Category: Podcast Episode

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.

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 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,

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Brandon Burton
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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
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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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Engaging Partners in Purpose with Carl Blackstone

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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 Carl Blackstone. Carl has a deep knowledge of working with small and large businesses as a well as well as professional trade associations on local, state and federal levels. Carl has served as the former manager of the State Government Relations for the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce and as a district field manager for Mark Sanford when he served in the US House, Senate representative, in addition to other community roles, currently, he serves on the board of the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives and the South Carolina State Chamber of Commerce as the President and CEO of the Columbia Chamber. Carl’s focus is creating a strategy to make and to help make the region more competitive for the next 20 years. Carl, 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, greetings

Carl Blackstone 2:06
and from South Carolina. Great to be with you today, and thanks so much for having me. You know, this chamber world is so small. I’ve met so many folks from around the country. They’re in chambers, but I haven’t met you. I apologize, but look forward to one day, but I’m just a boring guy from the southeast. I got four daughters. They’re in college, and so I’ll be working forever. But I love what I do and enjoy it very much. But otherwise, I’m just a boring guy,

Brandon Burton 2:35
a boring guy. Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got three daughters myself, son and three daughters. So I can, I can sympathize with you a little bit. It’s great, but, yeah, we’ll be, we’ll be working a long time. That’s right. Well, Carl, tell us a little bit about the Columbia chamber. Give us an idea of the size, staff, budget, scope of work to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Carl Blackstone 2:56
So we’ve been around. Were found in 1902 and so we’ve been around for 125 years or so. We have we’re mid sized chamber. We’ve got a staff of about 15. We’ve got a budget little two, two and a half million dollars, and about 12, 1300 partners in our under the umbrella Columbia as a whole is capital city, smack dab in the middle of the great state of South Carolina. Metropolitan Area is a little less than a million people. It’s because it’s a state government town, capital city, we have the University of South Carolina two blocks from my office. It’s been somewhat of a different place for businesses, because everybody knows it’s a government town, and the government mentality has been very strong here for years, and so when I I’ve been here for 10 years as the CEO. I’m not didn’t grow up through chambers. I worked at the State Chamber and and did lobbying work for the State Chamber years ago, but I didn’t really understand chambers, and that was a State Chamber, not a local chamber. And so when I found myself in this position, I’m like, holy cow, it’s a new world, and I’ve learned a ton. But the hardest thing we’ve had to do is really change the mentality of Columbia businesses. Say, Yes, we are government town. That is a positive, that is a wonderful thing, great attributes to have for recruiting businesses. But that’s not the only thing we are. We have great companies here, we need to be a little bit more pro business and think differently on how we approach things. And so at that time, 10 years ago, the we weren’t doing well. The city was not growing. We’re pretty stagnant, quite frankly, over the last 30 years. And that’s combination of the. Poor leadership, poor planning. It literally was acting from the business community, quite frankly, that that had created systemic problems that we needed to address. And so we needed more business minded people representing us on the city county level. We needed just to be more aware of what was going on and engaged in the political process, which helps. I mean, if you think about what government does on a day to day basis, they can help you, hurt you, and if you learn the business, we have a significant as a whole. Everybody thinks the southeast is got cheap labor, cheap taxes, cheap land, everything. But in reality, that’s not the case, especially in capital cities. Capital Cities are unique, and we have to high taxes, and it keeps businesses from looking to this area. And so we’ve had a challenge over the last 10 years, but I think we’re in a good spot now, which is pretty exciting.

Brandon Burton 6:02
Yeah, I can see where being in a capital city could definitely have its its benefits, but some challenges along with it, and it’s something that piqued my interest is when you you’d mentioned some of the challenges when you came into this position 10 years ago, to kind of boil down to apathy from the business community. I thought that’s a that’s an interesting approach. Could you talk a little bit more to that?

Carl Blackstone 6:24
Yeah, well, a lot of the folks that were engaged Jamie, we had a stagnant board. We I, I’ve said it over and over, so this is not first time. So we were male, pale and stale, yeah, we were a functioning board that was doing the same things we’ve always done, and it was, in my opinion, wasn’t healthy. We weren’t creating an environment where new people wanted to come right?

Brandon Burton 6:50
Yep, it sounds like your chamber was a the traditional Chamber of 10 years ago. The male pale and stale, yeah. And so

Carl Blackstone 6:59
we were, we were, we’re a traditional chamber, but traditional in the sense that 35 years ago we split economic development out. We’d also we’re a chamber that does not have the local tourism industry at all. That’s a whole separate group. And my predecessors, and there were reasons why they did it. I wasn’t around sorts. I don’t want to criticize them for it, but the long term impact was, what is a chamber that does not have economic development, that does not have tourism? What do you do? And how do you make yourself not relevant? But how do you find how do you make yourself essential to a community that was really down on itself and not grow it. It was stagnant. And so it was interesting back in 1950 Richmond, Virginia and Raleigh, North Carolina, Charlotte, Atlanta, Columbia, Austin, Texas, we’re all about the same size. And then you fast forward to 1980 in Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, three capital cities in these southern states were all the same size, and all of a sudden, now Columbia hadn’t changed. The same size they were in 1980 and Richmond and Raleigh are totally different. Not that I want to be I don’t think anybody in Colombia wants to be those other cities. It’s how do we attract and retain talent here in Columbia, and how do we make ourselves a draw? And a lot of the things that we were doing systematically were just not good for business, high taxes, not innovating and really not doing a whole lot to to change it. We were doing everything that we were doing, and so our hope, my hope, and you know, the team that we we have, was like, alright, we can, we can be the best Columbia. We want to be the best Columbia, but we don’t have to sit and do things just because it’s the way we’ve always done it. And it was maybe two months into my 10 years, like, Why? Why are we doing this? Why are, why are we doing this event? Or why are we sending stuff up? Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it. Yeah, that’s got to stop

Brandon Burton 9:12
the wrong answer, right?

Carl Blackstone 9:15
Hear that again and but changing the leadership, and then also you gotta have, if you want to attract new businesses, they gotta feel like they’re have a route to be participating. They gotta be participatory. We need them involved, but we needed to. We need to change. We need to have a board that reflects the community, both not just demographically, but also we needed different. You know, at one time, we had a board of, you know, our idea was diversity was had six different bankers sitting around the boardroom. Well, that’s not, yes, we diversity in banks, but we don’t have diversity of. Thought diversity of industry, and so we’ve been very, very deliberate in making sure that our community feels like we’re reflective of them, but but more importantly, that we’re actually we appreciate in their ideas and their thoughts. And how do we be a little bit more progressive?

Brandon Burton 10:18
Yeah, I like those thoughts and your comments around the you know, seeing the other similar sized cities grow and develop in that time period and and to have Columbia stay about the same as it was in the 80s, anytime something stays stagnant, you know, life kind of ceases to happen, right? Things start to die off a little bit. And to be able to invigorate that again, get it going. That’s that’s the key, to be able to keep it. Don’t let things become stagnant, right, right? Yeah, keep

Carl Blackstone 10:48
that part and but that’s where the chamber can really, is that the Chamber’s responsibility by itself? No, absolutely not. There are no, uh, single person that can do anything. And so you got to work with your city leadership and your business leadership and and the triple part, I mean, the triple PS really do work, not just in development, but also with ideas and how to get things moving along. And so we’re in a different spot than we were 10 years ago. It’s pretty amazing. You know, our growth in South Carolina has been substantial since the late 90s and early 2000s in Charleston and Greenville and south of Charlotte’s coming this way. And so we just have not been able to capitalize. But we finally been able to do so, and we’re seeing significant four or five times annual growth of what we saw two or three years ago, which is nice.

Brandon Burton 11:44
That’s awesome. Well, that’s a great setup for our conversation today, giving us kind of that the background on Columbia, how things are sitting, you know, the role of the chamber right now in Columbia and and as we focus our conversation today, we’ll focus on some of these maybe more unique approaches, you know, ways you guys approach things versus maybe the way some other chambers approach things and and I hope that there’s some some key elements out of this conversation that others can take and scale to their chamber and and be able to maybe implement some of these things to invigorate life in their communities as well. And we’ll dive in much deeper on this conversation, since we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Carl, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to focus most of our conversation today around kind of the the unique approaches that the Columbia chamber takes to your chamber work, versus maybe that of what some other chambers do. And in your explanation and background of the Columbia chamber, I think you’ve hinted on on several of these things, from the business apathy and kind of changing that mindset to the board makeup. But what are some of these other approaches or mindsets that you guys are taking there in Columbia to really see some of that growth that you guys are seeing and and to maybe energize some other Chambers as well, and kind of spark some ideas for them.

Carl Blackstone 16:22
Listen, let me just say we are not unique, and we’re also, I ain’t a smart guy. I want to set the record on this straight, because what I what I did when I got here was I had the privilege of having fresh eyes. Fresh Eyes is a gift. When you come in to an organization and you bring or whenever I hire new people, is really dig in with them to see what they see, because we get blinders on. And I guess my biggest fear is complacency, and complacency is a cancer. It’s a form of cancer that can erode an organization. And so I ask and spend a lot of time with new board members or new staff members or new partners. Say, what do we need to be doing differently? What do you see that we’re doing, that we’re missing? But so being always trying to find new ways to do things, I think, is critical for any organization. The problem we have in chamber world is we always underfunded. We have few two staff, and the easiest thing to do is what we’ve always done. Creativity takes time and energy, and you have to spend hours talking to folks, and that’s hard, but I think the end result is a better product for your partners, and we’re seeing that today. How do we continue to morph, even though we’ve had a good run the last three or four years? What we need to do differently? And I think taking steps back and really sending surveys to our partners and asking right questions, being on the phone and talking to them all the time or all right, this is good. Is this working? But their engagement is critical. And however we can find, I can’t say we have figured it out yet at all, but what I’m we are striving every day to make sure that we stay in front of the curve and businesses, you know, the chambers are in these unique spot because we have to understand politics, we have to understand the business and economics and accounting and law and all these Other things that we have to think about on behalf of our business partners, but we didn’t go to school for any of this stuff, right? I mean, we’re we’re learning on the streets like everybody else, but we need to lean on our partners to figure out what they need and and for us, in South Carolina, we’re seeing this huge post COVID surge of population and businesses coming in and great what’s our biggest issue? It’s workforce. How do we help our our partners? How do we help train and think about the workforce next week, next year, five years, 10 years. So it’s getting the mindset of, let’s being a community builder. Let’s think about thinking long term strategies on how we can be a player in not just the here and now, but later. It’s tough, and a lot of times the market throws a curve at us, and we’re not expecting it. We’ve just gotta alter our thought. I hate the word pivot after COVID, COVID, but I’ll use that word. We’ve gotta be always ready to think differently, which is, which is a struggle, but for us today, here and now, uh. We landed a very large OEM in Columbia that’s going to be producing a automobile, and they need 4000 workers by next year. And how do we ramp up? Because we know when a new new shiny object comes to town, you’re going to see folks leaving one job to go to another, and we got to find the workforce. Really dig in to think differently. On working with our local school districts, our state government for incentive purposes, on retraining folks, getting more high school kids into the workforce, workforce, work based learning opportunities for our kids. It’s a whole new world. We weren’t thinking about this four years ago.

Brandon Burton 20:45
Yeah, and there’s, there’s a lot of focus right now among chambers on workforce. I mean, it seems like you mentioned that P word pivot. You know, I think we can go the rest of our life without having any unprecedented pivots happening in our life, right? I mean, at least not calling them those, but yeah, to be able to see where these needs are. And there’s been, you know, this, this mass exodus of the workforce. And when you are looking for that growth and revitalization and trying to spark that energy into the workforce, where do you find them? How do you how do you retain talent that you already have in the community, and especially when everybody’s, you know, kind of vying for this attention as well that it is a it is a unique problem, and chambers are poised perfectly to address it. So

Carl Blackstone 21:38
addresses one thing is we’ve also got to embrace what our partners need, and they see us as a resource. And big companies typically don’t need us to help them with their workforce issue. I mean, they’ve got resources, they’ve got staff, but it’s a second tier, third tier, companies that struggle so much, and they need us because they don’t have the depth and that they don’t have the understanding of all the things that go into it, and so to be a resource for them, but also learning from our larger partners to say, Hey, how are y’all doing things that we can help teach others to do? It’s it’s not again. We’re not creating new products. We’re just trying to be dot connectors and say, Hey, how can we learn from one teach another? And it really helps the overall community.

Brandon Burton 22:31
That is an interesting thought, because I’ve heard a lot of chambers talk about when that big factory opens up, a big, major employer comes to town and they’re wanting to know, you know, we need, like you said, 4000 jobs filled. Can you guys help supply that? But in reality, those big companies come in and those jobs will flock to them, but they’re going to leave their current position. So that second tier is really it’s like, yes, we can help you find the workforce there, but you go to work overtime trying to find the workforce to fill the backside. So

Carl Blackstone 23:02
it is truly Robin chambridge. Is Robin Peter to pay Paul. And it’s the mindset, all right, understand that those are, there’s going to be fluctuations, but we need to that’s 4000 jobs. Doesn’t seem like a lot to some people that are, you know, in the Dallas area, that’s growing that many people in a month or whatever, for us, think about housing and the impact it has on the housing, on the track, on the schools. What does that if we bring in 4000 new people, is that 6000 kids we’ve got to start educating, and where are we going to put them? So the overall thought process we have to be we’re in a unique position. All chambers are that there’s no other entity that can bring the private sector with the public sector to sit down and find opportunities and and long term strategies on a lot of these issues. You know, we asked for years and years, we relied on government to fix problems, and we’re asking elected officials to do things more than we’ve ever asked them to do, but we as a chamber can provide a lot of resources to help assist find folks that are experts in their field, that work in your community, and sit them down. Let’s let’s have dialog. Yeah, but these community problems are long term. They’re not going away tomorrow, but we got to be thinking about them today, and building those relationships and having those relationships with both public and private partners really are beneficial.

Brandon Burton 24:51
Yeah. So the thought keeps coming back to me about the comment about the apathy of business owners and your comment about elected. Officials just now, elected officials definitely have their place, right? I mean, it’s important to work with them and to have the advocacy approach and everything, but they don’t have the same kind of skin in the game as the business does on Main Street, right? Who’s relying on this to feed their family, to for their employees to feed their families? They’ve got skin in the game. So to be able to get those businesses engaged in helping to find, you know, those the the employment, to help solve some of these problems that have to pop up in communities, to really rely on that business community, I think, is the key. And we’re chambers, help convene, and you’re convening with the electric the elected officials and everything as well. But, really leaning on those that have the biggest to lose and the most to gain, really by the success in the community. So I think you hit the nail on the head, whether you meant to or not. I don’t know.

Carl Blackstone 25:53
Well, the hardest thing to do is when you hit apathy. The apathetic feeling yes is re engagement and finding hope and that things can get better. And it’s, you know, if you’re a small business that has 10 employees and you’re barely eking out a paycheck to very worried about meeting payroll every two weeks, it’s like, All right, do I really have time to think about regulatory relief. I feel it every day. I see it. I have to have staff to deal with it, but they don’t have to. You’ve gotta really educate them on how we can make things better. They gotta see the light at the end of the tunnel. And so rebuilding is tough, maintaining is tougher, but I promise is better than the

Brandon Burton 26:46
alternative. Yeah. So how do you what’s your approach with your partners, as you guys call them there in Columbia, what’s your approach with partners to help get them engaged, to to step away from that apathy and to really buy in? I know you had mentioned before surveying and listening to them, seeing what their needs are and and I know other chambers are going to hear that and say, nobody opens our surveys, nobody opens the emails. So how do you do that? How do you get that feedback? How do you get them to step away from the apathy and to really lean into that engagement? Well,

Carl Blackstone 27:18
you have to have multiple redundancies, right? I mean, there’s the open rate on those surveys are pretty abysmal, but it has to be done at different levels. So we try to have meetings every year or every month that are opportunities to engage the public sector. Private sector have not just talking about politics, but projects that are coming and then making sure that we’re asking questions while we’re with them, have open dialog times to for them to voice their opinions. What’s going on, what’s good, what’s bad, but at all of our events, our goal is to ask questions of what we need to be, what do we need to know to help you all? And as soon as you start that dialog, and you do it over and over again, they actually start to believe it, which is good. That’s what we want, but it does. It’s not a just mention it one time and expect a flood of phone calls or emails. No, that doesn’t happen, but it’s gotta be built in to the process of every month, our annual our monthly meetings, our quarterly meetings, small I mean, you know, but also you gotta put your money where your mouth is if you really are trying to focus on small business, alright, let’s create a new group dialog, just for small business. What do y’all want to hear? What do y’all need to do? Let’s just focus on the area that needs focusing and that’s helped, that served us well. The other is, and this is the hard thing about I’ve got the best staff, best team in the world. I love they are fantastic. But we also, day in and day out are in a bubble. Yeah, they don’t have to go in and clock in clock out, and they don’t have to deal with regulatory issues, and they don’t have to deal with a lot of stuff. But we think we do and or more importantly, we think we know what our partners want. And quite honestly, you know, the worst thing we can do is think for ourselves. We need engagement, and that’s the key. And I remind our board this all the time. Look, we need y’all to tell us, don’t expect us to be you know, what did Ronald Reagan say? I’m here with the government. I’m here to help. Yeah? I can’t pretend to to know exactly what the issues are in a business. I need them to tell us and so, but we got to have that open dialog. We got to it’s it’s repetitive. I spent hours on the phone, but it’s important to to make sure that we have. People that we can call or give us straight answers to what we need to be working with and making sure that we’re providing that ROI

Brandon Burton 30:06
to our partners. Yeah, if I could summarize it, I’d say just stay curious on what those needs are for your your partners and and you mentioned, you know, you’re not going to get that flood of phone calls or emails, which is probably a good thing, because I wouldn’t really be sustainable either you couldn’t address them all last time. You might it might help in seeing some trends, but being curious in those personal interactions, if you’re at a luncheon, or if you’re, you know, visiting some members as you talk to them, what are some of the challenges you’re facing? And have it be a genuine conversation versus just greeting them, you know, thanks for coming to the luncheon. Yeah, you can elevate that that short conversation so much higher by being curious.

Carl Blackstone 30:45
Well, folks think you know if, if they get the first phone call from me, and I only call them once a year when their renewals up, right? I mean, there’s not a whole lot of authenticity in that call, right? I mean, they know exactly what I’m up to, so it’s important to have multiple contacts just to know, hey, we really do care. We really are inquisitive. We want to know how we can be helpful. And those, again, it’s all relationships and building out those relationships are are better for us as a chamber, but long term, it truly helps not only the chamber, but it helps our retention. It helps across the board. Yeah, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 31:26
Well, Carl, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to to ask for the chamber listening. Who’s wanting to try to take their chamber up to the next level. You’ve shared some great insights. But do you have any you know actionable, maybe tips or action items that you can share with those listening to maybe try implementing at their chamber to spark some life and step away from the apathy.

Carl Blackstone 31:52
Well, I think they’re different communities. Each you meet one chamber, you meet one chamber, right? Everybody’s different. Every community is different. But I think when you find we’re not good at everything, we don’t know everything, and so I think we try hard to stay in contact with partners, ask them what we need to be doing. I don’t have a silver bullet. I’m just making this up as I go quite honestly, but I think over time, people see us as a resource. They that they need, and they feel like, if we don’t know the answer, it’s okay, but we’re gonna go figure it out and try to find the answer. And I think companies and people are very happy with that answer. It may not work for us if we’ll try new things. We’re not saving the world, we’re not curing cancer, we’re not we’re not doing brain surgery or anything like that. We try different things all the time. It works. It works. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. It could be a timing issue, just could be whatever. But don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t Don’t hesitate, because the end of the day, we’re going to be doing this tomorrow, and we’ll try something else. So I, I think too many people try not to take risks. I like taking risks even little old nonprofit that we run. I think it’s, it’s worth, worth doing, yeah, and then again, it goes back to my biggest fear, which is complacency. So taking risks helps alleviate a little bit of that complacency.

Brandon Burton 33:34
Absolutely get to find some comfort in the discomfort, right? That’s right. So you mentioned that, you know, you’re just trying to figure it out as you go, but I’d say that the key element to that is taking the feedback. So as you implement new things, you’re you’re being staying curious, getting that feedback and that that tells you that’s your your guide as to what’s working, what’s not. Well, I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the purpose of chambers going forward?

Carl Blackstone 34:07
I you know, I think the best years of chambers are yet to come. I recognize them. Why they were created years ago, and the value that proposition that they’ve offered in years to years have just been B to B, and I don’t think that goes away. What I do think, though, as businesses in this environment that we’re in right now, political, environment, world, environment, whatever chambers, have this unique opportunity to really help define their communities for generations, and what the stuff we’re working on today may not come to fruition for 10 to 1520, years, but being at the table and helping solve these critical problems are important, and there’s no other group, if you look around, who’s going to be there? Well, it’s got to be the chambers, and it may be uncomfortable at times. It may. Be not fun, but at the end of the day, is it necessary? And businesses want to go and relocate, or they want to flourish where they can feel like they have they want to live work and play. Their employees want to live work and play in a community that’s vibrant, that is in an atmosphere that can make money, but they have a great quality of life, and so chamber is going to have to be at the tip of the spear in creating some of these long term strategies in their communities to fulfill the needs of business. So it’s going to be a fun challenge for the next few years. I’m excited. It’s new, different. Every day is different, so it’ll be fun. But I think looking at your book of work today knowing that it’s got to change, what can you live without? What Can You Live Without doing and what? What’s the best ROI for your partners, your numbers, or whatever? That’s what’s going to have to drive you. So, yeah, what

Brandon Burton 36:07
I find super interesting about chamber work is it is never ending. You know, once you solve one problem, there’s always going to be another, another thing to address. So never Is it the work of a chamber going to be complete. So job security there. So well. Carl, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you, what would be the best way that you’d have them reach out and contact if they had any questions we talked about you can hit our columbiachamber.com

Carl Blackstone 36:36
or cblackstone@columbiachamber.com we’ll get right to me. So love to if I’ve ever, if you ever have a question, if I can be a resource, let me know

Brandon Burton 36:45
that’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode. But appreciate you taking some time to be with us today, here on chamber tap podcast, share some of the approaches you guys have taken and really, you know, diving into engaging with your partners and helping them step away from that apathy that’s that’s so critical and keeping the work of chambers moving forward. So thanks.

Carl Blackstone 37:06
Yeah, absolutely, don’t be afraid to reach out. My My was reluctant when I first got to the Chamber of reaching out and asking for help, and call it pride, call whatever it was, but the best resources for me are other chambers, and we love the R & D working chamber world, reuse and duplicate, so embrace that as well, but find a mentor, find a friend at another chamber and and pick their brain. It’s a huge help.

Brandon Burton 37:35
I love that plug. That’s why this podcast exists. To your R & D. Well, thank you, Carl, this has been great, and I appreciate spending time with you today, and for you carving out some time to talk with us, this has been wonderful.

Carl Blackstone 37:47
Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks.

Brandon Burton 37:50
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Fixing Holes During a Storm with Jennifer Hanson

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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 Jennifer Hanson. Jennifer is a visionary community leader and marketing professional with more than a decade of experience in nonprofit management, business development and event coordination as executive director of the Boone County Chamber of Commerce, Jennifer has transformed the organization into a thriving force for for positive change. In just two years, she has grown membership, strengthened partnerships and revitalized events programs, and making the 112 year old chamber once again, a dynamic hub for collaboration, innovation and fun. Jennifer’s passion for empowering communities took root early in her career through her involvement at with the Omaha chamber, where she championed for young professionals in workforce and leadership development, her ability to reimagine possibilities and take decisive action was defined, has defined her career, whether she’s launching an award winning events, building volunteer programs or helping organizations rediscover their purpose, grounded by her servant leadership, Jennifer is dedicated to building authentic connections, fostering growth and leaving a meaningful impact where God has placed her. Jennifer, 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, yeah,

Jennifer Hanson 2:38
well, thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate being in here. And certainly, as you mentioned in my bio there, I born and raised in Omaha, and so as long although I’ve had last 14 years as a stay at home mom before, before joining the chamber, two years ago, I it’s been really great to be able to think back about all the good work happening at the Omaha chamber, and be able to bring those those tools and that sense of encouragement and to to Boone, Iowa and so, yeah, I thanks again for having me, and I’m excited to for our conversation. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:16
absolutely. Well, before we dive into the topic. Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us a little bit more about the Boone County Chamber, just to give us an idea of the perspective you’re coming from with the size of the chamber staff, scope of work, budget, that sort of thing, to kind of set the stage, sure, sure.

Jennifer Hanson 3:35
So the Boone County Chamber is a county wide Regional Chamber, and we are very excited that this, this 2025, is, frankly, is the year of scaling up for us. So when I came on board, we were just at around 200 to 15 or so in membership. There was an executive director, who was over Boone County, the economic growth as well as the chamber. And then I was brought in for events and communication. Soon after I jumped in, I realized that they were that might that executive director was what didn’t necessarily want to stay in that space, and had always wanted to open up a business and and so very good for him, Mike. Mike’s done a great job, and is a wonderful cater and and now business owner and with a with an additional bakery and such. But ultimately that led me to take this on. And so I stayed on as the executive director of the chamber, which allowed economic growth to find other services. But ultimately, this last over the last two years, we’ve now grown to a little over almost about 265 members and in a population of 12. 1000 we’re still on our way and back to maybe where this chamber was in its heyday in the 90s. But we are excited for for the growth. So when I came on board, when my after Mike left, I was the only, I was the only full time person, and I still necessarily only full time person on the chamber side. We had a part time a part time book bookkeeper. Now going into 2025, we have myself as the chamber director. We’ve we’ve got a main street director as a full time person, and we have a almost full time person who’s doing operations and our bookkeeping and office management, and we have a part time Member Services person. So going into 2025 we’re very excited to see a lot of growth taking place in our organization, and of course, in our membership. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:58
it’s fun to see the growth happening, and that means you guys are doing some things right. You know, you’ve got some energy. You’re doing things right to be able to see that growth. But our our topic, we’ve titled this episode fixing holes during a storm, and I’ve heard the phrase before of building an airplane as you fly it, so I imagine this is going to be pretty similar to that, but we’ll we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Jen, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, our conversation today, we’re talking about fixing holes during a storm, and see you come into the chamber. I imagine there’s some things that you’ve been hard at work at over. Your tenure there so far to be able to see the growth in membership and staff. But tell us what you mean with this phrase of fixing holes during a storm.

Jennifer Hanson 10:10
Yeah. So I, when I came on board, as I mentioned, I came in under a the current executive director who was on both sides of the island, on economic growth, as well as the chamber side. And yet, though the work of economic growth had been had been essentially given to an outside organization to to to do. And so Mike was kind of the director by proxy, and wanting to keep frankly, because that was the role on the county side. So when I came on board, I knew and I loved chamber work from having my experience in the Omaha chamber I had my I had my marketing background and advertising and so plus the relationships I built while I’ve been here in Burton the last 12 years or so, so I had a lot kind of that I could bring to the table on the chamber side. And so while economic growth would be something that I’m certainly happy to learn more about, and I’ve very excited about the growth in in that space here in Burton, let alone County. You know, tax law wasn’t necessarily my my jam, so I was happy to take on the chamber side. And frankly, I realized too it was bonkers that one person would be kind of responsible for both sides of this coin. So anyway, I don’t, as I said, How to get myself in any trouble, but ultimately I recognized the need to serve our members, and so I in me coming on board, allowed economic growth to continue on with with that outside organization, and they’ve done great things with it. However, we were still coming under we’re just trying to revitalize, frankly, not just the organization, but the relationships they’re in. So over the last even five years or so, I say that the chamber so was in its heyday in the 90s, probably early. 2000s too. Where we were, had membership upwards in the 400 mark, and over the last, gosh, these last, you know, 24 years or so, it’s just decreased. And what I heard over and over again is we just don’t know what the chamber does. We just don’t know what value you bring to us. And so I had to rebuild the value of what we were going to offer members, and building that back up and the programming and the events and so on so forth, while at the same time, while at the same time rebuilding those relationships with those individuals, with the elected officials and with the organizations that we had hurt over the years, either by just just letting their their business go to the wayside. We just weren’t promoting them. Well, we weren’t using our tools for their benefit. Or in some cases, we had some, I had some time with leaders that had been told, you know, had had had hard conversations with previous leadership in my organization. So ultimately, laying the laying the space for for for venting, for just really just sharing how you know where, where we at, and how can we get better, knowing that it wasn’t my, my doing, but it was an opportunity now to rebuild. And so you can’t rebuild unless you’re, you’re allowing that space to let, let all of it kind of air out. So anyway, I say that we’re building the house, or, you know, and and patching up the the holes in our own ceiling where, you know, now I was a state. I was a full, you know, one full time person here trying to rebuild the team, kind of identifying what, what we needed. Certainly I needed help, but just kind of when and where and how, while at the same time making absolutely positively remarkable, it just I go back having some strong and hard conversations with folks that had had been done really dirty in the past. And so in any case, I really wanted to to do that for the sake of what a good chamber can do and and giving us the opportunity to do it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 14:57
And unfortunately, yeah, this is some. Thing that I’ve seen in several communities where a new executive comes in and needs to patch some holes, mend some relationships, build the trust, back up of the value, create the value proposition and communicate that well to the business community of why the Chamber’s here. What do you know? How can we make things right with you? You know, versus you know, what ever had happened before? And it’s amazing to me too, over like you said, 24 years, we’ll say, you know, some people hanging on to some of these grudges, or, you know, ill will. And for others, 24 years goes by like that. You know, see, you blink and it’s gone. So, yeah, following that, that analogy you had mentioned being able to let some things air out, and, you know, before you can really do the the patching of those holes, you got to identify, you know, where the leak is, where the problem is, let it air out and let some healing happen before you can really go back to work to repairing the whole situation. So the analogies tends to fit pretty well there. Talk to us on the positive side, as you’ve been out visiting with members, talking about their situations. What are some of these positives that you’ve seen come out of this? As you’ve been able to listen to people and let their voices be heard and and then see, you know, to solve their their issues. Well,

Jennifer Hanson 16:34
I think that for because I was such a small team, I we knew from the get go from working with the board who was, by the way, a very engaged, very active board. So I think that was very helpful, just on the offset that they knew I was a, I was essentially a one person in this space, and so they knew they were going to have to be really engaged with alongside me, but being able to then bring on more collaborators into the work. So I I’ve always seen chambers, really since, since my time back in Omaha, as just this one, as that spot, being a a foundational, a foundational organization serving our community in a very positive way, and yet, though, in a very fundamental way too, where it’s, you know, it’s networking, and it’s, it’s promoting, it’s the events that we host aren’t, aren’t for our sake. It’s for the for the benefit of our of the of the attendees, of the members and the community people that are there. So I see the Chamber’s role is to really be a foundational approach to community development. And so when we don’t do that well, or we don’t have people that that that see us doing that, you know, they see, you know, maybe they see the bigger headlines coming out of our organization, which may or may not always be positive, but they it’s it takes the the focus off of where it should be, which is on your members. And so I really enjoyed the opportunity to really start from the from from the ground, and say, I know, I know my vision for the for a chamber, and yet, though we have a long way to go to get there, so certainly the opportunity to say, Okay, we’ve got to get at least on this, on this solid footing, but then having that relationship built, I can, I can call back to those folks and say, Hey, there, here’s an opportunity for you to, you know, can you help me with this? Can you, you know, is there a place where, where we can work together on on this goal or that goal? And so there’s so many more people that I’ve been able to get to know on a such deeper, more a deeper level, than, than than I had before. And I think too, it helped that prior to me walking into this space, I was a stay at home mom. I got to know a lot of the community members by just being a volunteer at different things. I served in Kids Children and Family ministry a few years ago. And so I got to know a lot of people in the community, not necessarily in this space, right, and let alone in this organization. So I got to know a lot of just who they are and what they what they kind of want in life, and what have you and their families and such, before getting into the space where I’m now calling them and asking, you know, hey, let’s chat about what what happened those number of years ago and see if we can’t be a a be able to serve you once again. So a lot of times those conversations were you. It wasn’t necessarily a cold call in in that way, yeah, the good news is, is that, yes, over the last two years, it’s, you know, we’ve really been able to regrow, regrow our members, and bring us back to a more stable financial picture, certainly the relationships we’ve had and we’ve been able to build on with our elected officials and other and whether it be our county or our city, the communities that surround us and really be able to, again, start from the ground, but then Make an active an active work to move forward.

Brandon Burton 20:42
I love that. So what you were talking about? So first of all, it gives a great perspective when you know these people from you know, say, your your previous, you know, before this chamber life, right? So in their personal life and what, what’s meaningful to them, but you’d also before that mentioned about engaging with these individuals that you’re having these conversations with, and being able to have opportunities to reach out to them and say, Can you help me with this project? Can you help me with what we’re doing here? And that engagement, I think, really helps to drive ownership in the outcome of the situation, and I see it as sharing the vision. So you’re sharing the vision with with these Chamber members, potential members, people you’re trying to mend relationships with, and then you’re filling the bus. You’re getting people to take seats on the bus that want to go where the Chamber’s going, and engaging them along the way. And that, I think that’s the way to that’s the way to grow it. That’s the way to grow and build it and and get people to to feel like they’re a part of something special.

Jennifer Hanson 21:46
Absolutely, and there has been a lot, there’s been incredible opportunities that have come here, here to build lately. And I think people are seeing the individuals and organizations both really working hard to to bring our community forward, our region forward, for that matter, and I think that it’s for a long time, just we’ve been in this cave, and I think that, yes, our organization, unfortunately played a part of that, but ultimately we have the from the city, from the county, from the chambers, from the hospital to the having all of these entities really working now together in a completely different way than we did, and in a refresh way to with, In some cases, new leadership. In some cases, not. In any case, it’s just been we’ve really made a concerted effort to come around the same table and say, we’ve, you know, we have to work together in order to make this stuff happen. And it, it doesn’t, it almost doesn’t necessarily matter who’s doing what, because we’re all essentially going to be foundational behind the scenes entities, and it’s going to be our community that that benefits from it and and should have the spotlight on it, right?

Brandon Burton 23:08
And you’re just, you’re convening all the people together doing doing that work so

Jennifer Hanson 23:15
well, Jennifer, exactly where the chain. That’s

Brandon Burton 23:18
right. That’s right, it’s one of those C’s as we shift gears. Here a little bit, I wanted to ask for the listeners. Who are? They may be in a similar boat as you are, and trying to patch some holes as they go, but regardless, trying to take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with somebody listening who’s trying to achieve that goal?

Jennifer Hanson 23:49
I thought about this question quite a bit, and I think that if you’re if you’re already in a chamber role, I would say, first recognize the incredible impact you can have if you so choose. I think that people want to see an organization that’s purpose is to be servant to have servant leadership and to be there for to help them right, and to help them grow and achieve big things and and to make the big headlines right. And so I think that the Chamber being at that intersection between our community at large and our business community, and just being being right there in that center spot, you have an incredible opportunity to do some big things. I think understanding that fully first and then leaning into whatever you’ve got in front of you to serve and to have that being your focus. I think we can, we can do incredible things then as individuals, but even as we’re going. If that’s where your heart’s at, that it’s going to show through. And if there’s, if there are tough conversations you have to have with folks, or even just, gosh, hard people that you have to deal with in order to get to even build that foundation before you can grow. I invite you to lean in on that, knowing that you’ve got you know you know your value, you know your organization’s value, and and what can be on the other side of this conversation. And so yes, difficult people or difficult situations are are part of our world. And unfortunately, we’re all we’re not. None of us are, are perfect. So understanding, though, that that they’re going being in their community, being in your sphere, they they can either be a hindrance to your work or a helper. And that ultimately, I think, if we can get to where, what goals they have, and the some of the shared opportunities there, you’re going to find, more often than not, that they want to help make great things happen. They just don’t know if they can do that with you. So finding opportunities to do great things together, even if it’s not necessarily, maybe what you know your your number one focus is, or whatever, but finding small ways you guys can work together. I think ultimately we’ll break down those barriers.

Brandon Burton 26:24
Yeah, the challenges will always be there. But I love what you said about recognizing the impact that you can make, and if as an organization, as a chamber, if you can recognize the impact, the connections, all the good that you can do in your community, believe it, and go after it. Go, go get it. So I love that. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jennifer Hanson 26:54
Well, I think kind of going back on that. I think that it’s chambers understanding what their purpose is to be that that foundational spot in the middle of their community where they’re connected to the business community at large, leaders therein, certainly understanding that their chamber should be for the CEO as much as it should be there for the the guy across the desk or the worker bee, who’s the waitress in the restaurant, what have you. It does not matter who they are within that organization, they have an opportunity to grow because of the Chamber’s work. So whether it being networking events or leadership development opportunities, workforce development initiatives, things like that, all of those opportunities are there for for the entire community, you know, and certainly we, are a member organization and what have you, but really making sure that folks understand that the chamber is there for their entire organization, not just that C suite, who you might have as your contact. So I think that’s where we could make our biggest impact, is if we are value across the board, knowing full well that the CEO has has a completely different set of needs, you know, than than the waitress at the restaurant, but being able to show off the value for those different individuals in different places. And then I think, though just understanding the the quantity and quality of service you can provide in this space, and recognizing that the spotlight should be on your community. And if you’ve got a positive community, or then you have a great chamber in your in your town, I think if you can rest in that. Um, you’ll it will be incredible for your for your organization, as well as for your region. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:10
absolutely. Well, Jennifer, this has been great having you on the show. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and commiserate or learn more about how you’re doing things there in Boone County. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jennifer Hanson 29:29
Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn, certainly I’m on Facebook there. I’d love to have you follow, follow us from the chambers perspective, too, on both or on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and then, yeah, otherwise, come to puffer belt days this September.

Brandon Burton 29:48
Yeah, that’s perfect. I will get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for people to find you and connect with you. But again, Jennifer, thank you for spending. Time with us today, here on chamber chat podcast, sharing some of your experiences and lessons learned through it. And I just think that the important lessons that come through it and understanding the great value that a chamber has. And I love the comment you made. If you’ve got a great community, it’s a reflection of your chamber. And keep up the good work. So thank you for for sharing this with us today, and I appreciate you spending time Brandon,

Jennifer Hanson 30:27
thanks for having us.

Brandon Burton 30:29
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Reinventing the Rubber Chicken Dinner with Michelle Epling

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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 Michelle Epling. Michelle is a dynamic leader and the 2024 Alabama Chamber Champion as the President and CEO of the Madison Chamber of Commerce. Michelle has transformed the chamber by earning its first accreditation in 31 in its 31 year history, with a rich background in sales, business development and entrepreneurship, Michelle combines her passion for community engagement with the focus on professional growth, having completed three years of the US Chamber’s IOM program. But Michelle, 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. Sure. Thank

Michelle Epling 1:57
you so much for having me today. Brandon, it’s an honor to be on this podcast. And again, I’m Michelle Epling. I’m the president of the Madison Chamber of Commerce in Madison, Alabama, which is very close to Huntsville, Alabama, for those that aren’t familiar, and it’s been my honor to be the president of the Madison chamber for the last three years. Something interesting a lot of people don’t know about me. I’ll say there’s two things. One, I have nine year old twins. They’re identical twin girls, and their hobby is Irish dancing. So we actually go to Irish dance competitions, and they look like little river dancers. It’s really quite fun. And then a family to bit is we actually run a family pecan farm on the side. So we have Newberry pecans that has over 1500 pecan trees, the largest pecan orchard in North Alabama. So if you think your family is nuts, my family, little literally sells nuts, and so we have a great time doing that. That’s been in a family business for about 10 years now, and it continues to grow, and really helps keep me having the perspective of the struggles of what we go through as business owners, because we’re right there on the front line as a family, figuring it out step by step. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:12
definitely helpful in giving you that perspective. I’ll say so, I’m in Texas, and we don’t have pecan farms, but we have pecan farms, so I think they’re similar, but yeah,

Michelle Epling 3:23
absolutely, absolutely, we don’t say pecan here in Alabama. But yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:27
yeah. So I’m originally from California, so it’s pecan to me, but there’s a lot of pecan people here. So anyway, well, tell us a little bit more about the Madison chamber. Give us an idea of the size of the chamber, staff, scope of work, just things you guys are involved with to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Michelle Epling 3:48
Absolutely. So I started at the Madison chamber three years ago. This month, actually, in November, we had about 259 members. Three years ago, they had not done any major events coming out of COVID. That was November of 2021 and really came into a chamber where the business owners were not happy with the chamber. They didn’t like us. Most of the town didn’t even know we existed, and really just stepped in from day one and always focused on, how do we add value to our members, and by doing that, we have now grown to over 500 members. In the last three years, we’ve grown the budget more than tripled it. We’re right about under a half a million dollar budget as a chamber size, and we put on anywhere between 25 to 30 events a year, on top of about 50 to 60 ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings a year, just due to the exponential growth in the city of Madison, we’re the number one school district in the state of Alabama, number one city to live in the state of Alabama. And we just had, we just opened our Costco last week. Week. So that was super exciting. We’ve also opened a BJ is wholesale this year. So I like to say we run with scissors. You know, Mom always says, don’t run with scissors. We literally run with scissors each and every day. And the team works very hard behind the scenes just to keep up with the growth.

Brandon Burton 5:14
That’s great. Yeah, it I know there’s chambers out there listening that are always a little jealous, and they hear of a community that has that kind of exponential growth. I’m always curious, is there a certain industry or something happening specifically that’s driving that growth?

Michelle Epling 5:30
So we are about 15 minutes next to Huntsville, Alabama, which was named by the US World Reports last year as the number one city to live in the state of Alabama, we have a huge presence of Redstone Arsenal, the FBI, and so we also have a big diversity of businesses in our county, being in the Huntsville metro area. So we just are very fortunate in the community, really, truly believing in regionalism and coming together. You know, we always say a win for Huntsville, a win for Muscle Shoals, a win for Scottsboro or any other surrounding city or Athens, Alabama, is a win for the whole region. And we truly all work together as chamber professionals to share that regionalism and work towards that regionalism together.

Brandon Burton 6:20
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I like the the regional approach, because it does make everybody better and and raises all the ships as that tide rises. So it does, it’s good. And hopefully the the community is starting to to recognize that the Chamber exists, that the Madison chamber is there. So keep, keep making those positive impacts. But for our focus, for our conversation today, we’re going to, we’ve titled this episode reinventing the rubber chicken dinner. And I think we can all relate. We’ve all been to these chamber dinners that were luncheons or whatever it may be, and the the chamber chicken, right? So we’re gonna take a fresh approach to reinventing this and see the approach that Michelle’s and her chamber has taken as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Michelle, we’re back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re reinventing the rubber chicken dinner today, so that should get everybody excited. We can toss that that old menu, and it’s not just the menu, right? So talk to us about talk to us about how you’ve approached this, this reinvention of what a traditional chamber dinner is

Michelle Epling 10:47
absolutely well, I we have a saying in our office if me and the team does not want to be at the event, why are we putting on this event? Alright, so I think that also goes down to what you eat at the event as well. And you know, making the events in such a way that, does it have to be a plated serve chicken dinner? Is there a different way we can go about doing a state of the city that is still fun and interesting, and, you know, bridges the community together, but doesn’t have to just be in round tables. And so three years ago, when I started, our city had just built a brand new minor league baseball stadium called the Rocket City trash pandas. And yeah, they’re they’re really cool. They have the guy, the little mascot, is out of a trash can, looking like a rocket. I mean, everybody wears trash pan and merchandise. And so within our city limits of the city of Madison, we actually don’t have a venue space that can seat 500 people and round tables of eight like it physically does not exist. We would have to go to Huntsville or Athens outside our city limits. And so with my mayor’s encouragement, he said, Let’s re look at how we did the state of the city before COVID. You know, you’re the new chamber president. We have this beautiful new stadium. How can we reinvent this dinner? And so we actually, in partnership with the Rocket City trash pandas, open the gates of Toyota field. We give out 500 free hot dog Soda and Ice Cream, and we invite the entire community to come to our state of the city. We line the concourse with a business showcase that’s super popular, and we do a community state of the city on the field of our minor league baseball team. So it doesn’t have to be a rubber chicken dinner for it to be an official state of the city. And I think we’ve proven that. We just did our third annual State of the City this past year. It was super successful. Our members love it. The community loves coming out to it. You know, we’re going to even have a mayor showcase and city council showcase next year, where they’re going to be on the concourse, meeting the constituents. And so it’s just a fun way to highlight our community. We give out a Military Family of the Year Award during that presentation, the mayor shows videos. Really just a neat way to reinvent that rubber chicken dinner. And then, you know, thinking of the rubber chicken dinner, we also had our annual gala Monday night. And, you know, at a gala, you give out the membership awards. We gave out Business Person of the Year, and then you give out young professional of the year. And this is the first time in our 31 year history, we’ve actually done an annual membership meeting that was a formal event that was cocktail, long dresses, and, you know, giving out award after award after award. I mean, it’s the same, right? It’s someone’s getting an award on stage. And I went to the team and I said, you know, I saw this thing a few years ago. This influencer did in Nashville, and she had these Santa elves come out, and they carried a basket during the middle of one of her events, and everybody got a free whatever it is. I wonder if our business community could get behind this. So I made a few phone calls to our local downtown restaurant that’s iconic, that’s in the Old City Jail, that serves like the meat and three I called out back. I called Chicken Salad Chick and some local retailers. And between the rubber chicken dinner, the team came out, and I had one on the podium for me and my chairman of the board. And we put on a blue because our logo is blue. Santa hat. Played Christmas music, and we distributed what we call Madison favorite things, and everybody loved it. So again, as you were planning these rubber chicken dinners, we serve steak. By the way, don’t serve chicken service. Pay the extra money. People want to eat the steak. Don’t serve the chicken. And. And make it fun. Do you want to be there? Would you want to sit through this entire program? And if your team’s answer is no, what are you doing to add value to your members at that event? And that’s what we look at with every single thing we do at the chamber. I love that

Brandon Burton 15:18
man. I love the reinvention, thinking outside the box, these approaches that really drive engagement. I mean, the thought comes to me the business showcase and the concourse of the baseball field. Now, if you just did your typical annual you know, state of the city in a conference hall, you’re not going to necessarily have the space to do business showcase, but Right? You’re supporting the businesses, giving them that space, or interacting with people in the community. They’re there. I mean, just the whole idea of it is much more effective, much more in line. I would even argue with what a chamber is and should be focused on.

Michelle Epling 15:57
And we even find some of those sponsorship levels to nonprofits. So we will say to someone that’s willing to give us X amount of money. Look, you could either have two tables on the concourse, or you can donate them to two nonprofits, and they love that. Yeah, how are you adding value to those sponsors, with the money they’re investing in your chamber, what’s important to them and to those sponsors, it’s those nonprofits and those causes that they give a lot of time and money to. How can you then turn that sponsorship and giving it back to that member as well, and not just taking money from them for you to put on an event? I

Brandon Burton 16:39
love that, so help us. I think you’ve done a good job with the setup, with the state of the city, and at the baseball stadium, just being able to see and visualizing the displays of businesses in the concourse get people seated with their hot dogs and ice cream. And normally in that setting, we’re waiting for that first pitch to be thrown out. So is there a stage set up on the field, or are you utilizing the big screen? That’s how what? What’s that look like? We

Michelle Epling 17:10
do have a podium on the field. They have a huge jumbotron at the baseball stadium that we use, and then they have the announcer, just like you’d be like, coming on home plate is so and so, I don’t baseball, whatever. And he announces, you know, please direct your attention to the field. In five minutes, we’ll be starting our program. And then at the time, he will say, please direct your attention. We always start with the tripping of the colors, because that always gets everyone’s attention, and that gets everyone to quiet down. And then after the tripping of the colors we have, we incorporate our schools and they sing the national anthem. That also gets everybody to kind of get in their seat and settle down. And so that kind of starts the program itself

Brandon Burton 17:56
gets butts in seats too. When you involve the schools and parents, they’re going to come and watch their kids sing, and that’s awesome, absolutely.

Michelle Epling 18:04
And then I would say another thing we do that’s kind of unique to our chamber is because we did not have an a venue that could host, like a business, or what we call it best in Business Awards. Three years ago, we ended up having to host it at the high school? Well, no one told me, Brandon that. I guess I never got in trouble in high school. I didn’t know you couldn’t serve alcohol in an auditorium at a high school, and it’s against a federal law, even if the superintendent is nobody tells me this Brandon Okay, and so I’m talking to the superintendent, and I’m talking to him about, okay, we’ll have our cocktail reception out here with the bar. And he’s like, Michelle, you’re legally not allowed to do that. And I’m like, Well, what do you mean? I’m not allowed to do that? And he was like, Well, you’re not allowed to serve alcohol in my auditorium. You can still host your best in Business Awards, but there will be no alcohol served during this entire night. And so we had a bank come forward at the time and said, Michelle, let’s host an after party at one of the local restaurants and bars. I’m good friends with this restaurant. We will sponsor it. We’ll invite all the nominees. We’ll give out drink tickets and serve some like desserts. But then, because I have both insurance licenses, from an insurance standpoint, I’m like, it’s really not a good idea to let these hungry people leave an award show and go straight to drinking alcohol. That just seemed like a liability. Brandon, so we got with a local restaurant, and they made a charcuterie cup, like to go. So think of like a charcuterie platter, and they in a cup, and my ambassadors handed them out as people were walking out the door, headed to the barn, I made a joke on the stage and said, enjoy your Madison car snacks on the way to the after party. Well, then a few months later, we were recognizing one of our elected officials, was our former Speaker of the House, who is. Now our chairman of the county commission. We threw a welcome back party for him. We found out what his favorite snacks were, put them in a little lunch bag, gave them out to all those attendees. Called him a Madison car snack. So much so that that’s now a sponsorship item in my sponsorship guide, and it has been requested thing I had another chamber, the Athens chamber. President Monday morning at 7am said, Do we have Madison car snacks at your annual gala tonight? That’s all I want to know again. How can you create these little traditions within your chamber that makes everyone feel part of it, but then it lets the celebration continue, even if it’s just for the car ride home, to continue adding value to that event. And so Madison car snacks, you ask any of our members, they can tell you exactly what it is, what a great idea as a sponsorship, and everyone wants it. And so again, how are you reinventing that rubber chicken dinner is what we look at every day.

Brandon Burton 21:04
Yeah, man, that is, I love that. I love how it wasn’t necessarily a plan to have your Madison car snacks, but it came out of a, maybe an oversight, we’ll say, you know, and necessity and and then that kind of evolves to be in the thing people look forward to. And you know, kind of rolls off your tongue. You’re you want your car snacks, right? You gotta.

Michelle Epling 21:26
Can we put the members logo on it, and we have an actual logo that says Madison car. And the snacks is, like, crunched out of it. I can email it to you and show you, and we put them in little clear bags, or little lunch bags we buy at Party City, and then I get up on the stage of whatever event it is and say, Brandon, the CEO of chamber, chat, podcast, favorite snacks or Milano cookies and skinny pop and join them on your ride home. And everybody loves it. You know, it’s just such a fun way to again, how are we adding value in what we’re doing at these events. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:02
that’s fantastic. And I’m glad you learned about the no alcohol on the campus before the event. I mean, it is, it’s zero tolerance. I don’t know what would

Michelle Epling 22:14
that is not allowed so several weeks before we put that event on, and thankfully, we have members that stepped in to help solve that problem. So so now we always do also have an after party at one of our local bars. So when we do best in business, we partner with the local bar and we have the after party again. How are you making this fun? And also don’t give speeches. That’s the other thing we do the award shows. We do not do any speeches on that stage

Brandon Burton 22:44
that’s much appreciated by everybody there that your

Michelle Epling 22:47
great aunt Nancy inspired you to start the business. What we do instead is we have announcer that has, like the deep announcer voice, and he gets he’s there right next to my marketing director, and he will say, now please welcome to the stage. Brandon, who has started this podcast X number of years ago and has won so many awards and and really highlights that person in a much more professional way than people can. Sometimes, if they’re shocked, get up and say in front of the microphone. So we gave out 11 awards Monday night, plus recognizing our elected officials and all that, gave an annual report for about seven to 10 minutes in in in less than an hour, according to our mayor, from start to finish. Yeah, that’s good, adding value. You know,

Brandon Burton 23:37
I like the announcer telling about the business as they’re walking up, because otherwise you get applause, and by the time you’re at the fourth, fifth person, everybody’s like, Hey, we’re tired of clapping the whole walk up. So being able to utilize that time in an effective way and cut down in other areas is super helpful. Well, I love this. I love the energy. I love the outside the box thinking, the creativity is is wonderful as we shift gears a little bit. I wanted to ask you, on behalf of chambers listening, who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal?

Michelle Epling 24:17
Yeah, something one of my consultants taught me, um, two things really is one, and I said it several times, how are you adding value to your members? You know, what are you doing that’s setting yourself apart from all the other noise, whether it’s the newsletter or the E blast, um, how are you adding value? And then the second one is, never make it hard for people to give you money. So Veronica cram is one of my consultants that helps our chamber with insight, strategic solutions. And she always says to me, Michelle, do not make it hard for people to give you money. And so I can’t tell you the number of times, especially, you know, when I started, it was me and one other full time employee if I got an email from. Somebody, and they said, Michelle, I’m trying to pay an invoice. I would stop what I was doing right then and there and get that payment immediately. And again, that drives the bottom line. And I’m a big believer that if you solve the income problem, all the other problems are a lot easier to fix. Yes, don’t make it hard for people to give you money.

Brandon Burton 25:22
Those two points of how are you adding value to your members, but also not making it hard for people to give you money, are great lessons for business owners to think about and implement as well. So there may be, there may be more there that can be taught and be you own programming there in its own to remove some barriers from people giving your members money, and for your members to learn how to add value to their customers every transaction. Absolutely. Michelle, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Michelle Epling 26:03
You know, I really see Chambers as being the convener. You know, when you think of a chamber, we are really in a unique position that can convene all the groups around the table as truly a neutral, unbiased third party. And so one of the things we’ve done at our chamber three years ago is we had the downtown businesses, we had rotary we had the Madison Street Festival. We had all these different the school system. We had all these different entities all doing great things in our community. But then sometimes their events would overlap, sometimes they would get upset that so and so’s doing something, and so and so is doing something. And we created the one Madison meeting, and we put the mayor with the chief of fire and police and all the festivals and all the organizations that really do those community events in our town, the trash panda baseball stadium people. And we meet once a quarter, and every organization gets five minutes to give an update on what their organization is doing. And the the amount of cross collaboration that has happened because we convened them together is immeasurable. I mean, the amount of initiatives that have come out of that meeting, and I think we need to continue to find ways to convene people together, whether it’s convening them in person, or being the convener on social media, on Instagram and Facebook, and being the one at the event going live, talking about what’s happening in and around your community. You know we really have a unique voice in being that neutral, unbiased third party to really share the good news. And so we call it celebrate Madison for our state of the city event, and we truly believe in celebrating our community. And I think chambers really could really make a big impact if they continue to find ways to celebrate their community, because you can go to any community and go to the what’s happening in ABC towns Facebook page, and you would think that city is on fire, and it’s the worst city in existence. How are you being louder on social media and in the groups you can lean around the table to celebrate your city. And I think that’s where chambers really have the future, is celebrating the communities they serve. And I think sometimes we forget that we have a unique opportunity to do that.

Brandon Burton 28:34
Yeah, I love that. When you It talked about Facebook and the, you know, saying it was on fire, I was thinking the other way, you have people talking about all the good things, but it’s really those communities online, online tend to be trash talking, right? Just really negative. So to be able to turn that and put it on its head and celebrate what your community has to offer and the good things going on, and build upon that there’s so much value there so but Michelle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about Madison, car snacks or anything else. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect sure

Michelle Epling 29:18
they can email me at Michelle, at Madison Al, like Alabama, chamber.com, and I would be happy to have a conversation with them.

Brandon Burton 29:29
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes to make it nice and easy to find. But Michelle, this has been a fun conversation, energizing. Should give people some ideas of some new approaches that they can take to their annual banquets or awards night, or any other, I’m gonna say, old fashioned, traditional chamber event, right? Let’s, let’s reimagine some of these things and bring some new light life to them. Thank you for sharing your example and experiences and. Know, and building the excitement for the listeners to be able to bring that back home for themselves. No

Michelle Epling 30:06
problem, we love celebrating Madison and thank you for having me on the podcast today. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 30:12
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