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Category: Podcast Episode

Creating a Clear Focus with Brian Anderson

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

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

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

Brian currently serves on several key boards shaping the future of Virginia’s economy. He brings to this conversation a wealth of insight on business leadership, regional strategy, and the importance of public-private partnerships in driving long-term growth. But let’s dive into an engaging and energizing conversation with Brian Anderson. Brian, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (04:13.219)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (04:19.587)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (09:01.518)
Thanks.

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

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

Brandon Burton (10:19.8)
Here we go.

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

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

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

Brian D. Anderson (10:52.555)
.

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

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

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

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

Brian D. Anderson (11:45.148)
Thank

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (13:14.99)
Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (14:54.006)
I like it.

Bye.

Brandon Burton (15:08.526)
you

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

Brian D. Anderson (15:32.331)
you

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (18:07.662)
Bye bye.

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

Brian D. Anderson (18:33.355)
Thank

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (20:51.822)
you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian D. Anderson (24:03.061)
Thank

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (25:01.965)
Yeah.

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

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

Brandon Burton (26:02.167)
Yeah.

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

Brandon Burton (26:37.4)
See

Brandon Burton (26:48.92)
Yeah.

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

Brandon Burton (27:02.38)
Yeah.

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

Brian D. Anderson (27:16.683)
.

Brian D. Anderson (27:29.695)
Yes.

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

The city’s doing something at the same time.

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (29:22.988)
Yeah.

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

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

Brandon Burton (30:04.878)
you

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

Brandon Burton (30:28.34)
Yeah, I love that. I also like asking as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian D. Anderson (32:39.295)
Wonderful.

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

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Empty Building Tours with Deb Brown

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Brandon Burton (00:01.024)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on the podcast, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is a leading voice in rural revitalization and a fierce advocate for the potential of small towns. Deb Brown is the co-founder of SaveYour.Town.

where for the past decade, she’s partnered with Becky McCray to deliver practical, inspiring solutions that help rural communities take bold action and create lasting change. Deb’s expertise is grounded in real world experience, from her impactful work as a Chamber of Commerce Executive Director to her varied background in retail, insurance, and entrepreneurship. She brings an energetic, no-nonsense approach that resonates with community leaders and grassroots

doers alike. She’s also the author of From Possibilities to Reality, Savior Small Town, a hands-on guide that brings essential reading for those working to breathe new life into rural places. Whether she’s leading workshops, crafting strategies, or sparking conversations, Deb Brown brings insight, connection, and deep belief in what’s possible when a small town takes ownership of their future.

Deb, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Deb Brown (01:40.504)
So first of all, thank you for the lovely introduction and for having me on your podcast. I am a fierce advocate for belonging to the chamber and being active in your chamber. So I’m glad to be here having conversations with you. Now, what do you want to know about me that might be different?

Hmm. I know how to set off fireworks. In fact, I’m a licensed pyrotechnician and I learned to do that while I was a chamber director in Webster City, Iowa. So it goes to show many things can happen when you work with a chamber.

Brandon Burton (02:08.277)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (02:19.104)
That’s right. It just shows how Chamber Executive wears many hats and carries credentials that you never dreamed you’d have to carry, right? That’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about your organization, Save Your Town, just kind of how it started, what the vision is, what you guys do, and kind of anything you want to share about

Deb Brown (02:23.15)
Indeed. Yes.

Deb Brown (02:43.478)
So we, Becky McCray is the rural small business advocate and she started a small biz survival back in 2006. And it is one of the first early blogs that talks about small businesses and rural communities and actions you can take. And I had been following her on Twitter of all places, right? When I first started on Twitter and I didn’t know any better. So I just reached out and started talking to her.

Brandon Burton (03:12.94)
There you go.

Deb Brown (03:13.452)
I guess I still do that, right? Anyway, we met in person at a bloggers tour in Hutchinson, Kansas and hit it off and started doing some things together. I was living in Iowa at the time and she lives in Oklahoma. We were involved in the 140 character conferences, which again is a Twitter-based conference.

Brandon Burton (03:34.05)
Twitter.

Deb Brown (03:37.059)
We just really got along and thought along the same lines. And she came to visit me one day and we’re sitting over dinner and she said, you know, I think we should do something together. I’m like, okay. So our first venture was a toolkit on how to do a pop-up in a small town. And my first question to her was, are people really gonna pay for this? And indeed, indeed they did because at that time not very many people were doing that.

Brandon Burton (04:01.12)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (04:06.83)
And we have grown over the years. I was still working at the chamber at that time and went out on my own with Becky in 2017. we’ve grown and spent many, many hours in rural communities across the United States and Canada. And it’s work that we love to do and we like being on the ground and hearing.

what people’s challenges are and working with them to figure out ways to overcome those challenges. That’s a short synopsis for you.

Brandon Burton (04:40.226)
Yeah, no, that’s great. It gives a good background. So I’d mentioned in your bio that you were a chamber executive. You mentioned it with the fireworks. Maybe just to continue helping to set the stage, tell us a little bit about your experience as a chamber executive.

Deb Brown (04:59.566)
Oh, sure. So my father had had a heart attack and we moved from North Carolina back to Iowa. And I was looking for something to do. So I volunteered at the local chamber in Hampton, Iowa. And lucky me, the director was phenomenal. And I ended up actually doing the communications, Main Street work and social media work. This was 2009, right? A while ago.

Brandon Burton (05:28.162)
Great.

Deb Brown (05:28.904)
and learned a lot in Iowa has phenomenal main street and chamber organization. So I really did learn a lot and the position for executive director came up in 2013 in Webster city. And I thought, sure, let’s apply for it. And danged if they didn’t hire me. So I was able to be a director there for a little over four years. it was for me.

Brandon Burton (05:47.03)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (05:55.511)
I had some background, of course, in chamber, but more in communications and tourism and talking to people and conversations. So I was given the opportunity at that chamber really to set the stage for the things that we could do in that community that would really make a difference. They had lost a major manufacturer two years before I got there.

employed 2,000 people in a town of 8,000 to kind of give you an idea. It was a company town and had been there for a long time. So you, many of your listeners will know exactly what that feels like. And there were some challenges, but as a community and as a chamber, we figured it out and really had a good time reinvigorating the community and getting more people involved and got past that.

Brandon Burton (06:29.858)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (06:36.32)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (06:51.416)
pour me stage into look at who we are. We’re phenomenal. What else can we do? So that’s my chamber experience. I just tried new ideas all the time.

Brandon Burton (06:57.43)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (07:06.274)
Very good. Well, it definitely helps to give us some background so those listening know you understand chambers. You’ve been in it. You’ve been in the throws and some of those, you know, deepest, toughest struggles that we see.

Deb Brown (07:12.993)
yeah.

Deb Brown (07:18.54)
And I wanna throw in here too that I do have my IOM certification and that is probably one of the best educational trainings that I have received in my lifetime. I was fortunate to have a great class, but also the instructors, it’s unbelievable training. And if anybody has the opportunity to do an IOM, please do it. And no, I’m not being paid to say that.

It’s just been huge in my life going forward from that point.

Brandon Burton (07:45.654)
Yeah.

Yeah, very good. Well, for today’s topic, we’re going to spend most of our time talking about what I see as a very unique revitalization tool, we’ll call it, to help revitalize some parts of maybe your downtown or town square that maybe is looking a little empty, a little quiet, a little, you know,

It needs some help, say. We see this in small towns all across the country. And Deb’s got some great ideas on how to address that. And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Deb, we’re back. So as I teased before our pause there, today we’re talking about this unique approach to revitalizing downtowns, town squares, some of these areas where we see

parts of towns that maybe get forgotten. Maybe they had a great historical impact in this community, in any community USA, right? We see it all across the country, but I’m gonna let you introduce what this approach is and how you go about doing it.

Deb Brown (09:08.47)
Absolutely. So we’re going to talk about the tour of empty buildings. And I want to tell you a story about how we came up with this entire idea and this concept. So I mentioned before working in Webster city, when I went over for the job interview, I counted 14 empty buildings downtown, 14 in a town of 8,000.

And I knew if I got the job, I was gonna be responsible or one of them to help fill those empty buildings. And I got the job. And yes, of course they said, so Deb, what are you gonna do to fill these empty buildings? And my first response is, well, what are we going to do? I have some ideas, right? And my thought was,

The beautiful, some were beautiful historical buildings. Most of them had a great story. I know that people are curious and they want to see what’s in places. Like if I can go upstairs and see where they stored their things in the old bank vault, I want to do that, right? So we came, I came up with the idea, let’s showcase these buildings because instead of hiding them or ignoring them,

Brandon Burton (10:08.033)
Yes.

Yeah

Deb Brown (10:24.844)
We want to fill them, so let’s showcase them. And it’s vacant or underutilized buildings. You can do that for. And actually, the tour’s design, it raises awareness about these building vacancies and inspires the reuse and revitalization ideas.

In a month’s time, we figured out, we scheduled a tour of empty buildings. Now, would I recommend doing that in a month’s time? I might tell you to take two months, just saying, but I didn’t know any better. And I had a group of people that were ready for change. They were tired of the story that we failed because it didn’t fail, things just changed and that’s life. Life happens.

Deb Brown (12:00.003)
So, you know, we had some really great members and people were ready to try something new. They were tired of that we failed story because that was just a story. In real life, things happen and change is the only constant, right? So a group of us,

Brandon Burton (12:02.082)
Okay, sounds good.

Deb Brown (12:24.906)
members got together and said what can we do? So we made a list of the empty buildings, got in touch with the realtors to ask them do you know the owners, which ones are for sale. We’re fortunate to have a local historian in the community and Nancy put together stories about each individual building which was great because it’s good to know the history right and our chamber champions those

Brandon Burton (12:48.588)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (12:51.5)
were the retired individuals that were still members. We called them chamber champions. And they stepped up to say, well, I’ll tell that story. I’ll go in this building and I’ll tell that story. So we put the tour together and it was, you could come and go as you please. It was over a time period of three hours. A local engineering company made the map for us.

Brandon Burton (12:56.802)
I love it.

Deb Brown (13:15.182)
And we made that available both online and at the chamber office. So you could come and pick it up or print it off. And the biggest secret I can share with you both before and after the tour is we talked to everybody. We had conversations with everybody. Have you heard about the tour of empty buildings? Are you coming? And people had not heard and it involved being out in the community and being in the places where people talk.

One of my favorite stories is I went to the morning coffee where the old guys go and all have coffee, right? You know this group, most small towns have them. And crotchety group of old guys. And one of the fellows said to me, Deb, what are you doing? It’s not gonna work. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why should I share about it? And I had to think for a minute and I said to him, you know, where’s your daughter live?

Brandon Burton (13:47.2)
you

Brandon Burton (13:52.266)
Yep, yep.

Brandon Burton (13:58.019)
is that we have a front-end center that we’re able to start moving. And just in some cases, why should I share a back-end? And then I think, well, it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad. It’s fine. But I think that we have to be very careful.

Deb Brown (14:11.182)
Because well, you know, she lives at the state capitol. I’m like, yeah, that’s right. You got grandkids, right? And he goes, yeah. I’m like, what would it be like if your daughter can move back home with her family and start her own business in one of these empty buildings? And it’s like the light bulb went off over his head. Everybody has a motivating factor and that was his.

And now he saw reasons where he could share that story. And he became one of our biggest advocates and in fact did share the story amongst his group of peers and organizations. It was just wonderful. And so a month later we had the tour, 44 people came and I declared that a success because that was 44 people that not only got to see the empty buildings, but also took their stories and shared them.

Brandon Burton (14:35.094)
Yeah, I it.

Deb Brown (15:03.018)
outside of the tour with their friends and families and associates. And we continue to share the local newspaper got on board every time somebody rented a building, they showed up and took pictures of the new renters and made a big deal about the ribbon cutting and shared about those people’s stories and the kind of products and services they were providing. The local radio station got involved.

It was, it became just so much fun to see what was happening in all these different buildings. And there were 12 buildings on the tour. In 18 months, 10 of those 12 buildings were filled.

Brandon Burton (15:42.53)
Wow

Deb Brown (15:45.571)
And they weren’t filled with another factory or some new big conglomerate from outside of our community. The majority were filled with entrepreneurs and local businesses that may have been expanding or ready to move from their garage to a brick and mortar building. Why did it work? Because we kept talking about it. And we shared every story possible and we use social media because

Brandon Burton (15:53.154)
you

Brandon Burton (16:09.034)
That’s awesome.

Deb Brown (16:13.742)
This was 2013, social media was important, much more important than before all the stuff that goes on with it now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just people being in touch with their families and sharing stories. So I love talking about the Tour of Empty Buildings because I know it works. We heard from Natchez, Mississippi that does the Tour of Empty Buildings just about every year.

Brandon Burton (16:21.826)
all the algorithms now and how they manipulate it.

Brandon Burton (16:44.309)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (16:44.312)
Buildings come and go, business owners come and go. know, things don’t stay permanent. So for them, it made sense to do that little bigger community. We heard from a group in Australia, and I think it was in Sydney, who said, you know, we do tours for tourists to go see different things in our community. We have added one empty building into that tour because you never know when a tourist might want to start a job.

Brandon Burton (16:57.868)
Ha.

Brandon Burton (17:10.914)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (17:13.454)
We were just hearing all different kinds of people wanting to take advantage of this tour. And we got the phone calls from some of our neighbors. Hey, can we do one in our community? And of course, what am I going to say? Absolutely, you can do one in your community. And here you and I are 12 years later, still talking about the tour of empty buildings. I want to go a little bit further and share another story from that.

Brandon Burton (17:28.758)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:35.33)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (17:41.773)
the local movie theater closed my first week on the job. You know, that’s just wrong. In a small town, the local movie theater is really important, right? And I think it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people in town. And so I said, let’s bring a bunch of people together and talk about this. So I just said, hey, let’s meet in two weeks at the middle school and see what we can do.

Brandon Burton (17:46.114)
I don’t mean… Right?

Yeah.

Deb Brown (18:08.458)
huge group of people showed up that wanted to save the theater. So that told us right there was an unofficial informal gathering to just see who was interested. And there were a lot of people interested. This group ended up forming a 501C3. They raised money. Now it was going to cost $90,000 to upgrade from old film to digital.

and had to buy the building and the building was for sale for $30,000. That’s a lot of money, right? But we didn’t care because we knew we could raise the money. People wanted to save the theater. The alumni associations in town jumped on board. We decided to sell the seats at $300 a pop, not actually sell the seats, but you could have your plaque on the back of it.

And the alumni associations bought those like they were giving them away free, made a huge difference. The students at the high school created movie trailers about the project that could be shown on social media. mean, everybody jumped in and got involved. And it was, the majority of the funding came in five, 10 and $25 donations. There were a couple of $10,000 donations, but the majority of it was small. And that

Brandon Burton (19:13.186)
That’s really cool.

Deb Brown (19:30.164)
speaks to the power of a small town that knows what it wants and someone or some group of people is there to help guide them to achieve that. That’s just one story from those 12 buildings.

Brandon Burton (19:40.205)
Yeah. Great story. Yeah. So I do, I’ve got some questions about the empty building tours. So, with this initial tour that you did at the 12 buildings, you had 44 people come to do the tours. What was your initial goal going into it? Like what, if we can accomplish one thing out of this, doing these tours, what would that be? And then with that goal, you mentioned talking about it everywhere, but

Deb Brown (19:48.142)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (20:10.22)
Who was it that you were really targeting to be on those tours?

Deb Brown (20:14.114)
Very good question. So the initial goal was to change the conversation from, we suck, we have empty buildings, to look at the possibilities. Look at what we do have. There’s place for lots of new businesses here. And that’s important because if you’re thinking positively, these are the kind of things you can accomplish. But if you keep that negative attitude around you, it’s just hard to break through that.

So that was the initial goal, get the building shown and maintain that good conversation and get people excited again. Excuse me. Generally, we’ve seen chambers, economic development groups, even local community organizations do put these tours on.

And you want to fill them with people that want to start businesses actually. So maybe it’s entrepreneurs, maybe it’s another business that wants to expand its footprint. Perhaps it’s, we never looked for big businesses. We were looking for the smaller businesses and how we can make that happen. A good example is three of the empty buildings went into the incubator project.

Brandon Burton (21:20.648)
So, that’s the plan. And that is the plan. And this is what I’m going to do.

Deb Brown (21:35.885)
which was just something I made up. I approached the owner and said, what if we helped entrepreneurs start a business and they could do that in your building, free rent first three months, reduce rent the rest of the year, they pay the utilities, the chamber will help with marketing and the SBDC will come in and help with the tools that they can provide. And she said, fine, sounds like a great idea.

Brandon Burton (21:47.011)
Because the treatment is being done in a way is not going cause any harm by any of the other things. And it must be a similar kind of treatment that involves the type of treatment.

Deb Brown (22:04.73)
And that really worked. That was phenomenal. And not just that, there were several different people that tried that idea out and a couple of them ended up buying buildings in town and expanded their initial footprint. So you just have to think a little differently, a little outside the box, give people a chance, lower those barriers to entry because that’s what an incubator project does.

If you think about buying a building, you know, there’s $100,000, another hundred grand to rehab it and fix it, and you haven’t even tried your idea out, makes no sense, right? So an incubator project gives you that opportunity to do that. I hope I answered your question. It kind of went off.

Brandon Burton (22:38.242)
Right.

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

Brandon Burton (22:50.722)
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, yeah, you did. In fact, as you were giving your response, it reminded me I had heard I was trying to remember where I’d heard it from. And I’m pretty sure it came from the book 13 ways to kill your community. Yes. And he talks about one of the ways to kill your community, obviously, uses reverse psychology, right? You don’t want to kill your community. But if you did, one of the things would be don’t paint. Like don’t

Deb Brown (23:06.146)
Doug, yeah.

Brandon Burton (23:20.514)
don’t keep things fresh, don’t keep things looking good. And he talks about the downtown environment and where there’s vacant lots, some communities put a little park, you know, in this vacant lot and, you know, updated the facade on the buildings. And I think it was in here where he even talks about putting posters up in the windows of some of these vacant buildings to show, you know, either how that building was used in the past. when there’s

When you’re walking down Main Street and you see this empty building, maybe it used to be a barber shop and you’ve got posters of a barber in there doing this, you could put posters, these screen posters on the windows to help people imagine what the space could be. And it’s not necessarily getting them in the doors and doing the empty building tour like you’re talking about, but it’s drawing attention to what can this space become?

What has it been in the past? What can it become? And keeping it beautiful, keeping the area looking nice, making sure that there’s not broken windows in these buildings, because that just spirals into bigger things.

Deb Brown (24:31.234)
And you know, I want to piggyback on that because it doesn’t have to be the building owner that does all of that. You know, I follow this lawn mowing service on TikTok and they actually go to people’s houses and mow the yards for free. man, that stuff is addicted. But we call those ninjas where what if…

Brandon Burton (24:46.4)
Yes, yes, I’ve seen that.

Deb Brown (24:54.54)
Me and a couple of my friends went and washed windows on one of those empty buildings. Just wash the windows and swept the sidewalk. That makes a big difference because people notice, are they doing in there? Look, the windows are clean. Sometimes if it’s a local owner, they get a phone call that says, what’s going on? I see your windows are clean. It’s little ninja things that other people can do. What are they gonna do? Are they gonna tell you to dirty the windows again? Of course not, right?

Brandon Burton (25:23.04)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (25:23.342)
So how can we as community members become a ninja and help? What things can we do? You have an empty lot in town and you’d like a restaurant, you know what, go take a card table with a couple of your friends and eat lunch there every day. Because you know, people are going to drive by and go, what the hell is Deb doing over there? And they’re going to stop or call me and I’m going to say, we want a restaurant here. So we’re trying the idea out.

Don’t be afraid to take those tiny steps to get people thinking and talking about what you’re doing. It matters.

Brandon Burton (25:59.009)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Those little things matter. So back with the focus on the empty building tour, I imagine there’s some level of coordination when trying to track down the owners of the buildings, if they’re a local owner, if they’re out of town owner, if they’ve got a realtor that they’re using. How do you gain access to these buildings and coordinate?

Deb Brown (26:07.522)
Yes.

Deb Brown (26:22.548)
So that’s easier than you think. The majority of small town realtors that I know anyway, know their community very well. And they know the history of the buildings that they’re responsible for. For us, that was the perfect outreach to get in touch with all. We asked all the realtors in town, let’s sit down and visit because we want to do something with these buildings you’d like to sell or rent or fill, right?

Brandon Burton (26:25.324)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (26:31.948)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:48.065)
Right?

Deb Brown (26:50.048)
So those were willing partners in the progress of it. Like I said, I counted 14, 12 came on the tour. And one of those actually backed out at the very last minute because that kind of stuff happens, right? And ended up he had a building that probably shouldn’t have been toured. And that’s why he backed out. It happens, right? It happens. you know, one person, the chamber director does not do all this work by themselves.

Brandon Burton (27:05.75)
Sure.

Brandon Burton (27:11.456)
Yeah. Yeah.

Deb Brown (27:19.948)
You will lose your mind. This is an opportunity where you can, yeah, no, you need to gather as a crowd and people that want to participate in this project with you. It will be usually the realtors and the building owners. Some of the local ones just pick up the phone and call them. Or you know they go to lunch at this restaurant every Wednesday, go sit down and visit with them. You know these people. This is not difficult.

Brandon Burton (27:21.73)
I’m glad you said that.

Brandon Burton (27:44.406)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (27:48.399)
Often we make projects hard. You know, so maybe I don’t know Connie, but I know that my board president does, and I’m going to say, can you go talk to Connie, and here’s what we want to know. So use your connections, and don’t be afraid to ask other people, what are your ideas? What do you think we should be doing? The newspaper was thrilled to be involved, and they came up with their own idea about follow-up and how

Brandon Burton (27:48.512)
That’s right.

Deb Brown (28:16.3)
they can be most effective with these new businesses. So the more you work with lots of people, the more ideas, and you want to try them all because you don’t know which ideas are going to work and which aren’t. if the idea doesn’t work, so what? It just didn’t work. Go to the next one, right?

Brandon Burton (28:28.876)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:32.714)
Yeah.

So would you have everybody meet up at the chamber office and then walk to these buildings or would you caravan or how would you gather to begin this tour? Right, yeah.

Deb Brown (28:38.9)
No.

So to do the actual tour, mean? So we didn’t do it that way because we wanted people to come and go, say, you may only want to look at three buildings. You don’t want to look at all 12 buildings. So you would pick up your map or download it. And you knew from four to seven, you could go look at the buildings. So counting was interesting because we had somebody in each location that counted the number of people that were serious. They came in to look at stuff.

Brandon Burton (28:55.678)
Okay, gotcha.

Deb Brown (29:12.43)
By serious, mean stayed, had a treat, and asked a few questions. That’s serious enough, right? So I wouldn’t recommend doing a ride around tour unless that’s something you want to do. Maybe you have a group of, Centerville, South Dakota had this idea. They had empty buildings that were not open.

Brandon Burton (29:19.009)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:27.852)
Red.

Deb Brown (29:39.819)
So they decided to meet downtown and they did a walk around of their empty buildings. And I think there were six or seven. And the economic developer knew, again, somebody that knew most of the people in town. And they just walked around and talked about the history of the building and what could be possible, answered questions. And I think they had maybe 14 people on that tour. It’s a tiny town. It was perfect for them. Esteline, I think they’re South Dakota.

Brandon Burton (30:02.452)
Okay.

Deb Brown (30:09.58)
The weather was not the greatest when they did theirs. So they decided to do just a mini tour for their board and a few building owners. They wanted to try the idea out. Let’s work with our board and see how this is going to work. And that worked for them because it was a smaller group, a new director that didn’t quite know how to be a chamber director yet. He’s really learning and he’s great. But this was good for him to try it out and see what his board thought.

And of course it was positive because you bring a group of interested people together talking about the possible success of your community. How could it not work out?

Brandon Burton (30:49.322)
Right. Yeah, I love that.

Deb Brown (30:50.754)
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be huge. can be work what works in your community.

Brandon Burton (30:57.1)
Yeah, yep. And you’ve shared some great examples of how different communities have taken it and adapted it to fit and work for their communities. So I love that. Well, Deb, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask you on behalf of the chamber leaders that are out there listening who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they try to accomplish that goal?

Deb Brown (31:27.79)
So I have a couple of things. The first one that I suggested just about everybody is to host a coffee and calendars event. And how this works is perhaps you want to work with a select group of people.

it might be your nonprofit organizations, invite them to come over for coffee and bring their calendars. And what you’re gonna do is talk about the next three months on the calendars of what people are doing. You wanna share information and see if there’s any way that you can collaborate or work together. The way that we did it is, I think we, maybe 10 people there, and we met.

I don’t even remember where we met. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be at the chamber at City Hall. can be at the coffee shop for that matter. And I asked people to go around and tell us who they were, what organization they were with, and tell us one thing that we may not know about their organization. And we found out that Building Families, a nonprofit organization, had funding to give to daycare, possible daycare owners to help

Brandon Burton (32:17.27)
Good evening.

Brandon Burton (32:26.914)
and the other organization. And without them, there’s no chance of a government to get money to make the big bang without the contribution.

Deb Brown (32:41.358)
If you have a house and you wanna start your own daycare, but you need to get licensed, it would help with the licensing. Maybe buy new toys, maybe put a fence up, just those small things that are necessary, but an individual may not have. That’s huge. You know how hard it is to find childcare these days. So to have an organization have that kind of funding, was a big deal and we didn’t know it. And I’m the chamber director and might’ve thought I should know it, right?

Brandon Burton (32:45.214)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (33:06.73)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (33:08.64)
So you start with that so you learn about each other and then you start looking at calendars. So maybe you’re having an event February 14th and so am I at one o’clock, both of us. Can we partner? Can I do mine at 10 and you do yours at one so we can have people in town the whole day? Begin to have these coffee and calendars kind of conversations on ways to work together to collaborate for the benefit of the community.

Brandon Burton (33:35.648)
That’s a great idea. Great.

Deb Brown (33:36.36)
Anybody can do that. Chambers can do that, but so can the local church society. mean, think about who could do that. So that’s my first tip.

Take the small steps. Not everything has to be a big deal. Find out from your membership, what is it that they want? I used to have one of my staff, part-time staff, was a retired school first grade teacher. That should tell you. Nobody told Joanne, no. So she would make the phone calls to members and say, Deb wants to come over for half an hour and have a conversation with you. And book the appointments. And I’d go with my notebook and just simply ask, so.

Brandon Burton (34:08.396)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (34:19.244)
What can we do for you? What is it that you want? And they were frankly surprised because nobody had ever asked them that. Generally we go with our hand open, right? Find out what your members want and how you can help them and how each other can help each other. We’re in the business of making our communities the best they can possibly be by supporting our local businesses and our members.

Brandon Burton (34:29.751)
Yeah.

Deb Brown (34:48.332)
Remember that. Continue to support your local businesses and your members in the way that they ask for help.

Brandon Burton (34:54.498)
Great pieces of advice. I love it. 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?

Deb Brown (34:59.629)
Thank you.

Deb Brown (35:11.386)
We live in this space, particularly those of us over 50, where we have one foot in the old way and one foot in the new way. So the new way of doing things is generally taking the small steps, building connections, gathering our crowd, figuring out how to work together as a group or as an organization. And the old way is letting your board make all the decisions and, and

deciding without input from the community, figure out how to get from the old way to the new way. Those communities that can do that are going to do really, really well. Yeah. And I’m not young, just you’re saying, I understand the old way and I know why it worked when it did, but it’s time for a new way. Let’s support as many people as we can.

Brandon Burton (35:52.578)
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (36:04.395)
Yeah.

And change can be hard. And if we can be helpful in helping to bridge the old way to the new way, let’s help make that transition a little bit easier.

Deb Brown (36:16.204)
And know, change is the only constant. There’s always gonna be change, right? The other stuff comes and goes too, right? Yeah.

Brandon Burton (36:20.438)
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Well, Deb, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners or anywhere you’d want to point them if they wanted to reach out and connect and learn more about what it is you have to offer or how you can help their communities. Where would you point them?

Deb Brown (36:42.898)
So to find out about us, if you go to saveyour.town and it’s S-A-V-E-Y-O-U-R dot T-O-W-N.

Wealth of information, sign up for a free newsletter, read the stories and the articles about what different small towns are doing and enjoy yourself at the site. Both Becky and I have written books and we’re pretty excited about it. Mine is, you mentioned it, From Possibilities to Reality. And you can find that one at saveyour.town. You’ll find the article that talks about the books. If you go to saveyour.town/books.

You’ll see both of our books there. Just sign up for the newsletter. It’s free and we share stories from people that we meet on the road, emails that we receive, from people like you that have stories to tell us. We are committed and invested in our rural and small towns and we want everyone else to be as well.

Brandon Burton (37:47.01)
Yeah, very good. I will make sure that’s in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for listeners to find the website and find you and find the book and reach out and connect. But Dev, this has been a great conversation. I’m glad we’re able to get you on the show and to really explore this empty building tours idea and some of the success stories that have come out of this, not just in your community, but in other communities that have adopted this strategy. I think it’s a really great idea.

Deb Brown (37:51.544)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (38:16.384)
So thank you for sharing it with us.

Deb Brown (38:16.707)
Thank you. And thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on the show. feel for anybody has a chamber question that I might be able to answer, just shoot me an email, deb@saveyour.town. Be happy to answer.

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How Forward-Thinking Initiatives are Reshaping Communities with Linda Parsons

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

Her leadership extends far beyond her role as she actively serves on a wide range of local and state boards focused on education, healthcare, childcare, and economic growth. Before relocating to North Carolina, Linda gained valuable public policy experience with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and served under two Ohio governors as a state and local government commission. She holds a degree in politics and government from Ohio Wesleyan University and is a CCE and a graduate from the US Chambers Institute for Organization Management. Please welcome to the show Linda Parsons. Linda, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so you can all get to know you a little better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (04:19.607)
Yes.

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

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

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

Linda M. Parsons (05:24.263)
I’m out.

Linda M. Parsons (05:34.298)
Okay.

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

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All right, Linda, we’re back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (08:41.741)
Yeah.

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (10:19.234)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:29.806)
Bye!

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

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

Brandon Burton (11:19.202)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (15:48.93)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:08.77)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (17:17.219)
Right.

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

Brandon Burton (17:52.877)
Yeah.

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

Brandon Burton (18:09.368)
Very cool.

Brandon Burton (18:17.944)
Yeah.

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

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

Brandon Burton (19:12.622)
Okay.

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

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

Brandon Burton (20:07.342)
Ugh.

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

Brandon Burton (20:38.328)
Move.

Brandon Burton (20:45.39)
Brave.

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

Brandon Burton (20:56.27)
Thank

Brandon Burton (21:05.059)
Yeah.

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

unexpected with what the future presents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (24:24.195)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:30.318)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (25:57.708)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (28:11.011)
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (29:54.99)
We are finished.

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

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

Brandon Burton (30:53.539)
Yeah.

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

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

Linda M. Parsons (31:28.341)
Correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton (34:15.371)
you

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

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

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

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Leading a Frontier Chamber with Shelley Batty

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Brandon Burton (00:01.11)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is Shelly Batty. Shelly is a proud native Orgonian and with a rare distinction of having lived in every tourism region in the state of

She currently serves as the Chamber Director for the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, where she champions local business and regional tourism. Along with her husband, Shelly co-owns Tall Town Bike and Camp, a go-to hub for cyclists, skiers, hikers, and backpackers seeking to explore the breathtaking landscapes of Lake County. When she’s not promoting her community or adventuring the outdoors,

Shelley dedicates her time to civic service as president of the Lake County Library District Board and an active member of several organizations, including the Historic Society and Oregon CBB. Her passion for Oregon runs deep and she’s here today to share insights on rural tourism, community building, and life on one of the state’s most scenic and welcoming regions.

Shelley, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Shelley Batty (01:30.768)
Okay, well, we’re in the middle of Lake County, which is known as Oregon’s Outback. Sort of a play on words because the same way of Australia’s Outback is this vast space with very few people, we are the same. Lake County is 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, so we’re not even considered rural. We are truly frontier.

Brandon Burton (01:56.768)
Wow, that is, I’m trying to wrap my head around that. 1,000 acres per person, it’s how that equates. Or square mile. Yeah, wow, even more. Wow.

Shelley Batty (02:04.86)
No, a square mile per person. Right. So it’s like rural is 25 miles from any big population center. And by comparison, we are four hours from the nearest airport, four hours from the nearest freeway, four hours from the nearest big box store. We have a Safeway.

That’s about the size of a good size bodega. And other than that, nothing with a corporate logo on it.

Brandon Burton (02:39.746)
Wow, that’s amazing. So that was going to be my next question is, well, have you tell us about the Lake County Chamber, size, staff, scope of work, budget, to kind of give us perspective, but often with that comes with a little bit of description about the community that you serve as well.

Shelley Batty (02:58.27)
Well, the Lake County Chamber is really unique because I serve a Chamber Director for a community of 8,000 people that is the same size as the entire state of New Jersey. So I have Chamber members that are 127 miles away from my office one way. I have

Brandon Burton (03:11.832)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:21.294)
Crazy.

Shelley Batty (03:22.266)
one part-time administrative assistant so that there’s someone to answer the phone while I’m driving 127 miles one way. And our budget is about $150,000 a year plus whatever grant funding I’m able to bring in. And we have 100 members and unlimited recreational opportunities. So it’s like, which hat am I wearing? Which minute?

And we are in a really beautiful 123 year old building in the heart of downtown Lakeview, which is the only town in the state of Oregon, everything else incorporated as a city.

Brandon Burton (03:50.647)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (04:08.398)
Wow, that is very unique. That’s amazing.

Shelley Batty (04:10.913)
It is very unique and Tall Town is kind of the background of everything because we are right at 5,000 square, 5,000 feet above sea level which makes us the highest elevation community in Oregon, hence Tall Town.

Brandon Burton (04:26.67)
Okay, yeah, that’s very interesting. Very cool. Well, that leads in well to what our topic is today. It’s at the stage very well. So today we’re gonna be talking about balancing your ability and the way that you approach, I guess, to balancing the local issues, but also driving tourism development. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Shelly, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about for you specifically as a frontier community, how you go about balancing the local issues, especially when you got so much area to cover while also driving the tourism development. So I don’t know what part you want to start with to dive into, but let you dictate that.

Shelley Batty (05:15.282)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (05:23.857)
Well, it’s always sort of a smash of doing everything all at once. Working with local businesses, you know, we’re a rural advocacy chamber. So I have most of our state and even some of our national congressmen and representatives on speed dial and making sure that they don’t forget that the

Frontier needs for small businesses are really unique. Basically, you talk about specialty retail as an example, you need 40,000 customers and 10 square miles or whatever the current version of that is. When we have 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, you’re never going to get that tipping point of

being successful based on just the people walking in the door every day. So you have to have ways of diversifying and doing a little bit of everything or running multiple businesses because that’s what it takes to kind of piecemeal your life. And so that tourism as an economic driver to keep small businesses in business and to keep reminding people that yes, we really are out here and yes, we really do need

assistance for being able to continue this Western lifestyle that doesn’t exist almost anywhere else in the world.

Brandon Burton (06:57.024)
Yeah. So I feel like you framed that very well. What are some of those, definitely uniqueness for these business owners, but as you advocate, what are some of those special considerations and needs that on a state level, and as far as advocacy goes, that you are trying to fight for, that you’re trying to draw attention to, to stand up for those businesses in your community?

Shelley Batty (07:26.503)
Well, a lot of that is right now very, very tourism focused and getting that tourism dollar into the region and then advocating for health care and keeping our hospital open and how do we make that happen? Advocating for seniors because like most frontier communities, the population is aging out. Our kids are our biggest export.

so that they go away to college and then suddenly get a job opportunity that keeps them from coming back home and so there’s nobody left at home. And then there are

Brandon Burton (08:07.555)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (08:11.709)
our tourism economic structure and kind of an education piece of yes, we know we need those tourism dollars, but we like being small. We like being insular. We like knowing everyone that we see on the street. So do we really want those people or just their money? And how do we make that happen?

Brandon Burton (08:33.921)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (08:35.165)
My way of dealing with that is that because we’ve got so much space and we have such incredible recreational resources and natural beauty, working on telling people, know, we can get a lot of tourists in 8,000 square miles and still not feel crowded and making sure that everybody has a comfortable room.

Brandon Burton (08:52.802)
Right?

Shelley Batty (08:55.793)
and have great tourism partners with Travel Oregon and Travel Southern Oregon, regional destination marketing organization. In 2024, we were awarded the Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary Destination, which is two and half million acres of what is documentably the darkest skies on the planet.

It’s really easy to find Lakeview if you look at a night sky map of the state of Oregon, find the biggest black spot, and we’re in the middle of that.

Brandon Burton (09:24.366)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (09:31.47)
Like, that’s great. Yeah. So one of my questions is going to be part of that, that struggle of you need to drive the tourism to bring in the dollars and self support these businesses. But do the people there, the residents, do they want that? Do they want to keep it rural? Do they want, not even rural, do they want to keep it frontier? Do they, do they resist, you know,

the growth and the business come because they want to keep it small and very much the way it’s been since God created it? What kind of feedback do you get?

Shelley Batty (10:15.111)
Well, I am sort of the change agent, I guess you would say. I interviewed for this job in 2013. And I was talking about adventure tourism and tourism as an economic driver for frontier communities. And one of the board members who was interviewing me said, and what if we don’t want those people here?

Brandon Burton (10:22.67)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (10:44.076)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (10:46.288)
And they didn’t hire me. And so then in 2023, I am their choice. And they at least recognize the need for tourism, even if they’re not 100 % comfortable with the idea of all of those people coming here. But then the other side of that is

Brandon Burton (10:50.552)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:03.084)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (11:11.128)
Sure.

Shelley Batty (11:14.821)
As long as you don’t look at the Facebook page, these are the most friendly, welcoming, hospitable, give you the shirt off your back possible. It’s so funny that ranchers that are not at all sure that they want tourists buy inner tubes and keep a bike pump in the barn in case there is a

bicycle tourists that wanders onto their property having problems. And because we don’t have cell coverage other than right in the town limits, if you have trouble alongside the road, unlike anywhere else in the country, people are gonna stop and offer assistance and bail you out or drive you to town or whatever. So it’s a very special place and they may or may not

Brandon Burton (11:49.23)
you

Brandon Burton (12:01.634)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (12:09.747)
tell you they want tourists, but they are so welcoming when we do get them that it is a magnificent spot in the world.

Brandon Burton (12:15.22)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (12:19.356)
Yeah, so you had mentioned the ranchers and you’ve got your business, it’s adventure tourism. What are some other examples of different industries that you guys have there in your community that keep things going, but also that might help draw tourism?

Shelley Batty (12:38.523)
Well, as a dichotomy of what you would expect, Lake County, in addition to being a ranching hub, and we have some of the best alfalfa in the world, if you eat Kobe beef or something like that, chances are the feed that those animals were fed came from Lake County.

most of our alpha gets shipped overseas. It’s amazing. We also are the greenest county in the state of Oregon. We are carbon neutral. We have wind. We have solar. We have geothermal.

Brandon Burton (13:02.71)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (13:14.614)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (13:20.379)
which not only makes for great hot springs, it also powers the state prison that we have in the county, it powers our hospital and our schools. We have a new industry in town, it’s really interesting, it’s called Ecomaterials, and they took samples of the cement from the Coliseum and reverse engineered it and have created a additive to your basic Portland

cement that’s 30 % lighter and 80 % stronger and 90 % less carbon usage to create it. And so we have a plant here in town that is making that additive through Ecomaterials and they use perlite, which is those little white bubbles that you see in like potting soil.

Brandon Burton (14:00.206)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (14:18.577)
and we have a pearlite mine on the outskirts of town so that Ecomaterials is right up against the property line for the pearlite mine and they simply take pearlite over the fence into their procedure. So very kind of

Brandon Burton (14:24.447)
Bye.

Brandon Burton (14:35.852)
Wow.

Wow. I learned something new today. I didn’t realize it’s mined like that. that’s interesting. So on the tourism side, in bringing in and drawing the tourism, obviously there’s the adventure. There’s the outback, right? How are you guys drawing the tourism? What’s the focus? What’s the draw?

Shelley Batty (14:45.617)
Yes.

Shelley Batty (14:53.137)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (15:07.918)
How are you attracting the tourism?

Shelley Batty (15:10.173)
Well, having the largest dark sky sanctuary in the world draws a lot of tourists. We also have a number of very large alkaline lakes. So we are one of the primary stopovers for birds on the Western Flyway migrating. So we get a lot of bird-watching tourists. Fort Rock and a number of other cave systems here in Lake County

Brandon Burton (15:29.558)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (15:39.937)
are the location of the oldest documented evidence of modern man dating back 18,000 years. So that’s really interesting. We are also really interesting in that we have Indian tribes all the way around Lake County, but no

Brandon Burton (15:52.844)
Wow.

Shelley Batty (16:05.529)
Indian tribal presence in the county because we were the summer powwow grounds where the different tribes from all around us would come to exchange prisoners and trade and negotiate their contracts. So everywhere you go in the county you can find evidence not of one tribe or another but of all the different tribes from the area.

Brandon Burton (16:24.706)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (16:34.365)
We have lot of mastodontesks being dug out of farmers’ fields and those sorts of things. We have the starting point of the Oregon Timber Trail, which is a 760-mile mountain bike path from the California border to the Washington border.

Brandon Burton (16:43.681)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (16:57.821)
And while it’s not super well known nationally, in the last seven years, we’ve had people from 32 countries come specifically to Lakeview specifically to ride the trail. We are the mids point resupply for the Oregon desert trail, which is a 730 mile hiking trail that is advertised as the hiking trail for people who think the PCT is for wimps. Be prepared. It’s awesome.

Brandon Burton (17:09.698)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (17:25.122)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (17:27.775)
tons of petroglyphs. We also have five world-class launch sites for hang gliders and paragliders. So it’s more launch sites in a contained area than anywhere else in North America. And all five sites have their face different directions. So regardless of which direction the wind is blowing, there’s somewhere in the county you can launch.

Brandon Burton (17:37.762)
Wow.

Brandon Burton (17:51.197)
The wind’s going, yeah. Wow, that’s fascinating. Yeah, yeah. So the tidbit about the Indian tribes and coming with their powwows, it just shows the long history of chambers of commerce there in Lake County, right?

Shelley Batty (17:56.477)
So I think I should keep going.

Shelley Batty (18:12.477)
This chamber was founded in 1932.

Brandon Burton (18:16.832)
Okay, yeah. So it’s whether formal or informal, commerce has been going on there for a long time. Yeah, very cool. So I mean, you you rattled off a long list of very attractive things there in in Lake County, as should be with with part of your job. So how do you go about promoting those? I mean, obviously, you’re on a podcast today talking about them, but I assume

Shelley Batty (18:23.421)
forever.

Brandon Burton (18:45.152)
social media has an impact.

Shelley Batty (18:47.229)
The social media has an impact. Oregon is really lucky in we have a unique tourism echo structure, I guess. In 2003, the state

instituted a one and a half percent motel tax for Knight State and that money goes to the tourism bureau that’s called Travel Oregon. Travel Oregon takes a portion of those funds and

Brandon Burton (19:11.022)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley Batty (19:23.631)
provide seven regional tourism development centers, which ours is Travel Southern Oregon. And so a lot of tourism marketing and how we get the word out travels from Travel Oregon through Travel Southern Oregon. They also provide a lot of grant funding to help us develop those tourism resources and they finance social media influencers and

ton of magazine and newspaper coverage of what’s really going on in all these remote parts of the state. And, you know, we are four hours from the Bend, Central Oregon area. That’s one of those places that has been super discovered and almost overused by tourists. And so they spend a lot of time marketing in that area, what’s going on in Lake County to move those people my direction.

Brandon Burton (20:02.701)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:14.797)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (20:23.872)
Okay, that’s helpful. as far as when the tourists do come, is it majority camping? Is there lodging? As far as accommodations go, what do they do? And does that drive any of your funding as well?

Shelley Batty (20:35.29)
There is

Shelley Batty (20:38.843)
We just.

Shelley Batty (20:42.469)
Right. We only have about 150 lodging rooms in the whole county. And then we have well over 500 RV sites that are designated RV locations. But we also have 76 %

Brandon Burton (20:48.75)
Okay.

Shelley Batty (21:02.813)
Publicly owned land for a service fish and wildlife National Parks service and all of those government agencies because it’s government land so it’s our land allowed dispersed camping you find a beautiful spot and just set up your camp and there you are and So it’s like a market to a very specific

Brandon Burton (21:24.12)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (21:32.665)
Tourist groups that are willing to be out on their own Really want the solitude of nature We’ve got a couple places that are you know really As a friend of mine was a bougie ready for that level of tourists But for the most part these are people that really want to get out into nature and really want to experience something that they’re not going to get anywhere else

Brandon Burton (21:49.036)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:54.307)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (21:58.971)
We don’t have the pool and the cabanas, but you can set up your cot without having to worry about putting a tent around you and look at a sky where you can not only see the Milky Way, you can see the colors of the Milky Way.

Brandon Burton (22:14.766)
That’s awesome. You’re selling me, Shelly. You’re selling me.

Shelley Batty (22:18.663)
Well, it’s like 75 % of the world never sees the Milky Way. And 95 % of the world, even if they see the Milky, that people that do see the Milky Way, they see this kind of vague light. Whereas we have colors of clouds, of stars, of light. It’s just the pictures that you’ll find on the internet are not filtered. They are not colored. That’s really what the sky looks like.

Brandon Burton (22:36.365)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:44.942)
That is really cool. So the next question came to mind as you’re talking about being a frontier community. What other challenges do you come across with being a frontier community that you confront and take on as a chamber to overcome these challenges? Or maybe because you are a chamber, the challenges are coming up and there’s uniqueness to that. I think just being a frontier community in general.

presents unique opportunities and challenges. So I’m just, curious about some of other things that you face.

Shelley Batty (23:27.015)
We, you know, our big competitor is Amazon or, you know, internet, whatever. And when you only have, you know,

Brandon Burton (23:31.469)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (23:39.421)
10 or 15 retail establishments in an entire community, it’s really easy to get sidetracked by, I’ll just go to Amazon, rather than finding out what our local businesses have before you search that direction. And that’s always a trick. It’s really hard getting the word out about things. We have a radio station. We have a weekly newspaper.

Brandon Burton (23:56.141)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (24:08.879)
We don’t have a television, anything, even the network televisions you have your regional. There are no stations that cover our region. Even you get on a big like a Portland, it’s the big town in Oregon. You go to a Portland television station and they show the state and they show the state.

Brandon Burton (24:18.973)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (24:32.893)
500 miles north of us and we don’t even exist and You know California you come out of San Francisco and they don’t show this wide swath that’s right where we are at so How do you get? Information out to everybody. I have like weekly conversation. I didn’t know that was happening and it’s like

Brandon Burton (24:35.596)
Yeah, right.

Shelley Batty (24:58.639)
Well, we have it on the radio. We don’t listen to the radio. We have it on the newspaper. We don’t get the newspaper. We have it on Facebook. We don’t do internet. We put up flyers and posters downtown. Well, we don’t shop in town. So, you know, knock on doors. Will you come?

Brandon Burton (25:14.651)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, word of mouth. Everybody just get out. You guys need a podcast. You need a podcast to highlight some of these things. Yeah.

Shelley Batty (25:21.405)
word of mouth. You know, it’s like I’ve got, I’ve got a list of everything that I should be doing and that I want to be doing and I need to be doing. But we go back to there’s one of me and there’s 8,000 square miles.

Brandon Burton (25:31.232)
Right?

Yeah.

That’s right. That’s right. Keep making the list. At some point, those things will rise to the top that are most important. Well, I wanted to ask for those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Shelley Batty (25:44.421)
you making the list.

Shelley Batty (26:00.125)
Think outside the box. A great example that I’m something I’m working on that I never thought I would be working on is the community of Lakeview is like many small communities in real financial straits. And so one of the things that they did was they canceled snow removal. And we’re

Brandon Burton (26:05.24)
And.

Shelley Batty (26:28.029)
5000 square feet. We sometimes have three feet of Not this year, it’s 55 degrees today. usually there is a huge amount of snow in the summertime. So a group of community members, not the chamber, not the town, just a group of community members got together and decided that they should raise money for snow removal.

Brandon Burton (26:32.194)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:38.403)
Right.

Shelley Batty (26:52.709)
and one of their members named Margo Dodd had just seen the movie Calendar Girls with Helen Murin about a small town in England who did a PG naked calendar to raise money for cancer research. And so they decided to do an Outback Naked Calendar and they got 12 business owners.

Brandon Burton (27:01.646)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (27:14.306)
Go.

Shelley Batty (27:18.685)
and well-known community members to pose for their naked calendar. And the photographs were taken by family members or local photographers who donated their time. And this calendar has gone viral now. It’s… I mean, I’ve…

Brandon Burton (27:25.656)
I mean…

Brandon Burton (27:34.88)
I did see the calendar on your website. Yeah, I did see that.

Shelley Batty (27:40.399)
I’ve talked to CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, the BBC, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. It’s crazy. And they’ve sent calendars to like 12 countries and 49 of the 50 states and have made 10 times what their goal was to raise money for a basic service that

Brandon Burton (28:01.442)
Hahaha!

Shelley Batty (28:10.437)
Most parts of the country don’t even think about needing to raise money for snow plowing. So you gotta think outside the box because you never know what’s gonna happen.

Brandon Burton (28:17.504)
I love the creativity. Yeah, I love the creativity. Yeah. Yeah, think outside the box, but you know, it also doesn’t hurt to take ideas that somebody else puts out there. So there’s community listening who’s struggling with snow removal funding. Yeah, maybe consider a naked calendar. So.

Shelley Batty (28:25.466)
outside the box.

Shelley Batty (28:33.609)
Or, you know, what other thing that sounds really silly that, who knows, you know, keep, what is it, throw spaghetti against the wall until something sticks?

Brandon Burton (28:42.894)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:47.086)
That’s right. Yep. Well, Shelley, 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?

Shelley Batty (29:00.018)
What?

Shelley Batty (29:04.791)
One of the things that I say far more often than I wish I had to was I’m not the county party planner. Prior to my coming on board, people…

Brandon Burton (29:14.659)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (29:19.553)
if they wanted a festival or if they wanted a special event or if they wanted another parade, call the chamber. They’ll do it. And you end up spending all of your time playing hostess. And while that’s a lot of fun, and there’s a lot of people that really enjoy doing that, it doesn’t really move business forward.

Brandon Burton (29:32.598)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (29:42.277)
the chambers nationally that are really growing and are those that are relevant, that are doing political advocacy and really working for a cause and talking to chamber members about it’s not what

the chamber can do for you or your specific business is what you as a part of the chamber can do for the community. that the community is strong and healthy, then you have people there to support your business and to support what you’re doing. But

Brandon Burton (30:12.791)
Yeah.

Shelley Batty (30:25.661)
Don’t go backwards and say, you know, everything I do is giving bodies into businesses. Everything I do is building up the community so there are bodies to go into those businesses.

Brandon Burton (30:39.022)
Right. I think that’s good perspective and view as well. Shelley, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about working in a frontier community and some of the solutions you’ve had to come up with with your creative out of the box thinking. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Shelley Batty (31:07.985)
The best way is always through the website. It’s really easy. It’s all about Lake County dot com. The contact information goes directly to my email. I think I even have my cell phone number on the website, but it’s all about Lake County got to come.

Brandon Burton (31:26.1)
And when you visit that, you can pick up a naked calendar. So that’s great.

Shelley Batty (31:29.575)
Cooke of Anika County and find out about dark skies and hang gliding and mountain biking and all of the other great things that we have going on in Lake County.

Brandon Burton (31:41.324)
Right. Well, Shelley, this has been great having you on the podcast. I’ve learned some new things today and some of those unique things that you face there as a Frontier community. And I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and shedding some light, even though you’ve got the darkest skies in the country. Thanks for shedding some light on this today. And I appreciate you being with us.

Shelley Batty (31:58.877)
you

Shelley Batty (32:03.847)
Well, I thank you for asking me to come on.

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Chamber Foundations with Jeff Meredith

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Brandon Burton (00:00.942)
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 true force in the world of Chambers and community development. Jeff Meredith brings over 16 years of experience in the Chamber industry, earning his IOM designation in 2017 and completing his MBA in

in 2022. In 2023, Jeff made the leap into full-time economic development where he’s already helped his community secure more than 3.5 million in grant funding. Known across the chamber world as the Foundation Guy, Jeff has guided over 50 chambers through the process of establishing 501c3 foundations. On top of that, he offers nonprofit consulting services

Helping organizations with everything from getting started to reviewing bylaws and performing financial analysis. Jeff’s strategic mindset and deep expertise make him a go-to resource for Chambers, nonprofits, and communities looking to grow stronger and smarter. So get ready to take some notes. But Jeff, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and

to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jeff Meredith (01:30.15)
Sure, well, Brandon, first of all, thank you for hosting me and for all the Chamber Champions watching this show. Again, Jeff Meredith, he’s already introduced me some. But a few things that you all might not know about me from within the Chamber world is, in addition to my full-time economic development job and a side hustle as a consultant, I also very much enjoy refereeing soccer.

It’s mostly a lot of youth. I tend to do U15, so basically not high school. I also do adults. I do speak English and a pretty solid Spanish, which is very useful in the soccer world, especially here where it’s 35 % Hispanic. It’s always interesting when I am referring because I don’t necessarily tell people I speak Spanish.

Brandon Burton (01:53.921)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (02:12.803)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:19.183)
That’s smart.

Jeff Meredith (02:22.298)
But I do give a warning because there are certain things that if you, for example, you curse at me and say certain words, I show a red card and I send that person off.

Basically, they’re done for the day. I usually give a warning when someone says such a thing in Spanish to let them know I do know what they just said now and they should not say that again. And I normally just kind of tap the red card as I pull it out of my pocket to remind them that I do have these available. So a lot of soccer roughing. Anyway, not much spare time in my life, but I enjoy it and I stay busy. So yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:50.178)
Yeah.

you

Right. So where did you pick up Spanish? How did that become something that you could add to your…

Jeff Meredith (03:03.098)
It’s actually funny, when I was first going to college for my bachelor’s, I was studying to be a bachelor’s, again, a bachelor of arts in history. For a BA, you have to have four semesters of one foreign language. So I chose Spanish. During the day, I had the book work, but at night, I actually was working in, well, Ryan’s family steakhouse, which is now bankrupt.

or no longer in existence. And one day they said, hey, this is Antonio. He doesn’t speak English. You guys are going to work together. So I was able to have the book work during the day, speak Spanish at night. And honestly, since then, I’ve used Spanish in several different restaurants. I can tell you stories about how I used to get free cake for speaking Spanish because I was a server.

Brandon Burton (03:28.696)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:49.752)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (03:52.41)
They said, we need to speak Spanish. I said, no, like we’re paying you like, uh-huh, $2.13 an hour. That’s not a skill. Bring in a translator. It’ll cost you more than the five bucks for the piece of cake. So I got lemon cream cake from Olive Garden anytime I had to speak Spanish.

Brandon Burton (03:52.717)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (04:05.133)
Right?

Brandon Burton (04:10.542)
That’s great. I love it. Well, this is the point where I usually ask you to tell us about your chamber. since you’ve kind of shifted focuses professionally, tell us what your chamber background was and kind of the size of chambers you worked with and that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Jeff Meredith (04:13.924)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (04:33.094)
Sure. So I have worked for two different chambers. My first chamber was the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, which is a larger chamber. At that point in time, they had approximately 1200 members. I think total staff of 17 or 18 in the building between the various economic development entities that were present there. And when I started, I was the administrative assistant. I didn’t know how to spell. I didn’t know what chambers did. I wasn’t sure.

Brandon Burton (04:34.542)
Sorry.

Jeff Meredith (05:01.195)
and but I discovered it was something I was decent at. I’m a friendly guy and then I got promoted to be member relations at the Joplin Chamber.

Brandon Burton (05:03.726)
Thank

Jeff Meredith (05:09.914)
While there, the Joplin tornado came through, 2011. And so that brought me some experience in dealing with disaster recovery, seeing what the community did. And then approximately year later, I did go to Monette Chamber, which is a small chamber. The chamber itself had a staff of two, but because we had a very good non-due revenue stream, we actually had more employees and it was, we were able to accomplish a lot because we had a nice budget.

Brandon Burton (05:10.35)
Well, I’ll you in the next one.

Brandon Burton (05:15.906)
So,

Brandon Burton (05:28.302)
and self-cultivation.

Jeff Meredith (05:39.75)
So I’ve spent two years in the small chamber and was able to leverage all of the financial resources available to complete all kinds of professional development while there.

Brandon Burton (05:40.142)
And there it is.

Brandon Burton (05:46.223)
and so they’re successful in a number of first of all. Very good. I remember seeing you at MAKO conferences and things like that over the years. So that professional development pays off.

Jeff Meredith (06:01.03)
I was on the Mako board for, I don’t know, five years, I think. In fact, I was past chair the year we canceled Mako because of COVID. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (06:06.444)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (06:11.63)
Yeah, there you go. So it’s fitting that our topic for discussion today is going to be all about foundations, since we’ve got the foundation guy on the show. So we will dive in deep on that topic and what it takes to start a foundation and all things foundations as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Jeff, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today we’re diving in on foundations.

You’re the guy to have on the show to talk about foundations. So I know chambers throughout the country, pretty healthy amount have foundations now. Some of them are pretty new. Some have had them for a decade or more. And then there’s another big segment of chambers out there that just aren’t sure where to start with the foundation or how to make use of a foundation or any of those things.

Let’s talk specifically to, I’m thinking mainly that segment of where do I start? How do I use a foundation? But even for those that have foundations, I’m hoping there’s still good value that they can lean out of this as they see how they can better leverage their foundation. we can start where you want to start, wherever the best point is. I’ll let you decide on

Jeff Meredith (07:34.726)
Sure, so, and I can just kind of ramble on for a minute, Brandon, and obviously if you’ve got questions, please pause me. I’m rarely at a short for words. So as far as where to start with foundations, I mean, let’s just kind of start with the basics. When I’ve had these discussions with chambers and their boards,

Brandon Burton (07:41.218)
That’s perfect.

Brandon Burton (07:45.038)
All right.

Jeff Meredith (07:55.794)
I remember one time someone said, so why? Let’s keep it short, Jeff, or we refer to things. Keep it succinct. Why should we do this? And if I had to do it in three words or less, it would be one word, which is money. A 501c3 has access to funding that a 501c6 simply can’t touch.

This is available through grants. Other 501c3s can give to you if you have a 501c3. In some states, you get tax exempt benefits for the c3 that the c6 does not get. And you can also get donations of things from various corporate entities in the country if you have a 501c3. And it’s just really kind of a money thing. So that’s where I would start. And some say well.

Brandon Burton (08:31.15)
This is not the end. We must forget the actions of the farmers, the families of the people of the country. And if you have a thought, look, the values of the

It’s where I live, it’s where I come from. And so I’m home. And I’m home, and I’m done with this.

Jeff Meredith (08:49.862)
How do I know if I can get money with a C-3? I mean, this may be a little bit of a tip as well. Ask. You know, most chambers, you probably have a board of directors for local leaders. Find out if there are 501 C-3s or charities in your community. You can also look some things up. You can Google if there are simply charities in the area.

Brandon Burton (08:57.838)
to to really want to travel to a smaller country. But I want to find a place to experience the beauty of this unique country. But also to think about the people who are so unique. Most ancient long-distance travel is happening in the world. This is where the time travel for the world can be. But it’s in the right hand. It’s in the past. But the world is still coming. And we have not lost it.

Jeff Meredith (09:12.75)
Most major corporations have their own charitable giving because it’s a way to take money from their left hand, put it to their right hand to receive a tax benefit for it, and then actually still direct their giving as well by passing from their right hand. So, that’s a good place to start.

Brandon Burton (09:26.988)
Yeah. I know Dave Adkinson and his book Horseshoes versus Chess calls out the importance for Chambers to have a foundation. And he gave an example, I can’t remember which chamber was that he worked with at the, or that he was at at the time where this happened, where he established the foundation. there was a family in their community that had a significant amount of wealth. And there was the

Basically the last remaining member of the family was getting ready to pass away, didn’t have heirs to leave it to. And because they had a foundation, that was a landing place where a great sum of money came into. It wasn’t everything, but it was a good sum of money because they had the structure to be able to receive it. And obviously they’d been doing the work in the community to show their value and build that trust for a family to want to.

to leave money to the Chamber Foundation. But yeah, it all comes down to money and being able to be a valid recipient of that money, whether it’s grants or these other examples that you put out there. So when it comes down to money, maybe it would be helpful just to talk about some ways that Chambers utilize foundations. I’ve seen some with

you know, that are chambers and they’ve got the economic development responsibility, which that seems pretty obvious in ways that they can utilize that. But if you’re a standalone chamber or if you’ve got tourism or economic development, what are some, some ways that are good utilizations of a foundation?

Jeff Meredith (11:09.606)
Sure, so most chambers, 70 to 80 % of what a 501C6 does could actually be a usage of a 501C3. And I start to think about what I see communities and chambers doing. There’s maybe some workforce programs.

that might be available. A lot of chambers they might give away a small scholarship to someone graduating from their school. Maybe they have a leadership program that they’re hosting currently. Foundations are good ways to offer this sort of thing because

There are, again, by leveraging those funds, you can get some sponsorships and some donations from some of these entities to support that same workforce program that you were doing before. And then you can actually kind of help fund it onto the chamber side.

Economic development is a prime example of something that a 501c3 is helpful for. In fact, sometimes you might even want to have more than one c3 set up that you have some control and access to because they’re for different purposes. And you can actually start to get really convoluted where you are having transactions between them based upon who’s doing what.

For example, where I am now as an economic development organization, we are a 501c3. So I can certainly speak to that degree on some of the things. As a c3, I’ve been able to leverage that status, again, to get grant funding for community development projects. And not because I was in economic development org, but because of the c3. Things that I’ve seen some chambers do that my EDO has done.

Brandon Burton (12:31.818)
Thanks.

Jeff Meredith (12:53.344)
is maybe you need to get a housing study done for your community. Perhaps you’ve thought about getting a hotel study done for your community. Let’s determine what that looks like for those areas. I got a grant from a governmental entity to pay for half of those studies that I was able to match with a private grant. And it was a rural development funding opportunity. Simply because my community was less than

Brandon Burton (13:15.747)
them.

Jeff Meredith (13:21.798)
50, 20, something, the threshold was higher than 15,000 because we were below where we are. And again, that’s a funding opportunity to do something that the Chamber wants done to support your businesses and members, but you don’t want to have to pay for it yourself.

Brandon Burton (13:23.342)
Sorry.

Brandon Burton (13:27.874)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:40.056)
Good.

Jeff Meredith (13:40.858)
Those are the opportunities. The same thing with the educational side. In fact, if you have a chamber foundation, in addition to providing educational courses to others, I’ve seen some that leave their own foundation to pay for their own institute experience.

Brandon Burton (13:46.41)
you

Brandon Burton (13:50.031)
Yeah, that’s good examples.

Jeff Meredith (14:00.364)
It’s professional development, education related, as long as you don’t specify, must be for high school students or children or something such as that. It’s still a perfectly legitimate use.

Brandon Burton (14:17.388)
I’ve seen some that have the economic development contracts, responsibilities as well, use it to acquire land as they are attracting a big industrial company to make a move to their community. then able to refund that, know, get that money recouped once the transaction is closed, but the chamber is able to be that instrumental piece in being able to make the deal work out. So lots of different ways.

to utilize the foundations.

Jeff Meredith (14:48.888)
Yes. And a lot of it, again, you’re doing similar programs. It’s just under a new umbrella. And that new umbrella just gets a little more favorable look when you start talking about some of these funding opportunities. I mean, some of the grants that, you know, the 3.5 you mentioned in my introduction, the first one of those was a million dollars from a trust that I was able to leverage for a million five that I could get for the city.

So I mean, put together five, you know, was ultimately a $5 million purchase between public and private funds my first month on the job, simply because we had the 501C3 and there’d been some planning done.

Brandon Burton (15:27.17)
Yeah, yeah. So for those listening, some may be intimidated at the idea of starting a foundation. I mean, they’re already busy at their chamber, right? Trying to keep their head above water. So what does it take to establish a foundation? What thought, what kind of planning needs to go into that? Who’s buy-in?

Do you need to be able to do something like that? What would you suggest?

Jeff Meredith (15:57.798)
Sure, so typically when most people start thinking about a C3, it’s either something they’ve had on their mind, they’ve seen a lot of these discussions, maybe they went to a training of some sort. So typically you need to get the buy-in of your chamber board upfront. Because the chamber board, you’re gonna need some startup cash to start a C3 and the chamber is a good source of that funding.

And while once you actually get the new entity set up, the chamber board no longer governs that entity, they’re still usually going to sign off on the bylaws to some degree and obviously the donation of the funding to get that going.

Brandon Burton (16:26.104)
Thanks.

Jeff Meredith (16:38.958)
Outside of that, it starts to be what is it you’re wanting to do that your C6 can’t do? Is there a pot of money you’re hoping to access out there? Is there a new program? Has someone said, will give you money if you have a C3 and do this? Again, just go ahead and ask people. Talk to your major employers. If we had a C3, that open up opportunities? And start that discussion.

Brandon Burton (16:40.846)
and sort of like bursting out. we do to people, what we do citizens, what we do. What’s going on, what we do, what we do to ourselves. It’s your very own work. And someone’s own behavior, and you’re not just doing it for me. Thanks.

Brandon Burton (17:00.398)
I’m not going to lose. I’m going to win.

Jeff Meredith (17:08.806)
as far as the steps to actually create a C3. I mean, it’s you set up a corporation with your state and then you do some things with the IRS and you’re good to go. I mean, and I say that in a drastic oversimplification because I’ve done it a time or two, but truthfully, we can get the process done in less than a month if we can get the appropriate approvals on the local entities.

Brandon Burton (17:23.15)
So, thank

Brandon Burton (17:28.718)
So how about like establishing any bylaws or selecting a board or any of the structural elements of building a foundation? If you’re starting from scratch, what direction do you give?

Jeff Meredith (17:36.986)
And then you just wait for the IRS.

Jeff Meredith (17:57.223)
Well, first off, would in this day and age, I would never start from scratch on almost anything. You know, think about

Brandon Burton (18:03.778)
Great advice.

Jeff Meredith (18:07.898)
because again, there are groups out there, there are resources out there. mean, many states offer sample bylaws for certain organizations and entities. So that’s not a bad place to start. Since we’re focused on chambers, I remember that my chamber colleagues were always more than happy to rip off and duplicate a little bit of R and E.

And then you would just say, hey, I’m looking for some examples of this and then you can share them with that and you start to kind of decide what’s going to make sense. As far as your foundation boards go, your chamber board is a decent place to start for some of those members. Again, when I work with.

Brandon Burton (18:47.662)
I was going to ask, do you suggest utilizing some of the same board members or having it be a different makeup?

Jeff Meredith (18:54.274)
I utilize some of them. Now again, whenever I work with an entity, I say your foundation board should be a minority of which is currently on the chamber board. And there’s a specific IRS that says this because chamber foundations want to be a public charity, not a private foundation. If you want to be a public charity, a majority of your board cannot be related by blood, marriage, or business.

Brandon Burton (19:07.374)
and I’m going to be signing this. I’m to be signing this with the Proudly Stranger of the United States. Proudly Stranger of the States.

Jeff Meredith (19:23.174)
Now, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t claim to be, but if the reason people are all part of a different entity is simply because they’re serving on a board together, in my non-legal opinion, they are related via business. So I keep it a minority. And when some say, well, that’s what we want to do, I then question, do they not have any other willing participants in their entire town other than these 12 to 25 people that they have involved with their chamber already?

Brandon Burton (19:25.582)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (19:42.014)
Excellent. Now we have a new program that discusses the importance of our lives. For which we find out about it.

Jeff Meredith (19:52.25)
You want to have some separation. And so then we start to pick out those other ones that you want because when you write your bylaws, because you’re starting from some level of scratch ish, right? Say who you want. My bylaws said we wanted someone from the school district and somebody from the city because we were going to do community economic development projects. I wanted that city. We did scholarship things. I needed that to the school district to promote my scholarships. Talk about appropriate.

Brandon Burton (19:57.327)
of the country and its people.

Brandon Burton (20:04.078)
So, I don’t know if that’s gonna be a good time for me. That’s all I have to say.

Brandon Burton (20:16.046)
As far as ongoing care and maintenance of the foundation, what is there to be considered there?

Jeff Meredith (20:21.968)
Now generally, we have the superintendent and the senior administrator, but they’ve got to pick who they want to trust. Find the focus and get the people that you’re looking for.

Brandon Burton (20:43.711)
And how involved, for example, as a chamber executive, how involved would they be with a chamber foundation on the day to day?

Jeff Meredith (20:52.614)
Sure, so as far as the ongoing maintenance goes, with a 501C3, there are two things, three things you’re required to do on an annual basis. You’re required to have at least one board meeting, and that’s just for standard corporate compliance. You are required to file a tax return of some sort, and depending upon your state, you have to keep your corporation active.

Now, some states only require that every other year or every three years I’ve seen. And as far as the tax return goes, depending upon your gross income, it could be a 990N, which takes, it almost takes you longer to log in to the IRS website than it does to actually complete the tax return itself. And if you’re making.

Brandon Burton (21:39.756)
That’s unheard of.

Jeff Meredith (21:41.286)
I know it is and I’ve helped people with that before and then they’re shocked how simple it truly is. So that’s kind of it and then as far as the involvement in well it all depends upon what you’re doing with this new tool. Are you taking programs the C6 was doing and you’re just doing them with a new hat on your head as the C3 then your workload’s not changing very much.

Brandon Burton (21:49.336)
That’s it.

Jeff Meredith (22:06.406)
Are you starting this new entity and because you have a C3, you’re suddenly launching new programs and new strategies or initiatives? Your workload will absolutely increase. But if by doing so, you’re generating enough funding to pay for an additional staff, then that’s a way to kind of help really maximize the chamber itself. And one benefit of having this relationship is,

The C3 can actually generate funding from various grants and sources and ultimately pay the C6 to actually carry out that scope of work as long as the fees being charged are fair and reasonable.

Brandon Burton (22:44.886)
So I understand some people are a little intimidated with the idea of grant writing and constantly be thinking about deadlines and applications and so forth. Is it worthwhile having somebody to run and manage the foundation separate from a chamber staff? Or I’m sure you’ve seen it done both ways, but what thoughts do you have around that?

Jeff Meredith (23:11.122)
I mean, again, if you’re growing that entity large enough, absolutely. Sometimes you could have a position you had already, perhaps a work first coordinator or something that maybe becomes the foundation director to some degree because there’s a natural crossover there. And if you’re a larger organization with a larger foundation, absolutely it makes sense because you’ve got the funding to support it. But if part of the reason, if you’re a smaller entity that’s trying to access fresh dollars from an outside source,

you creating a C3 to support the C6 and then having the sudden overhead of a new employee to manage it kind of defeats the purpose of leveraging that for the C6. I work a lot obviously with the multiple jobs we’ve talked about.

Brandon Burton (23:52.014)
All

Jeff Meredith (23:57.644)
and I’m cheap. whenever someone approached me at one point about, let’s throw in some money to help support a, at the time it was a Main Street director, I said, no, I don’t want to give my money to that, but I will work harder in exchange of not giving the contribution towards. And we accomplished a lot of things because we were able to do that. So every person is different.

Brandon Burton (23:58.134)
And that’s

Jeff Meredith (24:21.742)
I know some chamber execs, like to outsource a lot of their duties because there are experts in those fields. I’m more of a keep it in-house and reap the benefits and frankly learn along the way by doing so.

Brandon Burton (24:27.502)
for all those firms in this area.

Brandon Burton (24:36.8)
Yeah, just probably good advice. Keep it in house as long as you can until you get to that certain level and where it makes sense to hand off some of those responsibilities.

Jeff Meredith (24:46.438)
And you mentioned grant writing and things as well. I know that because there are some grants chambers can access and they say, well, I don’t want to spend the six hours or eight hours or whatever working on that grant application. And then I asked them, you know, I’ve seen one, was a 50, let’s keep it simple, $1,600 grant for eight hours of work. I don’t know of many chambers that are making $200 an hour.

Brandon Burton (24:54.21)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (25:12.806)
or that can go out and do anything else within their community to generate $200 an hour of return. So I believe that that is a great use of time and resources. And perhaps it’s just a different situation of prioritization versus allocation.

Brandon Burton (25:30.53)
Yeah, being able to shut off some of those other, you know, dings and lights and whistles and everything that beg for your attention when you’re busy at a dream group. That’s right. That’s right. Hunker down and get that application done. What other things need to be considered as somebody who’s looking to start a foundation and any pitfalls to avoid or things to look out for as they

Jeff Meredith (25:40.324)
I the cell phone out the door.

Brandon Burton (25:59.865)
Go down that path.

Jeff Meredith (26:01.806)
As far as pitfalls, I would just kind of look around and make sure there’s not some entity doing things you are already doing. And that’s not to say that maybe you can’t do it better.

But it’s an opportunity to, instead of setting up this whole new corporation, maybe partnering with an entity. Again, I’ll just go back to my time referencing the Main Street organization. We used the Main Street org to do a lot of community development activities for MONET because it had that C3 at the time. It was better known. It made sense. There were funding opportunities for that entity. Whereas we use the Chamber Foundation, which was also a C3 separately from, focused on just specific things.

So it’s really just kind of finding out what is that best usage. But I made sure that the C3 chamber was not doing downtown stuff. I wasn’t trying to take on any sort of facade grants or beautification or flowers or anything downtown. And we did a little bit of a mural project, but simply because the Chamber Foundation had the match, whereas Main Street didn’t.

and I guess this is just a secret to success for any community, you can accomplish a lot of things if you don’t necessarily care which entities actually getting the credit.

Brandon Burton (27:20.482)
Yeah, that’s a great point.

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

Jeff Meredith (27:23.278)
In fact, I remember once I was talking to my wife about something about, hey, she’s like, you’re working harder on that. I’m like, well, but it’s not. It’s the Chamber Foundation. And she’s like, you are a, you know, called me a name that I won’t repeat for your viewers. It’s still you. You’re just doing the work with a different hat on that day. Like, yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:46.456)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (27:48.09)
So Main Street’s getting credit for work that the Chamber Executive was accomplishing and the Chamber Exec was technically paying to do the Main Street thing, but it made the Chamber job better so it all worked out in the end. So if you have lots of entities, chat before you talk about setting up a new one, make sure that there’s not a crossover.

Brandon Burton (28:02.456)
Yeah.

Jeff Meredith (28:11.372)
know, maybe I maybe should get on the board of something else. Now ultimately we did have them separately because there were separate missions and separate purposes. So yes.

Brandon Burton (28:14.765)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (28:22.08)
And how specific do those purposes need to be in the foundation when they’re established and how easy is it to change focus if you get in, you know, 10, 20 years down the road and things. What we originally set this up for is not so relevant anymore. Let’s shift focus. How hard is that?

Jeff Meredith (28:40.294)
Well, so I usually tell people, when you’re setting up a thing, to keep the purposes somewhat generic. So it’d be workforce, economic development, community development, arts, tourism, education. But then within this, because you have to also have the vague and be specific. should the IRS, depending on which path you’re choosing, if they come back and ask additional questions, if you say you’re going to do workforce things,

If someone says, what’s your workforce program? You need to have an answer of that workforce program is I’m going to go and talk to middle school kids about the job opportunities or about career fairs or interview skills or something, or I’m going to host a leadership program for adults. You don’t necessarily have to have that in place yet, but you have to have a plan versus just saying I’m going to do workforce things because it sounds good.

And then should your focus or vision change in the future, again, you can always go back and amend those articles. You can refile those articles in the corporation. And then with the IRS, should your NTE E code, which basically describes what line of business the foundation is in, should that need change, you can also update that with the IRS as well in the future. So it’s really kind of a thing of, and I know it’s somewhat contradictory.

Brandon Burton (29:55.469)
this week.

Brandon Burton (30:03.47)
This was my best.

Jeff Meredith (30:06.31)
You want to have it vague, but also have the ideas of the specific programs and things in your mind so that you can kind of go from the vague to actually make it real versus just this ethereal world out there of all the things you hope to do, and you know, actual planner idea on what it is or how to accomplish it.

Brandon Burton (30:06.862)
And also that they are very much in the group as the Foundations. So it’s kind of both a problem for us to deal with. And we’re a lot of work to help you. And we’re happy to help you with your work. That makes sense. Is there anything else that we’re missing when it comes to Foundations? I’m sure there are several things, but as far as these are concerned.

Jeff Meredith (30:29.062)
There’s lots of things we’re missing. So really, guess, just a key thing, and maybe this kind of goes into what might be a tip. With 2026, charitable giving has changed. Individuals such as myself, who generally take a standard deduction on their taxes because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

and I’m married, in addition to my standard deduction of, I think, $31.5, I could actually take an additional deduction of $2,000 for giving charitable contributions. Now, that’s relevant because, A, for those people who want to make a little charitable contribution or have been in the past, you can now get a deduction for it. But more importantly,

for those who might think about a C3, you suddenly opened up the world of people who could get a terrible infection for giving to you from roughly, I think I remember it was 15 % of the population, you knew almost 100 % of the population.

Brandon Burton (31:30.35)
Yeah, that is a big deal. So yeah, I usually ask for a tip or action item for listeners who are trying to take their chamber up to the next level. Do you have something else beyond that that you wanted to put out there and offer for the audience?

Jeff Meredith (31:46.182)
Absolutely. And this one may seem like a foreign concept for some chamber execs because I remember we’re all hard workers, right? You want to get everything done that you can. When I used to do community events at the chamber, if the event made an extra $4,000 above budget or whatever, I did not get a bonus.

And this is relevant because I think in a lot of chambers, this is what happens. They can generate additional funds and frankly, we bust our butts to help an entity make a whole lot of cash, but in exchange, you’re not getting a dividend. Now I’m not trying to be selfish here, but what I’m circling back to is, I learned that instead of killing myself to stand underneath a tent for 12 hours on the 4th of July,

tying myself to that, I could pay someone, at the time it was $15 an hour, to do the same thing that then freed me up for additional tasks that were more important. In this case, at the 4th of July, as example, making sure that things weren’t going bad somewhere else, introducing bans and whatnot, interacting with my vendors who were paying me money to be there, and I wanted to make sure that they were fine.

So I’m not saying you should outsource everything, but there are certain skills that can be done by almost anyone. Don’t be afraid to find that because the old 80-20 rule, remember, 20 % of your job probably impacts 80 % of your actual performance.

Pick out those things that are most important to your job and your responsibility that someone else can’t do or can’t do as well as you and focus on those and those little things, especially with community events. Why work 16 hours for something when you could have someone do part of that job for a couple hundred bucks for the day and you’re better rested, you’re less stressed and frankly, the event goes better because now if you’re the face of the organization, they see you where you need to be.

Brandon Burton (33:22.734)
That’s

Brandon Burton (33:31.889)
And that’s how it is. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this. I don’t know how this gets to the end of the video. But you can have some of it.

Brandon Burton (33:43.47)
You must be one of those friends who really get that much fun because now if you have a fifth form of social, you’ll see that you’re not getting any less than what you’re talking

Jeff Meredith (33:52.472)
not sitting under attend, dealing with the rank and file attendees. that’s my work less hard and accomplish more.

Brandon Burton (33:58.807)
Yeah. I love it. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers and how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeff Meredith (34:15.234)
I Chambers will continue to exist in the future. I think they are still an essential function and an organization and the services that Chambers provide are very necessary. Even if you just focus on the networking aspect, which is something that a lot of Chambers are very well known for, even as we have moved on to social media and during COVID and things with the distancing, I know that people love that human and social interaction.

So chambers will continue to be a powerful force and they just have to make sure that they find their niche to provide their services. Because chambers, like a lot of 501c3s, can do many different functions and still be legitimate and legal. So find the things that your community needs and someone else can’t provide and the chamber can maybe provide that service. So that’s good for the longevity of the chamber.

Brandon Burton (35:06.894)
That’s good.

Jeff Meredith (35:08.87)
It’s good for the future growth of the chamber and if it’s a service for which you get money, it’s also good non-due revenue for the chamber, which also ensures all of those things continue on in the future. So I think the chamber outlook is very good.

Brandon Burton (35:12.59)
Just like I said, I’m going to take it So I’m going to help you to tell us what you want to about all these things that you want. Yeah. I’m going tell you what going to Very good. Glad to hear that. Jeff, this has been great having you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or anywhere you would point listeners who might want to.

Learn more about foundations or about how you might be able to help them. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect?

Jeff Meredith (35:44.07)
Sure. So, well, I’m always happy to connect with anyone that wants to more about foundations. My first consultation is always free. And if you want to reach out to me to get that discussion started, I am in central time. So I generally do these before or after my work hours or else at noon central time. So I kind of play a little time zone math there.

but you can find, I do have a website. My profession is not web design, so don’t hold that against me. It is jeffmconsulting.com. I do have a Facebook page of the same name, or if you’d like, can just send me an email, which is joplinjeff@gmail.com.

send those messages out. We’ll schedule a time that kind of works for both our schedules and let’s have a chat to see if a foundation is good for you and whether you decide to use my services or not. I’m always happy to answer questions on that first call.

Brandon Burton (36:24.814)
and I’ll you time.

Brandon Burton (36:36.612)
That’s perfect. We’ll get all that linked in our show notes to make it nice and easy to find you. But Jeff, thanks for spending time with us today and for going over these ins and outs of Chamber Foundations. think listeners will find this valuable and it’s a good one to have in the archives as well. So I appreciate it.

Jeff Meredith (36:41.851)
Awesome. Well, thank you.

Jeff Meredith (36:56.71)
Well, thank you, Brandon, and thank you to all you glorious chamber people. Have a wonderful day.

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Continuing Professional Development with Cindy DeWease

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Brandon Burton (00:01.006)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s been 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 true icon in the Chamber world with over four decades of service and leadership in her community. Cindy DeWease has been with the Clear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce for an incredible 42 years.

serving as its president and CEO for the past 18. During her tenure, she has transformed the chamber through bold strategic planning, launching impactful initiatives like a Young Professionals Division, and leading a leadership development program, and a powerful buy-in to the Bay Area Think Local campaign. Cindy’s leadership also extends to founding a 501c3 Foundation, launching a women’s engagement program,

and guiding the chamber through major renovations, all while sharpening its mission by streamlining programs and events. Her civic leadership is just as impressive. She’s served on numerous regional boards, including the City of Nassau Bay’s Economic Development Corporation, the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, and the Bay Area Houston Transportation Partnership. She’s also active in the Rotary Club of Space City.

and the Bay Area Houston Ballet and Theater Advisory Board. At the state level, is a recognized leader in the Chamber of Professional Development. She chaired the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives during the pivotal year of 2020, served on their board for a decade, and is now chair of the 2026 Center for Chamber of Commerce Excellence in partnership with Texas A &M University, a program

training the next generation of chamber and nonprofit professionals. Among her many accolades, was named the 2024 Marvin Hurley Award winner, TCCE’s highest honor, and is a two-time recipient of the Arthur A. Roberts Award for Distinguished Service. Cindy is a trailblazer, mentor, and changemaker, and we’re honored to welcome her here on the show. Cindy, if you would, I’d love to…

Cindy DeWease (01:58.078)
you

Brandon Burton (02:25.528)
give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Cindy DeWease (02:35.57)
Well, hello there. How are you? Thank you for that wonderful introduction that I helped you write. Well, I appreciate that too. And thank you for taking the time to interview me.

Brandon Burton (02:41.282)
Yeah. I appreciate it.

Cindy DeWease (02:53.534)
I’ve lived in the Clear Lake area, which is between Galveston and Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center, which is the home of our nation’s astronauts. So where our astronauts are trained, which is exciting for our community. And that’s why our community’s here, actually, because the Johnson Space Center was coming. And I live in a house that was built in 1963. And probably the first owner of that house bought the house because they were going to work at NASA.

So we appreciate our history and our community so much. And I have been at this chamber since

since the early 80s and never expected to be in this position. I just didn’t want to drive downtown Houston. So you never know what’s going to come your way. And so I appreciate you mentioning all the accolades that you you all feel kind of like we have that imposter syndrome. How did I get here? You know, we look at the folks that have come before us and that list of people that have received some of those awards and you

Brandon Burton (03:41.455)
Really?

Brandon Burton (03:56.487)
See you.

Cindy DeWease (04:04.724)
think, that’s so great, but I’ll never, you know, I’ll never do that. But somehow, I guess you outlive everyone and here you are.

Brandon Burton (04:08.526)
Yeah. One way or another, you get to that opportunity, Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (04:19.996)
Well, yeah. Yeah, right. huh. You just are the last one standing or, I know, well, she’s been here long enough.

Brandon Burton (04:27.478)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (04:30.33)
only worked for one chamber so I’ve had a lot of experience getting to know my colleagues around the state and and have such a great connection. I don’t know if if anyone any other industry has a connection like chamber folks do and so

Brandon Burton (04:47.712)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (04:48.274)
You know, I went to a funeral last weekend of the wife of one of our chamber execs that’s retired and just saw some old friends there that, you we were just so happy to see each other. Sad occasion that that’s the way we do that. But just such a great, just a great, great community. You know, building that network is so much more important than than you ever dream. You know, we know we can’t.

Brandon Burton (05:02.99)
Right.

Brandon Burton (05:10.135)
It is.

Brandon Burton (05:15.63)
Yeah, the network, the camaraderie, the knowledge sharing that happens is so valuable and so unique to the chamber industry. It’s a wonderful thing.

Cindy DeWease (05:21.714)
Yeah, it really, really, really, really is unique. so if we’re jealous of one another or not championing each other or helping each other, that’s a breakdown. We got to, I truly believe that’s a continued, needs to continue through the generations because that’s where you get your best friends, the people that have your back. And I wouldn’t have done any of those.

Brandon Burton (05:26.53)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:34.798)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (05:50.43)
if I didn’t have that, know, statewide. Those people that pushed me and said, you can do this. Really?

Brandon Burton (05:50.446)
Right, exactly.

Brandon Burton (05:57.773)
Yeah, yep. Well, if you would tell us a little bit about the Clear Lake Area Chamber just to give us an idea of the size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to set the stage for our discussion.

Cindy DeWease (06:05.883)
Okay.

Cindy DeWease (06:10.494)
Sure, sure. We have a little over 700 members of our chamber, our community, and we are a unique chamber in that we represent nine different cities around a lake named Clear Lake. so there’s a population of about 350,000, probably a little bit more than that now, but that’s, you know, that’s about the population.

and where I then uniquely set between Houston and Galveston, like I said, and home of our nation’s astronauts. We have five full-time employees and we have a great team. And so one part-time employee that is our accountant, comptroller. so she’s retired and she was a comptroller for San Jacinto College, was to community college in our area and just was bored. And so I said, well.

Come on over, we’ll give you a couple of days. So it’s kind of her retirement job. But, and our budget is just under a million. So, you know, that’s, we’re.

Brandon Burton (07:09.102)
Let’s do a playlist of numbers.

Brandon Burton (07:19.809)
Okay.

Cindy DeWease (07:22.27)
getting over that edge there. So I think the most unique thing is when we were named a chamber, it was already a regional chamber in 1962 when we started. Two cities got together and formed a chamber because the Johnson Space Center was coming. And then another city joined and as the community grew, all the other cities joined in and changed our name to the Clear Lake Area Chamber.

Brandon Burton (07:43.854)
All right.

Cindy DeWease (07:50.014)
which has always been that since I’ve been here. But it was like the late 70s, I think, when it started. that was unique in trying to get people to understand there is a, we were not a one city, one chamber. We were nine cities and two counties.

Brandon Burton (08:06.764)
Yeah, that was pretty innovative at that time.

Cindy DeWease (08:11.656)
It was very innovative at that time. But they also recognized individual city chambers were not going to flourish, not going to make an impact as the whole area. But also, we’re an area where you drive out of one city into another and you don’t even know. If you miss the little sign that says now entering the city limits of Webster or whatever it is, you’re not going to.

Brandon Burton (08:23.535)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:30.008)
We don’t notice it, yeah.

Cindy DeWease (08:38.57)
No, when you’re driving out of one into another because of the way the city looks or the way the area is set up. So we appreciate that. it is a little more accepted now. And people want to join those chambers that have a bigger influence. And so we don’t actively seek out other if there is a chamber in another area. But we also as chambers of commerce don’t turn down a member.

Brandon Burton (08:45.72)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (09:08.382)
legally we can’t but also if they’re doing business in our community they should join and that’s that we if they call us and say well I’m located in another city well first of all are you a member of that city’s chamber of commerce because you’re located there but if you’re doing business in our community we want you to be a member of our community so that’s just kind of yep yep

Brandon Burton (09:08.536)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (09:28.57)
Yeah, seems like a fair way to play. Yeah. That’s right. Now that we’ve established the rules, right? Right. Well, I’m looking forward to our discussion today. We’ve settled on the topic of discussing

Cindy DeWease (09:33.886)
We do our best. We do our best to set an example.

Yep. Now we can continue.

Cindy DeWease (09:49.448)
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (09:53.295)
Continuing professional development which is so important for for those in the chamber industry and making a career out of this and we’ll dive into this topic and the The insights that Cindy has on this as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Cindy, we’re back as I mentioned before the break today. We’re talking about continuing professional development and I have to say just as as some background one of the reasons I started the this podcast it was

Working with Chambers of Commerce, my background being in chamber publishing is I was all over the state of Texas and spending a lot of time in the car and working with a lot of rural chambers and, and some not so rural chambers. And really what I found is it didn’t matter if you were rural or not, but what came down to is that professional development and whoever’s leading the chamber, being able to have access to that.

And some of these smaller chambers that were underfunded, maybe their board just didn’t approve for them to be a part of the state association or things of that nature, were definitely underserved. And I could tell the difference between these chambers that were plugged in. They had that network. They had that support system versus those who were trying to figure it out on their own as they went. And there’s a huge difference. So the podcast started to try to lend some support.

to those underserved chambers. But since then, it’s evolved and there’s been more conversation about the importance of continuing development, professional development. So I’d love to get your take on it. I know you’ve got a strategic role in this this time as well, but talk to us about the importance of continuing professional development as a chamber professional.

Cindy DeWease (11:46.512)
Sure, well, I have to say for 25 years I worked at the chamber as an employee. did the 15 years of building sponsorships and programs for the chamber, non-news revenue programs. And I did that just out of, okay, let’s see what’s gonna work. Let’s throw this out there because I didn’t have the luxury of being participating in our regional or statewide

Brandon Burton (11:57.327)
Thank

Brandon Burton (12:04.248)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (12:16.574)
continuing education programs. I did go to Institute a long time ago when it was six years and you had to take a test and all those things and it was at SMU. So that just tells you how long ago I was there. So you kind of build your tribe at those, with those experiences. So I had a few, I had some training with Institute, and I also had a few friends in the business that I could lean on to say, I’m working on this, can you help me?

Brandon Burton (12:37.07)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (12:45.598)
being disconnected from it for a long time, you kind of lose that. And after I became the president of the chamber, Tracy Wheeler, I’m sure you’ve heard of Tracy Wheeler from Baytown Chamber, she’s been there over 50 years. She picked up the phone one day and said, listen, it’s time for you to give back. Oh, I’m busy. And she said, we’re all busy. There’s not one person, if they’re busy, if they’re not busy, we don’t want them anyway. And so,

Brandon Burton (12:55.0)
Yeah, yeah, I know Tracy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (13:10.094)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (13:13.234)
And she said, you need to serve on our board. I thought, well, really? And it really was the best, let me just say, kick in the pants that I received because building that network, and I was going to those GCC meetings, which is Gulf Coast Chamber Executive, was a regional group. And if you have a regional group you can connect with, that is, that,

is so important to your career, your connection, your sounding board. Those people know what you’re going through, or they can sympathize or empathize with what you’re going through, and can truly help you when, if you have an issue in your own community and you take it to someone within your own community, that may red flag you. That may say, why don’t they know how to handle this? And so, but if you can…

Brandon Burton (14:03.704)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (14:06.302)
develop those relationships with folks. And the first thing to do is develop it within a North Texas group, or I think there’s a West Texas group, our Gulf Coast group. And we’re not, and we don’t, can join any of those groups as long as you want to come to the meetings. And there’s educational pieces to it. But I think the biggest part is building your tribe. And how do I be that best person for my community? Well, nobody can do it alone.

you’re a sole person at a chamber, need, everybody needs support every once in a while. And so I think that that was my first step into becoming a part of a group, which was the local group. I went to the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives conferences. My 25th anniversary with the chamber was my first Texas.

Brandon Burton (14:45.634)
Thank

Brandon Burton (14:51.726)
and we’re going able to do some practical science.

Brandon Burton (14:59.15)
Cindy DeWease (15:00.254)
Chamber of Commerce executives conference that I went to and Art Roberts, don’t know if you all, did you know Art Roberts? He was the executive director for TCCE at the time and he’d worked at many chambers around the state and I’d met him, you know, probably at one point and, but he said he introduced me as, you know, one of the newcomers or whatever and he goes, but she’s a really slow learner because she’s been around for 20 years.

Brandon Burton (15:07.296)
I didn’t know art, so…

Brandon Burton (15:28.642)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (15:29.84)
I thought, thanks, but clearly I never forgot that.

But don’t do that. My suggestion is, as a staff person, I didn’t really have a choice whether I went to those or not. as the president and CEO, I make sure my staff goes and they have a connection with a membership person or they have a connection with the…

communications folks or the special events, non dues revenue folks. And so it’s important to us to have that, those relationships. But so I think.

As important as knowing what you’re supposed to be doing, because set yourself up for success. You know, go to those sessions that are hard for you to, okay, it’s hard for me to listen to this financial piece of this, or it’s hard for me to listen to the legislative advisory, you know, or legislative agenda pieces of it. Just get a little bit of knowledge. Come back.

Brandon Burton (16:13.08)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (16:32.734)
and then build on it and build on it. And so it took a long time for me to be interested in some of the things that I didn’t feel like I was interested in. But I was like, I’m never gonna need that. Right, right, exactly. And so I never thought I would be in this, I truly never thought I would be in the position to be the CEO. And it…

Brandon Burton (16:41.454)
I think it takes time to see where, I think takes time to see the relevance where it all connects, right? Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (16:57.938)
you know, 40 years ago, of course. And like I said, I just didn’t want to drive downtown, Houston. so, but that clearly had changed.

Brandon Burton (17:00.61)
Right.

Brandon Burton (17:05.368)
you

Cindy DeWease (17:10.098)
And now I can’t, I’ve had a great career, I’ve had a great life, I’ve made wonderful friends and it’s not something I take lightly. It’s something I can, I still go to those development, professional development seminars. take, have, TCCE has a, what they call Chairman’s Conference and they encourage you to bring your chairman of the board every year to this conference. I learn something new every year.

Brandon Burton (17:33.71)
Thank you.

Cindy DeWease (17:38.94)
you know, and every year I take my entire executive committee because one day they may be the chairman of the board. So if I’m learning something new every year, they’re definitely learning something new every year and need to bring that back. I not only want my staff trained, I want my board trained. I want them to know why they have me instead of running it just by themselves or, you know, as a volunteer.

Brandon Burton (17:46.669)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (18:06.29)
driven organization and there’s no doubt why they need to have me. They know I am their employee, the rest of the group are under my direction and just getting them to understand is important as well. So it’s not just for the staff, it’s not just for me, it’s training our board and they appreciate. Our board really appreciates that. Pardon me?

Brandon Burton (18:20.398)
It’s like, we have to do something about that. It’s like, we have to do something that. That chairman’s conference is so, yeah, that chairman’s conference is so unique, I think. I am not aware in other states, I’m sure there’s some states that do that, where they offer training for board members and board chairs. But in Texas, it’s a unique opportunity. It’s valuable.

You get to see a lot of, as you called your tribe of people that you connect with, but they’re able to connect and learn from other board members too, and how things are done and just a ton of value there. And it’s not, it’s not just you as the executive saying, this is the way chambers work, you know, to your board, your, your, your board chair, but they get to see, this is how, this is how successful chambers work. So, so valuable.

Cindy DeWease (18:52.22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cindy DeWease (19:00.434)
Yes.

Cindy DeWease (19:08.06)
Right. Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (19:14.31)
Right. And it’s not me telling them. It’s somebody else telling them. know, so and what we try, what it our fiscal year is October 1 to September 30th. And so which is unusual in the chamber world these days. I like it because I’m not spending December, you know, paddling when everybody else is taking off and

Brandon Burton (19:19.148)
Right. Yes.

Brandon Burton (19:24.887)
Thanks

Brandon Burton (19:32.01)
Right?

Cindy DeWease (19:36.496)
So, but when September comes, how did this happen? So, and that conference is normally in October. So, our executive committee, even though we always add one or two people, we kind of bring people up through the ranks, but it’s always one or two people that are new.

So when they join that executive committee and then we go to that conference, it gives them a time to bond. We take them to dinner and they sit together and they, you know, so, and then if there’s a group activity, they do that together. So to me, it’s really an important piece to get them to bond as well as a group. And I take them, you know, they…

And a lot of us are already very friendly and people say don’t be friends with your board members. Well, I fail completely at that.

Brandon Burton (20:24.194)
Bill.

Cindy DeWease (20:28.114)
people and some people say you know I like people I like the people I like but I try to I try to get in there and you know just really find what attracts us all and you know where where we can have some you know there’s always some kind of you know secret code that happens this time when somebody was telling a story that the night of our dinner and

Brandon Burton (20:46.925)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (20:51.492)
her son-in-law is Ronnie and her grandson, something happened at their house, and her grandson said, I’m gonna call Ronnie. And, well, that’s his dad. So now our joke, our private joke is, I’m calling Ronnie.

Brandon Burton (21:00.75)
Nope.

Brandon Burton (21:06.638)
Yeah. That’s great. Well, and you talked about having your tribe and, and I know a lot of chamber executives have their, their tribe, their peers that they can lean upon when you’re having difficulties or successes even to cheer about, because they understand, you know, it doesn’t just happen overnight. And there’s been a lot of frustration that leads up to those, those successes and to be able to commiserate and celebrate together is so important. And

Cindy DeWease (21:29.736)
Brandon Burton (21:35.566)
I’ve heard of some chamber executives talking about it even being their kind of their board or their cabinet, their kitchen cabinet is what they call it. While they sit in their kitchen, they’ve got their cabinet of people they can talk to and work through some of these issues. So much value with that.

Cindy DeWease (21:43.846)
Yeah, there you go.

Cindy DeWease (21:55.302)
Right, but you know some of my best friends are chamber execs and we travel together and you know we just, we’ve just got off an Alaskan cruise with you three other chamber execs and our husbands and you know we just have a great time together and you never know who’s gonna become a great friend. That’s important.

Brandon Burton (21:59.769)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (22:11.438)
Thank

Yes.

Yeah, that’s true. So any other programming or anything that you want to highlight as far as professional level?

Cindy DeWease (22:24.508)
Well, we just finished a strategic plan. so that was that strategic plan included our women’s engagement committee we call we and said that we’re starting this year and a lot of chambers are doing that. We just decided this year is a perfect time to weave that into a strategic plan. And then we’re

working on that foundation, so finalizing that foundation. So part of our strategic plan, I will likely retire from this job in the midst of that strategic plan. don’t want to say I am definitely retiring on this day because I might not be done. But in that process, part of the strategic plan was succession planning. And how do you succession plan?

Brandon Burton (23:09.11)
That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (23:18.846)
been here 42 years. I mean, that’s a big change for an organization. I am very, very fortunate to have a vice president that we have worked together for over 30 years. And she is fabulous. And she’s, you know, I run everything by her. You know, everything is, you know, you’re in this with me. I’m not doing this alone. I’m not a Lone Ranger. I work collaboratively.

Brandon Burton (23:30.898)
wow.

Cindy DeWease (23:45.23)
so much better than sitting here and trying to think of, you know, what’s the next best thing. so we talked about how do we do this, you know, transitionally and very thoughtfully. Now, the board has to hire that person, that next, you know, the next CEO of the organization. But I want them to know this is the person and this is my strong

Brandon Burton (24:08.568)
Here’s your recommendation. Comes highly, highly better.

Cindy DeWease (24:11.294)
and so far no one’s pushed back. So what we are doing since we’ve got a strategic plan that has some pretty lofty goals, I am moving to a position of CEO to push the strategic plan and drive that for the next few years. She is moving into the president’s role to work as that.

making sure that the operations of the chamber moves on. And then we have another employee that we brought on that wanted a leadership opportunity. And so she will move into the vice president’s role. And so making sure that succession planning is at least there. There’s a footprint and a model that they can look at. In order to do that, though, we had to change our bylaws because the bylaws say the president’s CEO is the same person.

Brandon Burton (24:48.782)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (25:01.922)
Bye.

Cindy DeWease (25:07.898)
So it’s letting everyone know, you know, in a bylaws change, not saying, okay, I’m going to change this person’s title. Do you all agree? That’s my job. That’s not their job. And so how about how we’re doing that is saying, okay, this is the bylaws recommendations we have to change to move forward strategically. And so it’s

Brandon Burton (25:08.526)
and we’re glad that we were able do that.

Brandon Burton (25:14.318)
Thank you.

Brandon Burton (25:21.216)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:32.225)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (25:34.582)
We’re excited about it. We’re very excited about it here. They are encouraged. You know, there’s a spring in their step and they’re very encouraged about it. And I am too. I love this organization. I love this community. This is my chamber. And we always say it’s their chamber. They’re going to end. And it’s their chamber. But I’ve been the steward of this organization for a lot of years. And so my

Brandon Burton (25:51.378)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (26:00.142)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (26:02.672)
chief responsibility for the next few years is to make sure it stays successful and stays a great organization.

Brandon Burton (26:08.886)
Yeah, and that succession planning, we don’t think of it often in terms of professional development, but really it is. It’s preparing for that next leader to come in and fill your shoes at some point and develop them professionally. So definitely fits in there.

Cindy DeWease (26:18.525)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (26:30.408)
And you never know, anything could happen. There could be an illness, there could be an accident, anything could happen at any time. If you leave an organization with hurry scurry, nobody knows what’s going on, then you’re just, yeah, and you’re set back. When I took this job, I’d been here 25 years, I thought I knew the job.

Brandon Burton (26:33.294)
Right.

Brandon Burton (26:44.514)
which we see a lot.

Cindy DeWease (26:52.702)
And I just, you know, I was named the interim until the board, you know, put me in the position. And I did not know this job. I knew the job I had. And I, we sat back probably a year, just me getting caught up. I would read an email and then I would respond to the email. Okay, can you tell me?

Brandon Burton (27:04.643)
Right.

Cindy DeWease (27:14.654)
what this role is, you know, or whatever. So having that preparation, I would have loved to have had a year or more of that preparation of taking the position. And even if it’s not, it’s no guarantee, right? Boards do what boards are gonna do, but they also see, okay, this is successful organization, why would we upset the Apple cart? Why would we put ourselves as volunteers through that? And that’s what we do. Right.

Brandon Burton (27:16.749)
Right.

Brandon Burton (27:24.398)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Brandon Burton (27:37.013)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:40.43)
They usually see the value of not rocking the boat too much. Yeah. Right. Right.

Cindy DeWease (27:43.44)
Right, right. They’re pretty level-headed board, thank goodness. And I’ve been fortunate not to have a board that, you know, that came in and wanted to upset the apple cart, you know, so, which is great.

Brandon Burton (27:55.567)
Yeah. Well, Cindy, I wanted to ask on behalf of the chambers that are listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Cindy DeWease (28:10.748)
Well, one of the things, ironically, we haven’t talked about Center for Chamber of Commerce Excellence, and I’m honored to be the chair of that. That is a three-year program in partnership with Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives and Texas A University. And it is professional development for chambers and nonprofit. we offer something different every single year. don’t know if you’re, I’m sure you’re familiar with Glenn Shepard.

Brandon Burton (28:37.699)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (28:38.018)
that goes around the country just being the best cheerleader for Chambers of Commerce that I know and he’s going to lead us in the first.

kick off breakfast motivation and then we’re going to end with a gentleman that’s called Mr. Thank you and it’s important of how important things are to say thank you and be grateful for things but it’s one two and three years we’ve got a session for the third year class on burnout to breakthrough it’s a professor from Rice University actually that’s doing a study on that and so we’re excited about that but we have it’s it’s just

preparation for a chamber career and it doesn’t have to be a chamber exec, it’s staff folks, it’s you all that and so that the deadline to register for that is on we just extended the date to the 23rd of January for the early bird and then it’s the end of March and so it’s a great opportunity and I would love to hear if anybody’s interested in.

and registering for that, but you can go on the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives website and see Center for Chamber Excellence or CCCE. always, yes, yes, we always have to have the Cs and the Es in there, whatever that looks like. But I…

Brandon Burton (29:43.918)
Extra C.

Brandon Burton (29:59.311)
That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (30:05.296)
I think I truly believe it is, like I said, building relationships and also preparing yourself knowing, you know, listening, making sure that you get that professional development, which I didn’t think was necessary. so I don’t have time for that. I just got to get through the day. yeah, but it’s challenging and it’s worth it. It helps me to.

Brandon Burton (30:23.726)
Yeah. That’s right.

Cindy DeWease (30:35.12)
It’s what inspires me when I have something new or something different to do. It inspires me.

Brandon Burton (30:42.582)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cindy, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers. So as you look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Cindy DeWease (30:55.504)
You know, I think it’s exciting. think, folks, when you hear about the…

these online chambers or you hear about that sort of thing is scary and it’s okay they’re gonna take over. But everything’s gonna be okay, all you out there that are scared of that kind of thing because those are the sort of things that people go into thinking this is the new fresh thing but then they come back to I need to build relationships. So as long as you’re providing programs.

build relationships because that’s what people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. If I know owner or manager of a restaurant, I’m more likely to go there than another restaurant. I know the officials at the hospital, I’m going to go to that hospital. And so what better way to build those partnerships is through common goals for community.

That’s how I feel it’s going to be. It’s going to be different. It’s way different than it was 40 years ago, let me tell you. But it’s not worse, it’s better. And maybe 40 years ago someone would have said, I don’t know that there’s going to be a need for a Chamber of Commerce. And I believe we’ve lasted over 500 years. I think there’s always going to be a need for a chamber as long as we have those professionals that drive it and keep it.

Brandon Burton (31:57.262)
All right.

Brandon Burton (32:00.707)
Thank

Cindy DeWease (32:20.126)
keep them valid. You you want to be a valid organization. And we’ve had a couple instances within our community or our, you know, brighter region of chambers that didn’t fulfill some roles. And it looks poorly on all of us. And so we want those area chambers that didn’t succeed to succeed. We want them to have a better staff, a better direction, a better board. And so what better what better way to do that? And because if it

Brandon Burton (32:21.838)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (32:42.47)
Bye bye.

Cindy DeWease (32:49.982)
When somebody comes in and says, I really kind of want to see your books because I don’t really appreciate what happened at such and such chamber. Well, as long as you’re a member, can. And I can assure you we’re transparent. here’s our, you this is what. And not all the books always be good. You know, we all know that. We’ve had good months, we’ve got bad months. And so we want to see our 990. We want them to see what that were relevant organizations abiding by the law.

Brandon Burton (33:07.086)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (33:20.034)
Yeah.

Cindy DeWease (33:21.682)
tears down the organization, gives a black eye to all of us. Even if you’re running your organization perfectly, a neighbor doesn’t, it’s gonna give you a black eye, unfortunately. So, mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton (33:27.47)
It’s true.

Brandon Burton (33:31.808)
It does. Well, Cindy, this has been great having you on the podcast. wanted to give you an opportunity. Yeah. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or maybe learn more about the CCC program. Where would you point them? What would be the best way to connect?

Cindy DeWease (33:38.334)
Well, I hope so. I kind of ramble sometimes.

Cindy DeWease (33:52.894)
to work.

Cindy DeWease (33:57.042)
The best way to connect with me is through email and my email is Cindy, C-I-N-D-Y, at clearlakearea.com. There’s no chamber at it, it’s just clearlakearea.com. And I would love to hear from you. I’m a talker. So as soon as you email me, I’m gonna pick up the phone and call you. So leave your phone number or our phone number at the chamber is 281-

Brandon Burton (34:15.79)
Very good.

Brandon Burton (34:22.352)
There you go.

Cindy DeWease (34:29.617)
488-7676 and the 7-6 is when this building was built so Hence the reason I’ve done so many renovations at this building. I had no idea that part of the title was GC general contractor. That is not my best role Those are not my best day. Let me tell you

Brandon Burton (34:34.136)
Very cool.

Right?

Brandon Burton (34:43.039)
Right?

Yeah, that’s funny. Part of that professional development, you just keep learning new roles, right?

Cindy DeWease (34:52.46)
absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell you about roofs. I can tell you about paint. I can tell you about flooring.

Brandon Burton (34:56.748)
That’s That’s right. Well, Cindy, thank you for being with us today, for sharing your insights, your experience, your background. This has been valuable. And I can’t wait to push it out to everybody in Chamber World. So thank you.

Cindy DeWease (35:13.49)
Thank you so much. enjoyed it. Maybe we’ll talk again. Yeah, we’ll talk when I’m close.

Brandon Burton (35:17.037)
That’s right.

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Podcasting as a Storytelling Platform with Jason Ball

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Brandon Burton (00:01.292)
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 powerhouse in economic development and community leadership. Jason Ball is the President and CEO of the five-star accredited Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, Visit Lincoln, and the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development.

Three vital organizations that together serve as the unified voice of business in Lincoln, Nebraska, focusing on economic growth, tourism, and advocacy. A certified economic developer, Jason brings a wealth of experience and leadership experience to the table. He’s a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organizational Management and the prestigious Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma.

Jason is also deeply involved at the national level. He is a member of the US Chambers Committee of 100 and serves on the board of the Midwest Institute for Organization Management. His leadership journey has taken him across the country from serving as CEO of the Round Rock, Sioux Falls, and Hutchinson Chamber of Commerce to directing business development right here in Lincoln now. In 2015, he was recognized as one of

Development Counselors International’s 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Economic Development. Originally from Sydney, Nebraska, Jason holds an undergraduate degree from Nebraska Wesleyan University and an MBA from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. With a background that spans chemistry, technology transfer, and strategic planning, Jason is a dynamic leader dedicated to building stronger communities through collaboration and innovation.

Jason, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening. if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jason M Ball (02:08.391)
Yeah, well, hello friends and colleagues. It’s good to see you on this platform. Honored to get to be here to talk with you today, Brandon. Look, when I’m not doing work, which for me is really most of the time, I’m kind of a boring guy. But I love to spend any free time I have either with my two kids who are going to be 10 and 13 this year or

spending time out running on the trail system we have here. It’s a great community for running here.

Brandon Burton (02:42.53)
Nice. It’s always nice when you can kind of boomerang, come back to your community that you love and where you’ve got roots, right? Well, tell us a little bit about the Lincoln Chamber, just to give us an idea, set the stage for our discussion today of size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to get us prepared.

Jason M Ball (02:49.563)
Yeah, that’s right.

Jason M Ball (03:03.527)
Yeah, well, all in the enterprise here is 26 staff members at Full Tilt. And, you you mentioned before, but we’re a combined chamber economic development and tourism visitor industry program here. And so the chamber’s the main 501C6. That’s where we do all the stuff that everybody in this industry knows about and understands. But we have a very strong policy and advocacy program. That’s really where I’m

I try to make sure that we do not miss on that side. And then we are well recognized here in this area of the state for some of the highest quality events and can get into those deeper in the community. We are very fortunate we’ve got a contract with Lancaster County to fund and house the program for Visit Lincoln, which is our tourism industry group. have a deep set of experts there.

that markets this community to try to bring sports tourism. It’s actually a really big part of what we do. We are working on getting a much needed updated convention center built here in Lincoln and then filling our arena and other facilities with any number of entertainment type of events. And a big part of that program has really been spent on trying to organize how we can invest in high-end asset more as a community.

Lincoln’s had to be, I think, more intentional about that than some other cities in the U.S. And then we house an economic development program, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development. a public-private partnership model with the City of Lincoln, who is our largest single funder. And then the private sector matches and actually exceeds that match for housing our economic development programs. That’s new business recruitment.

workforce development, local existing business assistance for growth. And then we have a very robust entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem building program here. All in, know, 26 people that come to work every day. We love the work we do. We run a very flat shop intentionally. Our culture is one where everybody’s expected to pitch in and help everybody else succeed. And we just are passionate about that work. It’s a fun job.

Brandon Burton (05:26.37)
Yeah, that’s great. Well, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t something you enjoyed. I appreciate that. That background on the chamber itself, the organization and what all you guys are involved with definitely sets the stage for our discussion today as we were going back and forth on different topics that we could cover. And there’s a few good ones, but Jason mentioned to me that you guys have a podcast, the Lincoln Chamber Business Link. So when I heard that…

Jason M Ball (05:47.793)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (05:56.205)
Like, well, we got to dive into that. I love hearing about Chambers podcasting and the approach that you take on it. So we’ll dive in to that topic and the depths of that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Jason, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to dive into the podcast that you guys have there at the Lincoln Chamber, Lincoln Chamber Business Link and Link LNK, which I think probably has some, is there other meaning to.

Jason M Ball (06:26.087)
LNK is the abbreviation for the Lincoln Airport. LNK. Yeah. We’ve adopted it for a lot of other purposes.

Brandon Burton (06:26.101)
LNK

Brandon Burton (06:30.03)
That’s what I was guessing. Yeah. I didn’t have a chance to verify that. So I wanted to make sure you could say it instead of me. But tell us about the podcast. How did the idea of it come about? What’s the format like? And we’ll get into some of the stories you’ve been able to extract as you guys have done this podcast.

Jason M Ball (06:38.257)
I hope.

Jason M Ball (06:53.733)
Yeah. And before we get into that, I’ll just share if people want to go check it out. You can find it at LCOC.com on our newsroom tab pull down from the top. So LCOC.com on the newsroom tab. can find BusinessLink video podcast. And you know, this is something I have to give credit to our vice president for marketing and program development, Brooke Zimmerman.

Four years ago, when I came back to this chamber, she and I had a discussion about, boy, we did not have a podcast at that time. We were doing various things on social media, but we did not have a podcast. what I envisioned was a tool to talk about things like economic growth projects or policies that we were working with and trying to lead on.

I thought of it more as a traditional audio format that we could push something out to the members in the community once a week or something like that. And Brooke started running the traps on what that would look like, how we would fully develop the programs and get that pulled together. And she came back to me and said, Jason, I think we’re missing the boat on this.

I think we need to move away from the audio and longer version type of tools for that. Let’s focus on quick hit 10, 15 minute things. Let’s do it more of an interview way rather than, you know, Jason or another staff member just talking about things that are going on. And let’s do it on video and let’s use it as a tool for businesses storytelling. And I give Brooke all the credit. I fought her on it. I was really worried about

technology, which was new to us. I was worried about how the heck are we going to fund putting a podcast studio together in the office? And then then we just started chipping away at it. It was a lot cheaper, I’m happy to say, than than I anticipated. It really did not require a whole lot of upfront investment from us. And we found a sponsor, AOI, which is one of our office

Brandon Burton (08:44.014)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton (09:04.418)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (09:09.455)
design and furniture businesses here in town. It’s AOI podcast studio. So they sponsored it and donated some furniture to go in. So we painted a wall and stuff up in the back and we were off and running. The first few episodes were really choppy, but then we found an outside provider. At one point we were thinking about staffing it up with someone who knew that space. And instead we found for a lower cost, a

Brandon Burton (09:19.054)
Perfect.

Jason M Ball (09:38.193)
really great outside provider that comes in and does the sound and video for it. So we just have to stack it up with the content and get people talking on it. And that’s really the fun part for us.

Brandon Burton (09:49.677)
Yeah. But I’m glad that Brooke had the vision. I see, as I see Chambers podcasting, you see several Chambers and there’s not, I’ll say there’s not a wrong way to podcast necessarily. It all depends on what your goals and objectives are, but going with like what your idea was, you know, talking about the advocacy and things that you’re doing, like who’s your target audience? Who are you trying to reach? Right.

Jason M Ball (09:53.243)
Yeah, me too.

Brandon Burton (10:18.094)
And that impact might be less just because a lot of people don’t want to tune into it. They want to see it work, but they don’t want to know the nitty gritty, right? Where the stories of business success. I mean, those are some of the top podcasts aside from like true crime are those of business entrepreneurial success stories and being able to learn what these people did to make this work, where the vision came from to make this happen. And people love hearing that. And then.

Jason M Ball (10:27.483)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (10:48.106)
Hopefully there’s some kind of tie-in to how the chamber might be helpful in their business being successful But whenever but a project can come in under budget that’s great. So You you mentioned the the studio so you guys are doing this like a in person. You’ve got the guests there Recording it. I assume you put it out Audio as well in addition to video. Is that correct?

Jason M Ball (11:14.651)
Yeah, it’s on Apple and Spotify and wherever people get podcasts so people can subscribe to it. But that’s really not where we’re pushing on it. It is more often than not used as a tool to provide additional content to put on social media. That’s where people are interacting with it. That’s where the views are happening. People love to forward those to friends and each other.

Brandon Burton (11:33.55)
social media here.

Jason M Ball (11:43.602)
Couple other localized places here like Podcast House Media, which is a local radio station that we do a lot of work with that also puts it on that website so people can find it that way. But it’s just another way to really push out the message of the breadth and depth of work that we’re doing and partners that we have. the best part about it is, Brandon, is it’s not

Brandon Burton (12:12.621)
Next time.

Jason M Ball (12:13.135)
It’s not just me. We started out with myself and another one or two staff members that were doing some things sort of regularly. But then we had some of our other team members really express a desire to talk about the people and programs that they’re working with on these. And so we’ve used it to talk about our young professionals group. There’s a more recent one that we started. Lincoln Visits has always been one of the founding

parts of this podcast where we talk about what’s going on in visitor industry development here in town. We’ve done workforce series, startup series we do every year with the Launch LNK Grant Award winners, six of them every year. So they’re talking about their entrepreneurial story. And then I think the one that I’m most excited about, because it’s got the most upside for us in terms of growth, is we launched last year a program called Latino Connect. It’s chamber stuff, but it’s delivered in Spanish.

I don’t speak Spanish. We hired someone who’s bilingual to do that. And she’s begun doing some of those podcasts for Latino connect in Spanish for a speaking market. So it’s, it’s turned into something I think even bigger than, maybe broken vision when she said, let’s, let’s move in this direction. And we’re so, so proud and honored that we were awarded the, for cities our size best communication award from ACC last year.

Brandon Burton (13:16.013)
to see.

Brandon Burton (13:20.11)
Very cool.

Jason M Ball (13:41.234)
for it. And then we also won a Best in Show for ACCE for the communications category, I believe. And so it’s something that’s worked really, really well for us. just encourage people, if you’re not doing any podcasting, and it’s like you said, there’s no right way to do it. We don’t have it figured out. We’re still guessing a lot of the time. But jump into that space because I’m a big believer that businesses and communities really need to know.

what chambers are doing and sometimes that messaging is the hardest part.

Brandon Burton (14:14.018)
Yeah. And there’s not a wrong way and you can always iterate. So, I mean, when I started Chamber Chat, it was strictly audio. And in the last few months, I’ve added the video portion. And with that, it allows for short form content for social media. And it’s all about getting more people exposed to what it is that you’re talking about.

Jason M Ball (14:20.987)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (14:37.992)
and bringing them in and letting them hear of these stories. And that’s the idea is these stories hopefully are lifting other people, seeing how things are done. And that’s what I wanted to touch on next is some of these stories that you guys have been able to highlight. You talked about some of these different series that you’ve done, but, and I know, mean, having a podcast, it’s like, you can’t have a favorite episode. It’s like having a favorite kid. You know, can’t do that. But what are some…

Jason M Ball (14:57.094)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (15:03.717)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (15:06.678)
some things that maybe have stood out to you as far as the storytelling aspect goes that you think, you know, if we didn’t have the podcast as a platform, this story would not have gotten out there. People in the community would not have known about this.

Jason M Ball (15:20.295)
Yeah, yeah. You know, the the one the angle that I take with all the ones that I’ve done are really pushing our business guests to talk about their why or their motivations or how they get started in business. Those are some of my favorite stories that I come across in this work. It’s it’s really easy to get excited about the new building.

Brandon Burton (15:28.546)
Thank

Jason M Ball (15:48.302)
or the policy program. like, I think of, you know, what we’re learning with, you know, Ava Thomas and our local newspaper and the media company that she runs for the Lincoln Journal Star, talking about the evolution of the news industry. That’s an industry that’s undergone a lot of change. And people in the community, interestingly enough, I think, don’t know that there’s a much larger

Brandon Burton (16:07.863)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (16:17.063)
you know, news and media organization behind it that does a lot more than news reporting. It’s full media and PR type of activities. You know, I think of our launch L &K companies, we had a local upholstery business that was going through a rapid growth process. And they were in a moment in their business where they had just bought out a previous owner and really had

tried to change what they were doing came in and and were able to talk about really what motivated them to take that leap and how scary it was but at same time how they found success in that and the last time I talked to them they had a book of business a year out and so I think that’s that’s pretty successful. I’m trying to think of another another good so like we did an episode

Brandon Burton (17:03.502)
and we’ll you next

Jason M Ball (17:12.495)
with what’s called the Echo Collective. Echo Collective is a coaching, mentoring and business support program started out of one of our local incubators and really by one woman, Kelly Ross. And it predominantly works with women and immigrant women in Lincoln and helping them start businesses. Those businesses have grown into chamber members, right? They’re people that we work with.

Brandon Burton (17:35.119)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (17:39.656)
a lot and it’s such an inspirational story to hear. Kelly talk about why that space she felt was so important and how she, I think, found some real ways to serve that community better. I could go on and on, Brandon. This is one part of what we do is celebrating the successes of other people and making sure that we’re…

Brandon Burton (17:40.558)
you

Brandon Burton (17:46.199)
Thanks.

Brandon Burton (17:55.224)
Yes.

Jason M Ball (18:05.371)
Our other goal with everything we do here, Brandon, is try to surprise people. think of Nebraska as cornfields and football in the 90s and volleyball and maybe even basketball now. Those associations are great. We’re proud of those things here in Nebraska, but there’s a whole business community and startup and manufacturing and banking and finance ecosystem here.

Brandon Burton (18:10.69)
OK.

Jason M Ball (18:31.355)
that I think most people are blissfully unaware of until they’ve had the opportunity to experience it. So we really try to focus in on those angles that will surprise people.

Brandon Burton (18:40.782)
Yeah, I love that. Surprise and delight. So you had mentioned with some of these stories that you shared and highlighted that like the upholstery business, their book of business being a year out. So in terms of measuring success of a podcast, like a lot of people are like, well, how many downloads do you get? And I don’t know that downloads matter so much as…

Jason M Ball (18:43.643)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (19:08.044)
when you see that upholstery business have, you know, that uptick in business or being able to get their story out there and surprises people in the community that they had no idea that this business was even here or I can see even as you do the highlights on tourism stuff, even giving a boost from locals who are checking out these tourist things that they didn’t know existed and they’re right in their backyard. So when you think of terms of measuring success from

project like this, what things are you looking for to see, yeah, this has been successful and worth continuing and worth doing?

Jason M Ball (19:46.28)
Well, I think one marker of that success is we get contacted now by new business leaders to the community or businesses that are celebrating some kind of a milestone or a business that’s really impacted by a policy. We’re having a lot of that inbound to us now. And so people are at least perceiving this platform as a good way to get their story and messaging out and get in front of a larger audience in Lincoln.

I think that’s been a great indication of success. You’re exactly right. The metrics do matter. We do track those. But this is never intended and we’re never going to try to position it as something that, you know, folks seven states over are going to be listening to. This is very much local content for local audiences. And but for a few exceptions, like when we’re talking about specific tourism assets or

Brandon Burton (20:35.927)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (20:44.591)
Lincoln visitation programs that are beneficial outside of that regional context. Mostly what we’re using this for is to make people aware of more deeply what’s going on in their community. We have a great business community, but I think everybody in this industry, to one extent or another, struggles with our businesses are engaged, but they’re so deep in their areas of expertise and spheres of influence.

It’s sometimes a little bit hard for them to break out of that and pay the kind of attention to a more broad set of topics that are going on in the community. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they’re running large enterprises themselves. And so this has really, I think, been proven based on some of the feedback. I love the folks that tell me, oh yeah, I’m a subscriber to this, which has never been a goal of ours. They say, oh yeah, I get these…

Brandon Burton (21:28.088)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:38.624)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (21:41.927)
and I listen to them whenever they come up in my queue while I’m working out on the treadmill in the morning. It’s been real fun to have those pop up and I really appreciate those people signing up for it.

Brandon Burton (21:48.259)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (21:53.955)
Yeah, that’s really cool. So you’d mentioned some of these different series that you guys have done different focuses. you’ve got businesses that are now reaching out to you. Is there a methodology of, cause that, that has been some pushback that I’ve had from some chambers about doing a podcast is, we can’t favorite, you know, XYZ business over this business or whatever. But if there’s a method to it, at least you can go back to that as saying this is why,

Maybe it’s different tier memberships or different industry segments or, or, or, you know, for some, it may be a revenue generator to highlight your business on the podcast. So what’s the methodology that you guys use as far as, you know, highlighting different businesses and what it is that you’re covering on the podcast.

Jason M Ball (22:44.583)
So first of all, I’d say we really try to diversify the programming. We don’t want to lump it all into public policy or all into CEOs or all in the large business. We try to make sure we’re hitting a broad swath. I’m happy to say we really haven’t run into big challenges with, you’re choosing one business over another to highlight. It’s not a sale thing. We really don’t, and we discourage it actively.

You know, we don’t want people coming in here saying, know, Jason’s redheaded retail store has 50 % off this week. Like we really stay away from that. We’re deeply interested in why did Jason start the redheaded retail store? And so that’s worked really well. It’s kept us out of hot water. It’s kept us from, you know, any sort of inkling of, you know, talking about competition in a way.

And I think because of that, it’s allowed us to open wide the doors for businesses that are interested. You know, I mentioned at the beginning, we thought, you know, producing one of these, one or two of these a month was a good goal. And I think in our first year of full operations with this, we produced more than 30 episodes, which is more than I anticipated. Last year, I’m sure we were in excess of 50 episodes. And so

We’re just trying to make it available to everyone. There’s not a lot of picking and choosing that happens. It doesn’t cost anything for our interviewees to come on. And so we’ve really used it as a tool for celebration. And it’s hard for people to get into trouble for continuing to celebrate good things, right?

Brandon Burton (24:15.501)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (24:26.946)
That’s right. That’s right. So you had mentioned with the studio, you guys did get a partner with the AOI. that the?

Jason M Ball (24:35.471)
Aoi podcast studios what it is. Yeah

Brandon Burton (24:37.644)
Yeah. So you got a local company to help, you know, furnish and set up the studio and kind of be that it sounds like maybe the sponsor of the podcast. that how that works? Do you have other sponsors or how does…

Jason M Ball (24:50.213)
Yeah. There are studio sponsor and that’s the gosh unless I’m mistaken I think that is the only one we’ve ever had. And A.O.I. has been just a great great partner on it and quite frankly I don’t it’s it’s compared to the overall size of any businesses marketing budget. That’s it’s still a really nice deal for them too. So it’s it look it’s again I want to encourage other folks in our industry

Brandon Burton (24:59.522)
Okay.

Brandon Burton (25:13.837)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (25:19.715)
If this is something that maybe you’ve been thinking about that you haven’t quite pulled the trigger on, I or my staff love to talk to you and just tell you how we found our way to figuring this out. I was really concerned about it. But if our team can figure it out, I know everybody’s team really can.

Brandon Burton (25:35.214)
Yeah.

Jason M Ball (25:43.979)
And especially doing the work we do, chamber folks usually don’t struggle to get excited about helping businesses celebrate progress in their community.

Brandon Burton (25:53.807)
Right. And there’s, there’s so many different ways to be able to produce a podcast now. And even as we’re recording this, we’re on a platform called Riverside, which is what I use to produce a podcast. And it’s not what I used when I first started and I had a, you know, bought a fancy microphone and all that. And if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see the microphone in the background. I don’t even use it anymore because the software makes the audio so great. I don’t need the fancy microphone.

Jason M Ball (25:56.379)
you

Jason M Ball (26:01.607)
you

Brandon Burton (26:21.638)
And, you know, the software is like, I don’t know, like 20 bucks a month or something. Like it’s, very inexpensive. but, there, it’s easy to plan a podcast and come in under budget and make it be profitable, make it be something that celebrates, you know, the members in your community and highlights your community. But it sounds like you guys are, doing things right. not that there’s a wrong way again, but you guys are doing a lot of right things.

I wanted to put it out there for anyone listening who’s wanting to take their chamber, their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Jason M Ball (27:05.227)
boy. You know, I continue to be such an engaged supporter of what the US Chamber is doing. And I remember working with other chambers or other colleagues in this industry who maybe haven’t plugged into as much of what they’re doing there. I just I really encourage people check it out. That membership, that partnership for

for us and especially in a state like Nebraska. Because I’ve been in Texas that has a huge federal delegation. Texas has a state when it rallies around something is pretty indomitable when they really want to get stuff done. Here in Texas, our federal delegation is five, right? We’re definitely on the smaller end of the spectrum. And so having a partner like the US Chamber for us has been invaluable.

Brandon Burton (27:41.122)
Right.

Jason M Ball (28:01.157)
when it comes to having a real effective voice and really getting some big things done in Washington DC. And so if I just suggest, and I know this isn’t revelatory, a lot of chambers are doing a lot of great stuff with them, but if you’re newer to this industry, definitely jump in on the Chamber Institute for Organization Management. That is the reason why I’m able to do the work I love every day.

And if you’ve been around that for a while, but maybe your chamber hasn’t been as plugged into the US chamber, check that out. They’ve got some great options and great package sizes for chambers of every size to benefit from. It’s worth every single penny in my opinion.

Brandon Burton (28:44.953)
Yeah, I love that. You know, just when I started this podcast, it was really to serve the underserved chambers who maybe they’re part time or one staff and their, their board didn’t, you know, have, have the budget for them to go to even their state conferences and be involved that way. And, over, I guess, about six years now, seven years of doing the podcast, um, having the plug.

Jason M Ball (29:02.012)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (29:10.124)
like that with being involved in the US Chamber and ACCE. And these things are so important that now even Chamber Chat has grown beyond just those underserved chambers to being able to serve a lot more. So great, great tip, great advice. Jason, I’d to get your perspective as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce. How do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jason M Ball (29:37.042)
Yeah, you know, I think the chambers of commerce actually are in an environment where we have more opportunity than maybe we have ever had in the past. Mostly because of the political fragmentation that’s happened. And I want to be as polite as I can to our elected officials. They’re doing hard jobs. They’re getting a ton of criticism for it. And especially at the local level, you

Brandon Burton (29:48.588)
Love that.

Jason M Ball (30:05.585)
they’re often not getting paid enough and everybody’s angry at them all the time. Like it’s, it’s rough. but at the same time, our, our politics have evolved over the past 20 years in ways that I think should, should be concerning to everybody. but aside from that, the business community, still has a great brand is still seen as a, a important partner to get big community things.

Brandon Burton (30:10.466)
it

Jason M Ball (30:35.207)
done or fund a big community projects and programs or you know back on the policy side get get real legislation passed that’s going to be durable and built on coalitions rather than getting just a 50 plus one type of votes scenarios right and so chambers really have that role to play and I think I think communities I think people I think businesses are hungrier for that than they have ever been.

And so as challenging as things can be on membership or funding programs or, you know, goodness knows, going out and making those visits to businesses right now with all the uncertainty in the market can be a really uncomfortable experience. But do that and find those ways to provide real value because people are hungry for what chambers are. Coalition builders are too few and far between now and our politics.

And I think every chamber, this one definitely really tries to step into that space as much as possible. And we’ve seen a great response.

Brandon Burton (31:45.323)
Yeah, think that’s a great perspective and outlook and You know, we all want to roll up our sleeves and get to work, right? Well Jason this has been great It’s been a lot of fun having you on the podcast to talk about podcasting and how you guys are doing it there in Lincoln For anyone who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about

the approach you guys are taking or any of the other things you’ve touched on today, where would you point them and what would be the best way to connect?

Jason M Ball (32:14.639)
Easiest way to find me is all my contact information is on our staff page at lcoc.com. I am the easiest person to find in town. So check it out at lcoc.com on the staff page.

Brandon Burton (32:26.892)
That’s perfect. We’ll get that linked in our show notes and make it easy. Jason, this has been great. I appreciate you spending the time with us today on Chamber Chat podcast. And keep making waves in the Lincoln area with your own podcasts there as well. I love it. And I’d love to see more Chambers get on board with podcasting. Thanks a lot.

Jason M Ball (32:46.321)
Brandon, thank you so much.

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Chamber Tech Innovations with Christopher Patton

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Brandon Burton (00:00.876)
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. Joining us today is a tech industry veteran turned chamber innovator, Chris Patton. With over a decade of executive experience in the tech world, Chris has scaled companies through major growth and multiple mergers and acquisitions.

But it was opening a kid strong franchise and joining his local chamber that sparked a whole new passion, which is transforming the way chambers connect with their members. saw firsthand how chambers were lacking modern user friendly tech that delivered real value to their members. That insight led him to found Chaymber, that’s C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R, a company dedicated to building an elegant, intuitive app that helps chambers

It helps chamber members do what they came to do, network, build relationships and grow their businesses without the clunky watered down CRM experience. Now laser focused on innovation in the chamber space. Chris is on a mission to make member engagement seamless, effective, and actually enjoyable. Chris, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening. And if you would.

share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you little better.

Christopher Patton (01:30.394)
Yeah, I’m grateful for the opportunity. I was glad we got to connect recently and learn more about each other. You know, being somebody newer to the chamber industry, right? It’s always nice to have new connections. That’s what it’s all about. As far as something interesting, you know, it’s always subjective, right? I’d say the most exciting thing in my life right now is that I have what will soon be an eight month old daughter, Juniper.

So as you can imagine, she is really the focus and highlight of everything I’ve got going on.

Brandon Burton (02:03.693)
What a fun stage too. Just starting to wake up and experience the world. So that’s very cool.

Christopher Patton (02:09.572)
waking up, waking up at all hours, for sure. Yeah.

Brandon Burton (02:12.353)
That’s right. Just waking up in general. Very good. Well, usually at this point, I have the guest tell about their chamber or their organization just to kind of give a little background and kind of set the stage for a conversation today. So maybe just take us through high level what chamber is all about, what it is, and then we’ll dive into the details a little bit later.

Christopher Patton (02:36.484)
Yeah, yeah. So we do two main things. We provide Chambers of Commerce, a new medium to be able to interact and engage with their members through this mobile branded experience with push notifications and more. And then we provide their members a tool to actually be able to engage and network with each other. So those are the two main things. We certainly have a whole bunch more features within the application and system and a whole lot more in our roadmap coming.

But you know, I always like to say that, you know, this is a platform that’s built by a chamber member for chamber members, right? So really trying to take that member experience that I know so well and my technology background and connecting the two.

Brandon Burton (03:21.291)
Yeah, now that’s great. I love it when somebody comes into it from the perspective of seeing the issue themself and then creating the solution to the problem that they’ve seen. So it tends to add a lot more value and insight to the product as it comes out. Well, today we’re gonna dive in on a topic of how chambers tend to facilitate through using their CRM to connect with members to.

just manage the organization at large, the reasons why people join Chambers to begin with, and seeing how Chamber, your app, can be a solution to some of these issues and struggles that we see on a regular basis. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Chris, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about how Chambers tend to rely maybe a little too heavily on their CRM to manage the organization. And don’t get me wrong, CRMs are great. I don’t know how chambers would function without them. But share with us from your perspective, what do you mean when you see chambers relying too heavily on CRMs?

Christopher Patton (04:28.476)
So.

Christopher Patton (04:36.006)
Sure, I think what I’ve learned, well, maybe I’ll share this tidbit. Every single sales demo call I do, feels like it turns into this therapy session about their CRM, right? And I appreciate that we’ve established that good of a relationship, kind of from the get go with lot of these folks, but it’s…

It’s a necessary evil for lack of a choice. I use a CRM for my business. It’s part of how we do business nowadays. sometimes they kind of get sold the bill of goods as far as like it’s the panacea that will do everything for them. And what I’ve come to learn being in the tech industry for a while is if you have a tech product that’s trying to do everything for everyone, they’re delivering to no one.

Brandon Burton (05:07.063)
Sure.

Christopher Patton (05:28.636)
because there’s really a lack of product vision. And I feel like that’s what we have, Is really focused product vision. So when I talk to these shamers about their CRM doing everything, right? Whether it’s the events, the billing, the emails, right? A lot of the times they’ve got all these things in the systems, but they are just super clunky. They’re not intuitive for them to use.

It scares them off more than anything, to where it’s possible that their CRM does some things that maybe we do, but it is so tough for them to navigate that they start looking elsewhere. With that being said, I know we’ve got features that their CRM does not do for sure, but I think that’s how I’d explain it is they’re under the impression the CRM will do everything for them, but it’s almost like information overload and

It’s really tough to navigate. It makes it hard.

Brandon Burton (06:30.894)
And I think, you know, bottom line is that a CRM can be great when, when it does do what you want it to do, when you can plug in with the calendar and you can, you know, have everything recorded in a CRM. There’s a ton of value to be able to go back to that and see what are all the touch points with their customers, with our chamber members. But the reality is when it becomes too difficult to use and they don’t use it and they start looking for other solutions that maybe don’t communicate with their CRM, that

end up being its own clunky system in its own by trying to kind of patchwork different things together. So having somebody like you who’s bringing something from the perspective, as we’ve talked about, where you’ve seen where these struggles, where these disconnects are, and with their tech background, to be able to find a solution that actually works. I think there’s so much value to that. Yeah.

Christopher Patton (07:27.554)
Ditto.

Brandon Burton (07:29.814)
I love the therapy session too, about CRMs. Because there’s so much good in them, but it’s like some of these things get added in almost as an afterthought of, yeah, we can do that too, but it’s not being done really well. It’s just in there because they can. But being able to maximize how these different tools work together is where you really get the key impact.

Christopher Patton (07:51.686)
Yeah. Hey, could I share another anecdote about the therapy session real quick? So I use AI note taker for all my calls so long as the person’s okay with me using it, which is pretty normal to have on our calls nowadays. And I always take my transcripts and I think you and I talked a little bit about this where I’ve got my AI business advisor, right? And I upload my transcripts for what I did for the day as well as everything else.

Brandon Burton (07:56.077)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:14.062)
Yep.

Christopher Patton (08:18.344)
A tool I’d recommend for everyone is create your own AI board of directors or some version of that. My business advisor at this point, man, they get it. like, this CRM is really causing these people, it’s happened again. Even my AI business advisor knows and they get it now.

Brandon Burton (08:35.073)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (08:39.426)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did talk about that. Having that, that AI board of directors and, and we’re not talking about, you know, the board of directors of the chamber, but people that you value their input, their insights where you can take issues and, and really just have their, virtual essence, you know, give you some positive feedback and help guide you. So great, great advice. so Chris, I know you’ve looked into the reasons why people join a chamber, why businesses join the chamber.

Christopher Patton (08:49.222)
Correct.

Brandon Burton (09:09.27)
to begin with. mean, you’re a business owner with Kid Strong. What did you join the chamber for with Kid Strong?

Christopher Patton (09:17.572)
Yeah, the real first reason was ribbon cutting, right? That was such a special moment for me to open the doors to my business, right, in my community. So, you know, naturally I was like, okay, this is how we do like the formal ribbon cutting, right, is with my local chamber. And it’s that day one high of when you’re with your Chamber of Commerce. And I love my local chamber here in my community. They do such amazing things.

But it was impossible for me as a business owner and being somebody on the tech side to not start connecting the dots after that. But then I’d say the other two main reasons is the same reasons, the data shows the top two reasons are because people want to network with fellow business leaders and they want to get more exposure for their business. And that was really my thesis behind Chamber and the direction I went in when we started building it out.

That was my motivating factor for joining and eventually building our product too.

Brandon Burton (10:15.475)
Yeah, so talk to us more about chamber. How does it help solve some of these issues of why, I mean it’s not doing ribbon cuttings for chambers, but how is it addressing some of these other things that people are joining the chamber for?

Christopher Patton (10:31.868)
Yeah, I need to go talk to my AI advisor to figure out how can we do ribbon cutting for Chambers. Now, yeah, so it serves, again, there’s two main purposes, which is giving Chambers of Commerce the new medium to be able to communicate with their members. And then, and I’ll jump into some more detail, and then there’s the member-to-member interaction side of things. So, what I will say is, there are even some CRMs that have an app that you can get. And…

Brandon Burton (10:35.638)
Right?

Brandon Burton (10:54.67)
Thank

Christopher Patton (10:58.972)
You know, I’d ask those chambers when they think of when they bring that up is how’s the adoption in those apps? And is it because the concept of an app is not good or is it because the app is not good? Right? There’s plenty of apps that are really successful. So, you know, that’s again another one of my core beliefs is that just giving your members a portal to like update their billing information, you know, and things like that is not going to be this

this really motivating factor for them, right? So when we come back to the first item with the ability for chambers to be able to communicate to their members, right? You’ve got the events, you’ve got the news where they can do the push notifications to their members and even transactional emails to folks that haven’t downloaded the app yet.

Brandon Burton (11:39.992)
the facts we want to

Brandon Burton (11:50.03)
Thank

Christopher Patton (11:54.938)
And then we’ve got things like exclusive offers and business spotlights so they can highlight more of their businesses in a new way to their community. And then we also digitize their directory. So it’s pretty standard that most chambers of commerce have a list of all their businesses. And we’ve actually got an integration with Google Maps. So that way, we take all of their businesses and give them their own localized Google Maps within the app as well.

Brandon Burton (12:18.606)
Thanks

you.

Christopher Patton (12:22.596)
as well as like group chat functions. So can take your committees and give them their own group chats within the app. Plenty of other things. And then when it comes to the member to member interaction side of things, the real kind of real world use case I like to give is Brandon, let’s say we go to a networking event together. What typically happens is like we meet each other and the relationship probably ends there until we see each other at another event. And

What we’ve done is tried to change that, right? So if we meet at the event, we can connect in the app. And once we connect in the app, our system sends out a branded email for whatever Chamber of Commerce. So we own all the automations. So the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have to worry about it. It actually connects us both through email. So then the next day when we get back to our office, wherever the eager beaver there is, can pick up the communication from there. And we can set up a business meeting. can…

just be connected for whenever we wanna connect again in the future. So it really takes those in-person connections and brings more value to them overall.

Brandon Burton (13:29.454)
Yeah. So the networking piece of it really is what captures my attention. That’s the big differentiator that I see is being able to take those in-person interactions that we’ll admit can be a little awkward sometimes, especially the follow-up can be a little awkward, bit salesy maybe, you know, depending on what it is. But when you can make a connection and really, you know, see that there’s something there, you know, mutually beneficial.

to connect on the app and then let that drive, you know, continued interaction down the road is so valuable.

Christopher Patton (14:04.028)
Yeah, because what happens, the real example I always give, and I always get smiles, and so it validates my thought here is, you give me a business card, I give you a business card, if we’re lucky, we remember to take it out of our pants before we do laundry. And know, best case scenario, it ends up in a pile in the corner of our desk, and you know, we like never get around to sending it. Yeah, don’t show whoever that is. But yeah, that pile.

Brandon Burton (14:25.48)
This pile. Right? Yeah.

Christopher Patton (14:31.836)
But that’s what I love, because now I go to my chamber events and I’m like, no, no, no, I’m not taking your business card. I’m going to connect with you in the app. then boom, we get an email into each other’s inboxes right there. And even if they haven’t downloaded the app yet, they get a notification through email saying, hey, Chris is trying to connect with you. And it prompts them to download the app. So we’ve tried to set up a lot of automations as well. When we think about why are other systems not being successful?

other apps not being successful. That’s a lot of it is you can’t just send an email at once telling your members to download something and assuming it’ll be successful. You got to really integrate it into your daily operations, but also you got to give them a tool that they actually want to use. That’s what it really comes down to.

Brandon Burton (15:17.398)
Yeah. Yeah. For me, seeing an unread email or an unread alert, you know, in an app is going to get my attention and bug me a lot more than seeing a stack of business cards on my desk that get buried by other papers. So I see where that, that really can propel, you know, those connections. so when you talked about the adoption of apps, just in general, like the CRM has an app. so it made me think I’ve been working with chamber since before iPhones came out.

Christopher Patton (15:27.836)
Yeah. That’s it.

Brandon Burton (15:47.457)
So not trying to date myself too much, it’s a, that where the iPhones, the androids came out and it was probably within two to three years, you start seeing the CRMs, the chamber CRM starting to launch apps because that was the new sexy thing is to have an app for your, iPhone or the Android. And it really was just super, super basic. And I really haven’t seen a whole lot of innovation going forward with those.

And I don’t know that the adoption was ever great in the beginning because it was essentially what you’d find on their website, just in an app. And if you don’t have to download an app to access the information, why would you? So anyway, I see where, where the adoption can be a challenge. Um, and for those who are, who are listening, who say, yeah, we have an app and nobody downloads it and nobody uses it or whatever. I think it all goes back to the value. Yeah. I believe it all goes back to the value. What’s the purpose of the app?

Christopher Patton (16:23.932)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Patton (16:39.782)
Yeah, I believe you. I believe you.

Brandon Burton (16:46.798)
How’s that bettering to, working to better enhance the business environment, the interactions with individuals. So having something of value is very helpful and we’ll get that adoption going.

Christopher Patton (17:02.342)
Yeah, and if I could say real quick, whether it’s about CRMs or something else that the chambers use, a lot of technology they adopt is understandably so to help with their operations, right? So they can run their chamber more effectively. I totally understand that. And that’s where we are different. It’s like, we’re trying to cut through the noise and bring value in a different way, and we’re giving you a tool for your members. So no, we’re not your CRM. We’re another CRM.

And in some cases, are, yes, we are an added cost compared to what you’ve been paying. And that’s usually why they’re reaching out to me is they’re trying to see if they can find a cheaper CRM that still does a lot of the things, right? So, that budget conversations are real, but luckily I know we’re priced really competitively. But that’s where sometimes I think chambers get a little focused on

just having tools and tech for them and not the people they’re supposed to be servicing, the people that are paying the bills.

Brandon Burton (18:07.456)
Exactly. So talk to us about your app and how it works as far as like a chamber being onboarded. Is there data that’s provided to them as far as the user experience and feedback that maybe they can record some things in their CRM so they don’t totally lose, you know, that information? Because I do see a lot of value in that and who’s engaging and at what level.

Christopher Patton (18:32.026)
Yeah, great question. So, you know, all the members get pushed to download at the Chamber app. But as soon as they’re in the app, everything is white labeled and branded as whatever Chamber of Commerce. So they’re getting that experience, both in the logos and the coloring they’re seeing, as well as the push notifications that they’re seeing. And then, you know, as far as using this, the information they already have available. So the good thing is they’ve got this information in their CRM.

Truth be told, I talked to plenty of, I talked to.

they rely on spreadsheets as well. They don’t even have a CRM. so nonetheless, they just can simply upload their member information and that’s what provides access to the members. Same thing with the directories. When I talked about that Google Maps, right? They just download the list of their member businesses from their CRM or their source of truth spreadsheet. They just upload it into the backend admin system that they have access to. And that’s what…

dictates what businesses are listed in there, what businesses can get spotlighted. So we can pull all that industry data and descriptions from Google itself.

Brandon Burton (19:46.733)
Yeah. So I think it’s important for Chambers to be tech forward thinking. I mean, that’s the way everything is going, right? When you just said spreadsheet, it made me cringe because I know there’s a handful of Chambers out there that are still trying to do things by a spreadsheet. So I know you have some thoughts as far as the tech forward thinking and especially as it relates to Chambers.

Christopher Patton (20:14.458)
Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m lucky in that I’ve had the chance to work for some pretty great organizations in the tech side for a while. So being an outsider to the Chamber of Commerce niche has been a learning experience for me. But at the same time, it’s helping me kind of show some folks some opportunities. I met with somebody recently who is new to their sales job, and I was showing them some of the tech tools I use.

for my outreach and just the automations and they were like, this is really cool. I need to get this set up. And so always happy to talk to people about that. yeah, Chambers of Commerce, right? They serve such a pivotal role in all of our local communities and they’re representing all these businesses in their community. And then sometimes they’re probably, sometimes they’re the least.

tech savvy organizations, not the people. And sometimes it’s budget limitations, It’s not for lack of care or effort. I see that in my conversations. There’s definitely that desire to adopt new technology because as you mentioned earlier, some of the bigger players in the market, they’ve been around for a while in the chamber industry as far as technology products and there’s just a lack of innovation.

Is the most blunt way to put it and and they’re raising prices at the same time. I mean I hear that constantly And you know, that’s what happens when you have somebody that has a massive market share right or there or there’s fewer players in a marketplace But I view that as exciting because that means there’s an opportunity for disruption both with what we’re offering and and this is really like V1 of our product I’m I am so stoked about all the things we have in our roadmap and I

telling you guys like we’re building a CRM. Like it’s happening. And you know, with all the feedback that I’ve gotten, I’ve done a number of discovery sessions with different chambers of commerce. So naturally I want to make sure we build something that people love. I mean, there is nothing scarier. I’ve done it. When you migrate CRMs, right, you’re just like, you know, please don’t let me lose all my data.

Christopher Patton (22:32.773)
So I get that and there will be that trust building process for sure as we start rolling that out later. Right now we’re hyper focused on just this end user experience for the members. But there’s no doubt that that’s in our roadmap and I’m excited about that because I mean the chambers are just to say they’re asking for it would be an understatement.

Brandon Burton (22:53.122)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, you know, with some of these bigger companies have been around a long time with the CRMs and whatnot. When it comes to like you mentioned, lack of innovation, I think the ideas are there. They get the feedback, obviously, but it’s like turning a huge ship versus a speedboat. Right. And when you got that much more people and to weigh in on decisions and what direction to go, it just takes longer. It’s a little slower.

lot slower. So to be able to pounce on that opportunity, you’re in a great spot.

Christopher Patton (23:29.967)
Yeah, it’s something referred to as tech debt. A lot of these older tech companies, not necessarily a chamber of commerce related, but just in general, they have tech debt where they have these really old tech stacks and old code in their code base. And to roll out net new features requires a lot more work than maybe a company like mine, because we don’t have to go back and fix this popsicle stick house of

of craziness that’s been built over the years in addition to just being able to roll out a new feature. So a lot of that exists right now.

Brandon Burton (24:05.036)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You talked about right now really focusing on that end user experience and for the chamber members, that’s what it’s all about, is giving them a good experience that’s going to keep them around, that’s going to help support their business and help them grow and thrive. So I think that’s obviously where the focus needs to be, but along the way it’s supporting chambers. I see where that continual growth and evolution will be. But yeah, I’m excited to see what comes out with the

the CRM as you guys work on that coming up in the future.

Christopher Patton (24:38.319)
Yeah, I guess I’ve kind of put it out there now. So it has to happen.

Brandon Burton (24:41.346)
That’s right now it’s real. That’s right. What other features do you want to highlight or or aspects of the app and the platform that maybe we haven’t covered yet?

Christopher Patton (24:55.896)
You know, I’d say one of the things that I like them or yeah, one of the things that comes to mind is again, like I’m trying to take that member experience, like what are the real problems they deal with and they face? And sometimes it’s basic things, right? So an example I give is like, I meet somebody at an event and then I go home right to my eight month old daughter and I completely forget that person’s name.

I cannot remember what company they work for, right? Like we’re all so busy. And you went there to network and you’re like, I can’t even remember who I networked with, right? Maybe I remember their face. So within the app, that’s where you actually do have the ability to, you see all the people you’ve connected with, very, very short term we’re gonna have you where you can see what events you met them at. So you can be like hyper focused on remembering.

Brandon Burton (25:51.147)
Christopher Patton (25:53.849)
So things like that, again, those are the problems that I feel like we’re trying to solve in that what are the problems that are audible amongst chamber members, right? In like the pain points that they have, but then also there’s that Henry Ford put, which I’ve heard he may or may not have said, which is if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, right? So part of this too is trying to also be innovative on my side.

Brandon Burton (26:17.208)
Try it.

Christopher Patton (26:22.573)
and come up with features that maybe members aren’t even thinking about because they don’t even know that it’s an option, right? So, you know, whether it’s in the near term checking in at events so they can see who’s at the events, right? So they know who they want to focus on talking to, you know, being able to just more intuitively search for specific industries. So like, I’m not necessarily just seeing like a business that does accounting on a directory, but I like

Brandon Burton (26:38.53)
Like that.

Christopher Patton (26:51.418)
I specifically who are the members and I can talk to them directly in the app and connect with them and try to meet with them. So again, just thinking about what is that member experience now and what could it be and really trying to digitize and improve that as much as possible without it feeling like a social network or like an online forum, right? That’s where companies go to die nowadays. So we’re not trying to do that.

Brandon Burton (27:14.04)
Yeah.

Christopher Patton (27:19.093)
Those things exist and it’s crickets. I’ve seen those with chambers of commerce. So we’re trying to do something that’s a bit more innovative.

Brandon Burton (27:27.276)
Yeah. I can see for the user to be able to see, you know, what events they connected with somebody at and over time to be able to see where are the events that are most worth my time to be at? Where do I make the best connections? And then, you know, as you continue rolling out features, if it becomes an option where I don’t know if you guys would do geo-fencing or anything at an event location, but then people show up and they get an alert of, you know, people that they’ve connected with in the past that are there and maybe, you know,

Christopher Patton (27:40.081)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (27:57.475)
rekindle those connections. So lots of exciting ways to go about it. it’s very cool.

Christopher Patton (28:02.801)
That may or may not be very short term in the road map.

Brandon Burton (28:06.604)
Yeah, right. Well, Chris, I wanted to give you an opportunity for for those listening who are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you leave for them as a suggestion to help them in that in that goal?

Christopher Patton (28:28.433)
Sure, and I appreciate the opportunity to have people even hear me out on my thought on this. Something that I find super valuable as somebody that’s like across multiple industries is dedicating time to like listen and learn both from your existing industry, right? That’s a value that you serve, right? Like if folks are CEOs or member services and they are not dedicating an hour a week,

just for learning to improve the business. You’re just in reactive mode all the time. And that’s not me chastising, that’s just something I’ve learned. I’ve got something on my calendar twice a week that’s just like education time for me, both for industry and then external industry, right? So an easy way Chambers can do this if they’re looking for outside industry time, because again, number one thing I’ll say is listen to the Chamber Chat podcast or…

Brandon Burton (29:27.054)
Great, great suggestion.

Christopher Patton (29:27.121)
You got to do that, right? Yes, yes. But as far as looking outside, right? That’s where you can learn some other technologies that, you know, chambers aren’t thinking about, or, you know, other tools that, you know, maybe could be adopted by their organization. You know, a great way to do that is just pick your AI source of choice and just like, create that business advisor, you know, get in there on an ongoing basis and dedicate that time.

So it understands who you are, what mission you’re trying to serve and what your pain points are. And keep prompting and asking more questions. Don’t give up on that. you’ll uncover things, right? Because sometimes we just, I always say like, I don’t know what I don’t know, right? So that’s why you just got to keep asking questions and keep digging. And I think that’s where sometimes all of us as business owners or business leaders, we can get a little blindsided by just what’s directly in front of us. So I think that’s probably my suggestion.

I recommend.

Brandon Burton (30:25.91)
Yeah. To your point about getting outside of the, where your blinders are kind of those other, other industries, other organizations. And I think chambers by nature do that. They kind of cross pollinate because they have to, but, my oldest kid, he’s getting ready to do course selections and stuff for his first year of college coming up. And, and he’s looking at the honors program. And I didn’t understand this, but at the school, the honors program is not just Harvard classes.

But it’s an environment where there is that cross-pollination. So you might have a certain direction with your major, but it’s like, how does that relate to mathematics or the sciences or whatever it is? you cross-pollinate from different perspectives and really work together more collaboratively too. And there’s just a lot of value in that. So I appreciate that tip.

Christopher Patton (31:14.885)
Yeah, teaching them to think and not just remember.

Brandon Burton (31:17.57)
That’s right. That’s right. Well, Chris, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christopher Patton (31:28.475)
Yeah, I think the way just we’re heading as a business industry, right? Like it’s impossible to not, and I hate to do this, but it’s impossible to not bring up AI, right? It’s becoming integrated and everything. So with Chambers staying relevant in their local communities and looking to

Brandon Burton (31:41.367)
Yeah.

Christopher Patton (31:58.673)
you know, like meet the needs of the next generation of business leaders, right? You know, I kind of, I kind of think of myself, I’m, I’m, I’m on the cusp, but I’m not 40 yet. And so, you know, I’m on the, I’m on that generation of business owners, right? And, know, those are the folks that, that are using AI a lot that are looking for ways to, to, you know, interact with their local business community. And I think matching that with what is a really clear need in society right now for

for community, right? And that’s something that excites me about what we’re doing, right? People are joining lots of organizations. There’s a bump again in the data of people joining organizations. So I think as chambers look down the road and they think about, sure, they service the business community, but how can they be that organization that connects people, that provides community to the people in their area?

in that sense, while also looking at some of the technologies that are coming down the pike and how they can incorporate them. I think those are two really pivotal things, We got every business always has to be looking at how can they adapt. And people my age and younger, I think have this really strong sense and desire for community because we spent so much time online, right? And so giving us…

Brandon Burton (33:21.248)
Thank you.

Christopher Patton (33:25.083)
types of people, the opportunity to network and connect with people and feel that sense of belonging I think is really important. I think chambers are really positioned in an awesome way to do that.

Brandon Burton (33:36.736)
Yeah, I would agree. would agree. Well, Chris, why don’t you share some contact information for listeners who might want to learn more about Chamber. Where would you point them? How can they connect with you to set up a demo or anything else you have to offer?

Christopher Patton (33:52.805)
Yeah, sure. My home address is, no, I’m just kidding. You can email me at patent, P-A-T-T-O-N, like the general, at chaymber.com, so C-H-A-Y-M-B-E-R (patton@chaymber.com). You can find me on LinkedIn, Christopher George Patten on LinkedIn. You can also do support at chamber.com. If you go to our website, chaymber.com, you can just simply book a meeting or check our pricing on there if you want to. So, number of ways for you to do that with ease.

Brandon Burton (33:54.786)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (34:21.15)
Very good. And we’ll get all that linked in our show notes for this episode as well. So make it easy for people to connect with you. But this has been great. It’s a fun conversation whenever we can talk about the innovative things that are happening in the chamber space. And I’m curious to keep an eye and see the continued evolution and how you guys grow and continue to develop. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these insights and valuable resources with us.

Christopher Patton (34:48.783)
Awesome, thanks again for the opportunity.

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Chamber Bitcoin Foundations with Brandon Burton

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Brandon Burton (00:00.824)
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Our topic for this episode is going to be a little bit unique. It’s something that I haven’t really dove into on Chamber Chat yet. Typically, I have guests and

Given this time of year, we’re coming into the holiday season. I wanted to be able to give a little reprieve to the guests that I would normally have on and allow them to enjoy the holidays, but also to dive into what I see as an important topic for Chambers to be paying attention to right now so you can be better prepared for the future. So before I dive in,

In this episode, I am going to be sharing some ideas around Bitcoin and how Bitcoin can help strengthen the finance, the outlook, financial outlook for your chamber. But I do want to put out the disclaimer that I am not a financial advisor, that this is not financial advice. You know, all the disclaimers go along with that. What I want to do with this episode

is really just give you some exposure to Bitcoin, what it is, kind of a vision that I’ve had of seeing how Chambers can utilize Bitcoin in the long term and give you something to be able to talk over with your board, with your executive committee, with your accountant, see what makes sense for your organization and to look to some other models and

how they’re utilizing Bitcoin as well. without further ado, this episode, the thought came to me, chambers are always looking for long-term sustainable revenue streams and ways to strengthen their role as community stewards. that’s a long way of saying chambers are always looking to remain relevant, right? But as Matt Appenzeller,

Brandon Burton (02:22.881)
talked about as he was a guest on the podcast a few weeks ago, it’s not enough to be relevant anymore. You need to be forward thinking. You need to be looking at what’s coming next. And it’s part of my thesis, you can say, that Bitcoin can very much be part of that long-term sustainable revenue stream and way to strengthen your role as community leader. We’re seeing

around the country, around the world, major institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and even universities are adopting Bitcoin as a long-term strategic asset. And I’ll get a little bit more into that as we go along. But to kind of frame the thought process as we get into this, what would it mean for a chamber foundation to build a strategic reserve

designed for growth for decades, designed to grow for decades. Think about that, ponder on that. What would it mean for your chamber foundation to build a strategic reserve designed to grow for decades? This is big thinking, long-term thinking, and we’re gonna dive into it as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, so before the break, I kind of set the table for you. Explaining what this episode’s all about with introducing you to Bitcoin and more importantly with how Bitcoin can be a great asset for long-term growth for your chamber, specifically for Foundation. So I’ll get into the details of it. I do kind have an outline that I’m going to follow. So as I go through the outline, it may seem like I’m reading some things, but I wanted to make sure that I had…

as much of the detail and reference points available as possible so I’m not missing anything. Bitcoin can be a complex topic. So I’ve been in it and involved with Bitcoin for nearly a decade now. So as I’ve gotten into it, there’s some things that I take for granted that I realize other people don’t have that framework or that foundation for understanding Bitcoin.

Brandon Burton (04:44.844)
I’m hoping to be able to give some of that background about what Bitcoin is generally before I build on the bigger ideas. So what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a decentralized digital monetary network. So some people call it like a digital gold. So it’s a store of value. It’s an investment tool, but it’s a way to be able to send money digitally.

anywhere in the world for very low fees. In the past, as I use the term digital gold, in the past, people would look to gold as a store of value. But if you needed to send gold across the world, there’s a lot of effort required with that, including insuring it and transporting it and the whole nine yards. So Bitcoin is a way for you to digitally transfer large amounts of money without

or large amounts of value without all the extra friction. Bitcoin is not a company. There is no CEO of Bitcoin. There is no website for Bitcoin. It was created anonymously about 17 years ago at this point. So as I record this, we’re in December of 2025, which is important because I will reference some different

things that will be important for us to pin back to this date in mid-December 2025. So Bitcoin was created anonymously and the way that it works is it’s mined a lot like gold is. Where gold, you have to get the tools, you gotta go into the mountains, you gotta dig through the granite and put forth a lot of effort to reveal the gold. So with Bitcoin,

Bitcoin is mined in the digital landscape. And the easiest way to explain this is there’s very complex equations that are put out there that computers work on essentially nonstop. And as a computer solves this equation, they are rewarded with a block. So a block

Brandon Burton (07:07.598)
for the blockchain technology maybe. So a block is mined roughly every 10 minutes. So every 10 minutes a block reward is issued. And what that is is that block of transactions gets approved and there’s a consensus across the different nodes that are being run on the network to validate that the ledger is correct. And then that block of transactions can get cleared and

and move on into the history of the blockchain. So as Bitcoin is mined, so there’s miners who they have expensive mining rigs that are used to mine the Bitcoin and it uses an intense amount of power to be able to do the mining. So a lot like mining gold, there’s a lot of effort that goes into it, a lot of energy. Same thing with mining Bitcoin.

So there is a difficulty in achieving it. And if there’s a whole bunch of miners that come on at one time, there’s a difficulty adjustment that gets made within the software. So it makes it harder to solve those problems, to earn that block reward. And if there’s less miners on the network, then that difficulty adjustment comes down to where it becomes a little bit easier to solve the problem. So it can stay on track for every 10 minutes for a…

a block to be mined. And that’s important too because miners, they are not online unless they can be profitable. So if they’re in an area where you can’t get cheap energy, then they’re not going to mine. So they tend to go to places where energy can be as close to free as possible. So maybe by a waterfall or some kind of water source where they can get electricity or solar or nuclear plant or

Even in oil fields where they’ll use some of the flare at the oil rigs to be able to convert into energy. Even methane from junkyard, from landfills, they’ll use the methane and convert that into electricity to be able to run their mining rigs. So there’s very creative ways that miners are able to access power to be able to do the mining. And it’s kind of transforming the world with giving a

Brandon Burton (09:33.311)
Access to energy in places the world that haven’t had it before so back to the minor so minor Is online they they go through the process to Earn a block reward and I keep saying block reward because if they win the block saying they solve the problem and and get that block there is a reward to it so that reward is a certain number of Bitcoin, so

Let’s say at one point it was 10 Bitcoin and then every four years there’s a halving cycle. So every roughly every four years, what was 10 Bitcoin be cut down to five Bitcoin as a block reward. And then four years later, that five gets cut down to two and a half. And then four years later it gets cut down. So you understand what I’m saying. Every four years that block reward gets cut down, cut in half.

However, the price of Bitcoin continues to rise very dramatically. So with that having, it tends to help boost the price of Bitcoin as well. Some of this may seem technical and really I just want to give a basis so you can kind of have a concept, a better concept maybe of what Bitcoin is. But Bitcoin is built to be long-term inflation resistant store about

So in the end, that’s what it is. institutions are starting to pay attention to Bitcoin. And you might ask why, why are institutions paying attention? Well, there’s the number go up technology. So the price of Bitcoin is dramatically increasing. But over the last 15 years of operation, there’s been zero downtime with the Bitcoin network. So because there’s no company, it’s not centralized into one.

building or one locale, these nodes and miners are spread throughout the world. So if one node or miner, if there’s a power outage in a certain area, there’s redundancy throughout the world. So there’s been zero downtime with the Bitcoin network. Historically, there’s been a 200 % average annual compounded return over the past decade.

Brandon Burton (12:00.258)
That number is a little bit deceiving because on the front end of the decade, this is averages. So the front end of that decade, that return was much higher. And as time has gone on, it’s not quite as high, but it is still very attractive. Usually around 40 to 50 % return annually at this point in time. Bitcoin has outperformed stocks, real estate, bonds, gold, and nearly every major asset class.

which is mind boggling. A lot of people say Bitcoin is too volatile and it is, it’s volatile. has its ups, it has its downs, but once you zoom out and look at it long-term, it’s just up and to the right ever since its creation. it is an amazing asset. Bitcoin is increasingly recognized as digital property. rather than risk on speculative assets.

This is where I want to make the distinction. People talk about crypto, cryptocurrency, and then there’s Bitcoin. So technically Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrency is not Bitcoin. So I hope we can be clear on that. In fact, I don’t ever talk about crypto. I have zero interest in any crypto asset. I don’t even want to name them, but there’s a lot of speculative assets in the crypto world.

to me, Bitcoin is the only thing that matters. Because even with all those speculative cryptos, people will buy and sell them, but they’ll accumulate value just to buy more Bitcoin, because that’s Bitcoin’s key. So let’s talk about what Bitcoin is not. So Bitcoin is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s not as, in fact, when you buy it, I would say you need to buy it and hold it. Otherwise you’re going to get burned. It’s not something to trade.

So if you try to time the market, try to buy low, sell high, one, there’s going to be tax ramifications, two, you’re never going to beat the market. It’s always going to burn you in the end. So it’s not a get rich scheme and it’s not something you trade. It’s also not a traditional investment managed like equities. It’s best used as a long-term reserve asset. So just buy it and hold it and.

Brandon Burton (14:26.57)
As you buy and hold it, there’s other things you can do with it, which I’ll touch on in a little bit. So the background or the inspiration that I had into bringing Chambers into the Bitcoin world is there is a company, it was called MicroStrategy. Now it just goes by strategy and MicroStrategy was, I’m going to say more of a struggling

software company. They were doing, I believe, about a hundred million a year in software. But as a software company, that’s not a lot. As we hear in his chambers, that’s a lot of money. But software speaking, that’s not a whole lot. But MicroStrategy, it’s a publicly traded business, intelligence company, software company. Their CEO is Michael Saylor. And he pioneered what I’m going to call the Bitcoin Treasury Strategy.

So in 2020, Michael Saylor was looking for ways to save their company. And he learned about Bitcoin and he dove in about what all Bitcoin has to offer. And in 2020, Michael Saylor announced that they would be shifting excess cash into Bitcoin as a long-term reserve. As of early 2025,

Um, and this number is not even going to be accurate anymore because they keep buying and acquiring more and more Bitcoin. But as of the beginning of this year, um, they, they held about 1 % of the global Bitcoin supply. I believe they’re closer to 5 % at this point. Um, every few weeks they’re buying more, um, in massive loads. So they accumulated initially through.

excess cash reserves. So whatever cash was sitting on their balance sheet, they were buying Bitcoin because cash as we know is subject to inflation and over time devalues itself where Bitcoin, it inflates over time and it’s inflation proof as it continues to outpace every other asset out there. And once they exhausted their cash reserves,

Brandon Burton (16:52.472)
They started looking for other ways to accumulate more bitcoins. So they got into convertible notes. They got into issuing bonds. They got into regular, regular treasury allocations. So they are creating new treasury products that they’re putting out there in the market that you can purchase. And essentially by one of these different treasury notes that they

that they produce and it’ll return, depending on the price of Bitcoin, roughly a 10 % return. So when you look at people on fixed income, for example, looking at retirement and they want a steady return, you can purchase some of these shares, these fixed income equities, and they’ll return roughly a 10 % a year guaranteed return.

MicroStrategy has built out their balance sheet and issued these notes and bonds and so forth where they are over collateralized massively with Bitcoin. So the price of Bitcoin, when it was at its peak earlier this year, it could take a down ride. It could dip down to like 80 % of its top value.

and MicroStrategy would still have a strong balance sheet to be able to make all their debt payments. So super strong company, very creative with how they’re accumulating Bitcoin. But as a result, the market cap or the value of MicroStrategy went from about $1 billion to over $80 billion during peak cycles.

So within about a five year period, went from 1 billion to over 80 billion. Their operating business didn’t change, but their balance sheet strategy did, and that’s key. So as we think of Bitcoin for chambers, I don’t want you to think of changing your operating business. Your day to day, what you do shouldn’t change much, but the way you structure your balance sheet should to be able to adopt

Brandon Burton (19:15.454)
this kind of a strategy. So you don’t need to change your programs or events. You can strengthen your foundation by adopting a smarter treasury approach. So that was the initial inspiration that I had. And then as I’ve, I dove into Bitcoin education several years ago, just learning as much as I can about it. And there were ideas floated out there about

what’s called bit bonds. So what a bit bond is, if you think of a municipality issuing a bond, maybe they need to build a new fire station. They can allocate a percentage, even just a small percentage of the bond to purchase Bitcoin with, but then as the math plays out would vastly outperform the interest on the rest of the bond. So then in the end, the

the end of the term of this bond would be split between the bond purchaser and the issuer. So they both end up better off for it. So BitBonds are tokenized bonds issued on Bitcoin’s layer. They have been issued first in El Salvador.

to raise capital through what they called volcano bonds. So if you wanted to Google that and dive in more on what volcano bonds were with bit bonds. But they resent a government using Bitcoin, the Bitcoin rails to raise capital. It’s a hybrid model between traditional bonds and the Bitcoin upside. This matters kind of as a precedent because it shows that public institutions are now using Bitcoin.

as part of sovereign financial strategy. It demonstrates how Bitcoin-backed instruments can support infrastructure growth, tourism, national development projects. And as far as the relevance to chambers, if nation states, El Salvador, we’ve recently heard even the United States building a Bitcoin reserve, strategic Bitcoin reserve for the United States,

Brandon Burton (21:38.145)
I’m in Texas. Texas has started a strategic Bitcoin reserve. But if nation states are leveraging Bitcoin for a long-term capital formation, then why shouldn’t local business institutions consider smaller scale version of this? Why shouldn’t chambers consider having a long-term capital, strategic capital, strategic Bitcoin reserve rather? So as my thinking, it went from

MicroStrategy, the corporate Bitcoin reserve that they set up, it’s the idea of these BitBonds. And I’m thinking, man, how can Chambers take advantage of this? So as I started diving into that thought and exploring that and flushing it out, the idea came to me of Bitcoin being part of a strategic reserve for Chamber foundations. So a lot of you listening will already have…

a Chamber Foundation or 501C3. I know many Chambers out there are exploring starting a foundation or would like to start a foundation. And I would suggest having the 501C3 to hold the Bitcoin, just the structure for it is much better and how you can allocate it throughout its life. But foundations are already managed and restricted.

sorry, foundations already manage restricted or endowed funds. So it’s a right entity for that. They operate with long-term stewardship in mind. So it’s not just something that you get money in, turn around and use it, but it’s meant for long-term growth and development in your community. And they are ideal vehicles for building intergenerational financial resilience. So.

the proposed chamber Bitcoin reserve strategy that I would put out there. So this is where you get your pen and paper and start jotting down notes. But I would say to accumulate small amounts consistently. I mentioned before trying to buy low, high. if you buy, if you dollar cost average consistently, you’re able to take advantage of the upside. So whether you use fundraising,

Brandon Burton (24:03.646)
surplus of revenues or earmark economic development funds or maybe you do a capital campaign and you take a portion of the money raised with that capital campaign to fund your strategic Bitcoin Reserve. You could also accept direct Bitcoin donations from local tech forward businesses. If they knew that you’re building a Bitcoin Reserve,

there would be people in your community who would want to give you Bitcoin directly to participate in that. And you probably know who some of those tech forward businesses are who would be interested in that. So the accumulation is one way. So how do you accumulate it? And there’s different strategies of how to do that. But then the custody of the Bitcoin. So Bitcoin has keys.

There’s a key phrase that accesses the Bitcoin. I would strongly, strongly recommend that, again, this isn’t financial advice, but I would strongly recommend that you use a third party as a custodian for your Bitcoin. And that way you can do what’s called have a multi-signature vault, which means maybe you as a CEO

maybe your board chair and this third party all have a signature to access the Bitcoin. if you wanted to, let’s say one of the, you or your board chair, you know, were to lose the keys, you could still access it with two out of three of those individuals having those keys. The other thing is,

A lot of chambers have policies in place, so you can’t write a check or sign a check over a certain amount without a second signature. So multi-sig would kind of help with that as well to make sure that any transactions or spending of the Bitcoin is done with a lot of thought to it and not done casually or just on a whim. But there’s some good companies out there that can help with that.

Brandon Burton (26:26.702)
And it just, really reduces the exposure to losing the keys. So you want to make sure you have a third party multi-sig vault and there’s some that will even insure it. So if anything were to happen and you’ve lost the Bitcoin, you can purchase insurance on it as well, which is pretty cool. So the next point is

My thoughts on this is if you choose to go with the strategy of building a strategic Bitcoin reserve, don’t do it unless you can commit to at least five to 10 years of holding the Bitcoin. Don’t sell it. Whatever you do, don’t sell. Ideally, you would accumulate the Bitcoin within your foundation and you would never sell it because it’ll continue to increase in value over time.

And there’s ways that you can access it. So you could take a loan out against it. You can, can act as collateral to do some pretty interesting things. that marketplace for how to use Bitcoin as a collateral is just growing and becoming more innovative. But let’s say, well, if you have this reserve and

you have that commitment of five to 10 years to not sell it, hopefully never sell it, the reserve becomes a long-term economic development asset. So chambers could eventually use the appreciated value to acquire land for industrial recruitment. You could seed a revolving loan fund for small businesses. You can fund chamber-backed grants or workforce programs.

You could create interest-based scholarships or talent pipeline programs. It could serve as a rainy day fund for future crises that may come. Again, I would say, please don’t sell it, though. I would take a loan out against it. so for the example, if you’re acquiring land for industrial recruitment,

Brandon Burton (28:40.878)
You acquire the land, you get that recruitment, you turn the land over, and then you pay off the loan that you had from the Bitcoin. So you continue to grow in that appreciation of Bitcoin while you’re putting that capital to use. So hopefully that makes sense. So expected outcomes over time. So just to give you an idea, if a chamber accumulates $100,000 in Bitcoin and holds it for 10 years, just as an example.

Historical averages suggest the potential 10 year growth to be about 25 times that initial investment. So that’s huge. I always want to think more conservatively. So even if it was 10 times, that still, that turns a hundred thousand dollars into a million over 10 years. But even 10 % of the historical performance will, you know,

dramatically outpace a bond or CD yield. I would say start small, contribute steady and consistently, and in the future you’ll have meaningful economic power in the future. So there’s validation. This is already happening with other institutions like Harvard.

is Harvard’s endowment, the largest academic endowment globally. They began holding Bitcoin in private funds as early as 2019. Other institutions, Stanford, Yale, MIT, all have different levels of Bitcoin exposure. Black Rocks, Bitcoin ETF or iBit.

is now one of the fastest growing ETFs in history. And Fidelity has publicly positioned Bitcoin as a superior store of value. And why does this matter to Chambers? Well, foundations with the 100 years outlook are embracing Bitcoin. Chambers, which also should have a plan for generational impact, should consider doing the same. So thinking big, thinking well into the future, building your community.

Brandon Burton (31:05.902)
Having that resilience Bitcoin is that tool to get you there now as you present this idea to your board as you present this to your accountant as you present it as you start talking about it out loud, sometimes I’m a little hesitant because People have different ideas about Bitcoin and more and more they’re becoming positive but man about eight years ago when I got into it

I mentioned Bitcoin to people, they thought I was crazy. But now it’s obviously much more mainstream and it’s been proving itself. But people will say Bitcoin is too volatile. And yeah, that’s true. From day to day, it’s super volatile. But long term, it’s been extremely strong. And as a chamber, you shouldn’t be trading the day to day. You’re building reserves for long time into the future.

The volatility really can be a gift. And Michael Saylor has talked about that. The volatility of Bitcoin is really a gift for us long term. Somebody may say, well, we can’t risk member dollars on Bitcoin. So this strategy uses foundation funds with clear restrictions and long-term intentions. So it’s not for operating budgets or for event revenue.

It has a specific purpose for funding this foundation. Some might say our board won’t understand Bitcoin and this is why education matters. It’s important for you to learn about Bitcoin so you can help answer their questions. You can compare it to land. There’s a limited supply. There’s only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin ever produced. 21 million. That’s it. There’s not even enough Bitcoin.

for every millionaire in the country to have a Bitcoin. So there’s definitely an early mover advantage. And Bitcoin can be broken down into smaller units called Satoshis. And you can learn more about that as you dive into your education on Bitcoin. But it’s a hard asset, has long-term appreciation. It doesn’t require ongoing maintenance. So the idea of like real estate, there’s always, know, maintenance that goes on with that.

Brandon Burton (33:30.754)
Bitcoin doesn’t have any of that. Bitcoin is digital land, globally scarce and infinitely divisible. So another risk, I guess you could say, or objection to it is what if we lose the Bitcoin? And that’s a question that makes me sick to think about, to lose your Bitcoin. So I’d mentioned before the multi-sig vaults.

use a third party, a trusted third party multi-signature vault, and that removes that risk of a single person losing the Bitcoin keys. But keys can be distributed among board members and with rotating responsibility. All right. So if you are wanting to implement this into your organization, into your foundation,

So one would be set up a foundation or sub foundation specifically labeled as a strategic digital asset reserve to adopt a written policy that says we’re not going to sell the Bitcoin for five to 10 years or whatever you want that policy to read. But that would be my my guideline is for sure. If you sell it if you sell it less than five years, you may end up losing money.

But if you keep it five to 10 years, you’re going to be on the upside. If you keep it forever, you’re definitely going to be on the upside. Part of that written policy, have it spelled out what your annual allocation target is, what your specific custody standards are. So you know how to access it you don’t lose your keys. Educate your board and your membership about what you’re

doing and how you’re going to put this strategic fund to use in the future or ways that it could be utilized in the future. And then begin to dollar cost average, just monthly or quarterly or annually, whatever interval you want to set up, but have a way to dollar cost average. then track reserve performance annually as part of your foundation reporting, you know, see what that growth looks like here to here.

Brandon Burton (35:49.719)
start getting excited because this can really transform your community and your organization. So imagine your chamber foundation in the year 2035, 10 years from now, with a reserve worth two to $10 million because you simply committed to accumulating a small amount of Bitcoin each year. Imagine funding major workforce facility.

securing land for a business park or seeding your own microloan program, all because your chamber thought ahead. This position’s chamber’s not as followers, but as innovators in community economic resilience. So in closing, I this has kind of gone a little long just hearing me ramble on without another guest or somebody to have that ongoing dialogue, but.

Chambers have always been the boots on the ground leaders in economic development. The future will reward those who embrace asymmetric opportunities early.

Bitcoin is not a silver bullet, but it is an incredible tool for long-term local prosperity. And I would encourage you to explore, ask questions, and consider whether your foundation is structured to take advantage of generational opportunities. But I hope that you found this interesting, at the least, transformational at the most. I really hope that

Chambers listening right now will take this and really transform the organization. And I would love to hear of anybody who adopts this strategy, especially 10 years from now. And you are that chamber who’s sitting on a $10 million strategic fund because you implemented something today. I would love to hear about that. But if you have any questions, reach out to me.

Brandon Burton (37:54.201)
Brandon@ChamberChatPodcast.com and Anyways, I hope this episode helps and hope you hopefully you learned a few things and sparked some ideas of how you can Set up your community for long-term growth into the future

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