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Category: Leadership

Evolve & Modernize as a Chamber with Charles Wood

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Brandon Burton (00:00.721)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Charles Wood. Charles serves as the president and CEO of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, where he previously led efforts as vice president of economic development.

With more than 25 years of experience in economic development, Charles has built a career centered on driving job creation, business recruitment, and regional growth. Before joining the Chattanooga Chamber in 2012, Charles held economic development leadership roles with Chambers of Commerce in Pensacola, Mobile, Alabama, and worked in local government in College Station, Texas.

Charles Wood (00:41.473)
. .

Brandon Burton (00:53.881)
Over the course of his career, he’s led marketing, recruitment, and expansion initiatives that resulted in thousands of new jobs and major corporate investments from companies such as Hewlett Packard, Mellon Financial, and Volkswagen. Charles holds a master’s degree in economic development from the University of Southern Mississippi, completed the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma, and earned the prestigious certified economic developer designation from the International Economic Development Council.

Charles Wood (01:12.249)
. you

Brandon Burton (01:24.021)
Charles, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d like to give you an opportunity to say hello 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.

Charles Wood (01:38.088)
Sure. And great to be here, Brandon. You know, I’ve kind of, I’ve been involved in the chamber world for a long time now at this point, mostly on the economic development side, not running the organization, but excited to be here. You know, I’d say I love Chattanooga, right? All chamber execs love whatever town they’re in at the moment.

Brandon Burton (01:57.713)
Hey.

Charles Wood (01:58.797)
But if I have a second home, it’s New Orleans and I love the food and the people and the culture. so I spend a little bit of time cooking Cajun food whenever I can. And so we’re, you know, it’s almost Fat Tuesday. So at least based on the timing for this recording and myself and our VP of membership and then someone who’s on our marketing team, we actually did a, we do a

a lunch for the full staff once a month. And so we cooked this month. So last week I did gumbo. And then our VP of marketing did red beans and rice. then our head, our marketing person did red beans and rice. And our other team member did jambalaya. So we did a full kind of Cajun luncheon, which was a ton of fun for me. So we kind of try and, I try and bring that up every year, you know, during kind of

Mardi Gras and carnival season. it’s a lot of fun. Chattanooga’s a long way away from New Orleans, but so we’re, but love doing it and excited that ACC actually is gonna be in New Orleans this summer. So, yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:06.612)
That’s right. So do those other staff members have ties to New Orleans or?

Charles Wood (03:12.589)
Our VP of membership does, he’s from New Orleans, proper person in marketing, I think spent some time in South Louisiana, but I don’t think he’s from there.

Brandon Burton (03:18.32)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (03:24.506)
Yeah, but enough to pick up some of the culture and cuisine. that’s good. That’s awesome. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Chattanooga area chamber to help give us an idea of the size of the chamber, the organization, the area of work, number of staff, budget, all of that to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Charles Wood (03:28.33)
Yeah, exactly.

Charles Wood (03:46.23)
Sure, and we’re a pretty big organization as chambers go for a community our size. So our metro area is a little under 600,000 people, but we have a budget of close to 10 million and a team of about 40. That includes about 10 people who are on our Chattanooga 2.0 team, which is a team that’s focused on cradle to career education and workforce.

pretty big arm of what we do. And they do some incredible work. Last year, we officially launched a college and career savings program for every kindergartner, middle schooler in Hamilton County schools. So that’s a pretty cool program that’s come out of the 2.0 team. We run a 128,000 square foot small business incubator with 30 to 50 companies in it at any one time.

And that lives under our economic development program. And then we run leadership Chattanooga as well. So a lot of communities have a leadership program. Ours lives under the Chamber Foundation. And then, certainly all of the other kinds of things that go along with the Chamber. So we’ve got about 1,750 members for the organization. So membership size, not too bad from an organizational standpoint.

Brandon Burton (04:50.864)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (05:10.673)
And.

Charles Wood (05:11.531)
And then, you know, lot of funding role we have, we’re technically two entities. We’re a 501C6 membership organization, and then have a foundation, 501C3, where our economic development and our talent initiatives all live.

Brandon Burton (05:26.493)
Very good. Now that definitely helps to set the stage and get us prepared for our discussion today. And today we’ll be diving into the idea of constantly looking to evolve and modernize as a chamber and as an industry. So we’ll dive into that topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton (05:48.894)
All right, Charles, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break. really, as you and I talked before we hit record, we were talking about the lens that you entered the chamber space, that it’s been very much through the economic development side of things. And now you’ve got this more responsibility in your current position. And I think there’s a lot of value in that perspective. And in the back and forth, you talked about how it

Charles Wood (05:55.147)
. .

Brandon Burton (06:17.839)
it’s helped you to kind of develop this lens to constantly be evolving and modernizing as a chamber. So if you’d like to expand on that and just give us an idea of what that means to you and areas where you’ve seen opportunity to do that.

Charles Wood (06:33.396)
Absolutely. And so we have a two part mission. The first is champion our member businesses. And the second is really focus on building a strong regional economy. But the way I kind of communicate the organization is really around our purpose, which is to build a thriving Chattanooga. And so you do that by kind of executing on the mission.

But the Chattanooga Chamber was founded in 1887. We’re one of, I think, 40 chambers of commerce that are on the wall when you walk into the U.S. Chamber in Washington, D.C., that kind of founded the U.S. Chamber. So we’ve been around for a long time. We’ll be celebrating our 140th anniversary pretty soon. I think I didn’t really think about that when I was first hired here.

Brandon Burton (07:06.557)
Thank you.

Charles Wood (07:24.45)
and we were at an event that we held, we had somebody come in from the US Chamber and they shared that. And kind of the weight of running an organization that’s been around that long, especially in a time of real change, right? At a national and international level, it’s a pretty big weight. And I think a lot of folks who probably watch this podcast, they’ve either heard of or read the book.

Brandon Burton (07:36.262)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (07:52.874)
that’s called Bowling Alone, right? And it’s a depressing book, honestly. It’s around the decline of social capital in America. And if you think about organizations like Chambers, right, that bring people together that are, you’re focused around kind of building social capital for a community and whether that’s churches or groups like Rotary or Chambers of Commerce.

There’s a lot of headwinds in our world today. And so as we kind of think about the organization and we think about Chattanooga, a lot of my focus has been around how do you work to evolve the organization to make sure that it’s going to be resilient and it’s gonna be, I think, a really relevant organization over the next decade or two decades out.

Brandon Burton (08:25.341)
Thank

Brandon Burton (08:33.553)
I guess.

Brandon Burton (08:39.389)
Thank

Brandon Burton (08:45.821)
and going to have to work on this. So there’s no harm in us working on this.

Charles Wood (08:47.882)
And so we’ve spent a lot of time kind of thinking about that, looking at systems and programs and looking at how we change those to make sure we stay true to the mission and the purpose, but also are not shy about working through the fact that we’ve got to continually evolve.

Brandon Burton (08:56.925)
and influence our research on the climate of the planet.

Brandon Burton (09:10.109)
And I think that’s so important and to your sentiment about the weight of leading an organization that has such a rich history is you don’t want to be the one that screws it up, right? But at the same time, there is change that has to

Charles Wood (09:21.66)
That’s exactly right. Yeah, that’s…

Brandon Burton (09:31.134)
You can’t do the things the same way they were in 1847. And as we see the fast pace of change in today’s market, today’s world, got to be abreast of those changes and be ready for it and look into the future and not just react to what’s being presented to you. And I know a lot of chambers will do their Chamber 2030 or 2035 focus, looking five or 10 years out in the future.

which I think is great. I think that’s, it’s great to have that strategic focus. But I had mentioned before, I had heard an interview with, with Elon Musk, you know, this man is literally creating the future in front of us with this, you know, self-driving cars and taking people to Mars and creating robots to, you know, clean your, your kitchen and cook for you and everything.

Charles Wood (10:14.163)
But.

Brandon Burton (10:25.185)
And he talks about what he can see in the next year or two, but he talks three to five years out. He’s like, I have no idea what that future looks like because things are moving so quickly. So to that point, I think we have to be adaptable and keep looking to what does the future look like now, instead of what did it look like five years ago? Anyway, not really a question there, but just more of an observation.

Charles Wood (10:32.568)
Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Wood (10:51.374)
Yeah, and we, you know, we do operate on a five year strategy. We’ve, we’ve done, we’re kind of in the middle of our second one that we’ve done. And that’s really helpful. We’ve got kind of four, four pillars in that strategy. One is around economic growth. One is talent. One is innovation. And then the fourth is champion our members. And so, but you know, you’ve also got to think way beyond that, right, as you go. So I think that’s a

Brandon Burton (10:56.594)
Good.

Charles Wood (11:19.324)
That’s a critical part of the calculus that you have to have when you’re working in this industry and you’re trying to influence the outcome of your community over a long period of time.

Brandon Burton (11:33.095)
Right, yeah. So I’m curious from your background in economic development as you approach these different, I’m going to say chamber topics for lack of a better term right now.

I see and we talked before the recording every chamber. Hopefully every chamber sees Themselves having some role in economic development whether they have that formal responsibility Or if they’re a supporting cast to you know, economic development corporation within their community But when it’s all under the same roof How do you see? Okay, this is a this is a chamber direction. This is economic development

because there’s so many things that can kind of blur the lines. And I know there’s your mission and all that, but how do you delineate where the focus goes?

Charles Wood (12:21.432)
But.

Charles Wood (12:29.534)
Yeah, I think one of the things I’ve enjoyed the most about kind of coming into the CEO role is playing a bigger role in influencing some of our more traditional membership kind of, you know, programs so that they have a strategic impact on our economic development work. And so we’re…

We have four big signature events that we do every year. One is a holiday party. That one is just a great time. It’s like our house party. There’s no speeches. I haven’t dinkered with that. But we have our economic outlook event, which we’ll have next week actually. we have an economist that comes up from the Atlanta Fed, which of course this is something chambers do all the time. But we’ve added basically a fireside chat.

Brandon Burton (13:02.736)
it.

Charles Wood (13:20.891)
this year that will be between the incoming CEO for our utility company, which is a whole lot more than a utility. They run all our fiber here as well with a consulting firm that’s doing a competitiveness analysis for us on Chattanooga and looking at how, you know, what processes, what incentives, what policies we can look at to make the community more competitive long-term in terms of economic development. And so,

We’ve added that component into that event very much in a way to try and educate and influence how our members, our elected officials are thinking about what does Chattanooga look like? Not just like what’s the economic outlook look like for the next year, but how do we influence what our economy looks like over the next decade? And so we’ve implemented that into that program. run a…

a program around diversity that we do every June. Last year, a big part of that program was centered around artificial intelligence and how we prepare our members, in particular diverse businesses, to leverage AI, take advantage of it and not get run over by it, right? And so it had always been more of a celebration of kind of diverse businesses, which is great.

but we really wanted to present some tools and kind of provide tools to our diverse businesses as they’re thinking about what the future looks like. using our events to influence that economic development lens is a big focus for us as we kind of think about what does the organization look like in the future? So that’s just a couple of examples of ways we’ve…

We’ve tried to take more traditional chamber of commerce kind of focus and then add an economic development kind of bent to that. And we’ve changed some of our other programming around to do similar things as well. we have what’s a pretty unique structure with area councils. These are almost operate like volunteer led chambers of commerce that cover a certain geography in the community.

Brandon Burton (15:43.119)
Okay.

Charles Wood (15:44.382)
And we used to have 12. One of those was not geographically based. The other 11 were. And we pared that down, which was challenging. I used the description of sacred cows make the best hamburger, right? So we were making hamburger out of sacred cows. And we kind of.

Brandon Burton (15:59.998)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Charles Wood (16:10.273)
required several of those to merge down and kind of, and so we, grew their footprint, but it allowed us to free up staff time. And then that staff time now we’re deploying. So one is we created an owners only council, which is very curated. So we don’t let anybody in. There’s no salespeople in it. Like it is just a peer network for business owners.

which has been pretty successful. And then we plan on launching probably one or two industry specific councils so that those councils will be almost like a resource for our economic development team. And then we also took on management of an outside entity called the Chattanooga Regional Manufacturers Association. So,

Brandon Burton (16:43.877)
love that.

Charles Wood (17:03.429)
If you met Bea in St. Paul, we took a page out of her book of kind of entering into a memorandum of understanding where we’re the management kind of association management partner for that manufacturers association, which has also got a lot of history. It was founded in 1902. And so we have a chamber staff person that’s managing that association.

Brandon Burton (17:09.359)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (17:28.512)
One of our economic development staff is heavily engaged on that from a workforce and economic development perspective, and so we freed up kind of capacity by effectively eliminating some programs so we could add some things back in that have, you know, I think that will create a lot more value from an economic development standpoint.

Brandon Burton (17:47.996)
Yeah, those are great examples. I love the idea of all the programming having a strategic purpose being tied into that points back to economic development. And I think that’s something that could be replicated for any size chamber, wherever they are, to just say, you know, whatever the current programming is, what can we do to elevate it and take it to the next level and give it a purpose that points back to our mission and what we’re doing and really help to drive

more purpose in the community. And it goes back to that constant evolving and modernizing things. So you had mentioned earlier that the staff and everybody has, for the most part, adapted very well to change that’s been going on. And even as you’re talking about these committees that cover geography, you phrased it in a way that you expanded their foot.

Charles Wood (18:18.91)
Yep, absolutely.

Charles Wood (18:31.044)
You You

Brandon Burton (18:45.273)
So instead of eliminating, expanding, instead of eliminating, I like that. Just the way things are phrased. A positive outlook on it. But what are some of these other changes that have been implemented, that have been received well, that are helping with that goal of evolving?

Charles Wood (19:06.348)
Yeah, I think, and I will say like change is hard, right? And so make no mistake, you know, we’ve had some team members that have been here for a long time and it is, yeah, for them it’s much more challenging. You know, when we bring on new team members, know, this is all new to them and so it’s just normal. But it is pretty challenging. You know, another, know, we’ve been…

Brandon Burton (19:10.109)
Sure is.

Brandon Burton (19:27.762)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (19:33.7)
Working really hard to leverage our leadership programs has been another initiative around that. And so we run a program called Leadership Chattanooga. It just celebrated its 40th anniversary. And that program has really been interesting. It used to be much more centered around building a network, learning a little more about the community, that kind of thing. But the curriculum, it’s an eight month program.

Brandon Burton (19:49.213)
you

Charles Wood (20:03.549)
And over the last few years, the curriculum has transitioned to align with our strategic plan. So I mentioned those four big pillars for us. So we actually have a session that’s focused around economic mobility. We have a program centered around talent. We have a program centered around entrepreneurship and innovation. And so we’re doing our best to of steep each class.

Brandon Burton (20:05.563)
We’re going to have wait for

Brandon Burton (20:13.821)
I’m not a big fan of the social service that we have. I’m not a big fan of the service. I’m not a big of the social I don’t know what else we can do to help most vulnerable people.

Charles Wood (20:33.348)
in what that strategy looks like. So that frankly, when they exit, they become our champions. They become a champion for that work. And so by transitioning it into kind of overlapping with our strategic plan, that’s been a really big help. And then the second thing we’ve done is kind of tie a little bit of it to our government relations effort.

Brandon Burton (20:43.345)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (21:00.589)
So one of the questions now that we ask when folks are exiting, when they graduate that program is, are you considering, would you consider running for office in the future? And so, right, because in a perfect world, as a business organization, you wanna see your local elected leaders and even your national elected leaders come from a business environment.

Brandon Burton (21:12.891)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (21:18.653)
Thank

Brandon Burton (21:27.388)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (21:28.841)
And so for us, that’s a strategic opportunity. Last year, our young professionals group hosted a, so you think you want to run for office kind of session, did some training around that to kind of get folks ready if they were interested in it. And so I think, as we think about, how do you take

How do you embed your economic enrollment strategy into your leadership programs? And then how do you leverage your leadership programs to drive kind of that opportunity around potential future elected officials? That’s a long-term play. It will take certainly more than five years to do, but the goal there is that when folks do run for office, they get elected, then we become a resource for them when they’re in office.

Brandon Burton (21:54.077)
Thank

Brandon Burton (21:57.982)
and I’m to do some of that. And I’m going to some of that I’ve been working for the past minutes. So, I’m going go ahead and turn this off. See you. Bye.

Charles Wood (22:18.954)
and that they’re coming into office with a good understanding of a lot of the priorities that we have.

Brandon Burton (22:22.077)
Yeah, hopefully it creates an ally in those public offices. So as you guys ask that question as they graduate out of the program, what kind of response do get? Is it more of planting a seed or are you getting responses that are like, yeah, or no way? I don’t know.

Charles Wood (22:39.458)
It’s a, it’s a, mean, most say no, know, most say we’re not, I’m not gonna do that. And it’s, I would say it’s harder now, right, to I think convince people that are in a business background to run for office than it’s probably ever been. Because, you know, we’re just, the country as a whole is so divided politically, it’s challenging. But we, last year we had city elections, we had a recent,

Brandon Burton (22:44.23)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (23:08.942)
a graduate from Leadership Chattanooga that came in as a city council member. He’s now chairing the Economic Development Committee for the Chattanooga City Council, which is great. And then we have county elections this year and we have one Leadership Chattanooga graduate who is running for a school board seat. So we’ll see if they end up in that. And so I think over time, right, the hope is that you have more and more folks that are willing to take that leap.

Brandon Burton (23:38.012)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that. And just, think, asking the question, it does kind of help plant that seed. And as opportunities come up, they can fall back on the experience they had in leadership Chattanooga and say, know what? I could be a candidate, and I could help see through some positive change and things that would help the business environment. So I love that you guys are asking that question and doing the programming for the young professionals. That’s awesome.

Charles Wood (24:00.795)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:06.141)
I haven’t heard of other chambers doing that. I’m sure they do, but I haven’t heard it yet.

Charles Wood (24:06.61)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (24:10.146)
I would imagine they do. It’s just, to me, it’s a matter of being really intentional. You know, I mean, you just, you’ve gotta be, hopefully you’re thinking several years out and you’re being really intentional, you know, with each program to think about how that program can then impact the community beyond what happens at the chamber, right?

Brandon Burton (24:31.611)
Right, yeah, I love that. Well, I always like to ask for those who are listening who obviously, maybe not so obviously, but they have a desire to take their organization up to the next level. I’d to see what kind of tip or action item you might suggest as they strive towards accomplishing that goal.

Charles Wood (24:54.913)
Yeah, think, you know, to me, one thing is, is don’t be afraid to change. You know, I think that as an association, we’re all effectively chambers are all association organizations. You can’t get too stuck in kind of what you’ve always done. It creates a lot of risk. so,

I think as we’re in the middle of a nominating process right now, and I would say, be thoughtful around who’s coming onto your board, that they’re comfortable with change and taking some risks. I read an article a little while back that was basically titled, Staying in Your Lane is Overrated. And it used Amazon as an example. And basically,

The idea was Amazon was a bookstore, right? For those of us old enough to remember, and they built this e-commerce website. And what happened over time is they had to build out all of this technology infrastructure to be able to sustain that business, right? And that infrastructure is what created AWS. And so they went from being an e-commerce organization to being an incredible technology company.

Brandon Burton (25:52.423)
Great.

Brandon Burton (26:11.196)
Yeah.

Charles Wood (26:18.584)
And it was all because they didn’t stay in their lane. And so I think that to me was a really interesting kind of message, I think, to take from what is now, of course, one of the largest companies on the planet, but think about how a company that’s built this great business is still innovating. They’re still looking at how they create, right?

Brandon Burton (26:40.701)
Yeah, I think that’s a good example of looking to where things are going in the future and say, yeah, as a bookseller, you know, they’re not the big online retailer yet, but they see that’s where the future is going. And they build up the infrastructure starting with selling books and then adding more things. And then they see where things are going, you know, more, you know, in a digital landscape. then, know, AWS get, I say, get spun up, but it’s more than that.

right? But they’re seeing where the future is going and they’re laying that the roads, they’re paving roads to that future. And as Chambers, we can do the same thing and we can help the businesses that are within our organization see that future and pave their roads. And that’s what it’s all about to be evolving and look into the future. So I love that response. Which leads me into my next question as we look to the future of Chambers.

Charles Wood (27:11.065)
Yep.

Charles Wood (27:34.079)
I think that, and I’m gonna plug a friend of mine’s book for anybody who’s met Amy Holloway, but she’s got a book coming out around trust and trust building. And I mentioned kind of this dynamic, the political dynamic, right? That we’re kind of facing as a country and even globally.

Brandon Burton (27:39.709)
How do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Charles Wood (28:04.018)
And I think we have a role to play around how we help build trust in our communities. I think if we can do nothing else over the next decade, I think thinking about how we work with our local government partners and the private sector to build trust. the business community continues to be one of the, think, most trusted kind of…

Brandon Burton (28:24.125)
Thank you.

Charles Wood (28:31.295)
kind of groups that’s out there. And I think we need to make sure we’re thinking about how we help build trust in our communities, certainly across the country as chambers.

Brandon Burton (28:43.461)
Yeah, that’s so valuable. These people don’t know what to trust anymore. Even from scrolling through social media, you never know what I’m reading. Is this real or is this fake news or AI thing or whatever? So being that source of truth and trust is so important in today’s age. I love that.

Charles Wood (28:57.193)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (29:06.653)
Well, Charles, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or anywhere you might point people who might want to learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Chattanooga. Where would you point them and what would be the best way to…

Charles Wood (29:19.02)
Sure, absolutely. So certainly my email, is cwood at chattanoogachamber.com. I’ll let y’all figure out how to spell Chattanooga. And then of course our website, which is chattanoogachamber.com is another good spot that’ll get you there. And then I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on a bunch of other social media platforms, but I don’t pay any attention to those, but I am on LinkedIn and reasonably active. So that’s another great way to reach me.

Brandon Burton (29:46.041)
That’s great. We’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it easy to find you and connect. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time and sharing some of your experience and insights with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. You provided a lot of value for us today, so I appreciate it.

Charles Wood (30:02.216)
Thanks so much, Brandon. Appreciate it.

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Diversifying Programming for Non-Dues Revenue with Sheila Thomas

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Brandon Burton (00:00.638)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Sheila Thomas. Sheila has served as the president and CEO of the Table Rock Lake Chamber of Commerce since 2014. Before joining the Chamber, Sheila served as executive director of the Ozarks River Heritage Foundation.

where she partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to manage several Corps properties, including the Dewey Short Visitor Center and multiple campgrounds. While much of her career has been spent as a successful real estate broker in the Branson area, her professional roots are in journalism, public relations, and marketing, a foundation that continues to influence her strategic leadership style today. Under Sheila’s leadership, her chamber team has earned 20 awards from the

the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, an international award for digital marketing, and the marketing campaign award from the Missouri Division of Tourism. The organization has also been voted best in Southwest Missouri for three consecutive years. Sheila is a member of the Rotary Club of Table Rock Lake and currently serves as the Board of Directors for the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri. She is a graduate of Leadership Missouri and has been

recognized as one of Springfield’s business journals, 20 Most Influential Women, and by Ingram’s Magazine as one of 50 Missourians to know. Sheila and her husband Gordon have three children and four grandchildren. And when she’s not championing for her community, you’ll find her boating on Table Rock Lake or spending time with her grandbabies. But Sheila, 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

Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Sheila Thomas (02:01.751)
Well, thanks, Brandon. It’s good to be here with you. Thank you for asking me. I’m not sure how much interesting I have to share about myself other than now I seem to be most excited about my grandkids. I have four now. And so that has been that they have all been born in the last three years. So, yeah, so that has been quite a life changing thing for us. We we tend to try to figure out how we can go.

Brandon Burton (02:21.972)
wow.

Sheila Thomas (02:31.381)
either north to Kansas City or south to Fayetteville, you know, every weekend just about. So that’s been an exciting thing. And I love living here at Table Rock Lake because I absolutely love being out on the lake and spending time there in the summertime.

Brandon Burton (02:37.3)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:53.364)
Well, you’re doing something right. If the grandkids are pulling you in those directions, you got your priorities straight, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the Table Rock Lake Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of your organization, staff, scope of work you’re involved with, budget, kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Sheila Thomas (02:57.118)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (03:13.567)
Okay, so we have around 500 members, so we’re kind of a medium-sized chamber in Missouri anyway. We have a staff of six, and that’s a little bit unusual probably for that number of members, but we also handle tourism and economic development for our county, so we have some different programs of work than some chambers.

but we do traditional chamber things also. Membership, know, member services and education and advocacy and all those types of things. So we are here in on Table Rock Lake in Branson West, which is just as the name says, just west of Branson, Missouri, different county. But we are in a county that contains Silver Dollar City and

two thirds of the shoreline of Table Rock Lake. kind of a small, smaller area, but a big, tourism spot.

Brandon Burton (04:22.218)
Yeah, and a beautiful part of the country. It really is beautiful there. So you guys got a great spot. Well, I think that that helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. So we’ll focus most of our discussion around diversifying programming and how it can help boost and sustain different areas of work within your chamber. So we’ll dive into that in much more detail as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Sheila Thomas (04:24.693)
Yeah, yeah it is.

Brandon Burton (04:52.362)
All right, Sheila, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about diversifying and programming. So as you mentioned in kind of the introduction of your chamber, you guys have the tourism responsibility as well as economic development on top of your chamber responsibilities. But that I think has a lot of strengths to it. Like it can spread you thin, but it has a lot of strengths to it to allow you to align.

your focus and your programming to really move things forward in your community. But I’d to learn more from your perspective as far as diversifying your programming. What does that look like? How have you implemented that as a practice versus a lot of maybe some of the, not to put anything down, but some of the stale programming that we see around Chambers. What could be a fresh look for us?

Sheila Thomas (05:49.292)
Well, I mean, you know, as I said, we do the traditional chamber things, obviously, but and we’re a little bit different area. I understand as in a tourism based economy, it is a little different than just, you know, a town out in the middle of outstate Missouri. But we have we have made an attempt actually within the last

or three years to really diversify. The first thing we did was to become involved in economic development. We were already doing some tourism marketing through some grant opportunities and then we would raise money from our members to help support the things that the grant wouldn’t pay for. But about three years ago we decided that we wanted to embark on an economic development program. There’s no

In our county, there’s no city or county that has an economic development director. So we felt like we needed to fill that gap. And so we hired a company called Opportunity Funding. We created a five-year strategic plan. And then we set about raising money to fund our economic development program. And we got pledges over a five-year period of about a million and a quarter.

that funded the hiring of an economic development director and then the creation of our department and we’re working on some other initiatives there as well. And then tourism, like I said, we had been doing tourism marketing, utilizing a state grant and then some matching money from a tax district that is in part of our county.

But we decided that we needed to place a lodging tax on our on the ballot and so that passed this last year in April went into effect in October and the county contracted with us to manage those funds and do that marketing and so we receive an admin fee from that from that also and so

Sheila Thomas (08:14.829)
that we’ll be able to expand staffing in that department. But we are a small team, we do a lot of big things. And so we really probably are understaffed based on what we do, but we do it pretty well. We’ve managed to do it pretty well.

Brandon Burton (08:35.272)
Yeah, I love that you guys saw the opportunity and the need between economic development and finding solutions for driving the marketing and funding and really just making a charting your own path. You’re not asking for permission necessarily.

Sheila Thomas (08:50.177)
Well, that’s kind of my belief about what chambers should be doing. You know, you find an opportunity in your community or a need and then you figure out how to fill that gap. Related to business and the economy, obviously not a social service type gap, but yeah, we just felt like we were the best equipped to do it. So if not us, then who? So we did it.

Brandon Burton (09:19.144)
Right. Yeah. And great opportunities for you guys to be able to step into those those two areas with tourism and economic development. So I’m thinking for those listening, you know, maybe they’re in small town USA and and they don’t have the same kind of scale of needing the economic development or the tourism driver. Or you have the other end of the scale where maybe they are in a bigger

Sheila Thomas (09:26.72)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (09:47.691)
community and there’s a separate destination marketing organization or economic development organization. What role can, I don’t want say should, but what role could a chamber have in those situations to still look at diversifying their programming to not just rely on membership and networking and things like that? What other revenue sources can they look

Sheila Thomas (09:51.136)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (10:15.902)
look towards or even lean into some of these things that you’ve already addressed.

Sheila Thomas (10:20.686)
We tend to focus very heavily on what our mission is and those things include economic development, tourism, that kind of thing. And then we try to create programming around those activities. One of the things we did several years ago was create what we call Chamber University.

Brandon Burton (10:35.038)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (10:49.558)
and we offer classes that our members can attend. And we charge for those because we believe people find value in things that they pay money for. And we often have experts that are providing, you know, a well-rounded curriculum that you wouldn’t get just anywhere. And so we charge $25 and it’s usually a three-hour, two to three-hour class.

and we poll our members to find out what types of topics they’re interested in, obviously. And then we do a lot of, we have what we call a community partner program, and these are basically folks who contribute above and beyond their membership dues, who just want to focus on mission-based things. You know, any chamber has those members who

join because they just want to network or they just want to they’re big on advocacy, legislative advocacy or those kinds of things. But you also have members who join because they believe in your mission and those folks contribute to us a little bit at a little bit higher level because we’re still on a fair share dues structure. But so it’s kind of a blended structure between tiered and fair share.

Brandon Burton (12:16.158)
OK.

Sheila Thomas (12:17.164)
they contribute above and beyond their membership dues. And then we highlight them in all kinds of ways throughout the year. But I think you just have to get creative for revenue generation. But if it’s tied to what your mission is and not just simply a fundraiser, you’re much better off.

Brandon Burton (12:42.206)
Yeah. So I’m curious about Chamber University. said you’re members and seeing what they’re interested in learning. But what are some of the topics you guys have dove into with Chamber University, just for some examples?

Sheila Thomas (12:47.106)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (12:54.478)
Our members have indicated always a very strong interest in marketing. And so we have had a lot of marketing classes. And because we’re fortunate to have some larger businesses here who have marketing departments and sophisticated marketing departments, they have given us really great class topics.

Brandon Burton (13:13.876)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (13:23.99)
We’ve taught, we just had one on search engine optimization and we’ve had them on search engine marketing and I think the last one we had was more social media based. We have one coming up that’s how to utilize market research in your marketing and where to go for information regarding market research. And so just, we’ve had

variety, a big variety of topics that members have really, we always ask them to rate the programming and we always get excellent reviews. it’s been a really popular thing for our members.

Brandon Burton (14:09.546)
Yeah, that’s good. Is it typically like done over lunch or is it strictly come and learn or what’s the format? Okay.

Sheila Thomas (14:18.186)
It’s usually like 9 to 11 or 9 to noon. And we have a sponsor. We have a sponsor for everything. We have a sponsor who is allowed to, they provide like a, you know, a continental breakfast. And then they are allowed to speak to the group. And we give them a specified amount of time.

Brandon Burton (14:24.606)
There you go.

Brandon Burton (14:38.922)
Yeah, that’s good. And then the community partner program. So I love that idea of having those members who contribute above and beyond that are mission based to be able to lean on them. like you said, every community has them. I think of the big manufacturers that they may not sell any more widgets by coming to a networking event, but they still they see a lot of value in the mission of the chamber.

Sheila Thomas (14:49.998)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (14:55.971)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (15:01.58)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (15:07.096)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (15:07.818)
So they want to get behind that and whether it’s advocacy or different angles that the chamber’s involved with, they want to be a part of. So leaning into that. What are some of these other non dues revenue areas that you guys look to or have been able to spin up?

Sheila Thomas (15:15.854)
That’s right.

Sheila Thomas (15:24.206)
We do a couple of publications every year. Of course, again, we’re in a tourism-based economy, so we have a need for a vacation guide that we do every year. And every other year, we do either a community guide or an updated lake map, and we sell ads in those publications.

and then we distribute them through a variety of sources. But we make a good bit of income from all of those things. In a smaller community, a community guide would work, definitely. It’s basically a of a combination of relocation and economic development type publication. And so we utilize that.

Brandon Burton (16:02.675)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (16:22.862)
We sell ads on our website. Again, we’re a tourism-based economy, so I get that our website probably has more visitation than some. Let’s see. We don’t do any major community events except a fireworks show that we have been doing for 40 plus years, and we are not going to be allowed to ever not do that event. However,

Brandon Burton (16:28.648)
you.

Brandon Burton (16:48.234)
Nobody will know what to do on the Fourth of July, right?

Sheila Thomas (16:52.876)
That’s right. That’s right. However, we have managed to we have managed to do a really good job with that. And we we give our we have partnered with so we needed corporate donations to help pay for the show. And so we partnered with our local radio station and with a company in Springfield on me on media.

And the radio provides us commercials to highlight our sponsors. And On Media provides us also a commercial. And we get to highlight our biggest sponsors. And so they get something from their donation, if you will. So they’re not just giving to a fireworks show. And we try to do all of our

Brandon Burton (17:42.376)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (17:49.025)
all of our programming that way to make sure that our sponsors really have value in what they get. We have a golf tournament, but we really focus on the networking part of it and the camaraderie part. And we have on-course sponsors that go out and they man booths and do things like that, but they love it. They just love it. And so,

We have partnered with a local golf course to do that and we just try to make sure that there is value there and they’re not just, we’re not just asking them for money as like a donation because we’re not a social service organization or a charity. We are a business organization and so we try to approach it that

Brandon Burton (18:44.852)
Yeah, so that comment kind of leads into, I was going to circle back to your economic development front where you had partnered with Opportunity Funding to do the, we’ll say the funding round, to be able to approach the economic development work. For those listening who may not be familiar with that sort of…

Sheila Thomas (18:52.994)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (19:00.844)
The funny, yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:12.778)
function or fundraising opportunity? Did you guys structure that within a foundation? Is it just within the chamber? How did you go about the asks? I’m assuming people committed to give X amount over a five-year period or something like that. But how was that structured? How did that work?

Sheila Thomas (19:22.819)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (19:28.515)
Right?

Sheila Thomas (19:33.263)
So opportunity funding has a lot of experience in this realm. And so they were a very valuable partner because we created the strategic plan with the help of probably 100 to 100, about 150 probably people in our community had input into this plan and opportunity funding sort of led us through that process. Then once we had the plan completed, opportunity funding

Brandon Burton (19:53.898)
Thanks.

Sheila Thomas (20:02.19)
helped us with the asks. So we helped set up the appointments and then opportunity funding would provide us with information that we could provide the prospect. And so they really walked us through that whole process. And it was a very positive experience for us. It went very well. We had had people telling us for several years that they were really

They really wanted us to focus on economic development and we really hadn’t done anything in that strong in that regard. And so they were, I think, very excited when we stepped into this role. And so we just great response and opportunity funding basically from start to finish plans the process for you and walks you through it.

Brandon Burton (20:58.698)
Okay, so is it all being held within the chamber or did you guys do a separate foundation?

Sheila Thomas (21:03.498)
yes. So we have a foundation and some of the prospects wanted their money to go to the foundation, but we have a management agreement with the foundation and the chain between the management agreement between the chamber and the foundation. And so we are able to utilize both. Most of the money comes into the chamber.

Brandon Burton (21:25.898)
So either way. Okay. Is there any strategic advantages of having it come into the chamber versus the foundation or vice versa that you can identify?

Sheila Thomas (21:37.294)
really, it just depends on how the prospect, they want to donate it to a 501c3 or a 501c6. Yeah, tax write-off or business expense, of, you know, one or the other.

Brandon Burton (21:44.712)
Yeah, get the tax right off or yeah.

Econ Dev Ops is the virtual assistant service built specifically for small Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Organizations (EDOs)

Brandon Burton (21:51.275)
Yeah. Okay. Very good. And then with the tourism marketing, I think that’s great that you guys took that on to get that on the ballot to be able to get the lodging tax. I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t there already. I thought that was a normal thing for anywhere. You stay at a hotel and you’re paying your hot funds and then it’s going to whoever’s driving tourism. But to see the need there and to be able to take it from idea to

Sheila Thomas (21:57.006)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (22:11.279)
I know.

Brandon Burton (22:21.2)
execution. What was that like trying to get it on the ballot and what kind of challenges did you guys face with that?

Sheila Thomas (22:28.818)
wow, that’s a loaded question. so, we, we met, with, several groups of people leading up to the decision. our County commission was favorable, in terms of putting a tax on the ballot. They, they believe that that is, was a good thing.

Brandon Burton (22:33.748)
Yeah

Brandon Burton (22:48.51)
which has green eyes to bright and green eyes to blue.

Sheila Thomas (22:55.182)
We decided on a lodging tax rather than just like a retail type tax. so it went on the ballot and then we began trying to educate people because it is one of those things. A lodging tax, anywhere you go you pay a lodging tax. But people here are…

Brandon Burton (23:17.115)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (23:22.542)
in our area are very, very tax averse. And so we didn’t know how it was going to work, but it did pass. And it’s going to give us some money that we didn’t have to be able to promote our area. And so we’re in a county of about 32,000 people, but our largest city is 2,500 people.

And so and where my office is in Branson West, that’s about almost maybe 500 people. That’s it. And so there’s a lot of of nightly rentals here and not a lot of big hotels or anything like that, but a lot of nightly rentals. And so we just saw that as an opportunity to give us some money to promote us and our area versus so we’re you know, we’re nine miles, 10 miles from Branson and

Brandon Burton (23:58.185)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (24:20.748)
They have a very large budget for tourism marketing, but we wanted to market our own little corner of the world. And so that gives us that opportunity.

Brandon Burton (24:27.679)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:33.364)
Yeah, that’s great. And I think for anybody who’s considering that, I mean, as far as a revenue source, that’s coming from people outside of the community. So you’re not going to the business owners and the residents and saying, we want to impose this tax on you. But it’s those that come and enjoy our amenities, who use our roads, who come bring business to the restaurants and everything and the retail outlets. Let’s have them help fund the bill of

Sheila Thomas (24:44.801)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (24:53.878)
Right.

Sheila Thomas (24:58.37)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (25:02.935)
Right.

Brandon Burton (25:03.434)
and making sure all of this is up and good for them. So I think it makes a whole lot of sense and I’m glad you guys were able to communicate that through the marketing or everything you had to do to be able to get that on the ballot and get it passed. So great job to you guys and congratulations on that victory. I wanted to ask on behalf of those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Sheila Thomas (25:15.086)
Mm-hmm.

Sheila Thomas (25:20.43)
Thanks.

Brandon Burton (25:31.016)
What kind of tip or action item might you share with them, whether it’s related to what we’ve talked about today or something totally different that might help them in accomplishing that?

Sheila Thomas (25:37.345)
You

Sheila Thomas (25:40.655)
Well, first let me say, just so that they understand that I understand. When I came to this role in 2014, I started in April and I realized in May that I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to make payroll. And I had to go to our biggest contributor who normally

Brandon Burton (25:59.531)
Thanks.

Hmm.

Sheila Thomas (26:09.998)
would pay for her things like all like in June for the whole year. I had to go to her and say, would you consider doing this in May instead of June? Because I’m in a bad way and she did and fortunately, and so I understand what it’s like to be, you know, that that chamber that is like just trying to keep your head above water. I get it. I do get it.

Brandon Burton (26:13.768)
Right.

Brandon Burton (26:34.889)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (26:38.658)
What we really tried to do and what I have a different team now than I had then, but what we really tried to do is really focus on what we were supposed to be doing. And that is being advocating for business, representing business, helping business owners and not trying to do a bunch of other things. And so we really tried to hone in on that.

And I read a book, I have it here right by me, several years ago called Horseshoes versus Chess by Dave Anderson. Yeah, and you got it too? Yep, there it is. I recommend that book to new chamber execs all the time because you really have to understand the long game.

Brandon Burton (27:16.38)
Yes, Dave Atkinson.

I’ve got mine right here. Yep.

Sheila Thomas (27:37.563)
And I started, I became involved early on in our state organization, our Chamber of Commerce Executives of Missouri, and attended their conferences and that kind of thing. I had never run a chamber before when I started. so I just tried to get as much education as I could. And so I strongly recommend that for anybody that’s trying to

move up, either get your membership numbers up or get your revenue up or both. You just you really have to just don’t do just what you’ve always done. You have to look at it differently and you have to look at making sure that you’re doing the things that the businesses want you to do.

Brandon Burton (28:19.401)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:32.042)
Absolutely. Great piece of advice. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Sheila Thomas (28:44.782)
You know, ACCE talks about, know, they do a report on this every year and I think their research shows that, you know, chamber membership is not necessarily as important to current generations as it had been in the past.

Brandon Burton (28:52.776)
Horizon, yeah.

Sheila Thomas (29:14.178)
But I believe, you know, especially in communities, we kind of represent a county more so than a city, but particularly in cities, there’s a sense of belonging that people still want and connectiveness. And so I really, I don’t think we’re going away anytime soon. I think if we’re doing the things that the businesses need and want,

then we’re valuable and they want to keep us around and want to be part of it. So I’m not as, I’m not negative about the future of Chambers at all. I think there’s still a great place for the organization in a community.

Brandon Burton (30:04.884)
Yeah, I think to your point, in a world where things are much more connected digitally, chambers will be around for that human connection because as humans, we still need that. We need that to thrive and chambers will be there to fill that space. So as well as a lot of other space, but that’s one key point that I see. Well, Sheila, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information.

Sheila Thomas (30:13.453)
Yes.

Yes.

Sheila Thomas (30:24.064)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (30:30.932)
listeners and they want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the table Rock Lake Chamber. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to reach out?

Sheila Thomas (30:40.942)
If they just want to find out information about our organization, we have our tourism website is visittablerocklake.com. And of course we invite everyone to come and see us vacation here. We have tablerocklakechamber.com is more information about the organization. And then we have

of links to our economic development sites and all those kinds of things in our tourism site. If someone wants to contact me, the best way to do that is email and my email address is sthomas at visittablerocklake.com.

Brandon Burton (31:26.708)
It’s perfect. We’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it nice and easy and people can check out the different websites and see the sponsors you have on there and everything else you guys are doing.

Sheila Thomas (31:29.687)
Okay.

Sheila Thomas (31:35.811)
Yeah, we have, let me make mention. our, my membership development director was recognized by ACCE as one of the 40 under 40 in the, you know, in the country. And she also won the top business development award in our chamber category this last year. And so she’s a great resource for people that are interested in.

Brandon Burton (31:48.788)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (32:04.78)
learning a little bit more about membership pitches or sales, anything like that. And then I have a couple other great resources too, tourism marketing and economic development. So if we can help, we’d be happy to.

Brandon Burton (32:17.716)
Yeah.

Awesome, I appreciate that. Well, Sheila, thank you for setting aside some time and being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. This has been a great conversation and hopefully one that is getting some ideas turning in the minds of the listeners to be able to find other ways to meaningfully add to their bottom line in their organization. I appreciate it.

Sheila Thomas (32:42.946)
Yeah.

Sheila Thomas (32:46.287)
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

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Relationship Building with Ray Hernandez

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Brandon Burton (00:00.93)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the show, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Ray Hernandez. Ray is a seasoned leader in community and economic development with a proven track record of driving transformational growth across Texas. He currently serves as President and CEO of the Lake Houston Partnership.

Prior to this role, Ray served as the president and CEO of the Huntsville-Walker County Chamber, where he led efforts to pass Huntsville ISD’s largest bond election in 23 years. As president of the Lewisville Area Chamber of Commerce, he played a key role in securing Mary Kay Cosmetics’ $110 million R &D relocation from Dallas to Lewisville.

Ray also previously led the Kyle area Chamber of Commerce and the San Marcos Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In 2009, Ray spearheaded development efforts for two major regional milestones, the largest hospital between San Antonio and Austin, Seton Medical Center, Hayes, and the largest community college in the region, Austin Community College. He is a U.S. Army veteran. or as a U.S. Army veteran,

Ray Hernandez (01:07.561)
. Okay.

Brandon Burton (01:21.166)
He also has earned his IOM designation through the US Chamber of Commerce at Layola Maramount University. He graduated with honors from Southwest Texas State University, completed economic development training through Texas A &M’s College Station Extension Office, and is an honors graduate in the Innovation ADA Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Ray Hernandez (01:35.352)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (01:49.496)
Throughout his career, has served on regional, state, and national boards. He’s married to his wife, Belinda, and together they have four children. But Ray, I want to welcome you to Chamber Chat podcast. We’re excited to have you with us today and wanted 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 little better.

Ray Hernandez (02:11.326)
Well, thank you for the opportunity to come and visit and share a little bit about what my career has been in the industry. Certainly, when we think about

Something that’s interesting about myself, I think many of us never thought about getting into this line of work, but I think for me, it’s a calling of service that was placed in us by our parents. And so I always love to tease and say that I come from a small family of 11. So I have eight brothers and two sisters and I’m the 10th child. And so it was always a big gathering of folks just coming home.

Brandon Burton (02:41.976)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (02:51.691)
every day, so it was a good fit. But mom especially really instilled in us a life of service. And when I look across my siblings, all of us have played a role where there was Rotary, J.C.’s, Alliance Club, serving as an elected official at city council someplace. There’s always been a life of service for all of us. And my career has been that. I believe that I don’t have a job. It’s been a calling to serve.

whatever community or organization that I’ve been engaged in. And so when I think about something interesting, that’s the thing that I think to, without me knowing that, that was instilled in me. And then it’s something that I took on and continue to grow as my 27 year career has transpired. And I’ve been very blessed to be surrounded by some incredible talents, some folks that care deeply about community and others.

and been lifted up by other servant leaders throughout my career.

Brandon Burton (03:56.673)
Yeah, it is interesting to be able to take a look back, you know, kind of take some perspective and see how the situations in your life have prepared you, the people in your life have prepared you for what you’re doing today. So I appreciate that. Well, tell us a little bit about the Lake Houston Partnership to give listeners an idea of the size, scope of work you guys are involved with, staff, budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Ray Hernandez (04:06.282)
That’s right.

Ray Hernandez (04:22.942)
Yeah, the partnership Lake Houston was founded 102 years ago, and so the organization has continued to change and develop and innovate throughout all that time, and especially in the last 10 years. And so it was led by some folks that are well known in the industry. Charlie Drumble is probably one of the most well known chamber executives, and he was here.

about 15, 10 years ago. And then after that was Jenna Armstrong and Jenna’s been a great leader and someone that was a good friend and served on the state board of directors for Texas Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. Yeah. She, she, she served alongside, beside me. And so the organization has said it has, has changed and under Charlie and Jenna’s kind of transition.

Brandon Burton (05:04.974)
Jenna was on the podcast several years ago, so yeah.

Ray Hernandez (05:19.228)
moved from the Umbal area Chamber of Commerce, that’s still our name of the organization, our DBA is the partnership like Houston. And so first I’ll say this area that we serve, primarily our service area is the Northeast quadrant of Harris County. And Harris County is huge, right? Houston’s the third largest city in the United States, but from the Beltway to the South, and then that encompasses Summer Creek, Summerwood, Atoska Cedar, the city of Umbal, which is a pretty small city.

Kingwood is our primary service area. Now we reach out to out into the Porter New Caney Spring area, Aldine to the to the West and just a little bit further south of the Beltway into the Sheldon area. So our service population is about 400,000 and so some of that’s in the city. Some of it’s in the county in the the unincorporated area and for those that aren’t familiar with Texas.

There’s 254 counties in the state of Texas, and so Harris County is one of the largest, most densely populated counties. And so we serve that quadrant and so. The the biggest landmark to our West is going to be the Houston Airport, the George Bush International Airport, and so they’re they’re very engaged with us and they abut our community.

on the on the West Side and then to the South we have the Port of Houston that that’s that’s there. And so we have commuter rail and all that that’s around in the Houston area with Houston Metro. We have a bus line and those things, but the organization itself. Has a budget just under $900,000 and so that’s through a lot of different revenue streams. It’s the traditional membership and events.

But we also have an economic development partnership. And so up until this year, we’re the only chamber of commerce, quote unquote, in the Houston market that actually carried the flag of economic developments. And so what I mean by that is traditionally in my career, chambers were involved with economic development. But that was a separate entity either through a foundation or through a city or through a county.

Brandon Burton (07:37.047)
Bye.

Ray Hernandez (07:44.637)
they were the actual economic development driver. Well, the city of Humboldt has partnered with us and some others, McCord Development and some others, and invested in the work we’re doing. So we actually have an executive vice president of economic development. His name is Owen Rock. He has over 25 years of experience throughout the country, Indiana, central Texas, the Gulf Coast here in Texas. he’s originally, interesting about Owen, he’s originally from Ireland.

So very diverse staff, he, I mentioned him because that’s something that really differentiates our organization is that yes, we’re a chamber of commerce and we do all the things traditional chambers do. But one of the things that we do differently is the economic development part of our work. And so that entails doing business recruitment, retention programs tied into.

Brandon Burton (08:15.118)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (08:41.512)
Main Street revitalization programs, working with some of the partners like I mentioned earlier, the Port of Houston, United Airlines, Houston Airports, the Governor’s Office here in the state of Texas, the Greater Houston Partnership. They’re one of our biggest advocates for the area. Big organization. I believe they have over 45 staff and they’re deeply involved with economic development. we work closely with them on actually

answering requests for proposals when businesses are looking to relocate or to grow here in the area. And so Owen spends a majority of his time working on that, but that’s kind of different. Now Shannon takes care of events, Kara’s our membership development. have Teresa on communications and Erica on the team, and so we’ve been very blessed with the great board of directors currently led by Greg Milky. He’s the.

who’s an attorney in town and he served on the board years past. And so he’s come back on to assist us with with the redevelopment of the organization. One of the things that I appreciate about the board is that they have gone through. You know when you when you change organizations and you develop new things, it can be a little cumbersome and a little bit of challenging. And they’ve been very open.

Brandon Burton (09:42.638)
Yes, that’s what is coming.

Brandon Burton (10:00.047)
to be a change proposition for you about the things that could be of concern to them and to you.

Ray Hernandez (10:10.279)
They’ve been very patient and they’ve been very rolling up your sleeve. Get your hands dirty. know, board should stay at the at the the at the high 40,000 foot level strategic, but this board at sometimes it’s had to come into a more tactical engagement as well. And so they’ve they’ve understood their role and they’ve assisted me and continue to help.

Brandon Burton (10:20.974)
you

$40,000 for a here at the sport. And sometimes it’s after.

Ray Hernandez (10:40.037)
move the organization forward. So we’ve been very blessed that we have some great partners.

Brandon Burton (10:40.366)
Very good. And for those not familiar with Texas, Texas has some cities that are spelled a little differently or pronounced a little differently. Ray, he mentioned umbel. So the H is silent. So it’s spelled as humble, but it’s pronounced umbel for those that are curious where it’s located. But I appreciate that background about the organization. Today we’ll focus our conversation around the

Ray Hernandez (10:59.664)
That’s right.

Brandon Burton (11:09.742)
relationship building, especially in an ever-changing industry, being in the chamber industry. So we’ll dive in deeper on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ray, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re focusing on the value of relationships.

So specifically, I mean, we all have relationships throughout our lives, but specific to the chamber industry and just being a, in every evolving industry, you’ve been around, you know, the state of Texas, you know, a good handful of different chambers, but they have some significant impact in the state economy and everything. What are some of these lessons that you’ve learned from developing these relationships and, and how have

You leaned on those relationships as the industry evolves.

Ray Hernandez (12:00.647)
Yeah, think part of that comes back from what I mentioned before, you know, growing up in that household with the small family of 11, right? They’re very diverse relationships, even within the family. I have the firstborn is a retired attorney. She was an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas. I have a brother that works on campus on a landscaping crew. Very diverse education levels and employment levels.

of family structure levels within my own family. And so you take that and you pull it out into the business world, right? And so Chambers of Commerce, I often hear people say, well, how many members do you have? And so to me, I get it, we’re a membership-based trade organization. I get that piece. But to me, what’s more important is how many of the members that we have are engaged either physically,

Online or through some interaction and that’s the piece. I think that that brings back that relevance of relationship. Right, so for I’ll give you the example of Chick-fil-a. So we not at this organization that I’m now, but a previous Chick-fil-a owner said, right? Why should I join the the organization? The Chamber of Commerce and I said, well, he was. I got my own marketing. I don’t need a ribbon cutting. I’m well known. I’m nationwide. Why should I?

Brandon Burton (13:23.374)
Be sure to like, and subscribe.

Ray Hernandez (13:25.99)
And I said, well, it’s those relationships. You’re new to this community and you’re going to learn people, but it’s not enough for you to know who the mayor and the Superintendent of schools is. There are the heads of those organizations, but to impact your organization, even on employment level, you need to know some of the lower levels and that’s some of the areas or not the lower levels, but some of the variety of levels within those organizations that we can connect you with.

Brandon Burton (13:44.142)
you

Thank you.

you

Ray Hernandez (13:55.652)
And so I’ll give the example. He was looking to stand up a culinary hire students, right? High school students at the Chick-fil-A. So through our connection with him and connecting them with the director for the culinary arts program within the school district, he was able over the course of two years created a culinary arts program within the school that then fed him prospective employees in his shop. And so that’s, think the biggest takeaway for when I think about relationship building that.

Brandon Burton (14:00.089)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (14:12.782)
We are responsible for maintaining and supporting employees to this extent. Thank you.

Ray Hernandez (14:26.15)
The first thing we should do is when we meet and engage a potential member or even a current member is to ask the question and then just stay quiet and listen. Listen, digested. I had a meeting yesterday with a relatively new member and so we talked about all this, you know, kind of their background and things that are important to them and how do we tie that into some of the activities we have. And so we got back to the office of my membership director.

Brandon Burton (14:34.894)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:51.246)
Yes, sir.

Ray Hernandez (14:54.245)
Said, hey, I got this email and I’m ready to send it out. Are you ready to go? And I said, hold on. Let me look it over. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, which is today. And so the email was great. It talked about all the great programs. But the piece that I’m going to help her do today is how do we tie the opportunity to the event or to the engagement in that relationship, right?

And so let’s this is a construction company and they want to meet architects. So how do we get in that conversation tie the introduction of an architect? Into the room so they can build a relationship. Right, which is very, very different than what people think is a traditional role for a chamber or doing networking or ribbon cuttings, which is all important, but it’s that.

How is our relationship with an architect architectural firm here and introduction to a construction firm? And then tie that into a city that’s sending out our piece request for proposals for a big project or let’s say a hospital or a school district. Tying that all together so that member can be financially successful or at least have a potential. And I think that’s the big piece for me is that we have to.

Brandon Burton (16:00.013)
you

Brandon Burton (16:14.178)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (16:19.62)
Build the relationships one person at a time, one organization at a time, one member at a time. And we have to customize it every single time. We have to customize it based on that individual’s perspective. And you have to also remember that individual perspective may change over time, right? So what was 100 % true today, next year may be completely obsolete. We’ve seen what’s happening with AI and technology right now and things are changing so fast.

And the priorities will change, and so we have to be flexible. And I always love to say, you know, if you’re not flexible, you’re going to end up like Radio Shack. I don’t know if anybody I’m dating myself there a little bit, but what is Radio Shack? Right. It was a it was an electronic story that doesn’t exist anymore because they didn’t innovate like they that they could have. And so in part, that that’s why they’re not here. And so I think that’s that’s important. Take away when you think about a relationship, just. One person at a time, one conversation at a time.

Brandon Burton (16:57.07)
Yeah, what’s that? No, I’m just kidding.

Ray Hernandez (17:17.668)
One email at a time and just being very intentional on how we engage that you. think sometimes we’re we’re we just want people to come and we just sent out the same email blast to every single person. But it’s going to fall in death ears and I do want to share a little bit about what chambers and this is one thing that we do. We traditionally have not done a good job in building those relations with communications is that.

Brandon Burton (17:31.459)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (17:45.686)
Every week we send an email blast about all the cool things happening. Now we know that only about 70, about 20 to 30 % of our membership at any given time attend events physically. So 70 to 80 % don’t. But every week we send them an email about all these cool things that we’re doing that they can’t attend. So they’re sitting in their office, taking care of their clients before the sun comes up, after the sun goes down.

And we’re sending a message about things that they can’t come to. And they start, you know, over time, we’re sending every, so 52 weeks a year, we’re sending this, or they don’t want to come to them, right? We’re sending them this messages and they’re like, well, there’s no value because they see the value in the, in the physical engagement. And while there is some value in physical engagement, absolutely in building those types of relationships, there’s also some value in some education and imparting and some connection outside of that.

Brandon Burton (18:20.75)
worse things that they don’t want to come to, right?

Brandon Burton (18:31.287)
attendance.

Ray Hernandez (18:40.983)
So one of the things that I’ve done, and I started this, I wish I’d started earlier in my career, but just at my last chamber and currently at the partnership, we send the email, it’s called the Partnership Press on a Wednesday. And the first thing that when they open it up is a learning opportunity, either for themselves, something they can share with their staff. We’ll use little videos from our stories from Seth Godin or different speakers.

different articles about how to take care of your team or or you know, you’re stressed out because of Christmas or just some kind of little. It’s not an ask. We’re not asking for anything. We’re not asking for money. We’re asking for engagement. We’re not all it’s like a little appetizer to say. The first thing you see when you engage with us in this newsletter is a little learning piece to us, and that’s very different, right? Now we’re still going to afterwards. We’re still going to list all the ribbon cuttings and all the other stuff,

Brandon Burton (19:32.79)
Are you? Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (19:40.333)
You know what we’re going to do as well, right? Because those we’re going to showcase those business, but the first taste every time is not is a is a kind hello and here’s a little gift and you think about when you go to somebody’s house right for the first time. You know, at least in my culture you you show up with something. Maybe it may be a know box of cookies. It may be a bottle wine, but you show up with a little gift and I like to think that we’re giving our members a little gift unsolicited about something.

Brandon Burton (19:51.064)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (20:08.642)
that they can be useful in their lives, either personally or professionally, every single week. And we didn’t make an announcement about it. We just did it. We didn’t make an announcement about it. We just did it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:13.698)
Yeah, I like that. You hit on so many.

Yeah, you do it. So Leads of Value and you hit on so many good nuggets. I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, there’s a book that I read some time ago called You’re Invited. And it’s all about curating events where you’re like, you talked about being more intentional about, you know, who’s being invited and connecting people intentionally and things of that nature. And so often as chambers,

there’s a networking event and like you said, you send out the email, everybody’s invited, you want everybody to come and you get 20 % maybe if you’re lucky, right? Versus a curated event where especially, I mean, you guys have economic development responsibility. You gave the example, the architects and the construction companies, how do you make these introductions? Well, maybe it’s under the arm of economic development where you do a curated networking where you have construction companies and architects and…

Ray Hernandez (20:52.174)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:14.902)
Maybe some banks, because you need access to lending. And so these are people that are need to connect and need to know each other. And I can guarantee you get them all in a room and connections are going to be made that help generate revenue throughout the community. So being intentional about it, there’s so much value to that. But even your Chick-fil-A example, great example. And I suppose that people asking you that question, know, Ray, why should I join your organization?

Ray Hernandez (21:16.925)
Sure. Financial.

Ray Hernandez (21:26.113)
Yep. Yep.

Brandon Burton (21:44.397)
The answer might be slightly different depending on who it is to your point. You just, got to listen and see what their needs are. Right. And then again, be intentional with your response and how you’re engaging them and building. It starts with building that relationship with them, but then helping them to build those relationships that are going to help further develop their business and, help them see value in the organization. So you hit on a ton of great points.

Ray Hernandez (21:46.438)
Good morning.

Ray Hernandez (21:54.525)
Yep.

Thanks.

Brandon Burton (22:13.326)
Any other examples throughout your career and ways that you’ve been able to lean into either developing these relationships yourself or helping others develop these relationships? I’m sure you’ve got a catalog of examples that you can share, but what’s maybe another one or two that stand out to you?

Ray Hernandez (22:21.217)
Okay.

Ray Hernandez (22:35.361)
I will say, so when I was in Kyle, we were looking to bring Austin Community College into northern Hays County. So the largest city in Hays County, which is just between Austin and San Antonio, is San Marcos, a big destination place. There’s a river that flows about 287 miles from there to the coast of Texas. There’s a big water race every year on canoes.

And and kayaks and so so we’re in in in Kyle in northern Hays County and awesome. Community College is the largest community college in central in central Texas at the time, and they’re looking to expand it to northern Hays County or into Hays County itself. And so we met with with with some of their folks and had those conversations and they broke up the effort in two different ways. So one was northern Hays County.

And the other one was San Marcos itself. And so have those same conversations and we we created committees and and totally separate right there efforts were totally separate from from the northern Hays County effort. And so early on, Dick Burdick, I Dick Schneider, sorry, Dick Schneider was the president of the Buda area chamber. Another small community next to Kyle. And so.

We said, absolutely. We want to help them do this. We need a community college and educated workforce in our vehicle here in our community. And so Sam Marcus is home to now Texas State University, previously called Southwest Texas State University. And so we got up. got it. We started working on our deal and so we went to the first meeting with a gentleman by the name of Jimmy Ferguson. He owns about 7 McDonald’s in the in the South Austin Kyle Buda area.

And so at the first meeting, one of the things we came out and agreed to is that we would find leaders to help lead the committee. And so when we first proposed it, Dick Schneider said, great, we’re the chamber presidents, we should be leading this. I said, look, traditionally we should be leading it, but let’s think about this for a second.

Brandon Burton (24:47.15)
It’s not nice to eat.

Ray Hernandez (24:52.544)
This is a community college. We need the fierce soccer moms, the strong Boy Scout dads to be leading. We need them to be the face of this project. Is the business community going behind it? Absolutely. But if we want this to be successful, we need the community’s face. People that aren’t elected officials, people that only know the space in their church or in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or on the soccer clubs, we need them to be the face. So we gathered.

Brandon Burton (24:56.27)
and I’ll see you next time.

Ray Hernandez (25:21.895)
a collection of about 45 folks from all different types of background, educational levels, economic levels, political levels, religious levels, just all types of engagement. And so when we went to Austin College to the board meeting, Bob Barton, who’s since passed, had the Hayes Free Press newspaper, he was there in the lobby, older gentleman at the time, and I said, Bob, what do you think about this? He said, we’ll never get

Brandon Burton (25:29.134)
you

Ray Hernandez (25:52.083)
this diverse group of people to agree on anything, but they agree that we should have education opportunities for their children and our children. And so we came down and the vote passed. We passed something like 64 % in favor and San Marcos failed about 60%. And I believe to this day that it was those relationships we built on the ground level, on the grassroots level with those soccer moms and Boy Scouts dads, people like Vince Collier, who was with, he did

I did mortgage lending, folks like that that were just on the ground level because they were fierce, right? If there’s a rainstorm going on and they’re coming home from church and the sign that we have promoting this effort falls in the middle of the field, the bank president may, but probably is not gonna get out of his car and walk across that field to put that sign back up. But you better be darn sure that mom that cares about it.

Brandon Burton (26:34.188)
you

Brandon Burton (26:42.99)
you

Ray Hernandez (26:51.135)
her daughter playing that soccer team is going to get out of that car, stop that van and run across that field and get that sign up. And that’s, that was different, right? We had to curate that relationship and that, passion and then align it. And so, uh, I left, uh, Kyle before the building was open. They built a, they, uh, it passed. was a 90, it’s, it’s a 96 acre campus, a five story building.

Brandon Burton (26:57.102)
Thank

Brandon Burton (27:01.001)
So, bye.

Brandon Burton (27:15.694)
you

Ray Hernandez (27:19.358)
And when I left they they said, Ray, what’s the one thing I was going to Louisville to become the chamber president there? They said, Ray, what do you what do you want to? What do you think about one thing that you wish you had? You had finished before you left that you didn’t. I said, well, the Austin opinion college and somebody better invite me back for the ribbon cutting whenever it opens. And so I left in April. It opened in I believe in January and I did get invited back and I and I got to be part of those festivities. And so when I point to something that.

Brandon Burton (27:37.544)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (27:47.166)
Because my kids are grown. Our daughter just graduated from A &M. Our son’s over at Seministons State University right now. two oldest have degrees from Texas State University.

What was happening in Austin being college wasn’t affect me personally, but it was going to affect that community. And so yeah, that that but it’s that relationships one on one different levels, different sizes, different times with different folks that really created something. And that chamber is is thriving. And I think in part if you go to Kyle today, it looks completely different. They have built out. There’s hotels there. There’s just it’s.

Brandon Burton (28:03.096)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (28:21.486)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:26.434)
Bye.

Ray Hernandez (28:30.053)
huge amounts of retailers come in there, housing developments, manufacturing has come to that community. And all because, I think in part because two chamber executives were willing to put their egos aside, step back and support the leadership of others. I think that’s very different, something that I’m very, very happy about and pleased. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:46.158)
Yeah.

I love it. That’s a great example, great case study. So Ray, I like asking everybody having the show for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item that you share with them as they work towards that goal?

Ray Hernandez (29:14.494)
I think the one thing that I wish I had thought about this so much earlier in my career, but making time to invest in yourself. If you want to be a leader, then you need to have the tools to be able to lead others. And the way you do that is to take those seminars, go to ACCE, go to the US Chambers training, go to Texas Chamber of Commerce executives if you’re here in Texas training.

Go to as much training as you can, right? You still gotta take care of the business. get that piece. Pick up an easy read of a book. Try to find a lesson. Pete Habel is a good friend of mine. He wrote a book called The Arsonist in the Office. And in that book, it talks about organizations that don’t wanna deal with arsonists that’s within their organization. And it’s a good learning takeaway that we, know. And so it’s all those learning, invest in yourself, and then also invest in your team.

So one of the things I’m most proud of when I got to Louisville at the Louisville area chamber, the very first board meeting, I looked at the budget and I sat down with my board and I said, Ray, what do we need to do? I said, I would like $8,500 for professional developments. And they looked at me, what kind of trips are you doing? What are you gonna be doing? I said, none of it’s for me.

I want this money so I can invest in my team. And so I’ll use the analogy of the story of a CFO and the CEO. And the CEO is sitting in his office. He’s happy. It’s a Friday afternoon. And the CFO, the chief financial officer, runs in the office. And it’s April. And he’s livid. And he tells the CEO, what is wrong with you? What are you doing? The CEO says, hey, calm down. What’s going on? He said, you have spent all the professional development money for the entire year. And it’s April.

Brandon Burton (30:54.222)
And, you know, what we’re doing is we’re going to use this free online learning program.

Ray Hernandez (31:05.456)
And the CEO just leans back and smiles and said, yeah, isn’t that fantastic? And the CEO says, no, it’s not fantastic. You spent the whole budget for the whole year and it’s April. He says, what’s going to happen if these people leave? And the CEO says, what’s going to happen if these people stay? They have all the tools they need to help us be more successful because we invested them early on. And I think so if you want to be successful, invest in your board training.

Brandon Burton (31:06.158)
I’m

Brandon Burton (31:22.915)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (31:33.775)
invest in your staff training and invest in yourself and invest in your volunteers. Give them some, you know, it doesn’t have to be a whole day seminar. It could be a little nugget. You know, at some level, you know, I talked about the partnership press. We’re investing on members every time we send them a little article. That’s a little investment. They don’t even know that we’re investing in them, but we’re doing it every single, every week when we send them something. But I think it’s important to invest in others, right? If you want to, I’ve been successful in my career because I’ve surrounded myself with the best talent.

that I could find in people that were much smarter than me. But it also takes that you have to invest in them. And people have invested in me as well throughout my career. I’ve been very blessed to have some incredible mentors throughout my career. And so you should do the same for others as well.

Brandon Burton (32:19.584)
Yeah, very good. I also 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?

Ray Hernandez (32:21.115)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (32:29.936)
You know, I think I’ve touched on this a little bit throughout our conversation today is be open to new ideas, be open to old ideas. Seth Godin in one of his talks talks about, says, you walk into a room and there’s a group of folks and you give a presentation and you say, okay, share me your good ideas. And the room is silent, just silent. And no one’s saying a word, right? And he said, okay, people.

I need your ideas.” And finally walks up to one young man and says, what ideas? And the guy’s got his head down. He says, I’ve seen you’ve been writing in your lecture, in your book, all during class, all during the seminar. You got to have some good ideas. And he’s looking down, a little distraught, and he says, I don’t have any good ideas. You don’t have any good ideas? No? Well, great. Show me some bad ideas.

And Seth Godin talks about, and I keep this, if you go into my office, there’s a lot of books with a lot of scribbling. Nobody can read my handwriting. Sometimes I have a hard time writing, but I write a lot. take a lot of notes. in the middle of the night, I may wake up and in my bed stand, I might write a note there. And so Kath Godin says, if you don’t have good ideas, give me your bad ideas, because the good ideas are within those bad ideas someplace. And if you go on my LinkedIn, and I’ll paraphrase here.

There’s a quote that have on there. I don’t know who to attribute it to, but it says, we don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And it doesn’t matter how much money or time that we have. I cannot see the backside of where you’re sitting right now. Right? It doesn’t matter how much time and money you have. And so we only see the world as we are. And so that’s why we need a variety of different perspectives and experiences to be able to move the organization forward. I would say that to…

Brandon Burton (34:05.198)
Thank

Ray Hernandez (34:27.386)
to your organizations, if you’re an association or Chamber of Commerce or any organization, business organization is, especially for Chambers, is be representative of the community you serve. Does your organization, does your board look like and have the talent and experience of the community you serve? If you do that, I think you’ll be on the road to being successful and you’ll also be open to innovation, right?

If your organization and your community is willing to innovate, then your organization is going to be willing to innovate. You got to take chances. You know, don’t, you

have success if you don’t take that chance, right? And so I like to play golf, right? And so I’m not a great golfer, but if I don’t at least go up and hit the ball, you know, I’ll never have that opportunity to have that fantastic shot someplace. It’s like, you know, you’ll miss every shot in basketball you don’t attempt, right? So at least try. And so one thing I would say for the organizations of the future is be courageous enough to fail.

Brandon Burton (35:29.132)
That’s right.

Ray Hernandez (35:40.505)
courageous enough to ask the hard question, courageous enough to close our mouth and listen. I know sometimes that’s a hard thing for even me to do. Some days, because I’m so enthusiastic about something, so passionate about something and I want to impart, but sometimes I just have to, and my staff can tell, they’re like, my God, Ray, you had a hard time in that meeting, did you? I was like, yeah, it was really hard for me to sit on my hands and not say something. He says, you had some great ideas, right? And I was like,

Brandon Burton (35:51.086)
All right.

Brandon Burton (36:01.654)
Thank

Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (36:09.313)
I have some ideas. don’t know how great they are, but I had some ideas, but it was hard for me because I wanted to make sure that others are heard and then reach out to people that don’t speak up and ask those questions. I had a CEO of a creative union in the last few years come to me and I was in the community. had been there as a CEO for over 20 years. And I asked her, said, how come you’ve never served on the board of directors for the chamber? And she said, Ray, no one’s ever asked me.

Brandon Burton (36:38.455)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (36:38.81)
I said, what? No, no, no, no. We send out emails. We do flyers. We’re in meetings and we ask for nominations all the time, every year. What do you mean? She said, Ray, no one sat down and asked me, physically asked me. And so it goes back to the start of our conversation, right? The relevance of conversations and connections, right? Is sometimes, you you would think, why does a CEO of a big cretina

Brandon Burton (36:54.21)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (37:02.562)
Yeah.

Ray Hernandez (37:08.501)
needs somebody to sit down with them one on one. But she needed that, right? She needed that, that little personal touch. And sometimes you don’t, sometimes you don’t need that personal touch. Sometimes just that email is gonna suffice. But for some people, you have to find that nugget, that trigger, that piece that’s gonna turn that key to open that door. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (37:13.23)
They’re still personal.

Brandon Burton (37:28.812)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Ray, this has been a great conversation. I love that you brought up Seth Godin.

Brandon Burton (37:38.542)
But I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and just learn more about your perspectives and things you’ve shared. Where would you point?

Ray Hernandez (37:50.649)
So I will do that. just wanted to thank a couple of people. Frank Kenny in our industry has been fantastic. Kyle Sexton has been one of my mentors throughout my career. But there’s been a whole bunch that have really lifted me up. But in order to reach out to me, I think it’s easy. Just send an email to ray@lakehouston.org is probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Just send me an email and I’ll be happy to answer as we can or direct you to someone that can offer you some guidance. But my parting word is just, you know, take care of yourselves, make some time for yourself, both personally and professionally, and wish everyone continued success.

Brandon Burton (38:20.27)
So, thank you very

Brandon Burton (38:38.228)
Awesome. Thank you for that, Ray. Again, this has been a great conversation. We’ll make sure your email is in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find you. But appreciate you coming on and setting aside some time to share your experience and perspectives and lessons that you’ve learned throughout your career. It’s been valuable. So thank you.

Ray Hernandez (38:57.347)
Thank you for the opportunity.

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Creating a Clear Focus with Brian Anderson

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Brandon Burton (00:00.928)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader with a deep commitment to community and economic development. Brian Anderson is the President and CEO of Chamber RVA, the regional Chamber of Commerce serving Greater Richmond, Virginia.

A native of Florence, South Carolina, Brian is a proud graduate of Francis Marion University with a degree in economics. His career journey is nothing short of inspiring from serving four years as a U.S. Army and Military Intelligence Officer to nearly two decades in the beverage industry with giants like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch to serving as chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners in Georgia.

Brian transitioned to the chamber world in 2008, leading the greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce and later the greater Columbus, Georgia chamber before taking the helm at Chamber RBA in 2019. Brian has earned his IOM designation and is a certified chamber executive. He is a recognized leader in regional collaboration and workforce development.

Brian currently serves on several key boards shaping the future of Virginia’s economy. He brings to this conversation a wealth of insight on business leadership, regional strategy, and the importance of public-private partnerships in driving long-term growth. But let’s dive into an engaging and energizing conversation with Brian Anderson. Brian, 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 if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Brian D. Anderson (01:57.651)
Well, hello, Brandon. It’s a pleasure to be with you today and to have a conversation about, you know, not just our industry, the things we’re doing because we are very proud of what we do. But I’ve been around this long enough to know that our chamber colleagues out in the listening audience, we all learn from each other. We can all do better at what we do by understanding how each of us has faced different opportunities and challenges. So happy to be with you today.

interesting about me. I think the biggest one that I tell young professionals when I meet with them most of the time is how I got here. And it’s interesting more and more that I meet younger leaders coming into the industry. I didn’t start the Chamber when I was 42 years of age, which is a late and never knew what a Chamber would do, what a Chamber does. But I felt that

Brandon Burton (02:25.752)
Thank you, Mark.

Brian D. Anderson (02:53.201)
going coming out of the beverage industry after 20 years, I wasn’t having the impact I wanted to make. I was doing well as far as their their goals and their measurements, but I didn’t feel like things were that I made a contribution. And so opportunity came open through my political life that the Chamber of Commerce in Dalton was in need of a leader. And I. You know, wanted to try something different. I didn’t know what that really meant.

But I got into it and here I am 18 years later and found that intersection of business and government to be a really sweet spot for me as an interest and also a passion for me to help make a difference in not only the life of the communities I’ve served, but also me feeling that I’ve validated my skill set and things I can do well and give back.

Brandon Burton (03:40.973)
Yeah, absolutely. I like that, you know, being able to want to make a difference and feel like the work you’re doing is making an impact and that’s important and Chamberworld is a great fit for that. But thank you for your service as well in the Army. We appreciate that.

Brian D. Anderson (03:53.291)
Here it is.

Brian D. Anderson (03:57.643)
Thank you. That was fun too. I tell young and younger people, you can get leadership development anywhere. Just get it. Whether it be through the military, whether it be through a service organization, you just, just you learn leadership by doing it, not by necessarily reading a book. That’s helpful. But you got to just go out there and experience things, make some things happen, make some, you know, fail at times, but then fail off. And so I think experience can help you in any way, any way you can get it.

Brandon Burton (04:13.219)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:19.587)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Good piece of advice there. So I’d like for you to share with us a little bit more about Chamber RVA just to give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Brian D. Anderson (04:38.921)
Well, I’ve been here six years and the organization is, it was in good shape when I took over, which is not always the case in my other two stints, but Richmond is a wonderful region to live in. Our chamber serves nine localities in Virginia. You don’t have cities within counties. They are separate jurisdictions. So we serve one city, the city of Richmond, a town of Ashland, and then seven counties ranging from Chesterfield and Wrico and over.

Colonial Heights, Guchelin, Palitan, and Hanover. And that’s a pretty large geography, but they’re also contiguous in the sense of not only being connected in geography, they all work well together. So we serve that region to be an enabler across the full region. We have 12 staff members, which is not enough. We could use 15 or 16, but 12 is what we have currently.

And they are all wonderful teammates that are in the right seats doing the right work. And so I’m fortunate to have a very qualified team. They’re not all experienced. There’s some of them are young and have just could joined us, but they’re the right people for the work we’ve hired them to do. Our budget’s about three and a half million dollars up from about three one when I took over. One of the areas we had not done well when I got here was membership development. We have been declining.

And now for six years in a row, we have added net new members and net new revenue. And we’re very proud of that. And we serve about 725 members. We don’t count locations. So those are actual member companies. So if you have 10 locations or 15, it’d be more. We serve companies. And that’s about a population of about 1.4 million people in this region.

Brandon Burton (06:23.276)
It counts as one.

Brian D. Anderson (06:34.443)
We currently are operating and we just finished our first year of the three year strategic plan. We used 2023 and 24 to develop that plan. Because before that, we felt we were like a lot of chambers, a little bit not as focused as we needed to be, kind of a little bit of everything. Anytime somebody asked to do something, we’d go do it. Had a lot of events. And I’m not sure we were making the impact that we needed to make. So we, as a team and with some volunteer board members.

and a strategic consultant coach went through a process and said, how do we become more impactful in the work we do? And we settled on kind of revamped things we were already doing, but also cut out some things. And we settled on four strategic pillars, two of which chambers do every day. The first is we connect people. We have events and we build relationships. We build capital and we continue to do that. But those events we have now are

very targeted to the work we do and or the audience. We do some small business events, we do some lead investor events, I host a CEO round table monthly, any way we can connect a member where they are. So that’s been a real focus and really paying dividends for us. Advocacy, we are in the middle of the General Assembly as many states are and so we are at the state house daily advocating for bills that are pro-business or trying to

have bills that aren’t, we oppose those. And we also take no action on some. They have nothing to do with the business community, we ignore them. We do the same level of advocacy at the local level. We’re always weighing in with our jurisdictions, whether it be zoning and planning, whether it be budgeting and how they’re gonna do bond referendums. So we try to take an active role with our local governments as well in the spirit of how does their actions, their policies make the region stronger.

Our other two are a little bit different, probably from some chambers. The third one would be economic development, economic empowerment or economic mobility. And that’s looking at our data coming out of COVID. We knew the thing, we knew where we were going in, but the numbers post COVID showed the disparity or the difference between those with means and those without. And so we’ve been very focused working with the Brookings Institute, the Urban Institute, our regional partners.

Brian D. Anderson (09:00.445)
on understanding what drives economic mobility and how we can help every family and individual move up that ladder to some degrees. We’ve been very focused on that the last, really five years, but really intently the last three. And then the fourth one, again, some chambers have some role in workforce development. We have taken on that as a primary charge. Again, not to deliver programming. We have plenty of partners that can do that, but we are working with NextGen

Brandon Burton (09:01.518)
Thanks.

Brian D. Anderson (09:29.417)
sector partnerships out of Nashville to really put the business community at the center of the conversation, C-suite executives telling us what’s not happening in the development world, development, and what they want to happen or need to happen. And then those of us around the outside of the room, community college, four-year institutions, K-12, Boys and Girls Club, any of those that can have out of school or around school activity.

they now are leaning in differently to try to get the outcomes we need. Being able to get young people to go into the paths that we need, construction, IT, health sciences, advanced manufacturing, and then having those programs deliver faster outcomes. You can get a certificate, a degree, all the way up to a four-year in a faster way. So those four pillars drive us every day. We’re very focused. We just had our annual meeting recently where we talked about how we successfully

Brandon Burton (10:19.8)
Here we go.

Brian D. Anderson (10:27.512)
executed those measures in 2025 and how much we have left to do in 2026, but very focused on again the work we have to do to make the best difference for our region.

Brandon Burton (10:38.594)
That’s fantastic and that that leads in very well to our discussion today.

to stand on is really just as a chamber developing that clear focus, that clear direction to go with your core work and things that you’re working towards to really move the ball forward in your community. like you mentioned, a lot of chambers get involved and get pulled so many different ways because something comes up in the community and everybody wants to volunteer the chamber to take that on, right? So.

Brian D. Anderson (10:52.555)
.

Brandon Burton (11:12.578)
So we’ll dive in deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Brian, as we mentioned before the break today, we’re talking about creating a clear focus for your chamber. you had mentioned you guys just went through your strategic planning process and kind of the four areas, the four pillars of work that you guys are focused on that really helps chart your work and makes things a little bit more clear.

as things are presented to you and what direction you guys need to go in. Talk about the adjustment, you know, from how things were in the past to realigning that focus to make it really work within those four pillars.

Brian D. Anderson (11:40.832)
Mm-hmm.

Brian D. Anderson (11:45.148)
Thank

Brian D. Anderson (11:57.115)
The first step, I think that you should start with and we did. I’ve always had this experience because we get better at it as we do it. Start with your mission, vision, values. We had a good mission statement, a good vision statement. Wasn’t as crystal and crisp as we needed it to be a little bit too broad. Even just refining the words within that. That took six months of not just what was in the mission statement, the value statement, but the words we chose.

And then from that, you have a lot more license to again, narrow down what’s really critical to the business community. Now, the other thing I’d say real quickly is, you know, what’s your chamber’s role in that geography? If you’re a local community chamber serving a city or a county or a very defined geography, you may have a different set of expectations and things you need to be focused on. As a regional chamber, we had a little bit more license to what we can and can’t do.

And we’re very upfront about like, I’ll give you an example. A florist is probably not going to get much value out of being a chamber member, a chamber RBA. We don’t do retail type chamber activities. We are focused on large regional issues that affect cross jurisdictional populations. And we’re clear about that. And every meet the chamber, we have to talk to prospects. If you’re a retail type operation, you’re probably not going to…

Brandon Burton (13:14.99)
Okay.

Brian D. Anderson (13:23.787)
be served by us well, so don’t join and write a check that you’re gonna regret. I’d rather you go join the local chamber or some other place you can get the value you need. We serve, but with that, we serve about 60 % of our membership, or 50 employees or less. We serve small, medium, large. We have all the corporate partners. We have the Fortune 500 companies, but we serve a good mix of people. So with that, we’re focused on professional type companies.

rather than the retail type. being knowing your mission and who you serve is the first kind of step. And then the third might be what’s your member value, member proposition. What does a member want out of the work you do and how can you deliver that? So we spent, again, a long time defining that and understanding it before we got into what are we gonna do. But eventually you get to that point and you’ve got all that focus.

you say, okay, what’s the most critical things we can do as a region and what’s the business community’s part of that, then it’s a little easier to get into, okay, these three things or four things will drive that. I’ll tell anybody having not done it this well in the past, don’t have six, seven, 10 strategies. Get it as close to what you can get down to this manageable and again, is also going to give you the biggest impact and how you deliver that. So the four I mentioned earlier are what we got.

Brandon Burton (14:21.326)
So thanks for watching.

Brian D. Anderson (14:51.881)
got our focus on. And right now, again, at least through 18 months or 15 months, those strategies are delivering the tactics we need to execute. And now we can see through some measurements how that’s generating the impact we want. So mission statement, member proposition or member value, member benefit leads to how you get the strategy right to go forward.

Brandon Burton (14:54.006)
I like it.

Bye.

Brandon Burton (15:08.526)
you

Brandon Burton (15:20.43)
Yeah. So you have that strategic plan with those four pillars that you mentioned earlier. You guys also have taken on a regional vision as well. So you want to talk to that and how that aligns with your strategic plan as well?

Brian D. Anderson (15:32.331)
you

Brian D. Anderson (15:37.385)
Yes, and in this case, they’re very much aligned because we already had the economic mobility focus within our strategic plan for the chamber. But again, coming out of the pandemic, working with two regional partners, which now grown to five total. We knew that our business union had a role with economic mobility, just like the local government has a role. So does philanthropic activity. So all of those focus.

on how we lift families up and people up, we take that and drill it down to say, how does the business community weigh in there? So how do we have a different member, have a different employee benefits program? For instance, maybe 401k is not the best thing I need right now as a 22 year old, I’d like down payment assistance or help with childcare. So helping our member companies think about mobility difference in a different way.

so they can help their employees be successful and meet them where they are in their life. So it’s taking that regional thought, drilling it down to again, what individual companies can do and then us as a business sector weighing in together. So RVA Rising, which we now call it, came out of that five year journey of deep diving into data. Dr. Raj Shetty from Harvard has a whole lot of data across the country from a study he did.

that basically can tell you kind of what your economic mobility number is. And we found we were pretty low. I Charlotte, in 2013, Charlotte was the 50th out of 50 cities as far as not having economic mobility. We weren’t ranked, we weren’t big enough. But when you look at the heat maps of that data, we looked just as poor in economic mobility as Charlotte did. So we said, okay, let’s partner and understand what Charlotte’s doing, drill it down to the level of what we can do and now track that over time.

From all of that work, we worked with the Urban Institute, we worked with the Regional Growth Initiative out of the Brookings Institute, with eight other communities around the country. And that again validated that we were on the right path, but also gave us some metrics to understand what mobility looks like. So that regional visioning now has a deeper dive on affordable housing, a deeper dive on workforce development, and a deeper dive on what happens with health delivery.

Brian D. Anderson (18:02.409)
both modality and inequity. And that’s the three we’ve kind of worked on so far with a couple more coming later. But that’s where all of us like leaning in now on those three priorities in the forefront.

Brandon Burton (18:07.662)
Bye bye.

Brandon Burton (18:17.249)
Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned, you know, working with different institutions, like you mentioned the Brookings Institute. how do these, you know, arrangements come about when you work with these institutes? Is there formal agreements? And I’m asking for those chambers that are listening, I’m asking on their behalf if they want to take on this kind of a focus, how do you get started and how do you build those relationships to be able to help drive

Brian D. Anderson (18:33.355)
Thank

Brian D. Anderson (18:44.223)
Great question. I’ll tell you, sometimes it’s intentionality, sometimes it’s luck. In our case, it might have been a little bit of both. Yeah, because we were already, I guess, in tune with what’s happening in that kind of economic mobility space, the conversation. One of my colleagues, mean, Vice President Strategy, kind of learned about this thing out there, something you could apply for with Brookings. And she said, I think we should do this. I said, of course we should. So we kind of pulled together a team and.

Brandon Burton (18:50.872)
Take either one, yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (19:13.385)
We applied to be a part of this regional growth initiative network. There was going to be eight regions around the country that were picked and we were selected. And I’ll tell you, not know even from the application, I couldn’t have told you how much, how impactful it was going to be at the end. We thought we would just do some sharing and we would do some learning. We would do some, you know, data work, but we, basically had eight convenings. Each city hosted one over about 18 months.

And we went, had a very curated two day discussion in each city by the Brookings folks who brought us in some cases, things happening around the country. And then they’d say, now, how do you react to that? So sometimes it’s being in the right place, the right mindset, meaning what you’re listening to, and then having the will or willing to take the risk and spend the money in some cases to go be a part of something bigger. That was the first one that really, and then from that we would have never known about wealth. We may not have known about next gen.

sector partnerships, having not done that work. But since we went through it, we learned what somebody else was doing. We said, you know, that really could apply to us and how we’re thinking about workforce. And so, you know, one good idea, one good pursuit turned into a second one. Urban was our community foundation, very forward thinking organization. We’re doing some work on their own. How does their work make an impact? They learned about Urban Institute and all the work they’ve done around the country and all the data they now have from working in those.

Brandon Burton (20:21.88)
So, thank you for watching and have great

Brian D. Anderson (20:41.439)
those communities. So they were working parallel with Urban, while we were working with Brookings, and now we’ve brought all that together under RBA Rising. And they both have been critical to helping us see how we’re doing or not doing, how we can measure success and progress. And we’ve now leaned in more heavily with Urban because their data is much more far reaching. They’ve got 16 or so measurements of how you can determine if you’re economically mobile. And we’re using their first five pillars right now.

Brandon Burton (20:51.822)
you

Brandon Burton (21:04.622)
So, excited to be here.

Brian D. Anderson (21:11.071)
to keep us focused.

Brandon Burton (21:12.758)
That was my next question with RVA Rising is what metrics are you looking at to measure success and see that things are moving in the right direction?

Brian D. Anderson (21:20.675)
And I encourage the listeners to go just Google Urban Institute. They’ve got a whole lot of information on their website that, can be applicable anywhere. don’t have to just be like that. Because I think the thing I’ve learned again after 18 years is every community is different. Every region is different. We have similarities, but you got to know what’s happening in your geography and how you can impact that. they’ve got 100 different measurements that could be tracked and looked at.

We’re now taking their wide ranging set of information from all these communities around the country and we’re picking which ones matter to us. So we’ve got a whole group at our Plan RVA, which is our local government, regional commission type entity. They’re taking the lead on building us a dashboard or a scorecard or whichever term you’re happy. They’re looking at what measurements fit our region and will determine whether or not we’re

Moving the needle quick example a lot of times you’ll hear people talk about our poverty rate 12 % of our our citizens live in poverty Well, if you have a whole lot of people move in to make good money That number could go down to 9 % or 10 % and you haven’t affected the people who are already there who live in poverty So we’ve we’re looking at data that says how do we get down very granular? Into the zip code and the neighborhoods and the families to measure whether or not mobility is happening or not

Brandon Burton (22:50.062)
super helpful and being able to have that dashboard or scorecard to be able to see how things are moving and growing and developing is going to be super helpful as things progress.

Brian D. Anderson (23:01.739)
Yep. And it’s hard. I mean, we give a caution. It’s hard. We’ve just been trying. I mean, I don’t have anything I can hand you right now that says this is how we’re doing, because every time we think we’ve got the 10 or five or whatever, something else kind of comes in. So it takes time, but I’m confident we’ll get there. But again, we’ve got to get away from measuring things like in education or workforce development. Graduation rate really doesn’t mean a whole lot. Yes, you want your students graduating from high school.

But what happens after they leave? they going into a post-secondary track to get a credential or a certificate or a diploma? Are they going straight to work? And if they’re going to work, is it fast food, minimum wage? Or is it into something that can build? So you got to be careful, again, how the data can be, one, understood by the group you’re talking to, but secondly, is it really measuring something that’s important?

Brandon Burton (23:56.897)
Right. So I’m curious between your strategic plan that’s recently rolled out and your regional vision, you guys have your focus. You guys are really honing in on those things that are important to really move the needle in your community. Throughout this process, did you guys have to address any sacred cows or have other ideas been presented to you since? And how do you respond in saying that this isn’t

Brian D. Anderson (24:03.061)
Thank

Brandon Burton (24:25.538)
the focus of the chamber at this time.

Brian D. Anderson (24:28.491)
Often, I mean, just last night, the last thing I looked at before I left the office was, again, a good partner that we work with regularly said, hey, we’re going to, this group wants to apply for a grant. We want you to be a part of it. We looked at all the information. We didn’t see anywhere that it made sense for us to do anything, write a letter of support or not, but certainly encourage them to do that work. So I think every day you creep in because again, I…

You got to be careful when you have the brand power a Chamber of Commerce does because that can work for you or against you. And too often it gets you pulled into things you shouldn’t be a part of. Now, I also wrote a letter of support last night from one of our local government officials to be recognized as a C-suite executive for the contributions he’s made. So I don’t mind doing things and lending the Chamber brand, the Chamber horsepower when it’s needed. What it can’t do is distract our team going down another path.

Brandon Burton (25:01.965)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (25:24.731)
that pulls us from the things we’re core. I’ve joked about in my career, I think I it at the Institute, but I’ve certainly carried it. Don’t do the Christmas parade if you can get out of it. Now, some places, the chamber has to do that because it actually is core to who they are and core to that town. But most chambers probably should not be doing the Christmas parade. It’s a lot of manpower, a lot of cost, and maybe not gonna get you where you need as far as policy.

and working on the other things you need to work on. But that’s the kind of example that we work, and I call it, don’t let it be the Christmas parade project that pulls you into something you don’t need to be a part of. We had a few, ours remained on the event side. Chamber people also think you gotta have something going on every hour of every day. So I’m constantly kind of reminding our team, when you plan a, you, your team, little part of the bigger team, plan a breakfast, and then another part of our team plans a lunch or a dinner the same day.

Brandon Burton (26:02.167)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (26:21.791)
That causes some of us have to be, you know, almost half our days committed and we’re just there as participants. So we’ve been very careful to make sure everybody looks at a master calendar. We try not to have anything of significance the same day and maybe same week. We cut the number of events, probably 25%. We’re very focused on ones we have to make each one count rather than let’s just have another one. But then we use that filter when people say,

Brandon Burton (26:37.4)
See

Brandon Burton (26:48.92)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (26:51.563)
Hey, I want you to plan a dinner and do this topic and invite these people. If it doesn’t answer the first two or three questions of our filtering, it doesn’t happen. We politely say you ought to go partner with somebody else.

Brandon Burton (27:02.38)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And just having those events that you do choose to do, having them fit those, the areas of focus that you guys are honed in on is so important because it would be very easy for a member to say, well, I was just at the breakfast yesterday. Why do I need to go to this thing today? And I mean, they’ve got their own calendars they’re trying to deal with. So the things that they’re involved with need to be focused and impactful as well. So being respectful of their time and resources is just as important. So.

Brian D. Anderson (27:16.683)
.

Brian D. Anderson (27:29.695)
Yes.

Brian D. Anderson (27:32.975)
And I have to another question just for regional chambers are some that may cross two or three different jurisdictions. We even go so far we plan something we try to go reach out to other parties. Is anything happening? Especially it’s a big signature event or the tourism folks got anything that week or the economic development people. We talk to our partners so we try to also not contaminate or take away from other people’s events because we know what happens when we plan something to find out.

The city’s doing something at the same time.

Brandon Burton (28:06.35)
Exactly. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, this has been a great conversation and reminder for all of us listening to hone in that focus and sharpen it. But I always like asking for some sort of a tip or action item for the listener who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What would you offer them as they strive to do that?

Brian D. Anderson (28:30.955)
A of quick ones. The ACC, which I’m a member of the board for the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, has a ton of data, ton of information. You can go get all kinds of reports that they keep as a repository. If you haven’t been to IOM as a young or entering leader of a chamber, I highly recommend IOM. It’s the best place to get the grounding for our profession. And then if you’ve been around the industry for a while and you need some personal motivation or maybe to validate that you know what you’re doing,

CCE is a good process to go through too. You need to be, I think, five or six years experienced in the role and some other criteria. on the ACC website. But all three of those will help you have the things you can have sort of at hand. You can go out and just get those. Another more, another area you can think about is have a mentor or a partner. Somebody that you respect either in your state, in your state association, maybe somebody you’ve met at

Brandon Burton (29:22.988)
Yeah.

Brian D. Anderson (29:28.829)
a convention or a conference, have somebody you can call when you’ve got a question you can’t ask your chairman. You know, this just happened. I’m nervous about it. My website had something happen and you don’t want the boss to know that you’re dealing with something. Have somebody you can call and share that with. All of us have been there, at least if you’ve been there as long as I have, you faced a lot of different challenges. Reach out to somebody in the industry. We’re all, we’re only as good as all of us are together.

because this is a tough job. met a young lady yesterday who’s running a one-person chamber. Her job’s 10 times harder than mine because she’s got, she’s expected to be on all the meetings I’m expected to be at and to deliver the same value as I’m expected. But I’ve got 11 partners on our team that help us do that. So help each other. Each chamber should be talking to each other regularly. We are not competitors. We are collaborators. If we do those kinds of things, I think you got a chance to be successful in a very rewarding profession.

Brandon Burton (30:04.878)
you

Brian D. Anderson (30:26.027)
that I’ve enjoyed for the last 18 years.

Brandon Burton (30:28.34)
Yeah, I love that. I also 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?

Brian D. Anderson (30:38.591)
Challenging, you younger business leaders, entrepreneurs aren’t joiners as other generations have been. You’ve got to work harder to get people into your community, your fold, get them to be investors. Secondly, on the political front, we’ve never been more divided. We can’t even debate topics anymore. Either you’re in or you’re out or you’re pro or you’re con. So chambers are going to have to bring that business voice into the policy arena even more than they ever have.

use the trust that people still have in the corporate or business community to your favor. We’ve got to be in conversations that are probably more more uncomfortable, but that’s why we’re there. We’ve got to make a difference on the policy side. And then lastly, just talent like everybody else, finding good people to do what we all need to do because you don’t go to chamber school necessarily. We hire people who have a skill set and maybe a good experience or two, and we turn them into chamber professionals.

Those are the three things that I’m watching right now that give us challenge every day is just, do we stay focused to what we can control, but also influence sometimes what we can’t control while we find a different.

Brandon Burton (31:50.936)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I wanted to give you an opportunity, Brian, to share any contact information for listeners out there who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about your strategic plan or about RBA rising and really sharpening that focus. Where would you point them and what would be the best way for them to connect?

Brian D. Anderson (32:13.355)
Well, chamberrva.com has all of our information from what we’re doing. As most chambers, we have a really good website, got our contact information on it. But my email is brian.anderson@chamberrva.com. Reach out to me, happy to help. Our team is very talented. We got a lot of good people that would be willing to help as well. So if you’ve got a question, we’re happy to help you.

Brandon Burton (32:35.028)
Awesome. We’ll make sure we get all that in our show notes for this episode. this has been great having you on. Chamber chat with us today, Brian. I appreciate you setting aside the time and sharing your experiences and things that are making a difference in your community and really just helping all those listeners out there to adjust their focus and make sure the work that they’re doing makes an impact. So thank you.

Brian D. Anderson (32:39.295)
Wonderful.

Brian D. Anderson (32:59.947)
Thank you for what you’re doing, Brian. This is a wonderful way to help all of us be better. So thank you for the work you’re doing.

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How Forward-Thinking Initiatives are Reshaping Communities with Linda Parsons

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Brandon Burton (00:00.972)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a seasoned leader in the Chamber and Association Management with more than 25 years of experience, advancing economic development and community collaboration. Linda Parsons has served as President and CEO of the Moore County Chamber of Commerce. since 2014. Under her leadership, the chamber has been nationally recognized as a four-star accreditation from the US Chamber of Commerce and twice named as a runner-up for the National Chamber of the Year. In 2025, Linda was honored by her peers as the North Carolina Chamber Executive of the Year, a testament to her impact across workforce development, business advocacy, and strategic planning.

Her leadership extends far beyond her role as she actively serves on a wide range of local and state boards focused on education, healthcare, childcare, and economic growth. Before relocating to North Carolina, Linda gained valuable public policy experience with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and served under two Ohio governors as a state and local government commission. She holds a degree in politics and government from Ohio Wesleyan University and is a CCE and a graduate from the US Chambers Institute for Organization Management. Please welcome to the show Linda Parsons. Linda, 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 you can all get to know you a little better.

Linda M. Parsons (01:50.836)
Well, Brandon, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. It’s always great to connect with our chamber colleagues across the country. So a little bit about myself. I think you asked for an interesting fact. And a lot of people do not recognize that I am artistically inclined. I was a ballerina until I was 18. And I am fluid in piano, violin, and a vocalist.

Brandon Burton (02:04.59)
That’s right.

Linda M. Parsons (02:19.341)
I am a painter and I have thrown pottery throughout the years. Currently not doing that, but so artistically, that’s always what’s motivated me and it’s what brings me joy when I have the time to do it.

Brandon Burton (02:34.7)
Yeah, I love that. And I wish we would talk more about that just as a society, just the joy that comes from creating things, know, just being expressing your creativity. There’s so much goodness that comes from that. So I’m glad you’re leaning into it. It is. It is. Yeah. Very good. I love getting those those little interesting facts about people.

Linda M. Parsons (02:49.299)
It’s also relaxing.

Brandon Burton (03:00.494)
If you would tell us about the Moore County Chamber just to give us an idea before we dive into our discussion today. Help us understand the size, staff, scope of work that you guys are involved with, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion.

Linda M. Parsons (03:14.291)
where I’d be happy to do that. So the Moore County Chamber of Commerce is located about an hour south of Raleigh in two hours from Charlotte, North Carolina. We are a population of about 110,000 people, one of the fastest growing counties in the state of North Carolina outside of an urban area with a projection to grow 50,000 people by 2050.

So it’s a lot of growth that is expected. I’ve also seen figures of another 70,000 residents. So we shall see. We are a tourism-based economy, and we also have a strong healthcare economy. We have currently 620 members with a staff of three, with just shy of a little over a half million dollar budget. And we are a mighty three.

Between the three of us, we have almost 40 years of experience in the chamber industry. All of us have a chamber background, which is extremely rare in the chamber industry. I’ve gotten both of them from seasoned chamber organizations, one in our state, one in the state of Texas. And we work very hard on a variety of issues ranging from workforce development, childcare is a very strong advocacy area, housing.

Brandon Burton (04:19.607)
Yes.

Linda M. Parsons (04:39.315)
transportation, leadership training. We have one of the oldest leadership training models in the state. And then of course, you know, just supporting that general member, whether it’s a solopreneur or a large corporation in our area. Golf is heavy. are home of the second home to the USGA. They built their second headquarters here in Moore County. And we also are home to the World Golf Hall of Fame.

And so if someone is a seasoned golfer, they’re probably very familiar with Pinehurst Resort, who is in the process of building another course in our community. So we have about 43 courses within 15 minutes of our community.

Brandon Burton (05:23.402)
Wow, well that is a great snapshot, but also painting a picture as you do, right, with your creativity, but painting a picture in the mind of what the community looks like. And I’m picturing with these beautiful golf courses and whatnot, just the beauty of the area as well. That definitely does help to set the stage for our discussion today. And as we kind of went back and forth a little bit on trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to cover,

Linda M. Parsons (05:24.263)
I’m out.

Linda M. Parsons (05:34.298)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (05:52.943)
I see a lot of the things that you guys are doing there in the Moore County Chamber as being very future forward, leaning and thinking. So we’ll dive into some of that future thinking, as well as some of the more actionable things that you guys have been doing to really take action on those thoughts and vision of what the future looks like. And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Linda, we’re back.

As I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about some of these future looking things that you guys are doing there at the Moore County Chamber of Commerce. One of the first things that I wanted to learn more about is I know you guys recently have gone about this, a new co-working space in your community and really targeting those people that work from home or those entrepreneurs and.

individuals like that, businesses like that. So please tell us a little bit more about the co-working space, how that came to be, how it works. know different chambers have co-working spaces, they’ve stood up, they all have their own nuances. So I’d love to hear the approach that you guys have taken and hopefully others listening will learn some things and be able to take some notes as to what they might do in their community as well.

Linda M. Parsons (07:12.209)
I’d be happy to do that. And I think one of the things that’s been very fortunate about our chambers, we have a board that has had progressive thinking throughout the years. They understood that if we remained the same, we would no longer be relevant in our community and for our region. We do serve a six county region, meaning we have a lot of traffic that comes into work and a lot of traffic that comes out. And we are also 45 minutes away from the largest military installation outside of the Pentagon.

So back in 2014, literally 30 days after I was hired, our building sold. It had been on the market for quite some time and I was working at the chamber at the time, but it wasn’t CEO. And so we sold our building and went to a temporary home and really tried to develop what our vision was. And we had heard about a particular business in downtown Southern Pines that was going to be building a building, three story building in the historic district.

So I approached him and asked if we could go into the building with him together and take the top floor. Fast forward to 2020, we built a building during the pandemic. We started that building in 2019 and finished it in 2020. There was some delays with supplies, but he was very forward thinking as the owner of the building, majority owner of the building where he had a lot of supplies dropped in before the final roof was put on. So a lot of the people that were having delays,

We didn’t necessarily have some of those delays. We did with appliances. But we went from a 10,000 square foot building that was built in the late 80s and was able to take that investment and turn it around into a 3,500 square foot penthouse suite in the downtown historic district of Southern Pines.

Brandon Burton (08:41.741)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (09:05.18)
It was probably one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. I literally threw the spaghetti on the wall and said, I think this is what we need to do. And when we do it, we need to open a collaborative workspace. Obviously not realizing that the entire world was going to shut down in March of 2020. So at that time, this construction had already started and I didn’t have the ability to shift the layout, but we moved forward and kept got creative. So we have a platform where people can drop in and work on a daily basis.

with a drop in rate. have subscriptions very similar to some of the corporations you see across the country, such as WeWorks, where they can pay to play a couple of days a week and a month. And then we have a conference room space that serves as overflow for individuals working quietly, not on Zoom calls or other things like that nature. And we have that ability to rent out that space.

One of the most popular things for us has been that remote worker who works for Fortune 500 companies across our country and they regularly use our space, they consider it their home. It does help where above a bar, but we also serve in adult environment if they so choose, as well as other snacks and coffee. I never thought an espresso machine would be so popular as it is. But one of our biggest leaders really has become the military

Brandon Burton (10:19.234)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:29.806)
Bye!

Linda M. Parsons (10:33.78)
component. So we have a lot of groups from the military that use that space sometimes for transitioning veterans to learn what they need to be doing to acclimate into the civilian world, as well as other training opportunities that they do in our space. And so I would say that is the majority of our user with the second being our members. And based on their membership, they have that option to use the space. So we have a lot of people that do team meetings, interviews.

Um, if someone is opening a new place in town, they have that opportunity to do other interviews if their growth is still under construction. It has been a revenue generator. So we were able to eliminate the God, the events that were a burden. Shall we say a time sucker for the stack. And now we just have to manage a calendar, which is fairly simple because we kind of have a regular users.

Brandon Burton (11:19.202)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (11:29.628)
And from there, it’s got a website, it’s got a following, and we are regularly booked. And it’s been a great investment for the organization and for our community.

Brandon Burton (11:43.437)
Yeah, I love that. love the, again, the forward thinking of being able to have that kind of space and before, you know, COVID even hit and to be able to see where needs are going and to be able to address that before they even really showed up in mass numbers like they did after the pandemic. I think there’s a uniqueness too of being able to serve

So you mentioned the remote workers, also entrepreneurs and startups and kind of that vibe that comes into it because they’re getting associated with the chamber early on in their journey. But I’ve also, I’ve seen and heard of some coworking spaces that are not connected with the chamber as being almost a chamber in themselves as far as the networking aspects go.

and who you meet within that networking space. Do you have any additional thoughts or insights on those points with the entrepreneurs and startups and the networking effect that happens in the coworking space?

Linda M. Parsons (12:52.752)
It absolutely is true. It is an opportunity for people that are working there to connect with others that may not have in otherwise while sitting in their living room navigating their children or their barking dog. And so I’ve actually seen some relationships form where they have now gotten into business together. Meaning we have a couple of consultants who have been able to do some work with some of our other workers.

During the holidays when everybody kind of took a break, it was fun to see everybody come back in January. How was your holiday? What are you working on? And we actually have one gentleman who used our space transitioning in his career, not military, but just a career transition. He got his MBA while in the space, was able to connect with one of those military groups and has now opened a consultant business.

So it’s fun to see those success stories, as well as the members who use the space as they grow and upsize their business and utilize it for team meetings and see that growth of those businesses or nonprofits that are using this space.

Brandon Burton (14:04.6)
Yeah, I love those success stories. What’s the relationship like with the work, with the chamber itself, kind of the space that you guys have within this top floor versus a co-working space? it kind of blend into each other? Is there distinct areas for chamber and co-working space or what does that lay out?

Linda M. Parsons (14:25.202)
It’s a complete blend. So we went with an urban design, meaning open ceilings, lots of metal. We did not shy away from comfortable furniture. We have standing desks. I’ll be honest, my board gave us complete discretion. They said, here’s your budget. You make it work.

And so we have an office in the front that is a collab space with a desk, a desk and a standing desk and a round table so people can have meetings. Then our offices are with incorporated within the middle. And then there’s another office in the back that gives a little more privacy. Again, conceivable, fix people. And then the conference room space is off of a massive kitchen and what we call the gathering space. So.

Great example on Friday mornings from seven in the morning until nine a.m. We have a group of military veterans that move our space for coffee. And when we come in at nine, they’re wrapping up, they clean up our kitchen, they go about their day. They’ve had their time to have a private coffee and we’re able to jump in through our workspace and do what we need. I do have a standing nine a.m. meeting every Friday. They know that. And even if they stay behind, they respect the fact that we are in our space.

working and doing our thing, but it gives a good blend. So our collab users have key fobs. can come and go as they please. And if we’re not there, they have access to the space, they have access to the kitchen and it works really well. So it’s a good blend. and it, it makes it feel like home. I don’t know how it’s. In fact, one of our coworkers users use that term this week.

Brandon Burton (15:48.93)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:08.77)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (16:13.875)
It’s a place that I call home.

Brandon Burton (16:17.132)
Yeah, that’s nice. That’s very nice. So I’m curious with the design and building it out, just from the little things from the scheduling to the key fobs to having the kitchen stocked. And did you guys consult with somebody else who’s done this before or was dreamed up on your own amongst the staff and the board and you guys like, let’s go do this. How did things come together?

Linda M. Parsons (16:44.479)
So when we initially came up with the concept and got the board approval, A, to move forward with the building and B, to do the collaborative workspace, we did visit several co-working spaces in our state. Most of them were corporate or other forms of, they weren’t connected to a chamber. And so we took some of those ideas, particularly knowing we were gonna be above a bar.

You know, we even discussed putting taps all the way from the first floor to the third, but we felt that we wouldn’t be able to go through a keg fast enough. So then we created relationships with local breweries. And so those breweries were able to put in the beer, can beer, so that the shelf life was a little bit better. We looked at those spaces from, you know, aesthetics, furniture, comfort.

Brandon Burton (17:17.219)
Right.

Linda M. Parsons (17:32.47)
And those things were very important to us. Standing desks are extremely important, but not everybody likes the standing desk. Some people like the sit. Some people like high tops, so we have high top tables. And then we very thoughtfully configured our conference room. If anybody remembers their science days from high school, you had a black top science lab table with wood legs. We reversed it. have

Brandon Burton (17:52.877)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (17:58.368)
custom-made tables made in the state of North Carolina out of ash wood with black metal legs all on casters. So the room can be configured in whatever format somebody wants. Whether it’s a large conference table, they want to do classroom seating for a training session, which obviously works really well for the chamber when we hold a session. I’ve seen it done in pods where people are working with individual teams.

Brandon Burton (18:09.368)
Very cool.

Brandon Burton (18:17.944)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (18:25.225)
And that has been very good. And then the other thing is we went with very top of the line technology. We did not shy away from technology. I talked to our IT guy and I said, I want you to bring in the best IT that you can possibly bring in. If the chamber is encouraging businesses to be on the top of their game as it relates to marketing, IT and other things, we can’t not do the same. So we have a seven-point television.

that does direct streaming. have access so that they can do Zoom meetings or other video type teleconferencing. We have mics around the room. We have a second TV in the room, because it’s kind of an L shape. So you can have a private session in the other part of the app. We have the same technology in the other offices. And we’re not shying away from updating it. With some of our military folks, we have some more restrictions.

Brandon Burton (19:12.622)
Okay.

Linda M. Parsons (19:25.211)
in reference to how they access technology. We’ve been working with them as well so that they can still access due to their firewalls and be able to utilize the space. So we didn’t shy away from the technology. And when we had our full budget, that was something that we thought, Philippe, thought about. Plus we have TVs in the lobby. So if they need to stream something while they’re in the kitchen using space or highlight a sponsor.

whatever their program is, they can do this thing. As it relates to the key fobs, it’s part of our security system. Probably the biggest challenge is if we lose internet and power. That’s a problem. But we can work around it and we have, but technology’s great, but you can’t control mother nature. And a couple of years ago, unfortunately, Moore County was

Brandon Burton (20:07.342)
Ugh.

Linda M. Parsons (20:24.277)
had a massive power outage that was done by a human, not by Mother Nature. And so we could not access our space because the town with the county was out of power for seven days. I was the only one with a computer, but all of our collab users completely understood because they couldn’t work either.

Brandon Burton (20:38.328)
Move.

Brandon Burton (20:45.39)
Brave.

Linda M. Parsons (20:46.005)
We didn’t make the national news and it’s unfortunate that someone chose to do that to our entire power grid. But those were good lessons to learn. How do we overcome that? We put in some other parameters so that we can get into our space, but sometimes you just can’t control technology. So it’s great, but Mother Nature or unfortunately some people have other plans and you just have to work around them. And we’ve got great people. They’re like, understand it.

Brandon Burton (20:56.27)
Thank

Brandon Burton (21:05.059)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:15.778)
Yeah. So there’s been a few different times and ways you’ve mentioned the forward thinking of the board and of your staff. It sounds like historically, at least in recent years, there’s been a very forward thinking board for your chamber. What are some, a few other examples maybe of looking to the future and planning ahead and not getting caught, you know, with the

unexpected with what the future presents.

Linda M. Parsons (21:47.328)
think I’ve been very fortunate in my tenure as president to have a board that understands that the three of us do have chamber experience and we look thoughtfully at studies, whether it’s ACCE studies, whether it’s our own studies that we’re doing and monitoring our membership trends, things of that nature. And so we bring things to the board and we make our recommendations on not what’s happening today. You’re always gonna have your

these events are happening or this program is occurring, we are always moving five years ahead. So a great example back in 2014, I actually made my board read the book, The End of Membership as you know it. And I’ve used a lot of those books and guides to help them understand that if we continue to, I used to use the term be our grandfather’s chamber, maybe to some it’s a

great grandfather. Not that they didn’t do wonderful things, but we wouldn’t remain relevant in our community. There’s a lot more competition. There’s a lot more ability to do things digitally. There’s just a lot of competition. And so by being able to stand out as a organization who’s been around for 59 years, I think always looking ahead, how can we do something differently? So we eliminated a majority of our events and we really focused on some key

leadership, HR training that’s connected to workforce development, childcare, housing study. So we’re investing in a different wave, the long-term of our community and our employers in our area, whether they’re a nonprofit, a small business, a large business. And it’s been really good. I think that members, we still do networking. You’re always gonna have a little bit of networking.

It’s a critical piece, but sometimes you can remind them you can network differently. You can network digitally, even through our own organization. You can connect with a military person and help them as they develop their resume and transition into the civilian life. And so it’s really been, we’ve been really fortunate to have that board who really hasn’t stopped us from trying something. Have we had failures?

Linda M. Parsons (24:13.233)
Absolutely. And I think those failures too.

Brandon Burton (24:15.726)
I’d hope so. Otherwise, that means you’re not taking any risk, right?

Linda M. Parsons (24:18.641)
Exactly. And I love to take risk, calculated risk. The building was probably one of my biggest calculated risks. That’s a pretty big risk. But I know that if it is a beautiful building, it is set in a beautiful place. And a lot of people think it’s an historic building. To me, that is a win.

Brandon Burton (24:24.195)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:30.318)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:44.514)
Yeah, that is really cool.

Linda M. Parsons (24:46.037)
I had someone recently come in, they’re like, so how old is this building? And I’m like, five years?

Brandon Burton (24:51.47)
But with the spirit of 100, right?

Linda M. Parsons (24:56.731)
Exactly. I think, you know, analyzing what programs are successful in a chamber. What does the chamber industry look like in five, 10 years? What are trends that we’re seeing? For example, AI, know AI is an important trend. So we’re in process of developing a curriculum in partnership with our local community college to help our business community navigate AI to their benefit and learn it so that

they’re doing things safely and that they’re doing things that are going to be helpful to their business as they continue to right size their business. we’ve held a session last fall. We sold out in seven days and we did it in our our own respective conference room and we’ve had a request to have it again. And so it’s it’s been great to see that excitement and the people that were in that room for that program are

were not traditionally attending events. And so I think you have to, you can’t just do one size fits all. Our chamber is not a one size fits all. We like to…

Brandon Burton (25:57.708)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (26:08.437)
cater things to the members’ needs, whether they’re small, medium, or large.

Brandon Burton (26:15.918)
I love that. So as you’re giving that response, my mind’s racing with all these different things, but like you’d mentioned, networking is always going to be some aspect of the chamber and paying attention to tools that are coming. I recently did an episode with the founder of an app called Chamber, but with a Y, so the C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R. And it’s all about being able to network digitally or you meet somebody in person, but then you connect digitally and

continue to build that relationship and that networking. And there’s great tools and resources available that we just need to be aware. And like you mentioned, AI and being able to stay on the forefront of some of these things and introduce them to your membership and help them gain the confidence to use some of these new tools because change can be scary, right? I mean,

just human nature, like if you wanted to survive, you don’t change, right? So being able to help hold their hand through some of this change is so important. But being from Ohio, you may be familiar with Matt Appenzeller, Southern Ohio Chamber Alliance, but he’s made the distinction between with chambers being either a lamppost, where you’re shining a little bit of light on a

portion of town square or being a lighthouse where you’re really showing, you’re shining the light of where the direction needs to go. Really, you know, bringing people along to where you see things are going and guiding them that way. And that’s, that’s what I see you guys doing there at the Moore County Chambers, being more of a lighthouse and really shining that light, saying this is where things are going, come along with us because this is where the future is bright.

Linda M. Parsons (28:03.125)
We talked a little bit about in the beginning about my artistic background. I’ve always said that sometimes a chamber is kind of like a conductor, a conductor of a symphony. We may not always have the answer, but we can connect and collaborate with different organizations or people to help make our businesses and our local economies be successful. I may not always have that answer, but I can connect a business to our local school system. I can connect them to the college.

Brandon Burton (28:11.011)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (28:30.447)
When everybody was saying, what are we going to do? Everybody’s leaving the workplace. I need employees. I need more students to go into this career path. OK, well, let’s start a workforce development collaborative task force so that we can work in partnership instead of all working in silos. A lot of times, that’s what happens in communities. Everybody’s working on something, but they’re not talking to each other. OK, well, it’s not going to be successful if you’re not talking to each other, being direct and open. And events will always have their place.

Training will always have its place, but our world is changing and we’ve got to change with it to continue to remain relevant to our members, otherwise known as investors, who are investing in us and our community.

Brandon Burton (29:17.08)
That’s right. I love that. Well, Linda, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask on behalf of the listener who is striving to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive to accomplish that goal?

Linda M. Parsons (29:34.804)
I do think reading the book, End of Membership as you know it, is a really good idea. And I really think taking a pause and stepping back and doing an analysis of everything that you’re doing, what is successful, how much time are you putting into it. The people time does cost you money. And if you’re doing an event to turn around to do in another event to pay for that event, is that really the most cost effective thing?

Brandon Burton (29:54.99)
We are finished.

Linda M. Parsons (30:02.101)
for your organization and the members that you serve. Sometimes taking that pause is scary, but by doing an analysis of everything that you’re doing, helps you move forward. While we did that back in 2017, we actually had a discussion yesterday that we’re gonna be doing it as a team discussion again, so that we’re prepared for this next 10 years. And…

and are able to continue to serve that investor of our community. So I do think that’s important. I also think if you’re really new in the career, find a mentor, find somebody that you, an organization and a person that you can regularly check in with. Being at the top is lonely. It’s a lonely place to be and one of the most exciting places to be, but it can be scary. Taking those risks are scary at times. And so being able to talk

Brandon Burton (30:53.539)
Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (30:57.599)
through those things with somebody I think is important.

Brandon Burton (31:01.324)
Yeah, absolutely. And really the idea of looking 10 years in the future and trying to plan and work towards that before too long, you have a 10 year plan, but you probably have to readdress it on an annual basis and see, we still on track? And I had heard a recent interview of Elon Musk and somebody was asking him about how he sees the future. And this is the man who’s literally building the future, right? With self-driving cars and robots and

Linda M. Parsons (31:28.341)
Correct.

Brandon Burton (31:31.286)
putting people on Mars. And he gave a great forecast of in the next one to three years, but himself, he said, 10 years? I have no idea. I have no idea what the future looks like in 10 years. And I think it’s good to have a plan, but we need to constantly make sure we’re still on course with that plan, that we’re going in the right direction.

Linda M. Parsons (31:51.638)
Absolutely, because you never know what curve ball such as COVID, which a lot of people got thrown at, know, nobody knew that was coming and you had to pivot and you have to be able to pivot quickly.

Brandon Burton (32:00.751)
Yeah, exactly. Well, Linda, I feel like this whole episode we’ve been talking about the future of chambers, but I’m going to ask the formal question that I always ask towards the end of an episode, which is how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Linda M. Parsons (32:21.449)
think we are at a great place to really excel our communities forward. Kind of looking at that road where you have two choices to go, Chambers had the opportunity to really pull their communities and help them in the areas of workforce development and bring employees to their employers, whether it is cultivating that relationship as young as kindergarten.

to others who are maybe second chance individuals looking for employment, veterans, the opportunity is there. And I think the chambers that embrace that and start working as collaborative units in their communities are gonna excel and be extremely successful.

Brandon Burton (33:09.526)
Yeah, I love that. And that visual again, that road, I think Alice in Wonderland, right? She comes to the fork in the road and she asks, which way do I go? Right? And the Cheshire Cat says, it depends on where you want to go. You know, and you got to know where you’re headed. Yeah.

Linda M. Parsons (33:15.658)
Mm-hmm.

Linda M. Parsons (33:20.277)
She does.

And every community is unique. Every community has its place. Every community isn’t the same. And yes, we borrow things from communities, but you have to look at your own community and what does that future hold?

Brandon Burton (33:38.004)
Exactly. Well, this has been a fun discussion. I’m grateful to have had you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more maybe about the co-working space or how you guys are navigating the future. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Linda M. Parsons (33:58.176)
So they can contact me directly at the chamber, 910-692-3926. If they want to see a little bit about our space, they can visit thirdfloorcollabspace.com. And if they want to visit a little and learn a little more about the chamber, it’s moorecountychamber.com. We do get confused with Moore, Oklahoma. In fact, today we have an application for a membership in Moore, Oklahoma.

Brandon Burton (34:15.371)
you

Linda M. Parsons (34:24.937)
We are not in Moore, Oklahoma. We are in North Carolina. So please be mindful of that. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, as well as LinkedIn.

Brandon Burton (34:32.334)
Very good. I’ll make sure to get those in the show notes and make it easy for people to find and connect with you. But Linda, thank you so much for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast sharing your experience and some of these things that you guys are doing to really position your community well for the future and look after those investors that are within your stewardship. I really appreciate you sharing those things with us.

Linda M. Parsons (35:00.106)
Thank you, Brandon, for the opportunity and I wish the Chamber community all the best.

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Strategic Initiatives in Action with Yvonne Myers

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Brandon Burton (00:01.038)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest today is Yvonne Myers. Yvonne is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, a role that she’s held since 2022 after a remarkable 31-year career with Columbine Health Systems.

Yvonne didn’t just pivot into this role. She brought her 14 years of board experience at the Chamber and a passion for building talent pipelines that meet real business needs. Under her leadership, the Chamber has secured over $2.1 million in grants to support work-based learning, sector partnerships, and workforce program development. She’s grown the talent team from a solo effort to a thriving team of three.

and currently chairs the NOCO works executive committee, a two county regional workforce initiative. Yvonne also serves on the boards of the arc of Larimer county and the early childhood council of Larimer county. When she’s not driving strategic change, you might catch her playing the string bass in the local band and orchestras. Yvonne, 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.

Yvonne Myers (01:34.82)
Well, Brandon, I’m excited to be here today and honored that you would ask me to participate in your podcast. So so hello, everyone. I’m excited to share the little bit of work we’re doing here. One thing I’ve learned about Chambers, it’s all about sharing and stealing and supporting each other for sure. So this is a great place to do it. So I really appreciate that. I think interesting fact is I was the first person in my family born in the United States. I don’t know why that’s cheering me up. But anyway,

first person to go to college. And so today is Fridays. We support Colorado State University. have a big basketball game this weekend. so having gone to university is very proud for my parents and it’s proud for me as well.

Brandon Burton (02:19.039)
Yeah, that is very cool. I love hearing stories like that. It’s awesome. America is a great place for that. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Fort Collins area chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget you guys work with, just to kind of give some perspective before we dive into our topic today.

Yvonne Myers (02:26.522)
And it’s for sure.

Yvonne Myers (02:41.594)
Sure, yeah, the chamber, we’ve been here since 1904, so we’re not one of the oldest ones around for sure. We have 13 staff members, some are part-time, I think eight are full-time, the rest are part-time. We do have a couple of consultants that we have, subcontractors that we work with as well. We have a place-setting company that does some of our events, and we have a wonderful, cranky advocacy person that writes a lot of our things and supports that work for us. We have about a $2 million budget.

Brandon Burton (02:49.547)
Thank

Brandon Burton (03:06.829)
Good night.

Yvonne Myers (03:10.2)
that we work from, we also have, we’ve done a Northern Colorado Prosper’s event. We’re on the fifth year of our second NCP event where we raise about four and a half million dollars each one of those times to do work like work on transportation, advocacy, workforce, those sorts of things. We also do a total resource campaign every year. We just finished our 15th year of our total resource campaign called Moving Fort Collins Forward, exclamation point at the end of that.

Brandon Burton (03:16.013)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (03:22.317)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (03:33.901)
Yeah, it’s just like being on the top of a spot, just playing with nature.

Yvonne Myers (03:39.262)
and we raised $536,000 this year for our sponsorships and our new members and all that sort of thing. So we have, you know, a volunteer team of about 50 that help raise funds for that. So we’re busy in the Fort Collins area. We also play well with the Greeley and Loveland chambers in our area as well. But we’re also, I would say, a pretty strong, strong lead in our region as far as the chamber goes.

Brandon Burton (03:41.901)
from the way I understand it, I was thinking the same thing.

So you have to be able to concentrate on the details.

Brandon Burton (04:05.249)
Very good. That definitely helps to give us an idea of where you’re coming from as far as the chamber goes. Today we’ll focus a lot of our conversation around that work-based learning, some of sector partnerships you guys are involved with, and some of these workforce programs that you guys are sponsoring. And we will dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All Yvonne, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into some of these work-based learning and these sector partnerships you guys are involved with all around workforce development. I don’t know if there’s a certain area you want to dive into first. I think there’s a lot of branches to this, but maybe just tell us where you guys saw the need and how you guys are addressing the need. Maybe that’s a good place to start.

Yvonne Myers (04:49.645)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (04:56.154)
Yeah, so, you know, the governor in our state, Governor Hickenlooper back in the day in 2013 brought the sector partnership model to the state because he came from industry, right? I mean, he was a geologist and he also had a brewery and all those sorts of things. And our economy was not doing well and he felt like, well, industry is the one to bring that economy forward. So I was lucky to be on our local workforce board working at a long-term care company at Columbine Health Systems and

Brandon Burton (05:08.525)
Thanks

Yvonne Myers (05:24.438)
started the sector help start the health sector partnership and the chamber at the time said boy you know it’s industry-led we should be a part of that and actually became our fiscal agent for no fee we had somebody else doing it for eight percent and when i called the chamber and said can you help us out i hope to get only one or two percent and they actually said well we’ll do it for no cost it was like yay so all of our money was just great

Brandon Burton (05:47.905)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (05:49.882)
And we are still that fiscal agent. 15, since 2013, we are now fiscal agent for five out of the six sector partnerships in our region. 2013, the House Sector Partnership and Manufacturing Sector Partnerships launched. We’re the two longest sector partnerships in the country that are still active. So that’s a pretty crazy thing we didn’t imagine. And then when I came to the chamber, we

Brandon Burton (05:59.404)
So.

Yvonne Myers (06:18.882)
I really felt like we needed to launch more industries around because I really believe in the sector partnership model of industry leading where things are going. They’re the one who purchased the product of education. They’re the ones that have the issue and opportunity. And I do think our workforce friends, our education friends, our government friends really do want to help us. But when we’re sitting in our businesses doing our work and they’re in their secret lab imagining what we need, it never works. It just doesn’t work.

Brandon Burton (06:36.611)
and turn it into a little bit a little bit.

Thanks

I love that. Just imagining, right?

Yvonne Myers (06:49.114)
So we have to get up out of our house and then speak to them and say this is what we need and they will magically help us, right? But we’re not there at that conversation. so, the vice versa also, which is they’re in their secret lab going, we know what industry needs. So we’re going to create this and they should be also including us in those conversations. So that really is a very basic tenet of the work that we do here is like industry needs to be there and you need to be speaking up. And so,

Brandon Burton (07:09.39)
So, we’re to have a great time.

Yvonne Myers (07:18.508)
When I started then, the nonprofit sector partnership, some of the nonprofits came to me who knew about sector partnerships said, we want to start one. And I was like, are you an industry? I know it’s a terrible question to ask, but I was like, are you? And so we pulled data around how many we have, how many employees, the economic impact, and went, holy buckets. And they don’t tend to show up in numbers because they’re tucked under government. They’re tucked under here. don’t really have to kind of pull them out of light cast in some of those places.

Brandon Burton (07:31.34)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:46.75)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (07:48.25)
We launched the nonprofit sector partnership. You hope to have 30 industry members at your launch meeting to get impact. We had 90 people there from nonprofit. You hope that they walk away with three things they want to work on. They want to work on five. know, nonprofits are used to roll up their sleeves and doing their work. And so we, our region had formed a TID attacks incremental district to

Brandon Burton (07:59.907)
Wow.

Yvonne Myers (08:16.826)
charge more, if you come here, you have to pay a little bit more to our hotels and motels and things. And then that money goes to marketing the region. And I said, well, you’re then already a sector partnership because you have to lay down your competition as industry and come together to work on issues you can collectively solve. So that was an easy lift of the hospitality sector partnership. So they’ve now been launched about four years ago. And construction launched during the

I mean, they launched like March 10th and then we all got shut down like the 20th, right? And so they did very little during COVID. They relaunched and they said, we’re gonna do a construction con. We’re gonna bring hundreds of kids in to learn how to, I mean, they bring in like big equipment and the kids actually get to sit on big equipment and do some things and all of that and do welding and that kind of stuff as well. so they…

Quickly, people want to write them checks, and they’re like, hurry to take the checks. And we’re like, we’ll be your fiscal agent. We’ll help you. So we provide directors and officers insurance. provide, we sign the contracts for the events they go to. We use our liability insurance. So all we do is create that frame for them to be successful and hold them up. And they go off and do the work, right, as well. So a year ago, we launched the Financial Sector Partnership. And I can tell you that.

Brandon Burton (09:21.102)
Thank

Brandon Burton (09:37.39)
Okay.

Yvonne Myers (09:41.221)
We kind of launch them all a bit the same with the leadership team and the committees of work you want to do. And then we let them be who they are. And they are completely all different. They have websites. And you can imagine it’s colorful and lots of stuff on the nonprofit. And the financial sector partnership is black and white. It’s very streamlined and much different. And so we get the opportunity to let them be who they are and do the work that they want to do.

Brandon Burton (10:05.806)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (10:10.508)
So with that, then received grant funds to the Health Sector Partnership came to us and said, we’d really like to do more work-based learning, but it isn’t working the way it’s going. Schools are calling us. We’re calling schools. It’s just like this disconnected mess. We don’t know which schools to call. Schools are reaching out to us multiple times. We were getting asked too much. So.

We collectively wrote a grant between the school districts in our region, the health sector partnership, and the chamber. And we were the fiscal agent and became the lead for the grant because we can more quickly write the grant and do the grant. You have to go through school boards. have to go through. And the health sector partnership is not an entity, so they can’t apply, as you know. So we received funding and hired a subcontractor to work directly with CTE teachers to bring industry to do work-based learning.

Brandon Burton (10:55.938)
Thank

Brandon Burton (11:07.822)
you

Yvonne Myers (11:07.834)
And we’ve gone, they have gone from 40 to over 400 with our help of activities where students are either getting paid and they’re in internships or they’re doing job shadows or informational interviews. And what we find is when we can really hook that industry member and write that plan well of what a student could do in an internship or even in a job shadow, they will take more, right? And they will say, I need two or three.

Brandon Burton (11:34.978)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (11:37.755)
figure out this will be my pipeline for my employees. Some say well I went to Rocky Mountain High School I want to support Rocky Mountain High School I’m doing good work for these students to get exposures and we really push this notion you hear this across the country you know I can’t imagine a job I’ve never heard about right so we really and the we use the Zello platform which is what the school district started with so it’s XELLO

Brandon Burton (11:56.062)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (12:05.698)
And students also make requests. now the grant ended and it’s now a staff member and we found some more funding through our local nonprofits and our county who gave us funds to continue doing this. We find that our staff member has to cold call. Three kids wanted interior design, so she calls the interior designers and she’s got now two wonderful interior designers who regularly take students, them in a great way. These students are

Brandon Burton (12:08.504)
So.

Yvonne Myers (12:34.394)
amplified and say this is what I want to do and off they go into the wide world of you know learning how to be an interior designer. So that’s been highly successful. When the state of Colorado then put out more funds to incentivize business to do this workplace learning, they recognize the cost. I mean the staff member that’s off the floor or out of the position to do that work to develop the plan all those sorts of things. So

We applied and received a half a million dollar grant and we were able to give out 400,000 in incentives and did so in eight months. gave up to $10,000 if you did all the way to an internship. And so we had 150 businesses, we could only fund 48. We really found that this was really, and it didn’t.

Brandon Burton (13:12.194)
Nice, that’s cool.

Yvonne Myers (13:25.252)
There’s not a one-to-one match. Industry isn’t getting fully paid for the work they’re doing. That little donut shop is not, the 2,500 is not gonna cover their costs, even the 10,000. But it’s a recognition that there is a cost, that there is an effort that you have that we recognize that for you. And so we actually received $50,000 in funding this past year from Woodward, one of our larger industries in the area.

Brandon Burton (13:47.886)
you

Yvonne Myers (13:51.109)
who said, well, we want to continue doing that work. have a charitable trust, and they gave us funds. And we have a request in for more funds from them to do this incentive work as well. And that all came out of the sector partnerships wanting to do work-based learning with funding that we got. So it sort of just starts to build on itself as you go.

Brandon Burton (13:59.599)
And that’s awesome.

Brandon Burton (14:07.97)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s very cool. So these business sector partnerships, you know, I imagine for some listening, it may be a new concept. Maybe their chamber doesn’t, you know, take this approach. How do you go about starting a business sector partnership? And do you feel like you have to get all of the businesses in that sector in your region or whatever to be a part of it? Or are there going to be some that abstain from being a part of the partnership? How does that work?

Yvonne Myers (14:37.358)
That’s super. Those are super great questions, Brandon. So when Colorado started it, we used what’s called the Next Gen Sector Partnership model. And they’ve just changed their name to Foundation. So I think you could Google Next Gen Sector Partnership as well. And you do reach out to those who are most influential in that region that are going to bring that

Brandon Burton (14:50.538)
Okay. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (15:03.95)
Makes sense.

Yvonne Myers (15:05.88)
are going to bring others. If you get an invite from that restaurant owner, you’re like, I don’t know what it is, but I better go. So you kind of lean on those. they don’t have to be leaders after that. You kind of not use them, but you activate them for that moment. And so we traditionally always use the Purple Wall model. It’s a Canadian facilitation process. So if you Google Purple Wall facilitation, you will find it.

Brandon Burton (15:12.962)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (15:35.693)
And it’s really just a parachute piece of material that’s purple. And you spray sticky on it, and you put all the industry at a U-shaped table, and you say, what keeps you up at night? And it takes a minute. Someone has to be brave and write the first thing. And with our health care one, one of the hospital administrators wrote, I don’t know how to discharge mentally ill people out of my hospital, and I have no resources. And they’re just sitting there. And so I

Brandon Burton (16:01.046)
that’s huge.

Yvonne Myers (16:03.222)
I lifted that up and read it to all the other people at the U-shaped table and they said, that’s what we’re talking about. And then the cards start flying, right? And you place them together, you know, in cards that match. And pretty soon you have 42 cards that say behavioral health is an opportunity, Workforce is an opportunity. What the last purple wall for the health sector partnership is every couple of years you do it again to be sure you’re on track. For the now for hospitals, it’s safety and security of the staff.

Brandon Burton (16:14.635)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (16:33.05)
That is becoming a very big opportunity for a second party to work on. And there’s a bit of a model that says you need a leadership team, you need some bylaws, and you shouldn’t have quarterly meetings and committees, or so. I mean, after that, do what works for you, absolutely. And a lot of times, when we started, I didn’t worry about who came. I just thought, we need to make it.

Brandon Burton (16:34.807)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (16:47.502)
Or do what works for you, right?

Yvonne Myers (16:59.854)
We need to keep moving it forward so people will find out and say, well, I better become a part of that, right? And that we kept it valuable and important. So like the health sector one that I led for eight years as a healthcare employee, we always did a post-legislative recap of what happened. Nobody has time to follow what’s happening in the legislature and know what’s going on. And then sometimes, then they’ve moved to now they have a legislative committee because we have a lot of legislation around healthcare now. So now they’ve moved to a

not a listening after, but a proactive before, right? And that’s again, that evolution of these sector partnerships moving and they want. But for me, they are a confab of the willing, working on what they want to work on. So he who shows up, we work on the things you wanna do, right? And so if it’s not meeting your needs, then you’re not gonna come, or you get a group of people together who say, want to work on this sort of a thing. So yeah, and not everybody has to join.

Econ Dev Ops is the virtual assistant service built specifically for small Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Organizations (EDOs)

Brandon Burton (17:53.603)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (17:57.755)
Keep it going, keep it moving forward, and people will come when they want to.

Brandon Burton (18:01.548)
Yeah. And I imagine in every community, those business sectors are going to look slightly different. I you may have some overlap where healthcare is something important or housing or manufacturing or whatnot, but others, maybe manufacturing is not as big of a factor and you go a different direction.

Yvonne Myers (18:10.595)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (18:18.616)
Very much so. We have one of the only nonprofit sector partnerships in the country because nonprofits, there’s a part where industry also contributes, right? They may pay for all partner meetings. They may, you know, for the construction con, they’re all buying the booths, they’re bringing their equipment. mean, they’re spending cash to do this and nonprofits don’t have as much money. But our nonprofit sector partnership is very active and has figured out how to…

Brandon Burton (18:36.994)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (18:45.156)
to do all of that without pulling money away from the nonprofits themselves. So they’re very active. So you’re right. It’s unique to each community in each region. We found the financial sector partnership when they launched, they’re one that kind of crosses over all the sector partnerships and fiscal literacy or financial literacy has become a topic with everyone because even though wages have gone up, people are still struggling with what things cost and housing and all that.

Brandon Burton (19:00.258)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (19:12.738)
So they’re looking at how they can bring trainings and education to the other sector partnerships. They also highlight the financial sector partnerships. Every all-profit meet and all-partner meeting hosts a nonprofit to share with what they’re doing so these banks and other financial folks can understand what’s happening in the nonprofit world. And so they’ve actually started to cross across each other to support each other as well, which has been fun to watch.

Brandon Burton (19:33.219)
Yeah.

So.

Very cool. Now, I know you guys have gotten into the work with focus with automotive and HVAC industries. You want to tell us about that and how that came to be?

Yvonne Myers (19:47.405)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. So our state did some financial training for those of us that are intermediaries. As the chamber has gotten into workforce, we’re now listed as a workforce intermediary. So we’re a connector between industry and workforce, economic development, all of that. And so, right?

Brandon Burton (20:05.42)
Yeah.

Convino, right?

Yvonne Myers (20:10.606)
And they recognized with all of the ARPA money that had flowed into all of us, post-COVID, that that was going to dry up. That’s once in a lifetime. We hope none of us want to live through another COVID situation. And that what was going to happen after this big infusion of cash, and then things were going to stop. And so they did financial training for us. And in that were folks from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation and their Talent Pipeline Management Program.

Brandon Burton (20:20.215)
Great.

Yvonne Myers (20:38.682)
And so I started to learn about that program. So I decided to take the course. And so glad that I did, because it really builds on sector partnerships, which is industry-led, but in really the workforce committee. The sector partnerships might work on legislation or labor laws or other things, labor laws, or liquor laws. We have a thing that went on in liquor laws with hospitality. And so.

Brandon Burton (20:57.186)
Good.

Yvonne Myers (21:03.49)
With the talent pipeline management, really is industry coming together and kind of owning what’s happening in that space. And what I mean by that, like with HVAC, when we met with them, we said, what is your greatest need that you have to solve in the next two years? That’s how TPM is. And they said, we need entry-level maintenance technicians. But guess what? With those 10 folks, they titled that title 10 different names.

And that’s a problem, right? So how can I as a CTE teacher, how can I as a parent, how can I as an applicant even figure out what role this is across all of these vendors and providers? Also, we went through an exercise of agreeing to what are all the skills they need to have to be hired and what skills are they going to be taught as they’re moving forward. So they come into alignment with that because then we take that to education and say,

Brandon Burton (21:30.432)
Really? Yeah it is.

Yvonne Myers (21:58.157)
If you can teach these things, we will hire them from you. And maybe there’s 15 things, and my business wants 18 things. Well, those three are mine to teach. These 15 will come from education. And then you survey your education and say, what programs do you have? How many students can you take? So in our region, our HVAC providers, and it’s from Brighton, Colorado, which is a little closer to Denver, up to Laramie, Wyoming, that’s the

Brandon Burton (22:02.52)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:26.616)
the geographic area our HVAC members provide, they said we need 250 over the next two years. Well, that number wakes up education, right? If I call as my own little HVAC company and I say I need three people in next two years, they go, well, isn’t that sweet? I’ll send some resumes or, you know, come see our students. You say 250, you move the nation, honestly. And so our local school district here, are

Brandon Burton (22:34.478)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (22:44.898)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (22:54.292)
aging as a state in Colorado and we’re not having as many babies and our schools are you know some places in Colorado are closing schools and our district would like to repurpose them and use them for education of other folks right in the evenings on the weekends adults that kind of thing I’m sure that’s happening across the country as well so the HVAC folks did surveys with educators and community colleges and you know do you need a two-year degree do you know

Brandon Burton (23:09.314)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (23:24.154)
what education do you need? Where can we hire folks and then train them and then put them back into education? How can we look at this differently? The automotive is in the same place. There are a few months behind them. in both cases, like yesterday’s meeting with our automotive, we had our school district here and they’re like, what would it take for you to hire somebody under 18? They’re like, well, we can’t. Well, right.

Brandon Burton (23:49.342)
Why not?

Yvonne Myers (23:53.131)
In healthcare, when I was asked that question, why can’t you hire him under 18? I said, well, it’s a nursing home regulation. Well, it’s not. And I said, it’s an OSHA rule. It’s not. It must be a labor law because we’ve always done it that way, right? It’s not a labor law. I asked our liability insurance provider. He said, yeah, you can’t. And I said, can you show me where that is? Because I needed to tell other people why we couldn’t do it. So give me the piece of paper. And then he came back two weeks later and he said, yeah, I got it.

Brandon Burton (24:03.48)
No.

Brandon Burton (24:16.11)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (24:22.042)
So we started taking students in high school when they finished the med prep program because you want to grab them when they’re ready and you want to get them going and you want to get them in your, you know, in jobs and, and then we’d scholarship them. Then we would pay for their nursing, right? And so same sort of thing in automotive and HVAC. And what I love about it is it, it holds industry accountable to stop stealing from each other and paying another dollar and taking that employee there collectively together.

Brandon Burton (24:47.512)
breath.

Yvonne Myers (24:49.848)
They also are helping develop curriculum. They also are helping to donate supplies. Like they can push on their suppliers and say, hey, so our high school automotive bay is one bay and I guess the lift is bad. I don’t know about lifts, know, but all the automotive people are like, this is terrible. We need to get to four bays and they can use their influence with their suppliers who want students to be hired so that they can supply the supplies. And so

Brandon Burton (25:06.007)
yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:19.182)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (25:19.896)
Here it works. And the magic of it is that industry has had their head down all these years saying, well, they just don’t provide me the right people. Those educators don’t know, get to play and understand the parameters of what education has to work under and the limitations they might have or the issues they might have. The educators who say, well, these industry people never hire the right people, they get to hear on the other side. And then we collectively come together and try to solve that problem.

Brandon Burton (25:46.742)
Right.

Yvonne Myers (25:47.567)
You know, it’s a long journey, right? We’re not going to get to 250 students. But three to five years, we should look back. And the idea is now we’ve done maintenance technician for both HVAC and automotive. Now what’s the next step? And what’s the next step? So the last part I’ll say is that for automotive, the greatest need they have are master mechanics. And that takes 10 years. You have to have enough pipeline coming in to get enough people to go that decade to get to be your master mechanic, right? And that’s what we’re doing.

Brandon Burton (26:01.518)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:16.686)
Yeah. And really with both of those industries, HVAC and automotive, I mean, with the rise of AI, those are going to be jobs that are around for a while still while a lot of white collar jobs are going by the wayside with AI.

Yvonne Myers (26:17.476)
create here.

Yvonne Myers (26:31.702)
are going away. And yesterday we had our Larimer County Workforce Center staff member with our automotive meeting and he said, and I had never heard this before, but that a lot of AI jobs are filled by women, jobs that AI may take away, and that this would be a new place, a new market to get, have women that can come into HVAC and automotive. And most of the people in our area anyway that are managing, owning, running these businesses

Brandon Burton (26:51.534)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:00.362)
all came out of like VOTEC programs. They had automotive in middle school, right? And those programs are gone and they’re coming back, but they need to come back with industry supporting them and getting the right equipment. can share an interesting story. One of our community colleges here had a tour with all the automotive folks and they said, and over here’s our showers, because we know you all have showers, so we wanna mimic that, we wanna teach them how it’s all gonna be. And…

Brandon Burton (27:05.454)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:16.942)
for the AI on the of this unit.

Brandon Burton (27:24.472)
Thanks.

Yvonne Myers (27:26.914)
I looked around and all the automotive people had such funny looks on their faces. And so when we got back to the main room, I said, I want to go back to that shower. You all had such funny looks on your faces. And they said, not a one of them has showers, not a one. And so there must have been some automotive person someplace that said we had a shower and then education thinks they need to provide that. And think of the cost of putting in the showers and having the showers and talking about the showers. That’s not what we need. We might have needed.

Brandon Burton (27:41.077)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (27:48.162)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (27:53.989)
three more car bays or an electric car bay or something different than that. And so I’m super excited and to watch the aha moments. So yesterday they said to the school district, well, if you have 18 students and they’ve gone through semester one and semester two and they have their ASE certification, how do we get those kids? You could just like, wow, 18 kids, you know? And she said, well, have this, do you do a career fair? And I said to them, when you’re in this talent pipeline management,

collaborative and you’re coming to meetings and you’re donating equipment and maybe even giving scholarship funds. You you pay or do what you want, but you have opportunities to play more because you know what the need is. You have first bid on those students right like you are helping to create the pipeline and it was like. What like crazy town and the other part is that industry, whether it’s HVAC or automotive, we’ve heard this a lot honestly feel like.

The students that come out of the schools are the ones who everyone said, well, Timmy and Sally, they’re not going to make it. So we’ll just stick them in automotive or HVAC. And that is right. And that really isn’t true. And with the advent of computers and the technology around automotive and even HVAC, I you have to plug in with your phone and understand the error messages and all the things. These are becoming highly technical positions.

Brandon Burton (29:02.798)
Right, yeah. Kind of a negative connotation, right?

Yvonne Myers (29:21.294)
They want all of the levels of students to come to them. And with HVAC, we’ve learned there’s 49,000 openings right now in the country for HVAC across the country. And these call centers and all these other places that have to be cooled and heated and all of that. And they say if you get HVAC trained, you can work anywhere in the world. And so kids are starting to hear that, parents.

Brandon Burton (29:45.858)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (29:50.359)
It’s very interesting, exciting stuff. And these were folks that sort of just popped up because the chamber hears and listens and sees what’s going on and has those industries with us. It wasn’t like we have this big data. We had all these automotive people saying we cannot find people we can’t get. And then HVAC, because it doesn’t have a union, which is maybe good or bad, I don’t really know. But because of that, they’re kind of.

Brandon Burton (30:02.638)
Makes those connections. Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (30:16.118)
out there a little bit and because it involves some electrical and some plumbing and a little bit of sheet metal they kind of fall in this no place and I’m super excited to help bring them together with a voice.

Brandon Burton (30:28.45)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. It’s exciting work that you guys are involved with with these partnerships. And yeah, it’s awesome. Well, as we begin to wrap things up, wanted to ask you, for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you leave for them as they try to work towards that?

Yvonne Myers (30:33.119)
well, thank you. Yeah, it’s fun every day. So.

Yvonne Myers (30:51.212)
Yeah, yeah, I do think that I feel very strongly, obviously, I’ve said a little bit earlier in this podcast, but that the chamber is a natural place to be leading this work, because it’s industry that needs to lead it. Education is mandated and is there and government and workforce and all those things are there. And, you know, we’re unabashed at saying industry would never do that. That’s not how you would meet with industry. This is how you would do it.

And our state is really flipping that script because many of our chambers are playing in that space. Our VATA chamber, Boulder, Grand Junction are really also, we’re all collectively in this space. And so I think you’re remiss if you’re not playing in that space, even being at the meetings. You may not have to be leading a TPM, but lifting up that voice and then bringing your chamber members to that.

Brandon Burton (31:35.95)
Thank

Brandon Burton (31:39.849)
Thank

Yvonne Myers (31:43.175)
Because the way the workforce system has worked for a long time isn’t going to continue working the right way if we’re not at that table. So I think that’s a really big deal. Don’t undersell yourself. you are vitally important in the workforce space if you’ve never stepped into it. You really, really are. And it doesn’t take much for you to get going. So don’t be afraid. Call me. I’ll help you.

Brandon Burton (31:48.44)
Right.

Brandon Burton (32:05.932)
Yeah, that’s great. I’d love that. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers and how you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Yvonne Myers (32:17.21)
Yeah, know, next month I’ll celebrate five years here, but as you stated in my bio, you know, I was on the board for 14. And when I took over the marketing position at our company, not running an assisted living anymore, I thought, well, I don’t know if I can do this. The owner said, you have to go, you better go to the chamber. And I thought, well, what is that? So I went and it was Rolodex days way before the computers. And so I went from one Rolodex to two and I became someone at our company that, do you know somebody here?

Brandon Burton (32:36.685)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (32:46.626)
I do, and if not, know somebody who knows somebody here. so chambers are, to me, have to always be here. The collection of how industry comes together, has their voice, advocacy for business, that voice of business. But also, it’s a journey for a business. I come as a new, I just start, opened up my business. So this is how I learn how to market and how to, where SBDC is, where all the resources are to start my business. And then,

Brandon Burton (32:59.118)
Bye.

Yvonne Myers (33:13.752)
I get successful in my business and I start taking on internships or I start, you know, donating back to the community. And then I’m far enough along that I join your board and I’m making impact and decisions about all of that. And even past board members are still very connected to us and call us with ideas and suggestions and all those sorts of things. And I think the future of Chambers is even more important because of the importance of business and how we

Brandon Burton (33:25.432)
Thank you.

Yvonne Myers (33:42.735)
drive the economy, what a big say we have and what happens in our economy. But we also recognize the importance of government and nonprofits and all the other components. But without us, none of that works. And so I feel like chambers are going to maintain their importance and coming together to collectively work on things and not being in silos. And I’m not saying that chambers are, but sometimes in a region, we have 19 chambers in our region. And we do a couple of things.

Brandon Burton (33:53.1)
Yeah.

Yvonne Myers (34:12.334)
together every year. And that’s important to continue doing and lean on each other and work together. But I feel like chambers, the value of chambers will not go away. It hasn’t gone away since the 1800s and will still continue to be vitally important. And we need to be sure that we’re raising the funds and being in the front seat of convening, championing, and connecting people and continuing to do that work.

Brandon Burton (34:36.94)
Yeah. Yeah. That touches back on your original comment you made when we started this about the R &D within Chambers and just do that ripoff and duplicate and see what works in another community. And if it can work in your community, give it a shot. No shame.

Yvonne Myers (34:53.434)
Absolutely, absolutely. I have never not, I mean, I’ve reached out across the country and I have never not had anyone say, absolutely, here’s all my resources. Then two days later, I found some more videos for it. Here’s some more resources for you. And I just love the camaraderie. I just love the connection to how important industry is and entrepreneurism is and moving the economy forward. So it’s an honor to be here.

Brandon Burton (35:04.429)
Right?

Brandon Burton (35:17.876)
Absolutely. But in that vein, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about all these exciting things you’ve covered today.

Yvonne Myers (35:27.982)
Sure, yeah, for sure. So I’m at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce. You can always Google that and we, you my picture’s there and all my contact information for sure. My email is the letter Y as in Yvonne Myers, M-Y-E-R-S at F-C as in Fort Collins Chamber dot org (ymyers@fcchamber.org). Our phone number is there as well. My cell phone number is on our website. So feel free to reach out at any point or at any time.

Brandon Burton (35:54.87)
That’s perfect. I’ll have all that linked in our show notes for this episode to make it easy. But Yvonne, this has been great having you on. And you guys are doing great work there in Fort Collins. And keep it up. And thank you for sharing some of that great work with us today.

Yvonne Myers (36:06.126)
Well, thank you.

Yvonne Myers (36:09.944)
Well, thank you for asking me to participate. I’m honored.

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Attract, Don’t Recruit with Christine Cribb

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Brandon Burton (00:00.536)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our guest for this episode is Christine Cribb. And after a decade in the Chamber world, where she led the largest Chamber per capita in the entire state of Washington, Christine brought her signature spark and unstoppable energy to the Chamber to a chamber in the foothills of North Carolina. Last year, she made a bold move and stepped away from an industry she deeply loves and stepped into what’s next. Christine went back to school to earn her executive presence certification from Cornell University, launched her own boutique PR and strategy firm, Christine Cribb and Company, and poured her heart and experience into writing her powerful first book, Attract, Don’t Recruit, A fresh relationship driven roadmap for chambers and nonprofits who want to grow with purpose and energy. These days, she’s all about living fully and leading boldly by helping organizations connect with passion while soaking up every moment with her three amazing grandbabies. Christine brings energy, authenticity, and heart to every stage, every project, and every conversation. Get ready because Christine shows up with energy and

The room shifts when she arrives. So Christine, I’m happy to have you with us again here on Chamber Chat podcast. For those who are regular listeners, she was with us in episode 270 if you wanted to go back and listen to that. go ahead and say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening. And I always like to get the interesting fact about you.

Christine Cribb (01:44.143)
Hello Chamber Champions. and an interesting fact. Wonderful. Hello Chamber Champions. It’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much, Brandon, for allowing me to come back on. An interesting fact about me would probably be that I spent 2020 during COVID in Italy. And I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me because I drink lots of wine.

I learned how to cook authentically and it was probably the best adult timeout I had ever had. So there’s an interesting fact about me.

Brandon Burton (02:23.054)
of good food that I haven’t been there but I’m a fan of Italian food so how long were you there in 2020?

Christine Cribb (02:30.988)
I was there for an entire year. we were there when January, when it closed down in February. And then when the airports opened back up, I came home and did a nationwide search to go back into Chamber World. I really thought that there was no better time for chambers to be engaged and active and supporting small business than coming out of COVID for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:56.088)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, tell us about your new venture, your new PR firm and the endeavors that you’re embarking on these days.

Christine Cribb (03:13.368)
Sure, sure. So you were cutting out a little bit there, but I believe you asked me what about after I left the chamber. Is that was that your question?

Brandon Burton (03:22.476)
Yeah, yeah, tell us what you’ve been up to these days with your PR firm and what you’re embarking on today.

Christine Cribb (03:28.298)
sure, sure. So I left the chamber last fall, just about this time of year. I left the chamber. visited with family all over the country and I was able to be present in my children and my grandchildren’s lives, which was really incredible. As everyone knows in chamber world, you’re balancing 27 plates and even though you’re visiting someone, you’re thinking of something else that should be done or needs to be done or did I tell somebody that? And so I was completely present. I came back.

I did go to school. went back to Cornell University and got an executive presence certification. And then I started my own. So I wrote my book January and February. I wrote my first draft and then started that entire process, which is phenomenal for anyone that wants to write a book. It’s just a great process of putting so much knowledge and story that you have to share that hopefully you make a difference to one person is incredible. So I wrote my book. I went back to school.

I started a little PR firm because I still have a great desire to help small businesses and businesses grow. And so instead of representing 600 members, I represent six. Six businesses that I can help put decision makers in front of them. I can give them exposure, public relations. It’s just delightful. It’s just a wonderful hands-on.

I am in charge of my own schedule. Don’t be envious, Chamber Champions, but I’m in charge of my own schedule. And I love the work so much. I still am absolutely passionate about helping businesses succeed.

Brandon Burton (05:08.13)
Yeah, and in this stage, you don’t have a board to report to or anything like that. So you’ve got a lot more freedom for sure. Yeah, I think.

Christine Cribb (05:16.93)
No board. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton (05:22.102)
I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard of the book writing process as being phenomenal from somebody. So you must have done something magical with the book. And a lot of other people talk about how strenuous it is and what a labor of love, those kind of descriptions. So I’m excited to learn about the book too. So most, go ahead.

Christine Cribb (05:41.707)
Right.

Christine Cribb (05:45.869)
super

Christine Cribb (05:50.242)
I just wanted to share that I thought I wanted to write a book. I wasn’t as secure in it until I did the research and realized that I had a story to tell and somebody will benefit from this story. And when I put it out to beta readers, the nicest compliment was, we can hear your voice. can hear that people could hear my voice in my words. And I thought, I’m going to share it.

I am not a literary virtuoso by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a Midwest girl. I speak in run-on sentences. I speak way too fast and I’m in the foothills of North Carolina. So be know that my editor constantly was slashing run-on sentence, run-on sentence, stop it, slow down. anyway, I did enjoy the process and it was, it’s my first of many books, I think. So I guess I enjoyed it where other people.

might have found it to be a challenge. I enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton (06:46.99)
That’s great, yeah, and other people say, I’ll never write another book again. And you’re just saying it’s the first of many.

Christine Cribb (06:48.653)
I also did lots of, Brandon, also did a lot of Yeah, rookie mistakes. So people, you you make mistakes. The first time doing something, you make mistakes. And I made a few. So, but it was a good lesson learned for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:05.228)
Yeah, that’s great. So we’ll spend most of our conversation today talking about the theme of your book is attract. Well, it’s the title, but it’s the theme that we’ll carry on for this podcast recording is attract. Don’t recruit. And the importance of that.

When you look at it through a chamber lens, through a membership organization lens, I think it’s a great idea, a great concept, and great principles that we’ll dive into as soon as we get back from this quick break. All right.

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Brandon Burton (07:39.31)
All right, Christine, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about attract, don’t recruit. So this is the title of your book, but tell us about how that title came to be, how that became the focus for your first book and what some of those lessons are that you share.

Christine Cribb (07:55.833)
Sure.

Super, thank you so much for asking. So a track don’t recruit came to me when I was coaching a membership position at my second chamber. I was coaching her and she said, so-and-so is not a member. I want to go get them and pitch them. And I said, you know, what’s interesting is that we doubled the chamber numbers in Cleveland County. And I never ever knocked on a door, handed a card.

said you’re not a chamber member come and visit me. We created energy and momentum that people leaned in and they came in and one by one we met every single one of them met with me.

They felt the benefits, they could see it and feel it, and they wanted to be part of it. The best example why I knew this was a track don’t recruit had to be the title, Brandon, is because in about my second year at this chamber, a woman came in and said, I can see so much energy on Facebook. I want to be part of this.

And I knew then that we had a little magic momentum going on and that needed to be the name of the book. Of course, I didn’t even know when I would be stepping down and retiring then, but I just knew then I would write a book and it would be called Attract Don’t Recruit. It would be all about infusing energy and making sure that people that ran chambers knew that they are the energy. They are responsible for managing up and managing down. They are the energy for their entire organization.

Christine Cribb (09:36.11)
So that’s kind of the meat and potatoes of the concept of how it got the title. And then it just evolved after that. would think of a topic like one of the most popular chapters right now that I’m getting feedback from is knowing your why.

Everyone talks about that. You really need to dive into why you do what you do and it empowers you to feel so much more authentic and convincing when you’re talking to someone when you understand your why. The other chapter that’s getting a lot of attention is the risky business I call it and it’s about taking risks. If you stay in the same mode you’re in, you will be in the same spot you’re in

two years from now, but if you take a risk and do something you’ve never done before. And in the book I share great risk takings. have a couple of really funny stories and then I share some failures. Like I can be completely bombed on something and it’s okay because at least I took the risk in doing it.

Brandon Burton (10:43.584)
Yeah, I like that. And with highlighting those two chapters, the why understanding your why is going to give you that drive that motivation to create that energy that you’re talking about, but also the risky business aspect. I’m sure there’s precautions, there’s things you need to look at. So you’re not just being, you know, totally flagrant with what you’re doing. But the risky business when you do something that’s exciting, it’s going to build that excitement that’s going to draw that attraction. Is there more that

can talk on on those two topics and building the energy around those those ideas.

Christine Cribb (11:20.599)
Absolutely, the risky business most importantly is that it’s strategic obviously and well vetted. I’ll share one really funny story. I was asked by a local community college to do a TV show.

and on Chamber World and Small Business. And so I went to my advisory committee, who is our board members. They’re the group that hired me and I wanted them to stay involved and I created an advisory committee. So the one, the chairman of the board said, let’s go drink some bourbon. We’ll have some bourbon brainstorming going on for, to discuss this. Well, I’m not a bourbon drinker.

So the host was about four doors down from where I live in my neighborhood, went to the bourbon brainstorm meeting. In five minutes, we decided that this TV show was not in our lane. We were not going to do it. and I agreed with that, but I just wanted it really well, once again, well vetted to take a risk of my time and energy. Right. And so I did drink my first old fashioned and I probably drank two of them.

Brandon Burton (12:33.804)
Okay.

Christine Cribb (12:36.347)
I then took something out of a jar and ate it and said, is the best grape I’ve ever tasted. And one of the men at the event said, at the meeting said, should we let her know that that is a bourbon soaked cherry? So that tells you that I was, I was enjoying that old fashioned.

On the way home, it was this time of year, on the way home, was kicking the leaves, walking home, and I had the brainstorm idea that we needed those gentlemen loved their bourbon. We needed to have a bourbon, gentlemen’s bourbon dinner. And we were looking for a way to raise capital funds to take care of the building.

So between within 24 hours, I was creating a gentleman’s bourbon dinner, tasting and dinner. I secured everything secured a sponsor, started to pull it together, pitch the board and said, let’s just try it. If it fails, it fails. But if let’s try it because of what I saw resonating with how much these gentlemen love their bourbon. So sure enough, we did it. I think it’s still in place now at the chamber and might be its fourth year.

that it’s happened, but it’s taken a risk. mean, we were adding alcohol in the Bible Belt in the foothills of North Carolina, and it was a huge success. We raised a lot of money, started the renovations on the building. It was fabulous. But that’s one example.

Brandon Burton (14:02.764)
Yeah, I think last time you’re on the show, we actually recorded the day after you had your bourbon event. it does, yeah. I believe so, I believe so. So I remember the energy coming from that, so yeah.

Christine Cribb (14:11.564)
That’s great. That’s great. Was it the first one? Was it? I think it was the… my gosh. That is great. that’s… Yes, that is one story that’s in the book. The other story I’ll tell share a failure also because everybody needs to take a risk of failing for sure. Coming out of COVID, there were so many positions that were open.

Brandon Burton (14:32.076)
Yes.

Christine Cribb (14:41.74)
Brandon that businesses needed employees. And so I thought, well, we’ll have a Friday career cafe. We’ll open up the chamber. We’ll have businesses set up little tables. We’ll have people come in that want to work that are seeking jobs. Well, we had businesses want to come in and they did great. They sat there, they visited with each other, they networked and we had tricklings of people coming in interested in looking for a job. And what that told me

was that our lane was not in the people looking for work. We did not work well in bringing those people in. We needed to leave that to the people that do that, NC Works. We needed to leave that to the groups that are part of unemployment and helping people get jobs and partner with them. We didn’t need to do something solo. So we tried it for three months and

And it was not successful and I was okay with that. At least we tried it and then we were able to partner with other organizations to help fill some of these positions for businesses. But we took a chance.

Brandon Burton (15:51.235)
Yeah.

So I think, and I like that example, it makes me think about even from the employer standpoint, when you interact with businesses or for those listening with your member businesses, the practice of attracting and not recruiting is beneficial even in the hiring process, when they are looking to bring on employees. I see this firsthand right now, my wife is applying for jobs and stuff and it’s tough when some of these businesses are not

trying to attract, you know, they’re they’re doing more of the recruiting style instead of, you know, showing how attractive they are and drawing people to them. And then they have the same problems all the time of, know, we just don’t have enough people or we can’t, you know, retain people because they’re not attracting. So I think there’s parallels from the membership organization to the employer standpoint as well. But it looks like you have an idea to expand on.

Christine Cribb (16:29.03)
Alright.

Christine Cribb (16:37.393)
Hmm.

Christine Cribb (16:49.57)
Absolutely.

Absolutely, I do because when you’re applying for a job You want to know also what’s in it for me your wife wants to know? What are you offering me? Not just what you need. I need you to and the old job description is not enticing anymore, right? And we just want to know is there family flexibility is there?

you know, what are the perks of working for you, not just hone in on what do you need? I think that’s really important. And I think there’s businesses that are definitely shifting to that because they want to attract the right people, not just fill a position, right? And then not as much with seeking employment, but with the membership aspect.

It’s all about relationship building, right? It’s about making somebody feel so incredibly valuable in your organization that they want to be part of it.

We worked really hard on, and it’s in the book of not, we tried never to say the word no. If someone asks for something and everyone in Chamber Champions, you know, people ask for things all the time. When someone would say, do you know what the Chamber should do? I would think, wait, am I sitting back eating bonbons? I don’t think so, right? You know what the Chamber should do. Anyway, I think,

Christine Cribb (18:19.674)
that relationship building. lost my train of thought there because that was so funny to me. I remember people saying that, but it’s all about relationship building for sure. Cultivating relationship that people want. and we never said no. So we had a list of things that we don’t do. Brandon, we didn’t say we can’t do that. That’s not our job. If somebody said, can I pay my electric bill here? Well, obviously you cannot pay your electric bill at the Chamber of Commerce, but instead of just saying no,

Brandon Burton (18:23.874)
Right, yeah. You talked about never saying no, right?

Christine Cribb (18:47.26)
Our front desk gal, the administrative assistant, Catherine, would walk the person out the front door, share with them going down to City Hall. They could pay their city bill, write down one block down, take a left, it’s right there. She would try to over deliver. She would not just simply say the word, no, we don’t do that. Then I had something called, can I say a bad word?

Brandon Burton (19:12.814)
Sure, we’ll clean it up if we need to.

Christine Cribb (19:15.022)
Okay, I said.

Clean it up if you need to, but we would have something in an email. People are so busy and they have so many emails. I would tell staff, just deliver a shit sandwich. Deliver a really nice opening. Be a nice, warm, hello, thank you so much for the email. Then get to the point without saying the word no, you’re dreaming. We can never do that. We’re a chamber of commerce. Deliver what you can do, not what you can’t, and then end it very, very positively. So I better come up with a new name for that, but that was the philosophy.

also no negative words never saying anything ill about your board somebody else your employees your members just keeping it so Genuinely positive that once you’re in the habit of not doing that. It’s like a piece of cake Yeah, and that infuses energy by staying positive all the time. Yeah

Brandon Burton (20:09.016)
and you’d rather have a cake than one of those sandwiches.

Christine Cribb (20:11.996)
Right. That’s right. That’s right. I also had a really special moment on the I have a chapter called train and trust. And in that chapter, I share a story about someone who’d worked for me that had been in chamber world for 11 years. And I took her to the first chamber conference, her first.

And when she came back, she bloomed in such a beautiful, incredible, empowering way, giving her some tools that she was able to go someplace for three days and speak the language of chamber world. Not only leaders and board members need to go to those, but when you bring your staff…

to an event like that, they feel so empowered when they get home and she bloomed, she was already phenomenal, but she even bloomed even more, more so. So that empowerment, the train them, give them the training and then trust them to do their job is really great.

Brandon Burton (21:16.342)
Yeah, I love that. So from a membership perspective, does the train and trust, does it have applications there as well when you’re trying to attract rather than recruit?

Christine Cribb (21:29.058)
Absolutely, so we, two things happened that taught me about this. The first was at my first chamber and a really great supporter and mentor of mine, Dan Aulis from Would Be Coffee, he came in and said, your structure is wrong. You have a membership coordinator, but you are on top of her all the time and wanting to make sure that every new member meets with you.

Why don’t you make her events coordinator and you just take membership? Because these people are coming in the door and they want to talk to you. So we actually changed the structure. Then when I got to North Carolina, there were only two of us at the time. So I absolutely met with every single new member. When we were able to grow, we hired a membership coordinator. And that is when I started to share that attract, don’t recruit. They’re walking in the door. Our job is to give.

not just sign that person up, but cultivate that relationship that makes them feel like they belong. You don’t need to be out on the street knocking on doors to people that don’t know what the chamber is. Let the domino effect, the energy in which you’re projecting, let that trickle down through your ambassadors, through your board, through your brand new members that just thank you. They thank you for these benefits and they walk out the door and they tell other people and they walk in the door. And it doesn’t happen overnight. We were coming out of COVID.

You know, I think on that first podcast I did, I shared that we were coming out of COVID. We had 14 events and that year coming out of COVID and within two years we had 149. I mean, we just set things on fire, whether it was a ribbon cutting once a week, whether it was adding more events like the bourbon event and some other events that we did too.

And so it’s really, it takes a little while, but it absolutely is worth the stop trying to beg people to join your Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton (23:27.68)
Yeah, yeah, be attractive. Is there another key point or two that you want to draw out from the book before we wrap things up?

Christine Cribb (23:35.376)
Well, sure, one thing is, there’s so many cool things to share. But one is to make sure that you, one chapter is a refueling station, that you make sure you take time to take care of yourself. That is more critical than ever because that work is never ending and I’m well aware of that. When I could step back and be completely present in my children’s lives, I didn’t know that I was doing exactly what I told people not to do.

Brandon Burton (23:42.72)
I know it.

Christine Cribb (24:04.335)
which was just drinking from a fire hose, even though I thought I had it all together. The other thing is key performing indicators. When you start to brainstorm and take a risk, when you have key performing indicators that are valuable, not just the board wants to know how many members and how much money we have, use really good quality key performing indicators to help you determine your risk taking and the decisions that you make down the road.

And then there’s a whole chapter on time management because I tried every single one of them. There’s like 14 different tactics to manage your time. I’ve tried everyone. I’ve merged them. I’ve said this is never going to work for me, but there’s some great tools in there. And mostly it’s about really being the energy behind your chamber. You know, I have a hashtag called room shifter.

Like be a room shifter when you walk in a room people should light up you should be able to Attract the energy if you walk in a room and nobody’s walking up to talk to you You need to put a smile on your face and you need to start walking up to them and put shaking hands and working the room That’s not even beginning there’s 23 chapters brandon Yes, yes

Brandon Burton (25:17.687)
Right? Just hitting a few of the highlights, right? But I love the idea about being a room shifter because there should be an energy change and if there’s not, like you should take the energy you have and then go find those others that need to either have an infusion of that energy or just connect with that energy or whatever it may be, but it should change the tone of that room and show that what you’re doing matters, right?

Christine Cribb (25:24.111)
Yes.

Christine Cribb (25:36.813)
Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes, I also told people that if you’re not a networker, just come alongside me during an event and before you know it, you will be paired off with somebody that you had never met before. And if you yourself as a leader are not a networker, go find one. Go find one and learn how to do it. Really know how to work a room. You should light up that room when you walk into it. Yep.

Brandon Burton (25:54.35)
Great idea.

Brandon Burton (26:07.628)
Yeah, I love that idea. Christine, is a yeah, this has been great. You’ve hit on a lot of great ideas and topics and points from the book. I wanted to ask you for the Chamber Champion listening who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item would you leave for them as they try to accomplish that goal?

Christine Cribb (26:10.884)
All right, the screen froze. There we go.

Christine Cribb (26:36.668)
I would like to tell them to start living like you’re a legend. Start energizing people, rooms, have over deliver in being authentic, but your energy, your positive energy shifts people, shifts rooms, shifts organizations. We all know the toolkit. We all have the rule. We’ve all read the books. We’ve all, we know how to run a chamber.

What you have to have is that authentic, genuine energy that takes it to the next level.

Brandon Burton (27:12.543)
I love that. It’s a great tip. So I know I had asked you this question when you were on the show before, but I like asking everybody for their current perspective. As we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christine Cribb (27:14.448)
Good. Good, good, good.

Christine Cribb (27:31.087)
I love it. I will look back and see what my answer was a couple years ago when I was here because it has changed. So when I wrote the book and I did some research on chambers throughout American history, what happened every decade was that chambers would shift their priorities across the country. They would shift.

what the priorities were depending on what was going on during that time. So I believe chambers will thrive and survive. Absolutely. I feel like they have to do it being open and willing to change and do things differently than they’ve ever done it before. So for example, obviously during COVID chamber was a huge part of workforce and knowing what was going on. The other thing would have been to be

I would tell Chambers to be a change agent. Be the change agent. If the future is AI, get on AI. Figure out what it is, offer classes, make sure that you learn everything that you can about it. If something’s going on in your county, get a seat at the table that lets you take the lead in being a change agent.

Brandon Burton (28:46.252)
Yeah, being able to just sit back and see the change happen is not going to serve your organization well. It’s not going to serve you as a leader. Well, you need to be that agent driving the change, recognizing where the future is going and be seen as that thought leader and that change agent. It’s ahead of the pack.

Christine Cribb (28:53.424)
No.

Christine Cribb (29:01.175)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like that’s, that’s, that’s phenomenal. That’s the deal maker is, is being able to get a seat at the table, to be part of what’s coming next, because there’s always something coming next. You can’t sit still for three, five, 10 years and think that you’re not going to have some changes going on that you need to be a major part of. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:30.22)
That’s right. That’s right. Find your original answer. Well, Christine, now the important question is for those listening who want to connect with you and learn more about attract, don’t recruit or where to pick up the book or connect with you, where would you point them and what would be the best ways to connect?

Christine Cribb (29:32.206)
Now you make me want to go back and look at my first video chat with you. I will look at that podcast for sure.

Christine Cribb (29:54.374)
Thank you.

Thank you so much. So you can purchase the book through Amazon. The name of the book is Attract Don’t Recruit, by Christine Cribb You can also reach out on Facebook in any time. I have a workbook coming out that’s going to be a companion workbook to the book, which will be great for directors, presidents of chambers. It’ll be great for board of directors and for staff. The workbook will have how to work your why.

really understanding your purpose and how to organize the time management aspect is in the workbook. That’ll be out by the end of December. So Facebook, but you can also reach me on my website is christinecribb.com. My next book will be announced on there. It’s called Mind Your Own Business. And it’s really for entrepreneurs that are trying to do a startup.

Brandon Burton (30:49.163)
Okay.

Christine Cribb (30:54.844)
you know, the people that say

I make a great lasagna, so I’m going to open an Italian restaurant. So it’s really a great guide for directors and presidents of chambers to guide entrepreneurs in the right direction. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you better find someone that does know, right? So that is one book. And then I’m going to write a book called Lipstick and Laugh Lines. And it’s about women that reinvented themselves after the age of 50. So if anyone has a great story,

of a woman who reinvented herself after 50 years old, it could end up in my book. And so if you think of the old chicken soup for the soul, I don’t think you’re old enough, Brandon, to remember that, are you? So if you remember, okay.

Brandon Burton (31:37.964)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s a great compliment, but yes, I do remember it.

Christine Cribb (31:45.457)
So Chicken Soup for the Soul, it will be that kind of stories. They’ll be small stories in there of women who reinvented themselves out of inspiration. So I got the bug to write books and so now I’ve got a couple more coming down the pipe. But ChristineCribb.com will get you to my website. Facebook will very easily message me on Facebook, follow me on Facebook. It’s really fun to watch what’s happened with the book.

We had 60 people come to the book launch at the chamber here in Shelby and I was overwhelmed. It was so humbling and exciting. Yes.

Brandon Burton (32:20.908)
That’s fun. That is really cool. Well, congratulations to you on getting your first book out there. We look forward to getting our hands on it, but also the future books that are coming out as well. And we’ll make sure to connect all your shout outs, your Facebook and website and Amazon and everything in our show notes. So it’ll be easy for listeners to connect and find the book and follow your journey. So this has been great. Thank you. You bet.

Christine Cribb (32:26.214)
Thank you.

Christine Cribb (32:40.592)
Thank you.

Christine Cribb (32:46.032)
Thank you so much. Brandon, thank you for this opportunity. Thank you.

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Workforce Housing with Natalie Hawn

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Brandon Burton (00:01.269)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a dynamic leader shaping the future of business and community development in Northwest Missouri. Natalie Hawn is the President and CEO of the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, where she champions economic growth.

strategic partnerships and a thriving business environment. With nearly two decades of experience at the chamber, Natalie previously served as senior vice president and membership and brings a strong background in business development and public relations honed through roles with Woody Bibbins and Associates and Prior Resources Inc.

A proud graduate of Missouri Western State University, Natalie’s influence extends far beyond her city. She’s the treasurer of the Hawthorne Foundation, a commissioner on the Missouri Military Preparedness and Enhancement Commission, and a national representative in the Air Mobility Command Leadership Academy. She’s also a 2024 recipient of the prestigious Women of Achievement Award from Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe.

From education to the arts and military readiness to economic innovation, Natalie is deeply woven into the fabric of her community, serving on numerous boards and leading countless initiatives that drive progress. She’s a passionate advocate and connector and a true civic leader. Natalie, we’re thrilled 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.

Natalie Hawn (01:47.97)
Hi guys, and wow, that was probably the best intro ever. Way to go, Brandon. So I am here in St. Joseph, Missouri. I have a 16 year old son that just played in the district champions of his high school, six day high school here. We played a Kansas City team last night. Unfortunately, we didn’t.

Brandon Burton (01:52.929)
we go, chat GPT.

Natalie Hawn (02:14.958)
win. So it’s the end of fall football season, but we have a couple years left because he was a sophomore this year. So he’s, I’ve spent a lot of my fall supporting his team and their football. So that’s kind of been my life recently. But I am from Mid-Missouri originally. I grew up on a farm. I have four brothers and I absolutely love Chamber World and I love what I do every day. It gives us passion.

to build a better community so that my son can have a better place to live for tomorrow. So that’s a little bit about me.

Brandon Burton (02:49.025)
That’s That’s what makes fall so great is football. I love it.

Natalie Hawn (02:52.118)
Yeah, the boys of fall. love it. And we are at the home of the Kansas City Chiefs training camp. So we’re big Chiefs fans in this part of the country. And I know that’s unpopular right now. I love it that we celebrate that you should be successful, but not too successful. Because we love you for a minute. Now we hate you. Be successful, but not too successful. But we’re still diehard Chiefs fans in this part of the country.

Brandon Burton (03:08.863)
Yeah, don’t do it over and over again. We want to see other people win too, right?

That’s right.

That’s funny. Well, tell us a little bit about the St. Joseph Chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, your budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Natalie Hawn (03:31.234)
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been, as Brandon said, I’ve been at the Chamber for 20 years in a little bit different role. The last four years, I’ve been the CEO. So prior to that, I kind of ran the whole membership side of the House. Now I have the opportunity to kind of dive more into economic development and really see this full scope of the Chamber. So it’s been a lot of fun. But our Chamber has about 1,300 members.

Our community is about 75,000 and we have a budget of 2 million. We do economic development and chamber. So we have a contract with the city and the county to do economic development. And we also have economic development partners that go into that budget. So we’re combined budget for about 2 million. We have a staff of 11.

Brandon Burton (04:21.205)
good. That definitely helps to give us that context. Obviously, every chamber has a different size, different resources, different focus even. But as we kind of hone our focus on to our topic for discussion today, which will be around workforce housing, that’ll help to give us that background and kind of what those needs are in your community. So we will dive into that topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Natalie Hawn (04:25.165)
Yeah!

Natalie Hawn (04:30.156)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:47.905)
All right, Natalie, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, our topic that we’re diving into today is about workforce housing. So I know this has become an issue, a hot topic rather, throughout a lot of the country, trying to figure out how do we, and it depends on the community, right? Some are trying to figure out housing for employees who maybe live outside the community, who have a long commute that are coming in, maybe the housing’s not affordable. Different scenarios that have

different needs to look for workforce housing. as you have the lens of the St. Joseph Chamber, tell us what needs are arising and how you guys are working to approach those needs.

Natalie Hawn (05:30.84)
So when I took over this role, the very first meeting I had was with one of our major employers. it hadn’t been a conversation or really a space that we had really been involved in. And they said to me, you have to figure out this workforce housing piece. We just can’t find affordable appropriate housing for our workers. And they’re having to drive a significant amount of way to work. And so I started digging into that and really

trying to better understand the need, because it was really, we were hearing it kind of across the country. This was about four years ago, but we weren’t really hearing it in our community and nobody was really, nobody was really digging in to try to solve it. So I started, I did some surveys, started having some conversations and kind of found that our members really were struggling with workforce housing and it really was a major issue to them. And I think they really hadn’t come to us because they weren’t sure what role we could play in solving it.

But we did a survey and we recently did a labor reason study and it showed that we are having labor issues, that we are significantly having challenges with people living here. And we had a population decline of 6.4%. And the top three reasons, number two was affordable appropriate housing. And so we thought, okay, you know, this is different world today for economic development. You know, it used to be that you could kind of say,

economic development, we’re going to, we have great land, we have great incentives, they’ll come here. It’s no longer that way. Now we have to kind of think about how do we solve the problems for that business? It’s such a competitive market these days because of technology and incentives. You can really live and create your business anywhere. So for the really great companies that we have here, what are we doing so they continue to expand and grow here?

to solve their problems. So we kind of dug into this workforce housing initiative because nobody was really having the conversation. And we did a study, so we partnered with the city and we did a study so that we could really make our decisions based in facts versus emotion. We intuitively knew what the challenges were, but it’s always great to really know what the data is telling you so that you can do some solution-driven.

Natalie Hawn (07:51.662)
problems around facts and data. And it really helps when you need to go out and get funding or get people to the table to be able to say, no, this really is the challenge and here’s where we are. So we found that we needed all housing, but we found that we really needed workforce housing. And I’ll break that down. We needed housing for people that make $50,000 to $100,000. The average wage in our community is $57,000. And we’re the seventh highest in the state.

So if you made our average wage, you were really having a hard time finding appropriate affordable housing. And we were getting, as we dug into this, were hearing we have 30 teachers living on couches. We had a lot of our young engineers that were having to drive in from other areas and they were having to spend a lot of time and money commuting and they didn’t wanna do that. They wanna live here, they couldn’t find any place to live.

And so as we dug into that, found that there are really what the challenge was. think, you know, our, had never got around the table and kind of thought about, we have to cultivate an environment to solve the problem of what we need. just assumed that developers and builders would provide the housing that we needed if there was a need. And that’s not the case today. And that’s why you’re seeing it across the country. So we incentivize low income housing.

through the state with tax credit dollars. And I think that’s probably similar across the country. So we have quite a bit of low income housing because there’s incentives for developers to make money. And then we have high income housing because you can make money on a custom built home. But where in today’s climate where you can’t make money is that moderate middle housing. So it’s really hard if you’re not incentivized with a tax credit.

to really be able to keep that rental rate low. So what we’re finding is the rental rates are extremely unproportionate for those folks that make 50 to $100,000. And in that housing study, we saw that we are about 2,400 units of rental or home under the need that we have in our community for people that make that amount of money. So we had to really get creative and think differently about how to solve this problem.

Natalie Hawn (10:19.566)
And so we kind of approached it like we would in economic development. So we give incentives for people that are expanding or bringing a job here. So why not give incentives for someone that’s developing housing that we actually need? Now, this is not something our community has done. So this took us probably two years to really educate.

the municipalities and the partners to understand the role they play because again, they’re just thinking well, if there’s a need there’s a demand somebody will fill it not if they’re not making money on it. It’s still business guys. So we had to just come at it a little differently. So we created a task force that was ran by the chamber and we’ve got everybody who touches housing at the table. So whether that’s your housing authority, that’s your Habitat for Humanities, your nonprofits, but also your for-profits, your builders.

your bankers, your home mortgage loaners, your employers. I’ve invited our major employers to the table to talk about what they need. The school district, because we have a huge need for teacher housing because teachers don’t make a lot of money. So we brought everybody to the table and we started facilitating the conversation. So we started bringing in speakers and topics and kind of educating the players on what is happening.

and what’s not happening and what other communities are doing. And by starting that conversation and really kind of championing the needs in the community, so educating the politicians of what we needed and educating the community of what we needed, then we were able to actually start, that’s where we were able to start making real change. So we went out and we looked at a community that was doing some great work in this space. And

we were able to kind of replicate some of the things that they were doing. So we wanted to go, how are you making this work? How are you doing this? They had, so for the state of Missouri, it might be a little different, but you could certainly do these things in your own communities. We were able to find the Abandoned Housing Act, and that was one of the tools that they were using. So we know that you have to be a nonprofit to do the Abandoned Housing Act. We have a lot in our community of blighted vacant properties that we could.

Natalie Hawn (12:36.832)
rehab and kind of get back on the tax rolls that we could have as affordable properties. So we started with, we started having conversations in our community and from that a group of four ladies that work at several of our major employers, CFO, HR came together and started a nonprofit called the Housing Improvement Initiative and they’re at the task force with us. A couple of them are on my board of directors and they started this nonprofit

And here’s what’s really cool about it. They have this nonprofit and they give first right or refusal to their employees to purchase these homes that they’re rehabbing that they got off of the Abandoned Housing Act. So they put their employees through a boot camp. And so that boot camp, they kind of target generational renters. And so they’re putting them through a boot camp where they can learn how to get their credit scores up. They can learn.

fiscal responsibility, they can learn how to be a good homeowner, and they give them a mentor in home ownership, and they put them through this boot camp. Once they’ve graduated the boot camp, then they become qualified to purchase one of the homes that they have. So this has come quickly. They put this whole program together, and we now have eight homes in their control. They’re buying and…

more through auction as well as through the Abandoned Housing Act every day. And then they’ve come up with creative ways to rehab these homes. So they’re working with our Youth Alliance on a trades program. So the students in our community get to go out and learn from tradesmen as they rehab these homes. So it’s a great way of kind of learning and skilling up for trades for future jobs for high school and young adults that need a trade. So

That’s been really great. And then we also partner with for-profits on that as well, where we can bring a rehabber in and they can, you know, rehab the home and we can certainly get it back out to a person to live in quicker than we do through the Youth Alliance program. So we have a couple of different ways that we do that. They sell the home then to somebody who has graduated from the program or somebody who’s qualified that kind of meets the scope. is not, it’s a…

Natalie Hawn (14:56.302)
Non-for-profit, so it’s not a for-profit. Anything they make, they put back into purchasing another home or rehab, et cetera. And the reason this is important is because about 60 % of our homes that are kind of in that affordable market of the range that are needed, they are really getting swept up by landlords. So the cash buyers, if you’re a normal buyer, you’re gonna take that cash offer. You’re not gonna take the chance on that person that needs a VA loan, that veteran.

because it’s a harder process. But they will not sell to a cash offer. They will not sell to someone that has a VA loan or has a first time home buyer. So their program is set up in a way where they’re really trying to get this into the hands of the people who really need it. And they’re targeting neighborhoods so that you can truly have change in that neighborhood. And they’ve targeted neighborhoods close to their manufacturing facilities. We are a…

large manufacturing towns. So they’ve kind of targeted neighborhoods around their facilities so they can start to build community. That is one example of really something that has come from conversation about need, identifying need, the task force. The chair of my task force actually started that program. So we were really excited, but we certainly didn’t stop there. have Doug.

so much deeper. So it’s one thing to start a task force and start the conversation, but you can also start to move the needle on real progress and change. So we dug a little deeper and we saw that one of the great tools that another community was using was a Nuisance Act. And we found out that St. Joseph didn’t qualify at state legislation for the Nuisance Act that only Kansas City and St. Louis did. So this last legislative session, we worked

hand-in-hand with our legislators and we got some legislation passed where St. Joseph got added to the Nuisance Act. And what’s cool about the Nuisance Act is it now allows us the ability to go after commercial blighted buildings, vacant buildings versus just abandoned houses. So we’ve also started our own charitable trust that we are now having, we’re working on a scoped area. So we’ve been working on our downtown. We have a lot of vacant buildings downtown.

Natalie Hawn (17:14.882)
that are owned by absentee out of state homeowners, a lot of times for tax shelter. So, but then we have people where we’re really trying to make strides and putting in a lot of investments and redeveloping certain areas of our downtown. So with the Nuisance Act, we’re able to go after that owner that maybe isn’t as progressively moving our downtown forward. And we’re able to put some pressure on them.

to either rehab their building and make it not blighted or we give them the option to gift it for the tax write-off to our charitable trust. We’ll then turn around and sell it for a dollar to a developer that will rehab it and really get it back on the tax rolls so that it becomes a thriving piece of our downtown because we have these investors that are putting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars into

rehabbing these buildings into our downtown, only to have an investor that maybe has a vacant blighted building that is really making it where people want to come commit crimes, catch it on fire. And then that really puts the whole progress that you’re making in your downtown at risk. So we have really kind of put our money where our mouth is per se, and we’re really trying to dig in and kind of tackle some of these issues.

Brandon Burton (18:43.763)
So, I mean, a chamber is perfectly positioned to be able to go after these difficult issues and find solutions and convene those parties to get the job done. I love the idea of the Housing Improvement Initiative and the nonprofit that was built around that.

So I had a question about that, also with the Nuisance Act. So first with the housing improvement initiative. So as they rehab these homes and go to sell them, are they being listed close to market price or are they keeping the prices lower to try to attract or try to make it work for those employees or how the pricing I think could become a difficult thing.

Natalie Hawn (19:26.562)
Yeah, so they are pricing them affordable for the person who needs to purchase it. So we know that the market hole, so we have the hole in rental, but we also have the hole in kind of that first time homebuyer. So we know in our market, 120,000 to 200,000, you can’t find a home. And if it is available, they’re getting swept up by the cash buyers.

So that is really where that first time home buyer or traditional home is where the need is. So they’re making it affordable. They are not flipping it and then putting in high rates because they’re not trying to make money on it. They want to get their employee into that home for a responsible, affordable amount in a safe neighborhood. And it’s also transforming those neighborhoods because you took that vacant home.

that obviously, you know, a couple of them have had squatters in it just because, you know, so it takes that vacant home and makes it a home again. And then you put an excited homeowner in it versus a renter, which there’s nothing wrong with renters, but we know that if you put the homeowner in and they are just going to have more pride in it, they’re just going to be more excited about it. And you do that with

Brandon Burton (20:41.739)
And they’ve been through a boot camp to know how to be a great homeowner. That’s right.

Natalie Hawn (20:43.596)
And they’re giving, they’re giving mentors. I mean, they have resources and people that are supporting them and cheering for them. And then when you put them in a neighborhood, you put two or three of them in a neighborhood, the pride becomes contagious. And that slowly starts to turn around your neighborhood. So no, they do not make money on those. If they happen to make money on the project, they just put it into the next project. And then think about the employee retention piece of that, Brandon.

Brandon Burton (21:05.995)
goes back into. there’s, yeah.

Natalie Hawn (21:10.4)
So if you care enough about your employee that you have rehabbed at home, put them through a boot camp and help them achieve a dream that they’ve never been able to thought possible, how loyal are they gonna be to your place? Like it’s a great employee retention tool.

Brandon Burton (21:23.957)
Yeah, that’s an awesome point. So is there any stipulation to those new homeowners, first time homeowners, do they need to stay in the home for so long when they sell it? Does it go for STIBs to another employee? How does that work?

Natalie Hawn (21:38.776)
So they do put some clawbacks on it and they don’t limit it to employees. So the employees that go through the boot camp don’t have to buy a home from them. They just get first right or refusal. And right now it’s such a new program, you know, that they’re not churning out the houses as fast as the need. So it’s kind of twofold. You’re getting your employee trained and ready to go out to buy a home and giving them the resources they need. And they have opened that up to the community. It doesn’t just have to be their employees, but they have more

people wanting to buy them, they do houses. But they definitely try to make sure it’s a great fit to whom they sell the house to. And they do have some clawbacks in there because they’re doing a significant amount of work on this house and then selling it at a fair price. they’re putting them some, they have a lawyer that they work with that’s doing a pro bono. And they do put some things in there to have safety precautions so that the person doesn’t just turn around.

and sell it for twice the amount of money because that defeats the whole purpose. And it’s really about building a better community and rehabbing homes. Our community has been here for about 175 years and we traditionally haven’t had a lot of strategy around housing. So what’s created from that is we have blocks of neighborhoods that have abandoned housing and abandoned commercial properties. And so…

That’s where we’ve really tried to dig in and kind of create some strategy. And the cool thing is the municipalities have come along. And so now they’ve been the biggest cheerleaders and the biggest champions now. And it’s really created something special.

Brandon Burton (23:20.043)
So with the Nuisance Act, what sort of threshold is there for these vacant buildings to be able to qualify for the Nuisance Act or for you to be able to go after the owners of the building?

Econ Dev Ops is the virtual assistant service built specifically for small Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Organizations (EDOs)

Natalie Hawn (23:29.954)
Yes. So this is still brand new. So we’re still writing the book on this chapter. We just got the legislation signed into law August 28th. So we’ve literally just created the Charitable Trust and the team that’s gonna kind of tackle this. So we’ll have to do another podcast to let you know how that unfolds. We kind of have our first building identified.

Brandon Burton (23:35.764)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (23:41.406)
Okay.

Natalie Hawn (23:58.318)
And, but we’re, we’re certainly still writing this chapter. It was more of an example of there’s so much that you can do to move the needle. And we’ve learned good and bad through all of these challenges, like, you know, the Abandoned Housing Act. I’m sure we’ll learn the same lessons through the Nuisance Act. So the Abandoned Housing Act, we learned the lesson that, and the group that does this high, I’m just a cheerleader for them.

I’m not a part of their organization. Most of them are on my board and they’re on our task force. But they learned the lesson that when they purchased, they went through all of the process to get the home, it abandons all of the liens that you have in the state, but it doesn’t forgive a federal lien. And they learned that lesson the hard way on their first home. And so you do learn lessons through these processes, but it’s been, it’s

It’s been a lot of fun and it’s really exciting. When we get to do the ribbon cutting on their first home, was probably the first ribbon cutting I’ve cried at. Because it’s just, we’re all kind of, we’ve identified this as a need in our community and we’re tackling it together. Business, community and community, it’s really cool.

Brandon Burton (25:14.001)
It changes lives and it can change lives for generations. So that is, that’s awesome. That is really cool.

Natalie Hawn (25:19.52)
Yeah, it’s been really cool.

Brandon Burton (25:21.973)
Yeah, so I love having these conversations about workforce housing because every chamber who has these difficult issues in their community to try to attack and try to find solutions to, they all come up with different answers. And to be able to share some of these ideas on the podcast, you know, the next chamber out there is going to have an amalgamation of what a few different chambers did to be able to come to certain answers. So being able to put these ideas out there and help other chambers

to really get their head wrapped around what is possible, what a chamber can do, and rallying the troops in the community, so to speak, be that convener. And you guys are moving the needle on making a huge impact in St. Joseph. So that’s awesome.

Natalie Hawn (26:08.664)
Yeah, thank you. I always say that the Chamber’s role, every community, I always say you’ve seen one Chamber, you’ve seen one Chamber, because the role of a Chamber is to be what their community needs them to be. And we tend to step in and serve the role to kind of facilitate solving that problem or being that convener, because Chambers are so positioned to be a convener.

So it doesn’t mean that we’ll always be the one leading the housing initiative or the task force. Once that problem starts to get some legs and really starts to head down a path that it’s gonna solve itself, then we’ll move on to the next challenge. But we find ourselves in the spaces that nobody else is at. If somebody else is already solving the problem, that’s awesome.

But it was one of those things that nobody was talking about housing, nobody was solving the problem. It was a true need for the business community. And I’ve had people, including our city manager say, why are you, he was branding, it was like, why are you doing the housing and stuff? And then he realized nobody else was. And I think that’s the role that Chambers, and it matters to this. And I think that’s the role that Chambers play. Like you can be such a convener to any issue that’s affecting your committee.

Brandon Burton (27:14.503)
And it matters to business. Yeah.

Natalie Hawn (27:25.112)
community if no one else is doing it. And you don’t have to do it forever. Be the champion, start the task force, create the conversation, create the data for the community, then start to watch it kind of evolve and then step out of the table and move on to the next issue. That’s the cool thing to me about Chambers.

Brandon Burton (27:45.473)
and see some of your board members spin up their own nonprofit to help solve the solution, right? Solve the answer, yeah. It’s awesome.

Natalie Hawn (27:51.758)
Isn’t that amazing? mean, and to me, it’s like, I just think that’s so cool. I mean, that’s what chamber boards should be doing. They shouldn’t be worried about, you know, really those day-to-day tasks about your event or micromanaging or what you are not doing. They should be solving problems like this. You know, I have four board members that have gone down and created a nonprofit to…

change our community and change the culture of their organizations because that creates, you know, just really lifelong champions for their organizations when you help somebody figure out how to buy a house. And they never thought that was going to ever be part of their story. So to me, that’s the role chambers should be doing. And that’s what they should be using their board for is how do you really make that radical change in your community? And you have those people that

the table with your board. So inspire them to do bigger things, not just come to the ribbon cutting. I need them at the ribbon cutting. I’d love them to be there. But when you have those thought leaders at the table, you can really, really make cool change happen.

Brandon Burton (29:01.729)
There’s bigger things to be done. Well, Natalie, as for listeners who are out there wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them, whether it’s related to this topic or something different altogether?

Natalie Hawn (29:19.47)
You know, I would say that never get too overwhelmed. The chamber world can be very overwhelming. I would lie to you if I told you there were days that I was overwhelmed. I tell my staff all the time, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And so I think the cool thing about chambers is we can be the catalyst for change in our community.

So if you’re wanting to take your organization to the next level, of do that practice with either yourself, if you’re a one man chamber, the team, kind of find that space that your community really needs and your chamber really does well. And kind of put yourself through that exercise of how can we next level. And I’ll give you just a simple example. It can even be just in the area of…

kind of how do we make about our membership experience? even running, maybe it’s your board if you’re a one man chamber, or maybe it’s your staff if you have the ability to have staff. And maybe you just take the example of kind of your onboarding or your new member process and take it as simple as kind of running an exercise of your touch points and say, how are we, what is this experience like for our member when they try to join the chamber? Do they have?

Can they do it online? Do they have to come in? How complicated are we making it for them? And kind of put yourself through that whole even just new member experience and kind of talk through the touch points and even look at how can I and our team make these touch points easier. So if we’re requiring them to bring a check into the chamber, okay, do we have an online option? Do we take a credit card over the phone or do we tell them, sorry, I can’t take your credit card over the phone, you have to bring a check in?

You know, take some time, even if it’s just 10 minutes in a staff meeting or 10 minutes of your day to think through a process that your members, for the most part, touch every day and how to make that easier for them. Little things like that can take your chamber to the next level. It doesn’t have to be a huge daunting, how do we solve workforce housing problem? It can simply be as easy as how do we make

Natalie Hawn (31:39.89)
our new member or our bill paying experience for our members as hospitable as possible. How do we make our members feel seen and appreciated even if it’s through the bill paying process? So it can be as simple as that. You just, think if we, in Chamber World, we have to take time to slow down and make sure that we are making it a great experience for our members and our community. So everybody wants to be a part of it.

Brandon Burton (32:08.415)
And I’ll add to it that I think after going, you know, slowing down, thinking through those processes, doing what you can to improve upon them, to invite somebody who doesn’t really know anything about the chamber world to go through the process and see what is the user experience for somebody who doesn’t work at the chamber, who’s not thinking about these things all the time, because that’s where you’re really going to see those gaps that you need to close. So.

Natalie Hawn (32:20.354)
Yeah. Yeah!

Natalie Hawn (32:31.146)
And I think that is the smallest thing that you can do that can have the biggest impact on your organization. If you say, I’m going to quarterly take something that we know touches 99 % of our members, literally can be your dues renewal process. And we’re going to slow that down and look at the touch points and talk about how we can make that a better experience for everybody.

It can have huge change on your organization, doesn’t take a lot of time, and it’s an easy thing to do.

Brandon Burton (33:05.121)
Absolutely. Well, Natalie, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future. So as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Natalie Hawn (33:17.024)
Okay, so I don’t know that I have the full answer to that obviously. ACCE has done some amazing stuff in their Horizon initiative that kind of outlines what Chambers should be looking at for the future. I will tell you guys, I don’t know, we’re gonna have to figure out from a Chamber perspective like us, how we’re gonna be utilizing.

AI because I think AI is going to be such a huge game changer for Chambers as well as like just society in general. So give me an example. So this is crazy to me. And then if and I was thinking about this, like how this could truly affect the business community because if it ends up affecting insurance, it’s going to affect all of us. But we were doing our health benefits analysis and maybe everybody knows this. This was new to me. I found out about this yesterday and I was blown away.

So we were doing our renewal. So we bid out our renewals every year. And we were bidding out our renewals and our guy brought our stuff in and he was like, okay, great news. We get to stay at this percentage point with your current provider. But I did go ahead and bid it out with other providers. And I bid it out with this new provider that’s on the scene, but they do all of your analysis through AI and the current providers don’t. And he said,

what I have to tell you and they give you like a full scorecard. He’s like, what I have to tell you is they didn’t accept your team. Like they wouldn’t, they won’t insure you guys. And I will tell you it’s because they take your credit card usage and they put it towards your health and wellness. So for example, I for a lot of parties for the chamber. I bought a lot of margaritas. They think I’m an alcoholic.

Brandon Burton (35:05.728)
Hahaha!

Natalie Hawn (35:09.174)
So I was like, this is a problem. So they wouldn’t insure us because they saw the medicines we pay for out of pocket. So it outed anybody on my team that’s on Ozempic. it also, it like, I was like, I felt very seen and heard by AI that I’m like, okay, it thinks that we’re not appropriate here because we’re buying all this alcohol. But they don’t know, but the disconnect with AI is they didn’t look to see, it’s a chamber. They throw a lot of parties.

Brandon Burton (35:30.751)
That’s funny.

Brandon Burton (35:36.521)
It didn’t have the context, yeah.

Natalie Hawn (35:38.146)
They didn’t have the context. And so that’s just one example, though. If you think about how businesses are going to start to use AI, chambers are going to have to play a role in that because that could revolutionize how the bidding processes for benefits come down in the future for insurance. And that could affect your small businesses. That could affect your chambers. I mean, they denied us. And luckily, our current plan doesn’t look at my credit card spending.

But I think it’s a good example of the reality of that in all seriousness is I think that we’re, even if it’s scary, we’re all going to have to figure out the role that the chambers are going to play in AI and technology. And I think the ones that figure it out are going to be a little more successful than the ones who don’t.

Brandon Burton (36:27.697)
And I’ve mentioned this comment, I feel like every episode, the last few episodes, but we need to make sure that chambers are transparent, that they use AI too, because your members are trying to figure out how to implement AI in their own business. And as a chamber, if they can look to you as a thought leader and you’re using AI, and if you’re trying to hide it, they don’t see you as being relevant. They don’t see you as recognizing what the real implementations are in the business environment.

Natalie Hawn (36:57.494)
Right, not to mention that, you know, they, it just makes your life so much easier. So they’re, you know, if you’re not using it and you’re not really trying to be efficient with it, then I think you have to, you know, you have to take a hard look. Cause we don’t do minutes anymore for like board meetings. I mean, it’s just, it has given us so much time back. So I think we have a responsibility then to teach our members how to do it and not be afraid of it. And, you know, think.

creatively about tools like Pacer AI and how can we use Pacer AI for our small businesses that can’t afford marketing research. I I think we have a responsibility as business leaders for Chambers to educate our businesses on how to use it, especially our small businesses that don’t have time to figure out how to use AI. I do think that’s where the future is headed and I think we have a responsibility.

Brandon Burton (37:47.743)
And.

Brandon Burton (37:51.935)
And this is the opportunity for small businesses to really take advantage if they can be guided in the right direction to really make a difference for their business. So, yeah. So I love that insight. Thank you for that. Natalie, before we wrap up, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about the approach you guys are taking there in St. Joseph. Where would you point them and how should they reach out and connect with you?

Natalie Hawn (37:58.228)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Natalie Hawn (38:17.623)
Yeah. You can find us at stjoseph.com. You have to spell that out. I say I-N-T, joseph.com. And all of my contact information is on our website.

Brandon Burton (38:28.747)
Perfect. We’ll have that in our show notes to make it nice and easy to find. this has been a great conversation, Natalie. Thank you for spending time with us today on Chamber Chat podcast and diving into some of these difficult problems that you guys are striving to solve and making some great headway with. I appreciate it.

Natalie Hawn (38:32.854)
Awesome!

Natalie Hawn (38:46.54)
Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

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Brandon Burton (00:00.92)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a powerful, today’s guest is a powerhouse community leader and economic development, Tanya Stevenson. Since 2018, Tonia has been at the helm of the Burke County Chamber of Commerce as President and CEO where she’s dedicated herself to strengthening businesses and forging meaningful community connections. Her deep roots and chamber work span back to her early career at the High Point and Lorenburg, Scotland County chambers. But Tonia’s commitment to service doesn’t stop there. She’s spent six impactful years as executive director of the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club in High Point, revitalizing facilities and expanding youth programs and securing stronger financial future for the organization.

Tonia holds a double major in business administration and home furnishings marketing from High Point University. She’s a graduate from the US Chambers Leadership Institute and earned the prestigious CCE designation in 2014. Her leadership has earned accolades like businesswoman of the year and 40 leaders under 40 and multiple chamber honors.

She’s a dedicated board member and passionate community advocate. And when she’s not leading or serving, you may find her hiking a trail or cross stitching a new design or enjoying a weekend getaway with her husband, David. Tonia, 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 share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tonia Stephenson (01:50.776)
Oh, if I share too much about myself, people might think I’m crazy and shouldn’t keep listening. So, yeah, just take that out. You know, when I think about things that are interesting about myself, it really goes back to my personal life and people find this interesting and I found it interesting. Back a long time ago, we won’t tell how many years because I can’t tell anybody I’m 29 if I tell my years.

Brandon Burton (01:55.726)
We can edit, so no.

Tonia Stephenson (02:20.403)
My husband and I got married at the North Carolina Zoo Logical Park. It’s the largest zoo in the world at this point. and people say, you got married at the zoo? it’s like, I’m the only official wedding ever to be held at the zoo. There’s a lot of people have gone out to the zoo and they’ve taken some witnesses and a preacher and gotten married in front of the whatever animals they wanted to. And, but we actually rented the zoo and, got married, had our official.

Big win, 350 guests. We were followed by the national press. We had cameras in our face through the process because all of our local news followed us. And then by the time that we actually got married, it made the national press. So it was a big deal. And everybody, you know, we laugh and joke, and I say this in front of my husband. You people say, why’d you get married to the zoo? And the zoo was a very big part of our courting years.

And we wanted to get married outside and wanted to find a beautiful place. And back then wedding venues were not a dime a dozen like they are now. And I called the zoo and said, hey, I want to get married out here. And they said, you know what? We’d love to do that. That’d be a great marketing tool for us. So we tried it. And the marketing team said, we’ll never again do this. So all these years later, we are the only one that has ever done that. But we have great experiences and beautiful pictures.

Brandon Burton (03:35.084)
Yeah, you broke it.

Tonia Stephenson (03:45.208)
It’s just a great thing to look back on. so, oh, what I was gonna say is I got married there too because all my in-laws were already there. I didn’t have to invite them. So they were in the cages, you know, but they were all there. My husband and I joke about that. And he says that we have good time with it, but it was really a great experience. And I think that says a little bit about me is I love the outdoors. I love animals.

Brandon Burton (03:55.406)
Were they in the cages?

Tonia Stephenson (04:14.517)
I love doing things different. I don’t like to do things like everybody else does it. And so that’s little bit about me.

Brandon Burton (04:24.034)
There you go. That’s cool. I was going to ask why the zoo and all that, but you covered it pretty well. So I’m glad the in-laws were able to be there. That’s important. That’s great.

Tonia Stephenson (04:33.525)
They were all there. Yeah. It was great. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. It was a hot day in June, but it was great. The worst part was having the, poor little best man, the channel 12’s cameras was so close into his face. I was like, bless his heart. He can’t even move without the cameras being right there.

Brandon Burton (04:52.974)
Well, tell us a little bit about the the Burke County Chamber to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Help give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget, things like that so we know what kind of chamber you’re coming from.

Tonia Stephenson (05:08.193)
Well, I consider us somewhat of a medium sized chamber. We have 640 members somewhere around there. People in the chamber world, know that changes on a daily basis. And we’ve grown it quite a bit. Since the seven years I’ve been here, we were at 450 seven years ago. So we’ve grown quite a bit through the years and very proud of that. We are located in the foothills of North Carolina.

Brandon Burton (05:18.839)
Right?

Tonia Stephenson (05:35.954)
A lot of people know Hickory and Asheville and we’re somewhat in the center of that and our northwest of Charlotte and our east of Asheville. So great location, big cities around us, but we’re still a small town and we’ve got some great amenities here. Just a great place to live and work. We do serve the full county and it is a big county. It’s amazing. It probably would take two hours to get from one end of the county to the other.

Part of our county is up high elevations and then part of it is east and lower elevations. So we’ve got some mountains here. We have four full-time employees on staff and one contract employee. Our budget’s about a half a million dollars. And it’s just, we continue to grow and we’re excited to be able to serve our community.

Brandon Burton (06:31.17)
Very good. And are you guys, are you strictly chamber? Are you tourism, economic development, strictly chamber? Okay.

Tonia Stephenson (06:35.275)
We are strictly chamber, which I like being that way. know a lot, exactly. I know a lot of chambers have to do with economic development or tourism, but I’m thankful that we can just focus on our members and not have to try to juggle all those balls. Although I admire the people that do.

Brandon Burton (06:40.59)
It allows you to focus on that mission, yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:00.716)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that definitely. Yeah, yeah, that definitely does help set the stage and the Carolinas are such a beautiful part of the country. So it’s no wonder you’re able to have a thriving chamber there because people want to be there so.

Tonia Stephenson (07:03.287)
but I have great partners.

Tonia Stephenson (07:18.985)
number one in business, three out of the last four years. So we’re very thankful for that.

Brandon Burton (07:27.118)
Well, our topic for conversation today, we’re going to focus most of our discussion around retention. And that’s a topic that every chamber out there should be paying attention to and monitoring, you know, as kind of one of those KPIs, you know, to see how your chambers performing, getting that feedback from your membership, your investors, you know, what is that retention looking like? So we’ll dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Tonia, we’re back, as I mentioned. So before the break, we’re diving in today on the topic of retention. I’m sure you have a unique approach. Every chamber looks at different metrics a little differently. But as you look at retention, what is it that you guys really hone in on? And what’s your approach that makes you maybe stand out as a chamber, highlight your wins, and help members stick around for the long term?

Tonia Stephenson (08:25.793)
Yeah, you know, a lot of it, I don’t know if it’s unique. I think it’s, for me, it’s spending the time with our members and spending one-on-one time and making sure our members feel like they are as important as any other member. And that’s real important to me. I know in the chamber world, I’ve heard a lot of my colleagues talk about how they spend a lot of time with their big fish. And I’ve heard, I’ve sat through so many…

seminars, webinars, trainings on how important it is for us to spend time with the big fish. And I know a lot of people believe that. I do, I do make sure that they feel appreciated. But for me in this chamber and in any chamber that I’ve led, it’s always been about every member is important and every member needs to feel like they are a big fish to us. And so we spend a lot of one-on-one time and

And I sometimes it doesn’t make sense in the budget world, but at the same time in the world of what our members say about us and how they’re talking about us in the community makes a big difference. And so there’s a lot of things that we take time to do that some of you listening may say, she has lost her mind, but maybe I have. It has worked for us and it takes, it does. So here I am.

Brandon Burton (09:44.066)
That’s okay. It takes a special person to lead a chamber. yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (09:50.32)
And our retention rates have really shown it over the years and we’ve had extremely great retention. So some of the process that we go through is when a member joins, the day that they join or the day after they get a thank you, a handwritten thank you note sent from me and welcoming them to the chamber family and being a part of what we do and you you have a team of four now that you didn’t have before.

our membership person and our director of operations person, they personally meet with every new member and sit down with them and find out about their company and what they’re doing and where they need help and where they’re struggling. And we always ask the question, what keeps you up at night? Because we know that what keeps them up at night is what we can do for them and hopefully help them in those ways. Our membership person sends a welcome email and in that welcome email, it explains all the tools that

the digital tools that they have that they can sign on into our member portal and that they can put all the information in there if they have any problems. She sits down with them and like walks them through it. There’s a welcome post on all of our social media that goes up within the few days that they have joined and that member post tells about their company. It thanks them for being a part of the community.

It has their logo in there. It has a link to their website and of course, tagging them on that site as well. So then when it comes to three months that they’ve been a member, our membership person calls them and checks in on them, sees what’s going on, how are things going. At six months, our board member calls them and checks on them and see how they’re doing and what we can do for them. And then at nine months, they get another call.

and just checking in. When they renew, they always get posts out on our social media so that they can know that not just them joining means a lot, but them sticking with us means a lot as well, and that we want to continue to give them the promotions that they have. Promotions is really big for us. Most of our members are small businesses that need that promotion.

Tonia Stephenson (12:10.647)
A lot of them, can’t afford big ads and radio. They can’t afford big ads on TV. We don’t have local TV here, so that’s not even an option for our folks. So promotions is big. we do a lot of promotions through, one thing we’re doing today is Friday. And so T-shirt Friday is something we do and we promote our members. So today we’ll spend our entire, most of our entire day out going and talking to our members.

The t-shirt we have on is one of our members and that member gets constant promotions throughout the day So everywhere we go we’re taking that person with us and the member will get anywhere from usually about 20 20 posts today on that on that one member and then of course there that’ll be 20 members that will get Various shout outs throughout the day and promoting whatever’s going on. We always try to be

aware of events that are coming up. So, you know, it might be that we’ll go to somewhere and say, hey, don’t forget they’re having this big sale this weekend, come out and shop or the festival’s happening this weekend, come out and see them at the festival. So we’re hitting as many people as we can with that, which people love that. And now every time I go into the bank on Fridays, they want their picture taken because they know that that’s something we do. And I was like, you know, I can’t get y’all every Friday.

Brandon Burton (13:35.522)
and it’ll get shared. They’re working the system, they know.

Tonia Stephenson (13:38.454)
But the bankers love it. They’re working, yeah, that’s right. And so that’s something we have a lot of fun with. And it does take a lot of time, but our members love it and they know that they’re being cared for and that they’re being promoted. And a lot of them have said, hey, I’ve gotten business. I’ve gotten a lot of business from that little thing. We feel like it’s a little thing for them, it’s big.

In addition to that, quarterly we actually get all of our ambassadors together and we get on a trolley and we go out and visit about 16 members and one day we take them gifts. We call it Surprise Patrol. And so we get out and we go into a business and we say, surprise, we’re all here. we, you usually 10, 15 people showing up to your business on a trolley is sort of shocking. And all the ambassadors will bring a gift from their business to that member.

and it’s all about saying thank you for your membership and we appreciate you. And we’re not asking for any on any of these things. We’re not asking for money. We’re not asking to support anything. We’re not reminding them that they owe dues or anything. It’s all about, we appreciate your membership and appreciate you and wanna thank you. And then of course, on Surprise Patrol, they get gifts as well. So that’s always a lot of fun days and all of.

Brandon Burton (14:59.79)
So about how many members are you guys able to visit on one of those surprise patrol visits? Wow.

Tonia Stephenson (15:04.567)
We get about 16 in a day. So we hit quite a bit and we’re promoting our ambassador members as well. So we got the 16 members that we’re visiting, but then there’s 10, 15 members who are ambassadors, who their businesses are getting promoted as well. So 30, 35 businesses are getting promoted in that day. And it’s just a fun day and a great time to…

show appreciation and remind people that we’re here and we’re supporting them and helping them any way we can. It’s always interesting because after every Surprise Patrol, I have members say, hey, how do I get on that list? And I was like, well, we’ll put you on the list for the next time. So it’s a lot of fun. Once a year, our ambassadors and our board and the staff all spend a week delivering our new directories.

We call that operation. Thank you. It’s it’s a program that’s been around for a long time in chambers, but it kind of went away. I’ve always had worked in operation. Thank you just because I think it’s so important. So we we have some type of gift that we give. It’s a small gift and it’s usually a got a corny saying on it. Something like this last year we gave payday payday candy bars out and it said every day is a payday with you as a member of the chamber so.

It’s cute and corny, but people love it. They love seeing us come because again, we’re not there asking for anything. We’re just there to say hello, say thank you. We take pictures throughout the day, post them on our website. mean, post them on all our social media sites. So they’re continually getting thanked and they’re continually getting promoted through these things. And so they’re all real important to us.

And then in addition, you know, we do all those calls that the staff does and then the board does at six months, but our ambassadors are making personal phone calls to our members as well. So the ambassadors are making five to 10 phone calls a month on our members just to say, hey, you know, is there anything we can do? Check in on you. What’s going on with you? What can we do? And so that’s really helpful because a lot of times our ambassadors learn things about our members that we don’t know and that

Tonia Stephenson (17:22.827)
gives us an opportunity to know and it’s that gives us 25 more people out there calling on members and checking in on them that we can’t, you people can’t get to all of them. And so they really helpful with that. And then there’s little things that we will remember and do that. I don’t think that is normal in the world of of anywhere. But for me, you know, I look at them, our members as customers, you know, we.

If I hear that there’s gonna be a ball game, I tell you make a note and I’ll call and say, hey, did little Johnny win his ball game? And that means a lot to them. Or I’ll shoot a note and say, hey, I was thinking about you. We do a lot of notes about testing, if we got some kind of medical issue, we have birthdays listed and we send personal birthday cards, handwritten notes, we send sympathy cards.

We spend a lot of time on these types of things and some people might say, well, that’s just a waste of time in the business world, but it is not waste of time. I’ve had people that, like I have one gentleman who said something about his, he had knee replacement recent, I mean, he had knee replacement a few years ago, but recently he said, you know, that was the sweetest card I got from y’all. And he’s like, it was the best one I got from, you know, it was from y’all.

Brandon Burton (18:41.474)
Wow.

Tonia Stephenson (18:42.057)
And he’s like, who would have thought that my chamber membership would have gotten me thoughts during my surgery? And so we really try to watch out for those little things. And we watch social media closely to see that they’re posting, that they’ve got issues or concerns. Then we reach out and let them know that we’re there to help them and support them through that, throughout whatever that they’re going through, or to celebrate with them when it’s good stuff.

and they remember that we remember those types of things.

Brandon Burton (19:12.686)
Yeah. So with these, uh, with the birthday cards and sympathy cards, I can see how that could get, you know, a little arduous, you know, to try to get all these, uh, cards out. So how do you, how do you manage that? Is it, are you focusing on the primary rep for each business or how deep do you go with, you know, if they’ve got three or four contacts as a, with their membership, I don’t, how do you kind of filter who or how you’re able to send, um,

those kind of cards too.

Tonia Stephenson (19:43.728)
We really don’t filter. Yeah, we really don’t filter. If we know it, we send it. And if they’re a member, we don’t really filter. yes, takes some time, but it’s not overwhelming amount of time. And it takes five minutes to fill out a card and stick it in the mail.

I usually fill it out first and sign it from your Burke County Chamber family and then write a little personal note for me. then everybody passes around, they sign a little note and off it goes. it brings return on investment of 10 minutes of time maybe and 60 cents stamp or however much they are now.

Brandon Burton (20:38.86)
Yeah, by the time this comes out, the stamps will be more.

Tonia Stephenson (20:39.447)
$4 car, mean, it’s really…

Well, that’s true. The stamps go up every day, it really has. you know, and it might seem like it’s arduous, but it hasn’t been. It hasn’t been. It could get that way. don’t know. But, you we just try to keep up with the best we can. And when we hear things that we miss, it’s like, whoa, we’re so sorry that we didn’t know that. And people, nobody’s ever fought at us for it or anything. So, so no, there’s not really any filter on it. If we know it and

we can do something to at least acknowledge and know that people will, for people to know that we care that we do that.

Brandon Burton (21:18.978)
Yeah. So there’s a couple things that you had touched on I wanted to circle back with and just maybe get a little bit more information. So one is with the onboarding of new members. You talked about different staff members meeting with the new members and kind of doing the orientation onboarding. Are these members coming to the chamber office? Are they going to visit these businesses at their location? Is it a mixture of both? How do you try to schedule that?

Tonia Stephenson (21:29.132)
Mm-hmm.

Tonia Stephenson (21:45.6)
It’s a mixture. A lot of people want to come to the office and see our office and meet the whole team and we’re a great location. So a lot of them happen at the chamber, but then a lot of the members say, come see my place and come take a tour or whatever. So it’s really a mixture. And for the member meetings, have where tier dues. So we have bronze, silver, gold, platinum and titanium.

Brandon Burton (22:05.934)
That’s good.

Tonia Stephenson (22:15.415)
Bronze members, our membership team takes care of it, but if it’s Silver and above, I’ll actually have that member meeting with them as well, just so that they know who I am and that we all care about. I we all care about them regardless, but I do take the time to spend time with the Silver and above members when they’re first joining.

Brandon Burton (22:34.124)
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So I really liked what you mentioned about T-shirt Fridays and being able to wear a T-shirt of different businesses in your community, different members and going out and taking pictures and posting them. Do members enroll in that? Do you proactively reach out and say, hey, do you want to send us a T-shirt and be included in the next T-shirt Friday or how does that program work?

Tonia Stephenson (23:00.031)
The only thing we have to do is have a t-shirt Friday and we end up with more t-shirts. I don’t know how many. I have quite a collection. Well, we’re not quite there, but yeah, we have quite a collection. That’s for sure. So every time we go out, typically I will come back with four shirts. And so we don’t really, we don’t charge for that, which, you know, we kind of talked about, it’s like we might all.

Brandon Burton (23:04.389)
Right. I can imagine what your closet looks like, right?

600 different t-shirts with logos on it

Tonia Stephenson (23:28.607)
start charging for this program. But we have some great events and we do fine with other things. And so far we’ve not charged because that way all sides of our members can participate. Nobody feels like that they’re really left out. And so we say the only charge for this program for T-shirt Friday is the cost of four T-shirts and you just provide us your shirts and we’ll wear them on that Friday.

Brandon Burton (23:30.147)
Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (23:56.002)
So we start out that morning, we take a group shot of all of us in our shirts and what’s really cute is sometimes there’s stuff on the back. So we have to turn around and have pictures of our backs so that we get the information on there. And our initial post out is the four of us in our shirts and we tell a little bit about the company and we give the company’s website address and how to get in touch with the people and what their specialties are. And then,

From there, it’s usually individual selfies with our members or the group of members. Because we really want to catch a lot of people and sometimes we can’t catch them open. So sometimes we might be out by a sign and say, you know, telling about some company. Or sometimes we’re on the side of the road taking pictures and people are looking at us like we’re crazy. Recently, we have a new bank who’s building a new location. And so recently I stopped at the corner.

Brandon Burton (24:38.998)
Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (24:52.119)
where there’s like, you know, basically like rubbish, you know, in this big, big parking lot right now, but they’ve got a beautiful plan and design that they’re getting ready to build. So here I am by the construction fence, taking a selfie with the picture of the bank that’s coming. And people just looked at me like I was idiot or they blow their horns and I was like, hi, yeah, it’s just me taking a selfie with the pit, know. There really is a purpose here.

Brandon Burton (25:13.186)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:19.042)
Follow us on Facebook, right?

Tonia Stephenson (25:22.199)
It’s like, yes, I might be crazy and do things differently, but here we are taking a picture with the fence. But it’s really, it was a good promotion because a lot of people didn’t know that that’s what was going on that location or they hadn’t been driven by there to see what the beautiful rendition looks like. And so it’s just about…

just about promoting what’s going on in the membership and promoting the members and what they’re doing and what their services are, what their product is.

Brandon Burton (25:53.058)
Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to ask about is you mentioned staff and ambassadors going out to deliver your annual directories. You had a name for it. Operation Thank You. So with Operation Thank You, I mean, you get, I guess, roughly about 30 people going out in the community to make these personal interactions, these personal deliveries. that sound about right? About 25 ambassadors and staff?

Tonia Stephenson (26:00.504)
Operation thank you.

Tonia Stephenson (26:17.783)
about 50 people. We have between 20 and 25 ambassadors. I have 20 board members, four staff, and then sometimes we recruit spouses and other people. So usually 50 or 60 people will help us out throughout the week. We do it in half days, we do it in teams of two so that it’s easier if you drive up to a location, somebody jumps out and delivers and jumps back in.

Brandon Burton (26:25.174)
And the board, okay. Yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (26:45.495)
Of course, sometimes we end up sending out to salespeople and they’re parking in every parking lot and introducing themselves to every person and having long conversations. And I’m like, guys, you’re not getting the books delivered if you’re doing that, but they’re doing their jobs. So, you know, I’m just thankful that they might get four delivered in the morning time, typically you can get 30 to 50 delivered in the morning and again in the afternoon.

Brandon Burton (26:57.228)
Right? Like I’m multitasking, yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (27:14.845)
if you get in and get out and keep moving.

Brandon Burton (27:17.9)
Yeah, yeah. Now I really like that plan and it’s a great way to have a for sure like an annual touch point with each member as you as you get those delivered and hand delivered. It goes a long ways with the payday bar or whatever that gift is so that’s awesome.

Tonia Stephenson (27:34.284)
Yeah. Well, when I was in, back in my day, when I was doing membership and learning the role and learning about chambers and figuring things out and sometimes, and the high point chamber that I was at for many years, we were quite a large chamber and, and it was hard to get to all of our members and to, to, to touch them throughout the year. And so a lot of times they only heard from us, was when they got their renewal notice and,

And I don’t know how many times I’d hear, it’s like, all you want is my money and you don’t really care about it. And even as a membership person, it broke my heart and I’ve tried to do my best to not, for that not to be the way it was. And our whole team, we all had a great heart about it, but we had 1300 members and there were six of us and still again, you just can’t get to everybody.

As I’ve learned throughout the years, I really don’t ever want a member say that the only time I hear from you is my renewal notice. And, and if, if that’s the only time they’ve heard from us, then shame on us. And, and so that’s what, and you know, my marketing person can say, but look at the hits that they get on our website, regardless of they hear from us, you know, they got these hits on the website. They got, no, I want them to hear from us. I want them to know. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:57.134)
It’s got to be meaningful to them, right?

Tonia Stephenson (29:00.511)
I want it to be personal for them. Their business is very personal, know, especially our small business owners. Some of our small business owners has their entire life savings wrapped up in that business. And when I say that they are part of the chamber family, when I say that the four of us are part of their team, I want them to feel it and I want them to know it. And I want them to, when they’re losing sleep at night, I want them to pick up the phone and say, here’s my troubles. And

We go to work to try to figure out what those troubles are. If they don’t ever see us, they don’t ever hear from us and they don’t, and if we are nothing but the email that comes in that says, hey, here’s your dues, they’re not gonna do that. And then when they get that email from the dues, they say, why do I need to pay this? And I get that, because I mean, money’s tight a lot of times. And so I wanna give them a reason that they say, I can’t afford not to pay this. And that…

That’s our goal with every phone call, with every visit, with every post we put out. That’s our goal is for them to know that they need us.

Brandon Burton (30:06.434)
Yeah. Well, I love all these touch points. I love the recognition. I love being able to show the member value to the chamber. These are all, I’m going to call them tactics or strategies, but that kind of cheapens it. I mean, it really is showing that you genuinely care about these individuals, these businesses and their success. I don’t think we can have a discussion about retention without me asking, can you share what your retention rates look like?

Tonia Stephenson (30:36.513)
We’re typically between 92 to 94%. So we typically lose members because they’ve moved or they’ve closed. And sometimes with, I don’t know if other chambers are having this, but over the last five, seven years, banks, because corporate says they’re not gonna be a member. Makes me so mad.

Brandon Burton (30:41.526)
something to celebrate.

Brandon Burton (31:00.94)
Yep. Yep. Or Walmart, we’ve been seeing that. So, yeah.

Tonia Stephenson (31:05.892)
So far, Walmart’s a really good member for us, so I hope that I don’t see that from them.

Brandon Burton (31:08.78)
That’s good. Hopefully they hang on. Yeah. Well, as we begin to wrap up, but I’d like to see whether it’s based on our discussion or any other thoughts for the chambers listening who want to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or strategy would you share with them and trying to accomplish that goal?

Tonia Stephenson (31:30.611)
One thing that I have always done and is real important to me and I think your podcast fits right in with this and I think it’s great that we have this as a resource. I’ve always had a mentor or multiple mentors. I’ve always found my neighboring chambers and made friends with them and made sure that they’re some of my closest friends.

and colleagues and somebody I could call on. So when I moved here, that was the first thing I did was look up my neighboring chambers and introduce myself, except for I had two that was precious and they reached out to me before I could get to them. And I have a neighboring county to the west that she and I call each other our chamber sisters because we just know that we’re there for each other.

So I think having mentors is very important and talking to other chambers and not just chamber mentors, but I think just having mentors in general, especially if there’s something that you’re not good at and you see it in somebody else, it’s great to spend time with that person and say, hey, can we go to lunch and just learn from that person, watch them. And then I think being a mentor to others is real important. And I know for me,

I’ve taken on several younger chamber professionals and spent time with them and tried to help them. And every time I’ve done that with the intentions of me trying to help them and help them learn and grow, I’ve found that I’ve learned and grown just as much through the process of being a mentor as I have having mentors. So I think that that’s just so important. You can learn so much, and especially if you’ll learn it with the right attitude and then go back and try to apply things that.

Brandon Burton (33:07.008)
Right. Yeah, it’s helpful.

Tonia Stephenson (33:21.547)
that makes sense. Of course, we all hear things and learn things all the time and it’s like, well, that would be great, but there’s no way I can put that on my plate. No, there’s no way. But to be intentional with trying to really, especially in areas where you know that you need to grow, learn and try to grow as much as you can in those areas.

Brandon Burton (33:39.18)
Yeah, I think that’s a great piece of 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?

Tonia Stephenson (33:51.416)
That’s a very interesting topic because I found that in during COVID times, we had to really think about chambers and what we were doing and how we did things. And we had to really pivot and change a lot of our ways of thinking to stay relevant. And I think that’s so important in the chamber world is that we stay relevant. And I think that there was a time at least for the chambers that I was working with that

it was maybe hard for us to be relevant, when some technology seems to have taken over a lot of what we traditionally did in the past. And so I think for us to update our what we’re doing and always look for new ways to do things and new ways to present ourselves and being relevant in the business community and being on top of what the business community needs and individuals need and taking care of those things are, there’s just.

So important. I think that it’s real important that chambers be chambers and work with businesses and know that we are here for business community. We are business association. We’re not a social group. We are not here to everybody socialize and have a good time, but we are here to grow business and help our businesses in whichever way that they need. Being a voice for the business. Our chambers very active in governmental affairs, so.

That’s one thing that sets us apart is we are, I always say if the business community was a body, stick figures all I can do, we would be the mouthpiece of that body. And we got to be the mouthpiece for our businesses because we are the group that is gonna be standing up for our businesses and making sure that our businesses are heard. And that’s what our role is.

But always being able to, always looking for ways to change and grow is just real important and staying relevant I think is so important.

Brandon Burton (35:51.98)
I’d be curious how you would label the rest of the body parts, but that’s okay. Well, that’s a discussion for another time. but this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate these tactics, these ideas, these ways of showing your care for your members to really nurture those relationships. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you maybe as a mentor.

Tonia Stephenson (35:58.488)
I’ve never really thought about the rest of the body, so I’d have to think about that.

Brandon Burton (36:21.954)
or just to get ideas of how you’re doing things, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Tonia Stephenson (36:28.161)
Sure, I appreciate the opportunity. First podcast I’ve done, so hey, this might be new thing for me. But yes, Burke County Chamber of Commerce, I’ll actually give my cell phone number because reaching me at the office is sometimes very hard. My cell phone number is 336-689-5438. And you can email me at T. Stevenson, it’s tstephenson@burkecounty.org.

So email me or call me or text me either way. I’m happy to always help out fellow chamber people when I can and talk to fellow chamber people. I love learning from them. So be happy to talk to anyone.

Brandon Burton (37:15.66)
That’s perfect. We will get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But again, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for setting aside some time to be with us and share these insights. I think it provided a ton of value for our listeners today. So thank you. Thank you a lot.

Tonia Stephenson (37:30.935)
Thank you, I appreciate you.

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