Category: Podcast Episode

Hybrid Sponsorship Program with Matt Hunter

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

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

Diann Rogers 0:40
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 0:54
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Our guest for this episode is Matt Hunter Matt joined the Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber of Commerce in Idaho in June of 2005 as the president and CEO Matt has a business administration degree from Washington State University and an AAS degree from West Valley College and Saratoga, California, in food service and Restaurant Management. In his role at the Chamber, Matt is responsible for all operations with special emphasis on government advocacy work, and the financial health of the chamber. Matt serves on many boards throughout the region and state. These include the Idaho State University College of Technology Advisory Board, as well as multiple advisory boards within the College of Technology. He also serves on the eastern Idaho Development Corporation board, the southeast Idaho Council of Governments board, the Idaho chamber Alliance executive committee, and on the Idaho nonprofit center board. Matt and his wife Shawn had been married for 37 years have six children and three grandchildren. They love the Pocatello community and made the jump from the hotel industry to the chamber industry so they could stay in the Pocatello area long term. Matt and his family loved the outdoors, including fishing and camping and Matt really enjoys getting out and meeting Chamber members as well as being involved in many community activities. Matt, we’re excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Matt Hunter 2:37
Well, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate being on the show, Brandon. Yeah, I have worked at the Chamber now for about coming up on 18 years. I enjoy the work that I do. And it’s it’s great being part of the community. So when I was a young man, I grew up in the Bay area of California. I marched in Drum and Bugle Corps which some of you might be familiar with. Some of you might not be national champion car from the Santa Clara area and won a couple national championships with that I’ve traveled pretty much every state in this country, mostly on a bus and stopping and playing music. It was a blast. And it’s something interesting about my early years in life

Brandon Burton 3:22
yeah, no that is great. And for those listening they can’t see this but my background. I entered mentioned Santa Clara I got my my Niners helmet in the background, big Niners fan and grew up in Sacramento myself. So we’ve got that in common. So well hopefully, hopefully,

Matt Hunter 3:41
you see all nighter stuff on my wall behind me. There’s quite a few nice

Brandon Burton 3:45
things well, it’s good to have a fellow Niner fan on here. So tell us a little bit about the Pocatello Chubbuck chamber just to give us an idea size, scope and scope of work, budget staff, that sort of

Matt Hunter 4:02
thing. Yeah, happy to so the Pocatello Chubbuck community is located in the southeast corner of Idaho. So we’re about two and a half hours north of Salt Lake City. We’re about three hours east of Boise, Idaho, Yellowstone parks nearby it’s it’s a beautiful high mountain area. Love it here. The communities of Pocatello Chubbuck are pretty much combined. Literally Walmart’s in both of them which is kind of fun cutting, you know they’re right on the line, right kind of fun. But about 75,000 people are chamber serves about 750 members $650,000 A year budget. And I have five and a half staff members including myself that operate in the downtown Pocatello area is our office so that is kind of a quick shot of our chamber.

Brandon Burton 4:57
Yeah, that sounds great that that def really helps set the table give some perspective before we get into our conversation today, which will be focusing our discussion around your hybrid sponsorship program and I know oftentimes chambers hear sponsorship program their ears perk up, they want to know more about you know what other chambers are doing to bring in the money right. So well speaking of money, we’ll we’ll take a quick break and we’ll come back and dive dive deeper into this topic.

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All right, Matt, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re we’re gonna focus on your hybrid sponsorship program. So first of all, what does that mean? What is your hybrid sponsorship

Matt Hunter 8:26
program, a lot of chambers run what they call sort of a tiered dues that includes events and stuff like that we don’t we run a standard dues based on employee count. And so our dues run from about $325 for a very small business to about 5000 for our very large companies that we have here in the area. None of that includes sponsorships. So we sell a separate sponsorship package, and we call it the one ask sponsorship program. So I’ll sit down with a company one time a year, we have a packet that includes all of our events, prices for all of them. And there are four tier levels, bronze level sponsorship, silver, gold, and then a platinum. Each of those events can be picked and chosen as they wish. A good example is if you’re a silver sponsor, you can pick any three of the nine events that we have in our in our sponsorship bundle. You can be a silver sponsor for that, including whatever a silver sponsor yet might be a Table event might be a hole at a golf club and a golf tournament. But you get that variety of things and you can pick any of those that you want to be a silver sponsor for and then there’s some marketing that goes into it. You’re on our website, you’re on a pull up in our lobby or on a pull up that said all of our event, you’re on a weekly newsletter that goes out and so they’re there Quite inclusive of any type of membership, the top level, the platinum sponsorships are $12,000. They include being a premier sponsor for one of our events, and then being gold sponsors for other one. And obviously they get more events they can be part of as a platinum sponsor, you can be part of five different events. And it includes other things like our all member meetings, you get tickets included to that you can do a business after hours as part of your sponsorship package. So it works really well. We bring in about $110,000 a year of our $650,000 budget. So it’s a big chunk of our revenue stream. And it’s been around since 2015, and continues to grow each year. So it’s a good program. And if you got some specific questions about it, I’d be happy to answer him, sir.

Brandon Burton 10:55
Yeah, so my first thought is, pricing Pricing is always a something of, I don’t know, people are scared sometimes to talk about price to set price to do do, you know, discounts as you do bigger packages. So as you look at the different packages with the one ASP program, is there discounts if you do multiple things? Or do you just say, here’s the prices, we’re just presenting it all at once, and you can decide what you want? Or how do you go about the pricing structure,

Matt Hunter 11:26
there’s obviously more value built in as you as you go to the larger packages, but the top package, as I said, as a $12,000 package Pocatello is not a large maybe I know people that pay it $25,000 sponsorship to be part of an event at the Boise chamber and I love those folks. And and I learned a lot from them about sponsorships. But you know, really a top sponsorship for one of our events, if you just bought that sponsorship alone is about 3000. Well, when you buy this package, you get about five of them. And so there for 12,000, you’re getting 15,000 value, you get all the marketing that I mentioned that that comes along with it, you get the the other couple of added events, like the old member meetings and stuff like that, that you get free access to. Below that you go to the gold sponsorship was about $8,000, you generally get about 10 to $11,000 in value when you buy into that one. So it’s in it’s just less events, and less hierarchy. If those events, you know, our events are structured, you’re you’re a gold sponsor, you get front seedings. So we’re sponsored behind bronze sponsor, you know, and and then the general public grab seats where they can get them. And so all of the levels do that. So you got 8000 at the Gold level, you got 5000 at the silver, and it’s got about $6,500 in value, and you get about 3000, the bronze, and it’s three to $4,000 in value. So the the added additional value obviously goes up as the level of sponsorship. And we’ll even do more. So the one ask gets you this many events, but I’ll sit down with a member if they really liked the one ask because I sit down with them and bug them once. Right not I’m going to call you every other week on they sometimes hear everything too, right? Everything’s there. And it’s it’s all laid out. And some of them will say well, we want all of this stuff that’s included in the package. Plus, we want this, this and this. So they’re still for it might be $15,000 because they bought extra stuff. And once again, I bug them one time. And they’re done dealing with their sponsorships for the year. So really well for us.

Brandon Burton 13:48
So let’s talk about how you go about bugging them. One time a year. So 750 Members, I don’t imagine you’re sitting down with all 750 to go through the ass. So how do you identify the ones you are sitting down with? The ones that sponsored the previous year? Did they get first right of refusal? How do you how do you approach it?

Matt Hunter 14:09
Yeah, exactly that. So initially, at most of our events, not all of our events, there’s the annual sponsor. Messaging is there, because you’re recognized that all of our events, at least with the banner that’s there, I always mentioned it, if you’re interested in talking about this, I’d love to meet with you. I’d love to talk with you about it. And so that’s sort of the first one at our big annual awards banquet. We really recognize them all give them a plaque for being part of it, you know, for the year and that’s where I make a little more sales pitch of this is what this program is love to talk to you about it. We also just do some general emailing about it. But there is first right of refusal. So if you’re the sponsor, premier sponsor of our governors banquet, you own it until you decide you don’t want to be the premier sponsor of that event. Yeah, And so yeah, and all of our events are like that. There’s only about nine events on there. There’s only one premier sponsorship for each one of them. And so there is a little bit of competition for folks that want to get their hands on one of those. So.

Brandon Burton 15:18
So and that brings up another good point. So the competition for those, especially those premier sponsors, how do you address pricing from year to year? I mean, especially right now, or inflationary times where pricing tends to increase in a lot of areas? Do you feel stuck at all in pricing? Are you able to increase pricing, we have felt stuck

Matt Hunter 15:39
at pricing. And and I think we would have been justified doing a price increase this year, we did not. We had a discussion, we actually had a very good year last year. And we probably shouldn’t make that decision based on that. Because all of our events, costs have gone up. But in the meetings this year, I pretty much told everybody these are going up across the board next year, every every level is going to go up all of our events are going to go up the only thing we really increased individual pricing on this year was our golf tournament. Because it’s I mean, it’s in July, I think I’ve got 10 spots for teams left in it. I mean, it’s already almost full. And so we felt there was just such demand for that, that we increase the price. And that that will go into more price increases for all of our events, the premier sponsorships are probably going to go 3500 instead of 3000. So I see everything already kind of working on what this is going to look like. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:43
As you mentioned, sometimes there’s competition on these premium sponsors. Do you open it up at all for bidding on on some of these prime spots are just first come first serve?

Matt Hunter 16:57
Yeah, I have not done that. It really is first come first serve. And there are not all nine of those events are owned every year, though. So there is still some availability on you know, some of the baby. I’m not gonna say all my events are highly valuable. But some members, the membership sponsors don’t value as much as other maybe based on attendance or other things. So there always is, uh,

Brandon Burton 17:25
maybe they’re just better aligned with other programs.

Matt Hunter 17:29
They like, you know, I mean, our Gate City brew fest, phenomenal event. Not every business wants to be aligned with a brew fest. But luckily, we have some that do. And so we have premier sponsors for that and and all of our other events. So it works pretty well. But the the competition side, it gets you’re juggling renewals, so a lot of them renewal in January, and you’re like, I need to get this renewal renewal done. Because if you’re not going to take this premier sponsorship, I already got somebody asking me about right. So I’m not trying to pressure him, I’m just saying I need to get it done. You don’t want it. That’s fine. I have people jump around between platinum to gold, the silver up and down each year, some of the companies move up and down. But and then that makes things available for other folks. But the gold and silver and bronze, I can sell 50 of them for any event. So those are very much.

Brandon Burton 18:21
Okay. So that was one of the other questions on my mind is how do you juggle that? So if, if you haven’t heard from one of those premium platinum sponsors, and you know, you’ve got two other people vying for that position, at what point do you just say, Okay, we got to move on at risk of hurting feelings.

Matt Hunter 18:40
And I actually did that with one of them this year. And they were, they were a premier sponsor, or platinum level sponsor and a premiere of one of the events. And I did have somebody else interested in that. And it took a little while for them to make their decision, but they downgraded from Platinum, and gave up that event and somebody else picked it up. So it really is just like, I’ve got to get all these books, I need your help, you need to make a decision on this and staying in touch with them. These products. I mean, there’s 17 of them in my community that are that are across the sponsorship levels. I think the first year we did about eight, so but I stayed very closely in touch with those 17. And if they’ve got questions or problems, they know what I’m going through with the other ones. And generally they know who the other folks are, that would like those events. So they make their decision. And sometimes they keep it because they don’t want that competitor.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Right. And I imagine a lot of their businesses that are doing these big sponsorships, they’re they’re on board with the mission and vision of the chamber and they’re they’re invested heavily you’re not dealing with, you know, a $300 investment level because those ones are going to be you know, not as committed to the long term right? So is your January just packed with trying to meet with all these businesses?

Matt Hunter 20:06
So I actually start this process in November, okay. Because, you know, by January, we’re starting to do events. So but I mean, I literally right now I have two that technically renewed in in January that are not finalized. And it’s the big events they’ve got, those are nailed down. But they’re trying to decide whether they want to be a sponsor of the law enforcement barbecue, or the CEO breakfast series, and they haven’t made that decision. And that’s a little more fluid. I don’t have to know that right. Now, we can do that at the end of January, still, we can manage that last little part. So I’ve got two of them that I’m still working with that are still in the final decision process.

Brandon Burton 20:50
Yeah. So is there ever a point where you think, you know, I need to reach out to these five or 10 businesses and encourage them to get more involved with with every

Matt Hunter 21:01
day. That really is how this program started, it was a number of businesses that were interested in being more engaged. And I came up with this program, I think I said in 2015. And since then, it’s like, you know, somebody comes into the, the community, they start doing a lot of stuff. And I’ll sit down with him and say, you know, you’re doing three events with the chamber, you can throw that into a sponsorship package, and get all this marketing that comes along with it. And that seems to work very well. I’ve done that multiple times over the years. That’s where how we got to the first eight, where we have 17 today, and some have gone out, we’ve had some that have done a year. And and backed away from it. We have some that had been in it since the beginning. And I’ve been there the whole time. So that different folks value it and it’s they spend their marketing dollars on other things. I had one that wanted to upgrade at this year. And then well, we’re doing this stuff over in the Boise market, we’re gonna stay at the level we’re at, you know, and that’s fine with me, I just, I want to serve their needs as well as I can.

Brandon Burton 22:09
Right. So maybe for clarity sake. So you have the one ask that you get these packages for but then as you have these events throughout the year, are you still offering sponsorship levels throughout the year for those who are not participating in the one ask program?

Matt Hunter 22:26
Yes, we are. The only thing you can’t buy without being in the one is programming. To be a premier sponsor an event, you have to be in the one ask program. But you can buy a gold table at February fantasy which is coming up next Friday. You can be a silver, you can be a bronze. There’s a lot of other sponsorships available for all of our events. And you can buy any of those as one offs. And so I think a gold sponsorship for most of our events is about 1500 bucks. A Silver’s 1000 and a bronze is $600. So yeah, most of our stuff is in about that range. There’s a couple of larger ones. But yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:07
I like that that gives you a pool of people or businesses in the future the see if they’re sponsoring three or four different events. Yeah. Hey, let’s I think our deeper conversation.

Matt Hunter 23:17
Yeah, our February fantasy, you know, there’s probably six or seven sponsors that are involved in the one ask that are part of this big dinner we’re doing next Friday night. And, but there’s 20 sponsors. So a lot of folks have come on as added sponsors for the event without being in one ask program. Okay,

Brandon Burton 23:37
gotcha. So has there been any lessons that you’ve learned through gone through this one ask program that you’re like, oh, this worked really well. Or if I wouldn’t do that aspect of it again, or you’ve had to tweak along the way,

Matt Hunter 23:50
the biggest mistake I made at the very beginning. And it’s still there, but we’re starting to work around it. One premier sponsorship for every event. And it was so you get exclusivity. You don’t end up with two competing banks or two competing credit unions or whatever, as top sponsors. But I wish I had said you get exclusivity within your sort of tear of influence. So maybe I could have hospital be a premier sponsor. And our big credit union being a premier sponsor together. And it has limited my ability, obviously to sell premier sponsorships. We had nine major events. I have nine I can sell. And I’m out and I think I could sell more. And I’m actually starting to talk to those premier sponsors about would you be willing to do this with this other partner to open up more sponsorships? That’s probably the biggest lesson. And then I probably should have done more regular price increases on it because it has made it harder to do that small chunk and price increase, you know, we increase our dues every year to 3%. Every year, folks don’t notice you’re not coming after for a 50% increase all the time. It’s the smartest thing if you don’t increase your dues every year, folks, because your dues every year anyway. But I wish I had done more of that also to stayed up with the pricing in the market instead of locking it in. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:25
And are you the exclusive person meeting with all the the one ask potential spy,

Matt Hunter 25:32
right now, I’m actually going to transition to this as a commissioned piece to my membership salesperson, we’re in the process of doing that right now. And the meetings that I do, as we go through because they’re not they don’t all renew in January, I didn’t make that clear. I’ve some that renew in October and some of that renew in July, because you can sign up anytime during the year. The big ones all renew in January. But so when I have some of the smaller ones renewed during the year, maybe four of them that don’t renew in January of the 17. I will take that salesperson along and teach them the process and help them understand how that program works. So yeah, that’s my plan, I need to transition away from it. I spend more time on government affairs than I do actually on selling sponsorship right.

Brandon Burton 26:23
Now, I think you’ve covered a lot of a lot of great stuff here and really painting the picture how you guys are working your one ask program? Is there anything that we’re missing that we haven’t covered that you think is important for listeners to know?

Matt Hunter 26:37
Well, you know, you always have just sort of extra events come. And so you say it’s one Ask, and you really don’t want to bug them about something. But if something pops up during the year, well, we’ve got to once every year we get to bring the legislature to Southeast side. Well, this is 23, we’re bringing the legislature to South I have to raise a lot of money to bring the legislature here, we fund everything. So you do have special events that are not part of the one ask and just working through that. Because then it’s like, well, I’m going back to Farm Bureau and I’m saying, I got this other event and y’all want to be part of it. Generally, they’re all pretty good about it. But you know, if that’s another something that comes up every once

Brandon Burton 27:20
Yeah, I thought of that earlier in our conversation of as you do have new events that come in, do you just kind of earmark it and say we’ll add that into the calendar for next year. Or if you try to get it in as they come from time to time, you really do I mean, I,

Matt Hunter 27:35
you’ll in my budget, there’s three lines of that one event to event three, that are just potential things that may come up that year that you didn’t budget for the year, they’re extras, and at some point, somebody wanted your help with something, you you decide to be part of it. And you need a funding area for it an expense area for it. So you just write it into the budget as you go along. Got it.

Brandon Burton 28:01
So as we start wrapping up, I wanted to ask if there’s any tips or action items that you can suggest for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest for them?

Matt Hunter 28:12
Well, there’s two that I would really suggest. I came to this industry from the hotel industry. I’ve been involved in chambers for all 20 years, I worked in the hotel industry, but never closely. So I almost immediately the second year I was here, I went through the IOM program to the US Chamber of Commerce, phenomenal program. If you haven’t been through it, I would definitely suggest folks go through it. And then after I got done with it, I was like, Well, where am I going to get my learning now, I need to stay up on things need to be involved. And I get a lot from the Idaho chamber Alliance, which I’m part of, and I’m past chair of and we meet and we got 20 chambers in Idaho that meet together and talk about these kinds of things and operations and sponsorships and all kinds of stuff like that. So if you have a State Chamber, be involved with your State Chamber. And then finally I attend ACC every year. It’s been a great conference, I started going to I think I might the year after I finished my IOM I started going to ACC II and it’s every year I come home with something from that conference that we implement that makes our chamber stronger. Not always a financial thing. It might be something else. But always something comes out of that in in programs and benefits and something that I can implement to support this community.

Brandon Burton 29:39
That’s right. And that’s actually where we met was that ACC conference. So it’s correct. Yeah, something good came out of that. So. So, Matt, I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Matt Hunter 29:57
Well, I think they’re Purpose going forward is just being super involved in their community. And it’s something where we haven’t done a great job in the past. And we’re and we’re reaching out more into not just my membership community, but the whole community and working on things as, as a community partner, involved with the United Way involved with early childhood education, things like that, that we have gotten involved in. At the other real thing that chambers have got to get much better out is figuring out how to engage the younger population, we Scott, we have for years, I wanted to start a young professional program. And we did we just started one about a year and a half ago, and it was actually the Boise Metro Chamber that helped me had one of their people that runs theirs, come over and talk to my board about it and get a group together and really help us get one up and running. And sure we have funding for it. That’s now part and it really is helping engage the younger community with our chamber of commerce. And that’s very important.

Brandon Burton 30:58
Yeah, if you want to stay relevant going forward, you got to start with them while they’re young, right. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about your one ask program, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you,

Matt Hunter 31:18
you could reach out to me two ways matthew@pocatelloidaho.com. That’s Pocatello and Idaho just spelled out very easy. And then the chamber office numbers 208-233-1525, happy to chat with anybody happy to share the literature I have on our one as program. And always happy to talk about anything else in chamber world. You know, people say that chambers are all the same. But I am a firm believer of the common if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, you all are doing great stuff that I know nothing about. And we might be doing some good stuff that we can help you with. So love to chat

Brandon Burton 31:59
with folks. Very good. And I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. And if it’s alright, maybe we could just link to your one ask program material that you have is there on your website that we can just point him to and those show notes. Maybe maybe not. Or reach out to

Matt Hunter 32:21
the updated version may not be out there say

Brandon Burton 32:25
that’s fine, that’s fine. Just Just reach out to Matt to get the latest and greatest. This has been a great conversation and I know chambers listening are getting value from this and their minds are spinning as to how they can implement something like this to simplify things but also to to make it easier on those those bigger sponsors as well. And I really appreciate you setting aside time and joining us today on chamber chat podcast and sharing this experience and insight with us.

Matt Hunter 32:53
Thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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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 podcasts. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Tony Felker 0:39
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Brandon Burton 1:00
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I’m excited about this week’s guest. Our guest for today is Mick Fleming. In addition to serving as the CEO for the primary National Association for Chamber of Commerce professionals for 16 years, Mick has provided strategic planning, consulting support, and direct motivation to hundreds of chambers and associations of all sizes. He retired from ACCE at the end of 2017 and launched chamber counselor LLC. In addition to his Cornell University degree, Mick is a graduate of Duke University’s credit bearing Leadership Program, as well as the Aspen Institute’s immersion program for C level leaders. He was a 15 year member of the US chambers committee of 100 and the Council of State Chambers in 2018. Chamber led chamber legend Frank Ryle presented Mick with the pillar of chamber Professional Award. During eight years of service as Vice Chairman of the world chambers Federation, he worked on collaborative projects with chambers in the world’s largest cities and nations. Throughout his tenure Mick championed initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion in the chamber and business worlds. His writings include making your chamber make a difference. And the horizons initiative, which we’ve referenced often, as well as a key section of the retooling for growth book, as well as numerous white papers and curriculum development. Mick and his wife, Barbara, who are both natives of buffalo have resided in Northern Virginia for 22 years now,

Mick, as I mentioned, I’m I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and friends out there listening and share something interesting about yourself that maybe we haven’t heard before.

Mick Fleming 2:55
Well, I have I don’t have a resume, I have a twisted past. That’s what I have. So I’ll tell you what I can I appreciate the invitation. I’ve known about the chat for a long time and love some of the stuff that you have some of it’s very practical. I mean, you know, finance stuff, and, you know, governance stuff. And so I think those things are extremely valuable, because a lot of people like I did back into the careers of chamber work. Almost everybody in the business has done something else first. And so I think it’s really great to have those basics. And, you know, there are people who can scare you to death with their talks about compliance and so forth. But just to have a, you know, a peer talk about these things, I think is really is really more valuable. So what can I tell you about something interesting about my past? I was in Jackson college. And so I and Cornell is a huge institution in New York state. So having gone there, I got a lot of help. People always talk about that left your first job and your second job and that, you know, so many people don’t have that kind of help. And I did. And then of course, I had proved that I was worth it for the next. Whatever tenure I stayed. I had some other weird things on the side. I I never ran a chamber until 2019 where I ran one for a summer as an interim CEO. From my chamber, my community said in 2019 That was 2019 Okay, it was it was a great awakening because I find out I found out why none of you sleep at night. And the chamber was having difficulties. And I’ll bring up something else later about the necessity of keeping the board and engaged in the in the purpose stuff. But anyway, I had a, I’ve had a great run. And I started off as a teacher and coach and moved on from there to other things got my first association job. I don’t know, I think in like 1980, or something like that. Okay, 82. And that was at the Business Council of New York State, which is a combination of the manufacturers and the chamber and economic developers across the country, across the state. And so that’s what I did to get into this business. I actually got in because they entered this. Somebody entered me for this distinguished business advocate thing when I was working in a publishing shop, okay. And so I was one of the winners. That was the Business Council and I used that, to get acquainted with them. They had a magazine, I was a publisher, and it all worked from there. And three different jobs. Their first one was publishing. Second one was general marketing communications. And the last one was public policy where I learned how to come up with new euphemisms for lobbying. Right, right. Yeah, Director of Government Relations. Yeah. All those kinds of words, instead of telling your mother you’re a lobbyist.

Brandon Burton 6:52
That’s right. Now, that’s a great perspective. So normally, I have people tell about, you know, their chamber size perspective, you know, scope of work, budget, that sort of thing, but it’s a treat to have you on because I always get a little bit worried when I see people like yourself, you come to the towards the end of your chamber career and you don’t get ready to retire. And I think Darren I missed having Mick on the podcast. And then as luck would have it, our paths cross and glad that we’re able to get you on today because I know you you bring a great amount of knowledge and experience as well. After leading ACC as well. So our our topic for discussion today is going to be around the importance of chambers focusing on their purpose and mission. And we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Mick we’re back. So I mentioned before the break that we will focus our discussion today around focus the importance for chambers to focus on their mission and purpose. You’ve had experience working with chambers, not only throughout the United States, but throughout the world. And I’m sure you’ve seen maybe some of these, some of the mission creep that comes in and just share with us maybe some of those experiences that have kind of been red flags. It’s like, oh, this is not your lane to get into. And, and you know, it’s come back to where you should be focused at?

Mick Fleming 11:05
Well, I think it’s good to raise this sometime last, we’ll do it here. I produced a speech and a presentation and booklet on it was called The Seven Deadly Sins. And what if you could know now what you’ll know, then? And so I came up with these. I actually, a guy from South Carolina was the one who came, Chavez said, Mick, you know, all these stories, you talk to all these people on the way out of their jobs? Could you tell what, what did they tell you. So that’s I came up with this. And the number one thing that I came up with in terms of the seven sins was almost universally across everybody I talked to was less lack of focus. And they just get hold too wide. And their resources run too thin. When that starts to happen, and they also get more disorganized, they don’t know which things are priority. So I really try to concentrate on that when I can talk to boards of directors, especially when I did those. And I still do some outreach and and do you know, day to day long sessions, about 90% of the time, they work great. And about 10% of the time, the exec doesn’t last very long after the session. I’m not harsh, it’s just, you know, when sometimes it’s just somebody finds out what they didn’t know, board or whatever. So that that context thing is really important. So when I talk about purpose, I always talk about purpose first, and, and, and mission second. So as you move into this thing, to try to write strategic disadvantages and marketing.

Brandon Burton 13:05
So I was asked maybe before diving into the first and second purpose and mission, how do you see them being different? You know, some people might hear purpose and mission and think, yeah, we’ve got a mission statement. And that’s our purpose. And it just blends together. So how do you differentiate that purpose and mission, then we can get in a little deeper

Mick Fleming 13:25
using Disney did a great job Disney Institute on that very question. And they brought in people that they really know about these things, three, including the guy from Hewlett Packard, and all these things, actually Packard himself. So here’s the thing, they the big thing about purpose is that there’s a very good chance that that purpose should last for 100 years. And a mission is who you represent, and what you’re going to do for them. And so you can almost think of two different stairways leading up to the Why did a purpose. One is this overall expectations and and what do we want to be? And what are our principles? And what’s the community about? How can we help the community while helping the members? That’s the that’s the big purpose statement. And then the other one is, you know, well, how do we help these people? The business people themselves as opposed to, you know, changing the world. How do we get to a why for that work? And if you put those two together at the end, you got to why and for both, both areas. The one actually for the work is easy. You’re, but you have to take it as stairways stair steps. You start off with something, let’s say, like, example might be, you know, we convene business and community and you take the next step and that the why for that is one voice is better than 30,000 voices or 50 voices. So we’ll have more strength than you have to get away from that. Well, what are we trying to do with that influence? And then you keep moving up that chain until you get to really the epitome, which is, you know, why do we even bother with all this stuff? And so I think that’s the way on purpose. It’s much it’s grander, it’s something that will last. It’s not subject to the whims of the next strategic planning group, or the next

Brandon Burton 15:53
CEO. Right, that purpose should help drive those strategic planning sessions. Right. Understanding that purpose. And you see a lot of chambers have mission statements, but you don’t see a whole lot. They have purpose statements, right? Yes,

Mick Fleming 16:08
some of the mission ones are good enough that they make. Yeah, it’s aspirational in that way. The other problem, I think with it is that it’s I shouldn’t say, Brian, look at the opportunity related to this is that you got to figure out what you’re selling. And for many people in the chamber world, everything that nothing in the mission is ever mentioned on a sales call. What’s mentioned in a sales call is you get to do this, you get by that you get to be a sponsor for this, we will take you on a trip to capitol, it’s all services. And the mission is, is not to have a great golf tournament. So and the mission, the mission doesn’t even have to have a magazine unless there’s a purpose for the magazine. So if you don’t have that, then and your staff isn’t trained, and you aren’t, aren’t focusing on those things that are bigger and more meaningful, it’ll be very hard to get big contributions, I’ll call it. Revenue above the rate card. Yeah, whatever your rate sheet is, anybody above that? Is somebody who’s either getting something from the organization specifically, like help with some transportation problem or something. And then the other thing is they’ll have they get to ask, you know, those people get asked for lots of stuff and sponsorship and stuff. And they mostly though it’s kind of a contribution, even a sponsorship, they there’s no way to measure how much value that is to the company. So those are the things that I think that’s why the mission and purpose are so important is that once in a while you got to sit across especially from big, a potentially big map or, or big sponsor, and talk about the things in those two stairways. Right.

Brandon Burton 18:14
So and I can see where somebody in the community may come to the chamber and say the chamber needs to head up this initiative. Because what we believe the chamber is well connected, you can make this happen. And so they want to dump it on the chamber. And in some instances, maybe that aligns with the purpose of what the chamber is trying to accomplish. But it doesn’t align with the mission. Right? Right. So to be able to be clear on where that fits, and if it really, if it fits both criteria, first, your purpose and then your mission. But then being well enough, connected throughout the community that you can say maybe this isn’t meant for the chamber to do but this organization can help and we’ll support it. However, we can

Mick Fleming 18:59
just have to watch out a little bit if you inherit some of those things, right. One of the things that I tell new execs or, or people who want to move into the business is to are getting CEO interview. You have to find out how, you know, unrestricted, the unrestricted. On your finances, how unrestricted is it. My best example is up in Seattle, and they had this one program, I think it was a homeless program. And they got this money to see see to get it going. And it was this expectation that the chamber would be doing this and they didn’t have the money. They didn’t know why they were doing it. So that can be a new exec comes in and says Where am I going to come up with that $100,000 a year. So I think those things so you got to be a little careful though. There was another place down in Baton Rouge where the new CEO said I’m not going to, we’re not going to do this Christmas parade, what does that have to do with the chamber. And so he says, We’re not going to do that. And the next day, the front page of chamber kills Santa Claus. You got to watch out, you got to sometimes some of the best things to do though is to farm it out, maybe to an aspirational organization, not just one that’s through one of your big hot shots. But, you know, an organization, maybe the Community Foundation, or sometimes it can even be youth, young people.

Brandon Burton 20:38
So we laugh about that the Chamber killing Santa Claus, but really, it’s it is an opportunity to tell the community what it is the chamber does, they’re not about the parties and pageants and parades, but you’re about meaningful work, that’s going to move the needle. So I can see where it may have a negative context and spin to it.

Mick Fleming 21:00
Jim Collins who I like wrote, Good to Great, here’s the draw these three circles come together in Venn diagram. And he says, You’re, you’re good at it. You like it, and somebody will pay you for it. And the nonprofit world, it’s down your mission, you’re the best your only provider, and you have a business model. And so those are the things people have to think about, I should spend at least some of their time in the center of that those circles. Yeah. I like to talk for a minute if I could about this. thing, I learned a couple of things. One is a policy imperative. Now, we’re chambers, there might have been a time when it was that you didn’t have to talk about the issues, and you could just get people’s butts in the seats. But I think especially for meaningful investors that want to make the community better and the business community better. I think there’s some things that have to be done on policy, not necessarily politics, I realized that it’s an overflow of lots of times, but policy work can be written in a way that doesn’t insult and it allows the chamber to be the sane middle. Some people think that’s an impossibility now, because everything’s so fractured. But I still think the same same little is the place that chambers can play in policy work without getting their heads cut off. And if they don’t lay there, somebody’s gonna say, Well, you don’t stand for anything that. So I think it’s important.

Brandon Burton 22:44
Yeah, I think if you keep that focus on what’s pro business, what’s good for the businesses in your community, it’s hard to even get into the political side of it, if all you’re doing is focusing on the business aspect and the impact of businesses. And that’s your that’s what you’re standing for.

Mick Fleming 23:01
Right. The only thing I wanted to mention was the textual leadership role. In the Duke thing that I went through, there was six domains of leadership. And in talking about the future, for chambers, the biggest thing that changed out of my life after going through that was one of the six paradigms of leadership. It’s called contextual leadership. And that’s, I didn’t know that until I went through that I didn’t know it. I’m 35 employees, I didn’t know they didn’t know what was going on. And of my 30 board members, I didn’t know they didn’t know. And getting transparent about as much as you can, that doesn’t involve you know, hurting somebody or HR or something. But being transparent, just made my life so much easier, and being taking time to explain our purpose. And our, our mission meant so much. And my life got so much easier. I mean, I was in a position where I was they were so out of touch. I was so out of touch. And I would give them the same assignment to two different people. Yeah, I, you know, they did not they didn’t object. So, it got some of that is because of lack of focus. Yeah, it was I was doing things that were, you know, offline, I do some things that we would just staff would be sent to do things that were not necessarily get on the mission. Yeah, I don’t want to I don’t want to cut off the hobbyist thing that you guys have to do programming to make some money. I would say though, that if you include staff time, it doesn’t make much money. So they program you run should have value above money, because it’s really not a huge margin that you have from any of the events you run except possible your maybe two biggest community wide events. You know, the awards dinner or whatever you call it, usually make some money is probably one of the thing that makes some real money. But the smaller grouping things and the committee running and all those kinds of things are usually they have to have a value that is there’s a real binding thing for the members. Right. And that’s that matters. But yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:39
So I wanted to circle back he had mentioned at the beginning talking about board engagement. So it Do you want to circle back to that at this point about keeping the board engaged when it comes to purpose and mission?

Mick Fleming 25:54
Well, I think an awful lot of people on boards think that their contribution to the chamber or their contribution to the community, is to have their name on the list of directors. They think that’s the thing. And they don’t think that they don’t necessarily think they’ve got other work to do. And I understand that. I tell people that if I had a large company CEO on my board, I would much rather have them make three phone calls a year, then show up every month or every other month for a board meeting, right? One, we got to economic development or economic loss issue to work on. Second one, we got an issue in politics, we got to work. And third, we got a mission with a member we’re going to lose, I would rather have that than have them show up everywhere, anywhere. So the board that matters is there’s this activist group, I call it the after school group or the detention group. And they’re the ones who actually care about which way you go. Which way, it’s not necessarily the Executive Committee. It could be somebody in any level, and you get a handful of those people. And you can probably manage the organization. Other than the representative stuff, you have to have some boards that those five people are whatever number you pick, they don’t have to be elitist. They just have to be with you and shaping you and you shape them. And I think that’s the critical part and part of the board, then they also can say yes, when you do a strategic planning change, and you’re no longer going to do the Christmas parade and you’re going to instead take a trip to Capitol. That’s something that they can help you with that gets talked about. And I don’t get blindsided and the board doesn’t get blindsided with those that insulation that you have from some people who get you on. Another thing, I think, is that it’s very important to figure out your terms of service. And what terms mean, and how far out to stretch the board group and you know, as your seventh chair elect already decided. Elect elect elect. And one of the reasons for that is that when you name somebody, a future leader or chair elect, you’re going to be doing work for to train for two execs, for for two CEOs. So you’ve got to watch out. The only thing I think that chambers lose focus on is they do things not just that are off mission, but they do things that they just don’t know how to say no to because the board asked somebody on the board asked for it. Right. You know, I’m on the heart fund, I think you guys could really help out if you came up with volunteers and did the blah, blah, blah. And how do you say no, how do you say no to the hospital? How do you say no to the school? And so carving out your niche, and each of those things is, is the only way to keep the peace? Probably unless you can use your five specialists?

Brandon Burton 29:20
Yeah, well, I think it goes back to just being familiar yourself with what your purpose and mission is. Because, again, going back to so many chambers have a mission statement, but they let that mission creep come in. And then when you’re in a board meeting, and the school district says hey, I think that you guys need to get volunteers together for this and put together a whole new program. If you don’t have that mission and purpose on the front of your mind, then it’s very easy to just kind of go along with it. Instead of saying, yeah, we’ve got more important work to do, but maybe we can put you in contact with people that that can run with this.

Mick Fleming 29:56
Now the most important program we ran in that summer that I worked in The Chamber of business is they had a great thing with the school that fit perfectly into the mission. That was an ethics day. Or even maybe two days for seniors in high school, okay. And the presenters and sponsors were all people who gave a crap about that, you know, accountants and lawyers and, and ministers. And I mean, it was, it was wonderful program. All you had to do is say we’re doing it and money would come in. Yeah, I’m not saying that’s what everybody should do. But see, find those ones where there’s a obvious audience and interest, for

Brandon Burton 30:41
sure. So covered a lot of a lot of great stuff. In our conversation today, I wanted to see if there is maybe one tip or action item that you would share for a chamber who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you offer them?

Mick Fleming 31:00
Well, I just got back a couple of weeks ago from the winter Institute. I talked about future chambers and associations. And I’ll tell you the thing that as I worked on that script in that show, the thing that came to mind most is that change, change, change, change, change is hard to work with. And if you have credit, imagine the things that you couldn’t imagine the things that people might think today that was going on 10 years ago, or five years ago. So you’ve been through, by the way, congratulations to everybody in the chamber row for getting through the pandemic. I mean, I don’t know how you did it. I didn’t retire because of the pandemic. But I’m really glad I wasn’t.

Brandon Burton 31:46
Well, they had this really good reason initiative, Dilip to so

Mick Fleming 31:50
very engineering and did a great job. Here that including getting all of you some PPP money. Okay, so here’s my tip, the Navy SEALs used to go into attack, and they think they had everything planned, and have all these weapons on how many boats we’re gonna need all that kind of stuff and to get to the beach, and somebody’s playing beach soccer. And they can’t even come through without, you know, collateral damage. Or some, you know, warlord died and they’re having to park a parade down the middle of town. They can’t. So they finally figured out that we’re going to have to do is to make themselves ready to handle whatever comes next. But the whole strategy should be how do I make it. So I’ll be able to handle whatever comes next. That means I gotta look at personnel, I got all the resources, all this kind of stuff, you’re gonna be realistic, I don’t think you have to say, we’re going to know everything about everything. Just you know, people can project a little bit for you and help you find those issues where

your strategy is, are we going to be ready. We don’t know if it’s going to be a flood

virus, a war that got a slump. The loss of our CEO, it could be all of those things. One that you don’t have to worry about. It’s like a scandal with your Chairman, Chairman of the Board, you can do about that. You don’t want to plan for it unless you want to do a program for dealing with the press. So I think that that’s the best thing I can say is you don’t know what’s changed. It’s common. strategy isn’t like all these to do list. It’s, How are we going to be ready,

Brandon Burton 33:36
be ready for the unexpected? expected to come? It’s gonna come. So I’m excited at this next question, I have to ask you. Every one I have on the show, I like asking them how they see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward. A lot of times the answers reference the horizon initiative. So I’m excited to hear you know, at this point here in 2023. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Mick Fleming 34:11
I wish it wouldn’t have been so correct. Raising my prediction. I mean, you know, the importance of international dealing with your organization. Can anybody see that not being continuing to grow, that your community, your employers? So that’s the kind of thing I think. And that strategy of being ready for whatever comes next is, think about that. You can think about your own issues. If you already have some say what’s gonna happen with that interstate that somebody’s directing our way or that major shipping change that we’re going to have warships in our report or whatever it is. And think that through if there’s if there’s the likelihood of some kind of military issue is, you know, the Mountain Group in Northern New York and Watertown, are they likely to be called in? Let’s see about that. I think that’s the prep thing you can think about. I also think that the be I was really surprised, honestly, that the last two comments, one economic and one personal crisis didn’t lead to more consolidation. Right. You know, the 2009 thing, I thought everybody was going to be scrambling to just, you know, collect whatever they can collect, and, and hook up with anybody that could hook up. And this time, I thought there’d be more regional linkage, or just expanding? I don’t see the themes. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t see that happening a lot in the US, you know, the whole all of Great Britain has 22 chamber. Really? Yeah. And, you know, we have, we have one, sometimes we have, you know, one is the county chamber with this name, and the other one is the city chamber with that name, right. I think some of that is going to have to be looked at, not just the volume, but of chambers. But you know, there’s divisions of labor that can happen all over the place. And, you know, saying that you’re, you know, arm and arm with the Economic Development Group, even though they get all the glory. That’s not a bad thing to get hooked up to, if there’s a publisher in town, and they’re doing these things that are about, you know, health day, and they all run these business publications, especially run all these special things for accountants and everybody. So I think finding partners is going to be a big deal, whether it’s formalized, or in formalized, I think that it’s going to be necessary. I think programming is going to have to grow up to a level where it’s better than not necessarily better, because in person is always better. But at least as good as or almost as good as the best you can get on the web.

Brandon Burton 37:31
Right. Now, I appreciate that, that insight and thought that you’ve given to that to the continued look forward to the future of chambers. But Mick as we wrap up here, today, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, anyone that’s, you know, wondering where you’re at, or how to get in contact with you what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Mick Fleming 37:53
Okay. I think the easiest way to get me as email and that’s mick@mickfleming.com, pretty hard to forget. Let me as one eminent and my phone numbers not off limits. So if somebody wants to talk to me about a specific topic or want to invite me to town, the numbers 703-216-5525. And if I’m not the person that fits best with what you might need, I know somebody who is so we can help with that. I do like to still go. I’d said I did the institute thing this year, I still like to go out and work with individual chambers. Once 2020 came, I had two great years of retired business 18 and 19. It was great. March 12 2020, the government announced all the shutdowns March 13 My three clients for the summer went away. So I kind of said, you know, I’m not gonna try to push the wagon up the hill, I’m gonna just take what comes in instead of marketing. Yeah. So that I, you know, I still like to do it. I’m not expensive. And also, most things are pretty short. Yeah, it’s like a day and a half and you get rid of me some of the other accounts, consultants, you know, they, they want to lifetime contracts, right. So I’m, I’m quick, I can do it. Topically or I can do it. The overall stuff like we talked about today.

Brandon Burton 39:42
That’s great. And I’ll get that in our show notes as well for this episode. And maybe just a side note, make is part of the chamber chat champions Facebook group as well, where we post each episode in and allow for some conversation around the topics of each podcast episode. So that may be another way where you can find Mick online. So, Mick, thank you for setting aside time with us today. Like I said, I’ve been looking forward to having you on the podcast. I’m glad it worked out. And thank you for the great information, valuable information that you deliver today. I really appreciate it.

Mick Fleming 40:18
Well, Brandon was great to be asked. Thank you for doing this.

Brandon Burton 40:21
Oh, you’re welcome.

Mick Fleming 40:23
This is not something that an individual will take on very often for an entire industry. And you’ve got both some guts and some brains to do it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 40:35
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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.

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Brandon Burton 1:02
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Our guest for this episode is Dave Kilby. For those of you not familiar, Dave is the President CEO of the Western Association of Chamber Executives or WACE. He’s also the Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs for the California Chamber. He’s the author of the book Chamber Champions Wisdom for the Ages, which was released in April of 2019. And for 11 years, he served as a California chambers lobbyist on small business economic development, housing and land use issues. Prior to joining the California Chamber he had a successful career in local chamber management as CEO of the Modesto Chamber in California. He’s a former chair of the US Chamber Western Institute and member of the US chambers committee of 100. And their political advocacy committee, is a self described movie Disney and trivia net and has a poly Holic, which is new word for me. Meaning he actually likes politics. Dave and his wife Kim are on a never ending search for the perfect India Pale Ale IPA.

Dave, I’m excited to finally have you with us today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and go ahead and share something else interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Dave Kilby 2:27
Okay, well, thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to our discussion or conversation. You know, you you I didn’t know you were going to do the whole bio. So you’ve already covered the the IPA angle and the Disney angle and some of those things.

Brandon Burton 2:44
But I try to get deep into the really interesting stuff. Yeah,

Dave Kilby 2:48
but you know, I’m a lifer. I basically walked off the college campus and got involved in a chamber. And it was all because of my senior project in the Journalism Department at Fresno State, which was who promotes Fresno. And that led me down to what a convention bureaus do, what do chambers do? What do cities do? And when an opening came up in Modesto to join their chamber as the number two person, my professor in the Journalism Department said, you know, more about chambers than anybody out there, go get this job. And the rest, the rest is history,

Brandon Burton 3:28
I might need to change that question. And to it says something interesting of how did you find your way into the chamber world? Because everybody’s got such an interesting path. But that’s a neat one.

Dave Kilby 3:39
Well, there isn’t anybody that’s that’s born to get into chamber. That’s their that’s their lifelong dream, but it kind of worked out for me.

Brandon Burton 3:46
That’s right, it tends to find the right people, that’s for sure. So at this point, I usually will have a chamber Tell me a little bit more details about their chamber size, staff budget and that sort of thing. But why don’t you just tell us a little bit more detail about WACE for maybe those who are east of the Mississippi or maybe not as familiar with the organization. Just tell us what it’s all about. And you kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Dave Kilby 4:11
In most states, there’s a statewide group association for Chamber of Commerce Executives. And a couple of decades or more ago, the California group was asked to become a boundary less association for chambers everywhere. And as a result, we now have chamber member members from chambers in I think it’s 21 states and a handful up in three different provinces up in Canada. And it’s it’s kind of, you know, our job we say is to help chamber executives and their staff succeed at their job. Right. So, you know, that that’s really what we’re all about. We don’t do lobbying. We don’t we’re not like you know, us State Chamber per se. We’re all in this for the the chamber execs and the staff professionals to help them succeed.

Brandon Burton 5:07
Very good. So for our focus on our discussion today, we’ve kind of settled on a topic of, you know, looking at it through Dave’s career, he’s seen some, some real chambers that are are really, you know, doing things right, you know, taking a lot of good notes about the things that these chambers are doing. And he’s been able to, you know, establish some good notes as to what are some of those essential ingredients for a successful chamber. So we will dive into this discussion and some of those findings that Dave has seen throughout his career as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Dave, we’re back. So I’m excited to dive into this exploration, we’ll say these essential ingredients that you’ve come across throughout your career, these successful chambers, what are some of the things that that have stood out to you as you’ve worked with chambers throughout your career?

Dave Kilby 8:43
Well, you know, I think there is a recipe for success in chambers. And I think five of the essential ingredients would be I’m going to I’m going to list them and then I’ll get into a little more detail about them. And that’s perfect. The first ingredient I think is do you have the right people on your board is the WHO who’s on your board and their mindset. The next ingredient is the staff. I mean do you have the best staff you can afford? And And do they have the talents to to run a successful organization? And the third ingredient is are you doing the right stuff? Does your program meet the needs of your members and I should emphasize meet the needs of your members today. Rebuilt i I’ll talk about tradition and some of the things that I’ve seen that have dominated chambers then it doesn’t matter if you have great board and a great staff and you’re doing all the right stuff if nobody knows about it. So are you communicating your value? You know and and and that appeals to everyone out there and not all of your members want the same thing. You know, Mom and Pop wants you to help them with their cash credit and make their cash register ring. And there are businesses out there that are international and their needs are cut pletely different. So are you doing the right stuff? Does anybody know about it? And then last but not least, and I think just, I mean, I, I would say, pre pandemic, but certainly during pandemic, and now is do you have a willingness to risk and change? So those would be my five ingredients. And I’d be happy to comment a little further on all of them if you’d like, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 10:24
Absolutely. So let’s talk about the two, the who I guess in the first two ingredients are the right people on the board and the right staff.

Dave Kilby 10:33
Right. Yeah. And you know, do you have the right people on the bus? And are they in the right seats? Right, so to speak? And, and I think that’s really important. Does your chamber have term limits? Does your chamber board look like the membership? Or does your chamber board look like a bunch of old baby boomers? I mean, are they representative of your membership? And Representative? I mean, that in all ways of diversity, size of business type of business location in the community, age ethnicity, going through it all? Or do they look like a cookie cutter have one type of person? And so I think that’s a big deal. The chambers that have a more representative Board, who are, who can commit resources, time and talent, are more successful than folks that have chamber board members that have to check in with the boss, before the chamber can take a position on a controversial issue before the city council. Right. I think the right people in the right seats is a real important thing for chambers.

Brandon Burton 11:44
Can you touch on on a chamber recruiting board members, and sometimes there’s a feeling of, you know, I can’t recruit are not sure how to approach that. But how do they go about finding the right people for the right seats,

Dave Kilby 11:56
we’ll see, I think one of the essential ingredients that chambers have is that everybody is, is thinking about who’s going to take my place on the board. And so constantly looking for the future board members, and actually going in and recruiting them, I’m a huge fan of that. Because that gets you if you just wait for people to volunteer, you’re never going to get the best and the brightest and the busiest in your town, you’re gonna get people that maybe don’t have anything else to do. And I think when you go recruit somebody, you know, if you and I were to walk into somebody’s office and say, Sally, we’d like to talk to you about the chamber board, you have the talents that we need. And you will have the the experience and the information about the major issues facing businesses in our community. And we need you on our board to help take the chamber to the next level to serve our membership, and the community make the community better? That’s a much difficult thing, much more difficult thing to say no to than if you just email somebody and say, Hey, are you interested to be on the board, or you put something in their newsletter or on a podcast or whatever, you know, please send it, you know, notify rested? Yeah, the busy people aren’t going to do it, you got to go recruit, you got to go get the right people to be on your board. The partnership with staff is really, really important. And knowing knowing that, you have this partnership, and everybody knows their role, they the board knows what their job is. And the staff led by the CEO knows what his or her job is, also, the board is into governance and the CEO is into you give me direction, I’m going to manage this business called the chamber. Right.

Brandon Burton 13:51
So as we talk about the staff side of things, oftentimes, you know, chambers tend to be great incubators, right. They find people may be new in a career, you build them up, you showcase these great talents they have and then you know, they go work for a member business. So talk a bit about, you know, finding the right staff, having them, you know, fit in with the organization be trained, but maybe there’s some things we can do to entice people to stay and it’s not always a bad thing to see him leave either for for good opportunities.

Dave Kilby 14:25
Well, you know, I, when I get in front of chamber boards, I emphasize the importance of running the chamber like a business, a successful business, and a successful business. They have good benefits in a successful business. The CEO may have a contract. In a successful business, there’s a bonus program. And so all of those things are really important. For chambers if the chamber makes $100,000 This year, why isn’t there a bonus program for the people on the chamber staff To reap some of the benefits of that, let’s run the chamber like a business. And, and again, fortunately, in our membership in WAC II, contracts are way up, benefits are getting better every year. And the bonuses, it’s almost 50% of the chamber. execs in WAC II got a bonus last year. Yeah, that’s awesome. And that I think is really important. That didn’t used to be the way it was. So because of that you have people stayin and making this a career more than just making it at their next job. So and that’s obviously one of our goals is to, is to make sure that that happens.

Brandon Burton 15:40
And that’s a that’s a big difference maker, right? They’re making it a career versus a job and something they can see themselves doing long term because there is a future there. So I appreciate that. The infographics he put out every now and then from the survey results you guys do, I think it’s very insightful. And anybody who’s not following Dave on the social media and whatnot to see those things, there’s a good key information in those infographics. So thank you for sharing that. So let’s say let’s touch on the right stuff, are you? Are you covering the right stuff and addressing the right stuff in your chamber? And I know that’s a topic a lot of chambers might need to take a closer look at when you have mission creep and maybe lose focus of, of your purpose and mission. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Dave Kilby 16:29
Well, you know, about four or five years ago, we were really, basically concerned about the future of chambers, and is our brand and in a sense, will chambers go away when the baby boomers retire? We were trying to find out the answers to that. And what we, what we came up with, with all of our focus groups and surveys and everything else is we came up with chambers today need to be what we call three C chambers, not three P chambers. Three C’s are to be a catalyst, a convener and a champion, which people can tend to remember that. And that’s a catalyst for business growth. That’s a convener of leaders and influencers to get things done. And that’s a champion for a thriving community. Now, contrasting that, with our research showed that folks don’t want their chamber to necessarily be what we call a three P chamber parties, parades and pageants. And around Fourth of July pyrotechnics, I mean, if that’s what I like to ask the question, what do you want your chamber to be known for. And if it’s known for ribbon cuttings, and mixers, and fireworks, that may not have value to a lot of people in the community. If the chamber is known as a problem solver, making it better to live, work and raise families in this community, they’re going to be a lot more successful. And frankly, people are going to be willing to write them bigger checks,

Brandon Burton 18:09
right? Have you seen maybe some key traits or characteristics from chambers that make that shift from being a three P chamber three C chamber and how they do it? Because they don’t imagine a lot of it is just, you know, cold turkey, where you just stop doing the Fourth of July parade? And, you know, there’s still things important to the community, but you’re also making a shift into more of that meaningful work?

Dave Kilby 18:32
Right? Well, I think, again, they’re kind of five buckets that that our research shows that folks want their chamber to do business people, the surveys that we do, we’ve surveyed, we have survey results from over 25,000 business people for that are involved in chambers. And we asked them the question, how important is it for your chamber to do these things? And so five things that popped out of that. And it doesn’t mean you still don’t do events, but you might have to spin them slightly different of why you do events. So the five things are, are you doing things to strengthen the local economy? Are you doing things to represent the interest of business with government? Some people would call that government affairs. Are you doing things to promote community? Now, that’s a little bit more than convention Bureau staff and tourism that’s making this a good place to live, promote our community way of life? And are you doing things to build business relationships? So see, you still do events, but you shouldn’t be doing that shouldn’t be the only thing you’re known for. And then the last bucket involves political action. It’s the it’s the most sensitive, it’s the most controversial, but the question that we ask, how important is it for the chamber to help elect business friendly candidates? It’s the office. Well, the current number is 72% of business people rate that as very important. Now, when we started doing this survey 20 years ago, it was 51%. Wow, today, today’s business person thinks there needs to be more business friendly folks elected office and how can the chamber help them? Yeah. So the fact that they want it, we don’t get into how you should do it, because it could be a spectrum, a continuum of things, from a candidates forum to endorsing candidates and writing checks from your political action committee. But all of these, so let’s, let’s just put political action aside, all of the others, the building business relationship, promoting community, representing the interest of business with government and strengthening the local economy, all of those are in that mid 80s, or 90%. of business, people say, I want my chamber to do those things, this is very important. So again, back to one of the essential ingredients of communicating value, you may be doing it. But the only thing that gets headlines are the only thing that you keep talking about is the next event. Right? This other stuff, which is a little more heavy lifting stuff tends to get put in the background, often by a lot of chambers,

Brandon Burton 21:23
right. So the communicating value, I see chambers are probably becoming more and more effective at that, with that data feedback you just gave 71% want their chambers to be involved with political action. And that that, to me, that goes back, it ties back into communicating the value because nobody is telling these business owners that hey, this is what your chamber should be doing. It’s what do you expect from your chamber and to see that growth? That means that that communication is happening there. But I also see some chambers still struggle a little bit to communicate that value. So yeah, talk a little bit about that.

Dave Kilby 22:03
Well, part of part of it is also I’m back to the board. Again, there are there are chambers out there that their board kind of has the perspective of we need to be everybody’s friend. And there are other chambers out there, the most successful chambers out there, by the way, have an attitude of we want to be respected, and maybe even feared, if we ever flexed our muscle look out. Because, you know, we can do a lot of things if we ever really went all in on something. So that communicating what you’re doing. Again, I’d like to ask people to do this, I said, take a look at your first screenshot of your E newsletter. I get about 150 180 of them every month, from different chambers. And the first screenshot to me tells the story. I’m too busy. I’m just like your members. I’m too busy. I’m not going to scroll, I’m not going to spend a ton of time. So what’s on the first screenshot, what are you communicating in the headlines? Assuming I’m not going to read? So what’s in the headlines? Are you doing a lot for what’s in it for me? The member? are you explaining the value of that I an example I use all the time is there’s a chamber there were two chambers out there. And within days of each other, I got their E newsletter. And the subject line on one was business expo November 13. The subject line on the other one was opportunity to meet 1000 potential business clients at the Chamber’s business expert. Now, that was just the subject line. But I think I know which one most businesses would click on To find out more information. I think it’s the second 1000 business contacts,

Brandon Burton 23:51
right? Yeah, so the other one you don’t need to open right? You get the information you need, right and the subject line which which made the that’s all you need is and mission accomplished. But there’s usually more information you’re trying to portray. You’re more details.

Dave Kilby 24:04
Yeah, it also doesn’t give you a rationale to be interested in it. Right? When you put what’s in it for the member, you know, then they’re more inclined to attend and click on it and go sign up, do whatever,

Brandon Burton 24:19
right. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for chambers to dive into some copywriting classes and courses and whatnot, just to see what these marketing companies are doing. What are they doing to grab your attention through emails, little teasers you get through social media posts. They know what they’re doing. They’re following the science, you know, of how your brain works and what gets your attention. So if nothing else, if you’re not going to sit down and actually do a course on copywriting, just be aware and pay attention to what you see on emails that come across to you and what you see on social media. Again, not

Dave Kilby 24:53
everybody has somebody on their staff with a journalism degree or a marketing degree or whatever. So you know, maybe getting a little X For a knowledge in that area would be helpful. Instead of it’s oh, gosh, we got to do the newsletter again.

Brandon Burton 25:06
Yep. In the panic do an hour before to throw something together. Right. So let’s talk about the the number five ingredient the willingness to take risks, what do you see there?

Dave Kilby 25:20
Yeah, you know, this is one of those that you know it again, to take the chamber to the next level, in this day and age, we have to be willing to change and risk, we have to be willing to do things different. You know, I, I’m a, I like to ask this question again, of chamber professionals, and I asked it to your audience, bring it in, you know, do you know who the protectors of the past are at your chamber? And, and frankly, hopefully, it’s not you, you know, hopefully, you know, if you’re the person that says, Oh, we’re gonna go back and keep doing the stuff we did in 2017. I don’t think that’s going to cut it anymore. There’s a quote out there, I’m not sure who said it. But I, I remember, I remembered it and wrote it down in my typical note taking that I do. And the quote goes like this, the pandemic caused us to do the things we should have been doing all along. Right. We should have been the key resource for businesses and dealing with government, whether it in the pandemic, whether it was PPE, or PPP or Cares Act money, or on and on and on, we became the trusted resource that they turned to, not just members, but the entire business community often saw the chamber completely different during 20 and 21. And in frankly, I think it’s it carried over into 2022. But the shelf life of that if you don’t keep doing things like that, now, we’re on to something else here in 2023. And how’s your chamber viewed?

Brandon Burton 26:56
Right. So, to me, that goes right back to that number four ingredient of communicating value, because a lot of these chambers were doing that, but their members had no idea until the stress hit till the pandemic hit, like, Who do I turn to? What do I do? And it’s like a moment of desperation, let me check with the chamber. The chamber is like, yeah, we can help you. We’ve been here all along. But that value had not been properly communicated. And or maybe they weren’t doing the right stuff. Today, going back to ingredient number three. So these are these are all supportive of each other, as I see.

Dave Kilby 27:31
Well, I see it also it gives me, it gives me an opportunity to spin it all slightly different. And emphasize the points,

Brandon Burton 27:39
right, for sure. So I hope everybody was taking notes, or maybe go back and give it another relisten as they go through those those key ingredients. And I think some of these are things that they’ve heard before and maybe in passing, but maybe hear in the way that you presented it today puts it in an order that makes a lot more sense to prioritize where they put their focus right now. Dave, as we start to wrap up here, you’ve shared some great tips. But I always like to ask for a tip or an action item for a listener who is trying to take their chamber up to the next level. What might you suggest for them?

Dave Kilby 28:15
Well, you mentioned this word, I have two things, frankly, and I’ll try to be brief on this, but

Brandon Burton 28:21
like bonuses, so Well, yeah.

Dave Kilby 28:24
I’m not gonna go there. I think one of the word focus. Yeah, I think I think a lot of chambers would be better off if they did less, and did what did those things better than trying to be all things to all people? So is it time for your chamber to focus? That would be my question there. And one of the ways to focus is I’m I’m a, I’m an absolute firm believer, I don’t care whether you’re a longtime chamber person, or brand new, of developing relationships with a handful of other chambers, and kind of a sister chamber relationship, if you will share everything, but but not necessarily pick the chambers next door to you pick chambers larger, that that you want to be more like, you think they’re doing a great job, how can I do that in our community? So I think that that, that tribe, if you want to call it that, have five go to people that you could turn to and ask them almost anything is really important. And it’s been one of those things that through social media and such, it’s, it’s probably a lot more common today than it used to be. But I think you got to choose wisely. Who’s in your tribe, right? You’re choosing people, the people in your tribe are all traditionalist. Instead of innovators and risk takers. You you’re gonna have a completely different experience. So choose wisely.

Brandon Burton 29:51
Yeah, I like that. I like that advice. And that’s a hope that I have through the podcast too, is as I have guests on and if people do splay, what they’re doing at their chamber, as a listener, if there’s a chamber that saying something that really resonates with you reach out and connect with that person, and see if if you can, you know, be a part of their tribe or bring them into yours, and learn and share information with each other and build that relationship outside of the earbuds you’re listening to the podcast through

Dave Kilby 30:20
this is this is a hugely a willingness to share industry, and to call up a chamber exec Atul, even out of the blue, and you don’t even know him and say, Hey, I saw this on on your website, or I heard about this on Brandon’s podcast or whatever. And I’d like more information, the person on the receiving end of that takes it as a huge compliment. Yes, not not a, you know, not a waste of time at all. So there it as you know, it’s a sharing industry, you know, you raise the tide and all the boats go up. So

Brandon Burton 30:57
that’s right, for sure. David, I like asking everyone I have on the show, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Dave Kilby 31:10
Well, I think it’s, I think it’s full of opportunity. I, I, my numbers say that about 40% of the chambers have never been stronger ever, in the history of their organization. There’s another 40% that are kind of struggling, I mean, and many of them have been very honest with me calling me up and saying, man, we’re in trouble. We, you know, we need some help. And then there’s 20% that are kind of somewhere in the middle. So I think the opportunity for people to move up is definitely there. And if especially if they embrace the five essential ingredients that we talked about earlier in the in the podcast, nowhere to go. But up, I think it’s a great time to be in this business, and a great career for people in the years going forward.

Brandon Burton 32:01
Yeah, if nothing else, it’s easier now than ever to communicate the value to your staff of this is what we do. And then you got the mission of going and communicating that value to your membership and the business community at large. Oh, this has been a great conversation. I’m so glad to have you on the podcast and to have you go through these five essential ingredients for a successful chamber. If if someone wanted to reach out and connect with you and learn more about, you know, these observations you’ve had throughout your career, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect

Dave Kilby 32:38
my email address and I’m, you know, when I do hang it up, I’ll, you know, it’ll, it’ll forward you to a personal email, but my, my current email address is dave.kilby@calchamber.com. That’d be the best way.

Brandon Burton 33:01
Very good. We’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can pull that up and reach out and connect with you that way. But I will say I’ve had several listeners or several past guests, you know, reach out to me after the fact and say, you know, they were surprised to how many people reached out to them afterwards, because of the things that they shared, wanting to learn more and, and really building that tribe. So as we wrap up, I want to encourage everybody to continue building your tribe and take that tip that they’ve shared and, and do something with it. Don’t just listen, but take some action on it. But Dave, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing these key insights. And it’s been a pleasure to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast.

Dave Kilby 33:44
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

Chamber Utility for NFTs with Ronnie Russell

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

Kris Johnson 0:41
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:23
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Ronnie Russell. Ronnie is an active duty retired infantry men from the United States Army with 22 years of service. He’s been deployed to Iraq twice and Bosnia once and has been awarded the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal Joint Service Achievement Medal and numerous Army Commendation Medals. He’s also a former infantry drill sergeant at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he has dedicated countless hours to training American sons. In 2010. Ronnie was nominated for the NAACP Service Award, and was the 32nd, recipient of the blacks and government Award. He is also co founder of the Texas Black Pages, a black business directory that represents 254 counties. He currently serves as the president of the Innovation Black Chamber of Commerce in Greater Fort Hood, Texas area.

Ronnie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.

Ronnie Russell 2:37
So, again, thank you. And I appreciate the platform itself and for everybody to know and understand Cambridge business, dedicated business. So for some time ago, I was trying to figure out, like the why, because the area where we are at the Greater Fort Hood area where we’re dead center between Waco and Austin. But there was no economic representation in the Killeen Fort Hood area. So of course, I’m going out, I’m going to other chambers asking them like, can you bring a satellite chamber in our city? And I did that for a while, but then I was like, like, why am I gonna ask someone to do something that I have the ability to do myself. So I say that to say, programs that your city don’t have created, resources that your city might not have, go out and find it, and bring it into the city. So just keep looking, keep striving keep adjusting, then everything is gonna work out.

Brandon Burton 3:44
And I love that you just took control. And did it reminds me of that quote from Gandhi, you know, to be the change that you want to see in the world. So nobody else is doing it, then, you know, take it on and be the change yourself. So tell us a little bit about the innovation Black Chamber just to give us an idea of, you know, scope of work, the size, the number of members budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of give us an idea and perspective where you’re coming from before we get into our discussion today.

Ronnie Russell 4:15
All right, so the innovation Black Chamber of Commerce was launched in 2019. February 16. Two weeks later, COVID hit so we’re locked in the storm. But we weathered the storm. And that was the great thing about it because at the time, you know, a lot of organ bladder, other organizations, especially the more senior Chamber organizations, they were in in person meetings and meet and greets and whatever it is, but it took time for those to transition into the digital aspect. And we started digital. So because we started digital, we started creating workshops. We started developing new systems from the digital aspect. So we were, like the formalities of how and who we are. As a people, we’ve always gone to in person. But the hybrid is something new. So because we started digital, and now we’re at with the in person, hybrid is a development of pulling people in that haven’t seen faces in a long time, and allowing those who are not comfortable with getting in front of physical, a physical audience to keep them safe. So we develop through that time. We’ve been averaging at least 86 members a year just just growing and expanding and developing. Um, the reason why we’re called the innovation Black Chamber of Commerce, because we didn’t want to get fixed into the constitution and bylaws in restricting us by staying in the city of Killeen, because it allows us to move as fast or as slow and develop and grow into other outlying areas that do not have a demographic representation of a Black Chamber of Commerce. So we have members in Killeen, of course, Fort Hood, Parker, hi, Temple, Belton. We’re out Copperas Cove huddle, Round Rock, Georgetown, because those cities that are major within population, and rich within resources don’t have didn’t have and still don’t have a Black Chamber representation. So it allows us to maneuver in that space. So we’re as fluid as possible without the restrictions of, of the city, or county line. But we’ve grown considerably, I think the first year our budget was only like, honestly, like 25 27,000, because we were we were digital. So it wasn’t that

Brandon Burton 7:03
we didn’t have the rent and everything and all that.

Ronnie Russell 7:07
Correct. So then the budget second year, changed to maybe about 5055. Because now we were buying more things and developing more assets and digital assets as well. I do a lot of stuff. I’m a creative, I built the website, I do all the graphics, I do all of the marketing, I create everything that is needed. Like even the NFT that we develop, I did all the r&d and in bringing that to fruition. So I’m just blessed to have the ability to create where a lot of other chambers who don’t have that, that marketing in house, they have to pay that. And now it’s an expense. I don’t have those expenses of marketing, because I do it myself because I’m social media certified, as well as meta certified as well. My next certification I want Google, but a lot of that stays in house, but we were blessed. And in in the transition into our third year. Now we we I think we, the 990 has data like 108 108,000 hours, okay, and it’s just, it’s just the beginning for me. And knowing what we have. Now we have 251 members, we just we have we got a bank that we just been developing with. And last year, they put in like $2.5 million into our membership with over 750,000 in deposits and transfers into the bank, they just been doing a phenomenal job with helping us out. We’re kind of a hybrid. And I say that to say we have a lot of community engagement, as well as a lot of business development. At the same time, because we have to speak the language of the community by also understanding that we have to advocate for the business community and bring in and pull in those resources at the same time because in our area, we don’t have a CDFI at all. The closest CDFI of people fund and lift fund and Texas mezzanine as well as what’s the other one? I forgot the other one but those CDFIs we don’t have. So I have to go out like now I’m in Austin right now after go out of our way to find the non traditional funding resources and bring them back in into the city so it’s I’m not gonna call it hard work. It’s it’s a worthwhile journey. Yeah, that that I don’t believe how As a final destination, but we will always be reshaping reforming. And we’re going into changing out membership now because, you know, we hit our third year. So we’re bringing in new board members, the the, the original board members, some of them are transitioning up through the advisory board why we bring in new blood membership is changing. Seats, the our EDC is changing seat. So we’re just just growing and developing and reshaping our corps.

Brandon Burton 10:38
That’s awesome. It’s great to have that perspective. Congratulations on year over year doubling your budget. Yeah, hopefully they have clips going in the foreseeable future. So as we have Rodney on the podcast today, we’re going to be focusing our conversation around the utility that chambers can find within NF T’s Ronnie had mentioned to kind of drop that in there as he was talking about it about the chamber that we will dive deeper into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ronnie, we’re back. So I know I mentioned this to you before we hit record but for everybody listening, the way this kind of developed is I’m part of a small mastermind group of you know, a couple other people that service the chamber industry. And as we were meeting one evening, I was kind of sharing my vision with them of how I see chambers embracing, you know, chambers, the future embracing NFT technology for whether it be for membership or ticket sales or access essentially, a lot of times people think of NF T’s as being you know, eight images and stuff on these blockchain networks. And I think there’s so much more utility to NF T’s that chambers of Congress can really get behind and whenever you look at a an NFT project, they always talk about building a community around that project. And like you know, bingo, you know, lights went off for me and then chambers are all about building communities. So how do we integrate these two chambers of commerce in fts. And while we’re in this mastermind meeting, one of the members of our group did a little Google search for chambers and NFT. And, and Ronnie pops up that the innovation Black Chamber they have incorporated and NFT for ticket sales. So Ronnie, tell us about how that came to be, and how you went about the development of the NF T and maybe a little bit of background. So for those listening who may not be familiar with what an NF t is just to kind of bring them up to speed real quick before you dive in.

Ronnie Russell 15:37
Right? So for me, again, I wanted to be innovative in an in our approach. But in being innovative in the approach, you have to create something new and you have to create something different. So let me read to you what the NFT is, it’s first of all, just to make sure that everybody knows because a lot of times we see it as we’re more afraid of the early adoption of it. And because we’re afraid of the early adoption, then we don’t feel like it’s something that it’s something that that like we can be a part of. So NFT is a non fungible token, which means that it is unique and can’t be replaced. It is the physical is a contrast physical money and cryptocurrency. So the cryptocurrency space is, is volatile. I mean it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. But the one thing that makes that make your NFT different is it will always have value. So what we did with ours, which we actually launched it last year, because we have a we have Texas Black Business Week, which is every second year I mean every second week of February, every year like we’ve been doing it because originally Texas Black Business Week was Texas black pages. And when when I when I launched the chamber I yielded over two IVCC because I didn’t want to compete with my own in my own city with my own events why yielded over so what we did with it when we created the NF t. So I found someone because being with Texas blank page, we have over 17,000 businesses listed within a directory. So I found a SaaS company that also build in our T. So I reached out and told him what I wanted and wanted to create a ticket item. So what happens with your ticketed item, you have to have several other platforms with metamath as well as open seat. So meta mask is where you’re going to have your cryptocurrency storage and you have to have a digital wallet. So that’s your grinder wallet. Right? Correct. Correct. And then you’re going to have to go to open sea and create that account for your crypto wallet to send the money to as well as when people buy it. So what happens is, let’s say you and your organization create the cryptocurrency non fungible token the NFT he created early adoption. So when our our opening ceremony for the Business Week, we gave away 10 fungible tokens. Well, once they give away, we have complimentary, complimentary 10 fungible token. So now that creates the early adoption, because a lot of people want to receive something that they didn’t have to pay for. So the early adopters really begin at that time. So then we did the early adopters, because we created 100 of them. So through the early adoption, we got people to want to go and find out and do research, what NFT was, and how is it beneficial for them. So the NFT that they’ve gotten at no cost to them, already had $100 value on it. So now, that $100 value for them, they got it at no cost. So then what happens is they want to go and buy more. So you as your organization, and when people purchase those NFPs they’re getting money. I mean, you’re receiving income from it. But now it holds value on there, and it’s kind of like buying stocks and bonds, but then when you buy it and then however the market fluctuates, then the value increase, but your cryptocurrency holds a much more stronger baseline with the value of it. So it just helps you out a whole lot more. Now we haven’t transitioned into the website of having a crypto platform where you can get your MBA estimate of your membership by purchasing your your membership through cryptocurrency. But we wanted to do it with events just to test the market. So if you’re thinking about going into the NFP perspective, figure out how are you going to do the early adoption? Because the early adoption is going to get people interested in learning more about what cryptocurrency is, and then you as an organization, you begin to figure out how is it going to benefit you in the organization as well, because because you’re a 501, C three, and they’re right there, they’re purchasing these products. Now they want to write it off, but the value still stays. They can write it off, but it’s still worth 100 hours. So they didn’t lose anything. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 20:40
no, that’s a that’s a neat perspective. And I love how you guys really focused on a trial with a specific event to see, you know, to build out the technology, see how it works. Go about educating your members about it. That’s uh, one of the hurdles that I see is with chambers adopting NFT technology is educating their membership base. So did you take any special steps to educate with this event? Did you just do NFT tickets? Or did you have traditional ticket sales two, sorry, two questions. And one, they’re

Ronnie Russell 21:18
both, we actually did both. So what we did is, of course, here we have the tangible ticket, and the non tangible tickets, of course, which is the NFL, the NFL, the non fungible token. So we tokenized our tickets. I’m gonna say that, again, you tokenize our tickets through the NRP, which is the non fungible token. And what we did was, we had the company that created the NFP itself, actually have them host, a Digital Workshop on Zoom, to get people to be much more educated on what the NFC was. So then the individual that won those non fungible tokens, then we had an additional workshop because they had to show them how they bow to receive it. Because once you receive once you want the NFT, you have to now be able to receive it. So I had to go in, get the go into open See, get the alphanumeric code, and then take that code and then send it to your account. So one, because you want that doesn’t necessarily mean that the work is over with no, you still have to download metamath, you still have to download and create an open sea account in order for me to thin your new cryptocurrency or your new NFT to you in order for it to digitally show up in their in their open sea.

Brandon Burton 22:57
So for those listening, so meta mask is going to be your crypto wallet that you use to receive these the NFT. In exchange crypto, it’s your storage, your wallet, that’s where you host these digital assets. Open see is more of that marketplace, right? Where you can post the NF T’s for sale. And there’s also an aftermarket right for NF Ts. So with this specific NFT that you guys created, is it good for the one event? Is it good for future events to how does it retain its value after the one after the event that you sold them for?

Ronnie Russell 23:37
Again, as cryptocurrencies so the value stays. So we can either repurpose it, or we can keep it as is because right now when you go to Open see you type in innovation, Black Chamber of Commerce, you’re going to see the hologram ticket that was created. So say this year, we’ll say this year during Black Business Week at the launch, we say now we’re going to offer a minted non fungible token from last year. So now the value is going to increase because last year’s price is not today’s price when you when you look at it, so you can just repurpose it and do the same thing. Or instead of doing a complimentary because the education has already been there. So now you can say today’s value, even do a silent auction silent auction with the NFT. So and then again, it’s going to gain more money from the donations of it. So now the winner again, they get the same thing as everybody else who did it with a complimentary service, because they’ve seen it before they understand it now. Well they have a knowledge base about it. So then if another way to do it because even to what you’re selling oxygen because it’s an NF t you take it in Put it on a big screen TV. And it you know in a rotates and everybody see you get the oohs and ahhs and stuff like that. So now through the silent auction of NF T’s, you’re going to make money. And again, in the person that purchased that NF T, they’re going to then take that whole purchase that purchase order that they’ve gotten from the NFT. And they’re gonna write that off. So you’re gonna get money from the silent auction, and they’re going to have a NFT, that they’re going to have value. So now another thing that I want you to know, when they purchased that NFT, and it’s being bought, the value of the NFT, that you have less, I mean, you have left now and goes up, because it’s purchased. Another thing that people can do what your NF t is, because it’s on a marketplace, people can go to like, now we’ve had a couple of hits, because again, open sea is an open market, we had a couple of hits, and people coming in and looking to buy our NF tees and and go through a whole auction process to where they said, Okay, I purchased it for $5 Somebody come out and see it, like no app purchased it for 10. So it just creates an ongoing marketplace by just doing one thing, by allowing yourself to be an early adopter, in creating something that, that that has a lifespan as long as it still exists in the market. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:28
So about two years ago, that’s when I was first getting introduced to NF Ts and and I you know, purchase Bitcoin and stuff. But prior to that, but the NF T’s were really starting to come on the scene. And at the same time I was in the process of creating a podcasting course to teach chambers had a podcast, we had a podcast. And the idea hit me, you know, if I created a limited amount, say, you know, 10, or 20 of the podcast courses, but tokenize it as an NFT. And then sell it. So once the chamber knows how to podcast, they don’t need the course anymore, they can resell that and in essence, be marketing to continue to market that course to other chambers. And you could build in a royalty with it to to where maybe you get 10% back on each resale. So it continues to be sold and promoted and produced and pushed out there. I didn’t go that course just because I didn’t have the technical know how to pull it all together. But in concept at that that could be a great utility, whether it’s a chamber or anybody else with courses in the future. But what are some other utilities that you see on the horizon for chambers to utilize and FTS and cryptocurrency?

Ronnie Russell 27:46
I mean, membership, but that’s really if you’re, if the community that you’re in, is really strong as a real good knowledge base, what NF T’s and crypto is and even offering NFT workshops for your members. I mean, even if you excuse me, even if you don’t use it to tokenize some of the things that you do, but you can still offer it as a workshop for your members as well as a workshop for the community. open sea has a grant that they do in order for awhile to assist you with teaching about the NFT process. So there’s grant money that’s out there for innovation. And that’s something that you can use to add into the scope of work with with your workshops, because it’s still early adoption, it’s still early, you know, even though it’s been out for maybe two years going on three years, it’s still early adoption is less than five years. So it’s still early Within those stages, though, I will say just take a look at it and see if it’s beneficial for you for one. And then from those benefits. Now you can add it as a benefit for your corporate sponsor. So they come in, they pay 5000 10,000 15,000 3000, whatever it is, and now that comes with the NFT. So now that corporation or that sponsor that you used to come in at a certain level, like say for your chamber banquets, or your community engagement events, so now you can tokenize their sponsorship by creating they’re taking their logo, of course getting permission, taking their logo and tokenizing their logo to say that this is the 2023 sponsor for whatever. So now you tokenize it so now you’re creating value even after the event is over. So now the event forever lives on because you have tokenized their support

Brandon Burton 30:00
That’s awesome. Yeah, I would follow a similar model, I think that you guys did as you look at memberships. So maybe you don’t do it for your entire membership and maybe a segment, right? Maybe you look at your young entrepreneurs, and you can have, they tend to be some of those early adopters. And if you can explain that, you know, membership for young entrepreneurs is done through an NF T. And that’s gonna get you access to online trainings, and all these different things that are focused for the young entrepreneurs. And then as they grow up, you know, through, you know, their business life through their, their professional career, you slowly start to integrate that throughout the rest of the chamber memberships. And, you know, if that young entrepreneur were to get a different job, or to, you know, heaven forbid, you know, move out of the community, they can either hang on to that as a valuable non fungible token, or they could go to somewhere like open sea and resell it, and be an advocate for your chamber and continuing to sell memberships. I think there’s a lot of utility there. Right? So going back to the ticketing, so you tokenize a ticket as as people showed up to the event, how do you go about you know, accepting the tickets as it you know, a paper traditional paper ticket versus ticketing on an NFT that they pull up on their phone?

Ronnie Russell 31:22
Well, on your back office, open, see, it actually, lets you know who actually purchased it. So they just create your your normal atom analog list of what you who purchased it, and then they come, then they can either they can show it, and then they can then you as organizations still line that particular NFT, owner and ticket purchaser off on your list. So it’s not something out maybe in the in the foreseeable future, which I do know there is a platform that that does do tokenized ticketing, so they can create that tokenized ticketing. And then I believe they do have a QR code, so they can check you in kind of like you do with Eventbrite and other platforms. So I think there is one that’s out there, I did find one, but I went, I wanted to go more. So more so with a open sea account, as opposed to just that one ticket item on that platform. Because once it’s over, it’s over, open feed, keep it a lot longer. So that that’s what we did. And that’s why I made that decision on not just using it as a ticketed items, but use it as a item for ticketing, which extends the life of the event.

Brandon Burton 32:41
Yeah. So I know there’s been a lot of examples out there of entrepreneurs that have launched NFT projects and communities around it. The one that comes to mind is Gary Vaynerchuk, right with his V friends. So maybe rather than going into the whole story of Gary Vaynerchuk, and V friends, people can Google that and get, you know, the background on what that was, but maybe just in a nutshell, he created these little animated characters. And anybody that bought these NF T’s, there’s like 10,000 of them, they would get access to his annual conference that he does for his fans for the next three years. So that one NFT purchase retains its value, you have an image that’s tradable, it’s non fungible, it’s your own, you know, your own property that you purchase, then there’s a lot of after sale market on that, but it retains the value for the next three years, especially with access to his conference. And then he does these airdrops and you know, other, you know, giveaways to those holders of his NFT. So, it incentivizes people to hang on to it and continues to build value on that. So, I just mentioned that put it out there. So chambers can think of other ways to maybe build on the technology and see the offerings that their chamber has to offer and, and see where some things might like that. But Ronny is, as you’ve gone through this experiment, was it worthwhile, would you do it again?

Ronnie Russell 34:16
Um, would I do it again? I will, I will approach it differently. Okay. What lessons did you learn do it again? Yeah. early adoption is is is hard with different age groups. My city the city of Killeen is a young city. But when it comes to Chamber members, a lot of them are older. So the early adoption with the older Chamber members in them is the devil like, I already don’t like to get online with you trying to shove this down my throat. Like I don’t have a habit pay for it. So I, I would do it differently. Like I would pose several NFT workshop, and just invite not just your members, but invite the community to come and be a part of it. Because now when they see your your chamber, actually doing something with NF T’s, then it allows them to feel like, okay, that’s a place that I can go to, they won’t make them feel like the chamber is a nursing home with a bunch of old people in it, right? But it allowed them to say, okay, they talk in my language. And let me go in here and see how I can be an asset. Like maybe you can begin to develop a digital committee and everything in a digital committee is totally different than just marketing is actually digitizing the process, assisting members with digitizing their paperwork, and it just totally changes the game when you’re speaking the language of the youth. So now they want to be a part of what you’re doing, instead of just being what their thing is. That’s what old people. So I will use that the early adoption workshop prior to launching in a ticketed item NF T with people who are already afraid of going online.

Brandon Burton 36:23
And that’s so important for just staying relevant as a chamber going forward. You don’t want to push your your longtime lifetime members do something new, that’s going to push them away. But for those early adopters, and to be able to continue to stay relevant, maybe do it for a segment of your of your membership population and just slowly integrate it. Was there a cost involved with creating the NFT? What does that look like you You said he had worked with the SAS company?

Ronnie Russell 36:52
There there. I think we were there. Maybe third client, okay. It wasn’t expensive. But even after we came, we had two members that we sent to them. So we got kind of, you know, some some money on the back end. That wasn’t how it started. It was like, you know, what you brought us to clients. So this is what we’re going to do for you. So it was kind of a good give and take, when it comes to I think we only pay maybe 450. Okay, for it. So again, it wasn’t expensive. But their work was good. But I will say if you’re thinking about going into the NFP look at their work, go to their open see account, and ensure that you’re getting something that was that is tailored to you and your organization. The one thing that I would do different from a design perspective, is to ensure that the design that they’re doing for you doesn’t look like somebody else’s design that they did. Because they they did a blockchain, you’re like, Oh man, that’s nice. But then you go to the, to their open sea account like, man, one thing you did to take my take their logo out, put my logo in, and then you change their color. But my color. Yeah. So make sure that you create something that is tailored and designed for you. And not a you universal and then like everybody else that they’ve done.

Brandon Burton 38:24
That’s good insight. As far as pricing the NFT. Did you price it in dollars or Aetherium or Solana or what did you price it in?

Ronnie Russell 38:34
It wasn’t Aetherium they use the theory. Okay? Because they had also look at, like, what’s the cost of the of the week that we had to deal with? So it won’t be I’m charging you this month, I mean this much. But then you got this much and gas fee. So you’re like, Man, the value ain’t the same or more because you got hit with so much. So many feeds with just purchasing it. So again, the company that went through using Ethereum, so it would depend on like, even when you’re doing it, make sure they’re there, they’re open enough to educate you about it and educates you through the entire process. Like it’s kind of like the customer journey. So have them walk you through the entire journey like like, I am the person that is purchasing the NFT now walk me through it, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. Now, I’m

Brandon Burton 39:31
just curious from a back end side of it, do you do you keep those sales in Aetherium? Did you convert it back to dollars as you put it into Bitcoin or how did that look after the sale?

Ronnie Russell 39:43
Of course the market fluctuates, but keeping it in, in the in the crypto space, it allows that to be a market that your marketplace so then when you do want to convert it and push it through your metamath gives me send it from Coinbase to traditional bank. I wanted to keep it any theory and because at the time the market was fluctuating as far as the cryptocurrency was was going, so I kept it in there. It’s kind of like, if you take it out too early, now you lost all this value because it unhit again. So I kept it in there.

Brandon Burton 40:22
Okay, good deal. So as we start wrapping up, I wanted to ask you for any chambers that are out there listening that are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item, might you suggest whether it’s related to the NFT space or anything else? What What would you have to offer?

Ronnie Russell 40:42
This, don’t be afraid of technology. Like our three buckets in the chamber itself is Business Technology, and veteran. And I want it to ensure that there was a technology agenda. Because a lot of people are afraid when they hear the word technology because there is a there are developed fears. When it comes to technology. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean that you can’t find out. And when you begin to find out, that’s when you become an asset to be valuable to those who need the information that you just obtain. So don’t be afraid of technology, learn the technology, understand the technology, repurpose the information that you that you just found.

Brandon Burton 41:32
That is a that’s a great tip there especially like repurposing that information that you find. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ronnie Russell 41:48
I think chambers need to be more of a conduit when it comes to crowdfunding. Because for us we do a lot of giving. And because we do a lot of giving we we we have a lot that we receive, like for our Juneteenth festival is actually crowdfunding. Okay, it looks like a festival to the eye. But on a back end. It’s it’s a program. It’s an economic program. We give away 10,000 hours a year, during our Juneteenth festival, first prize, get five second, get three. And third, get to. So as the sponsors pay into your program, repurpose the sponsorship and pour that back out into the community. Because the community is where the members lead. And the community is where who go and support the business that are not your member. So those members that are not your members seeing what you do, because for our Juneteenth festival with the June team, grant, it can be a member or not, that come and be a part of it. But when you’re an asset from a economic perspective, so then it becomes a resource and a value to the community because you have value and you have valuable value is something that is presented valuable is a resource, it is a resource that then becomes duplicated, because it is always going to be needed, because it was always going to meet a need. Because problems is just a need that meet a need that that that needs to be met. So look at what needs need to be met, and then create a program that meets the needs of the issue.

Brandon Burton 43:50
I love it very well said. So, Ronnie, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners that like to reach out and connect and learn more maybe about building an NFT or looking for a referral to the SAS company that did this for you what, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect and learn more?

Ronnie Russell 44:11
Yeah, so you can find and follow the Innovation Black Chamber of Commerce on Facebook, Instagram. Going to website innovationbcc.org. There’s lots of social proof that’s out there. So if you want to send an email, you can send an email to info@Innovationbcc.org or you can give us a call at 254-415-9951 and I’m in the heart of Texas, Central Texas. So I have no issue with with coming and speaking whatever it is, is at no cost to you. I will pull up and show up longer it means that I’ll pull up as though

Brandon Burton 44:58
that is a great offer right there because Ronnie covered a lot of valuable information with us today. I hope everybody was taking notes, maybe re listen to this one again, dive in a little bit deeper and learn more about NFT technology and see where those overlaps are for your chamber for your community, how you can apply this sustain relevant going forward into the future. But Ronnie, thank you so much for joining us today for sharing your experience and how you guys have gone through this and, and really just painting a picture of how NF Ts can really meet a need for Chambers of Commerce. I really appreciate that.

Ronnie Russell 45:36
So thank you for that.

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

Brandon Burton 0:57
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Our guest for this episode is Kami Welch. Cami is the president of the Arvada Chamber of Commerce at a 12 year chamber veteran. Kami has earned a reputation for developing strategic innovative opportunities for businesses and community growth. Cami is a US Chamber of Commerce talent pipeline fellow and a board member for WAC and the Association of Colorado Chambers of Commerce where she is past Chair camming also sits on the community boards for nonprofit organizations that focus on children education, homelessness, and domestic violence including family tree where she is a chair. Kami loves living in Colorado with her husband of 14 years and two young children where they enjoy hiking, skiing and exploring. Kami, we’re excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Kami Welch 2:02
Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. It’s an honor to be on with you. today. I’m excited to talk about a really important topic with everybody. I always struggle with this question about what’s interesting about me, I actually pulled my team to ask what is something that they thought was interesting about me. And we all agreed the the most interesting piece of my background is actually grew up ice skating, which doesn’t seem relevant to my current career, but it is because that was required early morning for a start time. After school. It was all about the conditioning, training and ballet and the cross training to be a good ice skater I actually had the same coach because I grew up in Oregon as Tonya Harding. So shared ice with her, which is interesting, but it’s hard. That was as a kiddo. I’ve appreciated the grit that that gave me that I’ve been able to carry through being a chamber leader.

Brandon Burton 2:51
Yeah, no, I liked that. I liked that you pulled your office suit, because it’s hard to come up with our own. Yeah, interesting facts about ourselves that that’s something they knew about you and it is unique. I don’t think we’ve had other ice skaters or do that have mentioned that on the podcast. So you’re one of a kind. So tell us about the Arvada Chamber of Commerce. Just to give us some perspective. Before we get into our discussion. Give us an idea of the size staff budget scope of work, that sort of thing, just to help set the table.

Kami Welch 3:21
Absolutely. So Arvada is located just west of Denver, so everybody knows where Denver is. We’re 10 minutes west of Denver, we actually share a border with Denver metro, our community size is about 120,000 people. We have about 3000 businesses in Arvada, we have about 500 Plus members of the chamber, which has been really exciting to see that our current team is six, but we’re growing to eight this year, we’ve had some awesome opportunities to increase revenue and grow our team alongside that which has been really an incredible opportunity to deliver on more work for our community. Our annual budget has doubled in the past year, which is crazy and exciting. So we historically were about a 500 to 550 $550,000 budget. This year, we’ll be coming in at about 1.2 million. And again, that’s because we’ve been able to identify ways to grow capital to do the work that’s so critical for our businesses.

Brandon Burton 4:17
Okay, so maybe we chose the wrong topic to focus on today. Let me just ask the question, what are you doing to increase revenue to double it like that?

Kami Welch 4:25
Yeah. So the reason that we did that is because our mission as an organization is to solve the most critical business challenges. And what we realized is that with a traditional business model, we didn’t have the capacity as an organization to take those challenges on. So our board looked at various options and decided to go forward with a five year strategic initiative capital campaign. So we actually worked with a company out of Atlanta called Power 10. And we did a feasibility study to really assess the need in our community, and if our businesses were willing to invest in solving their most critical challenges, so we ended up with a five year switch He took initiative that took on talents, housing, childcare, and to the business environment. And so we’re able to raise $2.5 million for the next five years to ensure that we can do the work that is required to actually have outcomes in these areas.

Brandon Burton 5:16
That is fantastic. Yeah. So that answers a question, at least on the surface level of everybody’s like, what are you doing to double your revenue? That’s awesome. So our our topic for conversation today is going to be around addressing childcare needs. As we look at the the economy in general, we see the workforce shortages and really just the economy in general has been rocked, you know, through the COVID pandemic and trying to come out of it. And one of those key questions to be able to help fix and stabilize the economy is addressing the childcare needs. So I’m excited to dive into that discussion with you and what you guys are doing there in about as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Kami, we’re back. So before the break, I had mentioned that the topic for today being around addressing childcare needs. What were some of those maybe key indicators or data that you guys saw that showed that this was a need to for you to chamber? It’s not typical chamber work? So how did how did that come to be that you guys saw? This is an area of focus?

Kami Welch 9:07
That’s a great question. And certainly one with a long history of feedback and engagement of our community and our businesses. But one of the things we do is on a quarterly basis, we run a business pulse survey and we asked similar questions. And then we sometimes throw in something or questions to make sure that we’re really understanding what’s happening with our businesses. And so every single time we’ve done that over the past seven years, talent is the number one issue always. And as we started to unpack our talent system and really understand all the moving parts and pieces, we understand that there’s not skill alignment, that there’s the lack of demand. But we had to dig deeper and ask why about 27 more times to really understand that there’s these other barriers that are happening in our community that are causing that talent shortage. What we uncovered and the reason why in our bold initiative that we mentioned earlier that we took on childcare and housing is because we recognize As as two of our biggest barriers to achieving the talent system that we really need, there is some crazy data that we’ve come across as we’ve dug into childcare. And to be honest, before we started taking this on in a meaningful way, I didn’t even realize what a huge issue this was. And I’ll rattle a little bit of data here, because I think it’s important. And I know you have listeners all over the country that are like, Oh, I wonder what that is for my state. So I’m gonna cite Colorado data. But it’s interesting to think about what other states are dealing with, and if it’s at the same degree, but one of the things that we thought was really interesting is that there was a Pew Research study, and they surveyed all sorts of people that were leaving jobs. And it was the number four reason in that study was childcare. So interesting, right? People are saying, I have to leave my job because I have nowhere for my kids to go. Colorado has the eighth highest cost of childcare in the country. So we know that that is a huge barrier for people that maybe aren’t making, you know, $100,000 a year, they can’t afford to put their kiddos in childcare. We know that in Colorado, 45,000, Colorado, parents are making career sacrifices due to child care. And 20% of our workforce needs childcare. So we’re starting to get a sense of Whoa, that’s a lot of people that are impacted by this issue in our community. What it really got alarming for us is when we started thinking about the supply of childcare facilities in that business model, which when you think through an economic development lens, that’s interesting, right? That’s like, Okay, this business model is struggling. So we know that we have what’s called the childcare desert. So in Colorado, we have one childcare spot for every three kids that need it. That’s wild. And there’s only one county in all of Colorado, where there’s enough spots for the kids that need it. And it’s not in the metro area, it’s probably very rural. Yeah, very, very rural. So really interesting data, my community alone needs well over 2000 additional spots to meet the demand. So taking a step back, and again, looking through that chamber economic development lens is saying, Okay, what’s going on here. So there’s some serious business model challenges, right, the cost of running a childcare facility is high, you think about the liability, the cost of real estate, the staffing that’s needed, there is a really difficult breakdown, these businesses are trying to achieve, they can’t pay their employees what they need to pay them. So they’re losing employees left and right, because they’re paying a minimum wage. But when you look at the business model, that’s all they can afford to pay them because they can’t have parents paying more than what they’re able to pay. So it’s a really interesting issue. And we’re recognizing more and more, that it’s going to take some really innovative solutions to overcome these challenges. But just looking at that data, it became crystal clear to us that there’s a huge issue. And there are ways we can influence making this system better.

Brandon Burton 12:59
Right? What really stands out to me is 45,000 career sacrifices are going on just in Colorado, because parents will look at you know, here’s the income that I would bring in, here’s what we would pay out and child care if you can get a spot, and they just see it as a wash are really just not worth you know, the extra headache of getting up early and doing everything for maybe to net, you know, a couple $1,000 It just doesn’t make sense.

Kami Welch 13:25
Yeah, I’ve countless examples in my personal and professional life of people that are making those choices every day, because of the cost. And as you said that sacrifice is just it’s horrible.

Brandon Burton 13:35
Right? So as you cite these different stats and the research that you’ve you’ve seen and and I like Like he said, looking through it through an economic development lens as this, you know, addressing the business models of childcare. It definitely is, I would say it’s a strong argument for Chamber of Commerce to be involved with this. So how do you see your role there about a chamber? Getting into the work? How does that look? How do you you can’t just go into business and say, Here’s your new business model. So how are you approaching this, this work of addressing childcare?

Kami Welch 14:10
Yeah, it’s a really, really great question. As an organization we’ve prescribed to the three C’s, many people know that it’s come out of the Western Association of chamber executives have been a convener, catalyst and champion. And so we often think through that lens, as we’re deciding how we support an issue. I think the biggest thing that we can do as organizations is really been that convener role. We have really strong partnerships across our region. And we often will say, we will join existing tables and we will lead where needed and so doing kind of that audit landscape of what great work is happening and joining in like, we don’t always have to start from ground zero. But there’s this moment of step back and say, who’s doing this work and doing it? Well. I will give a shout out to Epic Colorado, which is where much of that data I just shared came from there and incred have a partner in this work, but they’re doing amazing things and engage in industry and businesses in the Child Care conversation. So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But we need to get the right people in our community in our region around the same table. Because I often note that great work is happening. But so often, I think everybody can attest to this. It happens in silos, right? That people are like I’m doing the things, I’m solving the problems. But when you don’t tell anybody that you’re doing that, it can be really difficult. So I believe the key role of chambers is to bring together people to help them understand what work is happening, and how everybody can work more with more continuity as a group. And so we’ve launched what we call caps councils. And that stands for, I hope, this is okay to say if you can edit this out, kick ass problem solvers. So we have a tendency to want to make sure we’re driving actions. So we don’t have committees and councils and things like that we have action driven naming of what we do. So when people show up, they know they’re there to work. This is about rolling up your sleeves and getting towards solutions. We also like to set targets, right? Like, we know that our goal and taking on childcare is to increase the number of spots we have in our community. So who are the people that need to come around one table to help achieve that, but having a universal target that we’ve set at the Chamber helps to make sure there’s clarity and purpose when you get those people together. So that, to me is the biggest piece of this. The second thing that I think is really critical role of chambers, is to educate. So many people don’t understand all that data I just shared. And they’re making decisions based on their own personal experiences, which is fine, we are all creatures of our own perception is reality, right? But at the end of the day, there’s a lot to this. And so we have a unique role to certainly educate our businesses in our community, but also thinking about what role we play in educating the community at large about these issues that are impacting So playing a role, and really that awareness building, education, hosting forums. So people start to get that these are issues. It’s amazing to me when we’ve done that how quickly these issues start bubbling and becoming topics that everybody’s talking about the amount of organizations now that are telling me like I’m taking on childcare? And how do you know, I’m like, great, you know, like, we had to start those conversations, which has been really interesting

Brandon Burton 17:31
that so I guess the question that comes up for me, because you cited a lot of great data, and you mentioned epic Colorado that you were able to get that data from, for people in other states, where where would you point them to to try to find some of that data to be able to start that conversation about why their chambers should be involved with solving this problem as well?

Kami Welch 17:54
Yeah, that’s a really, really great question. And I know every state is going to be structured differently. One of the great sources of data we’ve had is actually our community college system. And so looking for a place where people that are going into this childcare profession are getting trained, typically, they understand kind of the lay of the land, they have really good data that they’re trying to utilize to get people into the program and help them think about where they open that childcare facility. So that’s a really good place to start. The other place would be school districts typically have a pretty solid sense of that early childhood education, and where it’s happening. And so talking with them about the landscape where there’s gaps, because we often talk about childcare, not just through the lens of quantity, but also quality. Like it’s not just about having somebody keeping eyes on your children during the day, but they need to be kindergarten ready, because all the data shows if you’re not kindergarten ready, then you lag all the way through school. And it’s hard to catch up on that. And so those quality metrics are important to our school district. And so they track a lot of the early childhood stuff as well. And then I will look at the state level and see what government departments exist that oversee child care, and really source out from there.

Brandon Burton 19:09
That’s good. Hopefully, people are jotting down some notes so they can do their research and see what the what the problem looks like. Because I’m going to assume it’s a problem in every state, and just see how big of a problem that is. And if it’s something that rises to the attention level that the domain deserve in some states, more so than others.

Kami Welch 19:28
I will also throw out on that the US Chamber Foundation has done a lot of work in this space and have an awesome toolkit on their website around childcare, that has many opportunities for businesses to get involved and resources that exist in that space. And so that’s a really good place to kind of dig in and start building knowledge around the childcare issue and opportunities.

Brandon Burton 19:49
Yeah. So about how long have you guys been involved with the child care work and had that be, you know, a big attention getter for you guys

Kami Welch 20:00
So about a year now. So not only that, I have to show great outcomes, which I’m excited in three or four years to be able to say we’ve added X amount of spots to childcare in our community, we’re still very much in the information gathering stage of this. But what has been exciting for us is how quickly we’ve been able to get to alignment of what is the goal? And what can we do about it. And so I talked a lot about the convenient and building community support, we also really worked in the policy space. And so recognizing that there’s like this whole advocacy play that comes along with moving child care system. So we have crafted a policy agenda. And that’s a big piece of our focus for this first part of the year is our legislators are down at the Capitol to really push on things like how do we expand cost effective preschool in early childhood? How do we give incentives to businesses that are willing to open childcare? So that we have the demand we need? So we’re really looking through initially that lens that what are those barriers of obstacle? And how do we remove some of them to be able to have better outcomes for our goals?

Brandon Burton 21:02
Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a sticky problem. I mean, all these different I start thinking of a solution. And then I see reasons why, you know, it may not work, but it conflicts with it. So it’s not a simple solution. I mean, it’s going to require rolling up your sleeves and doing some hard work. So the big question, I know everybody’s thinking is, how are you pulling it off? How are you funding this work? Because yeah, Kenny, this is a great idea. Every chamber should be involved at this. But how do you do it?

Kami Welch 21:35
Yeah, as I started on the front end of the podcast, obviously, we were lucky enough to pull together the resources to do that five year strategic initiative. I know not everybody is in that position to do that. But what I will take away is kind of key messages and learnings as childcare is something that people decide they want to take on, I’m always happy to talk to them about our journey. But messaging is a really big piece of that, getting clear on the data and what the issue is and the community and putting together on paper, a clear understanding of what you’re going to do to solve it. So that people understand that there’s neat to this, that this is work that needs to happen. Also talking about the economic impact, like we know, in Jefferson County alone, where I’m located, that there’s a $200 million annual economic impact because of childcare. So continuing to tie the messaging back to economic development, makes it a lot easier to go out and seek those funds. But there’s got to be strategy behind this. And so again, we did it through a five year strategic initiative, I highly recommend that I mean, I’m so glad to know that we set funding for the next five years, and I don’t constantly have to be working through that. And that’s could be a whole podcast on its own of how that campaign process, but really putting strategy behind your work for today, tomorrow and long term. So people see that I think you have to ask, you have to find those people that have the heart for community that want to make sure that their business community drives and ask them to invest, help them see that you are the organization that can do this work? Well, it has to happen in order to solve those big critical challenges. The other thing I’ll say is there’s a lot of federal and state money floating around right now. And so if you’re not plugged into grant opportunities, I would highly encourage you to look into how you access those at your state level, Colorado uses a bid that at every state is probably different in the systems that they use. But we’ve been able to apply for a variety of different grants that support this work. Some are still pending, and we’re crossing our fingers that we get. But we did get one to hire a person directly supporting talent, which as I’ve said many times talent in child care hand in hand, right? We cannot solve workforce if we don’t fix our childcare system. That’s it. So looking at grants, thinking strategically about how you ask for those dollars, is really, really critical. And I know there’s no like magic bullet situation, unfortunately. But there are ways to get dollars for sure.

Brandon Burton 24:05
Right. So how much did you say the economic impact 200

Kami Welch 24:10
million for just Jefferson County alone,

Brandon Burton 24:12
man. So I mean, when you figure the people that are making those career sacrifices, the the impact of if you had the additional childcare centers? I mean, that’s a big economic impact there. I mean, it I think there’s a number to it, you can’t even put, you know, at number two some of this, just because there’s a lot of unknowns that potentially could be much more than that 200 million. So when you talk about economic development, that is a huge factor right there. Is there anything that we’re missing from this, this conversation that we haven’t touched on yet?

Kami Welch 24:54
So I’ll add a fun thing to this kind of a lighter opportunity. So one of the things we saw over the pandemic was Women primarily we’re the ones leaving the workforce to move into a caregiver role. And so one of the things that we’ve loved doing as an organization that started a couple of years ago during the pandemic is every March during Women’s History Month, we highlight the badass women of Arvada, and celebrate women who are leading in our community and really crushing it. And it’s a really fun opportunity for us to talk about women in the workplace, and highlight how important and critical that is for our community. So we’ve worked to find certainly those very tactical and strategic things. But it’s also really fun to think about how you highlight and celebrate the people in your community. That’s the work of chambers is right to bring people together and lift and do the things that help people feel connected to their communities. So we’ve found that to be a really fun way to kind of bring our community together and educate around this issue without it feeling too starchy.

Brandon Burton 25:55
Like that, that is fun. And it draws some positive attention to these women who are who are really making a difference, right. I love that. So I like to see, you know, for chamber champions that are listening, if you might have any tips or action items that they might take, if they’re looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you suggest?

Kami Welch 26:18
Do you want a broad answer or to connect it to childcare?

Brandon Burton 26:22
Either way, whatever you feel is would be most relevant. Or if you want to do both, as a bonus, I’m open to whatever.

Kami Welch 26:31
Bye, far as the childcare conversation goes, I think the best thing to start and take action, if you haven’t already, is get the data, there is such a story behind that. And it will inspire you, it will inspire your leaders to take action. And so the first step related to child care, is that data piece of advice. As far as kind of industry and what that looks like, I will tell you that one of the best things I’ve done in my career is get involved, be involved at the state level, the local level, the national level, build those relationships so that you have a network of peers, of friends, sometimes we all need a little chamber therapy. I have my people that are in the speed dial that I call, I’m like, Have you ever dealt with this, this is wild, have you not network matters, it makes the career pathway of being in a chamber world so much more meaningful, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from my peers through this process. So get involved, join associations, make chamber friends, it matters and your chamber, you personally will be way better for it. So do it.

Brandon Burton 27:37
I love it. 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?

Kami Welch 27:49
I love this question. Because I think it’s been such a journey for so many of us and Canada, kind of the historic role of chambers and be known for festivals and ribbon cutting than really that celebratory stuff in communities, which is still important, and it’s fun, and it brings people together. But I believe that chambers are more critical today than they’ve ever, ever, ever been. And the issues that our businesses are facing are getting bigger and more complicated. And I often will say if not us, then who we are uniquely positioned as chambers to solve really critical challenges. We have the resources, the leadership, and we can bring together government, nonprofit education, business, all to one table and solve issues. There aren’t many others who can do that with the same level of credibility. So I believe we have an opportunity right now, to optimize on that coming out of the pandemic, where many of us stepped into a new capacity. people’s trust in our ability is high. And we need to optimize that and take action today to ensure long term success.

Brandon Burton 28:53
I love that response. Love it. Well, Cami this has been a very insightful and productive conversation. I think it’s been provided a lot of value for chambers to kind of look at themselves, look at their community, get that data, see if you know if this rises to needing that that level of importance in your community to address childcare needs. I’m gonna guess it probably is up there and probably the top five needs that you need to address in your community. But if anyone listening wanted to reach out and connect with you maybe learn a little bit more more detail about how you guys are approaching this work. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Kami Welch 29:35
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to talk to anybody. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do is to connect with my peers so please don’t hesitate to reach out. Email is the easiest way to reach me which is kami@arvadachamber.org If you’re just looking for more information and want to r&d, rip off and duplicate our website at arvadachamber.org And feel free to take information from there. I am a huge proponent of supporting each other and so no need to tell me you’re taking it. It’s just if it’s helpful to you, and you can use some of it. Please do I believe a rising tide lifts all boats so happy to help anyone in the industry kind of figure out where they need to go next.

Brandon Burton 30:11
Awesome. Well get your email and the website in our show notes for this episode, so anyone can check that out and maybe just send you a thank you for that r&d. But thank you Kami for spending time with us today for sharing the work that you guys are doing around child care. This is a topic we have not covered on the podcast yet, so it’s an important one. And I have a feeling we’ll be talking about it even more coming into the future. So thank you for that.

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Business Growth through Belonging with John Brewer

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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.

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Brandon Burton 0:54
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Our guest for this episode is John Brewer. John is the president and CEO at the Billings Chamber of Commerce in Montana, which is a five star credited chamber through the US Chamber of Commerce. The Billings chamber developed and manages the Billings tourism improvement district visit southeast Montana and the billings chamber foundation. John currently serves on the WAC board of directors. His past chair of the Montana association of Chamber of Commerce executives, serves on the ACCE board served as their emerging cities chair and serves in the US chambers committee at 100 advisors. Before moving to Billings, John was president and CEO of the Spokane regional convention and visitors bureau in Washington, of course, he has a BA in Communication Arts from the University of West Florida, and he and his wife Carrie have four children and two grandkids. But John, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so they can get to know you a little

John Brewer 2:10
better. Hey, Brandon, well, thank you. It’s, it’s good to see ya. It’s always the most difficult question I think is sharing something interesting about yourself, right? Because golf that I find interesting other than I do it a bore. But you know, my wife and I, I guess if I were to say one thing that we’re passionate about, and it’s been kind of unique is that for the 20, some years, 25 years, we’ve been together, we’ve been fostering dogs and my wife has a heart for people in need and animals in need. So we’ve had everything from 12 Puppies running around the house to a dog in a wheelchair to other special needs type dogs to try to help find them a home. So for us, it’s been fun as well as it’s been rewarding to to help connect the animals to their lifelong homes.

Brandon Burton 2:57
That’s awesome. So if you had to, if you had to guess over the last 25 years or so about how many dogs have been through your house, the Bowl number

John Brewer 3:08

We were much more active when the kids were at a different age and things that now we kind of go one at a time, I think more more because of our age than any grant. But it’s great. He’s working with debt dog adoption agencies around the country. And when they need a home. He’s kind of opening the doors for him. So I love being part of that.

Brandon Burton 3:30
That is awesome. As dogs need that. Yeah. Well tell us a little bit about the Billings chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we get into our conversation. Obviously every chamber is different. But give us an idea of size staff budget scope of work that sort

John Brewer 3:47
of bragging about Yeah, first. Yeah. You mentioned your that five star credited chamber several years ago, we were chamber of the year through atpe. So we’re proud of the work that we’re doing. We’ve got an incredible board of directors that kind of let us be unchained to go and figure out what needs to be solved in our chambers really focused on being one of those kick butt chambers, if you will, and problem solver and as far as tackling big community issues, as well as those core things that most chambers are involved in. For us. It’s business growth, business advocacy, community development. And then we are also as you mentioned in the intro there, the managing organization for our tourism entities both visit Billings and visit southeast Montana 13 counties and two Indian Reservation within our region here. So, you know, having that balance of connecting business to the you know, millions of visitors that come through here on their way to Yellowstone National Park or Little Bighorn battlefield sight of customers last stand or along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Were in a great spot to not only be a business hub as the largest city in Montana, and A tourism area where people start their journey by flying in and got the largest airport and great internet interstate connectivity. But our chamber has right now just over 1100 members, they employ just under 15,000 people. And we are hovering around 90% retention and we love that number. It’s solid. And we’re just we’ve been on a growth cycle, both from a revenue perspective, as well as the membership perspective. So our staff has grown by four FTE in the last 12 month and we’re brought people on who are focused in in the finance world, we need to do some things you’d mentioned that we just launched our foundation at the chamber. And we’re also bringing people on to help take care of the workforce issue that every community I think in the country is facing.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Now that you guys definitely have your work cut out for you, that’s for sure. It’s curious, have you guys seen an influx in tourism since the TV show Yellowstone came out a couple years ago?

John Brewer 6:05
It’s funny how many times we’re asked that question, right? Yeah, we, you know, Yellowstone, in where that shot is probably about a four and a half, five hour drive from us. But you know, Yellowstone Park has seen a bump, we hear lots of people on their way and talking about it, the detrimental side to that is now the state legislature feels like we’re getting all this free advertising that we should just pull that we get about $2 million annually for tourism funding. So they’re like, we don’t really need that anymore. Let’s reinvest that in affordable housing and other needs in our communities like public safety. So we’re in the middle of our legislative session that meets every two years, and kind of all hands on deck for those battles. And they are they are plentiful. We’ve got 4000 bills that have been introduced. And so yeah, it’s exciting. Yeah, it poses some challenges.

Brandon Burton 6:54
Right. Now. We were one of those families. Last summer, we were gonna go there and about I think two weeks before we went the, I think was the North Loop got closed down with the mudslides and stuff. And so we ended up kind of rerouting what our vacation was going to be because they were only letting in you know, every other day, depending on your your license plate numbers. They’re like, that’s a long hike.

John Brewer 7:19
And interestingly enough, our visitors director at the Chamber, her brother is the superintendent at Yellowstone Park. So when they were going through that kind of a lottery of license plates, you know, we were hearing about some of that, and that was an interesting process. But yeah, they were hit very hard, still not fully recovered, hit the egg industry in our region. But you know, that’s another thing that chambers are always geared up to, to try to do is, you know, be prepared to help whether it’s, you know, all the rains in California flooding hurricane. So another exciting role, though, per chamber and pillar solving those community problems that they hit.

Brandon Burton 7:54
That’s right. So getting back to, I guess the topic for our conversation today. As great as billings is, and you know, we want to get get honed in on a certain topic here. So, what we decided to cover today is, you know, every, every chamber, every community is vastly different. And as we get into the topic of diversity, equity inclusion over the last few years that looks different in each community. And as we talk with John today, we wanted to kind of focus on the why for Thayer Dei, what did they you know, hone in on and focusing on as they worked on diversity, equity inclusion, and we will dive into that much deeper as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, John, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break diving into what was the why for the your diversity equity inclusion efforts there the Billings chamber and how did things kind of evolve into what it is now.

John Brewer 11:43
And I think that word evolve and evolution is so important because I think so many of us in the chamber world and maybe as just citizens of the world, you know, we hear a lot about D E I and it strikes us all differently because words do matter. And as we were developing the name of the work even it was a lengthy discussion for many diversity, equity and inclusion or triggering words or they have a stigma to them. And and I think this evolution of white white chambers are involved in Dei. Now, is it an important context to understand I mean, for us, everything that we do these days is revolving around workforce, workforce development, workforce retention, Workforce Education. And this is one of those areas that I think we just push aside or think that we’re doing okay in and ignore. And I feel that chambers are masters, developing these type of networks, to include people so that they have a voice and to include opportunities for individuals to grow. You know, we convene people as chambers to solve problems, whether it’s public safety, or wetek. We talked about a minute ago, floods and community disasters, we bring people together for their expertise. But we also as chambers convene people to help educate them to help them grow. We have small business networks, which is a diverse individual group, we have young professionals and women’s networks and veterans groups. All of those address diversity by a DDI program just brings it all together. And understanding you know, because I think when I when I first got into this, and it’s only been a couple of years from the Billings chamber, so we’re in our infancy. But diversity doesn’t mean a person’s skin color alone. And I think that’s where we often go, you know, I’ve never personally been a female, I’ve never been in a wheelchair, I’ve never been a person of color. I’m not gay. I am, who I am. And I’ve got my political leanings and my religious beliefs. And we’re all so unique that for us and for our organization, what it means for us as the why and what we need to accomplish is to have a better understanding of others to meet them where they are, to help them feel a sense of belonging so people can bring their authentic and best selves to work. And so that companies can have the tool that they need to build a strong workforce. As I mentioned, your retention and recruitment is just so important. And I think many of the chambers that will be listening, but also the tourism economy. For us, we have about $625 million in visitor spending and direct visitor spending over 625 million. And over the last several years, our call center started getting questions in regards to I’m a person of color, am I safe? I’m a person in the LGBTQ plus community do I belong? And so between the visitor economy and just working with our members to help build that, that sense of belonging in a workforce so that the companies can, you know, tout themselves legitimately as being a Quality place to work and help employees grow?

Brandon Burton 15:03
Absolutely, I think that’s so important, it just creating that that place of belonging no matter what the diversity is of the population, and like you said, you’ve never been a woman. But yeah, that sometimes that gets overlooked, you know that, you know, there are different segments of the population, whether it is gender, or I think race is where a lot of people go to and you think the bet, are you a veteran? Are you disabled? Are you you know, what are the different things and and more and more, it feels like there’s new labels being put upon people or that are people that are associated with with new labels and and groups that they need special attention, they need to be considered, especially as they enter

John Brewer 15:50
the workforce. And I want you know, everybody who works, you know, bringing it down to the micro level people that work at the Chamber, I want them to feel that regardless of their backstory, where they come from, challenges that they’ve had in their life, that they feel that we are a place where they can grow, and they are important and their voices heard. And, again, whether it’s a person of color, and in Billings, we are about 88%, white, we have a strong Native American population, we’re close to the Crow Reservation, as well as the Northern Cheyenne. And you know, their workforce right now. They’re at about 50% unemployment there. And they’ve got workforce and a college and we want to find ways to be better in billing, to help bridge that workforce gap to help grow, but they have a unique culture that, you know, some from I think that the white heritage might just see the native culture and say, you know, what, they don’t show up on time, they’re don’t work as hard. The work ethic is different. And it’s these issues where it is just different. And once you learn how to address those, boy, we’re missing out on some big opportunities. If we don’t and, you know, for us, it was to better understand what we didn’t know at the time, we surveyed our membership a lot and asked a lot of questions to help even determine whether this was something that we should be getting into. And we had about 78% of our members say, we have needs and there’s nobody leading in this space in Billings in a space, I mean, connecting business to Dei, and 78% of our members said we need to do this. Billings is friendly, you know, we’re a great community, we’re welcoming, but we’re not diverse, and simply not knowing how to address diversity. And like we just talked about the breadth of diversity. I was surprised kind of how hungry some of our members were for tools that could help them grow. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 17:51
And, yeah, I feel like that’s one of the biggest challenges we have in our day is being able to be inclusive of all the diverse segments of the population and diversity, you know, division has that same root word of division, right? So in different segments of diversity, there comes a lot of strength, you know, as you can come together with, you know, whether it’s a women’s group or, you know, different races gather together, or its sexual orientations, there’s some strength coming together for that. But as society is as a whole, and as the workforce as a whole, it becomes very divisive, or it can be as we have all these different segments. So how do we incorporate everybody give them a place of belonging, make sure that they understand that it doesn’t matter, any of the subsets of the population you belong here, we want you to hear that. Yeah, say how have you have you guys approached that?

John Brewer 18:51
Well, we spent a lot of time again on the name when we talked about belonging, and we had all these nice acronyms and flowery words that we just decided that you know what we’re going to hit this head on, we’re going to have difficult conversations, and we’re going to be that place where people will feel comfortable coming with their tough questions, because like you say, dei and woke and all of these over politicized word, you know, it all boils down to, how are we helping our members and our employees feel like they belong. And we’ve developed a four part strategy for our dei work, and most recently launched a program called you belong and billing. With the end we launched at our annual meeting just a couple of months ago. The idea being that Montana and billing was ranked in the top three states and communities in the United States where people were moving to over the past couple of years. And we knew that brought a diversity of thought and diversity of political backgrounds, the diversity of color and so on. And we set out with this initiative to help an employer once they bring somebody in from another community, help them to onboard them to the community. So as an employer, we all have our onboarding programs, you hire somebody, you give them the one on one in the organization, they immerse in your culture at your organization. But we’ve found in our hearing, over time, so many of our large employers were losing people, because they couldn’t find their footing in our community. And for a variety of reasons. So as new people move here, we’ve got this community onboarding program, if you live at old Welcome Wagon feel you’ve just moved here? What should I see? And do where’s my theme, you know, where can I connect with things that interests me, whether it’s, you know, brew, trail walk, or arts and entertainment, the music scene. But more importantly, we felt it was a one on one human connection, so connecting them to other newbies that have just arrived in Billings, as well as community leader. So that this, you know, couple year ramp up time, I’m learning a new job and learning a lot of other stuff, buying a house, getting my cable connected all that stuff, we’re now going to deliberately help you find ways to get involved in the community getting involved in the chamber. And we think over time, we’re gonna be tracking that, and seeing what kind of retention rates employers are going to have, because there’ll be doing this onboarding, and then connecting to our leadership programs and connecting to elected official, and finding a way to get involved in our dei work if they choose. So that’s one very significant initiative that in its early phases, and we’re excited to see how it progresses.

Brandon Burton 21:34
Yeah. So and I like how you surveyed your members. And you said that you’re going about this, you know, when it boils down to what’s good for buildings, what’s good for your members. But really, there’s a huge outreach component of this to saying that you belong here, and you’re talking to people that are not Chamber members, that you’re talking to people that are not yet part of the community in some instances, but being inclusive and saying you belong, we have a place for you. But really focusing with your membership to create those places where they can belong and, and make them feel part of the community. So I’d like to, the focus is on billings in the members, they’re really that outreach component. I think this is so important.

John Brewer 22:17
In the outreach piece, one of our four core goals for dei mission was not only outreach so this one is relatively new, the outreach to outside of our borders. But within our membership, that continual dedication of space in our E News and other communications to dei content, celebrating Black History Month, and Martin Luther King Day, for example, and making sure that we’re able to provide kind of an upcoming calendar of here’s where we used to be set aside and set aside some dedicated time to to celebrate different populations. We launched a dei website, billing dei.com, and it has videos and to get books to read, and a downloadable toolkit that we actually partnered with it. Since they partnered we borrowed from the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, they developed this amazing resource. We worked with them to tweak a little bit to be billing centric, redeveloped it launched it and provided contacts and information on this website that helps businesses with their onroad or their onramp. You know, I want to start with I don’t know where to begin. What step one, I’m just in the early phases of wanting to introduce belonging into our organization, or we’ve been doing this for years, and what’s next for that company. And so some of our early adopters that really helped get the brand and part of a successful initiative, like takes funding. And some of our early adopters that stepped up, were some of the names you heard of, you know, corporate, large, major corporations such as Exxon and Keio International, based here and billing. A number of financial institution came to us with significant financial support to help us develop the structure, build a website, hire an individual to spearhead this work. And that’s meeting that goal for us. But making this sustainable, this could not be a fad. That, you know, it’s the talk of the day, let’s get behind this because it’s new, and then it disappears. It has to be sustained. So we built this into the fabric of our organization, found the funding and are really happy with with that continued growth and the continued support partnership from our members. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 24:36
So is the majority of the, I guess information and training for members? Is it digitally based on the Billings to ei.com? Or do you have any in person kind of stuff? I know you had mentioned the community, you know, the community onboarding has a personal touch that as far as getting the members position Well to be inclusive and welcoming for everybody. And what does that look like?

John Brewer 25:05
Yeah, so one of the very first things we did, this is out of my comfort zone. And we started. So we brought together a steering committee that has now evolved to an advisory board of 15 individuals that bring different perspective. And we decided early on, we needed to launch that personal touch. So for four sessions, now, we’ve had a diversity, equity inclusion, and an implementation dei class that’s consisted of four workshops. And those go over a four month period. And they’re followed by four community roundtable discussions, and then network opportunity. So after those four months, people will go through that they go through a graduation ceremony, we celebrate them. And then they become kind of part of our alumni email chain now of keeping them communicated with on a high level. But that step was big. And then once a company has graduated, so many people through that program, they’re then designated as a Workplace of Choice, and they get some language, we’re working on another piece to that that would be more of an identity for them. But they’re able to utilize those resources and promoting their organization as a quality place to work. So that has meant over the last two years for us 150 graduate full classes almost every time, those 140 50 graduates represent just over 30 businesses that employ 16,000 people. And that was our goal was to reach the major employees to begin with employers to begin with, knowing that they would cast their net out to their employees. And our goal, starting last April, and moving forward now is to engage many more small businesses. And part of the funding that’s come in, through our sponsors has been dedicated to scholarships for those that can’t afford it.

Brandon Burton 27:03
And it’s great. That was one of the questions that we’re going to have is there’s some kind of certification they get afterwards as a company, and you got into the depth of that with those workshops and the ability to kind of workshop together and around table and stay as part of that alumni group, and build that strength throughout the community. And then thinking with these major employers, 16,000 people being affected, they’re not all going to stay at the same player forever. So they’re going to move around that training is going to go with them as well. So casting that net, you know, wide within these major employers, I think is so key. And it’s such a smart move. I wanted to see as we start wrapping up here for I know a lot of chambers have some sort of a D and AI initiative, but it’s gonna see if you have any tips or action items for chambers listening, who want to take their organization up to the next level, what what would you suggest for them?

John Brewer 28:04
Yeah, that’s a great question. And you know, whether it’s dei specific or otherwise, one of the things that after our one of our first dei workshops, the presenter, who we’ve engaged as our contracts service provider to lead these workshops, gave me a bottle of wine, and encouraged me to enjoy it with somebody who I don’t know who doesn’t look like me, think like me is different. And I just that stuck with me. And I’ve got that here on my desk as a constant reminder of, you know, we’re engaged with a lot of people as chambers, we have strong networks, but there’s so many groups and individuals out there that we don’t know. So I’ve carried that on. And we do gift cards for staff and gift cards for others in the past, and have handed them out and said, You know what, here’s here’s a card for your favorite brewery or a card for a coffee shop. only caveat is you got to go find somebody to enjoy it with who you don’t know. And that really helped us as we were, again, evolving our advisory board and bringing those unique places around the table. Because we just have such a propensity to go back to that comfort zone and say, Hey, I’m gonna go grab this person and that person because I know they get stuff done. And I have a comfort there. That really helps, I think, just think differently and put you in that uncomfortable zone of of growth.

Brandon Burton 29:28
Yeah, yeah, I love that tip. That’s a hopefully everybody’s making a quick note of that. To get out of your comfort zone. Go enjoy time and conversation and a beverage or some food, you know, with somebody who’s different than you. And there’s a lot to be learned by doing that. John, I’d 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?

John Brewer 29:59
Yeah, I think there’s, you know, wide open plate for us to be successful and incredibly impactful in our community. But it boils down to leadership. It involves, you know, the makeup of our boards of directors and the professional staff that we have membership leadership and engagement. But there are there are some incredible roadmaps out there and somewhat crystal ball that we all need to be paying attention to and, and watching as they are updated. And, and, you know, I look often towards work that was done several years ago to ACCE and the horizons initiative gave us great perspective on emerging demographics and political polarization. WAC II is an incredible resource for their three C’s evolution of chambers becoming catalysts, and champions and conveners. And, you know, if we look to those roadmap, but he said at the very beginning, all chambers are different. But there’s a certain kind of structure a solid foundation that makes us unique, and I think will continue to provide value and make us relevant and not only relevant but essential as we go forward in such a digital age that we still have that ability to bring people together, that can really impact our communities in substantive ways.

Brandon Burton 31:23
I love that answer. And you know, how spot on was the horizons report? Right? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So I’m glad you brought that up. And in going from relevant to essential, I gotta upload Casey Steinbacher book, you know, that same title, great book, and any, any chamber pros out there, I haven’t read it. It’s a Kindle version. So you got to download it, but it’s a great read. John, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information. So anyone listening who’d like to learn more about how you guys are doing things there and billings, specifically about you know, creating a place of belonging with the your business growth there. What would be the best ways to reach out and connect with you

John Brewer 32:10
always best to reach me via email and that’s john@billingschamber.com. Again, just perusing our website with our BillingsDEI.com. There’s some great resources and a wider breadth of contact information and then then our website at Billingschamber.com as well.

Brandon Burton 32:30
Right? Well, we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode. So if anybody is driving and couldn’t get in, jot those down, just check out the show notes and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll have all of John’s contact information there. But John, thank you for spending time with us today and sharing how you guys are creating that that place of belonging through business growth there and Billings and the example you guys are sending. I really appreciate it. Thank

John Brewer 32:55
you, Brandon means a lot. I appreciate that.

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Increasing Your Membership through Advocacy with Kate Bates

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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 title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.

Tony Felker 0:37
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 0:59
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Our guest for this episode is Kate Bates. Kate serves as president and CEO of The Arlington Chamber of Commerce in Virginia. Kate was appointed to this role in June of 2014. After an extensive national search, Kate began her tenure with the Chamber in 2007, serving in areas of increasing responsibility. Under her leadership, the Chamber increased their business advocacy efforts with notable state and local successes, as well as growing significantly in membership. Prior to joining the chamber, she worked for women in government and national nonpartisan association of women state legislators. Kate serves as chair of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce executives. She also serves on the Arlington Economic Development Commission, the Arlington Alexandria Workforce Investment Council, the Leadership Center for Excellence board of directors, and participates actively in a number of additional regional organizations. Kate was a 2014 recipient of the Outstanding Young Virginia Anna award from the Virginia Jaycees and was an inaugural honoree for the Leadership Center for Excellence 40 under 40. In 2017, she was named a Washington Business Journal 40 under 40 honoree in 2019. She was recognized by ACCE as a 40 under 40 honoree for significant contributions for community as well as the chamber industry. Kate is a graduate from the George Washington University with a BA in Political Science and International Affairs, as well as the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s IOM program. She is also a graduate of leadership Arlington and leadership Greater Washington, originally from small town, Illinois, Kate and her husband, Ronnie have made Arlington in their home. Kate, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and then share something interesting about yourself so they can get to know you a little better.

Kate Bates 3:06
Thanks, Brandon. And it’s great to be here with you. Again, I love connecting with the Chamber industry and other chamber professionals. I think that’s one of the things that’s so great about our industry that you often see the surprise from people coming from other industries when they enter the chamber world is that we are one of the most supportive industries that everyone wants to share best practices and lift each other up. It’s really not a competitive industry. You know, if somebody’s coming from another chamber area, they have a great experience that’s only going to increase everything for our industry. So really happy to be here with you this morning. The fun fact questions always a tough one. But taking something that wasn’t in my bio that you read. I am a diehard Washington Capitals fan despite being from Illinois, I both my husband and I have fully adopted the caps as our team to the point where I several years before the caps won their Stanley Cup. Our wedding cake was actually made to look like the arena and had a tiny little Stanley Cup as our cake topper.

Brandon Burton 4:02
Wow. That is you guys are all in? Yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, no, I the the comments you made about the industry and being very supportive of each other. I was kind of surprised when I started the podcast about four years ago that there wasn’t a podcast out there already to share best practices and tips amongst other chamber professionals because it is, you know, so reciprocal, you know, amongst other colleagues. So thank you for pointing that out and sharing that, that fun fact about you. I’d love for you to take a moment to share with us a little bit about the Arlington chamber just give us an idea of perspective, you know, size, staff budget, scope of work, things like that, just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Absolutely. So

Kate Bates 4:46
the Arlington Chamber of Commerce is about 750 members, and our members really ranged in size from small startups, all the way up to large corporations like Amazon, Boeing and Nestle. And really every thing in between. So it’s really reflective of the business community here in Arlington. For anyone who doesn’t know Arlington, Virginia is located right outside Washington DC to the point where if you land at DCA airport, actually everything surrounding you is Arlington, I think they give the airport a DC address. But literally, as soon as you step one foot in any direction, off the airport, you are right in Arlington, so you know best known for the cemetery, probably. But there’s so much else going on in Arlington, it’s really a great place that has sort of a lot of those amenities that you get from being in an urban area, but has a lot of the benefits of you know, that placemaking that comes with other communities that are a little bit more on the small town space. Our chamber budget for 2023 is about 1.3 million. We have a full time staff of seven including myself and three part time members of our staff as well.

Brandon Burton 5:53
So yeah, this is kind of a unique, your chambers and a unique situation where a lot of the listeners have probably been to Arlington as they come visit the nation’s capitol where a lot of the chamber people that I interview are from all over the country and you know, maybe a small town Idaho or something maybe you haven’t been to but a lot of people have been been through Arlington so. So that definitely helps to set the perspective for our conversation today. And I kind of alluded to it as I went through your bio, but you’ve had an impact with advocacy there at the Arlington chamber and directly seeing an increase in membership tied back to the advocacy efforts that you guys are making. So we’ll be focusing our conversation today around increasing membership through advocacy. And we’ll dive into that a little bit deeper as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Kate, we’re back. Tell us kind of the origin I guess as you started there at Arlington chamber and kind of really boosted up the advocacy efforts. What did that look like? And at what point was the membership growth intentionally tied to it? Or how did you see that correlation and lean heavier into that?

Kate Bates 9:56
Great, so I’ll pick things up actually when I became CEO in 2004. tin again, I’d been at the Chamber for about seven years prior to that. But moving into the CEO role obviously presented some opportunities for me to be the one with the vision for the organization. So actually, in the interview process, I presented a new staff org chart. And it had two new full time roles. And the idea was to get there within five years, and we did very proud of that. But the first was a membership engagement role. So we had one membership person, and no matter how great that person was, as the chamber pros on the call, no, you know, it can be very hard. If you’re in charge of everything, recruitment and retention, you end up focusing on recruiting new members, and then also calling members when their dues are late. So that doesn’t leave a lot of time for taking care of your existing members unless they’re reaching out to you. So I knew that that was the role. I wanted to add first, chronologically, but equally important on this org chart I presented was a government affairs manager position, that, you know, I had some of that background from, you know, my education and my previous role prior to joining the chamber staff, but really saw that as the area, you know, where our chamber could grow and really be more relevant moving forward, we were in a great position, when I came in as CEO in 2014, you know, very strong organization, the good culture, a good foundation financials, in order are respected in the community. But I saw that opportunity for us to really lean into our mission more, and really have that impact for our Chamber members and our greater community as well. So I knew that it was important, I did, you know, however, kind of deliberately start with the engagement to get some more of the revenue to ultimately be able to add this role, which we were able to add in the fall of 2018. But really, you know, both in between that time, before we had the full government affairs professional, and even after, you know, it took a little bit for it to get going. But now we’re at the point where, you know, our government affairs person will not a salesperson at all, is absolutely instrumental to membership retention, and can be a really big asset for our membership team in terms of membership recruitment, as well.

Brandon Burton 12:05
So how does that work strategically, when you say they’re so impactful with membership, although they’re not salesperson? So do you have it time somehow, as they reach out to certain businesses as membership comes up? Or just because of the touch points along the way throughout the year? What does that interaction looking like to show the value that comes to the advocacy to those members to retain and to bring on new members? Sure, a minute. So

Kate Bates 12:31
I’m gonna bring that up a level first and talk a little bit more big picture. And then we can sort of sure dive into tactics a little bit more. So in terms of the advocacy broadly, you know, what we do falls into two bucket areas, you know, we do policy positions, and then we do member support. So policy positions are positions that the Chamber takes, you know, on behalf of the business community, there’s of course, a process that we go through to adopt those, you know, we did have a government affairs committee already in 2014, we grew that committee, and we added actually more meetings and now meets twice a month. So that group was working on that. And then policy positions are ultimately adopted by the Board of Directors, again, as chamber staff, you know, we we help them through this process, but they are the ones who are actually formally adopting the positions. So the value of those from a membership standpoint is, you know, it’s an opportunity for businesses to have a seat at the table on issues that they care about. So some chambers have their policy committees, application only are restricted, we do it a little bit differently, where ours are open to any member who wants to attend. So even if you know, if you have a company, if three people from your team care about an issue, they can come that day. And that is done. So you know, if we’re talking about child care regulations within the county, perhaps HR professionals will come to that meeting. If we’re talking about, you know, zoning in light industrial areas, we might get a different group of members. But we want whoever shows up to be the people who are impacted by those issues as well to make really good policy positions. But that also serves the benefit of having our policy work be beneficial to an even wider range of members. So we’re doing that broad work. But then we also do what we call member support. And that’s where we do the individual work and advocacy on behalf of businesses who are having issues typically at the local level. Virginia has what’s known as a Dillon rule state so that means that any authority not given to missa palette is stays with the Commonwealth. So we probably do about 20% ish of our work at the General Assembly level. But really, the bulk of it is at the local level and Arlington’s a county, not a city with no cities within it. So you might hear me refer to the county board for other folks that might be their city council or, you know, similar bodies there. But that member support can look like anything from you know, a business is having issues getting a signage process, getting their sign put up on their building, and they’re getting buried in County red tape, and we’re able to reach out and make those connections for them, and help them get their problem solved, or very least get it expedited and get to the right people. And what we often talk about is if you can solve one of those individual issues like that, you’ll often have a member for life.

Brandon Burton 15:13
Absolutely. So yeah, I think that really helps to break it down into what those two buckets look like. So let’s circle back with the on the policy side with the the committee meetings that you have there. So as you said, that’s open to any members who want to come, are you just broadcasting that through email? Or you’ve got your your regular set dates twice a month? And just an open invitation? And how do you moderate, that goes?

Kate Bates 15:45
Absolutely. So we they are open to all members, we do members can opt to sign up for the distribution list. So then you get the full information on a week out of who the speaker is going to be. It is a set date and time so you can mark your calendars with them. We do also for the bigger and more popular topics, we will also include an article about it in our regular E newsletter. So if you’re a member who isn’t already on that distribution list, and you’re interested in attending, there’s a way to do that. So early on, when we really beefed up our advocacy program, we separated them out. And we would usually have one that was more speaker focused, and one that was more working session focused. We’ve shifted and really most of them meetings at this point other than where we’re drafting our annual positions. Do you all have a speaker so often, you know, we set the agenda with our government affairs leadership, or our two committee chairs. And then we have a representative on our executive committee, who’s our vice chair for business advocacy. And our staff will work with them. And we set the agenda for the year, we always leave blanks because there’s always things that come up, and we want to have those spaces. But for example, we always start in January, we already had our first meeting with the county board chair. So the county board chair comes and gives, you know, probably about a 15 to 20 minute, talk about you know what’s going on for the year, especially what pertains to business. And then we open it up and do a moderated q&a. So this committee actually used to be in person pre COVID, when virtual during the pandemic was actually our first meeting to go virtual, we pulled that off quite quickly. And then we’ve actually kept other than, you know, a few special meetings, often our work sessions are better in person. But we’ve kept the bulk of those meetings virtually, because we’ve found that really that moderation is even easier to do on the Zoom than it is in person. We also have some members who you know, the commutes in these areas can be a little tough, there can be some bad traffic around and we’ve got not all of our members live or even work in Arlington. So having the Zoom really makes it more accessible for people as well.

Brandon Burton 17:42
I love that you pointed out that it has been done over zoom, because that was going to be a question as as it’s open to any chamber member, how do you have a room big enough to accommodate anybody that wanted to come, especially some of those hot topics come up? So glad to see that you’re still utilizing zoom and being effective with it and not just having the Zoom burnout?

Kate Bates 18:03
Yeah, the networking again, we we listened to our members, and it was very, very clear that the networking events, you know, we made it work virtually when we had to when things were really shut down. But no people want to physically be together for the networking. But for some more of the the meetings tend to work well virtually for us.

Brandon Burton 18:21
So this policy meetings, are they being operated by a chamber staff? Are you running that? Or is it a somebody from the government affairs that runs that? How does that? How does that work?

Kate Bates 18:32
So a mix between the two, so each of our chamber committees has a staff liaison. So again, prior to us, that is our government affairs manager. Now prior to us having a government affairs professional, I was doing that, you know, so I was the primary staff liaison, and then ultimately tapped one of our other team members to help with just some of the administrative when we’re in person, the sign in sheet and that sort of thing. But we do have a staff member for it, who’s often opening and doing more of the logistics of things. And then we also do have our co chairs who are kind of more of the public face for a lot of these things. So they’re the ones who are giving the welcome. We’re introducing the speaker with support from our staff.

Brandon Burton 19:10
Awesome. So maybe shifting gears a little bit, then over to the membership support side. So I assume your government affairs position that you’ve hired for is engaging with the members to find out what their needs are there. What what is that? How does those How did those interactions work? As far as engaging with the members? Is it reaching out to them as a waiting? You know, are there enough people coming to you with issues? Is it what, how does that direction work?

Kate Bates 19:39
Great question. So that’s really where the integration with the rest of the team and the membership team in particular comes into play. So you know, we always put you know, information, all of our newsletters, we have you know, in our print newsletter, which we still do occasionally you know, now we’re down to quarterly on that. And when we do the advocacy section, we add information that if you’re having any policy issues, please reach out Our government affairs manager, John musoni, has contact information. So we do have some of those static things. And you know, we do often when we onboard our new members, we make sure that they know about John as a resource, but really a lot of the specific ones. So some of the members who’ve been around for a while will know or who read, you know, their newsletters will reach out. But often, you know, it’s our membership team. And we have two full time and now one part time membership professionals as well, that when they’re talking with our members, and just the regular interactions, if they hear anything, then they make the connection there to our government affairs manager. So that’s how a lot of that happens.

Brandon Burton 20:34
I could see where there may be some bleed over with different positions with among chamber staff, where, you know, not everybody is a membership person, but at the same time, if somebody wants, you know, inquires about membership, you’re not going to say, well, I can’t tell you anything, right? You’re going to, you’re going to help them where you can and then make that transition. So is there specific training that you do for different staffers, it just kind of learning on the job and just kind of learning the different vernacular and what those important topics are to address members?

Kate Bates 21:06
Yeah, I mean, we’re all in the membership business, no, anybody’s in the chamber business is in the membership business, we like to say, in terms of, you know, training for membership and Government Affairs sort of working together there. A lot of it. So whenever we onboard any new full time team member, a big important part of that onboarding process, is they meet with each other team member, or sometimes by department. So we’ll meet with the membership team together and talk about how they work together. And what that looks like, will often also have, you know, especially for the government affairs, roll, them just sort of sit in on a membership meeting once or twice, we also have all new staff members go to our chamber one to one, so that they hear how we’re messaging membership to new and prospective members. But a lot of that integration to with the selling, you know, so our government affairs manager, you know, if he’s looking through a county board agenda, and that’s kind of a pro tip for any of the chamber professionals, if anybody is trying to figure out, you know, they’re not sure where to engage, look at your local government agendas, and just start reviewing them and see what topics are applicable to businesses. So there may be broad topics coming up, or there may be individual businesses that have business going before that your government body. So when that happens, you know, our government affairs manager will if it’s a member, reach out to them, if he hasn’t heard from them already, and ask them, you know, how are things going? Is there anything we can do to support you in this, you know, if they’re hearing that they’re having some problems, or they’re not sure how the vote is going to do, that’s where we would engage more, if it’s a prospective member, if they’ve got a bigger item coming before our county board, then that’s when, you know, our government affairs manager and our senior director of membership will talk together, they actually have regular meetings together and figure out a strategy, you know, who it makes sense to reach out to the prospective member and offer support from there.

Brandon Burton 22:54
So, as you have these two advocacy buckets, do you see pretty well split 5050? As far as getting feedback from members, and where the value where they perceive the value to be? I guess, because I see the value there being very, pretty equal. But the perceived value, I guess, from members, does it seem to be pretty evenly split? Or do you see one way or the other having more perceived value and impact on your membership?

Kate Bates 23:23
So that’s hard to say, again, there’s certainly more of the policy position work, and that will impact more members. But the member support will impact the business more deeply, if that makes sense. So if you’re one of those individual businesses, that’s where you will never forget, you know, I mean, I was at a just out to dinner with my husband on Friday night at a local restaurant. And the owner came by and was talking about some of the challenges he’s having and some of the new ones that he had just brought to our government affairs managers attention the day before, but just talking about some of the other work and really talking about how he saves so much by not having to call his attorney for every single question about the county, because he has us as this resource. And you know, that is a member that I would be shocked if that renewal ever doesn’t come in for us, just because he has felt that value so strongly if chamber membership. But the policy position work is also incredibly important. Because again, you know, for larger businesses, it gives them a place to engage. And for the smaller businesses, they don’t have the capacity to have somebody looking at all of these things on their behalf. And a lot of it can be playing defense as well. You know, there’s a lot of other, you know, advocacy groups, we have a very active community, which is a wonderful thing. There’s something known as the Arlington way, we’re really anything that’s going to happen as to go through a big process with lots of community input. And if nobody is watching those things, from a business perspective, a lot of things can happen with unintended consequences for business. So especially, you know, for those reasons, really the policy positions are broadly probably, I’m using air quotes that our listeners can’t see but more important, but Can the member support is more impactful to those who are directly impacted?

Brandon Burton 25:04
Right. And I know sometimes the policy stuff is a little harder to communicate the value to members like, once they see something really happened, some real traction happens. And they’re like, Oh, we’re so grateful our chambers doing this. But a lot of the work kind of happens behind the scenes, in a lot of cases, maybe not with the large companies and things like that, that are able to engage in different level. But I can definitely see, you know, where we’re at each has a place. I guess the basis of that question is where I was thinking, maybe for the smaller chamber out there one or two staff, but they want to get involved more in advocacy, like, where should they start?

Kate Bates 25:41
So, Senator, it depends on what their starting point is, I mean, at minimum, setting up, a government affairs committee is a good place to start. And maybe your committee doesn’t have to meet, you know, twice a month, or even once a month, maybe it could be quarterly, that could be a great starting point for people, and really that convening power, you know, two of the things we haven’t talked about so far are convening and access. You know, even if it’s not your chamber, doing the advocacy work, providing the space to connect your businesses with the elected officials, is hugely valuable, and making your chamber that central place where businesses can come to and connect with the elected officials, and equally important with the county staff, so or city staff, or whatever your configuration is within your local government. But you know, both the people who are the official leaders, but then there’s also often the, you know, the people who really get things done within the county or city government. For businesses, that might be a specific role. But it might not be it might be somebody in a role that you might not think but you realize that any issue you’re bringing forward, they’re the ones solving, you know, and providing that access to your members is a huge benefit. That doesn’t have to be a huge left.

Brandon Burton 26:54
Absolutely. So and I love the pro tip that you gave of looking at the your, your county or your Government Board agendas to see what those hot topics are that are coming up to be able to stay engaged with what matters to the businesses in your community. As we start looking to wrap up here, I wanted to see if you have any other tips or action items for listeners that maybe they want to take their chamber up to the next level, maybe they want to get more engaged with advocacy, what what would you suggest for a tip for them.

Kate Bates 27:25
So I love the one takeaway idea. And whenever I give presentations, I always ask people at the end to try to take one thing especially we’ve thrown a lot of information at them. For this topic, it’s really hard to make it one takeaway that works for every chamber, not knowing where every one starting point is. So if you’re newer to this space, I would offer you know monitoring what your local government is doing. And looking at those agendas for items that impact business and pick one to weigh in on you don’t have to start if you’re brand new to this and feel like you need to make an impact on every single thing. Just pick one there. Another option would be hosting a session with your membership could be virtual or in person with a local official or a top staff person. Again, it doesn’t need to be too much work on that agenda if you’re just asking them to come in, talk about what’s relevant to businesses, and then give a forum for your members to have that back and forth interaction with them. If you’ve been in this space for a while, at action items could range from finding a new way to communicate your work, whether that’s an advocacy, specific communication or newsletter, or maybe doing a better job of integrating your advocacy work and wins into your regular newsletters and communications. It could also be doing some relationship maintenance with your local elected officials or local government staff. And if your team is big enough that you do have a separate person or people handling government affairs and membership, an action item could be to encourage them to meet and see how they can work together more and how that government affairs person can support the membership efforts.

Brandon Burton 28:55
I hope everybody had a pen and paper ready to just write it or you can back up on the podcast 30 seconds, 60 seconds and write those down again, because those are some great tips. I also been a fan of podcasting for chambers that do have a podcast, I think being able to share your advocacy efforts through your podcasts, having a little advocacy moment or segment in each episode I think would be very helpful just to help spread the work that you’re doing. And because a lot of that is behind the scenes, and they don’t really know that you’re doing it unless you say something about it. So Kay, I like asking everyone that I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kate Bates 29:38
So I love that question. And we’re at an interesting reflection point right now for our chamber because next year, we actually turn 100 years old. So I was recently asked a similar question about as our chamber hits the 100 year anniversary. What do I think that you know, our founders would think about how things look now, and I think the two questions really come connect together. So you know, I think the why remains constant. But the how of what we do obviously looks quite different than anyone could have envisioned 100 years ago. And really looking forward at our industry more broadly, as long as the Chamber’s focused on the needs of our members and how to evolve the suit those, there will absolutely be an essential place for chambers. I think that the pandemic really showcased how vital chambers can be to the businesses within their community. We were again, a little short on time, so didn’t even dive into this. There’s so many different facets, but really a subset of the advocacy is being that resource for information for your members. And chambers really shone so brightly in this area during the pandemic, as new regulations were coming out and small businesses didn’t have the resources to keep up on their own. Now, we repurposed our government affairs professional, who was still advocating, but also to discern that information and distill it in a way that could be understood by the businesses so that they knew everything that what they could and couldn’t do and where to go for all the information as well. So that’s an example of the evolving, but you know, I think, absolutely, there’s a place a strong place for chambers, as long as we continue to look to our members, and see how they’re adapting and make the Adapt adaptations to help them moving forward.

Brandon Burton 31:16
Absolutely, man, when you gave that responsive, you know, the question you were asked about, you know, 100 years looking back, you’re kind of reflective of your chamber. Think 100 years ago, 1923. You know, we’re

Kate Bates 31:29
24, so we get out

Brandon Burton 31:31
there, yeah, so but the world has changed a ton, you know, in in those 99 200 years, and even looking forward, like, we have no idea what its gonna look like 100 years from now, and, but you know, if we can go one day at a time, one year at a time, maybe five years and look into the future and, and see what’s important to your members, see what’s important to your community to business, keep them strong and thriving. That’s what we’re all about. So thank you for that. For that perspective there. I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for you as well, like you mentioned, we were a little bit short on time as they’re going through this, we could talk for probably an hour and a half I bet on on advocacy. But if anyone wanted to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things, they’re in Arlington, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect.

Kate Bates 32:20
So I can be reached by email at president@arlingtonchamber.org, or I’m also on LinkedIn as well and can be found there.

Brandon Burton 32:27
It’s all right. And I will have those in our show notes for this episode as well. So if anybody’s not familiar, you can just hit your little notes, show notes on your your podcast player, and then it’ll have a link to actually the page on my website that has the full show notes and transcription. So we’ll have it there. But Kate, thank you for joining us today on chamber chat podcast. And he provided a lot of value and perspective and would encourage anyone listening to reach out and connect with Kate to learn more about advocacy and how that can help impact your membership as well. Okay, thank you very much.

Kate Bates 33:03
Thank you so much, Brandon. It’s really been a pleasure.

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Merging Organizations for a Stronger Community with Kim Casko

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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.

Matt Morrow 0:39
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

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

Our guest for this episode is Kim Casko. Kim has been the president and CEO of the Iowa City Area Business Partnership and September 2016. Prior to that Kim worked for AT as an organizational effectiveness program manager. She also held positions as assistant director for Change Management at the University of Illinois, Career Advisor at the University of Maryland, and management consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers originally from New York Kim holds a bachelor’s degree in management and psychology from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in higher education administration from Northwestern University in Illinois. Kim currently resides in Iowa City with her husband John dog, Rocky and cats. Omi and Tanis. She serves on the boards for the Iowa City Area Development Group Iowa city downtown district Mercy Hospital and ACCE she’s quite proud of that last one. Kim is passionate about leadership development at the individual team organizational and community levels. She enjoys anything food related, sitting on her front porch and making project plans. Kim, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Kim Casko 2:36
Sure, well hello everyone. And thanks Brandon so much for having me on. It’s so good to meet you want to be here today. Pash something interesting about myself. I guess. One of the the jobs that wasn’t highlighted in my bio is that I did a part time stint at our local animal shelter. When I first moved to town and learned a lot for that job. From that job. I got a passion for rescue animals. And you know, oftentimes in my current role, there’s just some parallels in terms of animal animal behavior like herding cats, right? Redirecting dog behavior that actually comes in handy in the current job. But out of that job, I did get a my dog rocky that you referenced in my bio, who came into the shelter with all four legs, but one was badly damaged and the shelter bed had to take it off. And then I fostered him and never gave him back. So three legged dog named Rocky and then about a year ago now I rescued a cat and her pack of kittens from our neighborhood and had them in my office for about six weeks, which was interesting. And then one of keeping the mom and one of the kittens that’s only in Tanis.

Brandon Burton 3:55
My youngest daughter would love to have a cat and one of some of our best friends. You know, it got a litter of kittens, and they keep trying to tell us my wife is severely allergic. So it’s never gonna happen or else you know, my wife would have to move out of the house. So my poor daughter, you know that she was in a tough spot. That’s right. She would love nothing more than to have a cat but yeah. Well tell us a little bit about the Iowa City area business partnership just to give us an idea of, you know, size, scope of work, staff budget, just to give us some perspective before we get into our discussion today.

Kim Casko 4:32
Sure. So we are Chamber of Commerce. we’ve rebranded and changed our name in 2022, the Irish city area business partnership right before COVID hit, which is a whole nother story, but we’ve had approximately 750 members. We’re located in Iowa City and downtown Iowa City which is the home of the University of Iowa. We are the only chamber in our county which is John In County, which is approximately 155,000 people, it’s the fourth most populous county in Iowa. Our budget is approximately 875,000. And we have a staff of five full time awesome team members. And we’ve got two folks on part time contracts. And it’s actually great because they’re folks from one’s from our CVB. So we’ve got a little bit of staff sharing going on. And she’s supporting our community leadership program. And the other is from this our Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance, which is a chamber economic development group to the north. And we’ve got someone helping us with our advocacy work there. So have some good friends and partners in terms of staffing support.

Brandon Burton 5:46
Very good. I like that idea that those part time contracts and being able to leverage abilities with other organizations. And I think it kind of leads well into our discussion for today, our topic will be we’ll be discussing our main topic today being merging organizations for a stronger community. And I think there’s multiple ways to go about this different types of organizations that might be worthwhile looking at a merge together. But I know you guys have recently got approval for a merge. So we will dive into more of that story and how that came to be as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Kim, we’re back. Before the break we’ve mentioned that you guys just recently got approval from your board to to move forward with a merger tell us who’s the merge with how did that develop? How did it come to be and you know, where do you see the need for this to develop this way?

Kim Casko 9:30
Sure. Well, the the best way for me to answer that is actually to tell a little story here. And actually the story starts in 1901 so bear with me will join me quick here but I’m in 1901 was when the chamber was first established. It was established as the Iowa City commercial club and then eventually evolved to become a chamber of commerce. And then eventually He developed, you know, sub committees and one of those sub committees was the Tourism Committee, which got spun off in the mid 1980s. That is now our CVB. And that’s because a hotel motel tax referendum was passed. So that their their own 501 C six entity, we also had another committee of the chamber that was the Economic Development Committee, that also spun off in the mid 1980s, as I think happened with a lot of chambers, and so that they could focus on recruiting businesses to town. So those two entities spun off. And then I think as many of us know, like, as time you know, moved along, like those, those two entities, CVB, economic development organizations focused externally bringing visitors bringing businesses to town. But over time, you know, within those industries, they realized, well, if you build it, they will come, you know, and focusing more on developing the community and making this a great place for visitors to come to and for businesses to establish themselves and grow here. And so, you know, over time, they start focusing more on that work. And, and chambers have always been involved in that that space, quality of life and placemaking. And so, hence, a lot of our community development work started to overlap. Simultaneously, we had a couple of other economic development entities that started cropping up in the 2000s. One was the Iowa city downtown district, which is a self supported municipal improvement district. And then the other is a regional partnership between our economic development organization and a combined chamber eto to the north, to create regional focus on talent attraction. And so you know, the space, the economic development space in the work, we do just started to shift and become more and more about community development. So we actually, in 2018, and it’s been explored even a couple times before 2018, as we hear from our past chairs, in terms of bringing together our organization and our economic development group, it’s a 2018 was the last time we looked at that I’ve been in this role since 2016. So it was kind of early in my tenure. And we decided not to move forward on a formal merger at the time, because there were several things going on in the environment, one of which was kind of bringing together this regional group. And, and so we decided not to do a formal infrastructure kind of remodel, but we decided, well, let’s start aligning resources in terms of sharing staff sharing space, we moved in with our economic development group, who’s called ikat by the way, if you hear me referenced up, that’s the Iowa City Area Development Group. We moved in with them in 2019, we, you know, we’d said, Okay, we’re, we’re going to start aligning our programming, we’re going to look at establishing a community vision, all of that. And we did, you know, attempt that that last one, but you know, heard from some of our stakeholders, like, oh, no, that’s not, that’s not your role to do the community vision thing. And, and so, you know, we shifted to focusing on on just education and working through that, then 2020, we all know what happened to the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, you know, we realized our organization’s us icad Are our downtown district, or CVB, are all sending out, you know, I’ll try to compile information and sending out information to our key stakeholders, and it’s all the same, you know, like, there’s a lot of overlap. And then and there’s a lot of overlap and the information. So we all just, you combine our marketing and comms team and started to, you know, really worked together on that. And then we stood up what we call the project better together initiative, and rally the steering committee, you know, across the community, to just do emergency recovery type things. And we just did a ton of work together through that time, not just communications, but giftcards campaigns, morale boost for our health care workers, all the things that a lot of assaulted. And so and through that we just learned, like really, you know, we call the project project better together. But after 2020 20, we’re like, Well, we really are better together, and we just prove that we have you know, greater impact. And so that then led, you know, in 2021, we looked at okay, so what now what, what is greater? Should we consider more formal alignment between these entities and what does that look like? And simultaneously, we also thought, now might be the time to come back to establish a community vision, you know, a vision for our future. We decided to prioritize that and focus on the vision work first, which we did in partnership with Rebecca Ryan, and we were able to launch that vision pot this past summer, which we call the Better Together 2030 All envision plan. And so once we kind of have that under the way then at the start of this past year, we started looking at alignment knowing okay, we’ve got the vision now, what does that mean for our organs? decisions and how we support that. So that’s where we started exploring that. And then ultimately proposing to our boards this past November, that to move forward on formally merging, you know, into a single entity, the business partnership, and I can, so the chamber and the economic development group, and we got a vote of approval from both of our boards to move forward now on doing the design work. So sorry, that was a lot of scarring. But

Brandon Burton 15:25
no, you know, no, so there’s, there’s a lot to unpack there. Right? I mean, it’s, you did a good job of condensing it down from 1901 to 2022. Now, right. So you had mentioned in 2018, that the, as you evaluated it, you didn’t see the need for a formal remodel of the organizations. So what do you think the key factors were from 2018? to Now I know there’s a pandemic in the middle there, but and opportunities to align resources and other ways. But what would you say were those those key identifiers that said, you know, what, now is the time that we do you need to look at making a formal remodeling of the structure at the two entities?

Kim Casko 16:16
Yeah, I think that’s a great question, and one we’ve reflected on and that we get a lot, like, why didn’t you do it in 2018. And, you know, I think that, again, our peers that I kind of work in on this joint venture with the entity, and the county to the north, on doing kind of a regional economic development group. And so that was, I think, creating some stress and some complication. And knowing too, you know, we were getting, there’s just a lot of thing, things on both of our organizations plate, and we thought, well, doing a merger is a lot of work. And so maybe we don’t go that route, but like we we need to start kind of aligning some of our work working more collaboratively. You know, all of that, you know, which is what we did actually have a slide in our presentation that we share with our boards in October, from 2018, it was directly plucked from the PowerPoint we did in 2018. Was that said, like, you know, okay, we’re gonna, you know, we’re not going to formally merge, but we’re going to increase our partnership, we’re going to co locate, we’re going to share staff, we’re going to strengthen our partnership with our CVB in our downtown district, we’re gonna launch a vision plan for our community, we’re going to focus on this big vision and this slide I have up then it’s like, done done and done. Like, we’ve, we’ve done those things. And we did that organically by working, you know, two together. And so it’s, again, the question of So what now what, and I think what the past two years proved out, is that there’s just a lot of overlap, in, in what we do, you know, not in not just from the back office, but certainly the back office. And, you know, as we saw with our marketing communications, like, you know, this is Rob pushing out the same stuff, like let’s, you know, combine our team. So that was really the first proof point. But, you know, I think also in terms of the work we’re doing, to support, you know, businesses of color, you know, both of both AAS and ikat are engaged in that work. And so oftentimes, we’re saying us in the business partnership, or partnering to create this inclusive economic development plan, and, you know, in business partnership in the ikat are focused on Workforce Solutions. And so, you know, that was another area workforce that I had, you had led the charge, typically, you know, on that, but as we saw from the pandemic, the impact on small businesses, that was exactly the challenge there too. So So we needed to do more on workforce, and hence needing to align that with our peers. And so there’s just more and more overlap, not just in back office, but in the mission focus work. That just we thought, you know, there’s now’s time in now’s the time to to really just consolidate that so that we can have greater impact. And our teams like both of our organizations are in really even stronger places than we were in 2018. And have really great, really great set of team members that are working together. So it just, there’s also a little bit of a gut feel like, now’s the time to do it. Yeah. And it’s been talked about so many times before, it’s like, at some point, it’s never like always at that time, because it is going to be a lot of work. But you know, at some point, I think he had to pull the trigger on it. So it

Brandon Burton 19:32
made it sounds like you kind of had a four to five year kind of runway to kind of the ideas kind of out there. You’re working together in more formal settings, but not a formal restructure. And then you’re able to see where those resources align where the messaging aligns where the the synergy really lines up, to be able to say like you said with the slide done down into the you have these Yeah, missions that you set out to accomplish, and they’re done. And it’s like, okay, we can work well together in instead of having the redundancy of two separate organizations doing the same thing. Let’s make this a formal deal.

Kim Casko 20:13
Yeah. And we could certainly do that. Because we did get challenged on that, like, well, you guys are doing all this great work together as separate entities. So why not just continue that way? We’re like, yes, key stakeholder, but behind the scenes, you don’t see like, the mad scramble and the exhaustion, duplication, and, and all that stuff, like, we could work so much more, you know, if efficiently and effectively behind the scenes to be able to do more, you know, like, and I think just the, the combined entities, the larger entities that are able to consolidate some things and be able to afford, like, having someone who’s focused on data, or someone who’s focused on TDI, you know, versus having each entity have to, you know, hire that and try and afford that. So there’s just so many things, but behind the scenes that are that our stakeholders don’t see that, you know, free kind of rewire align, those those cables will just create, it’s about it’s just about creating capacity and about greater impact.

Brandon Burton 21:12
Right, so, so as you look back over the last five years or so, where do you see some of those initial discussions happening? Was it driven by the board? Was it something that, you know, ikat, or the chamber was like, hey, maybe we need to look at more of a formal partnership, or a merger, or, because it can always be a little bit awkward, you know, if, if you go to icad and say, Hey, we need to, we need to merge together a watch out, you know? You got to date for a while, you got to make sure everything’s just right. But hopefully the board ends up driving that conversation. But how did it develop on your end?

Kim Casko 21:57
Yeah, so that’s, it’s been really interesting. So we actually saw back in 2018, the way it evolved, actually was from a survey and did a member engagement survey. Because I was kind of new in my tenure wanted to find out more. And, you know, we asked our members what they would value most. And by and large, the, you know, the top three things they would value the most is just impact, you know, on community community development work, creating, you know, attracting more businesses to town. And like, a lot of those things were things that our peers at ICANN were leading. And so and I shared the results of the survey, actually, with a group of pastures that I still meet with, and they’re the ones who kind of brought it up saying, well, maybe we should really explore merging, so and then it was mainly staff driven from there. And then again, like we were the ones that made the decision, like, well, let’s kind of pause on this and, and not do it formally yet. So then we are the ones it was mainly staff driven, you know, coming out of that experience in 2020 2021. We’re the ones that put it back on the table with permission, you know, we checked in with our, you know, exec committees, like are you okay with us, you know, exploring this, and we set a deadline, like, Okay, we’re going to explore it and present something back this fall, you know, as a proposal, so we got the board’s blessing to go ahead and do that. But by and large, it was led, you know, by by staff, which is a little bit, you know, we’ve heard and talking with some other combined entities, they asked us that question like, and they were like, just make sure you get your board along, too, because oftentimes, it is, you know, board trivet driven. So now that and we’ve done, we’re doing kind of a two step process here in terms of, you know, we got a vote in November, and was essentially, our boards voted on a resolution of intent to merge. So basically, they’re now giving us the blessing to design the merged entity, and then we have to take it back for a vote, hopefully, May June timeframe for them to actually bless the merger. So we’re not merged yet. And now is the place where we’re, you know, we’re setting up a merger Advisory Council that’s made up of both of our board members to help drive this because I think it needs to be a balance of both. You need to have staff in there, but you need to have also our board members or key stakeholders groups, you know, helping to drive it and, you know, we also want to involve our members investors to, you know, via surveys, focus groups, you know, get their engagement and feedback that way. But you’re right, there is kind of that, that that balance,

Brandon Burton 24:31
right. So, you’ve mentioned a couple times that there’s a lot of work involved with making the merge happen. So I don’t want to scare away you know, people that feel like a merge needs to happen with their chamber and another organization but at the same like, you have to follow you know, what your mission is the chamber if it aligns if it works, so I don’t want to scare him away, but can you help paint a picture of what the work is? involved, you know, as far as what you’ve seen so far, and what you anticipate, you know, through this intent to emerge to fully execute it.

Kim Casko 25:09
Yeah, well, a couple of things there. Um, you know, I’ll share how we’re approaching it. I don’t know if there is one, right approach. And no, it’s, I think always going to be. But the way we are trying to approach that, because knowing, you know, we’re taking this on top of everything, like we want to maintain, if not continue to increase service levels. So we’re very much aware of that. And so, with that being the case, we’re like, okay, we’re stealing some things from kind of an entrepreneurial world, like, what’s the minimum viable product? Move forward? Like, we kind of want to do this by July one, which is an aggressive timeline, but our, but I had their fiscal year, their next fiscal year starts July one. So there’s a little bit of a sense of urgency, which I think is good. Yeah, um, but we’re trying to chunk off like, Okay, what absolutely do we have to have, you know, to get approved, knowing that this is going to evolve. And I think if you talk to any other entities that have gone through this, they say, just that, like, it may take three years for it to feel fully kind of like where you want it, but you start somewhere, and it evolves. And so, so let’s kind of make sure we understand like, well, you know, what is that, and that makes it a little bit more manageable. And the way we’re approaching is, is kind of like two streams. One is a very organic kind of ground upstream, in terms of like, let’s just get our teams together. I mean, we’re located in the same space, but we have an office space in the lower level, and our icad peers sit in the upper level. Some things we don’t see each other. So last week was merger kickoff week, and we threw everybody together, like, okay, let’s be both do Monday, stand ups, let’s do it together. Like from henceforth, we’re doing our Monday morning stand ups together, we had a merger working session where we just checked in on our team members to see how they’re doing, you know, what the change and talk about, you know, what this, what this means, and what this looks like, and what their concerns are, and all of that, and then start talking about, have everybody review their roles, like, understanding each other’s work at the individual role level, and where’s their low hanging fruit and opportunity, and let’s start kind of establishing work teams and, and so there’s that piece of it. But then there’s also the other parallel track that really comes from our boards and the merger Advisory Council in terms of what is this new entity, you know, going to look like your mission vision values, like the key functions, and we want our teams involved in designing that too, you know, and, and our key stakeholders as well. And so kind of figuring out that future state, and also the kind of the, which steals a little bit top down, and then the bottom up of like, the current state and just kind of moving along, okay, and taking the mindset of okay, what do we need to get done in the next 30 days in the next 90 days? And I think that getting in that framework in that rhythm makes it more manageable?

Brandon Burton 27:59
So in this question, it may be a little bit premature in your current situation, but as far as staff goes with the two organizations, do you just imagine or anticipate through maybe attrition or just, you know, seeing where different responsibilities and your things live with different different positions to take on different loads are kind of shifting, they’re already sharing some of those responsibilities, I guess, across the two organizations, but how do you maybe anticipate or see the staffing situation playing? Uh huh.

Kim Casko 28:37
Well, one, both of our teams are currently understaffed doing multiple jobs. So and are amazing, we’ve got really amazing team members right now. So we’ve kind of shared with them, like, we don’t want to, we don’t want to lose anyone. So there’s that. And they’re just a dream team to have right now in terms of, you know, they’ve got, they have what we need in terms of kind of shaping what this looks like, you know, and there are some areas where there is some, some duplication, like, you know, in marketing comms like an event plan, but again, like, so many people have so many, you know, you’re doing event planning, you’re managing the facility, you know, you’re doing three taps in one. And so like, can we start parsing that apart and figuring out like, some people may be tired of what they’re doing. So what do you want to do? So we asked our teams last week to share out, you know, just their current role, but like, what are your passion skills, you know, and to start kind of thinking of, okay, where are my people want to go and what might this look like? And so, you know, we feel really, really good about that. And when you look, it really seems like when you look at it, you know, the duplication like where there’s almost as you’ve got two presidents you know, so as kind of setting the example like my myself and my peers are just committed to like, we’re committed to like seeing this, this merger through and figuring out what that new And it looks like and what roles are needed and what that top CEO role is going to look like, we’ve got to design that. And then you know, we’ve recommended to our, to our boards there and it’d be ultimately up to them the merger Advisory Council, but to do a search for that role and figure out what is the right leader we need in that space. And so we’re kind of trying to design is agnostic of ourselves and our egos and personal intentions. And

Brandon Burton 30:24
I think it goes back to the our title for this episode emerging organizations for a stronger community, so not for your own ego or not for your own personal situation, but for the stronger community. It helps having a board behind that that helps them make some of those decisions as well. So but it came as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you for the chamber listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? Or maybe is considering Emerg? themselves? What tips or action items might you share with them to help them accomplish those those goals?

Kim Casko 31:06
Yeah, I think, you know, just leverage. This is my first experience, kind of in the chamber profession, and I’ve just been blown away by the amount of support, you know, in the profession, and, you know, between things like, you know, this great pop podcast that ACCE the association Chamber of Commerce, execs, and just lean on. I mean, for me, I got a lot of inspiration around, you know, mergers from hearing what other, you know, organizations have been doing, you know, greater Topeka partnership, the one Spartanburg in you know, just in hearing those interviews and leaning on those leaders, calling them up, like, how did you do this? What was your project plan? And like, that’s just been tremendous, you know, for us, and to be able to leverage that that also makes it when you go back to like, workload, makes it feel a little bit more manageable and doable.

Brandon Burton 32:04
Yeah, that’s perfect. And you mentioned like in Greater Topeka Partnership, I’ll link my my interview with Matt Pivarnik, as well. So it gives another perspective how they came about it. And for anybody who’s who’s serious about looking at a merger, there’s, there’s things to be learned for sure. Well, Kim, as we look to the future chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kim Casko 32:36
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things I remember learning about early on when I started in 2016. And I think it was at the ACC convention was just the study that the was the Western Association of Chamber of Commerce sects that did that study, and on branding and came out with, you know, a couple things, one that you everything you need to do needs to tie to the benefit for the overall community and not just the business community. And Sherry And Kelly and her team at ACC always speak to that to like, it’s about community impact. And I think that’s still very much in very much relevant. Because the, the, it’s all about tackling those community community problems and challenges and opportunities, and we’re the group to do it. And that goes back to the waist, and like the three C’s and our role as catalysts, you know, for business and community growth, the convener, you know, across sectors and being the champion, like, that’s how we do the work. Yeah. And like, I think that’s still like, very relevant, if not even more so today. And I think into the future, because the problems we’re trying to tackle are really hairy problems. And, and it takes like that cross sector, public private, nonprofit, collaboration, and like, we’re the only ones in the space doing it. So and I think that’s, you know, very, very much needed. And so I mean, it’s part of why we changed our name to partnership, you because it takes that work. It takes partnership, and it takes collaboration. And if you think of that word, you know, it’s got the word lab in it, just experiment experimental. It’s got the word labor, and it takes work. But that’s really, I think that’s a skill set of ours, and that’s going to be critical in the future.

Brandon Burton 34:20
Yeah, no, I, I liked the name change, too. I think we’ve talked about on past episodes, we have named changes from Chamber of Commerce to something like a business partnership. I think it just keeps the relevancy, you know, where the focus is. And I think, I don’t know, maybe 100 years ago, 150 years ago, Chamber of Commerce maybe had a different meaning a different maybe it was more in the vernacular of, you know, meaningful words. But now I think more of a business partnership makes a lot more sense for a lot of communities.

Kim Casko 34:56
It does I mean, it does, but I will tell you this Probably be a whole separate podcast. But like, I will tell you like it’s it. We’ve had a tough time getting it to stick. I mean, when we launched it when the pandemic hit, but too, it’s longer. It’s tougher to say. And so people really struggle. And so I we are quick to say, No, we’re still Chamber of Commerce, because I think there’s still a lot of value for the brand. That space, I want to make sure people know, like, No, we’re still we’re a chamber of commerce. And so I think that’s still important, but like, people have an easier time saying, so it’s

Brandon Burton 35:28
your chamber of commerce chambers.

Kim Casko 35:31
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So people often ask us are like, what? It’s like almost the number one question we get, like, what’s the new name of the entity going to be? And one of our team members came up with this great acronym. They’re like the I was city area business and Development Association, which if you spell them look at the possible acronym, it spells out, I see a badass. Already curse on your podcast. But I think it’s brilliant. Working they were going with, they were like, you cannot have that as

Brandon Burton 36:10
I can see the logo right now.

Kim Casko 36:13
Perfect. So I’m really advocating for that.

Brandon Burton 36:21
But it came, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may be considering a merge or when I gain more the experience that you’ve gone through, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Kim Casko 36:34
Yeah, happy to connect with anyone, you know, on this, either, whether you’re considering it or you have done you want to compare notes like, so you can? Yeah, all of it. Well, we need a support group. I’d love your support group that we went for all for that. So you can reach me at Kim@IowaCityArea.com. Or my cell phone, which is 773-633-7700. I know that sounds like a spam. It is easy to remember. And then the merger, I’m going to share my Berger website here that are currently being put together which has been really yeah, really helpful for folks. So that’s IowaCityArea.com/merger, which has FAQs out there a video and we’ll just kind of hoping to keep that site updated.

Brandon Burton 37:30
That’s perfect. And well, we’ll get all that in the show notes for this episode. So people can get on there and check out the merger page and see, you know, all the updates and everything you have going on there. But, Kim, I’m glad we’re able to have you come visit with us on Chamber Chat Podcast and share this experience and the development and how things are going down with this, this merger in your your chamber. And I think it takes a little bit of vulnerability to say, you know, here’s what we’re going through and where we came from. And so I appreciate you putting that out there for us.

Kim Casko 38:04
Yeah, yeah, it takes a lot of that, you know, across the board. We talked exactly about that with our team members last week about vulnerability, vulnerability and navigating that and navigating this transition. And so I’ll share with you some of the other resources were using to to help with that. But yeah, appreciate being able to talk about with you today.

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Culture with Miles Burdine

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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.

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Our guest for this episode is Mile Burdine. Miles is a native of Kingsport, Tennessee, and he’s been with the Kingsport Tennessee Area Chamber since 1994 and was promoted to his present position of president and CEO in 1999 Miles other career was with the United States Marine Corps. After graduating from University of Tennessee with a degree in business administration, he served on active duty for seven years before resigning and his commission and joining the Marine Reserves after having served 30 years and now retired at the rank of colonel Miles has extensive training and experience in war fighting tactics, terrorism, security, civil affairs, and the challenges faced in the Middle East. Three of his deployments have been to combat environments in Beirut, Lebanon and 1883, Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and 91. And Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq in 2005. And 2006. Miles and his wife, Denise have three daughters and three granddaughters. Myles, thank you for your service, first of all, and welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We’re excited to have you with us today. And we’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Miles Burdine 2:51
Well, I’m Brandon, thanks for the opportunity first and yes, good morning to all the chamber staffers out there and chamber world and has really don’t really have much interesting about me, except perhaps of all three of my daughters named Laura and I’ve got two tattoos and locations that only people I want to see them can see them.

That’s about the only interesting thing about me. I’m not sure that’s even interesting.

Brandon Burton 3:17
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, tell us a little bit about the Kingsport area Chamber just to give us some perspective, maybe the size of the chamber type of work, you’re involved with staff budget, that sort of thing. Just to give some perspective, before we get into our conference.

Miles Burdine 3:34
We’re we’re relatively small community, there’s only about 55,000 in our community, but you go outside the city limits, of course, it grows significantly, but our chamber represents probably around 900 Different businesses or organizations. We’ve got a staff of 30 budget of 4.7 million and but I’ll add to that there’s about 31 million that actually managed by our, our accounting department, when you had other programs and projects and things that were involved in it within the community. And our list of programs, projects, events, things going on this building is quite long. We’re involved in the typical things that you might expect to chamber be involved in membership, of course, workforce development, government relations, or visit Kingsport program, small business development, sustainability, a healthy Kingscourt program list goes on and on and on. Things that go on inside the walls of this, this building.

Brandon Burton 4:41
Yeah, you’ve got your work cut out for you, you and your staff.

Miles Burdine 4:46
Pretty much. But you know, I look forward to coming to work every day. 28 years, I still look forward to coming in every day. Good.

Brandon Burton 4:53
And I think a lot of that will have to do with our topic for discussion today around the culture that you guys have built They’re at the Kingsport area Chamber and we’ll we’ll dive into that discussion a little bit deeper since we get back from this quick break.

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So Miles we’re back. And as we get into our topic for discussion today, culture is it’s an important thing at any company and especially at a chamber where maybe we don’t always have the you know, all the resources to be you know, super competitive on pay or, you know, things like that. So getting a little bit creative with the with how the office works, how the culture, the teamwork, how that all fits in and being able to attract and keep the right talent in your organization. We’d love to learn more about what you guys are doing there in Kingsport to develop the culture at your chamber.

Miles Burdine 8:33
Well, very well said, Brandon, we’re very proud of the culture we’ve created here. No, it’s been said the culture culture, Trump’s strategy, but part of our strategy is our culture. And I went back and look to see how many employees we’ve had. We have our 30 employees. About a third of them have been here over 15 years. Wow. I’m very proud of that. Now, along with that, however, some of the younger ones that we hire, we know that in fact, this morning, I did an exit interview for 28 year old, it’s found a better opportunity where he can make a lot more money and he has met not that he need my blessing, but he has my blessing. So I’m excited for him. But you know that the younger ones we are unable to keep as long as we’d like. And that’s just simply because We can’t pay them as much as they can make out in the private sector. But they they always come to me Xander view and we talked about why they’re leaving. And they’re always very, very favorable comments about working here. And that goes back when when we get ready to hire someone. They’ve already already been through an interview process with whoever is going to be their supervisor, but by the time they get to me they’ve already learned the things I’m I’m gonna tell you right now and that is you get a free job interview every day and this is this business because you’re around volunteers that can possibly offer you a better option. Anybody and encourage them to seek those opportunities to. And if you decide to pursue them, I’ll help you find another job a better paying job. But our culture is one of when I’m when I meet with them, and they’ve already learned this, but I’m looking for someone who they are I know they already have the skills, but I’m looking for someone who has the attitude. As someone who doesn’t step over piece by piece of trash, they pick up the piece of trash, and they show up to meetings early. So they can help set up and then they leave the meeting later so they can help put the room back to where it was. I’m looking for positive attitudes, as my father used to say, I’m an optimist, because I choose to be. And I tell them, what’s your dash to make a difference? Have you ever read the book the dash? Yeah, so you know exactly what to study. Right. Exactly. Right. So

Brandon Burton 10:54
and they usually don’t know birth and death for those listening, right?

Miles Burdine 10:58
Yeah, that’s correct. That’s correct. Yeah. And so but the dash is what’s most important part of its of your tombstone, if you will. And I’ll always give them the military analogy is the Marine Corps approach was and approach still here is, I want you to take that hill. And we’ll give you all the weapons ammunition and Chow you need in order to do so to get halfway up and you run out of bullets, let me know I’ll bring them to you. But I’ll leave you alone when you get to the top of the hill, holler. And we’ll drink a bill beer and celebrate. So giving them what they need in order to be successful, but holding them accountable to being successful as well. Okay, thank you. And, you know, a couple of the things that I’m really proud of our titles here. We always believe that people don’t follow titles, they follow courage. In fact, that’s my, my challenge coin those very words. But we don’t use administrative assistants, we only have the word assistants and they have our titles we use ministry professionals, the lady at the front desk is not a receptionist, she’s director of first impressions. We’d like to say we work with we don’t work for we all work for each other. And we don’t care who gets the credit. We do expect supervisors to take the blame for things that go wrong. And our our motto here is never above you, never below you always beside you. And it’s worked well. For us. It’s worked well for us. We’ve also got some staff committees that are set up and they’re led, usually by a younger staff members give them opportunity to lead when called fluff and puff. And that’s all they do is put on parties, gatherings, showers and puff I like lots of puff, I don’t know who came up with that. It’s certainly not something I came up with. But, you know, things that we can do that to get the staff together to have fun fact our Christmas party was supposed to be today, we had to postpone it to next week, because we’ve got so many people out sick this week that we have professional development committee and various other internal committees that give opportunities for everybody to participate in leading this organization. We encourage everybody to volunteer, I mean, we expect our volunteers to be here to volunteer for us. So we expect our staff to volunteer as well. And they, they certainly enjoy it. We have a policy here called Bring Your Baby to Work. We actually had some research done on it. And obviously it was done by someone who was about to have a baby, right? And came back and said, Here’s how we can do this. So we allow new mothers to bring the baby into work. And we’ve even got a room set up where they can breastfeed it, the only problem we ever have is people arguing about who gets to hold the baby. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:59
They can become distractions at times but good team building too. So that’s good.

Miles Burdine 14:04
We’ve also got a policy here called leave loudly. My My office is actually in the back corner next to the employee interests. And so we encourage employees not to try to sneak off to go to a soccer match or go watch a Christmas show or whatever with the kids. So they’ll stand outside my door here holler. I’m leaving, because I’m gonna go watch my son, practice basketball. And we celebrate love it. I know they’ll get the job done and I don’t care when they get the job done. So, yeah.

Brandon Burton 14:40
So you’re hitting on a ton of great points here. And yeah, I think some of these are definitely worth circling back to so one of the the thoughts that came to me as you were talking about as you hire people, that, you know, how do you hire culture versus developing culture? Then any thoughts on that?

Miles Burdine 15:03
Hiring culture. You know, finding the right people is finding people with the skills is not difficult. But finding people who match your culture sometimes can do. But typically, we as a as an organization, and me individually, I keep a list of people I see out in our community, whether it’s a server, who’s done a great job has, in fact, we hired a server like that one time and one of our community, our staff parties, and I just liked the way that person handled themselves and how hard they worked and ended up eventually calling them in and gave him an interview and hired. Um, so I guess the moral to that is you just never know who’s watching. That’s right. And who, you know, one of the things we like to be proud of here, too, is like to tell her what to do you know what the custodians name is? And they wonder what I vote yes, that is the colder you are no unimportant people. No unimportant task. In fact, I give a leadership presentation. It’s called scrubbing toilets with enthusiasm. It’s, it’s about learning how to follow from people you’re supposed to be leading and speak about. Daughter, I’m supposed to be leading her. But she taught me some great lessons in life and Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps, third Lord, third, lowest rank in the Marine Corps, my dog, people you’re supposed to be leading, influencing and teaching and so they do the same to you. And often, I get asked, you know, what did you learn in the Marine Corps, and it’s helped you in your job, and it certainly wasn’t learning how to say an Arabic Stop, or I’ll shoot that hasn’t helped me at all. But you know, the Marine Corps taught me some very, very valuable lessons most one of which is learning how to follow before you learn how to lead that first one, and first one out. Last one to eat, you don’t get to eat if there’s not enough, and probably the most important that wasn’t absolutely successful. And this is bringing everyone home safe. But all of those things are important lessons to be learned that have helped me in my career as Kingsport chamber.

Brandon Burton 17:27
Now, those are, again, you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of these great one liners that you can really dive deep on and it really digest more meaning in that so you know, the idea of having no one important people, I’d love to learn to follow before leading and never above or below, but always beside you. So these are are things that are obviously are being taught there at your chamber. So through the onboarding, are you introducing some of this culture? Is it just being engrossed with the the nature there in the office? Or how are you helping to teach and develop the culture?

Miles Burdine 18:11
It’s a little bit of both, but typically, it’s someone who’s already aware of us. And they want to be a part of us. Not always, but often. And so they they know our culture, and they know what they’re getting into when they get here. And so they know what the expectations are. And, frankly, they want to be a part of it. So we don’t have to actually make them do it. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of, you know, just like in the Marine Corps here. If I tell someone to do it, they’re gonna do it. But I don’t want them to do it, because they want to do it. Because I told him to do it. And there’s a big difference.

Brandon Burton 18:49
So you know, the idea of like, the the titles and never having a job that’s above or below you, always beside it. Have you ever had as a staff member, that you had to have a conversation with a heart to heart, so to speak and say, Look, we’re all one team together, and we all have an important role to play, but you’re no important, no more important than anyone else. And

Miles Burdine 19:13
I need to step we know that yes. And actually did not follow my own advice, one particular occasion and that was when someone came to me and said, Why did not get why did I not get that promotion? And I said, I owe you an apology. And the reaction was, oh, yeah, you do owe me an apology. But I said, I’m not gonna apologize to you for not giving you the job, not apologize to you for not telling you what you need to do get to get the job. And it was one of those things I’d avoided and did not pull the person aside and tell them what they were doing wrong. Tell them to adjust their attitude. Tell them to quit being an eight to five or tell them to quit using all their sick days when I knew they weren’t sick. Tell them to help pick up trash. Tell them to show up from eight meetings early. I didn’t do any of that. And so therefore, all those things I just said they were doing. And so I apologize them for not leading them not teaching them what they needed to do is my fault. And I didn’t do it until they came to talk to me now to that person’s credit. They’re still in our community. And when I see them, they always come up and say, hey, yeah, I got to the meeting 10 minutes earlier today, or help pick up trash or I know the custodians name, whatever. So they learned, yeah, just unfortunately, that had not led them before.

Brandon Burton 20:37
So it’s never too late to learn those lessons, I guess. But I also I think the way that you went about owning that and saying I owe you the apology, and, and really reinforcing what that culture is, the things that you’re looking for, that are important to growing and developing, or developing a team that has that cohesiveness and ability to work well together. Thank you a great example. So I like to think of the the chambers out there who were, you know, wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what maybe tips or action items might you have for them that are maybe looking to instill more culture or more of a defined culture into their organization?

Miles Burdine 21:27
I thought a lot about that when he asked me earlier, and really the only thing I could come up with is very simple. Put your employees first makes you looking at a book saying okay, this pile of books, some have read some, some I haven’t it’s the title is put your employees first, your employees or work harder for you. There’ll be more loyal. They’ll do things you want them to do if you put them first. And really rather simple. And the other thing I thought about sometimes we as chamber, employees, chamber execs, especially wonder whether or not we’re making a difference, whether or not we’re in the right industry, whether or not we’re improving our community, providing better live better lives for our citizens or developing our businesses. And, you know, I’ve had that feeling before too. And what I will usually do is go find someone who’s recently moved to our community, and asked him, Why did you move here. And boy, it just makes me feel so good. Because they tell you the things that we’ve all taken for granted. While this is a wonderful place to live, and it’s there in every community, so I feel better once I talk to them.

Brandon Burton 22:38
And that’s a yeah, you can feel better, especially if they mentioned things that you’ve been working on focusing on to further develop your community. But I think that also gives you some great material to go forward with whether, you know, I’ve heard that some of the best marketing material for a company or say, even for a chamber to help spread the message of what the work that you’re doing, is to use the language of the people that you’re trying to serve. So as you go to those new people and ask them what made you move to our community, and you can take that language, you know, what is it that that drove them to come to Kingsport and then to be able to repurpose that put that back out in the community. So you’re you’re speaking that same language to other people who may be looking for that fit to you know, in a future move or whatnot. So

Miles Burdine 23:30
well said we actually, you know, one of our networking breakfast called fourth Friday breakfast, which we copied off the Bristol chamber, which is the first Friday breakfast. Okay, we’re good at stealing from each other anyway. We started a part of the the event, it’s a networking event, but we also have a presentation that will have little segments and we have one on there called fresh set of eyes. And it’s a newcomer to the community who stands up and talks for three minutes why they chose to live in Kingsport, Tennessee. And you can see the people in the audience who’ve been here forever. Look it up going, Man, I forgot about that. I feel good about where I live.

Brandon Burton 24:12
That is awesome, fresh set of eyes. So it’s anyone listening doing your r&d right now? That’s a good one right there a fresh set of eyes, you know, it’s at a luncheon or whatever it may be set aside a few minutes and have a newcomer to the community share what they love about the community went through them there. That is a that is awesome. I love that one.

Miles Burdine 24:34
I guess Brandon, the only other thing I might suggest is, you know, no community is perfect. We certainly are not. But one of our attitudes here is we we seek the problems to help solve them. We may not be leading the solution, but we’ll always be at the table. You know that old saying around chamber world if you’re not at the table, you might be on the menu. There’s a lot of truth to that. We’d like to be at the table because we feel like that chamber, that chamber brand helps us to get people around the table who can solve community problems. And we want to be at the table, we may not be the only solution, but we can certainly help to solve community problems. So don’t run from them seek them out.

Brandon Burton 25:22
Absolutely. In the chamber world is one of the few examples I can think of seek out problems to solve. So that’s awesome. Well, Miles as we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Miles Burdine 25:42
I think it depends on the community, but our brand, that word Chamber of those words Chamber of Commerce, it carries a lot of weight, cares, a lot of Worcester, last is Arabic for influence. So it’s up to us to as chamber execs to just how much influence we can have. And that’s dependent depends on the individuals who are within the organization itself. You know, volunteers come and go. And we obviously we need to support them and promote them and give them all the credit. But the important work most important works done by the staff. And it’s up to us to, to keep carrying that water forward. I think our brand is one that that gives us the opportunity to help improve the lives of others and businesses and community in general.

Brandon Burton 26:43
I love that. And when you talk about influence, I thought of a Casey Steinbacher is ebook from relevant to essential and she talks all about the importance of chambers, understanding their role in their community to be influencers. Then she talks about the you know, the 16 year old with the cell phone in their bedroom that has a social media following of millions of people and making a very healthy income by being an influencer. And she really talks about that that’s, that’s what Chambers of Commerce needs to be as a force for influence within the community. Identifying those needs, solving those problems and, and being influential. And I thought I had an idea when you were talking about that, talking about fresh set of eyes, this would be a great idea for a chamber to do a podcast, where they focus and you can call it fresh set of eyes and bring on those those newcomers to the community and tell why they came in and can be a short three to five minutes segment. And boom, you’ve got a way to influence your community and share those stories

Miles Burdine 27:51
is a great idea. I’m gonna go talk to Vanessa Bennett. She runs our leadership programs. And she does a podcast every week. But it’s usually focused on just people in general, talking about the things that they’re working on. But I hadn’t thought about doing what you just described, is a great idea.

Brandon Burton 28:09
Yeah. When she puts it out there, I’ll help share. So. Yeah. So Miles, this has been a fantastic conversation. I think it’s so important for chambers to be mindful and be intentional about the culture that they’re creating in their organization to be able to attract the right people as they hire, but also to retain those people. You know, like, as he said, about a third of them, would you say a third of your staff had been there? 15 years? Is that right? Yes. Yeah, that is awesome. I mean, you just don’t see that in companies anymore, let alone in the chamber world. So

Miles Burdine 28:47
no one’s been here. 36 years. Another one just retired this past summer, after 34 years.

Brandon Burton 28:54
That’s awesome. Yeah. And of course, you know, there’s going to be those times that makes sense where a staff member finds it another opportunity that helps to develop their career and you celebrate those and you hate to see him leave, you know, for selfish reasons. But you are glad to see them move on and continue to develop especially as they are able to serve others in the community hopefully, so

Miles Burdine 29:16
Well, the way I look at it, too is they had a favorable experience here. They’re out in the out wherever they are, and they’re one of our advocates now. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 29:24
Yeah. And oftentimes they end up being members to whatever business they go to. So well, Miles. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re establishing culture at the Kingsport area Chamber what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Miles Burdine 29:45
Yes, sir. My direct line at work is 423-392-8807. My cell phone is 423-956-1988 everybody in Kingsports got it so you’re welcome to it as well. My email address is mburdine@kingsportchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 30:12
Very good and I’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode so people can click on click through those and scroll to the bottom of the shownotes for Miles contact information to reach out and maybe learn more about what what they’re doing there in Kingsport to be intentional about building a good strong culture but Miles is you’ve delivered a lot of great value today. I know this is going to be very helpful for a lot of chambers out there listening. So thank you for that. Thank you for sharing some time with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and wish you the best as you continue to develop your team and establish that culture there in Kingsport.

Miles Burdine 30:51
Thanks for the opportunity Brandon.

Brandon Burton 30:53
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