Skip to content

Category: Leadership

Chamber Collaboration with Nancy Hoffman Vanyek

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Nancy Hoffman Vanyek. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host,

Unknown Speaker 0:16
one of his favorite pieces sports memorabilia. Is this signed Steve Young jersey. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

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

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

Matt Morrow 0:49
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:11
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

Our guest for this episode is Nancy Hoffman van mix. Nancy is the chief executive of the Greater San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce in California. She started as the communications manager at the then called Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce and within six years was named the Chamber’s first female CEO. Nancy is passionate about uniting people government, business and community towards a shared vision. She serves on the city of Los Angeles’s Workforce Development Board and chairs its business services marketing and Resource Development Committee. She was named the San Fernando Valley’s Business Journal CEO of the Year in 2021. On the strength of her actions to help businesses, WACE awarded her as Executive of the Year for our her outstanding performance as an industry leader. In March Assemblywoman Suzette Validez recognized Nancy as a 2022 Woman of the Year for the 38th assembly district. Nancy spearheaded the creation of the San Fernando Valley’s Regional Foundation to advance economic community and educational development. She’s a positive vision for the San Fernando Valley and actively works to find solutions for businesses large and small.

And Nancy, I’m happy to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 2:48
Well, thanks for having me here. Something interesting about myself. That’s a hard one. I don’t I don’t always find myself as interesting probably as other people do. Well, for 20 years, I was a spinning instructor. So before I would head on over to the chamber office, I would start my day at 530 in the morning with 16 other people and teach them or lead a spin class. I grew up not being athletic at all. So to in my late 30s, became an aerobics instructor was, I think one of my most interesting things.

Brandon Burton 3:21
Wow. So you were teaching the spin class while running the chamber at the same time?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 3:25
Oh, yeah. And then a lot of times, I got some of those people to join the chamber. Or some of my, my best volunteers like they’re, they become my friends. And when I need help, the some of those same people are the ones that come to all of our events and help us out. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:41
that’s great. build those relationships, for sure. Well, tell us a little bit more about the greater San Fernando Valley Chamber just to give us an idea of maybe perspective, size and staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 3:57
So we have been around 111 years, and it’s a very big deal for us, because if you don’t know 111 And numerology means good fortune. And we felt that we didn’t get to celebrate our 100 and 10th anniversary because the pandemic so we launched this year call, it’s a grand new year, and we’ve been celebrating all of our past accomplishments and our current account and our future, what we’re looking forward to his future accomplishments. We have a staff of five, our budget is around a million dollars, which I’m going to say probably 40% as is attributed to some very specific job training grants that we have. So most of when people go oh, I can never be like, like greater San Fernando Valley Chamber. If we didn’t have the grants, we would probably just be what most books most chambers are within a budget, you know, probably a $400,000 range. We have only 400 members. People always think we have a lot of members because we’re a Regional Chamber. But we started in 1911. As the Vanna is chamber, we merged in the 80s with another chamber. And because there’s 23 chambers of commerce in the San Fernando Valley, which I’ve just want to really quick for geography, the San Fernando Valley is a suburb in the city of Los Angeles, we have 1.9 million people. If we were our own city, we would be the sixth largest city in the nation. So just put that in perspective. And yeah, we have 400 members, because there’s 23 chambers. And we have a different focus. So our members may not be the same as all the other chambers, we have some overlap, we definitely focus on a regional approach. So we get a lot of corporate offices, and as our members as well, that really come out and support us, and they support our initiatives. You know, we’re trying to shift from that. Let’s have you support this event sponsor this event come to this event to we have a job training initiative, we have a jobs initiative, we have this initiative and see how many people will support us in those those themes as focuses, which really helps us build our relationships with the business community. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 6:05
I like that. And it is a different approach for sure. Being a Regional Chamber versus a, you know, a smaller community type chamber.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 6:14
We started off as a local chamber. Yeah, our area, communities kept changing their name. And our our businesses would move into these other communities was the valley still the Valley for us, but they would remain a member. And so we needed a name that reflected like, we can’t just be vandalized anymore. Man is being chopped up into three or four different communities. And so becoming regional was a big game changer for us. But it took us several years to really embrace what that was and how we were going to do it. We had a whole plan to get there.

Brandon Burton 6:46
Yeah. So that how long ago did you guys make that change from Van Nuys to the greater San Fernando Valley?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 6:52
Well, we first went to Mid Valley, when we merged in the 80s, or mid San Fernando Valley, they kept plasmid Valley and that meant we could have been any Valley. Right? You know, it didn’t matter. We could be a valley in Appalachian Valley, for all that matter. And and so we, in 2007, we changed our name to greater San Fernando Valley Chamber. And that’s when we actually launched I think we changed it the year before. But we it was a it was a slow process to really change our internal events, because we didn’t want to scare off our existing members. You know, some of them already freaked out. When we moved our office, we didn’t move because we were coming regional removed because our building burned down. Yes, we couldn’t find another built in we we didn’t have like time we needed an office. So we moved to where we are now. And people in that neighborhood were very upset. And we’re like, well, there’s literally like a hole in the floor. We

Brandon Burton 7:46
didn’t plan for this. Yeah, I want to look

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 7:48
down and see into the into like the hallway or the restroom, because that’s what we were able to do. And so we moved our offices, and we already had to go through that trauma. And so when we became regional, we wanted to do it in a very thought out way, because we didn’t want we didn’t want to have any issues with other chambers, we always work well with them. And we didn’t want them to think we were coming in and we were going to overtake them, we still wanted to work well with them. Because local chambers, even if there’s a reasonable one and have a purpose, we all have a purpose, and how we serve our communities, whether it’s certain certain communities or cities or certain regions. And so we really have thought it out and how we were how each year something else was going to take us to the next level. And probably we went for like five, six years with not doing a lot. And then we brought in a new communications manager. And she saw the really big picture of it and started changing our narrative, changing how we looked at everything, really emphasizing how we need to change some of our events or bring in different events. And I think when we did that everything kind of just naturally shifted for us.

Brandon Burton 8:57
Yeah. So I think this is kind of naturally taking us to our topic for our discussion today. Being a Regional Chamber collaborating with other local chambers and just other chambers in the region becomes important. So our topic for discussion today is Ram chamber collaboration. And we’ll jump into our conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Izzy West 10:32
Hey, it’s Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner a weekly monthly planner that you can get on Amazon or Etsy I wanted to give a shout out to Diane Sawyer of the Reedsville Chamber who emailed me saying “I am loving this stuff! My admin assistant bought me the planner for Christmas before I could purchase it for myself.” The responses and feedback I get from my fellow Chamber Pros are a big deal to me and in fact the updates I make each year if you’d like physical planners, please check out the Chamber Pros Planner at TheIzzyWest.com. That’s TheIzzyWest.com.

Brandon Burton 11:04

Oftentimes Chamber Nation’s customers agree that since Amazon is all centralized then why not their own community including their professional service providers. 

Since Chamber Nation includes a full-service membership services department to handle all of the new member onboarding and ongoing support at no extra cost to the Members, this is now possible. 

Once the program is all set up, each member going forward will receive monthly membership ROI reports. The entire community will also have access to community-wide economic development reports that are terrific for supporting grant opportunities too. 

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Nancy, we’re back. Tell us how are you going about collaborating with other chambers and in your region to to create a stronger San Fernando Valley?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 12:16
Well, I don’t think I’m just a regional collaborator. I’m definitely a national collaborator,

Brandon Burton 12:21
scaling it up.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 12:23
So you know, I’m a longtime chamber exec 35 years, and I’ve always had collaboration envy. I’ve always seen like, some of these chambers come up with a project or a plan and do something. And I was always that person on the sidelines, I was never the leader in that collaboration, I kind of feel when it comes to collaboration, you have like, if you take the chamber three Cs, you could have put it this way, you have the person who is the champion, and they’re like they’re sitting at the table, and they have a voice. And then you have the catalyst and they take an active role in the collaboration. And I think I’ve moved up to being that active role probably 10 years when we changed our name to more active role. But you could be the convener of their three C’s and you could be the one who brings everyone to the table and that’s a big shift especially if you’re working with other chambers or other organizations, Business Development economic development agencies because most chamber execs are pretty strong personalities and we all want to be the leader so to be able to come to the table and be a convener and have other people who are normally conveners to move the needle takes a lot of patience internally tail so so how did I come about it? I looked at those three C’s and where I was with my collaboration and B I was always just a seat at the table I look at so there you know we have 23 chambers of La like I said we collaborate on some things especially through like I think a lot of communities have like a United Artists United chambers you know some of them have a Regional Chamber group. But might be collaboration came from other chambers that were like minded with us and our Eric’s had mentioned we’re in Los Angeles was like Hollywood, Culver City, people who were were very active in advocacy, economic development and workforce development issues that weren’t just networking and just the basic of the chamber. And so I’m gonna say that I used to just ride on their coattails. I was the youngest of our group, and I was the kid that everyone took care of, and then they all retired and left me in charge. And I was like floundering for a while and I wasn’t a collaborator, I was really just trying to keep myself afloat without anyone to lean on. You know, and I have not that, again, 35 years in industry, there’s a lot of people lean on, but not within Los Angeles for me, and that’s my hub. So, you know, over the years, I just, you know, it was kind of fiddling and everything around trying to figure it all out and doing things collaboratively with a bunch of different local groups and Then I’m gonna say 2016, I had a big shift. And I was, it was a shift entirely for me in our organization, where I think I finally understood, like, you could say, your mission based, but making the mission the priority and doing the best you can for your members becomes more important than your personality, your ego, and anything else that is you want and all of a sudden great things happen. So for me, it happened with breweries. I am the craft beer advocate of Los Angeles, okay. And we, in our area, like I mentioned, were part of Los Angeles, but the San Fernando Valley had four craft breweries, and as part of Los Angeles, it was a new industry and La didn’t know how to treat it. And what I mean is a brewery was brewery, so they were paying the same fees, licenses and taxes, as Anheuser Busch

Brandon Burton 15:53
doesn’t really work. Well, that way doesn’t work

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 15:55
well. So like, they didn’t do an inspection fee, and the city would show up. And then Anheuser Busch, you get in a golf car, and you drive across eight acres, and they look around. They were charging this brewery where you literally could stand on a stepladder, craning your neck look around the same inspection fee. And so the breweries came to me, and they said, Hey, we got a problem. We can’t afford this, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I called a bunch of land use planners who normally would help people. And it was a new industry, no one really knew where to start. And they just said, talk to this person, talk to that person. So I brought everyone to the table. And I said, I was just angry, I was angry on their behalf. There’s small family owned businesses, you know, their cousins, or husbands and wives. You know, sometimes I called one of them as a bunch of like college roommates, you know, that started it. And I just felt for them because they could not afford a land use planner. But Nancy’s not a land use planner, but Nancy’s gonna figure it out. And I got them off the table. And I was very lucky that someone completely understood the big picture. God is in front of the right person at the city’s economic development agency. And I know that sounds crazy, but it took a year but years very fast in Los Angeles, to literally get all the specs where they could now, we got four tasting rooms open within like, you know, they always were scheduled like within a very quick period of time, we got the fees reduced by over 50%, we got a qmD, which is the Air Quality Management District to waive all the fees for all their equipment, which was over $3,000. And I realized, and the big change for me on that on collaborating was unknown known to a lot of these people as a hothead. And I couldn’t be a hothead. I had to learn to just take a step back and say, here’s the problem. This is the solution I need. And once I did that all these people came to me and wanted to help. And they weren’t other chambers necessarily. They were just other people that could affect the change. And I just, it just was my game changer on how collaboration can work.

Brandon Burton 17:50
Yeah. So amazing. So what do you think it was early on in your career that made you feel like you couldn’t be that convener, the one to gather everyone together? Was it kind of an imposter syndrome or like you didn’t have that credential or how to yourself early on like that.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 18:10
I started off being the communications manager, and then our program manager and I had a boss, longtime chamber exec as well. So he was really that convener, but I realized that was a better convener than that I’m definitely good at bringing people together. But I think a lot of it was imposter syndrome. I never felt as felt as secure as I imagined other people, and I can name them all and tell you who they are. And I always felt like I was kind of watching them but not doing. And if I did a program, and we have many awards and accolades, I never really felt like, did I really do that? Or did I copy that. And then I the brewery thing was just a whole shift in our whole organization where we thought we can do anything to help our business community. And when that all right, Lisa chambers say these things for years, but we don’t, and we do them sometimes with other people. But not everyone just steps up and takes up the mantle on behalf of an industry or an organization because we think it’s going to be too tough, right. And sometimes you just have to be fearless. And you just have to take that risk. And people are free to take that risk with their legislators because they don’t want to ruin that relationship. But you have to they have to you have to find the right ones who are going to be your champion as well. And we got very lucky because two of them joined us and then everyone else and we’ve had all of our city council members love craft beer. So that that was my big catalyst though, for when the pandemic started. And I started a nationwide coalition with my friend Patrick Ellis at the Marietta chamber to help businesses find economic recovery during the pandemic. And it was all those lessons from that brewery episode that helped me you know, do you’re just starting to save small business Coalition, which isn’t all my class braided efforts, but it was when I realized that you could put those there were so many components when I pulled together, people not that they were my friends, people I admired that I met at conferences that I knew were doers. They were respected, and they had. They were critical thinkers. And they were also action oriented. And so we formed a leadership committee. And we got together. And then from there, we all reached out. And before you knew it, we thought we had like 39 chambers, and we had 200 chambers across the nation. And I think the biggest thing part of it was we were having chambers join us that had never done advocacy before. Their chamber might talk about advocacy, they might do something, they have relationships with elected officials, but truly do advocacy, mobilizing their members or their business community to have a voice. And we create a toolkits for them, we made it easy for a chamber had never done advocacy, we literally handed everything to them with like a timeline, everything written out instructions, they could do all of it, they could do one piece of it. And we were able to mobilize these 200 chambers we on one of our letter writing campaigns, which was using one of those systems that everyone goes into a computer system, we were able in one day to mobilize 8000 advocates and advocates means people who write a letter so from all those 200 people, that was just the first day 8000 people across the nation right to Congress.

Brandon Burton 21:19
Yeah. So from these experiences from those craft breweries to help with the economic recovery, have you kind of formulated a a template of sorts for bringing people together to collaborate? What does that look like?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 21:35
I’m not i For me, I think it’s really not having to have made the lead. You know, I’m like, I know that sounds crazy. We all want to be that leader and say, Oh, greater San Fernando Valley Chamber or whatever greater, I don’t know, degree chamber or whatever you want to call it. Like recently, recently, we received a grant for paid to give micro grants to small businesses. And I knew I could do it better. All the chambers have been promoting grants the whole time during the pandemic, right help businesses, and this is still recovery grant. And we received half a million dollars. But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. And every chamber has members that this grant could have helped. And so I reached out, I sent a big email to a lot of people I knew from small business coalition people I’ve just known from 35 years, all in California, and said, Hey, this is another grant, we’re not going to put our name on it, we’re just going to call it what it is. You can promote it as your branch if you want, however you want to do it. And everyone just joined in, because I think when you realize that you don’t have to be you might be the leader, but you don’t have to wear that crown the whole time that everyone can share the crown, you get a lot further, you have people who want to work with you, you want to work with them. I think I think it made me a nicer person. I know that sounds like so crazy. But I think, you know, I spent a lot of time on trying to prove to who I was versus trying to prove and what I could do for the business community.

Brandon Burton 22:59
Right. But I think it’s easier to get other in this instance, other chambers on board to help push it and promote it because they can look like a hero to to their members. And it’s not, you know, here’s a tool from the greater San Fernando Valley Chamber that we’re going to, you know, jump on top of, but it’s a, it’s positioned in a way that they’re there to help the business. And it’s not about where the credit goes. It’s just we’re here to help.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 23:25
And we promoted all the partners on it, you know, because we want them to get credit as well. But we want them just to we give them a gave them a sample news, release your name in here, you know, and, and then we made the website that it wasn’t one organization, but there’s a partners page. So everyone has a piece of the pie. Yeah. And now we’re actually coming to it because of them with this is a two year grant is supposed to take 24 months to give us money. Through all these chambers. We gave out all the money and under 120 days. Oh, wow. It’s crazy. So I mean, this shows you the strength of what chambers can do when they get together.

Brandon Burton 24:02
Yeah, absolutely. So that how many chambers all together joined together for the

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 24:08
there’s now 29. And they’re all across the state of California. And you know, it’s interesting I reached out to I didn’t chase it down because I didn’t have time I needed to get it together. And I got 20 right away. If people didn’t respond to me, they didn’t need to respond. Because all I’m asking us to do promotion, we just gave them templates to an idea. So you can do it on social media, you can send news release, you can announce it at events, we didn’t care how it was done, right? Through everyone doing it. Different media picked it up, because everyone has a different source right? Before you know it. All these HR organizations picked it up and all these HR attorneys picked it up. And so it means so even though maybe we didn’t get a lot maybe our individual chambers didn’t have a lot of applicants. Our efforts had people who had a lot of influence pick it up that helped us give away all this money.

Brandon Burton 24:57
Yeah, all those different organizations have their different toolkits that they can leverage and apply it. And that’s great, really gaining momentum quickly.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 25:06
I think you have to bring in people you trust, if you’re going to do that chip. I mean, if you’re like, there’s, I mean, not that everyone could collaborate, but you also have to know everyone’s strengths. These people are good at this, these people are good at this. And so at the basic level, like when we did save small business, everyone had different jobs to do whether it was locally in their state, or in their community. And then with this one, it was chambers that we knew that would actually spread the word that weren’t that have someone on staff cry that was doing the newsletter, or someone who’s doing social media, because if we didn’t get the word, if they weren’t, if they were just going to put their logo on our on our thing that wasn’t going to help us

Brandon Burton 25:39
need to have buy in. Yeah, that’s good. So I’d like to ask everyone that we have on the show, for any maybe tips or action items, to help other chambers that are listening, how to take them up to the next level? What might you suggest to help some of these other chambers that are listening?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 26:02
Well, you know, I think there’s a few things, like I already mentioned, like be a risk taker, you know, be a little bit fearless. But I think that everyone needs to remember to be mission focused. And I’m going to just refer to a chamber I was talking to yesterday who had a committee, you know, we all have that that committee who says this grant was a that was great, let’s do 12 more times. We don’t have the bandwidth, the money or they’re not thinking about how you’re not going to get all the sponsors 12 times for the same amount of money, you’re gonna saturate yourself. And I said, are these other events the same? Or do they do they go back to your mission, because you know, how you could always manage everything as being mission based, you know, you have a mission, like our mission is to promote the economic vitality, you know, of our community. And if it doesn’t go to that, we’re not going to do it. And so it helps us one, filter out the things that that we don’t have, that we don’t have time for, and but it also keeps us on focus. And if you stay to your mission, and always act in the best interest of your members, you’re going to be a champion for your business. So I’d say that’s a big one. And then I think advocacy chambers are very afraid to get into advocacy, and they look at the big chambers to do it for them. But chambers can do it at a very small level too. And that goes to back to being not afraid. And then that small level, I’m going to use my concierge service with the breweries, maybe you don’t want to go fight a bill ello, I want to encourage everyone to to fight bills and to advocate for bills that help their business community. But if a business comes to you, and they have a problem, you don’t always have to refer them out. Right, you can act as their liaison and their concierge. And then you become the expert. And then other other businesses come to you other organizations come to you. And it’s such a wonderful feeling to actually see the success that you’ve helped those, that industry or that business, even if it’s something as simple as they need a permit, we had someone during the pandemic that they couldn’t get the city to sign off on something just because everyone was working from home. So they have been able to call someone and say, hey, the SBA is not going to give them their loan, if this isn’t signed off, like the next four days, and get that done. Get to know the right people. When I started in the business, I would have to institute and this is back when you had paper, you didn’t have a computer. That was guys to make a list. If you’re gonna do economics, all the key key offices are key players. So if someone needs a business permit, and all these different things know who they are, and I kind of operate with that, like I need to know who everyone is and what what role they play, so I know who to call. Yeah. So that’s how you could advocate at the most basic level.

Brandon Burton 28:39
And I think along those lines of advocacy, using the brewery example, as a, as you have some of these craft breweries come to you, you may see an opportunity for another business industry that could benefit from advocating for these breweries because they have some kind of tie in to whatever that that, you know, piece of advocacy is you’re going after, and then even get more on board.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 29:05
People come to us all the time because they saw what we did with that and I have a beer named after me because a bit so plaque you got his plaques, all these words you heard like when you introduce me, you know really, I rather the beer has ever given me an award. I don’t want to say like I’m not grateful. But the people can walk into this brewery and it has the name of the baristas, Nancy’s beer. And then there’s our story of getting the the taproom event is really special.

Brandon Burton 29:31
So I will say you need to add that to your bio. So next time we can talk about Nancy’s. That’s great. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 29:46
You know, I think we really learned a lot in the pandemic about what we can do, like, you know, we were closed and we were closed down in some ways, right? You didn’t do your events, all those things that we rely on, I know our CPAs to say, Oh, well we shouldn’t do this because that could go away tomorrow. Well, by the way All our events went away. And the one thing that was holding us up was this thing he told us, I shouldn’t be doing training, because Job Training still existed, you know, for certain, like manufacturing and different industries that we were doing. So got what I really think chambers need to dive more into workforce development, or economic development, or Business Retention and Expansion, which those two things kind of fall under, well, first of all meant economic development. And I really have a lot of envy for those organizations, too. I mean, I’m pretty competitive. And so like, when I have a friend that’s doing something in a different community, I’m in a different state, I want to know how they’re doing it and chambers are great, we all will share will pretty much give it to you in writing, look at your entire package of whatever it is we’re doing if you just fill in the blanks. And so how I got all these other things I’ve been doing is because there was one person I was kind of following, you know, like, follow the leader, and how do I do that in my area, because they were doing it further down in Southern California. And I think all chambers, once you do that, and you understand how it relates to your mission and how it relates to your members, it totally changes your chamber, you still do your network breakfast, but when you’re when you’re talking to them, and they hear you’re doing the job training, or you’re doing this advocacy on their behalf or, or doing concierge red tape busting. It really helps your business community move further ahead,

Brandon Burton 31:24
right. And that’s the whole purpose of this podcast is to share some of those best practices and, you know, shine some light on some of those things, and then reach out and connect with these people that are on the podcast and learn more about how they’re doing these things. So, Nancy, along those lines, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about how you’re doing things there in your area?

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 31:47
Well, my email is very long. So let’s start with my phone number. How’s that? Okay, you can reach me at 818-902-9455. That’s my direct line, my office, my email,

Brandon Burton 32:00
and I’ll get these both in our show notes. So you don’t necessarily need to spell the whole email out. You can say what it is and then we’ll we’ll have it in the show notes.

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 32:08
It’s nancy@sanfernandovalleychamber.com. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:15
you got a good URL, but it’s nice in like

Nancy Hoffman Vanyek 32:19
a shorter URL. It’s just not linked to our email. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:23
yeah. No, that’s great. So I’ll get those in our show notes. Anyone listening, you know, while they’re out walking the dog or driving in the car can can go on and look it up there. But, Nancy, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for carving out some time to spend with us. Talk about the things you’re doing way easier. You’re building those collaboration efforts. I think this is terrific. So thanks a lot.

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.

Success happens over time not overnight. It’s why fortune 500 companies and other forward thinking businesses are shifting to a more continuous learning format to coach and support their salespeople. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching brings the same ongoing improvement opportunity to chamber membership salespeople visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching for your membership pro. 

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.
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!

10 Lesson Learned as a Chamber Executive with Rich Cantillon

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Rich Cantillon. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he enjoys seeing “Let’s Go Brandon” signs because it feels like the world is cheering him on, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Kris Johnson 0:49
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:30
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

From athletes to business leaders, successful people from every walk of life have a coach. They realize that the next level is a continuous learning journey and they continually seek fresh ideas and advice. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the professional coaching and guidance your membership rep needs to navigate challenges and consistently drive more revenue for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Our guest for this episode is Rich Cantillon. Rich is a 1976 graduate of Ponca City High School and in 1981 graduate of northwestern Oklahoma State University and Albert Rich also attended the University of Oklahoma in Norman and completed his chamber Institute management certificate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Rich owned and operated a photography studio and Blackwell for 14 years and worked for the Blackwell Chamber of Commerce for eight years. He’s been with the Ponca City Chamber since 2004. Rich has been married to his wife Pam for 40 years they have three grown children and a son in law and three granddaughters. Rich enjoys working with his church youth group at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which has been going to for over 35 years. He also enjoys teaching and working with other chambers on how to be successful, which is which he does on behalf of the state of Oklahoma, the State Chamber of Oklahoma, which currently serves on the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce executive board. This is a second time serving on the board and will be president in 2024. Also for the second time. He’s on the executive board for the Oklahoma tourism industry association and will be president in 2023. Rich serves on the pocket City Arts Council board and served as the secretary. He’s an active Rotarian, and has been president of both the Ponca City and Blackwell Rotary Clubs. Bridge currently serves on the US Chamber National Institute board based in Washington DC, which is Chair of the University Center Ponca City Board of Trustees appointed by the governor of Oklahoma. He also serves on other local boards and organizations to better Ponca City. Rich, I’m excited to have you with us on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Rich Cantillon 4:11
Well, Brandon, first off, thank you very much for having me. I’ve been really looking forward to this. I’m excited to get to share some things that we do. And some things that I’ve done in my career that I think have helped me be successful. One of the things that I want to share is my wife and I love to travel. My wife was a travel agent before we had children. And we just talked about we’ve been to 45 of our United States. We have parts in New England that we want to go to and we’re going to Alaska next year, so that’ll take care of one of the five. Yeah, and we just got back from Italy, which was a dream of ours. We’ve been to Mexico and Canada but we’ve not ever gone to Italy and we’re both born and raised raised Catholic. And so that was always a big dream is a very emotional trip when we were at the Vatican, and we were standing in St. Peter’s Basilica. So that was really exciting. And that’s what I enjoyed doing. And then of course, we have three beautiful granddaughters that our daughter and son in law have given us. And they kind of rule our life. And we love every bit of that.

Brandon Burton 5:24
And that is awesome. It is nice having your wife as a travel agent, because you need to test the product, right? Make sure it’s good before she sells it to other people. So it’s a good good byproduct. A

Rich Cantillon 5:34
lot of fun. Yeah, have

Brandon Burton 5:35
it. Well, tell us a little bit about the pocket City Chamber just to give us an idea of the scope of work that you guys do size staff budget, just to kind of give us some perspective.

Rich Cantillon 5:47
You bet. Thank you. So pulka City, Oklahoma is located in northern Oklahoma. And we’re right off i 35. We’re 20 miles from the Kansas border. So we’re right up here in north central Oklahoma. We are home to six Native American tribes. And so we get to do a lot of tribal work, which we really enjoy. There’s a lot of issues in Oklahoma, we have 39 sovereign tribal countries. And so that’s been a real interesting part of my career. We have about 650 Members, we’re a town the size of 26,000. At one time, we were kind of a one horse community, we were home to Conoco and which now is Phillips 66, when we realized that we needed to diversify, we started really an effort to diversify who we were as a community. So we weren’t dependent on just one industry. And that’s something I’m really proud of. I’ve been here 20 years. And in that time period, we are now the number five city in the state of Oklahoma with manufacturing jobs. And our manufacturing base is wide range, and covers a lot of different products and that are shipped throughout the world. So we’ve done a great job in securing the future POC the city, we also were oil has had a massive impact on Oklahoma. And there’s been a lot of oil investment into mansions into architecture into attractions. And so one of the things that we have here is the Marlin mansion, which is one of America’s top five castles. It’s a 55 room mansion, built by ew Marland, you created Marlon oil, which became Conoco now, Phillips 66. And that attracts people from all over the world to pump the city. So we’re also a tourist destination, we have a lot of other things that I won’t go into, you can go to visit pop the city.com. And there’s a lot of things to see and do that are very unique. And a couple of things you can only see here. So that’s a big part of what our chamber does. We’re all about building our economy and making lb punk the city, a great place to work and live. But we also are a tourist destination for the great state of Oklahoma. And we put a lot of effort into that. And that really can affect our economy.

Brandon Burton 8:25
Yeah, I love that. So for our discussion today. So I the whole purpose of the podcast when I started this almost four years ago now I think the idea was to be able to present ideas and best practices to ideally smaller chambers, who may not have the resources to attend conferences or may not have the staff to get away and to learn and, and it’s kind of evolved from there. But our topic for today we’re going to be focusing on 10 lessons that Rich’s learned as a chamber exec throughout his career and I think this is valuable to some of those smaller chambers, even even somebody at a bigger chamber maybe they haven’t been in the industry for 20 or 30 years, but maybe they’re you know, five years in but some of these lessons can help shortcut some of that learning curve and and really get you up to speed a little bit quicker. So I’m excited to get into this discussion and these lessons that Rich has learned as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chambers of Commerce have been around for over 400 years promoting communities all over the World. But today so much is found digitally that Chamber Nation believes it’s critical that there is a custodian of local digital information. They believe the Chamber is in a perfect position to be that organization. 

Chamber Nation provides an amazing membership management system you use to manage the chamber and the community. They also deliver a complete membership development system that they manage for you to be sure your membership community is fully documented for search and much more. Essentially, Chamber Nation delivers an entire membership support department which is perfect for those Chambers with a limited budget that needs to do more.

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Rich, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about 10 lessons that you’ve learned as a chamber Exec. So I’d like to go through what these 10 lessons are, I’m sure I’ll have some follow up questions for you, and maybe some back and forth. And hopefully those listening are going to be able to take some good notes and be able to apply some of these lessons or see how these lessons may be applicable in their own community. So let’s, I guess start with number one, we’ll start at the top.

Rich Cantillon 12:10
Okay, so this will probably the most important thing to me, I’ll never forget, I had my photography business. And I was approached, I’d been a volunteer in the Blackboard chamber, I’d actually served as chair of the board, and I was approached about, hey, you would be so good at actually managing and operating our chamber. And I thought, wow, how exciting. And I said, I did that. Well, one of my really good friends said who was the bank president and Blackwell said, now you know, it’s very political. And you’re going to have to really watch everything you do. Because a lot of people get in trouble in the chamber world because of politics or not doing something correct. And I said, it’s not political, it is political. So you have to be careful about everything you say, you have to be inclusive of everybody. You have to look at where you shop, who you support, all of this stuff. And now, with social media, and people with cameras, and Facebook and Twitter and seeing everything you do how you live your life, it is critical that you put the best foot forward that you can, and that you truly represent your chamber and your community.

Brandon Burton 13:40
So it sounds like you’re given fair warning, when you came into the chamber that it is political. Did you were you able to just learn from that warning? Or did you have to learn through experience?

Rich Cantillon 13:50
Well, it was it’s really funny. We would we love to go to Oklahoma City and walk the mall. And that was one thing during the holidays, especially go down with lights. And that was one thing I learned quickly. I do not go out of town during the holiday season. Because I don’t want someone even though they may be there. I don’t want somebody to see me there. I need to set an example to we talk about shot punk at first, and so I need to be that person. So though that’s one of the things right off when I was young, I was like, I can’t be I ran into some people in Oklahoma City and I instantly felt guilty. And so that’s something I’m really mindful of making sure that I do what I say.

Brandon Burton 14:42
Yeah, that’s a good example. It’s something to be mindful of for sure. I mean, in still travel and do your tourism and stuff, but I think that example holiday time, when people are expecting you to be shopping and you go to a mall, which is inherent for shopping so

Rich Cantillon 14:58
it could exist in there. said difference when you, you know, you want to take vacation you want to travel, people do not have a problem with that a matter of fact, I’ve been inundated with friends and people in pop them loving our pictures we posted from Italy. So glad we got to go. And so there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But when you’re going to neighboring communities, if you’re shopping, promoting what they’re doing and not locally, that can get you in trouble.

Brandon Burton 15:32
Yeah, for sure. And like you said, in the world of social media, I could just see if you went to went to the mall in a neighboring community, and you’re taking pictures and how beautiful the lights are and everything. You’re setting yourself up for some trouble.

Rich Cantillon 15:48
Yes, I have to be very discreet. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 15:51
So let’s, let’s move on to the next lesson that you’ve learned one of the things

Rich Cantillon 15:56
a lot of people that come into the chamber industry, they really think, well, I’ve run a business or I’ve done this, I know how to operate a chamber know our chambers are 501 C six, we’re regulated by the IRS, we have certain things we can and cannot do. We have bylaws that we must follow. And so that’s one of the things that we’ve seen in Oklahoma that people take over a chamber, maybe they would like me, Blackwell, what volunteer and someone said, Oh, you’d be so good run in our chamber, and they think they know everything. No, you do not. And so one of the things that I really stress is that if you’re new to the chamber world that you reach out to your state organization, or it’s someone that’s been a longtime chamber person, and get educated on what the do’s and don’ts are of operating a chamber, and here in Oklahoma, our State Chamber and our organization, OCC E, they offer trainings on what it is to be in chamber management at all levels, CEO and staff. And then the US Chamber which I’m heavily involved in, has Institute, which is a certification of our industry. I’ll never forget the very first year that I went to institute, it was eye opening to how much more I could be doing for my community through my chamber. And I’ve sent my staff and they come back, they’re all fired up. They’ve learned so much. So education, on what it is to run a chamber is critical to being successful and long term.

Brandon Burton 17:41
Absolutely. And I would say if you are one of those small chambers, one staff or part time staff, maybe to staff, and your board is not giving you the funding to be able to go to conferences, or be member of these organizations play back this little clip that rich just shared about how valuable this is to be involved to be able to get those mentors to be able to understand how to run a chamber properly because it is different than running a business for sure.

Rich Cantillon 18:10
Well, I’m one other thing, Brandon that you mentioned, if you do work for a chamber and their board is like they’ve never done that. And they’re like, well, we’ve never seen anyone that conference or will then find someone to sponsor. I mean, there’s always a bank or a doctor or a business that believes in that and they’ll sponsor you to go. And then when you come back, you’ll have this information. I firmly every time I go to any kind of conference or any educational thing. I always come back and give a report to my board on what I’ve learned and how to be beneficial to our chamber. So that that can make a big difference.

Brandon Burton 18:50
I love that giving a report when you come back and they can understand how you’re working for them and what you’re getting out of these conferences. And the one

Rich Cantillon 18:57
thing I would not do like Mako is the Missouri Arkansas Kansas Oklahoma conference. It’s in Branson. I love brands and we go there all the time. I when I go to make out I’m not taking pictures of me out eating on the landing. I’m not taking pictures of me at big cedar at Table Rock Lake, which I do all that but what when I if I do anything Facebook, it’s in a session. It’s what I’ve learned. And our board does not mind us having fun. But that’s not what we put when we when we’re talking about our conference, not the fun. The educational

Brandon Burton 19:37
that that goes back to the first lesson that you talked about being political and being careful and gosh just put out there. Right. So let’s let’s roll along to lesson number three.

Rich Cantillon 19:50
So put your volunteers first. We are the hired help. It is amazing to me I’m I’m I get Get a lot of emails from a lot of my peers, you know, their emails that they send out to their members. It’s amazing to me when I see CEOs in the middle of a ribbon cutting, when I see CEOs in every picture, and they’re kind of front and center, it is not about us, it’s about the people we’re trying to build up. So when we do a ribbon cutting, we like we just had one this morning, when we do a ribbon cutting, it’s all about that business, their employees, not our staff, we’re promoting men. So make sure that you always put your volunteers first, make sure when you have an event, you don’t just hang out with your staff, or hanging out with your chamber chair, that your executive board or your little buddies, make sure when you have a chamber event, you are literally talking to all the people there, you’re working in the room, even at a ribbon cutting, you’re speaking to everyone, making them feel important. When you put people first, they’ll be very loyal, and they’ll do whatever you need. It’s when they’re ignored or don’t feel appreciated. You’re gonna have trouble.

Brandon Burton 21:14
Yeah. And I think a lot of chambers are good about that. Because I you know, connected with a lot of chamber professionals across the country. And as I see pictures of ribbon cuttings, like in that example, I’m often looking for the the executive that I know, and the pitcher. And it’s usually hard to find them if they’re in it. Yeah, usually they’re in the back. And they’re supporting the business, which is that’s where they belong in that photo. Or taking it or Yeah, exactly. So I think they’re, I think a lot of chambers are good on that. But there’s there’s probably some that that needed to hear that as well. So thank you. So your next lesson number

Rich Cantillon 21:53
four, we’ve already kind of talked about this, but you are the chamber I am the face of Papa city. And so everything I say and do, people are looking at. And so I have to be very positive. We had a right after I took my job here, we had a major merger and we lost some estimate three to 5000 jobs when that merger happened. But we’re pocket city, we have great leadership. And we knew that we would survive that and be even stronger after a while, which we are we’re stronger today than we were ever before the merger. And you have to so many people were so negative, so upset, you know, how could this happen to us. And I felt those feelings, but I never relayed them. Because I was the face of the chamber along with the mayor along with economic development, we had to put a good face forward and say positive things. And so you have to remember no matter what people are looking at you and they’re looking at what you say what you put in email, what you put in the paper. So always make Remember, you’re the face of the community, and you can guide whatever happens and the direction, right? Nothing was exciting. I love that.

Brandon Burton 23:20
Yeah, nothing will destroy a good community feeling quicker than a chamber President getting out there and saying, Oh, this really stinks for our community. You know, you got to keep that positive, optimistic point of view. And I think in today’s world, a lot of people are they talk about being authentic. And there’s a way of being authentic without laying all the cards on the table and saying, This is how I feel, and I’m distraught inside versus being authentic, but still optimistic that your community will rebound. And there’s bright things on the horizon. So

Rich Cantillon 23:54
when you lose a company, of course, you’re going to report that, you know, we’ve lost 200 jobs, but you can’t just, you know, how could they do this to us. And so it’s really important. Another thing kind of Brandon along those lines, we have to be the leaders in creating unity. We cannot have division in our community within our leadership. And this is something I see that is an issue across Oklahoma where there’s the chamber doesn’t like Main Street or the chamber cannot stand the city manager or vice versa. I mean, and we have to remember that we have to create a vision and a unity and a focus for our communities. And we have to get past personalities and be determined to make it work. And I just did this week earlier, I had a chamber per one of my friends call. They’re very upset with their city manager, and he’s really not doing a good job. I said you know what do not talk about that, they’ll see that, and he won’t be there long. So you take the high road always be positive. And I guarantee it, it’s not going to last for long. And so our city manager here in Ponca, city, our mayor, our main street, we’re all our economic development, we’re all together, and we enter in, something happens. And I’m not recognized. And maybe I was a big part of that. I don’t get all upset, that doesn’t matter, because I know what I did. So we have to really always take the high road and be that peacemaker, or your communities are not going to be successful.

Brandon Burton 25:41
Right? Yeah, that’s a that’s a bonus lesson right there. Number 11. Right there. So so number five, lesson learned,

Rich Cantillon 25:52
okay, you have to get out of your office, it doesn’t matter if you’re one person, Cooper, it doesn’t matter. You have to schedule every week, time to go see your manager, your members. So many people, you know, you I made it a passion of mine, that I don’t want someone to ever say, rich did not cross the door, my business. And I got marked out time every week, and I go out and I check them off that I and and if you shop local, if everything you do is love a lot of it and already gonna be doing that. But there may be a dentist, that’s a member that’s not your dentist, that I go by and say, Hey, let Doctor know that I came in. I really appreciate all you do. It is not time consuming. And I’ve had so many people say well, I’m just so you just don’t know, I’m just so busy. Know, if you mark it off and planned and then you it’s like a meeting committee meeting. So I really encourage that you get out a we have a 92% retention rate. And I firmly believe it’s because we’re touching our members. And they like that. So make the time to do that kind of stuff, and that you’ll be very successful.

Brandon Burton 27:17
Absolutely. And you’re right, the time management part, if you block it out. I mean, if you don’t block it out, yes, your schedule will fill up and you don’t have time, but you make it a priority to block it out and find a way to enjoy it. You know, it should be something you look forward to getting out. And that’s what the work is about. It’s about supporting these businesses and hearing them listening to them taking it back to the table, you know, different committees and helping to further and advance your own community. So Right, correct. So rolling along to the next lesson.

Rich Cantillon 27:48
Okay, so we already kind of talked about this to treating everyone equal. This is really critical. If you put emphasis on just your big donor members, and you’re at things and that you that you don’t really care about that little mom and pop business, they’re going to see that. And you have to make sure that you’re treating everyone equal, when you’re looking at your board makeup, that it represents your membership, that you have a mom and pop business, you have the head of this industry, you have a not for profit, you have all the aspects of your membership on your board. So I have always put a lot of emphasis and a lot of that was because Blackwell Black was a small town. It’s only 8000 people we had about 280 Members, I think we got up to 300 before I left. And so it was easy, you know, to touch all your members, when you’re a lot more members, you have to make sure you’re doing that at events. So that’s a good way and you got to make sure everyone knows that they’re welcome at the table, that it’s really important to treat everyone the same. When I first came to pop the city, I don’t want to criticize anyone before me, but our chamber had a reputation of being very cliquey that that cannot happen. So many people don’t like to go back to their class reunion, because they felt like they were cliques. And we you cannot have that in our adult world. Because that’s a terrible stigma. So we are not a clicky chamber. Everyone’s welcome. I enjoy everybody. And so really keep that in mind.

Brandon Burton 29:40
Yeah, well, and to your point, it’s easy to follow the money, you know, the bigger donors bigger, you know, higher level members and support them because you can’t lose them. But really, it’s those smaller businesses that are maybe scrapping together whatever they can to join the chamber or maybe it was a hard decision to make, whether or not to join that Amer and they need you more than some of these bigger companies or people that have been around a long time. So yes, treating everyone equal, but realizing that the need for some of these smaller businesses may be stronger than some of the bigger businesses.

Rich Cantillon 30:14
That’s exactly right.

Brandon Burton 30:17
So lesson number seven.

Rich Cantillon 30:19
So it is really important that we’re enthusiastic, that we like people at random, it’s crazy to me, there’s a lot of people in customer service, and they really don’t like people. Well, in Park City, we have manufacturing jobs where you can work on a line, and you don’t have to deal with people. But if you’re in the people business, you have to be enthusiastic, especially a chamber and you have to be passionate. So what that means is, every day, you have to come to work happy, fired up, my brand, my wife crazy, because on Monday mornings all go, here we go. It’s another week. And I mean, it, I’m excited, it’s going to be another week to do great things for Baca city. So you have to be the same every day. And it’s not just us, the CEO, your staff has to be that way. Because I could be the most outgoing, happy, passionate person. But if someone comes in my front door, and my front line person, not nice, grumpy, that that’s going to be our chamber. So it’s not only me, but making sure that the my team has that same attitude. And so that that’s something we have to work on every day. Now in my career, I’ve lost my parents, I’ve lost two siblings. And so I’ve had some real sad stuff. While I’ve been operating a chamber, people are really aware of when you have things in your life that are sad. But what what you can’t do, it can’t affect when you come to work. If it does, you just need to take a leave of absence, or take some sick days or whatever, you need to get over that emotional, whatever. But when you come to work, you have to put that smile on, you have to be passionate, enthusiastic, every day, eight hours a day, or however long you work. That’s critical.

Brandon Burton 32:31
Right. And that enthusiasm I would say is contagious. So your staff is going to follow your lead Yeah, as the leader of your organization, they’re going to look to you. And if you’re coming in with a bad attitude at the front desk person probably is not going to be the most welcoming that people come through the door. But if you can be, you know, brighten and optimistic and you know, happy and cheerful and that all it’s contagious. So it’ll it’ll flow through. So So lesson number eight.

Rich Cantillon 33:01
So we’ve kind of talked about this too, but I want to really re emphasize this. So you can never be in the mud. You can’t be like the pig wallowing in the mud. Talking about people talking when someone’s being rude to you, you know, we had a member the not too long ago come in, and they said yeah, we don’t see any value in what you do. And they were kind of yelling and and come to find out you know, they’re they declared bankruptcy. So the you know, sometimes people you know, they have a lot of pain and hurt and they don’t want to except, you know that he didn’t want to say I’m taking out bankrupt bankruptcy. So he just lashed out at me, you know? And and I took it, I mean, you, you have to always take the high road, you cannot talk I could not tell anyone about that incident. Because that just talking bad about him. I didn’t. Every now and then I’ll tell my chair, if there’s an incident because I feel like they need to be in. If someone’s upset with us. They need to know that. But I’m really careful that I never say anything negative about an issue, or anyone. So I’m going to give you this example. When I was taken in pocket came after me Blackwell that came they wanted me to come and run. I grew up here as well known they knew our success and Blackwell. They wanted they’d been having trouble. They fired like three or four chamber CEOs. They wanted me well at first I said no, I’m not coming while they hired a person he didn’t do well. Well, a year later they came back they said you can raise your kids and Blackwell when they graduate from high school then you can do what you want. We don’t care. So I took the job. I was really excited to come home to my Come down, which I love. Well, there was an individual that someone on the executive board had said, We’re gonna give it to you. Well, they gave it to me. Well, he was very distraught. So he was talking horrible about me, said that I might have been embezzled, and Blackwell, I ran that chamber in the ground, how could they hire me? I mean, some horrific step where you know, people love to tell you, so Oh, did you know he said, blah, blah, blah? Well, so they have this reception for us about a month and a half, after I started with a receiving line back in the day. And anyways, we were standing there, and here’s my wife. And here he comes with his wife. And I said, Oh, honey, this is Mr. Blah, blah, and his wife, and he put his hand down, and my wife wouldn’t shake his hands. She’s looked at him, and is very awkward. And he knew that we knew he’d been talking about him. I did not like that. And I realized Brandon, at that time, I would come home and tell my wife, all this stuff for my wife loves me. And how do I know my wife’s not telling her girlfriend? You can’t believe? And then here you go. So what I do now, and I really encourage this, if I want to get something off my chest, I call Matt provider, Nick, who rents the Topeka Kansas chamber, my best friend in our industry. And I tell Matt, Matt, could get done, no, anyone who talked about me could care less. But I can vent to Matt and I know, no one’s going to know. So I just would encourage you, if you got to get something off your chest, or you feel insulted, or someone’s been mean to you, and you want to share it. Pick someone in Alabama, you know, Montana, that, you know, in our industry, and vent to them don’t do it local.

Brandon Burton 37:06
Yeah, in big trouble. That is a great piece of advice. And you know, taking it home to your spouse, like one, they don’t need that burden, you know, that you share with them and to carry it and carry a secret sometimes, right? So just, yeah. Export that, uh, that unloading to somebody outside the area. I love that lesson. So you got two more here, lesson number nine.

Rich Cantillon 37:36
So this is really critical to you being successful. And it’s so weird, because I have a buddy in our chamber world that said, Hey, your Italy trip was great. We’re about to go on a trip. And I said, that’s fantastic. He said, Yeah, but I’ll still get inundated with emails and all I’ll be getting taxed. And I go seriously, I, I said no, I don’t do any of that. I when I am on vacation, I’m on vacation. When it’s five o’clock, I’ll be back the next day before eight. And I don’t do anything. The biggest issue in our chamber world is people feel like they’re on the clock 24/7 You’ll be burned out, you will get resentful. You’ll get sick of it. And there is no need for it. No one else works that way. So why should we work professional people in a professional industry, and we’re on the clock eight to five. And then when it’s five o’clock, I’m watching my grandkids. I’m watching my kids. I’m doing whatever, I’m enjoying life. And I don’t get back until I come to work. And people know that. And when it’s the weekend, it’s my weekend. I don’t ever look at email I don’t look at I won’t respond to texts. And after a while, like I don’t get those things because it’s that’s how we often Yeah, he feels odd. They know I’ll respond when I’m at work. And within a day, I mean, you text me and I’m at work, you’re gonna get a response. So work the eight to five, but disconnect and don’t make it 24/7 I promise you if you live that way, you’ll never be in the industry like me, almost 30 years you won’t, you’ll wet because you’re you’re just going to be worn out. So I was told that early on by another chamber person dich Rasch, who ran our State Chamber, he said, make sure you don’t work 24/7 That’s just unacceptable, and you’ll be successful. And I found that to be very true.

Brandon Burton 39:53
Right? And I’ve even seen some chamber execs have a an automated, you know, auto responder on their email. So after five o’clock, they’ll say Tony Felker in Frisco is a good example of this, if you email him at 515, you’re gonna get an automatic reply that says, It’s after five o’clock. And by experience, I’ve learned that if I go, if I pay attention to this, I’m going to miss some details or whatever. So I’ll respond to you tomorrow morning when I’m back in the office. And it’s a classy way of I think of addressing it and just saying, I got it. And I’ll get back to you, you know, when the time is appropriate. And email, I think people are totally fine with that for sure. So the final lesson number 10, that you have to share with us. But what do you have, don’t be

Rich Cantillon 40:39
overwhelmed. Don’t let the chamber consume, you don’t get stressed out. My predecessor here at the pump, the Chamber died of a massive heart attack. Because he was overwhelmed. We had another person that ran our chamber, when I was in high school, my dad was on the board. And he literally had a nervous breakdown, he was so overwhelmed. And that is really sad to me. So when whenever you have an event, or you have all of all of this stuff, don’t let it consume you. One of the things that I’ve learned that can help alleviate that is write down at the end of every day, I write down everything I need to accomplish the next day. And then as I go through the day, I literally mark it off as I’ve accomplished it. So here’s today. Yeah, and I’ve already marked off stuff that I’ve already done. I literally am that all my work, it has saved me all these years. And I’m not overwhelmed. Another thing, if you have events, if you do a lot of events, with each event, create a folder and literally write down everything you need to do. I have to before the event three months out, I do this, this this, and then a month out, I do this two weeks out. And so you’re not having to redo it every year. Oh, what do we do for the auction? Oh, my gosh, it’s all in a booklet. And it’s your to do list. So if you take anything away, that I’ve said today, to me, the most important is the last thing I’m sharing is don’t be overwhelmed, write down what you need to do. And as you do it, mark it off. At the end of the day, when I see everything marked off. I know it was a success. Now having said that every now and then there’s something I didn’t I literally did not get to, okay, I’ll add it to tomorrow’s list. And I’ll it’ll be the top priority. So don’t be overwhelmed. We have a fun job. I love being a chamber CEO, and I’m going to really miss it when I retire. I love making a difference. I love seeing something think, wow, we could add that to that park or Wow, we could do this start downtown. And I can do it. I can start that ball. I love that. So or helping recruit a doctor or an industry or whatever we need a pastor and showing them our community and, and be and getting them here. That’s so rewarding. So enjoy what we do and have fun with it.

Brandon Burton 43:47
I love that usually asked for a tip or action item at the end. And I think that is perfect. Just enjoy it.

Rich Cantillon 43:55
Enjoy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 43:56
So Rich, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Rich Cantillon 44:04
We have to be relevant. So we have to be willing to change we have to be willing, you know, my focus here at our chamber in my 20 years here has really changed multiple times when the merger happened and we were focused on keeping our people growing our people. Now we’re focused on housing, which is a real need and pakka city. So it’s really it’s being relevant and always willing to readapt. So every year, we have a retreat and with our new board, our incoming board and with our existing board and we talked about what is going to be our focus in the next year. And we do that in November and that dictates what our business plan is going to be what your return on your investment to the chamber is going to be because you have to Joe, your members their return on their investment. And so that’s always exciting. And it’s always driven by what’s happening. So for example, 2022, we came out with the COVID. And we doing COVID, we were all about making sure our businesses survived, and really promoting what they were doing to to survive. And we were recognized by our State Chamber as a leader in that area in what we did some innovative ideas. But now, when we came out at COVID, for 2022, our world has become very angry, and mean, and people don’t mind yelling or cussing someone out in a store business, or it’s just crazy. So we’re doing a kindness campaign. And it’s been incredible. So we have 12 Marxists here. And we took a month, and like this month, it’s on our senior citizens. So how do you show kindness to senior citizens, and then we come up with action items. And that’s been really awesome. And I’ve really enjoyed doing that. So being relevant, looking at what your community is faced with? And how are you going to take care of it.

Brandon Burton 46:18
I like that, I like that a lot and be be relevant and be willing to change that.

Rich Cantillon 46:24
You asked about the future chambers. That’s how we’re going to succeed. If we’re not a player, if we’re not a leader, if we’re not relevant. If we’re not showing the return on our investment, we on their investment, we’re not going to be relevant, we’re not going to be able to sustain Chambers of Commerce. So keep that in mind.

Brandon Burton 46:45
You’re absolutely right. So Rich, as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put out any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about some of these lessons that you shared with us or in general, just how you guys are doing things there in pocket city, what would be the best way or ways for people to reach out and connect with you?

Rich Cantillon 47:05
So the best way would be through email and it’s rich@poncacitychamber.com. I love to text. So if you want to text me it’s 580-363-6665. And I’d love to hear from anyone and send our business plans and anything that we do that would help you we would love to do our we have we do tourism for the city of pumped city have a great relationship. So if they’re interested in partnering with their city, like could share how we do that anything they need. I’d love to share. So thank you so much.

Brandon Burton 47:54
Thank you This has been great. And I like I said at the beginning I hope some of these lessons will help a newer chamber exec be able to shortcut some of their learning curve and, and maybe take away some of those growing pains that happen when you’re new in the industry. But Rich, I appreciate you joining us today and sharing these lessons with us. I think this is terrific.

Rich Cantillon 48:16
Thank you, Brandon for all you do.

Brandon Burton 48:18
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!

Looking 25 Years into the Future with Bryan Derreberry

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Bryan Derreberry. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

And now your host, he enjoys smoked meat from his Traeger, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

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

Brandon Burton 1:02
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

Our guest for this episode is Bryan Derreberry. As President and CEO of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce for 11 years, Bryan leads one of South Carolina’s largest chambers in its regional advancement work. Bryan has an established executive management track record, featuring more than 30 years in chamber leadership and advocacy roles. Prior to joining the Charleston Metro Chamber. Bryan was president and CEO of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce in Wichita, Kansas, where he directed the state’s largest Metro Chamber for seven and a half years. He also served as president and CEO of the Catawba County, North Carolina and Middleton Ohio Chambers of Commerce respectively. Bryan began his chamber career as a state lobbyist for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, of course in Ohio. He holds holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Wittenberg University and is and has completed graduate coursework towards a combined MA and PhD in American politics, and international relations from the American University. Bryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a

Bryan Derreberry 2:31
little bit better. Well, Brandon, thank you for the opportunity. You know, it’s I love when you say chamber champions, because I I think about all my colleagues across the country and the amazingly important work they do and strengthening their business communities and advancing their regions. And I think one of the interesting parts of my background is my intention, when I started my career, was to go into lobbying full time, and had that chance with the Greater Cincinnati chamber. And at that time, that was the fourth largest chamber in America and represented that business community in Columbus, Ohio, four days a week and really treasured the opportunity. And somebody said to me, do you miss your lobbying days? And I think one of the things that people can learn about chamber executives, is that I said, I lobby as much now as I did when I did it full time, right? This looks different. I said it different audiences, different opportunities. A lot of times, it could be anything from a neighborhood association, embracing a new piece of infrastructure, or a group that’s not familiar with our chamber, we launched a major DNI effort three years ago. So we’re, we’re speaking out in numerous communities in our metro area, and sharing with them about the chamber for the first time. So it’s powerful to think about how every chamber exec in the country and many of their teammates day in and day out need great lobbying skills. So those degrees and that initial experience have really served me well.

Brandon Burton 4:15
Absolutely, yes. And I firmly believe that anyone listening to this it’s involved with the chamber, they are champions for their community and and when I tried thinking of a name for the audience, you know, that that seemed to fit well, so kind of rolls off your tongue but it has great meaning to so thanks for for recognizing that and you take a moment and tell us a little bit more about the the Charleston Metro Chamber to kind of the type of chamber Scope of Work size, staff budget, that sort of thing. Just to give us some perspective before we dive into our conversation.

Bryan Derreberry 4:52
You bet. We have 1600 members. A budget that said six and a half have million 30 full time staff members. And we have four primary platforms that we deliver our work through. Number one, like every chamber, a significant membership platform. Number two, a important government relations platform. We have three full time lobbyists on our team, one up in the state house in Colombia, and then two that work locally with our three counties and 30 municipalities. I think that’s a distinctive flavor for our organization, with regard to how important it is to get alignment, in all those communities, and I’ll talk a little bit later about, we use a partner ethos to lobby versus the bloody nose ethos that seems to be typical for the rest of our United States today. And that serves us very well. We have a large community advancement platform. And within that platform, we do diversity, equity and inclusion work. We do significant professional development programming work for our members. And also we do workforce and talent development. And then our marketing and communications platform is the fourth platform with regard to making sure not only that membership, can actively get engaged in what we do, but also the 830,000 people. And 165,000 employees represented by our membership, have an appreciation for what goes on within the chamber. So a very gifted group of folks, board of directors of 68, Executive Committee of 26. So very actively involving all the sectors in our metro area, and the volunteer leadership of our chamber. And I know one thing that chamber champions understand out there is that a lot of times we have to explain to people that we are a volunteer, directed organization. And they’ll come to us and say, Oh, you need to take a position on this issue. Well, we’ll go through our committee structure, and determine whether we take a position on the issue or not, it’s not my decision, or our government relations team, or our workforce development team to make a policy decision. It’s the responsibility of our volunteers. And I think after a number of years here, people now appreciate that, and they value that. So I think that’s another dynamic of our chamber is we very much want to put our members and key leadership roles in directing the chamber, we see ourselves as a regional advancement organization. So we look at that three county metro area and we look at big Rakesh used to work on already mentioned diversity, equity, inclusion, housing, attainability, mobility solutions, overall quality of business environment. So significant work that will advance our region over the next 25 to 50 years.

Brandon Burton 8:09
Right. I love that the fact that you pointed out you know, if the issue gets presented to the chamber, you take it to your committees, your board. A while back, I had Matt Morrow from the Springfield, Missouri chamber on the podcast, and he talked a lot about the wisdom of crowds. And when especially when you have a board of that size, 68 and different committees and whatnot, as you bring a different different topics in there. They all come in from their different backgrounds and experience and be able to know what the vision is the direction the Chamber’s trying to go. And then from there, combined experience and wisdom, they’re gonna land on the best possible outcome and direction to take up on different issues and policies even so glad you pointed that out.

Bryan Derreberry 8:57
You know, Brandon, I would strongly agree with your assessment. I am. This is my 36th year in the profession and I, overall, those board meetings, executive committee meetings, government relations committee meetings, I’ve seen the wisdom of our leaders proven out time and again. And I think another thing that every chamber champion listening recognizes is that they may come up with a position that’s contrary to what I personally believe, on a policy issue, maybe even what our team believes. And at the end of the day, we step forward and implement that decision, because it is their organization. So I think if you’re young and you’re chamber champion development, it’s important to realize that and of course, we want passionate people in our profession. And we want people that are highly skilled and able to craft how an issue needs to be examined. But then you have to be responsible to the degree See that it may end up somewhere that you didn’t imagine it would go. In over all those years, I’ve never seen it a selection of an outcome or a policy position that wasn’t best for the business community. So my encouragement would be to trust, that leadership, trust working with them to find the right pathway forward for your community. And there’s an old saying, you and I both heard of Brandon, you know, if they write it, they’ll underwrite it. And they, if they develop it and fill, it’s their own, they will get up and give public testimony, they’ll provide funding for lobbying efforts. So that’s part of the beauty of this profession is that, you know, we do lead heterogeneous organizations. This is not the American Dental Association or the American Medical Association. So we’ll have everything from a sole proprietor to somebody leading Joint Base Charleston here with 26,000 employees, and all across that spectrum, people will bring input an interest, and that’ll craft a composite position, or a composite direction. That’s really powerful. Right? Takes a lot of patients.

Brandon Burton 11:16
That’s right, it does. It takes a lot of patients. So our topic for discussion today, I’m a big fan of helping people and even chambers to understand the potential the power within them to become something greater. And for our discussion today, we’re focusing on looking 25 years into the future, which I think is very important in that aspect as far as realizing what the potential is of your organization, to be able to see what direction you can go and what needs to happen. You know, those those baby steps so to speak between here and there, and we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

From frustrations trying to connect with decision makers to trouble demonstrating value to difficulties adjusting to an uncertain post COVID world who does your membership rep turn to for expert membership sales advice? Holman Brothers can help right now. They’re year round Next Level Coaching program supplies a total coaching and mentoring support system in a way that’s never been available for membership pros. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

All right, Bryan, we’re back. And as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about looking 25 years into the future as a chamber organization looking into the future. What at the end of this conversation, I’ll ask you how you see the future of chambers going forward. But in the meantime, before we get to that future and How do you see from here moving forward over the next 25 years,

Bryan Derreberry 15:04
Brandon and we do something that we feel is particularly powerful. About mid year we’ll begin a process called annual partnership calls. So we will go to somewhere between 180 to 250 of our members. And we sit down. And we ask a couple of questions that influence what that runway looks like over the next 25 years. The first question is, talk about the next three to five years of your company, and identify where you think there are excellent opportunities for your competitive growth, and then identify things that are impediments, speed bumps, and then we just, were quiet. And I think anytime you ask somebody about their company, and how they’re doing, where they’re going, what’s working, what’s challenging, you get really good, really good input. And the other the other question that really registers with them is that if there were one to two things in our metro area that you could change for the better, what would they be? So I’d love to tell you, we come back with a lot of disparate information and no agreement, we come back with a real clear picture as to what are the most significant opportunities, and what are the most pressing challenges. And when we look at those in combination, a lot of what we described on how we’re designed as an organization is influenced by the annual partnership calls in our area housing attainability is the number one regional issue. It will be a 25 year fix. To get the proper stock, the proper pricing, we’re in a real challenge with regard to our supply versus our demand. We’re growing by 33 net people a day, and we’re just having a hard time providing workforce housing that’s affordable. So we have a huge coalition working on that all three counties, public sector partners, private sector leaders, citizens, different associations. And we know right now we’re at 6000 houses behind for attainable housing in our metro market. That’s a couple of decades. So another one is mobility solutions, we’re getting ready in 2026 to undertake high speed bus lanes. So major mass transit project 21 Miles 2020 stops along the way. And for our metro, you know, if you’re in a, we were just in Boston for Metro leadership visit, they’ve been hopping on the tee for a while now. For us, that’s an important first step, there will be other lines to follow. But removing, even if we can remove eight to 10% of the traffic from our highways, that extends their longevity, it cuts down on congestion. So those are the kinds of issues that emerge. And it’s not us sitting in some room at the Chamber, figuring out where we go the next 25 years. It’s the people that want to be the employers, the citizens, the electeds, that continue to help our region thrive, identify where we’re going. And in that mix, there are many of our elected bodies, there are stakeholder partners. So we’re getting a really great level of input that’s formulating where we go. The other thing we just completed, we did an 18 month study. It’s called one region roadmap and used SP Friedman out of Chicago, Illinois to undertake our effort. And what it does, as a lot of communities don’t know what those big rock issues are, doesn’t take very long to figure those out. But this is going to be a 10 year plan, where every year we’ll identify five to seven priorities for the region to work on collectively. And there will be we’re using a local governing network,

which my political science professors from long ago would have really liked hearing. But what that is it means there’ll be a lead agent, we’re going to be the lead agent for housing attainability will involve other stakeholders throughout the community. And then we’ll begin to work on gaining annual metric identified success and creating more attainable housing. So equitable did Dual accesses another one, entrepreneurial development is another one. But this gives us a roadmap as a region for a decade. And at the heart of the one reaching roadmap is equitable access for all of our citizens to living, learning and earning opportunities. So I think you have to have a foundational piece that engages everyone. And that’s the piece, we want everybody to be able to have those attributes as we move through the decades ahead. So listen, well build a strategic plan that has lead agents that will be responsible for the work that’s being undertaken. And they get after it year in and year out, we have a large steering committee that will evaluate each of the lead agents on an annual basis to make sure they’re performing. So you know, it’s the classic thing brand. And if you if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and we’re just really dedicated to that kind of work. And I would encourage chamber champions across the country that are listening, there’s a couple of key learnings in there. Number one, you want to bring as many people along as possible. So get out and talk to your members, talk to your elected officials, talk to the people that you’re going to need to do this with. We never say the chamber is going to do this work. We say along with our partners, we’re gonna tackle these annual priorities. The other thing is to make them concrete. That’s hard for a lot of communities. I’ve been in other communities that love to study and talk. But when you say annually, we’re going to achieve x, y, we’re gonna accomplish why. And then you report on it, then you have credibility, then it’s not a study that goes and sits on the shelf and collect stuff. So listen, well, engage others be concrete, and produce results. So we’re, we’re excited about one region roadmap, we kick it off in October. So when you and I talk this time next year, yeah, I’ll be able to, I’ll be able to tell you more about getting divorced in one region roadmap.

Brandon Burton 22:18
Yeah. So I know leading up to this discussion, you had shared with me, some of these topics that you guys are looking on. Maybe areas of focus, as you look to the future of Charleston, and and you talked about some of these, like the attainable housing and the you know, the infrastructure and mobility and things like that, as you have these different. We’ll call them topics areas of focus. How do you go about focusing on each one? I assume there’s some sort of a committee for each area of focus? Is that right? Have you said it’s one thing to create division, and we need to expand and put some focus and, and work over in these areas? But then how do you go from that, that vision to actually rolling it out to? Let’s take some action on these different steps? What does that look like there in Charleston?

Bryan Derreberry 23:12
You know, it’s interesting, and I think inherent in your in your question is a couple of things for chamber champions number one, regardless of the size of your chamber, and I have a deep passion for chambers that have staff under the number of 10. I think they work harder than any other chamber in the country, you’re going to need to hire some experts. We’ve been very intentional over the past 11 years, that we add people to our team that have significant expertise. So while they won’t do it on their own, they have a career track record in the areas whether it’s workforce development, government relations, diversity, equity and inclusion, attainable housing. They’re an expert. Because I think that you’ll be pleased as a chamber when you make that investment. And when you’re smaller, and maybe one or two major issues. So we’ve been very intentional about in that group of 30. Hiring people that have that level of expertise. The other thing that we’ve done is built a very strong committee structure. So however, those issues are moving through our organization, there are one or two or more committees that will be touching them. And we’ll be following through on what we commit to do organizationally to achieve results. The final thing is a talk a little bit about that local governing network and if anybody would like information on that we’re happy to share. You have to engage the whole region. So you look at something like the high speed bus lanes. Our Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments is working with all the governments along that set of high speed bus lane routes. We’re working through our regional policy committee, which handles all of our local regional work. But there also is going to be a lead agent in that area that will pull together, how many ever stakeholders are required to implement. So a lot of it’s leveraging what I call critical mass. So you got some key folks at the top that have expertise, and then they’re bringing partners together to, in this instance, transportation, overlays for development on those 20 bus stops. So you know, there’s some sophistication that’s required when you do that kind of work. So, you know, my encouragement would get experts on your team, make sure the region understands the top issues, bring stakeholders together, that can move the issue. And then, again, metrics that make sure over 510 1520 years, you’re making progress, because in that timeframe, Brandon, you and I both know, you’re gonna have different mayors, you’re going to have different city councils, you’re going to have different county councils, you’re going to have a different state legislative delegation. So you have to be you chamber, and top stakeholders that are in it for the long run, you have to keep the plumb line very clear, and keep coming back to the issues. Because a lot of times public and private sector partners can get easily distracted. So that’s the other thing is that we look at all of our work as forever work. Okay, you’re forever doing housing affordability, you’re forever improving infrastructure. You’re forever maintaining your business climate. For us as a coastal community, you’re forever looking at resiliency. So part of that is developing a drumbeat internally to be in it for the long game. Yeah, every year, as you said, you want to have annual achievements. But you have to have those long game goals, talented team, great partners, focus and metrics to be able to move to we call them big rock issues. Because they don’t go away. You know, somebody said, you know, we have funding, we have something called Accelerate greater Charleston that funds. A lot of the professional staff that the technical professional staff is somebody said, Well, when are we going to stop doing accelerate greater Charleston? And we just smile, and we say never,

Brandon Burton 27:50
whenever you give up, you know, like,

Bryan Derreberry 27:53
you want to quit? Yeah, you know, and last one out, cut off the lights. And what I think what helps private sector companies, especially if they’re developing products, have said, you have an r&d arm, don’t you? And they Oh, yeah, we have research and development. Well, for chambers, your research and development is positioning the region for the future and putting the building blocks in place. I said, if your r&d went away, you’d be selling the same product over and over, you’re always looking to improve. And that begins to help people wrap their brains around. Okay, this is forever work. This is a long game. And the other beauty I just shared earlier, we went to Boston with 100 leaders, is get your leaders out to other metro markets that have like opportunities and challenges. So they can see the kind of work they’ve done. And then we come home and people say, hey, we saw how they did that in Boston, we can do that. Or they come home and say, wow, they had a big miss, we can really learn from that. So when we tackle a like issue, we don’t make the same mistakes. The other beauty of that trip is that you think all the leaders in your community know each other and kind of have a comparable set of aspirations. They don’t know. So when you get 100 people together that are having lunch and dinner and some staying up till college late hours, getting to know each other better. They come home aligned. You know, a lot of this is about not only what you’re tackling, but its alignment, and persistence. So that annual trip kind of says, Okay, we’ve gotten to x with high speed bus lanes. So we’re gonna go look at somebody that’s either built them all the way out, or maybe they have light rail. So again, it’s I call it staying 20% dissatisfied. Yeah, never, never 100% satisfied. that you have to continually prod the region to achieve at a higher level. Part of the challenge to Brandon is that, you know, I’ve been in places that are BB plus communities, it’s hard to get a BB plus to an A, it’s really easier to take a C or a D and pop it up to an A, because people feel the threat. They feel the need for collaboration and alignment. You know, when you’re a B plus, you’re kind of fat and happy. Right? Do we really need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:33
you’re too comfortable? Any adjustments? Yeah.

Bryan Derreberry 30:37
And that’s when we say there are 396 other mshs in this nation, that one our employers and they want our talent. So yes, we need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:45
Yeah, that’s I love that point. And that being the 20% just satisfied it. Yes. Always, always looking for that room to improve. I love that. salutely. So and I’m sure this answer will vary. But as there are different committees and whatnot on these different topics. You had mentioned doing these leadership visits to other cities, which I think is awesome. It’s a great way to look at a certain topic and how a city that you may aspire to be like and in certain aspects that I see great value in that. As far as the nitty gritty, the day to day. How often do some of these committees meet as a monthly? Is it weekly? Is it quarterly? Are they all different? Depending on what it is? How do you? How do you say that in your community?

Bryan Derreberry 31:32
There, at least monthly, if not twice a month. And we’re big believers, our board this year will have had 10 board meetings and 10 executive committee meetings. You know, I hear people say, Oh, we you know, chamber champions. I apologize if I’m stepping on toes. Oh, we do a quarterly. Okay, these kinds of issues. If you do a quarterly and somebody misses a quarterly meeting, they miss half a year. Yeah. Okay. We call that creating a drumbeat. Whether it’s committees that are working on policy, or programs or initiatives, or executive committee and board. If you lose the drumbeat within your organization on key issues, you’re not going to be able to move fast enough to make a difference. Well, they’re all busy people. And I’m gonna give you a great example. Brandon, we tried to go to every other month when I was in Wichita, and the board rebelled. That’s a cool message. Yeah, one I’m meet monthly. So I think sometimes, yeah, it’s a lot of work. We have an amazing executive ops team. And it’s a lot of work to do 20 meetings a year with, you know, large lead volunteer bodies. And it’s the work we signed up for.

Brandon Burton 32:58
Absolutely. And it’s that forever work as it’s that forever work.

Bryan Derreberry 33:03
And, you know, the the thing we talk about is, and I just met with our exec ops team yesterday, and they’re incredible. And we said, our goal is to create an experience for every volunteer that has never been met or matched in our metro area, from knowing about their family, their names, their interest, and taking care of them. So when it comes time for one of them to be an officer, or to lead a committee or to get more of their people engaged Hekia I’m going to deal with the Charleston Metro Chamber. And so that that kind of intentional focus. And that’s why we sold out that trip to Boston in record time. And we don’t want to take 200 people, you know, we’re kind of like 100 Yeah, you know, if you get over 100, you start to have a three ring circus, and they don’t bond the same way. Yeah. But that that internal clock for us? It’s kind of like a metronome. How are we honoring them and engaging them. So they think I’ve never had a volunteer experience like this. Because let’s face it, we are battling for their time, talent and treasure, there are 4600 non enough for profits, and just the greater Charleston area. You know, as your communities get bigger, that’s probably 15,000 20,000 25,000. So it’s pretty rarefied air to get top leaders. The other thing we do a little bit different because we are really committed to the ENI is that we don’t have to have the the gal or the guy in the corner office. A lot of organizations just say, Oh, I only want the CEO or the president. Right. Well, we’ll say is give me number three, or number four, that will be that CEO and president in 10 to 15 years Yeah, so we can have the level of gender ethnic, racial diversity on our board that reflects our community. It also makes us a lot more healthy from an organizational standpoint,

Brandon Burton 35:13
and possibly more time to give to the purpose and the cause that you’re working on to always go for the number one, they’re going to be some of the busiest people. Not that the number three or four is not busy, but they’re able to work it in a little bit more and build that future along with you. So you’ve hit on some really awesome points in our discussion here. If you were to try to condense down to maybe a tip or an action item for chamber champions listening that want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you put out there and suggest for them to consider

Bryan Derreberry 35:53
my greatest tip would be pick one to three things in become an expert. And that that’s going to weave right back into what we’ve been talking about Brandon, you’ve got to be committed to do it long term. So let’s say you pick developing a pipeline from your high schools and middle schools for your top two or three business sectors just know front side that that’s going to be 15 to 25 years. Think what we learned during the pandemic, because it was probably a sharing experience for every chamber and business member Association in our nation is that it was the meaningful work that maintained our most significant investors. It wasn’t the business after hours, it wasn’t the networking events. It was they could look at the chamber. And the chamber in our metro area got together with the council of governments and other stakeholders. And we created a whole reopening strategy for our metro marketplace. We met every day at four o’clock, Monday through Thursday for almost six months to get the region opened again. I felt like I had a whole new family. And sometimes it got irritating. But I wouldn’t have traded that we build bonds between organizations and governments that we never had before. So that would be my tip be be substantive, be relevant. And we use a term I think it’s the you know, if you were to ask me the the Chamber’s magic power, our secret sauce, we use a term called seine center, sa N E. Your chamber, chamber champions can be the same center on these issues, you can bring parties together. And whether it’s workforce development, whether it’s diversity, equity, inclusion, whether it’s housing attainability, whether it’s infrastructure solutions, whether it’s recruitment and retention of either businesses or employees, you can be the organization that brings all the parties together, that need to be aligned to do the work. That to me is what a chamber really is. Our mission statement is initiate advocate and empower the region to produce a prosperous business environment. And it’s a little different than a lot of chambers. Because they flip business environment in a region, we know that our region has to have the ingredients that are aligned to make employers, employees and citizens successful. So look at the region as your laboratory, look at your county as your laboratory. If you’re a City Chamber, look at your city as a laboratory, and find those one to three things that really need to be worked on. That would be my greatest encouragement. And and when you do it, you’re gonna get real popular real fast. So you’re gonna have to learn how to say no, yeah. That’s right, because let’s say this camera does such a good job on developing those middle and high school talent pipelines for industry. We wanted to do this now. We wanted to do that. So I think the other thing is to when you do those annual partnership calls, as I mentioned to you, we didn’t come back with 50 Things came back with probably five to seven things that every employer is focused on. So you know, stick to those critical realities, and and go deep and do a great job. And then when it comes renewal time and recruitment time, somebody will say, Oh, yeah, that chamber. They really have the best interest of the business. Unity in our region in mind, they’re worth investing in. So that would be my do stuff that matters and do it. Well.

Brandon Burton 40:09
I love that. So the question that I mentioned at the very beginning that that we would circle back to towards the end is how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Bryan Derreberry 40:21
I’m bullish, I think about what’s occurred over the window is what we’re in pandemic endemic, the past two, three quarters of a year, and I know for our chamber just to bring it home to right here, we look totally different than when we entered. We have a set of members, a set of stakeholders, a set of raving fans in the community, because of how we opened up our organization, for allowing us to assist anybody that needed help. And that that runs a little counter to the the typical Oh, we only help members. Well, when when your community is facing what we’ve all faced. During the pandemic, you help everybody you can help. And you make again, choices. So we look very different today, we look more open to diverse partners, diverse audiences. And we’re working on stuff a lot of chambers, you know, 20 years ago, maybe if you were in a major metro community, you were doing DNI, but I think chambers are going to be leaders for their regions, excuse me. And the years ahead, unlike any other time, I think that the credibility of the chamber when they tackle those issues, even if they’re not successful, and they’re going to be successful in the vast majority of instances. I think there’s a caring tone and tenor and a level of respect by leaders saying, Yeah, we need a rallying point. And I think I think it’s changed. And if your your chambers worth its salt, it’ll step into that opportunity and, and really make a big difference. SOT I’m very excited for the future. However, I do believe one of the things we continually learn is that it can’t, it can’t be all about the fun stuff. Right. And I mean, there are, somebody said to me, how many organizations in your community do networking events, somewhat goods? Probably all 46 months? not for profits? Yeah. So yes, do we have strong programming? We do. We do. But we’re probably one of the communities leaders for providing professional development programming. We have the six different leadership types of offerings. So we know right now, as you well know, in your market, Brandon, attracting and retaining talent is the number one business issue. So again, always making sure your chamber is plugged into what’s relevant, and then providing it with the highest level of expertise you can undertake. And if you’re small, don’t let that slow you down. You’ve got people in your membership. You’ve got volunteers and members that can come alongside of you, and build out the type of programming that you need. That’s one of the powers of small communities is that they can really rally that type of asset set and make it work. So I’m excited. I’m, you know, I think that chambers have always been amazingly relevant. We celebrate a little birthday next year. Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna be 250 years old. Wow. That we’re the we’re the oldest continuing operating chamber in America. So founded three years before our nation became a country. I’d say we’re in it for the long game.

Brandon Burton 44:13
Yeah, doing that forever work. I love it. So I’d love for you to be able to share some, any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn sure but as you’re doing there in Charleston,

Bryan Derreberry 44:27
it’s it’s a really easy, bderreberry@charlestonchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 44:43
That is perfect. And I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode, too. So if somebody always,

Bryan Derreberry 44:48
always happy to talk this profession, and you know, I think your question Brandon on the future is that many chambers are at an inflection point. Mm. But there were ways that they used to do things and things that used to matter. And the inflection point is some of those still have value. The greater value though is marshaling the the leaders and assets of your community and aligning them and doing significant work. So we’re at that neat juncture, so many chambers have already crossed over. And if anybody wants to talk about the both the rewards and the pitfalls, because it’s hard when you enter into a new area of work. And also there are ways to enter in that you can have some immediate victories and set yourself up for long term success.

Brandon Burton 45:47
Yeah, I think that’s important to be able to have that encouragement going along that, that you are going in the right direction. So I love that. Bryan, I appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, providing, you know, great vision and insight for chamber champions listening. I’m sure everyone got a lot of value out of this. But thank you for being a part of the program today. I appreciate it.

Bryan Derreberry 46:13
Well, I love you championing our industry. I believe so greatly in the work that I see peer organizations and colleagues do across the country and America is great because of great chambers. So thank you for being an advocate.

Brandon Burton 44:58
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!

Accreditation Process with Dewan Clayborn

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Dewan Clayborn. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he believes the best way to get better at something is to put in the reps is my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the chamber chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal on the podcast to help introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Matt Morrow 0:47
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

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

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

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Dewan Clayborn. Dewan is the president of the League City Regional Chamber of Commerce, and he’s been there since July of 2019. Since Dewan’s arrival at the league City Regional Chamber, they’ve seen exponential growth having some of the most success that their chambers ever had in 60 years, bringing in over 600 new members to date more than 500,000 plus views of the chamber website. multitude of ribbon cuttings and so much more. The ones leadership has seen the league City Regional Chamber of Commerce become one of the fastest growing chambers in Texas and become a four star accredited Chamber of Commerce putting them in the top 3% of all chambers of commerce in the United States, all in less than three years. The one was a 40 under 40 recipient for ACCE as well as for Galveston County in 2021. He majored in Business Administration at the University of Central Arkansas, and he started out in management managerial work upon graduation from college. Don is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, but made the decision to move to Texas due to the state providing so many business opportunities. Dewan grew up with the love of basketball in business and still plays basketball that is to this day for a male division League. Nuan has worked in the chamber world since 2015. After being laid off from Target during its breach scandal, he became the director of special events at the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce. He fell in love with the mission and culture of chambers. Dewan believes his spiritual gift is serving and cease working at the Chamber is fulfilling his gift and a wonderful way to serve his community. He serves on multiple multitude of nonprofit boards and as a mentor for the Chauncey Glover project as well as a founding member of branch which is brothers renovating adolescents and creating heroes, a membership program dedicated to help him minority children in single parent homes or in juvenile system. He’s also on the board of directors for the African American Marketing Association. Dewan, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber tap podcast. I feel like it’s been working in progress to get you on the show. And I’m glad we’re making the happen. But I’d love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something else interesting about yourself so you can get to know you better.

Dewan Clayborn 3:45
Sure, of course, though, I thought you’re going to trim down to by longer and longer. But know how long so the world, Dewan Clayborn, President, CEO of the leek city, Regional Chamber of Commerce, and first of all, Brandon, thanks for having me. I’ve been an avid listener to you and I’ve listened to the podcast. I love it. And I’m just excited to finally be here.

Brandon Burton 4:09
I’m excited to have you on here just to I’ll say that an interesting fact is Dewan turned me on to wearing shorts at conferences inside thing beside each other. I think it was at TCC I think. And you know, here I am wearing slacks and this shirt and everything. And I’m like, man, like they did say casual dress. So So then the next conference, I see him I’m wearing shorts and he’s not the only one left me hanging.

Dewan Clayborn 4:41
Next Conference, I wear my shorts again.

Brandon Burton 4:43
There we go there. Yeah. Well tell us a little bit more about the league City Regional Chamber kind of size staff budget type of work do you guys cover just to give us a little bit more perspective?

Dewan Clayborn 4:55
Great. So first off, Lake City is the largest city in Galveston County. There’s over 120,000 as a population, Lake City is a 15, fastest growing city in the US right now. And so we are really smack dab in the middle of, on your way to Galveston to kheema. All of these tourist destinations you have to drive right through league city league city is 48% undeveloped. So I tell people for architects, they can be an artist and draw out the development that they want. And so because of that, it attracts so many different businesses to league city, I was actually blessed to help negotiate bringing Amazon there, which created over 200, over 500 jobs in our community. And because whenever Amazon comes somewhere, of course, other businesses are watching. And so I work very closely with the city’s economic development director, Scott Livingston, and we’re all about recruiting businesses to leak city. But of course, my main goal as the chamber is to business retention and keeping those doors open. And so a lot going on this league city, we’re a Regional Chamber. So we have businesses in Galveston County, Brasilia County in Harris County. And so we’re here to sell ArcSight all businesses no matter what city because we know business is hard. And so we don’t want them to do it alone. And there’s no other way to do it then with one the best chambers in the nation right now.

Brandon Burton 6:25
I love that and that does give a good taste a good flavor of what you guys are involved with at the moment and and like you said, just that rapid growth in your area, which doesn’t happen by accident, you know, I mean, it helps you have undeveloped land that people can kind of dry out and see the vision that they want. But I mean, you guys are doing some things right there and working with the city and economic development to attract those businesses to the area. So great job. Thank you. So our topic that we decided to settle on for our discussion today is going to be around the the accreditation process. And as I shared in the bio, um, you guys are a four star accredited chamber. So I know there’s other chambers out there that are contemplating or maybe going through the process itself. So it’ll be beneficial to hear, you know, from your point of view going through the process and what it was like and to be able to help some of these other chambers be prepared to go through it as well. And we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

When you really think about it, is it realistic to expect your membership rep to deliver consistent results without consistent coaching? Much like an elite athlete, your membership rep must be aligned and performing at their best which doesn’t happen automatically. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching programs supply the indispensable training, guidance and support your membership rep needs to keep their performance in high gear. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

All right, John, we’re back. So tell us as far as the accreditation process goes, maybe let’s start at the beginning, what made you guys decide that you wanted to go after an accreditation?

Topic-Accreditation

Dewan Clayborn 10:16
Well, before I jump in, I have to give recognition or recognition is due. And so you mentioned that started at Fort Bend chamber. And I did, and that was under one of the best leaders in the chamber industry carry Schmidt. And so being there, we were actually a five star chamber. And so I learned about accreditation there, because that’s all we would talk about. And I was like, why do we keep talking about this? And then I started doing research on like, Okay, this is what separates our chambers from the risks. Because we have a saying, in a chamber world, when you say one chamber, you only think. And so that’s when I learned about it. And so as I was there, the chamber is actually for bench and was getting ready for the reaccreditation. Because it’s a distinction for five years. And so on that for fear, you want to gear it up and start mobilizing your leadership to get ready to apply again. And so I just had one little small portion, because while I was there, I was director of special events. So I was kind of over to governance piece. And it was just so intriguing the amount of details. And it really helped me learn more about the chamber more about my role in the chamber. And whenever I got to leak city, you know, they always said, I mentioned that one time on the board me like, Hey, guys, have we ever thought about being accredited? And they say, Yeah, we thought about that, we looked at what it required. And then we never open that book up again. I was like, well, that’s not the right attitude. You got to look at obstacles as an opportunity to grow and to develop as a chamber. And so at that point, I decided that we will be accredited, and we will start the process. And so I believe around 2020, at my board retreat, we reopen all that paperwork. And I had a facilitator there, Dr. Glenn Friedman, one of my mentors, he’s, and he’s actually teaching chamber basics for TCC. II, say, my class and my staff there yesterday. And so he walked us through the process. And so there’s actually some prerequisites for the accreditation. And so it’s like, if you don’t have these five things done for each section, you’re not even ready to apply. And so we had none of that done. So that was our starting point. And so from there, we started our year long year and a half long journey to get ready to apply for accreditation during the pandemic.

Brandon Burton 12:47
Right. Yeah. As if there wasn’t already enough challenges. Right. Right. So as you got started, what are some of the first things that you guys, you know, tackled, as far as overview talked about overcoming obstacles? What are some of the things he had to address early on in the process?

Dewan Clayborn 13:06
Well, the first thing was just, you know, learning the good governance, right. So when this have we had a financial audit? If you’re in just realize I didn’t answer your question. So our budget is around $778,000. And we have a staff of five to six employees. And so essentially, if your chambers budget is over 500,000, then best practice from us chambers to get an audit a financial audit every other year. If your net income is not your net, if your gross income is under 500,000, then best practice is to get a financial have a financial audit every three years. And so at this point, we were actually under that 500,000 mark. And so we were able to, you know, the first thing we need to do a financial audit. So, first off, if you’re a new executive, if you’re taking on a new chamber position, that’s honestly one of the first things you want to do. So that any skeletons that are in that closet, I’m out and you’re not held accountable. Unfortunately, the situation I was in, we didn’t have the financial resources to do a financial audit when I first got there. And so I was excited that that was one of the first steps because I had been wanting to have one every since I arrived. And so when it was time to start that process, that was the first thing that I say, Well, hey, well, we have all this money. Let’s go ahead and get the financial audit done. That way you can really have a good understanding of where we are. And that’s one of the major steps you have to do before you apply for accreditation.

Brandon Burton 14:44
That’s right. No, and I think that’s good advice too, even if you’re not applying for credit. So if you are a new chamber exec coming into a new role at a new chamber, it would behoove you and protect you to have a financial audit done. Out there intimate that’d be skeletons, but it’ll just give you a good pulse of what’s going on in your chamber, what’s the help financially, and be able to help you kind of chart those waters going forward? Yes, please. What are what are some of these other obstacles or things? Yeah, next steps in the process. So so once

Dewan Clayborn 15:18
you actually go through what the minimum standards of accreditation, and you have all of those checked off, then the next piece is really now diving deep into each section. So there’s eight different sections for accreditation, just to name a few. One of them is Board Governance. One of them is program development. Another one is financials. And so start going through each section and literally work your way down and checkbox. And if you’re able to provide that documentation, do it if not, start reaching out to chamber executives that are already accredited and started looking to I call it our od rip off and duplicate, or allow you to file and get get some of their best practices. And so that’s where I then started, you know, for those documents that didn’t have what those policies and procedures, I started looking at some of my neighboring chambers that were accredited and started adopting some of their policies. Now, of course, you want to get your board involved. And so my Board reviewed it, and we made our we made we put our league city twist on it, but work smarter not harder. You know, people have already paved the way the people have already had these documents, sorry about that have have a little

Brandon Burton 16:41
mascot, right.

Dewan Clayborn 16:44
Right. Well, yeah, so somebody is already has that work done, work smarter, not harder, and reach out to them and try to borrow some of those resources? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:55
I’d like that just to be able to lean on your other peers in the industry. And there’s no no sense in reinventing the wheel, you know, reach out to your peers. How do you do this? You know, what kind of structure template are you using? Yeah, I see that as being in the podcast space chambers will reach out about starting a podcast and saying, Well, let’s look at some templates that other chambers are doing for their podcast, and see what would fit you and your community the best. And that’s what it’s all about is kind of finding a template and then customizing it towards yourself and what works for your community. So as you went through the process, how was the buy in from your board? From the Staff? What was the overall climate like?

Dewan Clayborn 17:40
Right? So you know, the first thing is, I really had to, like, you know, sell the board on the importance of accreditation, right? Because their first question is, okay, why? What’s the benefit for this for the chamber? And then not even that for the members? So why am I as a top investing five star member? Why do I care about you being accredited. And so as the executive and a leader of the organization, those are the first talking points you want to have, okay, why accreditation is important, because it shows one the businesses that were good financial stewards with the finances, that they invest in our chamber, right best. And that’s through going through the financial audit. Also, in that financial peace, you have to have financial policies, procedures to make sure you have controls over those funds, that businesses are investing in your chamber, you know, because business are given 1000s and 1000s of dollars a year. And so you want to make sure, as a chamber executive, you’re not just saying that you’re a good steward, but you’ve had CPA companies sign off on that you are able to produce financial policies and procedures, if anyone asks, and once you have your financial audit, it shows that you are good stewards with those funds that you’ve been given. And so that was my first message is to allow on our board members to know that, hey, I know a lot of you all are part of a lot of chambers. But if you’re wanting to see which time you should invest in the most, you should look at investing in an accredited chamber, because we have that stamp of approval from the US Chamber of Commerce.

Brandon Burton 19:16
There you go. I like that pitch. Because a and you guys are kind of in a region where you do have a lot of chambers, you know, immediate neighbors even and a lot of your members are going to be members have maybe three or four different chambers. So when they decide where to put their money, you know, put it where it’s going to have the most influence where it’s going to have the biggest impact, right and building a stronger community. So how about to the general chamber member? I mean, I’m sure you guys made some sort of an announcement once you you got your four star accreditation. How did you make that announcement to members in a way that you know, show ODE what it meant to them, even if they’re maybe an entry level member, right? What does that mean for them?

Dewan Clayborn 20:07
Yeah, so what we did is when we finally found out that we reached this prestige distinction, we hosted a four star accreditation celebration, we actually have someone from the US Chamber of Commerce come out from Washington, one of my good friends, uh, you know, I’m John Gonzales, he came out. And so basically, I invited out all past board members, anybody that was a member, one, one month, one year at the chamber and current members to tell them all, because of you, we’ve reached this distinction. And that’s a way for you to know by you investing in the chamber in a community, that’s a great investment. And we have a stamp of approval from Washington now, because of all of our innovative events, because you’re here serving and you came up with this innovative idea to host chatting with the mayor. So I kind of pinpointed some of the events that the US Chamber actually recognized us for hosting and being creative. And I personally recognize those individuals who have come up with those events, because our members actually are the ones who helped us come up with these dynamic events, the chamber, which is here to execute and run the day to day operations.

Brandon Burton 21:21
I think that’s so good. I love that you guys did a party, but then it to specifically call out those people as businesses, organizations that had a key impact, you guys getting this distinction? And being able to say this is a role that you played? And I think that allows other businesses to say, Hey, I kind of do something similar. I can see why that’s important. And it kind of builds that momentum amongst your membership. Yeah, we’re on the right track. This is a good,

Dewan Clayborn 21:48
it builds engagement, right. And it shows people you know, we have a thing at my chamber. I don’t know if you’re, you’re like little younger, but there was a show called cheers back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. And so we tell people, we want to be like, cheers, we want to go where everybody knows your names are going to go.

But no, but that’s where we want people to feel engaged and involved. And hey, we’re here because of you. Because truly an honesty, honestly, you know, we are a membership based organization. So we keep our doors, our doors, open our lights on because of your investment in membership. And that’s really what makes a chamber 501 C six versus 501. C threes, because we’re membership based driven.

Brandon Burton 22:38
Yeah. So just for the record, the next line is, you know, everybody’s glad you came.

I got to last right. So as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask you for if you had any tip or action item for a chamber listening, maybe they want to go through the accreditation process, what would be your, you know, advice that you would offer to them.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Dewan Clayborn 23:06
My advice is just do it, you know, just start the hardest pieces start it is overwhelming when you see all of those sections. When you need the amount of detail that’s require, it is a lot. But remember, there are chamber executives like myself and others that are more than happy to pay for it to be a listening ear and a resource with you. And just know it’s a journey. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. And I’ll just share a quick story with you about me. And for those of y’all that follow me y’all know that I’m pretty kind of straightforward about you know, me and my faith and reasons why I’m operating in my spiritual gifts right now. But because of that, when you go for it, of course, you get, you know, some traction pulling you back. And so, Brandon, what happened to me is we worked on accreditation all year, and I plan to submit by December 31 2021. And tell me why, when we were ready to submit, everything went wrong. I mean, my server shut down, I lost all my files that we’ve been working on all year. The board’s asked me hey, have we submitted have we submitted it? And I’m like, Man, I don’t have I don’t I don’t have any of my documentation. We were actually like going through a switch you know, Outlook has all these tools now was actually Microsoft suite they have all these different tools and so as we were converting over to more of a cloud based structure, all my files are gone. And so here I am December 30 2021. At the chamber really like trying to stick to I’m gonna submit by this year I’ve said is to go you know, to I got to the point where you know, I have another philosophy that you know, clarity is better to speak And so I had to challenge myself and say the one you don’t have enough clarity here, I literally had to start redoing the entire package. And so I was just going through trying to remember the stuff I had and all went and stuff. And it was, it was so much and overwhelming that, you know, I had to go back to one of my philosophies, and I’m like, I don’t have clarity here. So I shouldn’t have be really trying to push in, submit this thing, because, you know, this has been a goal for my board, and me, and I’ve been sticking to it. And so you know, because of COVID, has taught us to pivot. And so I had to have that tough look in the mirror and conversation with myself and say, you know, hey, if we’re gonna do this, we need to do it right. And you’re not ready to submit it, you’ve like really rushed and got through it. But this is not your best work. And so at that point, I had to own it and tell my boy, you know what, it’s not time to do it, we’re going to submit the first quarter of March, and yeah, march 31 2022. And we’re just gonna do it the right way, I don’t feel comfortable. And you know, because they heard that from me, they respected it. And then you did do that. And so around June, July 2022, is when we got the good news that we reached a four star distinction of being a credit. So that long story is just that, hey, you all are gonna run into challenges. It’s just like anything that you’re doing, or why you’re at the chamber when you’re trying to do right, when you’re trying to fight for business, when you’re trying to get you’re structuring your governance, in order for the chamber, as you’re going through that process, just know you’re gonna have challenges is going to happen. And that way you can be more, more challenged, proof and prepare and be more resilient. And, again, feel free to pick up the phone call and call me or someone else that can help get you through that, because it’s tough going through it by yourself, but just know, hopefully, my testimony will help you out that if you are ready to do it, and something happens and you don’t feel confident you feel in your gut that it’s not the right time, it’s okay. It’s okay. Because you don’t want to submit prematurely. You don’t want to do not even get a credit or get three star whatever. And all the quotations are good. Let me not say it that way. But you don’t want to undersell yourself and have that distinction for the next five years, because you were trying to rush and apply. And so in my worst and just be prepared when you’re trying to do good things, that force is gonna try to work against you. But keep that grit keep moving forward, be resilient, utilize your resources. And at the end of the day, you’ll get through it. And you’ll be excited that you went through that journey.

Brandon Burton 27:41
Yeah. And I think like you’re saying in hindsight, had you went ahead and rushed it just to meet that date that you had set that goal date? Right? And yeah, you’d be eaten that year for the next five years that you didn’t put your best foot forward? And it wasn’t it wasn’t a true representation of what you’re

Dewan Clayborn 27:57
learning beyond this podcast.

Brandon Burton 28:04
That’s right. Yeah. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Dewan Clayborn 28:14
Um, I’ve seen the chamber actually starting back being the authoritative entities in the communities through COVID. The chambers have been in part of big conversations with elected officials, legislative entities, economic development entities, workforce development, we’ve been engaged across the spectrum of different industries, because people are starting to see again, why chambers are so valuable, and why we are here to make the world go around. So I think that right now was big for chambers are focused on those partnerships. You know, right now, I’m reading a book called The CEO excellence, and it talks about the six different mindsets of a CEO. And the one of the interesting things that they say on areas, challenge everything, challenge everything you do, ask why, and be okay with changing things up. And I think that because of COVID, and where we are, in a world, this is the time for chambers to bring back more life to your chamber. Be okay with stopping that program that isn’t profitable. Be okay with creating a more of a work life balance and culture for your staff be okay with having a little bit more fun at work and not stop being so serious, you know, we have to be with our teams with our boards more than we’re with our significant others, so why not have fun with it. And so I think chambers are going to be rising to the top. We have a lot of great chambers currently that are doing some phenomenal things in their communities. And during crisis. We’ve seen chambers step up like never before, and I think that’s just going to continue to happen. And we’re now in that circle and sitting at the table helping make this sages in decisions in order to make our communities survive and thrive, absolutely

Brandon Burton 30:05
love that. So you had a he had put out the invitation there for listeners to reach out with you to give you a call or email to see how you’re doing things, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you if they wanted to learn more and just get to know you better?

Connect with Dewan Clayborn

Dewan Clayborn 30:21
Thank you. Well, I’m pretty easily fine on social media. So that’s definitely well really more so on Facebook and LinkedIn. And so that’s you can find me there to one Dewan Claiborne’s CLAYBORN or you can always email me at the chamber dewan@leaguecitychamber.com. And then of course, you can always reach out and call our office at 281-338-7339. But yeah, I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn, on Facebook, give me a shout. Remember that you are not going through this accreditation journey by yourself. Work smarter, not harder, are od rip off and duplicate get resources from chambers who have already gone through this process. And then once you get it with your board, finagle it, finesse it and make it perfect to fit your chamber.

Brandon Burton 31:18
As perfect. I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, so people can reach out, you know, connect on on social media or shoot us an email or give me a call. But I think you’ve provided a lot of value today for those listening, especially those who maybe been on the fence of whether or not they want to go through the accreditation process. And whether or not it’s worth it. And I think you put forth a great argument for your bigger investors, and even just the average chamber member about what that value is and how to relate that value back to them and the impact that they’re making on your organization to really stand out and be recognized. So yeah,

Dewan Clayborn 31:56
yeah, if I may, one other thing, you know, what it means for that executive is, I would challenge any chamber executive, that if you have not gone through accreditation, and not just saying you have to submit but going through, like each section, you do not know your business the way you think you do. I don’t care if you’ve been at a chamber for 20 plus years, going through accreditation, from an executive standpoint, I’ve learned so much about my business so much about the chamber, that I can even tell you from a financial standpoint, you know that I am 59% membership with income, and the other percent is non dues revenue. That’s actually one reason I then become a five star, because best practice shows that the US Chamber wants you to be 40%, membership income, and then 60%, non dues revenue. So as I’m getting are gearing up for my next five year, to apply, I need to have a shift in income. And it makes sense because what happened during COVID, people didn’t renew. And so if you’re really heavy, only membership, whenever there’s a crisis, thinking about now, how cripple your chamber could be, which then will have a bad reflection in the community, because you are the one that’s the chamber who are making the community survive and thrive. And so that’s probably my last voice to the executive, the reason why it’s so beneficial for you to do it, because you learn so much. And I mean, even this, like I learned about how much I invest in my stamp of professional development, you know, I was investing around 40 hours a year, but the US Chamber says it should be 60 Plus, you know, that’s what five star chambers do. And so for me, it’s like, wow, I need to, you know, invest more my team. And so I wouldn’t have known any of these numbers if I wouldn’t have gone through the processes. So in order to really know your business, in order to really know your chamber and look at the bones of the organization, I highly recommend any executive to go through that process. Because no matter how long you’ve been in chamber industry, you won’t know your business as well as you will, once you go through the accreditation process.

Brandon Burton 34:11
And I appreciate that perspective of that feedback that you get back Yeah, through this process to say, to become a five star I need to do this and this. And like you said, as far as your dues revenue versus non dues revenue, and I think it would be to your benefit to have even more diversity in that non dues revenue.

Dewan Clayborn 34:31
Yeah, it makes sense. You know, and you never as a chamber executive, we don’t think about it from that perspective. You know, we’re, hey, membership, membership membership. But if you’re able to do a shift in your financial strategy, it makes you more resilient as a chamber.

Brandon Burton 34:48
Absolutely. Absolutely. And relevant going forward to because you’re involved in different things so well, I think this has been a great discussion one I really Appreciate you joining us today on chamber chat podcast and again, I’d encourage anybody has any questions to reach out and connect with you and you can tell you know, Don’s got some some excitements and passion behind this. So they chat and learn more from him but uh, Duan thanks for being with us today. I really do appreciate it.

Dewan Clayborn 35:18
Hi, Brandon. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to coming back any topic you want to talk about? I love it. I want to pivot myself as a regional collaborator. And so I want to share resources I want to help other chambers, and I want everybody to be great and survive and thrive throughout these unprecedented times.

Brandon Burton 44:58
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!

Authentic Leadership with Dale Wilsher

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Dale Wilsher. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

Now your host he goes for walks at night to avoid the summer he he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

Jason Mock 0:43
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

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

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

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us today for it’s episode 190 with Dale Wilsher. Dale is a certified life and leadership coach, trainer and DISC personality profiles as well as a keynote speaker and award winning author, pressure to be all things to all people for years in her life. Dale now helps professionals understand their own distinction, their individual personality, passion and purpose so they can do meaningful work, create high functioning teams and contribute at their highest level. Dale, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can tell you a little better.

Dale Wilsher 1:50
Well, thanks so much, Brandon. Yeah, I’m Dale Wiltshire, and I’m here in Boulder, Colorado, and you gave the whole bio piece. So I love what I do. I’ve been doing this for about 10 years as a coach, I’ve been speaking for about 15 years when I started speaking, I was making popery and Starbucks cards. So I’ve definitely been able to level that up a little bit. Make speak in a way that I can sleep indoors and pay the rest of the bills. So you know lots of good things in the work that I get to do with people and helping them understand their strengths and their stories. So they can make the most of their time and their attention. And their talent. I you know, it’s a lot of pressure on what’s interesting about you, I was thinking about what’s interesting about, you know, other people in my life, my family, but I would say right now I’m in in the middle of training for a half marathon. So I got frozen shoulder when we hit the pandemic, and it took me out of everything, I ended up having a dislocated shoulder. So I couldn’t even run or bounce, you know, like whatever the I couldn’t do any of it. So I’m pretty excited. We’re we’ll do the 10 mile run this Sunday. And I’m doing it with my best friend and two of my daughters. And if one doesn’t show up, she has to pay me back. So I’m covered.

Brandon Burton 3:02
That’s awesome. Got your backup plan?

Yes, yeah, no, that is awesome. So tell us a little bit about your organization, the work that you do. I mean, you touched on it just briefly there. But who’s kind of your ideal client that you work with? And kind of yeah, go down that rabbit hole?

Dale Wilsher 3:22
Yeah, well, the business officially is called your authentic personality. And that really speaks to a lot of work I do to help people find authentic direction to be able to help them find more definition, I don’t believe you have good direction until you have a clearer definition of who you are. And especially in terms of your personality, your authentic personality, I do a lot of work with clients on their masks. So I work with a lot of purpose driven professionals in the chamber world is one area, but I work with people in a multitude of environments and different types of jobs, settings and industries. But they’re always purpose driven. They want to understand how to bring more of themselves and what matters to them into the work that they do. Because according to all the research on meaning, that’s how you engage most deeply. And to me, that’s based on your design, how you really contribute, what you’ve been, you know, designed to, to offer the world. So I help through a number of processes and tools and tips. And then I’ll work with people on their limiting beliefs, some of the things that hold you back from living out that distinction, usually in terms of emotional regulation, kind of weak or lame boundaries, and I work with a lot of women. So I see that quite a bit. I’ve never seen a woman come to the planet with good boundaries. And then those limiting beliefs. There’s so much that kind of subtly resides in our subconscious that is holding us back from all that we can do. And to me, that’s the greatest crime is really not tapping all that you were meant to do. So I want people to leave nothing on the table.

Brandon Burton 4:56
I love that tackling those limiting beliefs. My kids will tell you I preach to them all the time about discovering their potential and not leaving anything on the

Dale Wilsher 5:04
table. Right. That’s great. We’re right there with each other. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:08
absolutely. So for those listening, you and I, we got to actually meet in person before doing this podcast at the Mako chamber conference a couple months ago. And that’s kind of a rare opportunity for me to meet my guests in person before. So usually I do the interview, and then maybe at a conference later, I’ll get to meet these people in person. So we did this kind of backwards, which was awesome. So,

Dale Wilsher 5:35
so fun. It was so great to meet you. We were both in like our vendor tables. But I got to be the closing keynote at that event, which was delightful. I also got to talk about, you know, leading confidently in your personality type. And I think I finished that with how to keep the urgent from hijacking what’s important, which requires that you really know your authentic values. So it’s all kind of in line with the stuff I love to do.

Brandon Burton 5:58
Absolutely. And that segues right into our topic for our discussion today around authentic leadership. We’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chambers of Commerce have been around for over 400 years promoting communities all over the World. But today so much is found digitally that Chamber Nation believes it’s critical that there is a custodian of local digital information. They believe the Chamber is in a perfect position to be that organization. 

Chamber Nation provides an amazing membership management system you use to manage the chamber and the community. They also deliver a complete membership development system that they manage for you to be sure your membership community is fully documented for search and much more. Essentially, Chamber Nation delivers an entire membership support department which is perfect for those Chambers with a limited budget that needs to do more.

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

From lost opportunities to miss recruiting goals, membership salespeople need expert coaching to push through and achieve.  It’s how top performers get ahead and stay there. With Next Level Coaching, the Holman Brothers become your membership reps de facto sales trainer, advisor sounding board, and mentor all rolled into one. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching for your membership pro.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Alright, Dale, we’re back. So as we talk about authentic leadership, what does that mean, as far as you know, what is what is authentic? What is real? And how do you? How do you discover that as a leader?

Topic-Authentic Leadership

Dale Wilsher 9:12
Yeah, well, and, you know, LinkedIn did a survey not too long ago, and they had about 16,000 people respond with their definition of what leadership was, and they had so many different words, values that came up everything from inspiration and wisdom and influence and credibility and energy. You know, just almost as many definitions for leadership as there are probably people who lead and people who are lead, so I’ll leave the leadership. These were the people who are leading influencing guiding teams and organizations, you know, to action. So there’s the leadership piece, authentic leadership. You know, there’s a number of ways to describe that Sheryl Sandberg talked about you know, bringing your whole self to work and and making sure that you know, you’re you’re not just a profession

is no self during the week and a personal self and authenticity has a consistency to it. So there should be the same personality that you are at home, you’re bringing to work. And I, like I mentioned before I work with a lot of people who are wearing personality masks. So trying to really understand what is their original design, because if you’re working out of a mask, you’re going to work twice as hard for half the results. So, you know, it’s bringing that I believe it’s bringing your values into action, really aligning with what matters most to you. So you have to be able to clarify those, so that you can get in the driver’s seat of them and not just kind of bump into them now and again, and then also your purpose, each person has one why you don’t have a professional, why and a personal why you have one. So how can you bring that to bear as the leader to be able to influence your organization, your members, your staff, whoever it might be? I love that. So I find that that LinkedIn survey intriguing, because you hear all the time people employees say, Oh, he was the worst leader ever, or, you know, she was an amazing leader, it’s great to find that and everybody’s perspective, you know, tends to lead to a different result as far as what that definition is. Absolutely.

Sorry. As I say,

Brandon Burton 11:15
I like being able to hone that down into what is authentically you and not having these different personality masks. But go in with your thought.

Dale Wilsher 11:23
Yeah, I forgot my thoughts. So um, yeah, it is, it is all about being real. And then I say, finding out what is real because I see it if you kind of look at truth, if authenticity is a form of truth, there’s like the little T truth, which is that courage to admit your weaknesses, it’s what’s true right now, that’s what a lot of people talk about to be vulnerable, a lot of the work by Brene, brown and bringing that so that people can be human. They’re not burning out all that kind of stuff. But then it is finding what is real, because that is this discovery toward you know, what is your best self? What are you capable of? Because we can and I do hear it from time to time, use authenticity as an excuse to kind of stay in our comfort zone. It’s like, oh, that’s not natural for me. Oh, that just doesn’t feel right. And then we never quite stretched ourselves into what can be the best parts of ourselves. So it’s, it’s kind of a broad, broad concept.

Brandon Burton 12:19
Yeah, that kind of goes back to the limiting beliefs. What do you say, Oh, that’s not me. Yeah, all the excuses become limiting factors. But I like how you’ve mentioned these personality masks, as well, as you work with clients, and they gain the courage, I guess, to remove that personality mask that work mask to show who they authentically are. What is that like for an individual because it I imagine it does take courage to change who you presented yourself as for, you know, a certain amount of time in a public scene versus your authentic self.

Dale Wilsher 12:54
So, so true, it takes a lot of courage. And what we know from DISC personality results is that at least 20% of the population is wearing a mask at any given time. And I always see this when usually most of us have a major and a minor personality type. And I work out of the four basic personality types, but there are compatible blends. And when you’re looking at opposite blends, usually one of those is the mask like usually you’re partnered up married to your opposite, making you think you should be more like them. Or maybe they think you should be more like them. So it gets confusing family culture, corporate culture, can say that you should be one way versus another that bias. So to be able, I find to help people, first of all, figure out if they’re wearing a mask, and they’re, you know, filling kind of an internal conflict or confusion about who you’re supposed to be. We see burnout patterns and chameleon patterns that can let us know if that’s there. But to be able to bring who you are, first of all, I think you have to see what is really good about that personality type, most of us overvalue other people’s strengths and we undervalue our own, we assume that because we do it, it doesn’t take any talent, it’s not really that big of a deal. So I always start with helping people really understand what the foundation of that personality is, and what the gifts are that you bring that the rest of us really can’t touch. So I think it starts there. And then it’s a matter of growth because personalities 5050 50% is in your DNA. And then the other 50% is influenced and experience. You know, we’re all very unique, but that other 50% That’s really the study of epigenetics, which is the study of nurture, and what happens and when you are in a culture that does not really favor or kind of allow for your personality type, protein expression can get turned off. So truly, you’re not able to grow your strengths if you’re not using them or you don’t see what’s really good about them. So I find that when people take those masks off, first of all, there is a great sense of relief. There is a great So fear, like, What’s everybody gonna think now. And then there’s this process of allowing protein expression to be turned on. But according to the Gallup organization, you will move much faster when you’re working in the lane of your strengths. So it’s not like if you’ve been turned off for 30 years, it’s gonna take you another 30, it can happen very quickly. But you need to know what your strengths are your authentic strings to really start to grow those adding skills, adding knowledge, and just spending time in them. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:29
yeah, that is a topic of epigenetics in general is wow, like, you can dive in deep on that. And, and the whole idea is, it’s above genetics. So people say, Hey, I’m genetically predisposed to, you know, have breast cancer or have this you know, alcoholism or, you know, different character traits or whatnot. And epigenetics is above that. So you can change, you can literally change how your genes act and react based on nurture and things like you’re talking about. So I want to get us closer back to chamber. Oh, this is all?

Dale Wilsher 16:04
Yes, we were talking human world. Yes.

Brandon Burton 16:06
Right. Right. So as we look at chambers, how can a chamber benefit from authentic leadership?

Dale Wilsher 16:14
Yeah, I think it is really, I see in the chamber world that a lot of CEOs and directors are one of the personality types, which is the high on the disc, that is the social butterfly, that’s because that’s naturally what they do is connect to people, connect people with others promote people. So I see a lot of that. So when I talk to chamber professionals, I mostly hear people bringing that element of, you know, I create a lot of trust, because I’m able to share openly because that’s the nature of their personality type or I value connection. And so my members feel like they’re safe, and we care. So we can help their businesses grow, because they’ll lean into us, because I’m being authentic. Now, this could happen with any of the four. But there is this piece that’s really about trust, and connection and care. And it’s, you know, a part of Google did a study about high functioning teams, you know, and one of the biggest pieces of that is there’s got to be psychological safety. And part of that is feeling like you’re understood, you’re known and who you are. So they felt like being able to bring their authentic self gave their members especially permission to be their authentic selves, as well. So, you know, and I’ve talked to so many people who said, you know, all eyes are on us, you know, like, we want one of my CEO said, you know, I’m like a Disney World character, like people know, kind of watch. You know, I, when I’m out at my daughter’s soccer game, people know who I am, I’m committed to my community. But I need to be the same at the soccer game as I am in my business. And she works very hard to do that. So that’s exciting to see that people can trust her because there is that consistency there.

Brandon Burton 17:57
So in the chamber world, I see a lot of these chamber professionals, they might look to others, their peers in the industry, and say, well, this person is that social butterfly, this person, you know, shows that sincere care for each of their Chamber members, and how to help their business succeed. So IMS do the same thing. I need to template myself the way you know someone so does that conducts their chamber. So I do believe that there’s some value to be learned by by looking at your peers and taking notes as to what they do. But how do you how does one kind of resolve that conflict if they feel like I’m not naturally that social butterfly, and I’m super uncomfortable, you know, more, maybe more of an introvert, and I’m feeling forced to go this direction?

Dale Wilsher 18:45
Well, and that comes back to really understanding what your style is, what your leadership style is, because each of these four types has a leadership style. You know, it’s not just one type that fits into the chamber world and other types don’t, but it is getting really, I think, familiar with that style. Again, what’s great about that, let’s say that you were the approver, which is the see on the desk, they’re careful and cautious, very conscientious. So that builds trust simply by the nature of everything that happens usually gets done, they do things for the right reason, they have a ton of integrity. And so in meeting with their people, they would do better to meet one on one, say, you know, they’re going to do the big group, you know, ribbon cuttings and different types of events. But they’re probably going to tap their source of genius by really meeting with people one on one and getting to know them and have it using those great listening skills and letting people know who they are authentically so that those can be valued, like they can be trusted for that reason. So I advocate always to know what your true personality type is so that you feel like that that’s a great thing. And you might be representing for a different personality type. Your membership is made up of every single type. So we need an understanding to create kind of a culture of So in respect of all the different types, it’s like I always say personality is like a set of glasses that you come to the planet with. And you kind of think everybody’s wearing the same one. And then when you’re like, What are you doing? Or what are you thinking, like, you know, if you if you escaped it for years, in your adult life, when you have children, you’re like, What is wrong with you? Or at times, you can think what’s wrong with me, it’s because they have this different set of glasses, different priorities, different motivators, different fears. So to understand that means you’re going to understand your people better. And I think it creates that, again, that real feeling that thing that inspires trust. So any of these can lead extremely well,

Brandon Burton 20:38
like that. So it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to not do those things that make you uncomfortable, you may have to do it from time to time, but lean into those strengths that you have to show. Yeah, I like that answer. So what type of things make authenticity hard in the chamber world?

Dale Wilsher 20:57
Yeah, well, because you are always being watched in that sense that people know you in the community, you’re a figure that people recognize there is that that fear of some? Well, I talked to one of my CEOs who said, you know, there’s one board member who is actually, as we talked, we were able to figure out, it was the opposite of her personality type. But that was just not going well, this person actually was not her fan, the board member and so to be able to bring her authentic personality out felt like even more of a risk, she felt like that was going to be used against her and sees those were the improvers that I mentioned the careful and cautious they are naturally more private. So they did not like her sharing. And they felt like they at one point the person said, Stop trying to be vulnerable with us. And so, you know, that is a danger in kind of like how do you respect other people’s wishes and still bring who you are. Now that was just one person who was kind of alone in their thought process. But that’s it, you can seem unprofessional, if you have a more exposed, more sharing kind of open personality type. And so to understand, sometimes I just explain, you know, like my personality type as a D, I move fast. And so sometimes because I value people’s time now if I let them know that then then they can kind of give me a little bit of grace, when they feel like Dale, you’re being abrupt Oh, thank you for letting me know, but they understand where it’s coming from. So I think there’s personality misunderstandings that can happen, because again, your membership and your board, membership is going to be completely different than you there’s the judgment that you get. And like that board member, I’ll just read really quick, there’s a favorite line I have from the Velveteen Rabbit, which is about this little rabbit, who is a stuffed animal who wants to become real. And this is the quote, this is the old wise horse in the nursery, who is the one with all the wisdom, he says generally, by the time you’re real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all. Because once you’re real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. And I think just knowing that there will always be people who don’t understand. But by and large, when you’re getting feedback, to be able to be vulnerable is is always going to model for other people that they too can be vulnerable. So I think while it’s a risk, it’s a risk that’s worth it. And hopefully, she’ll still get the help she needs.

Brandon Burton 23:39
So, maybe circling back a little bit to that LinkedIn study where there’s there’s these different leadership expectations. And whether it’s coming from your board or from Members, is there a way to approach your authentic leadership style and say, to your, whether it’s to your board or your membership, this is me, this is where I perform best, I’ll still do these things. But I need a little bit of grace in you know, making this transition or removing this mask or whatever it is to show your authentic self.

Dale Wilsher 24:09
I think you said it beautifully. And if you were depending on if you what your skill set is your strengths are whether you do that one on one, whether you do that at a group meeting. And knowing that you know the the two personality types that are relational, they always want to morph and bend to accommodate relationships that are a little bit more round because they want to be able to do that the other two are more task based. And they’re a little bit more square. They have kind of more structure and so just letting people know where you’re coming from but inviting that feedback and having those honest conversations about your personality, your style, and always having that openness to say I want to make sure that I’m not using that kind of excused authenticity like I’m sorry that’s not me. I can’t go there. You know a mass forms not when we accommodate someone stuff. While the opposite type for me is the s, that’s the stabilizer. It’s the biggest portion of the population. It’s a more soft spoken individual hearts for service. I see them a lot in nonprofits, but they, you know, they do things differently. So I need to bring down my my speed, and my volume, literally, extroverts have more volume I need to accommodate. But mass comes in when you start to think that’s who I’m supposed to be. So it’s, it’s still accommodating what people might need, understanding where they’re coming from, but having the courage to bring out yourself so that everybody else because if we don’t, we are not allowing people to bring their best. So I just think the understanding of personality is huge.

Brandon Burton 25:42
So this thought just came to me as you’re giving that response, because it’s very much, you know, our discussion is very much focused on the leader and their authentic leadership, as a leader, how much should it play into your conversations with others about what their styles may be?

Dale Wilsher 26:01
I think if you want to grow your people, it’s crucial if you want to keep your people, I mean, one element of finding meaning at work, which is what everybody is looking for, which increases engagement, and increases retention is that you’re known that people understand who you are, and what matters to you. And they’re helping you bring out your strengths. So I think if you’re bringing in a disc trainer, or you’re doing something that allows people to be able to be known, and don’t just take the test, and like put it in the file, I see that a lot in hiring. And then they’re like, I don’t even know what my results were, I mean, it, it needs to be kind of a living, active thing to understand, so that you can help develop your people. That’s what everyone is looking for a place to grow and develop into their true self. And if you can align work with that kind of element, then everyone wants to stay, everyone wants to engage. And it’s also like, we’re not supposed to be everything to everyone, but your team can be, you know, we are supposed to live out of our strengths. And together, then we are a well rounded team. So we don’t want well rounded individuals, we want well rounded teams, because that creates appreciation, and giving people space to really kind of live in their zone of genius grow that.

Brandon Burton 27:19
I think that’s fantastic. As we as as we start wrapping things up here, I wanted to ask you, if maybe for a tip or an action item for chambers listening, who’d like to maybe take their chamber to the next level, what would be something that you’d offer from maybe from our discussion today that they could implement?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Dale Wilsher 27:40
Well, you can imagine, I’m gonna say just know your personality type. But also know your values, I find that 75% of a person’s values align with their personality type. And so there are a number of ways to do that I have, I have courses, I work with people individually, it’s not a long process, but it does need to be an authentic process, don’t get a whole list and just go shopping, because that’s when you just pick everything you’re like, Well, who am I, if I don’t pick generosity, you know, like, I’m just selfish son of a gun. So you got to be careful. But defining more, I would say, take a disk, if you’ve taken disk before, you know, get them out, have a meeting to really review who everybody is and what their value is to the team. Those are always in those reports, I have a disc test on my, on my website, which is your authentic personality.com that anyone can take, of course, I do that kind of training for groups. But I just think whatever you can do, whether use StrengthsFinder by the Gallup organization, but really get something that’s simple, that allows people to understand themselves, but also other people on their team. It’s not enough just to dive into your own personal growth, you need to understand how you relate to others, and how to bring out the best in them as well.

Brandon Burton 28:56
I love that. And I think a lot of chambers are familiar with these personality tests and trying to figure things out. But for those that maybe have put it away in a file, or you know, it’s in a drawer somewhere, pull it out, maybe do it again, I don’t know how often personalities change over time, but I imagined for some, you know, over a course of a career might change a little bit. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Dale Wilsher 29:27
I think the future is strong. If you know according to the Small Business Association, you know, only 1% of companies are large organizations, you know, 99% are small businesses and to that to chamber serve. And so this to me is the heart and soul of our community. Having gone through the pandemic, we all know that we need each other we need to be in contact with each other. We’re again we’re together we’re a well rounded team we will there’s always things we don’t know there’s that humility to say I can learn from others. If people can help promote me connect me. So I think that as long as we have people and communities, and we have an economy, chambers will be strong and so, so needed.

Brandon Burton 30:11
Yeah. I love that. And we have learned a lot through the pandemic about the need of chambers. But the point you make about 99% of businesses being small businesses, a lot of them are just trying to figure out the next step the next day, you know, so having a great resource such as the Chamber of Commerce is so vital to their success. Absolutely. So Dale, I like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, you’d mentioned your website. But if you’d like to plug that again, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you if they’d like to learn more about the work? You do? Yeah,

Connect with Dale Wilsher

Dale Wilsher 30:47
thank you, Brandon. It is a going to the website. It’s yourauthenticpersonality.com. There’s a contact page. If you have any questions, and those come right to my email, I always answer every single one of those there’s a personality tab at the top, we’ve got some fun quizzes, we’ve got some videos. If you want to do that, if you want to look at disk training, again, reach out, any of the information will head home to my email, and I’m happy to be a resource in any way I can. So your authentic personality.com

Brandon Burton 31:20
That’s awesome. And we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode190. But Dale, this has been fun to reconnect with you and to have you on the podcast. So thank you for taking the time to be with us today. And I look forward to to everybody learning more about their authentic leadership styles and making a bigger impact.

Dale Wilsher 31:42
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Brandon. It’s great to see you again, too.

Brandon Burton 31:47
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!

West Des Moines Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katherine Harrington

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Katherine Harrington. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

And now, your host, he can’t stand the sound of an art board being folded. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

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

Brandon Burton 1:02
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

From athletes to business leaders successful people from every walk of life From athletes to business leaders, successful people from every walk of life have a coach. They realize that the next level is a continuous learning journey and they continually seek fresh ideas and advice. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the professional coaching and guidance your membership rep needs to navigate challenges and consistently drive more revenue for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2022 ACC chamber the year finalist series and our guest for this episode is Katherine Harrington. Katherine is a ballerina turned executive as and as the President and CEO of the West Des Moines chamber in Iowa over the last two years in this role, she created an avid fan base and several new programs including the International black and brown Business Summit, the DEI Workplace Excellence Awards, Best of the West awards, Raccoon River rally, Fall Festival, W DM newsletter and more. Katherine has an extensive background in public speaking media sales, revenue stream creation, event development and leadership with organizations including US magazine and New York City, Crain’s Chicago Business San Diego Business Journal DSM magazine and the Des Moines business record. She also bootstrapped and ran her own glassy technology magazine events and digital news organization serving leaders in the booming tech and internet industries in San Diego called the tea sector at the Des Moines business record, she was Director of Innovation was the number one sales producer and started the lucrative innovation Iowa magazine, weekly news and a yearly awards event. Katherine has a passion for helping others and is on the board for several local organizations and foundations. Her early ballet career led to her Interlochen Arts Academy full time at the at 1415 Pacific Northwest Ballet School and Corniche Institute of Allied Arts and San Francisco Ballet School at 16 Tulsa Ballet Theatre at 17 and scholarship with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 18 in New York City, it was in New York that Arthur Mitchell of Dance Theatre of Harlem said Katherine Harrington dances with her heart and you can see love coming out of her pores. Katherine received the W dem chamber MLK Jr. Community Organization Leadership Award as a winner of the great outdoor foundation and most valuable Philanthropist Award. finalist for the inspiring women of Iowa award was voted one of the most likeable by CityView magazine. Katherine has three successful children. Allie who’s a lawyer with Mayor Brown in Chicago. Nick is a real estate executive with compass and a real estate investor in Milwaukee. And Caitlin is a leader in supply chain at Target in Minneapolis. She’s married to Craig Walter, his biology and chemistry teacher at Valley High School. Katherine and her two daughters also started a widely claimed podcast in 2022 called what the fam you can listen to them on Apple podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. But Katherine, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Congratulations for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something else interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Katherine Harrington 4:59
Now Have allbranded I just first of all, thank you for doing this, thank you for hosting this really important venue to help share for others to grow and build their chambers and their communities. So this is great, what a great service you have just kudos to you for for ID ating. And doing this and putting it together and, and making it happen. Wow, you read my whole entire bio, so I’m a little embarrassed. So Wow. And it’s kind of fun to you know, it’s Gosh, I’ve done a lot in my years. I didn’t realize they’re gonna read the whole bio, but, but I don’t think I have any more thing.

Brandon Burton 5:37
I was gonna trim it up as I went through. There’s a lot of good stuff here.

Katherine Harrington 5:42
Embarrassed Oh, my gosh. But I don’t like to talk so much about me. I like to talk about others. So I’m a little blushing right here. But for that intro,

Brandon Burton 5:54
from? Well, why don’t you instead of focusing on yourself, tell us a little bit more about the West Des Moines chamber so we can get a better idea of the type of chamber you are the size, staff budget, the scope of work that you do, and that sort of thing to kind of set the tone for our discussion.

About the West Des Moines Chamber

Katherine Harrington 6:12
Yeah, well, that’s a topic I can talk all day and night on. So absolutely. I actually started this role on April Fool’s Day of 2020. So and I had had no prior chamber experience at all. So this is a new world for me. But I’m a big idea person, I love to build ideas. I can’t stop that idea brain. It is constantly going and growing.

Brandon Burton 6:40
Kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time isn’t

Katherine Harrington 6:43
exactly it. You’re right, Brandon, like if you love ideas, and if you love to see them grow and nurture and help others chamber life is for you. But you’re right. It’s a blessing and a curse, you have to understand what you can do, what capacity you and your team have, and what you can maybe scrap or or say, well, we’ll do that in five years. Right? So it’s just hard to say no to all the cool things that that we can do. But the chamber, West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, we will be 100 years old in 2024. So that’s pretty impressive. We’ve been around for a very long time. So it was certainly a I’m on the shoulder of giants, as they say when I joined a couple years ago. So it, it’s been a wonderful experience. The pandemic was right during that time as well. So I remember our former president training me and she said, Katherine, I think this pandemic is just going to last for about a week or so. And then I think we’re going to we’re gonna be through it at you know, and here we are, right. So I was I was, I loved her positivity. But you know, the facts bore out that it was much longer. But it was actually a really beautiful time to look at everything we were doing and understand, you know, how can we serve our community during this amazingly challenging time for humans and neighbors and our businesses? And, you know, what do they need. So, honestly, it was a gift to start during this really challenging time. Because we first of all, we had just one team member left, we have six team members, we’re hiring another team member, we’re growing. And we started with just one team member. So it was kind of nice, I could hire our own staff and build our own culture. We are huge culture advocates, we feel like that extends to not just the chamber, but to our city into our businesses. We’re trying to create the best culture in America, in our city. So it was really neat to onboard people that have the same loving acumen to help others. But we have 711 members and around almost 100 years. So now we’re gonna have seven team members and we really have a separate division which is our workforce division which is kind of unusual for some chambers so so that’s a little bit a little bit about

Brandon Burton 9:18
us. Yeah, that that will help as we get into our topic today is a chamber the year finalists but I what I like to do is focus the majority of our discussion on the the two programs you guys submitted on your chamber your application, and we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

All right, Katherine, we’re back. So as I mentioned before, will will highlight the two programs synopsis on your chamber, the your application, if you would just talk to us a little bit at a high level what the two programs are, and then we’ll circle back into some more detail on each of them.

Katherine Harrington 12:01
Yeah, so one is we started a black and brown Business Summit. And this was really the motivation because of the murder of George Floyd and the uprising in our city as well as around the world. And we want our city to be the most welcoming city in the world. And how do we do that? So we are all about making big noise for our city, because it helps spotlight who we are, you know, we’re not, we’re not on a beach. We’re not on an ocean. We’re not on a mountain. So we have to think really unusual. And think big if we’re going to make some noise for our city. So we started through really a community saying how can we support black and brown businesses and see them grow and nurture and become billionaires? Not just, you know, 1000 air but a billionaire? So the Athene, it’s now called the Athene black and brown Business Summit, it is something that we’ve had 23 countries, people in 23 countries view we telecast it. So it’s it’s a hybrid event, but it’s extensive. So that’s, that’s number one. Okay, we love that event. And then our second program that we’re spotlighting is our 15th year, the Western Moines Leadership Academy, and it grows and builds every year, with leaders all ages, all companies that, that join that we have a pretty rigorous application process, but we have to narrowed it down which is hard to 33 people in the region. And it’s a little different than most leadership academies, but but those are our two that we highlighted in the application.

Brandon Burton 13:51
Very good. So let’s circle back to the first one, the Black and Brown Business Summit. As you launch that business summit, how did you structure it? How did you get the word out? How did you build up the hype for this? Building upon the the emotion really, that was going throughout the country?

Katherine Harrington 14:11
Yeah, it takes a team. It takes a community to support that. So our team, we started a dei committee, and that’s led by now our board chair Angela Jackson, and she’s an entrepreneur, small business owner, and she’s also in charge of the EI one of our largest employers here called a theme. And we created our dei Committee, which helped to start and grow that black and brown Business Summit. So that then spun into six different committees. So we have a lot of community members near 200 volunteers that help to support that event. Because that event is a is a two day conference, but within it are many smaller events all very meaningful To help build and grow and inspire the Black and Brown business community, so part of it is a pitch competition the first day, we have a pitch competition. First year, we gave out $10,000 to the winners. And this year, we gave out $42,000 to the winners, wow. So a lot of a lot of money, cash. And that’s all raised through sponsorship through sponsorships, and we do well with sponsorships, people want to be aligned with this brand, they want to be aligned, and they want to help these businesses grow. So it’s really a great forum to provide that connection for those sponsors. But so that’s day one, there’s lots of programming, education, learning, practicing your pitch, we bring in experts from around the world, to help these people, you know, figure out what is their pitch, and then on the main stage, they do their pitch on day one. And then day two is, oh, my gosh, lots and lots of sessions and breakouts with everything. You name it, like social media, how, you know, how do you run your social media marketing, branding, Bitcoin, you know, just different things. We’re trying to be on the cutting edge of knowledge for these folks to help them really achieve success. And then we have a keynote, we had Daymond John of ABC Shark Tank Shark Tank was our keynote this year. But it is a sincere pleasure. We also have a fundraising component to the summit and we fundraise for nonprofit organizations at the same time that support black and brown businesses. So so that’s pretty neat, too. And every year that that changes. So there’s a lot involved in all of this programming.

Brandon Burton 16:45
That is awesome. That is every follow up question I had for you, you are hitting right after

Katherine Harrington 16:52
I need to practice for the big interview, right?

Brandon Burton 16:54
That’s right, you’re covering all the great points. So I love the idea that pitch competition, and then having those breakout sessions and trainings really to how to be more effective and future thinking about your business. I think you’d mentioned Bitcoin. And I think that there’s, you know, in the crypto world and NF Ts and Bitcoin, like that’s going to be a big part of the future of business. And chambers and businesses alike need to get on board and realize what that impact can be. And you’re not holding back any punches with your keynote speakers either. John is awesome. Yeah,

Katherine Harrington 17:31
yeah. We, it’s neat. It’ll be fun to see where we go with our keynote this year. So yeah, yeah, fingers. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:39
Well, let’s, let’s shift gears, then over to the West Des Moines Leadership Academy, and talk to us about what that entails. And maybe what sets it apart from other leadership classes that other chambers might put on. Yeah,

Katherine Harrington 17:54
it’s really, really interesting what we do there some leadership academies, you learn more about the city, you might learn more about, like how the police is run, or how, you know, planning and zoning is run or city council, things like that. But we take the Leadership Academy, we kind of put it on its side a little bit. And we go deep into the humanity of you as a leader. What makes a good leader? And and that’s a complicated answer. And that’s multifaceted. So we have experts that come in are experts in their field, to really try to help those leaders know who they are, first of all, a lot of people we think we might be self aware, but only 10% of humans are really literally self aware. So you know, how self aware are you analyzing that understanding how you can become more self aware. And great leaders make great companies. So that’s what we want to train our great leaders so that they then as they’re leading their company, or soon to be leading their company, we’re trying to give them that incredible humanity, caring, loving, honest, open, transparent acumen that they can take to their companies. And, and it’s really, that they can also take to their personal lives, because we’re teaching them not only how to be a great leader, but a great human. So it’s, it is very intensive. And sometimes there’s crying in these, because you learn a lot about yourself that you did not see or you could not see or you didn’t want to see. So it is absolutely it’s like a therapy session. Right. So, so it’s it’s really neat, but another component of a Leadership Academy is nonprofit fundraising. We love to raise money for others in our town and most of our signature events have a component of nonprofit fundraising, based around sponsorship so so we the leadership can’t To me this year raised nearly $50,000, for the local community school district, for refugees that are coming into our city that don’t have the resources don’t have the means to find the housing, whatever that they’re looking for. So we raised $50,000, for a refugee program in our city, so impactful.

Brandon Burton 20:23
That is awesome. I know, just locally, I’m in the Dallas area. And my wife through our church was very involved with refugees, a couple of walls, I guess, was pre COVID. And they were allowed to, and some of the most humble people and great experiences working with them and hearing their stories and just life changing. So the fact that you guys are raising funds to help out those refugees, it changes lives. So that is a huge impact in your community.

Katherine Harrington 20:53
Is that need to be part of the chamber where you can change people’s lives. I mean, I’ve, I’ve worked for nonprofit organizations my whole life. And I should have started the chamber years ago for and I’ve only been involved for a little over two years. And I’m just like, Oh, I love it with all my heart. It’s amazing work.

Brandon Burton 21:10
Yes. So tell me a little bit more about the discovering the self awareness. So you mentioned now it’s like a therapy session. I as you’re talking about it, I’m picturing all the aha moments where people are like, oh, you know what, I’ve been living my whole life on somebody else’s agenda. You know, let me realize who I am and what I want. So is that kind of how you see things unfold? Or what are? What are some of the experiences that you’ve seen come out of that?

Katherine Harrington 21:38
Well, yeah, we literally have. So we have a number of expert speakers and book writers that are nationally published, that we do hire we pay, you have to audition to be one of our leadership academy trainers. And we do have a super high standard. So we built a great reputation for that. So there are a ha moments. I mean, I remember one woman in particular, you know, standing up saying, you’ve changed my life, this is life changing. And the fact that I know this now, you know, I can take this everywhere with me wherever I go, it was just something really personal. But that that is incredible. That’s so meaningful. So it’s just very fulfilling.

Brandon Burton 22:24
Yeah. And I mean, that’s the, for me, that’s the whole point of a chamber is to be able to, you know, improve your community. And to be able to start with changing individual lives, especially if those people are business owners, the refugees that are coming to the country and starting businesses starting a life here, all of it is going to play into a greater city, a greater community overall. So that kind of transitions into the next question I was going to ask you is, how do you view the role of the Western chamber? What what is your role in your community from your stance? Oh, goodness,

Katherine Harrington 23:02
well, we want to put Western Moines on the map worldwide, literally, and no idea is too, too big or too small to do that. And right now, our biggest need in our community is talent, attraction, workforce attraction. And so we are trying to do everything we can to bring more people to West Des Moines. Now, the way people choose their cities, and places they work is they choose the city first. And then they’ll choose where they want to work after they’ve mobilized and figure out what city do I want to live in. So we are trying along with our city of West Des Moines team, we work closely with them. We’re really trying to trying to create that best city in America to live work and play in every facet. But our job is to promote our city. Think of those big ideas that we can activate and make happen. Because we can we’ve got the means we’ve got the desire, we got the passion, and we can find the money, whatever it is. So we’ve got some really exciting ideas for the future. But we just published for instance, a magazine called 515 West and it is a talent attraction magazine. It is a showpiece. We are going to put it up for some awards, but it’s beautifully designed, captivating, you know, double page spreads that highlights our people or humanity or the beautiful parts of our city, or Parks and Recreation. And we’re gonna be advertising that magazine across the country and targeting key cities that may not have all of the great amenities like West Des Moines has, right? We have a safe, safe community. Our housing prices are low compared to some of your, you know, major cities, our traffic, we don’t have any traffic jams. It’s like 10 minutes to get everywhere. So that We have really, really, really friendly humans, like everybody here is for others. It’s not about me, it’s about how can I help you. And everybody has that acumen. And we’re continually trying to build that and model for others. So we’re huge model. And we’re modeling for the community, right? This is, how can I help you? So we are excited to advertise the 515, West magazine in LA, Denver, Boston, Hartford, Connecticut, because we are a financial and insurance center in the US. But we’re LA, Chicago. So cities like that where you know, it every thought of West Des Moines. style. Yeah, exactly. So we’re going to do a social media campaign in those cities promoting our city to hopefully cross our fingers build interest, awareness and attention and love for our city.

Brandon Burton 25:55
So hopefully, it doesn’t bring the traffic jams with it. Well,

Katherine Harrington 25:59
I know infrastructure is Uh huh. Our whole region has a march to a million theme, which, you know, we’re all we’re all trying to bring more people here to our beautiful city and more people from all over the world all over the country and world. So yeah, and you asked earlier, Brandon, our size of a chamber, we just reached a million dollars in revenue, which is we, that’s new for us. So a million dollar chamber, and even through the pandemic. So, we’ve, we’ve we’ve done really well with serving our community. So yeah, we’re strong chamber.

Brandon Burton 26:36
That is awesome. So as a chamber, the year finalists, I look at all the finalists as as they were kind of setting the benchmark in the chamber world, you guys are doing great things. And I’m curious to see if you have any tips or action items for chambers who are listening who might are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What suggestions would you have for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Katherine Harrington 27:00
I would say don’t be afraid to make bold decisions. Don’t compare yourselves to other chambers. Be unique. Be yourself. Go big. And, you know, I think that’s huge. And that’s just something that, that we challenge ourselves every day, how big can we think how big can we go. And then from a culture perspective, we live, eat and breathe positivity and loving others, and caring for others. So having that acumen I think will set you apart from other other organizations, other people, it is very, very important to keep that positive mindset and look at things on the positive side, chamber life is a lot as we all know, if you’re listening to this, you’re part of a chamber you know, you know, many people walk through your door every day, you get interesting phone calls you you know you have, you’re dealing with so many so many beautiful people in the world. But always see, the positive side always know it’s from comes from a place of good intent. Don’t you know, I’m just always about loving others, and you never know what somebody else is going through. So always give them love back, even if you might not be getting it right. Because sometimes people walk in the door, and they may not be happy about something, it rarely happens to us. But I’ve heard other chambers, you know, having difficulty and I’ve been reading the other blogs and the Facebook, you know, different pages and channels and stuff. But just charging through doing all you can to help others and love others and model for others I think is is just so important to us.

Brandon Burton 28:51
And that goodwill will come back to you as well. Even if they’re not in a mind frame of state of mind to return that love at some point, it always comes back around. So I like that advice. And I like the idea of being bold and going big. Because I think a lot of chambers might be a little scared to go too bold or too big because any fallout that may happen or risk that comes along with it. But you know, have those big dreams and it’s not so much for to make a risk. But to make a difference in your community. You have to dream big and and be bold. So I love that.

Katherine Harrington 29:33
It’s so true. And a lot of it too is imagining revenue streams that are new, unique, different that nobody else is maybe doing because to be a chamber you have to build revenue because you’ve got overhead. Of course you’ve got your staff, but thinking of new ways that you’ve never thought of before to monetize things. You know, we’re a business just like every other business. So treating it like a business is not like a nonprofit, but like a business. We partnered, for instance, our chamber has never done this before in the history of our chamber, we’re partnering with an organization, and we’re selling culture licenses. So we’re helping companies and humans understand what it means to create great culture at their organizations. And because culture is more than we’ve got a beanbag chair over here, and we, you know, we’ve got fabulous beer Fridays, and you get to get off at one o’clock, its culture is a lot more than that. It’s more than than a ping pong table that gets dusty in the middle of the, you know, break room, right? So. So there is a science behind it, there is a science around it. So we’re trying to help companies understand how they can create the best culture. And so we’re starting to launch a program called better culture brought to you by the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, and it’s a neat online program self paced, and very, very valuable information. So we’re really excited about that. So, you know, so think of revenue streams that you can build. They know how that helps you grow as a chamber. So that’s, that’s one thing I would say to

Brandon Burton 31:16
like that. And I would, I could sit here and pick your brain for the next hour or two about different revenue stream ideas. But maybe we save that for another conversation. Yes, yeah. So no chambers all over always looking towards the future. And you gave great advice of looking for those revenue streams and staying relevant. But how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Katherine Harrington 31:41
Wow. You know, as chambers become larger, it’s interesting in our in our region, we have 24 chambers in our city, which your eyes Brandon’s eyes got big right now. And it’s like, there’s a lot of choices, right. But chambers are in a very unique position to think innovatively creatively, to work with their cities to do the same. I see Chambers as really the leader that helps cities grow and flourish and become the city of the future. And that all depends upon your team, your team has to have that acumen. Right. They have to be that innovative, passionate, hard working mindset in order to do that, but I really see chambers being this, the leaders to help drive those cities for the future thinking of placemaking opportunities, you know, like, what can we do? Mayor, you know, what can we do a mayor city of West Des Moines to create placemaking opportunities that we don’t have here that helps attract the best talent. Maybe we have an indoor, I don’t know, an indoor downhill ski resort. You know, again, we don’t have mountains or an ocean and palm trees. But think big, like, what are the things that we don’t have that will attract and draw, and I listened to a podcast this morning. I love podcasting. It’s so fun. And they talked about small cities being Guinness book world record holders at on various things. One is the largest ball of twine. Okay, but it’s, but it’s a city attraction mechanism. It is, you know, it’s like this draws this ball of twine draws people to the city. So you know, so I see the Chamber’s as as real innovative hub to help cities build the city of the future. And if cities work together like we do, we have a really strong relationship with our city. And we work closely together because they are just incredible. We all have common goals, right. But I see us as the real innovators, that’s going to propel a city forward.

Brandon Burton 33:52
I love that great, great answer. Great response. I live podcast too. So clearly. Katherine, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in West Des Moines. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Katherine Harrington

Katherine Harrington 34:13
Yeah, sure. My email katherine@wdmchamber.org. And you can see all of our contact information at wdmchamber.org. Our hashtag we’re using is #GoWestWDM and my cell phone number which never leaves my hip Much to my husband’s chagrin is 515-689-4447.

Brandon Burton 34:47
Right now, I’ll get that in the show notes for this episode as well. So anybody listening can go there to find that contact information. But Katherine, this has been great having you on the show. Great discussion, you guys. We’re making a huge impact in your city. And I wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year.

Katherine Harrington 35:05
Thank you, Brandon. I just want to say, you know, I, I steer the ship, but I don’t you know, I don’t I don’t drive it. Well, I steer it but I don’t. I don’t I’m not the engine, right? Yeah engine of the ship as our team and they are incredible people. And they’re so smart, and they’re so intelligent, I learn something new from them every day. And our board. Our committees are, you know, I could go on and on and on hundreds of members, they’re just all in it together. And I love it so much. So it’s not about me, it’s about our village and our beautiful community and people that support it. So thank you to the chamber team.

Brandon Burton 35:47
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. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.

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!

Paducah Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Sandra Wilson

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Sandra Wilson. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

And now your host he enjoys reading personal development books. He’s my dad Brandon.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:46
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:00
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

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. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.

Guest Introduction

This is a special episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and our guests for this episode is Sandra Wilson. Sandra is President and CEO of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky. She joined the chamber in 2013 after working 26 years for a large manufacturer as Public Affairs Manager. As a community volunteer. She was the first woman to serve as Chairman of the Board of the Paducah area Chamber in 1996. And later also the first woman to chair the Paducah Economic Development Board. on a statewide level, she served as chairman of the Kentucky Manufacturers Association and on the boards of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and leadership, Kentucky. She’s a graduate from Murray State University Leadership, Kentucky and leadership but Paducah.

Sandra, I’m excited to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. Congratulations being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. Why don’t you take a few minutes 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.

Sandra Wilson 3:11
Oh, thank you, Brandon. It’s it’s my honor to be on your show today. We really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the our chamber here in our community. And so thank you for this invitation. We were thrilled to be named to finalists for chamber of the year. It’s tough competition. It’s a lot of work. And so we’re very excited about it. The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, of course is located in Western Kentucky. We are a city of about 26,000 and a county that includes our city of about 65,000. We’ve been around a long time. We were established in the I don’t know that 80 years ago, we have over 900 members. And we just wake up every morning and go to sleep every night thinking about how we can make our community better. I bet you hear that a lot. But that’s that’s what we do. We say that anyway, it’s a great honor to serve our community. For me, you know, I did work in manufacturing for many years, and was always active with the chamber. So when I in 2013, I had the opportunity to become the president and CEO of the chamber. I was like yes, yes pick me. I’m so excited to be in this role. For a fun fact. I years ago many years ago was on the prices right? And it wasn’t the hour long version. It was a nighttime version. They were trying out with Tom Kennedy as the host who is also from Kentucky. That’s a story with itself. And I was in Watch out in California and they interview you or they did at the time and they asked me where I was from and I said Paducah, Kentucky. It’s halfway between monkey’s eyebrow and Possum Trot. And I’ll never forget the like one of the three selectors looking at me say are those names was a rural towns? And I was like, yes, yes, they are. And they said, What are you doing live in there? And I just kind of made a joke about what I’ve been asking myself that same question. So then I got on the show and was a big winner. Then about two years after that, somebody was at the movie theater, and they called me and said, You’re in a movie. And so I was in the movie, the flight of the Navigator. It’s a really fun kids movie. And the little boy is gone in a spaceship, and he’s trying to get home. And the family is trying to help him talk him into getting home, and they’re watching television or the television is on in their den. And at one part in the movie, the whole movie screen goes to the TV screen. And it’s Tom Kennedy and me standing there in the process, right? So I’ve been in a Disney movie, I’ve been on the process, right, and just had a great time. I guess I want career.

Brandon Burton 5:58
That is awesome. I love that I’d love asking this question because I get to learn these these neat things. Now I need to rewatch flight of the Navigator. We watched it during the COVID pandemic with our kids. And I can introduce them to that. But I need to go back on the Disney plus now in what three watch that.

Sandra Wilson 6:15
It’s a fun movie. And you know, I also work with our leadership pudica program. And so every year, you know, when you’re getting to know each other, I usually kind of tell that story about it. And it does. It’s not too long before somebody will either find that section in the movie, or I’ve even I tell them if they become the best class ever. I will show them the video of when I’m on the process, right? Because there’s kind of a funny moment at the end when I do when the showcase. And Tom Kennedy comes up to me and says Sandra, what do you have to say, and I just kind of froze and said, pitch me is this rail, and sock almost kind of feel that way now about being a finalist of chamber of the year. It’s just such an honor and such a thrill.

Brandon Burton 6:56
That is awesome, good, good loop coming, bringing it full circle back to the chamber of the year. So you mentioned a little bit about your chamber that you know just over 900 members and tell us a little bit more maybe you know Scope of Work size of staff budget, things like that just to help give us a better idea. Before we get into our discussion.

About the Paducah Area Chamber

Sandra Wilson 7:18
Here we have a staff of five, myself, we have a vice president of operations. We have a Member Services Director, a programs and public policy director and then our administrative assistant. So we are a small staff that we’re very mighty. And we run a lot of different programs. I would say the Paducah chamber is probably known the most for our advocacy efforts. And I think that’s one reason why I was chosen for this position as well is because I’ve been working in advocacy, really my entire career. I worked for a paper mill before and worked on stateless at the state legislature on the state level. And on the federal level, I’ve always gone to our state capitol, I’ve always gone to DC, some so I knew all of that. And we have been very involved with advocacy. We have the Department of Energy site here that closed in 2013, the week before actually started at the chamber. So we knew that things were going to be changing. They had been in operations for 5060 years. And they were closing, but they’re still going to be here another 3040 years in the cleanup phase. So we had to start working on getting that in place, making sure that the contractors were going to be part of the community that we were going to get the funding that we needed. So those are things that in our advocacy efforts. We’re known for going to DC and asking. And I’ve been told back senators and our congressmen that we’re not scared to ask, you know, Ron, pretty, we’re pretty persistent. When we say something that our community needs, and we try to be organized, we try to make our case, be respectful, and really push for things that we need from the federal level and from the state level.

Brandon Burton 9:00
That that helps. And the advocacy work is so important to and I’m glad to see you guys have grasped on to that. And that’s kind of your area of expertise as far as work at your chamber. Yes, thank

Sandra Wilson 9:13
you. It is a it is a big part of us. I would think I would also say that we really have added a lot for small business. We started a cohort program in 2021. We had 16 to graduate from it. We used to nationally known author Mike McCalla wits is booked fixes next. He actually we contracted with him to join us for two sessions. So we we’ve done a lot of seminars and you know, when COVID hit, all of us had to change the way we were running our chambers. And so we did that we pivoted we wanted to help our small businesses to stay in business. We brought in a lot of resources for them, to help them into advise them. And so I think that’s some They’ll set we’re known for and then really just being a convener of people through a lot of our different programs. We have just finished our 35th year for leadership Paducah. We just finished our 11th year for our youth league program. We have a really active particular young professionals program. We’ve started some other set to intern initiative. So all of that some time kind of ties into workforce because we know every place is short of workers. And we’re all trying to get those. So we’ve encouraged our employers to hire interns, and then we’ve encouraged them to have the interns get involved with us, because we want them to work with young professionals and to fall in love with our community and want to come back here and live and work.

Brandon Burton 10:45
I love that. So for our topic for our discussion today, being that this is a chamber the year finalist episode, what I like to do is focus on the two programs synopsis you guys submitted with your chamber that your application will dive into that discussion with those programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Oftentimes Chamber Nation’s customers agree that since Amazon is all centralized then why not their own community including their professional service providers. 

Since Chamber Nation includes a full-service membership services department to handle all of the new member onboarding and ongoing support at no extra cost to the Members, this is now possible. 

Once the program is all set up, each member going forward will receive monthly membership ROI reports. The entire community will also have access to community-wide economic development reports that are terrific for supporting grant opportunities too. 

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

From frustrations trying to connect with decision makers to trouble demonstrating value to difficulties adjusting to an uncertain post COVID world who does your membership rep turn to for expert membership sales advice? Holman Brothers can help right now. They’re year round Next Level Coaching program supplies a total coaching and mentoring support system in a way that’s never been available for membership pros. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

All right, Sandra, we are back. Why don’t you tell us maybe just at a high level first what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your your chamber that your application and then we’ll circle back around into a little more detail on each of them.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Sandra Wilson 14:04
Great, I think the application boy it really helps you evaluate what you’ve done. And so we had part of our advocacy efforts had been to work with the FAA through the Department of Transportation, the US Department of Transportation and with our state about our airport. We are one EPA is one of only five commercial airports in Kentucky. We had united service to Chicago for two flights a day with through the local cons of local carrier with Sky West and we are an EIS airport, which is the central air service. So we do get a subsidy from the federal government on that. And we were operating out of a terminal that was built in 1953. So it really was preventing us from growing and so thinking back this was written 2018 and 2019 there was I’m the actually the call about the possibility of us being able to get 20 million from the Federal Aviation Administration to replace our old terminal came to the political chamber. So we took that on. And we’ve worked very closely to raise the money. And we have, you know, the community itself has been very successful in getting that money. And we had a groundbreaking and have that under construction right now to get a new airport terminal here. Excuse me, the second one, the second program that we submitted was called leaders for the future. And we, during COVID, you know, we were working really hard to keep all of our leadership programs viable and relevant. But you know, when you’ve got 30, or 40, people on Zoom calls, and they’re listening to speakers all day, it kind of totally changes the direction or changes the focus of your leadership programs. So it really helped us just there were two things that helped us to establish our second synopsis. And that was the Leadership Center. And we had a foundation with our leadership for the foundation. And we thought that that would be a way to expand our funding was to use our foundation, which many chambers do, we’ve had our change our foundations, and we felt like we wanted to grow that. So we raised half a million dollars in our community during COVID, to establish the leadership center so that we could enhance our current program and expand our program as well.

Brandon Burton 16:29
So talk let’s talk about that one. First that talk to us a little bit more about the leadership center. Is that a physical location where people come in is that in general, kind of the the infrastructure is it both tell us what that is exactly what it’s,

Sandra Wilson 16:47
it’s housed here at the chamber. And I would say our goal for this that we really focused on in our synopsis was establishing the Leadership Center and raising the funding for it and determining the direction. So we there was a gentleman by the name of Dr. Nick brake, who’s with Western Kentucky University, who had done a study of small cities and some of the things that they were lacking. And we looked through that and studied it and Lee studied it studied Paducah. And leadership training was a was something that was missing on a on a broader level. So that’s where we felt like we could come in, we had a proven track record with our leadership, Paducah class, and our youth lead and our young professionals and the different programs that are involved with that. And we felt like we could expand and enhance that programming. And to make it stronger. We also are active with association of leadership programs. It’s a national organization for leadership programs. And you see, in the end, those about a lot of leadership centers are indeed separate independent in their community and that half are run through the chamber. We want to keep all of that bass through the chamber. We just wanted to make it a new branding, I would guess a new branding and a new way to enhance all of our programming.

Brandon Burton 18:08
Okay. All right. So it sounds like you already had the foundation setup before you went down that road. What was the basis for the foundation? How long have you had that I’d like to share more information about that for chambers that maybe don’t have a foundation set up yet. And the value in having one and being able to leverage that to further the mission of your chamber.

Sandra Wilson 18:32
Well, of course, if you’re involved with ACCE, you know how important foundations are, and they’ve really focused a lot of the attention on that. And I appreciate that because it is a new way to change some of your funding and to leverage being a 501 C three foundation. So it is a process to go through. We had established ours for the leadership pudica foundation many years ago. And it was it prior to me being here, but it was for our leadership programs that I don’t think we had leveraged as as much as we could. And so we took that on and to try to really make it more visible in the community. We did not want to do a capital campaign to raise money for our leadership center our community had has a lot of capital campaigns going on for other organizations, that was not our intent to compete with those our intent was to just reach out to those that we felt like would want to be with Bob with us on it and we could benefit from it and raise that money in and start the programs.

Brandon Burton 19:37
Okay. Now that that gives a good idea of kind of that that founding and structure leading into that that program. So let’s say circle back with the at the airport terminal. At some point as you guys are going down that path with you know, getting the money for it and kind of seeing In the development of it, the COVID pandemic hits, right. And what were the thoughts as you guys kind of navigated through those waters to see the first when travel in general really got shut down, but then all the other ramifications that have come with that.

Sandra Wilson 20:21
Who could have ever predicted what was going to happen with COVID-19, and how it was going to impact what areas, you know, so many things have rebounded quickly, and travelers certainly rebounded quickly. But we were in the midst of that we had, you know, we have a relative, we’ve gone to DC every year for the last 20 plus years, we take about 50 to 60 people every September, and meet with the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation with, we also have a large river industry here. So we’re very active with the maritime industry, Mayor Ed in DC, of course, we would meet with most of the all of the congressman from Kentucky, we’ve actually met with Congressman from Tennessee, and some in Mississippi at different times that are on committees that would impact operations that we might have in here. So we had been talking about our terminal for years with the Department of Transportation. And in fact, in 2007, we were in DC and I we we included a copy of this in our application, the front page story, we were on the front page of the newspaper, that FAA was going to give us a certain amount of money at that time that we could use for a new terminal. But we came home and we were going to have to raise a lot of the money ourselves locally. And at that point, you know, just did not happen. The timing was not right, I would say. So circle back, we continue going to DC every year, we continue talking about the Essential Air Service how important that is to us. We build great relationships. And the FAA has a program that will help provide funding for new terminals. And we find out about it. In fact, I love to say the call came in to the chamber that this funding was available and $20 million. And so you had to have a lot of matching funds. There were a lot of qualifications that you had to do to get that 20 million, but we embraced it. We knew that the only way we were going to be able to continue to grow our airport was to have a new terminal. We were very severely restricted for a lot of things out there with our small, almost 70 year old terminal. So we met with the Federal Aviation Administration, we can actually out let me back up and say we convened the people in our community that can make that happen. We made the call to the mayor, we made the call to the board, chair of the airport, the Regional Authority Board for the airport. We brought them together, we coordinated phone calls with the Department of Transportation and then we brought in the Memphis district of the FIA to Paducah. It met with them and started this whole process. But we then it became very evident 20 million was not going to build a new airport terminal. So at that point, we started looking at on a statewide level, because our chamber is also very active in the state. So we have state priorities that we develop every year that we’re working on while our legislature is in session. And so we determined that we were going to ask our state legislature for money for the new terminal as well. About that time, we had a governor’s race going on which booths becoming pretty hotly contested. And so we have hosted forums before and we decided, well, let’s go for a gubernatorial forum, and see if we can get that. And we have a really good reputation for doing those and keeping them nonpartisan and making sure that the crowds very respectful. In fact, when people come to our forums are not allowed to even clap or talk during the forum so that we have the media asking the question, but we typically reserve it where we can ask a chamber related question to so because the airport funding was on our state priorities. That was our question to the current governor and his challenger. Where do you see the state being able to help our Paducah airport, Barclay Regional Airport with racing funds to build a new terminal? And both both knew that that question was going to be on there. They were very prepared and both pledged to help that. So at a minimum of 5 million, we were hoping for more but they both pledged that day for 5 million. So this was in November of 2019. And then, you know, of course there it was there at that form was in October of 2019. So then, the election is done in November and the new governor takes office and we immediately are Frankfort meeting with him at our state capitol reminding him of that pledge. And he comes to Paducah in February of 2020, with a check for $5 million.

And, you know, we have the big announcement at the airport. So, you know, we’re beginning to get a 20 million from FAA, we see other funding we can apply for with FAA, we’re getting the 5 million from the state. So we’re beginning to build so much momentum. And then of course, COVID, hit March of 2020. But we didn’t give up because we knew that once COVID was passed, that we really did feel like the air, you know, people would begin to travel again. And we wanted to have our new terminal ready for when that happened. Never would we have imagined that we would have the pilot shortage that we have. Now, I don’t know how you could have predicted that. But you know, the major airlines have a lot of their pilots over 6000 have retired during COVID. So they have been utilizing smaller airport terminals, smaller airline carriers, getting those pilots to go to work for them. So there’s just a shortage right now of pilots. But we haven’t stopped. I mean, we are continuing, we may be changing carriers or a lot of things that may be changing with the airport. But we still have a new terminal under construction, we’ve ended up raising over $42 million for it, our city and our county both are participating in it, we were able to get more money for during the COVID many. So we are in a really good place right now for the airport. And we felt you know that we helped to launch that and feel very proud that to play the role that we did to get the thing going on the funding.

Brandon Burton 26:43
So you had mentioned you know how often you guys are going to Washington and and you know, advocating for for Paducah. How is it that you had mentioned you got a call about the FFA FAA funding? How is it that you are on their radar? Is it because of your trips to Washington and those relationships that you built you built over the years? Or how did that had? Looking back? How do you see things as they came together?

Sandra Wilson 27:11
Well, I do think it’s relationships and, and being vocal about what you need. You know, our senators and our congressmen knew that we wanted to try to get funding for a new terminal, that we were growing our airport, it’s very important for our economy in this community. And we’re very proud to be one of only five airports in Kentucky commercial airports. It was, you know, we had two flights a day go into Chicago, and they were both full pre COVID. And that has been picking back up. It’s I think, you know, it’s it’s critical that you know, the people you have relationships, and they know your needs.

Brandon Burton 27:53
Yeah. And I think I love this program, because when you think back 70 years ago, I mean, I wasn’t around, but the technology and aircraft alone, and how it syncs up with these terminals and everything, I’m sure, yeah, it was overdue for an upgrade, just to keep up with the times and technologies.

Sandra Wilson 28:15
You know, they’re one thing about in community sometimes or in with with chambers, I think sometimes we can be humble. And we, we like to put the credit to others in our community. And so it’s hard for us to say, well, we helped lead that effort. But we did I mean in. And I think that’s what that was kind of a good process to be able to talk about that. In the in the synopsis, we had all of the research from the airport about why we would need a new terminal we’d been fighting for, you know, looking for funding for years. And it just all finally came together. And it takes an organization like a chamber of commerce, that has the the the knowledge and the grit, and the willingness to take it on and really to help push. Now, again, I’m going to say we’re just what we were one part of it, I’m gonna push all a lot of the credit, our city and county both got involved. We had a great air later at the airport, you know, their board was very active. So you know, it’s a lot of credit goes to a lot of organizations and individuals that we were very proud to have played our part to help get it launched and to bring people together to begin the discussion. And to have the attitude that yes, the time is now we can do this. Why would we wait? Why would we not embrace the fact that we we can make this happen?

Brandon Burton 29:44
Right. And I believe that you do need to talk about those wins, those influences you’ve had in the community and showing that you’re able to convene those leaders and influencers to make something happen. Otherwise, how do those leaders and influencers realize how to get some something big like this done in the future if they don’t fully understand the role of the chamber as a convener as a champion as a catalyst, you need to be talking about it. So good job to you guys. Thank you. I wanted to ask you has it as the chamber, the year finalist, how do you see the role of the Paducah chamber in your community?

Sandra Wilson 30:22
We are a strong convener of people, we are a I hope people would look to us as the leader, that if they have an at an advocacy issue, and we saw that during COVID-19, a lot, you know, a lot of companies would call us and ask us specific questions, and we knew who to put them involved with. If we didn’t have the answer ourselves, we were connecting them with Department of unemployment or the Small Business Administration. So a connector, a convener and a leader. Those are some of the roles that we really embrace the most.

Brandon Burton 30:55
I love that and such important roles as well. So I’d like to asking if you might have any tips or action items for listeners who may want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you suggest that they maybe look at or try implementing at their chamber,

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Sandra Wilson 31:14
I think it’s important that you have a strong board that support you. And looking at the big picture of what your community needs, and you can’t, you may not be able to be all things to everybody, but maybe you pick up the things that you see are the most important and that your board is supportive of, and just really work on them. I know I’m you know, I can be persistent, hidden and probably pushy sometimes. But if we have an issue that we believe in so much, and that our community has identified as really important way, I just feel like we have to fight for it, we have to go for it, and try to do things that will help your community to grow and be a stronger community. So I think you have to have strong leadership. And you have to have a great plan, a strategic plan of where you want to go and what’s important to your community.

Brandon Burton 32:16
Yeah, I think it’s so important to have that strong supportive board. And to realize that you as the chamber, you have some some direction, on who those people are, how they support you, like, dive in deep and learn how to work with a board to develop a strong supportive board. So

Sandra Wilson 32:37
very important, you can’t you have to have a strong board, we’ve talked about that we had a training in Kentucky this week, where we just talked a little bit about board orientation, recruiting board members, onboarding them, and I just can’t stress enough how important it is that you have the right people on your board.

Brandon Burton 33:00
And I’m sure every time you hear a training on board development, you always hear something like, oh, yeah, and it may not be something brand new, but it’s like, I need to do that better, or I need to implement that. But you know, it’s usually stuff you’ve heard before, but it’s how to make it all work as a well oiled machine.

Sandra Wilson 33:18
Absolutely. I came away with notes this week. And I’ve been doing this for a long time now. But you know, on the legal side, the financial side, the obligation side, those are the things you know, we have, we do have a strong board, and we have great board meetings, and we have great participation. But boy, then you start talking deducted. I have reminded them of that, do they understand that all of these others, the simple things, I like to look at the big picture things,

Brandon Burton 33:44
right? Absolutely. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Sandra Wilson 33:54
Why ICC is doing a lot of study on that, how to build a chamber for the future. And I know that they have a lot of information about it. But I think you have to be ready to be the leader in your community, and be accepting of that role. And be willing to do that. And I going back to what we’ve talked about earlier, you have to determine what’s important for you and for your community and be really willing to take that leadership role. And let’s face it, every community has different issues, you know, larger communities have may be able to take on different projects in what we would larger chambers can take on different issues in what we can with a staff of five. So you have to be collaborative with other organizations in your community if you’re a small community and, and be willing to have courage. I would think that with courage and purpose those are two words that ICCE talks about and I would say amen to that you have to lead with courage and purpose.

Brandon Burton 35:00
I love that. So Sandra, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you’re doing things. They’re in Paducah what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Connect with Sandra Wilson

Sandra Wilson 35:16
Well, my direct email is swilson@paducahchamber.org. I’m going to spell Paducah. It’s p a ducah.org. But it could chamber.org. Or if you forget s Wilson, you can always send it to info at Paducah, chamber.org. And it’ll come to me, always happy to help. I have gone through the IBM program with the US Chamber. And, you know, I’m not saying I have it all down, Pat. But I’m happy to tell you this challenges that we’ve seen, the trial and errors we’ve gone through and the successes we’ve had that have been some of the big, you know, just great celebrations, and I believe in celebrating the wins when you have them and in our community. And you need to look for those every day to try to celebrate the things that you’re doing right and not get caught up in the little things that are in the weeds. And I’m talking to myself right now, while I’m saying that to you because it’s easy to do. And in our meeting earlier this week with other chamber execs, if you’re not in the chamber world, you don’t really understand what goes on in the chamber world. And so we have to really support each other. And that’s why I’m always happy to talk to anyone and support them in any way that I can.

Brandon Burton 36:28
I love that. And that is such a great trait amongst chamber leaders as well being able to offer that support and mentorship. I’ll say that so

Sandra Wilson 36:39
absolutely. Thank you, Brandon for what you do with the podcast that what a great resource for our profession.

Brandon Burton 36:45
Thank you. I enjoy doing it and hope everybody’s getting a lot of value from from listening to people like you that Sandra this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for spending time with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and wanted to wish you and the Paducah area Chamber Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Sandra Wilson 37:04
Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 37:07
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to chamber chat podcast

Brandon Burton 33:27
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.

Would you be interested in creating even more value from the processes that you’re already doing on a daily basis? Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees and Swypit can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more non-dues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/cc and you can join many other Chambers as you begin swiping with Swypit!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SwpitBanner-copy.jpg
Swypit can help you increase your non-dues revenue while also helping your members become more profitable by lowering their credit card processing fees. Click here to learn more about Swypit’s credit card affinity program. -P.S. Your members will love the savings you can offer them too!
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!

Being the Sane Center with Bill Connors

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

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

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

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

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

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock, President and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber.

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

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

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

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

Guest Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Boise Metro Chamber

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

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

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chambers of Commerce have been around for over 400 years promoting communities all over the World. But today so much is found digitally that Chamber Nation believes it’s critical that there is a custodian of local digital information. They believe the Chamber is in a perfect position to be that organization. 

Chamber Nation provides an amazing membership management system you use to manage the chamber and the community. They also deliver a complete membership development system that they manage for you to be sure your membership community is fully documented for search and much more. Essentially, Chamber Nation delivers an entire membership support department which is perfect for those Chambers with a limited budget that needs to do more.

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Being the Sane Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

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

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

Future of Chambers

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

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

Connect with Bill Connors

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

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

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

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

Would you be interested in creating even more value from the processes that you’re already doing on a daily basis? Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees and Swypit can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more non-dues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/cc and you can join many other Chambers as you begin swiping with Swypit!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SwpitBanner-copy.jpg
Swypit can help you increase your non-dues revenue while also helping your members become more profitable by lowering their credit card processing fees. Click here to learn more about Swypit’s credit card affinity program. -P.S. Your members will love the savings you can offer them too!
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!

Wisdom from the Wild with Julie Henry

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Julie Henry. 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.

Join the Facebook Group

Introduction

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

And now, your host, he’s always intrigued when he sees a snake in the wild. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. It’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Matt Morrow  0:45 

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

Brandon Burton  1:06 

You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

From athletes to business leaders, successful people from every walk of life have a coach. They realize that the next level is a continuous learning journey and they continually seek fresh ideas and advice. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the professional coaching and guidance your membership rep needs to navigate challenges and consistently drive more revenue for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

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

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Julie Henry. Julie is president of finish line leadership and author of wisdom from the wild the nine unbreakable Laws of Leadership from the animal kingdom. Former Zoo and Aquarium senior leader, Julie has worked with over 55 organizations across corporate nonprofit government association and community sectors. She holds a Bachelors of Science degrees in both zoology and education and Masters of Arts and Communication and an executive program certificate in sustainable business leadership. She is dedicated to helping people deal with change lead teams and build resilience using insights from wildlife and wild places. Julie has presented over a million people across 32 states and six countries in settings ranging from auditoriums and ballrooms to boats, beaches, forests, theaters, boardrooms, and even underwater while feeding sharks and moray eels. She lives in Sarasota, Florida with her two children whom she lovingly describes as her zoo animal and her wild animal due to each one’s natural inclination towards life. Julie, I’m happy to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, if you would take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.

About Julie Henry

Julie Henry 3:06
Oh, it’s so great to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. I love talking all things, wildlife and wild places, and especially if you can help somebody think about something a little bit different. I’m happy to do that. And something interesting about me is if you ask me what my favorite animal is, it’s not actually in the book. It is a giant squid. And I think giant squid are fascinating because, um, you know, they get in battles with sperm whales. And we didn’t even know that we didn’t see one alive for a long time out until like, the past 10 years alive in his natural habitat. So it was a it was a conundrum, you know, an animal of legend that we kept searching for. And I love that.

Brandon Burton 3:41
Right. Wow, that is a good insight. There might be another chapter in you somewhere about.

Well, I’d like for you to take a moment to share a little bit about your background about your organization Finish Line leadership and and your relationship with chambers of commerce throughout your work just to kind of show the relevance to why we’re having you on Chamber Chat Podcast today.

Julie Henry 4:10
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. You know, when I spent the first 10 years working for organizations working for other people in nonprofit and corporate settings, and then when I launched my business in 2008, my sister in law actually said to me, you need to join the Chamber of Commerce. And I said, Well, why I don’t understand I just never had really been involved in chambers of commerce. And she said, Well, you need to it’s, you know, community, it’s its growth, it’s networking. It’s everything, and especially if you’re going to run your own business, and I said, Well, okay, and, and so I checked it out and immediately, I was really interested to get involved in many as many ways as possible. So that was putting my hand up and saying, Yeah, I want to join this committee, and then it was sure I’ll serve on the board and then it was, yeah, run this committee for green business. leadership because to me, Chambers of Commerce are such a necessary part of our community to provide a gathering space, a convenient space for people to talk about things that are hard and challenging and business as well as to support each other. And then over time, they became my clients hired to help them with facilitation to find new executive directors, I’ve been helping recently with the leadership programs that many of them have in the local area. So I’ve, I’ve been on both sides or every side of the coin, and I continue to think that they provide a very valuable and necessary role in our communities.

Brandon Burton 5:38
Absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that background. And it is very fitting to you to have that such close contact with chambers of commerce and several communities. And to be able to integrate that with the lessons that you share in your book today, which is going to be the topic that we’ll cover is diving into a little bit more of your book of Wisdom from the Wild, which is the nine unbreakable Laws of Leadership from the animal kingdom. And we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chambers of Commerce have been around for over 400 years promoting communities all over the World. But today so much is found digitally that Chamber Nation believes it’s critical that there is a custodian of local digital information. They believe the Chamber is in a perfect position to be that organization. 

Chamber Nation provides an amazing membership management system you use to manage the chamber and the community. They also deliver a complete membership development system that they manage for you to be sure your membership community is fully documented for search and much more. Essentially, Chamber Nation delivers an entire membership support department which is perfect for those Chambers with a limited budget that needs to do more.

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Wisdom from the Wild

All right, Julie, we are back. You know, I’d like to say that it would be an understatement to say you hit a homerun with this book, you know, a lot of people, they, they talk about writing a book, and then when it comes down to it, they balk, you know, then they never actually do it. And sometimes, you know, if they’ve already put out information about it, they kind of find themselves in a pickle, you know, because they they’re not going forward with what they said they would do. And I’m saying all these things on purpose to dry out these these metaphors, these analogies there throughout life. All right, as we talk about hitting that home run or boxing or being in a pickle, a lot of these analogies are sports related. A lot of them are baseball related, I would say that wisdom from the wild, it covers a lot of the blocking and tackling of leadership. So there’s a football analogy there. But we don’t see a ton of analogies from nature in our everyday lexicon and conversations. However, I will say my oldest, my oldest child, he’s about a year and a half he’ll be leaving the nest and spreading his wings. So he’ll he’ll be getting out there in the world. But we could uh, we could either stick our head in the sand and pretend like these. These laws of nature don’t exist in leadership and have those parallels. Or we could talk to Julie and we could read her book and see some of these parallels. So Julie, I’d like to hand it over to you and share maybe what was your driving force behind writing this book writing wisdom to the Wild and drying out these lessons that you’ve noticed in the wild in creating those parallels to leadership?

Julie Henry 10:08
Yeah, you know, and I’ll the first thing I’ll say is that I find nature the great equalizer, because it doesn’t matter if you live in downtown Tokyo or rural Oklahoma, or if you have a Harvard MBA or if you’re 16 years old, and you haven’t graduated high school yet, you can walk outside and think about, hmm, I wonder why that’s happening. Or let me learn more about that. And you don’t have to pose in nature, you can just be yourself. In fact, nature demands that your yourself doesn’t let you

Brandon Burton 10:38
be natural. Yeah.

Julie Henry 10:41
Like it’s gonna call you out. If you try to hike a mountain in high heels, you’re not going to go very far. And so I think nature is a way for people to have leadership conversations that strips away the need to know the answers already, because nature is about being curious and asking questions. And that’s really what life is about, let alone leadership. And I also will say that when I was in college, you know, my dad was a leadership development guy, he ran his own business, my mom was a teacher, and I was a science kid. So somehow, it’s going to stitch them all together. And my college professor gave me a project and said, teach people about coral reefs. That was my project. And I thought, well, not everybody’s going to be interested in coral reefs, what if I use the analogy of a business and talk about how coral reefs operate together, just like a business does with different departments, etc. And that was in 1996. So it’s only grown since then. So when I worked in zoos, and aquariums, I would always invite companies in, like, come to a retreat here, this is an interesting place. And let me help you think about your communication challenges through the eyes of you know, a pelican rather than, like the top 10, you know, communication laws. And then when I flipped it, and I was working as a consultant, I would be, you know, literally 1500 feet underground in a limestone mine, working with people that work in shift work, and it’s 11 o’clock at night, and they’ve been there for 42 years, if I can tell them stories about, you know, a sea turtle, then suddenly I’ve got their attention. And that’s important. So it was for all of those reasons. And we learn everything else from nature, architecture, our medicine, music, everything, why not leadership?

Brandon Burton 12:18
Yeah, I love that. And I’m hoping after you, after people hearing this discussion, and and chamber leaders reading your book, hopefully, they can come out of it and say, I really need some coral reef time, or, you know, through this pandemic, you know, I was, I was quite the sea cucumber, you know. So, these things will make more sense as we get on with our conversation here. But you have your book broken up into three main sections. So you talk about change, teamwork, and resilience. So I think for the chamber for chamber professionals listening, change, teamwork and real resilience are three areas that they need to be hyper aware of all the time, because starting with change, you know, those changes always happening. But I’d like to focus on maybe one of these topics of change, where we you talked about not being distracted by fear? What lessons did you learn from nature that correlate to leadership revolving around fear?

Julie Henry 13:20
I’m glad you picked that one. Because I think change, of course, is ubiquitous, right? In every part of our life, let alone as a leader, but also, it’s your great calling. And as a leader, if you’re not leading change, then I don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t just No, no leader that I’ve ever talked to, I said, I just kind of want to manage the status quo, like, do you? Or do you want to innovate and serve your community better? I think it’s the latter. But in order to do that, you are going to be confronted by either your fear of the unknown, or people around you who have, you know, I don’t know, maybe brainstormed many, many times on giant post, it notes, all their ideas, and then they never get taken. So they’re afraid to do it again. Or they’re new at the organization, and they don’t want to commit their ideas. Or maybe you’re trying to change the membership structure of your chamber. Oh, my gosh, that’s so hard. I’ve been in those conversations, like, how do we restructure to better serve our members? And how do we price it and how do we market it? I mean, your listeners know exactly what I’m talking about. I know they do. And there’s innate fear, both on oh my gosh, are people going to like not join again? Because we’ve changed the membership structure. And who do we make more angry? Right, right. So think about the animals that scare us. Universally, right? Snakes, and spiders. Those are the animals that come to mind. And the thing about spiders is, I love spiders, love spiders. I find them totally fascinating, but even me, I can still be startled if I turn on the light and there’s a giant spider the size of my hand next to the light switch as has happened before. That still startles me So even if you’re totally comfortable with leading change, and you’ve been down that road, you can still be startled by fear. And it’s important to understand and recognize that fear is just a part of being a human. And you’ve got to validate that and call that out, and you cannot ignore it or sleep, sweep it under the table, if you want your change to actually stick when you’re on the other side of it.

Brandon Burton 15:21
I love that. And I think, you know, nature for us fear is something It’s a survival mechanism. You know, we have that fear for a reason, and it’s to survive. So when you see that, that spider or snake for me, I like snakes, I’ve had pet snakes, I’m fascinated by snakes. But if I’m out for a run, and there’s a stick in the road that kind of looks like a snake that catches me off guard, I’m going to stop, because I don’t know what kind of snake it is. But then I get curious, sometimes it’s a stick, sometimes it’s a snake, and I’ll stop and watch it for a bit. But it goes back to being curious. So don’t let the fear stop you from being curious. kind of lean into it and see what you can learn from it is what I understood.

Julie Henry 16:04
I love that. Yep, I call it fear is nature’s yellow light. Just slow down.

Brandon Burton 16:09
Yes, absolutely. So you talked a lot about teamwork. And there’s a I want to move on to the teamwork section. Because there’s a couple topics on this that I wanted to have you highlight and talk more about, but one of them is the the chapter is titled, there’s no one size fits all approach to teamwork. And in the chamber world, everyone has heard the saying that if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, meaning that no two chambers are alike. Talk to us a little bit about this and how that relates to leadership and specifically with chambers.

Julie Henry 16:46
Yes, I think that chambers are one of the most unique organizations that I’ve been involved with and worked with. And sometimes that’s a great thing. And sometimes that’s a challenging thing, especially when it comes to communicating, you know, your relevance, or why should people should get involved sometimes, like I did, I had, I didn’t understand it, you know, long time ago when I was first getting involved. And there are some animals that from the outside look a little unusual. In fact, one of my favorite animals about this is naked mole rats, and naked mole rats, when we first discovered them, literally, the people thought they were mutations because they’re super funky looking. And they have big teeth, and they look basically naked. They’re hairless, almost mammals, they live underground, they live together. And we just ignored them for a while until we rediscovered them in the 50s. And then came to understand that oh my gosh, they actually live in colonies like bees. And they’re super effective at how they’ve divided all of the labor, if you will, between these animals. And they’re basically blind, but they communicate by your trails of urine and stack up together, keep their body temperature regulated, even though they’re mammals, I mean, so, you know, I love naked mole rats, and I champion them. And I tell people, when your team seems a little unusual from the outside, or your organization does, I want you to lean into that and champion your naked mole rat team, you don’t own explanation, anybody and you’re probably super highly functional, even though you may look kind of strange from the outside, but embrace that and own it. And don’t ever shy away from it. That’s why I love that you call your listeners chamber champions, because I want them to champion the fact that they are also naked mole rats,

Brandon Burton 18:28
yes. Love that. can bring it full circle, I love it. And I think that’s so true that as we look at, you know, especially working with maybe people on a committee, you know, they might bring an idea or an approach. It’s like, man, that’s really weird, you know, and you can kind of put it aside and say, That’s weird, and stay away from it. Or you can, again, be curious and lean into it and say, Well, what, what is there that we can learn from this? And are there things that we can implement and become stronger for it and maybe attract other people to come along our mission with us? So I’d love the lessons from the naked mole rats. So the other chapter that I wanted to touch on under Teamwork was, especially I think, important during these times were in chambers all over focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. And you have a chapter titled, surround yourself with people who are not like you. And you talk specifically about a termite meeting giraffe and giraffe meet the termite. And I’d love for you to share more about that story and maybe, you know, make those correlations to what we see in the real life today.

Julie Henry 19:43
Yeah, you know, if you thought about a termite giraffe, they may not even seem like they even live in the same habitat, let alone need each other but they do because you know, the Africans van it’s pretty hard place to survive. There’s not a lot of water out there and you’ve got to work together and so they while they’re not actively Working together, they’re participating in helping each other survive. So the termite is breaking down vegetation as they’re, you know, chewing it up, basically. And, and that is attracting the giraffes to come over and basically eat that vegetation. And then they’re laying their own feces and urine. If you Well, there’s a lot of conversation about this on this podcast, I apologize, hopefully.

Brandon Burton 20:24
We’re not advocating for chambers here. Just to be clear, right? Now, we’re not

Julie Henry 20:30
gonna remember this, because we’re talking about it. You know, so, you know, for me, I remember the first board I was ever involved in, I remember, in this giant, long, giant board, it was 40 people long meeting, it was eight hours long. And I remember thinking, Oh, my gosh, this is super stressful. And I don’t know, really how I’m participating, etcetera. And the formative thing for me was the fact that I think towards the end of this meeting, one person basically said one sentence and summarize the entire eight hours, we call the meeting to order, we took a vote and we finished it. And that is not how I operate. As you can tell, I have a lot to say, and I communicate with my words all the time. And immediately, I thought, oh, my gosh, he’s different than me. And I need to be with him on all of these projects, because we’re going to be better together, and the outcome is going to be even stronger. And that’s an uncomfortable thing, too, though, right? Because I’m like, What are you thinking? You’re not talking? I’m talking all the time? And what are you thinking, but I had to lean into that. So that’s, that’s, that’s one way of looking at it. And then the diversity, equity inclusion is, of course, the other part of that, because, you know, people who are not like us are, sometimes they scare us, because it makes us try to think differently, or just acknowledge that we don’t know all the answers. But remember nature’s about curiosity. And if the termites and drafts need each other, then you need also a termite to your giraffe.

Brandon Burton 21:55
Absolutely. And one thing that came to mind is you were giving your response there is, so there’s the diversity, equity inclusion, part of it of, you know, trying to figure out those people in your community that you may have not even noticed before, you might not have noticed that they were part of your community, you might not have noticed that they had a business in your community, because of whatever the type of business it is, or the person that’s running it, their background, or whatever it may be. There, I can guarantee their segments in any community where you have not noticed certain people or certain types of businesses. And if you can kind of open your eyes as a giraffe, like what purposes is giraffe have to look way down on the ground, there’s a little termites that are going around feces and stuff down there. Whereas, you know, in the chamber world to be able to look a little deeper within your community. And on the Diversity Equity inclusion topic, we always talk about who’s missing. And rather than just who’s missing, I would say, Who Have you not noticed, and try to notice a little bit more. And then I think there’s another part of it when it comes to networking, I mean, chambers, editorials for having networking events, and you’re making introductions, and if we can help certain businesses, see other businesses that they may not realize they’re connected, but to be able to help build, you know, build that bridge between their two businesses and say, here’s why you need each other, here’s how you can be stronger together, and help form those solid relationships. I think really reemphasizes that a whole story of the termite giraffe. So So as we move on to the resilience section, there’s a couple in this as well, that I wanted to touch on. So especially coming through this COVID pandemic, resilience has been a key topic of how do you, you know, first of all stay relevant, how do you adapt to that change? But then how do you thrive through it? And I think that boils down to resiliency. And your chapter titled you’re wired not just to survive, but to thrive. And you talk about sea cucumbers. Help us make that connection there.

Julie Henry 24:14
So before I answer that question, I just want to say that the reason why I’m so passionate about everything in this book, and everything we’re talking about is because I didn’t just think of these examples, and suggest to your listeners that maybe they should consider this. Everything we’re talking about is absolutely true. That’s why I call them unbreakable laws, like termites and drafts, they need each other spiders are needed and sea cucumbers are wired to when they are threatened. Ie they’re living on the bottom of the ocean floor. Here comes this predator are about to get eaten. Their mechanism to survive is literally to eat visceral, which means to throw up their own guts, right? That’s Crazy, this animal that is trying to eat the sea cucumber will either swim away or potentially eat the guts of the sea cucumber. Now, if that happens, this sea cucumber, which basically looks like a sausage on the ocean floor, it doesn’t actually look like it’s capable of much. However, it is related to sea stars. So probably most people listening know that a sea star can regrow its arm if it gets cut off, or eaten or whatever. Same thing with a sea cucumber, it can regrow its own guts, that is a biological fact and absolute certainty. That’s how it’s wired to survive, but also to thrive. So if a relatively innocuous animal on the ocean floor can survive a huge threat literally within inches of its life. Those times when you are afraid of change, or leading your team down a road, that you’re just really not sure if it’s even the right road to go. But someone’s got to make a decision. And that’s you. And you literally feel sick to your stomach. The awareness and the recognition that you’re wired to get through. This brings not only great comfort, but also should build your confidence and let you lean in a little more and totally erase it pastures is syndrome, anything else that we talk about, like, it’s your biological fact that you’re gonna get through this and you’re gonna thrive on the other side, it’s going to be uncomfortable, I can’t imagine what it feels like to regrow your guts, but you’re going to do it

Brandon Burton 26:31
just that image of regrowing your guts. So, I see the parallel to again, through the pandemic is you know, initially when everything shut down there was that kind of wait and see phase where chambers and businesses just kind of like okay, let’s let’s take the temperature, let’s see what’s going on here. And once we realize this is gonna go on longer than what we expected. It’s not just two weeks, this is gonna go on much longer. He saw businesses he said chambers that had to do layoffs. He said chambers that had to tap into their reserves that they’ve you know, saved up for decades, possibly those reserve funds. You said chamber offices that had to shut down their physical location and everybody was working remotely from home. And I don’t know that looks a lot like you know, getting rid of your your insides and in still figuring out how to pull it back together, how to regenerate how to get back into the office, how to rehire how to get your funding backup, all while at the same time remaining relevant and serving their their membership base that that needed them so badly at that time. So I think that is a an excellent parallel to the sea cucumbers. It probably one of my favorite chapters was was the last chapter the book, as you talked about resilience, and it’s titled even cheetahs slow down. I know. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna let you talk about that before I share any of my thoughts, because I think we may touch on some of the same things.

Julie Henry 28:16
This is the last chapter of the book. But the pivotal moment when I realized after 25 years of having the idea in college was time to write the book. Because I had talked to so many people at that point and felt that way myself, that it is again, a biological fact and unbreakable law that even cheetahs slow down. But if I were to ask your listeners to think in their head, when I say the word cheetah, what do you think of? Now? Chances are, you’re thinking about the fact that it’s the fastest land animal. And if you were to Google cheetah, you’re pulling up all of these images about how fast they run. And that’s what they’re talking about. Okay, well naive. How many of you have ever been to a zoo or even been to Africa and seeing the cheetah running? Probably not many people actually seeing the cheetah running unless the zoo has, you know, structured it for an event or for you know, interaction? Most of the time, they are hanging out and resting and relaxing. And they are not, I think overthinking when they’re resting and relaxing, right? So we glorify the idea of being busy with effective leader in our culture. And that’s why we are so fascinated by how fast this cheetah goes. But that cheetah goes for what less than a minute, and then they rest. And they don’t think about oh my gosh, I wish I would have jogged left instead of jogged right. And I don’t know if I can do it next time. And I’m not sure I have the courage and maybe I should ask somebody else what they think no, they just rest. Okay, what do we do? Well, I will rest on the weekend or everybody else leave at five. I’m going to stay and do the event tonight. Okay, well, first of all people are watching you. You can’t Don’t just burn yourself out and expect everyone else not to do the same thing. But the thing is, nature’s going to slow you down one way or the other, you have a choice, you’re going to be proactive and say, Nope, here’s what I need. Here’s how I manage my energy. resilience to me is about managing my energy. It’s not false positivity. It’s not Yeah, I’m good. I can totally do those three events on Friday night, and I’ll just bop around, can you No, you cannot, okay. And it’s also going to happen to one way or the other. So reactivity, proactivity, completely your choice. But you need to slow down, if you want to lead and have the impact you’re designed to have. And if you want to have other people around, you also do the same thing.

Brandon Burton 30:43
I love that. And I think for chamber leaders all over, I see them running constantly, whether it’s just in the office or at an event, but even after hours, you know, if they go out to eat with their family, they’re seeing people in the community and they’re constantly thinking work, they’re thinking the connections are, you know, trying to further the mission of the chamber, which it’s all you know, they good and honorable desires. But to avoid that burnout, and to really perform at your highest capacity, we need that that downtime, that respite time. And that’s, you know, for leaders, specifically, as you’re talking about in this book, but I’m thinking even your your membership salespeople, you know, they, they need that, because if they have any kind of commission structure, to their to memberships there, I mean, I’m a salesperson, you I understand sales, like you run, you run, you run. And I had this discussion this week, because of this book with with a sales rep that I said, you know, what, you’re running constantly, and you need to, you need to rest. And sometimes I think resting it, maybe you talked about not thinking about second guessing and everything. But I think some of that resting can come in the form of planning to some degree, not, not the big strategic plans, but maybe planning out your next day, or what you’re doing next week. Kind of on, let’s say lower level, brain power, but it’s not the high stress kind of brain power that you need to rest and to be able to perform it that the best of your ability. So I love that chapter. And, and especially, I think that was fitting to be the last chapter in the book, because you read through it, and you get all these great ideas about being a leader and like what you need to do to be like a sea cucumber, or a pelican or coral reef, or all these different things, I am gonna hit the ground running, and cycling hit, but I also need to rest. So it’s a good reminder.

Julie Henry 32:44
I’m still getting, you know, think of it like a bell curve. We spent all this time preparing and thinking and strategizing. And then we’re doing doing doing doing and then we just fall off a cliff. But it’s really a bell curve, like how do we ramp down? Like, are you checking your email, right, exactly. Soon after we get off this podcast like? Or can you take five minutes and like write down what you learned and reflect on it? Like you need to have a bell curve of your energy management, and then you’ll go back up. But it’s not a cliff. It’s a bell.

Brandon Burton 33:10
I love that those emails will wait for five minutes, they will I promise, they’ll still be there in five minutes. So take that time and jot down some notes. I love it. So Julie, as we start wrapping things up here, I wanted to ask you, if you might have maybe one tip or action item that you could share with chamber champions to help take their organization up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Julie Henry 33:34
You know, the one thing I would say to chamber champions is to pick one part, whether from well, you know, from this whole conversation or when they’re looking out, we tend to have all of these ideas and visions. And as you’re saying they are unique, because most of the time if not all of the time they’re living in the community that they are supporting. So they’re always on right. But what’s one action item that you can stop doing one action item that you can do a little more of and one action item, you can start completely in the next quarter. I like quarters because I think that’s a doable timeframe. Because you can see and measure progress. And the key to this is not only do you write down your goals, but just like I talked about with a mangrove method of change, you need to write where you are right now. So for example, if you want to stop checking emails immediately after every meeting that you get out of and you want to spend five minutes just thinking and decompressing before you check emails, then you need to write down. Alright, now I’m checking emails after I know it sounds silly, but I’m not kidding. Like if you want to run a marathon faster, the first thing you do is time how fast your mile is right now. If you want to lose 10 pounds, the first thing you do is get on a scale and see how much you actually weigh. So when we try to measure change in our personal leadership style, we go at it like that. I want to become a better leader. I want to become a better chamber professional. Oh my goodness, what does that actually mean? We have got to get specific and measurable. And it’s deeply personal. It’s deeply personal. And so pick achievable goals for you that makes sense to you. And maybe you won’t even end up on your annual review. And that is okay, is your personal journey.

Brandon Burton 35:19
That’s right. I love that. So one thing to stop one thing to do a little more of, and one thing to start brand new. I love that, too. So I know, chambers are always looking to the future says, as you look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see their future and purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Julie Henry 35:37
I would love chambers to continue to champion to use your word here. Their integral role of being a neutral place for people to convene, and have conversations that need to happen. So my analogy for this is when I used to run the Green Business Leadership Council, which was a committee of our local chamber was really important for me to create a space in which businesses felt safe, not necessarily comfortable. That’s always my marching order, right? But safe to come to the chamber and say, Gosh, I’m really struggling with how to do sustainability, my business right now, or I’m not sure if I should make this investment in, you know, the change in my restaurant or operations. But I know it’s better for my customers. But it’s not better for the bottom line right now. What are you doing? So how can people work together to affect change in the community, collectively? And I think chambers are unique in that position, because where else can businesses go and not feel like they’re either baring their soul or they’re going to get, you know, called on the carpet by somebody else? And maybe they don’t want to tell their customers yet or their stakeholders or even their employees, yet, they just need to have some thinking time first. And chambers are a convenient space. From my experience, in my opinion, it’s such a needed one. And so look to the future, what are the big things happening in your community, that you can step up and say, yeah, come talk at our place, like literally, here’s the space, or here’s a, here’s a neutral facilitator, or here’s a neutral listening person like that is so needed in order to continue advancing the communities, especially from diversity, equity, access inclusion, you all have these big hard topics that are happening. chambers have a unique role. And I know you can do it even better than you’re doing it now.

Brandon Burton 37:23
Absolutely. I love that, that look of the future. So Julie, I want to do to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with chamber champions, anyone who might want to reach out and connect with you or find your book. What’s the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Julie Henry

Julie Henry 37:41
Yeah, my website is JulieCHenry.com They can get on there shoot me an email. My email is also Julie@JulieCHenry.com It’s not all that creative, maybe. Yeah, you know, they can get my book anywhere their favorite local bookstore can order it if they don’t already have it. Or an Amazon has been in some airport bookstores with their you know, traveling again, and having some fun that might see it there as well. I’m on Instagram and LinkedIn both that Julie C Henry, and I would just love to you know, hear about what you’re doing and hear your plans for the future. Because it’s all exciting to me.

Brandon Burton 38:17
I love it. And we’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode as well. But I will say as you mentioned, finding the book in some airports and things like that it so it’s a leadership book, but it doesn’t feel like a leadership book, you know, says you read it the stories that you’re reading, they’re they’re real stories, they’re real parallels to life. And and that’s what I love about these analogies that I talked about at the beginning is the more familiar you are with them. You don’t need an in depth explanation to understand that an ostrich ostrich sticks its head in the sand to understand that metaphor, right? So the more familiar you are with these stories and the examples that Julie shares in this book, I think the better the leader you will be and being able to make those parallels in your life. So thank you, Julie. It’s been great having you on chamber chat podcast today that you provided a lot of value for the listeners and I hope everyone picks up your book and, and learns more about being a great leader from these laws of nature. Thank you.

Julie Henry 39:21
Thank you. It’s an honor to be on. And I hope everybody takes five minutes and goes outside today and asks a new question that you’ve never asked about nature and how that can help you be a better leader.

Brandon Burton 39:31
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Would you be interested in creating even more value from the processes that you’re already doing on a daily basis? Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees and Swypit can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more non-dues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/cc and you can join many other Chambers as you begin swiping with Swypit!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SwpitBanner-copy.jpg
Swypit can help you increase your non-dues revenue while also helping your members become more profitable by lowering their credit card processing fees. Click here to learn more about Swypit’s credit card affinity program. -P.S. Your members will love the savings you can offer them too!
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!