Category: Podcast Episode

Importance of Digital Content with Patrick Shanahan

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Patrick Shanahan. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Now, your host, he would like you to join the Chamber Chat Champions Facebook group. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Thank you for tuning in to Chamber Chat Podcast. I am your your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to help you better serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Jason Mock president and CEO of the San Marcos Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for his chamber. Two years ago,

Jason Mock 0:51
We brought in Holman Brother 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 1:01
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting HolmanBros.com.

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Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Patrick Shanahan. Pat currently leads the enterprise sales team at Glue Up. Pat’s responsibilities are focused around building a team of consultants tasked with providing full digital transformation for large scale associations and membership based organizations in North America. Pat’s consultative approach to SAS sales has enabled him to grow companies in the hospitality and technology space. Pat’s most notable accomplishment ranged from programs focused on revenue optimization and the hospitality space for some of the largest hotel groups to repositioning and building new teams within technology companies to starting and exiting a technology company of his own. Pat, I’m happy to have you with me today here on chamber chat podcast, if you would take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you better.

Something Interesting About Pat

Patrick Shanahan 2:12
Absolutely. Thanks, Brandon. And welcome, everyone. Thank you for having me, I guess I’d say something interesting is once upon a time, my mid 30s actually went ahead and quit a very lucrative job and just tried to start my own company. It’s kind of like the stars line I had, it was, it was the right time, I was actually still unmarried at the time didn’t have as many responsibilities in the scope of family. And man, my actual family was really just like that, they thought that my trajectory was going really well. And it wasn’t easy. I had, I totally lacked the resources that I needed to, to get it off the ground, I had Uber Lyft for practically a whole year and sort of simultaneously get my, you know, on the street MBA, so to speak. But, you know, ultimately was successful, it’s taught me a valuable lesson in faith. But I kind of call it these days, I don’t know if this is really a buzzword or phrase, but faith by intelligence, meaning that, you know, I like to have as much info as possible before taking a leap of faith. And I’m not saying that this is something that you do when it comes to, you know, religion or anything along those lines. But as a sensor, you can take, take as much information as you can before you take a leap. So it’s still a leap nonetheless. Because that’s something random but interesting.

Brandon Burton 3:33
Yeah, like that reminds me of the quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. About how it goes to the effect that you don’t need to see the whole staircase to take the first step. But you know, if you can see that first step and take that step with faith, and you’re on the right track. Well, why don’t you take a take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about about glue up? What is the company glue up? What do you guys do? What are your services? And then that’ll help set the table before we get into our discussion for today?

About Glue Up

Patrick Shanahan 4:05
For sure, well, it’s there’s kind of a lot to it. So I’ll keep it pretty simple. We’re a software company, you know, a SaaS company, a cloud based, you know, application with, with mobile apps, but at our core, we’re a CRM company that helps member based organizations manage, you know, their, their contacts, their members, their prospects or opportunities. And it’s sort of modular in its in its capabilities in terms of, you know, the membership management, you know, events, community engagement, it being app based it really, really what we do, it’s two things. So we try to kind of go in and discuss with our clients, how do we remove any manual processes here, this is meant to be sort of an all in one out of the box solution that can, you know, greatly enhance the full ecosystem. And the second thing that we do really is just drive engagement. So in a very segmented and relevant way meaning that it’s all about the data that you have at CRM level, how do you segment lists of of data segment your your people and then you know, drive real information and get them to engage you’re basically on a on a mobile app or on the desktop in a community sets. Awesome. So I mean, we see what that really does is it kind of certain things that we do like for example, our virtual speed networking, version two, which is a really cool, kind of putting the pizza lovers with pizza lovers and putting the the wings lovers with the wings, lovers, you know, you ultimately in a networking sense, hopefully what that does is drive perceived value into ultimate tangible value.

Brandon Burton 5:45
Yeah, and we can touch more on that in a in a moment, but I’ll introduce our topic for discussion today is going to be around the idea of creating more high quality digital assets for your chamber, to kind of diversify your digital outreach to your membership and your community in general. And we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Importance of Digital Content

All right, Pat, we are back. And as I mentioned before the break our our focus for our discussion today is around creating high quality digital content for chambers of commerce. And specifically, just to kind of give a heads up to everyone is I’m partnering with Glue Up for a special online podcast live event, if you will, with with glue up and we’ve got a panel as well of speakers that will be on this live digital event really focused on this whole topic. So today, we were hoping to kind of whet your appetite a little bit, hopefully to gain more people to join us for this digital development event.

Click image above to register for this free event on February 24, 2022

So Patrick, you had mentioned before that break about how you mentioned segmentation. So taking for example, a Chamber of Commerce to be able to segment their members. Can you talk a little bit more about what what you mean by that?

Patrick Shanahan 9:35
Yeah, for sure. Well, I’ll use the example of email to start with at least but you know, we all get hundreds of emails a day and many of them just aren’t relevant per se. You know, I get a lot that it looks like somebody just didn’t do their research when they’re trying to sell me you know, a sales enablement tool or something or, or data that they’re trying to sell. You know, because we’re a software company we need to acquire data so that we could reach out and, you know, what happens is like, Okay, we get, we’re getting the same even with organizations that I’m interested in or that I’m a member of, I’m getting stuff that’s just way out of my realm, it’s not necessarily truly relevant. And I don’t have time, unfortunately, all the time to, to dig in and just read all that. So one of the things that I like to talk about is how to really segment your your actual audience, whether it’s members or non members, especially the non members, because, you know, hopefully, members are receiving value Otherwise, they wouldn’t continue on. But the non members obviously are being a little bit more picky, perhaps they need some more value to be, you know, instilled in them, or you need to demonstrate that. And it’s really starts with, like, how you reached out to them in the first place. So, I hope that’s kind of a decent answer. But basically, that’s really just one of the probably five Pong endpoint. Yeah, concepts that I discuss on a daily basis for chambers,

Brandon Burton 11:00
that I’ve joked about this a few times. But my background is in chamber publishing, so doing advertising sales, for chamber directories, and maps and different things. And as I do that, I joke about that, I often feel like a bartender, you know, I meet with these Chamber members, and I hear, I hear their complaints, you know, with unmet unfulfilled expectations from their chamber, and so forth. And one of those things that I hear from Chamber members on pretty much a daily basis is how they get so many emails from their chamber, they just can’t even keep up with all the emails. So as you talk about that, just email as a example, the value that comes in segmenting your membership base, maybe as a starting point, to say, yes, there are certain things that every chamber member needs to know about. But there’s other things that maybe just the restaurants need to know about, or maybe something that just this service based industry needs to know about, or the retail, you know, so you can really hone down and you can get as niche as you want with the segmentation, to make sure that the messaging you’re putting out is relevant to those that you’re putting it out to. And then they also feel like you’re doing something for them, specifically, instead of just sending out a wide broad casting net, and hoping that you bring somebody in to the next event, you know, that your chambers doing. So I see a ton of value in being able to segment and in that that’s best done in a digital way, you know, and being able to input your data in a way that makes sense to be able to segment it later.

Patrick Shanahan 12:42
Totally. And then, you know, even on the front end, the marketing front end, you know, the chamber, I see pretty much every chamber just its sign up for a newsletter or something. Yeah, well, you can think through that one even better to you can actually maybe even have a little bit more of a segmented approach from the former facing, like, even in the initial pre membership phase, like signing up in picking sort of an industry segment at that point to receive communications from so

Brandon Burton 13:12
for sure. And then that gets takes us to the next point that I wanted to touch on is the ability to diversify our digital outreach. So I think every chamber out there has got email, most of them have some kind of social media. Those tend to be you know, we’re most chambers kind of a baseline, you know, they’ve got their Facebook, they’ve got email, but maybe what are what are some other examples that come to mind of other ways that they can reach out digitally to their membership base and and prospective members?

Patrick Shanahan 13:48
Yeah, absolutely. Well, there’s a few. Number one is that, you know, this is my perspective. So I’m not necessarily trying to be out here talking about technology, but you know, it’s, it’s an app based world now. And so, you know, we have the likes of the, you know, the Instagrams, and Facebook’s, and LinkedIn, those are certainly very important. However, none of those actually are enable you to truly do what we did in our last couple of thoughts, you know, to truly segment that and actually have it so that, for example, and with our product with with glue up the community engagement solution, you pull up in the app, and you’re privy to what you have sort of subscribe to terms of the topics that you want to hear about, and it works much like a social network. So you kind of you’re scrolling through but it’s all people that are like minded maybe or have the same challenges. And so again, it’s it’s like value driven there because you’re not you know, you ever scroll down forever and you just didn’t really scroll and scroll on most can’t find anything you really are interested in and so that’s that’s, like probably the main the main gripe, actually that I hear from her clients is that A is the same thing we were talking about where it’s like, yeah, we have trouble kind of finding our niche, but it’s because in this whole thing, and actually, I’m just gonna throw out that, you know, Scott Pleasance is, you know, is going to be on this podcast. And I’m super excited because he comes from this economic development mindset, that’s just fantastic. And so when we were designing the community engagement solution, you know, we pretty much worked with him on on understanding what that would entail. It’s very programmatic in nature, it translates very well to industry segmentation, special interests, economic development, so forth. So when, when you’re scrolling forever, on a social network, and it’s not very segmented, there are, of course, you know, channels and people that you can, like, they all work a little bit differently. But when we were designing ours, it was very focused on trying to trying to be able to satisfy, you know, the, whether it’s, you know, economic development, or if it’s topical in nature, industry segment in nature, I’d say that’s the number one. The number one thing in terms of expanding as reaches, so you know, you’ve got, you’ve got all the whatever social networks, you’re using us also, you should have something that can tie them all together. So we’re well integrated into all of the social networks that that you know, a chamber would have or that a member based organization would have. So that’s, that’s the other thing is that it’s got to be something that’s integrated, so that it can be done at scale, because it needs to be done at scale, because there’s a hyper focus on the delivery of the information.

Brandon Burton 16:37
Sure, yeah. So you drop Scott Pleasance name. So Scott will be joining us as a panelist on our the live digital event that we have coming up and this is going to be on February 24. So for all you be listening, kind of bookmark that save the date. And we’ll we’ll get a link out for you to register for this here in just a little bit. But also on that panel is we’ll have myself we’ll have Patrick, it will also have Izzy West. And I know a lot of you are familiar with Izzy between her her blog, the Izzy West and she does several YouTube videos and very involved with digital content creation and working with Chambers of Commerce now as a consultant to take on their their social media presence. But as we talked about diversifying digital outreach, you know, the, you’ve got your social media, you’ve got your podcasts, you’ve got blogging, you’ve got video, you’ve got, you know, all of the different social platforms. So being able to reach out to your members or potential members and meet them where they are, and being able to communicate with them effectively in the way that’s going to resonate the best with them, I think is so important, and why we’re going to have this digital event to talk about creating high quality digital content and the importance of it for Chambers of Commerce. So one of those things, Pat, that you mentioned with the with Scott is around economic development. And and we had talked beforehand about how really economic development is something that every chamber should be a part of to some degree. Do you want to touch a little bit more on that about some thoughts? I know Scott’s no expert on that, but maybe give a teaser?

Patrick Shanahan 18:28
Totally, totally. And yeah, I wish he was here. But um, you know, he’s, he’s, I’ll give you a little background. He’s he actually is from Lynchburg, Virginia, at least now in his life. So that’s down and in sort of, sort of the country, at least in my perspective, you know, because I’m from the DMV, the Washington, DC metro area, I’m in the suburbs. And he’s tasked with economic development, he actually his organization is called innovate Lynchburg. And that whole corridor is a place where he and his his board are trying to really think outside of the box in terms of how do we attract, you know, and educate new talent to basically get, you know, economic stimulus via bringing, bringing in organizations like I’ll give another example of Scott for a get back to it. But like, when you think about Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, and I actually live in montgomery county, which is on the Maryland side, Virginia is absolutely crushing it. I mean, they’ve got Amazon Web Services there. It’s already been there. They’re moving, they’re getting the HQ to how does that happen? There’s a lot of things in terms of tax incentives, server time and certain things like that. So a lot of that’s going on and a little bit of a smaller level out there. What he’s doing, but the the point is that, you know, whether we like it or not, and I never really realized this until I spoke with my CEO and this is actually a couple of months ago, and certainly when we had that conversation Two weeks ago, Scott, whether we like it or not, if you start a business, you’re you’re simulating, you know, economy, you’re developing the account, you’re creating jobs, opportunities, whatever we do, it’s all centered around that in a business capacity, and then our allies really, so he’s all about that, very cognizant about that. And he really, I think they started this tech hub in a more hyper focused way to try to get the tech companies that presumably, will grow fast, you know, and, and, and provide faster value, maybe that just any other industry segment out there is. So I think what they’re betting on to start, he actually, I mean, I’m not sure if anybody knows, but I mean, it’s in Virginia, it’s like, it’s like, if you get at a high school, there’s a program where they practically pay you to go to school, and they practically sign you up for the job of your dream career, that it’s a two or four year program. I mean, they made that happen out there. And that is fantastic. It’s having a major impact on lives out there. So hopefully, that’s a good summary of it. And I think it’s going to be epic, they’ll just continue to really, really do well.

Brandon Burton 21:12
Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing what seeing what Scott has to bring to this digital event. And for those of you who who are interested, this is the the morning of February 24, that we’re doing this, this digital event for creating high quality digital content for chambers of commerce. And you can access it, probably the easiest way to register would be through the shownotes On this episode, which is chamber chat podcast.com/episode 160. And I’ll have a registration button there, that’ll take you to the page to get signed up for it. But Patrick, I don’t want to, you know, giveaway, everything that we’re going to be covering in this event. But I would like to have you, you come from a digital background for sure. Like to get your perspective on a tip or action items that listeners chamber champions can do to help take their chamber app to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Patrick Shanahan 22:12
Absolutely. Number one. Sorry, you said a tip, I have a few

Brandon Burton 22:17
that will take bonuses. I mean, we’ll charge extra for those for the list. No, I’m just kidding. Well, yeah,

Patrick Shanahan 22:23
me too. Now, obviously, number one would be attend this actual event coming up on the 28th. So for sure, register for that. And yeah, check, check out my website, go up.com. But with this series, you know, to, I think a really cool exercise to do would just be to create a list of all the small business businesses that are in your, you know, in your area, that are in your database or not. And that are, you know, they’re not member, take, take a small sample of this random. And, you know, if it’s, if it’s a ton of data, yeah, just take like maybe five of them. Hopefully, once maybe the, you don’t even really know, if you’re in a really, really small place, that’s probably going to be pretty hard. But go to their website, see if they even have one, see if it’s really out of date. We’re gonna chat about this just a little bit, probably, if we can get to it on on the event. But I mean, there’s some chambers that I work with, that are totally making money off of this type of strategy. And I think we spoke about this as well, really out of the box thought process and a really, really cool strategy that I think is, is on the economic development front, it’s on the, it’s on the, it’s on the front of chambers, you know, really spearheading the advancement of their members where applicable.

Brandon Burton 23:46
I think that’s so key, especially coming off the heels of the pandemic right now, where, when, when COVID first it and businesses you know, brick and mortar businesses had to close their doors for, you know, the two weeks to flatten the curve, or however long they ended up closing their doors for those who had a website who had a digital commerce, you know, presence, were able to pivot and actually still do pretty well, even through the pandemic. So I think that’s a great tip that that’s us offered is to, to take a look at, you know, a sampling of your members or prospective members and see, do they have a website do they have what kind of digital presence do they have? Are they operating just with a brick and mortar and a Facebook page? Because that’s not going to help a whole lot with SEO rankings are people trying to find them online? I know in fact, one of the sponsors for this show for the for chamber chat podcast is chamber nation. And they’ll they’ll help chambers do this or they’ll build out the number of web pages for their members. So it helps to with rankings with search engines help them to be found in a digital world that we’re now a part of. So I think that’s a huge Did that path just offer there’s to do that evaluation, and then look for the opportunity where you can help these businesses to get more into the digital world, just so they can stay relevant. We always talk about chamber staying relevant, but we need to help our members, businesses stay relevant as well. That’s a great tip. Tony, Pat, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Patrick Shanahan 25:30
Pretty much what your last statement was, I mean, you know, chamber personnel, are some of the most diverse people they know, almost to a level of high granularity, you know, of not only their members, but they, they have the full idea of their area of what can be done, what can’t be done, the trends in all these different segments. And, you know, I think that, I think sometimes we we, we make the mistake of just thinking that someone knows their business, like 360 degree in and out, people are also very inundated with their lives to so a small business owner, and I’ve been with myself, is inundated by a hyperfocus of something, and mostly it’s revenue driven. Right. But perhaps, you know, one could actually kind of take a higher view, you know, back it out and say, Well, what is the risk involved? Potentially, and we saw it with COVID. You know, we saw restaurants like shutting down, you know, if they were able to pivot fast enough, would it have happened? So, having an idea of even like that, for example, they’re basically, you know, it’s it’s all about two things, the economic economic development, but also just basically being able to kind of be a consultant for, you know, all businesses within the area member or not. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:51
Which I know, can be hard as a bandwidth so wide. But there are certain things, I think it goes back to the segmenting, you know, if you can segment and share information to these specific groups, you’re not needing to do as much of the one on one stuff, but you can still do the one to many, it just may not be the entire base as many, but maybe it’s 15 or 20, in a group instead of 200 or 400. You know, it’s like

Patrick Shanahan 27:19
the glaring opportunity, you know, go for that, what can be done for everyone?

Brandon Burton 27:24
All types, but absolutely, yeah, yeah, go see where the biggest needs are, and attack those first. Absolutely,

Patrick Shanahan 27:31
totally. And maybe the other thing would just be to continue to focus early, because I know a lot of chambers is really great, but you know, use use the tools and the knowledge and the data that you have to truly put value to value within their relationships, you know, so finding people that, you know, be Cupid, you know, in a business sense.

Brandon Burton 27:53
Yeah. That’d be that matchmaker. Yeah. For sure. Well, Pat, what would be the best way for a chamber champion to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about glue app or anything that you had to share? And beyond joining us for this digital event on the 24th?

Connect with Patrick Shanahan

Patrick Shanahan 28:12
Sure, absolutely. Go to the website, glueup.com. Or you can reach me by email. patrick.shanahan@glueup.com. So that’s Patrick Shanahan. And that’s spelled s h a n a h a n at glue up.com. And we’re common. Well, that’s 443-282-8656. Happy to speak with you.

Brandon Burton 28:38
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode, which again, is going to be at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode160. And again, we invite everyone to join us for this digital event. Again, it’s going to be on the morning of Thursday, February 24. Depending on your time zone I’m in Texas, so I’m Central. So it’s 9am Central. So do the math to wherever you are, you’re located. But we’re going to have a great discussion on creating high quality digital content for your chambers and why that’s important. And again, I’ll be on that presentation. Patrick will be on there. Scott Pleasants and Izzy West. So we’re going to have a great discussion. There’s going to be opportunity for those in attendance to ask questions, get some live feedback. And we’ll also do some speed networking at the end as well so you can get to connect with some other Chamber Champions that are out there and be a part of this great event. So check out the show notes page again, chamberchatpodcast.com/episode160 to register for that event.

That Patrick, thank you for joining me today on chamber tap podcast, and sharing some of these key highlights and insights and, and helping to tease this event a little bit. We hope we get a great turnout.

Patrick Shanahan 30:00
I appreciate it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 30:04
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Industry Trends with Joe Henning

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Joe Henning. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host. He loves hearing stories of listeners connecting with his podcast guests. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast . I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal 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 Diann Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers has provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:46
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 1:01
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting HolmanBros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Joe Henning is Joe is served as the president and CEO of the Henry County Chamber of Commerce in Georgia since 2019. Prior to that, he served 14 years as president and CEO of the aurora Regional Chamber in Illinois. Joe is a 2009 IOM graduate he holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations and a master’s degree focused on organizational development from Northern Illinois University, as well as a certificate in nonprofit not for profit management from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has served as chair of the Midwest Board of Regents in 2012 and 2013. In 2017, he served as chair of the National Board of Trustees for the program and continues to serve as a faculty member. He has taught on collaboration, industry forecasts strong chambers for the future, and marketing and membership in 2007. Under Joe’s leadership, the Aurora chamber received its first accreditation through the US Chamber of Commerce with four star distinction. In 2012, and 2017, he led the reaccreditation efforts and successfully achieved consecutive five star distinction. In 2015, the Chamber received chamber the year from the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, as well as three star chamber of valor by Hiring Our Heroes, US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. In 2014, he was named chamber Executive of the Year by the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, Joe supports and serves on the boards of a number of organizations that impact equity, inclusion, mental health, among others. I’m excited to have Joe with me today on the podcast, Joe, if you take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.

Something Interesting About Joe

Joe Henning 3:11
Well, thank you, Brandon, I appreciate it. I look forward to the conversation today. And I’ve been most appreciative of your podcasts and the insights that they give with all the peers. As you said, I’m a native of Illinois, I born and raised there and about two years ago, moved down here to Georgia. And so right now, I’m having a little difficult time, loving my Chicago Cubs and what they did with the bloodletting this year, but especially living in Atlanta, Braves country after the World Series wins. So thank you for your time today. Appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 3:47
Absolutely. It’s a pleasure. Before we get into our discussion today, I’d like for you to sit to take a few moments just to share with us a little bit about the Henry County Chamber, kind of the size, scope, staff budget, just kind of give us some perspective before we get into our topic.

About the Henry County Chamber

Joe Henning 4:03
Sure. So excuse me, so I’m Henry County Chamber. It’s a little bit larger than I had. When I served in Aurora. We’ve got about 800 members. We do have the dual role as Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau for Henry County. There are four cities within Henry County we have about a I think we’re things that last census, we were pushing the 300,000 mark, maybe just a little bit over that. And what we’ve seen and this occurred prior to my coming here, but round 20 around 2000 or so. The population just exploded in Henry County. We’re just slightly south of Atlanta, about 30 minutes south of Atlanta, and the population exploded and that diversity that came with it is something that we’re still addressing, working with and supporting change management within that realm. So we’ve got, we’ve got kind of a southern hospitality, but we’ve also got that Atlanta metro feel to it. And so I think we’re all trying to figure out what that looks like for each one of us individually for businesses, for organizations, and that. So we’ve got about I’m sorry, we’ve got about seven employees full time employees on staff split between that tourism and the chamber. And I’m looking forward to the conversation today, kind of the lessons I’ve learned. And hopefully, as people follow the your podcast and hear this, maybe they’ll be able to share a couple lessons that they’ve learned too. And I always appreciate these programs, because I get something out of it as well.

Brandon Burton 5:39
Absolutely. Which our topic for discussion today is going to be around industry trends as we kind of look forward into the future some, and I appreciate you mentioning, you know, for listeners that hopefully they can provide some feedback as well. I recently started a Facebook group, chamber chat champions. So that is a place where we can kind of park some of these episodes. So after people listen to them, get on there and share some of your ideas. What are some of your thoughts going forward with industry trends? Let’s, you know, get some more discussion going around these episodes, make it a little bit more interactive, and said, well, we’ll jump into this discussion around industry trends as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Industry Trends

Alright, Joe, we are back. So as we look at the Chamber industry trends going forward, what are some of those things that are kind of top of mind for you that other chamber executives, other chamber professionals should be mindful of at least going forward?

Joe Henning 8:49
Well, I I’d like to, I’d like to take us back, it’s probably it’s probably been at least five years. And the ACCE, he put out their Horizon Report. And I believe at the time that they first launched it, there were eight influences. And then right after that, within about a year, they added the ninth one with limitations of government. And if nothing else, between the political and social fragmentation and the population shifts and the resources, and all of that, those nine areas that they identified. If nothing else in the last two years as a chamber leader, we’ve realized is that it was spot on. Like they knew what we were talking about, right? Everything that came to the global impact, the scarcity and abundance, all of these different pieces that they were looking at that were influencing the way we would be. And what they figured was 2025 hit us about five years early. And so, you know, as we look at that, I think one of the key takeaways is that people haven’t read that report and really looked at what those influences have, can do for their organization. They really need to check that And ASAP has a similar a similar identity that they’ve done for associations in general. And kind of, I’ve used them both in in teaching industry trends and chambers and associations in the future. But it really does help to go back and look at that. And what we’ve done in the past is group work, whether it’s a committee, you know, maybe it’s the ambassadors or as our Government Affairs Committee, is we’ve taken one of those nine influences and really dissected it down and said, Okay, if we’re looking at population shift, what does that mean? And for us, that’s become an abundance. Like I said, we’ve doubled our population within the last 30 years. And so we have an abundance of population. And with that shift, that changing demographic, what does that do for our community? And what do we need to do in order to embrace that support that that growth? So I think really looking at the influences over the last year, I think any any of us within the chamber world can can identify where those influences have impacted us with COVID pandemic. You know, its its impact on education. You know, we’ve got a one hand we’re sitting here in Henry County, I believe, at the end of October, we had a 2.6 unemployment, right. But that’s not taking into account those that have left the workforce. And so I still have businesses here that are struggling to hire, you know, they might, they might normally run three shifts, but they’ve only got enough employees that they can do two shifts. And so that impact on the local economy and the whole state’s economy is an issue that we have to address and figure out how we get that workforce back.

Brandon Burton 11:37
Yeah, there almost needs to be a different metric beyond Yes, sir. appointment, because it’s not showing what the true yeah, issue. Yeah, it’s,

Joe Henning 11:45
it’s truly a dated metric, when you think about it, when you think about how its measured, and why they chose that. It’s definitely a dated metric.

Brandon Burton 11:52
Absolutely. So as we are looking at the future of chambers, I mean, I think that’s spot on. If somebody is not familiar with the horizon, report, by ACC, to, to go download it, read through it, and be very familiar with it. And you’ll see a lot of things. It’s like, oh, yeah, this has happened.

Joe Henning 12:11
Oh, yeah. But there’s really,

Brandon Burton 12:16
but there still is useful information that is going to be very relevant to making sure your chamber is up on the trends and, and being insightful as to what the future has to offer. And if anything, I would say in the age of technology we’re in, it just speeds up the change. So you mentioned that these changes coming five years earlier, I think it has a lot to do with that. But

Joe Henning 12:38
it does, you know, one of those areas was that communicate the Communications and Technology. And I think if we weathered it successfully, we all realize that the only way we were going to be able to communicate with our members and our community was through technology, we weren’t going to be able to do we couldn’t do face to face for a number of months. And we couldn’t do the networking. And believe me, I am so glad that we were able to put that aside because you know, anybody that does a survey, networking is always at the top of the member wanted member need. And yet you get the same small group that shows up every month for the networking events. And so I think for all of us that were able to put that on the side burner, and really focus on being a resource for our businesses, whether they were members or not, you know, to be that resource to be relevant and essential to their success. I think that was the best opportunity, we all had to prove that we were more than just a networking organization, that that’s not what we were solely put here for that we had other things that we could provide to them. And that we were successful in doing that. And so when I look back at 2020, Brandon, as much of a struggle as it was for all of us, I still think it was a great opportunity for Chamber of Commerce to really prove its worth.

Brandon Burton 13:58
Absolutely, it really shined the spotlight on what chambers do. And the reason they’re there. And you know, I don’t know. I mean, networking obviously has a purpose. I mean, there’s a reason people ask for it. There’s a reason chambers do it. But it also becomes a it’s not a high demand task oriented thing for chamber to do. It’s relatively simple, provide a venue some drinks some reason to get together, right? Where it can be done on another level, you know, where it’s much more carefully curated and inviting certain people the network with a purpose and really having a reason instead of just coming and pitching what you have to sell to other people. You

Joe Henning 14:44
know, I think that’s exactly I think what I’ve tried to do over the last year or so is really speak to that activity as connections. And I know that also can can kind of be overused in that but but what I want them to realize Yes, we’re doing these, these opportunities for you to expand your network. But let’s make connections, you know, know who you’re looking to meet, let one of my teammates know who it is what it is you’re looking for. And when can we create those connections, whether it’s in person at an event, or via email, or phone call, or something like that. Because you know, you can have, you can take 50 business cards home from a networking event, you’re probably not going to connect with them, you’re not going to follow up with half of them. It looks good when you can stack them there. And you feel like you were successful, because you met 50 new people. But was that a better use of your time, or you you telling me that, hey, I need to, you know, I’m a realtor, I really need to know, the mortgage people that are in the membership I really need. That’s where my, that’s where my bread and butter is. So let me help make the connection with those 1012 1515 mortgage lenders, so you know, who you can reach out to, because, you know, you might need if you’re a realtor, you might need the plumbing expert at some point, if you’re trying to get a house up to market. But the rest of them, you know, you’re, it’s a waste of your time. And that’s, and that’s where I feel sometimes we we do what we’ve always done. And this this last couple of years was really an opportunity for us to evaluate what it was we were doing, and how do we move things forward. And I think that’s where so many chambers of commerce were able to prove their worth, and prove their relevance. And I think that’s what many of us have always struggled with, because everybody sees us, you know, stodgy, you know, politically connected, you know, really only looking out for the employer. You know, we were not I mean, we spent last year, we worked with one of the cities to give away $1.3 million to small businesses so that they could stay open, and they could keep their families under a roof. We worked with a lot of our health care providers to make sure that the COVID Panda COVID vaccine was out and people were getting it and that we could keep businesses open restaurants open. But keep the schools open, too, because we were seeing that struggle. So I mean, there’s still things that we’re dealing with, we’re dealing with early childhood care, you know, that’s something that we kind of saw 510 years ago was needed. But boy, did that pandemic open a lot of people’s eyes, yes, it really was a problem. And so now we’re kind of looking at that as how do we how can we help facilitate some change within that as well?

Brandon Burton 17:24
Absolutely. So what are some of these ways? I mean, we, we probably don’t need to get super deep into it. But the ways that chambers have shown the relevance, I mean, we’re beyond the networking, we’re beyond, you know, the the Staci, you know, the the well connected organization, but it really is about building a stronger community.

Joe Henning 17:46
Yeah, you know, you asked about Henry County, and I guess I didn’t think about it at the time. But, you know, we’re fortunate, we have a great and this started, this started literally, probably three months before the pandemic, it was like, right around January, maybe a little bit earlier than that, but but the school superintendent, the county manager, the executive director of our development authority, and myself sat down and started figuring out ways that we could work together. Then the pandemic hit within about three months. And fortunately, we had those relationships. So we knew who could take the lead on what and so we we went, and we started scheduling, virtual town halls, through zoom, Facebook Live. And because we had the trust in the relationship with those other three organizations, the four of us appeared together and talked about the pandemic and what that meant for education and what that meant for employers. You know, how the county was reacting to it. And so we were able to be that, that, that resource of knowledge for them and share that information, because we had already built that trust. And I think that’s where many chambers were able to succeed in the last couple of years was they started building that trust, they had that trust in place, or they were able to quickly get that trust together and look at how they could support the community as a whole. And I think what I saw from many of them was traditionally because when you look at it, what pays our bills is our members. So we do have to focus on those those members and what their needs are. But those that were really successful, still cared about the members, but they opened up their doors to all businesses, because they realized that we needed all businesses in order to keep our local economy strong. And so what many saw was a growth in their in their membership. Because once it once it turned around and those non members that you’d helped were coming in. But I think we also we also learned a lot about technology. You know, we were good at texting and emails and everything. But we went remote for about I think it was about three months that that we had closed Our office and we had one employee at a time in the office. And so we had to start communicating as a team via zoom. And so every day at 1030, I called a staff meeting unless you had the day off, you had to be on it. I wanted to see eyeball to eyeball the day that my team was doing, okay. But I also know that we still needed to bounce ideas around and get stuff done. And so that worked really well. So the technology, you know, we were looking at it, we were looking at how do we do webinars and things like that this forced our hand. And I think there were many chambers that really found that. And I think we’ve all found our success in that as well. We had talked a little bit I think, earlier in the podcasts, or maybe just before we started about timing, and kind of that evergreen aspect of it. And it was really interesting, when we would put one of our webinars out, we were really pleased with the numbers we had when we looked about two months later, they’ve more than doubled and sometimes tripled in viewers. And so that made us realize that it’s great that we’re doing these in person events where we can allow for the networking, and we can share the knowledge. But we’re missing so many people, you know, we’re missing are restaurant owners in that that have just closed and they’re not coming in for breakfast, because they’re in bad. You know, we realized that we need to figure out what that hybrid now looks like. And so that’s kind of what we’re looking at for 22 is how do we take that that technology that we’ve embraced, and bring it back to the in person opportunities for people to connect? And so I think that’s what 22 is going to be for us?

Brandon Burton 21:29
Yeah, I can see, you know, in the future, some chambers now, you know, as they start opening back up to more in person things again, but having a camera setup, and capturing, you know, everything going on, and then having a database of resources, and so on almost an on demand library, and repurposing it through social media and YouTube and podcasts and all these different ways. Because, you know, the way that the restaurant owner versus the insurance agent versus you know, the the retail shop owner, the way they digest the information is going to be so different. And you almost got to be there in every different way to be able to That’s right. That’s what we’re fighting. Yeah. Which, yeah, we all love to hear that. Right. Just creative work.

Joe Henning 22:13
You know, I think I think that’s the key, though, is we? We, you know, like I said, we do a lot of the networking, because that’s what’s expected. And I think if we can create opportunities for people to see, oh, you know what, I’d rather do this than just the networking. And we start really prioritizing what it is that we do and what that value add is. I think that’s how we can change what our business model looks like. And I think that’s what the future is for the chamber is, is it’s time for us to change. And this is going to help force our hand to do it.

Brandon Burton 22:42
Yeah, absolutely. So what are what are some of these other trends? Maybe that you see, I know. Yeah, diversity, equity. Inclusion is one that that I noticed. I don’t know if there’s others, you want to make sure that we highlight as we go about our discussion.

Joe Henning 23:02
You know, we talked a little bit about the political and social fragmentation. We, we realized a lot of that in Georgia, between Brunswick and Atlanta, you know, during the pandemic, and we, we had nothing as severe here in Henry County, but we did have some some conflict, for lack of a better word, I guess. And so you’ve got that fragmentation. And we took the technology, and we started doing community dialogues. And we had to do it virtually because you couldn’t be in person, but we were having success with our community dialogues, and really having the conversation around equity and diversity and inclusion. And from there, you know, it’s interesting, from there, we were able to, we’ve actually got a five part series that we put together for hospitality. And it’s called culture of customer service. And it’s looking at the needs and wants of our African American visitors, our Hispanic visitors, our Asian visitors, our LGBTQ visitors, and those with disabilities. And so we really looked at the diversity within the DEI, and put that out there for hospitality. And we’ve gained some great traction and interest with that, in fact, we’ve got non hospitality, businesses that are interested in providing that for their employees. So I think when we look at that fragmentation, we need to figure out as a community leader, you know, how do we address it, it might not be the same in every community across the country. But you know, we’re all kind of struggling. I think if we’ve got peers out there that have worked with it, I think that’s an opportunity for us to align with that. And then I think the last one, you know, because I know that we’re getting close to your 30 minute mark, but I think one of the lessons we look at is that resource alignment. And, you know, as I said, there’s a lot of things that we do because we’ve always done but that eats up resources. And like you said, we’re just you know, we’re Doing everything we need to really look at what we do well, and what we do, because it’s needed to be done. And so looking at those resources we have, and really applying them to what our mission as a chamber is. And there’s, you know, it’s said that if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. It’s not gonna that alignment is not going to be the same for everybody. But you got to go back and look at mission of your organization. And, you know, our priorities, our leadership development, business success, advocacy. So that’s where we put the largest amounts of our resources in. It might be financial, it might be human capital. But we really look at what those four areas of our mission are. And that’s where those resources go.

Brandon Burton 25:40
So this thought or question is kind of a combination on these last two points that you you hit on with the community dialogues you did, Randy and I, and then the the resource alignment. So I know, during 2020, we all got hit really hard with the the idea that we we all need to pay more attention to diversity, equity inclusion. It was a hot topic. And it was right for chambers to put a focus on that shine more light on it. At the same time, well, let me let me finish that. So So you shine more light, you guys are the community dialogues, which is awesome. I think if you didn’t strike when that iron was hot, and say you just now got around to doing the community dialogues, may not have the same impact that it did when you first rolled it out. So I think being able to quit, act quickly and pivot when you see that need. So I guess my question would be how would you approach the time when it’s right to make that quick pivot versus chasing the shiny objects and the squirrels is distress?

Joe Henning 26:47
Good understood, I think there’s still an opportunity, if there is a need that you’ve identified within your community, by all means have that conversation. Interestingly enough, our first dialogue was late June. And we started with Malcolm Gladwell, talking with strangers. And if anybody isn’t aware of that is his book about Sandra Bland death in Texas. At that she was from Chicago area, she was moving down there for a job and that and she, I believe it was she was in she was found in a cell. Excuse me. Um, strangely, I don’t know how, you know, I don’t know, sometimes you just lucked into success. And, excuse me, this was the five year anniversary of this occurrence. So we were able to use that. But we also took advantage of having great relationships with our police department and our faith based leaders. And so we had a, we had a conversation with a police officer, a faith based leader, and our chamber chair, and really looked at the different pieces that each of them brought to the conversation around the Sandra Bland death. Excuse me. And so, you know, we kind of looked at that as when we were programming, we wanted to make sure we had key individuals that took part in that conversation, because we were doing it virtually, um, it was a little more difficult to get a true community dialogue. But I think if you’re doing it now, you might have that opportunity that you can have the community dialogue. And so if I were to do it today, without the experience, I’d still look at starting with conversations around some of these books that are out there. And there are many, depending on what it is you want to address, we started with the race relations, because that’s where we were struggling in Georgia and in the southeast. But you’ve got others on other disabilities, LGBT, you know, you can look it up, there’s definitely, you know, an area each month that you can focus on, I would do it in an auditorium or a church and you can still have your panel up in front. But you also have then the opportunity that your community that’s, that’s joined you there that day can also ask questions, and so it does become more of that dialogue. So I think there are ways that we could still do this, if people haven’t done it yet. You know, they’re still waiting, there’s still a way that they can impact their community positively.

Brandon Burton 29:24
So in I mean, that’s that’s one example right around the DNI but it will say technology in there, you know, yeah, a new social media platform rolls out and you got to strike while the iron Todd or else he missed the boat and, you know, being able to weigh out, you know, does this really serve our members? Is it really served the mission of the chamber, or is this just the next shiny object and it’s gonna be gone? Yeah,

Joe Henning 29:50
no, I absolutely agree. Like I I, you know, if I could get out of social media, I would, but I think I think for any of us in the industry, you have to use that as a Pulse Point. And there’s a lot that you can find out about what’s going on within your community by looking at what’s what’s happening within that social media context. And whether it’s Facebook or Tik Tok, I mean, it’s Facebook or Twitter, I refuse tick tock, it’s just too annoying for me, I must just, I’m probably aging out. Um, but, you know, I try to limit when I get in there. So I don’t end up down too many rabbit holes. But you do start seeing where people are weighing in on things. And whether it’s, you know, the the limitations of your government, whether it’s locally or at the state level, or even at the federal level? If that’s a concern, then what can you do as an organization as a community leader, to help affect change there? You know, is it a conversation with one of your elected officials, we did that during our 40 day session last year, we couldn’t get to the Capitol because of the pandemic. And so, each Wednesday, I think it was about three o’clock in the afternoon, we took turns inviting each one of our elected officials, our State House State Senate, in for about a half hour conversation on what was happening that week, where they thought certain key legislation that we were interested in was was a dying wasn’t going further. And so it really helped us then to show that role that the Chamber plays in advocating for business. And so sometimes you just look into these successes. And, you know, I think you just have to be open to try and get it. Believe me, I, we laughed earlier when we started. But we’ve had some failures. I mean, we started some of these, these programs. And, you know, I pause it because we were a little bit early, and then I forget to turn the recording back on. And, you know, those things happen. And a lot of times, it’s happened to your guests, so they understand to that, oh, we’re gonna do that again. But you just have to go with it. It’s it is a little bit of a discomfort level that that learning curve you got, but I think it just makes us stronger. It makes our organization stronger. It gives us more tools that we can reach the business community in the community as a whole, so that we can do our service to what we’re here for.

Brandon Burton 32:12
Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we do start to wrap things up here, I wanted to see if you have any, maybe a tip or an action item that you would recommend to a chamber listening that they can do to help elevate their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Joe Henning 32:26
That’s that’s a great question. I think. I think just to take it down to the basic, I challenged them all to do, you know, as a professional within the chamber industry, commit yourself to one goal of professional development in 2022. You know, it can be if you haven’t, if you haven’t looked into Institute for organization management with the US Chamber Foundation, look into it, it’s a four year program, but my goodness, the information you get out of it, the relationships that you creates, are amazing. And for me, that’s my sounding board, when I get stuck with something or I get frustrated or don’t even know where to turn is I go back to some of my peers from my classes or on some of those boards that I served on with them. And we kind of walk through what that is to learn. It could be you know, they’re listening to your podcast, that’s great. That’s professional development, they’re learning from, you know, these these outside of mind these great minds that are out there in the country leading a chamber of commerce, and it’s helping give them ideas. But I think, don’t be afraid to learn and make sure you’re committed to that go after your CCE or your ca IE, look at your state accreditation things. But the only way we have to treat this as a profession. And I think sometimes we’ve been lost with that. And we’ve seen some people that have come and gone that might not have thought it was a profession. But if we’re here for the long haul, and I think going on about 20 years now I consider that a long haul for me. Um, we have to look at it as a professional look at what that professional development looks like. And so I challenge people just kind of keep learning it. If nothing else we learned from the last two years is we have to stay on top of the trends, the knowledge that’s out there, what it is that we can do to better serve our members in our organizations, because we’re all in it together. And we’re here as parents, we’re here to help each other. And I can’t thank you enough for being one of those resources out there for the chamber for fashion and helping all of us to see where those resources and those ideas are.

Brandon Burton 34:37
Thank you. It’s my pleasure. I think it is such a important aspect to continue that professional development wherever you find it. You know, especially everything you listed, I think, you know, having a good mentor having a group of people you can go to and bounce some ideas off of. And these are things that have been shared in other episodes as well and it’s Stay, I’d love having that reinforcement. Oh, somebody, inevitably it’s happened or somebody that that’s where I need to reach out to so and so and, and they don’t do it because they’re busy, they get caught up. And then this is that reminder, go reach out to that person, that group that whatever it is to further your professional development, do it now make a note?

Joe Henning 35:21
That’s right. I think a lot of times we don’t do it, because we’re like, oh, it’s, it’s gonna interrupt what they’re doing. It’s gonna be an inconvenience to them. They’re gonna think I want something. And I’ll tell you what, when I’ve made those calls to thank people, or to see how they’re doing, or I’ve received those calls, it’s made both of our days, right, even somebody’s thinking about me, somebody cares. And I think that’s especially, you know, especially right now, and I hate to keep beating this pandemic. But that’s all we all want. We just want to know that there’s somebody out there.

Brandon Burton 35:51
That’s a fair point. Yeah. But so we’ve been talking all about industry trends. And I like asking this specific question to everyone I have on the show is, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Joe Henning 36:08
I think they’re, you know, there’s always going to be a need. I think the challenge we all have, as chamber professionals, is moving from a relevancy standpoint. And we all proved it, in the last two years that we were relevant, we were needed to being essential, and providing services that they can’t find somewhere else, or that we do so much better that nobody else can do it. And so I think that’s where we’re all heading. I couldn’t tell you, you know, I thought, I thought maybe we wouldn’t be a brick and mortar, because we did well enough. But you know, we also have the Visitors Bureau within our, our organization, so we’d still need to have something like that. But, you know, I think a lot of people are looking at what that space looks like, do they really need that large footprint? Or is it a smaller footprint that they can use and so I think we’re gonna see a lot of changes, I think we’ll see some some mergers, I think some of the smaller chambers might merge or might merge with another entity, whether it’s a Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or an Economic Development Authority. But we’re still going to be here, as long as we’re doing our job. And committing to it as a profession, I think we’re still going to see the need for chambers, they’ve been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. So as long as we keep picking up that challenge, and going forward, I think we’ll be here.

Brandon Burton 37:23
Absolutely. Move from relevant to essential. And I’ll put in a plug for Casey Steinbacher, with her essential, great, great read and really helps to look forward as to what chambers can do to become more essential. But, Joe, I’ve enjoyed this discussion today. And for having you here on the podcast with me, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information if if someone wanted to broaden their professional network or learn more about how you’re doing things, what would be the best way to reach out and connect with you.

Connect with Joe Henning

Joe Henning 37:56
Thank you, that’s great. I my contact information, I think the easiest is probably just go to Henrycounty.com. That’s the website, you’ll find my my ugly mug right there on the homepage, and click on that and get my email address (jhenning@henrycounty.com) and phone number (770. 957.5786). And if you are interested in seeing what we did with those community dialogues on that, search Henry Georgia Chamber on YouTube, and all of those dialogues, let’s video dialogues are up there. And they’re also on our Facebook page for Henry County, chamber, Georgia. And if you have questions on you know, if you want to know what we learned through that process as we improved it, by all means, reach out to me and my team and and I honestly, credit I’m looking forward to I am in that chamber champion chat that you have in Facebook. And so I’m looking forward to learning from others too, as they give us feedback on today’s podcast.

Brandon Burton 38:48
Awesome. I appreciate that. I will I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. It’ll be a chamberchatpodcast.com/episode159 and I’ll try to link the YouTube video or at least your YouTube channel in there. So people are gonna, you know, browse around and find those community dialogues that you reference when this has been fun. Thank you for joining me.

Joe Henning 39:13
This is all Thankyou. I’m glad we finally did get to connect. I apologize again for the delay but but it’s been a great conversation. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 39:20
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Creating a Vision with Pat Patrick

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Pat Patrick. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he wants to support your health by encouraging you to go for a 30 minute walk outdoors. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Pat Patrick. Pat worked in executive marketing roles and advertising capacities for Safeway stores, Tyson Foods and Foster Farms poultry company and I see marketing systems overseeing multi million dollar budgets and multiple advertising agencies over his career. Pat came to the Lodi Chamber in California in 2001, where he was appointed the chambers president and CEO. Pat has been part of the success of Lodi wine country through establishing international access to Central America and China for Lodi wine exports and major strategy was leading the sponsor leading and sponsoring trips abroad for Lodi ventures and for foreign buyers to visit Lodi. He was also the author and developer of vision 2020 a catalytic economic look forward the Lodi community which has positioned Lodi for early success in the new decade. Pat has and is today active in volunteer roles, such as several local not for profit boards, including the Adventist Health Lodi Memorial Hospital, reaching outside of both Lodi both regionally and nationally in the chamber industry. Pat has served as past president of the Northern California Chamber association was asked to join two national fellowships one developing healthy communities and the other focusing on workforce development, and 2017. He was elected by his peers to be the board chair of WAC. In 2020, he was selected to receive the excellence and leadership award the organization’s highest honor. Pat is a graduate from the University of Texas and the Institute of organizational management. At Pat, I am happy to have you with me today here 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 bit better.

Something Interesting About Pat

Pat Patrick 3:28
Well, thank you, Brandon. It is my honor to be on here. I think you’ve done a couple of 100 of these and so but I’m just honored to be included. I’m excited to share with my fellow chamber professionals, some of the success that has come to the Lodi chamber of commerce with a great program. And something interesting about me. Well, my best friend’s dog, his name is Tucker. I don’t know. I think I sent you a picture of Tucker. Yeah. So if the people can see Tucker then they’ll know Hey, I’m an okay guy. Because that dog is great looking dog and he’s my best friend back. He’s here. He comes to the office. He’s He’s our greeter

Brandon Burton 4:20
the chamber mascot there. Hey, man. That’s awesome. Oh, yeah, I’ll have to put a picture of Tucker in our show notes so people can log on and see that and we’re getting close to a couple 100 episodes. This is actually 158 But we’re getting up there. We’re racking them up. So met with a lot of great chamber people. So it glad to add you to the mix. Yeah. So before we get into our discussion today, I’d love for you to take a moment to tell us a little bit more about the Lodi chamber kind of the the the size the scope of your chambers. staph budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion.

About the Lodi Chamber

Pat Patrick 5:04
Sure. We are in 2022. Next year we will be 99 years old. Formed in 1923. And at that time probably our membership was made up of a lot of farmers because we are surrounded by something called the Hanford sandy loam. That’s not my description, but that’s the name of the dirt around us, which is very, very rich and has a long history of growing great things. Today there’s 100,000 acres of wine grapes that surround Lodi but I as a wine region, and with the home of Robert Mondavi, right, he was he grew up here is quarterback on the high school football team. And he worked in his family’s vineyards. And he when he’s he went to France to you know, learn his winemaking craft and then came back and put in a very large production facility in Woodbridge, which is a suburb of Lodi. Lodi is a town of 68,000 people. Okay, so we’re not, we’re not big at all. The chamber has 700 members, and we had a staff of seven prior to the pandemic. And since then, we’ve been operating on three and a half staff and we’re busy people. And so we have we are coming back with that, you know, pretty good bank balance in the bank right now. Because we cut a lot and so our membership stayed with us. We couldn’t do any of our events. We have a couple of large revenue producing events first those were gone. But we are coming back strong. It is good to hear Yeah, we got a good ambitious 2020 to play.

Brandon Burton 7:14
Good deal. So and I know we’ll we’ll get into that with our topic for the we’ve settled on for this episode is which is creating a vision. And specifically you guys have what’s called vision 2020 And we’ll have you share some of the details of that as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Creating a Vision

All right, Pat we are back. As I mentioned before the break we were talking about creating vision and specifically around your Vision 2020 that you helped to author for the Lodi chamber there in a nutshell what is Vision 2020.

Pat Patrick 10:02
In a nutshell, vision 2020 is an act was an economic look forward. It started in 2014 an economic look forward for our community. We identified five major areas of great challenge for Lodi, but they also offered great promise for lota. And so as I told people, we get to decide which one that’s going to. You’re going to be for Lodi and those were Workforce Development how to you know, get the young people of today ready for the jobs that they’ll need tomorrow. And then our own communities economic competitiveness. Lodi was never has never been marketed as a place to come and do business. And we are 90 miles east of Silicon Valley, which was probably another at that time, the number one place for job creation in the United States, right. And then we had business and community health. We wanted to make sure businesses healthy and their number one asset is their people. And so we joined arms with the hospital and and some other health care professionals to create a whole plan to get Lodi healthier. And then we looked at the livability of Lodi because today we have 90 wineries. And this close to some major population centers we develop the tourism industry. But tourism was the other was the last area that we looked at. And we just need to bring more people to Lodi and the livability aspect which I skipped over was one of those people that we need in our community to grow our community. What do they think the livability is like Ilona, and so we’re concerned at that from a tourist standpoint, from a job creator standpoint, and then for young families to work in those new jobs.

Brandon Burton 12:24
I think those five points the workforce development, economic competitiveness, business and community health, livability and tourism are things that probably most chamber champions listening can kind of look internally at their organization and say, how do we measure up in these different categories? Where do we need to bulk up? Where do we need to shift some some focus to make their communities stronger in these different areas. So as we talk, I’m sure you’ll highlight some of the things like you have with the wineries and stuff that are very specific to Lodi, but for those listening, you all have, you know specific things for your communities as well that make you attractive and make people or that can make people want to live and work and visit and do all sorts of things in your community. So I’d encourage everyone to pay attention to those things in your own community as we go about our discussion today. But how, how is the division created? Kind of how you know who was involved with the with the creation of it?

Pat Patrick 13:34
Um, well, it’ll be fires often start from little sparks, right. And so I am a member of WAC, which was outlined in the introduction. And the president of that organization is a fellow by the name of Dave Kilby. And so Dave does a good job, and helping executives grow. Chamber executives grow. He’s a reader. I’m a reader. He has suggested some really great books to me over the years, right. And a couple of those really changed my life in terms of how I viewed my job, and here at the chamber, and what I’m really responsible for in this seat as president and CEO of the community Chamber of Commerce. And so it got to be when I looked in the mirror in the morning, here, it was, it was a challenge. I started to challenge and so the book that really got me was a book called The Coming Jobs War. Again, it was written in like 2012, but I think it’s very still very good and applicable for today. But it changed my life. It’s written by Jim Clifton. Jim Clifton is the CEO of the he’s the CEO of the Gallup Corporation, I’m sorry. Okay, who who does a lot of polling, obviously, not just political polling, but he polls on everything in the human endeavor that we go through. And he does. So in about 150 different countries, they have offices in 75 around the world. So he knows what’s on top of mine on people’s heads. And it says, In the number one thing was jobs, what happens if I lose my job in this world right now? What happens if I can’t get a job that I want, or, you know, 25% of the world’s population is without a job. And that’s still true today. So it’s a it’s problematic. So. And he talked a lot about the influences on a community. And it just changed me, I, I saw some challenges that we had in Lodi, and no one really addressing the community, you know, your city does a general plan, which identifies where to put the housing, where to put the industry where to put the commercial, but they don’t really plan that much on the economic growth, the security of that, because without that, you don’t have a good community at all. And so we, we, you know, I took that on, because we had health challenges, too, in the county where we live in California, one out of every two people are either pre diabetic or diabetic. That’s a lot of money that, you know, that the workforce has to put in to, you know, towards that element alone. So we got a good response from our larger employers, we came out with programs to help their people get healthier. That’s what one of those five areas was about in the workforce development, the retiring baby boomers, the younger people coming in, are they prepared to work with the millennial generation, there are some challenges. And so we see that and we wanted to have some frank conversations with our school district to make sure that we were preparing kids for the workplace, not only on hard knowledge, skills, but soft skills as well. And so I just sort of lit myself on fire.

And started talking to I went around groups and pushing this concept 2020, I had a population pyramid, which is one tool that I would recommend to any chamber commerce professional. It’s a bar graph that shows the population and how it is arrayed in your community, population pyramid, and ours, what I mean, there’s 1000 things that that one graph can tell you. And it makes you aware of the changes that are coming over the next 10 years in your community population wise. Right now, we see a lot of shifts coming in. So how does that impact your community? How do you change your community to or prepare your community whether you know for what’s coming? And so we I would go out and talk to service clubs, I got on the stage at the community theater with about 900 people, and I just wanted people to get close to me. So the what was burning inside me would catch them on fire too. Because what vision 2020 needed was about 70 volunteers, leaders and influencers to pick up this mantle and start charging and that’s what we did. We put about 15 people in each one of those five areas. We call them that vision action team. Okay, kind of goes with Lodi right wine. So it wasn’t the chamber. I always envisioned the chamber being on top of a mountain kind of kicking over some big rocks and hoping that a landslide would start when when the chamber rocks would hit the healthcare rock and in the education rock and it would start to roll down. And so it it quickly became bigger than the chamber but the chamber had the responsibility to drive it. And that meant the board I tried to put as many leaders and influencers on my board as possible. We only had a board of 12. Today we have a board of 15. But in those days, we had a board of 12. And the best business people in Lodi is what the goal is. I could talk about how we do that to the nominating committee, which is valuable for chamber execs. But what we did was we, we built the board drove it in five areas. So we put two board members on each one. And so they were in charge of running their that their vision action team. And if it was tourism, we had the leaders and tourism in our community on that committee. If it was workforce development, we had the career tech people from the high school we had the community college, we had employers, from industry and from business, all kinds of business sectors. And health, we had a bunch of health professionals, they’re trying to work on this big problem about the diabetes, and the health of our community, the health of our business community. Very important. So you kind of get the idea. We had 70 people from the community, top people, the superintendent of schools, a CEO of the hospital, and they brought some of their folks. We had this we had city government, their city council people even had county supervisors want to sit in because they heard about this. I had one county supervisor say, Well, can you come do this for the county?

No, I can’t. There’s only one of me. But we wrote a 43 page booklet with color photographs and graphs and things to back up everything that we were trying to the condition that our community was in where we wanted to go and how we thought we were going to get there. So each of these five vats, the people, they started with a vision statement, they created a vision statement for tourism, created a vision statement for workforce development and so on. What will this look like? What will tourism look like in Madang? In 2020? That was the question, what will it look like? Right, and so they wrote a vision statement of what that would be. And then the next thing they had to come up with once they had the vision statement was what are the strategies that we have to employ to make that vision come to pass? And then once you get the strategies, strategy, number one, number two, number three, what are the action steps over the next five years because this was 2014, to get us to 2020 to achieve our vision. So vision flowed into the strategies. And the strategies were made up of action steps that were on a timetable. lead organizations lead people were identified to make sure that that thing kept moving forward, that actions do

Brandon Burton 23:29
I love that. I love the idea of these bats to be able to have these or these committees to over these specific segments have the vision to three that vision, the strategies, the action plan and see these things through to you know, like you said over a five year thing, so I assume the people that are involved with these vats, it was a was it a five year commitment to be on one of these committees. Is that how I was approached Okay. Very good.

Pat Patrick 23:57
As some people you know, drop out some new ones. Come on. So, yeah, so a lot of great things happen. We have a huge today we have a huge biking community bicycle. It was enough we want to have one stage I guess you could say we had two people in our livability that and they formed bike Lodi and now bike Lodi has done fantastic things. I mean, we have bike trails that go from downtown now all the way out in all directions. We didn’t have that before. We didn’t have tourism wayfinding signs before we got those put up. These are examples of the action steps to get things done right. And so great things just sort of organically came out. And it worked. It worked.

Brandon Burton 25:05
So now here we are, as we record this, or at the end of 2021. This will be releasing beginning of 2022. But you guys have been able to see this vision unfold. How do you vision out? You know, the next five years? Let’s say, I have is that looking for Lodi? And are you continuing the same type of structure, same type of model or what? What’s your thoughts and plans going forward?

Pat Patrick 25:33
Okay, good question. We, there were a total of 55 action steps that were created for those five. That’s right. And we achieved 38 of them, which is quite a few. And some of the ideas were just a bridge too far. And some of them weren’t, didn’t turn out to be a good idea at all. And so what we did was we wanted to keep an effort going, but the main effort, what changed in our world was businesses started coming over the hill, there’s been an exodus from the Bay Area, Sacramento has really prospered from that. And again, load I really hadn’t been marketed. And so we we created a completely new website. Not a chamber website, but what I call an attraction website. Yeah. And it’s called grow in Lodi, very simple, you can go to it grow in lodi.com. And you’ll see a lot of information about Lodi from what, what the living is about here, what the climate is about, what, what’s to do here. testimonies from business owners who were doing business in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they came over to Lodi and started or renewed their business and what has been their experience and so it’s it’s been catching on slowly but good. We have one of the fastest growing businesses the fastest. Certainly the fastest growing business in Lodi, and one from Sunnyvale is a business called Cepheus. Their molecular diagnostic company that bought out a supplier here that supplied them with a key product. And long story short, they bought that company 38 employees today they’re at 750. Next year, there’ll be a 2500. Wow, molecular diagnostic and healthcare right now is head of premium. They went from one small building to now four very large buildings and made the made the step to bring their research and development over here. So that’s huge for a small town. And so they’re growing in Lodi, and we’re using them as sort of a bell cow to bring other people over, because they’ve had some great success here. And they’re big proponents, they love it here. And so there’s room for more. And so that grow in Lodi, today’s Board is saying okay, what’s next? We really liked what vision 2020 did. How about a vision 2030 And I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. I agree more. And so we’re, we’re in the very early planning stages of that. I’ve got an excited board. And that is so key to any success that a chamber executive at a chamber could have is to get the right people on the bus and sitting in the right seat. That’s right. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 29:01
And I think a big part of that is these bats he talked about that’s putting the right people in the right seats that are excited and know about what the opportunities are in these different segments that are specific and relevant to Lodi you know, in our conversation but you get get those people in the right seats, they are able to create that vision, bring it back together create the synergy it’s just it’s a great model that you guys have gone through and and you’ve done well explaining it to because I can see all the different intricacies you know that have gone into this.

Pat Patrick 29:36
Right. Yeah, and some of the serendipities are the real the relationships that form you know, because here’s the school district in their silo so to speak, you know, fighting the battles that they fight working every day hard, everybody’s busy. And then here’s city government over here and they’re doing their thing and then here’s, you know, health care over here. They’re doing their thing. And here’s the Chamber of Commerce trying to help everybody out in all directions. And so, hey, what if we all got into the same silo? Right? Instead of all working, so, you know, making time to align ourselves with each other over the big community, the things that are really driving to unity, and, and their little rolling, or their big rolling and working together. And that is, that has been great. And I think that’s really one of the things that is, in the My current board about wanting to, hey, let’s do that vision. 2030. Right, because we know we’re not where we want to be yet. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:49
So as we start wrapping things up here, I wanted to ask you, for the listeners, what would be maybe a tip or an action item that you would encourage them to do to help, you know, elevate their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Pat Patrick 31:03
Yeah. Well, I mentioned reading, it’s a funny thing, you know, you’re gonna watch a video or you can listen to something of book on tape or something. Yeah. And they’re great. But, you know, set a goal, if you’re a leader, set a goal to read a book a month. And usually books around 200 pages long. And so that’s like 10 pages a night, put up a nightstand, and then go to sleep 10 pages, you know, but pick the book, and ask some of the ask some of the CEOs that you look up to for some both times that can help that can help a person out in their leadership role, their community role there, you know, the, the Chamber of Commerce, there’s some great ones out there. One of them’s called Make it Happen. That was one of the first ones that I got. And what happens When the Boomers Bail was very intellectually about the changing indite. In the demographics as the seniors, the baby boomers move out of the work force, and the millennials coming in the changes, you know, dramatic. So it changes you, it makes you smarter, and it also touches something inside you. Chamber executives have, I think, the best job in the community, they really do. Yeah, because you’re working for some great people, working for all the different businesses in your community that create the jobs and those employees, buy homes, make loans through the bank, create property tax, create sales tax, and it makes the community go around. I really believe really truly and believe that you don’t see a good community without a very robust active business community. Face it, we make the we make the community work. If you can get it better for business, you’ll get it better for the community

Brandon Burton 33:31
very too. And I appreciate you sharing those, those book references too. So we’ll have those in the show notes that people can look up and if they wanted to check out one of those books make it happen or what happens in the boomers Dale and you mentioned earlier the Coming Jobs War as well. So good options.

Pat Patrick 33:50
Those are just three. Yeah, if anybody wants to get in contact with me or you can go to the to the chamber website, Lodi chamber comm click on grow in Lodi, and you’ll see just a little introduction to vision 2020. Not the whole thing. But I could supply them with other information. Somebody wants to go further. I knew, I know, chambers do a lot of community type plans. But I never came across one that was an economic look forward. Because that really gets to the heart of so many issues. It does.

Brandon Burton 34:29
Right And speaking of looking forward as we look forward to the future of chambers of commerce in general. And how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Pat Patrick 34:40
We only become more and more important in the information age if we still refer to ourselves as being in the information age. There’s so much out there. And we know that a lot of it can’t be trusted, or it’s always going to have a leftward spin or around With spin, where is where’s truth? Versus truth? A chamber is not Republican, it’s not Democrat. It’s not red, it’s not blue. It’s, it’s it’s the community. It’s about the future. That’s where That’s where a chamber is roll is. And it, it creates opportunity did, I think a podcast from chambers, um, we we started down that path. But then the board sort of took us in a new way. And so I’ve got all the equipment that I’m working because I think, to be the same middle, right, the same middle, on on community issues, you’re gonna tackle probably anything that’s happening in Washington, DC, or, in my case, even Sacramento, as low as a small community, but in that community, you know, if your newspapers are going out, or they’re getting thinner, now’s a good time to start, I think, bringing two people together, like point counterpoint. Yeah. And and do it very respectful of each other. And do it with information, not necessarily what your opinion is, but what you know, to be the facts on this issue, and the other person who may be and have an intellectual conversation. And I think that can be very, very valuable. And it they, I don’t know where it would go. But I think it would go in ways start on the business platform approach. But I think it could go very deeper into things like homelessness as I can. Yeah, every community’s got that challenge. And, hey, there’s the smartest people I know, are business owners, right? Very successful business owners. What do they think? How can they think out of the box, and help the community get a program?

Brandon Burton 37:11
I love that if if the purpose of a chamber is to help build stronger communities, you need to be that go to resource of trusted information, that’s that sane center to be able to bring both sides together and really get behind issues to drive progress forward. So I think you hit the nail on the head

Pat Patrick 37:29
is that we call ourselves a three C chamber. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before. Yeah, yeah. A catalyst for business growth, a convener of leaders and influencers, for positive change, but always to be seen as a champion for the community, three C’s catalyst, convener, and champion.

Brandon Burton 37:50
That’s, that’s why I call my audience chamber champions, you know, they that’s one of the essays to draw him in.

Pat Patrick 38:00
And that’s what they need to try to ascribe themselves to the film. Yes.

Brandon Burton 38:05
Well, Pat, before we go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put any contact information out there for listeners who may want to connect with you and learn more about your vision 2020 and going about creating a vision of their own their chamber, what would be the best way to reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Pat Patrick

Pat Patrick 38:24
Well, I can be reached at PPatrick@LodiChamber.com. And the old fashioned way on a telephone for my direct line is 209-365-4604.

Brandon Burton 38:45
Which is perfect. And I will get that in our show notes for this episode as well. So we’ve got a lot of good stuff in there. We got some book recommendations, we’ve got pets contact info, a pitcher Tucker, hopefully we’ll get in there as well. So go to chamberchatpodcast.com/episode158. And, Pat, it’s been a pleasure having you on here. I really appreciate you carving out some time to visit with me and to talk about this important work that chambers across our country are doing and you guys are doing a great job there in Lodi.

Pat Patrick 39:18
Thank you. Thank you, sir. Enjoy.

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Introduction

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.

And now your host. He’s a fan of Bitcoin. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the chamber chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Gina Suydam . She’s the president of the Wyoming County Chamber of Commerce in Pennsylvania, where she works with a variety of businesses in rural Northeast Pennsylvania. Gina believes a strong community leads to better quality of life for residents of Wyoming County and the surrounding endless mountains region. Over the past eight years in her position, she’s facilitated the development of natural gas utility service to the white Wyoming County Seat of Tunkhannock. Working with the county commissioners and Borough Council chamber board of directors GUI Utilities and Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation. Gina encouraged public private partnerships, securing $2 million in grant funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development to launch this development and bring natural gas service to residents and businesses in Tunkhannock. Currently, Gina is collaborating with several other Wyoming County organizations on a community heart and soul Initiative, a humanities based approach to community planning sponsored in part by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Gina facilitates leadership Wyoming Regional Leadership Program, which she implemented to develop to develop a more complete awareness of Wyoming County’s industries amongst local professionals. In 2021 22, Gina will lead new initiatives to engage youth with local workforce and structure an Economic Development Council to identify sites for potential development.

Gina, I’m thrilled to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. And if you would just 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 bit better.

Something Interesting About Gina

Gina Suydam 3:12
Sure. Well, hello, Brandon. And thank you for having me on the show. And thank you to all of our chamber champions out there. I’d said it’s great to be here with you today and great to talk with you after we’ve had such a crazy past, you know, two years in the in the chamber world than in the business world in general. But it’s great to be here today. Something interesting about myself. So I was born and raised in Wyoming County. And I grew up on a very small dairy farm. So I come from, you know, kind of very humble rural beginnings. And being here as a part of our chamber now seeing industry kind of take off here in our area has been really exciting for me. When I grew up in our town, there was really nothing to do right now. I have three teenagers who tell me there’s nothing to do here and I just shake my head.

Brandon Burton 4:09
You only knew and I was a kid. Yeah.

Gina Suydam 4:13
You feel like it really all they say back when?

Brandon Burton 4:16
That’s right. No, that is something special, though, to be able to work at the chamber where you grew up, and then that’s your community. So that’s a rarity to see that in the chamber industry. So that is pretty neat. Yeah. So share with us a little bit more about your chamber kind of size, scope, first staff budget, that sort of thing, just so we can kind of get into our discussion.

About the Wyoming County Chamber

Gina Suydam 4:44
Sure. So our chamber is a county wide chamber. We are the only chamber in our county. Our county total population is about 27,000. So our chamber remains small. Were at about 300 60 Members, we have a three, two full time staff and a part time staff person. And then our budget is roughly about 250,000. But I’m going to talk about some interesting things today that will allow me to have about a $350,000. budget next year. Right. So it’s a we’re very excited about the movement and things that we’re doing here in Wyoming County to help grow our community. But again, I think that size right doesn’t matter in you know, in the chamber industry. Thank you. You can do great things for your community, but it’s all in perspective. And it and that’s that’s what it’s about.

Brandon Burton 5:51
That’s right. And I’m hoping everybody’s ears perked up when you talked about budget going from 250 to what you have going on? It’s going to take it to 350. And percentage wise, that is huge. So I mean, as you scale that for chamber who may be larger, you scale that up to your size, I mean, tune in, you know?

Gina Suydam 6:12
Yes, exactly.

Brandon Burton 6:14
So our topic for discussion today we’re going to talk about partnerships with nonprofits, and how that plays into your budget like you kind of alluded to, but we’ll get into this discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Non-Profit Partnerships

All right, Gina, we are back. So as we talk about nonprofit partnerships, why don’t we just start by having you share what you’re currently involved with and things that you’re doing there at the Wyoming County Chamber in this room?

Gina Suydam 8:58
Sure. So back in 2019, kind of you know, the pre COVID world, I was approached by the Wyoming County Community Alliance, which was a small nonprofit that received some funding from our local United Way. They received about $10,000 A year from United Way and they really only ran one program and focused on students and kind of helping students to engage in activities. Great program, and I was really excited about it. But really, why they asked me to get involved was they were their 501 C three was kind of in jeopardy. They were they were at a place where they didn’t have a strong board of directors and they didn’t really have a strong vision for the future of their organization. So they asked me to come in and do some strategic planning initiatives with them. And fortunately for me, one of my chamber board members also sat on their board. And he said, I think this is a real opportunity for chamber, because we had been talking about getting our own 501 C three, as many chambers are right now. And he said, I think this is an exciting opportunity for us to partner with his 501 C three, get a lot of our things accomplished that we want to accomplish, but still have that 501 C three, a little bit at arm’s length. And so that’s how that started for us. Right. And And now we’ll get into I think some of the the bigger things that we’re able to accomplish with with that partnership.

Brandon Burton 10:46
Yeah. So as you work that partnership, what is the scope with what this nonprofit? So, so the Wyoming County Community Alliance? What is it that they were doing? And then in partnering with them, what was the chamber able to add and bring to the table to help further the mission and vision of the chamber as well?

Gina Suydam 11:09
Sure. So in in 2019, when I got involved, we were looking at creating the Alliance to be an organization that would really help other nonprofits in our community to grow. In the chamber world, we spent a lot of time focusing on our businesses. And there’s this the sector of nonprofits who, at least for my chamber, I didn’t feel were getting enough attention from us, right. They they wanted or needed, you know, training on how to do proper fundraising and those things. So that was our vision going into 2020 is that we would start setting up some trainings and helping other nonprofits. And the mission, let me just back that up a little bit. The mission of the Wyoming County Community Alliance is to create a healthy community. Right? So it was very

Brandon Burton 12:04
vague, it was like a chamber kind of

Gina Suydam 12:06
which was perfect, right? To get us, you know, to get that chamber and the Alliance melded together, it was it was perfect for us. So when 2020 started, you know, we were you know, we were kind of in that mode of, alright, let’s get some of these trainings scheduled that we talked about. And then as we all know, the world came to a screeching halt. And in March, and by about April, one of my fellow board members on the Alliance said to me, Hey, do you think that that the alliance could run a Food Distribution Program? Because we are, you know, as in many communities, food resources became very scarce? And I said, Sure, the alliance can do that. Right? Because we had the ability to filter in money as we were doing through the United Way with this other student project. So we started a Food Distribution Program. And then we went on and then throughout COVID, other organizations approached us the local four H group approached us and said, Hey, for he has kind of shut us off for the year, right, shut our funding off for the year, but we have students in our agriculture program that have raised livestock, and they normally sell them at the county fair. Well, there is no county fair this year. But these students have $800, you know, cows and pigs that they still need to sell, because what happens is they sell the pigs, they get scholarship funding, and then those, then they use that scholarship funding to buy their animal for next year. And eventually they use that money to go off to college. So these kids are they’re entrepreneurs, right? These are the kids we want to invest in now. So they said, Do you think the alliance could help this livestock group, this Wyoming County livestock group and be our pass through for the the auction of our animals and then pass through the money to the students of scholarship funding? And I said, Well, sure. We could do that. Right. You know, again, much like chambers where? Yes, yes, we can do that. Yes, we can help right, let’s figure out a way. So by the by the end of 2020, the Alliance had also run a restaurant workers relief program where we funneled money out to our restaurant workers who, in the state of Pennsylvania, all the restaurants were shut down about three weeks before Christmas. So we had, you know, lots of moms without jobs, three weeks before Christmas, and they were feeling a little a little down on their luck. We were able to give, we were able to give 40 families $500 In a very short timeframe just again get getting this money and kind of leveraging the chambers

in the chamber name in the community and saying we’re partnering on this, we believe in this organization, this is a good cause. This is a, this is an organization that you can give to safely and the money is going where we say it’s going, right. So we did all of those things very quickly, in 2020, which was great, because we then got that notoriety of the partnership between the chamber and the Alliance. And now going into 2021, we were able to step up our game. And we have gotten $170,000. For the projects that you talked about, in my introduction, the student engagement, we’re continuing a Food Distribution Program, realizing that transportation is a big issue for a lot of our families and in our rural area, and then, again, with economic and community engagement. So the chamber is going to run those programs. But the funding for those programs was donated by a chamber member through a tax credit program that is offered here in the state of Pennsylvania. So I’d encourage you all out there and chamber world to kind of look at those programs in your prospective states to see if there’s anything like that I think I was Googling the other day think Missouri has a similar program. And I know a few others came up. But it’s in our community anyway. In Pennsylvania, it’s called the neighborhood Assistance Program. Okay. And it allows for corporations to receive tax credits for their donations. So my $170,000 of donations was just leveraged by those companies receiving 75% Tax Credit. On that donation

Brandon Burton 17:15
makes it easier. Yeah,

Gina Suydam 17:16
yes. So so the asked is really right, so much easier when you’re saying all this money. One is staying with a trusted entity, right here in our local community, all of your dollars are going to an organization that you believed in for years. Right. And it’s, it’s just been, it’s been an incredible process for me to see, you know, of course, how you apply for state funding is, you know, as anyone who’s ever applied for state funding, I’ll tell you, it’s a little tricky, right. So that process of applying for the state funding was very eye opening, and then kind of walking through those other pieces. And you know, now we’re at the point where we’ve received the donations, and now we’re going to begin implementing the projects.

Brandon Burton 18:05
So do you know about how long the state tax credit program has been available?

Gina Suydam 18:11
I don’t, um, it’s an annual program here in Pennsylvania. So you have to apply annually for those tax credits, and you have to, you know, find your own donors. But it’s much like the education tax credits. It Well, it’s similar but different, right? As, you know, as many states do, they create these similar programs, but put their own little nuance, to make it you know, to make it a little little more difficult for everyone to understand. But it’s definitely a program I think, worth worth looking into. Because as I recruited, you know, I recruit my own donors. So that’s what makes it different than the education tax credits, his education, tax credits all go into one pot. You know, someone else is working to recruit those donors and get that money in the door, where this is, I’m recruiting my own donors. And that was a very valuable thing for me. And you told me before the recording got started that that Kyle Sexton had recommended that you talk to me, and I just want to share this little chamber story because many of us know Kyle and I was out with Kyle when I had my my tear dues, right our chamber moved to tear dues, and we’re having those meetings and I met with a gentleman in our community, who’s been a chamber supporter for a long time owns many businesses. And we walked out of the meeting and I had gotten my big win from him. I’d got my big yes pile, you know, pat me on the back and he was all excited for me. And then he turned to me. And we got the car and he said, save that guy’s phone number, right. Put his card in your back pocket for the big ass because he is your go to. He’s the guy when you want something big. He’s going to be at the table giving it to you And sure enough, he funded $150,000 of my $170,000 project. Wow. So, so thank you to Kyle. Right. Yeah. For giving me the the encouragement. Right that I could ask that big. And pointing out who to go to when your site? Yeah, right. Yeah. So that was that was really exciting for me. So I’ll share that with you that, that maybe that’s why Kyle connected. That

Brandon Burton 20:32
is me. Yeah. Yeah. So what’s coming to my mind is, I mean, you’re having some great partnerships, it seemed to align very well with the Chamber’s mission. I know most chambers are not sitting around saying what else can we do? You know? So how do you? How do you manage it as you as you run these additional programs, these partnerships with nonprofits? As far as bandwidth goes, they’re in your office, your staff, versus with the nonprofits that you partner with? How much of it is on your shoulders? How much of it is on on their side? And how does how did those relationships look?

Gina Suydam 21:15
Sure. So I think every, every, you know, relationship is going to look a little different. For us, the alliance has no paid staff. Right. So the staffing part does fall on our chamber. But that’s, again, where the where the financial relationship comes in. So the alliance has hired us contracted with us to do that work for them, therefore, enabling me to hire another person, right to bring in and then I do hope to bring in another person this year on our team, who will help us facilitate this. But I want to step back a little bit, because you said, you said a little bit that right, creating more for me to do, all of these things are something that most chambers are already doing, or are feeling like I wish I could write, I didn’t take on anything that I didn’t think we should be doing, maybe with the maybe with the exception of our Food Distribution Program, which was really just a wild lead for our community. But that is 100%, volunteer driven, right, we have, you know, my staff time on that is, is pretty limited right now. But everything else, our student engagement will eventually turn into, you know, workforce awareness here. And that’s something chambers are doing our economic and community development. I mean, if you’re not at at those tables in your communities, you need to find a way to be and for us having the money, right is is a way for us to call the right people to the table. And I think that was really important for us to, to kind of step up. So now my county commissioners are paying a little more attention when I say, hey, we need to do this in the way of economic development, because I can leverage and I can leverage now, a lot of funding that they have, right? So they’ve already come to me and said, what else do you need? Right? We have some funding, what else do you need? Right? So that that makes it interesting, it’s it’s very much turned to the turn the chapter for me, to put us I think, to leverage our chamber, where we should be in a in a role of community leadership.

Brandon Burton 23:40
There’s that lesson from Kyle, again, if seeing a couple steps ahead. And you know, being strategic with how you do these partnerships to, to build to have that leverage going forward and to develop more meaningful programs, even in the future that kind of sprout out of these things that you’re doing now. So I think that’s a very important distinction that you pointed out. And just a lot of times we look to simplify joblessness, to add to it, but every year, right, everything you’re doing is adding to the greater mission of the chamber and where you want to be, you know, a few years down the road. So I think that’s very good. I’d like to ask if there’s any maybe tip or action item, that a chamber listening maybe based on our discussion, maybe not something they can take to help elevate their chamber up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Gina Suydam 24:38
So I think my my advice in that space, right is to make sure that your board as I said, again, it was my board member who came to me with the Alliance and said, you know, hey, we can help them and I think in turn, they will help us Right. And if he if he didn’t know what I was looking for. And many of you may be saying, well, my board isn’t that engaged or my board doesn’t really understand the picture. I didn’t think my board did either. Right. But it’s those one or two little nuggets of people that, that they’re listening, right? They’re listening. And when the bulb lights up for them, they will take action. Right? And, and sometimes, right? Sometimes it’s, it’s those off the wall ideas that are going to bring the big dollars to you, right? It’s those, hey, let’s, let’s build a strategic plan for this other organization that that is essentially falling apart. Right? Let’s, let’s help them with their strategic plan and figure out how we can partner and I’m thinking great, here’s one more thing on my plate, right? And then I stopped and said, let me look at the big picture this, let me really see how down the road, we can really become a powerhouse. And I think that that’s what has happened.

Brandon Burton 26:09
But there was something else that you had mentioned early in our discussion about that about going into 2020 wanting to do some of these trainings for other nonprofits in the community. And I think some chambers would look at that as competition, you know, why are you going to go and get the competition, the tips to be able to get those resources that you’re after to in your community? But you obviously don’t see it that way. And that in, and I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it either, is competition because it’s all for building the community. And if you can align some of those same missions and visions together to further the cause of the community. I think that’s right on what you’re doing. I don’t know if you have anything more you wanted to add to that. I meant to ask you about it earlier as a follow up, but as far as looking at other nonprofits is competition.

Gina Suydam 26:59
Yeah, I, you know, I’ve never, you know, for me, I started in the nonprofit world, right? I started with places like the American Cancer Society, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. So I have a strong fundraising background. And for me, when I look at other nonprofits in our community, I really look at Yeah, maybe, you know, maybe they are asking for funding, but they’re asking for funding for their cause. And where and and there’s enough, you know, funding, if you will, you know, to kind of go around. And I think that when we do start creating that community over competition, right, that that that community space, where we’re all working together. You know, I think that that joints that unity really raises, you know, raises everyone up.

Brandon Burton 27:57
Have you seen from the other perspective, as you go to some of these nonprofits? Do they view the chamber at all, as any competition? Have you experienced?

Gina Suydam 28:06
Um, no, I don’t think they do. I think they understand, you know, what our role is, and, and the role we can play in helping them. So there are many nonprofits who who come to me who come to the alliance and say, you know, hey, I’m struggling to get funding in x area, right, or I don’t understand how I can apply for this grant. Right. And then, you know, we help them in that space. Because again, I think a lot of times that funding is funding, I’m not going to get right that funding is specific to Veterans Services, or, you know, library education or funding, you know, it’s not, it’s not funding for me, and I think, again, creating that, that better community for all takes our chamber and takes our community to the next level.

Brandon Burton 29:02
Yeah, I would agree. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? Well,

Future of Chambers

Gina Suydam 29:13
I again, I think, and I think ACC he says says this, The best is that, you know, chambers are really poised right now, right to be that, that center space that everyone can come to the table and realize that, that the future is about, about growth, that the future is about coming together and uniting and bringing our community forward. And that’s really where I see chambers. I think we need to continue to have an open mind and I think we need to continue to to grow and encourage our members at every level. All right to participate and allow their voices to be heard.

Brandon Burton 30:06
I love that. And I think you’re so right. ACC is right about being that that same center. When you look at a community, if you’ve got that division, you know, the polar opposites, all that does is pull your community apart. So how can you pull people together be that that center, that meeting place that table where you can bring together both sides, it’s so key to building a strong community. The Gina I wanted to give you the opportunity to share any contact information for people who are listening, who might want to reach out and connect with you maybe learn more about how you went about creating these partnerships, how you got the right board people on your board to to help do this, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Gina Suydam

Gina Suydam 30:52
So I’m, you know, pretty accessible, right? So my email address is gina@wyccc.com. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook, I’ve connected with a lot of chambers. I’m also on Twitter, I don’t use it very often, but I am there. So I’ve connected with chambers and colleagues from all across the country. And I really truly enjoy it. My I’m in my second year, I just finished my second year of IOM. I try to attend ACC conference when I can. So I’ve met a lot of chamber colleagues and I’m always happy to connect and encourage each other because they do again, I do really think it’s about that collaboration.

Brandon Burton 31:39
Absolutely. Well, I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, which can be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode157. But Gina, I enjoyed visiting with you, you guys are doing some neat things there, the Wyoming County Chamber and and I think this idea of partnerships and really just having a model for someone to follow and, and be able to do their own R&D and see how they can apply this back to their community. So thank you for sharing all this with us today.

Gina Suydam 32:11
All Thank you, Brandon for having me on the show.

Chamber Financials with Lindsay Frilling

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Lindsay Frilling. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

And now, your host he thinks this is not a fun time to purchase a used car. He’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello chamber champions.

Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for today is Lindsay Frilling. Lindsay serves as the CEO for the Obion County Joint Economic Development Corporation which includes the Obion County Chamber of Commerce, and Obion County and Industrial Development Corporation. Lindsay joined the OCJEDC in 2009. Prior to joining the OCJEDC, that’s a mouthful. Lindsay was the director of marketing and special events for the Boys and Girls Club of Northwest Tennessee in Union County, and is also the former customer service supervisor for Midwest CBK. Lindsay holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems from the University of Tennessee at Martin and a Master of Business Administration from UTM. Lindsay is a graduate of Tennessee chamber Institute and US Chamber Institute organization management and earned her certified economic developer designation from the International Economic Development Council. As an active member of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce executives, Tennessee economic partnership, and Tennessee Economic Development Council. Lindsay currently serves on the board of directors of for all three organizations and was chosen for the 2016 s EDC Chairman’s Award. Lindsay is a past president of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce executives and served on the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry board of directors. In 2015. She was named as one of West Tennessee’s up and coming top 40 under 40. Lindsay is a proud mother of two children alley, Kate and Houston.

Lindsay, I’m excited to have you with me today. You’re on Chamber Chat Podcast. And 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 we can all get to know you a little better.

Something Interesting About Lindsay

Lindsay Frilling 3:19
Well, thanks, Brandon. I’m excited to be here today. Um, the all the exciting things you said, have a degree in it, which just kind of makes me a nerd. I guess my two kids. The fun fact about them is they’re nine years apart, really not sure why I decided to wait almost a decade. But it’s a fun ride. One went to high school and one went to preschool this year. So you know, life. Life is interesting to say the least. But you know, being in the chamber world, they are the reason I do what I do every day. So it makes life even better knowing that I’m helping to create a community in an environment that if they choose to live here, when they are old enough, then they can find a job and have a good quality of life.

Brandon Burton 4:06
Absolutely helping to build that future for the rising generation. I love it. The good news is they’re both in school now. So that’s awesome.

Lindsay Frilling 4:16
Yes, yes.

Brandon Burton 4:19
Well, share with us a little bit more about the your, your organization there kind of the size, scope, staff budget, those kinds of things to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

About the Obion County Joint Economic Development Corporation

Lindsay Frilling 4:31
Well, I’ll just say we’re in Union City. We’re in the very northwest corner of the state of Tennessee, so I’m located on the Kentucky border, almost to the Mississippi River to the Missouri Bootheel. Just to give people frame of reference, I’ll say Northwestern say they say Knoxville I’m like no West northeast, so I’m probably closer to Dallas, Texas than I am Knoxville. So two hours north of Memphis three hours west of Nashville. Three and a half hour south of St. Louis. So that kind of gives you an idea of where we’re located. Pretty much all of the Northwest Tennessee area is considered rural area. I’m about an hour from Jackson, Tennessee, and an hour from Paducah, Kentucky. So that would be your, your closest metropolitan ish areas near us. Um, my county that we serve, has a population of around 30,000. And we have myself and one other full time staff member, I have a part time staff person and currently have an intern from the University of Tennessee at Martin so to full time to part time right now. Our budget will run anywhere from 400 to $500,000 a year, we collect dues as we are a Chamber of Commerce in an Economic Development and Tourism Organization or our income comes in the form of membership dues from Chamber members, industrial members and hotel tax collections, which is really what keeps the doors open. As many of you know, memberships just really don’t give you enough money to have a good operating budget.

Brandon Burton 6:18
So that does set the table. Well, especially for our topic of discussion today being focused more around chamber financials and kind of what does it take to keep those doors open and the lights on in your office. And we will get into this discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Chamber Financials

Alright, Lindsay, we are back. So as we get into the topic today of chamber financials, I wanted to discuss this topic, specifically because we’re this time in chamber world, it seems like there’s been quite a bit of turnover with people retiring or go into the private sector. So we have a lot of new executives that are entering the chamber world space and trying to get their heads wrapped around. Yeah, the management of the office, the Chamber financials is a big, important part of that. So it’s hoping to just have a discussion around chamber financials, I know you’ve, you’ve seen kind of, you know, different ends of the spectrum when it comes to chamber financials. But I’m hoping we can get into maybe some best practices and things for these newer chamber executives to think about as they go about their budget and, and where to spend money. So maybe just as a starter, as you’re trying to get your head wrapped around what we talked about today. I know you had some reflections on on previous times. What are what’s maybe a couple lessons that you’ve learned when it comes to managing chamber financials?

Lindsay Frilling 9:12
Well, me personally, a treat it as if it’s my own money. And my first question is what I spend this if it was my money. And then the second question is, you know, obviously would would the board approve of this? And third, would it benefit my members? So first, those are just basics. You know? Unfortunately, I’ve served on boards over the years with very, very intelligent people, business people, business owners, and we get into a room and we’ll be making financial decisions for whatever organization it is, and they they make decisions and I’m thinking would you do this in your business? Would you do this with your own money? And I’m thinking No, you wouldn’t because you wouldn’t be as wealthy as you are, if you did so. I try to keep Have everything in the frame of reference of what I do it for myself, and would my members appreciate this spin or this purchase? Or, you know, whatever it is just keeping that first and foremost in whatever decision it is that’s made about money. Because I mean, as you probably have heard, involve your podcast, not many people wake up, grow up and say, oh, I want to be a chamber executive when I grew up, I mean, because most people don’t still know what a Chamber of Commerce is. So I kind of bounced around and landed into this job. And then the next thing I know, they were like, well, here are you do you do QuickBooks take care of that for us write the checks. And, and I got into it. And, of course, I fortunately had a business degree. So I knew how to read financials, I guess the first thing is, is if you don’t know how to read a profit and loss statement, or a balance sheet, go take a class, go sit down with somebody, ask somebody to help you understand those basics. I’m not to insult anybody. But you know, you’ve got to be able to know what’s coming in what’s going out and where it’s going. And then I started doing some projections as I got to look at these numbers, because I realized quickly that way more was going out and what was coming in on a monthly basis. And I finally said, Hey, by this month, six months down the road, like we’re gonna be negative, this chart is going down, up. So I was, you know, I was freaked out. I was like, I want to have a job in six months. So what are we going to do? And so that worked itself out eventually. But in the meantime, I spent the next several years just, I mean, basically saving money pinching pennies, and trying not to spend money unless it was absolutely necessary while still providing the services to our members.

Brandon Burton 11:58
So this question, maybe, kind of basic, but you had mentioned earlier on about, yeah, they’re at your organization, you have chamber work, you have Economic Development and Tourism. So you’re getting income from those different areas. And not every chamber is set up the same way. Some are just doing chamber work. Some will have an economic development contract, and some will focus more on tourism, but you’re, you know, blessed enough, if that’s the word you want to use. Three. But there are different revenue sources. So when you’re looking at projections, and you’re seeing, you know, the expenses going up, and the income, not keeping up with the expenses, besides cutting expenses, which obviously, that’s something to be looked at. What do you do as far as revenue generation? Are there maybe some thoughts around non dues revenue that a newer chamber executive maybe should consider and contemplate doing?

Lindsay Frilling 13:04
Well, I guess the first thing is, is look at what’s already being done in your chamber. And if it’s not making money, you need to get rid of it, or you need to change it, period. We don’t just because we’re called a quote, unquote, nonprofit, that’s for one day of the year, that’s when we file taxes. That’s the only day that the nonprofit status means anything. We are the voice of business as that we are the largest business in the community, we must operate like a business, everything we do must generate revenue. And that sounds very selfish, but to your question to answer that, if you’re doing things and it’s not making money, it’s not benefiting you. It’s not benefiting your members, because you’re not operating at a sustainable level. With that said, Do you offer complimentary things to your members? Absolutely. But you know, say free, you know, you know, go out and promote as oh, we’re doing this as a as a goodwill for the community. Because you can do that you can do it as an isolated event or something that you know, wraps around something else. But in the long term, whatever it is, whether you host a golf tournament, even your annual banquet, like you don’t need to lose money on those events. And the first thing you’ve got to do is make sure your board members understand that because I tell people all the time, you know, you all as the board, own this organization, I’m the hired help to make sure that I run it the way that you want it ran. So you know, you got to have those hard conversations, but if they’re on the board, that means they’re more vested in the organization than just your average member anyway, so you lean on them to lead the charge. Let them be the first ones to offer up a sponsorship or whatever it may be. Just start the generation of revenue or whatever the event is, or just a capital campaign.

Brandon Burton 15:05
And so you had mentioned, kind of the criteria that you look at the money can be treated as your own money, get to make sure the board approves the spending of the money, and does it help the members. So as you have these discussions with a board, whether it’s you or chamber executive listening, looking to have a conversation, one of these tough conversations, any any advice on how to help them navigate, kind of the difficult conversation that may come up from time to time,

Lindsay Frilling 15:38
um, you it, find a mentor, find somebody to have this conversation with first, somebody else, probably best to find somebody geographically located near you. Because in this area where we live, our county mayors talk to the next county mayor or the next city mayor or the next elected official or the next board chair, like they’re always talking. So you know, the best thing to do is find out what’s happening around you figure out how they have the conversations, figure out how money is spent, how boards operate, I mean, and and I say it all the time chambers are like fruit, but we’re all different fruit, apples, or just bananas, because every chamber operates differently because your chamber has to operate to fit your community. And just because your community sits next door to another one, doesn’t mean you’re going to have the same needs. And I mean, we’re we have a huge tourism draw, we have Discovery Park of America and Reelfoot Lake. And then you know, the next community down may not have those assets. So we have to tailor our programs and services to fit the community. So find somebody close to you, but also find somebody similar to you another chamber or chamber Exec. I’m a firm believer in mentorship and ask questions, ask questions, ask questions, because you know, r&d in this world is rip off and duplicate what’s working over there, and you think it’s gonna work for you scale it up, scale it down, put it in place, give it a try. And you know, find a champion, find a champion for your chamber, find a personal champion for you, and have that volunteer by your side. Because, you know, the first role of the chamber world is keep a volunteer between you in the issue. And that issue is always money, whether it’s a positive issue or a negative issue, it’s always an issue. So, you know, find somebody close that you can keep as your champion, whether it be your current president or somebody else on the board, but you’ve got to have a mentor, you’ve got to have a volunteer, you got to have people around you because you cannot do this work on your own.

Brandon Burton 17:58
Absolutely. I love that. That advice of having a mentor specifically someone within your region because your state your region, it’s going to vary from you know, a chamber in California to a chamber in Maine is going to be very different. So find out some of those best practices in your area. One thing I wanted to ask you about as as far as like income to expense, during the COVID pandemic, we realized how important it was for a chamber to have reserves. You know, when when PvP loans are going out and and chamber most chambers didn’t qualify? How do you look at income versus income to expense and specifically, setting aside reserves that kind of that rainy day fund?

Lindsay Frilling 18:45
Well, as I said, I’ve served on a lot of boards and different capacities in generally, the best practice that we aim for, is keep a reserve of half of an annual costs. So whatever your annual budget is, have your goal is to set aside half of that. Now, Is that realistic for everybody? Absolutely not. But, you know, it gives you six months of time should something, you know, catastrophic occur. So that’s just generally what I have seen. Again, that number could fluctuate up and down, depending on the type of organization you have. But, you know, people want to tell you three months, but in reality, how quickly does three months go by when you’re in the middle of a crisis? I mean, six is going to go pretty quickly, but at least you’ve got double that amount of time, if you can, if you can aim to, you know, put back at least half of your operating budget for the year.

Brandon Burton 19:50
Yeah, I think for me, it goes back to treating it as your own money. So if you look at your own personal finances, right, the recommendation is save for a rainy day right? If If you were to go unemployed for some period of time, maybe it’s ideally and I hear different numbers. But you know, some people will say try to have a year’s worth of savings. And that’s not feasible when you’re just starting, right? If you’re starting from zero, but you build up to it, right. So whether it’s a percentage each, each month that you’re putting aside or whatever, you got to start somewhere

Lindsay Frilling 20:24
in savings should be a part of your budget, just with your business, just as it should be with your personal income. And as you said, I would much rather have six months of my personal expenses than three, but if I’m going to go to six, you know what, I’m going to go to 12, I’m going to get there. So nothing’s to keep you from raising the bar, once you hit that 50% to just keep on going, you know, and putting it into investing it, you know, letting it make money for you. So that, you know, down the road, your chamber is sustainable, and you don’t have to go through the struggles of you know, where we’re going to get our next meal. I mean, you know, that’s reality for a lot of chambers. But it doesn’t have to be if you know, you try to put all of these puzzle pieces together. I mean, it’s not going to happen quickly. I’ve been at this 12 years. And I will say that it probably hasn’t been until the last two to three years that I’ve actually felt comfortable about our finances.

Brandon Burton 21:26
Wow, that says a lot what these last two to three years have been. So yeah, well, let’s say if you could tell us a little bit more about that. He’s the had mentioned about investing those reserves. Just for, say a new executive, is that something a chamber can do? What options are there? Who should they talk to what what would be your thoughts?

Lindsay Frilling 21:50
We have in the past, we’ve had CDs, we’ve had that money put into CDs at certain rates, we’ve had it small CDs, large CDs, we’ve had different funding financial funds. With that, I mean, again, that’s going to go back to your chamber your board. Right now, my board chairman is a CPA, so I pretty well have a sweet deal going on when it comes to that. So he’s very helpful. But again, in within your community, reach out, utilize those resources, utilize those members that you have asked for a meeting and go ask that question, say, would you even if they’re not on your board, would you be willing to sit down and look at this budget with me? And help me go through this? Give me your thoughts, because you know, they’re the experts. Chamber execs are generalist, we know, we know a whole lot about a lot of things. But we’re not necessarily experts in any one thing. And generally not financials we need to be I mean, I’ve made it a goal over the years for that to be my forte, I want to know everything about my budget inside and out. But I didn’t come into it that way. I’ve just learned and asked questions. And, you know, being almost broke at one time, helped me get there a lot more quickly than most people. But my I definitely, definitely recommend contacting your local members and just asking for 30 minutes of their time to sit down and say, Hey, what do we do? How do we look? And if we wanted to get to X amount of savings, then what what can we do with it because you know, what we do in the chamber world is manage expectations every day. And if we can set that goal and cast that vision of, hey, we want to have this amount of income each month, we want to save this much each month, we want to get to this much in savings. And then once we get there, we want to put it in invest it here or put it over here and let this money make money for us.

Brandon Burton 24:03
I think that is a wise piece of advice. I don’t hear a whole lot of chambers talk about that. So I’m glad to have you gone a little deeper about investing some of those reserves. Are there certain metrics? Maybe the look at his you look at it. Well, maybe let me back up. profit and loss statements. How often should you be looking at over?

Lindsay Frilling 24:30
I reconcile ours monthly, and some chambers wait and get audited annually. And then you know, if there was a discrepancy, you won’t find it for 12 months, three months, whatever timeframe. And, I mean, I again at home, I’m not going to wait 12 months to look at my balance in my checking account. So why would I do that at work? So I literally You know, write checks, pay bills make deposits throughout the month, but at the end of the month, I sit down, reconcile it and QuickBooks, send it to the accountant and they put their stamp on it every single month. And it keeps us because it’s essentially, the way it’s set up. It’s essentially as we’re getting audited every single month, so that we’re not going through and paying for a massive audit once a year, it’s literally getting their stamp every single month. And if you’re not doing it, at least monthly, you should be.

Brandon Burton 25:36
And it gives you a good pulse to as to the healthier chamber, the financial health of your chamber, where things are at, if there needs to be adjustments made, you’re not waiting till the end of the year, it’s easier to make small adjustments along the way to get to that end goal. Well, and

Lindsay Frilling 25:51
we’re a chamber that collects days, once a year, I know there are chambers that lets you come in and pay as you go, which is fine. But for accounting purposes, it’s just easier for us to bill in July, the beginning of our fiscal year, and then spend, you know, three months that window of time collecting the money and bringing it in. Now it makes it tough because toward getting closer to June, you have less income. So your p&l doesn’t look as healthy as it does in July, August, September. But again, that’s what a budget is for, you know what to expect throughout the year, you know, who’s going to renew and how much you’re going to have pretty much the first quarter of your calendar year, what are your fiscal year, whatever that is. And then as people join throughout the year, we just prorate their days, whatever right that is. And then we bill everybody in July. Again, what works for you is on you. But like it keeps us from having somebody having to manage that piece of our budget in our organization every month. I mean, it just, you know when you have and 5060 members may seem tiny to some people. But imagine if you have 2030 4050 of those a month, and you’re sending out invoices every single month, I mean, ah, my personal opinion is prorate those days, get them all done at once. And that way you kind of know, early on in your year, what’s your incomes gonna be, especially if your chambers are your sole source of income?

Brandon Burton 27:31
I like that. And obviously, every chamber is different. So they’re gonna approach it differently. But as you look over your your p&l, are there certain, certain indicators that you look at to kind of measure the health of your organization?

Lindsay Frilling 27:46
Well, you know, there’s so many numbers and percentages out there about what your your salary and compensation percentage should be of total revenue. And I’ve looked ACC has information, your State Chamber will have information. And, you know, unfortunately, and this is really difficult for people that are looking to outsiders that look at your budget to understand that we don’t we don’t make a product, we don’t make widgets. So our biggest expense is our people, it’s going to be in payroll and salary. And when people look at your budget, and they see that it’s over 50% of what’s going out the door. Some people really you know, are taken aback by that. But you have to just again, manage that expectation and say, We are a service organization, we are marketing, we are everything except for creating a product. So we don’t have any necessarily raw materials going into our process and into our budget that we’re paying for. We’re paying for talent. And that’s probably the biggest line item that you’re going to have to overcome in the chamber world that and travel because if you’re not out traveling and interacting with others, you know that some of the best things that I’ve learned as a chamber exec has come from other chamber execs, networking with those executives, attending conferences, attending trainings, Tennessee has an awesome Institute, a two year program that’s, you know, a couple of days long, I did that and then transitioned right into the US Chamber Institute, but it’s expensive, you know, so that can be kind of a line item that sticks out in your education and your travel expenses. Again, you’ve got those two just tied directly back into what I was talking about your people your talent, and if you’re not investing in your talent, you’re going to lose your talent. And again, I’ll go back and say it all day. Long we need to operate as a business and how many businesses do you know that do not invest in their people? I mean, if they’re not, then they’re probably not going to make it.

Brandon Burton 30:11
And to your point, if you were making widgets, you should be looking at ways to source better materials or better logistics for distribution, and you’re putting money into that to get a better return. And when your core product is your people, you got to put the money into them to make them better, to better serve.

Lindsay Frilling 30:30
And if you you know, a lot of chambers can’t pay at the pay scale that your businesses can they should be. I mean, that’s a conversation I have a lot. I’m like, if we’re representing business, we need to be hiring like a business, we need to be paying like a business, we need to be compensating like a business. And I wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago, because I didn’t have the money to do it. But you know, now we’re there. And I’m like, we are a business, there’s no reason to keep saying, Oh, your nonprofit, you can’t pet Yes, you should be able to is numb people should always be number one. And in everything you’re thinking about as a chamber, internally and externally. But it’s got to start from within. Because if you’re not taking care of your people inside, they’re not going to go out and take care of your members, businesses outside. I mean, I literally hire people for passion. And then I can teach them how to do it, because I can’t teach them to care. I can’t make them care. And if they don’t care about people, and they don’t care about the community, they don’t need to be at a Chamber of Commerce. Right? Sure. Well, so being able to allow them to go travel and network and get training to me is a little can add to that overall compensation package. Job.

Brandon Burton 31:52
So everyone listening needs to take like the last four or five minutes and send it to your board. Just a little friendly. Listen, you know, this is this is coming from a you know, well respected chamber executive. Yeah, it just, it’s not coming from you individually. So just a friendly tip there. But

Lindsay Frilling 32:14
say it all the time. You can, I can say it all day. But if I just bring somebody else in to say it, you know, it becomes gospel. So you know, yeah, use my words. It’s fun, it won’t be the first time.

Brandon Burton 32:25
Yeah. So as we start wrapping up here, I’d like to ask if you have any, maybe a tip or action item, the chair for anyone listening that they can do to help take their chamber up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Lindsay Frilling 32:38
As I said, Go to chamber Institute, whether it’s state level US Chamber Institute, invest in yourself, invest in your people, get a mentor, two or three of those, always keep a volunteer between you and the issue. Be authentic, and don’t accept the invitation to every argument you’re invited to attend. Because the Chamber’s you know, it’s fun when it’s fun. But then when it’s bad, we tend to get all we get, we don’t get the credit, we always get the blame. And I just always, always tell my people when you know, Facebook, or whatever, people are being negative, you know, just consider the source know that what you’re doing is good. And if you’re doing it right, you’re laying your head down at night, and you can sleep and just let the rest of it go.

Brandon Burton 33:30
Yeah, that’s good. So as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Lindsay Frilling 33:39
We’re always going to be the voice of business. And business is driven by people. So it’s always going to be about people, whether it’s in education, workforce development, entrepreneurship, whatever we can do to help people is always it always has been, and it’s always going to be where we go. So I think it just goes back to what I said earlier, you got to care about your people, you got to care about your community, and you got to hire staff that have the same thoughts and feelings about it. And then you help others whether whether it’s the economic development organization, the Tourism Organization, Main Street, downtown organizations, just make yourself the hub of the community when somebody wants to know something or needs to know something, make them think I’m going to call the chamber.

Brandon Burton 34:30
That’s right. And you know, most responses I get to that question are pretty similar, but I love just kind of hammering that home, you know that chambers are about people. And the feature of chambers is about strengthening your communities and making your communities better. And those responses I get come from all different points of view. So I hope it’ll continue to resonate with everyone listening and really getting that sense of the purpose of what chambers are all about. But Lindsey Before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who might want to reach out and connect with you what would be the best way for them to reach out and do that,

Connect with Lindsay Frilling

Lindsay Frilling 35:10
um, you can reach me my cell phone number is 731-592-1083 which is the best way because as you know, for sitting behind a desk, we’re not being very effective for our community. So that is my cell phone number. My email is lindsay@obioncounty.org and you can always find us online.

Brandon Burton 35:46
Awesome. I will get all that in our show notes for this episode, which will be at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode156. But Lindsay, thank you for spending time with me today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I think the perspective that you brought and and just experience around chamber financials is very helpful for those who are just getting their, their feet wet. And really, you know, I’m going to reiterate it you know, get a mentor. Get with people in your region, your communities, neighboring communities and see what they’re doing and and learn from others. So, thank you for that, Lindsay. And it’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Lindsay Frilling 36:28
You too. Thank you so much for having me.

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Turn a Job You Like into a Career with Mark Eagan

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Mark Eagan. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host he believes that a level of stress is necessary to provide the traction for life. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Mark Egan. Mark serves as president and CEO of the Capital Region Chamber and the center of economic growth based in Albany, New York. The Chamber and the Center for Economic Growth affiliate drive economic prosperity, with one voice one mission as one region. Mark began his Chamber career in 1987 and held executive posts with chambers in Mansfield, and Brockton, Massachusetts, and South Bend, Indiana. Prior to being recruited to New York’s Capital Region in 2008. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Stonehill College and a certificate and executive management from the University of Notre Dame. He’s an IOM at the University of Delaware and the Center for Creative Leadership is also earned his CCE designation. As Mark served as chairman of ACC and chaired his foundation and certified chamber executive commission. He serves on the US Chamber committees of 100. And as a past chair of the New York, Indiana and Massachusetts Association for Chamber of Commerce executives. And past chair of the Institute for organization Management Board of Regents has been recognized as chamber Executive of the Year both by the New England and the Indiana chamber executive associations. Mark, I’m excited to have you with me today here on chamber chat podcast. I appreciate you carving out some time to be with us today. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to everyone out there listening and share something interesting about yourself. So you can get to know Mark Egan a little bit better.

Something Interesting About Mark

Mark Eagan 2:58
Well, terrific. Thanks for having me. And thanks for doing this program. It’s a great way to inform and inspire and connect us all over the country and different size communities, and how we can do our work with greatest impacts. So again, you thank you for you know, creating this, this forum. So you’ve probably heard through the you know, that that intro, I’ve been doing this for a long time, I can’t believe that, you know, that job out of college has now turned into 34 years later. But I guess the piece about myself as a relates to personal but also to sort of what we do for a living is, you know, I learned about business by the kitchen table, my dad ran a small business. So I learned about the struggles, but also really the rewards of of hard work. And I saw the relationships he had with other businesses in our community and what they’re able to do together. And I think, quite frankly, that’s sort of what spurred my original interest to get involved in chamber work.

Brandon Burton 4:03
Gave you a taste at a young age of what the power of a chamber could do. That’s awesome. Well take a moment to tell us a little bit more about the capital region’s chamber, kind of the size, scope, budget staff, that sort of thing and kind of set the table for our discussion for today.

About the Capital Region Chamber

Mark Eagan 4:21
Sure, well, I guess what I would say because of my career, I’ve been in chambers in all different sizes. So you know, some of you might be in a smaller community and you might hear what I when I say the size of our organization or budget, you might say well, this his comments are going to relate to me. And I really want I want to say is that you know, my my first chamber when I started I was the only employee and we had a budget of 100 $110,000. Our organization today that I work for has 32 employees. We have a budget of $7.3 million. We serve a Metro area a little over a million people. So, so I’ve, you know, gone through sort of the, all those phases of being the only employee or being in a couple community chamber to county chamber to a Regional Chamber and now more of a Metro Chamber. So hopefully some of my experiences can relate to everybody, no matter where they’re at.

Brandon Burton 5:26
Absolutely, you’ve definitely have seen the whole spectrum of chamber work. So for those listening, listening to what Mark has to say, because he’s he does come from experience from all different backgrounds and, and I think what he’s will share with us today is going to bring a lot of relevancy. Our the topic that we’re going to focus on today is specifically around the idea of taking a job that you love and turning it into a career or even a job that you just like and make it into a career. And I’m looking forward to getting into this discussion as Mark as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Topic-Turn a Job You Like into a Career

Alright, Mark, we are back as I kind of set the table before the break is we’re going to be talking about turning a job you like into a career, which is something that you’ve done successfully going from, you know that that chamber that you started with, with 110 members and, you know, to where you are now with the more of a Metro Chamber. I know I like having this kind of discussion with with chamber professionals, because very rarely does somebody get into the chamber world intentionally. Usually, it’s something you kind of fall into. You’d mentioned a little bit about seeing your dad as a small business owner, but why don’t we just start with with your your origins and chamber work and what made you fall in love with it.

Mark Eagan 8:09
So you know if remnants of my accent still give me away, I’m originally from Massachusetts, I live there now and 24 years or something like that, but some of that accent will never disappear. And I went to to those of you haven’t heard of Stonehill college, it’s it’s in Massachusetts. It’s a liberal arts college, they have these amount of business majors about 2500 students. And I, when I went there, I graduated in 1987. The economy was really strong. There recruiters on campus, I had multiple job offers before I graduated, and I walked across the stage to get my diploma with without a job. And I remember when I’d have an interview and have an offer my my dad would say, Well, why don’t you take it? And I’d say, well, didn’t really excite me. And you know, my dad grew up in a generation where, you know, I sort of joke the jobs were to provide not to excite. But it was literally it was two days before my graduation, I read this article in my hometown newspaper, about this new chamber of commerce that they had been, you know, it was had been grassroots developing, you know, members, and they had enough members to open an office and to begin to hire a staff. I thought, Boy, that sounds really interesting. And, you know, in my, in my clinical modality, they reached out to somebody who knew who was had been involved in helped create the chamber and they’re like, Oh, well, it’s a group but you know, we don’t really know where we’re going, what our focus is going to be we really don’t have any, you know, money to pay much and I thought this this sounds like such a cool opportunity. I had led a membership association. I know some sushi a club on campus and And so anyway, I throw my hat in the ring. I remember they used a local, like HR company and help sort of, you know, go through applicants and interview and they, you know, basically said to me, we’re gonna think we’re going to put you in the mix that’s going to see the board. But you know, basically you’re a longshot, because you know, you’re, you’re young, and you’re green. And, and, but we like to have a variety of candidates. And ultimately I get offered the job. But in quite frankly, I think part of it was, again, they didn’t have a lot of money, and I could be hired cheap right out of school, my starting salary was $15,000, in 1987. The, but they also, I think, they can see my passion. And they also knew I was from the local community, it was the chamber covered three different towns, I think they thought because I knew the community because again, my dad knew people that may be able to help them get members. So again, it just started as a job. But as a 22 year old, I literally had to, you know, go and pick out the you know, get get Office Furniture have the phones turned on, but it literally was a startup organization. They hadn’t. And I remember going to the first board meeting. And I said, you know, so what’s your first goal, and I said, my first goal is to get members went back the next month, Bobby, I said, I changed my first goal. We need to do something, we need to know why we exist. And why would someone want to be a member? And, and, and I remember, you know, you know, way back then, you know, used to having all these breaks through going through school. And then in college, I thought, how do you take this new job and get two weeks off. And you know, that kind of feel like I’m in jail. And and I remember my first year, I literally other than a few days and get away one time during the winter, I didn’t take any time off. Because I was just so excited by the work we were doing and what we were trying to what we’re trying to build. And again, to your point, it was, you know, still a job, but was a job that I felt like I really was I was enjoying and I could see sort of the rewards not just for me, but more importantly, for the businesses that we were we’re working with. So you know, a lot of times, chambers will work together. And sort of in that part of Massachusetts, we had this informal group, where we would we’d get together, I think it was quarterly with the execs and then certain number of times a year, we’d actually bring in a volunteer leader.

And the, again, I was three years into the job, there was a chamber that was nearby, that again, we were three years old, at that time that the Chamber I think was 77 years old. You know, by the time I left the chamber, we had a little over 300 members, this organization about 750 members that their exact was leaving. And one of those volunteers who had seen me at those meetings, reached out to me and said, we have an opening, do you think you want to be a candidate? And I thought, Well, again, this is going to be a stretch because I’m still this young guy that I have this experience here. But they saw something in me and and and I was hired. And that’s where I grew my skill sets in a whole different way. And I went from just you know, three suburban towns to an old urban city industrial city that had a lot of challenges, as well as the neighboring communities. So the lawn but I’ll I’ll take a

Brandon Burton 13:46
take a little pause there and kind of backtrack a little bit. It sounds like you’re a quick learner, you have to change your first goal. On the SIR early on to getting members to really saying Hold on, we need to figure out what our mission and vision is to get people to get excited about what we’re doing. But I’m curious in those first three years, how did you learn to run a chamber? How did you well, who did you rely on? Did you have mentors that sounded like you’re part of a regional group of other chambers. But what were some of those outlets and resources that you relied on?

Mark Eagan 14:22
A great question. And I remember just describing myself as a sponge, literally. That’s what I felt I was just soaking in from everybody. I could learn from a lot of my neighboring chambers, right nearby or other chambers in the state. So I started my job and July. And so again, I reached out to some chambers nearby to start with. I remember in January was the first state association meeting I went to, which was a big deal for me to sort of get real sort of professional development. And I remember then the that, that someone said to me, are you going to go to institute. And of course, my response was what’s Institute, I had never even heard of it. And particularly at that time, it was sort of a standard that most chamber folks did. Today, depending on the size of the chamber, it’s I don’t know, it’s as prevalent today as it was, you know, in the 80s. But as soon as I knew about it, my goal was to go and to find out, find a way to, you know, to find enough money for to pay the, you know, the, the tuition and all that to go. And because I was in the northeast, back, then it was in Delaware. And, and I remember, you know, back then you used to get materials that you had to read, and you have to use it to do a written test. And, and I remember, some of those materials I read a couple of times before I even went to institute because it was again, I was like, oh my god here, this is like someone to tell me how to do this. And back then I thought that there were things we were, when an idea would come forward by volunteers, sometimes I would call on, you know, sort of one of the deans in the area, to say, you know, can we do that, because I thought there was things that we could do and couldn’t do, and I realized, you can do anything. It’s really what’s the needs of your community, and you have the capacity to deliver. So it was really those, those those folks that took me under their wing, had a huge impact, and helping shape me. And then, you know, my connections that when I went to institute, I got to meet people that weren’t just from my state are really from the Northeast region, the country, and then it just continued to grow over the years.

Brandon Burton 16:50
So you went from the, this the original chamber, the smaller, you know, where you’re the, you know, the the chief cook, and bottle washer and doing everything, you’re doing the membership sales, managing the office manager, retention, the whole shebang, right. And then you get this new opportunity at a new chamber that expands your I guess, available skill set. So you had to learn some new skills, you had to learn how to manage people, you had to learn, you know, the probably a larger scope maybe of what that chamber covered. So what was that transition, like with the with this next step?

Mark Eagan 17:33
It was, it was a big one. Because, you know, I again, the the, the tri John chamber was my first chamber, again, because the three towns so as a creative name. And so as myself and I had a part time, like, administrative assistant, and we had like a contract kind of membership person, by the time I left, then the chamber I went to, I can’t remember the exact number of employees when I got there, I want to say five or six. But I think what happened for me at that next chamber was the first chamber, we were very much focused, I would say, as a, as a member of benefits organization, you know, our sort of whole programme of work was programs, you know, what are you registered to go to? It was, you know, pretty sort of transactional. And then go into my, to the second immunity. And as I mentioned, it was a, you know, you had a city of about 100 and 1000 people in the surrounding communities, and the city was on a decline. So part of it was how do you use the strength of the business community to help turn the community around? So that was probably when I started to realize that the chamber was more than an organization to serve its members, or an organization to help strengthen the community. And I guess the thing I would just say that sort of in addition to it, I always look to say, how do I keep one at that point, I realized, Okay, well, this is great, but who knows, someday I might want to be somewhere else and do something else. And so I remember it was I think it was my first ACC first ACC meeting I went to, and there were these. There weren’t even like breakouts because the conference was different back then. But it was like this optional sessions, you could go to sort of in your free time. Free time, and I went to this session about tourism. And one of my friends said, What the hell you go into that one on tourism from your community, you’re in, you know, does nothing in tourism. And I said, but I don’t know if the next community I might want to go to might have tourism. So I need to learn those skills today. And then, you know, long story short, when I did move to South Bend, Indiana A component of the chamber there was the Convention Visitors Bureau, we had six or seven staff people who just worked on tourism. So that was the example how’s it goes full circle?

Brandon Burton 20:12
Yeah. And if you’re already at the conference and the the informations being shared, why not be there be that sponge because you never know what that next opportunity is going to be. And, and for those listening, it may be something you decided to try to implement at your own organization that you’re that you’re currently at, and talk to your board about and say, Does this make sense for our community? But it sounds like I was going to ask you at what point did you realize, gee, this isn’t just a job, like, this is a career I’m going to be in this for the long haul. Sounds like it might have been then when you started kind of broaden the scope and think, you know, further down the road, is that accurate?

Mark Eagan 20:50
Yeah, I yeah, I think it is, you know, I was I, when I was at the, what’s called the mountain, it’s called the Metro South chamber, which is in Brockton, Massachusetts, about 27 miles south of Boston. And I realized that I felt like, I felt like I was getting into a routine there. And I was there for, and I was there for a little over seven years. And I said, I, I’m not comfortable with the routine. And so I said, Okay, I need to decide, am I going to look for another chamber job? Or am I gonna look for a different job. And I, you know, born and raised in Massachusetts, was always very close to, to, to my, you know, immediate family, my folks, my siblings. And but I realized, if I was really going to have a be my career, I couldn’t just say, Well, what other chamber might open up within, you know, a 30 mile radius. And so I, again, things are a little bit different today than they were back then. That was before, you know, larger chambers and higher search firms. There was a guy who used to work for the US Chamber, well being and said, Have you ever thought of living in the Midwest? And my response was what? And he said, You know, there’s he goes, there’s an opening in South Bend, Indiana. And he goes, when they described who they are, and the kind of leader they thought they might need, because I thought of you. And, and my first thought was my own literally, my only experience in the Midwest was changing planes at O’Hare, I literally had not been to any of the offices people refer to as the flyover communities. I thought, you know, what, I should probably explore this. And I did. Again, that was a huge step. Not just personally from the whole geography side, and sort of moving away from home. But the organization was significantly larger than where I was at. You know, the staff that I had at the Metro South chamber, I think we were seven people. There were 22 people on the staff itself, and it was going with nothing was familiar. You know, I didn’t know the community knew any of those things. So it’s really a test to say, Have I developed these skills, when I can go somewhere where I literally know nobody, but can, you know, develop sort of do community assessment, build skills, build relationships, and help maybe bring the chamber and the organization in the community to, to a different level, and it’s funny, I remember on my I was a newlywed going through that process. And I went out for my final interview, and my wife, they wanted her to come. And so we did a tour, we did do a dinner with volunteers, and she had a column and the next day, I was going to have interviews for the half of the day. And I remember when I left the hotel in the morning, that she said, Well, what do you think’s going to happen? I said, Well, this is the piece and I said, you know, I guess, you know, the next day, probably get a call saying, you know, they’ll debrief whatever. Well, I could walk from where the chamber office was to where the hotel were saying, I get back to the hotel room. And I said to her, then go away, I thought and she has what didn’t go well. It didn’t know they offered me the job right then. And, and, and I remember all these emotions going through me. And, and I thought through it, I said to her, Can you see any reason for me not accepting this job, other than it’s not Massachusetts? And she said, I can’t. And I said, I can’t either. I said, so if I don’t take this job. It means I’m going to look I’m going to leave chamber work, because I really can’t I can’t continue to grow in chamber work if I’m not willing to really make a big move. Obviously, the know you already know the rest of the story I, I took the leap. And, you know, my two children were both born there. And I, you know, had the pleasure of working in South Bend four and a half years.

Brandon Burton 25:19
Wow. So as you tell the story, it sounds like there’s a couple decision points. And and I think it’s probably similar to a lot of people’s career path where, you know, one decision point was making that choice to take on more learning, whatever level it is, but taking in stuff that you maybe don’t currently need. But then the big one is to open up the opportunity, or the idea of moving outside the area to be able to continue your career. How does that, uh, I know, everyone’s different in their, you know, their, their home life status, you had mentioned you were a newlywed at the time? How do you go about that conversation with I mean, it’s a big move. Some, some people have children at this point in their career. So you’re dealing with schools and everything, but what kind of advice would you have with the, with those kinds of discussions?

Mark Eagan 26:21
Well, you know, I think everyone’s different. And you and you have to say, you know, okay, you know, again, I totally push myself out of my comfort zone. One, just because the chamber and the size and the scope and all of that, but then again, the geographic piece. So you have to do what you know, you have to think it, read your own tea leaves. And I And again, I think the timing of children is important. You know, I think for most of us, you don’t want to make a move when your kids are probably a high school, if you can help it. You know, when when, when we made the move, when we move to, to Auburn, in New York, my kids were then in first and third grade. So again, it was ages that were easy, easier to adjust. And again, that was the move was, you know, for the sort of getting the opportunity that was there. But also the nice benefit was, you know, where the majority of our family is, we were 14 hours away for them. And now when we moved to New York, we’re two and a half hours away for them. So that was a nice added bonus to it. The thing I would also say if, you know, I have been so impressed of, you know, my colleagues that I’ve known for a long, long time, who maybe have chosen, not not because they were stuck, but they were chosen to stay in the same community for you know, 2030 years. And, and I give them a lot of credit, because, you know, in most cases, the reason they’ve been able to do so is they keep reinventing themselves. They don’t just sort of retire there and not tell people so go to work every day, you know, they challenge themselves that they meet the needs. And, you know, and you know, in for me, you know, while I’ve moved, I haven’t moved very much, you know, I’m only in my fourth chamber in 34 years. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:11
I think that’s a good point to make with. Some people choose to move Chambers as they develop their career in chamber world and others will stay in the same community they started with and stay at the same chamber for 30 or 40 years. But the you hit the key there is they keep reinventing themselves keep reinventing what the offerings are that the Chamber has to offer. And, and I’m sure they can see a similar path to when they first started at their chamber 30 or 40 years prior, and then, you know, towards the end of their career, to see how their chamber has grown because of the things they’ve learned and implemented and they didn’t just stay stagnant. So I think that’s cool

Mark Eagan 28:54
that we as Atari just personally, but I think even for our organizations, to fulfill its mission, we have to be willing to sort of challenge the status quo. And, and I guess what I’d say to folks that are watching and listening, again, who we’re all different sort of sized communities is the thing that I remember years ago, again, when I would, you know, read an article through ACC, or I would go to a conference or a state association meeting. You know, again, going back does really oftentimes, I was one of the smallest communities there. But I used to try to listen to what some of the larger communities were doing and saying, Hey, how does this relate to what we’re doing? And can I just scale it all back to a level? I think that was part of what some of the successes were able to have and part of the reason that I have grown, so I wouldn’t, you know, encourage all my colleagues to do that. Don’t look at something and say well, because we’re suburban, and their, you know, their city or because, you know, we have three staff and they have seven staff or whatever. I think that we can learn from each other we can we can grow together. And it’s really how can we have, you know, impact to strengthen businesses? And then how can those businesses, because they’re helping create jobs, create better opportunity for the people who live in our communities?

Brandon Burton 30:17
Absolutely. I love the idea of just being open minded as you don’t shut down ideas because the chamber that you’re hearing them from as much larger as a bigger budget or more staff, think, How can I take something an idea that I like, How can I implement it, maybe it includes a strategic partnership with an another organization in your community, maybe it involves outsourcing. So I mean, the opportunities are limitless, if you can be creative and stay open minded to Western. So I like that we’re having this discussion. Right now, as we’ve kind of worked through this COVID pandemic, we’ve seen a pretty large exit, I would say, of people in the chamber industry, either retiring or maybe going into private sector work. And that means there’s opportunities, there’s openings for new people to kind of fill these voids that are new to chamber world. So I’d like to ask you what would be maybe one piece of advice that you would have for somebody who’s just now getting into chamber work to maybe explore the idea of actually making it a career, not just a holdover job until something else better comes but to really fall in love with it and make it a career? What would you what would you have to say?

Mark Eagan 31:38
If you’re if you’re new, I guess I would go on from my experiences, going back to that analogy of the sponge, you know, try to soak in as much as you can. You, you know, in through the years, it’s not just learning from other callings, but, you know, learning from the volunteer leaders that we work with. And I have, you know, you also learn from the people that you don’t like what they do, and you learn what you don’t want to do. You know, I remember, you know, years ago, when back when I was still in my 20s, and, you know, one of my colleagues who sometimes, you know, would, you know, get so full of himself, and I would, you know, say to somebody, you know, forever like that shoot me. And because, you know, I think we have to realize that, you know, you know, the work that we do is important, but you know, we’re not the chamber, you know, we have the privilege of working there. But, you know, I, I hope that each of those chambers, I worked out that I had an impact while I was there, but none of them went out of business when I left. And, but I think that is we work together as a team and our community can make a big difference. And, you know, there’s opportunities I’ve had, you know, what, I’ve had folks in the private sector try to get me to leave and go to work for them. And really, what I’ve tried to ask myself is, you know, can I think of another career where I think I would find it satisfying? And that I could impact so many different people? You know, and I, the answer is I haven’t been able to, and that’s why I’m, you know, I’m still doing this every day. Yeah, during the pandemic, there were times where, you know, to say, Geez, how many more years before I can retire? But the reality is, you know, you know, recently somebody was talking about it, and I said, Well, you know, I, I started to work quite a few more years. But I said, even if I didn’t have to, I’m not ready to retire yet. You know, it still really energizes and motivates and inspires me every day.

Brandon Burton 33:45
So I love that answer. I wanted to ask you, since you have been at a variety of different chambers, you’ve seen the scope of the spectrum. Maybe, you know, a tip or an action item that you can offer to somebody listening that who may be trying to take their own their chamber up to the next level, what would be a piece of marking and advice?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Mark Eagan 34:12
I guess I’d say is, you know, by looking look through my development over the years, a lot of it ties to my colleagues. Some of my closest personal friends are folks who I met, you know, over the last 30 years, and they’re in lots of different states. And in even in a we haven’t seen each other as much because of the pandemic, but we’ll still have the zoom call that we’re, you know, together. Because as we know, there’s nobody else in our community that does exactly what we do. So I wouldn’t, you know, encourage you to develop that network. It could be again, the Chamber next door, but it could be a chamber across the country. Somebody that you click with, you know, personally and professionally, if you haven’t yet plugged into whether it’s, you know, whatever your budget is, and leave him in school and your state association, or if you can go to institute, if it’s the right program for you, ACC, you know, even if you, you know, don’t have the budget to ever go to a program to go to their convention, you know, for a pretty minor investment, just to have access to all the tools and resources that are on their website. There’s so many best practices, you can’t just take it and duplicate it at your organization. But as I said earlier, you can take it and adapt it to the needs of your community and your membership.

Brandon Burton 35:39
Absolutely. So I like asking this question to everyone that I have on the show is, as we all look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Mark Eagan 35:55
You know, I guess what I’d say is, is, if we can all think back to why did chambers originally get formed? I think over the years science where we’ve evolved to isn’t why we got created. So you know, to my earlier comment about, you know, being a member of benefits organization, or is the purpose broader than that. And yes, without members, we couldn’t do our work, you know that we’re a membership based organization. But I think our mission can be more than serving our members. Because if it’s just coming to us, because of an educational programming or networking program, a for profit company can do that. But But if we look at it, and say, it’s really about strengthening the economic and social well being of our communities, we’re at a unique intersection to be able to do that. And there’s probably no one that can do it, as well as our chamber, whether we’re a community of 10,000 people, or a metro of millions of people. So I think if we focus on that bigger mission, you know, chambers are going to be here for a long time. But if we just that transactional organization, I think that that folks can question. You know, really what I direct value is,

Brandon Burton 37:17
I love that answer. I think, as the world changes around us that that core reason as to why a chamber exists is still to strengthen and develop their community. And I think that purpose becomes even stronger. As the world becomes more digital and money flows different ways. It’s even more of a reason to have a strong core within the community to build it and bring people together. So thank you for that. So Mark, as we wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone who might want to reach out and connect with you about, you know, your career or anything you had to share with us today. What would be the best way for for someone to reach out Connect?

Connect with Mark Eagan

Mark Eagan 38:00
Yes, feel free. And I can I can put my email in here if I’m doing it with my glasses on. So hopefully, I don’t have a typo. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 38:12
And I’ll put them in the show notes as well.

Mark Eagan 38:15
So it’s meagan@capitalregionchamber.com. Feel free to send me an email if there’s a question or the resource that I can point you to if you want to set up a time and do a conversation, I’d be happy to do it. And my direct line, it’s 518-431-1424.

Brandon Burton 38:37
That’s perfect. And again, like I said, I will get this in our show notes for this episode, which will be at chamber tat podcast.com/episode 155. Mark, thank you so much for spending time with me today here on chamber chat podcast. I think what you provided is a lot of value to those listening, especially those who may just be getting into the chamber world. Mark is a great resource and, you know, a wealth of experience and knowledge. So hopefully everyone was being a sponge and soaking this up. But thank you, Mark, for being with us today.

Mark Eagan 39:09
Well, thanks for the invitation and thanks for all that you do.

Unprecedented Opportunity in Southern Indiana with Wendy Dant Chesser

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Wendy Dant Chesser. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent – And now your host, he has never heard a Whopper or Big Mac. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the chamber tap podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us today for episode 154 As I have windy Dan Chester join us today from One Southern Indiana or One SI. Wendy has been with One SI since November 2012. As President and CEO. She’s driven by a strong desire to implement change that would establish a stronger economic growth better educated and better paid workforce and structure of advocacy within the state of Indiana. One SI serves as the organization that speaks with one vision and one voice for Clark and Floyd counties. Its mission is to provide the connections resources and services that help businesses innovate and thrive in the region. Wendy came back to our home after serving as president of Cornerstone Alliance, a similar organization in southwest Michigan. Wendy’s role in leading the organization included serving as a trustee of the 530 acre Harbor Shores development and directing the 700 member Cornerstone Chamber of Commerce. Prior to removed in Michigan. She worked in various aspects of economic development for over seven years with the state of Indiana and spent the last year of her state government career as deputy Deputy Executive Director for program operations of the Indiana Department of Commerce. Wendy is a present or past member of several professional organizations including the International Economic Development Council and Economic Development Association in both Indiana and Michigan. She currently serves as legislative committee chair and past Chair for the Indiana Economic Development Association. Wendy was named one of North America’s top 50 economic developers in 2015 by consultant connect the Indiana Economic Development Association awarded her the Economic Development Professional of the next half century in June of 2018. And in 2016, her Indiana peers named her the Chamber of Commerce Executive of the Year, she was awarded the 2000 Outstanding Young Hoosier award from the Indiana Jaycees was recognized in the Annapolis Business Journal’s 40 under 40 for 2004 and was honored by Western Michigan’s business reviews business leaders under 40. In 2021, southern Indiana was named chamber the year by the Indiana chamber Executives Association and honor that her team was most deserving of due to their aggressive actions and to help businesses during the COVID 19 pandemic and resulting recession. Wendy is a native of Jeffersonville and she received her Bachelors of Science in Business Management from Indiana University southeast in 1991. She and her daughter Jocelyn reside in Jeffersonville. Wendy, I’m excited to have you with me today here on Chamber Chat Podcast if you would just take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and I’d like to have you share something interesting just so we can get to know you a little bit better.

Something Interesting About Wendy

Wendy Dant Chesser 4:30
Well, thank you, Brandon. I appreciate the opportunity. It was a it’s a great opportunity to work in this industry. And one southern Indiana is a chamber that was emerged organization starting in 2006. I came back in 2012 to serve as president. I’m the third president of the organization and the dirty little secret is this is actually the third time that I applied to be president. So if Third time’s a charm It was really seen as an opportunity for me to come home and do what I love to do in the communities that helped raise me.

Brandon Burton 5:07
That’s awesome. I like that it’s kind of unique to be able to serve in the chamber where where you’re from. So that is awesome. Well share with us a little bit about one southern Indiana just so we can get a better idea of kind of the size staff to kind of the perspective that you’re coming from, as we entered our discussion today.

About the One Southern Indiana

Wendy Dant Chesser 5:32
So let me start with the geography. So the geography of the area is that we are part of the Louisville, Kentucky, MSA. So we’re truly a two state area, the only thing that separates us with our neighbors to the south is the mighty Ohio River. So if we look at the the area as a whole, we have about a 1.3 million population MSA, our piece of it the carved out piece for our southern indie or for the one southern Indiana area is basically Clark and Floyd counties, which are the two most populous counties on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, we have about 200,000 people in those two counties. So our chamber really does operate in conjunction with others as a Regional Chamber addressing regional issues. We have about 1025 business members today, we were up to about 1100 pre pandemic, but things happened and we are now slowly growing that, that that membership back, and we have really have dug in and said, you know, this is the role that we have to play, we’re not necessarily going to be the best at some things in our regions. But we know that the businesses that that are looking for assistance either through manufacturing through some of the small businesses, of course, hospitality businesses and some of the innovative businesses, we’ve been able to establish a presence with them and to continue to provide some assistance to them in terms of the business membership.

Brandon Burton 7:05
Very good. So that does help to give us an idea of where you’re coming from and kind of crossing over into Kentucky, someone with the membership and responsibilities there. As we get into our topic for discussion today. So the term that we all became very familiar with during the pandemic was these are unprecedented times. Right? So our topic for this discussion is going to be unprecedented opportunity Spoken like a true economic development professional, specifically in southern Indiana. And it’s my understanding that some of these opportunities sprouted as a result of the pandemic. So looking forward to getting that perspective and having you share those things it says we get back from this quick break.

Topic-Unprecedented Opportunity in Southern Indiana

Alright, Wendy, we are back. Let’s have you share with us what some of these unprecedented opportunities are that kind of sprouted out of the the COVID 19 pandemic that maybe wouldn’t have been there initially. But because it’s you know, the pandemic happened and our worldview and everything kind of shifted. What’s resulted in southern Indiana out of that?

Wendy Dant Chesser 9:37
Well, one of the things I’m excited about and you mentioned this before break, we are also the local economic development organization for two of our counties and we have a third county under contract. One of the reasons that that I can be very optimistic about our economic future is that we have seen record interest in this is wanting to either locate or expand in our area. And don’t take that for granted. But I do recognize that we have decades of investment that has put us in this place. The states of Indiana and Kentucky have in the last five years, built not one, but two bridges across the Ohio River to truly connect our greater region. We have a 6000 acre industrial park that was formerly an Army Ammunition site that is really reached its peak in being able to provide one stop shopping for companies that are looking to locate and we’re seeing right now about 15,000 employees working there per day, but there’s a lot of room for growth. It’s about 15% occupied. So we know that there’s growth opportunities there as well. And we believe that Indiana’s stable business climate is helping us attract companies to the area. I don’t want to the short side, our neighbors to the south. Oh, wow. Well, you know, when we do economic development in southern Indiana, we often are best known for a city we’re not in a state we’re not a part of. That’s the challenge of being across the river from a metro area like Louisville, Kentucky. But we also have the advantage of taking advantage of the many investments that they make. They have an international airport UPS has its world, its Worldport distribution system in Louisville, we take advantage of that every day, then on the quality of place aspects. It’s a city, it’s got a lot of activities, it’s got professional, it’s got semi professional sports, it’s got a horse racing, it has a beautiful zoo, we can take advantage and sell all of those assets, while we’re growing the southern Indiana economy. And in addition, we’re working on those quality of place and those assets that give us an additional regional asset to share with our neighbors as well. So I’m really excited that we’re starting to see this this economic growth. A lot of interest in economic growth coming to our area. But it’s not just because we’ve got a new brochure, a new website is decades of investment to make our area attractive. And when you have a good product to sell at a time when people are in the buying mode, which they are, we are we are seeing some wonderful numbers in interest from prospects coming to our area, I believe, August of 2021, we had more interested projects tagged than at any time since our existence in 2006. So something’s worked in we’re trying to maximize it. But it also comes with, of course, with challenges and being able to make sure we’re good stewards of where we are in this place in time.

Brandon Burton 12:46
And like being able to leverage the greater area, you know, geography, like you mentioned, to be able to tap into to Louisville what they have to offer. And I mean, really a big development in Louisville was a big win for you guys to to be able to continue to leverage your communities, your counties that you’re representing, as you know, like these resources that are right here, and you don’t need to be in the mix of it all. But we’re, you know, the there’s different ways that you can kind of play that. But I like that. So what about some of these initiatives that have come out post COVID? Or through COVID? That you guys have implemented, that you can kind of touch on for us? Well, let

Wendy Dant Chesser 13:28
me let me talk about three of them primarily. The first is, we have recognized that, that when it’s most, most communities did, the businesses impacted by COVID, size of business really does matter. And so some of our small businesses suffered the most. And this is an opportunity for us, our board of directors had to retreat back in March and said, We want to be able to help those small businesses, those that are already there for those that are growing. So in partnership with the Indiana small business development centers, we have now a shared staff position. That is what we call our small business navigator gives us a someone who’s focused on small business and specific needs that they have, whether it’s technical assistance, whether it’s accounting assistance, whether it’s how access to capital in general, and helping them determine their best best path forward. There are a lot of resources for small businesses, but if you don’t have them all packaged and put together at the in the place where a small business needs them, including potentially some funding sources to keep them moving, then then then we’re not really doing them a good service. So we’re excited about what our small business services initiative is offering. The second is new to us and long, long overdue and that is our diversity, equity and inclusion activities. As an organization, we had not addressed DNI In any of the work that we were doing, the events of 2020 changed our perspective on that, and was quite frankly, a wake up call that that was necessary. And our board of directors took it seriously and incorporated DNI not only as a standing committee within the organization, that they incorporated DNI goals into all of our bylaws, responsibilities, really to make sure that it’s embedded in the fabric of who we are going forward. So our spending and hiring practices internally, how we help companies and promotion opportunities, those are those small things that we’re getting underway and excited to be saying, it’s finally time that we’re doing something in this area, which is long overdue. The third area, and this is the one I saved this for last, this is really as a result of the Indiana General Assembly working with the governor and putting together an initiative that’s going to help communities and regions focus on what their needs, their long term needs are going to be if it weren’t for the Recovery Act funds and things coming into the state and local governments, I’m not sure that this initiative would have occurred. But what is called the regional economic acceleration and Development Initiative, or ready for short, the state put $500 million into a pot and are asking regions around the state to compete for these funds to help leverage private investment to build out quality of place projects. So stop for a second think about where quality of place project may be. Whether it’s a developing an industrial park, which we’ve talked a little bit about weather is increased taking an area of 600 acres right in the middle of our waterfront area and creating a park inviting people in to not only understand the habitat that’s there, but also to also park called it’s called origin Park, that adjusts to the climate change issues when you’re on a river flooding as a part of your date of your annual the annual seasons that you go through. So we’re working on that. But how do we look into some of the more rural areas of our five county region and do things that will benefit them through a youth sports complex through helping one of our historic downtown’s become more of a destination for music goers gives us the opportunity to dream a little bit, but then to set put our priorities together in a five county region and tell the state we need your help to leverage these funds that are sitting on the sidelines, we know that population growth is one of their goals. There’s a lot of folks looking at our area and interested in our area, how do we now tap into those dollars that the state’s made available in a very competitive way, mind you to try to make sure that we’re doing the best we can in 2021 2223. So that all of these dollars that are being spent to help us recover are truly investments that our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren are going to benefit from. So those are the that’s what I’m really most excited about. We’ll have a decision on whether or not we were competitive enough by the end of this calendar year. But I tell all of our regional folks, every time I get the chance, even if we don’t get the full prize that we’re going after we’re in a better shape now than we were before. Because we’re working together, we’re supporting each other’s projects, and programs in trying to make sure that our quality of places stretches beyond our initial or our jurisdictional boundaries into a broader region.

Brandon Burton 18:49
Absolutely. So I love how you’ve identified these opportunities in your community. And I’d like for listeners that are, you know, tuned in right now to think about what opportunities are available in your community. And it might not look exactly like Southern Indiana. But would it make sense to have small business surpluses? Maybe probably, and those are the businesses that need a lot of the help. And it’s kind of that paradox. Sometimes they’re the members that can’t afford to buy the the higher level investment with the chamber, but they need the most help. They need the most assistance. So maybe having a focused effort on that. And I think integrating more the DEA and I you know, like you said integrating that into your bylaws and having more of a concerted effort on making sure that certain segments of the community are being included and that you’re reaching out and thinking about who’s who’s not here, who are we missing? And I think that’s something that every community and I think a lot of chambers are doing a good job at that looking at the DNI but these are your you’re seeing these as opportunities. And I love I love that vantage point instead of, you know, it’s one more thing that we need to take on, it’s one more thing to do. But you’re serving. So

Wendy Dant Chesser 20:11
we are serving it and and we have a team of professionals that work their butts off back during COVID. And so they were they’re tired, but boy does this give us all new energy. The the internal statement is, yes, we’re doing all of these new things, in addition to those things we were already doing. So it’s more we are adding a few new team members. But at the same time, we recognize that if we want to be relevant as an organization going forward, that it’s imperative that we take, we take a real good look at what is going on what’s needed, and what’s going to make our region competitive and our individual businesses. Again, we tell them all the time, because we have both of these roles. We’re a chamber of commerce, but we’re also an economic development entity, the Chamber side helps them go out and get a bigger piece of the pie. And we want that we want to be that and help them. But at the same time, we owe it to them. And everybody else can take a bigger pie so that there’s more for us to go after. So that the only thing I can do in the kitchen is talk about this and

the to do go hand in glove. And when we look at regional opportunities, we all we know that that there’s not a moat around in any of our communities that keeps people from going back and forth, and all that all that neighboring does is offer you and your businesses more opportunities to grow.

Brandon Burton 21:39
And I like that as looking at opportunity like like your analogy of baking the bigger pie. I mean, there’s definitely some opportunities where as a chamber, you need to look at new programming, for example, and say, how do we monetize this? How do we make it worthwhile? How do we do this. And then other things that you you do chamber work wise, is it’s really baking that bigger pie, that’s going to show the value of the chamber, you might not have that direct return on investment, you’re not collecting revenue necessarily for that program or for the focus and attention you’re putting into it. But it’s baking that bigger pie, it’s strengthening your business community, it’s proving your value to your members. And there’s a whole lot of value in doing that as well. So kind of two different ways of looking at the opportunities that are provided.

Wendy Dant Chesser 22:27
That’s the what we have going forward in the unknown, but we can look back and see how some of the work that was done. Pacific example 11 911 or 12 years ago, before I joined organization, we started a robust Business Retention and Expansion program where we would go out into businesses and specifically manufacturers. And the reason is, is that in Indiana, in our part of Indiana, manufacturing is still one of the most strongest sectors for us. About 20% of our payroll in our counties comes from manufacturing, not necessarily 20% of the jobs 20% of the payrolls, so it’s incredibly significant to us. So maybe 11 or 12 years ago, the organization started a Business Retention and Expansion program where they went out to manufacturers and they basically asked simple questions, how’s business? Do you have any opportunities to grow your business? And what are those impediments to doing more business for you? And the answers to those questions became our work plan came up became the strategy. So that that started and because of that, we identified that manufacturers had a lot of common needs, depending on regardless of what they were making. So we started a new membership category called the Metro manufacturers Alliance. And it started with eight manufacturers and has since now grown to about a we’re just under 80. So significant growth is really the most regional of our programs, about almost 50% of them are of the manufacturers are from Kentucky work the other 50% are Indiana, recognizing it’s a it’s an area for us to sell. And the biggest thing that we offer them a round table so your CEOs can get together in a facilitated roundtable environment. I call them support groups when sometimes they don’t like that, but that’s what it is. Doesn’t stop at the CEO that goes to the HR directors, it goes to the procurement folks right now, the busiest one is supply chain because supply chain issues are so critical. So it gives manufacturers at different levels of the organization peers to discuss these, truly. These these truly big issues that are either going to make or break where they are could make or break the workforce supply chain all of the things that we hear over and over again, that we may not have a solution for within the walls of our organization. We can pull together Are those like minded individuals who are looking for solutions, and then they can help come in that we can facilitate that process. So I, it’s a great, I look back on what my predecessors put into place to help us get to where we are today. And honestly, I feel very strongly we have an obligation to pay it forward, that making sure that those areas that we have to work on for the next 10 or 15 years are going to that we get out that all started today.

Brandon Burton 25:29
Yeah, I can see incredible value in those roundtables. Do you have any trouble getting participation on those or kind of hit or miss

Wendy Dant Chesser 25:38
is hit or miss. And I would say that they like any other initiative. If a company is going to get the most out of it, it comes from the top. So those CEOs that are most engaged are the ones whose team typically see more value in the in the programming that is created. And each of them has a facilitator that not staff, but an outside facilitator that can help guide the conversation, look for new ideas. When we went to zoom, obviously, we saw more participation, because at the time people were but we’re hungry for a interaction and be more information. Now that we’re back more live in person events. It’s everybody’s busy. So we’re trying to find ways to keep that enthusiasm going.

Brandon Burton 26:23
Yeah, that’s great. It’s like a giant mastermind group, you have people in the similar roles at different companies to be able to see what’s working for them and share ideas. I love it.

Wendy Dant Chesser 26:36
Just like we’re doing here, because when chamber, chamber folks can share and learn from one another. When I somebody gave me a great quote at one time, I don’t know if he made it up or not. But he said, If I ever take my candle and I light your candle, mine doesn’t become any less dim. We’re all brighter because of it. And I think that’s the that really resonates with me.

Brandon Burton 26:57
Yeah, I love that. Well, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if you have any tip or strategy or a piece of advice, maybe that you would share for listeners that they might be able to implement it their chamber to help take them up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Wendy Dant Chesser 27:16
I don’t really have any specific program advice that I’d like to talk about when a little bit along with the theme of this when a new initiative is started is what we’ve found out what worked best for us, when when we strategize about it, we don’t have to have all the answers. And the harder thing is we don’t have to have all the funding. Because if you get a good idea started and it starts to snowball, it gets a little bit bigger, it gets a little more if it shows more results. The funding, I would say always comes with a lot of times it does it as the funding will follow. So we’re not we’re I’m not overly I’m not an overly risk averse person. But in this role, sometimes you’re expected to be you know, to look before you leave, and we do but we also recognize that sometimes you have to do the right thing and you have to move in a direction because the time is now and then give the opportunity for the rest of it to catch up with you. So it’s not it’s not a renegade or derelict kind of approach. But it’s the reality that sometimes people have to see something happening before they will totally embrace it. Sort of the Henry Ford quote, you know, if he had asked his customers what they’ve wanted, they would have wanted a faster horse. When he was interested in making faster horses, he was interested in giving them something new. And look at where we are today. And that I think that analogy sticks true with a lot of what what a chamber organization does as well.

Brandon Burton 28:51
To your point the other day I had heard the the same that procraft Another word for procrastinator is perfectionist that people will hide behind the idea of being a perfectionist just to delay putting that thing out or you know, and like you’re saying you don’t need all the answers or the funding, just get moving and the pieces will come together. And it’s a failed initiative

Wendy Dant Chesser 29:15
in the chamber world is not necessarily a failure that a mark against your permanent record. It’s a learning experience. And as we see businesses do that all the time, try something new and learn from it. I think in the chamber role we can we can learn from that same philosophy.

Brandon Burton 29:32
Yeah, absolutely. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Wendy Dant Chesser 29:41
That our team has really looked at the AC e ACPE. Horizon Report. And those areas identified such as people will join in and engage in initiatives that they’re passionate about. The days of joining a chamber because it’s the right thing to do. Because your grandma, your father did it with his business, not there anymore. So we have to find ways of consistently making ourselves relevant. It spreads us maybe a little more thin than Lee, because because people find relevance in different things, whether it’s our young professionals group or sales and marketing group, they’ll find relevant in different categories. But as long as we’re nimble and are working to meet their needs to keep them engaged, we feel very strong, and they’ll continue to support us. So the future, the future for us is to continue to be continued to being open to those new ideas, those new initiatives to see if we can pull people together and help them collectively, while making sure that our organization is strong.

Brandon Burton 30:51
I love it. Well, I appreciate you spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, sharing some of the great opportunities there in southern Indiana, but also helping the Chamber’s listening to maybe better see the opportunities that are in their own communities. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who’d like to reach out and connect and maybe learn how you’re doing some things they’re in southern Indiana, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Wendy Dant Chesser

Wendy Dant Chesser 31:23
Well, I think our website is probably best it’s a portion of it or still are under reconstruction. So but it’s the information is still that is on there still accurate, it may just not be complete. That email, the website address is 1si.org. So that’s 1si.org and that’s where we try to at least get people in doesn’t have all of the information that but we have a wonderful team that can supplement any of those questions that come from it.

Brandon Burton 31:58
Very good. And I’ll make sure that’s in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode 154. But again, Wendy, it’s been a pleasure visiting with you and having you on the show. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

Wendy Dant Chesser 32:14
Thank you, Brandon, and I appreciate it very much.

Brandon Burton 32:17
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Izzy West 32:49
Hey, it’s Izzy again. I’ve got some questions about the annual Chamber Pros Planner that I publish. so I wanted to encourage you to visit my website theizzywest.com as I have a video you can watch to see if my planner is right for you. I flipped through the physical books so you can see what the monthly spread, weekly to do list, and meeting notes pages are like. This planner is designed to help keep you on track for your 12 week goals as you push your Chamber forward. Again go to theizzywest.com for the preview. That’s theizzywest.com.

Lessons Learned in 2021

Below is an auto-generated transcription of the top 10 lessons I have learned in 2021. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host, he would love to see chambers get behind the idea of encouraging overall healthy living beyond these unprecedented pandemic times. Here’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:25
Hello, Chamber Champions. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Topic

As we wrap up the year of 2021. I like to do this type of episode at the end of each year where I can I look back at the episodes that I’ve done throughout the year and take out some of the top lessons that I’ve learned and possibly some of the best lessons that can be learned and applied at chambers all over. So not to try to pick out the top 10 episodes by any means, but maybe some overall principles that stood out to me that are worth mentioning again. And in this episode, I decided to pick out the top 10 lessons that I’ve learned in 2021. And with that, I will also be referencing some of the past episodes that I’ve done in this last year. So if you missed any of them, you can always go back and check them out. But as usual, I’ll have all of the links to these past episodes. And anything mentioned will be in the show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode 153. But with that kind of table being said, as far as what the format of this episode will be. I’m going to run down just really quickly what these top 10 lessons are, and then then we’ll get into them in more detail. So I have them numbered, but really it’s no particular order. But number

10 is how important partnerships and membership models are especially in this last year. And taking a look at those
9 is the importance of online communities.
Number 8 is future proofing chambers and small businesses.
Number 7 is the need to go for chambers to go from relevant to essential
Number 6 more chambers are getting into podcasting. So we’ll talk more about that.
Number 5 is the importance of strategic partnerships. You may have your own ideas, but again, I’ll dive in deeper with that.
The number 4 is touching on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Number 3 is the international exposure. So this one is maybe more of a lesson that I’ve learned. But the the need of the show internationally. So I’ll dive more into that.
Number 2, I wanted to highlight the horseshoes versus chess a little bit more. That’s Dave Atkinson’s book.
And then the number 1 lesson is the need that I have to make some pivots.

So with that, we will we’ll get into this. More More detail more depth on these top 10 lessons that I’ve learned this year since we get back from our quick break.

Lesson #10

All right, we are back. So as I teased before the break, I went through quickly the top 10 lessons that I’ve learned this past year. And number 10, was the importance of partnerships and membership models. So as we’re all aware, we’ve been getting through the hopefully, in most places some of the recovery from the COVID pandemic, trying to put some of the pieces back together and try to get our communities up and running again. And as I was doing several of these interviews early on in 2021, the idea of partnerships and mergers between chambers, or economic development, partnerships, and tourism, coming together with Chambers was a big theme to kind of consolidate budgets and resources, and to really leverage what your community has to offer and kind of bring it all into one package. And kind of along those same lines. So before I move on from that Matt Pivarnik was on for Episode 102, which he talked a lot about that with that merging and bringing together the different entities economic development, tourism and chamber all under one roof for that partnership. But along with that, I would say is membership models as well. So through the pandemic, and and even some before there. So there’s been attention given to membership models, but especially through the pandemic and trying to figure out, you know, the best way to serve members. And the best way to show value and, and all of that, being able to take a step back and look at the offerings that are being put out there with a membership model. Tiffany Esposito, she spoke to that in episode 104. So again, any of these episodes that I referenced, you can always find them at the kind of the format to it is chamberchatpodcast.com/episode and then the number so like that one would be episode 104 for Tiffany episode about membership models.

Lesson #9

The number nine lesson that I learned this year was the importance of online communities. And April Bragg joined me for episode 118, where she talked about their beginnings of a Facebook group called Robins regional, that kind of spawned out of the pandemic, and how that Facebook group really gained a lot of traction brought their community together, and really shown some exposure to what the chamber can do for the community. So for a lot of people in their community that didn’t necessarily know what the chamber was, this was an opportunity for the chamber to be that hub, that convener to bring people together, and kind of be that information base of knowledge. So I love that episode, and that the examples that she gave around building an online community, it’s not for everyone, but

I decided to try to kick off an online community of my own to try to make these episodes here on the podcast a little bit more interactive. So I recently launched the Chamber Chat Champions Facebook group, which I know a lot of you are a part of already. So thank you for joining that if you’re listening and you’re not a member of that, please look it up on Facebook again, that’s Chamber Chat Champion’s Facebook group. And the idea there is to be able to take these episodes that are put out each week and to be able to have a little more discussion in depth, sharing resources, ideas, tips from other chamber professionals that listen and that are part of this community. So check that out and join my community.

Lesson #8

The number eight lesson that I learned this year was about around future proofing chambers and small businesses. And this is a it’s been something that’s been on my mind for a lot of the year now is the idea of so many things going digital Online, as far as retail shopping goes, a lot of people don’t go out to Main Street anymore. They hop on to Amazon or whatever’s convenient for them from the convenience of their home or office. So as a chamber, Boyd Stough talked about in episode 121, about how a Chamber of Commerce is the best small business resource in there in your individual community. And the need to be able to to grasp on to the idea of that, and believe that, and I really do believe that for small businesses that are trying to hang on trying to plan for a future, that is a chamber of commerce, that you all of us, we have that responsibility to help these small businesses be successful. And chamber commerce is that great resource. That kind of piggybacking on Boyd styles episode was Jason Leslie in Episode 125. Jason is at the Alberta Chambers of Commerce in Canada. And he had talked about how with a program that they were working on with Boyd, to roll out a program for all of the chambers in the province of Alberta, to bring them online to have the same type of membership offerings, and certain membership offerings, but same type of expectation. So when somebody joins the chamber, they can know what to expect from it. But also, they’ve set up what’s called chamber market. So every chamber in the province of Alberta is online with chamber market now, it’s just recently rolled out. And it is a online retail store for any of their Chamber members of any of the chambers in the province of Alberta. And I know they’re rolling it out in other provinces as well. But this is definitely one of those ways that the chambers there in Alberta are really being an advocate to help future proof these small businesses and chambers for that matter going forward. So great job there.

Lesson #7

The number seven lesson learned is from Casey Steinbacher book From Relevant to Essential. And I had her on the show in Episode 106, where she talked about the book, and it’s a great episode to listen to. But if you haven’t read the book, go download it. It’s a Kindle version or a digital, I think it’s on other platforms too. But I read it on a Kindle. It’s pretty inexpensive. I don’t remember exactly what how much it was. But it I read it all in a day. So it’s a very easy read. But it really talking about future proofing chambers, it’s really making sure that chambers are around in the future going from just being relevant to being an essential staple in your community. And she talks a lot about becoming an influencer in your community. So it’s just a little bit of a teaser into into her book there. And if he listened to last week’s episode, Episode 152, I went into more detail about that book and shared some of the quotes that she had in the book that really impacted me.

Lesson #6

The number six lesson that I learned this year is that more chambers are getting into podcasting. And I know when the pandemic initially kicked off that I had a lot of chambers reaching out to me about wanting to start a podcast not knowing where to start. And it’s been fun over this last year is is some of those have gone online. And they’ve they have their show up and running now to be able to get some of that feedback from these chambers saying hey, I listened to you, like I was inspired by or whatever it may be. And even if it had nothing to do with me, or Chamber Chat Podcast, it’s the idea that chambers are grasping that medium for being able to share their message. And a couple of those that that stood out to me was Michael Huber in Episode 140. And he talked about the podcast that he spun off that’s not necessarily the podcasts for his chamber for the indie chamber, but it’s one that he does under his own on his own power, I guess you could say, but he does it in a way where he’s really highlighting the people of Andy and and the stories that need to be covered there. One of the other ones is B Kyle. And that was episode number 139. But that was a neat story about how she came up with the name. It’s BS Table Talk and and how she came up with the name of Table Talk. So you’ll have to go back and listen to that episode 139 If you’d like to hear that story, but also, I had last week’s episode was the chamber podcasting presentation that I did for the Nebraska chamber executives. And that was really spawned because Justice Rhoden, she, she does a podcast at her chamber. She’s a listener of of Chamber Chat. And she had reached out to me and she’s obviously sees the value of podcasting at her chamber and wanted to help other chambers really get on board and see catch the vision of podcasting. So that’s episode 152. If you wanted to listen to that one.

Lesson #5

The number five lesson that I learned this year is the importance of strategic strategic partnerships. And I don’t have a specific episode to reference for this one, I will mention that this theme came up a lot as I did the chamber, the year finalist series this year, which if you were to go back, and look, that would be episodes 129 through Episode 142, I believe. So if you wanted to go check out some of the things that are talked about around strategic partnerships in more detail. But the couple of things that stood out to me was how some of these chamber the year finalists, they all had to highlight their response to COVID to the pandemic and how they stepped up for their business community. And several of them had partnered with local banks, or small business development associations to be able to offer loans actually loans through the chamber. Because they had these strategic partnerships in place. So there’s definitely a lot to be learned there. Not that you need to always be available to offer loans or anything like that. But to be able to know some of these things are available. So the next time there is a big need like that, that you can be quick to pivot and take action. So those are definitely worth taking a listen to.

Lesson #4

The number four lesson that I learned this year is something that a lot of us have been learning about this year. And that is around the idea of diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think a lot of our eyes have been opened to some of the things that have been ignored for a long time or under appreciated. And just recently in Episode 151 Leonardo McClarty came on and on the podcast and he talked about adding a little twist to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conversation. And he’s talking more specifically about you know, reaching beyond just race and gender but you know, to look at veterans or women owned businesses and things like that, to be able to look around your chamber events, your luncheons, your gatherings and really ask yourself who it is that’s missing, and how you can reach out to their, their group their if as a chamber, you’re supposed to represent the voice of business in your community, what businesses are not being represented, and see what you can do to reach out and include them. And I’m grouping this other episode under the same umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion. And that’s episode 109 with Matt Morrow, and he talked about the lessons he learned from the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, and how as a group, a diverse group of people together are way more intelligent than in any one individual. And I think the more diversity we can bring into our groups, or whether it’s a board or a committee, at your, at your organization, being able to have diversity, and that is going to make the outcome that much wiser, that much smarter.

Lesson #3

The number three lesson that I learned this year is the need of you international exposure, specifically for chamber chat podcast. And I’ll have to admit, when I first started the podcast, that I was doing it with the small chamber in mind, you know, the Chamber who doesn’t have a huge budget, who maybe is not a member of ACCE or even their state, or regional associations, to be able to provide a way to share Best Practices and resources to help them be more successful to better serve their members and community, as I say at the beginning of each episode, and I’ll have to admit that my focus was largely on these smaller Chambers in the United States. I figured there’s a lot of Chambers in the US and I have no shortage really of, of opportunity there to present to these smaller Chambers. Well, that quickly grew to chambers of all sizes in the States. It grew to where I’ve had a couple of Canadian interviews on the podcast, I had Adam leg in Episode 123. He was the former president CEO at the Calgary chamber. They had Jason Leslie on who’s at the Alberta chamber and Episode 125, as I mentioned before, but I had a great introduction with a man named Houssem Touil, he’s at the Tunisia Estonia Chamber. I had who saw him on the podcast in Episode 120, because he just recently put together a global chamber index, where he took a look at it, he invited Chambers from all over the world to participate. And really to find out what the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic has meant to them, have they gained members lost members revenue, the whole nine yards, went in depth in the survey, and produced a really good report that really showed all the results from that survey, and made sense of it. And having that introduction with Houssem has opened up the doors for Chamber Chat Podcast is he is introduced me to others and the international scale introduced me to someone at the International Chamber of Commerce. And in fact, on episode 145 I had some representatives from the International Chamber on the podcast to talk about the World Chambers Congress that was going to be happening in Dubai over Thanksgiving break. So hopefully some of you are able to log in, at least virtually I know, a couple of you may have went even when in person there. But that has really opened the door to chamber chat podcasts on an international level, which is way beyond my wildest dreams when I started this, to think that within three years of starting the podcast that I’d have a an international audience as well. I know that’s not super relatable to you at your Chamber. But that is a lesson that I learned this year. So I thought I would share that.

Lesson #2

The number two lesson that I learned and really there was a lot of lessons in this one. But it was out of the out of Dave Atkinson’s book, Horseshoes vs Chess. And I’m going to do a shameless plug for his book. It is the the most well written book that I’ve that I’ve read at least, that explains the purpose of a chamber of commerce, what a chamber should be doing, what a chamber executive should be doing. I think we all have acquaintances and friends and maybe even family members who are not in they’re not involved with chamber work at all. And they know that you work at a chamber of commerce, but they’ll inevitably ask, so what is the chamber and I know oftentimes, I’ll see people kind of stumble and not really know how to respond to that. But Dave Atkinson’s book horses versus chess really does paint that picture in a beautiful way. Where he compares he shares the the analogy that was shared with him when he first got into the industry, about how some will like in chamber work to game horseshoes, where you all you have to do is show up and throw the horseshoe kind of close to the target and you get a point. And compared that or contrast horseshoes, rather to the game of chess, where you have to as a chamber professional as a chamber executive specifically, you need to know the different pieces you need to know what they’re capable of, and what kind of moves they can make any likens the chess pieces to being economic development and education and tourism and all the different aspects that a chamber can have influence in in your community, and realizing that you can’t move all of those pieces at the same time and they don’t all do the same thing. But being able to learn how to control the pieces and the board to better move your community forward to win the game ultimately. So I highly recommend everyone get your hands on that book, Horseshoes vs Chess if you haven’t already.

Lesson #1

And then Finally, the number one lesson that I learned this year is that it’s time for me to make some pivots and some adjustments to, I guess the offerings that I put out there. So this is coming up on my third year anniversary of doing Chamber Chat Podcast. And it’s a blast, I enjoy it I, I really love interviewing people for the show, and getting to expand my network, getting to know Chamber professionals across the country and globally now, as I mentioned.

But I’ve had an idea that’s been presented to me, I’ve been able to percolate it on it some time, and decided that it’s something that I need to act on. So I’m still going to be doing Chamber Chat Podcast, very similar to how I’ve been doing it. But I’m also early 2022, I plan on releasing a brand new podcast, and I don’t have the name yet to put out there. But it is something that is going to be relatable, something that you’ll be able to use as a resource for your membership. And something that fits in line with the the mission of Chamber Chat Podcast, to better help your serve your members and your community. So please stay tuned for that I will make more of an announcement as a get some of the things ironed out some of those details. But I’m excited to have a new podcast offering. And I’ve got some other things in the works as well as far as new offerings to put out there to better help you serve your members in your community. But I’m also open to some suggestions. So if there’s something that you would like to see from me a way that I can better serve you. Please reach out to me my email address is brandon@chamberchatpodcast.com. And I would love any feedback and ways that I can better serve you. So with that, I wish you all a great New Year, bright futures for 2022. And I hope that you’re able to kind of take inventory of some lessons that you’ve learned this last year, and be able to to move forward in a bright future a good direction for 2022. So thank you for listening, and I look forward to chatting with you again next week.