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Brandon Burton (00:00.92)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a powerful, today’s guest is a powerhouse community leader and economic development, Tanya Stevenson. Since 2018, Tonia has been at the helm of the Burke County Chamber of Commerce as President and CEO where she’s dedicated herself to strengthening businesses and forging meaningful community connections. Her deep roots and chamber work span back to her early career at the High Point and Lorenburg, Scotland County chambers. But Tonia’s commitment to service doesn’t stop there. She’s spent six impactful years as executive director of the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club in High Point, revitalizing facilities and expanding youth programs and securing stronger financial future for the organization.
Tonia holds a double major in business administration and home furnishings marketing from High Point University. She’s a graduate from the US Chambers Leadership Institute and earned the prestigious CCE designation in 2014. Her leadership has earned accolades like businesswoman of the year and 40 leaders under 40 and multiple chamber honors.
She’s a dedicated board member and passionate community advocate. And when she’s not leading or serving, you may find her hiking a trail or cross stitching a new design or enjoying a weekend getaway with her husband, David. Tonia, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.
Tonia Stephenson (01:50.776)
Oh, if I share too much about myself, people might think I’m crazy and shouldn’t keep listening. So, yeah, just take that out. You know, when I think about things that are interesting about myself, it really goes back to my personal life and people find this interesting and I found it interesting. Back a long time ago, we won’t tell how many years because I can’t tell anybody I’m 29 if I tell my years.
Brandon Burton (01:55.726)
We can edit, so no.
Tonia Stephenson (02:20.403)
My husband and I got married at the North Carolina Zoo Logical Park. It’s the largest zoo in the world at this point. and people say, you got married at the zoo? it’s like, I’m the only official wedding ever to be held at the zoo. There’s a lot of people have gone out to the zoo and they’ve taken some witnesses and a preacher and gotten married in front of the whatever animals they wanted to. And, but we actually rented the zoo and, got married, had our official.
Big win, 350 guests. We were followed by the national press. We had cameras in our face through the process because all of our local news followed us. And then by the time that we actually got married, it made the national press. So it was a big deal. And everybody, you know, we laugh and joke, and I say this in front of my husband. You people say, why’d you get married to the zoo? And the zoo was a very big part of our courting years.
And we wanted to get married outside and wanted to find a beautiful place. And back then wedding venues were not a dime a dozen like they are now. And I called the zoo and said, hey, I want to get married out here. And they said, you know what? We’d love to do that. That’d be a great marketing tool for us. So we tried it. And the marketing team said, we’ll never again do this. So all these years later, we are the only one that has ever done that. But we have great experiences and beautiful pictures.
Brandon Burton (03:35.084)
Yeah, you broke it.
Tonia Stephenson (03:45.208)
It’s just a great thing to look back on. so, oh, what I was gonna say is I got married there too because all my in-laws were already there. I didn’t have to invite them. So they were in the cages, you know, but they were all there. My husband and I joke about that. And he says that we have good time with it, but it was really a great experience. And I think that says a little bit about me is I love the outdoors. I love animals.
Brandon Burton (03:55.406)
Were they in the cages?
Tonia Stephenson (04:14.517)
I love doing things different. I don’t like to do things like everybody else does it. And so that’s little bit about me.
Brandon Burton (04:24.034)
There you go. That’s cool. I was going to ask why the zoo and all that, but you covered it pretty well. So I’m glad the in-laws were able to be there. That’s important. That’s great.
Tonia Stephenson (04:33.525)
They were all there. Yeah. It was great. And it turned out to be a beautiful day. It was a hot day in June, but it was great. The worst part was having the, poor little best man, the channel 12’s cameras was so close into his face. I was like, bless his heart. He can’t even move without the cameras being right there.
Brandon Burton (04:52.974)
Well, tell us a little bit about the the Burke County Chamber to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Help give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget, things like that so we know what kind of chamber you’re coming from.
Tonia Stephenson (05:08.193)
Well, I consider us somewhat of a medium sized chamber. We have 640 members somewhere around there. People in the chamber world, know that changes on a daily basis. And we’ve grown it quite a bit. Since the seven years I’ve been here, we were at 450 seven years ago. So we’ve grown quite a bit through the years and very proud of that. We are located in the foothills of North Carolina.
Brandon Burton (05:18.839)
Right?
Tonia Stephenson (05:35.954)
A lot of people know Hickory and Asheville and we’re somewhat in the center of that and our northwest of Charlotte and our east of Asheville. So great location, big cities around us, but we’re still a small town and we’ve got some great amenities here. Just a great place to live and work. We do serve the full county and it is a big county. It’s amazing. It probably would take two hours to get from one end of the county to the other.
Part of our county is up high elevations and then part of it is east and lower elevations. So we’ve got some mountains here. We have four full-time employees on staff and one contract employee. Our budget’s about a half a million dollars. And it’s just, we continue to grow and we’re excited to be able to serve our community.
Brandon Burton (06:31.17)
Very good. And are you guys, are you strictly chamber? Are you tourism, economic development, strictly chamber? Okay.
Tonia Stephenson (06:35.275)
We are strictly chamber, which I like being that way. know a lot, exactly. I know a lot of chambers have to do with economic development or tourism, but I’m thankful that we can just focus on our members and not have to try to juggle all those balls. Although I admire the people that do.
Brandon Burton (06:40.59)
It allows you to focus on that mission, yeah.
Brandon Burton (07:00.716)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that definitely. Yeah, yeah, that definitely does help set the stage and the Carolinas are such a beautiful part of the country. So it’s no wonder you’re able to have a thriving chamber there because people want to be there so.
Tonia Stephenson (07:03.287)
but I have great partners.
Tonia Stephenson (07:18.985)
number one in business, three out of the last four years. So we’re very thankful for that.
Brandon Burton (07:27.118)
Well, our topic for conversation today, we’re going to focus most of our discussion around retention. And that’s a topic that every chamber out there should be paying attention to and monitoring, you know, as kind of one of those KPIs, you know, to see how your chambers performing, getting that feedback from your membership, your investors, you know, what is that retention looking like? So we’ll dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.
All right, Tonia, we’re back, as I mentioned. So before the break, we’re diving in today on the topic of retention. I’m sure you have a unique approach. Every chamber looks at different metrics a little differently. But as you look at retention, what is it that you guys really hone in on? And what’s your approach that makes you maybe stand out as a chamber, highlight your wins, and help members stick around for the long term?
Tonia Stephenson (08:25.793)
Yeah, you know, a lot of it, I don’t know if it’s unique. I think it’s, for me, it’s spending the time with our members and spending one-on-one time and making sure our members feel like they are as important as any other member. And that’s real important to me. I know in the chamber world, I’ve heard a lot of my colleagues talk about how they spend a lot of time with their big fish. And I’ve heard, I’ve sat through so many…
seminars, webinars, trainings on how important it is for us to spend time with the big fish. And I know a lot of people believe that. I do, I do make sure that they feel appreciated. But for me in this chamber and in any chamber that I’ve led, it’s always been about every member is important and every member needs to feel like they are a big fish to us. And so we spend a lot of one-on-one time and
And I sometimes it doesn’t make sense in the budget world, but at the same time in the world of what our members say about us and how they’re talking about us in the community makes a big difference. And so there’s a lot of things that we take time to do that some of you listening may say, she has lost her mind, but maybe I have. It has worked for us and it takes, it does. So here I am.
Brandon Burton (09:44.066)
That’s okay. It takes a special person to lead a chamber. yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (09:50.32)
And our retention rates have really shown it over the years and we’ve had extremely great retention. So some of the process that we go through is when a member joins, the day that they join or the day after they get a thank you, a handwritten thank you note sent from me and welcoming them to the chamber family and being a part of what we do and you you have a team of four now that you didn’t have before.
our membership person and our director of operations person, they personally meet with every new member and sit down with them and find out about their company and what they’re doing and where they need help and where they’re struggling. And we always ask the question, what keeps you up at night? Because we know that what keeps them up at night is what we can do for them and hopefully help them in those ways. Our membership person sends a welcome email and in that welcome email, it explains all the tools that
the digital tools that they have that they can sign on into our member portal and that they can put all the information in there if they have any problems. She sits down with them and like walks them through it. There’s a welcome post on all of our social media that goes up within the few days that they have joined and that member post tells about their company. It thanks them for being a part of the community.
It has their logo in there. It has a link to their website and of course, tagging them on that site as well. So then when it comes to three months that they’ve been a member, our membership person calls them and checks in on them, sees what’s going on, how are things going. At six months, our board member calls them and checks on them and see how they’re doing and what we can do for them. And then at nine months, they get another call.
and just checking in. When they renew, they always get posts out on our social media so that they can know that not just them joining means a lot, but them sticking with us means a lot as well, and that we want to continue to give them the promotions that they have. Promotions is really big for us. Most of our members are small businesses that need that promotion.
Tonia Stephenson (12:10.647)
A lot of them, can’t afford big ads and radio. They can’t afford big ads on TV. We don’t have local TV here, so that’s not even an option for our folks. So promotions is big. we do a lot of promotions through, one thing we’re doing today is Friday. And so T-shirt Friday is something we do and we promote our members. So today we’ll spend our entire, most of our entire day out going and talking to our members.
The t-shirt we have on is one of our members and that member gets constant promotions throughout the day So everywhere we go we’re taking that person with us and the member will get anywhere from usually about 20 20 posts today on that on that one member and then of course there that’ll be 20 members that will get Various shout outs throughout the day and promoting whatever’s going on. We always try to be
aware of events that are coming up. So, you know, it might be that we’ll go to somewhere and say, hey, don’t forget they’re having this big sale this weekend, come out and shop or the festival’s happening this weekend, come out and see them at the festival. So we’re hitting as many people as we can with that, which people love that. And now every time I go into the bank on Fridays, they want their picture taken because they know that that’s something we do. And I was like, you know, I can’t get y’all every Friday.
Brandon Burton (13:35.522)
and it’ll get shared. They’re working the system, they know.
Tonia Stephenson (13:38.454)
But the bankers love it. They’re working, yeah, that’s right. And so that’s something we have a lot of fun with. And it does take a lot of time, but our members love it and they know that they’re being cared for and that they’re being promoted. And a lot of them have said, hey, I’ve gotten business. I’ve gotten a lot of business from that little thing. We feel like it’s a little thing for them, it’s big.
In addition to that, quarterly we actually get all of our ambassadors together and we get on a trolley and we go out and visit about 16 members and one day we take them gifts. We call it Surprise Patrol. And so we get out and we go into a business and we say, surprise, we’re all here. we, you usually 10, 15 people showing up to your business on a trolley is sort of shocking. And all the ambassadors will bring a gift from their business to that member.
and it’s all about saying thank you for your membership and we appreciate you. And we’re not asking for any on any of these things. We’re not asking for money. We’re not asking to support anything. We’re not reminding them that they owe dues or anything. It’s all about, we appreciate your membership and appreciate you and wanna thank you. And then of course, on Surprise Patrol, they get gifts as well. So that’s always a lot of fun days and all of.
Brandon Burton (14:59.79)
So about how many members are you guys able to visit on one of those surprise patrol visits? Wow.
Tonia Stephenson (15:04.567)
We get about 16 in a day. So we hit quite a bit and we’re promoting our ambassador members as well. So we got the 16 members that we’re visiting, but then there’s 10, 15 members who are ambassadors, who their businesses are getting promoted as well. So 30, 35 businesses are getting promoted in that day. And it’s just a fun day and a great time to…
show appreciation and remind people that we’re here and we’re supporting them and helping them any way we can. It’s always interesting because after every Surprise Patrol, I have members say, hey, how do I get on that list? And I was like, well, we’ll put you on the list for the next time. So it’s a lot of fun. Once a year, our ambassadors and our board and the staff all spend a week delivering our new directories.
We call that operation. Thank you. It’s it’s a program that’s been around for a long time in chambers, but it kind of went away. I’ve always had worked in operation. Thank you just because I think it’s so important. So we we have some type of gift that we give. It’s a small gift and it’s usually a got a corny saying on it. Something like this last year we gave payday payday candy bars out and it said every day is a payday with you as a member of the chamber so.
It’s cute and corny, but people love it. They love seeing us come because again, we’re not there asking for anything. We’re just there to say hello, say thank you. We take pictures throughout the day, post them on our website. mean, post them on all our social media sites. So they’re continually getting thanked and they’re continually getting promoted through these things. And so they’re all real important to us.
And then in addition, you know, we do all those calls that the staff does and then the board does at six months, but our ambassadors are making personal phone calls to our members as well. So the ambassadors are making five to 10 phone calls a month on our members just to say, hey, you know, is there anything we can do? Check in on you. What’s going on with you? What can we do? And so that’s really helpful because a lot of times our ambassadors learn things about our members that we don’t know and that
Tonia Stephenson (17:22.827)
gives us an opportunity to know and it’s that gives us 25 more people out there calling on members and checking in on them that we can’t, you people can’t get to all of them. And so they really helpful with that. And then there’s little things that we will remember and do that. I don’t think that is normal in the world of of anywhere. But for me, you know, I look at them, our members as customers, you know, we.
If I hear that there’s gonna be a ball game, I tell you make a note and I’ll call and say, hey, did little Johnny win his ball game? And that means a lot to them. Or I’ll shoot a note and say, hey, I was thinking about you. We do a lot of notes about testing, if we got some kind of medical issue, we have birthdays listed and we send personal birthday cards, handwritten notes, we send sympathy cards.
We spend a lot of time on these types of things and some people might say, well, that’s just a waste of time in the business world, but it is not waste of time. I’ve had people that, like I have one gentleman who said something about his, he had knee replacement recent, I mean, he had knee replacement a few years ago, but recently he said, you know, that was the sweetest card I got from y’all. And he’s like, it was the best one I got from, you know, it was from y’all.
Brandon Burton (18:41.474)
Wow.
Tonia Stephenson (18:42.057)
And he’s like, who would have thought that my chamber membership would have gotten me thoughts during my surgery? And so we really try to watch out for those little things. And we watch social media closely to see that they’re posting, that they’ve got issues or concerns. Then we reach out and let them know that we’re there to help them and support them through that, throughout whatever that they’re going through, or to celebrate with them when it’s good stuff.
and they remember that we remember those types of things.
Brandon Burton (19:12.686)
Yeah. So with these, uh, with the birthday cards and sympathy cards, I can see how that could get, you know, a little arduous, you know, to try to get all these, uh, cards out. So how do you, how do you manage that? Is it, are you focusing on the primary rep for each business or how deep do you go with, you know, if they’ve got three or four contacts as a, with their membership, I don’t, how do you kind of filter who or how you’re able to send, um,
those kind of cards too.
Tonia Stephenson (19:43.728)
We really don’t filter. Yeah, we really don’t filter. If we know it, we send it. And if they’re a member, we don’t really filter. yes, takes some time, but it’s not overwhelming amount of time. And it takes five minutes to fill out a card and stick it in the mail.
I usually fill it out first and sign it from your Burke County Chamber family and then write a little personal note for me. then everybody passes around, they sign a little note and off it goes. it brings return on investment of 10 minutes of time maybe and 60 cents stamp or however much they are now.
Brandon Burton (20:38.86)
Yeah, by the time this comes out, the stamps will be more.
Tonia Stephenson (20:39.447)
$4 car, mean, it’s really…
Well, that’s true. The stamps go up every day, it really has. you know, and it might seem like it’s arduous, but it hasn’t been. It hasn’t been. It could get that way. don’t know. But, you we just try to keep up with the best we can. And when we hear things that we miss, it’s like, whoa, we’re so sorry that we didn’t know that. And people, nobody’s ever fought at us for it or anything. So, so no, there’s not really any filter on it. If we know it and
we can do something to at least acknowledge and know that people will, for people to know that we care that we do that.
Brandon Burton (21:18.978)
Yeah. So there’s a couple things that you had touched on I wanted to circle back with and just maybe get a little bit more information. So one is with the onboarding of new members. You talked about different staff members meeting with the new members and kind of doing the orientation onboarding. Are these members coming to the chamber office? Are they going to visit these businesses at their location? Is it a mixture of both? How do you try to schedule that?
Tonia Stephenson (21:29.132)
Mm-hmm.
Tonia Stephenson (21:45.6)
It’s a mixture. A lot of people want to come to the office and see our office and meet the whole team and we’re a great location. So a lot of them happen at the chamber, but then a lot of the members say, come see my place and come take a tour or whatever. So it’s really a mixture. And for the member meetings, have where tier dues. So we have bronze, silver, gold, platinum and titanium.
Brandon Burton (22:05.934)
That’s good.
Tonia Stephenson (22:15.415)
Bronze members, our membership team takes care of it, but if it’s Silver and above, I’ll actually have that member meeting with them as well, just so that they know who I am and that we all care about. I we all care about them regardless, but I do take the time to spend time with the Silver and above members when they’re first joining.
Brandon Burton (22:34.124)
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So I really liked what you mentioned about T-shirt Fridays and being able to wear a T-shirt of different businesses in your community, different members and going out and taking pictures and posting them. Do members enroll in that? Do you proactively reach out and say, hey, do you want to send us a T-shirt and be included in the next T-shirt Friday or how does that program work?
Tonia Stephenson (23:00.031)
The only thing we have to do is have a t-shirt Friday and we end up with more t-shirts. I don’t know how many. I have quite a collection. Well, we’re not quite there, but yeah, we have quite a collection. That’s for sure. So every time we go out, typically I will come back with four shirts. And so we don’t really, we don’t charge for that, which, you know, we kind of talked about, it’s like we might all.
Brandon Burton (23:04.389)
Right. I can imagine what your closet looks like, right?
600 different t-shirts with logos on it
Tonia Stephenson (23:28.607)
start charging for this program. But we have some great events and we do fine with other things. And so far we’ve not charged because that way all sides of our members can participate. Nobody feels like that they’re really left out. And so we say the only charge for this program for T-shirt Friday is the cost of four T-shirts and you just provide us your shirts and we’ll wear them on that Friday.
Brandon Burton (23:30.147)
Yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (23:56.002)
So we start out that morning, we take a group shot of all of us in our shirts and what’s really cute is sometimes there’s stuff on the back. So we have to turn around and have pictures of our backs so that we get the information on there. And our initial post out is the four of us in our shirts and we tell a little bit about the company and we give the company’s website address and how to get in touch with the people and what their specialties are. And then,
From there, it’s usually individual selfies with our members or the group of members. Because we really want to catch a lot of people and sometimes we can’t catch them open. So sometimes we might be out by a sign and say, you know, telling about some company. Or sometimes we’re on the side of the road taking pictures and people are looking at us like we’re crazy. Recently, we have a new bank who’s building a new location. And so recently I stopped at the corner.
Brandon Burton (24:38.998)
Yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (24:52.119)
where there’s like, you know, basically like rubbish, you know, in this big, big parking lot right now, but they’ve got a beautiful plan and design that they’re getting ready to build. So here I am by the construction fence, taking a selfie with the picture of the bank that’s coming. And people just looked at me like I was idiot or they blow their horns and I was like, hi, yeah, it’s just me taking a selfie with the pit, know. There really is a purpose here.
Brandon Burton (25:13.186)
Yeah.
Brandon Burton (25:19.042)
Follow us on Facebook, right?
Tonia Stephenson (25:22.199)
It’s like, yes, I might be crazy and do things differently, but here we are taking a picture with the fence. But it’s really, it was a good promotion because a lot of people didn’t know that that’s what was going on that location or they hadn’t been driven by there to see what the beautiful rendition looks like. And so it’s just about…
just about promoting what’s going on in the membership and promoting the members and what they’re doing and what their services are, what their product is.
Brandon Burton (25:53.058)
Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to ask about is you mentioned staff and ambassadors going out to deliver your annual directories. You had a name for it. Operation Thank You. So with Operation Thank You, I mean, you get, I guess, roughly about 30 people going out in the community to make these personal interactions, these personal deliveries. that sound about right? About 25 ambassadors and staff?
Tonia Stephenson (26:00.504)
Operation thank you.
Tonia Stephenson (26:17.783)
about 50 people. We have between 20 and 25 ambassadors. I have 20 board members, four staff, and then sometimes we recruit spouses and other people. So usually 50 or 60 people will help us out throughout the week. We do it in half days, we do it in teams of two so that it’s easier if you drive up to a location, somebody jumps out and delivers and jumps back in.
Brandon Burton (26:25.174)
And the board, okay. Yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (26:45.495)
Of course, sometimes we end up sending out to salespeople and they’re parking in every parking lot and introducing themselves to every person and having long conversations. And I’m like, guys, you’re not getting the books delivered if you’re doing that, but they’re doing their jobs. So, you know, I’m just thankful that they might get four delivered in the morning time, typically you can get 30 to 50 delivered in the morning and again in the afternoon.
Brandon Burton (26:57.228)
Right? Like I’m multitasking, yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (27:14.845)
if you get in and get out and keep moving.
Brandon Burton (27:17.9)
Yeah, yeah. Now I really like that plan and it’s a great way to have a for sure like an annual touch point with each member as you as you get those delivered and hand delivered. It goes a long ways with the payday bar or whatever that gift is so that’s awesome.
Tonia Stephenson (27:34.284)
Yeah. Well, when I was in, back in my day, when I was doing membership and learning the role and learning about chambers and figuring things out and sometimes, and the high point chamber that I was at for many years, we were quite a large chamber and, and it was hard to get to all of our members and to, to, to touch them throughout the year. And so a lot of times they only heard from us, was when they got their renewal notice and,
And I don’t know how many times I’d hear, it’s like, all you want is my money and you don’t really care about it. And even as a membership person, it broke my heart and I’ve tried to do my best to not, for that not to be the way it was. And our whole team, we all had a great heart about it, but we had 1300 members and there were six of us and still again, you just can’t get to everybody.
As I’ve learned throughout the years, I really don’t ever want a member say that the only time I hear from you is my renewal notice. And, and if, if that’s the only time they’ve heard from us, then shame on us. And, and so that’s what, and you know, my marketing person can say, but look at the hits that they get on our website, regardless of they hear from us, you know, they got these hits on the website. They got, no, I want them to hear from us. I want them to know. Yeah.
Brandon Burton (28:57.134)
It’s got to be meaningful to them, right?
Tonia Stephenson (29:00.511)
I want it to be personal for them. Their business is very personal, know, especially our small business owners. Some of our small business owners has their entire life savings wrapped up in that business. And when I say that they are part of the chamber family, when I say that the four of us are part of their team, I want them to feel it and I want them to know it. And I want them to, when they’re losing sleep at night, I want them to pick up the phone and say, here’s my troubles. And
We go to work to try to figure out what those troubles are. If they don’t ever see us, they don’t ever hear from us and they don’t, and if we are nothing but the email that comes in that says, hey, here’s your dues, they’re not gonna do that. And then when they get that email from the dues, they say, why do I need to pay this? And I get that, because I mean, money’s tight a lot of times. And so I wanna give them a reason that they say, I can’t afford not to pay this. And that…
That’s our goal with every phone call, with every visit, with every post we put out. That’s our goal is for them to know that they need us.
Brandon Burton (30:06.434)
Yeah. Well, I love all these touch points. I love the recognition. I love being able to show the member value to the chamber. These are all, I’m going to call them tactics or strategies, but that kind of cheapens it. I mean, it really is showing that you genuinely care about these individuals, these businesses and their success. I don’t think we can have a discussion about retention without me asking, can you share what your retention rates look like?
Tonia Stephenson (30:36.513)
We’re typically between 92 to 94%. So we typically lose members because they’ve moved or they’ve closed. And sometimes with, I don’t know if other chambers are having this, but over the last five, seven years, banks, because corporate says they’re not gonna be a member. Makes me so mad.
Brandon Burton (30:41.526)
something to celebrate.
Brandon Burton (31:00.94)
Yep. Yep. Or Walmart, we’ve been seeing that. So, yeah.
Tonia Stephenson (31:05.892)
So far, Walmart’s a really good member for us, so I hope that I don’t see that from them.
Brandon Burton (31:08.78)
That’s good. Hopefully they hang on. Yeah. Well, as we begin to wrap up, but I’d like to see whether it’s based on our discussion or any other thoughts for the chambers listening who want to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or strategy would you share with them and trying to accomplish that goal?
Tonia Stephenson (31:30.611)
One thing that I have always done and is real important to me and I think your podcast fits right in with this and I think it’s great that we have this as a resource. I’ve always had a mentor or multiple mentors. I’ve always found my neighboring chambers and made friends with them and made sure that they’re some of my closest friends.
and colleagues and somebody I could call on. So when I moved here, that was the first thing I did was look up my neighboring chambers and introduce myself, except for I had two that was precious and they reached out to me before I could get to them. And I have a neighboring county to the west that she and I call each other our chamber sisters because we just know that we’re there for each other.
So I think having mentors is very important and talking to other chambers and not just chamber mentors, but I think just having mentors in general, especially if there’s something that you’re not good at and you see it in somebody else, it’s great to spend time with that person and say, hey, can we go to lunch and just learn from that person, watch them. And then I think being a mentor to others is real important. And I know for me,
I’ve taken on several younger chamber professionals and spent time with them and tried to help them. And every time I’ve done that with the intentions of me trying to help them and help them learn and grow, I’ve found that I’ve learned and grown just as much through the process of being a mentor as I have having mentors. So I think that that’s just so important. You can learn so much, and especially if you’ll learn it with the right attitude and then go back and try to apply things that.
Brandon Burton (33:07.008)
Right. Yeah, it’s helpful.
Tonia Stephenson (33:21.547)
that makes sense. Of course, we all hear things and learn things all the time and it’s like, well, that would be great, but there’s no way I can put that on my plate. No, there’s no way. But to be intentional with trying to really, especially in areas where you know that you need to grow, learn and try to grow as much as you can in those areas.
Brandon Burton (33:39.18)
Yeah, I think that’s a great piece of advice. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?
Tonia Stephenson (33:51.416)
That’s a very interesting topic because I found that in during COVID times, we had to really think about chambers and what we were doing and how we did things. And we had to really pivot and change a lot of our ways of thinking to stay relevant. And I think that’s so important in the chamber world is that we stay relevant. And I think that there was a time at least for the chambers that I was working with that
it was maybe hard for us to be relevant, when some technology seems to have taken over a lot of what we traditionally did in the past. And so I think for us to update our what we’re doing and always look for new ways to do things and new ways to present ourselves and being relevant in the business community and being on top of what the business community needs and individuals need and taking care of those things are, there’s just.
So important. I think that it’s real important that chambers be chambers and work with businesses and know that we are here for business community. We are business association. We’re not a social group. We are not here to everybody socialize and have a good time, but we are here to grow business and help our businesses in whichever way that they need. Being a voice for the business. Our chambers very active in governmental affairs, so.
That’s one thing that sets us apart is we are, I always say if the business community was a body, stick figures all I can do, we would be the mouthpiece of that body. And we got to be the mouthpiece for our businesses because we are the group that is gonna be standing up for our businesses and making sure that our businesses are heard. And that’s what our role is.
But always being able to, always looking for ways to change and grow is just real important and staying relevant I think is so important.
Brandon Burton (35:51.98)
I’d be curious how you would label the rest of the body parts, but that’s okay. Well, that’s a discussion for another time. but this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate these tactics, these ideas, these ways of showing your care for your members to really nurture those relationships. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you maybe as a mentor.
Tonia Stephenson (35:58.488)
I’ve never really thought about the rest of the body, so I’d have to think about that.
Brandon Burton (36:21.954)
or just to get ideas of how you’re doing things, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Tonia Stephenson (36:28.161)
Sure, I appreciate the opportunity. First podcast I’ve done, so hey, this might be new thing for me. But yes, Burke County Chamber of Commerce, I’ll actually give my cell phone number because reaching me at the office is sometimes very hard. My cell phone number is 336-689-5438. And you can email me at T. Stevenson, it’s tstephenson@burkecounty.org.
So email me or call me or text me either way. I’m happy to always help out fellow chamber people when I can and talk to fellow chamber people. I love learning from them. So be happy to talk to anyone.
Brandon Burton (37:15.66)
That’s perfect. We will get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy. But again, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for setting aside some time to be with us and share these insights. I think it provided a ton of value for our listeners today. So thank you. Thank you a lot.
Tonia Stephenson (37:30.935)
Thank you, I appreciate you.
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