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Category: Leadership

Next Level of Chamber with Donny Jones

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

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

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Donny Jones. Donny is the Executive Vice President for The Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and the chief Workforce Development Officer for West Alabama Works. He’s responsible for the daily operations of the chamber including financial management and information technology and manages a contractual relationships with vendors and professional service providers. Donny is instrumental in ensuring that the regional workforce systems leverage federal state resources to develop and grow the necessary K through 12 and adult training pipelines to support the current and future workforce. He is a former appointed Member of the governor’s workforce Council, and is currently an appointed Member of the Alabama Workforce Board where he serves on the executive committee and Policy Committee and appointed Member of the governor’s Career Technical Education Task Force to enhance the CTE curriculum and appointed Officer the Alabama committee of credentialing and career pathways and appointed member of the committee for Grade Level Reading. The Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities awarded Donny the Public Service Award for West Alabama and 2019 and 2022. He received his accreditation as a CCE a distinction that less than 4% of leaders in the chamber profession hold. He serves on the board of directors for the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Educational Foundation, ACC foundation board, as well as other committees and ACCE boards. He also worships and teaches at five points Baptist Church reserves as Deacon he’s most known as a husband of Clara is a 29 year educator and father to Carson and Carter, the dining Welcome to chamber tap Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today on the show and love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself.

Donny Jones 3:53
Absolutely. Well, as you can see, I don’t do much but chamber work and work in the community. So but I am a one of the things that I tell people is very interested in the in the chamber world, I don’t play golf. And so I’m one of the only chamber execs you’ll ever made that has never played golf. But I do have four animals that are in the record books that I’ve killed with my bow across the country. So with that being said, most of my board members never mess with me. So anyway, a lot of really cool things are happening in our area. Of course, if you guys have seen the NFL another cool tidbit about our chamber is you probably saw the number one pick with the NFL last night. Jalen is actually right down the street from us or has been his career at the University of Alabama where our chamber is actually just right on the edge of the campus. So a couple of interesting things about us and myself.

Brandon Burton 4:56
That’s right and as we record this, that’s end of April 2020 Three. And then to add on to that this morning, my son is getting ready for school and he tells me yeah, this is the first time that an Alabama players been taken number one overall in the draft. And he’s a big history buff of any sort. So you know, little tidbits like that just really geek him out. So plastic? Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Alabama Regional Chamber and just kind of how you guys are structured scope of work, you guys are involved with size of the chamber staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage?

Donny Jones 5:33
Absolutely, we’re, uh, we’re sometimes a little cold, a little different as a chamber, we’re actually the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce, we serve as nine counties on the western part of the state of Alabama around seven counties. So square foot mileage is about 7500 square miles, our chamber has around 1300 members, and those are all business members, we don’t do individual memberships, representing about 65,000 employees. One of the things that is a little different is we’re the Regional Chamber of Commerce. So today, you’re talking to the executive vice president. Also, we’re the regional workforce Council, Alabama has seven regional councils across the state of Alabama, which is really a sounding board for workforce for industry. We are housed within the chamber, there were the fiscal and managing agents for that. And we’re also the regional workforce board, if you’re familiar with WIOA, and the federal dollars, so and I’m the Executive Director for both of those organizations. So we really have two large boards that work together, our Workforce Board, which is called the West Alabama Works Board, and then our chamber of commerce board. And so simultaneously, we’re always working together and actually who we are, as an organization is one of the largest collaboratives, when it comes to meeting the needs of businesses through that our budget on the chamber side is roughly about two and a half million dollars. And then on the workforce side, which is in combination, it would be close to $4 million organization. So we’re at right now 24 employees, 15 of those employees actually are full time workforce specialists. So as you can see, workforce is the largest portion of our organization. And really, we focus on that as one of our primary objectives to deliver services to our business community, because as you know, workforce is the largest issue that a lot of our businesses are facing. So that’s a little bit about our chamber. And in our services, yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:48
that workforce is always important, but right now is definitely you know, cuts the workout for you with the workforce shortages and just, you know, shifting in the economy in that in that front. But as we focus in on our topic for our discussion today, we settled on the idea of talking about next level of chambers and and this topic intrigues me because chambers are constantly looking to see what’s the next thing that we need to do to be relevant, right? How do we as we look to the future, how are we being relevant? How are we making an impact in our communities, and I feel like we’re going to be touching a lot on that and our conversation today so we will dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 11:09
All right, Donny, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about next level of chamber. So tell me what does that mean for you guys there, West Alabama. And as you guys have looked at this scenario, as just, you know, staying relevant and and keeping the chamber in the forefront of the community there. What’s the approach that you guys are taking?

Donny Jones 11:30
Well, let me maybe the best way to tell you this is is the tail of an opportunity that I had this past week to have dinner with one of New York, New York Times bestselling author, Andy Andrews. I don’t know if you know that in traveller. Yeah, absolutely. And the butterfly effect and all that. So, so we were having dinner, he was speaking to a group and, and he said this, he said, you know, the difference, you know, and a lot of people are reading the book, Good to Great. And he said nothing against that book. But everybody is using that now as the Bible of you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People, as 20 years ago. And he said, you know, the problem is, is many of us are trying to go from good to great doing the things that we do, and have always done but doing better and doing better than our competitor. He said, What happens if an organization actually actually looked at doing things completely, in a different way, and looking at it a completely different way of doing business? And he said, That’s really where he’s coming from, as he was saying that I was like, wow, that is exactly what our chamber of commerce, and our focus has been, for so many years, you know, it was, you know, go to chamber Institute and learn more about what other chambers are doing and best practices. But if you really look at that 90% of the time is the best practices of the same things that you’re doing, just trying to find a better way of doing it. And so what we looked at is we said, you know, what, what is our number one key issue for our members out of our 1300? Members? What is the number one issue? And as I’m speaking to different groups across the country? That’s one of the things I asked that question. And I’ll be in a group and I’ll say, How many of you guys as chamber professionals, and your chamber? How many of you do a capital campaign? In a majority of, you know, middle, middle sized or larger chambers do some type of capital campaign, they’ll raise their hand? And then I’ll say, How many of you, in this room did a survey of your business community as you were doing a capital campaign? Well, everybody raises their hand, right? And then I asked the question, how many of you was workforce? One of the key components and an underlying issue that none of them could solve? And had an answer for? A No, everybody kind of look around, look at each other. And then, you know, you’d see hands go up really slow, but most of the hands came up. And then I asked the simple question. How many of you, if that is the number one issue in your community, or one of the top three, have the majority of your staff focused on meeting that need? Not one chamber, except our president that’s in the room, usually, when I’m speaking raises their hand. Because when we look at we’re talking all the time to our small businesses and our industries that we we help and we say, listen to what your customer says, and then meet that need. But yeah, as chambers, we try to get our members to do what we think they need to do as engaging into our organization instead of going out and doing what they need and actually being the voice of business. Now, I’ll be honest with you, Brandon, one of the things as I’m talking about that, it raises the hair on a lot of chamber execs Next, because they’re like, well, by God, what so that’s what we’ve always done. And that’s how we’re gonna do it. I’m like, That’s great. That’s why dinosaurs died. That’s right. So if you look at membership organizations, not just chambers, but when you look at, you know, trade organizations and everything, everyone is struggling with membership, and the digression, I guess, of membership. And then also, you know, we also have best practices don’t know if anybody’s been to their state organizations, or ACCE or US Chamber. And you know, they’ll have a session that says, best 30 ideas, and 30 seconds, or whatever it is. And so they’ll go in there. And there’ll be 100,000 ideas of how to do the same thing the same way, but just put a different makeup on a pig and make it look different. But it’s the same deliverable. And, you know, there are some ideas, and I don’t mean to cut that short, because you can get great ideas, I love those sessions. But at the end of the day, when you look at your structure of the chamber, you know, are you still doing the same things? And so as you see these national trends of of less sponsorship dollars, of being more innovated, how do you, you know, I had somebody one time, say, you know, what, if, if I could sponsor my toilet paper, I put a business’s logo on there, we’re just trying to find more ways that our golf tournaments at our chamber and sessions at this than the other to do those kinds of things. And what it’s doing is, you can only do so much with a product. And then what happens is you degrade it so much that people aren’t really wanting to buy, right. And so what we’re looking at, and what we have done is said, You know what, we’re gonna focus on the number one issue. And in our region, it was workforce development. And so we still do the bread and butter place, don’t get me wrong, we still block and tackle, we still do the networking events, we still do the chamber and sessions, we still do the directories, we do all those things. But our focus really is on helping our businesses grow. And one of their biggest issues in a community where our unemployment rate right now is 1.8%. You know, and our companies are growing, and they’re bleeding at the same time. And so we’re really focused on that. So 15 of our staff members, or really 17 of our staff members are focused every day waking up, meeting that one need. And education and workforce development is where we really focus on, right.

Brandon Burton 17:32
So as you’re explaining all this, to me, it makes perfect sense. And as I think of chambers across the country, I think sometimes they get a little constrained when they think everything we have to do has to be mission focused. And then they go back and look at their mission statement. And well, our mission statement doesn’t say anything about workforce necessarily, you know, so maybe they’ve pigeon holed themselves too much by defining their mission statement. Rather than being that voice of business, and constantly just looking to see what the, what the next thing is they need to do to help businesses be successful and to build a stronger community. So I guess it may be a word of warning, I guess, as you as you drafted your next mission statement to, to look at that what what’s going to leave you that flexibility to be able to pivot and to be able to listen to the needs of your members. And what’s their number one, number two, number three needs that they’re facing? And how can you as a voice of business, step in to help them solve those issues.

Donny Jones 18:32
That’s exactly right. And, you know, we just, we just finished our five year capital campaign, which is, we don’t do a yearly business plan. We have a five year strategy that we implement every day, and we wake up and that’s, that’s our focus. But this year, we did something different this this next five years. And so when you look at and I’m going to be around a while I’m gonna beat the dead horse right here. But I want to say this. When you look at most business plans, for chambers, you have your vision, you have your objectives, you have, you know, your strategies, and they do their SWOT analysis and everything. And, you know, what we’re doing is we’re changing our entire organization to be here’s our vision. And here’s the deliverables period. Because I’d say at most businesses don’t really care about your strategy. They want to know that you’re gonna get things done. And so people are so tired of plans that sit on the shelf and nobody visits them. And we’ve got a plan and we send it out to all of our members and nobody reads it. They put it in file 13 Because they know it’s the same Oh, say Mo. So what we did was we said we’re going to take and we’re going to create a vision of where we want to go for example, in this category is lead business driven workforce and talent development. The vision is specific. It’s two sentences, and then boom, the deliverables. How many people were going to put to work? How many how many outreach events, we’re going to do all those kinds of things. And when you look at a conversation that I don’t know about other chambers, but we have is that our patriarchs are dying out in our communities. And the new leaders that are coming on board are not Civic, rent minded. You know, it’s not, I’m going to invest, because it’s the right thing to do. They are business minded, and they want to know that they’re getting a return on their investment. And so many times chambers make the excuse, well, we’re not really a chamber that makes your cash register ring, we grow the pie for everybody. And, you know, you say things like, rising tide floats, all boats, and we have all this thing, and this new generation of business leaders are looking at you and saying, You’re full of crap. It’s just all smoke and mirrors, and you would sell blind man glasses. And so they, they think that way. And so what we’re doing as a chamber is we’re saying, look, here’s the deal, we’re hearing what you’re saying, and we’re going to focus on delivering those policies, we’re still going to be an advocacy organization in the voice of business. But here’s what we hear you saying, and and that’s what we’re going to work on. And quality of life is one of those things. So what does that mean? I mean, quality of life for every community is different. Does that mean? Well, that’s like saying, random world peace, we’re gonna solve world peace. And so chambers are out there. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re telling everybody, we’re solving world peace, and everybody’s going, whatever. And so what we’re doing there is saying, this is our vision for what quality of life looks like, for our community. And these are the specific things that we’re going to do for you, as a partner in our community. And so that’s where we’re going is really changing this and changing the topics, instead of trying to sell everybody something that they really don’t want. Because people I think respect chambers, I think people you know, intuitively know that they’re important. But when it comes to, am I gonna pay my employees $2 More than hours so that I can actually keep my employees and keep my lights on? Or am I going to pay a membership fee, because it’s the right thing to do. chambers are beginning to lose that battle. So we have to really become a chamber that is consultant driven information and knowledge based, and actually somebody that’s helping companies grow and meet their needs. And so our niche was workforce developmental now.

Brandon Burton 22:32
Yeah. And I think depending on the community, depending on the chamber, the niche may look different. Absolutely. Workforce definitely is a niche where you can have some, you know, absolute deliverables, and you can have data to back up the work that you’ve done to say, here’s the results of the efforts that we put forth on your behalf. And when you look at the your chamber in general, you guys really are larger on the workforce side, budget wise, staff wise, I mean, the attention is going to workforce, because that’s where you hit while I assume that’s where you have those key indicators, you can go back to to measure success, and where you can go back to investors and say, this is where you’re getting your return. So I’m curious as you as you put that focus on workforce. I know we can talk for hours on this, because it’s something passionate that you’re passionate about. But what are what are those areas and workforce? In your bio had mentioned the K through 12? Programs? You know, I’m sure retention, is there education with employee or with employers? What are those those key areas that you’re focusing on with regard to workforce? Sure,

Donny Jones 23:41
absolutely. I’ll give you a prime example. On the K 12 system. We do large regional events, for example, worlds of work that we do, it’s what we call Disney World, steroids for workforce development. So we bring, we shut one of our community colleges down for three days, we bring every ninth grader in the entire region, over 5,009th graders up and they experience all the different job opportunities that we have. And it’s all hands on. And it is a big event. People come from all over the country to actually look at the event and say, how do you all model this? And so we’re in our schools, we’re touching our kids, we’re really all the way down into pre K. We have an educated workforce Academy, where we train all of our superintendents and principals and key leaders in our 12 school systems. We’ve graduated over 470. And they spent an entire year with us learning workforce development in changing the landscape of how educators think about this big topic. Then we’re also involved in our adopted school program, getting industries involved, and ensuring up our education system which is not the best in the country. And so we’ve got a lot of work to do and it’s going to take the into Park community, particularly the business and industry, community to really help shore up our education system. And then another example is bringing those resources. For example, we have this past year, we put over a million dollars in the hands of our industries through our workforce board, and through one grant alone, and we trained over 1100 workers and upskill those workers just in our small region, through our community college system, and being able to fund those kinds of things. We place over 3000 individuals in jobs over the last year, just in one sector. That’s the automotive industry. And then a lot of things into Brandon, here’s another way, and I’m going to chase a rabbit real quick. But how many chambers talk about diversity, equity inclusion, right? Let me give you what real diversity, equity inclusion looks like the 3000 employees that we placed in the automotive industry, because we had Mercedes Benz here, 78% of them were African American, of the 78% 51% were male and 49% were female. So when you begin to talk about what we’re doing for communities, and how we’re trying to be an inclusive community, instead of just having events, which we had our development, diversity, equity inclusion event for the chamber last week, so we still do that. But now we’re having discussions about how we’re really impacting those communities that feel like they haven’t been included. And we’re saying, Look, we’re focusing on your entire community, we’re not talking about these topics, we’re doing something about these topics, we’re making a difference when you look at the difference we’re making on the disposable income and the average, you know, family income for our minority communities, that is growing because of our workforce side. So you know, at the end of the day, I think our society is changing. From a perspective of less, don’t just talk about things, let’s get something done. And it’s time to move the needle. And that’s what our organization is really focused on in our communication is focus on that side of it, you know, not just, hey, look what we’re doing. We’ve done 10 events, this this month, what we’re really focusing on is we’re changing lives every single day. You know, last week alone, we put 100, high school students ninth 10th 11th graders into summer jobs, they’ll actually start in in three weeks, with 20 different employers. And we’re, you know, we’re modeling that out when we’re talking about it. And people are saying, We’ve got people every day that’s calling us and saying, how do we get involved in the work of the chamber because of what you’re doing. So those are the kinds of topics that we’re really focused on.

Brandon Burton 27:56
I love that you can just off top your head, you have these numbers, right? He can tell, you can say, we’ve helped 3000 people and jobs in the automotive sector and then go on to the diversity equity inclusion side, you can say, you know, your percentages of, you know, different races and genders. And those are numbers you can point to and say, here’s how we’re moving the needle. versus you know, we had a networking event, and we had 50 people show up. What came of that I’m sure something good happened. But how do you measure that? Exactly.

Donny Jones 28:26
And that’s, that’s what people want to hear. And what we’ve seen as, like I said, we just finished our capital campaign, the majority of people who increased in some doubled their investment over the next five years in our organization, the majority of those said, we’re investing because of what you’re doing and workforce development because that is key. We’re a huge manufacturing area, even though we have the University of Alabama and a huge healthcare sector. Industry is our big, I guess you’d say employment sector. And so individuals know, you know, that if we don’t solve that problem, because Alabama doesn’t have the largest population. I mean, as I was telling you, 1.8% unemployment is almost like zero. Unemployment, right? So how do we get more people in the participation rate? So we’re doing outreach events every single week. In two weeks, we’ve got what we call our signing day. So all the students that we’ve heard in all these events, you know, our apprenticeship programs and everything is going to look catalogue. Now, it’s not going to have 100,000 People like it did last night on the NFL signing, but we’re going to have a huge signing day and make a big deal that work is valuable. And you know what that resonates with our our, our members or our membership and the businesses and they’re saying you know what the chamber is bringing value back to our community and that is essential, soft skills. It is work is valuable, and we need everybody to be a part of growing In our community. And so it really is, if any of you think about what we’re doing is we’re really doing exactly what everybody else is saying they’re doing, right. But it’s turning that value into, you know, something tangible. And it’s not, Hey, did we do 10 referrals from our website to your community or your business? That’s not what we do. We’re, you know, and so we’re all the time as chamber, folks, we’re like, we gotta tell people about the value of our organization, and we say all these things, but nobody really knows how to do it, besides, create a new flyer with great pictures and people at a networking event and somebody with a governor and a mayor and all this. And so the, it’s the same old, same old. And so that’s why I said, we’re really taking it to the next level. So I’ll give you a kind of a, an analogy of we do things in a real systematic way. So our first five year campaign was called working as one, because we wanted our community to learn that we’re never going to take it to the next level unless we begin to work as one. So guess what the title of our next capital campaign was working.

Brandon Burton 31:17
One’s got to be in there. So working

Donny Jones 31:18
this one. Now, this campaign was actually called all in, because once you get everybody at the table, once everybody is working this one, now everybody has got to be only in to move us to the next level. And so that is really what we’re seeing in our community as people are coming to our chamber and really saying, how do we engage? How do we involve Coulson, you are an organization that’s making a difference. And, you know, I had somebody come to me, actually yesterday and say, I was at church the other day, and I had this family member come, or this church member come to me and say that my kid went to our well 2.0, which it was for graduating seniors, which was four weeks ago, or three weeks ago. And we put 200 kids, and they had 600 job offers, or 200 kids at major industries. And so when you look at that, you know, they were talking about this change this kids laugh. And so now they’re like, how do I get involved? So we’re creating whole new opportunities, where people do engage at a whole different level, because now they’re passionate about what we’re doing. Not just that we’re the chamber. That’s

Brandon Burton 32:31
right. So that leads up very well into my next question, as we start to wrap things up here. I like asking as we frag is for chambers that are listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item would you suggest for them to, to consider implementing at their organization?

Donny Jones 32:50
Well, I’m the worst person to say this. But one thing I’ve think that I would suggest, is like the old saying that my mother used to say this all the time to me, which as you can tell, I talk a lot and are very passionate. And sometimes I don’t stop and listen enough, because I think I have all the answers. You know, God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, son. And chambers forget that sometimes. And so what I would say is if you’re going to check your chamber to the next level, is listen with an open and honest mind and hear what they’re really saying. And see what what the real eco ecosystem around your community is. For us, the struggle was workforce. For some communities, it could be loss of population growth, for some, it could be a need for a new strategy and economic development. Whatever that is. I would say that you listen to that, and then look at how you can become the very best at that. So you become the source of that for your community. But then you look at how do I deliver that if it’s economic development? What am I going to do? What am I going to create? How am I going to sell it? And how am I going to let people know that we’re the ones who do it? We hear all the time chambers say this. And Brandon, I don’t know if you’ve had speakers on here that say we don’t toot our own horn enough. Well, the reason you don’t toot your horn enough is because you really probably aren’t doing anything that’s a really of subsequent, you know, need. We every week. We are on the news every week. And we have four stations and usually it’s at least two of those stations. And that’s one of our goals. But if you look at 90% of those newsfeeds, it’s because of what we’re doing in the lives of people because their interest stories, right? So, you know, focusing on making a key difference and what is ain’t going to do and looking at things totally different. Like I said, you’ve still got to do the bread and butter plays. But if you want to grow your organization, I can say this from, you know, what we’ve seen where we went from, you know, seven staff members to 24. And it was all focused on those deliverables. So every new position that we have hired at the Chamber has been to give outcomes and deliverables not to do programmatic work. And so really look at how do you change in that direction? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:30
I love a said that to not only listen more, we hear that sort of tip a lot. But the caveat there of listening with an open and honest mind, because it’s so easy as you hear the needs of of your members or the struggles that they have to become a little defensive, maybe we do that for you, and you try to explain and rather than just listening and realizing maybe we’re not doing it well enough, maybe they don’t know about these things, because we’re not executing in the way that we need to. And

Donny Jones 36:01
I have to confess I was that guy. That’s why I said a lot of times, there’s people that are probably hearing us discuss this today that are actually getting frustrated at hearing me say, because they are so sad. And this is how we’ve always done chamber work. And this is what we’ve been told. And it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just, you can be good to great all day long. And I would encourage you if that’s what you want to be be that. But what we’re talking about today is going from good to the best. Yeah. And that’s a way of thinking about it.

Brandon Burton 36:36
Yeah, that’s great. So as we look to the future of chambers, we’ve been at it feel like we’ve been talking about this all all interview here, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Donny Jones 36:50
Wow, that’s a loaded question. For me, particularly when what we’re talking about is a seat chambers that are going to be successful. Um, you know, I think there’s a place for for every chamber, but I think you’re going to see more chambers becoming more like merchants associations, or actually becoming more like a Deloitte deliverable organization, where their staffs are more like consultants that are actually doing incredible things and working with industry to raise the bar. In those sectors, I think you’ll see a lot of chambers becoming more sector driven, where they’re, you know, what they’re doing for manufacturing might look different than what they’re doing for technology, what looks different than what they’re doing, or healthcare. And they’ll probably have specialists that that focus on those key areas. The other thing is, is, once again, I think you’ll see more of a contractual organization that’s doing real contractual top work. For example, like we’re doing in workforce development, where you know, millions of dollars of our organizations actually to deliver services for the state of Alabama, or for a particular entity or a county or a city. You’ll see more of that. And I think you’ll see chambers being more innovative when it comes to those traditional chamber programs, and have they delivered in different ways. But I think you are going to see the larger chambers actually turn into more of more of that focused. This is our sweet spot. And that’s what we’re going to do, because once you try to become all things to all people, amount one HD, is very difficult for for you to actually have a core focus of your organization.

Brandon Burton 38:44
Absolutely. So as we wrap that, wrap it up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more. Hey, you guys are doing there at the West Alabama chamber, what’s the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Donny Jones 39:00
Yeah, absolutely. If you want to reach out to us, our number here is 205-758-7588 websites that I’ll give you is WestAlabamaChamber.com and WestAlabamaWorks.com. We have hosted, I think 20 or so in the last 18 months, communities that have come in and flown in and done benchmarking trails, particularly on our workforce side. So we’re always open to that because we always learn as much from other Chambers as they learned from us. So it’s a great time to exchange. So if you know chambers are interested in that. We have a staff member that actually focuses on working all the details out and helping chambers, create their benchmarking trips on workforce development and flying in and actually doing that. So appreciate all the time, Brandon, thank you for having us here too. But yes, love to talk to anybody that might have questions. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:56
that’s been fantastic having you on the show today. And I think the perspective you bring and the insights the the work you guys are doing is really going from good to best and that best looks different every community. So I hope everyone listening is taking notes on those, those action items they can do to really survey and listen and have that honest heart in mind as they listen to their members to see how you can become the best. So thank you, Donny, for being with us today. I really appreciate it

Thank you enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton
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Business Building vs. Networking with Sharon Mayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’m excited today to have Sharon Mayer with us Sharon is the President and CEO of the Allen Fairview Chamber of Commerce and a little bit of background on Sharon. She was named the President CEO of the Allen Chamber in August of 1997. She began her career in her chamber work career as a part time employee at the Arlington Chamber of Commerce in 1989. She then quickly moved up the ranks and in 1995, she accepted the position as president of the DeSoto Chamber. During her tenure at the Arlington chamber she completed the IOM program in record time and continuing education in chamber work is still important to her today she has to Institute for Advanced Management courses that she’s participated in when an SMU and went to Colorado Springs Institute programs. Working with other chambers and within the state association is extremely important to Sharon. during and following her tenure on the TCC board she facilitated retreats for area chambers and assisted in the planning and facilitation for annual programs and chamber basic courses hosted by that association. Sharon joined the Board of Regents for the Center of Chamber Excellence in 2004, where she participated as an instructor for member bait membership basics, and served as Chairman of the Board of Regents. She also served as board member on the North Texas Chamber Executives which represents over 42 chambers in the north Texas area. And as the 2023 board chair. She is a past member of Board of Directors for WAC II, and Sharon serves on the North Texas Commission Board and their executive committee in 2011. Under Sharon’s leadership, the Allen chamber expanded to become the Allen Fairview Chamber of Commerce serving two very diverse communities in 2022, that marks Sharon’s 33rd year in the chamber business, and 25 years as CEO of the Allen Fairview chamber. In 1997. She married Paul Mayer, who’s the CEO of the garland Chamber of Commerce. Together they have five children and nine grandchildren. Sharon, we’re excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Sharon Mayer 4:28
Well, hello, everyone. I am absolutely thrilled to be here with you today and looking forward to our discussion. You pretty much told everybody about my life

Brandon Burton 4:40
secrets, right? There

Sharon Mayer 4:43
are a couple of things that were not included on that. So I have a certification from the University of Texas at Arlington and as a paralegal, which I’ve never used one time in my entire life. I was also I’m a licensed real estate agent and sold one house. But the only reason that I was involved in real estate is because my late husband away, and I owned a real estate company in order for me to keep it going, should anything happen to him? And unfortunately, it did. I had to be a licensed Realtor so that, you know, we built houses. I had a business, especially advertising business that did hand engraving on sunglasses, and our biggest client was Harley Davidson for 1000s of pairs annually. And then guess what they did, they found out that you could go to China and have them stamp for a lot less money. So pretty much tied to that business.

Brandon Burton 5:50
That’s the story of a lot of small businesses these days. Right.

Sharon Mayer 5:53
So so that’s a lot of historical stuff that that I don’t mention in my bio.

Brandon Burton 6:00
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the Allen Fairview chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, just to kind of set the table for discussion.

Sharon Mayer 6:13
All right. So our chamber is right under 600. Members at this time, our budget is a little over 500,000 annually. And I will say that, probably 55% of that goes for staff. Because if you if you don’t invest in those resources, those people resources, then you’re doing your chamber a disservice. I have four and a half, three and a half employees. We have a finance director, a membership director and a programming special events director plus, I am so fortunate to have a part time law student who was actually started with our chamber as an intern when she was in high school, and worked has worked remotely for us all the way through her undergrad, and now her law school. And she’s in her third year of law school. And she works remotely and does all of our social media and marketing and things like that. So and she’s she’s just excellent.

Brandon Burton 7:33
So that was my next question with her working. So I love hearing about chambers utilizing interns first. But then to have her working remote to retain her as she goes through her schooling, what type of stuff she’s doing social media marketing, what other kinds of things do you have her

Sharon Mayer 7:51
to keep the graphics, but she does all the social media stuff. And you know, she does the promotional graphics and things for all of our programming. And I mean, she’s really creative, and does a great job she just completed we just had our annual gala and she did all the collateral for that. And it was it was done as well as the marketing firm that we had been paying $26,000 a year you know, on a contract to do and you know, and she’s she I think she she’s just under $20 An hour and she tracks her time and it’s definitely saving us money plus it puts money in her pocket you know, and

Brandon Burton 8:41
love her find a big chunk of change in the budget like that. Well for our our topic today we’ve titled this episode business building versus networking. And we did that because of the approach that the Allen Fairview chamber takes in approaching their members and, and how they call different things you know, the the Cymatics, if you will, so we’ll get into a much deeper conversation on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 11:37
All right, Sharon, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break business building versus networking, what’s the difference?

Sharon Mayer 11:46
Great, big, huge difference. So everyone does not everyone does networking, one way or another, obviously. But the reason that we chose to focus on this building business is because you got to go back to our mission, the mission, our mission is to advocate educate and build relationships that enable our communities and our members to prosper. So everything that we do to us back to our mission, and changing the name of what we at one time called Allen net, that was when we were teeny tiny and there were 12 people in the room networking, and then we changed it to Tuesday morning Live, which everybody still calls it Tuesday morning lab, at least those who have been around for a while it has transitioned to now it’s coffee and connections. And so we wanted to use the connecting and the building and all of that together. And it is now grown to around 90 in attendance every week. And these people understand the value of building a business network, which is not the same thing as networking, they do not spend their time shoving their business card in somebody else’s nose under their insight, you know, here, I have something that would benefit you. And you know, just going on and on and talking about yourself. What’s really interesting, if you attend one of our networking’s is that you find out that they’re not talking about themselves. They’re talking about everybody else in the room. They’re talking about how Joe really helped Sammy over here, you know, find a plumber, and it was an emergency he needed somebody. And, and they also have I mean, they have fun with it because they make up silly sayings and silly names about their other businesses. And they just, they make it fun. And I think if you talked about the whole atmosphere, around our business building, whether it’s the morning or whether it’s a an after hours event, or whatever it might be, you’re gonna find that people talk about us as a family, not as a membership organization, because they are all so connected, and their friends and they invite others to come in all the time, which is the reason that it has grown the way that it has. And it all goes back to the to what we originally said is you’re in these seats and in front of these people to build your business. But the best way to build your business is to and we’ll use the word network to network with people that you know I can trust and the people who are in that room Boom, know, like and trust one another. And a byproduct of that is that they know, like and trust staff know, like and trust the organization. And it just, it helps us to increase our influence within the community. But it also helps us when we’re building our membership.

Brandon Burton 15:20
Yeah. So I know, I get the sense that networking is like a four letter word there that now in Fairview chamber? How did you successfully go about changing the mindset for people as they’re set on? Using that four letter word, networking, and converting that to business building?

Sharon Mayer 15:43
We just stopped. We didn’t, we never, we don’t ever tell anybody anything. We just sort of start using a different term ourselves, and move on from there. And it just catches on.

Brandon Burton 16:00
So about how long ago did you guys make the shift from calling these networking events to build business building events? Well, it

Sharon Mayer 16:08
started during and right after the pandemic. You know, that was, you know, well, that was a really horrible time in our lives. And thank God that we’re, you know, on the other side of that, it was also from our chamber perspective, and our engagement. And like I said, our, I guess we’re influenced within the community, probably the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Because our chamber had to keep connecting people, but we had to do it the, you know, like we do now, with Zoom calls a lot of times. And so that was when we thought, you know, okay, we’re not, we’re networking, but we’re not networking. And we’re not doing this face to face thing. So let’s just kind of change the way that we present this and the way we said, so if they became business building opportunities, and we’ve just kind of hung on to it after that.

Brandon Burton 17:09
Yeah. Yeah, I know, a lot of people networking can be a very intimidating phrase, if you say, to a new member, for example, Hey, we have this networking event coming up. And you see the sweat start coming down their foreheads, I got to talk to people and get uncomfortable and do you know, pass out business cards and be sold by everybody in the room, versus changing that and saying, we’re having a built a business building event, come and learn how you can grow your business. And it’s a totally different perspective for the similar kind of outcomes. But it changes that perspective coming into it for a different objective

Sharon Mayer 17:47
does and in fact, if I were to tell you something else, about myself and my husband as well, that nobody that we interact with, when believe is neither one of us are extroverts. We are not, we would rather than being alone in the office door closed, nobody bother you. But you, it’s so it’s not a natural thing for us to do. But at the same time, this is something that we have to learn in our positions, and we put ourselves out there so we can really understand. And I particularly can understand the reluctance of someone to just show up cold at a networking event. So what we have done other than Chase, or is that we make sure that there is someone there to greet them and someone to take them and say, Come over here, let me introduce you to these people, you know, and our members do not sit with their friends, because we tell them when you’re sitting with your friends, you’re not building your business. So you just sit with someone that you don’t know. And the best ones to sit with. And the ones that you get to know really well as time goes by is that if you’re the first person that that a new person that comes to one of our events meets, then they automatically feel like if you’re open and welcoming, and all of that they feel like okay, they’ve made one friend in a group of 90. And so it’s a little less intimidating that way.

Brandon Burton 19:12
Yeah. So I’ve recently heard a term when you’re in a situation like that social setting, that you tend to see the circles of people, right that stand in the circle and talk. And the idea was instead of creating circles to create horseshoes to where it’s open for newcomers where you can be welcoming for newcomers to join the conversation. They don’t feel shut out because they’re looking at everybody’s back. And you purposely leave an opening.

Sharon Mayer 19:38
Yeah, and our volunteers, basically our ambassadors, our business success advocates, both of them. Both groups are really really good about taking a member or a visitor under their wings. And they don’t talk to them about the chamber but they they actually stay And during the 32nd commercials, and they do the first commercial for them, so that they actually feel more comfortable the next time they come back.

Brandon Burton 20:09
Okay. Yeah, I like that having the volunteers there to just help make sure that they have a good experience that they’re meeting people getting connected with those right individuals that will help build their business. So. So you also take a different spin on some other vernacular than your, in your chamber. For example, members versus investors. You had another one it had to do with sponsors, that have sponsors, partners, and so the sponsors, talk to us a little bit about the the thought that goes into those names.

Sharon Mayer 20:48
Well, my staff gets worried when I start thinking. And because I like changing things up, because I think everything gets old, it gets stale. So we may do the same series of Legends, or breakfast meetings. But we don’t call them them. I mean, you know, so So I sit down and I go, Okay, let’s see what would be start, let’s start your day. And then I go start smart topics and relevant themes. So I mean, you know, everything has a meaning to me, I have to have that. So. So we changed the name of start. And then we changed the name Merlin engines to bold bol D stands for nothing, just bold topics, okay. And speakers. So that led to the whole thought process of Okay, now we’re looking for sponsors for these events. And why not just say, hey, come partner with us on this event. Because partnerships, in my opinion, are a much closer, more personal relationship than a sponsorship, sponsors write checks, partners get involved in the whatever event it might be. And we involve them ahead, we promote them like crazy, but we involve them by asking them to come in and introduce the speakers, give them time on the program, you know, to talk about their business. And that’s how we refer to them. So and then you talk about the the member versus investor. So members are easy to lose, investors are a little bit harder. Because what you’re doing is you are working within your organization, but you’re you’re drawing them in, and when you refer to them as investors, then they see that what they’re doing with those dollars, is that they’re investing not in the chamber. They’re investing in their business. And they’re investing in the community and economic growth within our communities. And we use those terminologies all the time, invest in your business, invest in your community.

Brandon Burton 23:12
I like that. Yeah, the investor definitely brings a level of commitment, where a membership is like, you know, see how it works for me see what’s in it for me, right?

Sharon Mayer 23:22
We still get a lot better, you’re always gonna get what’s in it for me.

Brandon Burton 23:26
Right? Right. So another terminology that I picked up on is you don’t necessarily call your volunteers or ambassadors these, you said six business success advocates. Yes. Is that are those essentially ambassadors or do you have ambassadors as well,

Sharon Mayer 23:44
we have ambassadors as well. But what we’ve done is we’ve taken some things away from the ambassadors and given it to this new group that we’ve had in about two years now. So our ambassadors are still the meters in the greeters and the the ribbon cuttings and you know, open houses, all of that. Our business success advocates are BSA as we call them, are focused on retention. And they are focused on building relationships after someone joins Not, not when they show up at one of the coffee and connections or that sort of thing, because they’re the ones that will, will call members, especially first year members every three months. So they’re kinda like a mentor. They tell them about not chamber events, but they tell them about chamber benefits, particularly at whatever level they have joined it because we have a, you know, tiered dues investment schedule. And they forget, they join, they choose this level, and they think, oh, yeah, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. Well, we track what they do and what they don’t do. And so our Business Success Advocate which is really hard to say. I actually have a list and they know what the expectations were when that member joined. And they can relate to them. Because I mean, they’re members themselves. And so they’re peer to peer. And it’s a lot easier. And a lot, it’s really a lot better and more impactful conversation when you’re talking to someone who is is your peer, rather than you’re talking to this chamber staff person.

Brandon Burton 25:28
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m curious, the question comes to my mind, as you talk about these PSAs business success advocates. There, they’re there as mentors to help guide these new investors along their path at the chamber. As a new business joins the chamber invests in their business and their community, are you having the opportunity to evaluate where maybe they can get involved with whether it’s a committee or as a weather ambassador, or Business Success Advocate or partner, whatever it may be?

Sharon Mayer 26:09
Yes, but we do have some rules. You need to be a member for at least a year, before you can join either the investor group or the business success and this good group X PSA Group. But those are the only two where we really have a rule. I mean, we have a dei committee, we have a legislative affairs business advocacy committee. So those were, if that is your, what you’re interested in, then you can join immediately if that’s what you want to do. And we introduce them to these things gradually. It’s all in their membership packet that they you know, but the other thing about membership packets is, you know, they’re drinking through a firehose, instead of, you know, a water fountain or a water bottle, whatever it might be. And they forget and so that’s what the BSA is, do they remind them that you know, here’s an opportunity to hear but also don’t forget, you know, you get on the chamber podcast at your level of membership, you get three minutes on the you know, the podcast, you get a free hole at the golf tournament, you get all you know, other things, the

Brandon Burton 27:28
podcasts that you guys have in your chamber, right.

Sharon Mayer 27:33
Past Al Anon action, don’t ask me why didn’t say Fairview in action, but it started out Elden an action. And that’s the way it’s remained. So yeah. And it’s kind of fun, because we get to talk about our members. And we do and they get to participate depends, like I said, depending on their level of sponsorship members, what’s that word investment? Yes. But yeah, it gets a little tongue twister when you get right down to it. But you know, we have, we have not a huge audience. But we do have our regulars who listen all the time, we have a little over 600 that, you know, that subscribe to the podcast, very easily found right there at the top bar website, on the left hand side, along with our blog, and all the other things that I add to it continually.

Brandon Burton 28:28
That’s great. I’m a big fan of chamber soon podcast, as you can imagine, so glad to hear you’re using that as a platform to tell the stories of your members and, and highlight them. So I’d like these, you know, taking these old terminologies freshen them up a little bit, maybe giving a more meaningful definition to them, to allow these investors to really get more bang for their buck to really build their business stronger, and to see their involvement with the chamber on a different level. So I think this has been a good exercise, and hopefully chambers listening or jotting down, you know, some of their own terminologies that they use, they might be able to freshen up a little bit.

Sharon Mayer 29:13
If you if you don’t look at things annually, whether it’s the name of coffee and connections to you know, whatever it might be and thinking, Okay, we’ve been doing that for two or three years that’s getting really old. Let’s put a little zing in it. It’s like our new member orientation, it was called a new member orientation. And we’re going to call it chamber 411. And guess what time of day, we’re going to have it for 11 at the end, and our battle fab after hours battle. People know people remember those times that are odd, you know, that are off kilter. And they remember for lemon and 505. So that’s what propose things to I mean, there is nothing too small or too big in your chamber that could not stand a little refurbish refresh at once. No. Well,

Brandon Burton 30:08
absolutely. So Sharon, I wanted to ask you if for those listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item might you share with them to accomplish that goal?

Sharon Mayer 30:24
accreditation through the US Chamber, we have gone through the process three times. And we moved from being an accredited chamber to a four star chamber. And then last year, we are awarded our five star chamber recognition. And every single time you go through this process, you have to take a really in depth look at your chamber and what you’re doing. And while a lot of chambers will involve a large group of members, in going through each of these different aspects, we do not and we did not. And we had one or two of our board people involved. And what we found out is volunteers unless you’re in a smaller chamber, or a really, really large chamber, and they understand the benefit of this will drop the ball every single time. So as much as I love them, God bless them, don’t count on them. And so they what it really has done for our chamber and our staff is it’s made us look internally, instead of externally. And, and the feedback that you get from the US Chamber on when we got our four star accreditation. The one little Hickey that we had was Governmental Affairs. And I had four years to fix that. And and what was that mission statement again, advocate, educate and build relationships. So we went to the top of the page. And now we have a very, very, very active business advocacy committee. So it’s, that’s that’s really and that’s important to me, especially in the state of Texas, because we’re kind of crazy here right now.

Brandon Burton 32:21
That is a good tip to go about the accreditation process.

Sharon Mayer 32:26
And you know what? I mean, it’s so gratifying because let me tell you what it did. I have been talking about getting my CCIE and God knows I’m putting this out there to public for 30 years. And after that five star came in, I went okay, that’s checked off my list. Now it’s time for the CC anything. So I am everybody listening

Brandon Burton 32:49
can help keep you accountable to that.

Sharon Mayer 32:54
Email me, Sharon and LM Fairview chamber.com. Wish me luck and ask me how it’s going. And I’ll be happy to share the good, the bad and the ugly.

Brandon Burton 33:02
That’s good. So I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sharon Mayer 33:10
You know, what really bothers me is when people say chambers are becoming obsolete, that the younger generation doesn’t know what a chamber is. I was in Austin yesterday. And I was at a legislative affairs thing. But I had a little bit of time. So I went to the mall. And I am walking into the mall next to this young man, and he’s very places how’s your day? Go nuts. Have fun. How’s your son? He said, Are you just out shopping? You’re on your way to work? And I said, No, I’m here for a legislative session. And he said, What do you do? And I said, I run a chamber of commerce. And he looked at me and he was like, I said, you don’t know what Chamber of Commerce is, do you? And he said, no, no. And I said, most people your age No. And most people who are a lot of them who are older than you don’t. And I said, but let me tell you what we do. We advocate educate you build relationships, and keep going back to that. And we are a business association that works on the local level within a town in a community to help businesses thrive. And to help them with so many business issues that are coming up right now. One of the things that and I’m gonna throw this in there you didn’t ask. I’m really proud of our legislative affairs stuff, but I am exceedingly excited about our diversity, equity and inclusion committee. And the fact that we are making such strives to get not only our work with our city and our school districts and to get the word out that this is what we’re doing. But we are working towards getting minority veteran Now, women on LGBT queue businesses certified so that they can actually do business with our local municipalities or county state and beyond that program, once we get that launched is really going to be what will be remembered in our community and within our membership as something that was done well and is extraordinary for them. So

Brandon Burton 35:30
that’s fantastic. So Sharon, before we go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect or keep you accountable and your CCE, you threw your email out there already, but what would be the best way to have someone reach out and connect with you?

Sharon Mayer 35:49
Well, the very best way to is to email me because I will probably answer it at two in the morning. So it’s sharon@allenfairviewchamber.com.

Brandon Burton 36:03
And I will get that in our show notes for this episode. So it can be nice and easy as someone’s listening before they go to bed and they want to send you a message that you can respond to at 2am. There you go. Oh, Sharon, I appreciate having you on the show today and setting aside some time to be with us and share the approach that you guys take there at the Allen Fairview chamber. I think that’s something that’s kind of been on the radar for a lot of chambers. But it just made me that reminder that they needed to keep things fresh, keep things with purpose, to give the best experience for their remember investors.

Sharon Mayer 36:38
I have told you all about our mission statement. I didn’t tell you what our vision is to be an indispensable resource to Allen, Fairview and Collin County businesses. And that’s what we’re continuing to work towards to be indispensable.

Brandon Burton 36:53
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you for for being with us today and sharing your example. I do appreciate it.

Sharon Mayer 37:01
It was my pleasure anytime.

Brandon Burton 37:05
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Rapid Membership Growth with Jennifer Vincent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Jennifer Vincent. Jennifer is the President of the Cambridge Area Chamber of Commerce in Ohio. She has a associate’s degree from Zane State College holds a license and health and life insurance and has over 15 years of experience in sales and marketing. Jennifer is involved in several local organizations and boards throughout her community. She is a 2019 2020 graduate of leadership and Guernsey. She served as a leadership Guernsey administrator for the 2020 2021 class. She was named president of the chamber in June 2021 and served as leadership Guernsey administrator for the 2021 22 as well. Jennifer’s been married for two bow for 11 years together, they have seven children and three grandchildren. And her spare time she enjoys reading, reading, traveling and spending time with family. But Jennifer, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, we’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Jennifer Vincent 3:12
Well, thank you for having me. I am happy to be on here. And I feel like all the interesting things about me you already talked about in the in my bio, as you said, in my spare time, which there isn’t a lot of that. But I love to run and a few years ago because of my love of running a friend and myself. We had started a run group. And we were doing things to give back to our community through our run group. And so we ended up turning that group into a nonprofit. And every year we hold race series and do some other events and then give all the money that we raise to local local charities local groups here in Guernsey County.

Brandon Burton 4:06
Nice. That is a that extra step quite literally that you took there. But that’s that’s neat. I like learning these things about people’s they have you on the show. Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about the Cambridge area Chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber type a chamber staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for a conversation.

Jennifer Vincent 4:32
Sure. So as you said in my bio, I guess my my story is that I came to the chamber. I officially started in July of 2021 after being named the president in June and our chamber had not had a president serving in this role for 17 months when I took this position And so through a retirement and some other things, and then of course, hate to say it, but COVID That was the reason, you know that we didn’t have someone in this job. So when I, when I came into the chamber, we were the size of it was about 390 and membership. And it was myself and the office manager. The office manager that was here was also in transition, and she was able to get her dream job. So she left right after I took this job. So there was a lot of transitioning going on. I hired a new office manager, I ended up after a year having someone also take over the leadership Guernsey program. So now we are a staff of three. And as of yesterday, we are now a membership of 500. So yeah, yeah, so over the last year and a half plus, I have added 142 new members.

Brandon Burton 6:22
That is fantastic. And that’s a largely what we’ll we’ll spend our discussion on today is the rapid membership growth. So it talks a little bit about the the transition everything going on there at the Chamber before you came in as you came in. But you’ve had a steep learning curve in the short time you’ve been there at the Chamber, but also making a big impact while you’re while you’re learning and getting your feet under you as well so excited to get into this discussion with you and and some of the things you’ve learned along the way as you’ve been doing this and we will dive in deeper in this conversation since we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:18
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Brandon Burton 9:49
All right, Jennifer, we’re back. So you kind of set the stage for us as you came into the chamber you were taken over a role that had been vacant for about 17 months. A lot of transition a lot of moving parts, middle of a pandemic, lots of things happening. So as you came on board at the Chamber, I guess what did you see as your first priorities as you came on board in this position?

Jennifer Vincent 10:20
Um, I mean, it’s probably going to sound obvious, but, you know, coming into the job, it was basically just learning who the current members were, and reaching out to them. And, you know, just letting them know that after 17 months, that obviously now there’s someone in in the role, and seeing what it is they needed from the chamber, as well, as, you know, I was I was learning, learning the job, you know, and learning who all the members were. And, you know, my, my intention was not to come in and say, you know, my top goal was not, gosh, I want 500 members. I just wanted to bring everything back together. And again, I know, this is probably obvious to say, but we were in the middle of a pandemic. So there was not a lot of events and a lot of things happening. There were no business after hours. There were no fundraising events, there was no education programs, like there was just nothing going on. And so coming into it, I, you know, wanted to see, okay, what is it, we can get started back? You know, what events? Can we get started again, and have the networking in the community, to just to get everyone back together? So, I mean, that was kind of the first thing I did was, you know, learn who the members were, and what can I do for all of us to be together?

Brandon Burton 12:04
Yeah. So and that’ll, that’ll take you far, just learning who the members are and what you can do to advance the community. And naturally, I would see some, you know, membership uptick anyway, just by having somebody in the position now, you know, giving some attention to it. But as you have had more of a focus effort on building the membership, and and I don’t think you mentioned in the recording 500 is the highest that the membership has ever been there in Cambridge, right?

Jennifer Vincent 12:39
Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s an that’s a new record.

Brandon Burton 12:43
So congratulations there. But as you started to focus your efforts on on building the membership back up, what were those key priorities had to do in the middle of pandemic express the value the, you know, the unique selling proposition that you had to put in front of members or potential members, as he began signing them up?

Jennifer Vincent 13:09
So, you know, as I said it, I guess, my first thing, again, wasn’t that I just, I wanted to hit that goal, you know, so I want to make that clear, I still want the chamber to be here to be that, that voice of business. And you know, it, I guess it, it was kind of like an organic type thing, right? I just when the board hired me, they said, We want you to think outside of the box, we don’t want you to feel like you have to do what the chamber next door does. You just take this and make it yours. And so I started with just simple little things. The when a new member joins the chamber, I would email them, which I still do, but I email them and say, you know, welcome to the chamber, I want to come and see you and bring your plaque and your membership plaque. And I want to get a picture with you. And so we would in the past that, you know, the chamber would take a picture of the member with their plaque and post it on social media. So I wanted to just change it up a little bit. I’m in the picture with them, handing them the plaque. And when I would post their picture on social media, it’s a picture of us together, and I tell what their businesses and what they do and how you can find them and, you know, just give them a little bit of that, you know, five seconds of fame and some advertising. And it kind of took off as far as like you said, I’m also here. So that helped with membership growth, having someone in the position and then the other thing was What I was thinking a couple of months in, you know, these new members, they’re getting time on social media on the chamber page. What are we doing for the members that have been here? 25 years, 50 years, you know, has people forgot that company XYZ joined the chamber 50 years ago? Of course they have. So what can I do for them. So after tossing around a few ideas, I created member of the week, and every Monday at noon on social media, there’s an article that pops up member of the week. And I started that in October of 21. And I’m, I’m very proud to say I’ve never missed a single Monday, including holidays, I still run the article. But what I do with that, I could very easily just email a questionnaire to that business and say, fill it out and send me a picture. But I actually go to the business. So for the last, I can’t do the math, you have to for me, how many weeks that’s been? So it almost two years. Yeah. Yeah, we’re going on almost two years. So for that many weeks, I have made an appointment with a different business before their articles gonna come out on Monday. And I go see them. I spend time with them. I asked them questions, to be able to write that article, I take pictures of their business, I take pictures of them. And every Monday at noon on social media, that article is posted member of the week, and it gives a little story about how they got started, how they think they’re successful, you know, and been able to be in business. 40 years, I’ve met with some businesses, they’ve been in business 100 years, you know, they’re carrying on the family business. Yeah. So I think that helping our community, remember who some of the members are that have been here, our chambers been in existence, 76 years, helping our community remember those members, I think has largely helped our growth as well. It’s, again, it’s just reminding our community who’s here, and who you should be doing business with

Brandon Burton 17:25
right now. And I think that’s a great approach that you’re taking, I love that you spend the time with each of those members to do that membership spotlight member the week. And as you brainstorm or as chambers listening, brainstorm other ideas. It can be made easy for in some sense that, you know, there’s a manufacturer’s week, you know, that’d be a great week to highlight all the manufacturers in your community. There’s no national ice cream day, you know, what members of your community serve ice cream? Yeah, highlight them tell a little story about them. There’s, I think every every day of the year, there’s some national day, you know, or whatever. So play that to your benefit and highlight them and you don’t have to do it that way. But it’s just an idea as you brainstorm and create your content calendar, which you’re going to put out there be intentional about who you’re reaching out to and why. And as Jennifer seen, it draws attention, it shows that value and keeps people engaged and in renewing their membership and bringing up those members that have been around seemingly forever. So get get creative with it. Think outside the box. So there are there other things as you were given that that directive to think outside the box that you explored and maybe things that worked and things that didn’t work even.

Jennifer Vincent 18:51
Um, yeah, so another thing we started doing know a lot of people use the term lunch and learn as a business meeting, whatever, once a month. And I wanted to just again, change the name a little bit change up what we do. So we call it power lunch. And we don’t hold it every month, because I chose to hold it the first week of the month. And we tend to hit a lot of holidays for some reason. So we ended up having power lunch about six times a year. And typically what we do with Power Lunch is the speaker is from a group or organization rather than let’s say, a business trying to advertise for themselves if that makes sense. So for an example, one of our speakers has been the director of the visitors and convention bureau. And now we still have someone sponsor, so The way it works is if you want to be a sponsor of power lunch, then that is a business, right? That’s doing it, you know, for profit. So they sponsor Power Lunch, they get two tickets to come and eat lunch. And they get 10 minutes to talk about their business before the main speaker. And it’s, that’s went very well. For us, too. It’s a smaller type, venue event, we usually have Around 35 people in the place where we hold that lunch and could only have 40. Anyway, so it’s 30, fives kind of that perfect number. And that’s been really successful, because again, it’s helping to highlight the organizations in our community, that maybe we don’t know what they do, or we forgot how much they do for our community. So and then, of course, you know, we, I hate to say it, you put everything on social media, right? You you post about that lunch, and you know, who sponsored it and, you know, make sure they they get their thank yous. And that helps, too, because, again, there’s, there’s just so many organizations that our community doesn’t know why they’re in existence,

Brandon Burton 21:20
right? Yeah. If it’s not on social media, it didn’t happen. No, exactly. Yeah, I like to say that, you know, social media is used to perpetuate what you’re already doing. So it becomes that larger amplifier of your your power lunch to then amplify what you’re doing with the speakers, we’re about, you know who the sponsor was with these. Remember, the week, you know, you’re already doing the interview, you’re talking to people just naturally, you’re going to talk to others about it, but then putting it out on social media amplifies that message, and just makes what you’re doing go a little further. So directly tied back to the membership growth. Is there a process as far as you know, attracting members as far as onboarding the members that you’ve found to be successful for you? I mean, you’ve been, you brought on a lot of members in a short amount of time. So you’re either running ragged, which the chamber chamber executor has been known to do. Or you you may be starting to establish a system of some sort. But where are you at in that that process?

Jennifer Vincent 22:31
I would say it’s definitely the system. Some of the members have come to come to me and said, I see what you’re doing, and I love it. And then the other thing is, if I see a new business announced on social media, I’m reaching out to them immediately. Hey, congratulations on your new business. I see you’re going to be opening soon. I would love to help you with that. What can I do for you? When can we chat? When can we sit down. So I’m reaching out to them, I’m being proactive. And then once I meet with them, you know, I’m talking to them about the benefits. And this is what we can do for you at the chamber. They fill out their application, then the next step is, like I said, I go back and see them at their business. So I want the picture that goes on social media to be myself and the business owner in front of that business that they’re you know, that’s joining, you know, we post that and at that time, I also give them a packet of information. And just tell them, these are the ways you can get involved. Depending on what it is you need from the chamber, and just go over all those things with them again, I don’t ever want to leave them empty handed. I don’t want them to feel like wow, she got my money. I’ll never see her again. So you know, I leave them with a packet of information on how to get involved. And I always tell them, if you’re not sure what you want to do with the chamber, please don’t be afraid to reach back out to me and say, What can I do? I want to advertise more network more. I need insurance, whatever it is, whatever the reason was, I want them to reach out to me. And then after that, we’re I’m reaching out to the members again, you know, another touch point. We’d love to see you at a business after hours, that type thing because again, I just don’t want them to think, Oh, she got her money. She got her application and we won’t see her hear from her until next year when it’s due again.

Brandon Burton 24:45
Right. So I know I think I’ve shared this example once before but I have a friend who’s a he’s a realtor. And as a newer REALTOR at the time he had reached out to me he had just moved to a new community He knew I did the podcast and I worked with chambers. And he’s like, Hey, should I join my local chamber? And like, well, it depends, you know, what are you trying to do? What’s your what’s your goal? What’s your objective? Like? Would you like to get involved at the chamber? You know, see what kind of committees, you know, see what kind of work your chamber is involved with. It’s the old saying, if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. But as new members are on boarded, to be able to know what those opportunities are to see, should I join yes or no? and at what level do you want to be involved with, because there’s a lot of ways to be involved. If you want to add, I’d like that you’re spending that time with them and trying to really help them understand the the impact they can have, but also the level of involvement that they get with their membership. That’s a that’s key. Is there anything that you think for, for listeners out there is a focus on membership as a membership isn’t necessarily always the primary focus, but it’s always on your mind? Right? You’re always looking for opportunities. Anything that comes to mind that that other chamber, professionals out there should be thinking of, as they go about recruiting new members.

Jennifer Vincent 26:19
Um, I think that the, the best advices as you’re recruiting the new members, is to also be thinking about what you’re doing day to day or month over month to keep them. You know, you you want to talk to them about joining. But the next question, I’m sure in the back of their mind is okay, I’m joining today. But what, what, what am I going to do with this as we go forward? So what programs do you have that are going to retain them as well? And then, of course, you know, telling them about what you’re doing, is why they will join. And then of course, step two is how you keep them.

Brandon Burton 27:08
Right. And I would encourage anybody to use their membership software to, to put in some of those, those key benchmarks now along their memberships. So if they’ve been in for, you know, two weeks, you know, do they get some kind of an email? Or is that when Jennifer reaches out and schedules, the plaque delivery in the picture and the social media posts, and then a month later, and three months and six months? What are those touch points? Are you making a phone call? Are you sending an email? Are you making a personal visit? Are you having an ambassador go by? Or what are the what are these things to keep these members engaged and fully on boarded in that first year, and, and there’s various membership, software’s can can help you do that, and some of it automating but some of it, just those reminders of, hey, it’s time to reach out to this member and take the next step. So I hope everyone’s leveraging that. Well, as we start to wrap up, Jennifer, I wanted to see if there’s any tips or action items that you might want to suggest for listeners who are looking to take their organization up to the next level, from the things that you’ve learned in your your 18 month sprint, so far, what what stands out to you is some of the things that would really help take an organization to the next level.

Jennifer Vincent 28:27
You know, it’s showing them that, that you care about their business. You know, I gave a lot of I said that I do a lot of things with social media. But the other thing I do is I go to them, I go to their business, whether it’s to talk to them about joining, maybe, I mean, I do everything local, right. shop local, whether it’s using their business for, you know, my things that I need, if just whatever the reason may be that I need to talk to a member. I tried to do it in person. I think that that is something that we have let ourselves get away from. We rely a lot on email and texting. And while that’s a great, maybe first step or second step, I think that the in person, it takes more effort, it takes more time, and the business truly believes that you care about them. If you take the time to go see them, and it’s truly the favorite part of my job. I love I don’t even feel like this is a job. I love what I do. I never get out of bed The morning and not want to come to work. So I love going to see people face to face. It’s my favorite part. And if you incorporate that, in your day to day week over week, having members want to join the chamber is not hard,

Brandon Burton 30:22
right? And what I’ve learned from others is you need to schedule that into your day, because it’s easy for you to schedule it, block it out, and then hold it as an appointment. But nothing beats that personal connection, spending time with somebody and being face to face shaking hands, you know, spending time in their business to show that you care. Yeah. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jennifer Vincent 30:58
chambers are we’re, we are still the voice of business, big or small. And I think that chambers are needed even more so in the future. Because not every business is a brick and mortar. We have so many businesses that are that are online. They’re their storefront is not what you drive downtown. You don’t drive past them. So who is their voice? who advertises for them if they don’t do it themselves? And granted, they are doing it, but they need that extra layer. So I see chambers being even more important now than ever.

Brandon Burton 31:46
Yeah. And I think continuing to adapt and stay relevant as you talk about so many businesses doing things online now that, you know, is your chamber equipped to help them with best practices online or to help someone set up a e commerce Store if they have a brick and mortar so they can sell out the back door to? Yeah, where’s your chamber at in that process of being able to stay relevant and help your members and potential members, these businesses in your community to be able to be relevant in a worldwide marketplace these days? Thank you for that, Jennifer, as we come to a close, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about this rapid membership growth. You’ve seen there and strategies that you’ve implemented, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jennifer Vincent 32:43
If they want to start with email first, is the easiest. And my email is president@cambridgeohiochamber.com.

Brandon Burton 32:58
Right, well, we’ll get that in our show notes too. And I’m sure Jennifer would welcome in person visits to if you wanted to show up in person and

Jennifer Vincent 33:06
absolutely come to Cambridge.

Brandon Burton 33:09
Spend some money and spend some time in Cambridge? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, Jennifer, I appreciate it. It’s been great having you on the show and sharing your experiences in your your first 18 months or so they’re on the job and you’re making a big impact and learning a lot along the way as well. So thank you for coming on here and sharing some of these things that you’ve learned with us.

Jennifer Vincent 33:32
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 33:33
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Small Staff, Big Impact with Jodi Owczarski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 38:07
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Empowering Volunteers with Nick Kieffer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Nick Keefer. Nick joined the Goshen Chamber in 2007. As Vice President for Business Development, Nick became the president and CEO of the Goshen chamber in July 2017. He graduated the US chambers IOM program in 2011. Nick joined the Board of Regents for the winter Institute site for the IOM program in 2012. In 2013, he received the designation from the Indiana chamber executive Association as certified professional in the chamber industry. And October 2019, Nick was named to the National Board of Trustees for the US Chamber Foundation’s Institute for organization management. Nick is a past board president for the Indiana chamber executive Association. In 2022. He received his accreditation his accredited executive distinction from the Indiana chamber executive Association. Prior to working at the Goshen chamber, Nick ran a construction company with his father in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He received his bachelor’s degree in business from Indiana University and a master’s degree in communications from Purdue University. When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with his his wife Molly and son Maxwell and daughter Caroline and and that they enjoy spending time outside and stay active chasing their kids around the family farm. But Nick, I’m excited to have you with us today on the podcast I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know

Nick Kieffer 3:43
them better in this Brandon Thank you for having me. I think what you do for the chamber industry is great anytime we can hear from from other people and you being that source just greatly appreciate what you do something interesting about me oh my goodness.

I have two food trucks that I do on the side so with our family farm we have a couple food trucks we do around so when I’m not at chamber work I’m doing some food truck work all right, so tell me more what type of food are you serving? Yes. So so we we make apple cider mini doughnuts so my my wife’s family has an apple orchard here in Goshen and so we have what we call the cider shack. So we do cups of cider and mini donuts. And in our new latest food truck will be a sweet corn roaster so we’ll be roasted sweet corn with some different toppings and stuff like that. So keeps me busy. My wife doesn’t like me sitting sitting around home. Nice.

Brandon Burton 4:43
Now that sounds fun. The Cider donut sounds good. Yeah,

Nick Kieffer 4:49
I learned. I believe one every time I work I check the first one for quality. And then I stay away from them. But

Brandon Burton 4:56
yeah, I have to right. Yeah, like any good dealer knows you don’t use the product, right? Yeah. No, that’s great. Well, tell us a little bit about the Goshen chamber just give us an idea of you know size of the chamber staff budget scope of work just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Nick Kieffer 5:15
Sure. Goshen is the county seat of Elkhart County, we are the RV capital of the world. So any PRVC going down the street, there’s a good chance that was made in my neck of the woods. The Goshen chamber, been around since 1954. We represent 448 businesses, and about 20,000 employees in the Goshen area. Goodness, I have a staff of I say two and a half. He’s really a full time third person but we two full time staff and a part time staff here at the chamber. And we’re on a budget of about 400,000 a year been pretty consistent in that room for the last couple of years.

Brandon Burton 5:59
Good deal. So I like getting that perspective. So as we go into the whatever topic we’re covering on an individual podcast episode, it really helps listeners be able to see how to scale Yeah, compared to their chamber. And you know, if if Nick and that Goshen chamber are able to do these things that three staff or two and a half staff, and a budget of 400,000. See what you can do is your chamber, whether it’s bigger or smaller, and just, you know, scale it, scale it to your size. But I appreciate you sharing that. And as we get into our topic for our conversation today we’ll focus the majority of our conversation around empowering volunteers. And I know chambers across the country utilize their volunteers a little differently and have different types of relationships with them. So I’m excited to dive into this conversation with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:13
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Brandon Burton 10:01
All right, Nick, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll focus our conversation today around what we can do to empower volunteers. And to know, volunteers are key to the success of pretty much any chamber. We need those people that understand the vision and mission of the chamber and who are on board and are really great community champions. So they’re in Goshen? How do you guys go about working with your volunteers? And I guess we’ll start there just in what aspects are utilizing the volunteers?

Nick Kieffer 10:36
Sure. So, you know, like I mentioned, a staff of three, we couldn’t do what we do without help, right? That’s, that’s the most important part. So you know, relying on our board and our ambassador group to really be the extra eyes and ears out in the community to really help us with what we do is imperative to how we operate. So, you know, we can utilize our ambassador group for, you know, retention for membership growth, or kind of that first year, handholding with a member of, you know, really engaging them and bringing them into the chamber. So a lot of different ways there to try to do that. But you hit the nail on the head with cultivating that volunteer aspect and how we do that it’s just, it’s so important to I think, for any chamber, no matter the size, to really have a group or a core group that you can rely on.

Brandon Burton 11:37
Absolutely. That reliability is key. So volunteers, they could take the the attitude of, I’m not getting paid for this, I’m not taking this serious, right. So getting those right people and we often talk about getting the right people on the bus in the right seats. And, and it’s, it’s true with volunteers to make sure that

Nick Kieffer 12:00
the time, yeah, it takes time to to do that you really have to, you know, it’s not something where, hey, next month, I’m going to have you know, a group of 20 people that I can go out and do this, this is something where you have to constantly work on it work on the relationships, get to know people find out who’s, you know, kind of invested in what they want from the chamber, right? So it’s that give and take of what we have to offer what we can help them with? And then how, how can you use that in a volunteer capacity?

Brandon Burton 12:26
That’s right. You know, it’s often said, you get out of the chamber, what you put into it? And yeah, that there’s a level of truth to that. Especially if you get involved with the committee or volunteering or different things like that. But what are what are some ways that you guys go about in, you know, empowering your volunteers, so giving them some control? And some, some say in everything, right,

Nick Kieffer 12:54
you’re right, you’re, you’re you’re trying to lead the organization and grow it, but but at the same time, you have to be okay with the fact that there’s a group that’s doing some work that you’re not, you know, you might not be able to make it so I can’t make every committee or group meeting that we have, it’s just not possible. And so finding, like you said, again, the key point, finding those right people that you can say, hey, I need notes, you know, where the chamber stands on these things, or, you know, kind of what to expect from the chamber as far as how we operate. And so our meeting should go this way, we try to get staff or myself at different ones, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Our young professional groups, probably my best example of, I’m not there all the time. And they really have kind of taken on that leadership role, and from a volunteer side that has really helped grow our wipey group.

Brandon Burton 13:49
And that’s great. So maybe just pulling the thread a little bit on the young professional group, what is it about that with, it’s really helped drive the leadership and that that group forward, as far as the volunteer base goes,

Nick Kieffer 14:05
I think, again, it gets back to that you have to, you know, give them give them room to feel that it’s their, their meeting their, their group, their identity. So, you know, they formed their kind of executive committee for the group. And, you know, I kind of gave an overall hey, here’s what the chamber kind of wants or expects, and how do you, how do you get there and then just kind of taken a step back and let them work through the process. And I was in the room on those early meetings and, you know, chime in when I’d be like, Okay, maybe not this way, we need to kind of shift over here, but not not to be too micromanaging of what they wanted out of the group. So they really bought into the overall idea of what we were doing because they were the ones driving it and so it just kind of stemmed from They’re, you know, they nicknamed me, they call me the DC the dream Crusher. So every time they come with an idea that is out of my budget, I say no. Or, hey, let’s figure out a different way we might be able to do it. But, you know, so just allowing that process it, allowing them to really take the reins and feel like, hey, you know, Nick’s not sitting over top of us, you know, telling us what to do, it’s really our group, that’s that they kind of elevated that program and really taken it on. So they like

Brandon Burton 15:34
it when when the dream crusher is not there, right. Now, so I mean, joking aside, I see, you know, a good feeling that comes out of it, when you can see the different committees, different organizations are able to continue on, even if you are a staff member is not there to help guide or, or even micromanage the whole outcome, but being able to see that they have a good trajectory and moving in the right direction, even without that, you know, staff involvement and every step of the way.

Nick Kieffer 16:11
Yeah, again, it gets to, you know, kind of recruiting those volunteers that understand chamber, the kind of the chamber talk and what we’re here for, and how we can, you know, really make an impact or a difference in what’s going on. And so you cultivate them, and then they you put them in positions to succeed. And then it’s, it just kind of perpetuates through through a program.

Brandon Burton 16:34
So I’m always curious to hear how people go about recruiting volunteer, whether it’s a volunteer for a different organization, a different committee or board member? How do you see, you know, the process of going about recruiting volunteers? Yeah, it’s,

Nick Kieffer 16:54
it’s listening right? There, there are so many conversations we have in chamber work, where somebody will slip it in or talk about, you know, I’m looking for an opportunity, or I need a connection to or I’m looking to connect with and so when you hear those, those things, you know, somebody’s wanting to put themselves out there and really get involved. And so when you, when I hear that, right, and then it’s like, okay, then you got to gauge how much and in their, their own personal traits, right, so you kind of have to do a little, you know, reading on their, how, in how much they want to be out in front of something, or if they just want to be kind of behind the scenes. But it’s really listening to, you know, at our after hours, or at our some of our programs, as you get introduced to more of the membership and, and who they bring from their organizations to kind of see, okay, hey, we can play somebody here, or where would this interest you, we have this program, you said you wanted, you know, more information on this in the community, I have a great program over here, and then you kind of start building it from from there. So it’s just throughout the year staff, my staff and I, you know, we kind of keep a little list of, hey, you know, have you talked to Joe Smith, or to Jane or whoever it may be, and then just kind of work them in. So it’s an ongoing process for us.

Brandon Burton 18:24
Yeah. And I’ve seen, it’s often a good idea to have those people that are engaged in the community to hopefully be in stepping up as volunteers and being engaged in a different level of the chamber.

Nick Kieffer 18:36
Right. And if you’re, you know, for us, we run our own leadership academy. And so, you know, we try to cultivate leadership and employees from organizations that want to be connected to so that’s a great pipeline for us. Our ambassador group, again, is a great pipeline for us. You know, so look around your community, there’s different pockets, and there’s different nonprofits that you can be like, Oh, hey, you know, they’re super involved in this this might be a really good fit for them over here and then you kind of start connecting the dots with with volunteers.

Brandon Burton 19:06
Absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense it you know, I was joke about you don’t you want busy people? Busy people know how to get things done, right. You don’t want the person who’s sitting at home looking for something to do Oh, certainly.

Nick Kieffer 19:23
I mean, from from my my perspective, that is probably one of the most things for for volunteerism at all don’t waste their time, right? Like they, they have a lot of things to do. They’re not like they’re not my employees, right? It’s not their full time job to help the chamber out. So if, if you don’t have enough for a meeting, canceling, give them their time back because they will work harder for you knowing that, hey, they’re not going to waste our time. I mean, even even on a board level, right? If you’re if you’re, if your agenda for your board meeting isn’t jam packed or you don’t have a whole lot of things If you can afford to say, hey, you know what, this month we’re okay. And your exec team is okay with it, man, give those volunteers that time back. And it just, it makes a difference as you you’re building your relationship with your volunteers. Right.

Brandon Burton 20:12
And, and I think there’s ways of communicating that to where it is still keeps the weight of the importance of it. Without, you know, taking off that pressure of No, we’re not doing this. Like, it’s not important. Like, it’s still as important, but we also value your time. So we’re trying to prioritize things. And then given the circumstances right now that take Enjoy your evening,

Nick Kieffer 20:37
you know, I just had that situation where, you know, I took a took a vacation was gone, right. And I was gone during a week where you have your typical committee monthly meetings, and I told, you know, the three of them the bigger meetings and like, Look, I’m not going to be here, you know, it’s okay, we can move it back, or we can, you know, pick it up next month. And every one of them said, No, we got it, we got, you know, just give us a couple things that that we need, we’ll we’ll have the meeting, I’ll get your notes. And so that’s when you sit back and you’re like, Ah, I got a good group, right. This is your, you know, good group of volunteers that really see the long term, you know, mission to the chamber and really help out in that way. Right.

Brandon Burton 21:15
That’s one of the best feelings is to know that the organization doesn’t sink without you there,

Nick Kieffer 21:20
right? Like, from an ego thing, like, you know, that’s not true. But that’s, it’s just to be like, Okay, I don’t have to be there as an executive, you can kind of take that breath of like, it’s still gonna go on,

Brandon Burton 21:30
right? Yeah, I think sometimes we, we make ourselves feel more important than we already. Know, that’s good. So I’d like to try to get maybe, you know, for those who are listening, any kind of tip or action item as they are looking to take their chambers up to the next level? What would you suggest for them may have to do with volunteers, maybe something totally different. But what what comes to mind for you?

Nick Kieffer 22:00
I, I can’t. Huh, listening, I think I mentioned that a couple times, but just listen to your membership, they will tell you, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything in between, in a lot of different ways. But if you’re in your staff are listening to what’s going on, it’ll help cultivate your membership, it’ll help cultivate your volunteers, and it’ll strengthen your chamber. You know, it’s been, it’s been a roller coaster, last couple of years of volunteerism coming back out of it is kind of up and down, where things out, but it’s just, if you understand the needs of of your members and those that are looking to be involved, it’s easy to make decisions to help them and that’s, that’s our ultimate goal, I think as a chamber is to be a resource for the business community. And so anyway, you can do that that’s a you know, to me, that’s that else that’ll strengthen your chamber in the future. You know, as far as you know, growing yourself or, or getting more information. I’m a huge proponent of the IOM program and be involved in ACC. I think those are two phenomenal organizations that chambers, and chamber execs can pull a lot of information out, you know, whether it’s going through IOM or attending ACC, those are great. Listen to your podcast more, I think, you know, the more you talk with people, like we’ve all been through it, no matter the size of the chamber, you’re running, we’ve all been through it. And so there’s, there’s things you can learn from from anybody and, and, you know, just, I was just at a function where, who was the chamber directors third day on the job? Oh, you know, right. So just all excited about it. And she was telling me a couple of things. And I was like, Man, I didn’t think about it like that, like just three days on the job. But it was a nugget that I could take back and bring back to my chamber. So always be open to listen and to learn from from everybody. I love

Brandon Burton 23:56
that perspective that people bring from different experience, whether it’s, you know, three days on the job, so they’ve got a very green, you know, perspective

Nick Kieffer 24:05
to the 17 years where you’re, you know, you’ve kind of been through a lot of different different scenarios.

Brandon Burton 24:11
17 years or even prior prior employment before Yeah, whatever your career path was before the chamber brings a perspective to so absolutely being able to learn from others and just listening and in, like I said, at the beginning of Episode scaling, so you can’t necessarily do everything the same as other chambers and you shouldn’t content, yes, get the concepts, listen to the needs of your community, and then scale it to the size that makes the most sense. But Nick, 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?

Nick Kieffer 24:55
I’m my kind of mantra here is a resource center is That means you adapt and change. You know, technology’s going to throw wrinkles into our business world and business community and, and so being that constant resource that people can rely on and businesses can rely on for solid good information, I think is so important for chambers to to be at the forefront moving forward.

Brandon Burton 25:24
Absolutely. As you say that I’m thinking, we are recording this in March of 2023. And right now, all of the buzz is Chat GPT and artificial intelligence and all these different ways that it’s going to change workforce and change content and change our workforce and chamber work absolutely, exactly. So as a Chamber of Commerce to be able to be on the forefront of that, learning about the technology, helping to distill this down to the members that say, here’s what it means for you. Here’s how you can apply some of these technologies to better your business. And here are some pitfalls to look out for and to be aware of. And again,

Nick Kieffer 26:05
when you when you look back over the many years of what chambers have done that’s that’s the root of it. That’s the it’s the always saying okay, hey businesses, here’s what’s next here’s the next thing and so being at the the forefront of that and you know, kind of helping businesses navigate through it is is where I think we we need to focus on absolutely,

Brandon Burton 26:27
I couldn’t agree more. I appreciate that.Nick, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you learn more about how you go about approaching volunteer working with volunteers in your chamber, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Nick Kieffer 26:46
Yeah, goshen.org would have my contact information, email address, and keefer@goshen.org is my email. But I’m more than happy to help. Like I said, I’ve been in chamber work almost 17 years now. And it’s it’s fun. It’s fun work, but it’s more rewarding when when we’re sharing with each other. And I’m learning from from you and and hopefully I have a nugget or two that you find valuable as well.

Brandon Burton 27:14
Absolutely. And we’ll, we’ll get your contact info and that should be in the show notes for this episode so people can find you there. But I appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast and sharing your experience and insights is working with volunteers and really creating a culture that that helps them want to work towards the success of your chamber.

Nick Kieffer 27:39
Brandon, thank you again for all you do and having me on your show.

Brandon Burton 27:43
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Barren Inc.-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Maureen Carpenter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guests for this episode is Maureen Carpenter. Maureen was born and raised in upstate New York. Before moving to Bowling Green in 2011. Maureen was president and CEO of Commerce Chenango responsible for chamber Economic Development and Tourism. She came to Bowling Green, Kentucky in spring of 2011 and started work at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce where she held held four different positions from economic development coordinator to vice president. She later was promoted to vice president partnership services to bring the economic development perspective to chamber partnership. And January is January 1 2020. Maureen began her position as President and CEO with the Barron County Economic authority. In the last three years, her primary focus has been on property and infrastructure development workforce and facilitating the process of consolidating economic development and the Chamber of Commerce. Maureen officially became the president and CEO of both in January 2022.

And Maureen I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. First of all, congratulations to Barren Inc has been selected as a 2023. Chamber, the year finalist. But I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Maureen Carpenter 3:42
Good morning, I’m so happy to be here. We’re very excited to get this far in this process. And to be a finalist. It’s been a lot of work, but we’re excited about it. So I appreciate you bringing me on here to talk a little bit about what we’re doing here in Barron County. Something interesting about myself, I don’t remember if he said this in the bio, but I am the youngest of nine children. So a lot of people when they find out about me say that explains a lot. You know, that’s just par for the course. But yeah, I mean, that’s probably the most interesting thing other than that, you know, work family. Yeah, try to have some fun every once in a while.

Brandon Burton 4:22
I purposely left that out of your bio, because I thought that might be something you might want to share. So well tell us a little bit more about Baron Inc. I know that your bio kind of tells a little bit of the history there but just tell us what the organization is about size staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing. Just so we know what type of chamber you are as we get into our conversation.

Maureen Carpenter 4:46
Yeah, so we are definitely a growing chamber. We are just under 500 Members we’re hoping to be to 500 within the next month or two. We have five full time staff and we have the From great privilege of having an intern with us each year from one of the high schools, so total of six, if you count our intern, our budget is just just over about a half a million dollars a year for just then that’s the chamber side. We, we are an economic development and chamber combined organization. So we oversee both the Small Business membership side of things as well as our industrial development. We also have a chamber foundation where we do our workforce and talent initiatives, including our leadership programs. Though, Barren County, we’re a rural community in South Central Kentucky, we are centrally located between Louisville and Nashville. And we have about 45,000 people that currently call Barren County home.

Brandon Burton 5:50
Right. So that does help paint the picture very well, as far as you know, the size of the community and of your chamber and the you guys are busy there, you know, the chamber and economic economic development and ran the foundation as well. So I hope we’ll hear a little bit more about the foundation, possibly as we get into our discussion today. And hopefully, that’s picking the ears of chambers that are listening to see how they can best utilize or maybe better utilize the foundation at their organization as well. But typically, the way that I like to go about these chamber, the year finalist interviews is really focused on the two programs of work that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application. And I’d like to just have you at a maybe a high level, just tell us what the the two programs are about. And then we can get into a little more detail on those.

Maureen Carpenter 6:45
Yeah, so our first synopsis was about about the housing analysis that we have completed last year, and then the impact that that has had in both our ability to enact some changes that needed to happen to incentivize growth in housing, and then also how that has resulted in multiple different types of housing being developed in the community. And then our second is our action for leadership program. It’s the A Pharrell through the Center for the Kentucky Center for Leadership, and really how that focuses on everybody can lead and pulling community leaders, business leaders together to really look at a challenge, put together a solution and then actually implement those solutions in the community.

Brandon Burton 7:32
Very good. They both sound like great programs, and I’m excited to learn more and dive deeper into those. And we’ll do that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:31
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Brandon Burton 10:19
All right, Maureen, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned, what the two programs are kind of the the areas of focus one being on housing and, and the analysis of the needs of housing in your community, and the other on the action for leadership program. So let’s dive in a little deeper on the housing initiative. And what brought that to the forefront kind of the background of that and how you guys have approached that issue?

Maureen Carpenter 10:49
Well, honestly, first, it came with own pert my own personal experience, trying to always helps unity, finding housing for myself and my husband. But then we also brought a lot of people with us. So my in laws, were looking for a house, you know, retired couple looking for a smaller home. And then my youngest son decided to leave the nest, and he was looking for a place to live. And then my oldest son, we brought him back from New York. And, you know, we were looking for an apartment, and I’m like, you know, I kept telling people, you know, we need more housing, we need to understand this. And so I’m like, you know, we really need that data, we need that information that we can take to developers that we can take to our elected officials to make some things happen. Yeah, sometimes you think there’s a problem. But if you don’t necessarily understand the depth of it, nothing is going to happen. So we we put out a bid, we worked with Boeing International, to put together the study for us. And they came in it took about six months to do the analysis and give us the results of that.

Brandon Burton 12:01
So from the analysis, what what sort of things did you learn? What direction does that kind of point you guys as a community, and maybe some action items for you to take from that, that those results?

Maureen Carpenter 12:14
Well, what we learned was we really needed housing, in every aspect, everything from low income housing, affordable housing, you know, the upper end housing, you know, 350,000 $500,000 house, but also senior living capacity and nursing homes. So it really, you know, ours was really just kind of looking at that workforce housing. But then we found that there was really a gap and everything. And it really showed us that we needed over 3000 units just to meet our market demand. That is powerful information. When you go and say, Hey, developers, here’s an opportunity, you have this land, why are you not building and so being able to show them that show them the the numbers of if you build it in this category, they will come being able to take that to the banks to finance their projects, and then being able to take that to our planning and zoning and say maybe we need to look at some of these regulations, maybe there’s something that on the front end of the development costs that we can still require, but maybe it’s a little bit farther down the road. So making those changes, having that information has really resulted in a boom in housing. Very good.

Brandon Burton 13:36
So with that analysis, does that kind of point you in a way? Because he said, There’s housing of all different needs, from low income to nursing homes and everything in between? Did it help give you a direction of kind of where to put your focus first? Or is it more of a shotgun of let’s just try to get it all at one time?

Maureen Carpenter 13:57
You know, we from from my perspective, it was really working with us developers on the workforce housing, to get some new developments. So we have a new housing development that’s going up, that’s going to have the nice one, two bedroom apartments, but then behind that, it’s going to have some nice workforce, affordable housing. And then we also worked with our housing authority, you know, people were able to use this information to to get grants. So we have some new housing authorities section eight housing that’s going up. And it’s beautiful. I mean, we have an amazing Housing Authority, and they maintain their properties extremely well. And then we also, you know, this encouraged some others to do some more rental properties, the nice, you know, workforce, young professional housing for them, as well. So and then it also helped with connectivity within the community. So our parks and rec department, were able to take this information, look at where those housing needs were and then we now have connectivity between two school districts, three different residential developments and multiple parks. And so it really helped to bring their application together and talk about the different areas

Brandon Burton 15:12
that needed improvement. Yeah. So I think from an economic development standpoint, it’s a no brainer, you know, to to make the his directional changes in housing and focusing on Workforce Housing First, of course. If because you guys are chamber and economic development, how did the chamber side play into that, as far as interacting with the community and either support or pushback on different housing, we know how much people love change. So how did you guys navigate through that?

Maureen Carpenter 15:43
Well, really on the chambers that it was advocating, to those elected bodies, that they they needed to make some changes that we still could have the regulations that we wanted to protect the homebuyers eventually, but also help the developers to be able to invest those funds. The chamber also it was getting it out there and promoting it, going to the realtor association meetings going to rotary, you know, just how we hosted multiple meetings with our stakeholders, because people know people and the network. And it’s not just developers that are in our community, but it was reaching out, saying, here’s an opportunity in our community as well. So really, the Chamber side was a lot of the communication strategy to get out there, and make sure people do. And again, I think the most important thing with this is a lot of communities know that they have a housing issue, but they don’t have the data that they can then use to really identify it. So you know, it’s a costly endeavor, you know, it’s not cheap to get these done. But, you know, just the tax revenue that will be generated from the new housing, more than make up for that return on investment.

Brandon Burton 16:58
Yeah. So just out of curiosity of myself. So as you brought in this se consultant to gather this data and do the the analysis, what sort of things are they looking at to collect the data as far as data points go? And what’s the involvement from the chamber in that process?

Maureen Carpenter 17:18
So they look at all the different data points, they obviously they look at our housing database, how many houses are on the market, what type of housing how many days are they been on the market, the pricing, phone calls with the apartment complex managers to talk about their vacancy rates, talks about their rental rates, talking with the assisted living in the nursing home. So they did a lot of outreach and surveys, we also gave, so from our perspective, it was really getting them the right contacts, the right people to talk to making sure that they talked with our Planning and Zoning Commission, and understood what they’re doing, understanding the comprehensive plan of where is residential housing planned for, so they could kind of say, just here’s some recommendations at the end. Also, you know, making sure that they provide us with some examples, what are some places that have done this well, and come up with solutions to these things, so we’re not recreating the wheel. So being able to go and see what other communities are doing, and bringing that back to our leadership? So really, I mean, they did a lot of the work for us, it was creating the bid packet, reviewing the bid, and then providing them with the information of here are the people that you need to talk to here, the survey, the people, I would survey if I were doing that,

Brandon Burton 18:45
yeah. Now that that’s helpful for anybody who may be considering taking on this kind of endeavor. So let’s maybe shift gears a little bit to the the second program or the other program, not that they’re in order around your action for leadership program. Tell us what that’s about how is it different from other Chamber Leadership Programs and just kind of walk us through the development of that?

Maureen Carpenter 19:11
Yeah, so the action for Leadership Program is a two day very interactive. Workshop. So you come in in the morning, you’re immediately doing scenarios and working with other people in the room in the community. To identify what are some issues and it really takes you through the process of identifying what is something that is important to you, that you feel is a challenge in the community? What are the different ways you can work with people? How do you see those different perspectives? And then really put together a plan of how you’re going to address the issue. What are the steps that you can take? Who are the people that you need? to bring in to help with a project, and really have that catalytic leadership of anybody can leave, you know, if it’s just simply, we want a different selection of books at the library. Okay, well, how are you going to do that? Who do you need to do that with? And how are you going to get it done? So it really just takes you through that process. I think one of the biggest things that people struggle with is they come up with all these fantastic plans, and they come up with all these ideas. But then how do you implement and this program really teaches people how to implement the plan and come up with I’ve been we used it, we developed a strategic plan last year. And we use this process to come up with our strategic plan, and identify those issues and how we would address them and how we would implement the programs and the changes to be able to do that.

Brandon Burton 20:53
So how does that look, I as you’re explaining this, to me, I’m thinking, I’m thinking of like in Boy Scouts, right? You have those who are candidates for Eagle Scout, and they go through the whole, you know, Eagle project, they identify a need and challenges the community. And they attack it, they gather support, create a team, they go after this, this initiative that they’re trying to help solve. So as your participants, as they are in leadership class, I don’t know how you necessarily turn them. But as they find that thing that’s important to them that challenge in the community, how do you help guide them and and lead them to become leaders in implementing this, because that’s what stood out to me is how you teach them how to implement the plan or lead them on implementing Yeah, it’s,

Maureen Carpenter 21:44
it’s really taking those steps of the process. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a workbook, there’s a book that you’re supposed to read before you get there. But then they help you facilitate, and you actually go through the process of identifying it, writing it down, getting it on that paper, and then doing checkpoints. So you know, we obviously anybody. First of all, we did this, we identified people, we wanted to go through this program, we said there, there are some things in our community, we need these people on the same page, we need them to understand this process so that we can work together, you know, so we made sure our judge executive went through it, our mayor, our city council members, some of our fiscal court members, and then our board members, this school system, if you if our application comes out, I mean, there’s a video from the school system of how they had a few people in this class. But that led to, you know, over 1000 people being able to use this process together within the school system. So it’s really teaching them the steps that they have to take and giving them the tool that when they’re sitting there, they can go back to you and use that to move forward.

Brandon Burton 22:58
Okay. So are there maybe a couple examples of some of the outcomes of this program that you’d be able to share with us just to see kind of the impact being made in the community?

Maureen Carpenter 23:09
Well, I think the school system, again, is a great example of that, you know, they’ve taken this, and they’ve gone through several different process changes with their Board of Education building, and how they use it. We have a, it’s called Beyond the bell. It’s a daycare program. And so they’ve used that and now they’re coming up with a solution to expand daycare to add not only spots during the day, but to add a second, second shift daycare. How are we going to do this, we need second shift daycare, we need more daycare, in our community. And through this process. We’re now in the in the in the stages of they’re getting into location. They’re working with the the school system, the city, the county for the funding to be able to open additional daycare. Okay, so that’s kind of one example. Another is just our community leadership. We went to Frankfort, which hasn’t happened in probably 10 years to gather. As a team, we were able to sit down and use this process and identify what are the key thing that we need to go out there and say, This is what Barron County needs to be successful, not going out there and all being on a different page. But really going out there and saying, Here are challenges. Here’s what we need to do to improve these challenges. And here’s specifically as a team, what we’re asking you for. So those are just a couple of examples of how how we’ve used it again, we use this process in our strategic plan. And now we’re implementing multiple things out of that plan.

Brandon Burton 24:53
I love it. Yeah, no good good examples and definitely making an impact in the community and and I love the Do you have been able to have that unified effort to as you go to address issues together? As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask if for anybody listening, who’s looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item? Might you share with them? As maybe based on your experience, maybe based on some of the things that we talked about today? But what would you suggest for them to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Maureen Carpenter 25:28
I think, you know, coming in, like I said, we took over in January of 2022. And our chamber has done a 180, we’ve added 167 members, since that day, since January 1 2022. We’ve re evaluated every single thing that we offer to make sure that we’re not just relevant, that were essential. So really focusing on what are those things that our membership needs, versus focusing on the things that we’ve always done? You know, we can still do those things. We still do a Christmas parade, we still do our business expo. But modifying those things to meet the members needs. And again, making ourselves dissent show that if something were to happen to the chamber tomorrow, it would be felt throughout the entire community. And so listening to your members, and really, then evaluating what you’re doing, I think is the king.

Brandon Burton 26:28
Yeah. And my ears perked up. And he said, relevant to essential for anybody who hasn’t read and Casey Steinbacher is it gets an ebook, but at that same title from relevant to essential, it’s an a plus for me. So get a good good review there. Check it out. Marine, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Maureen Carpenter 26:55
You know, we live in a very strange time, there’s a lot of things that go on that are out of our control. When you look at legislative when you look at what’s going on with the different countries, and I think the big thing for chambers is going to be making sure that their membership is informed, you know, how, how did they and keeping up with trends? You know, who would know who would have thought that? You know, we’d all be doing meetings over a computer instead of face to face. So I think, again, chambers of the future really have to grow, they have to think outside the box of what do our chambers need? Or what our members need? And how do we deliver that that may be? Again, not the way that it’s always been done, you know, chambers need to evolve, it’s no longer. It’s no longer just about networking events, and it’s helping to grow their network, it’s helping to bring them the resources they need, in this ever changing market.

Brandon Burton 27:58
So yeah. Now I’d like that helping keep your members informed and keep the trends in the forefront of mind as well to help your business community stay on top of those things. Marina, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who have really noticed that you guys have really turned things around in the last year, you know, catch the vision of what you guys are doing there, I want to reach out and connect with you about the the awesome things you guys are doing there, Bernie, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect. That’s why

Maureen Carpenter 28:33
it’s through email. It’s just maureen@barreninc.com. You can also visit our website. I encourage everybody to do that and check out our video. If you want to see more about Barron County, we’ve got a great video on there. But go to BarrenInc.com. Or you can email me at maureen@barreninc.com.

Brandon Burton 28:51
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode. So people can go there and check out the video and website and shoot you an email as well. So Maureen, this has been great having you on the podcast, you guys are definitely making an impact in your community and, and really it blows my mind in the last year to be able to already rise to the top to be considered as a finalist is chamber the year. And I wish you guys the very best of luck as as chamber of the year.

Maureen Carpenter 29:21
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. We’re just excited to put Barron County on the map and let people know that we’ve had a lot of amazing things going on here we’ve got tremendously viewership in our community.

Brandon Burton 29:33
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Leadership Programs with Debra Orner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Debra Orner. Debra is the Vice President the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce in Pennsylvania. She began her career with the Cambria Regional Chamber in 1998. She’s responsible for the Chamber’s external operations including events and programs. And among these is her professional pride and joy the John V Gunter Community Leadership Initiative. Prior to coming to the chamber, Deborah worked in public relations at St. Francis University and on the staff of the late Congressman John P. Murtha. Debra is past chair of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce professionals, and has served on his board of directors since 2012. She was the first non CEO to be elected to this position. She has served as chair at the PACP professionals and leadership conference since 2013, and is also a member of the communications committee. Debra is also an IOM graduate. Locally, Debra is at the vice president of the Johnstown United neighbourhoods, which began as a community project of the leadership program. She also serves on the board of directors of several other local organizations. Debra, we’re excited to have you with us today here in timber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Debra Orner 3:25
Thank you, Brandon. As mentioned in my bio, this is my 25th year in chamber work. Never thought I’d have a job that long. But once I started, it was just it was just Kismet. And I love doing it. I can’t imagine doing anything else. And my chamber friends actually like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight years old because that in the summer of 1977, our city suffered the third devastating flood in our history. And one of the things that came out of that was an advertising campaign that was put together by some local businessman. And some of it was funny like they were they will put up billboards that say were wet but not washed out. But the one that stuck with me was one that says we will rebuild together. And I’m not saying that I knew that Chamber of Commerce was a job you could have when I was eight years old, but I knew I was I wanted to do what those men did. So it just made a huge impression on me. And the other thing that came out of that was our congressman at the time had only been in office probably about two or three years. And where I lived during the flood was across the street from an elementary school that had a very large playground. And that’s where National Guard helicopters would land and that sort of thing. And I was able to witness our congressman landing at our at that playground and getting out and kind of directing things and starting the process and helping to shovel mud and that sort of thing. And that was Congressman John Murtha. So at eight years old, I was looking at this man like he was some sort of John Wayne and he was just one of my first heroes and then I ended up working for him. So it was kind of that was a pivotal event in my I live to kind of had an effect on my later years that I never could have predicted at the time. But so that’s why they like to joke that I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Wow. So I hear a lot of stories about how people get into chamber work. But that is a unique one. So I appreciate you sharing that. And not everybody has that kind of experience when they’re a young child and being able to have those impressions stick with them into adulthood. So thank you for sharing that. Well, tell us a little bit about the Cambria Regional Chamber just to kind of set the table for our discussion give us an idea of the size of chamber scope of work staff budget, that sort of thing, just to prepare us for our conversation.

Debra Orner 5:44
We’re located in Johnstown, which is in Cambria County in Pennsylvania. And that’s about as the crow flies 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. We have about 650 members at the moment and our budgets around $650,000. And we have four full time staff people. And we do a lot with those four people, we have probably 10 major events per year. And a lot of programs in between, like most chambers, we have a governmental action program, we have a women’s issues program. And of course, the thing that’s my favorite is our leadership program. But we also have branched out into kind of becoming a digital media company, we have a pretty strong social media program. We are we do a lot with promoting our members via social media. We do a lot with video. So that’s something that we’ve been getting into the last four years when our new president Amy Bradley came on with her background in news broadcasting. So that’s something that’s been kind of new for us. But we’ve been we’ve been doing pretty well with that, in addition to the other traditional things that the Chamber of Commerce does.

Brandon Burton 6:52
Yeah, that could be a whole conversation within itself right there under the digital media. And

Debra Orner 6:57
absolutely,

Brandon Burton 6:58
you guys are taking there. As we in thank you for sharing the background there on the chamber and what you guys are involved with in the staff. And as we move forward with our discussion today, we’ll be focusing on with what we’ve alluded to a couple of times already through your bio and what you shared with your pride and joy of being in the leadership program. You guys have there at the Canberra Regional Chamber. But we will dive deeper into discussion about that and how you guys approach your leadership program that says to get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:16
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Siobhan Kenney 9:32
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Donna Novitsky 10:03
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Brandon Burton 10:16
All right, Deborah, we’re back. So I’m curious to learn about the leadership program, it’s not often that you hear chamber professionals say that leadership programs are pride and joy. So I can tell this means a lot to you, it’s close to your heart. And I’m sure it’s because there’s been some big impact that’s come out of it. So share with us the approach you guys take and why it means so much to you.

Debra Orner 10:41
Well, I always joke with with my boss and my board of directors that I do leadership for free, and they have to, it’s everything else they have to pay me for, because I love the program that much. I actually took the program over, within two weeks of starting my job back in 1998. And back then, the program was only in its current format, about four years old. They had done a program in the early 80s. Back when corporate dollars for training were more easily had, they would bring in people like Lee Iacocca and Steven Covey, and it was more of an of a really higher level executive training. And it wasn’t a cohort group. The way it is now, back in about 1994 is when it when they started to form it into a cohort group where a group of about 18 to 24, people would go through a series of lectures throughout a nine month period. So then, when I took over in 1998, they also said, Well, a good way for you to learn how to run this program would be to go through it yourself. So my first year with the program, I was actually participating in the program, plus I was learning how to run it. And that was really unique. And I don’t recommend it to anybody because it was it was very confusing for everyone. For my classmates who didn’t understand that I was part of the class plus I was I was running the program and for me trying to be part of the class yet organizing everything. So that wasn’t probably the best way to go about it. But the following year, we instituted an overnight team bonding session. And that’s really where things took off. Because that really cemented the bonds the class would have with each other. And we had two amazing facilitators that I was lucky to have for almost my entire career here that really took the program to another level. And our program is a little different from other programs in that we meet twice a month. And we are skills based rather than the programs that typically have like a healthcare day or a Law Day where they go on basically like field trips to hospitals, and in court systems and that sort of thing. So our program is based around skills like project management, and we’ll do a session on soft skills, and we do emotional intelligence. And we do disk training, which a lot of other programs do as well, but we pair it with other sessions that basically benefit the person through professional development. So we’ll do honorable leadership and, and things like that. So we’re a little bit different from other programs. And we also do, the people that are in the program are required to work on a community project while they’re in the program. So we’ll we divide them up into groups of four, six people, they can choose to work on whatever they want to work on, we use a multi voting process for them to figure out what they want to work on. We give them some project management training at the end of the year. And from there, they run with it. And we’ve had some amazing projects over the years that have just touched 10s of 1000s of lives with the impact that they’ve had. And the the people that are in the program, sometimes the project means so much to them, we do a session at the end of the year where they have to do, they have to present their project to our board of directors. And they’ll do a session where they present to their classmates and their sponsors. And we’ve had grown men in the in the front of the class crying because the project meant so much to them. So it’s not just something we do to keep them busy. It’s something that really means a lot to them, and it ends up being something very meaningful to the community. This year, for instance, we have one group that’s working on building a pavilion at one of the trailheads here in town for one of our one of our hiking and biking trails. And we have another project that’s raising money for a project called the needy children’s shopping tour, which takes disadvantaged children and take they get to go shopping at Christmas time and they get to buy new things and it’s just it’s a really cool experience for everybody involved. And then we have another group that is raising money for an organization called wings for Warriors which is an organization that serves disabled veterans With all terrain wheelchair so they can still get out into the woods and do the activities that they enjoy before they were injured. And so that’s another project that’s that’s happening this year. And then we have a final project that is going to bring together some resources for first responders who we kind of tend to forget about them a little bit that they need some help, too, sometimes. So those are the just 404 examples of projects that our program does. And they will work on those throughout the nine months. And they don’t have to be finished with those by the end of the program. Usually they are. And sometimes the products are one and done. And sometimes the people continue to work on them past when they graduate from the program, which I think really says a lot for how much the project that they choose means to them. So that’s what I kind of think sets our program apart a little bit with some of the things that we do,

Brandon Burton 15:51
ya know, you you’ve covered a lot of things there is, as you talked about how the program’s laid out, but so if I understand, right, it’s a nine month program, you meet twice a month, so 18 times total throughout that that period.

Debra Orner 16:06
Yes, we meet we meet twice a month for half a day.

Brandon Burton 16:09
Okay. And tell us a little bit more about this overnight team building opportunity is that you guys set go somewhere off site, is it somewhere? Just how do you how do you come about that

Debra Orner 16:22
we did and actually the pandemic turned it from an overnight into just a two day session. But it’s still it’s still the same basic setup, it’s just, we don’t stay overnight anymore after after the pandemic happen. But we spend the first day basically with just team building activities and with them getting to know each other and kind of breaking down barriers, and really getting to know each other a lot more and what they what they have in common what they might want to work on for the next nine months. So it helps them to form their project teams. And then the second day is really when we spend putting the project teams together. So they’ll spend like the entire second day just discussing things like what does our area not have that if it did would make it a better place to live? Or, you know, what would you work on, if you knew you couldn’t fail those sorts of things. So we, we lead them through discussion like that, and then they they break down into areas of interest. And then from there, it’s all up to them, like what project they pick. So they might know that when they walk out on the second day, they might know for sure what they want to do. Some people come to the program with an idea that they want to do, and they just recruit people to help them. So and some people show up, and they have absolutely no idea what they want to do. And they’re they’re looking to be sold on something. So we have kind of all different methods happening there. But those two days are just so important because it really helps them bonded as a group. And a lot of times even sometimes we’ll have people from the same company that participate in the program in the same year. And people from the same company won’t know each other before they get to our program. So really, for the most part, these are 20 strangers who don’t know anything about each other. So we really take the time on those two days to help them get to know each other. And really, they walk out of those two days and their friends.

Brandon Burton 18:09
Very good. So that was my next question. So this is happening at the beginning of the leadership program to build those bonds, kind of build your teams select your products at a tone for the whole nine months.

Debra Orner 18:22
Yeah, we do that at the beginning. And then at the end of the year, we go back to the same site. And we do what we call a year on reflection. And that’s really their opportunity to kind of get their emotions out about what they’ve been through that year. And like the things that made an impact on them and just kind of talk it out and just really have a have a nice day, like a little Capstone session with with their classmates that they become so close to throughout the course of the program.

Brandon Burton 18:49
Nice. So you had mentioned that you’ve been blessed with a great facilitator, as you go about trying to figure out who facilitates a leadership program like this? What sort of traits are you looking for what what would make for a good facilitator for other chambers that are listening and considering building a similar program?

Debra Orner 19:10
Really, they just think it helps tremendously if they have a passion for the area, because that’s really what most leadership programs are trying to do is create something good for their community. And it also helps if if they like helping people develop, because that’s a huge part of what we do. So you really just have to have a passion for developing people and you have to really care about the community and the area and you have to want to see it get better. And we as Chambers of Commerce don’t often have large budgets and sometimes our facil facilitators most of our facilitators actually are volunteers with the exception of one person, everybody in my program is a volunteer. So we really have to be Find people and cultivate relationships with people who just genuinely just care. And that’s really, that’s really as simple as it is. Obviously, they need to have some proficiency in the thing you’re asking them to present on. But really, they just have to care. And they have to want to do it. And they have to have that volunteer capacity capacity themselves.

Brandon Burton 20:20
So I think that’s those are great things to consider. And like the passion for the community. And it made me wonder through this leadership program, it sounds like a lot of the skills like the skills based training, those sort of things that you’re going through, are I guess you can you can take it from one position to another, from one community to another, you’re developing leadership skills that are transferable. Are there other aspects, besides the project may be that are community based that are unique to your community? And maybe not, but I’m just I’m curious.

Debra Orner 21:02
Well, one thing that that I’m pretty proud of that we do with our program is we give them the opportunity to meet a lot of community leaders, because that’s who most of my facilitators are. They’re people who are business owners or leaders in some other way. And we also do a session on local government where they get to meet all of our county commissioners, and our city manager and our the community community and economic development director for the city will have the Director of Emergency Services for the county comm. So they get to meet people like that. And these are, again, community leaders who are giving back through this program by it. And that’s one of the sessions where I kind of call it the, it’s your opportunity to ask the why doesn’t someone or why don’t they questions, because a lot of times people just don’t understand why things are the way they are. And this is really just an opportunity for them to sit down and meet with oftentimes people who are elected leaders, and it just gives them a chance to form a relationship, and just to meet them and to see what their role can be in moving our region forward.

Brandon Burton 22:07
Yeah, I love that, like building those strong community ties. So the the year end reflection, that I can imagine that being kind of a high point, really to this whole program to be able to see the development to be able to look back at, especially going back to the same location that it all started right, then able to reflect back on that those beginnings, the relationships built the impact of their projects. You had mentioned grown men crying at the end, because they’re their program, what are some of those more impactful reflections that have kind of hit you over the years, as you’ve seen these people reflect on their their time in the program?

Debra Orner 22:53
Well, I always say that the people in the program, we’re going to learn more from each other than they will from almost any, any of us or any of the facilitators, because you get to meet the people who are doing the work in the community. And there’s just a lot of eye opening moments that you wouldn’t know about if you didn’t get to meet these people. And for me, just seeing the relationships that formed from people who didn’t, who wouldn’t know each other, except for this program, and who accomplish amazing things because they have met in this program. To me, that is just the most gratifying thing. And I think that’s what they get out of it as well is that people that they didn’t know, prior to be in the program, and they’ve accomplished these great things with. And a lot of times with the, with the, with the educational part, sometimes people will even tell me that it doesn’t apply to them right now. But years later, they went back to that training, and they used it. So it is something that stays with you forever. And that’s really why ours is more of a professional development kind of program. Because no matter who you work for, or where you go in your life, whatever community you’re a part of, this is yours forever. So it’s not just that it’s specific to our city or our county. We believe that you improve region by developing its people and by developing its leaders. And so that’s what we really try to do every single year in our program. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:21
I love that. So the question came to my mind is this is kind of your your baby your kind of pet project, right? There’s the leadership program. How do you I guess put the dividing line between what you do as an organizer and, and putting together this program versus the facilitator and their responsibilities and to where you’re not stepping on each other’s toes and identifying what your your respective roles are. How does that structure look with your organization?

Debra Orner 24:56
Really, I am just so fortunate with the people Will that are part of my program, honestly, we all just work so well together. And they know that I would do it for free. So that that helps to that they know what how much I love it, and how much how much of myself I put into it. But I basically recruit all of our all of our facilitators, which can be 18 per year, depending on on how many sessions we do. And, honestly, I just let them run with it, because they’re the experts in their field. So during the session, I don’t interfere with that, that’s up to them what they want to put it in their curriculum. Sometimes I helped facilitate that session in class, depending on on where the conversations going on try to help lead the conversation a little bit. But for the most part, our facilitators are just such professionals and they just care so much, there’s really no need for me to, to get involved in that part of it. And they let me handle all of the admin and that sort of thing and all of the communication and it just, it works really well together. And it’s just it’s it’s nothing but 25 years of cultivated relationships, that people know what we’re trying to do with this program, and they have just gone all in on it. And, you know, they have other things to do, they have other things they could be doing other than spending half a day with me. But they just, that’s just what great people they are. And so they take time away from their own businesses and at their own expense to come and share their expertise with our class every year. And I have facilitators that have been with me for really the entire 25 years. And I just think that’s a remarkable thing.

Brandon Burton 26:34
That’s fantastic. So as you go about recruiting facilitators, and I’m asking this for somebody who’s looking to build a leadership program at their organization, where are you looking in the community to everywhere from

Debra Orner 26:49
everywhere, and one of my favorite things to do is if there’s a graduate of the program that can teach something, I love to bring them back. And sometimes I have a list of people that I want to bring into the program, because I respect them as a person, and I want people to meet them and to learn from them. And sometimes I have a topic that I just really want somebody to teach, but I haven’t met that person yet. And really one of my favorite stories, I have one of money, one of my first friends that I ever made when I worked at the Chamber, he’s just a really good presenter. And you know, I’ve called on him in the past to present things. And the one year, I just had a really, things don’t always go smoothly. And I lost like three facilitators for you know, due to various reasons health and that sort of thing. And so I needed him to present a topic on or to present a session on public speaking for me, which was okay, and public speaking is kind of, that’s not really something that’s that unique, and you can get a lot of people, different people to do that. But the following year was the only the second year that we were going to present emotional intelligence. And back then that wasn’t something that was very common. And it wasn’t something that a lot of people, you know, were doing at the time. So I lost my facilitator for that session, probably 10 days before the session, and I just sat there, and I think I’m gonna have to cancel the session, because who am I going to get to present emotional intelligence is like, there’s like two people in the world that even know what it is, at this point.

Brandon Burton 28:18
tested your own emotional intelligence. Right?

Unknown Speaker 28:21
Exactly.

Debra Orner 28:22
So so this friend called me almost like 10 minutes later, and he said, Deborah was looking online at your at your syllabus for your leadership program. And I saw that you have emotional intelligence, and who teaches that for you? And I said, Oh, my God, why are you asking? He had just gotten certified in that like, I think two weeks prior. And I said, Oh, do I have an opportunity for you. So that was just somebody that I knew that it was just an existing relationship that I had that that I could peg into that slot. And another time I had, I had really wanted to include servant leadership in the program for some time, but just had not met somebody who could teach it. And so as you mentioned, I worked at St. Francis University, prior to coming to the chamber, and I still have some friends that work there. And so I was talking to one of them the one day, and I don’t know how the topic of servant leadership came up, but it did. And I had said how much I wanted to make that part of our program, but I just, I hadn’t found anybody to teach it yet. And she said, Well, you know, who could teach that for you? And I said, Who? And she mentioned, one of my alums, and I said, Oh, my God is so to see there, put them on the phone. And he wasn’t there at the time, but he did call me back. So he’s been teaching that session for me ever since. So it’s really just keeping your eyes open and seeing who’s around you and paying attention to what they do. If you’re friends with them on Facebook, or if you’re connected with them on LinkedIn, what do they post about? What do they seem to know about what do they seem to be an expert in? Or even just what are their interests because a lot of times people’s job isn’t necessarily their passion either. They can they can teach about something that’s not Not necessarily what they do for a living. So I’ve had that that happened as well. So it’s really it’s just a matter of using your own connections, and just just letting people know what you’re looking for what you want to do, what your goals are, and the people will help you get there.

Brandon Burton 30:16
That’s great advice. Deborah, is we start wrapping up here, you’ve, you’ve touched on some fantastic points as far as creating and building and nurturing a leadership program, it’s your chamber. What tip or action item might you have for listener who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level?

Debra Orner 30:38
The best advice that I can give anyone is if you have a state association, and you probably do join it immediately and get involved if you’re not already, because nothing in my career has been more valuable to me than the Pennsylvania Association for chamber professionals. I learned more about this kind of work just sitting around with my colleagues over lunch and dinner, and possibly one or two late nights than I ever did in any classroom. Chamber professionals tend to be just the most generous giving people and they want you to succeed, and they will share with you and they will help you and they will cheer you on the whole time.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Absolutely. And, and that’s the only reason this podcast is a success is because the chamber professionals are so willing to share and, and share some of those best practices and tips and programs and things like you’re doing today. So thank you for that salutely. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Debra Orner 31:43
Well, I think one thing that the past few years has shown us is that and especially extremely epidemic, evident during the pandemic is despite their traditional nature, Chambers of Commerce adapt extremely well to serve our members. We have extensive extensive reach in our communities. And we tend to be extremely good listeners. And some of the hardest days we worked was when everything was shut down, because we were putting in so many hours trying to take care of our members. So we tend to be very good at adapting. And I think we will continue to do that to adapt to our members evolving needs. And the other thing that has been extremely evident the past few years is the importance of human connection. And that is something that chambers have always done exceptionally well. So I think as long as there are humans in business Chambers of Commerce will continue to be the conveners. And how we do that might change with the times, sometimes it might be virtual instead of in person. But I think that’s we’re going to continue to be the connectors.

Brandon Burton 32:44
Absolutely great points. And I would have to agree with the future chamber. So thank you for that. Deborah, I like to give you an opportunity, or really for the listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you learn more about the leadership program that you put on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect and learn more? Sure,

Debra Orner 33:07
they can email me at debra@crchamber.com. And you can reach me directly through our website, which is crchamber.com. Or they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I love to talk to anybody about leadership. So if anybody out there is has a program that they want to maybe adapt or if you’re looking to start a program I would love to help. I’ve helped several of my colleagues start programs that are going extremely well right now. So

Brandon Burton 33:35
very good. We will, we’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode so people can can look you up and we’ll have your LinkedIn profile LinkedIn in there as well. But I really appreciate you sharing these insights and lessons learned and your approach to leadership program. They’re at the Canberra Regional Chamber. And thank you for being with us today. Really appreciate it.

Debra Orner 34:00
Thank you, Brandon. I really enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 34:02

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Addressing Challenges Facing Businesses with Rick Wilson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick Wilson 3:47
Yes, sir.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 37:08
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

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Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Impact of Community Teamwork with Kyle Spurgeon

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Kyle Spurgeon. Kyle is President and CEO of the Jackson chamber in Jackson, Tennessee. Before joining the chamber, Kyle was vice president Corporate Relations for Jackson Energy Authority. He has also served as marketing director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. He’s helped facilitate project locations representing more than $2.5 billion in capital investment. He holds a BS and public relations marketing from Murray State University. He is past president of the Tennessee Economic Development Council, past president of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce executives, past board member of the south of the Southern Economic Development Council, and past president of the Tennessee economic partnership is also a board member of several other local community organizations. Kyle is a 2017 graduate of leadership Tennessee. He was recently named the 2019, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce Executive of the Year. Powell is married to Melissa together they have five children and one very happily spoiled dog. Enjoy running and traveling the tile. I’m happy to have you with us today here on Super Chat podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:18
I didn’t realize you’re gonna read that entire bio,

Brandon Burton 3:21
we got to get the good stuff, you know.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:25
Melissa and the dog go smiled when you get to the very end. So Leila was wagging her tail? Good. Yes, something interesting. I guess it’s not in that and maybe the reason I enjoy doing these kind of podcast is in high school and college. I was at a radio disc jockey records, and I was a sportscaster and read the news. And so that, you know, as we started getting into the podcast area, that something that just not I’m not gonna say was natural, but it’s something I really enjoyed. So I look back on my days working in radio in Paris, Tennessee, that’s probably where this comes from.

Brandon Burton 3:59
Yeah, that sounds great. It’s your you’ve kind of got that natural comfort with that, I would say so. Well, I hope so. Yeah. So before we just jump into our topic, I’d like you to get some more background on the Jackson chamber. Just give us an idea of size, your chamber staff scope of work, budget, things you’re involved with, just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah, so our

Kyle Spurgeon 4:23
chamber we have are running at 1050 members and budget of 1.6 $1.7 million, a team of seven and that word team is all capitalized because we all work together extremely well. And I look at our chamber and over, particularly the last four decades, we’ve been recognized as a chamber that’s very, very effective at recruiting new jobs in industry, to Jackson in West Tennessee. What has changed really over the last decade is we’ve maintained that standing and that influence in the community and that’s the SAS but were looked upon more, for addition to that term, our leadership programs our assistance to small business, in really since the announcement of Blue Oval city working with our city and county and others, in making sure we lead community development efforts with them, either we lead those were on the team, because that’s becoming an extremely big part of what we do. Our chamber was founded in 1905, we’re accredited by the US Chamber, we’ve got a four star designation now we’re going to be pursuing that five star designation, I think, later this year, or in 24. And as you know, when you’re accredited, by the US Chamber you one of the top 3% of chambers in the country. And that’s something we are extremely proud of. I’ll conclude this by saying just about a decade ago, our chairman at the time, told him he was talking to a group of people about the chamber and he said, one of the things I’m most proud of, is this organization has a seat at every major discussion that goes on in our community. That’s something that we don’t take for granted.

Brandon Burton 6:08
Right. And I think that’s going to lead in well to our topic for our discussion today as we focus on the impact of community teamwork. So having a seat at all those major discussions, being you know, right there, the driver of economic development and community development. I think we’ll have a fantastic discussion around that today. As soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 8:37
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Brandon Burton 9:34
All right, Kyle, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re focusing on the impact of community teamwork. So when you were talking about the chamber you brought up blue oval city. I’m familiar with it. I’ve heard you heard some great things about this set this huge economic development win. But if you would just fill the listeners in on what what is blue oval city and they maybe a little bit of background about how that came to be. And I think that’ll lead well into our discussion today.

Kyle Spurgeon 10:06
Sure. So blue oval City is a 17 year overnight success story as it took a while. And I’ll give you some background on that in a second. But it’s a $5.6 billion investment of Ford and SK Innovation to build the world’s most advanced assembly automotive assembly plant in battery plant. 3500 acres between Memphis and Jackson. So we sit right on Interstate 40. We are an hour from a Shelby County and two hours from Davidson County, which is which is Nashville. So Jackson is ideally situated. That project started back in the early 2000s. When Governor Phil Bredesen and the commissioner of economic and community development, Matt kispert, worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority and identified a site that would be great, what they would call a mega site because TVA had started that program. Two years earlier, local folks in Haywood County, the chamber, President CEO at the time, Paul tour was part of that effort. And those were the early people. You know, in our business, a lot of times when you make the announcement, the folks who were there at that time get all the credit. Well, if it wasn’t for the folks early that identified that property and caused it to be purchased project would have never happened. And what is happening now a blue oval cities under construction, Ford plans to be rolling their new electric vehicle off the assembly line and 25, which is crazy to think about it. That’s two years from now. And you’ll start seeing supplier announcements this year, the project announced again 5800 jobs $55.6 billion in capital investment. That’s really just the beginning. We’re starting to see those supplier locations, the tier one and tier two folks looking at Jackson and other parts of West Tennessee plus the projects that will need to be situated on site. But every piece of that project happened because of teamwork. Mark Herbison is President and CEO of HTL advantage. So that’s Haywood, Tipton Lauderdale counties. Haywood County is actually where the Megasite is it spans Haywood County and Fayette County, Mark led that effort. I tell folks, he has created more jobs, personally per capita for a staff than anyone probably in the world and economic development because he he led that project with two people. Our team, it’s a Jackson chamber in the Memphis chamber, were part of the negotiation process and helping to close the deal. But Mark was the guy day to day. And so when you take what Mark did what we were able to do with the Memphis and Jackson chamber and TVA in the state, in no one caring who got credit, you know, we were able to close that deal. And it turned out to be, you know, obviously one of the largest economic development projects in Tennessee’s history and one of the largest in the country.

Brandon Burton 13:14
That is fantastic. So as you’re, as you’re talking about this, the development of the site just yesterday. So I’m in Texas, but yesterday, I actually drove past the news Tesla facility that’s being rolled right now. So in my mind, I kind of I can kind of picture what this is looking like just a massive space, massive building, the technology that goes into it, and as you mentioned that the discussions of this started in the early 2000s. So almost 25 years from when the first cars will roll off the assembly line. But the evolution that’s happened in that amount of time, from having the focus on batteries now versus just what cars were in the 2000s. If you see an early model in 2000, f150 versus what’s going to roll off and 2025 They’ll be vastly different for sure. Being able to keep up with that, that evolution, that involvement. But let’s let’s focus more on this the community teamwork effort. So you’d mentioned that the teamwork part from an economic development standpoint, working with different counties, different cities, be able to pull together as a team. What are what are some other examples how things have have worked together as maybe you guys have been the convener of some of these, you know, throughout the community to drive some of these wins throughout the Jackson area. You

Kyle Spurgeon 14:43
use that great chamber award convener, and you know, we all successful chambers do that extremely well. The reason and focus it on the economic development piece first. The reason this community has been successful for 40 years doing economic development and recruiting Companies like Delta Faucet, Toyota, Stanley, Black and Decker. Kellogg’s is here, all the Pringles in North America are made in Jackson, we’ve always had that stance, no matter who was in an elected position as one of the mayors, or who ran Jackson Energy Authority, which was our utility, who read who ran the hospital here, we never care about who gets credit. And whoever is Mayor allows the chamber to be the quarterback for all economic development activities. And we everything we do is built around that team concept. But we also don’t have to pick up the phone and call a mayor’s office or a chairman’s office to, you know, direct every single move that we make, because we’ve got enough brand equity in the success that we’ve had. And that’s something we we protect, you know, if you’ve ever were to see a member of our team try to step out and make it all about themselves, instead of the community, that team member is going to get called back and pulled back and probably not gonna be on the team anymore. And so again, I think we’ve used that success model. And as we’ve had to expand our reach, I guess, and the different projects we’re working on and in different communities, we just make sure again, that it’s just all about pain.

Brandon Burton 16:21
Yeah, I like that. And I see the importance of that, I wonder if there maybe is some tactics or ways that you go about whether it’s dealing with your team internally there at the chamber or broader throughout the community to help build a sense of team. And and you’ve touched on a little bit there. But what what some of that mindset and maybe tactics around building that team mentality.

Kyle Spurgeon 16:45
Yeah, one of the ways is making sure particularly your elected officials are not surprised, in that they give us a lot of leeway to work on projects, again, because not just the team we’ve got in place now. But we’ve always been successful doing that. So just Just imagine if you had a mayor in office, and all of a sudden you’re about to announce a project and he knew nothing about it, that’d be a surprise. But for us to be able to do that our elected officials and everyone on the team has to understand the confidentially the confidentiality involved in those projects. Excuse me. And so by bringing them in early, and us respecting the fact that they understand that confidentiality allows us to do that. And then when we have a new chairman, coming into the role within our organization, again, bringing them in early, helping them understand how projects occur, because if you’re not an economic developer or been involved in projects, you probably have some misconceived notions about it. And so it’s education and making sure people don’t get surprised. So

Brandon Burton 17:55
I’m curious, as far as not having these elected officials be surprised. Is that something that you had to learn through experience? Or like, ooh, we should have plugged them in a little more along the way? Or is it just something that it kind of made sense to you from the beginning? So you just a good practice to follow all along?

Kyle Spurgeon 18:13
Yeah. When you said, Did I learn that from experience in a roundabout way? Yes. You mentioned I worked at Jackson Energy Authority. And I remember firing someone without our CEO knowing it. And John made it very clear to me that his name was John Williams at the time, that he needed to know that because he went to church with the guy’s mother, that we had just fired. And so you learn real quick, and he came back the next day sick out, you and your team did the right thing. God needed to go. But I can’t be surprised. So I’ve always taken that with me in terms of you know, when you announce a project, or you’re doing some community initiative, and it’s successful, you will get your elected officials and your investors up there announcing that project? Again, you don’t want them hearing about it a day before or a week before without having any Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:13
or worse as things are even more developed or the read in the paper social media. Yeah, so yeah, I think it’s neat how some of those lessons kind of stick with you and with whether it’s something professionally or personal lesson that carries over, and it’s something that is important to you, that brings a lot of value to others that are listening to and you can provide that experiences. So I appreciate you being willing to share that. I know it’s not always easy to to share from past experiences like that, but

Kyle Spurgeon 19:43
it’s that thing about everyone makes mistakes. And as long as you learn from that mistake, not gonna say it’s not bad, but it’s a heck of a lot better if you learn from it.

Brandon Burton 19:53
That’s right, and learn from the first time hopefully. So I Want to know if there’s maybe tips or action items for those listening who maybe want to build a better community or teamwork effort throughout their their community and take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them to try to implement and to sharpen that focus,

Kyle Spurgeon 20:20
like an easy thing to do is sit back. First of all, you have to have a strategic plan. And any organization is trying to build a to build their brand and build on success or initiate some success, you have to have a strategic plan. And then once you get that, identify a group of people that you know, like and trust that you can work with, and then slowly help them find their way onto your board or your executive committee. And then look at that group as your core team folks that you can pick up the phone and call and know that they’re all pointing in the right direction. And can you know, they can alert you so that you’re not surprised? on things that might be going on in the community, either business wise, or political wise, but I think it’s that first step, you know, every chamber CEO, if they’re moving, taking a job somewhere else, my belief is, the first thing you need to do is look at that strategic plan. If the community doesn’t have one, make sure that’s one of your first action items. Because if you don’t do that, then everyone’s going off in different directions. You’ve got to have a North Star, something everyone can focus on. And so you can build that team effort that way.

Brandon Burton 21:36
Right? Well, I’m glad you went that direction. With that with those, we’ve seen a lot of change in the chamber industry right now with leadership and everything. So for those who are new to community, I think that’s key advice and make sure that there is a strategic plan. And if not, do focus on getting one ASAP. But you had mentioned finding those people in your community that you can know, like and trust. So when you’re new to a community, any tips on how to find those people, because there’s certain people that want to be found, right? For good, for better or worse, they want to be able to filter out Who are those ones that you should know, like and trust?

Kyle Spurgeon 22:12
Well, I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had to go through a search process in 13 years, but just think about it. So if I’m in Jax, and if I was moving somewhere out west, or wherever it was going to interview with the search committee, you’re not going to take the job unless you have confidence in the organization in that search committee. So that’s probably the best place to start. Those are the people that because they’ve accepted that position on the search committee are obviously vested in the community, and the folks in the community or organization, trust them to make the right decision, identify one or two members of that, or the entire committee, and just tell them that who are the folks that I need to understand can best influence our success moving forward.

Brandon Burton 23:01
I love that piece of advice. So yeah, I have that that deeper conversation with that search committee once you get that job and seek their their counsel. And I’m sure it’ll be valuable. I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future changers and their purpose going forward?

Kyle Spurgeon 23:24
But maybe your toughest question that you

Brandon Burton 23:27
bring out your crystal ball and see what it looks like I

Kyle Spurgeon 23:31
think we’ve seen it in I can only speak to our organization, something that has changed, you know, early, particularly I say early, three to four decades ago, and we’re all the way up into the 2000s, early 2000s. We could have encouraged someone to join the chamber, just because we were successful, creating new jobs and capital investment, they just want to be a part of that. Now, they’ve got to experience something. And so Chambers of Commerce, the our events, you know, our social media presence, it’s networking, and it’s an experiential type, membership. And people will no longer write you a check just because the chamber is great in your community, your your membership sales team has to build relationships with them. You have to support your existing industries, you have to run leadership programs. So you really have to be in tune with the folks in your communities and the business leaders. So I think moving forward chambers, just like you know, something that you look at, it’s a negative look around the country at the civic organizations and how their membership has declined. Well, it’s those civic clubs that have changed a bit who have been able to stabilize their membership and in any chamber organization. If you look at the average age of the men First, they may be skewing upward. Well, you’ve got to make sure you’re running young leaders programs, under 40 type programs, because those are the folks that are going to sustain your organization moving forward.

Brandon Burton 25:14
I like that I think I just had my own little aha moment because he gave that response. And so when you when you mentioned that, you know, today, people have that need to experience something. And it makes me think of just the connectivity that we have the the instant gratification, the, especially as you look at the younger generations coming up right now, if they can’t get Amazon to deliver whatever it is, you know, next day, or today would be even better, then it’s not good enough, right. So to experience something, you can’t just talk about doing something you can’t just, you know, have a good organization, they need to experience something they need to kind of need that dopamine hit right to be able to want to come back and have more. And if you’re able to provide some small wins along the way where they can see, okay, I’m seeing the value here, okay, I’m seeing where this is helping the community, I see how this impacts my business, leading up to those big wins is big economic development, contracts, things like that. I think it’s important for every chamber to be thinking about those small, small wins along the way to give that feedback loop of the what you’re doing is important, and they feel involved. So

Kyle Spurgeon 26:31
you know, one thing to do is make sure not only celebrate the successes that your chamber has in the community, but just think about ribbon cuttings, those in another, you’re celebrating the success of a small business or big business. So being a part of the success without taking credit for it of other organizations to where you attach your brand, to their brand. Because everyone loves attention. And if you’re a small business, we’re doing a ribbon cutting for you. They love seeing their faces and their names on our social media feeds, on the traditional media, news stories, and so attaching yourself and supporting other folks success without taking credit for it. And that’s a big help.

Brandon Burton 27:16
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve heard some chambers getting away from ribbon cutting somewhat, but I think there’s still a great value there with giving that that positive feedback loop so well, Kyle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for those who are listening that want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson, or learn more about Blue Oval city and how they can, you know, bring somebody else to their community because they’re not going to get forward right. What would be what would be the best way for them to to reach out and connect with you?

Kyle Spurgeon 27:56
Yeah, my favorite way actually is through LinkedIn. Really, all social media is not great all the time. But our team finds LinkedIn to be a fantastic source to connect and share information. Other than that, my email address love to give that out. It’s kspurgeon@jacksontn.com. And you know what our business you learn from other folks, we’ve, in the last several years, we’ve been to Wichita, Kansas, Greenville, South Carolina and Monroe, Louisiana, Franklin, Tennessee a few years ago, just learning what those communities were doing in their chamber and economic development teams. And yeah, we’re stealing ideas and bringing those back, we just are going to hopefully be able to announce a $34 million training center that our governor has put in his budget. The idea from that training center, pain from a visit to Wichita, Kansas.

Brandon Burton 28:56
That’s awesome. Yeah, those leadership visits as you know, inner city visits are, they’re very valuable. So by learning from each other, you know, those listening, reach out, talk to Kyle, you know, learn learn from him, and, and even take it to the next step and schedule a visit to another city and see how things are being done there. So that’s a whole other topic we can dive into right. Yeah. But Kyle, I appreciate you spending some time with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, I think you’ve provided some great value for those listening to really maybe just take another look at how they are building a sense of teamwork throughout their community to lead to some of these big wins. So I appreciate you sharing your experience and what’s going on there and Jackson, thank you.

Kyle Spurgeon 29:43
Thank you Brandon. Great questions and appreciate having the opportunity to be a part of it.

Brandon Burton 29:48
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!