Category: Podcast Episode

Building the Right Chamber for Your Community with Heather Lebischak

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Heather Lebischak. Heather is a dynamic and accomplished leader dedicated to driving growth, fostering collaboration and advocacy for her community. As President and CEO of the North Jefferson Chamber of Commerce in Fultondale, Alabama, Heather has been instrumental in championing local businesses and enhancing the region’s economic vitality. Under her leadership, the Chamber has flourished, offering innovative programs, member centric initiatives and impactful events that contribute to the area’s growth. Heather’s passion for service extends beyond her role at the chamber. She serves on the board of directors for the Central Alabama theater group, the North Jefferson Rotary Club and the Fultondale library. Additionally, she plays a vital role in shaping the future of education as a member of the Career and Technical Education and culinary advisory teams for Jefferson County Schools. Heather also contributes her expertise to the Central Alabama redevelopment Alliance Advisory Council, advocating for sustainable development and revitalization in the region, a dedicated community advocate. Heather combines her professional experience with her her personal commitment to making a difference as the group fitness director at Gardendale Civic Center, she promotes health and wellness while connecting with individuals in her community. She also serves in the nursery at our church, church of the highlands, reflecting her commitment to nurturing and supporting others. Heather’s innovative spirit, ability to build meaningful relationships and unwavering dedication to her community make her a respected leader and influencer in North Jefferson. She’s passionate about creating opportunities for others, promoting civic engagement and fostering a collaborative environment where businesses, individuals and organizations can thrive. Heather continues to inspire those around her with their tireless efforts to enrich her community and empower future generations. And Heather, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself. Maybe we didn’t share in the bio already.

Heather Lebischak 3:21
Yes, so I’m very excited to be here. I If you had told me 10 years ago, I would have been reporting a podcast for a chamber, I would have said, what the hexa chamber? This is not a world I ever saw myself in. I was a very happy legal secretary slash paralegal. Plan to retire there and there’s, I won’t bore you with the details, but a few changes along the way led me to chamber world, and it’s a world I absolutely love. It’s very different from legal, where everything’s proprietary and protected. In chamber world, we’re big on collaboration, so that’s one of my favorite things about chamber world, but it was the hardest thing to get used to, because I’m used to protecting information. That’s the legal side of me. So it is definitely a world I did not know existed a few short years ago, but that I always see myself in now. That’s

Speaker 1 4:10
right. That is a interesting contrast from your previous experience and and then entering the world of R and D, where everybody’s ripping off and duplicating or collaborating, as you said, that seems

Unknown Speaker 4:22
better. I like R and D better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:26
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the North Jefferson chamber, just to kind of give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Absolutely

Heather Lebischak 4:36
so about a little over a year ago, I was approached by three cities in the north Jefferson Community, Fultondale, Morris and Kimberly, with this idea of a Regional Chamber of Commerce to give a bigger voice to their communities. Fultondale has a lot of businesses. MORRIS And Kimberly do not, and separately, they didn’t feel that they could individually sustain a chamber. But together, they thought they could and that it would be, as our motto says, stronger together, to have a bigger voice for this community. So that was in about October, November of 2023, and we officially launched the North Jefferson Chamber of Commerce on January 5 of 2024, and also have to be my wedding anniversary. So it was a date I knew I could remember we launched last year. Since that time, we just had our first birthday, there is nothing I won’t do in the name of chamber or community. So our first birthday featured pictures of me with a smash cake like the first birthday should be with cake all over my face and pigtails and all the things. But it was an amazing first year we had around that we had 130 members. Our Facebook reach had grown. We were profitable. Year one, we were able to hire someone part time. When I first started the chamber, my guess was that we were five years away from our first hire, and I’m actually in the process now setting up interviews for our third hire, our first full time hire. So we have been very successful. It showed nothing to do with me. I have an amazing board, and it was a need in our community, and I have the backing from three amazing cities looking to add more. We have city members, but as far as our funding cities, it’s those three, Fulton, no Morris and Kimberly, but we are meeting with some others next month to see about bringing them on board, because the more the merrier.

Speaker 1 6:29
Well, you guys have a vision, obviously, the direction you want to take this and and it seems to be gathering some steam, both the membership and the attention of other cities, other communities, to pull in. That’s awesome. Yeah, we’re, we’re kind of at a stage in chamber world where a lot of chambers are celebrating their 100th anniversary, or a few, maybe even 150 so to just celebrate in one year like it’s it’s going to bring a whole new perspective to the conversation that we have today. I know a lot of people if they were to say, Well, if we redid this chamber thing all over again, we would do it differently. So I’m excited to learn what are some of the approaches that you took in establishing a new chamber. And maybe some of these things are things that still can be ripped off and duplicated in an existing chamber that’s celebrating 100 years, but there’s also bylaws and things like that to deal with, so depending on on where you are and and you know what some of these things are, it’ll be interesting to get your perspective today, but our focus for our conversation today will be focused around building a chamber that’s right for your community. And I think that’s very fitting giving your background, but we’ll dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Heather, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, today, we’re talking about creating a chamber. It’s right for your community. So you come into this where you’ve kind of got a blank slate, I assume, I mean, I guess, tell us the story. So you’d mentioned these three different cities approached you, but what was the vision? What kind of parameters were you given? Were you able to just dream big and go at it? What’s it like? That

Heather Lebischak 11:29
was the beauty of it. They I came from a neighboring chamber that was like a 35 year old chamber. It was fantastic. They were amazing. But when I was approached about this new chamber, I was actually, on a personal level, doing a fast with a friend of mine. And so for anyone that’s ever done a spiritual fast, it comes with a lot of clarity. And so when I was approached about this, I immediately knew, prayed over and knew that this was something God was calling me to do. And so I stepped out on faith. And by faith, I mean I felt very convicted that God didn’t even want me putting numbers on paper, so there were no dollars on the table. Guarantees anything when I signed on for this, but it was they had saved me, because we were a neighbor community. They saw what I did there. They knew what I was capable of, and so when I came on board, there were no parameters, and that was a beautiful thing. They just wanted me to strengthen their businesses. They wanted to show their businesses that we’re backing them, because they’re going to back you, which is a beautiful thing for a city to do. That’s what cities should do. They should make it easy to operate within the city. And so all three cities were fully on board from the very beginning, both not just financially. Obviously, I needed money, that’s a biggie. But even today, some of the councilmen and some of the council women and the mayor, they’re the most frequent shares of things on social media. They advocate for me. They promote me. They’re putting me in conversations and at seats, at tables that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And so there really were no parameters other than do what we’ve seen you do, and so I heavily relied on them. The first thing I had to do was start a board. There’s no handbook for starting a new chamber or a new business, for that matter. But chambers particularly are tricky, because we are, as we all know, we are a 501 c6 there’s stuff for 501 C threes out there, 501 c6 look, gets left out of all that. So there’s a lot of policies and procedures that were like, Oh, we think it’ll follow that, but we’re not sure. So there was a lot of guesswork in the beginning. I had just gone through the accreditation process with my last chamber for the state, and that included updating bylaws, drafting policies and procedures and employee manual, all the things. There’s about 40 items here. I had just gone through that with my former chamber, so it was kind of fresh on my mind. So I actually, literally yesterday, just finished it up for this chamber because I wanted us accredited after one year. Like, I wanted it to be like, that’s the first thing we do. So the first Biggie was forming a board, and I was coming into cities that I wasn’t as familiar with. The Chamber I came from was a neighboring city, but these communities I didn’t have a stronger tie, so I relied heavily on the city council and the leadership in the and the mayors in the cities to recommend people for the boards, because I wanted equal representation from all my cities, as well as all the other intersectionality points you want in diversity within a chamber board. So relied heavily on them, but they truly just said, come in, do your thing. And it was out. And by the way, do you need an office because here’s free space. So they were fantastic. I have a free office, fully furnished, a free boardroom. I have a huge venue I operate in that I can use for all of our events. So they were in all three cities. They don’t all have the same capacity as far as space, but they have all offered space on whenever i. Need it. So that’s a huge hurdle. I know a lot of chambers have to deal with, is renting and stuff like that, and that is not one I have luckily had to face.

Speaker 1 15:08
So are you in a city office, a city building then? Or so the city of

Heather Lebischak 15:12
Fultondale purchased it. Used to be an outdoor shop. It looks like a big barn on a hill. It’s a beautiful building, but the city purchased it and uses it as an event center, and there just happened to be an office and boardroom side by side that were fully furnished, that they weren’t using. So they’re like, here, you want to go there. And hey, we got extra copy machine. You want it? And the venue is fabulous. It’s gorgeous. I could not ask for a more beautiful venue. So I operate within the venue. And so when we have events, everything’s right here. Yeah,

Speaker 1 15:43
that’s awesome. So yeah, I can imagine it being a little bit maybe intimidating, you know, creating a board from scratch and not knowing the connections, and you know, who the those players are in these different communities. So did you have an idea, as you went to the different cities of what you were looking for as far as representation from each city, or were you just looking to get recommendations from them as to who they think would be a good fit for the board? What was your What was your approach to that? Yeah, that was definitely

Heather Lebischak 16:14
the scariest part, because the board is who you answer to, who you’re held accountable to, and in chamber world, boards aren’t always super familiar with the operations of the chamber. It’s just a very different world. And so answering the people that don’t know the inner workings is always hard. So you want people that are going to trust you, empower you, not get in the weeds with you. And I just didn’t have any connections to know who those people might be. I knew I wanted diversity among industry for sure, and diversity among other aspects as well, but I heavily relied on the city leadership for who those were. I wanted prominent people in the community. So I have a fantastic board. We started with the board of six. We now have eight, but we started with the board of six, all of which I consider friends now, none of which I hardly even knew when they signed on. So four, let’s say four of them, came by recommendation. One actually asked me to serve, and I’m so glad he did. He is in the nonprofit world, so he kind of gets what I deal with. And then one of them was just a kind gentleman who sent me an email when I left my last chamber and said, Hey, we’re with you. We’re Where are we going? We’ve seen what you do. And I was like, Oh, that would be a good guy to have to my corner

Speaker 1 17:30
for sure. No, that’s awesome. So you had mentioned that these three cities kind of came together, approached you about this, so there must have been some sort of a vision of what they wanted to see be accomplished. Were you able to expand on that vision? What? What kind of room? Yeah, did you have with that? And how’s that evolved?

Heather Lebischak 17:50
Right? So there, as I mentioned, fultonville has a lot of businesses. Was there, so theirs was more on the business support, pulling me into economic development discussions as they are, courting a business, pulling me into those discussions, having me help with those some help with event planning. MORRIS And Kimberly are not as business heavy. They’re more I can’t say the word rural. It’s a very hard word for me to say, but they don’t have as many businesses, so Theirs was a little bit different. Theirs was more on the event side. So I help them more with events, and a lot of the vendors at those events are my businesses, but theirs is more on the event planning side. Kimberly, especially Morris, has more businesses probably than Kimberly, so I do have the businesses there. The biggest thing I’m excited about with Morris is they are starting an incubator space that they are going to have available, and we will have space within there that we can operate and do trainings, and they are going to target minority owned businesses for that space to give them a inexpensive place to get started while they’re getting on their feet and getting their business off and running. So all of them had very different needs and so but I had fantastic luckily, I did have fantastic relationships with the leadership to know up front, what those needs were and be able to meet those needs, adapt as I went and realize even more needs than they thought they knew, that I can get plugged into and help out with.

Speaker 1 19:17
And I’m sure as you go about recruiting members, you’re hearing more of what the needs are as well, so you can continue to evolve and adapt, but tell us a little bit about that as you approach members. So you’re in an area where it sounds like there wasn’t a chamber that existed currently. So as you approach businesses and talk about the value proposition of a chamber and help them get the buy in and the vision of of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in the community. What’s that pitch like? How do you how do you make that approach to these businesses familiar?

Heather Lebischak 19:53
Right? Well, particularly Morris and Kimberly, they were very unfamiliar with the Chamber concept. So the first and. You know, as I mentioned in the beginning, if you’d asked me maybe seven years ago, I would have been like, what? What is a chamber? I have no idea what that is. So the first thing is, is I felt like, before I start trying to get you to join, I need to get us established. I need us be active, a good website, active on social media. I need you to see me at some things and see what I can do before I ask you to pay me money to offer you services that you don’t know what are. So we spent a lot of time building that up. We started in around, actually, December, 8 or ninth is when I officially started here. So I spent that whole first month really building our brand. Mission Statement is huge to me. I tell my board, I drill it into my board. They’re probably sick of hearing it. But everything we do is viewed under the lens of our mission statement, which is we advocate, connect, educate and fight for businesses in the north Jefferson Community, and in doing so, strengthen the communities we serve. So we do want to strengthen the communities, but it’s always a byproduct of the business community, because that’s what we’re here for. So I spent that first month we didn’t even start accepting memberships until January 5, and that was intentional. One, if I’m being completely honest, taxes were a lot easier to wait till the next year when we were so close. Yeah, but the other reason is I wanted to spend some time kind of showing them who we were and what we had to offer. And so January 5, we launched, and I believe, Oh, don’t quote me on this, but she says that she’s recording a live podcast, right? I think we had around 36 founding members. So 36 joined on that first day. And so a lot of it is just putting together materials to educate them on what we have, relying heavily on referrals. We have, we actually have cards. We deliver that say, join us. We’re awesome, and it kind of goes through what we are as a chamber. Now that we’ve got a year under our belt, those cards also reflect a QR code with our 2024, annual report that shows everything we did last year, from our social media reach to our audience to our members, to our events, so that they know kind of this is what they accomplished. Last year, I’ve twofold, one for new members to see what I can do, and two for existing members to see where their money went, because I take that very seriously,

Brandon Burton 22:13
yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 22:14
as well as the funding cities, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 22:17
So as you talk about creating an organization where you can be that voice for business. Are you approaching advocacy at this point? As far as legislation? Are you getting into that at all? Or

Heather Lebischak 22:31
yeah, so it was part of my plan, from the beginning, was to get and initially I wanted to have some kind of government relations field. I’m in my I’m coming into my final year of IOM, which chamber people will know as institution for organization management. And so I met with someone last year to get some insight on how to launch that because it is not an area I know anything about. And so in meeting with her, she was fantastic in recommending one avoid the word government. And I was like, okay, noted, so we did launch last year our public policy committee, so we are not on the advocate side yet. As far as lobbying or anything like that, we exist right now solely to inform particularly I know everybody the boi report was back and forth and back and forth. And so we were keeping our members informed of that, most of which had never even heard of it. And at the time, it would have been a big deal, because it was an enormous fine if you didn’t pay. And so right now, our Public Policy Committee is strictly to inform. We hosted a state of the city event in Morrison Kimberlin last year, which, to mo everyone’s knowledge is the first one they’ve ever had in that community. We did that under public policy. We educated on where to vote, how to vote, how to register to vote, how to do absentee ballot, all of those things. There was a group of we. Were a group of us from the chamber actually in Ireland over the election, so we all had to do absentee ballots for that, but mainly just to keep them informed of policies that impact them. I do feel like in the future as a Regional Chamber, I do feel like we will take that step towards being a voice to advocate for our businesses when it comes to legislation, and maybe even going as far as to hire a person that that’s their job to handle that. Because I do feel like I do want to be that voice for businesses, not just at a local level, but as a state and federal level as well. Yeah,

Speaker 1 24:26
it’s exciting to see, you know, a chamber starting from scratch, and you can really go any direction you want to and and you don’t have to do what every what other chambers are doing, either right, like you can right kind of chart your own path. Are there? Have there been any unique approaches as you’ve kind of crafted this custom model of a chamber for these three cities that you’re like you know from my past experience in the chamber, I want to get rid of this, or I want to bring this in. What are? What are? Maybe a couple examples of some unique approach.

Heather Lebischak 24:57
Biggest one I came into i. I came from a 35 year chamber, and they were fantastic. It was a great city, a great business community, and but there wasn’t a lot of records like if you try to look back and see who won this award last year, who was even the executive director, I ran across a piece of paper in my desk that had the founding date, and that’s the only reason I knew the chamber was 35 years old, and it wasn’t neglect on anybody’s part. It’s just nobody thinks to write stuff down. And so that was one of the things. When I went into this, I was like, I’m writing everything down. Every event we have, we’re gonna know if we had a women in business luncheon last year, we’re recording the winners. We’re gonna know from year to year, and that annual report I did, it’s basically a chamber scrapbook. So for every year, they’ll be able to look and see who did what. So that was the biggest thing I took with my old chamber, was to record everything, and the other one was to create a very good not just a Policies and Procedures Manual, like a formal document, but a obnoxiously detailed, one of how to do everything, a how to mingle. We put on this event. We send them postcards on this day, we get sponsors on this day, we get posters to where, you know, heaven forbid I walk out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. They’ve got that document to know how to do, and it makes training a lot easier, as we’re looking to hire. But just the importance of doing that, taking the time, and it’s hard, because I started off as a one man show, so there wasn’t a lot of extra time, but taking that time to draft that document just a simple bulleted list of how to do everything we do.

Speaker 1 26:34
Yeah, and even, I mean, as far as creating policies and procedures in today’s world with AI and everything like, there’s tools that help with that process as well that will, you know, if you start a process from start to finish, and AI can watch you do it, and then, you know, write the bullet points, and here’s the detailed steps of how to do it. It’s pretty cool stuff. So you’re it’s a good time. Knows

Heather Lebischak 26:58
me well, I will say, though, when I first so if you were to look at, if you were to Google chamber by laws, you’re going to find the same ones. We all use the same one. Same with policies and procedures. And part of that’s how collaborative we are. We are happy to share. But when I was doing the policies and procedures at the time, I wasn’t AI was still, oh, the robots are going to take us over. Don’t use it. So I did, actually, if you look at my desk, I had five of them spread across my desk, and I literally typed them from scratch, picking out the pieces that I wanted from each one. Now my background, as I mentioned, was illegal, and what we did was draft these long planned documents. So it wasn’t super foreign to me, but it was a tedious process. Now, I do rely heavily on AI and particularly chat GPT it I told I made the mistake of saying yesterday, I was like, it does 80% of my job. And I was like, let’s word that better. It allows me to be 80% more efficient and do other things, which is the truth of it, the times I would spend drafting social media posts when I really should be doing something else, as opposed to worrying about putting something cute. I’m 44, years old. I’m past that. I don’t know the cute things or the hashtags or all that, so I rely heavily on that for when it comes to social media.

Speaker 1 28:16
Yeah, that’s That’s great. Good takeaways. Any other lessons from this, the last we’ll call it, year and a half of kind of ramping things up and first year in a chamber, any other things stand out to you that may be beneficial for other chambers listening to, you know, as they do their R and D, things that stand out. The biggest

Heather Lebischak 28:39
one for me is I learned a lot of patience. I am a microwave. I want it quick, quick. And I’m going to build a plane as I’m flying it, and I’m totally okay to do that. And if we land on one wheel, that’s okay. We got down. Um, but I did learn there are things where it’s okay to not do immediately, let it, let it simmer just a little bit. Think on it a little bit more, whether that’s responding to emails, putting up events, planning events, I like to I have been known to plan an event with a week’s notice when I get a good idea, and so sometimes that works out, but I have learned to slow down and think it through, talk it out, especially now that I do have a colleague that works with me who is fantastic, and she brings out things that I didn’t think about, which is fantastic. She is a perfect compliment to me as far as putting events together and programming and so as we’re looking to hire, I’ve relied heavily on her, because the things she’s looking for and asking are very different from the things I am but equally as important right now,

Speaker 1 29:36
that’s that’s good. Um, well, I like asking everyone that I have on the show for maybe a tip or a strategy for chambers that are listening and trying to take their chamber to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them?

Heather Lebischak 29:54
I think the biggest one, and it goes back to I have vivid remembers, vivid memories of being a chamber. Me and going to my first chamber event and listening to somebody talk about this $100,000 banquet they just threw and totally freaking out thinking, oh my gosh, I’ll never get there. I’m doing this all wrong. Take everything with a grain of salt. Everything’s scaled. Well, I say that everything is not scalable. You’ll hear that all the time. It is not true. Not everything truly is scalable. Not everything is for your chamber. Yeah. And so I think the biggest takeaway is is, does it fit your culture? Number one, does it fit your mission? Like I said, I drilled that into my people. But just take everything with a grain of salt. Take it all in and then figure out what it is that your chamber needs to do. What does your chamber want to be known for? And do those events align with that?

Speaker 1 30:46
Yeah, I’m glad you made that designation, that everything is not necessarily scalable, scalable

Heather Lebischak 30:52
because you heard me say it, because I just hear it all the time, but I was like, and I’m guilty

Speaker 1 30:56
too. I’ve said it before, but you’re right. You know certain things are not for your chamber, and you need to know your community. You need to know what where the value proposition is and what’s worth your time. You know what are you going to put your time and energy into, and what’s really going to have a return and be valuable to your members and and to your larger community? So thanks for mentioning that. We all needed to hear that. But Heather, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Heather Lebischak 31:30
I think they’re going to continue to be more and more relevant multiple as people become, like I said, I came into a community where a lot of people didn’t know what the chamber was, as they realize as the complexities of starting a business, it’s hard. It’s difficult unnecessarily. So in my opinion, one of my goals is to sit down with our cities and create a how to of how to start a business. When you come into Fulton Hill to start a business, this is how you do it. And also in that process, figuring out that we really need this. And so I’m hoping chambers can play a bigger role in that, not just encouraging them to come but helping them to get started. And so as we can offer trainings or advice or expertise in that field, I do think that we’re going to become more and more relevant as chambers and more and more needed, and as people realize, like, I really this is something I need. This is a business expense that is a must for me. Yeah,

Speaker 1 32:25
so earlier, you said there’s not a guide for starting a business. That sounds like you’re writing it. So maybe you know, version two is the guide of how to start a chamber. I

Heather Lebischak 32:35
hope so. Like, we’re about to do taxes, and I’m like, please don’t screw up anything. Too bad.

Speaker 1 32:41
That’s right. Well, Heather, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about how you’re doing things, the approach you’re taking. Where would you point people and what? What’s the best way for for them to react?

Heather Lebischak 32:56
So our website is NorthJeffersonChamber.com, and then my email address is president@northjeffersonchamber.com. I am a Gen Xer, so I regularly check my email. I will respond. It’s definitely the best way. I’m a texter too, but email is probably the best way to get in touch with me, and I would love to hear from anybody, answer any questions, anybody looking to venture out and do this thing? I have not yet had anybody to share this with, because it’s just like you mentioned, most chambers are 100, 150 years old. No, I was in a board meeting the other day, and we were, I’m on the state board of directors, and our director, who is amazing, was talking about growing the state board and reaching out to the existing chambers. And she made the comment, she said, I mean, it’s not like we can just create new chambers. And was like, one of the ladies was like, well, Heather did yeah, they’re not, but it’s just not something that happens. And so it would be cool to be able to help someone else through the process, even if it’s just a lending an ear to know, yes, I know how frustrating it is, yeah, and there’s not answers. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 34:01
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Helping Businesses Make Money with Heather Thomson

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

Our guest for this episode is Heather Thompson. Heather is the new Vice President of Economy and Engagement at the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, before taking on this new role, Heather was the Executive Director for the Alberta School of Business Center for cities and communities, as part of the founding team of the center, Heather spent much of her time mentoring the next generation of business innovators while working with leaders in the business community with an emphasis on education, consulting, academic and applied research and industry outreach. A few of her key highlights through her career include being named edify his top 40. Under 40 in 2023, she employed hundreds of business students who’ve worked with more than 3000 organizations in the Edmonton region to build digital infrastructure to support their business. She secured $2 million in funding to support local business community recovery from their effects from the pandemic, and she works with national media networks to deliver consumer behavior research to the country. And she’s working on her Master’s right now in behavioral economics, but Heather, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Heather Thomson 2:31
Perfect. Something interesting. Well, thank you very much for that awesome introduction, and I’m really delighted to be here. Something interesting. Okay, well, I’ll go with maybe something that’s that’s exciting in my life. I don’t interesting, but I have two small children, and, yeah, they’re four and eight, so when it’s just absolutely crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy these days, and something interesting, I have two really strong talents that I always want to brag about, because I think that they’re just I think everyone’s gonna be jealous. But I’m really good at playing blackjack, and I have this amazing sense of direction, like I know I can read a map, I can get myself into the summer. I It takes very little for me to understand direction. So I feel really excited about that. And then fun fact is that I have been to Disneyland or Disney World or Disney something adjacent, 20 times. Wow.

Brandon Burton 3:30
Yeah, it

Heather Thomson 3:31
might come up. It might come up in our conversation. So I just kind of want to, like, you know, put that out there. But yeah, you know, I live in Canada, so I’m winter girly, especially right now, as we’re recording this, it is winter time, and, yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.

Brandon Burton 3:46
Yeah. So when my wife and I first got married, we lived about 30 minutes away from Disneyland, so her sister got us an annual pass when we got married, so we probably went about 20 times that year, and I think I’ve been once or twice since, okay? So it burned me out. Okay? That was

Heather Thomson 4:04
even my question. People like people say, Well, if you had an annual pass, you’d get sick of it. And I just, I wouldn’t. I feel like I would like, Oh, I gotta go to Starbucks. I would just go to the Starbucks, to Disney, true or false. Did you get sick of it?

Brandon Burton 4:16
So I wouldn’t say I got sick of it. What it is is you feel like you’re obligated to go, like you may not feel like you want to go, but you’re like, I got this pass. It’s going to expire in two months. We need to get our money’s worth, so you’re trying to do it. But then there’s certain blackout dates for people that have passes that you can’t go. So when it’s convenient for you, you can’t go. So yeah, so there’s, there’s little catches with it, but overall, we enjoyed it. It It was fun. The best, best place in the world. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about the Edmonton chamber, just to give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work, budget, those kind of things you guys are involved with, with the work, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Heather Thomson 4:55
Yeah, for sure. So there’s, um, yeah, we so yeah, when we move the Cham. For coming up on a year after come January, and the image and Chamber of Commerce is the second largest in Canada. It was the largest for a little while. When I say largest, I mean based on, like membership size. So we have about 1900 members, which is a fairly large size. It was actually, to be honest, I was kind of surprised when I first took over the first took over this job. I thought, you know, a chamber should be about 10% of the registered businesses within the city limits, and the city has 45,000 registered businesses. But obviously we know that number is not accurate for a variety of reasons that we can get into. But then I actually did a little bit of dicking compared to, like Calgary and Vancouver and like other sort of peer cities. And I’m like, Oh, we actually, we do have a very large chamber. And I think one of the things is that the Edmonton chamber, which is kind of fun, is that it’s the oldest organized or I guess just the organization in the city. It’s actually older than the city itself. I kind of think that’s fun. So we really lean into that as part of the brand. Something that’s unique to us right now is that we are a 99% new team. So my former business partner, Doug Griffiths, applied to be in this role, and he he was successful, became the president and CEO, and he said, Hey, I know you love working with businesses, and that’s what I was doing at the university. And he said, I think you should come over here. And then just there was so much turnover, and just like a lot of I don’t say the word messiness, but there was a lot that we needed to sort out. And so the team went from when I first started, there was four of us, and then we went to six, and so on and so on. And here we are, nine months later, and we are back up to 20, which is so exciting. And these 20 people are hand picked. Usual chambers in Canada are a team of about 26 but we’re going to keep it at about 20 because we reallocated the financial resources to kind of expand the scope of work, of what we’re asking from people, so fewer people, but probably the same amount of operating money for salaries. So that’s a very logistical detail, but just to give some insight as to why our team isn’t as big as the other teams, but tremendous capacity. So in terms of the last year has been really like everyone, hold on. I’ve been using this analogy that is felt like we have been having to we did 47 events this year that were that were attended, and it felt like we were hosting a party while we were renovating our kitchen, and no one was to know that we were renovating our kitchen. But that’s that, that was the analogy, right? So it’s like we have no resources. We didn’t have an events team. We just got an Events Manager a month ago. So it was really all hands on deck, just trying to make sure people didn’t couldn’t see all the the sawdust everywhere. And I’m really excited for 2025 because I will say this has probably been the hardest year of my, of my working life. I’m so ready for 2024 to be over. There’s a lot of, you know, three steps forward, 2.85 steps back.

Brandon Burton 8:14
So progress, though, it

Heather Thomson 8:16
is progress. And so it’s like, yeah, the year over, I can see the progress. And let’s get into 2020 but yeah, there’s, I know a few people that are like, this year, gosh, this year was, this was hard,

Brandon Burton 8:25
right? Yeah. So as far as the scope of work for the Edmonton chamber, you guys, do you have any of the Economic Development responsibility, tourism, is it strictly chamber? What does, what are you guys involved with?

Heather Thomson 8:38
Great question. It’s actually, again, another unique thing to Edmonton in that Edmonton does not have an Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. So it used to, and then what happened was it’s a subsidiary of the city of Edmonton. So what the city did was they dissolved Edmonton economic development and they put together three different entities. So they have something called Explore Edmonton, which runs, really the tourism, hospitality, marketing, branding for the city, but they also are responsible for the hosting of those events, right? So they run the convention centers, they run the expo centers, and so they have a very large mandate so that takes care of the tourism and hospitality. And then we have something called Edmonton global, which is an organization that is funded through the region actually, so not just the city of Edmonton, but all the surrounding municipalities, and they’re supposed to go out and do foreign direct investment. And it’s actually, in theory, it’s a really smart idea, because as a region, that’s how we make money. Like collaboration is where people want to invest. And so as a region, we’re really strong as Leduc county separately, or sturgeon county separately. And see in Edmonton separately, like if we just are so much stronger, you know, going after those big those big fish, when we have our whole region to promote. So that’s what Edmonton global does. And then we have. I’m still limited, which is a focus on a tech and startup incubator space. So there isn’t anyone formally in the space of economic development from a domestic standpoint, and tourism, sorry, not tourism trade accelerator and promoting our businesses to the world, outside of the country and outside of the province. And so that’s that’s our going to be our lane. So as I was saying earlier to Brandon, we are in the business of creating wealth. We’re in the business of being really proud that we want to create wealth here in Edmonton, and we want to advocate to all all orders of government, different policies. And I’ll share a policy that just came out last week, that I’m like, pulling my hair out that I’m very vocally, really against. And then we also want to make sure that we’re getting our businesses out to the world. And that’s a key part of creating wealth and creating these connection standpoints. I want, I want people to see that their membership with the Chamber is not just a historic or grandfather thing that’s part of their budget, which we have a lot of those, I want people to see like, Oh, if I’m actually not a member, like, I’m missing out. And so that’s been a core mandate for this year of 2024 we’re thinking, why are you a member? You know the fact that we’re 136 year old organization. I know that doesn’t sound that old to me, some of your your listeners, but like I said, it’s older than this. It’s really old. I would say we’re 136 year old startup and and so we have to, we have to think, why would you be a member? And I we have a lot of chambers, you know, even in the province, that are really bad, and they’re just like a cost cutting or and they’re competing for resources. And so we have to be really, really sure that if we’re going to run this chamber and we’re going to ask for money from businesses. But they are like, Yep, this is a great use of my investment, and happy to do it. I’m not doing it because I feel obligated to do Yeah,

Brandon Burton 11:49
yeah, absolutely. Well, that definitely helps set the stage for our discussion today. And I will say just a little bit of background. You mentioned Doug. Doug Griffiths, a lot of listeners are familiar with Doug because of the 13 ways to 13 ways to kill your community book, and as I had him on the podcast shoot, it’s been a couple years now, I think, since I had him on the podcast, but he he referred Heather to me to to have her on the show because of her passion for helping businesses make money, And in different ways that she’s gone about doing that, so we finally made it happen. She’s now in a position at a chamber there with Doug as well, and and that’s what we’re going to focus our conversation today on, is helping businesses make money, which I think is what every chamber should be about in one way or another. So we will dive in deep on this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Heather, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today, we’re talking about helping businesses make money. And when I think of a chamber of commerce, that should be one of the root reasons, you know, the whys for a chamber to be in existence is to help businesses thrive, and whether that’s removing obstacles or giving them key action items or training, or different ways to be able to really accelerate their business. So I’d love to dive into what your take is and maybe some strategies of how you’ve been able to help businesses really thrive.

Heather Thomson 16:35
Yeah, I think that the interesting thing, I think I was given a really unique opportunity with the pandemic. You know, just if I, if I kind of go back in time to 2020

Brandon Burton 16:49
nobody wants to do that. I know. Emily, sorry, just

Heather Thomson 16:52
bear with me. Don’t worry. We’ll, I’ll get us through to Disneyland here in a sec. Okay, yeah, it was actually worse than that. I am. I had a baby in January, little January, and the plan was that my husband was going to take, we were to share the pad leave and and in Canada, I don’t I this is so hard to hear for American listeners, but we have up to 18 months of paid maternity leave. So, you know, we just have so much so, I mean, so this, I just want to say For context, this is very unique in in Canada, this would not be unique in the United States. So we, I take, I take my mat leave. I was always going to take mat leave until about May, and then my husband was going to take over. And then COVID happened, and my husband happened to be a essential worker, so he does H back. And so this was, like a really random thing, but one of the buildings that he was looking after, I think it wasn’t the hospital. It was like a it was like to really make sure, like the bodies healthcare. Yeah, the bodies could stay cool once they were bodies, unfortunately. And that’s like a really, really morbid thing to bring up. But just to give context that I was at home now with a three year old and a colicky baby, and COVID started, so I didn’t have any help. I didn’t have any parents. It was a nightmare. And the colic, I mean, like people who joke about colic, but like, when you’re at home, I couldn’t even walk in the mall. And keep in mind, this is Canada, right? So it’s like, we’re not going outside. We’re not meeting people in the park. It’s still very cold out. So this was, like, an extremely dark, isolating time. So I was watching a lot of news, and I was seeing so many businesses close their doors and, like, that’s it. They’re they’ve gone under. And it happened really, really fast. And I remember it was, like, just around Easter of 2020, and I was actually kind of getting a bit frustrated now, at this point, because and irritated there these businesses, like, go just make a Google profile. And so it’s like, it’s easy for us to think about it now, right? Like, everyone has a Google profile, like, so easy. It’s like, of course, I’m like, yeah. But five years ago, that was not the case. So many businesses were still operating under the assumption that, like, you can find me just by walking or just by, like, you know, knowing about me through someone and now we quickly shifted as consumers were like online, online, online, and we saw firsthand the businesses that could afford it, and businesses that kind of had some sort of infrastructure or education and knowledge were able to survive this. And so it was at the end of April, I kind of, I just talking to my friend at the city of Edmonton. And I said, What’s going on here? Like, what’s the plan? And and he said, Well, I actually think that we should talk, because I have this idea. And I had a student consulting group at the University of Alberta business school that nobody was getting any work because everything, like, as you remember, like, was shut down. There was nothing happening. And I said, I can, I can mobilize students. So in a nutshell, we created the first iteration, which was making Edmonton digital. So we we got some seed money, about $300,000 in city of Edmonton through some grant funding. And I want to be really clear about this. This is something that drives me nuts. There during COVID, there was no matching grants, and I still advocate that match. Grants need to be a thing in the past. There were so many other ways to ensure that businesses or people that are applying have assurance and skin in the game. There’s so many other ways to do that. Matching grants take out like we wouldn’t be able to do if we, if we didn’t have a matching like if we, if we had to match it, yeah, yeah. Because from a university’s perspective, we can’t use operating funding. There’s just laws against it. So just to give an idea, there was no matching component to this. So we got the money, we paid the students, and within like six months, the students had worked with 800 businesses here in Edmonton to get them up online. And so we did Etsy stores, we did Google pages, we did websites like we just whatever we could. It was like a mass mobilization of getting students to build out this infrastructure. And it was, it was really great to do so, to see the students now could do something with their time and make some money. And then the and then businesses were getting up in line. The province picked it up as well. And so we were able to expand it, and then it turned into closer to, like, two and a half million dollars in about 3500 businesses by the time we were done. It actually just ended this past fall, and so it was a really cool opportunity to look at COVID and being irritated with the news. And I have this thing where I like to take my personal irritations and turn them into, like, my new professional project. But I was, I have to say I was, it was so I was so fortunate, because I was offering in a time where the answers were Yes, right, I was hitting so many low hanging fruit for the government to find right. I was, I was employing youth. 70% of the people we were working with identified as some sort of minority group, and our target was a quarter. So like, you could just see, like we were just like, the government was like, yes, yes, yes. And we were able to provide such a larger, you know, return of of investment on what the government’s money was for us. So it’s been really cool to see that that program come from A to Z, and now we have to think, Well, COVID is done. Everyone we laugh. We’re like, oh, yeah, of course. Everyone has a Google page. It’s like, yeah, of course. But this notion of democratizing digital assets and digital tools and education wasn’t a thing before 2020 it was expensive. Businesses didn’t know how to do it. And now here we are, five hours, five hours

Brandon Burton 22:20
later. It seems like it’s sometimes five, yeah,

Heather Thomson 22:25
five years later. And this knowledge is just this, AI, like, we just were able to do this so quickly. So now we have so many things we have to do next. We have to think about this is going to be the next thing that we have to jump through and, like, I like that saying where it’s never been as hard as it is today to run a business, but it will never be this easy again, and so we have to kind of just readjust that whole like things are not going to get easier. We need to get better.

Brandon Burton 22:52
Yeah, I love that story, that background, being able to catch that vision and see where there’s a, you know, holes in the marketplace and being able to see, hey, there’s access to funds here. Let’s partner. Let’s, let’s get these students out to work and help these businesses and, and I’ve mentioned it before on the podcast, even where, even just, you know, brick and mortar retail businesses that have been that way for decades, maybe that have never explored having an online store Shopify or something like that, and just the the limits are, it becomes limitless when you can shift that way. It just becomes a matter of keeping up inventory and being able to ship and that sort of thing. But those people who can make that conversion from just brick and mortar to brick and mortar and online are going to be the ones that thrive and and really do well going into the future. Yep, so you had mentioned trying to think about some of those things or what’s next. You know, as far as how business evolves and how technology impacts business, are there some trends that you have an eye on right now that that you’re seeing is, I think this could be something to pay attention to.

Heather Thomson 24:07
Yeah, and it’s interesting, because I think I was just actually doing quite a bit of data on this. In 2022 and 2023 we were looking at space right? So now we’re looking at space of how consumers are shopping, and what we’re seeing for the first time. And this is like all but like, I’m not gonna say us economists. I’m not there yet. Man, I can’t wait to be. But a lot of economists and a lot of retailing academia, we’re just nerding out over this point of data. It’s so cool that for the first time in human history, we have more purpose driven consumers than we do value driven consumers. And so just to explain what that is, a value driven consumer are the people that care the most about like their dollar, right? They want to, they want to set, they want that dollar to go as far as possible. They’re couponing. They’re they’re about that. I. And then you have the purpose driven consumer. And so these are the consumers that are their time, and they want the great experience. And so what we’re seeing here is this is a clear cut demographic shift we’re seeing in the marketplace from the spending power. So you have people, really under the age of 45 that are the purpose driven consumers that are taking up way more space in the marketplace. And you have the baby boomers, who are the quintessential value driven consumers that are leaving right? They’re they’re not. And that’s the other thing. Like we they like baby boomers have, which are people born between 1946 to 1964 these, these individuals have more wealth per person than anyone has ever had in the history of humankind. But they’re not spending the money, right? Like, you know, who’s spending the money? It’s millennials, millennials. So those are people with 1981 to 1997 and so we’re having, and I’m generalizing here, right? We should look at the data from minerus or visa or something like that, and you’re gonna see this. And so what’s happening with that is that, how we are setting up our business world, how we are providing value for the consumer, is a really interesting time right now, because what worked seven years ago isn’t working today. And yes, there’s the pandemic, sure. Because, to your point, Brandon around you know brick and mortar needs to have an online like, Yes, right? We know that, but we also know that the consumer, from a data perspective, actually enjoys shopping in person. So I want to make that very clear. People have this notion like, I can’t compete with Amazon. I’m like, Yes, you can. You 100% compete with Amazon, and you should. Amazon leaves a lot to be desired. But what, what the problem is, is that people are thinking, I can’t compete with Amazon, because I’m a distribution center. I am a Toys R Us, where you just have a shelf and a product. Yeah, you will not compete with Amazon. You will go out of business. So anytime a business is kind of gearing towards come and buy something from me, I have a product, come and purchase it from me. Those are the businesses that are going to die. So because of this, we need way less square footage. We don’t need, you know, 5000 square foot retail days. And I remember when I worked at Lululemon, we needed a lot of space. We needed a big back room to house two weeks worth of inventory on hand. That’s not how retail works anymore. Retailers and businesses like you just need less space to operate, and that’s through sophisticated shipping. But now in North America, we have about 30% too much space. If you look at malls, we’re seeing this across the world. Malls, unless they’re extraordinary, are they’re like, they’re so depressing to look at, right? They are just they’re not, they’re not of value anymore. And even in Canada, where we have a winter climate, unless a mall is getting some serious investment and some serious diversification, they are the now the land the mall sits on is what is actually valuable, not the mall itself. Yeah, and so we’re seeing this really critical shift from how are we utilizing our space? Office market is no different. We just need less space, but we’re also in a housing crisis. And so one of the big projects that we’re going to be tackling now is, how are we right sizing our physical space to make sure that we are able to invest in residential housing? Because that’s such a critical we learned this from the pandemic. If there’s no residential base, the city is done. You’re that area you’re in is done from an economic standpoint, but we also need to make sure that we’re building the right the right things, but we’re also taking the things that are on the market currently, because it has worked for 40, 5060, years, and it doesn’t work anymore. We need to make sure that those spaces are being retrofitted to work for today. And this is a whole thing that we are hearing in very in all the provinces, who should pay for it. And so one of the things our neighbors to the south Calgary has done is that they created, this was before COVID. I just want to point that out. It was in 2018 they had a downtown residential investment, or it, sorry, yeah, investment incentive. So if somebody were to take over a building that was an office space, because keep in mind, this is Calgary. It’s 2018 they have 50% office vacancy. They said they put 150 million that if a developer were to take a building and turn it from office to residential, they would get $75 a square foot to do that, which is people like, that’s that’s, why are we getting tax dollars to developers? Well, I’ll tell you why. Now, Calgary weathered COVID better than any other Canadian city, and they’re the downtown that has rebounded the fastest in North America. They had a residential population. Edmonton had 60,000 people coming downtown every day to were a government town, yeah, well, that’s only 12,000 people who live down here. It’s 12 square kilometers. We have the hardest hit downtown. And so it’s just interesting, this whole notion of how we are now advocating that we’re in the situation. We need to figure out housing, we need to figure out space, and we need to use tax dollars to get us out of it. And it’s very. Very controversial, but we ultimately, there’s no there’s not going to be a higher return on investment than figuring out the space. Yeah, that

Brandon Burton 30:07
is a that’s an interesting problem to solve and to address. I really am intrigued on the comment you made about the being purpose driven economy more so than a value driven economy. Now, and those that that do value, the value driven aspects are the ones that are not spending the money necessarily. So, you know, in a world where you know the Walmarts and Amazons have done so well because they offer the best value, how can a chamber business or a retail business, how can they lean more into that experiential, purpose driven type of economy?

Heather Thomson 30:49
It’s a great question. And this was something we came up when we were working with businesses, when I was at the university, because it’s really hard to have a business do something for 40 years, and it worked for 40 years, and all of a sudden it doesn’t, yeah, so I think the thing, the thing is, is that there’s so many different ways that you can add elements of purpose and a great experience, and without it being flashy and expensive. You know, I think one of the things that we’re that we’re seeing as as simple as possible, is just a better customer service. And this is something that, and this is the, I don’t know if the states has this problem, but in Canada, we are having a really difficult problem with our labor force, and due to a lot of injections throughout the COVID money, the younger like our unemployment numbers are made up a lot of new newcomers to Canada because our immigration, federal immigration plan was so flawed, and Canada has actually been a taste like a test case for a lot of other countries who are like, Don’t do this. Like we put so much emphasis in bringing on so many new people to Canada, which is great, but there wasn’t a lot of thought to it. So half of our unemployment rate federally is is with new newcomers to Canada. And I just can’t imagine being a new person coming to Canada and being kind of like, sold on this, like, new place to live, and not having a job. I would be like, it’s so many we’re going back, and it’s, it’s such an economic and social travesty that we have to, we have to deal with. And it and it is, it’s, you know, and the and the other half of that is young people. I didn’t see the other half, another large portion of the of the unemployment rate are young people. And what we’re, what we’re hearing, is actually a willingness to work situation. So this is, I’m curious to know, if you guys are seeing this the United States. We

Brandon Burton 32:39
are. Yeah, yeah. It seems like when COVID hit and a lot of stimulus money went out, all of a sudden people didn’t need to work. And I don’t know how they made the stimulus money last for four years, but they apparently still don’t need to work. So they still don’t need

Heather Thomson 32:52
to work. It’s crazy, yeah, and so, and that’s where, like, the customer service angle, to get back to that, that’s a hard one. You know, customer service is something that is dwindling in terms of, you know, something that we would even expect as as consumers. But so when people are like, What can I do? And like, do better customer service? Start there, and that’s anything from, like, I know there’s a pharmacy down the road, and they’re very sweet. They’ve been doing that forever from our house, and now they just have a sign, like, we’ll deliver. I’m like, great. I’m going from Safeway, I’m coming over to you. And it’s just like, they had all this extra time, and they have teenage kids, and so they’re like, we’re just, we’re gonna send them out deliver. Like, great. And so it’s just like a very small thing that it’s like, okay, that’s easy, because what we’re wanting to do is people are prioritizing their time. That’s what we’re seeing in this modern economy. And so this isn’t about convenience is going to win, right? So this is where I’m saying, like, you don’t need to go to bat with Amazon. You don’t need don’t worry about that. Convenience is really important, for sure, but I think there’s kind of a rule where you have to make it you have to make it easy, you have to make it fun, or you have to make it beautiful. So go in those categories. The beautiful one, I think, is really overlooked. And I actually get this is something I get really frustrated with, because whether you’re a value driven consumer or purpose driven consumer, people really enjoy beautiful spaces, pretty spaces. And so this is where, like, I actually have a podcast that talks solely about twinkle lights and the psychological point of twinkle lights, like, there’s my Disney reference, like, Main Street, right? Like you just, they have the perfect twinkle lights. And if you go down Main Street, you know, I just love it, because you see the garbage cans, or exactly, was it 10 feet away from one another? They had the blade signs. They have the good smell. And it’s, of course, it’s a simulated environment. I understand that, but there’s so many elements,

Brandon Burton 34:45
something to aspire to, though, exactly, I do

Heather Thomson 34:48
have to say that I know it’s a simulated environment. I don’t think any of us would actually want to live there, because it’s like creepy and pleasant Philly, but there are so you’re right, the cleanliness, the twinkle lights, you know when we. Were working with businesses during the pandemic. They’re like, I can’t keep up. And this one, one person was a forest, which, by the way, forest did very well during COVID. So I just want to say that. And this guy was like, yeah, we’re just we were sinking. We’re not getting any money. And I go there, your store is disgusting, like the windows are disgusting. Your light bulbs are burnt out. That is why you’re not making money, I can guarantee you, especially when you’re like, when you’re unfortunately, when you’re like, a Hair Studio, nail place, anything that is lending itself to already improving esthetics, well, guess what? You have to make it look even better. So there’s just, there’s a lot of things that we need to do that can actually bring that sort of purpose element. And it doesn’t have to be this Disneyland mentality or the budget, but I think that that is one of those things where businesses can actually just kind of get back to some nostalgia and get back to what’s really what used to work, even in the 50s and 60s, because people data is very clear that people are wanting those experiences.

Brandon Burton 35:58
Yeah, well, and to your point as we make as a chamber. If we can get members and retail businesses to create the easy, fun and beautiful environments and experiences, it’s going to reflect very well on our community as well, and it’s going to be welcoming. It’s going to be a place where people want to come from outside to spend money in the community as well. So it doesn’t just help the business, but it helps the overall community

Heather Thomson 36:24
Exactly. And wealth begets wealth. And I want that to be like a bumper sticker everywhere. People are thinking, Well, no, if they get it, then I don’t get it. I’m like, No. Like, can you imagine if Nashville was, like, only one music studio that’s like, no. It’s like, it’s empirically false. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:40
it’s not a pie so, right? Well, Heather, this has been very fun to dive into this and hear some of these ideas and research and things that that you’ve noticed, these trends that are happening, good things for chambers, listening to kind of ponder on and to see how they can implement and make some adjustments within their community. But I wanted to ask you, as we start wrapping things up for the chamber listening, who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them trying to accomplish that goal?

Heather Thomson 37:19
That’s a very, good question. I think depending on your community gaps, one of the good things, a challenge about being a Chamber of Commerce is the umbrella of value is very large, and so that’s kind of what we had to figure out here, is like we can’t be everything for everyone, and we can’t do everything. So what are we going to do that’s really impactful and kind of ignore the rest? And so I would say, figure out what’s not being done in the ecosystem and then go and fill that that gap. And thankfully, in our in our case, it was in sad case, we are not we don’t get a penny from the government. So we can be the advocate that the business community needs us to be. So we can, we can we can talk about, you know, just give you the example I was kind of alluding to. Federally, they’re removing GST for two months, starting tomorrow, over the holidays. This podcast is being done, you know, at the end of 2024 and, yeah, they’re removing GST for two months. And this is in, like, absolutely awful. It’s the worst thing we can do for the economy. Business community hates it, so it’s kind of fun, because it’s such a layup for us to, like, be such a stark advocate that this is so bad. But that’s the space we’re really leaning into. And so if we’re looking at, how are you going to be successful? Like, pick something and do it really well, whether, like, I know, a chamber of commerce, just just to the south of us, there are regional, there are massive Regional Chamber of Commerce, which I also recommend, by the way, if you’re struggling for resources, amalgamate. Like, like, you know, I know, like, someone has to fall on the sword, but just do it. But they, they, they are so great at networking. They are like, the hottest ticket in town. They are the ones that are like, come to this event. We’ve got you. You got to learn this. So their big thing is, like, education and networking and growing your your business through other people. So, so, yeah, we do lots of partnerships, and that’s the thing. Like, I don’t, I don’t need to do that, because they’re doing it. And so that’s the thing where it’s like, just figure out what you need to do.

Brandon Burton 39:27
Yeah? I like that. Find the gaps and lean into them and own

Heather Thomson 39:31
them. Yeah, yeah. And then ask for money. Yeah. I love it.

Unknown Speaker 39:34
I love that idea. I know

Heather Thomson 39:37
it’s so easy. Once you have a good idea, it’s always true. Like, well, let’s ask for money. I’m like, no, what do you like? Make the good idea first, then you can find funding. Funding is actually quite easy. I’ll say in Canada, when you have a purpose, when you have a purpose, but yeah, or and if they could get rid of matching grants,

Brandon Burton 39:52
yeah, yeah, that too. Well, Heather, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going? Forward.

Heather Thomson 40:00
Oh, this is tough. If you’d have asked me this, like, two years ago, I’d be like, chambers probably aren’t long for this world. And I still feel like that from just from a risk standpoint, because there are so many member based organizations, right? It feels like I turn around and there’s another one and there’s another one, it’s like, Well, I’m a member of, you know, the Urban Development Institute. Now I’m a member of the Edmonton construction Association, and they’re all, they’re all money based memberships, and that’s the other thing that’s really tricky. And so I think that’s one of the biggest risks that we have, is like, how are we competing with them, making sure that our membership is the best membership, and and I think we have some ground to make up for that, certainly. And so I think as long as we we can do that and actually be what the business community needs us, and at the end of the day, producing results that are getting more money in the in the region, and I think, I think we’re good. And the other thing I would say is we have such an active membership and board, and I think that’s one of those things where it’s like, kind of that fear of missing out being part of a club with there’s so many different member orgs. Like, I honestly can make like a Disney moms in Edmonton Association, right? Like, there’s nothing to stop you. Yeah, nothing to stop them. In fact, I think I might

Brandon Burton 41:23
it’s a great idea. Yeah, exactly. But like

Heather Thomson 41:25
with the internet and even, like podcast, like anyone can do it, and so I think that’s one of the things that I’m, like, quite nervous about, is like, how are people choosing us? How are we the number one stop, and how are we worth the money? Yeah, yep.

Brandon Burton 41:39
Goes back to finding those gaps in the community and owning them and standing apart showing the value. Well, Heather, this has been a great conversation, and I really appreciate you spending time with us today. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about your approaches and how you guys are doing things there in Edmonton. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? Reach out and

Heather Thomson 42:04
connect my email is actually probably the best. So it’s, it’s Heather, no, it’s not. That’s probably know it I’ve been here for 10 months. It’s hthomson@edmontonchamber.com. Yes.

Brandon Burton 42:22
I can double check it for you. We’ll get it in the show notes either way, so we’ll make it easy for people to find and be able to reach out to you. But Heather, I just want to thank you again for spending time with us. This has been fun. It’s insightful and really forward leaning as we we look at these types of experiences people are looking for as they interact with the retail businesses in our communities and and really seeing where those needs are to be able to help businesses make money to prove the value of the chamber, but having our communities thrive as well. So I really appreciate you spending these these few moments with us and sharing these insights. Well, thank

Heather Thomson 43:01
you so much for having me. I clearly could talk about this all day, and I know we’re all even though we’re all pretty geographically spread out, I know that we are kind of all singing from the same song sheet and having a lot of similar problems. So I appreciate your time as well.

Brandon Burton 43:17
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Small Business with Tom Sullivan

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

Our guest for this episode is Thomas Sullivan. Thomas is the Vice President of Small Business Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, working with the US Chamber’s nationwide network. Tom harnesses the views of small businesses and translates that grassroots power into federal policies that bolster free enterprise and reward entrepreneurships. He also runs a US Chamber Small Business Council, engaging those members on a regular basis to increase Small Business input and involvement in chamber initiatives. Tom’s advocacy career spans from creating Legal Center at the National Federation of Independent Business to General Counsel at the Bipartisan Policy Center to building the innovative lending platform Association. Tom received unanimous Senate approval to serve as SBA Chief Counsel for advocacy at the George W Bush administration, and remains active in the bush Cheney alumni network. Tom and his wife live in Virginia and are blessed with two teenage sons. Tom serves on the board for the Global Entrepreneurship Network and is a graduate of the Chamber’s four year Ioan credential program. Tom, 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. Well. Thank

Tom Sullivan 2:37
you. Brandon, hello all the chamber chat listeners, it’s great to be with you today. Let’s see something interesting about me. Well, you know Brandon, when you and I were chatting about the day that this podcast will air, April one, not only is it April Fool’s Day, but it is a day that is forever etched in my memory and pain in my lower back, because I have significant structure in my lower back where several of my vertebrae are fused together, and that was done on April 1, a long time ago, so I’ll Never forget that day. It is certainly something interesting, yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:22
and hopefully it’s improved your life since then,

Tom Sullivan 3:27
it has, definitely has. I can, I can, I can use both legs regularly. So yes, it’s, it’s, it worked. That

Brandon Burton 3:35
is a good improvement, for sure. Yeah, well, Tom usually I have the guests tell a little bit about their chamber size, staff, budget, scope of work being at the US Chamber, why don’t you instead tell us a little bit more about your role with the US Chamber to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Well, Brandon,

Tom Sullivan 3:54
thank you. So first of all, I am a little bit biased, but I do have the best job at the United States Chamber of Commerce here in Washington, DC. The reason it’s the best job is I get to spend every day talking with folks who are probably listening to this podcast local state chamber leaders as well as their small business members. Now I get the added benefit of taking what I learned from all of those wonderful folks and advocate before Congress and the White House, but I truly think it is the best job, mostly because I get to talk with small business owners every day.

Brandon Burton 4:29
Absolutely, I can totally understand why you would say it’s the best job in the world. That’s I love working with chambers for that very reason, they’re the ones that are dealing with people that are on the front lines with, you know, putting bread on the table, so to speak, for families across this country. Well, for our topic of conversation today, we’re going to spend the majority of our focus on small business on the local and the national scale. And. And bringing in some of your expertise, some of the things that you’ve seen, and some things that you may see on the horizon as well, with regard to small business, and we’ll dive into this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Joe Duemig
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m Rose, and we’re the founders of App My Community, a mobile app that can be customized to meet the unique needs of your chamber of commerce.

Joe Duemig
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All right. Tom, we are back. So as we turn our focus today on small business, on the local and the national scale, I know your focus is on that all the time, but what are some of the things that you see as you, as you interact with chambers across the country, as you, you know, pay attention to the needs of small businesses. What are those things that are top of mind right now, things that to be paying attention about? To be fair, we are recording this in in December of 2024 so by the time this comes out in in April 2025 we may see a little bit of a different climate, but at this point, how do you see things, and what are those things that are top of mind? Well,

Tom Sullivan 9:10
thank you Brandon, and thank you also for letting the listeners know that here in December, while we’re awaiting president elect Trump to take office, there is some uncertainty, and I’m sure that by April, all that uncertainty, you know, smooth sailing, but, but seriously, there are some things that will certainly still be front and center on the radar as your listeners are listening right now. Probably the thing that has been on every small business owners radar for close to three years has been inflation. This has been the the strongest headwind for small business growth for three years and. There certainly have been proposals to reduce inflation and whatever those proposals are, small businesses are going to be the largest cheerleading section, because it it has been a wet blanket on growth for small businesses that have been anxious for that growth to take off for some time. So solutions to inflation are front and center for every small business in the country, and most of my job is trying to look at small business policy through the lenses of growth, and that means through the lenses of those policy solutions designed to reduce inflation.

Brandon Burton 10:45
And that is such a hot topic, for sure. And even as this is released in April of 2025 inflation is not one of those things that you can just turn a dial and it’s fixed right. There’s, it’s a it’s that small steering of that ship, that that makes those, those changes. And some of this gets done on the, you know, the advocacy front. Some of it is, you know, when it comes to importing and exporting and where these goods are coming from, and there’s a lot that plays into the cost of goods, right to Yeah, what we look at with inflation, but for sure, on the local level, for the local chambers listening, is there, are there things that they can do to whether it’s to help with inflation or or to put minds at ease of their members and help them to navigate their way through the uncertainty with with inflation. Well, let’s, let’s

Tom Sullivan 11:45
start first hit on your your question about, How do they help? And I just want every listener to know how important it is to show up. And I don’t mean just show up was switching on the zoom camera or picking up the phone. I mean, coming to Washington, DC and having your voices heard. I mean, this is something I do every day. And you know, it’s nice when lawmakers are sick of seeing my face, but every time a small business owner comes from the district that has elected this member of Congress. Every time they go into the office. That’s what makes a difference. I mean, the best lobbyist I have ever met, and I’m saying that with full acknowledgement that my wife is a lobbyist. So the best lobbyist I have ever met is Yasin Taru from Knoxville, Tennessee. He owns a falafel shop, and he comes to Washington, DC, and, you know, he gets the selfie pictures with with members of Congress and all that stuff. But then when the member of Congress sits down and the staff around them take out their notepads and pencils. He says, Look, he starts locally. Hey, when are you going to, you know, you said you were going to have some federal money to rebuild that bridge. Like, how’s that going? Where’s the progress? Because I haven’t seen the construction trucks pulling up yet. And and the member of Congress looks at the staff member and says, okay, yeah, we got to follow up with that. And then Yaseen generally, then goes on to tax policy. It says, Look, you know, some of these tax provisions really have to be made permanent, because it helps me and it helps millions of other small businesses around the meeting ends, Yasin goes home to his beautiful family, and then it’s up to me and my colleagues at the US Chamber of Commerce, along with the colleagues of chambers all over the United States, to make sure that there’s follow up capitalizing on that local small business owners advocacy. And I could tell you, Brandon, it makes a huge, huge difference. Every Yaffe in Toru who shows up in a member of Congress’s office, is worth 20 times when I show up. Yeah, so the magnifying impact really, really does make a difference. And now I know that small business owners, you know, they gotta make enough profit at the end of the day so that the lights can get turned on the following day, and they’ve got to make enough money so that food does get on the table of their employees. So it’s hard just to pick up and go to Washington, DC, but I can assure every small business owner it makes a difference, and what makes an extra difference is when they talk with their local chamber first, make sure they get their message down so that they know what the ask is that will help them as a small business and will help the entire community of small businesses that honestly, they’re representing when they make that trip to Washington, DC.

Brandon Burton 14:57
Yeah, and I see you know. All the time, these chambers that do their Washington DC fly in and, you know, maybe bring some of their people from their board, who are these business owners, and be able to present their voices and concerns and what their needs are. And I know not every chamber has the ability to do that, but there is strength in numbers. So the more, the more that show up and can plea that case and hopefully be in line with each other too, so you don’t have one chamber contradicting what another saying, right? Well,

Tom Sullivan 15:29
you know, we we do more to just have folks come and and speak their mind than we do worrying about whether or not everyone is on the same page. One small business owner has a different view of how their business can grow, and the federal incentives to make that happen, it’s not going to be so different from another. Growth is primarily the main talking point, and small business owners know what it means to grow. They know what it it means to grow as an economy that actually bolsters the America as a superpower instead of making it weaker by adding deficit. So we don’t worry that much about exact messaging. We worry mostly to make sure that our representatives are speaking through the lenses of growth, to their their policy makers. And I should also at least acknowledge you don’t have to come to Washington, DC. Every member of Congress has local district offices. And when they’re when they come back home to the voters who elected them, they want to visit with small businesses. Not only is it a great photo op, but it is also great from a Chamber of Commerce’s perspective, that that small business owner gets the undivided attention of the elected leader through the entire visit. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:54
that’s a good point. So a couple times now you’ve mentioned looking at things through the the lens of growth, or presenting things from that that perspective, and as I think of these, a lot of the lawmakers, they’ve they’ve been in politics their their adult life, right? They, a lot of them have not run and operated a business themselves. So is there any maybe best practices on how to communicate through that lens of growth that can be relatable to those that they need to relate it to? Well,

Tom Sullivan 17:24
what a great question. The answer is yes, there is some advice. So first of all, the advice is, be who you are. Don’t try to be a lobbyist from Washington, DC. Don’t try to be like the most caught up on the latest scandal of the hour. Just be who you are and tell your story and practice your story, either with your loved ones or your local chamber leader, and have them ask questions the way that a member of Congress would I love telling a very recent story that happened. We have been already aggressively meeting with Congress to promote the pro growth aspects of tax policy that are set to expire at the end of 2025 Our campaign is designed to make those provisions permanent, so that at the end of 2025 all of a sudden, small business owners don’t wake up with an enormous tax bill that they didn’t expect. And we brought in a local small business from Bucha, Arizona, who sells hay, alfalfa, if you want to be more specific. And he was wonderful. He was meeting with Dave Schweikert, who is a member of Congress, who serves on the tax writing committee, and and Dick Cardo, who’s the owner of Cardo hay company. He said, you know, all this, this whole discussion of taxes, is just so complicated, and it’s this is awkward for me as a small business owner, I don’t really know what to say. All I know is, for the past five years, I have been saving a little bit every year in order to buy this piece of machinery that bails hay and puts the hay on my truck in a way that I don’t have to because I’m getting older and I can’t do it anymore. And, and the congressional staffer looked at dick and said, Oh my gosh, that like, that’s the example we’ve been looking for. Yes. And he said, Where are you gonna buy this equipment? He said, Oh well, you know, I, my friend down the street, sells this particular piece of equipment, we’re going to get it there. And so all of a sudden, Dick is just telling his story and what he’s been doing, which is saving some dollars at the end of every year, which is made possible through some tax deductions that are set to expire. Not only is he saving that to spend it. He’s spending it for his business to grow, and he’s also spending it at a neighboring business that will allow them to grow. And so the reason I tell you that story is sometimes we make it too complicated, and it’s as simple as telling your story that connects your local experience with a national policy that is designed to promote growth, and that’s what Dick did. And I’ll continue telling that story to anyone who will listen. What

Brandon Burton 20:32
a great example. And you know, sometimes there’s sometimes government can get in the way of that growth, and we want to be able to take down some of those barriers, eliminate some of those things. And for him to say, I’m trying to save a little bit each year to make his job easier, but be more productive, to help his business, help others. And then, as you’re explaining this, the whole thought of inflation creeps back in here too. I mean, that ties right back into it when he’s saving a little bit each year, but that little bit is less than is less and less each year because of that. So it all. It all plays into it. So does it. Does wonderful example. Is there anything that local chambers can do to help with their their members, maybe to put their mind cities or to to help them carry on, you know, through a lens of growth that will allow them to maybe not focus on the the negative effects so much of inflation, but continue to look at opportunities to grow and control what you can control and and maybe encourage others to help you in the other areas,

Tom Sullivan 21:43
there certainly are ways that local chambers can learn from each other, perhaps learn from you and me and others. You know. One of them is Institute. You know, the Institute of organization management, otherwise known as Institute or IOM. I’m a winter Institute graduate down in Tucson, Arizona. You know the networks and learnings that all Institute graduates benefit from carry on for the rest of their professional lives. And when you’re struggling with something all of a sudden, you have this immediate network of other chamber professionals who hopefully are listening to this podcast. And that does provide comfort, it does provide certainty, and it does provide paths forward. The other thing to do is to recognize that that the relationship with the US Chamber of Commerce is intended to be a two way value proposition, and the access that our 1600 local, state and regional Chambers of Commerce have who pay a small amount in order to be part of that network. Their value is gained from getting the regular insider information about what’s going on, and then we encourage those local chamber executives to share it with their membership, so that that connectivity, which really chambers are famous for because that’s what we basically do. At our core, is we connect people work. We’re the community connectors, and the more that we can lean into that connectedness, whether it’s through IOM Institute or whether it’s from being part of what we call the Federation, sounds like a Star Wars term, but really it’s just a term that is assigned to this incredible network of both trade associations and local, state and regional Chambers of Commerce. So just leaning into that connectivity, I think, diminishes some of the fear, some of the uncertainty, and does create some really long, lasting bonds.

Brandon Burton 24:03
I think that’s great advice. And anybody who I know has been through the IOM program would would echo that. And in fact, it’s often a action item that that guests will share with others, is to build that professional network and to to have those peers that you can lean upon and in the, you know, the US Chamber, even to lean upon. Well, what other what other things come to mind when you go about your work with focusing on small businesses and that, that lens for growth, what what other things are top of mind for you at the moment?

Tom Sullivan 24:39
Well, you know, one of the things that is constantly top of mind are the day to day challenges of small business owners. I mean, I’m lucky to deal with national policy issues, so tax, health care, regulatory policy, those types of things are within my remit. But you know, what about. About choosing a payroll provider? What you know? What about finding an inventory management system? All of these things that are, are the that that are worries, concerns, and, quite frankly, opportunities at a small business level, the US, Chamber of Commerce, traditionally never really addressed those daily needs until COVID, when COVID hit, this desperate need for information was absorbed by our then new CEO, who was a small business owner herself, Suzanne Clark, and she heard this thirst, she felt this thirst for practical information, and we responded by launching a small business digital platform. It’s called co CEO, that digital platform is designed to answer these questions that small business owners have that are daily challenges, and the greatest thing about CO is that the answers come from other small business owners. So how do you choose a payroll provider? Well, there are stories on this small business digital platform called CO that interview a small business owner, and that small business owner tells how she chose a payroll provider or manages a supply chain or how they could figure out how the heck to hire a really good employee like these, these things that keep small business owners up at night are answered by their peers through this digital platform that is available for anyone, and Our local and State Chambers of Commerce are certainly taking advantage of it by by embedding the CO platform into their communications with their members, and it is open to anyone who has a good internet connection. And I’m just really happy that now that COVID is in our rear view mirror our commitment to answer daily questions and challenges small businesses face continues to be a priority. I think that that has to do in a large part because our CEO is Suzanne Clark, is a former small business owner, but it also is an example of how we saw something, we built it into our new muscle memory, and we’re committed to continue it long term.

Brandon Burton 27:46
Yeah, that is that’s a great example and great resource. So if the chambers listening have not been utilizing co I’d encourage them to check it out and see where it makes sense to implement it with your members, and, like Tom said, embedded into your communications, because it sounds like a wonderful resource. Well, Tom, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for the chambers listening who may be wanting to, you know, take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tips or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal. Well,

Tom Sullivan 28:23
I’ll go back to my friends at IOM and Institute in the Federation. You there is a chamber of commerce accreditation process, and those five star chambers around the United States are the best of the best, and that means that that process isn’t easy, but I’ve never heard a five star chamber saying, Wow, that was a heck of a waste of time. I mean, the other way around, we hear like, you know, I had no time for it, and it was hard. But now that we got our accreditation, it was worth it. And I think the chambers that are looking to go to the next level should look very seriously at the Chamber’s accreditation program and see if they can jump in with both feet,

Brandon Burton 29:18
and even if, even if they’re not awarded with a five star accreditation. It’s a good refining process to go through the exercise and see where you where you stack up, and where you can find areas to improve and be more efficient as an organization. Well, Tom, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tom Sullivan 29:41
So Brandon, in this digital world we live in, I think there’s an even greater need and appreciation for the convening power of chambers. Now we we have the luxury now of convening in a multitude of ways, but it’s still convening. Yeah, um. And whatever flavor that takes. I do think that the power of networks that are made possible through the convening are actually at an all time high. I say that also with the realization that for the past five years we’ve had record breaking new business starts, and that means there are all these new small businesses looking for connectivity, looking for network opportunities, virtually and in person, and chambers of commerce are uniquely situated to capitalize on it.

Brandon Burton 30:37
I love that, the idea of the power of the networks. I’ve heard a quote before, and I can’t attribute who I heard it from, but talked about digging your well before you’re thirsty, you know, you make those contacts, you have that network built. And then when there’s a need there, you’re not trying to develop those relationships right then in that moment, because you already have them, you can send out that message and say, Hey, I need help with this, you know. And you know those contacts who can help you. So great, great piece of advice and and way to look forward with the future of chambers, 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 maybe learn some more about what you have to offer in terms of a small business support. Where would you point them? What would be the best way to connect?

Tom Sullivan 31:27
The best way is through LinkedIn. Under Thomas Sullivan US Chamber of Commerce, you’ll you’ll find my LinkedIn profile. I tend to lean into LinkedIn a little bit more than some other social media platforms. I find the the dialog a little bit more respectful on on LinkedIn than some other social media platforms. But if, if those other social media platforms are your are your thing, my handle is smallbizpatriot, and that’s probably the easiest way to get me.

Brandon Burton 32:00
All right, we will make sure to get that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy to find you and connect with you on LinkedIn. But Tom this has been great having you on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking some time to be with us today and to share some of these insights and and like you said, the the lens for growth. I love that, that perspective, and that’s really the way every chamber should be looking at small businesses in their community, is through that lens for growth. What can they do to help remove obstacles? What can they do to help create that network to allow for that growth? And this has been a valuable conversation, so I appreciate you.

Tom Sullivan 32:38
Well, Brandon, right back at you. I appreciate you, and I certainly appreciate all of the chamber executives who are listening, and in particular because of the great work that they do for their small business members.

Brandon Burton 32:53
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Capital Campaigns with Ann Hutchison

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

Our guest for this episode is Anne Hutchison, and became President and CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce on January 1. 2021 she started with the Chamber in 2003 is a policy committee coordinator and was promoted to Executive Vice President in 2005 before moving into the CEO role and directly manage the communications and events departments, assisted in the day to day operations of the chamber and managed issues and political advocacy, as Well as as well as the chambers and leadership Fort Collins and leadership northern Colorado programs, and is responsible for the future vision and strategic direction of the organization, while maintaining the staff team and the day to day operations of the Fort Collins Area Chamber, she’s been a key community leader in advancing the business friendly policy agenda while building community through business. And 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. Yeah.

Ann Hutchison 2:15
Well, thanks, Brandon. I’m thrilled to be a part of the podcast today and really looking forward to hopefully sharing some insights that are of value to my colleagues across the country. As far as something interesting about myself, I don’t know that this is interesting, but I am a true blue or true green CSU RAM fan. So I graduated from University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, which is about an hour away from Fort Collins. But my father and my sister have multiple degrees from Colorado State, and they, they gave me the opportunity to be a fan of Colorado State, and so, so I am. I’m fully invested football, basketball, volleyball, you name the sport that has a clock and a and score, and you’ll most likely see myself and my sister there cheering the Rams on. I’m wearing green today because we do Fan Friday here in Fort Collins, where we get our green on on Friday. So you will, you will regularly see me sporting the green and the gold in support of that important community partner. But also it’s just a lot of

Brandon Burton 3:29
fun. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s always nice to get those proxy invitations to be a fan, right? Exactly, exactly. That’s awesome, but you wear it well. So this is that that’s fun. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Fort Collins area Chamber, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, so we know where you’re coming from in this conversation, to tell us about the size staff, budget, scope of work, the things that you guys are involved with, to kind of preface for this conversation, yeah.

Ann Hutchison 3:57
So Fort Collins is located in Colorado, we’re about an hour north of Denver, and as already noted, Colorado State is our single largest employer in Fort Collins, they’re a key primary employer in that we bring in about 10,000 new students every year onto Campus. So we have a campus of about 40,000 students, and we learn them up, we take that raw material, we learn them up, and then we send them back out into the world to do really great things, and as a sizable employer, but also that primary employer, bringing those new dollars into the community, incredibly important to Fort Collins, but we’re not a single industry town. We also then have a strong technology presence here in our economy. Um, we’re well known for our retail sector. Um, at one point we had the justification that we had more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the United States. So a beautiful cross section community that the economy is driven by a lot of really interesting and great companies and organizations. As far as the chamber goes, we are the Fort Collins area Chamber, and that’s very intentional, that we not only support concepts and visions and ideas for Fort Collins, but we really do address issues on a regional basis. So it’s a connection between Larimer County, which is where Fort Collins is, and Weld County, which has Greeley as it’s a county seat. That two county area represents almost 700,000 people, and we really are a regional economy, with people living, working and playing throughout that two county area. As a result, we then end up being one of the largest chambers in the two county area. We have about 1200 members. We then staff the work that those 1200 members request with about 14 people that represent 11 and a half FTE. We’ve We’ve tested out a lot of concepts that we funded through grant funding that then we move those folks off of contract basis onto our staff, so you’ll see us continue to grow a little bit, although the last several years, we’ve really leaned into that concept of not FTE, but contracts in order to get the work done. Last little note would be, we function under a five year strategic plan that we call northern Colorado prospers. And you and I’ll talk a little bit more about how we created northern Colorado prospers and what it does for us, but it sets the stage for the work of the chamber to be largely around four key goals we’re we’re staying highly focused on the economy and how the economy works and how we can influence the economy here in the two county area, we spend a lot of time working on our talent ecosystem and making sure that the ecosystem is easy for people to get into, but also then creating the talent and the workforce that our employers need moving forward, we spend a lot of time talking about transportation in a two county area, and really making sure that there’s a system that allows people to get throughout the two county area. And then our fourth goal is around a business for the environment, really making changes locally, at the county level and at the state level, to make sure that business has an opportunity to thrive throughout Northern Colorado.

Brandon Burton 7:40
That’s great. Yeah, that gives us a really good snapshot of what you guys are involved with. So do you have any of the tourism or economic development, or you solely chamber? Or what’s the what’s that scope look like?

Ann Hutchison 7:52
We are solely chamber. So here in Fort Collins, we have a separate organization that manages our visit profile. We have a separate organization that manages our downtown Fort Collins promotions. We have a separate organization that does any of the pageants and parties. So yes, our full time job is membership, connections and

Brandon Burton 8:17
advocacy. Awesome now that that helps set the stage, for sure. And I’m, I’m curious more about the the contract workers, and exploring that through grants and and I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for other chambers to be able to to really assess the needs. See, do we need a full time person for this? Is it a short term commitment that could be a contract thing or, or if it may be a long trip. I’ve heard of accounting, you know, being contracted out and not necessarily having a staff person for that. So, yes, they’re doing some innovative things. It sounds like, Oh,

Ann Hutchison 8:48
thank you. Yeah. It really the contract design has really allowed us to test out concepts and test out concepts using other people’s money, which is kind of fantastic, but it also then gives us as an organization that opportunity to buy only the services that we need for that moment in time without then having that long time commitment, especially if a concept doesn’t work, but that long time commitment of staff time benefits, office space, technology, I mean, you name all of the parts and pieces. And so using that contract model really has given us the opportunity to test ideas, make sure that they work, and then we can, we can adopt those into our organization, if they make sense. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 9:33
so I don’t think you mentioned what the your budget is, operating budget there at the Chamber, because I think that’ll be a key thing as we get into our topic for today. Yes,

Ann Hutchison 9:43
so we function with a with approximately $2 million a year. Half of that budget comes directly from membership dues and community events or membership events that we run. The other half of that. Budget, then, is a funding stream that very specifically drives our major priority work for the organization. So and again, we’ll we’ll talk deeper about this, but we ran a five campaign that asked business to make a five year investment with us, and that generated about $4 million for use over five years. So that’s where that other million dollars comes from. Is that very specific campaign that then drives and funds this very specific strategic work? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:35
now that that’s perfect. Yes. And as you alluded to, we’re going to be focusing our conversation today around capital campaigns and being able to use those to raise the funds for these important you know, key work for the chambers are involved with so I’m excited to dive in deeper on that topic, learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the Fort Collins area Chamber. Soon as we get back from this quick break,

Joe Duemig
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Joe Duemig
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All right, Ann, we are back, as we mentioned before the break today, we’re going to be talking about capital campaigns, and you mentioned how that makes up about half of your your operating budget there at the Fort Collins area Chamber. And you had mentioned that you go about asking people to commit to to support this strategic strategy for a five year plan. Tell us more about the structure, how this is done. Just unpack it for us, you bet.

Ann Hutchison 14:41
So it it’s important to note that I inherited an amazing legacy here at the Fort Collins area Chamber. So our our former CEO, David May, who led this organization for 20 years, really did a fantastic job and helping. Our business community and especially our leadership. Think about the role of the chamber and and placing the chamber into a space where we were taking on the biggest of regional issues we were we were proving out that we could be a trusted resource, that we could actually move the dial on policy and create the future that we really want here in Northern Colorado. At the same time, he identified that we were doing that in one year chunks, and it was really challenging to start to move that flywheel relative to these really massive system changing issues. If you if you spend half of your foot your fundraising, and then you only end up with six months in order to work on the issue itself, and then you go right back into fundraising again. So David led our board through an analysis to really identify that this capital campaign concept could work for things other than buildings. And so we launched in 2016 a fundraising effort where, number one, we worked with the business community to identify the biggest issues that the business community wanted to see the chamber work on. We then packaged those with four major goals and took it out into the market and said, business community, are you willing to make a five year commitment in order for us to do this work? And that first campaign, we were able to raise $3.8 million for use over a five year window and and it was transformational for our organization. It really got this out of that one year cycle, but also laid down a marker to say our organization Well, yes, we are about people connections is really about taking on the biggest issues of our region and delivering on the promise of making change with those issues. So under David’s leadership, we ran with Northern Colorado prospers 1.0 had some great success as David then prepared to retire in 2020. We were coming up onto the last year of that five year campaign. We we went back out into the market and said, Hey, community, we’ve been doing this work. Here’s what we’ve been able to do. We think we’re still the right organization to continue this work. Would you be willing to fund us again? That feasibility study came back and said, Absolutely, we could show very specific improvements that we had made to our business environment. And business was very willing to say, yes, let’s let’s give it another round. So my first year in seat in 2021 was to take that new product out into the market and spend 2021 fundraising while wrapping up the first campaign, as far as moving the dial and again, very successful, about $4 million that was committed to us for then the next five years of programming. So we’ve been under northern Colorado prospers 2.0 for for three years, four years, with 2223 and 24 being the first three years of that campaign we’re will be taking on in next year, 2025 an analysis of, is this the right tool moving forward? Do we run another campaign or not, and what that might look like for for fundraising in 2026 so it’s, it’s, it’s been transformational for us? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:35
I really like the idea of of not needing to spend half the year on fundraising, and only have six months to do the actual work, right? So be able to do it once, and kind of have it set for a five year time frame and and be able to really roll your sleeves up and get some things done. So you’ve been there at the Chamber for you know well before this, this is put into place. How have you seen the change? I know you said you guys will be doing an analysis to see if it’s worth going forward, but how have you seen the before versus after? With with using this kind of strategy? Yeah,

Ann Hutchison 19:13
I’d love to use the example that really showcases this idea of the flywheel turning and the impact having lasting, lasting change in your community. So here in Northern Colorado, Fort Collins is connected to Denver, our city center, by an interstate. It’s called I 25 and it’s an interstate that was put down on the ground in 1969 and had really very little improvement to it since we were starting to experience as a community that our commute to Denver, whether it was to head to an international airport or or to interact with state government or or just to do business. Was going from a 45 minute commute up to closer to an hour and a half, with projections that that commute could expand to three hours in a very short amount of time. So So capacity on that roadway was was a growing, growing concern. Our transportation division said, don’t you worry about that. Northern Colorado, we have you slated to to do some pretty major improvements to that roadway, adding an extra lane, and we’ll be, we’ll be getting that done in 2075

Brandon Burton 20:35
awesome, can’t wait, right?

Ann Hutchison 20:37
This is 2015 when we’re having this conversation. Business leaders around the room had some very choice words to say and said, You know what? We appreciate that, but we’re going to knock about half a century off of that number, and we are committed as a business community and as a government community to find the funding in order to improve that roadway and have all of those dollars secured, if not the construction completed by 2025 so we’re in 2015 2020 make the big declaration we are going to fix north I 25 by 2025 because of Northern Colorado prospers and that fundraising, that campaign style fundraising, we knew we had money for the next five years to be able to very specifically create a lobbying plan to build relationships, to to to dive in full time to this conversation, To make a change. And I’m happy to report that we’re we’re coming up on January one of 2025, and we have been able to secure $1.2 billion for the improvement of that roadway. We actually have, of the five segments that we were working to improve, four of them have been completed. And actually we have concrete on the ground with an additional lane that is offering free flowing traffic we have then the final segment is now fully funded and is under construction now. So because of the funding that we had in place, we were able to go on a absolutely proactive pathway in order to make change and then turn around and deliver to our business community exactly what we promised. So very real example, and made all the difference.

Brandon Burton 22:32
That is awesome. That’s quite the quite the example,

Ann Hutchison 22:40
if only every issue was that easy, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you have a problem, you know exactly what the answer is, right? Problem is road doesn’t work. I need $1.2 billion we find $1.2 billion and we fix it. Some of these other challenges are, sadly not as easily, easily addressed it and and you can’t check the box quite as quite as quickly, but it is a very real example for us.

Brandon Burton 23:08
You had mentioned earlier that there’s there’s pillars to this work, to this plan that you guys have going forward the northern Colorado prospers. Can you talk to us about what those pillars are and and the thinking that went behind creating those pillars Absolutely.

Ann Hutchison 23:26
So our four pillars are number one, reigniting the economy. That pillar was created as we were coming out of COVID. And so reignite was a concept that we were using relative to, how do we bounce back from COVID? I would say with that goal, we’ve actually evolved it into not only recovery, which we we have been able to do since COVID, but also now, how do we accelerate our economy? How do we grow our economy in northern Colorado? So that’s our first our first goal, or our first pillar is around the economy. Our second goal is around our talent ecosystem. And how do we continue to attract, grow and retain the right talent for Northern Colorado, and what are the systems that we need to affect in order to make it again easy for people to come into our workforce, stay in our workforce, and grow in our workforce. Our third pillar is around transportation. That’s where that I 25 example comes from. We were really keenly focused at the beginning of this campaign spend window on I 25 now that we’ve been able to check those boxes, we’re now altering our vision to really be about regional roadways. How do we connect to that spine of I 25 to go east and west across the two county area, and then the fourth pillar, or fourth goal, is around a business friendly environment? What are the barriers? What are the regulations? What are the artists? Official limiters that we’ve created here in Northern Colorado that make us less business friendly. How do we eliminate those in order to inspire and encourage the opportunity for business to have success here so for for very broad areas, gives us a lot of space to be impactful, but also fully driven by our business community, saying these are our biggest pain points that we believe the chamber can be impactful around. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:30
I knew you guys would get the feedback right. You wouldn’t just, you know, pull topics out of a hat and say, this is where we’re going to put our attention and and not have any data to support that. So that’s fantastic. So when it comes to the capital campaign, do you guys? Do you put it on yourself? Do you make all the contacts? Do you bring in a consultant? How do you guys approach it?

Ann Hutchison 25:51
Yeah, so for Northern Colorado prospers 1.0 we did a full RFP with the with the fundraising community and interviewed consultants from across the country. We created a fantastic relationship with Sean McCullough with power 10. They’re in Atlanta, Georgia, and Sean is just this really dynamic leader that absolutely takes off his hat of I live in Atlanta, and becomes immersed in our community to help us really understand what’s happening at boots on the ground. He ran a feasibility study for us where we took out the basic concepts, and he then was that third party to give our business community a really confidential but easy path to share their feedback. Once we completed the feasibility study with Sean, we then did enter into a contract where he, working with our staff, managed that actual fundraising campaign for the first northern Colorado prospers. We then went back with Sean a second time to do another feasibility study, and then they were a key partner with me as I was doing the fundraising in 2021 and that outside consultant was incredibly powerful. I think, as chamber folks, we have a tendency of thinking we can bootstrap everything. But I will say that investment with power 10 and with Sean paid for itself in so many ways. They pushed us hard to be able to articulate what we were offering to the community. They also pushed us hard to be able to tell the story once we did start the work, and then again, that that anonymous, almost anonymous, third party pathway for our investors to really provide strong, raw insider feedback that again, we may or may not get as as a chamber with our community so big proponent of sometimes you have to spend money in order to make money in order to get the work done. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:09
So when it comes to making the asks for people to commit to funding, this is that you that’s actually making the ask. You’re sitting down and making those calls and make setting those meetings exactly

Ann Hutchison 28:23
right. Power 10 came in, and they were, in some ways, our back office. So they were coached, yeah, and they would coach us up. They helped us with the messaging and the narrative. They would set up the meetings so that so they were they were going through the brain damage of getting on two different schedules. And how does it work? And is it in person? Is it online? But then it was myself as CEO, doing the pitch as well as the ask. And then the great news was then power 10 was, in some ways, that that follow up closer, so I would make the ask in some cases, you know it was, it was an ask of $50,000 a year from a company for five years, and then power 10 would do the follow up to make sure if we got a warm or a hot Yes. They then did all the follow up to to finalize, have the paperwork done, and then we process the rest of that internally.

Brandon Burton 29:20
Yeah. So how long would you say the the capital campaign lasts like the actual work of, you know, from start to finish, from doing the research and, you know, surveys and everything to you’re done, and you’ve know, you know what the dollar amount has been committed for the next five years. So

Ann Hutchison 29:38
it’s, it’s probably an 18 month process. And as I noted, we’re highly focused in next year, year four of the current campaign. We’re in in doing analysis from start to finish, and then fundraising in 25 and we’re planning 18 months for that process. So. Um, we’ll be starting as soon as January, talking with our board about other ways that we could create the same kind of funding streams. Um, deciding if any other pathways make sense, or if we need to stay on this campaign path, then going out into the field with a feasibility study in q2 of next year, then making a decision in q3 on where we head. Um, q4 then is, is the narrative and the finalizing of goals. And then January one of of 26 crazy to say out loud, January 26 then I would be heading into the field to start, start those one on one conversations with a goal of being able to wrap up the campaign within about six months.

Brandon Burton 30:45
Okay, very good that that definitely helps. So you’ve done it. You’ve been in it through point 1.0 and 2.0 now, and it looks like the the amount that was committed was it increased some. So hopefully that speaks well to it being received well by those who have committed to fund this. Yes, and hopefully that’ll continue. I know you need to be sensitive, and that’s why you’re going to do the you know, this assessment, to make sure you’re not wearing people out. But it seems to, seems to work well. If they can see the results of the work you’re doing, they’ll, they’ll continue to fund it.

Ann Hutchison 31:21
Absolutely, I will say, I think one of the opportunities that’s in front of us, one is with the campaign we were talking to regional business leaders and having people that probably wouldn’t necessarily write a check for a membership, write a check four times the size of membership because they were investing directly in specific work. So so that was a tremendous change of opportunity for us as a chamber. We weren’t going to the same well all the time now, certainly key investors in our organization that have been long time. Sizable membership. Investors also invested in NCP, but the new audience, the new employer that we had the opportunity to talk to was was just tremendous. I do think as we start to look at NCP 3.0 we not only want to continue to expand that UN unusual investor in the chamber, I’m also curious about, how do we broaden this opportunity for investment to our our basic membership participants? What are those pathways for even our smallest of investors on the chamber side of the house to also then invest in northern Colorado prospers. So for us, it’s looking at both ends of that spectrum, top and the bottom.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I can feel the excitement of it too. I mean, it definitely it funds important work, and the money needs to come from somewhere, and you guys are lucky enough to have some strong partners there in your chamber to help fund this. As we start to wrap things up, I’d like to ask for the chamber listening who’s trying to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tips or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal? Yeah,

Ann Hutchison 33:21
and I know a lot of us have been using this line ever since COVID, but I think it’s very true in that chambers need and should be at the forefront of the biggest issues that are impacting a community. We have the skill set, we have the relationships we we have the foundational presence in a community to be able to take on the very biggest challenges for us in each of our communities. I would suggest that pre COVID, we were maybe hesitant as an industry and as chamber leaders to really dive in full on being that resource. COVID forced many of our organizations to be in a space that was new and unexpected, but proved out that we can be not just a voice for business, but we can be a change agent, and I really encourage my colleagues across the country to embrace that. Yes, membership connections are important. Yes, community parades and community celebrations are important. But if you really want to be a change agent, there is an opportunity and you can do it, and you’d be surprised how much the business community is willing to fund that work.

Brandon Burton 34:43
Yeah. Proofing point right there. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ann Hutchison 34:53
Yeah, again, I think in this time and space where we have a lot of. Of conflict in communities. We’ve just come off an election season that was probably as divided as we’ve ever seen since we became a country of people having very, very different views of the world. The chamber can be this fascinating, exciting, vibrant home base for multitudes of perspectives to come together, to then identify what is very best for the future of your community, and realizing that we’ve built these connections that we’re interacting with business and that can remain this incredible home base for so many community decisions. That gets me excited and showcases, I think, the role that chambers can absolutely play across the country in in creating our next future.

Brandon Burton 36:00
Yeah, I love that. I love that response well, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, if there’s anyone out there who wants to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys have gone about your capital campaign results, things that maybe we didn’t touch on, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Ann Hutchison 36:19
Yeah, certainly. My email is probably the very best pathway. Um, I’ll promote that. Our website has tons of information, just as as every chamber across the country does. So our website is FortCollinsChamber.com and Fort is spelled out. So F, O, R, T, C, O, L, L, I, N, S, C, H, A, M, B, r.com, is our website, and then my email, I’m please, please take full advantage of that, and my email is ahutchison@fcchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 37:01
That’s perfect. And we’ll get it in our show notes too, so people don’t have to try to catch all the spelling. We’ll we’ll get it in there and clickable and everything so But Anne, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. Appreciate you sharing your experiences and impact from your capital campaigns and really driving the work forward there in the in the Fort Collins area. Thank you for for being with us and sharing these insights with us today.

Ann Hutchison 37:25
Absolutely. Thank you Brandon for the invite, and again, I hope it’s of value to my colleagues across the country. If

Brandon Burton 37:32
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Rebuilding a Troubled Chamber with TJ Sullivan

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

Our guest for this episode is TJ Sullivan, after three decades as a top college leadership speaker, TJ Sullivan gave up his top airline status to become a chamber executive. TJ is currently the President and CEO of the Parker Chamber of Commerce and Foundation in Denver, Colorado area. He’s received CEO of the Year honors from the Colorado Chamber of Alliance. He graduated W, A, C, E Academy in 2023 and he also runs a Tuesday night bowling league. So, TJ, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and hopefully I didn’t steal your thunder, but, yeah, share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

TJ Sullivan 1:56
Well, hello everybody. I was, I was teasing Brandon before we got on here that, you know, there’s probably, he’s probably done 8000 of these interviews, and he finally got to the to the to the dregs. So it’s nice to be here. And greetings from Colorado, where it’s a 68 degrees and sunny today, so in December. Yeah, and you put some pressure on me, say something interesting about myself. Um, okay, so here’s my favorite one. I tell at parties. I ate at the very first Chipotle on the very first day it was open. I was working at the time at the University of Denver, and Steve Ells opened the famously opened the chipotle literally across the street from my office. And we thought, oh, look a cute new burrito place. Let’s go check it out. And, oh, my God, I wish I’d quit my job immediately and gone to work for him. I think his net worth is now $500 million so, man, if I, if I had known, if I had only known, but I went back to my white collar job across the street and felt sorry for the people putting burritos together. Those people are probably billionaires by now. So, yeah, yeah, that

Brandon Burton 3:00
that is pretty cool though, you know, yeah, first day, first Chipotle. Then, yeah, if

TJ Sullivan 3:06
you go into any Chipotle back by the restrooms, you’ll see a picture of the very first Chipotle, and you can just picture me walking in there the first day, going, hmm, chicken or steak. You know, that’s

Brandon Burton 3:14
right. Hopefully you made a journal entry that day. Yeah, July,

TJ Sullivan 3:19
July of 1993 Good Lord, I’m old. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 3:25
Well, tell us a little bit about the Parker Chamber of Commerce. Give us an idea of size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion today? Sure.

TJ Sullivan 3:33
So like in back when I back around my 50th birthday, I decided I just couldn’t travel, like I had been traveling 200 nights a year for almost three decades, and I was looking for a job here in Denver where I could sleep in my own bed and and, you know, have a more normal life. And I got a job at the superior chamber, which is up in Boulder County, up close to Boulder, very a one person show in a cubicle, doing literally everything. Did that for two and a half years, and then COVID hit, and we, we actually did really well during COVID. Surprisingly, we were one of the few chambers in Colorado that grew significantly during during COVID. And then the folks down in Parker needed a CEO, so they, they recruited me down there. So Parker is about 20 miles southeast of Denver, if you imagine the Denver Metro area as a clock face. I used to work up at 11 where Boulder is. Now I work down at five where, where Parker is in very red Douglas County, and I’m a nice Denver blue guy, so that was kind of interesting to be recruited down there. But they hate being lumped in as a Denver suburb. But as growth continues to happen, it’s just sort of inevitable that we’re becoming this affluent Denver, suburban, exurban, type of a city. They still like to think of themselves as something very unique and separate from Denver. But the Denver influence is there very small business ecosystem. It’s we don’t have a lot of big corporations manufacture. Dollars. It’s a it’s sort of got a bedroom community type of feel to it. We have about 475 business members, which translates to about 1100 humans that are attached to those memberships, and about 300,000 or so in membership revenue each year, for about 43% of our annual revenue. So we do about, we in 2025, I think we’ll do about $680,000 budget. So, and I just hired my fifth staff person to very exciting. That’s a, that’s who we are.

Brandon Burton 5:30
Did you say today? Yeah,

TJ Sullivan 5:32
literally, this morning I call, I called a, called a nice guy. I don’t know. He hasn’t accepted yet. So by the time this comes out, he might have told me to, you know, go pound sand. But yeah, we and the funny thing is, it’ll be a three men and two women in the office, so we have a little bit of a male dominated environment going on for some reason. I’m not sure how that, how that’s happening, but, you know it’s happening. So, yeah, it’s pretty fun. You

Brandon Burton 5:55
just hit the scales today with that. That’s, I know, it

TJ Sullivan 5:58
wasn’t even my choice. I let my membership VP, choose, you know, between the between the candidates, so it wasn’t even my fault, although I’m sure I’m going to be blamed for it. So right?

Brandon Burton 6:08
Well, I’m looking forward to our discussion today. I think it’s a discussion that a lot of chamber leaders can resonate with, as they’ve either been in this position or they might be in the throes of it right now, but we’ll be talking about rebuilding a troubled chamber and yeah, looking forward to hearing about your experience with this and how you’re able to overcome and all the the ins and outs of that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right. TJ, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about rebuilding a troubled chamber. And sounds like maybe this might be something that that you’ve had some. Experience with at one point or another, but yeah, it might be something close, close to home for you. But tell us what’s your experience been like? And I know everybody has their own story of, you know, the Chambers as they’ve come into them, and the approach they had to take.

TJ Sullivan 10:15
I, you know, first, I want to say that when I go to a lot of chamber conferences, we see or ACCE, it’s amazing how many new chamber executives you meet who are who are there and introduce themselves as someone who just took over a month and a half ago, and they’ve got no money and they have no idea what they’re doing. And please help me. And so I see these people, these well meaning people who are thrown into these impossible situations all the time. And having been through that a little bit, I I always feel like, man, get ready. Buckle in, because you’ve got a, you’ve got a journey here in front of you, you know. So maybe somebody listening right now is, you know, is one of those people who is like, What the hell have I done? You know, saying, Sure, this, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so for those of you that resonate with this topic, you know, I understand where you are and what’s what’s ahead of you. When I got to Parker, it had gone. The Parker chamber had gone through about 40 years, 40 or 50 years of just boom and bust, boom and bust, boom and bust and and, like a lot of chambers, it depended on who was in charge of the chamber, and how they handled money and and the economy and all the different things that affect, you know, how chambers do? When I got to our chamber, we had about $110,000 total in the bank, 80,000 of that was encumbered it. We have a big festival called the Parker Days Festival, which is about a $2 million enterprise every summer. And when COVID happened, the festival was canceled. But there was about, you know, 100 grand that had been collected from vendors and different, you know, businesses before COVID Shut it down. So about $80,000 worth of those businesses said you can hold on to the money, unless you don’t bring the festival back at some point, then we want our money back. So imagine, like, you know, basically having 100 $100,000 in the bank, and 80 of it, you know, you can’t, yeah, or if you do, you’re, you’re spending the credit card. So the the chamber had hired, had, had fired their entire staff, except for one person who is now my VP of membership. And she basically cleaned house, stripped everything down to the studs. She saved the chamber. She got the annual budget down to less than $200,000 a year. She had found, you know, so many storage units full of stuff that the previous executive had purchased. And it was just, it was just a financial she had managed to stop the hemorrhaging, but we had to rebuild, and we had to decide if we were going to start that festival back up, otherwise we had to give that money back. So it was a pretty precarious situation. And when I went in there, and even when I was up in Superior same sort of thing, it was very, very small. It wasn’t really in crisis, but it was very, very tiny, and there was a lot of ambition to grow it. So I guess, because I started my own company and ran it for 16 years and bootstrapped the whole thing, I guess I just have an orientation toward, I like to make money. I like money in the bank, and I like to be able to pay for what we’re going to do. That’s sort of my ethic. And so those are attributes, by the way, yeah, yeah. But I also, but I’m, but I am pretty ambitious when it comes to money. You know, I’m not afraid to ask for money. I’m not afraid to to charge a fair ticket price for something, and so I’m not timid about that kind of stuff. Yeah. So anyway, that was the challenge. I just had to basically, we had a lot of potential and a lot of opportunity. We had to decide if we were gonna do that festival, and that I had never done a festival before. Oh, my God, we’re talking like 40 carnival rides and 200 marketplace vendors and, you know, dozens and dozens of food vendors, three stages. I didn’t know I had never done any of that. So it was crazy. So that was a big, scary challenge, but we, thank God, we pulled it off in 2023 we 2022 2022 we brought the festival. Back. We ended up making, you know, several $100,000 we we got back on solid ground, and then we could start building so for those people out there who are walking into a mess and a really, really sad bank account, you can do it. You can do it. You just have to figure out what your assets are and where your potential is, and go hard,

Brandon Burton 14:22
yeah. So some of these people coming into these situations, it can be a variety of different things. It could be just, you know, poorly managed, you know, ahead of time. It could be a toxic board member that’s Yep, or several, or several, yeah. It could be conflict with a city manager, or something, you know, something internally that is really, you know, given a bad name to the chamber, we’ll say. So there’s a lot of different ways that things can, can kind of go awry. But as you, as you come into a chain, or maybe even before you come into a chamber, are there things. It looking back that you would want to know more about before taking a job, or questions that you would ask, or just, even if you took the job, just going into it eyes wide open, of knowing you know kind of what you’re getting yourself into.

TJ Sullivan 15:15
Well, I think, I think one of the keys for me when I took the Parker job was that the the man who was hiring me, who was the chair of the board at the time. He was super sharp and very smart and very transparent, and I liked his vibe, and I trusted him. Immediately, I knew that the board was about half people that wanted to hire me and half that wanted to hire somebody else that was very different, very very established, old school type of thing. But it just so happened that Brian was the chair, and he made my hire happen, which, in a blessing, made all the old school cranky people quit the board. So I ended up being hired by the good guys, and then the good guys were able to recruit more good guys onto the board, so good guys and women. So yeah, it was just, it was, I got lucky that I did not walk into a toxic board situation. I don’t think I would have taken the job if I got that vibe, though, I am not interested in being told no, a lot, and I’m not interested in having stale, you know, ideas, stale, stale, pale and male, as they say, right? I I’m a big booster of women business owners and minority business owners and and, yeah, I just want, I want to see a lot of diversity in in the membership, and a lot of excitement and entrepreneurship. And fortunately, the person who hired me said to me, if you take this crazy job on, I promise you will support you. And that was, that was key. Man, I couldn’t have done it without that.

Brandon Burton 16:43
That is huge. Yeah, and having that supportive board, and being able to pale still and males, it’s good to be able to move away from that, have some of that diversity represents the greater business community. That’s the way to do it, and to be able to have that confidence of your of the board chair, to be able to say, hey, you take this and we’ll we’ll support you. I see those that take positions that are being micromanaged by their board and and that’s that would just be frustrating because they’re tired. I don’t even know how you could turn it, turn around a program that never micromanaged that way.

TJ Sullivan 17:25
Well, I guess people who come into these jobs come from lots of different places. I was I came from it from having owned several successful businesses, so I had that entrepreneurial mindset. I hadn’t worked for anybody for 30 years before I took the job in Superior so I was, you know, fortunately, they knew what they were getting when they hired me. They were not getting someone who was timid, you know, they were getting someone who was fairly aggressive. So, you know, they knew what they were hiring. And thank God they they committed to that, right? I don’t think I would have been a good hire for a lot of boards out there who had a lot of ego wrapped up in things. Because, you know, the first thing, one of the first things I think you have to do when you have a troubled chamber that you’re trying to get back on the right track, I think is just to take a real hard, data driven look at the events that you’re doing. I am. It’s kind of funny that in Parker, I that one of the first things I did in the first three weeks I was there was I killed the town Christmas parade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For some reason it had fallen to the chamber to do this parade. And you know, here we were in end of September, and I looked at the I was like, show me the sponsors. Where’s the money, where’s the numbers? And, like, it wasn’t there. And I did my calculations, and I was like, we’re gonna lose $60,000 that we don’t have on this thing. So I killed the parade, and you can imagine how popular I was after doing that. I have people in downtown Parker who still aren’t members of the chamber and still hate my guts for that, but, but in a twist of irony, they

Brandon Burton 18:52
were the big sponsors, right?

TJ Sullivan 18:54
Well, they were on the committee who felt like this is something we need to do, but they hadn’t. They weren’t treating it like a business, you know, and, and so, in a twist of irony, tomorrow, I’m, I’m one of the announcers for the Christmas parade, for the 2024, Christmas parade. So it did come back, but, uh, but I killed it the first year. So, yeah, that was, but, you know, looking at the events, I mean, God, so many chamber executives walk into, into their jobs, and there’s these, just these events that make no sense, that they just have to do because everybody’s so emotionally attached to it, but the money isn’t there. And I think some if you’re not willing to go in and slay a couple sacred cows, you’re you’re gonna have a tough time turning that chamber around.

Brandon Burton 19:34
So let’s talk about that for a minute, because as somebody new to a community, new to a chamber that, yeah, you got fresh eyes, fresh perspective, taking your knowledge and experience from from where you come from, and taking it to this new community. Are there things you need to be careful? I mean, you can look at the data, you can look at the numbers, you can look at the math like, does this make good business sense? Are there any considerations beyond. On that, like, are you gonna, are you gonna make people upset, that are gonna make your job harder, and all the other aspects, or what other things need to be considered? Yeah,

TJ Sullivan 20:07
yeah. And that’s part of being a good business person. I mean, when you have, you know, if you’re we need to run chambers like businesses. I mean, I was like, I told you at 110,000 in the bank, 80,000 encumbered, and I was gonna lose $60,000 on a parade, like, There’s no way. And, and when I went to my board and showed him the numbers, I’m like, somebody tell me where I’m wrong here. And they’re like, No, you’re right. This is a mess. And I said, Okay, I’ll take the heat. And, you know, I’m not afraid to take the heat. Yeah, I was my the joke around town for about two years was, was calling me parade killer. That was my nickname. But, you know, I don’t care. I put PK. I got, I got a shirt with PK on it, you know, as my nickname. Like, yeah, I’m the parade killer. That’s cool, you know. And you know, when you, when you, when you, when you say, Do you want to see the numbers? And here it is. You know, people have a hard time arguing that, especially business members. There were community members who are very upset. Oh, my God, we love the parade. I’m like, well, good. Hand me a check for $25,000 and we will do it. Yeah. And so, you know, people don’t like being told no, but you know, if you’re going to be successful in business or successful in nonprofit management, you got to be able to stand up for the right decisions, especially when you have the data to support it. But yeah, no, you’re not gonna be popular all the time. Like I said, there’s still people who don’t like me in town, but then, you know, that’s all right. I, my board likes me, and they like the fact that we, we have money in the

Brandon Burton 21:23
bank. Now, you’re positive now, yeah, and I can, I can see the chamber member or the community, you know, just the average citizen saying, Oh, who’s this? You know, this hot shot coming in from out of town, thinking, oh, yeah, best, you know, oh, a Denver

TJ Sullivan 21:38
guy, a Denver in a list game. I still live in Denver. I live in Denver. I come from the, you know, the horrible city down to this, you know, Bucha, like small town, and I’m ruining everything. But, yeah, no, you know, I mean, again, I think it, and I’m not trying to say it. Say, like, it’s an easy thing to do, it’s a very hard thing to do, and you hurt a lot of feelings and and people are disappointed in the whole thing. But you know, maybe you don’t kill it if it’s if the numbers much smaller, you know, take a pause. So, you know, we need to take a year off and figure this out and and especially if you just came in and a damn event is happening in two months and you’re gonna lose a bunch of money on it, my goodness, you know, like, that’s not your fault. You walked into that. But right? You know, I that’s, I’m just putting that out there as a really hard thing to deal with, because when the event is over and it lost a bunch of money, they’re going to look at you and go, you know, how did this happen? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:31
So are there other obstacles you had to overcome in coming in here in Parker, or, yeah, yeah. We had

TJ Sullivan 22:40
to, we had to write, we had to right size our pricing. I mean, our pricing was a disaster, you know, because, speaking of not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings, it was a lot of fear of raising the cost of the membership. So I had to, I had to quickly, you know, do a quick survey of what other chambers in the in the county especially, were charging, and make sure we were on parity. That’s a simple way to drive in some income. And, yeah, you lose a few members. But you know, whatever, everything go everything goes up in cost. And if you work really hard to provide the value, then you know, you don’t hear that much about it. In fact, I’m raising my prices right now for 2025, by $30 at every level. And I haven’t heard of peep so

Brandon Burton 23:17
I mean, and a lot of people say $30 like, how can you do that? How it can be scary as a chamber to raise your your dues by by $30 but when you talk about $30 for the year, yeah, really, that’s what we’re crying about,

TJ Sullivan 23:30
yeah? Well, we made a big move also to moving to recurring billing. So, you know, we move all those small members that that $400 level, or whatever that everybody has, that’s the majority of their members, we move. We’ve moved about a third of them to monthly charges. And the nice thing is, it’s taken off a lot of heat on renewals, because we just they automatically renew and keep going at $42 a month, or whatever it is. So the recurring billing and taking some of the pain out of the renewal processes is another really good move to do, because, you know, most of these struggling chambers are dealing with with not enough staff to get done what needs to be done. And so if you can get people on a monthly credit card charge and get used to the cash flow implications of that, then it can be that can be a really good strategy, too. So

Brandon Burton 24:12
that also makes it easier raising dues in the future, since at a 42 a month, maybe it’s $44 a month, and you’re not going to miss $2 Yep.

TJ Sullivan 24:20
I mean, I think, you know, another thing that we did that I think was is important, is I am a big what’s the right word? I a big critic of the commission based membership person. I believe that if you’re a membership organization, doing membership right is the most important thing you do. If you don’t do that, then why are you even in business? So I believe in paying the membership person. If you’re fortunate enough to have a membership person, I’m a big believer in paying them a competitive salary and moving on, you know, like this, this commission stuff, and people rotating in and out every three months and selling bad memberships to that that aren’t even real. I mean, there’s a Yeah. I believe in having a well paid membership person. My person at Parker is well paid. She’s a rock star. She does amazing work. Everybody in town knows her. She’s She’s phenomenal. You know, I generally, I just really believe that you have to put the money where the most important things are, and that’s the people that are actually making things happen. So I spend a little bit on board development, you know, I spend money on volunteer, you know, making sure volunteers feel valuable. I kind of tend to put the money more into people than events, development, publications or things like that. I mean, I’m more into like, people because, you know, yeah, so

Brandon Burton 25:39
I’m sorry, I kind of took the head there. You’re in the people business. So that makes sense. And as far as the membership person goes, it makes sense to not have to compete among staff, and who gets credit for the deal too, the new member. Well,

TJ Sullivan 25:53
when I got to superior, it said, you know, oh, Target’s a member, and Costco is a member. But I was like, no, they’re not. Like, I can’t find anybody there. Somebody went and, like, got a $50 gift card from Target or something, and then called them a member. I’m like, No, that’s, that’s not how we’re doing things here. So, you know, when I got to, when I got to Parker, first thing I did was, was chop about 50 non members out who hadn’t paid in over a year, and we’re still sitting on the books because, you know, oh, we got to have John the the attorney as a member, I’m like, No, we don’t. If John’s not paying, John’s out, like, done, and we’re gonna add a $50 application fee. So when John wants to come back, he’s gonna pay a penalty for that. So, you know, just you gotta, you gotta come and play ball, man. You know the chamber, chamber, chamber takes some courage. Chamber takes some, uh, some uh, guts. I think if you’re going to do it right and really succeed. So, yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:43
for sure. So there’s some, some pretty fun obstacles they had to overcome. And it seems like you’re, you’re still alive, you’re, yeah, they still run you out of town yet, either. So

TJ Sullivan 26:55
no, you know, you get. Gotta get people to the table, ask them what they want, you know, celebrate new ideas, try some things. Yeah, you know, we, we first thing. First thing I’ve done at both chambers that I’ve that I’ve run, is I analyzed every single event. I looked at the money, I looked at attendance, I looked at, you know, my friend Jim Johnson from down in a down at Pearland would be very, would be very impressed with my with me talking about data, because he’s a data geek, and I am not, but, but, you know, like we looked at the basic numbers and we’re like, I’m like, why does this event make sense? It’s gone. Okay, this one is good. How can we make it better and bring five more sponsors in? So you really have to do that financial analysis of your events, not just the big ones, but even the small ones. You know, your after hours and different things. Like, could you we took one of our after hours, for example, and first of all, first thing I did was get rid of the idea of that after hours mixer has to be monthly. We do five a year now that’s it. And and we make them good, you know, we make them really fun and good, and people look forward to them. But we also get them sponsored, and we turned our November after hours into a member appreciation party with a band and then a bar and the whole thing. And we had 200 people at it. We had 200 people at it a couple weeks ago. So, yeah, you know, just fix, fix what’s not working. Inject some new ideas, take some chances. I mean, people get excited about being part of an organization that feels like it’s winning. You know, there’s nothing worse than writing a check to an organization you feel is limping along. So, you know, big part of turning a chamber around is put some wins on the board, man, and celebrate them and make sure people are excited about it, and do one good event instead of four terrible ones. You know, those kind of things. I mean, again, I know it sounds easier to say than do, but I’ve done it, you know. And it can be done. It just takes time. It’s a

Brandon Burton 28:39
really good point, though, when you consider renewing a membership and you’re like, I don’t know if this organization is even going to be around for a whole year, but yeah, here’s my check, you know. But if you see, if you see positive things happening, you see these good things, it makes it a whole lot easier to check and sponsor things so well,

TJ Sullivan 28:57
people want to affiliate with winners. I mean, I, you know, I know that sounds very I sound like a, like a basketball coach, but people want to affiliate with winners. You know, you go to any college in this country and look at the football program. If they’re winning, the stands are full. If they’re if they’re losing, they’re not, you know, this is, this is a basic here. So, yeah, yeah, I think it’s really important. And then, and then you have to put in, like, some good procedures, you know, like at the Parker chamber, I got rid of all nobody goes for free. Nobody goes for free. Board members. You know, if we have an event that costs $10 board members pay. Everybody pays, unless you’re writing a sponsorship check, everybody pays. That was, like an ethical change. I had to put in place. You know, they were used to like, Oh, I’m on the board. That means I get free this, free that, like, no more. We’re not doing that anymore. So you know, some things like that too are really important to bring the integrity up of the organization. So

Brandon Burton 29:46
yeah, I think that’s good. Just updating policies, even just the way you approach things, it takes a bold stance. It takes some courage, like you were saying, it’s not for the weak and heart, for sure. Her, but I said you’re still standing. They haven’t run you out of town yet. So I

TJ Sullivan 30:05
think a big part of it too for me, as I take care of my people, even our team is really loyal, and we all have a good time at the office. We we don’t have office hours. That’s one of the best I wish every chamber would do this. On the front of our door says, staff available by appointment, and we might open on Tuesday at eight o’clock. We might open at 10 o’clock. We our staff makes our own schedules. We give them lots of flexibility. We don’t have office hours. People sometimes will drop by at 430 and go, oh, there was nobody at the chamber. I’m like, Yeah, because we are not working at 430 on on Thursdays. You know, that’s not what we do. So you know that those kind of things also, you know, like, be more like a modern business. We, our staff doesn’t work Fridays in the office, unless we have an event. We work from home on Fridays. And boy, my staff loves that. So, yeah, you know. So we do some, you know, what are the, what are the competitive businesses out there doing? And, you know, take, take lessons from what they’re doing and replicate that, you know, so we don’t have a visitor center. That’s, thank God we don’t have a visitor center. You know, different story if you did, yeah, if you have a visitor center and you have a contract, you have to be open from this hour to this hour. Okay, that’s a whole different ball of wax, which I’ve never done. But, you know, no, we’re, we’re off running around, selling memberships, setting up sponsorships for events. You know, I’m sometimes at home putting the directory together. You know, God knows, we work where it makes sense, and we control our own schedules, and boy, that’s done wonders for staff morale and every you know, you treat people like adults, they act like adults.

Brandon Burton 31:33
I’d always say, building the team culture, but also being able to attract people where it fits our lifestyle. To be able to be able to work something like that instead of you need to be clocking in now and can’t leave until, you know, and they’ve got kids or whatever else that they got to deal with. So some of

TJ Sullivan 31:49
my board members had a tough time with with with that policy that I put in place. But I was like, Okay, well, you enjoy it. Why shouldn’t? Why shouldn’t my staff enjoy it? And, right? And, you know, yeah,

Brandon Burton 31:58
and then collect your data, and you’ve got your evidence to justify it. Yeah, we’re growing, you know, and then you can make Jim happy too. So that’s right, that’s right. Well, TJ, for the chamber leaders listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tips or action items or just what would you encourage them to maybe try to work towards that goal of advancing to the next level?

TJ Sullivan 32:27
Well, I feel like I’m going to say something that a million people have said, but if you’re a chamber executive, you need to make sure your board is investing in your growth and development. I cannot believe how many chamber execs don’t go to things like WAC or ACCE or their State Chamber association because they’re like, oh, you know, I can’t afford a night a hotel. You know what? You got to go to your board and say, you got, you got to invest, at least in sending me to something where I can meet, interact with my peers, find out their best practices, find out what the new trends are, you know, and and, and invest in yourself and your chamber by going and learning something, you know. I, you know, like I said, I was over 50 years old when I started this chamber thing, so I felt like I was, you know, I came in with a lot of experience, but, man, I had a lot to learn about what goes on. What the hell is chamber Master, you know, all these different things. And, yeah, I went to WAC, went to ACC, asked a million questions, met some cool people, got some people that I could call on, invest in that it is the one of the best things you have to demand from your board is that they find a couple grand to let you go to something where you can learn. And if they’re not willing to do that, you know that tells you mostly what you need to know about where your board’s priorities are because, you know, there’s so much benefit. I’ve never come in, I’ve never come back from one of those conferences without an idea that just dramatically affected the income bottom line, I always come back with ideas that change, change how we do things. And can I tell you one story that’s really interesting? I went to a round table type thing at WAC one time, and everybody just went around, and the question was, What’s the best thing your chamber does? And I’m like, it was a bunch of events and a bunch of other things, and one exec, and I wish I could remember her name, I don’t think she’s in the field anymore, she said, Well, we every, every two months or whatever, we just take, you know, six or eight of our members out for lunch and just do kind of a lunch with the CEO and just casually listen to them. And I was like, Oh my God. And, and so I wrote that down and took it back, and we instituted that, and we’ve been doing that for two years, and it is hugely impacted our sponsorships and our revenue and and different things simply by going to lunch with a small group. And, uh, boy, I never would have gotten that idea if I hadn’t gone to WAC. So, you know, invest, invest in your knowledge. You know, you don’t know everything. You certainly aren’t expected to know everything. Go, go listen to people who’ve been doing this for a while. So I’m

Brandon Burton 34:51
so glad you gave that as the tip that’s really the root of why this podcast exists is, I came across so many chain. Members that their boards wouldn’t, wouldn’t budget for, you know, career development for the for the chamber exec or any of the staff. And I saw the podcast as a way to be able to share best practices that didn’t tap into their budget, right? And they get to hear from people like you that’s that give that courage to approach your board, tell them you need this. You need to develop as a leader. You need the training that’s offered at these different conferences, and it’s well worth it for the organization. So I appreciate you giving us that tip, because it’s a it resonates with me very well. The question I like asking to everybody I have on the show is, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

TJ Sullivan 35:50
Well, again, with the answer that I think everybody’s probably saying, I think we have to be serious about advocacy. We have to become quasi lobbying organizations. If your chamber doesn’t already do that, start small, form a government affairs committee. You know, there’s a lot of chambers in every state that are killing it on government affairs. And that’s what brings the big dollars in, that’s what brings the big the big corporations, the big employers in, is when you can make something happen. We, we, I, when I came in, there was nothing. And we started a Government Affairs Committee, and in the second year, we decided to take on a ballot, a bond initiative that gave a big pay increase to the teachers in our area. We framed it as a workforce issue and and that same bond issue had failed three times in previous elections, and we got the chamber to go gung ho on it, and we got it passed. And now every teacher in Parker, you know, stops me and goes, thank you for what you all did. And when you have the teachers, man, you’re you’re doing well. So no, I think, I think, I think government affairs is the future. We’re going to our next big, huge hire, hopefully will be someone who is doing business advocacy, because that’s where that pays dividends. And so the future chamber is in advocacy and and when people say, Oh, I don’t like politics, I’m like, Well, you better learn, because you better start learning to like it and be that same center that’s that’s the big buzz phrase now is, you know, part of the chambers being the same center of a polarized society, there’s money to be made there, there’s there’s influence to be made there. And in my mind, that is the future of chambers. It’s not the networking with cheap Chardonnay. It’s, it’s, it’s going to your state representative and saying, let’s get a law passed that that’s more exciting,

Brandon Burton 37:35
yeah. And as you give that answer, I could, I know some are intimidated by the idea, but there’s ways to do advocacy that’s that’s very low barrier of entry, and just dabble in it. Get your feet wet, grow rely on your State Chamber. Rely on other chambers, regional chambers, get support there. And I think you’re right that that definitely is going to be a huge part of the future of chambers. And

TJ Sullivan 37:59
you know, if you’re not ready to take stand on issues or or take on a campaign or endorse candidates, that’s the big, scary one for everybody. You sure can be the the educational place where people go to learn about the issue. You know, you don’t have to take a stand on the new blah blah tax, but you sure can hold a town hall where you bring in people to explain it and discuss it, and that’s advocacy. That’s advocacy. So even if you’re afraid of of government and politics, there is a place for your chamber to to get noticed for making a difference in that area. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 38:33
absolutely. Well, TJ, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe be a lifeline if they’re at a struggling chamber right now, get some some other tips and strategies. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

TJ Sullivan 38:50
Well, LinkedIn is easy because it’s just LinkedIn forward slash TJ, Denver, that’s easy to find me there, or I think the more fun way is on Instagram. My handle is ParkerChamberCEO, all run together. And I, you know, Instagram is fun. It’s a little little lighter, a little more fun, and I love seeing what other people are doing. So I’d say those are the two best ways to interact with me. If you’re super serious, go to LinkedIn. If you’re more, you know, light, fun and silly. Go to go to go to Instagram.

Brandon Burton 39:17
All right, we’ll get those both your accounts linked in our show notes for this episode, so make it easy to find. But and if

TJ Sullivan 39:26
I only get two new followers, I’m gonna, I’m gonna let you know, Brandon that you know, please do not generate the followership that I was hoping for as as a huge social media influencer that I am. So that’s right.

Brandon Burton 39:39
Well, TJ, this has been fun. I appreciate you carving out some time and joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and getting real about some of your experiences and struggles and triumphs and things that you dealt with to overcome and to be where you’re at now in your chamber career, I appreciate that and the state you’re offering to others.

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Income Generating Community Masterplan with Rudy Flores

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

Our guest for this episode is Rudy Flores. Rudy is the President and CEO of the Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, also known as the LSRCC. He is a passionate advocate for small business and community development. Over Rudy’s 13 year tenure, he’s grown the LSRCC budget by 354% and led the creation of a community wide master plan that has driven significant public investments. He also manages the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Improvement Program and has secured grants to enhance organizational resilience and foster peer to peer training. Rudy serves as a chair on the US Chamber in on the US chambers, Institute for organizational management, Board of Regents and the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, demonstrating his commitment to advancing the chamber industry. Rudy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah,

Rudy Flores 2:16
thanks for having me today. You know, I am in a different type of chamber, I think, than most of our industry, where it’s in the inner city Chicago is a little different than most, where every neighborhood within the city proper has a Chamber of Commerce. So I’m in a square mile area that has 45,000 residents. So that’s usually shocking to people. And the business mix. We have about 800 business licenses within that square mile. So that’s something I think that’s unique. And then about myself, that’s something I that people usually find really interesting, is I just bought a car in March of 2023 so two years ago, I went 22 years without having a vehicle. I’ve always lived in more dense urban settings, Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia and Chicago, so never really needed a car, and decided to finally get one and do some more exploring and being on the two boards that you mentioned, I’ve been traveling a lot more to different chambers through my role, and it’s been really interesting and unique to go and visit, you know, rural chambers, suburban chambers. And the one thing I like to tell people is, like, you know what? We’re all the same. We all have the same struggles, the successes. It’s just our geographies are different. So it’s been really fun for me having a car and getting to drive around and, they, know, experience the chamber industry.

Brandon Burton 3:42
Yeah, that is, it is interesting. So was it an adjustment to drive again? Like to skip behind the wheel?

Rudy Flores 3:50
Yeah, I still rent cars here and there, you know. I mean, you still have to have a car originally, but, you know, it’s, I’m don’t have the downtime of, like, reading a book while on transit and stuff like that. So that’s a little different or, you know, but now I’m switching to podcasts.

Brandon Burton 4:07
Good deal. I’m glad, glad we could support that for you. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Lincoln Square Ravenswood chamber. Just give us an idea. I mean, you, you’d mentioned the 45,000 population, that square mile. It definitely is unique. But give us an idea, size, staff, budget, scope of work. I mean, it is a unique type of chamber. So just to dive into that a little bit and help help us get our minds wrapped around that, I guess.

Rudy Flores 4:39
Yeah, so when I started in was that 2011 it was just at two and a half of us, you know, two full time, one part time. Now we’re at five full time, one part time. We have a little over 300 members. Why? What else our budget is? When I started was right around three. 100,000 the last two years we’ve been over a million. So, you know, growth has been a really important thing, like trying to diversify our income, it’s been a big focus. And that’s that you mentioned in my bio, a peer to peer grant where we train other chamber professionals. It’s been about, how do you grow your budget without, you know, overworking your employees, or, you know, only having limited employees and stuff like that. So that’s been a big focus on mine, just because I love the industry that we’re in. But you know, in my community, in Lincoln, COVID area of Chicago, we’re on the north side. We’re about a mile and a half from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play. So the members that we have, a lot of them are brick and mortar retail restaurants. So I know a lot of chambers have, like the CVBS or the main street organizations, so we kind of more aligned with that, but doesn’t mean we don’t have the professional services and stuff like that. So for us, it’s always having to find a balance of like, our bread and butter is that brick and mortar retail restaurant. So we’re doing a lot of events where it’s consumer facing, but still having to figure out the right mix of things we’re doing to create benefits for those lawyers, accountants, you know, insurance agents, things like that.

Brandon Burton 6:14
Yeah. So with one square mile that you’re working with when it comes to events and different things like that, do you have a venue that you go to, like your go to venue that you use? Or how do you when you don’t have the entire city necessarily to to pull from, or maybe you do, I don’t know. I mean, how do you, how do you approach that when you have different events and where you need to utilize a venue of sorts, yeah.

Rudy Flores 6:41
So, I mean, the public street, it’s like, our biggest venue. So we, Chicago is really well known for street festivals. You know, if you’ve been to Chicago, hopefully you’ve been in the summer, when our weather is amazing. If you’ve been in the winter, it’s a different amazing. It’s cold and windy. You know, earlier this week, it was a negative three windshell, you know, at eight o’clock in the morning. So, so we really, we had two street festivals that we do in one’s in the second week of July, and then the other one is the first weekend of October. The one in the summer has about 40,000 attendees. It’s music, craft beer, local businesses and food. And where the one in October is called Apple fest. It’s a Fall Harvest Festival where we bring farms in from around the Midwest and kind of celebrate the return of fall. We hit 70,000 people this year. The we closed down almost a half a mile of our main business corridor. And it’s all about promoting local businesses. And so that’s where, like a big, big money generator for us, is that those are fundraising efforts for the for the organization, but also our members are selling product and stuff and making money. But then we do our smaller things, like in the winter we have, we’re lucky, an industrial corridor that, over the years, has turned into more like event spaces and more artists and startups and galleries and stuff like that. So we do rent some of those venues and do things indoors. We used to do galas. We don’t really do that anymore, because our membership isn’t really looking for that kind of stuff. So we do a lot more business to consumer facing events. We do things like wine strolls and beer crawls and stuff like that, where you basically go and taste like for our wine store, we go, we get wine distributors to be within each of our businesses. They can be from dental offices to a retail store, and you buy a ticket as a consumer and go and taste wine. But it’s marketing the business, because you’re not walking into something. So we do a whole bunch of different things. We also run 22 weeks of farmers markets twice a week. So we have 78 days of programmed community events that we put on throughout the year. Wow, that’ll

Brandon Burton 8:54
keep you busy. It does well. That definitely helps give some more context around, you know, setting the stage for our discussion today, and we’re going to focus most of our conversation around that community master plan, and specifically with the income generation that comes from this community master plan. And we’ll dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Rudy, we are back, so let’s, let’s dive into this community master plan. Tell us what it’s about, kind of how the vision came to be implementation, and, of course, get to the money part of it. That’s what everybody wants to know.

Rudy Flores 12:47
Yeah. So we started in, let’s say, like around 2013 or 14, seeing a lot of interest in developers coming into the community, and we had one specific street the city came into and did a streetscape, meaning they came in and redid, all the sidewalks did decorative plantings, like the brick crosswalks and stuff like that. And the in that street that they redid had a lot of just parking lots or, like, old industrial buildings that weren’t really being utilized anymore and stuff like that. And all of a sudden, developers started coming in, buying these properties, started building and multi unit homes were ground floor, some commercial and upper floors being either condos or apartments. And I noticed, like the residents of the area, like complaining. You go to these public meetings and everybody’s super angry and and everyone seen, I’d go to these as the as the chamber director, and and listen. And one thing I noticed was that people kept feeling like they weren’t being heard, they weren’t part of the process, and saying there’s no plan. And I, coming from an urban planning background, I spent my bachelor’s and my master’s programs in community planning. I was like, we need to look at not just individual properties, the way they’re developing and having public meetings talking about it, but let’s look at our entire community holistically. Bring people together to weigh in on what’s the direction they want to see growth happen, or maybe not see growth, and also letting everybody have a say, because I feel like most people that go to the in person public meetings are typically the angry ones, exactly the NIMBYs. And there are NIMBYs. And if you don’t know what NIMBY is, it’s not in my backyard and NIMBYs, yes, in my backyard, yes. And so, and there needs to be a balance, right? You can’t make everybody happy. So there needs to be a give and take. And so we were like, what can the chamber do? Because. Is backing up a little bit. Our community, starting in 2000 started to see a decline in population, and it’s a fairly affluent community now. It was originally the German area of Chicago, and over time, it’s just it’s changed into just being a mix of different people. But what was happening was our public schools, our district was getting better, so we had families moving in, and they were taking, we call them flats. They’re homes that are like each level is a different apartment, basically, so two flat or three flat, and converting them to single family. So it wasn’t changing the look and feel of the community, but what was happening is we were losing the density. And what happens then is then the businesses have less customers, and so we’re like, we need denser housing. The Chamber doesn’t want to get involved in like, the residential area drama, that’s what I call it, but the arterials, which are our commercial corridors, that’s the chamber like, that’s like, you know, our our territory, doing air quotes here. And so we were like, how do we advocate for growth along those commercial corridors to have denser housing so younger people can move in, or maybe, you know, individuals or couples that don’t have children, that are probably going to go out more and spend more money and still keep the fabric of those residential areas the way they are. So we have, basically, in the chambers, the umbrella organization of a we have a business improvement district, a taxing district that focuses on like public way, esthetics, cleaning and greening, holiday decorations. Can do some marketing programming. We do street pull banners and things like that, things like Main Street organizations do, and I know some communities have business improvement districts, so we call them special service areas here in Chicago, so that has its own board called a commission. So both the board of the chamber and that board of that taxing district both agreed to kind of partner together to put some funds together to do this community plan. And one of our goals was like, we really want it to not just be about pretty pictures of like, this is what we want things to look like. Because I tend to think that when people create these, like, elaborate plans, that just they look beautiful and they sit on a bookshelf and don’t go anywhere. We wanted data. That was the biggest piece. We still had pretty pictures, but we really wanted to have the data of what the community wanted, and so what we did was a lot of surveys and public meetings and and built this interactive website because we wanted to meet the residents and and employee employees who come into the community and people just visit. We wanted everybody to have a say and be able to give their thoughts and opinions on the way that they felt most comfortable doing. And so with the website, the way we developed, it was almost like a Pinterest, if you’ve been on Pinterest before, where you could post ideas, pictures, comments, whatever, about what you would like to see, and then people could add to it, or they could actually rank it, and if you got more likes and stuff that posted to go higher up on that that page. So that’s one way of getting people’s thoughts and opinions. We also had a map where you could place things on a map, if you, if your brain works that way, where you like to see a map, you’re like, oh, this intersection is difficult to cross that or, Oh, this would be a great place for a park or whatnot. You could post things on a map, and then we would have digital surveys. People would fill those out, and then we would make sure that all these ways that we’re trying and then go, sorry, and then go back to, like, the public meetings. We also hosted public meetings so you could weigh in on that as well. What we did was, though, ensured that we were marketing this, not just through a newsletter, but also through different social media channels. We’ve, as an organization, currently have over 40,000 followers between Facebook and Instagram. We’ve always had a really strong marketing presence, and so we really utilized those tools, so newsletters and social media and some media as well. We we have a PR firm, so we do some to our like our local online paper, we do some TV, media and stuff like that to publicize what we’re doing. So trying to make sure that we were being thoughtful and looking and creating a plan on how to get the buy in. And so through the whole process, the three or four surveys we did, we’d have like, 2000 entries for each one, wow, and, and we always make sure we do it where it’s multiple choice, right? Because most people don’t want to write, you know, anything. But we’d also always put like the other or a comment box, and we would get. 1000s of comments. It was, it was incredible to see, because I’ve done surveys so many times, but people were so invested in the project that we just got all this really great data. And so it really, it was. It really created a really great plan. And then the reason it really took off after that was because our elected officials saw the engagement that we were getting, and they were like, Oh, wow, this is my constituents. Like, right? That are weighing in. And they’re like, All right, well, this is what we’re we’re seeing and hearing because of the chamber. What can we do to actually start implementing these pieces?

Brandon Burton 20:43
Yeah. And I can see that being replicated in chamber of any size, really. If you start developing a vision, start, you know, doing the surveys, getting the feedback. I like the idea of the Pinterest type website, the maps, the surveys, compiling all the data, but, but that’s a key factor right there, is having the the elected officials seeing, hey, something’s going on here, and I need to be involved. And let’s see if we can make some of this stuff happen. It’s a

Rudy Flores 21:13
it also, it also, though the community too was really exciting because, again, there’s those original meetings with those developers coming in and developing projects without really

Brandon Burton 21:22
having the feedback coming in. Like, do we want this or not? Right, exactly. So people

Rudy Flores 21:27
were like, Oh my gosh, I have an outlet that I can finally have a voice. And it started to make people understand the chamber more, start to sign up for our information, and we now became, like, a bigger leader in our community. And then our politicians were like, oh, I need to start working with the chamber board. That’s

Brandon Burton 21:50
right, that’s awesome. So how did this start gaining traction? Once the elected officials say, hey, we need to be involved more. Let’s see how we can make some of this stuff happen. How did, how did things actually develop in, you know, seeing the ball move forward. Yeah. So,

Rudy Flores 22:07
you know, our area is split with different council members and our state rep and our state senator and stuff like that. And so everybody obviously wants a piece of the pie, and they want their piece to be first, and so that was the tricky part. So what we did? So we adopted the plan in 2019 it took a little over a year to do the plan, and we decided to do the plans, a big, overarching plan, right? It’s not something that’s super detailed about any one thing. It comes, you know, just talking about all different pieces with some recommendations on what are the things you probably should start first? So what we did was those recommendations started to do like these bite sized studies each year afterwards, and balanced it between our two council members, because that’s who we work with the closest so we’re two we’re calling wards here in Chicago. So we have the 47th Ward and the 40th ward. And we did two different studies, one in 2020 in our 40th Ward and one in 2021 in our 47th ward. And that was a way for us to work with both offices so they both know they’re getting a piece of the pie and seeing how we can do a deeper study in these in two different projects. The first project was an underutilized block of a street that, over time, had been rerouted so it was just like an empty street of nothing. And we did this a temporary Plaza during the COVID years to see, would this space eventually be able to be turned into a park, like a city park, and it worked pretty well, and that, working with the council member, was able to secure, I think, like, $12 million not just for the plaza itself, but to redo the entire commercial corridor in the section of this area which was kind of a blighted part of our of our community. And then the following year, we did a deeper dive study around our transit station, which was is in the center of our central business district for our community, to re look at an under utilized Plaza and a parking lot that we use for our farmers market and some festivals occur there about how can we make the parking lot that look like a parking lot? So be for parking when it’s not being used for some activation, but then if it’s being used for the farmers market or festival, it doesn’t feel like you’re standing in a parking lot. So what’s going to happen is it’s going to be pavement converted into like brick pavers and stuff like that, and then the plaza that’s next to it that’s very under utilized is going to be incorporated into it. So it all feels like this, like nice little landscaped area. And so both of those studies happen year after year, much cheaper than the big project that we were doing originally, but came from that, um. And then that those two little projects, both of our council members took that information and then started to look for funding sources, through public dollars that could help implement them, so we would not have been able to fund the actual construction and the construction for the first projects occurring right now. Hopefully we’re wrapping up this spring, and the other one is starting this spring and will hopefully be finished within a year.

Brandon Burton 25:25
Okay, that’s awesome, but I like seeing that, the vision that gets caught, and then, you know, seeing that the ideas spread. So the idea of this being a so you get these, these big improvement projects right as part of the master plan, and there’s big expense that comes along with that. Like you said, you know, elected officials are going after the funding, looking for that, but we’ve also talked about this being income generating for the chamber. So how does that play into the overall master plan? Well,

Rudy Flores 26:02
there’s a couple, a couple of things. So the Some people ask, what does this have to do with a business organization? Right where in enhancing the public way? Well, the public way, you know, the prettier it is, the more likely consumers are going to come and support the businesses along that. And so the current businesses started. The ones that were part of members already knew what we’re trying to do. The ones that weren’t, oh, seeing that the chamber is really trying to invest in their area to ensure that they’re going to see growth of, you know, foot traffic and stuff like that. And then we also started to see, like, developers looking at now properties we have, I think, like 400 plus units now being built within this, this confined area because of the plan, because they know that all of this investment, public investments, coming. But we started having people like, message us, like businesses message us, and we’re like, Hey, I saw the work you’re doing. How do I get involved in this. Like, it just started to build a conversation, because we just became more noticeable. Like, it wasn’t just about the events that we do. If you’re not brick and mortar retail restaurant, you might not want to do some of our public facing events. It wasn’t about the networking. It was just this, this change that’s happening, I think, in the chamber world in the last couple of decades, where it’s not just about networking, because you can network in so many ways. It’s just another component to showing what a business organization is doing to try to create more business for businesses,

Brandon Burton 27:36
right? So it’s very organic. The revenue generating is organic, and these businesses seeing the value, wanting to be a part of the chamber, wanting to support, wanting to just be engaged more fully. So have you, I know construction, you’ve got two sides of the coin, right? It’s very positive. It’s exciting to see new growth, new development, and then you’ve got the headache of dealing with the reality of this road’s closed for some time, or I can’t go the way I normally would go, or access to my business might be altered a little bit. Yep. So are you hearing any of that feedback yet? Is, how do you how do you deal with that through I, I’m I’m in Texas, and we get we’ve got a lot of growth here and and we see that with construction, where, especially, you know, access to businesses, and it’s an opportunity where a chamber can step up and help provide some solutions, right? But what obstacles are you seeing coming up, and how do you go about helping to resolve those obstacles.

Rudy Flores 28:41
Yeah, so the research we had done before the construction started, we knew that usually, when there’s the construction happening on the street that you’re located on your your sales might dip by 25% you know, at minimum, sometimes. And yeah, because just getting to the business or finding parking or just being able to walk down the sidewalk becomes difficult. You know, we learned that the hard way, like having to communicate better, like more often trying to meet people where they need to find their the communication, like the one of the first projects I we could have done better, getting the word out about what’s what to anticipate, and so learning from the mistakes of like, maybe not. We didn’t walk door to door handing out flyers. Right now, we have the contractors on the construction team, like working with our local government, having them go and ensure that they’re handing out individual flyers. We’re already emailing and stuff like that, but we all know we get a bazillion emails, and if you’re a small business, you’re wearing so many hats, you’re going to miss a lot. So that was one thing. We also started to do weekly contract meetings. So the chamber attends it with the contractors, our government official offices, somebody also attends it, but it’s open to the public. So. So if a business has a concern about maybe, you know, they’re getting deliveries or stuff like that, they can join that call. Or if they have any grapes, you know, they can just make sure that the team that’s doing the construction and can hear it. The construction started to become phased instead of just doing a whole street at one time, like three blocks at a time, only on one side of the street, so you’re not just disrupting everybody and everything. Started to look at the way that logistics of each project were being done. So you know, we had to learn the hard way. But at the main takeaway is, there’s never too much communication, and I think it’s our role to ensure that we communicate the way that people want to receive the information. It’s not always about what’s easiest for us. It’s about how to get that message out there and then being able to show like I did a printed delivery, I did a email, I did a phone call, or whatever you can do, because then it really shows you care. And those little things, I think that’s what makes chambers really unique and special, and I think that’s what makes the businesses happier. And then they want to be a part of you and continue being a part of

Brandon Burton 31:15
you. Yeah, I think sometimes we’re afraid to try to reach out one more time or one other way, because we don’t want to over Burton, the recipient, right? The Chamber members, yes, and when it’s going to directly affect their business. I think if you feel that prompting, if you feel like maybe I need to call too, or I need to, you know, do a personal flyer, whatever it is, I’d say follow that gut instinct, yeah,

Rudy Flores 31:40
because it’s not us asking for money. Like, they probably, that’s what they’re not looking at your sales like, Hey, can you sponsor this or whatnot? This is like, hey, I want to ensure that you’re ready to anticipate any, you know, things that might put a pause and in your business, or, you know, in consumer spending,

Brandon Burton 31:56
yeah, well, it definitely seems like an exciting time you guys got a lot going on, great vision and and lots of opportunity. I like to ask for, for those listening, who are, you know, wanting to take their chamber up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you suggest to them and trying to accomplish that goal? So

Rudy Flores 32:19
the big thing for us is, was the the money that needed to be utilized right to do this project. And so, you know, having a reserve is extremely important. If you know you’re around around 2008 in the recession, hopefully your chamber started to make sure they were having a reserve after that issue, especially through 2020 Yeah, right, right. If you didn’t have a reserve, I know some chambers that you know, closed because of it. So we’re lucky that we, you know, have learned over the course of decades and had a large reserve, and so we had started to budget, to put money aside for this project. The way that we’re doing that is through our festivals, so communicating to the public that when you’re coming to our festival and donating money, because we asked for donations at our entrances, that money we’re saying is going towards these kind of projects. So being very transparent about where the money is going, I think the community then really, like, starts to notice and understand and they want to support you. So that’s been that was our biggest thing. So I just budgeting is extremely important, and really ensuring that you’re trying to raise money. I think that, from my perspective, a lot of chambers tend to be afraid to charge for what they’re doing. But we do great work, and we don’t work for free, and so we are a business at the end of the day, and so really looking at, how do you generate money, not only to grow but also to do bigger projects. And then if you can tell the story of why you’re increasing your fees or asking for donations because of what you the projects you want to do, I think that goes a long way.

Brandon Burton 33:58
So with those business and community improvements going on, and you incorporate that into these events, and saying that these the money, the funds that are donated here, help to support that. Are you seeing an increase of people participating with those donations? Has the needle moved with that, or as far as how that’s being communicated and then and reciprocated on the back end?

Rudy Flores 34:19
Great question from our local community, yes, but as we were becoming more well known, so like the event I mentioned that happens in the fall Apple fest, we went from 50,000 people in 2023 to 70,000 in 2024 we did not see an increase in our gate donations for that event, it stayed the same. So our thoughts are our community that’s been coming take care is hanging, yeah, but now we’re pulling from a much wider audience that’s not going to have the connection to our community. They’re coming for the event and not not for like I want to make sure that this community is strong. Yeah, and so we now need to relook at our messaging and stuff. And how do you communicate that when everyone’s trying just to walk into the event, how do you market like, why this event is more than just getting a slice of apple buyer or buying a bushel of apples?

Brandon Burton 35:14
That is really good feedback, though. It’s good information to know that it’s being supported locally. You know, the community locally understands and that messaging is getting to them. And I can see somebody coming from out of town like, Hey, I don’t live here. What do I care? Right? I just exactly so, yeah, now that is interesting. Well, I like asking everyone that I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Rudy Flores 35:43
You know, I think that you it has to be very mission focused. The younger generation, we know is not joining our organizations like the older generation. And I think part of that is because, not because they don’t want to be a part of something, is that they want to do something that’s like ensuring It’s more meaningful to what their beliefs are. And so I really believe it’s us having to really stand behind what our organization stands for, communicating that and showing that value. So it isn’t about the events like it was. I just the events of getting together and meeting somebody. There’s so many ways of meeting other people. It has you have to have a purpose that people feel emotional about. And so I think that that is one of the things. And I think economic development, I think that, you know, government is pulled so thin, and we seem to expect government to do everything, and in this example we’re talking about today, we took the initiative to do the plan ourselves, because we knew that our local government didn’t have the capacity to do it like they’re doing projects in our downtown and not in our neighborhoods, which is fine, like our downtown needs it, but we wanted to ensure that we were in control of our own destiny and our own community. And I think that that’s a direction that a lot of chambers can go, and I don’t think they need to do it alone. You can partner with somebody, because these can get costly. So finding another nonprofit organization that has shared values that you can bring, you know, resources together to do these kind of things, or do little, you know, small little studies that grow into a bigger one. There’s, there’s so many different ways you can do

Brandon Burton 37:27
it. Yeah, I like that. Being mission focused and communicating with that mission is clearly so people understand that the cause, the purpose, like, what is it you’re getting behind? And it’s still, it drives me crazy to this day when somebody will ask me, What does the Chamber of Commerce do?

Rudy Flores 37:44
Same here? Well, where do

Brandon Burton 37:47
we start, and which chamber are you talking about, right? Well, Rudy, this is great. And I think there’s you know, things that can be scaled too for other communities to be able to look at what you guys are doing here, and creating that vision and that sense of community, and driving that forward as to what the community wants things to look like and to be able to take some initiative on that. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about your approach or how you guys are doing things there. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you? Yeah,

Rudy Flores 38:22
well, first you can go to our website. It’s LincolnSquare.org on the far right drop down menu as our SSA. That’s our taxing district that shows the master plan and everything we’ve spoken about today is broken down into pieces and actually the entire process of how we did it. So that’s there publicly available. My name is Rudy, r, u, d, y, you can email me at rudy@lincolnsquare.org. Happy to chat. This is I nerd out into this kind of stuff. So happy to talk about it, or just contact us at the contact box on our on our website, and that’ll get to me.

Brandon Burton 38:58
That’s perfect. Well, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode too, and make it easy to find you. But Rudy, I appreciate you taking time to be with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing some of these successes and vision that you guys have, and the really how you guys are moving the needle and seeing the the improvement of your community. It’s it’s fantastic.

So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Chamber Passion with Joe Aldaz

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

Our guest for this episode is Joe Aldaz. Joe is the President and CEO of the Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber and Education Foundation. He is a seasoned nonprofit leader with over 20 years of experience, he has revitalized the chamber, achieving national recognition for its growth, membership retention and impactful events. Joe is a passionate advocate for diversity and leadership development, founding the adelante Leadership Institute to empower marginalized communities. His as his efforts have created opportunities for bipoc business owners and fostered strategic partnerships at all levels, a sought after speaker and consultant. Joe’s expertise spans nonprofit management, small business ecosystems and veteran services, but Joe, 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.

Joe Aldaz 2:13
Sure. Well, you know, thank you for this great opportunity to kind of share our story about our chamber journey here in Colorado Springs, but something maybe not a lot of people don’t know about me is I have a journey into thoroughbred horse racing. So I am a micro share owner in a program called my race horse so it gives you the opportunity to to experience being a owner and watching thoroughbreds race across the country, so I’ve kind of dabbled in that with my son over the past few years, and it’s just fun being able to have very small shares, act like an owner and watch one of your horses win a great race. So that’s something a lot of people don’t know about me, but coming from New Mexico, a lot of horse racing there in the state of New Mexico, I kind of grew up around it and had the opportunity to experience it as An owner, beginning in 1995 but then stepped away from that and had the opportunity again, about five years ago, to purchase some shares in a stable of horses, very small percentage, but it’s just fun having that great experience to watch Your horse coming down the home stretch, and it’s a, it’s wins a race. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:04
no, that is interesting. I’m actually, I’m in North Texas, and so we’ve got a lot of, a lot of horse ranches, a lot of horse breeding that goes on around here and and a lot of these race horses come out of, you know, not, not too far from where I am, but that that is neat. It’s a something I don’t know a whole lot about, but I admire it is something very fascinating. Well, if you could tell us a little bit about the Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of chamber, scope of work, staff, budget just kind of set the stage for our conversation today.

Joe Aldaz 4:45
Well, the Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber was originally incorporated in 1988 and they had a pretty impactful run up until about the early 2000s and obviously has a small identity. City chamber where you were your your revenue is based on memberships and sponsorships of event. It’s very hard to sustain that unless you have an effective staff in place. So ironically, in 2006 I was in between jobs from the defense sector being retired Air Force, somehow they found me, and they asked me to come on board, to be their sole staff member as their executive and to rebuild the membership in the chamber and professionalize their board of directors. So not knowing a whole lot about chambers, I took on that role for a little over a year, grew their membership that had dwindled from probably close to 400 to less than 100 and built it to back over 200 in a year, uh, began to develop some programming and structure for the organization, but then had an opportunity to Move on to the USO and and serve in a position there. So I was far removed from chamber operations from beginning in 2007 but in 2009 the Hispanic Chamber closed its doors based on not having funding and able to continue operations. Four community members in 2016 reestablished and reincorporated the chamber as the Colorado Springs Hispanic Business Council. And they reached out to me in 2018 to come on their board that evolved to becoming their board chair in 2000 in the June of 2018 I volunteered to serve out that board chair’s term, but that turned into almost a two years as a volunteer board chair. At the time, I had a full time role in veteran trainings, facilitating and training veterans for Syracuse University in a program called onward to opportunity. So that was my full time job, as I was the volunteer board chair. But when I took on this role, we had 22 members in June of 2018 $6,000 in our account. And to make a long story short, I retired from Syracuse in March of 2023, and the board made me, asked me to be their full time executive. And since that time, in June of 2018 we’ve evolved to over 350 members, over $200,000 in assets, and we continue to grow. We have a very robust event schedule and programming. And believe it or not, when you mentioned about our staff, I am the staff for the Hispanic Chamber. Wow, all things that we accomplish are the support of our board of directors and myself, making sure that we deliver the high caliber programming, high caliber events to our community and our Hispanic Chamber members.

Brandon Burton 8:15
So that is very impressive. Great job. Sounds like they got the right man in the seat there. So keep it up. Man that that blows my mind to go from 22 members when you come in to over 350 now. So as I, as I reached out to you, and we were setting this up, we talked about, kind of focusing the discussion today on overall chamber passion. And you know, this kind of, these kind of results don’t happen without passion. So I’m excited to dive in deeper on this passion and kind of what drives you with this as soon as I get back from this quick break,

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Joe Aldaz 12:09
I know the my passion kind of is centered around trying to create a lot of opportunity for Hispanic owned and multicultural businesses in our community. This is the fastest growing entrepreneurial market in the country. If you look at the just the the economic power the Latino population has in the United States, it’s 3.6 trillion GDP, which is the fifth largest in the world, resident in our country. So the indirect and direct impacts of that are, there’s going to be entrepreneurs that are going to be starting a business, because that’s opportunity to grow generational wealth, which the Latino culture continues to try to build in the United States. So that drives my passion, and I just want to be of service to those businesses, to help our community grow and continue to build that small business ecosystem here. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 13:19
I mean, you really are in a position to see lives change for sure. You know creating that, the generational ability to be able to create a place, tell us a little bit more about some of the programming, the the approaches you take, what how is the chamber stepping into this role that that really can be so impactful for these individuals and their families. Well,

Joe Aldaz 13:47
you know, we we provide, as an example, one of the programs we provide, and it’s a free service we have, what’s called the avanzar business accelerator program, that is a digital platform that we created through one of our board of directors who has been in the startup business space for several years. And what that allows us to do, and we are providing that as a free service to all startups and entrepreneurs in the Colorado Springs community. It’s a 24/7 digital platform. Entrepreneurs can register and go in and gain training in a lot of different topics, from building your financial plan, building your business plan, identifying the right type of client for your market, develop financial projections, all of those things that impact growing a business. And we’ve made that free for all entrepreneurs in our community. And as we grow, we believe that we’re going to reach and touch 1000s of entrepreneurs here in COVID. Colorado Springs. So that’s a unique program that we have that no other Chamber of Commerce here in El Paso County has here in Colorado Springs. Another unique program that we have is the adelante leadership institute that is a 10 month fellowship program through Education Foundation, and we’re developing a pipeline of emerging Latino and Latina talent to become more civically engaged and begin service on nonprofit boards and commissions in Colorado Springs to start to change that diversity of what boards look like in our community, since the Latino population is the fastest growing population here in Colorado Springs.

Brandon Burton 15:47
That’s that’s awesome, hey, and a great the business accelerator. I love that idea, and being able to have that as a free offering, a free resource to help these businesses really get their their business up and going. Definitely, I’m always fascinated being a Hispanic Chamber, aside from word of mouth, how do you how do you target people you’re trying to reach out to, versus a chamber that has a demographic, a, you know, more of a geographical footprint, you’ve got geographical but then also the subset,

Joe Aldaz 16:22
right? Well, I relied on having a very high caliber board of directors. Uh, Frank Sinclair, who’s on is one on our board. He is the, what we call the great connector and networker in our community. So he has a large network of organizations and businesses. He also has a show called The be encouraged show that he they host, pretty much on a daily basis, where they bring in small businesses to give them exposure and help them build and gain that that branding and access to our community. So I’ve used my board of directors networks. I’ve been in the community since 1999 and then the several different capacities, and I’ve leveraged that network as well, and kind of in essence, have called in a lot of favors. Hey, can you help us with our chamber and make a member investment or sponsor an event, and I get, I think my track record of the other positions I’ve been in, I think there’s some trust that has been built there and credibility to where they say, yes, we’ll we’ll make that investment. Perfect example of that is I met with a a colleague of mine who happens to be a 1983 Air Force Academy graduate. He was a classmate of mine in 1983 runs a major company here in Colorado Springs, and we met over coffee, and he said, You know, I want to help you. And he made a significant investment in our organization. So it’s those types of relationships has here in Colorado Springs and Frank, who’s on the call here at podcast as well. We’re very relationship driven community here. It’s not transactional. It’s, you know, having relationships like this, talking with people over coffee, meeting them and establishing that relationship, which I think the outcome directly is, if they see that it’s a valuable relationship, they’re going to make that investment in time or talent or their resources to help your organization. So that’s what I’ve really been passionate about is being a chamber that is relationship driven. If you go to our website to become a member, you have to click on partner. You don’t click on an icon that says member, because member, to me, is more of a transactional type word partner is we want you to invest in us and become a community investment partner, because we’re helping build community through business. So we’ve kind of changed that dynamic of membership to becoming a community investment partner with us, because you’re helping build the community through our your investment into our organization. So

Brandon Burton 19:23
when somebody goes through that process on the website and and instead of becoming a member, they become a partner. How long from the time that they sign up and they they say, Yes, I want to be a partner. I want to I want to join before they hear from you, to develop, start building that relationship. They’ll have for

Joe Aldaz 19:43
me pretty much immediately. You know, I will we, we send a welcome letter out to him, pretty much through our technology, and then I will reach out to them, to to to see if they will want to meet and ask questions we have. Believe what we call a member orientation sessions, where they can log in, and it’s a very free flowing discussion to answer any questions, whether you’re a new member or a current member, just to you know, to explore what their needs are, what their services are. But I have met with executives in the large companies here that are members, and I’ve met with those micro business owners over coffee that may have five employees to try to learn, you know, what their needs are on how they can, you know, help expand their market or grow their business, because every one of our members has different needs. Some of our members just want to come to our events and network. Others are trying to find business resources. Others are trying to figure out how they grow their business, to access more capital in order to enable it to grow so there’s a variety of needs that these different businesses have, and some of our major financial institutions and corporations that are invested in us as well?

Brandon Burton 21:03
Yeah, I was hoping that was going to be your answer, that they hear from me almost immediately. I’ve seen other chambers where the button says join. Click here to join, become a member, and it’s all about that transaction. They put in their credit card information, they get loaded into the database, and, boom, they’re a member, and then they may not hear, I mean, there might be an email sequence that they receive, but that personal communication they may not hear for months, and it very much is transactional. So going, you know, leaning into building these relationships and having it be, you know, something that ends up being really more of a transformational relationship. To be able to help these businesses thrive is so important. And I like how you mentioned every business they join for different reasons, they have their their reasoning for for being a part of it. And I think bottom line is they all want to see their business grow, right? That’s the That’s the common the common need. But it comes in different ways, whether it’s looking for funding or networking or those different opportunities, but being able to get to know these members and their needs helps you align them to you know those best fits and make those introductions to the people that that they need to meet to be able to thrive, right? Are there any other maybe unique approaches you take into building relationships with these partners?

Joe Aldaz 22:30
You know, one of the things that we established through our chamber is in late 2022 I reached out to all of the other local chambers here and asked them how their networking events were going, what the attendance was like. And they said, you know, we’re kind of getting the same people that come. They’re not really growing. So I threw out the idea of coming together and collaborating to host what we called quarterly business after our events. So we hosted our first, first one in March of 2023, and we had five chambers involved with it. And we called it the chambers of El Paso County Business after hours, every guest that comes registers through their own chamber. And we just had one chamber that kind of CO hosts to man the registration has members came in. And that initial one that we did in March of 2023, that we hosted, we had about 120 some guests. Since then, they have grown to a couple of our quarterly after hours to over 200 guests. Wow. That spirit of collaboration, of being, you know, trying to bring members from other chambers to connect with members of other chambers. I think it’s been a pretty great experience, because we’ve seen the the growth and at the same time. It’s a $10 investment. When we have a multiple of activities going on here in Colorado Springs, we found that if somebody’s going to invest their time, they’re seeing this event as an opportunity to be connected with several different organizations at one time. So that’s something that unique that we’ve done to try to build that relationship as well. We are very social type organization. If you come to our business luncheons, we have done a pivot on what a luncheon looks like. We bring in an inspirational speaker to speak to our audience, because we, I felt, feel that if they leave with a very inspiring, motivational message, they’re going to be a better business owner, and they’re just going to be a better individual in general, which I think will impact them as either a staff. Member of an organization, owner or an owner of a business. We’re having our last luncheon next Tuesday, and we’re bringing an Air Force Academy graduate and former MBA basketball player, Antoine hood, who led the Air Force Falcons in 2003 and 2004 to the Mountain West Conference Championship and the first appearance in the NCAA Tournament in I believe it was 42 years Wow, wow. He has a very great story on his journey trying to break into the NBA. And now he’s an entrepreneur that’s developed a very unique water bottle that you can use for your marketing, in your business and in sports venues. So you know, those are the types of individuals we bring in in June of 2023 we brought in an individual named Vince papale. His story was the Walt Disney movie, invincible, that Mark Wahlberg starred in. Yeah eagles, yeah about the Philadelphia Eagles. Great, great, great luncheon. People left just inspired. Everybody got his the book that he had just recently authored. So it’s that luncheon is very high energy. People establish relationships in there, and they look forward to coming back to the next quarterly luncheon. We don’t do a monthly lunch, and we do a quarterly luncheon just because of time and resources, but it’s now work become affected because they anticipate and look forward to the next one, because they know the types of speakers we bring in to leave those great and inspiring messages.

Brandon Burton 26:56
Yeah, so obviously, we’re on a podcast platform. I’m a big fan of podcasts, and I’ll, I’ll hear a lot of great, you know, motivational type people on podcasts. But there’s something different to being in the same room as giving a speech and and in the people that are there in attendance, they’re going to leave and tell other people, you know, I heard anvil hood talk about this, and you know, to be able to be there is going to generate more that word of mouth and the positive traction that you’re looking for. And I just I applaud you for getting these great speakers to come in and and be energizing and uplifting to those who are in attendance. That’s awesome. So you got your you’ve been innovative in your time there had just trying to make things work. You’d mentioned the quarterly networking, you know, the five chambers throughout the county. I’ve seen in some areas where some chambers may shy away from that regional collaboration when it comes to events like that, because they’ll get things, they’ll let things get in the way as to, like, who gets the money. You know when you register, you know if you’re hosting it, but you’re all registering your own chamber, like the logistics of it, trying to get everybody to agree on how that all works. What kind of structure do you guys use? How does it work to have black chambers work for you guys? We

Joe Aldaz 28:29
make it as simple as possible, so every individual registers through their own chamber, and they keep that revenue. And we ask that one chamber kind of hosts, it, select the venue, work with a venue to hopefully make complimentary appetizers. Usually it’s at a place that there is a cash bar that they can have a drink. And it’s worked pretty effectively, because it’s not really, we’re not really trying to make huge dollars. We’re using it as people connecting and networking. There’s no programming in the event, you know, initially there was thoughts, Well, should we have an educational session before the networking? And I said, this is a Thursday evening, and people are trying to decompress from the end of the week. They just want to come and enjoy themselves. The only remarks are made is the executive from the participating chambers make some brief remarks about some upcoming events, welcoming all the guests here, and that’s it, and it’s just socializing and networking. So as far as the lift and the logistics, everybody’s been very agreeable, and they can make a little bit of extra money through their their chamber for their members, and that COVID, that host chamber, just does all the logistics with the venue and appetizers and things of that nature. So there hasn’t been really any pushback. And, matter of fact, there’s been some other chambers when we initially started, how do we get involved and participate as well? The Philippine American Chamber of southern Colorado just established over a year ago. They’re going to host one next year. Awesome. So so it continues to grow, and it’s just a great collaboration. You know, people enjoy being around a lot of different people that they may not be connected with if through their own chamber. Is

Brandon Burton 30:32
there any sponsors with these networking events? No,

Joe Aldaz 30:36
because, you know, it’s not. It’s not something that we’re looking to make a lot of money, because once you get sponsored, then you’re that’s where we say, well, how do we share that sponsor revenue amongst the five chambers that are actually participating in it? Yeah, we just make it a straight networking event with no sponsors, because every chamber has their events scheduled where they can gain that sponsorship revenue, so we’ve made it as simple as possible. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 31:04
I like that very good. Well, Joe, I like asking this question to everybody that I have on the show, and I think it means a little more coming from you, because as as chambers listening may have a desire to take their chamber up to the next level. I’d argue you’ve taken the Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber up several levels. But what kind of tip or action item might you share for those listening who are trying to accomplish similar goals?

Joe Aldaz 31:38
I think that what I would want to leave other chambers with is think out of the box and try to be innovative in the approach that you take to chambers. And I think chambers need to be community minded as well, and not so focused just on business. Because I think if you’re trying to build community and be active in your community, in community events, or have what you would call a community event that indirectly is going to impact business throughout your community as well. Perfect example of that is we are now in the process and have launched a campaign through one of our board of directors that is in the Latino health equity world, called one school, one vaccine at a time. And what that is, is we are working with a school district here right now, in Colorado Springs, and looking to build it to other school districts. We want to make vaccines accessible to Latino, specifically Spanish speaking families, because many of these Latino families are business owners, but they cannot make the window of opportunities for vaccinations for their kids and their families during the times that school have those so what? So what our board member has created, and she’s been in this space for several years, is we are hosting vaccination clinics that are outside of those normal working hours on a Sunday morning, on a Saturday evening, to make sure that those organizations, those individuals have access, and our school district that we’re working with has been very flexible to that, and we’re working with the county and the state to continue to mobilize and grow that program. So that’s where we believe that we’re community minded, because those business owners, business can be impacted if they’re not, you know, vaccinated and are not being able to work and own a business because they’re sick and they haven’t been able to get those types of vaccinations, because it’s a family focused thing. If your child is getting vaccinated at these clinics, that family is more apt to get the vaccinations they need as well. So that’s just one example that that we we have fostered. The other thing that we foster is our major signature event is not an annual gala type dinner. We have transitioned, and we’ll be in our fifth year, we have an outdoor Latin culture event called La vida love. It’s a community focused event. You come in, it’s a ticketed event. You come in and sample small bites of cuisine. We have distilleries and breweries or small pores, and then we have live Latin bands performed throughout the evening. So it’s a it’s starting to be tagged here in Colorado Springs, as the premier summer business social in southern Colorado. We’ve grown it since our inception in 2021 from about 250 guests. We. We’re close to 700 guests this past summer that we did it. We do it on a Saturday evening at a country club that’s attached to a a resort called the shine Mountain Resort, and it’s just a great a great event. The only programming that we have there is we announce our Hispanic Business Award recipients. So they get some branding, because they’re out there receiving an award in front of almost 700 guests. And that’s a very community minded guest. I mean, we it’s we have our Hispanic business members come, but the community comes, and they, pretty much now are marking it on their calendar to say this is the summer event that we want to be at. That’s

Brandon Burton 35:43
awesome. I love that. I love that it’s outdoors. I mean that that brings its own issues, as far as planning and hoping weather works out and all that. But we’ve

Joe Aldaz 35:52
been lucky for the five years we have, we have not had any rain, and it’s the setting. Is a very intimate setting. We are on a golf course beach over a lake overlooking the mountains with a large stage for our performers. And it’s just, it’s just a really nice setting, and people enjoy it. They enjoy the samples of food, the distilleries that with provide the small pores of bourbon whiskey lagers, and people have fun. And as you know, with our culture, Latin culture, if you have food, drink and music, we will be there.

Brandon Burton 36:32
That’s right. And having it be outdoors is very inviting to the community as well. Nice setting, yeah, if it’s indoors in a big conference center the community doesn’t see it, and being outdoors, yeah, and here

Joe Aldaz 36:45
in our community, there’s a lot of non profits and there’s a lot of annual dinners. So we say, what can we do different, to be our signature fundraiser, but be more of an attractive and separate us from the rest of the group to say, Hey, this is a more of an inviting event that we’d like to come to. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 37:04
you guys made a great choice. I love it. Well, Joe, I like asking everybody 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?

Joe Aldaz 37:16
I think chambers need to the model that chambers currently work under, as far as memberships and sponsorships and being event driven, I think it works to a point, but I think chambers need to become more innovative and figure out how to create other revenue streams to help their organization grow. We believe our avanzar business accelerator program is one of those types, because we have the opportunity to provide sponsors and corporate entities to be part of that training module that we have on the platform. So if a financial institution wants to say, hey, we would like to provide a training module on access to capital. Well, there’s an investment to have your brand on our platform to provide that training. So that’s an example of another revenue stream. And just trying to develop partnerships with some of our businesses, and we’re always looking to explore those. I know a lot of chambers have what they call affinity programs, where you can get member discount, but what we did a little bit differently this year, and we experimented with it. One of our members is a coffee company called model citizen coffee, and what they did is they developed a specialized coffee that we could promote and get 20% of the revenue, called Rico Suave, so people into members could go to our website, link up to the company, and it every one of those bags of coffee sold, we would get 20% of the revenue. One of our members has a ather Vida beer company. She has done the same thing. They have developed a special lager that they’re putting in a lot of different venues, and we are getting 20% of the revenue from that lager being sold, not large checks, but there are additional revenue that comes into our chamber, and it’s helping build that business members brand as well, because they’re showing that they are engaged and participating with the work that we’re doing and helping us grow as well.

Brandon Burton 39:39
Yeah, it’s a win, win. And those little checks add up. You get enough lines in the water like that, they add up. Well, Joe, this has been great. I can feel the passion you have. I can see the the impact that you guys have been making. And and it excites me to see the revitalization of the Colorado Springs Hispanic chamber. And. And the impact, the true life changing impact that’s being presented there. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you. Where would you point

Joe Aldaz 40:13
sure our website is CSHispanicChamber.com, my email contact is info@cshispanicchamber.com, and if people want to contact me directly via phone, it’s 719-231-5353, and I’d be happy to to speak with anyone on you know, if they have more questions on what they heard today, and just looking forward to hopefully having some ideas that have gone out here today for other chambers that you know across the country.

Brandon Burton 40:52
Yeah, definitely some things that can be implemented. So I appreciate you sharing these insights and your experience and enthusiasm and just overall passion for the work you’re doing and the impact that it’s making. So thank you for being with us today. I appreciate it.

Joe Aldaz 41:08
Appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 41:11
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Non-Profit Collaborations with Crystal Narr

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

Our guest for this episode is Crystal Narr. Crystal is the Executive Director of the Chillicothe Area Chamber of Commerce in Missouri, not to be confused the other Chillicothe chambers. We recently had Mike Throne in Chillicothe, Ohio, so but Chillicothe, Missouri, and she had attained her bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from Missouri Western State University through her many community minded interests, Crystal found her niche in the nonprofit sector, leading downtown revitalization efforts with Main Street Chillicothe for six years before accepting her current role in 2014 she serves in volunteer leadership roles in numerous community and state organizations, including Chillicothe Rotary Club, Livingston County Library Board, Bright Futures Chillicothe, a plus Advisory Committee and the Grand River Technical School institutional advisory board. She currently is serving on the Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce board, also known as MAKO. She is the current vice president of Leadership Missouri, and will be the 2025, chair of the 19 County Regional legislative event, great Northwest Day at the Capitol. She also served as the 2021 President of the Chamber of Commerce executives of Missouri, and held a seat on the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry board of directors. Crystal enjoys raising her three sons alongside her husband, Travis, on their farm outside of wheeling Montana. Crystal. 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.

Crystal Narr 2:56
Well, I’m honored to be asked to be on this podcast. Super exciting. I know that you meet with many individuals all the time that share their knowledge and experience in the chamber realm, and so I’m glad to be added to that list. You know, most of my bio covered, kind of moving forward all the different things that I’ve been involved in. And it’s something that I’m truly passionate about, is that once you become a more I will say tenured chamber executive is being able to give back and help the people that are new and coming into the industry. Because I think we can all agree that it can be overwhelming at times and feeling like you’re drinking through a fire hose. So anytime that I can help ease some of their worries and show how I’ve been able to, you know, make the best of it over my 10 years in my current role. I consider that a win both ways. So something fun about myself is that in my previous lifetime, I like to say I actually was a dancer and had the opportunity to perform at many different locations that have some, you know, familiar name recognition, like Disney World, Disneyland, Bush gardens, Navy Pier in Chicago. So that’s one of my claims to fame, although it’s been several years back, but still fun to reminisce. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:17
so tell Can you tell us a little bit more, what kind of dance were you brought in for performances? Or were you putting on costume? What were you doing? So I

Crystal Narr 4:26
was raised here in Chillicothe, so this, it just goes to show you know that if you have great leadership in any sort of role you know within your community, big things can happen for youth, and that’s something I still try to engage now in my role as a chamber professional, because I just had some great I love dance. I was also in show choir, and because of the leadership within those groups, they sought out opportunities to get youth, you know, into those arenas. And so it provided us some great opportunities and experiences. It long before I even turned, you know, 18, that I got to experience. So

Brandon Burton 5:04
that’s awesome, and it just gives you experience. It kind of opens your eyes to possibilities, and being able to travel a little bit and see some different parts of the country. That’s awesome.

Crystal Narr 5:16
Absolutely, has served me well, because we actually, we won’t necessarily talk a lot about that today, but our chamber actually has a trial a very successful travel program, and I’m the person that gets to assist with those from the start to finish booking, picking the locations, all the way to traveling on the trips with our travelers. So developing that love of travel and experience culture has served me

Brandon Burton 5:40
well. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Chillicothe area Chamber. Give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Crystal Narr 5:51
So the Chillicothe area Chamber is located in northwest Missouri. We are about an hour drive to the Kansas border and about an hour drive to the Iowa border, we are currently sitting just shy of 300 members, which is the highest number of members that we have had in my 10 years. So we’ve seen a lot of growth through 2024 that we’re very proud of. Our budget fluctuates each year, as most do, but we have seen it grow, which I’m grateful for. So annual operating budget sits this year right around $220,000 and then our staff is actually fairly small. We are full time two people, and we do have one membership coordinator who only works one day a week, but makes the most of those eight hours each week. So yeah, and our town population is right around 9500 with our county population being about 15,000 so our Chillicothe holds the bulk of our county population and is the county seat,

Brandon Burton 7:01
yeah? All right, that definitely helps. So are you guys just chamber? Do you have any economic development or tourism, or what? What’s that scope look like? Yeah?

Crystal Narr 7:10
So that’s, I think, what led to the discussion that we’re going to have today about synergy among non profits. You know, within a community, especially what I would consider a smaller community like Chillicothe, and how that can work to everyone’s benefit, because we actually are a standalone organization. We are only the chamber, and there are separate organizations, separate you know what I mean? Boards, budgets, 501, c status for our tourism, our main street organization, economic development, community development corporation, arts organizations, everyone is completely separate, all

Brandon Burton 7:52
right. Well, that definitely helps set the stage for our discussion today, as we’ll focus the majority of our conversation around non profit collaboration. So how you as, as you said, just a chamber, I argue you’re more than just exactly, but how you as as a chamber focused organization, right? How you are able to collaborate with other nonprofits throughout the community? So it’s going to be a worthwhile conversation for for everyone listening, and I’m excited to dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick

Joe Duemig
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Joe Duemig
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All right, Crystal, we’re back. So before the break, you’d mentioned that you guys are very chamber focused, but you have to rely on these collaborations with the other nonprofits in the community, whether it be economic development or tourism or downtown or arts. Talk to us about how that’s structured, how you go about building those relationships and collaborating, and especially when everybody’s reporting to different their own respective boards, operating within their own budgets. How do you try to lead with that synergy, to try to bring everybody together with the same goals and focus and in those areas that align for everybody to be on the same page?

Crystal Narr 12:21
I will preface this entire conversation that we’re about to embark on with a couple things. One is, I’m not going to pretend that we have it completely together, but I do know that we have figured out what works and what doesn’t work. You know, through trial and error over a long period of time within our community, but then also always coming back to the cliche, you know, quote of a rising tide floats all boats. A rising tide lifts all boats, however you want to say it, because truly, when you get right down to the heart of what everyone’s trying to do it is for the betterment of our community, no matter where you’re located. So that is really the heart of it all, and what we try to focus on. But that being said, it’s not always easy to get all the players around the table. That takes it takes work. It’s not something that happens overnight. So I already use the word synergy, and I probably will use it several times, but really that is what I try to focus on when thinking of these collaborative relationships within Chillicothe. You know the importance of nonprofits working together is basically to create a larger impact than what any of us individually could create, right? Yeah, so, and there are within each of our organizations a lot of shared goals, shared missions, even, you know, within each of our own independent silos. So there are just many facets that work because we are already closely aligned. So it just naturally makes sense for us to work together. We just have to cultivate that relationship to really be able to dive into it.

Brandon Burton 14:16
That makes a lot of sense. How do you do it, though? And I’ve seen it. I’ve seen in a lot of communities where there may even be a sense of competition, you know, between the chamber and another organization within the community and other it may even be another business association. Yeah, you’d mentioned the Downtown Association. That might be a point of competition, in some sense. But how do you get past the competition part and see the synergy part?

Crystal Narr 14:49
Okay, so you know kind of talking about how, like, you’re overcoming the obstacles to get to that point. So here are the things that are probably, dare I say, slightly taboo. Do, and so I’m going to choose my words wisely, and hopefully everybody understands. You know what I’m getting at here, but first of all, it requires a very open line of communication. Now, we all know within our organization there’s some confidential conversations that can’t be had with people outside of our executive board or our board of directors staff, that sort of thing. But outside of that, I truly do feel it’s important to have a very open line of communication with those other entities. Because I can tell you from experience, there have been a few things that have happened where we didn’t have that open line of communication and we were another organization ourselves. Were simultaneously working on a project, both of us, but there was this barrier between us. So, you know, we had opened up, and it wasn’t because we were trying to be secretive. We were just had our blinders on, and we’re, you know, working on it, and they were doing the same thing, and we actually both launched this project the same week, wow, on our social media streams, and then it just was, it was bad PR internally, because it really showed that we were not, we weren’t not communicating whatsoever. So things like that that, you know, just show the importance of having an open line of communication. One of the ways that has been done for us over the years is establishing we have done them monthly. We have done them quarterly. So you could just have to find what works for you and your schedule. But meetings among those entities, a lot of times, it’s over coffee and someone’s boardroom, everybody kind of comes with their calendar of events, their work plans for you know what their to do list looks like for that month, that quarter, whatever it is that you’re planning out. So then, number one, we can all be aware of what’s going on. Number two, we can provide assistance. Number three, we can help promote and number four, we don’t step on toes. You know that everybody is doing their own thing and aware of what everybody else is doing. So that’s kind of my first thing number. I

Brandon Burton 17:05
will say even, even when you were working in your silo with the blinders on, at least it’s a proof of concept, right, like you both saw the importance of working on the same goal, yes, and so just trying to find the positive in this, to be able

Crystal Narr 17:17
to Yes, absolutely. And I will say that because of having a positive relationship between our organizations, that when that happened, it wasn’t like there was some big blow up, disgruntled, you know, situation that ensued following it. Luckily, it was, it was our main street program that we that that occurred with, and it was just this past July, and they ended up being very willing and kind of did this version, you know, and changed it to where then it all worked. We were doing, like a member showcase series of our Chamber members. They were doing the same thing with like downtown spotlights, and they quickly changed it and focused it, instead of the business, on individuals who worked within downtown businesses. So we both still completed the mission of what we were wanting to do, but they kindly altered theirs to just focus on the individuals instead of the businesses. So it still all worked out, if that makes sense, yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:18
which brings a whole a neat perspective within its own So, exactly so.

Crystal Narr 18:25
So here’s my thing, that I’m like, I think everyone will understand it when I say this. But one of the key factors to making it work, especially in a smaller community, but it’s it works on any scale, is that every organization has to, has to stay in their lane. You have a mission. You have to abide by that mission. You cannot deviate from that mission, because if you do, it’s inherently going to step on another organization’s toes, you know, so that that depends like using our kind of our three main nonprofits that we work with. You know, locally the chamber, I always say our main two pillars are business and community downtown. Their focus is going to be confined to the defined district of the downtown and the members and events and everything that takes place within that area. Then we had tourism as our third, you know, leg of the stool of kind of our different entities that partner together, and they’re really focusing on everybody outside of our community and getting them here, right. But really, if you think back to what would that be middle school math, whenever you’re learning about Venn diagrams, right? We are all interconnected in that center piece of the pie, basically so. But we have to make sure that that center piece of the pie doesn’t keep growing to the point that the parts that exist solely to us that that part is bigger because. Then we’re losing sight of what our original mission is. So again, I think that staying in your lane ties back into having that open line of communication and really strong connections with the partnering organizations. So

Brandon Burton 20:18
about staying in the lane, and I can see the wisdom, the value in that. And I think in your structure, where you have all the nonprofit organizations to gather together on a regular basis and go over calendars and what you guys are working on, that definitely helps to see where those lines are drawn. But like you said, that Venn diagram is going to have overlap Absolutely. You all have buy in on certain things, but I can see that being where you’re supporting tourism in this, you’re supporting downtown in this, you have your buy in in that part of the Venn diagram, while helping them in their lane. Is that kind of the approach that you take with that, or is there more to that?

Crystal Narr 21:03
Yeah, no, you really kind of hit it, and it works just in different ways, depending upon each individual scenario. But for instance, our tourism organization, they offer tourism grants that support some of chamber led initiatives or events. Same thing for our main street program. So we are helping them by tourism is not having to put on the events, which we all know is nice when you’re not the one running to organize. But yet, they are a big supporting partner by offering up funds, because we all know we need money to make these things happen. So that’s a win win. It’s a great example of how we can utilize that. But at the same token, when tourism needs support for input, for things that they’re trying to do new initiatives, they’re trying to pursue stock photography that we might have you know on hand, that are, you know, essential to our events, we’re also paying them back by doing those sorts of things to provide support for them as well. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:02
I’ve seen in communities where stock photography becomes an issue where, you know, tourism has the rights to picture and, you know, chamber might want to use and say, oh, you can’t use that. That’s our pictures really like, aren’t we all building the same community. That’s it. So, yeah,

Crystal Narr 22:18
that is actually a good segue into kind of the next component of, you know, overcoming those obstacles, which is building trust. Yeah, um, it is key to this whole thing. If you don’t have trust, you’re not going to have synergy at any point, unfortunately, um, and one of the things that makes a big difference with that is personalities and making sure that the players who are coming to the table can come to the table and can be trustworthy. Our supporting partners for each other have everybody’s best interest at heart, not just their own. I think we probably all can relate to scenarios where somebody had an ulterior motive, you know, whenever they’re getting involved with something, and you kind of have to clear all those, you have to check those at the door and make sure that people are truly coming into these conversations with everyone’s best interest at heart, and not just to steal ideas and the manipulator that sort of thing. Something I’m not going to say, this is a little bit of one of those like, do as I say, not as I do, but we, we’ve had it in the past, and do a little bit still, but something we could continue to work on is having either the opportunity for even if it’s not the executive director or CEO of the organization themselves, but having someone in that capacity, maybe it’s a board member that can serve as an ex officio on each other’s boards, so that they are a part of those conversations early on. I think that is a great idea to keep that open line of communication, is something we had the opportunity for locally, and I I loved it. I thought it was brilliant. Was one of our organizations actually was in a period of transition and was hiring for their next Executive Director, and their board had the foresight to reach out to myself and the other entity and say, Would you please come be a part of this interview process and gave us that opportunity, and I will tell you that was it worked incredibly well because that board saw the importance of keeping a Very positive relationship, knowing that our roles are very comparable. And so we could say, oh, this person has the traits, you know, the things that you can’t train a person on that just need to come in and be able to, you know, pick up the reins and take off. And it worked really well. So I think that’s another takeaway, that if. People are willing to initiate that. It, it can work really positively. It’s

Brandon Burton 25:04
a great idea. It’s, it’s a little harder to to outs the person who’s there with the alter your motives and who’s there to, you know, steal ideas and whatnot, but to try to have those open conversations, to build the trust. But then when that typically, those people are not the people that last, right, right? Right, absolutely, there is a vacancy to be able to try to get these boards to come together and say, you know, it would behoove all of us to be able to have each other sit in on these interview processes to create a stronger community. I love that idea, yeah, for sure. So, any other ideas, though, for when there is that disruptor, you know, in the groups where not that you’ve experienced it at all. I mean, I don’t want to put anybody under the bus, but if there is, you know, you get a distractor. You know that that’s within the group, how do you go about trying to build the trust? How do you how do you move the ball forward with that person in that in the mix?

Crystal Narr 26:03
Yeah, we have had a couple different scenarios over my timeline, because you, you know, mentioned in my bio that I actually worked for the chamber as the assistant, and then went to the main street program and was the executive director there for six years before returning to the chamber, and now I’ve been in my role here as executive director for 10 years. So I was fortunate that I came to the table. I’ve worked in both realms, and so I inherently have some institutional knowledge of both, which has, in my opinion, served us well. But at the same point, whenever we do have those conversations with entities that or leadership, you know, in those entities that might not come in with that synergistic attitude and personality, it can be trying at times. And so there are times that you do just have to step away a little bit and figure out ways to cultivate those partnerships. We actually do a few events within our community that are all of us together, and initiatives that are all of us together. So Chillicothe, Missouri is the home of slice bread, right? We were the first place to commercially pre slice and sell loaves of bread. If you can believe that

Brandon Burton 27:24
you guys have made life so much easier, let me tell you, I mean, greatest

Crystal Narr 27:27
city since I you know, we’re trying to live up to our claim to fame, but we actually host annually a sliced bread day, and that is a unified effort that all of us carry some portion of to see that come to fruition each year. And so we have meetings all throughout but again, it is the prime example of everybody staying in their lane, making sure that what we are doing aligns with our mission. It could be even so far, is where the events are located. Downtown. Handles anything that’s located there. Tourism is really focused on the outreach component, getting people to Chillicothe on that day, and then we really handle promoting it locally, an additional component of a concert that brings everybody together to a local business that evening, bringing back local musicians that maybe have since moved away or are still here. And we call it our slice of home concert so and there are other partners that you know, our local museum, our art Guild and gallery, our library, like everybody, kind of has a piece of the pie, but it it’s just one of those things, like it couldn’t work if it was just one of us, but everybody coming together makes that work.

Brandon Burton 28:50
Samples, yeah, yeah, yeah. We

Crystal Narr 28:52
also, this has been several years back, but all came together to host the tour of Missouri, which was basically one step down from the Tour de France bicycle race that everyone’s familiar with, but it was here in Chillicothe as a part of their race across the state of Missouri. And it was huge, I mean, a huge staging event here, and that was really the first of something we have seen of that scope. And so once again, it took a lot of players all coming around the same table to make sure that that happened, and that when people left Chillicothe, they felt like, wow, that community knew what they were doing and were welcoming and gracious, and we would love to go back there again. So it’s just one of those things that, again, everybody stayed in their lane, knew their role, but was also willing to contribute and support others.

Brandon Burton 29:44
Yeah, great examples. I love it. Are there any other aspects that we need to consider when working with non towards collaborations with other nonprofits?

Crystal Narr 29:54
I one of my things that has come up more recently, that. Hopefully other communities are already doing this, but if not, maybe it’s something that would be a new idea for community our size and many other probably even big cities. I think that there’s a saying that you know, if you want to find something done, find the busiest person in town, or that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Sometimes I feel like it’s probably more 10% do 90% of the work. So in a town our size, we are constantly tapping the same people over and over and over again, whether it’s financially or for volunteer time. So we have collectively started talking about creating a list of community volunteers, and that might even have a component of people who sign up but maybe don’t have the best track record of actually following through. That’s kind of what prompted this conversation between our entities, because there was a volunteer for a main street event, and they said, we said, Oh, do you have enough volunteers for this, you know? And she was like, Yeah, I think so. She was like, we have this, this and this, you know, person that are coming. And we said, oh, she list off a name. And we said, Well, we hope that they show up, because they didn’t for our event, and we were kind of left in the lurch. And she was like, oh, man, I wish I would have known that before I let them, you know, sign up for it, and I didn’t book somebody else with them, so I’d have a plan B. So that’s what started this conversation of possibly creating a cohesive, a collaborative volunteer list, and then also the same thing for maybe financial and that one would be a little bit different in that trying not, you know, to always have all of us hitting up the same five businesses over and over to try to get more creative and see who else is pulling money from them. So then we can try other avenues, so really being collaborative on those sorts of avenues as

Brandon Burton 31:52
well. Yeah, and at the same time, yeah, you want to be careful, because some of those people that do sponsor and donate to these different things, they look forward to that and want to do that, and if they don’t have the opportunity, then you’re going to hear that end of it. So yeah, yeah. Well, Crystal, as we start to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for chambers listening who are trying to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you offer them to try to accomplish that goal? My

Crystal Narr 32:20
favorite quote is that change is debilitating when done to you, but exhilarating when done by you. So really trying to make sure that people can be a part of the process and to not be afraid of change. You know, I’m nearly 20 years in in some role of nonprofit leadership, and Change is the only thing that I can continue to count on every single year. We really try not to be stagnant. We really try not to fall into that bane of, well, we do it because it’s always been done that way. We are really always trying to reinvent, keep the things that work, but then change the things that need to be changed, to consider us progressive minded. And so that’s my one takeaway for any don’t be scared of it, and make sure that you’re taking people along with you for that change, so that they also want to embrace it, and that includes your board, your membership and your community.

Brandon Burton 33:28
Yeah, there’s so many dynamics to change, and that quote wraps it up very, very concisely. I love that. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Crystal Narr 33:44
So we actually have really started having conversations about what it looks like moving forward, and just like I said, embracing change, my board of directors in our retreat, preparing for 25 really took a lot of what we were the feedback that staff was providing them about lack of engagement, lack of attendance, and really took that to heart. And so we have initiated a lot of change for this year. We have always been a chamber that has had monthly chamber luncheons every single month, third Wednesday, and we have seen a really drop off in that. We think part of that is just strain on our members financially. We think part of that is strain on time commitment. And, you know, the financial part kind of plays into, you know, we’re seeing wages going up, and that that means that now our members are having to pay employees to attend a chamber luncheon, while also paying to attend a chamber luncheon. So we are just trying to be very mindful and meet our members where they’re at. So we’re cutting back on how many we’re having a year. So. Same thing with our networking events. We’re also trying to restructure them so that they are held at the times that work the best for our members. So again, embracing change, initiating some new things, like industry roundtables that don’t cost anything for people, but still give them a voice. Stepping up our game and our advocacy efforts to help our businesses in ways that they might not feel prepared to actually, you know, lead the charge themselves. So really, just changing the way that our chamber has functioned, and taking some baby steps to get us to where we need to be, to be progressive.

Brandon Burton 35:40
Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of looking forward like that, leaning forward into that and and really kind of punch, punching above your weight class, we’ll say absolutely like it. Well, Crystal, this has been fun having you on the podcast, and I appreciate the the insights and perspective you’ve shared. Wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the approach you’ve taken with working with other nonprofits. Where would you point them? What’s the best way to connect with you?

Crystal Narr 36:13
Anybody can reach out to me at any point in time. My email is chamber@chillicothemo.com and our website is just www.chillicothemo.com as well. So I’m happy to chat with anybody, and hopefully I can even glean some information from them along the way.

Brandon Burton 36:35
That’s what it’s all about. So I’ll, I’ll get your information in our show notes for this episode to make a nice nice and easy to find you and connect with you. But again, thank you for being a little vulnerable and sharing some of these experiences you’ve had and working with other nonprofits. I know it can be sticky at times, but you guys have seemed to find a way that works, and I know it continues to be an evolution, but I appreciate you sharing some of these tips and strategies that are working for you.

Crystal Narr 37:03
I appreciate you asking me to be a part of the chamber chat podcast and look forward to listening to the many other ones so that I can continue my lifelong learning that I hope to always initiate in my chamber profession.

Brandon Burton 37:19
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Chamber Turnaround with Warren Call

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

Our guest for this episode is Warren. Call Warren is the President and CEO of Traverse Connect, the economic development organization focused on advancing the economic vitality of the Grand Traverse region in Michigan. Traverse connect hosts the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, a coalition of 18 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations representing over 7500 businesses across northern Michigan that advocates for economic competitiveness and pro growth rural business policies. Warren’s role is to lead strategy for the organization, advocate for area businesses, represent the region globally and collaborate with local, state and national organizations on critical issues related to economic development and regional competitiveness. He holds leadership roles in several public policy initiatives dedicated to economic expansion, and was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Board of Directors for the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. Prior to joining traverse connect, Warren served as vice president and regional manager for Huntington National Bank with oversight board investments in private banking across northern Michigan. He holds an MBA in international finance from St John’s University, and a BA in history from Michigan State University, where he was the captain of the Michigan State University Alpine Ski Team. Warren, 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. Yeah.

Warren Call 2:45
Hello, Brandon, thanks for the opportunity, and welcome all the chamber champions that are out there listening. It’s, it’s a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, Warren, call from, from Traverse, connect in Traverse City, Michigan, kind of maybe a little bit of background for me. The as you mentioned there in the in the bio ski racer, skiing is kind of my thing. I grew up in in a ski family. My parents both worked in the resort business, so we, we kind of lived there. And so I grew up skiing all the time. I was a high school and college racer. Worked in the ski business for a while in Utah, as well as in in Michigan. My brother was it was also chief of course for World Cup races in Colorado. And so we do a lot of traveling for skiing. We ski a lot here, and then been in a number of avalanches due to, due to my skiing experiences. Wow,

Brandon Burton 3:49
see, I’ve never been much of a skier. I’ve been snowboarding a couple times, but nothing. I can’t do it. It’s just not me. And I see videos of these people to get caught up in avalanches and like, that’s why I don’t do so that is interesting, though, and definitely an address adrenaline rush, I’m sure, absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit more about traverse, connect, give us an idea of size, scope of work, staff, budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation today.

Warren Call 4:22
Yeah. So for anyone that’s not familiar with with Traverse City, traverse City’s Northern Michigan, the northern lower Michigan. So there’s the university the Upper Peninsula, the up, as we call it. We’re in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The pinky of the mitt is, is basically where we are from a map standpoint, right on Lake Michigan. We’re about four hours north of Detroit, six hours north of Chicago, one of our claims to fame, Good Morning America, named us the most beautiful place in America due to Lake Michigan and the dunes and all that kind of stuff. Um. We’re Travers Connect is a hybrid entity. We’re both a Regional Chamber of Commerce and a regional economic development organization covering the five counties around Traverse City are, we’re we’re a small town, we’re a small region. We’re a Micropolitan Statistical Area. So think about 150,000 people in kind of the the micropolitan area our our chamber organization has 1000 member companies here in our in our five county footprint, we have about a $3 million budget and a staff of 11 here in Traverse City, we have a brand portfolio, as we call it, because again, we’re, we’ve, we’ve expanded beyond being just a traditional chamber. So we have under the traverse connect brand. We’re, we both have the five County Chamber of Commerce services as well as direct economic development for for this region. So business attraction, business retention strategies, you know, incentives for for business relocation, things like that. We also have what’s called the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, as you mentioned, and proud to report that it’s now 19 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations across the footprint. So that footprint is basically the northern half of the mid northern Lower Peninsula, and then all of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So the reason for that is from an advocacy and public policy standpoint. When our team is in Lansing, the capital of Michigan, or in Washington, DC, we’re not speaking on behalf of just Traverse City or just our micropolitan region. We’re speaking on behalf of all of Northern Michigan with a unified voice. We also kind of going through that band, brand portfolio further we’ve got, we house the Traverse City young professionals organization. We also have the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council. So that’s a subset entity that’s obviously focused on manufacturing. And then we run what’s called Michigan’s creative coast. That’s a talent attraction program for our region that is nationally, trying to attract talent to to Northern Michigan, so that that’s, that’s kind of us in a in a very brief nutshell.

Brandon Burton 7:36
And we could do, we could do about eight or nine podcast episodes and all these different branches that you guys are involved with within your your brand portfolio. It’s fascinating. I imagine, with the the 18th chamber now in the northern Michigan Alliance, that you’re probably close to 8000 businesses or so that are being represented on that, that advocacy front.

Warren Call 7:58
Yeah, our, our Director of Government Relations was actually just looking at that yesterday. She’s She’s put out a updated survey to all those those organizations, because we do want to make sure that I think we’re probably close to, or maybe over 8000 at this at this point. So you know, that’s, that’s a lot of businesses and a lot of organizations that we represent. And again, from an from an from an advocacy and public policy standpoint, you know, Northern Michigan, as with many rural areas and rural communities, you know, you can sometimes get lost in the mix. From a standpoint of, you know, in Michigan, Detroit speaks pretty loudly. Grand Rapids speaks pretty loudly. We want to make sure that policy makers know that the rural areas of northern Michigan are important too, and so we have that unified voice to speak on behalf of the rural areas.

Brandon Burton 8:50
I love it. It’s a great idea and a great strategy. So our focus for our conversation today is we’ve titled The episode is chamber turnaround. So we’re going to dive in deep onto to how traverse, connect became what it is today, and kind of the background story to that and and I’m sure a lot of the story can resonate with other chamber leaders across the country as they hear it, but we’ll dive in deep into that story and experience as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Warren, we’re back. So tell us, what is the background? What’s the story on on traverse connect, how did it come to be and and this whole idea of chamber turnaround, I think it’s safe to assume that things maybe weren’t as ideal, and then things had to happen to to get it on track to where it is today.

Warren Call 12:56
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting Brandon, because what what we face here in the Grand Traverse region, the Traverse City area is unlike a lot of Michigan, or actually a lot of the kind of the industrial upper midwest Great Lakes region, we’re actually growing. We have really been on a pretty good trajectory from a growth standpoint, for a while, and what we needed was we had a lot of great institutions and a lot of great initiatives that were they were they were they were well intentioned, and they were well meaning, and what they weren’t is they weren’t modernized for our environment. So what we really needed to do is we needed to take kind of that big picture of Chamber of Commerce, services, economic development, and we needed to modernize our approach, or for the region. And what that really related to was we had a lot of organizations that were doing good things, but a lot of it was siloed. So there wasn’t a lot of coordination across some initiatives there wasn’t full coordination across the region. And so what we looked at was an opportunity to reimagine what business support services, in kind of its most general sense, looked like in our region. And it became, frankly, a wholesale reconstruction of of our organization and of of the approach to economic development and and Chamber of Commerce services for the entire region. So, from a from a background standpoint, it really, it really started back in in probably 2016 2017 there was, there was a number of initiatives that had kind of gone by the wayside. So a kind of an older, traditional public sector, county led Economic Development Corporation had gone dormant and didn’t have a lot of operations in it at the same time. Um, 100 plus year old Regional Chamber of Commerce, I wouldn’t say had, had certainly was still functioning and well functioning, but it was pretty traditional, and it was perhaps even a little bit stale in its approach.

Brandon Burton 15:15
I’ve heard that before from chambers have been around a long time. Yeah, right. And fantastic

Warren Call 15:21
legacy, very successful legacy, but needed, needed a refresh, basically, yeah, and then we had a number of initiatives that had newer initiatives that were important, so, especially in innovation and technology. So a new tech incubator had been stood up. A couple other good initiatives, but they were, they were in their own silos and not plugged into some of the other things that were going on. So a number of us, and I should, I should probably point out that I have no background in economic development or Chamber of Commerce services. So back at this point, I was actually working in the in the finance industry for a national bank with I was overseeing their northern Michigan operations. So I was involved in these things, but as a as a volunteer board member, yeah, so I was a volunteer board member on the Economic Development Corporation and on the technology incubator, and I was involved in one of the committees through the chamber, and there was things like that. But so we work, we were working as a community to re envision what economic development and Chamber of Commerce services should look like. And it there was a couple of retirements at some of these different organizations, and so we looked at that as an opportunity to kind of rethink what it what everything should look like. And at that point, I got asked by some of the people that you know, they said, well, great, but if we’re going to reconstitute everything, we want you to move from being a board member to being the guy in the chair. So I didn’t expect to be in that role. But that’s, that’s how it happened.

Brandon Burton 17:02
It sounds like maybe you spoke too much in these board meetings. I think so. I think, I

Warren Call 17:07
think I shared my opinion a few too many times, right? So what we ended up doing is the county’s Economic Development Corporation was reformatted with with new board members. I was, I was, again at that point, the volunteer chair of that organization, when we reconstituted it. And what we did is we, we built a strategic plan for rebuilding everything. And so that that process happened through 2017 2018 and then in 2019 I stepped into this role at traverse Connect, which at that point was a kind of a community development organization that hadn’t really found its footing. And so we, we, then my job was to work with a consultant that we had hired and build a strategic plan, not just for my organization, but for the entire region. So this really was a soup to nuts kind of approach. We had community wide forums, we had a listening tour. We had a steering committee made up of key leaders from business industry nonprofits from across the region, kind of, as I call it. That was our big shots group, right? We had prominent CEOs and other leaders who, you know, have influence. And what we ended up doing is through, through those public listening tours, those, those, those the kind of the road show as it was, the industry forums that we, you know, we brought together the manufacturers, and we brought together the healthcare providers, and we, you know, all these things. We ended up basically opening the hood, ripping everything out, and putting it all back together again in a new in a new structure. So we merged Travers connect and the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce together into one entity that’s now called Travers Connect. We spun off a couple of of subsidiaries that were no longer, you know, relevant, and we we then merged in over time, we merged in some of these other things. We expanded that chamber Alliance. It had gone when we went from 12, now up to 19 members. We also brought in and merged the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council as a now a subsidiary of our organization. And really what it was was we took all these outdated structures and we were trying to address the fact that we had growth in the region, which was positive, but we also had a lot of growth challenges. So we’re a very popular. Destination for tourism. We’re a popular destination for second homes, and those are very valuable aspects of our economy, but they’re not our only aspects of our economy. We have actually a lot of technology. We have a lot of advanced manufacturing. We actually have more employment in manufacturing than Michigan’s average. And for anyone that knows Michigan, there’s a lot that says a lot, right? So people think of us as a great place for vacations and beaches and cherry pie, but what they don’t realize that there’s also a lot of other things going on in manufacturing, in technology, in agriculture, so advanced value added agriculture, right? We, you know, if, if your kids ever eat, go, go squeeze, you know, applesauce in the packet that’s made right here in a very massive facility here, matern, the French company that has their their location here, we make a lot of wine that gets shipped all over the world, etc. So we’ve got a lot of things beyond tourism and and second home ownership, which are important to us. But one of the challenges there is we have a high cost of living because so many people want to either be here part of the time or be here, you know, for vacation, etc. So we have workforce challenges. So while we’re population was growing, our working age population was declining. Yeah, so 35 to 49 year olds, that core working age population, the people that run businesses, that you know, teach school, that have kids in the school system, that you know sit on nonprofit boards that kind of your core working age population that had declined by 7% between 2010 and 2019 Wow. So you can’t have a vibrant year round economy and community if you don’t have the people that are here year round working and, you know, getting their kids into snow pants and out to school the next day, right? It’s, you’ve got to, you’ve got to have that, that that year round population. So that was a wake up call to our region that we needed to do something. And so that was kind of all of the the work we did to institute a new structure and develop a new a new strategic plan was focused on the fact that we need to be a year round economy so and I can go into more more detail about, kind of, some of the key highlights of that, but I wanted to pause and see if,

Brandon Burton 22:33
yeah, I think that’s important to dive into some of those key highlights. I’m always curious as well, when there’s restructuring like this that goes on as to it. And you gave a great background about you being sitting on, on the two boards and ideas, you know, bubbling up. But you know, when you put the rubber to the roads to have the traction to actually implement these changes, it can be kind of sticky. You know, when you’re dealing with with leadership, with other organizations, multiple boards. So as as you talk to your next point, if you can try to work some of that into about the approach and and for a chamber listening, you know, not everybody’s has that perfect timing where everything aligns to just make it happen, but the vision is there of this is the direction our community needs to go. So if you can kind of speak to that a little bit too, as you in your response, yeah,

Warren Call 23:30
and there, there’s, there’s a lot there. But certainly, I think the key things here that we learned were that over communication. And I just mean complete, over communication and repeating. The reasons why we’re doing this were really key aspects of our approach, I think, because what we found was that, you know, people, people fear change. Yes, and organizations fear change. But really, when it comes down to it, there’s actually not a fear of change. They fear change because they fear loss. People equate change with loss. They think that the change you’re making is going to result in some kind of loss for them. And so we had to really do our homework to show that this change was not going to result in loss, it was going to result in gain for the community.

Brandon Burton 24:28
That’s a great framing. I like that. So

Warren Call 24:31
really thinking about, again, what you need when you’re going to implement big change like this, especially with 100 plus year organizations, and you know that legacy of the Chamber of Commerce and things like that, you’ve got to show that you’re respecting and building on that legacy and enhancing what it’s going to do going forward, not taking away from it. So part of that is, again, like I said, over communicating. So. Part of that is having a clear enemy. So again, from our perspective, that clear enemy was we lost 10% of the working age population between 2010 and 2019 right? I think I said 7% before, but it was actually 10% we lost 10% of that working age population in that that time period that got people’s attention, and that was the enemy, and we were able to focus our efforts around that enemy that allowed organizations to really work together. It allowed, you know, we had a business leader meeting with a county commissioner, meeting with a nonprofit, you know, hospital leader, all of them could agree that if you lose your working age population, you’re in trouble. So that that focused everyone’s mind, and it allowed us to do a couple of key things. Number one, I think it helped everybody kind of check their ego at the door, because it wasn’t about their organization or their project, it was about defeating that, that enemy, and then it also allowed us, I think, some latitude to what we ended up calling slaughtering some sacred cows. It’s

Brandon Burton 26:12
important, yeah, because everyone

Warren Call 26:15
realized that if we were going to address this issue of work, losing the working age population, we had to to come up with some new solutions. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the framing that helped us. I also think it was important that we did a lot of listening first. So we, we hired, sorry, we formed that kind of, what I called the Big Shots group, the key leaders across community as a steering committee, people that are trusted across business, industry, nonprofit, etc, that that helped. Then that steering committee was the one that gave me direction, and gave our consultants direction, and then we did these community wide forums, we did the listening tour, we did the workshops that were open to everyone. So we really we incorporated everyone’s feedback. And I think it’s important to do that regardless of what you’re doing. But here’s the thing you got to think about. And I think chamber professionals know this, you’re never going to make everybody happy, right? So that our new solution, our new structure, our new strategic plan, I think it’s well done. But of course, there, there’s going to people, be people that are going to not like some aspect of it, right? But being able to say we asked everyone for their opinion was really important, right? Even if we didn’t incorporate their opinion, maybe they didn’t like the final product, but we asked everybody. Nobody was nobody was on Ask. Everyone got tired of hearing my talking points because I repeated them so many times, and our steering committee repeated them so many times, but at least everyone felt like they were, they were heard.

Brandon Burton 28:03
It goes back to that over communication. And nobody can say, you know, I didn’t know this is happening, right? You’re talking about it, and you’re not catching them by surprise,

Warren Call 28:13
right? So that’s, that’s what resulted in, for example, the decision to have a hybrid structure, you know, our our leading private sector businesses were really tired of the chamber asking them for money and sponsorship and dues, and then the economic development corporation trying to get some funding, and then the tech incubator and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, one entity that that has a really, you know, clear mandate. Now, you know, my private sector business leaders can say, I’m writing a check to traverse, connect, to do this, this and this right, so that, that we came really clear. And so it gave us, it gave us focus and clarity too. And we were, we were really intentional. And the end result of that, that hybrid structure and our strategic plan outlined exactly where we were going to lead, where we were going to support and where we weren’t going to get involved. So our focus became, you know, Travers Connect is going to our mission is to look at the economic vitality, strengthen the economic vitality of this region by growing family sustaining careers. So family sustaining careers year round. You can afford to live here. You can afford to put your kids in child care, etc. You can afford a house, a family, sustaining career is kind of the North Star. The way we do that in our three pillars of primary focus is the economic competitiveness of the region. Number one, strengthening that. Number two, direct support for business. Businesses, number three talent, making sure we’ve got talent attraction development and that continuum of of talent development, then we were really specific about where we’re going to support. We support the technology incubator in early stage company development. We’re not the leader in early stage. They’re the leader. We support them. We’re not the leader in housing development, but there’s an entity called housing north. They’re the leader in housing development. We support their efforts. So we’re really clear about, you know, some of those, there’s a community development. So some of the kind of more societal, environmental things. Yeah, we’re not the leader in that, but we support the community development coalition that is the leader in that. Okay,

Brandon Burton 30:51
this is all super fascinating, and I could see it’s a big undertaking as well, but being able to align the needs within the community to be able to say what’s important. How do we want to, you know, advance the future going forward, you said, create these family sustaining careers. Can you talk a little bit about some of the the outcomes that you’re seeing from these changes? How is the the temperature change? How has the mood changed in the community by implementing this. Well,

Warren Call 31:24
certainly, you know, again, as chamber professionals, know you’re never going to make everybody happy. So there’s still the same things that we always have, right? We still have challenges with with, you know, elected officials not agreeing with each other and different priorities. And always that tension between managing appropriate growth versus maintaining our character and our charm of our communities. Those are always things that continue to be items of debate. But I think where there’s where there’s really clear success in there’s probably three things I would touch on that have really been been clear success. First of those is under that, that banner of the Northern Michigan chamber Alliance, the opportunity to to leverage the connection between economic development and public policy, that that’s been really helpful for us across all of Northern Michigan, so that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and other kind of policy leaders know what our priorities are, and they know that we’re we’re focused on it. They know that we need funding for our initiatives. They know that when we’re when we’re out there trying to recruit an advanced manufacturing company to come to Northern Michigan. They know that it’s part of a concerted strategy. So I think that that was one really, one really big win, especially since, you know, again, we’re a fantastic place to vacation. We’re a fantastic place for second homes and so a lot of policy leaders downstate, Michigan, that’s what they think of when they think of Traverse City. And that’s great. We want to, want them to continue to think about that, and that to be continued to be a strong part of our economy. But also we’re a great place for an advanced manufacturing entity to relocate. So that that’s one thing. The second thing is, it’s allowed us to leverage some unique attributes of our community to focus on cluster development, industry. Cluster development, we’re not going to be a place that Ford or GM are going to set up a huge production facility. That’s not the right fit for us. That’s the right fit for downstate Michigan, the right fit for us, from a cluster development, is freshwater research and innovation. We’re on Lake Michigan. We’re a great place for research and development as it relates to water technologies, marine technologies, things like that. We’re a great place for value added agriculture, as I mentioned, we’re a great place for testing and deployment of drone technologies. Our our local college is is a leader in the Midwest for drone technologies, and the way that drone technologies are need to be developed for rural communities. Think of agricultural uses. Think of rural healthcare delivery, both with drones and with telemedicine. Those are things that are unique to our region. So we’re leveraging our unique things to develop these industry clusters in rural health, in drone deployment, in marine technologies, to again, Grow family sustaining careers, right? We want, we want, you know, if, if some company is going to build the next, you know, advanced underwater drone research product, we want that to be, to be done here, right? Because we the. This is a good place to do it. And then the final thing I would talk touch on is Michigan’s creative coast, our our talent attraction initiative. We, I think we, we had a good plan and we built a good program. We also got really lucky Brandon, because we built this nationally focused talent attraction brand, and it went live about three weeks before the pandemic hit, wow, and one of our big initiatives as part of that was with remote work and technology. If you can work anywhere, why wouldn’t you want to work here? And our timing could not have been better, because all of a sudden the world realized they could do things from anywhere, and it’s been a huge growth for us. We’ve been able to attract entrepreneurs, remote workers, technology, biopharmaceutical entities. It’s just been phenomenal from a standpoint of attracting talent and attracting entrepreneurs,

Brandon Burton 36:03
that is huge. Yeah, I appreciate you touching on those three areas. And when you’re talking about economic development leveraging, you know, working with the public policy, the thought came to me, it used to be that the media kept government in check and made sure that, you know, trying to keep them honest, we’ll say, Right? But now I see that shift being more with with chambers and economic development on the advocacy front to keep governments in check. And if they know that you’re you’ve got your eye on these, you know, policies that affect business, then it’s hard to get something past a group, you know, of 18 chambers that are, you know, form this alliance to to make sure that business is being protected and it’s a fertile place for business to grow and thrive. So these, these are great areas, great successes that are, that are coming out of this and and I feel like in the format that we have for this podcast, we might have bitten off a little more than we could chew, because I could, I could listen to you for a couple hours, you know, going in depth with all of these, you know, different aspects and the the winds that are coming out of this. But I appreciate you being able to try to condense this to to work with this format, and kind of give a glimpse of what’s possible as you align resources and ideas and and getting you know the stakeholders involved, and really convening them all together to to create a good cause going forward in your community and region. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to see if there’s any any tip or action item that you would share with the Chamber who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What would you suggest for them? You

Warren Call 37:51
know, what I learned in this process Brandon was, I think the key thing is leverage. Chamber leaders have way more leverage than a lot of them that real they realize or that they use. And I think, you know, chambers, chambers, and chamber leaders oftentimes are kind of the key servant of the community, and that’s that’s an important role, but I think it’s important to remember that it’s a servant leader role, and I think there’s an opportunity to have a bit more swagger in your community and and take the initiative. Be bold, you know, be authentic, but also be the authority, because, because the chamber knows more of what’s going on than most other people in the in the region, yes, build a vacuum, fill the vacuum of leadership, and really leverage that. And I think you can do that with your staff. I think you can do that with your board, your community, obviously, elected officials. So that’s what I would say. I think the best way to do that is, is to quantify things. And so metrics and quantifying helps you to leverage your authority.

Brandon Burton 38:58
I like that having the data to back up what you’re trying to accomplish and and I love that word leverage too. It brings power, quite literally, as you apply apply a force with leverage, you’re able to do a lot more than what you can do on your own. Absolutely, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, you know,

Warren Call 39:22
I think it’s gonna be really interesting. I think that, you know, as a as an industry, you know, as everyone knows, you know that that struggle for for member retention, I think, is always gonna is, is always gonna be there. And we don’t need to get into all the kind of the traditional things about, you know, retention and non dues, revenue and all that kind of stuff. But the key thing is, the chamber was always thought of as the authority, traditionally on business issues. Then the internet comes along and business leaders feel like they can kind of get information from other sources, so they don’t necessarily need to be involved. In the chamber, they don’t need to be members. I think that’s been a struggle over the last, you know, 20 years. I think maybe, and I don’t know for sure, but maybe as the internet becomes less of an information source and more of just a confusing mix of everyone’s opinion, maybe there’s a need again, for kind of that trusted authority, that authentic, trusted authority. And I would, I would love to see chambers and economic development organizations fill that role, because I think it could be kind of a full circle thing where, you know, there’s, there’s a million websites, and you really don’t know what’s going on, so you might need to just go talk to your local or regional chamber to figure out what’s really going on with business issues.

Brandon Burton 40:46
Yeah, I like that. I’ve never thought of it in that context before, but I like that. It gives you something to think about and see that that full circle come back around right? Well, warm for for those listening who may want to reach out and learn more about how things have developed, there at traverse connect, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? You

Warren Call 41:10
know, I’m, I’m 100% against email. I think it’s a waste. There’s, there’s actually a really good book called world without email. If you haven’t read it, you should my cell phone, 231-651-9174,

Brandon Burton 41:27
alright, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for for people to reach out and connect with you. But Warren, this has been great having you on and thank you for you know, kind of pulling back the curtain and showing what took place to create travers, connect and aligning all those desires, interests, abilities, to be able to bring them in under one roof, and also shut off some of those sacred cows that may weigh you down a little bit. This is a great exercise that probably every chamber needs to go through on some regular basis, maybe not to the same extent, but to really see what the purpose is and what’s driving them. But thank you for sharing your experiences with us today. This has been fantastic, and I really appreciate it. My,

Warren Call 42:18
my, my appreciation to you, Brandon. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having

Brandon Burton 42:24
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