia as a whole is capital city, smack dab in the middle of the great state of South Carolina. Metropolitan Area is a little less than a million people. It’s because it’s a state government town, capital city, we have the University of South Carolina two blocks from my office. It’s been somewhat of a different place for businesses, because everybody knows it’s a government town, and the government mentality has been very strong here for years, and so when I I’ve been here for 10 years as the CEO. I’m not didn’t grow up through chambers. I worked at the State Chamber and and did lobbying work for the State Chamber years ago, but I didn’t really understand chambers, and that was a State Chamber, not a local chamber. And so when I found myself in this position, I’m like, holy cow, it’s a new world, and I’ve learned a ton. But the hardest thing we’ve had to do is really change the mentality of Columbia businesses. Say, Yes, we are government town. That is a positive, that is a wonderful thing, great attributes to have for recruiting businesses. But that’s not the only thing we are. We have great companies here, we need to be a little bit more pro business and think differently on how we approach things. And so at that time, 10 years ago, the we weren’t doing well. The city was not growing. We’re pretty stagnant, quite frankly, over the last 30 years. And that’s combination of the. Poor leadership, poor planning. It literally was acting from the business community, quite frankly, that that had created systemic problems that we needed to address. And so we needed more business minded people representing us on the city county level. We needed just to be more aware of what was going on and engaged in the political process, which helps. I mean, if you think about what government does on a day to day basis, they can help you, hurt you, and if you learn the business, we have a significant as a whole. Everybody thinks the southeast is got cheap labor, cheap taxes, cheap land, everything. But in reality, that’s not the case, especially in capital cities. Capital Cities are unique, and we have to high taxes, and it keeps businesses from looking to this area. And so we’ve had a challenge over the last 10 years, but I think we’re in a good spot now, which is pretty exciting.

Brandon Burton 6:02
Yeah, I can see where being in a capital city could definitely have its its benefits, but some challenges along with it, and it’s something that piqued my interest is when you you’d mentioned some of the challenges when you came into this position 10 years ago, to kind of boil down to apathy from the business community. I thought that’s a that’s an interesting approach. Could you talk a little bit more to that?

Carl Blackstone 6:24
Yeah, well, a lot of the folks that were engaged Jamie, we had a stagnant board. We I, I’ve said it over and over, so this is not first time. So we were male, pale and stale, yeah, we were a functioning board that was doing the same things we’ve always done, and it was, in my opinion, wasn’t healthy. We weren’t creating an environment where new people wanted to come right?

Brandon Burton 6:50
Yep, it sounds like your chamber was a the traditional Chamber of 10 years ago. The male pale and stale, yeah. And so

Carl Blackstone 6:59
we were, we were, we’re a traditional chamber, but traditional in the sense that 35 years ago we split economic development out. We’d also we’re a chamber that does not have the local tourism industry at all. That’s a whole separate group. And my predecessors, and there were reasons why they did it. I wasn’t around sorts. I don’t want to criticize them for it, but the long term impact was, what is a chamber that does not have economic development, that does not have tourism? What do you do? And how do you make yourself not relevant? But how do you find how do you make yourself essential to a community that was really down on itself and not grow it. It was stagnant. And so it was interesting back in 1950 Richmond, Virginia and Raleigh, North Carolina, Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, Austin, Texas, we’re all about the same size. And then you fast forward to 1980 in Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, three capital cities in these southern states were all the same size, and all of a sudden, now Columbia hadn’t changed. The same size they were in 1980 and Richmond and Raleigh are totally different. Not that I want to be I don’t think anybody in Colombia wants to be those other cities. It’s how do we attract and retain talent here in Columbia, and how do we make ourselves a draw? And a lot of the things that we were doing systematically were just not good for business, high taxes, not innovating and really not doing a whole lot to to change it. We were doing everything that we were doing, and so our hope, my hope, and you know, the team that we we have, was like, alright, we can, we can be the best Columbia. We want to be the best Columbia, but we don’t have to sit and do things just because it’s the way we’ve always done it. And it was maybe two months into my 10 years, like, Why? Why are we doing this? Why are, why are we doing this event? Or why are we sending stuff up? Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it. Yeah, that’s got to stop

Brandon Burton 9:12
the wrong answer, right?

Carl Blackstone 9:15
Hear that again and but changing the leadership, and then also you gotta have, if you want to attract new businesses, they gotta feel like they’re have a route to be participating. They gotta be participatory. We need them involved, but we needed to. We need to change. We need to have a board that reflects the community, both not just demographically, but also we needed different. You know, at one time, we had a board of, you know, our idea was diversity was had six different bankers sitting around the boardroom. Well, that’s not, yes, we diversity in banks, but we don’t have diversity of. Thought diversity of industry, and so we’ve been very, very deliberate in making sure that our community feels like we’re reflective of them, but but more importantly, that we’re actually we appreciate in their ideas and their thoughts. And how do we be a little bit more progressive?

Brandon Burton 10:18
Yeah, I like those thoughts and your comments around the you know, seeing the other similar sized cities grow and develop in that time period and and to have Columbia stay about the same as it was in the 80s, anytime something stays stagnant, you know, life kind of ceases to happen, right? Things start to die off a little bit. And to be able to invigorate that again, get it going. That’s that’s the key, to be able to keep it. Don’t let things become stagnant, right, right? Yeah, keep

Carl Blackstone 10:48
that part and but that’s where the chamber can really, is that the Chamber’s responsibility by itself? No, absolutely not. There are no, uh, single person that can do anything. And so you got to work with your city leadership and your business leadership and and the triple part, I mean, the triple PS really do work, not just in development, but also with ideas and how to get things moving along. And so we’re in a different spot than we were 10 years ago. It’s pretty amazing. You know, our growth in South Carolina has been substantial since the late 90s and early 2000s in Charleston and Greenville and south of Charlotte’s coming this way. And so we just have not been able to capitalize. But we finally been able to do so, and we’re seeing significant four or five times annual growth of what we saw two or three years ago, which is nice.

Brandon Burton 11:44
That’s awesome. Well, that’s a great setup for our conversation today, giving us kind of that the background on Columbia, how things are sitting, you know, the role of the chamber right now in Columbia and and as we focus our conversation today, we’ll focus on some of these maybe more unique approaches, you know, ways you guys approach things versus maybe the way some other chambers approach things and and I hope that there’s some some key elements out of this conversation that others can take and scale to their chamber and and be able to maybe implement some of these things to invigorate life in their communities as well. And we’ll dive in much deeper on this conversation, since we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Carl, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to focus most of our conversation today around kind of the the unique approaches that the Columbia chamber takes to your chamber work, versus maybe that of what some other chambers do. And in your explanation and background of the Columbia chamber, I think you’ve hinted on on several of these things, from the business apathy and kind of changing that mindset to the board makeup. But what are some of these other approaches or mindsets that you guys are taking there in Columbia to really see some of that growth that you guys are seeing and and to maybe energize some other Chambers as well, and kind of spark some ideas for them.

Carl Blackstone 16:22
Listen, let me just say we are not unique, and we’re also, I ain’t a smart guy. I want to set the record on this straight, because what I what I did when I got here was I had the privilege of having fresh eyes. Fresh Eyes is a gift. When you come in to an organization and you bring or whenever I hire new people, is really dig in with them to see what they see, because we get blinders on. And I guess my biggest fear is complacency, and complacency is a cancer. It’s a form of cancer that can erode an organization. And so I ask and spend a lot of time with new board members or new staff members or new partners. Say, what do we need to be doing differently? What do you see that we’re doing, that we’re missing? But so being always trying to find new ways to do things, I think, is critical for any organization. The problem we have in chamber world is we always underfunded. We have few two staff, and the easiest thing to do is what we’ve always done. Creativity takes time and energy, and you have to spend hours talking to folks, and that’s hard, but I think the end result is a better product for your partners, and we’re seeing that today. How do we continue to morph, even though we’ve had a good run the last three or four years? What we need to do differently? And I think taking steps back and really sending surveys to our partners and asking right questions, being on the phone and talking to them all the time or all right, this is good. Is this working? But their engagement is critical. And however we can find, I can’t say we have figured it out yet at all, but what I’m we are striving every day to make sure that we stay in front of the curve and businesses, you know, the chambers are in these unique spot because we have to understand politics, we have to understand the business and economics and accounting and law and all these Other things that we have to think about on behalf of our business partners, but we didn’t go to school for any of this stuff, right? I mean, we’re we’re learning on the streets like everybody else, but we need to lean on our partners to figure out what they need and and for us, in South Carolina, we’re seeing this huge post COVID surge of population and businesses coming in and great what’s our biggest issue? It’s workforce. How do we help our our partners? How do we help train and think about the workforce next week, next year, five years, 10 years. So it’s getting the mindset of, let’s being a community builder. Let’s think about thinking long term strategies on how we can be a player in not just the here and now, but later. It’s tough, and a lot of times the market throws a curve at us, and we’re not expecting it. We’ve just gotta alter our thought. I hate the word pivot after COVID, COVID, but I’ll use that word. We’ve gotta be always ready to think differently, which is, which is a struggle, but for us today, here and now, uh. We landed a very large OEM in Columbia that’s going to be producing a automobile, and they need 4000 workers by next year. And how do we ramp up? Because we know when a new new shiny object comes to town, you’re going to see folks leaving one job to go to another, and we got to find the workforce. Really dig in to think differently. On working with our local school districts, our state government for incentive purposes, on retraining folks, getting more high school kids into the workforce, workforce, work based learning opportunities for our kids. It’s a whole new world. We weren’t thinking about this four years ago.

Brandon Burton 20:45
Yeah, and there’s, there’s a lot of focus right now among chambers on workforce. I mean, it seems like you mentioned that P word pivot. You know, I think we can go the rest of our life without having any unprecedented pivots happening in our life, right? I mean, at least not calling them those, but yeah, to be able to see where these needs are. And there’s been, you know, this, this mass exodus of the workforce. And when you are looking for that growth and revitalization and trying to spark that energy into the workforce, where do you find them? How do you how do you retain talent that you already have in the community, and especially when everybody’s, you know, kind of vying for this attention as well that it is a it is a unique problem, and chambers are poised perfectly to address it. So

Carl Blackstone 21:38
addresses one thing is we’ve also got to embrace what our partners need, and they see us as a resource. And big companies typically don’t need us to help them with their workforce issue. I mean, they’ve got resources, they’ve got staff, but it’s a second tier, third tier, companies that struggle so much, and they need us because they don’t have the depth and that they don’t have the understanding of all the things that go into it, and so to be a resource for them, but also learning from our larger partners to say, Hey, how are y’all doing things that we can help teach others to do? It’s it’s not again. We’re not creating new products. We’re just trying to be dot connectors and say, Hey, how can we learn from one teach another? And it really helps the overall community.

Brandon Burton 22:31
That is an interesting thought, because I’ve heard a lot of chambers talk about when that big factory opens up, a big, major employer comes to town and they’re wanting to know, you know, we need, like you said, 4000 jobs filled. Can you guys help supply that? But in reality, those big companies come in and those jobs will flock to them, but they’re going to leave their current position. So that second tier is really it’s like, yes, we can help you find the workforce there, but you go to work overtime trying to find the workforce to fill the backside. So

Carl Blackstone 23:02
it is truly Robin chambridge. Is Robin Peter to pay Paul. And it’s the mindset, all right, understand that those are, there’s going to be fluctuations, but we need to that’s 4000 jobs. Doesn’t seem like a lot to some people that are, you know, in the Dallas area, that’s growing that many people in a month or whatever, for us, think about housing and the impact it has on the housing, on the track, on the schools. What does that if we bring in 4000 new people, is that 6000 kids we’ve got to start educating, and where are we going to put them? So the overall thought process we have to be we’re in a unique position. All chambers are that there’s no other entity that can bring the private sector with the public sector to sit down and find opportunities and and long term strategies on a lot of these issues. You know, we asked for years and years, we relied on government to fix problems, and we’re asking elected officials to do things more than we’ve ever asked them to do, but we as a chamber can provide a lot of resources to help assist find folks that are experts in their field, that work in your community, and sit them down. Let’s let’s have dialog. Yeah, but these community problems are long term. They’re not going away tomorrow, but we got to be thinking about them today, and building those relationships and having those relationships with both public and private partners really are beneficial.

Brandon Burton 24:51
Yeah. So the thought keeps coming back to me about the comment about the apathy of business owners and your comment about elected. Officials just now, elected officials definitely have their place, right? I mean, it’s important to work with them and to have the advocacy approach and everything, but they don’t have the same kind of skin in the game as the business does on Main Street, right? Who’s relying on this to feed their family, to for their employees to feed their families? They’ve got skin in the game. So to be able to get those businesses engaged in helping to find, you know, those the the employment, to help solve some of these problems that have to pop up in communities, to really rely on that business community, I think, is the key. And we’re chambers, help convene, and you’re convening with the electric the elected officials and everything as well. But, really leaning on those that have the biggest to lose and the most to gain, really by the success in the community. So I think you hit the nail on the head, whether you meant to or not. I don’t know.

Carl Blackstone 25:53
Well, the hardest thing to do is when you hit apathy. The apathetic feeling yes is re engagement and finding hope and that things can get better. And it’s, you know, if you’re a small business that has 10 employees and you’re barely eking out a paycheck to very worried about meeting payroll every two weeks, it’s like, All right, do I really have time to think about regulatory relief. I feel it every day. I see it. I have to have staff to deal with it, but they don’t have to. You’ve gotta really educate them on how we can make things better. They gotta see the light at the end of the tunnel. And so rebuilding is tough, maintaining is tougher, but I promise is better than the

Brandon Burton 26:46
alternative. Yeah. So how do you what’s your approach with your partners, as you guys call them there in Columbia, what’s your approach with partners to help get them engaged, to to step away from that apathy and to really buy in? I know you had mentioned before surveying and listening to them, seeing what their needs are and and I know other chambers are going to hear that and say, nobody opens our surveys, nobody opens the emails. So how do you do that? How do you get that feedback? How do you get them to step away from the apathy and to really lean into that engagement? Well,

Carl Blackstone 27:18
you have to have multiple redundancies, right? I mean, there’s the open rate on those surveys are pretty abysmal, but it has to be done at different levels. So we try to have meetings every year or every month that are opportunities to engage the public sector. Private sector have not just talking about politics, but projects that are coming and then making sure that we’re asking questions while we’re with them, have open dialog times to for them to voice their opinions. What’s going on, what’s good, what’s bad, but at all of our events, our goal is to ask questions of what we need to be, what do we need to know to help you all? And as soon as you start that dialog, and you do it over and over again, they actually start to believe it, which is good. That’s what we want, but it does. It’s not a just mention it one time and expect a flood of phone calls or emails. No, that doesn’t happen, but it’s gotta be built in to the process of every month, our annual our monthly meetings, our quarterly meetings, small I mean, you know, but also you gotta put your money where your mouth is if you really are trying to focus on small business, alright, let’s create a new group dialog, just for small business. What do y’all want to hear? What do y’all need to do? Let’s just focus on the area that needs focusing and that’s helped, that served us well. The other is, and this is the hard thing about I’ve got the best staff, best team in the world. I love they are fantastic. But we also, day in and day out are in a bubble. Yeah, they don’t have to go in and clock in clock out, and they don’t have to deal with regulatory issues, and they don’t have to deal with a lot of stuff. But we think we do and or more importantly, we think we know what our partners want. And quite honestly, you know, the worst thing we can do is think for ourselves. We need engagement, and that’s the key. And I remind our board this all the time. Look, we need y’all to tell us, don’t expect us to be you know, what did Ronald Reagan say? I’m here with the government. I’m here to help. Yeah? I can’t pretend to to know exactly what the issues are in a business. I need them to tell us and so, but we got to have that open dialog. We got to it’s it’s repetitive. I spent hours on the phone, but it’s important to to make sure that we have. People that we can call or give us straight answers to what we need to be working with and making sure that we’re providing that ROI

Brandon Burton 30:06
to our partners. Yeah, if I could summarize it, I’d say just stay curious on what those needs are for your your partners and and you mentioned, you know, you’re not going to get that flood of phone calls or emails, which is probably a good thing, because I wouldn’t really be sustainable either you couldn’t address them all last time. You might it might help in seeing some trends, but being curious in those personal interactions, if you’re at a luncheon, or if you’re, you know, visiting some members as you talk to them, what are some of the challenges you’re facing? And have it be a genuine conversation versus just greeting them, you know, thanks for coming to the luncheon. Yeah, you can elevate that that short conversation so much higher by being curious.

Carl Blackstone 30:45
Well, folks think you know if, if they get the first phone call from me, and I only call them once a year when their renewals up, right? I mean, there’s not a whole lot of authenticity in that call, right? I mean, they know exactly what I’m up to, so it’s important to have multiple contacts just to know, hey, we really do care. We really are inquisitive. We want to know how we can be helpful. And those, again, it’s all relationships and building out those relationships are are better for us as a chamber, but long term, it truly helps not only the chamber, but it helps our retention. It helps across the board. Yeah, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 31:26
Well, Carl, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to to ask for the chamber listening. Who’s wanting to try to take their chamber up to the next level. You’ve shared some great insights. But do you have any you know actionable, maybe tips or action items that you can share with those listening to maybe try implementing at their chamber to spark some life and step away from the apathy.

Carl Blackstone 31:52
Well, I think they’re different communities. Each you meet one chamber, you meet one chamber, right? Everybody’s different. Every community is different. But I think when you find we’re not good at everything, we don’t know everything, and so I think we try hard to stay in contact with partners, ask them what we need to be doing. I don’t have a silver bullet. I’m just making this up as I go quite honestly, but I think over time, people see us as a resource. They that they need, and they feel like, if we don’t know the answer, it’s okay, but we’re gonna go figure it out and try to find the answer. And I think companies and people are very happy with that answer. It may not work for us if we’ll try new things. We’re not saving the world, we’re not curing cancer, we’re not we’re not doing brain surgery or anything like that. We try different things all the time. It works. It works. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. It could be a timing issue, just could be whatever. But don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t Don’t hesitate, because the end of the day, we’re going to be doing this tomorrow, and we’ll try something else. So I, I think too many people try not to take risks. I like taking risks even little old nonprofit that we run. I think it’s, it’s worth, worth doing, yeah, and then again, it goes back to my biggest fear, which is complacency. So taking risks helps alleviate a little bit of that complacency.

Brandon Burton 33:34
Absolutely get to find some comfort in the discomfort, right? That’s right. So you mentioned that, you know, you’re just trying to figure it out as you go, but I’d say that the key element to that is taking the feedback. So as you implement new things, you’re you’re being staying curious, getting that feedback and that that tells you that’s your your guide as to what’s working, what’s not. Well, I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the purpose of chambers going forward?

Carl Blackstone 34:07
I you know, I think the best years of chambers are yet to come. I recognize them. Why they were created years ago, and the value that proposition that they’ve offered in years to years have just been B to B, and I don’t think that goes away. What I do think, though, as businesses in this environment that we’re in right now, political, environment, world, environment, whatever chambers, have this unique opportunity to really help define their communities for generations, and what the stuff we’re working on today may not come to fruition for 10 to 1520, years, but being at the table and helping solve these critical problems are important, and there’s no other group, if you look around, who’s going to be there? Well, it’s got to be the chambers, and it may be uncomfortable at times. It may. Be not fun, but at the end of the day, is it necessary? And businesses want to go and relocate, or they want to flourish where they can feel like they have they want to live work and play. Their employees want to live work and play in a community that’s vibrant, that is in an atmosphere that can make money, but they have a great quality of life, and so chamber is going to have to be at the tip of the spear in creating some of these long term strategies in their communities to fulfill the needs of business. So it’s going to be a fun challenge for the next few years. I’m excited. It’s new, different. Every day is different, so it’ll be fun. But I think looking at your book of work today knowing that it’s got to change, what can you live without? What Can You Live Without doing and what? What’s the best ROI for your partners, your numbers, or whatever? That’s what’s going to have to drive you. So, yeah, what

Brandon Burton 36:07
I find super interesting about chamber work is it is never ending. You know, once you solve one problem, there’s always going to be another, another thing to address. So never Is it the work of a chamber going to be complete. So job security there. So well. Carl, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you, what would be the best way that you’d have them reach out and contact if they had any questions we talked about you can hit our columbiachamber.com

Carl Blackstone 36:36
or cblackstone@columbiachamber.com we’ll get right to me. So love to if I’ve ever, if you ever have a question, if I can be a resource, let me know

Brandon Burton 36:45
that’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode. But appreciate you taking some time to be with us today, here on chamber tap podcast, share some of the approaches you guys have taken and really, you know, diving into engaging with your partners and helping them step away from that apathy that’s that’s so critical and keeping the work of chambers moving forward. So thanks.

Carl Blackstone 37:06
Yeah, absolutely, don’t be afraid to reach out. My My was reluctant when I first got to the Chamber of reaching out and asking for help, and call it pride, call whatever it was, but the best resources for me are other chambers, and we love the R & D working chamber world, reuse and duplicate, so embrace that as well, but find a mentor, find a friend at another chamber and and pick their brain. It’s a huge help.

Brandon Burton 37:35
I love that plug. That’s why this podcast exists. To your R & D. Well, thank you, Carl, this has been great, and I appreciate spending time with you today, and for you carving out some time to talk with us, this has been wonderful.

Carl Blackstone 37:47
Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks.

Brandon Burton 37:50
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Fixing Holes During a Storm with Jennifer Hanson

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Jennifer Hanson. Jennifer is a visionary community leader and marketing professional with more than a decade of experience in nonprofit management, business development and event coordination as executive director of the Boone County Chamber of Commerce, Jennifer has transformed the organization into a thriving force for for positive change. In just two years, she has grown membership, strengthened partnerships and revitalized events programs, and making the 112 year old chamber once again, a dynamic hub for collaboration, innovation and fun. Jennifer’s passion for empowering communities took root early in her career through her involvement at with the Omaha chamber, where she championed for young professionals in workforce and leadership development, her ability to reimagine possibilities and take decisive action was defined, has defined her career, whether she’s launching an award winning events, building volunteer programs or helping organizations rediscover their purpose, grounded by her servant leadership, Jennifer is dedicated to building authentic connections, fostering growth and leaving a meaningful impact where God has placed her. Jennifer, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well, yeah,

Jennifer Hanson 2:38
well, thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate being in here. And certainly, as you mentioned in my bio there, I born and raised in Omaha, and so as long although I’ve had last 14 years as a stay at home mom before, before joining the chamber, two years ago, I it’s been really great to be able to think back about all the good work happening at the Omaha chamber, and be able to bring those those tools and that sense of encouragement and to to Boone, Iowa and so, yeah, I thanks again for having me, and I’m excited to for our conversation. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:16
absolutely. Well, before we dive into the topic. Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us a little bit more about the Boone County Chamber, just to give us an idea of the perspective you’re coming from with the size of the chamber staff, scope of work, budget, that sort of thing, to kind of set the stage, sure, sure.

Jennifer Hanson 3:35
So the Boone County Chamber is a county wide Regional Chamber, and we are very excited that this, this 2025, is, frankly, is the year of scaling up for us. So when I came on board, we were just at around 200 to 15 or so in membership. There was an executive director, who was over Boone County, the economic growth as well as the chamber. And then I was brought in for events and communication. Soon after I jumped in, I realized that they were that might that executive director was what didn’t necessarily want to stay in that space, and had always wanted to open up a business and and so very good for him, Mike. Mike’s done a great job, and is a wonderful cater and and now business owner and with a with an additional bakery and such. But ultimately that led me to take this on. And so I stayed on as the executive director of the chamber, which allowed economic growth to find other services. But ultimately, this last over the last two years, we’ve now grown to a little over almost about 265 members and in a population of 12. 1000 we’re still on our way and back to maybe where this chamber was in its heyday in the 90s. But we are excited for for the growth. So when I came on board, when my after Mike left, I was the only, I was the only full time person, and I still necessarily only full time person on the chamber side. We had a part time a part time book bookkeeper. Now going into 2025, we have myself as the chamber director. We’ve we’ve got a main street director as a full time person, and we have a almost full time person who’s doing operations and our bookkeeping and office management, and we have a part time Member Services person. So going into 2025 we’re very excited to see a lot of growth taking place in our organization, and of course, in our membership. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:58
it’s fun to see the growth happening, and that means you guys are doing some things right. You know, you’ve got some energy. You’re doing things right to be able to see that growth. But our our topic, we’ve titled this episode fixing holes during a storm, and I’ve heard the phrase before of building an airplane as you fly it, so I imagine this is going to be pretty similar to that, but we’ll we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Jen, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, our conversation today, we’re talking about fixing holes during a storm, and see you come into the chamber. I imagine there’s some things that you’ve been hard at work at over. Your tenure there so far to be able to see the growth in membership and staff. But tell us what you mean with this phrase of fixing holes during a storm.

Jennifer Hanson 10:10
Yeah. So I, when I came on board, as I mentioned, I came in under a the current executive director who was on both sides of the island, on economic growth, as well as the chamber side. And yet, though the work of economic growth had been had been essentially given to an outside organization to to to do. And so Mike was kind of the director by proxy, and wanting to keep frankly, because that was the role on the county side. So when I came on board, I knew and I loved chamber work from having my experience in the Omaha chamber I had my I had my marketing background and advertising and so plus the relationships I built while I’ve been here in Burton the last 12 years or so, so I had a lot kind of that I could bring to the table on the chamber side. And so while economic growth would be something that I’m certainly happy to learn more about, and I’ve very excited about the growth in in that space here in Burton, let alone County. You know, tax law wasn’t necessarily my my jam, so I was happy to take on the chamber side. And frankly, I realized too it was bonkers that one person would be kind of responsible for both sides of this coin. So anyway, I don’t, as I said, How to get myself in any trouble, but ultimately I recognized the need to serve our members, and so I in me coming on board, allowed economic growth to continue on with with that outside organization, and they’ve done great things with it. However, we were still coming under we’re just trying to revitalize, frankly, not just the organization, but the relationships they’re in. So over the last even five years or so, I say that the chamber so was in its heyday in the 90s, probably early. 2000s too. Where we were, had membership upwards in the 400 mark, and over the last, gosh, these last, you know, 24 years or so, it’s just decreased. And what I heard over and over again is we just don’t know what the chamber does. We just don’t know what value you bring to us. And so I had to rebuild the value of what we were going to offer members, and building that back up and the programming and the events and so on so forth, while at the same time, while at the same time rebuilding those relationships with those individuals, with the elected officials and with the organizations that we had hurt over the years, either by just just letting their their business go to the wayside. We just weren’t promoting them. Well, we weren’t using our tools for their benefit. Or in some cases, we had some, I had some time with leaders that had been told, you know, had had had hard conversations with previous leadership in my organization. So ultimately, laying the laying the space for for for venting, for just really just sharing how you know where, where we at, and how can we get better, knowing that it wasn’t my, my doing, but it was an opportunity now to rebuild. And so you can’t rebuild unless you’re, you’re allowing that space to let, let all of it kind of air out. So anyway, I say that we’re building the house, or, you know, and and patching up the the holes in our own ceiling where, you know, now I was a state. I was a full, you know, one full time person here trying to rebuild the team, kind of identifying what, what we needed. Certainly I needed help, but just kind of when and where and how, while at the same time making absolutely positively remarkable, it just I go back having some strong and hard conversations with folks that had had been done really dirty in the past. And so in any case, I really wanted to to do that for the sake of what a good chamber can do and and giving us the opportunity to do it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 14:57
And unfortunately, yeah, this is some. Thing that I’ve seen in several communities where a new executive comes in and needs to patch some holes, mend some relationships, build the trust, back up of the value, create the value proposition and communicate that well to the business community of why the Chamber’s here. What do you know? How can we make things right with you? You know, versus you know, what ever had happened before? And it’s amazing to me too, over like you said, 24 years, we’ll say, you know, some people hanging on to some of these grudges, or, you know, ill will. And for others, 24 years goes by like that. You know, see, you blink and it’s gone. So, yeah, following that, that analogy you had mentioned being able to let some things air out, and, you know, before you can really do the the patching of those holes, you got to identify, you know, where the leak is, where the problem is, let it air out and let some healing happen before you can really go back to work to repairing the whole situation. So the analogies tends to fit pretty well there. Talk to us on the positive side, as you’ve been out visiting with members, talking about their situations. What are some of these positives that you’ve seen come out of this? As you’ve been able to listen to people and let their voices be heard and and then see, you know, to solve their their issues. Well,

Jennifer Hanson 16:34
I think that for because I was such a small team, I we knew from the get go from working with the board who was, by the way, a very engaged, very active board. So I think that was very helpful, just on the offset that they knew I was a, I was essentially a one person in this space, and so they knew they were going to have to be really engaged with alongside me, but being able to then bring on more collaborators into the work. So I I’ve always seen chambers, really since, since my time back in Omaha, as just this one, as that spot, being a a foundational, a foundational organization serving our community in a very positive way, and yet, though, in a very fundamental way too, where it’s, you know, it’s networking, and it’s, it’s promoting, it’s the events that we host aren’t, aren’t for our sake. It’s for the for the benefit of our of the of the attendees, of the members and the community people that are there. So I see the Chamber’s role is to really be a foundational approach to community development. And so when we don’t do that well, or we don’t have people that that that see us doing that, you know, they see, you know, maybe they see the bigger headlines coming out of our organization, which may or may not always be positive, but they it’s it takes the the focus off of where it should be, which is on your members. And so I really enjoyed the opportunity to really start from the from from the ground, and say, I know, I know my vision for the for a chamber, and yet, though we have a long way to go to get there, so certainly the opportunity to say, Okay, we’ve got to get at least on this, on this solid footing, but then having that relationship built, I can, I can call back to those folks and say, Hey, there, here’s an opportunity for you to, you know, can you help me with this? Can you, you know, is there a place where, where we can work together on on this goal or that goal? And so there’s so many more people that I’ve been able to get to know on a such deeper, more a deeper level, than, than than I had before. And I think too, it helped that prior to me walking into this space, I was a stay at home mom. I got to know a lot of the community members by just being a volunteer at different things. I served in Kids Children and Family ministry a few years ago. And so I got to know a lot of people in the community, not necessarily in this space, right, and let alone in this organization. So I got to know a lot of just who they are and what they what they kind of want in life, and what have you and their families and such, before getting into the space where I’m now calling them and asking, you know, hey, let’s chat about what what happened those number of years ago and see if we can’t be a a be able to serve you once again. So a lot of times those conversations were you. It wasn’t necessarily a cold call in in that way, yeah, the good news is, is that, yes, over the last two years, it’s, you know, we’ve really been able to regrow, regrow our members, and bring us back to a more stable financial picture, certainly the relationships we’ve had and we’ve been able to build on with our elected officials and other and whether it be our county or our city, the communities that surround us and really be able to, again, start from the ground, but then Make an active an active work to move forward.

Brandon Burton 20:42
I love that. So what you were talking about? So first of all, it gives a great perspective when you know these people from you know, say, your your previous, you know, before this chamber life, right? So in their personal life and what, what’s meaningful to them, but you’d also before that mentioned about engaging with these individuals that you’re having these conversations with, and being able to have opportunities to reach out to them and say, Can you help me with this project? Can you help me with what we’re doing here? And that engagement, I think, really helps to drive ownership in the outcome of the situation, and I see it as sharing the vision. So you’re sharing the vision with with these Chamber members, potential members, people you’re trying to mend relationships with, and then you’re filling the bus. You’re getting people to take seats on the bus that want to go where the Chamber’s going, and engaging them along the way. And that, I think that’s the way to that’s the way to grow it. That’s the way to grow and build it and and get people to to feel like they’re a part of something special.

Jennifer Hanson 21:46
Absolutely, and there has been a lot, there’s been incredible opportunities that have come here, here to build lately. And I think people are seeing the individuals and organizations both really working hard to to bring our community forward, our region forward, for that matter, and I think that it’s for a long time, just we’ve been in this cave, and I think that, yes, our organization, unfortunately played a part of that, but ultimately we have the from the city, from the county, from the chambers, from the hospital to the having all of these entities really working now together in a completely different way than we did, and in a refresh way to with, In some cases, new leadership. In some cases, not. In any case, it’s just been we’ve really made a concerted effort to come around the same table and say, we’ve, you know, we have to work together in order to make this stuff happen. And it, it doesn’t, it almost doesn’t necessarily matter who’s doing what, because we’re all essentially going to be foundational behind the scenes entities, and it’s going to be our community that that benefits from it and and should have the spotlight on it, right?

Brandon Burton 23:08
And you’re just, you’re convening all the people together doing doing that work so

Jennifer Hanson 23:15
well, Jennifer, exactly where the chain. That’s

Brandon Burton 23:18
right. That’s right, it’s one of those C’s as we shift gears. Here a little bit, I wanted to ask for the listeners. Who are? They may be in a similar boat as you are, and trying to patch some holes as they go, but regardless, trying to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with somebody listening who’s trying to achieve that goal?

Jennifer Hanson 23:49
I thought about this question quite a bit, and I think that if you’re if you’re already in a chamber role, I would say, first recognize the incredible impact you can have if you so choose. I think that people want to see an organization that’s purpose is to be servant to have servant leadership and to be there for to help them right, and to help them grow and achieve big things and and to make the big headlines right. And so I think that the Chamber being at that intersection between our community at large and our business community, and just being being right there in that center spot, you have an incredible opportunity to do some big things. I think understanding that fully first and then leaning into whatever you’ve got in front of you to serve and to have that being your focus. I think we can, we can do incredible things then as individuals, but even as we’re going. If that’s where your heart’s at, that it’s going to show through. And if there’s, if there are tough conversations you have to have with folks, or even just, gosh, hard people that you have to deal with in order to get to even build that foundation before you can grow. I invite you to lean in on that, knowing that you’ve got you know you know your value, you know your organization’s value, and and what can be on the other side of this conversation. And so yes, difficult people or difficult situations are are part of our world. And unfortunately, we’re all we’re not. None of us are, are perfect. So understanding, though, that that they’re going being in their community, being in your sphere, they they can either be a hindrance to your work or a helper. And that ultimately, I think, if we can get to where, what goals they have, and the some of the shared opportunities there, you’re going to find, more often than not, that they want to help make great things happen. They just don’t know if they can do that with you. So finding opportunities to do great things together, even if it’s not necessarily, maybe what you know your your number one focus is, or whatever, but finding small ways you guys can work together. I think ultimately we’ll break down those barriers.

Brandon Burton 26:24
Yeah, the challenges will always be there. But I love what you said about recognizing the impact that you can make, and if as an organization, as a chamber, if you can recognize the impact, the connections, all the good that you can do in your community, believe it, and go after it. Go, go get it. So I love that. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jennifer Hanson 26:54
Well, I think kind of going back on that. I think that it’s chambers understanding what their purpose is to be that that foundational spot in the middle of their community where they’re connected to the business community at large, leaders therein, certainly understanding that their chamber should be for the CEO as much as it should be there for the the guy across the desk or the worker bee, who’s the waitress in the restaurant, what have you. It does not matter who they are within that organization, they have an opportunity to grow because of the Chamber’s work. So whether it being networking events or leadership development opportunities, workforce development initiatives, things like that, all of those opportunities are there for for the entire community, you know, and certainly we, are a member organization and what have you, but really making sure that folks understand that the chamber is there for their entire organization, not just that C suite, who you might have as your contact. So I think that’s where we could make our biggest impact, is if we are value across the board, knowing full well that the CEO has has a completely different set of needs, you know, than than the waitress at the restaurant, but being able to show off the value for those different individuals in different places. And then I think, though just understanding the the quantity and quality of service you can provide in this space, and recognizing that the spotlight should be on your community. And if you’ve got a positive community, or then you have a great chamber in your in your town, I think if you can rest in that. Um, you’ll it will be incredible for your for your organization, as well as for your region. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:10
absolutely. Well, Jennifer, this has been great having you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and commiserate or learn more about how you’re doing things there in Boone County. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jennifer Hanson 29:29
Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn, certainly I’m on Facebook there. I’d love to have you follow, follow us from the chambers perspective, too, on both or on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and then, yeah, otherwise, come to puffer belt days this September.

Brandon Burton 29:48
Yeah, that’s perfect. I will get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for people to find you and connect with you. But again, Jennifer, thank you for spending. Time with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, sharing some of your experiences and lessons learned through it. And I just think that the important lessons that come through it and understanding the great value that a chamber has. And I love the comment you made. If you’ve got a great community, it’s a reflection of your chamber. And keep up the good work. So thank you for for sharing this with us today, and I appreciate you spending time Brandon,

Jennifer Hanson 30:27
thanks for having us.

Brandon Burton 30:29
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National Signing Day with Bryan Daniels

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Bryan Daniels. And Bryan is the President and CEO of the Blount Partnership in Tennessee. Brian brings a wealth of experience in economic and community development, having spearheaded initiatives that have attracted over $4 billion in investments and created more than 12,000 jobs in Blount County. Under his leadership, the Blount Partnership, which includes a five star accreditation from the US Chamber of Commerce, has become a model of excellence in economic and tourism development. Brian holds certifications as A, C, E, C, D, i, o, M and C, C, E, highlighting his dedication to advancing the chamber and economic development professions. Brian, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Bryan Daniels 2:03
Hello, everyone. This is a wonderful opportunity. Brandon, thank you for reaching out. I’m honored to be here regarding me of something of note and interest. I am also a small business owner outside of the chamber work that I do not in the community that I practice in, but isn’t more of a family business, and I chose to kind of chart my own path and and get into chamber work, but I still have kind of a an eye on what it takes to operate a Small Business, just due to my family’s involvement and how they make a living. That

Brandon Burton 2:44
definitely gives a good perspective as you try to represent business and look out for their interest and being one yourself, sure, that’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the bond partnership. Just give us an idea, size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion today? Sure,

Bryan Daniels 3:02
happy to do so. Our Chamber of Commerce is celebrating its 100 and fifth anniversary. So there we’ve been around a long time. Our Chamber of Commerce is actually very diversified in the programming it does. It also beyond just being a five star credited chamber. It is the economic development agency for the entire county that we serve in this all the cities within it, then we are also the single point of tourism for the county and all the cities that service it. The advantage of that is, instead of these nonprofits or quasi governmental entities, you know, scrambling for resources, each one is able to pull those resources together, and we’re able to compete or provide programming that’s more much more robust than we could if we were apart. And I know there’s more instances in our country where each one of these agencies are separate, but for us, it really works well, allows us to play bigger than we are as a community. Our organization is we have two locations in our community. We have a staff of 26 people, and we have an operating budget just under 10 million a year.

Brandon Burton 4:20
All right, yeah, that’s

Bryan Daniels 4:23
and, and we serve as a population of roughly, when you look at the entire county in the cities, roughly 145,000

Brandon Burton 4:32
people, okay, yeah, that’s what I love about the chamber world is, you know, we say it all the time, you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. But as I’ve been doing these podcast episodes, over 300 episodes now, we’ve done episodes where chambers are merging with their economic development or tourism departments, then episodes where they’re separating. There’s, you know, pros and cons both ways, but it’s obviously working in your. Community, they have it all under one roof and and being able to have that synergistic focus. So yeah, we’ve

Bryan Daniels 5:05
been under one roof combined since 1969 and so we actually stand on the shoulders of leaders that put this model together now. We have refined it over the years. We’ve changed it. We’ve we’ve actually written new state laws in Tennessee to allow others to adopt such programming, and we you know you have to change with the times, but the core mission and the philosophies and work culture are still very much the same as it was 50 plus years ago. Right

Brandon Burton 5:37
now, before we hit the record button, you had mentioned something else unique that your chamber does in the realm of construction, right? Can you tell us a little bit about

Bryan Daniels 5:48
that? Well, so I am an engineer by background. I’ve got a master’s in it, and I construction is something I did before I came to work in this chamber world. I work for an engineering firm for three to five year, well, three years, and then a private manufacturer. But I’ve been in this chamber I’ve been in chamber work in chamber world for 23 years now, and at the same the same chamber that hired me to come here, and it was to do economic development initially, and so with what we do in developing properties and infrastructure, and that’s everything from roadways To bridges to walking trails to business parks to recreation parks. We build all those things for the community, and as kind of a unique niche in my role, the community has allowed me to construction manage all those projects, just because it plays into my education. And so that’s kind of a value add we find providing for our local governments that empower us to do those things. And the business community too. We’ll build some infrastructure for our businesses. It’s usually tied to a business park when we do that, but we do that and and they’ll allow me to do the construction management of those pieces. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:21
I know chambers across the country all about finding that value add with their their staff, and how can we maximize, you know, the resources that we have. So thank you for for sharing that with us. Sure. So as we honed in our on our topic for discussion today, we decided to focus in most of our conversation around your guys’ approach to National Signing Day, and I’m excited to dive in deep and learn about your approach and the uniqueness and what’s made it successful in your community. As soon as I get back from this quick break,

Joe Duemig 6:26
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Rose Duemig 6:35
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Joe Duemig 6:49
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Rose Duemig 7:03
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Brandon Burton 7:58
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All right, Bryan, we’re back, as I tease before the break, we’re talking about your guys’ approach today to National Signing Day. So I guess, for any chambers out there who may not be familiar with National Signing Day. Just give us a brief synopsis about what it is, but then the approach that you guys take to it that has made it so successful in your community.

Bryan Daniels 10:29
Sure, this, this is a wonderful niche that we’ve carved out for ourselves, but National Signing Day is across the country. We did not start it. We’ve actually added into it. It was initially the idea was brought up by one of our CEOs of one of our manufacturers that, like all of us, we’re all struggling with labor force in a variety of forms. It could be relegated to a certain industry type, or it could be just in general, trying to keep your young folks from leaving and seeking those other opportunities. And we’re no different and and as we’ve had a lot of success the last call it 15 years with companies relocating here or expanding here, you know the natural progression of students wanting to leave has continued. It hasn’t ramped up, but our need for them to stay here and be a part of our labor force has grown significantly to where you know those students that are bleeding off. It is hurtful for us. We need them to stay here. They know the culture. They know the education. It’s it’s easier for us as a community to keep our students here versus trying to assimilate new people that move in. And so one of our, like I said, one of our presidents of a company. His name was David Bennett. He made a challenge when he was chair of the Chamber of Commerce his year, that he led us, that he wanted us to participate in signing day, and his overall vision was he wanted us to be the largest and if possible, a state model of how we would participate in signing day. And and signing day is truly getting students at a young age, somewhere around high school, engaged in what career opportunities are there in the community, and when they graduate high school, the next day, they already have a job lined up, and they’re entering the labor force. Some of this is apprenticeships are going into or they have been a part of why in high school, some of these are in in our in our state, we do dual enrollment so kids can get credit toward an associate’s degree or certificate along the way, and some of that they learn, they have the opportunity to leave school and go work for some of our local employers. And so it has a variety of ways of how you get there. But for us, when we started, we started in 2019, our first class, very modest. We had three employers that were willing to step up before signing day. Usually, signing day for us is the first part of June. And so that spring semester, those students were going to work part time or after hours to get experience in those different companies. And then when they graduate high school, they were they were signing a letter of intent that I’m coming to work for your company, and we had it in, in at our chamber. We had three companies, we had seven students, and we provided them gift cards, a lunch pail. We invited their families, our business community, of of our community, or our chamber, our our membership is rough. Roughly 1300 businesses belong to us, and so we invited all them, and and in our boardroom, we have approximately, I’d say, 7080 people showed up to to, you know, congratulate these seven students that were going right into the labor force, and we we made a big publicity movement highlighting their skill sets, who they were, and how big a deal this was to celebrate just like you would a professional athlete who’s signing a big contract to Go play for a team. We gave them the same pageantry as we could to prop them

Brandon Burton 14:46
up. That’s awesome. I love that because there’s there needs to be more of that attention and celebrate these people that are trying to do good things, positive things, and propel their quality of life forward, provide for their family. Set goals, achieve goals. I love it. Yeah,

Bryan Daniels 15:03
you know, so often in our in our country and society, we’re celebrating, you know, those four year degree students or even collegiate athletes that are going into professional sports. And the crux of what we need as a society are really, are really folks on the ground, hourly or certificate people that actually generate higher incomes than some four year degree education. And so we’re trying to we were, we’re trying to celebrate. That is our goal. It’s now morphed into, we have, we have a waiting list. This last group that we put through, we had 40 plus employers, I think it was around 44 and we had set, I think, more than 77 students that were celebrated. And it’s, it’s, it’s the cameras, the lights, the smoke show coming out into an audience of roughly 500 550 people just celebrating. And you’ve got all of our TV stations and our our newspapers are there interviewing these students. And it is, it is, it is an event. It is an event that will last about from beginning to end a couple hours, the employers get to introduce each well, let me back up. The students are introduced by a an emcee that has a very booming presence, and they walk out this curtain and smoke and lights and they’re highlighted of who they are as a person. Then they go and sit at a table in front of an employer that has a backdrop, and however many students they’re hiring that that that year, they sit in front and they do that for every employer around this convention center we have. And so as every student then gets seated, then our MC will then ask them to sign their letters of commitment, and then each employer gets an opportunity to talk about the career that students going to do and where their career path is for them, and talking about opportunities for travel or pay or lifestyle, all of that, each employee gets to talk about that, and they love it. They they love it. All of our school systems now participate, and we now have regional schools from other counties now wanting to participate with us in our signing day. That’s

Brandon Burton 17:48
awesome. So at the beginning, when you’re talking about what National Signing Day is, you had mentioned that the need to keep your keep the resources there in the community, rather than these students, you know, leaving the community after they graduate. And the thought occurred to me, you know, human nature, most people, they resist change, right? They don’t want change. But for whatever reason, this age frame, you know, as kids are graduating high school, college, that time of transition, it’s like they feel like the only option is change, and a lot in a lot of instances, so to be able to help them see, you know, the value of staying in the community, what the opportunities are, I think, is it’s such a great highlight to be able to to attract and and draw attention to these local employers and opportunities. And I’m hoping, in this audience of 550 people, that there’s some students in there too, and not just parents, so they’re catching a glimpse of these opportunities as well. Is that? Is that what you see?

Bryan Daniels 18:49
Yeah, it is. And I will tell you, leading up to signing day, our team has gone so far as we have life size cutouts. Made of each student, much like you see at a premiere of a film or something, where you can go stand beside the actor that’s in the movie and get your picture taken. We do these life size, uh, stand ups of every student, and then we put them in the schools, and so all the students see that this person is about to be celebrated at National Signing Day. And it actually creates a buzz within the schools to where those students are like, wow, I want to go participate or find out. Why are they doing all this celebration? And it has actually fed the recruitment within signing day with our employers. And it has, it is paid off so handsomely for our community and and and you hear the buzz in the in the in the in the school systems.

Brandon Burton 19:58
So I can see where the momentum. And builds as far as recruitment for employers goes, because they see this pipeline that comes in and solves a problem for them and that that’s an easy sell, it seems like, how does it work with the recruitment at the schools? Are you working with guidance counselors or what? What is that setup like?

Bryan Daniels 20:14
Sure, we are working with guidance counselors, but I will tell you of if I could give any advice for chambers of commerce, one of the things that we recognize that we’re trying to address is somewhere in our history, chambers kind of withdrew out of the school systems and involved in civics or history of the community, and that is a loss that we’ve tried to really insert ourselves into, in trying to help those teachers not only prepare the students for the community, but setting them up for these careers. And so the our first entree was in in working with the guidance counselors and trying to help identify students of different career paths as they’re trying to figure out where to go with their life. Is it associates degrees? The certificate is to go to four year school. What? What will life hold for them? And so the guidance counselors began to invite us into the school system to talk about those career opportunities, just to make them aware that would then bleed into we’re now into helping do instruction on what it takes for a community to grow and survive and thrive, and what responsibilities students have for their community. And so that’s really helped us a lot and and that has now perpetuated us into another feeder, which we call our eighth grade Career Fair, which is a a break off of our signing day that now the elementary schools have seen what Signing Day is doing, and then seen our involvement in to the curriculum of schools. We now do an eighth grade Career Fair of where all of the eighth graders, whether they’re homeschooled, public school, private schooled, are all brought in to a a one day event of where we have all of our employers that are willing to participate. And in our community, there’s roughly 104 140 plus employers. Here we have them our convention center, and then they bring something that represents their company for the students to have, hands on, looking, feeling, touching, of what is done at that company. And it is, it is now built in the curriculum. You’re there for every student to experience that. And we have aviation companies that are based here. We have headquarter companies, manufacturing companies, service companies, ex resort companies that are all kind of Permian our community that is as big a driver now for signing day as signing day is, and so it’s just kind of morphed into this bigger, bigger whole strategy.

Brandon Burton 23:13
Yeah, I’ve got a daughter in middle school right now, and this week, her school has been pushing out a career fair, very similar to what you’re talking about. That’s great and and when I saw it, I was like, this is fantastic, because with our older kids that have gone through, I’ve never seen them do anything like this. Now, I will say, for the chambers who have not really dabbled in this, I think there’s a difference between your guys’s approach and what I’m seeing here at our local level is for this career fair, they’re asking parents, essentially, parents of these students who are interested in coming and talking about what they do for a career to come have a table and do their thing, versus having the employers there. I think there’s a bigger impact having the employers there, but it may be easier to get parents involved, because they have some vested interest that the students already being at the school. But there’s a an easy on ramp there to be able to make that introduction with these middle school kids. So then ramp it up to the high school and and get that machine starting to move right.

Bryan Daniels 24:15
That’s right, it at any level, whatever. You know each community is going to be different in their approach, but I think the overall message is chambers have to be engaged in workforce development or education to at least help their community keep the culture that’s there. Because with a lack of understanding or knowledge of what a community has to offer, those students will seek other opportunities, just from a standpoint they don’t know they don’t know what they don’t know. So they’re going to be seeking opportunities and seeking knowledge. Why not try to engage them earlier on?

Brandon Burton 24:55
Absolutely. So I was curious when you talked about you guys being able to. Have a place in the schools now where you can come in and present, and you’ve got to, you know, ears to hear right? So you guys can get in front of an audience of students. Do you guys, have you created some sort of a replicatable type of curriculum that you present? Or is it more of a question and answer kind of thing? Or, how do you guys make that presentation? What does that look like?

Bryan Daniels 25:21
So it is different for it is different every year. There are different the, well, I mean, how to say it? The the we have three public school systems, and we have two private systems, and then you’ve got your home schooled folks. Each one of those utilize us in different ways, but they all utilize us and they utilize different parts of our organization. Like I said, we’ve got chambers of we’ve got a chamber, we’ve got a workforce development director, we’ve got an economic development person, we’ve got a construction person, of a litany of experience in our office, and different instructors will invite us to come in and talk on different topics now they we have already agreed upon what we’re going to talk about relates to subject matter that they’re discussing that week, and we know on the curriculum, what they’re learning about, what we come in and do is we take their curriculum and we apply it, or give instances of how what they’re learning is actually how it’s deployed in what we do day to day. And so, like, there’s a marketing class, so we’ll talk about the marketing do we do in economic development to recruit companies here, or the marketing we’re doing in our workforce development program, our finance folks will go in and talk about what they’re learning in in some of their math classes, of how that relates to accounting and and then when we talk, for when I’ve gone in, it’s usually talk about civics of local government, what it takes to operate one, and then the importance of of them being engaged In that electoral process from a business

Brandon Burton 27:20
perspective. Yeah, that’s fantastic, and that makes sense, having these different entities that you need to have some different approaches with, and the different classes you get in front of, I’d love that approach. Well, Brian, as we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, for the listener who’s out there who wants to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to as they try to work towards this goal?

Bryan Daniels 27:48
Well, I’m, I’m very big on training, and for us, you don’t know what you don’t know, especially in this profession, I don’t it’s, it’s more the norm that we all kind of fell into chamber work. Somehow it found us and it really, it really spoke to our soul at some point. That’s I hear that consistently. I would, I would, I would be very I would, I would encourage the listener to seek out training opportunities within the US Chamber, ACCE and IEDC, to further their breadth and knowledge that you’re going to be around folks with A variety of problems and solutions that you’re going to identify your communities addressing or needs to address, and you’re it’ll be worth your time and resources. So I would be encouraging everyone to get engaged in those organizations now for us, if I had to say, would there’s one thing is a threat to our our chambers of commerce in this country, I think it is not being involved in your local schools or being afraid of the political scene too. That more and more with the turbulence in our country, chambers of commerce and bid the business community is still seen as where there’s good information that comes out of there is trusted resources, and so I would encourage everyone, and that’s in this profession, to be engaged in your local school systems and to Be engaged into the political structure of your local community with that’s what, that’s what we originally founded on, is being advocates for the business community. And sometimes when you take funding from the business community or the the governments, it’s a kind of a weird relationship, but we still have to be. Advocates for our profession, whether it’s to the local governments or to students that are trying to figure out their way in life.

Brandon Burton 30:07
Yeah, I like that. I like that advice. 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?

Bryan Daniels 30:19
I think chambers are going to become more relevant. I think we’re going to continue to see the pressures of consolidation for those that are in areas where you have several different chambers together, and more regionalism will continue, but, but Chambers of Commerce are going to become more and more relevant as more pressures are put on our business community, from no matter your political affiliation, from the left or the right, there’s, there’s definitely pressures coming on the business community. So chamber is going to become more and more needed to be those advocates for those businesses.

Brandon Burton 30:58
Absolutely. I love the way you say that. So Brian, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the bot partnership, and just maybe want to just connect and maybe learn more about National Signing Day and your approach. What would be the best way for someone to connect with you.

Bryan Daniels 31:21
Yeah, absolutely, thank you. So they can call us anytime. Our number is, 865-983-7715, or go to blountpartnership.com, or they can reach me by email at bdaniels@blountpartnership.com all of our contact information is there. I’m on LinkedIn, a variety of social media platforms and so yeah, we we welcome any opportunity to collaborate with fellow chamber professionals.

Brandon Burton 31:57
That’s perfect, and I’ll get all that in our show notes as well to make it easy to find you and connect with you and and send you a LinkedIn request. Brian, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. I appreciate you taking time to be with us today and to share your perspective with National Signing Day the way you guys have approached this and and sharing some of the successes and things you’ve learned along the way. I think it’s tremendous value, and I hope that some chambers out there listening who maybe are not participating yet and National Signing Day might have caught the bug and see the value in it to explore the opportunity as well. So thank you for sharing that with us today.
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Thinking Big with Ryan Tarrant

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Ryan Tarrant. Ryan is currently the President and CEO of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce and Experience Jackson, Jackson County’s destination marketing organization. In this role, he leads a strategy and vision to improve the regular quality of life in Jackson County for businesses and residents through advocacy, collaboration and destination development. Ryan previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Business Leaders for Michigan, the state business roundtable, which he dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, education, widely shared prosperity and and a healthy economy, where he oversaw the execution of the organization’s work plan and public policy engagement strategy. He also has prior experience as a chamber executive, where his success included securing more than a million dollars in public funding for an award winning talent attraction and retention initiative, and created a robust advocacy strategy that drove community infrastructure projects, place made, placemaking activities and engagement with local, state and federal officials. Prior to his work in membership based organizations, Ryan held a variety of positions in government and politics, serving as chief of staff to US Representative John Molinar and as a district director for us, rep dave Camp and run numerous federal campaigns. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Saginaw Valley State University, and he and his wife, Cheryl, have two mostly adult children and reside in Jackson, Michigan. Ryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ryan Tarrant 2:59
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. You know, reading through that bio, it’s starting to make me just feel old. You know, I didn’t feel that old before. And you know, have those Boomer, growing children that tend to go leave for college and then come home and stay for a little bit. So, you know, hopefully we’ll be empty nesters soon. But yeah, I grew up in a mid sized town similar to Jackson, you know, we’ve got 30,000 people grew up in Bay City, Michigan, and, you know, great town had a, had a great upbringing, you know, you had the river, you had the lake, you know, grew up, you know, sailing and doing those things. You know, they have a sailing association. So, you know, really, every kid in the community can go out and learn to sail. And, you know, just, just kind of a fantastic place to grow up and live, you know, real sense of community. But one of the things, you know, it’s a traditional Midwest blue collar town, and so, you know, over the years, as you lose some of that manufacturing, you know, I think there’s a tendency for people to kind of say, well, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re just, you know, I think Madonna called it the dirty little town, because she grew up there as well. Okay, you know. So, so I think for me, you know, growing up in Bay City, you had a region, and Bay City kind of always felt like that, that little bit of a red headed stepchild. You had Midland with the headquarters of Dow, and you had Saginaw that was twice as big and, and so, you know, you always felt a little bit less than maybe, but, you know, so I think that’s what’s kind of drawn me into to the chamber world.

Brandon Burton 4:31
Yeah, it turns into a fighter. It sounds like little scrappy. Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So as far as the the chamber goes, what? What’s the size look like? Staff, scope of work, things you guys are involved with?

Ryan Tarrant 4:48
Yeah. So our chamber is about little shy of 700 members, you know, budgets little north of 600,000 and then I also run experience Jackson, which is our destination. Marketing organization, which is actually housed in the same building, but has a completely separate board, had combined. We have a staff of 10, and then the combined budgets, you know, roughly about 1,000,006 or 1,000,007 between the two. So two distinctly different missions. You know, from the chamber perspective. We we have a strategic plan that, you know, really tries to put our members first. You know that customer service, what our events look like. How are we connecting our members? You know, you’re kind of, if anybody thinks of a chamber, it’s, it’s that traditional chamber experience, but it’s really only, you know, probably a quarter of a third of what we do. You know, the other two pieces are, how do we impact our community? You know, what kinds of things can we? Can we take on? Can we convene and collaborate on to to improve the community? And then the third leg of the stool for us is, is that government affairs and advocacy work? You know, here in Michigan, we we’ve seen some some changes for businesses on the public policy side. And, you know, how do we, how do we push back on that when we need to? How do we, how do we work with our elected officials on some of those issues? And, you know, so over the last year, I’ve been here about 14 months this year, we we’ve had some issues with aggressive panhandling, you know, coming out of the out of the pandemic, I think a lot more communities have dealt with, you know, homelessness, panhandling and some of those types of issues, maybe more than they had in the past. You know, we got to the point where in our downtown, specifically, it was getting pretty aggressive. We have a self described progressive city council, okay, who had had pushed back on it for a long time and and so we spent about nine months working with them, to come to a compromise agreement early in the summer, to to kind of abate that a little bit as far as that aggressive behavior, as far loitering and accosting. And so, you know, had some success there. You know, we go after a lot of different state appropriations, earmarks, if you will, to to kind of ramp up projects, and that’s kind of the scope of what we do. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:04
well, that should set the stage for our discussion today. You guys are busy, for sure, get your hands in some several things and making an impact, but we’re going to focus our discussion today around thinking big and some of these big swings you guys have tried and these ideas that that come to you, and I’m excited to dive into this conversation and learn from these things you present to us today as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Joe Duemig 6:26
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Joe Duemig 7:54
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All right, Ryan, we’re back. I mentioned before the break. We’re talking about thinking big today. So in all these different areas of work that you guys are involved with, what are how do you incorporate thinking big? That might be the better way of asking it. How do you incorporate it? You know, every

Ryan Tarrant 9:53
community has its own personality, I would say. And you know, a lot of places in the Midwest you look at and. And and those these communities kind of take a look. And, you know, in our state, if you’re in a mid sized community, you look and you say, Okay, well, you know, Grand Rapids and Detroit sort of get everything and you know, and they’re doing a phenomenal job. I mean, you know, we all know, know about the NFL draft in Detroit and things happening in Grand Rapids with beer city, and then you’ve got Traverse City up north and and so they get a lot of play and a lot of a lot of credit for things. And I think we can, we can have a little bit of fall into a little bit of a rut where we just sort of expect to get, get what we get, and move forward, and nothing really changes, you know. And I think we take a little bit of a different perspective on it, which is, you know, kind of that, why not us? You know, if, if there’s, there’s these opportunities out there, you know, I mentioned appropriation as far as the government advocacy side goes, you know, why not us? You know, if you’re not even asking, you’re never going to get anything, and everything’s always going to be the same. You know, downtown Jackson seen a lot of redevelopment over the last decade or so. I mean, it’s really come back. You have restaurants, you have businesses downtown, and, you know, we have Consumers Energy, which is, you know, either number one or number two, as far as the biggest energy companies in the state that’s headquartered on one end of our downtown, the other end of the downtown, on the other hand, has something called the Hays hotel. It’s this historic hotel, 10 stories, and it’s been vacant for 21 years. And as I came into the community, and you know, I we would talk about the Hays hotel, and you would have people who would just kind of roll their eyes because they’ve all heard it before, and something’s going to happen with it. You know, fast forward and, and there’s a developer who’s who’s committed to it, and, and, you know, through our conversations with them, learned that there was a little bit of a gap with with all of the the different funding components, you know, you look at over the last couple of years, the increases in interest rates and labor shortages and supplies. And so, you know, it would seem that every time they would fill a gap, there was, you know, maybe another hurdle at the back end. So, you know, we kind of took a look at that and said, Well, you know, what if we tried to hit the easy button here a little bit. And so we engaged with our elected representatives at the state capitol and and kind of had that conversation and said, Look, this is, this is sort of that, that transformational project that kind of completes downtown and books and bookends Consumers Energy to then start to infill some of those, those side streets. You know, we were successful in securing we, we actually asked for $3 million and secured four and a half million dollars. Wow, yeah, they treated it a little bit like the 2023, housing market. You know, you put it up for 100 and they give you 150 right? But, you know, those are the types of things that you know, if you say, why not us? And you make the ask, you know, it’s okay to fail. You know, nothing changes if you fail, but nothing changes if you don’t try either.

Brandon Burton 13:05
Yeah? So, and if you do fail, you learn something, and you can apply it to the next, the next, you know, big idea, right? That’s exactly right, yeah. So, as we talk about big thinking, I I can’t help but think of you can’t have big thoughts if you don’t have big vision, right? If you don’t see a bigger plan or bigger vision for your community, can you speak towards that as to how you see Jackson County, what the possibilities are, what how you would like to see yourself in the future, and to be able to apply that to these big ideas that you’re working towards?

Ryan Tarrant 13:42
Yeah, I’m a big fan of, you know, looking at what others are doing and kind of figuring some of those pieces out, like, what are those aspirational goals? You know, I mentioned Grand Rapids, you know, there’s some other communities out there. We actually transitioned one of our team members into more of a data and analytics role, you know, he has a skill set for it, and so, you know, he’s been doing a lot of this. And, you know, not just kind of the, you know, hey, we’re going to do a community assessment and ask people how they feel. You know, we’ve been doing those for 40 years. And over the last 60 years, the city has lost 40% of its population because people’s feelings aren’t based on anything that you know maybe is real or or achievable. And so, you know, we look at at similar communities and find those comparable communities, then, you know, okay, what are, what are their chambers doing? Who is that, that sort of spark plug in the community, that organization, or that individual, you know what? What’s caused them to grow to, you know, achieve additional educational attainment, those types of things. And so, you know, for us, over the last couple of months, we’ve started to look at some of those things. And you know, you can look at Grand Rapids, and the things that we found are, you know, the two biggest keys to to growth seem to be, you know, persistence in your goal and strategies. And you. Yeah, and then, you know, having sort of some spark or some leader that that actually moves it forward. And when I talk about that persists, persistence, when you look at Grand Rapids, you know that that downtown redevelopment in Grand Rapids started in the mid 70s when Gerald Ford was president. You know, the Secret Service, when he became president, told him he couldn’t do a parade in His own hometown because there were so many vacant buildings and they couldn’t secure him. So, you know, fast forward a few years, and they had a conference center come in, and then, you know, and then it was a civic arena, and then it was a medical mile and a four year institution. And it’s been driven by, you know, collaborative efforts, but also by a couple of larger corporations or families that are located there. You know, similar things can be seen around the country. You know, you look at Bentonville, Arkansas with with the Walmart and Walden family, and then you look at places that that have the opportunity to do those things, but maybe don’t have that one or two businesses or individual that individuals with wealth that can kind of pull it off and keep people together. And what does that look like? You know, I talked to our peers in Mankato, Minnesota last week, and, you know, talking to them, and that persistence is there too, you know, they, they’ve, over the last 40 years, had these 20 year plans. I mean, they’re telling me they’re on number three. And so how do we create that? I mean, you’re talking mid 80s, yeah, how many changes of leadership have we had in since the mid 80s? You know, I’ve been in in communities where where you look at things and you go, Okay, there’s this collective group of leaders who have this vision and support each other and collaborate. But then you have one or two leave, and you have another one retire. And if, if that vision isn’t written down, and you’re not not pulling in those successors immediately into that, those leadership roles and to help with that vision, it starts to fall apart. And so, you know, it’s, it’s that keeping people together and that consistency in what you’re doing. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 17:06
now I love that, the creating that vision, and being able to see where there’s certain individuals in a community that maybe carry more influence they might, and I’m not talking necessarily elected officials, but you gave the example of the Walton family, and, you know, they’ve got money, they’ve got influence, big business. How do you get those people within your community to kind of, I don’t know how to say this, in the way that that I intend, but to engage, but to to not be so hyper focused on their individual business growth and success, but to be able to look at the greater picture of the community and get them to engage in the community, to see it grow and success and succeed by applying some of their skills and connections and abilities to the greater good

Ryan Tarrant 17:55
and and I think the biggest, the biggest key there. I mean, you know, you talk to economic developers. And you know what number one or number two is always people, if you’re talking to site selectors, on what’s the first thing they look at if they’re going to go into a community, right? It’s, do you have the quality and quantity of workforce, you know? So when you start talking to those, those you know, whether it’s an individual or a larger corporation, you know, everything I try and do comes from a perspective of, you know, talent, attraction, retention. You know, is this something that’s going to help us attract and retain talent, or is it just something that that we’re doing to do and how does it move the needle? You know, on our destination marketing organization side, you know, we’re making a big outdoor Bucha. Because, you know, we have something called the Irish hills in our county, and there’s, there’s opportunities for for gravel biking out there, which is the fastest segment of cycling. You know, we’ve got 11 miles of mountain biking trails, and our one of our city parks that just needs to be regrouped and maybe added to. And so, you know, how do we do that? Because now those things translate to those quality of life amenities that, you know, when one of our major corporations, or even, you know, a physical therapy organization, is hiring somebody out of college, you know, do you want to go to Jackson, or do you want to go to Chicago? And if you don’t have those quality of life amenities that, you know, you’re not going to compete with the big city lifestyle, but that’s okay. Utilize the assets you have, but make them as good as they can be. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:27
that makes a lot of sense. That place making aspect is huge. And I love the example you gave, the Hayes Hotel. I’m in Texas, and there’s a big historic hotel not too far from where I’m at, that has been vacant since, I believe, the 50s. So it’s been it’s quite the icon. People see it, but just now, things are starting to happen to revitalize it. And it’s great to see it’s great to see those success stories and to see it turn around. And it’s something that builds a community. Be around it too, where you can see progress happening on like, a magnified level, right? Yeah,

Ryan Tarrant 20:07
yeah. And those are the sort of transformational things that you see in a community that, yeah, you know, it’s sort of the I mentioned the last decade in downtown Jackson. And you know that that, to me, is that transformational piece that sparks the next decade.

Brandon Burton 20:22
Absolutely, are there some other big things that that you’ve taken a swing at, or, you know, that they would fall into this category of big thinking that we need to highlight?

Ryan Tarrant 20:35
Yeah, so, you know, you mentioned big things, and I mentioned, you know, a lot of lot of mid sized communities out there, you know, sometimes I think in a in the chambers, we can get hyper focused on our day to day. We’re all so busy, you know, all of those things, but, but we’ve really gotta, gotta kind of identify some of those swings. I mean, we can do that by focusing a little bit, right? Yeah, you know, making sure we’re training our sites and we leave that capacity for for those big swings, you know, but for us, I, you know, revamping those, those mountain biking trails are one of our big pushes for next year, you know, because what we’ve learned is, is, if you’re in that 12 to 20 mile range of mountain biking trails, and you develop them so, you know, you I guess, and I’m learning about Cycling right now, apparently it’s like skiing. They have green so little kids can do it and like me, and then they have black diamonds that are really challenging. And, you know, I break my neck so, you know, bringing in a trail builder to develop that and to add miles to it, so that we can draw people in, you know. And it’s in one of the, you know, I would say probably lower income or more diverse neighborhoods in the city. And so the proximity of it, you know, it’s not just doing that for talent attraction, but how do you make that accessible to everybody? So as a piece of that conversation, we’re looking at it and saying, Okay, can we do a mount like library, if you will, where, you know, a kid from the neighborhood can walk down and and, you know, show his card and essentially rent a bike without paying for it, just like the library and go ride the trails and have fun. You know, you want, you want those things to be accessible for everybody. You want everybody to be able to enjoy them, you know, and to do that because it gives you that, that sense of community pride, because with each one of those things you accomplish, it, it builds on itself. You know, we’ve got, we’ve got another nonprofit in town that’s called the hope kitchen, that’s taking the old Masonic Hall and creating a community kitchen, teaching kitchen to sort of train chefs in front of the house. And, you know, to make sure that that we have that pipeline of of talent for our restaurants, so that, you know, when somebody comes into town, or when you go downtown or to a restaurant in our community, you’re getting the service that you you expect. I mean, I think we’ve all been out to eat over the last couple of years, since COVID and and it always feels like, you know, a lot of time, I wouldn’t say always, but often times it feels like, you know, maybe that level of service that we were accustomed to pre COVID is not the same as post COVID, yep. And so, you know, teaching those people, you know how to do that, and and for us, you know, how do we support that? You know, when they need, when they need to purchase their equipment. How do we how do we help them, whether it’s with with grant funding, through the advocacy process, you know, those types of things. So yeah, so those are some of the, some of the things that that are on our radar right now.

Brandon Burton 23:33
And actually just saw this last week, restaurant that had a sign posted on their door said, No, dine in, just take out only, and it’s something that’s stuck ever since COVID and and I hope that’s because the the data is telling them that’s the best solution for them, but my fear is they can’t get the staff to do dine in or decide easier at the community the Customer Services has fallen out something,

Ryan Tarrant 24:01
yeah, the worst one I’ve seen. I saw was I actually tried to order a pizza online, and got a note when I tried to to click Order, and it said, we’re short staffed. We’re taking time to orders for tomorrow. What I got pizza from somewhere else. I think I still have pizza. So yeah, but yeah, that was the most bizarre one. I mean, they updated their their website, and they’re ordering, oh my goodness, that quickly, that you know, hey, we’re just, we’re busy, and we can’t keep up, so we’re just not taking any more

Brandon Burton 24:35
orders. Wow. But hopefully your appetite is still there tomorrow. So that’s crazy. Well, as as we start to wrap up here, I like asking for the chamber that’s listening, who’s trying to elevate their organization to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you suggest for them and trying to accomplish that goal? So

Ryan Tarrant 24:55
I think we were, we were sort of, you know, in that mindset of. You know, about a year ago, when we were sounds like, yeah, strategic planning, right? You know, how do we elevate to the next level? We hadn’t done a lot of community initiatives or, you know, over the past few years, we hadn’t done a lot of advocacy work for our members over the past few years. And so, you know, they’ve been doing kind of this, you know, event to event kind of mindset. And so one of the things that we did was we actually developed a survey for other chambers. And so, you know, I mentioned our revenues about 600,000 so we kind of kind of broke it out into those peer chamber, Chamber organizations, and then sort of those aspirational chambers that are in that next level at 700,000 to a million or so. And we really went through and kind of said, you know, how many, how many events do you have that would be considered, you know, kind of, quote, unquote, Premier events, you know, your annual meeting, or your community awards or, or those types of things and, and, you know, how many of these advocacy pieces do you do, you know, kind of went down the line to try and benchmark a little bit to see, you know, at different levels, is, is there a different, you know, what does that look like? You know, are we doing something that’s a little bit off and, and what we found from it, you know, we had, we had, it actually ended up getting 1010, or 11 responses, you know, we, we targeted, who we who we asked. But we it was split evenly between those, you know, smaller in our our level, and then those larger organizations. And what we found was, the larger you are, the less you do. It’s hard to think about, but say it again, right? Or at least the forward facing of what you do is less larger you are, you know, because so many of us think of events, the less you do. Yeah, and it was that, you know, it felt like, as you got to that larger, larger revenue size, and you start to get north of 700,000 you know, those organizations are focusing more, doing fewer premier events, probably doing them really well. But part of that is because they’re transitioning from doing more events to more of that community based work, more of that advocacy style work. And even within that advocacy work, they’re more focused. They might pick three or four priorities that they want to work on, versus having, you know, 10 or 15 and and throwing everything at the at the wall and seeing what sticks. So, yeah, you know, I think that that next level for all of us is, is probably being more focused, you know, we, we, and we can fall into that. I mean, I’m, I’m as guilty as everybody else, right? We get so busy, you know, that there’s so many things going on, and sometimes it’s hard to to put that focus and pinpoint on on that one thing that your members need. But you know, I think at the end of the day, you know, for us, if, if we can accomplish that, that top priority, versus numbers 10 through 20, I think our members are going to be happier with us. We’re going to continue to grow, and, you know, the community is going to be better for in the future.

Brandon Burton 27:59
Yeah, but it sounds like having your new data and analytics person is a great step in that direction, to really focus.

Ryan Tarrant 28:07
It does help to look at data. You know, fewer feelings, more things based on data, really, I think, helps us move the needle a little bit. So, yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:16
I just heard the other day somebody was trying to bring back an event after the pandemic, and they put out an email to all their followers and whatnot, and said, you know, if we get enough interest, we’ll put it on. And there was like 300 or so people that responded, yeah, we want to do this. And then the person thought, you know what this is? Just feelings, you know, let me put this out there again, to the ones that said that they want to come and have them put down a 50% deposit, and if we don’t get enough, we’ll refund everything. We won’t do it, but if we get enough, we’ll move forward. And I think he said, Out of the 300 plus, you know people of interest, I think six people put down a deposit. He’s like, we’re not doing it. So I pay cancel it.

Ryan Tarrant 29:03
And I started looking at our events, and kind of said, you know, and talk to our team about if people don’t want to come to an event, you know, they may say they want it in our survey end of year survey, which, you know, we do every year, to kind of, kind of benchmark ourselves and see how we’re doing and what their needs are. And they may say they want all the networking in the world. You know, for us, we offer 22 networking events a year for a grand total of $90 you know, it, it’s literally sort of boosted by sponsors and different things. But if you’re not going to come to it, but you say you want it, we’ll just stop doing it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:39
yeah. Don’t need the practice, right, right?

Ryan Tarrant 29:43
It shows that, you know, we’re a week post election. It shows that sometimes the data and the polling can be

Brandon Burton 29:48
off. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, Ryan, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ryan Tarrant 29:57
I don’t know that the purpose changes. All that much. I mean, you know, we’re, we’re still going to have that need for businesses who who want to get together, and who want to want to network with one another, develop those relationships. But I think, you know, if there’s any change at all, it’s probably that more and more of that is going to be about that, that bigger picture work that you’re doing. I mean, when we look at our community work, we’re not thinking of, are we doing this? Does it benefit our members? It’s, are we doing this? And does this benefit the community as a whole? You know, if, if the city of Jackson grows, and the county of Jackson grows and we have a bigger employer base, it certainly helps, helps our members. And so, you know, we worry less about those types of things, you know, right now, we, we are we awaiting word on a million dollar grant that we partnered with our local two year college on. And as a part of that, it’s workforce development, you know, is building out a workforce development collaborative to make sure our educational attainment is where it needs to be, and that all of our workforce development partners are working together, you know. And so about a quarter of that 250,000 would be essentially directed to the chamber to run that piece of it, you know. So, so I think you know that community based piece is probably the biggest thing. If, if people aren’t already doing that, how do you impact your community? You know, we know our businesses want to impact their community. That’s why they’ve, you know, for 70 years, sponsored Little League teams, right? You know, done those types of things. They sponsor the local booster club like they they want their people to have community pride. They want to want to see their community and be be proud of where they’re from, and say, you know, you should come visit. You should move here. It’s a great community, you know. And I think the chamber really in in most places, can be a driver of what we look what their community looks like in the next you know, 1015, 20 years,

Brandon Burton 31:48
yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. Well, Ryan, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson County, or maybe you’re one of the aspirational chambers that they’re looking up towards. But what would be the best way to to point somebody to reach out and connect with you? Sure my

Ryan Tarrant 32:09
email address is ryan@jacksonchamber.org, and my cell phone, because I actually got rid of my desk phone. I don’t use it anyway, is 989-708-7683,

Brandon Burton 32:26
that’s perfect, and we’ll get this in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy to find, but I appreciate you carving out some time to spend with us today on chamber chat podcast, sharing the example you guys are setting there in Jackson County and and sharing these ideas and some of these big things, these swings you guys are taking, I appreciate that, and it’s provided a lot of value to listeners today. So thank you for that.

Ryan Tarrant 32:49
Appreciate it. Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 32:50
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Creating Conveners with Tara Lea

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Tara Lea. Tara has been involved in the chamber industry at the local, state and regional level for the past decade, with a passion for leadership and a commitment to making a difference. Tara currently serves as a Vice President of Community Affairs at the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce. In this role, she orchestrates programs and initiatives aimed at cultivating the next generation of leaders and empowering individuals to enact positive change in their spheres of influence. Prior to the Nebraska chamber, Tara was the president and CEO of the Fremont Area Chamber of Commerce. In that role, she managed the strategic, fiscal and programmatic goals for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce. She also served as a spokesperson for the chamber through their region. With almost 600 members in the Fremont area Chamber. It’s the sixth largest and one of the oldest chambers in the state of Nebraska. Tara started her career, her chamber career as the president of the Ralston Area Chamber of Commerce, a 275 member organization dedicated to creating business and community vitality. She’s had. She has a very active role in creating the Ralston 20 year development plan. Prior to joining the chamber industry, Tara was employed at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Professional Golf Management Program, and as the educational specialist recruiting students from across the country to make Nebraska their home. Tara has served as a board member for a variety of civic and government organizations. She’s She was elected to the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce executives and Mid America Chamber of Commerce executive board of directors by her peers, and is currently past chairman of both organizations. Tara has been recognized for both service and professional leadership through the Midlands Business Business Journal, 40 under 40 Leadership Award. She has earned her Bachelor’s of Journalism and Broadcasting and has a master’s in educational leadership from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Tara is also a 2021, graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce IOM program. Tara, we’re 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 who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Tara Lea 3:32
thanks, Brandon, and hello to all my chamber friends across the country, so excited to be on the podcast today to share just a little bit of knowledge that I probably ripped off and duplicated. From some of my friends across the state over the years. My bio is very long with some big words that chatgpt helped me make up. So thank you, Brandon for sharing that. But a big thing that you see in there is Nebraska has mentioned many, many, many times. Born and raised Nebraska, very proud Nebraskan. I think something interesting about myself, and I’m going back a few years here, but when I was a senior in high school, I was both a Nebraska cow queen and pig queen in the same year. So I got to go around the state of Nebraska to fairs and community events and hand out ribbons and just be a promoter of short horn cattle and the pork industry across the state. So I think my, my love for Nebraska, and kind of ending up here in the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce role probably started way back in high school

Brandon Burton 4:31
and talk about something to aspire to, cow queen and pig queen. Wow,

Tara Lea 4:36
just the royalty of Nebraska. You know, I still get the crown out once in a while. No, I’m just kidding,

Brandon Burton 4:41
and we’ve got her on the show today, folks, I love it. But tell us a little bit about the Nebraska chamber, obviously, State Chamber, but give us some perspective the size scope of work, how you guys are involved working with other chambers staff. Just to you. Kind of get our mindset straight as before we go into this conversation today,

Tara Lea 5:04
absolutely so. As you mentioned from my bio Brandon, I’ve kind of climbed the chamber ladder here. I like to say I started a small chamber, went to a mid sized chamber. Now at the Nebraska State Chamber, it’s an entirely new beast and animal compared to the local chambers. We have about 1000 members here at The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, and our focus is obviously statewide. So we want to make a huge difference from Western Nebraska all the way to Eastern and North and South. We want to cover the whole state. So as most chambers do, we do a lot of lobbying for our businesses and communities across the state. But my role, which is new, is really to work with the local chambers across the state of Nebraska as well. So I kind of have that inside track and know what a weird job that we have. So I can be that person to new folks who come into a chamber role and help do some training and education for them. I can also, if they, you know, chambers have issues or events or things they have questions on, we’re the resource for them, trying to do a lot more meetings with the local chamber folks. So in a way, we’re making all the local chambers an extension of the State Chamber, and I think that’s just going to make the entire state a whole lot stronger as we move forward with that. Here at The Nebraska chamber, we have 12 employees that are here in the office, and then we just started a new initiative a couple months ago, which is also my baby, called six regions one Nebraska. And we’ve hired six navigators across the state, who then are kind of an extension of the chamber as well, working on some regional projects in each of those, those communities, in those areas.

Brandon Burton 6:36
Man, that you guys are busy. I mean, this is, this is awesome. I love, especially your role, this new role that’s been created, and seeing the local chambers becoming an extension of the State Chamber and and having the six navigators. I mean, Nebraska is not a small state. I mean, you get in the East Coast and you get states you can drive across in 30 minutes. Not so much in Nebraska, right? So it makes a lot of sense to have your your delegates?

Tara Lea 7:03
Well, it makes a huge difference, because even for the 12 of us, you know, each of us trying to get out to the western side of the state, it’s eight hours across the state, so we were not spending nearly as much time out there as we should have been. So yes, to have somebody right there in the community, to always be a resource has just been huge for us.

Brandon Burton 7:19
Yeah. Now that is fantastic. And really, that could be a whole podcast episode there. But our focus for our conversation today is going to be around creating conveners. So maybe some of that comes into the conversation today when we talk about, you know, helping to lift up some of these chambers, get them trained and educated, but ultimately creating conveners and and becoming one of those, you know, pillars in that C, you know, the 3c of chambers. So we look forward to diving deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Joe Duemig 7:53
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Joe Duemig 7:54
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All right, Tara, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, our topic for our conversation today is creating conveners. So as you hear that topic and the approach to your work, what does that mean to you? How do you approach creating conveners in your day to day work?

Tara Lea 10:20
So that has been just a passion of mine the entire time I’ve been in the chamber industry. I mean, even at the local level, it’s so important to bring together not just your your members and local businesses, but make sure they’re still working with city government and county government and, you know, make all of us working together to move things forward in the right direction. So now, in my role, literally, I get to do it every single day. So I mentioned the six regions one Nebraska initiative. I also run our leadership Nebraska program. So I know we have a ton of leadership programs across the country. Each of them has its own awesome element, but, you know, a lot of are very similar as well, but that’s really where I have the opportunity. We have about 350 Alumni members who we do events for throughout the year. And then each year, we take a class of between 30 and 35 those folks are from all across the state, and then we go visit different communities across the state. So at that time, it’s all about those introductions, bringing people together. It’s amazing to see, even years later, folks that are working together because they met at an alumni event or they were in class together. So I really think that’s to form those partnerships is huge, and anything I can do to make that happen is just a true passion of mine,

Brandon Burton 11:32
absolutely. So tell us a little bit more about that. As you as you take these alumni, you divide up, you go out and visit others. What? What does that look like? What do you provide? What’s the curriculum, if you will?

Tara Lea 11:43
Yeah, great question. So again, if you have a local Chamber Leadership Program, you’re probably meeting one day a month or something along those lines. For leadership, we meet three days a month, so it is a huge time commitment for folks, but we start at noon on a Wednesday and wrap up on noon on a Friday. And the whole goal, obviously, is there’s a leadership development component, which is huge, but it’s also the relationship. So we are making sure the folks in this class are getting in front of the mayors of communities, or just the key people that are in that community, senators, whoever that might be, and then the top business leaders in those communities as well. So they have that resource and they know them. And then we take a lot of behind the scenes tours as well. So Nebraska is a large manufacturing state, so we get to see some really cool things that are made right here in the state of Nebraska. Each month, we’re in a different part of the state. So we do southeast, we do Western, northeast, central Lincoln, Omaha. We hit kind of all some of the hot spots across the state. And again, just to showcase it’s usually focused on the top hitting issues within a state right now. So obviously, this year, child care comes up in every single session. We go to communities and see what kind of facilities they have or how they’re kind of battling. The child care shortage crisis across the state. Housing has been huge for a number of years. It’s fun to go see some of the small homes and just or the things that are being created, you know, in these communities, to make sure they’re covering the housing they need, housing they need, and then just workforce. So issues in Nebraska, but also issues across the whole state, we are not going to find an answer. Unfortunately, I wish we had that crystal ball that told us, Hey, here’s the answer to all of this. And if someone listening does have that, please call me and tell me what that is. But it’s just nice to see what other folks are doing, so then the people in the class can take those ideas back to their communities and help build and try to solve some of these issues that we have across the state.

Brandon Burton 13:38
Even if somebody has solved it. It’s probably only solvable in their community and whatever adaptations need to happen. So the thought came to me as you’re explaining how this, how the program works with these visits, these manufacturing facilities, you know, just getting out and seeing, you know, the childcare place, the the workforce and the housing issues. How is this all working towards the goal of creating conveners? Or would you say that’s the goal? Absolutely

Tara Lea 14:09
is the goal. And I think it happens every single session, because someone will meet someone that then they can go work with or push a project forward, because they had the opportunity to convene and meet with those folks while they were on a tour, listening to a panel of speakers. Even just the leadership development, it’s it’s getting those folks in the class stronger and more knowledgeable, so that they can then go back to their communities and bring everybody together, convene people that need to be in the room to push things forward and make things happen across the state.

Brandon Burton 14:39
Absolutely, I was thinking just the just the perspective that’s opened up to these individuals to go through the program, I think is so valuable in creating conveners, to be able to look at a problem from multiple angles and say, Yeah, I know somebody over here. Let’s bring them in. Let’s and maybe that’s getting more into the catalyst phase. Is the you know that that other C, but I think being a convener is so important to be able to have those connections, bring them in, have that perspective, to approach things from from different, different angles, really, absolutely

Tara Lea 15:12
and as a State Chamber, we just really want to see all of our local communities advance and grow. And so that is obviously huge for us is when we can bring folks together and do some the right people, so then they can go back and make an impact within their community.

Brandon Burton 15:25
Absolutely. So I know we’re talking a lot about the leadership Nebraska, can we talk a little bit about how you work with chambers too? Because I want to know, because I feel like there’s some convener development going on with those chambers too. As you work with the local chambers, what are those interactions like? And what do you do to promote them, to support them, to train them. What does that look like? Yeah,

Tara Lea 15:55
so that’s something we’ve really focused on the last couple of years as well. We have no no better value than our local chambers across the state. They are huge resources for us as the Nebraska chamber. So we want to make sure folks are loving their job and wanting to continue working in the chamber industry. Obviously, that’s kind of an issue we’ve had across the state as well, as is folks kind of get burnt out or whatever issues might arise. So we really want to focus on, what can we do to make their lives a little bit easier? So the Nebraska chamber association is our statewide group of chamber executives, and we meet every other week on a zoom call where we’ll bring in experts in the chamber field. Maybe sometimes it’s just a social media expert, an HR expert, just people who can come in and educate our local chamber executives so that then they can be a resource in their local areas and their local communities. We also do two conferences a year where we get as many people together as we can. It’s usually two to three days, and it’s just pure professional development education, but also that awesome time to be with your colleagues who do the things that you do, day in and day out, and they understand how how this job is, so it can be a resource for folks moving forward, just to have that, that person to go to and talk to when needed. As far as spreading the word the chamber newsletter, we love to get local chambers in there. And one of my dear friends in Fall city and I Amber Holly started a podcast a couple of months ago called chamber chatter boxes, where we just interview local chambers and they talk about what makes their community unique, some of the events they have going on. We really encourage folks across the rest of the state or region to go and visit those communities in our podcast. So not nearly the level of the chamber chat yet Brandon, but we have goals to aspire 12 episodes in someday, we will also be at 309

Brandon Burton 17:47
Awesome, awesome. I love hearing chambers podcast. So this is, you know, going through COVID. That was kind of the vision that I saw. Is with the pivoting. I even set up a page on my website called the podcast pivot, right? So during during COVID, chambers still needed to get their messaging out and, and some did, you know, Zoom calls, and they used other tools where they could, you know, put out video. But podcasting, when people are at home and they’re doing different things, and they can listen and and be able to be educated while they’re doing other things, is so important. And I think the world we live in today where everybody’s so busy, that’s a way to reach people, absolutely, podcast so

Tara Lea 18:27
and drive time, yeah? I mean, just drive time in our state too. People in our car a lot, yeah, driving throughout Nebraska. So it’s a nice time to just pop on a podcast and use that, that that windshield time for good, absolutely,

Brandon Burton 18:40
instead of just listening to radio or whatever, I mean, right? Music, yeah, we all have those songs embedded in our mind already, so we don’t need to keep reinforcing. We can, you know, broaden our minds. But

Tara Lea 18:53
that’s right, I could sing a little bit for you if you want to. No, I’m just happy to everyone would turn their this podcast off right now if I started that.

Brandon Burton 19:00
But I was just gonna, I was just gonna say how great you sounded, you know, with the microphone and the podcast set up. So we’ll leave it right there. But

Tara Lea 19:07
perfect, sounds good.

Brandon Burton 19:11
So you guys meet twice a year for a conference that’s you. That’s kind of unique. I see most, most state association, State Chambers, are doing, you know, once a year. So do you know what was behind that? To do it twice a year, and is a turnout similar for both, or is one more supported than the other? Yeah,

Tara Lea 19:32
so we have a fall conference every year, and that’s probably that’s been going on for as long as I’ve been in the chamber industry, and we kind of rotate that across the state, so every region has a chance to be host and show off what they’re doing. That is our bigger event that definitely gets more chamber execs there. And then in the spring, we do what we call mini institutes. It’s just a two day session. It’s typically either centrally located in the state of Nebraska or Omaha, Lincoln area. And that started. Gosh, probably five or six years ago, just because people wanted more they wanted to get together more often. They wanted more education opportunities. And that one, it’s a little less attended, but again, it’s just a two day event, so sometimes people coming from further distances, it’s, you know, can I justify the day and a half compared to the three days? And so we tried to keep the prices really low on that too. We know there’s not a huge budget for professional development, a lot of small chambers, so we keep it under $100 for both of those conferences, and try to provide as much value as we can while folks are together. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 20:33
that’s great. I think for those listening who may be on a board for their state association, just take some ideas. See if there’s value in your state to do something similar. But from Tara’s perspective, it’s all about strengthening Nebraska. So don’t, don’t, don’t compete too Right, right? Don’t

Tara Lea 20:50
get too good. Go ahead and do a few things, but you know, don’t. Don’t be as good as us. Just kidding,

the whole country will be better if everybody works together. So it’s all good.

Brandon Burton 21:00
Absolutely. I love it. I love these approaches. I mean, you guys are, it seems like you’re doing things right, to build up leaders to to turn them into conveners that are going to strengthen their communities, be that extension of the Nebraska chamber throughout the state. I love the strategy that you guys are making. Is there anything else to the approach that you guys are taking that’s worth noting again, for those listening who may be taking something, taking what they hear today, back to state association or or up to their State Chamber and say, Hey, can we do this surgery? Have you thought about this? What? What would you suggest? Yeah, I

Tara Lea 21:36
know I mentioned it, but I really there’s so much value in having someone at the local level. And that’s, I think, when I came from a local chamber to the state that was the biggest piece that was missing. It was, you know, we were expecting our members to come to us all the time. And even at local chambers, we do that too, where it’s like we’re hosting these events. If they’re members, they should be coming to our events, coffees, urban cuttings, whatever it may be. At the State Chamber, we were hosting three events a year, and expecting folks to just show up. Well, that’s that’s not a great way to do business. That’s not a way we find out what our members need and want. So statewide, I think the best thing we did is have these local navigators in communities, where they can get out and hear from each individual member, or even if they’re not members, just communities across the state, local chambers, I think, do the same thing. And I’ve really stressed this to my local chamber friends, is that you need to meet one on one with with as many members as you can. We’re here to make the business community a better place. And if we don’t know what the issues are that our business leaders are facing, there’s no way we can do that. So that one on one, time that you spend with your members is so valuable and so important and and even if, you know, no solution comes out of it, just the fact that your business member feels heard is huge for them. And when that invoice comes around to pay again, you know, the following year, they’re going to remember that time they spent with you, and it’s going to be a lot easier for them to write that check, instead of, you know, debating if they continue their membership or not,

Brandon Burton 22:59
yeah, and this, I mean, I feel like we see this model from the US Chamber, where they have representatives that they come and they’re going to state conferences, and they’re going to local chamber, you know, events and being, being seen, being present, taking note on what, what are the issues of importance, and being able to take them back to the US Chamber say, Okay, let’s focus on these things. So it’s a great, great model. It seems to be working for them. So why not? Why not do it in Nebraska, or whatever state you’re in right now? So exactly

Tara Lea 23:32
Brita. The other thing I was going to mention that we do is, I know, when I was a local chamber exec, the lobbying side of things was not my cup of tea. I didn’t, didn’t follow very well. I didn’t, didn’t understand a lot about it. I can easily admit that. But so what we do at the State Chamber also is, during the legislative session, we’re giving our local chambers kind of cheat sheets that they can then share in their newsletters or meetings with their government affairs council, where we’re basically like handing it to them with the Cliff Notes, like, yes, here’s the big things that are happening during the session or even happened this week at the state capitol. Feel free to do a social media tweet that’s similar to this, or, you know, whatever it might be, just really getting those resources to the folks that aren’t comfortable with it and don’t, you know, I would never want to do a newsletter and put something that I wasn’t 100% sure about, and now we’re just taking the guesswork out of it for the local chambers. And here you serving on a platter, like here it is. Go ahead and just copy and paste, and then if they have questions, our government affairs folks here at The Nebraska chamber are amazing and more than willing to go out and do lunch and learns and things with the local Chambers as well with their businesses, so that it kind of takes some pressure off that local chamber leader and the experts can come in and really talk about what’s going on in the capital.

Brandon Burton 24:44
Yeah, and advocacy should be such a huge part of each local chamber, and we all know chambers typically run understaffed, so to be able to put in the time individually to do the research, take an opinion to say what’s best for our business community, that’s a huge and. That’s a full time job, really, yeah, and absolutely, to be able to have that support from the State Chamber to say, Here it is. Now, I would suggest for everybody still read it, you know, look at but yes, use that as a resource to promote and put out there and and call it your own, you know, say, in a partnership with the State Chamber, this is what we were standing on, and it’s hard to go wrong if you take that approach. So great point. Nobody

Tara Lea 25:27
goes to school to learn how to be a chamber professional, and we wear so many different hats that it’s just nice when we can have, you know, help out there along the way to make us look better. That’s always a good thing, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 25:39
Well, Tara, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask, on behalf of a listener who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, you’ve shared some great, great tips and strategies, but what might you offer for a chamber that’s trying to accomplish that goal of of taking their chamber to the next level?

Tara Lea 25:55
Yeah, don’t be scared to try new things. I think we kind of get in our little ruts of we’ve always done it this way, so we’re going to keep doing it that way. And I think that mentality, hopefully, is changing a little bit as we’ve all had to reinvent ourselves, especially through the COVID years and things like that. But I think just go ahead and try that event. If you’re if you’re not sure if it’s going to work or not, do it one year if it flops, who cares? Don’t do the next year. If you are looking to change some initiatives within your city your community, go talk to the mayor. Go make those relationships happen so that you can really push things forward. But you can’t be scared to try new things, because we’re ever changing and continuing to show our value to our members and our communities. So take the leap and do whatever fun event or initiative that you’re hoping to achieve,

Brandon Burton 26:43
absolutely. That’s great advice. As we look to the future of chambers, I always like to see, you know, what does your crystal ball say? How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? Well, let

Tara Lea 26:56
me wait my taro cards out here. No, I’m just kidding. So I could not be more excited for I feel the future of chambers are going throughout our country. I mentioned before COVID, like we all did a rebrand, right? We were worried. What are we going to look like when we come out on the other side of this? We can’t do things the way we always did. I truly believe chambers are stronger now than we were five years ago. I think we’re just going to continue to grow. I do see some more partnerships happening, whether it be regional chambers forming or more economic development and chamber folks merging. I think that’s probably the way things are going to go. But I think we’re only going to be stronger because of that. So I think, yeah, I have no doubt that chambers will continue to play a huge role in their communities. They will be the people who know everything about what’s going on and the place that folks go to to find the latest and greatest information. And I can’t be I can’t wait to be part of the ride, and it’s so fun where I’m at now, because I not only get to see it at the state level, but I really get to see it happening in the local communities as well, and that is absolutely amazing. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:01
I love that vision of the future, and I am going to plug just our previous episode with Angela Wilson. She talked about negotiating contracts. So that is the future, with chambers merging and taking on more of an economic development role. Give that episode a listen and just really get into what you need to be considering as you approach contracts with these different partnerships. But I love that, that vision of the future. So thank you, Tara, absolutely. Yeah. So I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you. Learn more about how the Nebraska chamber is approaching different things, or what they can do to to strengthen their chamber. What would you Where would you point people to to reach out and connect?

Tara Lea 28:45
Yeah, I am always available via email. I might take two emails, like it did when Brandon tried to set this up today, but I promise I will try to get back to you much of the first one. My email is just tlea@nechamber.com, again, T, L, E, A, at, N, E, chamber.com, or I’m always available. You can call me at 402-480-6918,

they also have a great Nebraska chamber has a website that’s great leadership. Nebraska has an awesome website. I would also, if you’re interested in leadership program, would follow leaders from Nebraska on Facebook. We’re always posting the fun things that we’re doing, so feel free to give that a follow and and steal some ideas from us as well.

Brandon Burton 29:31
That’s perfect. We’ll, we’ll do our best to link all of that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy to find all the places and and links. But Tara, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. I love the energy and enthusiasm and the insight that you brought to us today, and appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you so much. Well,

Tara Lea 29:52
I so appreciate the opportunity and all the local chambers and State Chambers keep doing great work. Really proud of you, and can’t end without saying, Go Big Red.

Brandon Burton 30:00
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Navigating Contracts with Angela Wilson

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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.

Our guest for this episode is Angela Wilson. Angela is the President and CEO of the Greater Muskogee Area Chamber of Commerce. Angela provides the overall daily management of all departments of the chamber and works with the Chamber’s board of directors to ensure the Chamber’s mission is achieved. She became the Chamber’s President and CEO in November of 2019 after serving as Vice President and Director of Programs for six years, she oversaw all of the Chamber’s programs and events and all non news revenue projects, which make up approximately half of the Chamber’s annual operating budget. Angela has worked at the Muscogee Chamber Since 2012 after serving as a tourism director and executive director for the Chamber of Commerce in Coffeyville, Kansas for four years. Angela began her career with the Muskogee chamber as the program and sales director in 2016 was promoted to Vice President and Director of Programs. Angela has a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado. She is an IOM graduate and a graduate of leadership, Coffeyville leadership, Mugi OCC chamber Management Institute, OK, CNP, non profit management and Dale Carnegie effective communications and human relations. Angela currently serves as chair on the OCC board of directors, Mako Conference Board of Directors, and the President of the Board of Trustees for the Muscogee public schools, education board of directors. Angela, I’m excited to have you with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Sure.

Angela Wilson 2:52
Thank you for having me today. It was an honor to be asked to do this. I should could throw rich Cantillon. We used to be with the Ponca City Chamber in Oklahoma, throw him under the bus for signing me up for this that he deserves it. And though I love to share, I love to help other chambers. So in any way, I hope someone takes maybe just something from this today to help them

Brandon Burton 3:17
absolutely, and I’m sure that’s, that’s what the whole purpose of this is, right? Is to bring people on and their perspectives from their their part of the world, their part of the country, and their scope of work at their chamber and and we’ll, we’ll flesh out those things that can be a value to others listening. So tell us a little bit about the greater Muskogee Area Chamber, just to kind of set the stage. Give us an idea the size of your chamber staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of prep us for our conversation today.

Angela Wilson 3:48
Sure, and those of you don’t know we are Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. You might have heard a song before okie from Muskogee, from Earl haggard. That’s usually what people associate us with. But we are located, for those, again, that don’t know, in eastern Oklahoma. We’re about 45 minutes from Tulsa, so we kind of sit out. We are a micropolitan community of about 35,000 people. Our chamber has about 375 members. We know, give or take those, our budget is about a $375,000 budget, and we have, right now a staff of three. I’m in that little transition where I’m down one staff and so again, we’re like all chambers. Do we reevaluate if we want to fill that position, or if we think we can, obviously we all know we can take on more work, because we always think we can, but we’re kind of in that time where we’re reevaluating if we want to fill that so normally we’re a staff of four, and we are again solely just a chamber. And. Yeah, we

Brandon Burton 5:01
love it. So I think it’s probably fair to say most chambers are operating one or two staff people below what they need, right? So probably, probably put you right in the right the sweet zone, right there. So

Angela Wilson 5:13
yeah, we always take on more work. For some reason, I It’s really weird. Yes, we can do it. Yes, we can

Brandon Burton 5:19
do it. Yeah, chambers have a problem with saying no or problem saying yes. Maybe is what it

Angela Wilson 5:24
is yeah that we need to go to get help for saying yes to everything

Brandon Burton 5:28
absolutely. Well, I’m excited for our topic today. It’s something we haven’t really spent much time on in over 300 episodes of Chamber Chat Podcast, but it’s a focus of navigating contracts. So I know a lot of chambers out there have either tourism contracts or economic development contracts or maybe a Downtown Association contract of some sort. But all these variety of different types of contracts may or may not come across the desk of the the chamber, and the Chamber might seek them out. They might be sought out in some cases, but either way, I think it’s a good opportunity for us to have a conversation about how a chamber can go about navigating and maybe even negotiating some of these contracts as a as they appear. So I think there’s going to be a lot of value for listeners today, and look forward to getting to this with you right after this quick break.

Joe Duemig 6:26
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All right, Angela, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our conversation today around negotiating contracts. As you introduced the greater Muskogee Area Chamber, you mentioned that you’re solely a Chamber of Commerce. I know that hasn’t always been the case, but if, if you want to take the mic and kind of give us the background and evolution of of the Muskie chamber, just to kind of set the table for us. I think that may be helpful, sure.

Angela Wilson 9:08
So when I started in 2012 we had a contract with the city for tourism, and we had a tourism staff of about, I think, three other people, and again, the Chamber has an administrative fee that we take off that contract, like every contract that we have. Well at the time, every year, that contract auto renewed. We went to City Council, we did our presentation. What we did that year, we went about our way. The chamber was very heavy in tourism. We were known for having fun, doing all these parties, entertaining, you know, at all these big events that tourism was hosting, and the Chamber kind of took a back seat to that. Well, fast forward about five or six years, and that tourism budget was. Is over a million dollars. And so when people see that, oh, I can do that, they make it look so easy and so fun. And there was always people, every year, probably since I’ve been here, that thought they could do it better. And so, come about 2017 18. There was a lot of pressure from City Council. They were, they were feeling the pressure from outside sources to kind of put their thumb on what tourism was doing. And so, you know, around here, we batten down the hatches. We jumped through tons of tons of hoops. I think our president and CEO of the chamber at the time, she spent probably 85% of her time dealing with tourism, and so again, the Chamber suffered from that. So I’m over here as vice president, holding down the chamber because we’re dealing with all of this outside noise for tourism. They completely changed. Our board completely made. You know, everyone track their time like just everything was ridiculous, almost, um, and so, you know, my president, CEO, she left, and at the time, I’m thinking, Oh, God, do I want this job? Do I want it? Do I want it? And my kind of analogy of it is, I know it was a bowl of crap, and I’ve decided to eat that bowl of crap when I applied for this job. So that’s go to 2019 I accept this job, and, you know, the pressure is still there, the red tape we’re dealing with non stop. And then COVID happens, and then I’m really thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, what did I really do? Well, when COVID happened, we didn’t know what our budget was going to be. We didn’t know if people were gonna they’re not traveling, like, oh gosh, you know, layoffs, whatever. We just didn’t. Nobody knew. And so, um, we worked. I spoke with my board, and I said, you know, guys, is this really worth it what we’re dealing with, and our chamber is suffering. Um, our Chamber members. They just think we do tourism. They don’t know what they get as a chamber member. And so with kind of all of that background and just everything going on, we decided to part ways with that contract. It wasn’t easy. It was some difficult conversations with my board, with the city manager, with the mayor, but we decided we needed to do what was best for our chamber, and letting that contract go was what was best for our chamber. Now it came with a loss of that administrative fee, loss of jobs that I had to lay off people, and so it wasn’t a fun time. And you then COVID still going on. So you’re like, oh God, we can’t do events. Oh god, you know, what did we do as a chamber? Are we going to be okay? So the fall of 21 was October of 21 was the end date for that contract. So we gave it back to the city on a silver platter, and said, Here you go. Good luck. We’ll be here if you need some help, but have fun and take it on. And so the city took it in house for a little bit, and then they re contracted it back out to a third party again. But, you know, as a chamber, it was our time then to rebrand as a chamber and say, Where do we want to go from here? What do our Chamber members want? So we sent surveys out, we visited with members. We kind of rebranded of what we do. We had a whole new program of work. Just everything was completely new, and it was scary, very scary, but it took us about three years to recuperate that admin fee is about $30,000 so we took us years, you know, just biting away each year at a time, and we did it. And it was a very rewarding kind of deal to be a part of, to be like, we’ve done this, we’re okay. We never had to pull money from reserves. We never had to do any of that. And you know, it was just a time, and our members recognized that, hey, they’re really asking me what I want as a member. And so we put some new programs out there. We got rid of a couple programs, and so looking back now, is the best thing we’ve ever done. We are, I say, we live our best life. We have no other contracts. We don’t do the economic development contract. So we are solely a chamber on our own, and it is very nice. So we answer to our members. We do what we want. We want to make up something and do something. We do it. We don’t want to. We don’t, don’t, don’t want to. We don’t have to. We’re not on purse strings or Puppet Strings of any entity, if it’s a city, county, whatever it might be, just our members. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 14:59
Yeah, and I can see where it can be difficult to serve two masters, right? So if you’ve got your chamber board, you’ve got a tourism board, and they’re wanting different things, and you’ve got staff that are allocating time different ways, trying to keep all that straight. It can be a headache. It can be a burden. I can see the benefit, of course, to be able to synergize, you know, the efforts that the chamber is doing with tourism and trying to bring that all under one focus, I can definitely see that and and we’ve had episodes where we’ve talked about where that can be a huge benefit, but when it’s splitting time going different ways, it has you not able to perform to your capabilities, really, as a chamber, they mentioned for your members to be able to understand what they get as a chamber member, I think is so important to be able to put that focus back there. So since that separation, the decoupling of the tourism contract, we call it a divorce

Angela Wilson 16:01
and the COVID, I guess I don’t know,

Brandon Burton 16:05
good terms, right? Do you have visitation? Yeah, we

Angela Wilson 16:09
have. They come visit every now and then. That’s

Brandon Burton 16:15
funny, but I imagine I mean, you still have an interest in tourism, right? I mean, a strong tourism in the Muskogee area is going to benefit your Chamber members as well. So there’s still win win within that, but not having that that burden or that weight upon you to perform in certain ways and to have the expectations that you need to meet. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that approach has been like since then, and involvement with tourism now that it’s not you know that that weight that’s on you as well,

Angela Wilson 16:45
sure, and I will say when it got really bad. I mean, we had open records requests from people for tourism. The Attorney General’s office was calling me that we were embezzling all like it was just to the point where you’re like, This is crazy things, and nothing came of any of it. So you’re like, Well, we know we’ve had audits, and we do our audits every year. We’re okay, but you know, just going forward, we’ve been there to help them. When they transitioned over, they would call us to say, how did you guys do this? Or what did you do about this? And they’ve had a couple tourism directors since then. So each time they get a new one, they call us and you know, we’re there. If we need to be, we’re going to partner. We’re going to do what’s best for Muskogee at the end of the day. But do I ever want it back? I don’t think so, unless it’s just really that bad that we need to take it back in. But it was just an opportunity for us to be us and not be everyone just associated us with tourism before we were I mean, at one time, there was all women here, and they were the chamber chicks, but they were the happy go lucky face of Muscogee, because they were tourism, and so we needed to be a more professional organization and here for our businesses and be taken seriously, be at the table on serious conversations, and not just, you know, fishing tournaments and this and that and this, parties, fun things. So we have kind of really stepped it up as more of a professional organization. You know, we still have fun, but we try to be, you know, that pinnacle the top of what we can be in Muskogee, when we do things, we want to be the best at it. But with tourism, you know, we’re all partners. We all try to partner with things, with our economic development, with the city, with the county, we definitely try to break down those silos and partner and move forward and do what’s best for Muskogee. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:50
I can see we’re after the divorce to be able to focus more on the 3c versus the 3p right as a chamber and your focus. What would you say for chambers out there that are either considering a partnership or considering dissolving a partnership? What are some of those things that need to be thought of and really calculated into to making these sort of decisions? I know sometimes the decisions are made for you, but if you’re if you still have a seat at the table and you’ve got some input, what are some things to be considered sure

Angela Wilson 19:25
if you aren’t considering it, my top piece of advice would be, make sure that contract is strong, strong, strong, and you have your best interest at the very front of that. Because, you know, for ours, was just auto renew, auto renew, the good old boy system. Well, then all of a sudden they wanted to have batten down and hatch down this contract. And it was just, it was a waste of everyone’s time and money and effort for things, I get a contract. But looking back. Hindsight, there’s different things of who owns what. We’ve gone through that with a logo and a branding, does tourism own it, or does the chamber own it? Buildings? Did they pay rent? If they had, you know, put money into the building? Who has what desks like it is very simple, things you don’t think about. And then if your logo, if you’re going to dissolve it, if your logo has chamber and tourism, well, guess what? Your chamber is going to have to pay for all new branding, all new envelopes, all new signs, whatever it might be, business cards. There’s a lot of just little things you don’t think about that that logo and tourism was on, so make sure that you set yourself up as a chamber. Set yourself up right and solid. Consult with an attorney. Please do that before you sign any contract. Don’t just let the city or the county hand you one and say, sign this. Have those conversations with your board of if we weren’t to do this tomorrow, what would we look like? Can we still keep our doors open? Can we still be successful or and make sure it is tourism is one side and there’s a high wall of chamber on the other. Do not merge those. It can get muddy. It can get very gray, and you don’t want you don’t want any part of that either. So keep things very clear, separate, a separate checking account for your tourism, a separate checking account for your chamber. I know there’s some out there that blend those two and Good gosh, makes me cringe, but they are separate, separate audits. Just make sure everything is very clean financially. So you know, if you do have an open records request, here you go, and you’re clean. And that is another perk right now, is we don’t have, we’re not subject to open records, not that we’re doing anything shady, but yeah, but we can say no, if we really need to, but at the end of the day, make sure the chamber everything is secure for the chamber, and that’s what look out for the chamber at the end of the day. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:11
on a smaller scale, it makes me think of the small business owner who may be commingling their personal funds with their business funds, and, you know, working out of their other house, but not paying themselves rent, and then they go to sell a business, and, well, what do you have to sell? What? What’s here? And so keeping things clean, and, like you said, having the contracts really buttoned down, to be able to know, you know, is the tourism or is economic development? Are they paying for rent? Are they do they own certain computers and desks, and being able to have that, that separation, but within the same umbrella, Giving definition, I guess is, is the way to say it. But I

Angela Wilson 22:49
think document everything. And you know, most of the time you should have on tourism side. If you’ve purchased the desk computers, you know all that. So if you have it, but make sure it’s very clear who owns what in your office, because we had to spend many times of like, okay, this desk has been sitting upstairs. Who bought this? Or you just don’t know, sign on the side of the building, who owns that you don’t know. You know it’s one of those things. So definitely keep track of everything.

Brandon Burton 23:25
Yeah, I can see when you take on a contract, it can be exciting to say, look, we’re getting a new sign, new business cards, new website like all this to rebrand. And you know, this is a new, fun, exciting thing, and there should be an influx of of income coming with that to the chamber. But on the opposite end, when you’re separating, not only are you losing the contract, the administrative funds, but also the cost to go through and change all those things too. Yeah, may not be less exciting. It’s a different kind of excitement, I suppose, yeah.

Angela Wilson 23:56
And when you have to, you know, if you have delay people off, tourism employees, it’s going to affect your the Chamber’s unemployment rate for a couple of years that happened to us. So there’s just little things that trickle downhill. But at the end of the day, looking back, it was on my end. It was worth it, if I were to take on again, like we’ve said, another contract or something else, if it was be a main street or an economic development I know now to make sure that that contract is solid. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 24:30
absolutely. So. As you’ve seen this, the separation, the divorce, the uncoupling, the de burtoning, how have you been able to see the focus on the members. What’s the member response been like? Has you been able to focus on them and the value that they get as a chamber member? Now, sure,

Angela Wilson 24:50
one of our first things we did in the spring of 22 we did a membership Blitz, and we went and visited 100 members. I. Was our goal, and just sat down with them and just said, what’s going on? What can we help you with? We don’t want anything. We don’t want any money. What are you dealing with? What can we do better? And so a lot of them just appreciated that they hadn’t seen people from the chamber in a while. They hadn’t had a chamber voice in a while. And so we took some of that feedback and just built a better chamber for that. Or people, you know, hey, I would really like you to bring back this or this. And so we’ve tried to implement those things, and people have really appreciated it. And they’re like, you know, you guys are doing a great job, and I appreciate you. Guys have been more attentive to us, and so just those little things in, you know, making what we do more relevant. This is what the chamber is. This is what our mission is. This is what our program of work is, and that’s who we are. And what can we do for you is really what we spent that next year saying, what is our chamber want? What do you guys need? We’re here for you. We’re open. And we got so much positive feedback of that, of just those little conversations. And you know, I was driving yesterday home from a meeting, I’m thinking, I think I want to do another one of those membership blitzes again, just to go out and just visit people that we don’t normally get to visit with and see. But that was probably the most impactful thing that we did, was just visiting with people and asking what they want, not what we want, what they want. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:37
and another listening tour sounds like a great idea, and be able to being able to see now that about three years post separation, if I if I’m doing my math correct, yes, it’s not, it’s not hard math, but I want to make sure I got the dates right to be able to do another follow up listening tour like that. And I would be curious to see what’s the the image of the chamber. How has that changed over those three years? Sure people

Angela Wilson 27:03
take us more serious. Now we’re not just the party, fun, happy, go lucky. We’re here for our members. We’re intentional about what we do. We’ve made some other changes internally of our processes for new members. We just are really intentional about what our members want, and we’re more professional level of what we we want to do, what we need to do. We’re there. And, you know, people recognize that. They say, you know, the Chamber events are always the best events, and we always try to be, you know, creative when we do our events, of the best advice sometimes I ever heard was, if you don’t want to be there, probably they don’t want to be there as well. So I was take that into consideration when we’re planning events or planning programming. Good gosh, I want to be there, and if I don’t, probably nobody else really does and not being able to don’t be afraid to try new things. Try it if it fails. So what you tried it, and you can go on down the road if something’s not working. Don’t be afraid to get rid of it. That’s probably my biggest piece of advice of as a chamber of when I came on the first time I tried to get rid of a program, I was scared to death. I thought I was gonna lose my job. Thought people were gonna run me out of town. And people came back and said, Thank you for getting rid of that. I thought it was waste of time. I was like, Oh, thank you. So that would be my thing is, don’t be afraid to change just because I hate saying this, but you’ve always done it that way. Doesn’t mean you have to continue doing it that way. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:43
we’ve got a whole episode about burning sacred cows, so you can go back in the archives and listen to that and and learn how you can get rid of some of these programs that are not serving you or the chamber anymore. So if they’re not serving the chamber, they’re probably not serving anybody else, and people are doing it out of obligation or guilt, and you can level it up and do something much more effective and impactful. So yes, amen, good. Good comment. Well, Angela, as we start to wrap up, I always like asking for listeners who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them to try to accomplish that goal. You just mentioned one. But does anything else come to mind that you’d like to share? Probably,

Angela Wilson 29:26
again, I would just echo, don’t be afraid of Chinese things and look out for the best interest of the chamber. Be that arm, be that solid pillar in the community. Not everyone’s gonna like everything you do, but that’s okay, at least they’re noticing what you’re doing and do what’s best for you. At the end of the day, you need to have your back, your board needs to have your back and your chambers

Brandon Burton 29:54
absolutely and I’ve mentioned it several times in past episodes, but if you’re focused. On what’s good for the business community. In your community, it’s hard to go wrong, and it’s hard to have too many people upset with you if you’re at least the people you’re serving are not going to be upset with you if you’re focused on on how to best serve the business community. So

Angela Wilson 30:14
yeah, I always say too, you know, I don’t know everything. We don’t know everything, but we know people who do, yeah, and so. And you know, you do want to say no to people sometimes, but I think telling giving them the resources and helping them along, they appreciate that, and they recognize the chamber did help me. You just, you just picked up the phone and called it another person, maybe, but to them, that was a game changer in what they were trying to accomplish. And they really look back about, oh gosh, the Chamber really helped me out. And then they’re going to start showing up to stuff and being there for you and having your back. So it’s just little intentional things, I think, as well being very intentional on the little things, yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:55
absolutely, totally accurate. So I like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Angela Wilson 31:07
I think chambers even looking back on, good God, I’d hate aging myself, because, you know, I look 20, but I’m getting in the 40s now. But you know, we have evolved over the time that I’ve been in the chamber world, and it’s exciting because it’s something new every day. And I think just being relevant and keeping up with those trends of what businesses need, what communities need, what you guys are, the chambers are the forefront. And so we need to be those leaders, and we need to have that creative mindset of what’s next. And so, I mean, chambers are still going to be around, but we’re different than we looked 10 years ago. We’re different than we look 20 years ago and even 50 years ago, when people just paid their dues because it was the right thing to do. But I think it’s just exciting, because you it’s up to you as a chamber you can do what you want to do, and what your Chamber members want. So it’s kind of exciting that you don’t always have to do the same thing every day or every year. So I think just making sure you’re on that cusp of what’s you know kind of what your members are wanting, and stay ahead of them one step so you can provide those services for them, but chambers are always going to be around. What they look like in 20 years might be completely different. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:27
I would argue, even from four years ago, from through COVID to today, chambers look different so well, Angela, this has been a good conversation. I think it’s provided a lot of value for listeners, and I appreciate you getting a little, you know, authentic and raw about an experience at your chamber that I’m sure was full of difficulties and challenges, but being able to rise above and come through on the other side with some lessons learned that are valuable for others that have been listening today. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Angela Wilson 32:58
Thank you for having me, and yeah, there was a lot of wine along the way going through that transition, wasn’t it always

Brandon Burton 33:05
rainbows and butterflies? Yeah, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect. And say, how’d you get the courage to move forward with this, or whatever it may be, what’s the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Angela Wilson 33:19
Absolutely, please contact me if you have it’s not a dumb question. No questions are dumb. We’re involved contacted peers. That’s what we rely on and how we survive sometimes. But you can visit our website, Muskogee chamber.org, or you can email me at angela@mugicha.org, or if you go onto our website, you’ll find our contact or phone number on there, and yeah, email me, call me, whichever. I’m always open, and that’s one of my favorite parts of my job is helping other chambers.

Brandon Burton 33:53
Yeah, it’s such a great profession for being able to do that. Yes, we’ll, we’ll get the website and email and our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find you. But again, Angela, this has been great, and thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your experiences and insight with with those that are listening.

Angela Wilson 34:10
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 34:14
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