Category: Podcast Episode

Below is an auto-generated transcription of a presentation that I recently shared with the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce Executives. 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

Voiceover Talent 0:10
community. And now, your host, he wonders what your favorite episode of the podcast has been. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello, Chamber Champions. I am Brandon Burton, your host of Chamber Chat Podcast 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 for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

I decided to do something a little different for this week’s episode. And in the past, I’ve I’ve done a couple book reviews where I kind of summarize books. I’ve shared a couple thoughts of my own in the past. But most of the episodes that I do, as you know is I interview other chamber professionals and get some of their insight and expertise on different topics. But for this episode, I’m playing a recording that I did with the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce executives group on a presentation that I’ve presented to them a couple months ago around podcasting and had the hows and whys and all the reasons I guess why a chamber should consider podcasting. So I want to put a shout out i Thank you to Justise Roden for inviting me to present to the Nebraska chamber executive group, and for that opportunity, but for this episode, I’ll just be playing the recording. Granted when I did the presentation live, it was over zoom. So I had a slide deck and everything on PowerPoint. I don’t think you need to see the visuals to get the concept and the overall ideas about why a chamber should consider podcasting. So I’m just I’m going to play the recording. You’re also welcome to visit the show notes page, which will be listed at the end of this episode, and have any links to anything that I mentioned. So with no further ado, we will get into the recording as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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My focus on this presentation today is going to be around chamber podcasting. And I’m curious how many of you on the call, have a podcast for your chamber. I just like to see how big the choir is that I’m preaching to see justice if if there’s others maybe even just, you know, put it in the chat. And I’d love to know the name of your podcasts. I can check it out afterwards.

But often as I come across somebody who isn’t familiar with podcasts, I don’t really come across that anymore. But about three years ago when I was kicking around the idea of starting a podcast, I had several people ask me what a podcast is. And the easiest way that I found to explain that was to think of a streaming platform kind of like Netflix, but For audio, so radio type of content in a streaming platform you can take with you anywhere. So a lot of ways I think it’s better than a Netflix platform because you can participate in a podcast while you’re doing lots of different things. But I’m going to try to share my screen and see if this will work too. Hopefully guys can all see that. So in this presentation today, I’ll be covering some of the stats, the reasons for having a podcast, the data, the ROI, and even a free resource as we get along in this. But as we start off, I don’t know how many of you let’s see, I’m not getting my slides to change. Here we go.

I don’t know how many of you have read Casey Steinbacher, his new book From Relevant to Essential. It’s a quick read, fantastic book. But in it, one of the main points that she makes is how chambers need to accept their role as an influencer in their community. And she tells the story of the 16 year old girl who sits in her bedroom with a laptop, a cell phone and a camera, and makes a million dollars a year as a social media influencer, telling other young women how to apply makeup and what clothes to wear. And Casey kind of correlates this to chambers being influencers, and pointing out the fact that chambers need to figure out how to monetize their influence in their communities. So in this example, this teenage girl, her platform was social media. Whereas a chamber you can have a lot of different platforms. But I’d like to explore podcasting as a platform for you. You may not realize it, but I will be presenting today with Casey Steinbacher as I share some of the quotes from her new book, because she’s just full of great value. So some of the quotes just to get us started. She says in just about every leadership book ever written, the ability to influence is valued as a key trait of great leaders. chambers have been slow to understand both the value of influencers and the role of content. And lastly, if the mission is prosperous communities, and the key strategy is transformational influence, then the core tactic for successful execution of that strategy is constant, high quality, diverse community nuanced, widely distributed content. So with that, let’s get into some of the stats with podcasting. So 75% of the US population is familiar with the term podcasting. Half of US households are podcast fans. 16 million people in the US are avid podcast fans, I think I would fall into that category as I subscribe to several different podcasts. But I find the age of the podcast listeners interesting. So a lot of those listeners fall into those age demographics of like the millennials and Gen Xers. So as you try to think of content and staying relevant to those upcoming generations, podcast could be a very effective way to do that. And some of these other stats just cover like income levels, and education, so forth, for podcast listeners, which could come in handy when you go about getting sponsorships for a podcast. But listener habits. So some of these stats are pretty intriguing. So 90% of podcasts are listened to while at home 64% of podcast listeners listen while driving. The big stat that stands out to me is this 93% listened to all or most of each episode, which is huge. If you think of your engagement on your social media platforms or your email content opens of your your emails that have 93% of your listeners listen to all or most of your content is outstanding. And then 65% of podcast listeners had been listening for less than three years. So this is a newer medium that people are adopting, and and kind of jumping on to. And then the most popular genres for podcasts are comedy, education and news. I’m not sure where a chamber falls in necessarily as far as a genre goes. But I think definitely could could fall under Education and news as you talk about what’s going on in your community and in keeping your community up to date. But hopefully it can be engaging and maybe maybe you can mix some comedy into your podcast as well. But I’m going to run down just real quickly. 10 reasons why you should maybe consider having a podcast for your chamber. So one would be to engage your members and your community at large to spread The mission and purpose of your chamber to promote and share your advocacy efforts to showcase your business community, to introduce your audience to their chamber leaders. I know a lot of times chamber leaders may may kind of seem untouchable, you can’t get time in front of them. But maybe being on a podcast can help connect with your community to encourage discussions for good in your community, to introduce a new source of non dues revenue, to leverage existing programs and events that your chambers already doing, to introduce a new offering to your tier dues model, and to be a resource for educating your membership. So let’s talk about engagement. I like to use this example this yellow highlighter exercise. So if you were to print out a list of all of your Chamber members and go through with the yellow highlighter to mark up the list, and anybody who has any level of engagement with your chamber, whether it’s you know, they attend all the luncheons and networking events, or they’re a sponsor of some program, maybe they are frequent commenter on your social media posts, whatever engagement if you just mark up that list, and then figure out what percentage of your membership does not engage on a regular basis. Now, Casey is quote on this slide here says that a few, a select few will engage in active leadership and support of the chamber. But most are too busy and appropriately focused on growing their own businesses to have more than a transactional interest with the chamber. And this is where I see podcasting fitting in because I call by podcast is a net activity, it requires no extra time to listen, you can listen while you walk the dog while you drive the car while you fold the laundry. Whatever you’re doing, maybe not while you’re engaging with your members. But anything outside you can, you can be listening to a podcast at the same time. You can also hold different contests to engage your membership. And maybe the winner of a contest can have a Business Spotlight or an interview on your podcast. And next podcast can be used to connect with your community. And Casey’s quote here says that chambers need a much larger platform and audience than it currently has. It needs to talk more frequently to the larger community and not just limit its conversations to the business community. And for that matter, primarily just its members. So I like the idea of having a a name for your podcast that is inclusive of the entire community. I used a couple examples here on this slide of chambers that I found that that have podcasts that that reflect that their names of their podcasts kind of reflect their greater community. So the first one is, It’s Happening in The Haven. So this is the Winter Haven, Florida Chamber. And nowhere on this cover artwork, do you see the name of their chamber, but you do see a guitar you see, you know, the fun and activities and events. So if I’m a resident of Winter Haven, Florida, I want to listen to this podcast to know what’s going on in my community. So I think that’s a great job that they’re doing there. The second example that I have on here is the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce. Their podcast is called B’s Table Talk. So their president and CEO is B Kyle. So I recently had be interviewed for my podcast, and she explained the name of their podcast to me, which I thought was interesting. She said, if you can imagine when you’re at Thanksgiving dinner, and your nephew brings his new girlfriend to Thanksgiving, everybody in the family, they all kind of scooch and they make room at the table for the newcomer. And she said that’s the goal for their podcasts in their community is to scooch and and bring, you know, newcomers to the table. So everybody has a voice and a inability to to talk there. So I thought that name was fantastic. It takes a little bit of explaining but once you get it, it really resonates. But your podcast can be an entertaining wait for your community to be in the loop while also learning thing a few new things at the same time. And you can introduce your your audience to new businesses in your community as well.

So we’ve all heard that Chambers need to be storytellers. What uh, what better platform is there for telling stories than a podcast? So you can interview your members and entrepreneurs to learn how and why they started their business. You can have valued members come on your podcast to tell the story of how the chamber has been there to serve them and help them through maybe a difficult time. You can have fun with things like National Donut Day, there’s a day for everything. So you can have, in this example, maybe a local bakery or donut shop, come on the podcast and just have some fun with it to engage your your greater community. You can use your platform to tell about your advocacy efforts. You know, let your community know what you’re doing on their behalf. And show your diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by interviewing all segments of your community. So the KC quote here is that chambers need to understand how to engage and activate more voices in that larger platform, their bigger audience, help them feel welcome to the conversation and that their voices matter. See, so create valuable content. So I love this, the quote that Casey has here says your meaningful content provides an incentive for your audience to share their influence with their network on your behalf, which is, and we’ve all heard of things going viral on social media, and so forth. So if you create good, valuable content, then your audience will create the legs for that to get out deeper into your community. But you can take some trainings and programs you already have at your chamber and maybe repurpose those into a podcast episode or vice versa, you might have a good podcast episode that you can repurpose in other ways. You can provide some how to lessons to give your listeners a quick win. So for example, maybe you start off each episode with some type of a social media tip that they can pull up their phone because their chances are they’re already listening on their phone, and they can pull it up and do whatever tip you’re telling them on social media and, and have that quick win to have them coming back for more. And I love this point here is that you can create an immense amount of goodwill, by shining light on a certain business or even a potential community partner by having them on the podcast and learning more about them sharing their story in your community that that goodwill is kind of immeasurable. And next we’ll, we’ll talk about non dues revenue, we all want to see what what can a podcast do for your chamber, right. So as we get in this conversation of non dues revenue, I’d like to think of there’s also non mana, non monetizing monetization and qualitative objectives such as re engaging members who haven’t been participating for some time, but maybe they hear your podcast and say I didn’t realize that the Chamber does XYZ, whatever it may be. But as far as non dues revenue go, you can leverage your podcast for existing programs and events by promoting them on your podcast increase attendance and or sales. You can teach business owners how to podcast, you can rent out your podcast studio or equipment. And of course, there’s sponsorship and advertising as well. And the KC quote around revenue is as you create content and use it effectively to monetize your influence in your community.

The some advertising stats around podcasting, hopefully this, this resonates with you, but 81% of podcast listeners pay attention to podcast ads. As you compare that to other media. 63% say they ignore TV commercials 66% Ignore digital ads. 61% Ignore billboards and 59% Ignore radio commercials. But 60% of podcast listeners have bought something from a podcast and even stretch that out a little more 72% of people who’ve listened to a podcast for four or more years have made a purchase. And Casey says it consistent high quality and engaging content influences audience decision making more than any other technique. And again, that goes back to being an influencer and being able to talk about these brands that you might have as a sponsor and and things like that to to really get people to make that decision to make a purchase. Now, I recently conducted a chamber podcasting survey. I looked up as many chambers as I could find that had a podcast. There’s not a whole lot right at the moment and again, it is a newer, newer platform, but of those that I that I got survey responses back from about half of those surveyed said that their target audience for their podcast is their community at large. And then the other half was kind of split up between being directed directly towards members and the other towards the general business community. 80% of the chamber surveyed have had their podcasts for less than two years. And that I saw a big uptick with chambers through the COVID shut downs, where they’re trying to find a way to stay engaged with their membership. And a lot of chambers did pivot to podcasting to stay connected, continue providing valuable content to to help their their businesses through that bet crazy time. And time spent. So of those surveyed 68% of the chambers that have a podcast spend between one to three hours a week on their podcast, so it’s not terribly labor intensive. And chambers of every size, are are in the podcasting game now. So the excuse of I’m just a one person show at my chamber, I’m too small, it’s not true chambers of every size are in this and succeeding at it as well. And then the format of podcasts. So 82% of chambers surveyed said that they do an interview based podcast. And all the rest had a combination of either sharing information or repurposing chamber programs and having interviews. So in the end, 100% of the chamber surveyed have some type of an interview based podcast which helps on creating the content so it’s not on you, as a chamber to create the content for each episode. Now the monthly expenses. I’m curious what what you guys would think monthly expenses would be for a podcast. With this survey, 65% of the chamber surveyed spend less than $20 a month on their podcast. So it’s not very time labor intensive, again, one to three hours and for most chambers less than $20 a month. And then the monetization side of it. Not a whole lot of chambers had figured out or applied monetization to their podcast yet only about 17% have about 35% say they would like to and about half of the chambers surveyed said that they don’t monetize your podcast. So whether that’s a choice, or they just haven’t gone down that road yet. I’m not sure I need to dig in deeper to that answer. But of those that are monetizing their podcasts, they’re seeing between five to $10,000 a year, income generated from their podcasts. And I imagine that number will will only increase the more the podcasting becomes popular light popular, I can’t say that word becomes more popular.

But I do have a free gift or resource for you guys. So during the the beginning stages of the shutdowns with COVID. I was thinking as I was about a year into my podcast at that point, and I was thinking of all the chambers that I work with, and how are they going to stay in contact with their members and help, you know, get information out there. So I put together a free chamber podcasting guide. It’s a downloadable PDF that goes over the software to be used for podcasting, the hosting platforms, the equipment, and resources for all of that as well as an outline to kind of structure your first 10 episodes. So if you would like to check it out, you can access that link there chamber chat podcast.com/pivot There’s some other things on that page. But you can look for that cover of the chamber podcasting guide to request request your free copy. And of course I would love to connect with with any of you that are on this call. My contact information is there my email, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And of course, I would love it for you guys to subscribe to my podcast. So if you wanted to check out your your podcast app on your phone and search for chamber chat podcast, hit subscribe and you’ll get a new episode each week in your your podcast app. But with that we can open it up for questions.

Unknown Speaker 24:42
Brandon that was That was fantastic. I feel like he just literally gave us a playbook here in Seward County. So thank you. Thank you. I am I am curious. For those that have smaller chambers, I mean hat maybe give a couple of like easy way to wait easy ways to get started, because I think I was probably even overwhelmed with this concept until we had an awesome summer intern that put some of this stuff together for us. Sure. Do you have like a like a 101? Like people don’t even know what equipment to get or any of that stuff? Can you? Can you kind of briefly walk through some tips and tricks there?

Brandon Burton 25:22
Yeah, absolutely. And I just shared the my slides as well in the chat. So if anybody wants to access that, there’s some hot links on there for for some of the things that I covered. But I know a lot of chambers got into really upping up upping their social media game, especially through COVID doing live videos and things of that nature, some, you know, invested in doing YouTube videos, and they invested in in some equipment, you know, cameras and microphones, and so forth. And a lot of the equipment that you may already have around your office could work for doing a podcast. I’m, I mean, the sound quality is important. But you can get a I mean, even the microphone I’m using here at this is like $100 for the microphone and the arm and everything and it works great. And actually have a link to this microphone in the chamber podcasting guide. So the equipment, so there’s there are some, some hosting platforms, there’s one that’s called an anchor, that’s a free podcast hosting platform, which means that’s where you would upload your mp3 for each episode. And then it sends it out to all the different podcast directories to be downloaded. And anchor is a it is a free podcast hosting platform. And I’ve seen a lot of chambers utilize a anchor because it is free, so it fits the budget really well. The other ones that I know are good I use Libsyn is my hosting platform. And another good one that I’ve heard a lot of good things about is Buzzsprout. So both Libsyn and Buzzsprout are at pay for hosting platform Lipson, I spend, I think $15 a month to host. But when I was personally trying to decide what hosting platform to use, finger a lot of times on the free platforms, you kind of get what you pay for, although you get a lot with the anchor platform. So my son 15 years old, he’s he started a podcast and he uses anchor, like man, he got some good resources on there. But I get a little bit leery on the free platforms just because at any time that’s that model can change. And oftentimes, you’re giving away your rights to your content as well when it’s a free platform. So as long as I’m paying for it 15 bucks a month, I know it’s mine, I’ve got full control over it. For me it was worth that investment. So if you’re looking to to pay I think Lipson like for a decent package is about $15 a month, I think by sprouts around 20. So

Unknown Speaker 28:15
hey, Brandon, I have a question about like editing. Because we have our podcast and it. We sit down with our members for about an hour, go through an hour of content, and kind of edit down all those arms oz or anything that like sounds weird because like I’m used to it. And I probably spend three hours editing one podcast. I just was curious how long it takes you stop

Brandon Burton 28:45
it? No. No. So what I do, I record the majority of my interviews over zoom, because I used to use Skype a lot. And through the pandemic, everybody became familiar with Zoom overnight, and that nobody uses Skype anymore. But people understand how zoom works. I record on Zoom. And then I edit in a program called audacity, which is it’s a free editing platform that’s pretty user friendly once you get the hang of it. As far as the editing of it goes, I tell my guests right up front. I say I try to keep this raw, we keep it real. I don’t go through and edit out all the VMs and and and I mean sometimes there’s a reason to, I try to make sure that at least the introduction of the podcast is clean. But once we get into the meat of it, I just keep it raw and just just keep it going. You figure if it was video, you’re not going to go through and cut out all the ads and ohms because it’s chopping up the video too. So just just keep it real. Just get the sound quality right so it’s not too loud and too quiet.

Unknown Speaker 30:01
What would you recommend is the best target length of a podcast session?

Brandon Burton 30:07
Yeah, that’s a great question. So one of the things I encourage anyone to do who is creating a podcast is they say create your avatar, think about who your target audience is. And when is that prime time that they would be listening? So it may be some guessing on the front end as to who that audience is until you can get some feedback. But try to think about when that primetime is, if it’s on their drive to or from work, how long is their commute? Is it five or 10 minutes? If they’re going to be listening, when they’re out walking the dog, maybe 2030 minutes. I think beyond 3035 minutes, it kind of gets intimidating. You know, I know myself, I have some podcasts that I love. I mean, the content is great. But every now and then I see an hour and 45 minute episode, and I just don’t have the time today. And then it gets chopped up over several days of listening. And I’d rather get it all in one or two sittings. So I would say try to target for sure under the 3035 minute mark, but it may be quite a bit shorter than that to

Unknown Speaker 31:15
time. Because I am a fan of your podcast. What is your personal favorite or most memorable?

Brandon Burton 31:24
Oh, man, most favorite and most most memorable? So there’s been a lot of good ones. And that’s the politically correct answer, right. But I did I really enjoyed. They’re almost around the same time, and I’m gonna narrow it down to two. Because about the same time Dave Atkinson was coming out with his book, horseshoes versus chess, and Casey Steinbacher, with her book relevant to essential so I think it was within a week or two that I had them both on the podcast. And they both just bring so much knowledge of a career in the industry. And packaging it in a book that is so well done. They they both delivered a ton of content in those episodes. Another one that I really enjoyed was with Toby teeter from the Joplin chamber. And he was talking about how they use social media for their economic development and employee attraction to their to the Joplin area. And that was that was very fascinating. So they got really techy, it might be more than what most people are willing to dive into. But I really enjoyed that one. Thanks for being a fan to justice. Appreciate it. All right. I hope you enjoyed the chamber podcasting presentation that I did to the Nebraska chamber executives, it really was a blast to be able to do something like that it was the first time that I really presented in that type of format, but definitely open to doing it for others as well. So if you have a chamber group in your region, or your state that you would like to consider having me present to feel free to reach out to me, my email address is Brandon at chamber chat podcast.com. But in the episode, or I guess in the recording of that presentation, I did reference a couple of free resources. And I know I put them out there before. But I do have a free chamber podcasting guide that is accessible to anybody who’s who wants that and really just kind of helps to chart out your first 10 episodes, and tells you all the software and you know the ins and outs of how to how to get started. But I also recently conducted a survey, a chamber podcasting survey where I reached out to many chambers, who I know had a podcast to get some insight and feedback from them about the value of podcasting to them. There’s a lot of very insightful data in that and I’ve referenced some of that in the presentation. But if you want access to either the chamber podcasting guide or those survey results, you can find them at chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot But as usual, the show notes for this episode will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode152 And it’s been a pleasure presenting this this chamber podcasting presentation with you today. Hope you found a lot of value out of it. And even if you don’t decide to make the jump into podcasting, hopefully at least opens up your mind to other ways to become an influencer among the business community in your region. So with that, I will let you go and look forward to gotten with you again next week.

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Leonardo McClarty. 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 0:13
And now your host. He thinks positive affirmations are important playing and you are awesome. He’s gonna get 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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Leonardo McClarty is the president and CEO of the Howard County Chamber of Commerce in Maryland. His specific duties are largely centered in four distinct areas organizational leadership and business development, marketing and program management, public policy and Community Relations and fiscal management. Prior to coming to Howard County, Leonardo was director of economic and community development for the city of York, Pennsylvania, where he was responsible for promoting the city to the private sector and efforts to foster economic investment and neighborhood redevelopment. With his within his purview, were bureaus of economic development, help housing and planning, permits, zoning, and native of the Atlanta area. Leonardo served as president and CEO of the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce for nearly 10 years. A career economic development professional Leonardo has also worked for the city of Roswell, Georgia, to Cobb County, Georgia, and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. He holds an undergraduate degree in political science from Furman University and a graduate degree in city and regional planning from Clemson University. He is a certified chamber executive through ACC, certified economic development finance professional through the National Development Council, and is a graduate of the US chambers Institute for organizational management. Leonardo is married to Shamika. And they have three daughters, Leonardo,

I’m excited to have you with me today, here on chamber chat podcast, I’d like to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that we have out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Something Interesting About Leonardo

Leonardo McClarty 3:15
Thank you, Brandon for having me. And definitely looking forward to this conversation and his chat. I always enjoy talking about the profession, and just my experiences and things I’ve perhaps been able to do or witness and even just learning just as we have these dialogues. And so I guess something maybe interesting, you know, former college football player played running back for farmer. And so definitely, I’m a Paladin, and so continue to to root on my alma mater, which plays in the Southern Conference. And then while they’re also had a radio show, and so my roommate and I, we, we had a hip hop show back in the early 90s. And so it’s seems to be a long time ago now. But that’s a little bit about me that maybe some folks would know.

Brandon Burton 4:07
That was the good old days of hip hop right there.

Leonardo McClarty 4:11
Yeah, and it actually it actually, you know, was it’s funny sometimes, you know, you’re sounding Oh, when you find when you start saying, Oh, I don’t listen to that anymore. anymore. You know, I guess the same way that our parents talked about, you know, they was, I guess sometimes they were stuck in the 70s. And I feel like I’m maybe stuck in the 90s Yeah, yeah, I

Brandon Burton 4:31
catch myself doing the same thing as I see, like, tick tock and stuff, you know, all these social media things and like, what a waste of time, you know, and, you know, older generations are looking at Facebook saying the same thing. So it’s, it happens with every generation, you know, it was rock and roll was going to be the downturn of society. And yeah, we’re still here. So share with us a little bit about the Howard County Chamber just to give us some perspective. Before we jump into our topic today, I’d like to get an idea of, you know, staff size, your chamber budget, that sort of thing.

About the Howard County Chamber

Leonardo McClarty 5:06
Yeah. So, so Howard County Chamber, we’re here and actually Columbia, Maryland. And so Columbia is actually situated in a greater Baltimore area. And so we’re right around the i 95. Corridor, where roughly about maybe 15 miles or so south of Baltimore, and then we’re about 30 miles or so. I guess that would be north of DC. And so if anything, as a community, probably in particular, Colombia, really grew heavily in the 80s. And kind of part of it was because it was it kind of served as a good in between place between Baltimore and DC. And for those that may, you know, be Greek government officials and also maybe doing something medical wise in Johns Hopkins, or, or what have you, as a community, we are about maybe a little over 300,000 as a county. So chamber wise, we have about 630 members, including myself, it’s six of us on staff. And so been around organizationally, I think we’re in our maybe 52nd 53rd year. And so budget wise we are we sit somewhere around about maybe around that 1000, close to a million dollars. Okay. Well, that

Brandon Burton 6:36
does help give some perspective. Both you know, where you are geographically in Maryland, but also the size of your chamber? And what type of chamber do you guys do economic development? Do you do tourism and just chamber what type of chamber don’t

Leonardo McClarty 6:52
want to just chamber one of the things I think that perhaps many of the listeners are fine, maybe adventurous or unique, depending on where you are? Maryland is probably and what I found, so as it was mentioning, a random chamber in DeKalb. County, Georgia, you know, now, I guess, gosh, that term ended, I guess about sometime in 2014. And, you know, so I would say when you get to kind of Richmond, Virginia, south, southwest, going into the Midwest, it’s not uncommon for chambers to do economic development, it’s not uncommon for even chambers to maybe have a tourism program or even sometimes a leadership program. Whereas what I’ve found that’s been interesting is probably Richmond, Virginia, North, particularly as you get into Maryland. Very few chambers here, do economic development, the tourism, a lot of places, even the leadership program to separate our leadership program here started as a part of our chamber, sometime in the maybe the mid 80s. And that kind of spun out on its own, I guess, might have been in the 90s or something. So you still have a close relationship with leadership, our county with our tiny tourism or Economic Development Authority, but as a chamber itself, we just do with just the chamber.

Brandon Burton 8:12
All right. Well, that does help. But I find this our topic for today’s is intriguing. Obviously, you know, across the country as diversity equity inclusion is kind of top in my top of mind for most chambers, I would say across the country. We’re going to take a little twist to the standard approach of DNI and we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-DE&I with a Twist

Alright Leonardo we are back. So for our discussion today talking about DE and I with a twist And I, I’ve been wanting to cover this topic for some time. And a lot of episodes, we’ve touched on it, but we haven’t had, you know, this be the the main focus. But I’m excited to have you with me today to talk about this this topic. From your perspective, what is what does DNI with a twist mean to you, but maybe just in general DEI and then we’ll add the twist on, you know, a little bit later.

Leonardo McClarty 10:30
So, so typically, when you talk about DNI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, obviously, you’re talking about it from the lens of particularly, you’re taking into account maybe gender, race and ethnicity, you’re talking about, perhaps sexual orientation. But it’s normally those facets, certainly some might even we then perhaps, if you’re differently abled, or, or maybe even, there’s another one that escapes me. But that’s generally when people talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, when I think about it with a twist, I think is adding other components to it. In a sense of particular, from a chamber perspective, recognizing that one, we either are charged with serving a city, multiple cities, county, sometimes, you know, state. And so we’ve got to take into account all of these other facets. And sometimes maybe that’s geographic location, maybe that is the size of business. Maybe even in this age, maybe it’s age, it’s ultimately trying to be, you know, trying to recognize that there are just all of these different components, and that at the end of the day, I like to say, people like to be able to identify the folks that look like them, and look like them can be a lot of different things, it doesn’t always mean, you know, again, that I identify because it’s a male speaking, but maybe it’s the fact that it’s a small business owner, and I run a small business. And so that’s kind of the twist component.

Brandon Burton 12:13
I think that’s great. As we get into this topic, you know, I see whether it’s the media culture, or whatnot, the world loves to put labels on people, right. And, to your point, I think, as we look in programming, or even speakers for different events, your participants that are there, they, they would like to hear from somebody that they can relate to somebody who’s walked in their shoes, somebody who sees the world in a similar way as they do. But I think a lot of this also goes to kind of what the purpose of your chamber is, what that ideal goal is, because I think in the end, most chambers aren’t looking at the world through the lens of, you know, we’ve got 16 Different groups of people. But we have one business community, you know, we’re trying to further the development of our community, we want to bring people together rather than divide. But I think part of that, to your point is, in order to bring people together, you have to have some of these segments to say, look, this person is part of this greater organization. And they’re like you in these ways, is that kind of how you that’s how I see it, as you’re explaining

Leonardo McClarty 13:39
it. No, it is, I think, if anything, perhaps maybe another way of saying it, and maybe even easier way of saying truly being able to answer the question who was missing? You know, we we like to say in the chamber world that we are the voice of business. And so if you’re the voice of business, how can you be the voice of businesses, if not all businesses there? And so I think about it as an example, you know, a few years ago, we were doing what we call it our vision for 2020, which is a three year strategic plan at the time. And one of the things that we recognize as an example and Howard County, we are a very diverse community. And yet, as a chamber, we didn’t have necessarily that much diversity. I mean, yeah, we had this is getting into the more traditional stuff. But yeah, we had, you know, white businesses and black businesses and we had, you know, women and what have you, but specifically as a community. I would say we probably have, you know, four distinct kind of ethnic groups, if you will, you know, we’ve got white black, but then we’ve got specifically a large Indian population and a large Asian In population, and so much so that there’s double, it’s double digits across the four. And then if you go and start breaking down aging into, you know, whether that’s Korean, Chinese, what have you, and so forth. But we said, we don’t have a lot of the other parts of the business community represented. And then it was kind of why, you know, so then it became a case of just trying to be more intentional about first listing this try to reach out to these other groups, and we started to want a multicultural networking event, just have nothing else to create a safe space for people that because what we ended up finding, when we spoke as an example to I think it was one of the Korean groups, they had members that wanted to move beyond just doing business, just amongst themselves, particularly if they were second generation, and maybe felt some hesitancy as to how do I quote, penetrate the larger business community? We had other members in the larger, more, I guess you could say motto with the chamber that had interest in other populations. And again, everybody’s trying to figure out, well, how do I get invited to their dance? And so we said, Okay, well, you know what, let’s create a dance that we invite everybody to. And so we did the first mixer where we had a couple of Indian groups we had, like the Korean society, we had our tourism partner, we had, I think, the Hispanic Chamber, we had the Maryland LGBTQ chamber, we probably had about 100 plus people there. And it was truly kind of this melting pot thing. And so I think, you know, again, with that, it was one just recognizing that, first and foremost, to your point, if we are about and as we talked about offline, if our job is to promote commerce to promote industry, the job creators, increase the tax base, be that true advocate for private industry, private enterprise. And we’re going to say, on our business cards and mission statements, that written voice of business, how can we truly be that voice? If not, everybody has a seat at the table?

Brandon Burton 17:20
Absolutely. And you hit on so many great things there, I was thinking, you know, a lot of chambers do a really good job at highlighting the women in business, and they have a great programming around women in business. And I think we’re seeing more and more of an effort to reach out to other other demographics that fit within business ownership. But when you talk about who’s missing, you know, if I’m in Texas, you know, and in Texas, we get a lot of Hispanic populations. And a lot of times you don’t get a whole lot of the Hispanic business owners as members of the chamber. Maybe they don’t see the value proposition they don’t, I don’t know, you know, what all the reasoning is necessarily behind all of it. But you had mentioned about these different segments, wondering how do I get invited to their dance? And it made me wonder, you know, are our most of these people asking how do I get invited? Or do I even want to be invited? Like, where are they on that spectrum? Yeah, yes. For me, what does it has?

Leonardo McClarty 18:28
Yeah, good. And I would say that it’s probably a little bit of both. I mean, and I think, you know, I’ve used this other analogy at times, you know, we may not ultimately increase our membership amongst these other diverse populations. But I say sometimes it’s one thing for me to stand on the front steps of say, of my porch, and to say, hey, you know, the doors open come in. And then you have a choice on whether or not you want to come in or not. It’s another thing for me to sit inside the living room. And the door is open. And I just kind of say, well, you know, the doors open. But I haven’t necessarily invited you and you haven’t seen me to say, look, come on in. You’re welcome. And I think if nothing else, I think that’s one of the big things in which, you know, different types of some groups were when they were they kind of a wondering, do I really want to be invited? It’s a case of, you know, have we created as a general chamber, an atmosphere, where we actually say, look, you’re welcome. We’d love to have you and I’ve got a board member, she’s actually gonna be my chair next year. And it was interesting, when she first interview and she, you know, to come on the board, one of the things she talked about with sometimes that that perception that we deal with is chambers, and a sense of maybe not being Open, you know, in some cases to just, you know, the other weather small businesses or coops that haven’t been necessarily in the know or in the loop. And so she challenged us to create an even more welcoming environment. And she even says, hey, if I’m on the board, I see chamber events, much like a dinner party at my house. And I find that if you if I invite you to my home, but I walk around to all the guests saying, hey, look, how are you doing? Maybe to anything else that drink and get something else to eat? Are you fine? Are you comfortable? And she was like, we have to create that same type of atmosphere, when people come to our events, as opposed to, as a previous chair said, when he used to be involved in chamber, he said, I would go to these events, and a joke would be told, and other people knew the punch line. And I did. Yeah. And so you know, so I think it’s just one of those being, you know, conscious of our perceptions. And whether they’re real or not constantly having to fight, you know, the perception of the I think I’ve even written a couple pieces here. As an example, when I would hear all the chamber still has all been. And it’s like, well, have you seen our website lately? That, you know, we’ve got about a 32 member board, and literally half of them are women. You know, and it’s like, you know, it’s not that, and I think I titled the piece that not to check not your father’s chamber, or something to that effect,

Brandon Burton 21:32
you know,

Leonardo McClarty 21:33
so I think we have to just tackle some of these perception issues head on, to really try to, to change, because I think, lastly, as we look at particularly, millennials, especially Z, you know, Gen Z, they are truly all about looking for inclusive organizations and seeing who’s being left out. And because we all, you know, fundamentally as we strive to grow, as an industry, and as we try to grow our respective chambers, I think we have to be conscious that it’s going to be hard to attract the younger generation if they see us being standoffish for, perhaps not being open minded to alternative box. And so cool.

Brandon Burton 22:23
Absolutely. And for me that the big takeaway is being able to, can have that outreach to these business owners of different diverse backgrounds, and sharing the messaging that the Chamber has for them, that you have valued offer to them. And let me show you how, you know, and then tying it in somehow that’s relatable to them, that they can see oh, there’s other people like me, there’s other people that that I can relate to. And it’s not just an exclusive membership for, for whatever the perceived, yeah, vision is from that business.

Leonardo McClarty 23:03
And Brandon, I think the other P That’s key is that the thing that they have in common is that, hey, we own a business. We employ people, we have payroll to make we tax. Right. And so, you know, so I think, you know, if anything is kind of, you know, trying to bring out that look, you know, you know, at the foundational levels, this is what we have in common, you know, that we all are struggling to make sense of some of the stuff that’s taking place, whether it’s in a regulatory environment, or just dealing with supply chain issues, or labor shortages, or what have you. And we can

Brandon Burton 23:45
learn from each other. Yeah, there’s a lot of issues that affect all of us, it doesn’t matter where you are in the community affects all of us is if you’re a business owner. So you shared the example of having your multicultural networking event, as there have been other successful outreach opportunities that you guys have had there that might be good to share with others listening.

Leonardo McClarty 24:10
The other thing that I would say that’s probably that we’ve done is I have internally this little matrix when we go through our board nomination process. And it’s kind of just an informal tool that I use, again, getting back not we’re factoring in this twist component, where I’m literally writing down everything from, you know, obviously, you got the, you know, the person and it’s easy to determine whether or not they’re, well. I’m gonna say we’ve phrased the statement. But you know, you’ve got, you’ve got the gender element, they may have an ethnicity piece, but then I’m writing down to their small business mid sized business for, you know, are they small business, where are they located? Did the county even down to now we’re looking at what’s their, their age group. And, and so we’ve been fortunate that we don’t necessarily deviate from our process our processes our process, but at the same time, were these conscious of, okay, if we’re bringing on five or six board members, you know, are we bringing, you know, bringing in maybe three men to weapon or two women and three men, you know, are we bringing in? Wow, okay, we’ve got a couple of boomers here, we’ve got lineal we’ve got to Jen’s ears. You know, one of the things I was sharing is just the fact that people like to be able to, you know, have something that they can relate to the other person. And so sometimes when people look at the board, and if they’re folks that they respect, and the community and our business community, and you’re younger in your career, and you say, Wow, she looks like she’s about my age, or we went to college together, how does she get on the board? or what have you, you at least feel like okay, well, you know, what, I, there, I don’t have to wait until maybe, you know, at this level within the company, or what have you before I have an opportunity, maybe to be on the chamber board. So. So it’s it’s those things that I’ve been really proud of over the last five or six years that we’ve been very conscious on, is again, classically asked that question, who’s missed? In some cases in industry, like we recognize last year, when we went for, I guess, it was earlier this year, going through our process, because our board development piece, people come on the board effective June one. And so we were looking at earlier this spring, and we recognize, okay, we don’t have any restaurant tours on the board. And so we brought this one board member on, she was what I call the three, four. He was a woman, she was a small business. And she was a restaurant tour. So And technically, she’s probably a Gen X. Whereas, you know, when we brought our YPN rep on, he was a guy. He’s I think, maybe Pacific Asia, he’s AAPI. He’s a millennial, you know, so he’s, I mean, so it wasn’t necessarily that we were trying to fill the slots. It’s just the fact that, you know, we had criteria, people met the criteria, they were in certain roles within the chamber already. And when we went back and looked at them, he said, Wow, we met all of these different goals. And so for me, it’s just a case of actually charting it. And something I think you’ve heard me say, offline is being intentional, I mean, I think are the same, you know, what gets measured gets done. And so I think actually measuring, you know, where we are. And lastly, what I would say is, you know, in some communities, you may not have as much ethnic diversity, but you’ve got diversity in terms of where your business is located. You’ve got diversity in terms of how you the size of business, or maybe the type of industry. You know, I think we’ve all heard if you’ve been in the chamber industry for a while. And here is I think, for me, I’ve got now almost, I guess, about 17 years in business. And you’ll constantly hear oh, chambers, just from the big guys. Well, 7870 80% of our members probably have 25 employees or less. So if you’re dealing even with just that stigma, oh, okay, well, then let’s take a look at who do I have speak? And where, who’s on my board? You know, am I addressing kind of the stigmas? And again, it doesn’t always have to be around, you know, racial components. It could be around again, industry, business size, geography, what happened?

Brandon Burton 29:06
So I love the great example you share, for sure. I love that the age component that you bring into it, and I think it, it cuts both ways. You know, there’s other young professionals and see, oh, this, you know, I relate to this person, but then you have the older generations that can see this younger generation, say, I thought these were just people lived in their mom’s basement, that this person knows what they’re talking about, you know, breaks down those stigmas. And I love that. When you talk about being intentional, and like who speaks How do you do incorporate that into the outreach somehow. So if somebody is not a member, but you have a young professional to try to open that up and invite some business owners that are younger, how do you go about that?

Leonardo McClarty 29:53
So for us, it kind of depends on the type again, well, obviously a couple of things a topic and the type of opportunity it is So for instance, if we’re doing a small business seminar, we really like to focus that within the chamber and see do we have someone or multiple people that have this level of expertise, and and start there, if it’s one of our conferences like we do, for instance, a Cyber Conference that this year I think was in Year 10, we do a Women’s Leadership Summit. That’s now it may be going on year seven, we do issues our first year, we get a wipey Summit, young professionals. And so as an example, then all three of those, we’ve actually had plenty of we’ve had some members, but we’ve also had plenty of non members to speak. On the conference side, we really want, because we look at it as a conference, we want to get the best and brightest. And for the Women’s Leadership Conference, in particular, we do a call for speakers and find evidence because there we are. This is a second year we’ve done this, I think we’ve allowed people to self certify, to say, for instance, that professional development affiliations, like Sherman, I think might have been APA and a few others. And so there were certain parameters that the speakers had to be able to address when they responded. And so in that case, it was open that we cast a wide net, because it was more about delivering value. And the fact that we do people would be able to be with continuing ed units. And there was a certain criteria we had to be. But even still, we chose we tried to have some topics that maybe with lend themselves to certain groups. And it just it worked out this year, again, that we had is the multifaceted group of speakers and so forth.

Brandon Burton 32:02
That is great. So I know we need to start wrapping up here, we’re starting to get a little bit long, but I wanted to see if you have any tip or action item, maybe based on our discussion today that you can put out there to help other chambers listening to take their chamber up to the next

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Leonardo McClarty 32:20
level. The biggest thing and this speaks across the board, as I think I’m constantly challenged, or so, you know, the one thing that I think COVID has done for anyone running anything, whether you’re a small business owner, a not for profit, executive, corporate executive, but we’ve all had to challenge ourselves in some respects to think differently, as to how we solve problems is how we move forward. And I think that’s the one thing that I would say as you deal with things, whether it’s in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion space, or just overall programmatically, just challenge yourself to think differently. And thinking differently might mean, okay, who do I need to talk to or reach out to that maybe I haven’t done so in the past. And even in some cases, you know, don’t be afraid to lean on the I’m new. Or it’s or it’s a it’s a new day. And the fact that I know, we haven’t worked together before, but it’s a new day. And we we probably have similar interest, how can we work together? So that’s the big thing I would say is we have to constantly challenge ourselves to do things differently.

Brandon Burton 33:35
I love that answer. As we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Leonardo McClarty 33:47
I think you know, continually, I think our future I think continues to be right. I think the one thing the one place that I think we can really stand to continue to have leverage is the fact of being that convener. I think you and I talked about right now, we’re in a place where certainly divergent opinions continue to diverge. And as a chamber, oftentimes we’ve had to play a role in Switzerland. So I think that we can continue to be that piece that really for the betterment of our business communities. To try to me we have to be the one to be the level headed wanted to bring multiple parties and factions together. And and I think the more that we can do that we can continue to generate value for our members. The other thing and I think you did a podcast on this already. But I think also moving beyond just events and thinking about those in really getting into that economic and community development space, particularly maybe when it deals when it comes to advocacy, we don’t necessarily have to be the economic development entity to actually be an economic develop public policy and advocacy and how it impacts. This is economic development.

Brandon Burton 35:18
So, absolutely whether or not you have that official responsibility or not, there’s a role, I think, for every chamber to play in economic development and advocacy for their businesses. But Leonardo, I’ve enjoyed this discussion with you. This has been a lot of fun. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who’d like to reach out and connect with you, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Connect with Leonardo McClarty

Leonardo McClarty 35:43
Yeah, they could always reach out, excuse me, reach out to me via email. My email address is lmcclarty@howardchamber.com. Alternatively, you can just look up Howardchamber.com. And go to the staff section, and you’ll see my smiling face and email address.

Brandon Burton 36:10
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode as well, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode151. But Leonardo, thank you so much for spending time with me today, here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I feel like you brought a lot of value. And really a lot of action items that that chambers listening can take back into their communities to be more diverse and to really bring people together under the whole mission of the chamber and be in that same center moving forward. So thank you so much for that.

Leonardo McClarty 36:40
But thank you for what you do to expose others to the chamber profession, and certainly thank you for having

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Nina DeAngelo. 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 0:13
And now your host. He got a new Christmas decoration this year that he’s really excited about, an inflatable Griswold family station wagon. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:24
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I am 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 for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

I have Nina DeAngelo with me. She is the vice president of the O’Fallon Chamber of Commerce and Industries in the great state of Missouri. She is active in the chamber world as well as her community. Nida sits on the board of the Chamber of Commerce executives in Missouri and will take the seat of Vice President in 2022. The O’Fallon chamber is a member of ACC II where they were awarded the prestigious chamber the Year award in 2017. Nina sits on the board of vision leadership, St. Charles County where she is currently vice chair and will take over as chairman of the board in 2022. She also owns her own consulting company dynamic shift where she offers motivational, inspirational speaking engagements, along with business and life strategies around mindset. Nina had developed her passion for relationship building with other business owners and forged her relationship with the O’Fallon Chamber of Commerce and industries. When she worked at a community bank. She served on the board of the O’Fallon chamber for two years when she was offered the position within the chamber as a staff member. Nina I couldn’t refuse the new this was the universe showing her the way while serving in the capacity of Vice President at the O’Fallon Chamber of Commerce then embarked on a journey of self improvement and professional development in the field of neuro linguistic programming in 2020. She graduated a certified master Coach and Trainer of NLP by the International Board of neuro linguistic programming in November 2029. loves learning about business owners and what makes them thrive in their industries. She has also has a passion for helping business owners succeed and attaining goals within their plans. This is why Nina’s position at the O’Fallon chamber is perfect for her, you will often hear her say I don’t go to work every day, I go to a place where I can help others become successful.

Nina I’m excited and thankful to have you join me today on Chamber Chat Podcast if you would just take a minute 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 bit better.

Nina DeAngelo 3:36
Awesome, awesome. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge you, Brandon for offering me the opportunity to come on your show. So thank you for that. And hello, all chamber champions. Like Brandon said, my name is NIDA D’Angelo, something interesting about me, I served just short of nine years in the United States Army.

Brandon Burton 3:56
Awesome. Thank you for that. That is awesome.

Nina DeAngelo 3:59
Of course Loved it, loved it. It was great. I got married, started having babies and I had the opportunity to stay home and raise them. So just decided that it was time for me to go ahead and hang up those boots and be a mom.

Brandon Burton 4:09
Yeah. So you get to see a good, good portion of the world and you’re nine years. Well,

Nina DeAngelo 4:13
I traveled. What? You know, my first duty station was stateside, and then I did a tour overseas in Panama, South America of all places, which was absolutely gorgeous, loved it. And then I came back stateside, and then that’s when I transitioned out so

Brandon Burton 4:28
All right, very good. Well, share with us a little bit about the O’Fallon chamber just to help give us some perspective to the size budget staff, that sort of thing. Just so we all kind of know where you’re coming from as we get into our discussion today. Sure,

Nina DeAngelo 4:43
sure. So um, we are a so our the size or membership size is roughly 600 members. We are located in O’Fallon, Missouri, which is roughly 30 miles west of St. Louis. We have a staff currently of I say three and three quarters, because we have three full time staff. And then we have somebody that likes to work. You know, she’s our program specialist, she likes to work just part time hours. And she makes it very clear, she likes to work part time hours. And then we just got approval from our board of directors to bring in a fifth full time employee. So we’re super excited about that. That’s a great opportunity. Our budget is we’re just above half a million right now. And I just love what we do for our community. I mean, if you could just look up someone or a team that loves their community, you would look at, you’d see all of our staff at on that in that in that definition, because we just you can just see it, we just love it.

Brandon Burton 5:44
That’s awesome. So I think that helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today, which the the topic that we titled this, this episode is kind of unique. And for someone who just is scrolling through their podcast player and sees the title of this episode, we titled it you can’t spell awesome without me. And I think this is going to be one of those episodes that it is a little bit different from kind of standard episodes that I’ve done in the past. But I think it really is one of those things where through Nina out we’re good. We’re introducing you to a person with some ideas that will help you better serve your members in your community. And that’s what this show is all about. So I’m looking forward to getting into this discussion and seeing what exactly this means as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-You Can’t Spell Aweso(me) without ME

Alright, and I know we are back and I am. I’m just kind of jumping in I want to know what this means. You can’t spell awesome without me. And I know we had some some discussion before we got on the podcast call. But why don’t you share with everyone what why we decided on that title for this episode and what that means?

Nina DeAngelo 8:06
Sure, sure. So we just we just got a couple of different topics that I could have spoken about this morning. And so you can’t spell with us. You can’t spell awesome without me came to be when I created a presentation for a local organization here around enter chatter. So in a dialogue and your mindset and how that affects your day to day activity. And to be quite frank, whatever mindset that you’re in, it can make you or break you. And so I created this presentation around the fact that the word awesome me is on the end of it right. So you can’t technically spell awesome without me. And so that’s that’s how the whole and I’ll be completely transparent. I actually stole those lyrics from a Taylor Swift song. So but it just resonated with me, I saw it right. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that like totally like goes hand in hand with what NLP is. And, and mindset and overcoming challenges. And, you know, getting past barriers and blocks, any barriers and blocks that you have in your life comes simply from a mental block. And if you have the ability and the tools to know how to just recognize that, and then tools to implement to get past it, you can succeed with anything you put your mind to. And I really mean that. I mean, like anything that you put your mind to.

Brandon Burton 9:24
Absolutely. And I’m a big believer of that of having a focus and something that you can work towards and, and paying attention, I think to that inner chatter. And when we spoke before, as we were trying to settle on a topic for this episode. I had shared with you that I had, I had recently heard it and apparently you had heard it too, that there is a small percentage of people that don’t have an inner voice. And it just blew my mind. Yeah, I think that is kind of a conscience or, you know, there’s should I do this or should I not and some people just don’t have have that, and I just don’t understand how they operate with that I rely a lot on my inner chatter.

Nina DeAngelo 10:07
Yeah, and I bet that those that don’t have that inner chatter, they’re probably super successful, because they don’t have that, like when you when you create a goal, and five seconds later, that voice in the back of your head is like, you’re never gonna make it right. They don’t have that. So like they create a goal. And they just go,

Brandon Burton 10:22
yeah, yeah, that’s very true. So we probably don’t have enough time in this whole episode to dive into all of the helpful tools and resources that that you would have to offer. But you had mentioned those mental blocks, and being able to have those tools and resources to overcome those mental blocks to accomplish really anything you put your mind to. I guess the first thing would be how would somebody identify some of these mental blocks to first realize that, hey, there’s an issue here, I need to address? And then how does kind of seek out? I mean, do they need to seek professional counseling? I mean, sometimes it may, I know, the answer is gonna be different for everybody. But what are some of those resources that you could share? Well,

Nina DeAngelo 11:14
um, so first and foremost, awareness is key, just being aware that it’s happening, because let’s, I mean, statistics say that, you know, the human, a human being has over like, 60,000 thoughts in a day, right? 90% of those are negative, and 85% of those are repeated on just just repeated on a regular basis. So just being aware that that’s happening really is key. And then when you are aware of it, what you do is you just you take, you know, you’re taking a mental note, this is all done inside the head, I mean, or unless you want to talk out loud, that’s fine, too. But people might actually look at you funny, but you just you’re aware of it. And when you when you recognize that it’s happening, you you mentally make a choice to flip the switch. And what I mean by that is, you know, you mess up on an email or you do something right that you know that you end up, you know, saying something to yourself, like, oh, you dummy, right? Oh, wait a minute, I’m not a dummy. This is a learning opportunity for me, right? You just flip it, you flip the script in your head takes practice. It’s like, it’s like walking, whenever we first started walking when we were infants, right? Did we just get up and start, you know, jamming to the tunes? No, we had to learn right? And so that’s exactly what what this is all about. It’s about reprogramming what’s already in our minds to better service.

Brandon Burton 12:31
I like that example of learning to walk like you’d never see a baby or a toddler fall and then say, You dummy, you know, get up and you know, what are you thinking? You know, exactly, that’s not it’s not the natural set. So somewhere along the line, more of these negative thoughts come in. And they tend to be, you know, tart, self, almost self abusive, you know, as far as those thoughts go. But I like the idea of being able to rewire. Flip the switch, as he said, you’ll be able to turn those negatives into what is that learning experience? Or where is the truth that for real? And really take inventory of what those thoughts are versus what reality is? Because

Nina DeAngelo 13:13
yeah, and I will tell you to Brandon, that this has really helped me have just deep and thoughtful conversations, and I’ll tie it into the chamber with members with membership. I mean, I don’t know, you know, we get members in our office all the time. Sometimes I feel like I should probably charge per hour, they’ll come in, they’ll sit down, and they’ll just start, you know, like, I feel like I’m a bartender, sometimes you hear all their problems, right? I’m sure their ticket professionals can completely understand what I’m saying here. And so to be able to use the tools, I have now to hear what they’re really telling me. And to help them, you know, flip the switch, if you will, on their thought process. This has just been a huge, like, it’s just been a huge positive influence on our retention numbers.

Brandon Burton 13:52
So I don’t know if you guys are on a tiered dues model or not. But is that one of the benefits listed as being a member of

Nina DeAngelo 14:01
No, that’s what that’s what? Yeah, that’s what my consulting company comes in. I always tell them, Look, I’m going to give you an example. And if you want to go deeper, or if I go deeper, I’ll just send you the invoice. Yeah, just kidding. That’s funny. Yeah, but that’s exactly what we’re the consulting company comes in at, you know, if they if they feel like they’ve gotten a benefit, and they want to go deeper into that, then that’s when we talk offline chamber stuff. And we talk more about the bit my own business.

Brandon Burton 14:26
Yeah. So I like tying it into the the chamber work. So for chamber champions that are listening, how can they maybe apply some of these ideas of helping members flip the switch? Obviously, they haven’t necessarily gone through the training that you have, but just to be aware of the story being told in the members mind versus what’s being told vocally to the chamber, what’s not being told what’s unspoken and trying to pull out what the true needs are to be able to come to a resolution what What direction would you point them into, to help them figure these things out?

Nina DeAngelo 15:04
I mean, really just that I mean, it does take training, it’s not like it’s something that you can just one day say, You know what I’m going to, I’m going to just start being more positive in my life, because that, that’s great for you. But you may not always recognize that coming from somebody else, you know, so it does take training. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, I do encourage you to find someone in your area that does offer some sort of training on the mindset and get involved with that. But really, the basics of it is just just listen, just listen to the conversation, they will tell you everything you need to know while they’re sitting in front of you, and just help them see it in a different light. If that makes any sense. Like your members perspective, when they come and sit down with you, it could be completely different from what they see, after they leave your office or after they leave the meeting with you or wherever it is, you’re having the conversation, as a chamber professional, just be hyper aware of how you can direct that member to success versus, you know, joining them in their pity party that they’re having at the moment

Brandon Burton 16:06
like that, yeah, help point them to success. So you’d mentioned at the beginning, that, that inner chatter can really make or break someone. And I think there’s so much value so much truth to that. Are there some strategies that because I think that for chamber professionals as well, I mean, and looking at it from that perspective, that that inner chatter can make or break and you can look at a member and have a preconceived idea, they don’t want to talk to me because of this or that, or we don’t have anything to offer them right now, because of whatever past experience or we are the end all, be all answer to them. Because whatever I mean, there’s these ideas is this inner chatter. So from that perspective, what tools or mindset shifts or thoughts, would you share with the Chamber professional to kind of get that inner chatter aligned?

Nina DeAngelo 17:08
For sure, first and foremost, get to know your products and services, like the back of your hand, like you need to get to know what it is that you have to offer your membership right? There, I promise you, you have a solution for whatever is happening in that business owners, whether it’s directly through the chamber, or whether you, you know, you introduce them to another member who can help them down that path, you have the resource for them. You just have to look at it from that perspective of if I don’t have it right, immediately, right here in my toolkit, who do I know that’s in my circle, that’s in our membership that could possibly have a conversation with this new member or this prospect or whatever, however, you’re looking at it, to get them past whatever it is that they’re experiencing? It’s chamber land, in my opinion, is much bigger than just the chamber organization, it is the community as a whole, whether they’re members or not their businesses in your community, and we all want to see our communities thrive and that and whether or not you’re paying a membership to me or not, it matters to me, of course, because that’s what I do, right is I work for the chamber. However, I love all businesses in my community. And therefore, if a business comes to me, that’s not a chamber member and has an issue, I’m going to look in my membership to see who I can refer to because I’m all it’s a win win. So if you can just look at the situation. And you can say, Is this a win for the for the person coming to me with the problem, right? Is my solution a win for what they what’s going on? And is it a win for the member? If I’m referring them to a member, then it’s a win win win? And it’s a no brainer?

Brandon Burton 18:35
Yeah. Yeah. And you would never not connect a member with a another business owner who is not a member who actually would have the answers and resources that the member needs, just because of the membership status. So yeah, I think you’d be

Nina DeAngelo 18:49
surprised, though, honestly. I mean, I’ve gone to many conferences, nationally, and just statewide, just sometimes people have, you know, just a very closed off very non growth, you know, like a fixed mentality versus a growth mentality. And once you decide to fix that, right, once you decide that once you choose consciously that you’re going to fix your fixed mindset into a growth mindset. It just the whole world has opens up and possibilities just come to you. And you’re just like, Oh, I didn’t see that before. But I see it now kind of thing. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:19
it’s all scarcity versus abundance. For sure. in your community. It’s not a scarce community. There’s all the resources and tools you need are there at your disposal if you open up and look at them. Yep. Love it. So I think this is a this is one of those topics that we could, you know, there’s there’s fingers, we can go

Nina DeAngelo 19:41
I think more than 30 minutes, several different

Brandon Burton 19:43
just different directions. Absolutely. So, I don’t know I’d like to get your thoughts on. I’m a fan of meditation and being able to use that to help set the tone and mind Setting intention for my day. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? And I guess we’ll have you answer that first.

Nina DeAngelo 20:09
Yeah, for sure. So I am a fan as well of it. We are energy beings living on an energy planet. And that’s what meditation is. Meditation is aligning your energy source with the world, God, Mother Gaia, whatever, however you whatever you phrase it as, when you are paying homage, if you will, through meditation, to that higher being that higher being sends back gratitude, in the form of manifestation, which I know that sounds super Woo, and some people listening are going to be like, That’s so Whoo. Try it. Give yourself 30 days to and meditate every day, for just a short amount of time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is, and start and just be hyper aware of what’s opening up around you.

Brandon Burton 20:52
Yeah, I fully agree with that. I just, I guess the example that I have it from my life, and it wasn’t even done intentionally. But it helped me understand the value of having a clear vision. And for me, meditation is what I’m able to, to create that vision. So I know what direction I want to go and then have the energy align, as you mentioned, but when I was much younger playing baseball, I was a first baseman, and we were in a championship tournament. And I’m standing at first base doing my duty, and I had this vision kind of pop into my mind, of we had a runner on first and a runner on third. And I thought if, if this batter hits the ball to me, I’m going to get him going to catch this line drive, I’m going to tag the runner at first, and then I’m going to, you know, throw the ball the third and get that runner before he can tag up and, and we’re gonna turn a triple play, you know, and then it wasn’t, you know, 30 seconds later, that balls hit and it unfolded exactly, almost exactly as it was in my mind. But it was such a vivid vision of how things would unfold. And I ended up getting the runner at home instead of third. But we turned to triple play. I’ve never seen that happen before, besides in my mind, and we did it. So

Nina DeAngelo 22:17
I love that example. Because you know, the human brain, like neuroscience itself, will, you know, it’ll tell you it’ll teach you human brain, it functions in terms of pictures. What if I tell you don’t think of a blue tree? Yeah, what happens? Right? You just visualized the blue tree, or you saw the words blue tree in your head. Yeah. So visualization is so powerful for us as human beings. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:39
So in terms of meditation, is there a certain type of meditation that you prefer? Just whatever works for somebody? Is there tools? For somebody who’s not familiar with the world of meditation? Where would they start? And what would you encourage them to do?

Nina DeAngelo 22:56
Well, I can tell you my journey, and you can you can latch on to it, if you want to do the same thing. I mean, you take from it what you will. So meditation was never a thought in my mind until I started this training back in 2020. And then it was suggested to me by an energy worker that was in my class, to start meditation. And so I simply just went on to Spotify and YouTube and I found guided meditations to help me get started. So that’s to me, I think that’s the best way to start when you really don’t know what it is you’re doing. guided meditations will definitely help you get the basic level of what it’s all about. And then as you graduate and get better at it, you can move to just sitting silently in the silence, and taking that silence in for what it is. And so I’m not gonna lie, it was difficult process for me at first because my there’s constantly remember the inner chatter we talked about got going on all day, every day, right. And so the challenge for me was start with a guided meditation and anytime, something that comes into your mind outside of what’s being told to you through the guided meditation start over.

Brandon Burton 23:58
That’s right. So I know I had used an app called Headspace when I was first trying to get into it. And they have little animated videos that teach you how to meditate. And one of them that stands out to me is the guy, this little character, it shows him sitting on the side of a highway. And he’s seeing all these cars go by on this highway. And it’s explaining that meditation isn’t about looking at every car, and seeing what kind of car and what color and how fast they’re going, where they’re going. But it’s just sitting there and realizing there’s cars. Yeah. And just let that be. It just passes by. Yeah. And so that’s being able to sit there in the silence. Recognize that there’s thoughts that come in and out. They don’t have to be good or bad. That Chatter is going to happen doesn’t have to be good or bad. Just it happens. And then make your intention and go the direction you want to go.

Nina DeAngelo 24:54
Yeah, that’s great. There’s a lot of resources out there. So if somebody’s looking to get into meditation, you can look on you can look in your app store, you can look online, there’s a million ways to find ways to get started.

Brandon Burton 25:04
Absolutely. But before we start wrapping up here, I wanted to see if there’s anything that that you feel of value that that we need to share with chamber champions. Before we, I have my, my standard wrap up questions. So before I get into those, I wanted to make sure that we’re not leaving any valuable content out there that you wanted to touch on, before we start wrapping up.

Nina DeAngelo 25:27
Yeah, um, I mean, to be to be honest, just be genuine in what you’re doing for your chamber, you know, have those conversations, listen, listen to what’s being said to you, because they’re going to tell you everything you need to know and the conversation that you’re having with them. Know, your products, you know, backwards and forwards so that you can recommend those things to your members. And just know that you know, not everybody’s in the same space or in the same place all the time, they’re going to come to you at different levels of that of their business growth. And, you know, it’s, if you love your chamber world, if you love what you do in the chamber, your energy is already high, you’re already you know, your inner the energy is already there, just plug it into products and services that will best serve your your chamber membership. And one of the things I wanted to mention too, was think outside the box, like I think chambers. And when I said I know, a lot of people say that, and then people go How do you do that? What does that mean? Yeah, um, a lot of chambers will do the same thing. We all network, we all advocate, we all you know, I mean, like, there’s a million things that we all do, right? An example of this to me is if you don’t if you’re not part of your state association, and you are not big enough to, you know, pay a membership do into into ACC or or any other organization at the moment, forge relationships with your community partners, find out what they are, you know, ask them a great question. If money and time weren’t a factor, you know, what would you do, and then find out what those things are between yourself and your community partners, and then just forge a relationship with them and go forward and figure out how to make it happen.

Brandon Burton 27:05
I love that that is such a key thing to be able to develop those relationships, because, and I’ve referenced this a couple times on the podcast, but Dave Atkinson’s book, horses versus chess, great book, great example, that talks about all the different pieces in a community. And he likens that to the chessboard to, you’ve got your school district, you’ve got the city, you’ve got County, you’ve got, you know, tourism, you’ve got economic development, you’ve got chamber where all these different chess pieces, and you can’t move them all at the same time. But you have to understand what each of those pieces is capable of doing, and have a strategy to help move the ball forward. So 100% So key. Well, as we do start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask you for maybe one tip or action item that you might have that you can share, you just share a good one there forging those relationships and thinking outside the box. Hopefully, we didn’t steal that one early. But is there any any tips or action items that you’d like to share with the Chamber champions that are listening to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Nina DeAngelo 28:12
Yeah, so I have a couple actually. So if you don’t have, if you have not sat down as a staff, even if you’re a staff of one, do it with your board, create your core values, understand what it is that the what the common vision is for everybody that’s involved, right, as far as the Chamber’s growth is concerned, get those core values in place, create your mission statement, if you don’t have a mission statement, get one, it’s super important, it will help guide you in the direction that you’re going. And then create a strategic plan three to five year strategic plan around your core values and your mission statement. And that will be that will help guide you and it will take the guesswork out of what should we be doing at this point. To build the chamber chambers, you know, like they’re just like any other business, have a roadmap in place, your core values, your mission statement, your strategic plan are all part of that roadmap, if you don’t have it, get it and start following it. And you’ll be surprised at what happens in the growth of the organization.

Brandon Burton 29:10
I love that it’s a great tip, get those core values and create that mission statement and strategic plan. So you got to get to know what it is you’re doing on a day to day basis and why you’re doing it. So very good. So Nina as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how to use the the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Future of Chambers

Nina DeAngelo 29:30
Oh, I mean, we’re not going anywhere. We’re gonna be here for a while. And me personally for us. We like to plug in to ACC because we’re fortunate enough to be a big enough chamber to do that. And they help us create, you know, what, where we’re headed because they do all the work for us, right? They hire all the big dogs to do all the data collection. And then we just, you know, we just read the data and we bring it in and we just and we decipher it and we go through it and pick it what we’re going to do so um, chambers are going to be around for a long time, especially if we’re out there showing our communities What our value is, whether it’s a big box store, or it’s your local mom and pop, we’re not just there for businesses, we’re there for our residents as well. And I don’t think we probably don’t count that enough is that we’re not just a resource for our businesses, we also are there for the residents as well. So I think that’s probably another thing that could, could probably be done better by chambers, that we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Brandon Burton 30:25
I love the resident part. One of the chamber, the finalist interviews I did this year with James McCoy at the Forsyth County Chamber. He had mentioned how they their chambers partnering a lot with homeowners associations in their community, that that’s a in a lot of communities. That is a totally untapped resource to be able to connect with the residents in your community. So I’m just going to plug that out there again, for anyone listening. Well, Nina, I appreciate you spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. So I’d like to give you an opportunity to put any contact information out there that you’d like to share for listeners who might have questions about anything you shared today, or learning more maybe about your consulting services are ways that you’re able to connect and help them as well, what would be the best ways to reach out and connect? Yeah, sure, no

Connect with Nina DeAngelo

Nina DeAngelo 31:20
problem. So you can reach me at my first name nina@ofallonchamber.org. You can also reach me and I’ll throw my cell phone number out there, because people call me on all the time, you can reach me My cell phone is 636-577-4323 I will say that if anything that Brandon and I discussed today, just if it if it just gave you a twinkling of ooh, I want to know more about that act on it. Because that’s your unconscious mind telling you that there’s more, there’s more for you. So I’m happy to have that conversation with anybody who wants to know more about what I do in the NLP space and also anything that we do there at the chamber to help grow our community.

Brandon Burton 32:03
Absolutely. And I just wanted thoughts come in to me as you’re giving these responses as we’re wrapping up that your brain your mind is one of the most powerful resources in the entire known universe. And and you have one you know, you’re you’re blessed enough to have one and inside that skull of yours, so treat it well understand how it works and how it can work to your benefit. But Nina I really enjoyed this conversation. I think this is a conversation that we need to have more of throughout the chamber industry and just throughout our communities in general. So thank you for sharing that. I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode150. But again, Nina thank you for being with me today. This is a fun conversation and a lot of value provided as well.

Nina DeAngelo 32:57
Thank you, Brandon have an amazing weekend.

Brandon Burton 32:59
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 33:32
Hey, this is a publisher of the chamber post platers a weekly monthly planner featuring weekly meeting notes habit tracking and 12 week goals. Last year Emily Roberts of the Madison Area Chamber commented in the Chamber Pros Facebook group. This is my first time getting this planner and it’s great. It’s specific for chamber professional and it has lots of notes room checkout Izzy West’s website to get a better picture of it. So you had heard her go to the Izzywest.com to learn more about the Chamber Pros Planner. I have a video you can watch me slowly flipping through the book so you can decide if it’s right for you.

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Adrienne Cole. 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 recently formed a Chamber Chat Champions Facebook group to make the podcast a more interactive experience. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:24
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 for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Adrienne Cole

Adrienne Cole is the president and CEO of the Raleigh Chamber and leads the Triangle’s largest business membership organization representing two-thirds of the private sector employment in Wake County. With more than 25 years of experience, Adrienne previously served as the Chamber’s senior vice president of Economic Development and executive director of Wake County Economic Development.

Adrienne and her team support the interests of the local business community while building a thriving regional economy, enhancing the community’s quality of life, and strengthening member businesses. Adrienne’s core focus areas are the key drivers of this community and include economic development, diversity, equity and inclusivity, government affairs, transportation, workforce development, talent, entrepreneurship, leadership development, and small business. 

Since 2014, Adrienne and Wake County Economic Development (a program of the Raleigh Chamber) announced more than 54 corporate relocations and expansions totaling over $4.9 billion in capital investments and creating more than 22,523 jobs. These figures include announcements from global companies such as Infosys, Microsoft, Pendo, Bandwidth, Apple, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, Google, and Amgen.

Adrienne serves on numerous boards including the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. Adrienne is a graduate of Meredith College and received a master’s degree in public administration from Appalachian State University.

Adrienne has been the recipient of the Triangle Business Journal’s Women in Business Award and CEO of the Year award. She has also been recognized by Business NC as a Top 100 Influencer in North Carolina and in their Power 100 list. Adrienne and her husband live in Raleigh and have three children.

Adrienne, I am excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to just take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you better.

Something Interesting About Adrienne

Adrienne Cole 3:42
Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me today. I’m really honored to to be with you and to share some of what we’re working on in Raleigh and with the Raleigh Chamber. But yeah, a hearty hello to my chamber colleagues across the country. I get so many good ideas from them and bounce ideas off of them and learn and just have so much respect for what they’re doing in their communities. You know, when I first moved into this profession Yeah, it was described to me as a as an avocation, not necessarily a vocation. And you know, chamber leaders tend to be really passionate, mission driven people who care so much about their communities and so yeah, the opportunity to say hello to all of them today and wish them well and hope that everything’s going well in their communities is a real treat. So thank you.

Brandon Burton 4:38
It is a great community and a great network when you get into chamber world so we all

Adrienne Cole 4:43
want to learn from each other for sure such Inspirational Leaders Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:48
that’s right. Well share with us a little bit more about the the rally chamber so know your chamber and from your bio, you guys obviously handle economic development and things But let us know you know more about your chamber, maybe the size, budget staff, that sort of thing, just to kind of give perspective as we get into our topic for today.

About the Raleigh Chamber

Adrienne Cole 5:10
Thank you. Yes. So the Raleigh chamber is, I guess you would categorize us as a larger chamber. So about 1800 members give or take, you know, a few 42 full time staff, and an annual budget of about $9 million. So certainly not the largest out there, but not the smallest either. We, while our name is the Raleigh chamber when we go by the Raleigh chamber, our legal name is the greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. We are many of our programs are regional at so expand outside of the city of Raleigh proper, but we work super collaboratively with other chambers in our region. So the Wake County has filled municipalities rally being the largest, most of those municipalities have their own chambers of commerce. And so we work closely with our colleagues across not only Wake County, but into Durham County, work closely with the Durham chamber, Chapel Hill chamber, our friends to the east as well in economic development, and then we’re going to talk more about that, but also in other areas of our business and other business lines. So So yeah, that’s it in a nutshell, we we like to think that we are an entrepreneurial bunch and that while there are things that we’ve been doing for a long time, that we also aren’t afraid to launch new initiatives. One of the one of the newer initiatives being the triangle diversity, equity and inclusivity. Alliance, which we launched in March of 2019.

Brandon Burton 6:47
Very good that definitely gives some perspective to where you’re you’re coming from, which I think is going to be an important for our discussion today, as we focus our interaction around the idea of economic development as a team sport. And I think that is a great perspective to take as we as we look at economic development, especially as you guys are positioned as in kind of that regional partnerships that you’d mentioned there. That we will get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Economic Development as a Team Sport

Alright, Adrienne , we are back. As I mentioned, we’ll we’ll be talking about economic development as a team sport. So why don’t you let me hand the mic over to you and tell us a little bit more about how you partner with the other economic entities throughout your region. Some of the cities, counties, other chambers, what is what does that look like and how you guys have approached economic development in your region?

Adrienne Cole 8:58
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. So you know, we really, really believe that we’re stronger together. And we’re not Pollyanna about that. We know that there are complexities to that and and there’s different dynamics in each community. But we really do believe that if we move forward together and put a unified front together for as a region, that we’re going to be stronger as it relates to economic development. And so just as an example, it is not unusual for a site selection consultant or a company to reach out and say, We’re considering Raleigh for our relocation, but they don’t mean the municipal boundaries of Raleigh. They’re there meaning the broader sense of Raleigh and very often they mean the Research Triangle region. And so it is not unusual for us to then team up with our partners in Durham. So the Durham chamber leads economic development for Durham so Durham economic development as a part of the Durham chamber and we will do a joint submissions We may have received requests for proposals or requests from it for information from a client, and we will team up do a joint submission, work that project together, recognizing that the client is going to make the decision that works best for them. Do they want to partner more closely with Duke University? Or do they want to partner closely with North Carolina State University that may drive their decision on whether they locate in downtown Durham or downtown Raleigh as an example? Do they feel a greater affiliation for the field in in one of those communities over the other and, and we’re fine with that. And so when a project lands in another community that that is a neighboring community to wait County, we celebrate that win as a region. We have lots of structures that support that collaboration. So not only are we intentional about it from a leadership standpoint, but we also facilitate that through a regular cadence of meetings. So once a month, we have a meeting that we call a regional roundtable and it is myself, our executive director of White County Economic Development, the Durham chamber President Jeff Durham, his head of Durham economic development. Aaron Nelson from the Chapel Hill chamber joins us and his government affairs person Katie lwvus joins because the Chapel Hill chamber doesn’t do economic development, but he’s still an important partner in the regional discussion. We also include the president and CEO of the Research Triangle Park Foundation, that’s the group that manages the park, which the park straddles wake and Durham counties. And we include the executive director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, which is a 10 County effort focused on marketing the region externally for economic development. So he does a lot of foreign direct investment work. He’s marketing the region across the country, and really across the globe. We meet monthly in this regional roundtable to share what we’re working on. What projects may have reached out to us what challenges we may be facing, are there needs around transportation and transit, is there a public policy issue that we need to tackle, and that regular cadence of meetings, builds the relationship over time, and helps us operate from a place of trust. And I think that, you know, it sounds super simple. But we do that in other areas of our business, too. And I think it’s a really important role that chambers of all sizes, can play a part in and can lead regardless of whether they do economic development. And no, we’re talking specifically about economic development as a team sport. And it is we are so much stronger as a team than we are as individual organizations or at war with our neighbors. But it but it translates across and beyond economic development. And I hope we have a chance to talk a little bit about that, too. I will also share that the Research Triangle regional partnership is a 10 County effort to market the region. We have structures that allow us and facilitate the collaboration so that we’re not competing with one another for funding. So we support our economic development work financially, through a program called edge. And it’s a five year funding program. We’re an edge six now. So this is the sixth iteration of the five year campaign. Companies Make five year pledges to support our economic development work 20% of the private sector dollars, we raise those to support the Research Triangle regional partnership. So we are their largest funder, and as a result, they’re not out fundraising also creating a competitive landscape for us. Yeah. So that really, so we have structures in place that facilitate that collaboration. And then we have, so that sort of creates that foundation, and then we have intentional leadership, that’s guiding those conversations and making it a priority.

Brandon Burton 13:59
So wow, you’ve covered a lot of good stuff already. Well, I’ve been taking notes here says I circle back around, you had mentioned how you celebrate any success in the region, which I think is huge, instead of being a having that competitive nature when it comes to economic development, realizing that, you know, if a if a big major corporation moves to Durham, that’s still gonna support your community because there’s all those other businesses support that are going to move and, and the businesses that are already there are going to get a boost because there’s helping to support that. So it’s also interconnected. But I think the example you gave of an errand at Chapel Hill chamber being a part of your roundtable, even though Chapel Hill chamber doesn’t specifically handle economic development, he still has a seat at the table. So he’s still involved. He’s still being a team player with economic development in the region, which I think is so important. No matter what the size of your chamber is, or if you officially have an economic development responsibility, there still is a role for every chamber to play. Absolutely,

Adrienne Cole 15:13
yeah, he’s a very important partner. And, you know, he may not be doing project handling specifically. But he’s very engaged in conversations that are creating the environment where companies can be successful if they’re here, or want to move into, right. And so we have a regional public policy agenda that we work on with 18 chambers in our region, to align public policy initiatives, some of which are focused around economic development. And you know, so that’s creating that, that the product, the community, the the quality of place, that companies want to then invest in, and so it’s supporting our economic development work. Aaron is an incredibly important partner in our regional transportation Alliance. So RTA is a program of the rally chamber, it’s it’s it’s so powered out of our organization. But it is a standalone restricted fund effort focused on mobility in the region. It’s a business led organization focused on mobility, transportation, and transit is incredibly important economic development. Aaron in the chat, little chamber is deeply involved in RTA. And so you know, it’s all interconnected. And that speaks to the team element of it too, you know, we really, we really work in silos at our detriment, and at our peril. And if you can come together as a community around some of these things, and work together on them, and provide knowledge, the united front to the client that might be looking to move a major life science project in or Information Technology Project 10, or an advanced manufacturing project, and but then you’re also working together to create and maintain the quality of place that you want to maintain, then then your entire region is better for it.

Brandon Burton 17:07
Absolutely. And so that that segues well into, I wanted to come back to the the regional leadership roundtable. Kind of, because like you said, it is so much more than just economic development, you guys are able to cover a lot of different faculties that kind of they’re interconnected in making a region attractive for these for these businesses to come and be a part of. What was the the origins for this roundtable? Who leads it? Who creates the agenda? Yeah, just kind of. So I’m asking these questions, just so somebody’s listening, if they wanted to create something similar in their area, how does that look like and how does it function?

Adrienne Cole 17:54
Yeah, so I cannot take credit for the the creation of the cadence of meetings because the regional roundtables just one of the regular meetings we have, we could talk about the others. But, you know, the person who I really point to and give credit to creating this, these, the muscle memory around collaboration, and the fabric that really creates this tapestry of collaboration was Harvey Schmidt. You know, Harvey was the longtime president and CEO of the Raleigh chamber here for 21 years, I worked with him for years on our economic development team. tremendous mentor to me, I feel like I carry a little Harvey around the my shoulder everywhere I go whispering in my ear, which is not a bad thing. Um, and, you know, Harvey was really a front runner in terms of regionalism and regional thinking, and then put structures in place to facilitate that. So he and the then leader of the Research Triangle Park, and the then leader of the Durham chamber, and others came together to say we have to work together as a region. They even went so far as to initiate it was a program that had had its own brand and its own mark and all that, but it was really to get people thinking around regionalism, and it was called a family of communities. And the thinking behind it is that every community can have its own personality not dissimilar to the members of a family. But then as a family would you have shared values and shared things that you were working on and share things that you come together around and that we as a region could operate as a family of communities, and so that allows Durham to still have Durham’s personality and and what makes Durham unique, and the town of Cary has its own personality and what makes Cary unique, and Raleigh has would have been what makes Raleigh unique and Chapel Hill what makes Chapel Hill unique and you’re not, you’re not diluting that by coming together and working together, and so that was done in the 90s, that effort around a family of communities, and from that came the sort of regular cadence of meetings that that we, that we protect, and that we maintain and that people are committed to. So I mentioned the regional roundtable, we also do a, a quarterly effort with with regional chambers coming together to share what they’re working on. We do. Every other month, we bring the economic developers from the 12 municipalities that we support with Wade County Economic Development, we bring those economic developers together every other week, every other month, rather, to share what they’re working on. And in those economic development organizations, some of them are in chambers in those communities. So for instance, the the town of Karis, economic developers with the carry chamber, others are town employees. So you know, at the apex economic developers, a town employee, we don’t care, we’re bringing them all together to collaborate to understand how we can support them through way County Economic Development, and so that they’re getting to know each other on a regular basis. About every other month, the economic developers in the 10 county region that Research Triangle regional partnership represents come together to share and we’re pretty open. So we run a program called work in the triangle, which is a Talent Recruitment and Retention effort to support economic development. If an economic developer in one of our 10 County area needs information or to utilize that as a tool for a recruitment effort that they are doing, they are welcome to it. So we’re not we’re not holding anything and saying that’s ours, we’re saying use it and own it and make it yours. And I hope it helps you with what they’re working on. Right. And so I think that that just sort of openness, but the openness is born out of this relationship building that happens over time, where you’re working with people who you know, and trust in like, and and then can move forward. I’ll share one more one more meeting that our chamber convenes that any chamber could do in their community, regardless of whether they do you know what their specific service lines are. And so we call it the leadership roundtable. Again, this was a Harvey Harvey creation, that I just tend to use the leadership roundtable. So the first Friday of every month at 8am, we host a meeting. That includes our city manager, our mayor, our county commission chair, our county manager, our school, board, Chair, school superintendent, head of the airport, head of our CVB, head of our downtown organization, head of the Research Triangle regional partnership, that marketing effort head of the park RTP.

The head of our community college, so we Tech Community College is huge. We have 75,000 students in it. We have leadership from our unit from NC State University, you get the point, and my executive leadership at the Chamber attend. So we have business leaders in the room. And they come together the first Friday of every month, we have a three minute timer that we flipped over for in person, if we’re on Zoom, it’s a timer on the Zoom call. Everybody does a three minute update. There is no agenda, it’s to share the magic really happens before and after the meeting. It’s a safe zone. So everybody has an agreement that what is shared in this room stays in this room unless explicitly discussed that there’s a strategic reason to take to carry it outside of the room. I kind of it’s organized by by our my office. So my executive assistant sends out the invitations. If someone stopped showing up, though they get a call from me. Where are you? We miss you. Your voice is important. We can’t have the same discussion without you. And then the next meeting, they’re there. These meetings have been happening for decades. And it creates this fabric of collaboration, that muscle memory, you’ve got people who are working together and coming together. And so when there’s a problem, let’s say there’s a discrepancy in the amount of funding the county commission wants to get the school system. Those leaders have developed a relationship and can navigate that more smoothly than they could if they didn’t know each other. The chamber is the is the convener there. We’re the conductor. And that convener conductor role is so powerful in communities, regardless of the service lines that that particular chamber does, whether it’s economic development or public policy or you know, whatever it is.

Brandon Burton 24:59
Yeah, And I think the big thing that you’re addressing there is the trust, being able to, to come together to convene. It’s a great example of how you guys are operating as a convener. But to cultivate a place of trust, where people can can share the projects they have on their mind, thanks for going on struggles. And I see this operating a lot like a people are familiar with the term of mastermind, you bring a group of people together and together, you know, your combined knowledge and experience, you know, is exponentially greater than any one to individual, or any one organization is awesome. And people

Adrienne Cole 25:46
also develop an appreciation for what the other organization is facing and working on. And there’s real power in that too. Because anything, you know, anything’s possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about. And so it gives people an opportunity to have a better understanding of what their partner organizations and and, you know, and to see those other organizations as their partner organizations. You know, in some communities, they don’t even see each other as partner organizations. And they really, that’s a missed opportunity. And you asked earlier, you know, how are the agenda set? You know, so this leadership Roundtable, I’m mentioning doesn’t really have an agenda, the agenda is to share what you’re working on. For our regional Round Table meetings that we started the conversation with. It’s a crowdsource agenda. You know, we send a note out that says, hey, looking forward to seeing everybody on this day, send us your agenda items, we’ll make sure that they’re added to the list. You know, and so that way, we’re covering what everyone and the agenda pivots depending if we’ve got a huge project that we’re pursuing together, that might be the entire agenda, that economic development project

Brandon Burton 26:57
is your office and collecting all those topics? yardage, okay.

Adrienne Cole 27:02
Yeah, we are. And yeah, we were the we’re organizing it and sending out the Zoom link or, you know, sending out the meeting reminder, but like those regional roundtable meetings aren’t, we don’t host them at our chamber, we’re hosting them at the Research Triangle Park office, because it’s more central. Yeah. So we don’t really we’re trying to facilitate it, but we don’t feel the need that we have to own it. Sure, that makes make sense.

Brandon Burton 27:28
Makes a lot of sense. I love the the strategy that comes together by by bringing together all these different entities, different communities, being able to see the strengths that you each have being able to support one another. And I think there’s so much synergy that comes from doing this, and to tearing down those silos and those barriers between communities and really sharing the success, you know, across community lines, across boundaries that are more or less, you know, fictional boundaries that are there, but really building up your the greater community at large, I think you guys are setting a great example. And obviously have great organizations that are, are a part of it with you and helping to see this vision through.

Adrienne Cole 28:18
So true.

Brandon Burton 28:20
I wanted to ask you, if you would, if you have any, any tips or action items for listeners that they might be able to take from our discussion and apply in their, you know, their own chamber to try to bring them up to the next level and, and work towards maybe some of these synergies?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Adrienne Cole 28:40
Thank you for that question. Such a great question. Um, so I think so what one’s gonna be sort of specific to economic development, and then just more broad, so I would just encourage anyone who is doing economic development to remember that companies don’t care about municipal or county boundaries, they don’t care. They really are trying to tap your region, they’re trying to tap your workforce in the region, they want to see that you’ve got a plan not only for today, but for 1520 years down the down the road, and they really like to see the collaboration. So you will better position your community if you are collaborating with your community colleges, with your colleges and universities with your partner organizations, other chambers, other economic development organizations, so being open to that, and trying to move in that direction, and socialize that idea also with the elected officials in in their communities, because sometimes elected officials can be very, very wish it was that it’s their job, their job is to represent that unit of local government. But if they can encourage that collaborative teamwork, it will help their economic development strategy in the long run. So that that’s one from just from a tactical standpoint. The other, which is another Harvey ism, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, is, you know, from a, from a development of your, your own opportunity as a chamber executive, you know, he’s to say, and I say it all the time, you can fake sincerity but you can’t fake showing up. So you have to be present, you’ve got to show up, even if you don’t know exactly what your role is, you know, being being open from a place of wanting to help to, you know, not pushing in and like this forceful kind of way. But in a, you know, how can I help as an as a professional? How can my organization help? What can we do to support this initiative that you were doing, I think, is such a great opportunity to broaden your own horizons, it creates opportunity, and then being open to that opportunity, I think is another thing that’s really important for folks to remember. I think, you know, approaching it with humility is always important. But But that, that sort of recognizing that you’ve got to show up, you’ve got to be present, is really important. That’s

Brandon Burton 31:13
right. Those are both great tips. I love that quote, you can’t fake that you can fake sincerity, but you can’t fake showing up, you got to show up.

Adrienne Cole 31:22
You got to show up. Thank you for that one, too.

Brandon Burton 31:27
So as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? I

Future of Chambers

Adrienne Cole 31:33
think that you’re so important. And you know, my observation of chambers is that, you know, they adapt to what their community needs, often and every community is different. And so every chamber is different. You know, there’s that adage of you seen one chamber, you see one chamber. That being said, I think that chambers play such an important role. We’ve already touched on some of the serving is that convener, that conductor, that trusted partner, but also think that chambers have the ability to find the middle ground in a way that other other organizations might not be able to, you know, the ability to bring the private sector, to the table with academia with the nonprofit sector with elected officials, to find common ground to move communities forward to move initiatives forward, I think chambers are uniquely positioned to do and, and it’s it’s such, it’s always been an important role. I mean, the rally chamber is 132 years old. So and I was reading recently, an annual, it was a it was a business plan for the coming year. And they were talking about a lot of the same things that we still talk about transportation and education and economic development and business support. And I was like, wow, I could have just picked this up and plugged it back down again. But it speaks to how vitally important chambers are. And I think in this incredibly contentious world that we find ourselves in chambers have just an immensely important role to play.

Brandon Burton 33:11
They do at that I was going to touch on that is that, you know, social media and the news outlets are making the job a little easier, in a way for chambers to have that need in the community to find that middle ground to bring people together, convene them in a way on a common purpose, and moving your community forward. And I think that’s it takes special people I believe, to work at a chamber to be able to, to have that vision to bring people together from different backgrounds and do that successfully. So big thank you to all the all the chamber professionals out there that are doing that successfully.

Adrienne Cole 33:51
So for sure, you know, and I remind my team, that it’s not about us. It’s not about us, we are facilitators, and you know, we are we are we’re servants, we’re you know, it’s our job to take care of this organization on behalf of the business community. But it isn’t about it isn’t about Adrienne Cole. It’s not about it’s not about us. It’s a and so we really don’t care about the credit. We’re really just trying to move the community forward so that it’s a great place for us to live and work now but will continue to be a great place to live and work for many, many years to come. And I think that chambers and the special people who run chambers get that?

Brandon Burton 34:37
Absolutely. Well I love the examples that you shared with us today. I think you guys are setting a great example for further chambers Ville to look to and learn from do some r&d, do their the ripping off and duplicating and I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or ways for listeners to reach out and connect they’d like to learn more about some of these partnerships and roundtables you guys have established and and yeah, you’re doing things what would be the best way for for someone to reach out and connect?

Connect with Adrienne Cole

Adrienne Cole 35:11
Absolutely happy to so my email is acole@raleighchamber.org. And feel free to shoot me an email anytime and then my amazing executive assistant Kelly Lacombe who is wonderful on so many ways. Well schedule a time for us to connect. And you know, I’m always always happy to share anything that we’re doing if folks find it helpful.

Brandon Burton 35:39
That is very helpful. I appreciate that. And we’ll get your email in the show notes for this episode too, which will be found at chamberchat.podcast.com/episode149. Adrienne, this has been a pleasure to visit with you I’d love again these examples and and I love to see good synergy and teamwork coming together and being successful at it. So great job.

Adrienne Cole 36:04
And thanks so much. It makes the work fun for sure. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Jaime 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 prefers running outdoors versus a treadmill, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Jaime Henning from the Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce in Colorado. Jamie is the president and CEO of the Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce, visit Greeley and the Greeley area Chamber Foundation. She has been a leading voice on energy infrastructure and other issues important to the region. She’s been in Greeley for just under two years that has already made a big impact bolstering the Greeley business community. During the pandemic. The chamber led a public private partnership creating the Greeley area recovery fundraising funds to help businesses and CO created a safe place to the Five Star certification program with the city created a business response Task Force and common grounds virtual chamber coffee to connect businesses and elected officials. She is honored to represent Greeley helping steward 100 year organization and its next chapter in championing business. Jamie is one of over 500 in the US to earn the distinguished CCE certification. She sits on and has served on boards including the American Chamber of Commerce executives and the US Chamber of Commerce most recently, the CCE commission and chair of the newly formed events division. Among her most proud accomplishments, she has helped to train hundreds of other chamber executives helped found and direct Lincoln’s young professional group that grew over 1800 members, one of the largest in the country while serving as a senior director overseeing brand campaigns airshows Startup Week advocacy work, helping to found new initiatives and a successful Guinness World Record attempt. Jamie is a native of Nebraska a corn Husker from Fairbury have a small farming community of 4000. That’s known for its red hot dog sold in Memorial Stadium. She grew up on a farm where her grandfather owned a local gas station and elevator. Her mom was a business owner. And so as her dad who farmed so she comes by it naturally, she earned her degree in Corporate Communications and Public Relations. Jamie, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast , please take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Something Interesting About Jaime

Jaime Henning 3:48
Yeah, wonderful. Thanks so much. I’m so excited to be on. And we have such an incredible profession. And we’re really lucky and leadership’s a gift. And so it’s been incredible to join the team here in Greeley, Colorado. And you know, from an interesting perspective, I’ve helped organize co organized several air shows, and I’m a little nerdy about watching them fly around or traveling to them. So this weekend in Loveland, Colorado is an air show with the Blue Angels. I’ve coordinated them before I will be sitting out on the road, likely getting a view of their early runs that they’re going to make. But I’m just passionate about the people that serve our country. And it was amazing to work with them so and air shows have turned into a hobby, but they were something that started out professionally for me really to drive interest in our local Air National Guard Base and its connectivity. It was one of our largest employers, so they were a lot of fun to run and great chance to connect with community so I’m excited to see one here in Colorado.

Brandon Burton 4:48
Yeah, who doesn’t love a good air show? Hey, they’re, they’re fun.

Jaime Henning 4:52
Absolutely they are.

Brandon Burton 4:53
I love that connection to bring it back to the community and National Guard. It’s great to be able to to have that perspective. Speaking of perspective, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the Greeley area chambers to give us an idea on the size and staff and budget and so forth so we can know where you’re coming from before we dive into our discussion.

About the Greeley Chamber

Jaime Henning 5:15
Yeah, wonderful. You know, Greeley, Colorado, was recently named in the last three weeks, the fastest growing city in northern Colorado. So they’re expecting by 2050, to nearly double the growth of the city, which is pretty exciting. So it gives us an incredible opportunity. And the community itself is heavily based in a lot of heavy industry. So energy development, agriculture, it’s the seventh largest ag producing county in the country. It is the largest oil and gas producing county in the country. So so many different large industries that drive here, but a lot of our membership, the chamber is still made up of small businesses predominantly just like the rest of you listening today. And so in terms of Greeley, and so much growth happening here, northern Colorado is really special. And that Loveland Fort Collins, in Greeley, work on a lot of our work together. So there’s truly this regional tilt to the work we do. And when I came here and put a poster above my desk, just to remind myself, my team and others, collaboration over competition, that you know, the new way, the old way might have been to compete the new ways to work together. So we really have a lot of that going on in northern Colorado, and I think it’s how we’ll win. So I’m so pleased to be here. And, um, you know, Greeley has, again, tremendous opportunity to grow and evolve in the next couple of years here.

Brandon Burton 6:38
That’s awesome. So I’m at a curiosity, what is it that’s fueling the growth there in Greeley?

Jaime Henning 6:43
Well, you know, Colorado is a pretty amazing place to live. I have a lot of hometown pride for Nebraska, I grew up there my whole life. But there’s a lot of beauty here that can be accessed. So a lot of interested outdoors, people enjoy coming here, I can tell you on any given Saturday morning, you might find me driving up the Big Thompson Canyon to Rocky Mountain. And I can be there in 45 minutes to go for a hike on a Saturday morning. So that’s pretty incredible. Even though release kind of here on the plains. That’s actually what’s kind of fueling the growth too, is there’s just so much weight, so much place to expand. And so release got a lot of land. And it’s also been acquiring some pretty innovative water practice, and waters gold where there’s a lot of people coming here, and it’s pretty tough to do development or more expensive. So I’m really also the least expensive in northern Colorado for housing prices. So a lot of that is just driving it and then interesting coming to this really beautiful state.

Brandon Burton 7:40
So yeah, that’s awesome. So as far as the chamber itself, what is staff size? What does that look like for you guys? Yeah,

Jaime Henning 7:48
well, we’re growing to, um, you know, during the recession, or during the recent COVID component, and everything economically that came with it, we have to attract a little bit. And, you know, our tourism operation specifically was probably the hardest industry in the country. So each tourism organization had to kind of pivot figure that out. But we’re about five FTEs. Right now, we’re hoping to grow to about seven. And we have a director of our tourism program, and I direct all activities at the chamber. And then we have a very active foundation that you mentioned earlier, we helped 280 small businesses with rent with about 600,000 Initially, and eventually a million dollars that went through our foundation to help local business in the first 10 days after the pandemic started. So pretty impressive group of people who just raised that locally and came around it so I work with some pretty amazing leaders here who who did that work. So yeah, they’re about seven FTE is hopefully as we grow here, five now and then we’re a midsize chamber so um, you know, we have 700 investors here at the chamber and and growing all the time, you know, our penetration in the business community, so many people belong, but there’s a lot of opportunity to grow so we had someone who’s doing a lot of business interaction and development for us and that’s been reaping rewards. So

Brandon Burton 9:12
that’s awesome. I think that helps to paint the picture for us for sure. As far as where you’re coming from as we get into our topic today which from what I understand you have a maybe an interesting background as you’ve gotten into the chamber industry and kind of moved up the ladder so we titled this episode transition up the ladder as you share your journey and what that’s look like because I know a lot of people have gotten into the the chamber industry by accident, they say so we’ll learn more about your journey and dive into that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Transition Up the Ladder

Alright, Jamie, we are back. So as we talk about your transition up the ladder, your development and growth in the chamber industry? Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell us how did you get into chamber work in the first place? What was your happy accident? And we can kind of go from there. Yeah, I

Jaime Henning 11:23
think about everyone who works in our industry and stuff. They’re in really interesting ways, you know, whether it’s private business or otherwise. In my case, I went to college for communications and PR. And when I got out of college, I thought for sure I’d work in an advertising agency or I had all kinds of ideas about what I might do. I ended up working at a state park. And I’ve always had an outdoorsy interest. So I work with a bunch of businesses out there coordinating events. And one day someone stopped me and kind of grabbed me by the arm and said, you know, you’d be great at the Chamber of Commerce. And I said, What’s that? And they said, Well, there’s one in Lincoln, you should go visit with them. So we had some time we had to take off mandatorily in the summer. And so during that month off my first day, I was so bored. So I I’m just like a go getter and I couldn’t stand it. So I called the chamber. And I continued to call the chamber the next day when I called I said, Hey, can I talk to the President, and I told the front desk assistant, I’ll just wait on the phone until you can have her pop on. And so at first, I can only imagine her thoughts like who is this person demanding to talk to me. But we had a really great conversation. She’s like, can you come in today, I said, in fact, I’m free. So I tried to grab, you know, my nicest looking anything I had in my closet at the time as a college student or right after college, and went in to talk to her. While I was we had great conversation. I hadn’t heard back. So I called again. And I said, Hey, I’m going to my aunt’s in Oregon, I’m going to leave you her phone number, this was all pre cell phone. And I said just in case you want to call me back about that job. And I think really they offered because they said if I could be you know that attentive to the follow up that I could be with their investors. And you know, you and I talked a little before the podcast today about connectivity to investors, and it matters, the follow up matters. So that was kind of how I found my way into the chamber industry.

Brandon Burton 13:18
So maybe let’s let’s stop there for just a second. What What was that driving force about the chamber that made you want to be a part of it so much. Honestly, I

Jaime Henning 13:27
enjoyed those business owners, I got to know, in that hospitality job I was doing, I would coordinate their events. And they would I would sit in the room and listen to them talk about how they were growing and doing innovative things. And I thought, Wow, if I could be around them all the time. Like I’m just a true Creative At Heart. I thought this would be really interesting. Like I’ll grow in there if I’m around these people all the time. So it was a little bit that honestly. And now I’ve had that opportunity for over 20 years. So

Brandon Burton 13:54
that’s awesome. So I didn’t mean to cut you off with Santa like yet and kind of a next step. But yeah. So after you finally were offered the job, right?

Jaime Henning 14:05
Yeah, they didn’t have the job I wanted. I wanted to be the event professional. And they said, we already have someone doing that. But if you want to be the President’s assistant, you could do that. And I said, Okay, I’ve no idea how to do that. But I’ll do anything you want. So I started and from there, I served in about every position you could serve in at that chamber. So I was the President’s assistant toward the end I was managing communications investor relations. And you know, you name it, I was probably you know how to touch with it. So what an incredible opportunity as a leader to learn everyone’s role from the inside out. I think it has made me a much better leader from a perspective of how my people that work for me engage with our investors and what they might be feeling and needing and so it’s helped me in the job crafting because there’s almost nothing I haven’t gotten to touch a little bit so

Brandon Burton 14:59
you Yeah, I can see how that would pay off for sure by just kind of not even just dabbling in. But you’ve you’ve like, been immersed in all these different aspects of how a chamber operates. And and what a great opportunity to start as the President’s Assistant, I’m sure they just created that position for you because of your tenacity and your, your stick to itiveness. And not wanting to take no for an answer or nothing for an answer. Right? Well, ironically,

Jaime Henning 15:26
the the woman that interviewed me was not the president, she was the Executive Vice President, the President was in Ireland. So she hired me sight unseen for him. And I said, When am I going to meet this person? And I said, you know, what’s he like, what will be working with him? And her comment to me, I still remember it was basically, hey, you know, I want to leave here for a long time. And if you just stick with me, let’s let’s do this. I’ll teach you everything I know. And I worked for that person for all 20 years that who actually is just recently retiring from the industry. So um, yeah, it was she meant what she said. And I followed up on that. So

Brandon Burton 16:05
yeah. Awesome. So as you say, and now being President CEO of a chamber, as you kind of reflect back on your, your time and your experiences developing in the chamber industry? Are there moments that you look back on that you think I’m glad that happened to me at that point, or you’re able to make some correlations from the past to your current position?

Jaime Henning 16:30
You know, no one is in this job, I don’t think who doesn’t want to serve and give back. So, um, you know, this week, one of the team members I have I elevated to go to winter Institute. And, you know, the friends I made at winter Institute are people I talked to weekly, still, I do business with them, I consult with them. They are my personal board of directors, and their chamber presidents from all over the country and leaders. And so for me to be able to do that for my team, she just got a scholarship to go to winter Institute. She’s not even sure what I got her into. But she trusts I think that if I said it was the best thing I ever did, that’ll be good for her. So you know, the givebacks a big deal. But the connections we make in this industry are what cement us to it. That’s my feeling. I’m sure a lot of people feel that way. So absolutely,

Brandon Burton 17:17
in fact that the next area I wanted to kind of cover was the kind of a mentorship if you will, I mean, not everybody that’s in the chamber industry has had the same path as you did. Everybody’s had their own type of accident to get into the cheaper world. But yours is definitely unique. But taking that perspective that you have, what could you maybe suggest for others in the industry already that they can do to help mentor and bring up the future of chambers?

Jaime Henning 17:51
Yeah. So I think, you know, part of mentorship is just being a good team member. And when you talk about transitioning up the ladder, and making sure your team knows they can count on you being generous with your time, and ensuring they can come to you is a big deal. So I think from a mentorship perspective, being an accessible team member, puts you in a position to lead and influence other people. And so I don’t know how intentional I was about that I was intentional about wanting to supervise people, I thought that you know, if you talked about any leader in the country, they’ll tell you, being a leader is about having followers, you know, having people who want to move the direction you’re moving and embrace the ideas and the big vision, your casting, nothing can be more permanent, and what I’m doing right now, and so just learning to work with people and then learning to help influence them in positive ways and help them grow. I think that’s all of our jobs. But it starts with being a good team member. And if you don’t have any credibility, and respect and trust, you really can’t move from there.

Brandon Burton 18:57
So that’s right. And I can imagine as you’ve hired people, and maybe seeing the potential in them as you hire them, and, and hopefully, you know, you’re seeing them as somebody who will be around in the industry for a long time, and not just a fleeting, you know, a year thing, you know, just passing by or whatever, but to be able to really help grow them and develop them and give them you know, that experiences and maybe in different fields within the chamber to be able to to help them move along. I mean, I’m making some assumptions here. I see your head nodding. But I think that’s, that’s what I would take from your experience, at least.

Jaime Henning 19:36
Well, I don’t want to Pollyanna this moment and saying chambers don’t have their challenges there. And, you know, Chambers of Commerce are struggling with workforce the same way. Our industries are right. And we’re connected to every one of those industries. So there’s a high propensity that people that you hire, might want to jump out and in and that happens all the time. So the best thing you can do is just grow into them, offer them opportunities. He is starting to be innovative as a chamber and don’t rely too much on the past mean of COVID taught us anything, we can’t be who we once were, we need to also innovate and show up. And so that’s the best way to keep your best and brightest is to do that and listen a lot, so and then act on those things.

Brandon Burton 20:16
Yeah, when we see it all the time, where some of the best, some of your best employees are the ones that get poached by some of your members, they see the good work that they do, and, and they can usually pay them more. So that’s, that’s where it comes down to

Jaime Henning 20:32
worthy consideration of benefits and perks. You know, chambers, the best thing I offer I hear from my employees is flexibility. And you know, not every, you know, other business can offer that necessarily. So we just have to identify what are the things we excel at, right? And then do those, right. So

Brandon Burton 20:49
that’s right. So I wanted to maybe pick your brain just a little bit and see what maybe tips or action items you would have for people that are listening that they could maybe implement in their organization to help lift them up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Jaime Henning 21:07
Yeah, one of the things my mentor said, when I was listening to a class she was speaking to on the number one thing she looks for is confidence in someone. So I would say, you know, you don’t want a lot of bravado, you want to retain your humility. But leadership requires a certain level of, hey, let’s go this way. And so I think having a level of competence, and then saying yes to a lot of things, you know, when physicians would transition in our organization, I sought to be a global thinker, you know, not to just pay attention to the silo in front of me. Or if I was the event coordinator, that’s all I was gonna pay attention to, I start to really help others in the organization and learn. So I think truly that saying yes to more things, eventually have to focus, right? You can’t say yes to everything by being open to that option, and to learning and to being vulnerable enough to say, I don’t know, but for me in coach is pretty important. So

Brandon Burton 22:04
I like that idea of being able to say yes to it, maybe it’s not necessarily saying yes, but it’s, like you said, being open to the possibility exploring the possibility instead of just being siloed. And shut down. And nope, this is all I do, all I do is the marketing or all I do is, you know, remember, retention. But being open to the idea to broaden your experience. Because you’re right, you can’t say yes to everything, because then you just get bogged down, you don’t have the bandwidth, and you become, you know, no good to anyone, if when you say yes to everything, but entertain it, be open minded, and see what can what can be beneficial, not only for you with your personal development, but also in those who you serve. So I think that’s a great piece of advice.

Jaime Henning 22:53
I think, as you’re, you know, trying to remain your activity as a lifelong learner. And in that you establish some credibility. And so, you know, I think if you can become the resident expert, people will look to you and you will inherently grow your leadership skill, because working with people’s when it’s all about, there is no more important piece to this than that. And so, you know, I’ll honestly say I had to work a lot of my feedback loops, sometimes that’s tough. I’m kind of a perfectionist. And so I’d love nothing more than someone to come to me and say, Oh, wow, great job, I wouldn’t change a thing that doesn’t happen. When you work with investors, you’re working with this huge idea pool of leaders who want to go all kinds of directions. So you have to really find ways to hone in on that.

Brandon Burton 23:39
That’s right, those personal connections, I think sometimes get overlooked and forgotten about in the digital age that we live in. But it is so key. And I think there’s a hybrid there, you know, the digital, but the personal touch has to be there to build those relationships and that trust. Not everything can be done by a computer, although you’re getting better at that.

Jaime Henning 24:00
Exactly, exactly.

Brandon Burton 24:03
So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Jaime Henning 24:12
You know, it’s interesting, because I’ve heard people say, the Chamber of Commerce is reinventing itself. And maybe I even said that earlier, you know, and in ways we are. But really, I think the message chair, investor ship, if you’re the leader, needs to be that we’re getting back to where we started. And you know, I had another visit with someone in the chamber industry. And Chris Mead, who actually wrote the book on chambers, so to speak. And I was visiting with him. And we were talking about our energy sector and the way it’s evolving. And the truth is, we’re getting back to why we were created. We were created as an industry, a community, a collective voice, for business survival. I mean, what could be more poignant than the moment we just went through, and we helped businesses survive this not closed, have resources have connectivity, so I think really, we’re starting to turn around the original Genesis for why we were created. I think for smaller chambers, especially, sometimes we can get into the thought process that our ROI all comes from networking or events. And really, there is such a broader purpose to the chamber, and you know, coalescing around important issues, making sure your local community knows who your candidates are, who care about what we stand for. And so it’s an interesting time, if you can frame it that way, I think,

Brandon Burton 25:30
yeah. And I think networking, it’s, it has its place, for sure. I mean, we talked about the personal connection. But I’d like to give the example of a call to yellow highlighter tool, right. So if you if you were to print out your whole membership list and pull out the highlighter, and start marking up your list of the members that engage with your chamber on a regular basis. And I think most chambers, if they were to do that, that percentage is going to be pretty small, it’d be if they’re, me, every chamber is different. But if if their primary focus is networking, that percentage that shows up for these networking events, and that’s their primary way to engage with the Chamber is going to be a very small percentage of their entire membership. So are you really serving all your members by just having this networking event available? Maybe I mean, it’s, it’s there, but is there things that you can do that really do serve the entire business community, or 80% of them or, you know, a much higher percentage than the little bit to show up to the networking? So I think, I think it’s important to, to stay relevant looking at that, and and realizing why, why, you know, getting back to the basics, this is

Jaime Henning 26:48
the person who has championed events my whole life. I mean, that is where I am the resident expert. That is what my old team thinks of me as, but I’ve had to grow into this leadership position. And maybe before where I highlighted networking, as the only now I am personally involved in the policy work. I love it. I mean, that is where so much good happens for your chamber. I think a lot of small chambers also don’t believe they can do that work. They absolutely can. I mean, we ran candidate forums last week, where I simply had a conversation as three questions posed by my leadership to those candidates about why they’re running, any chamber president could run something like that, right. And the community appreciated it because they don’t know everyone, you know, it wasn’t meant to lobby or advocate, it was truly meant as a get to know you. And in the long haul chambers work with those folks every day. And that’s how they get things done, or these private public collaboration. So it’s been an interesting perspective for

Brandon Burton 27:44
me, for sure. So in the long run, when the majority of the people that you represent are small businesses, or businesses and the business community, it’s important when there’s elections coming up, that it’s good to have those candidate forums and to be able to hear their platforms, but need to have some pro business candidates, you know, let your members know which candidate is pro business and is going to be able to help their business succeed and thrive. So I think that’s a important thing that you hit on right there.

Jaime Henning 28:16
And then on the networking side, just reinventing what you do. And it’s not that we should get away from the things we do. We’re still doing business after hours. I’m not sure many chambers, you know, or not, but we’re expanding into mourning smaller collaborative events where maybe the COVID impact isn’t as much and, and other things. So I just think we’re forced to think about that change all the time. And it’s probably a healthy thing.

Brandon Burton 28:38
So yes, absolutely. Be flexible. Be flexible, but know your mission, your purpose. So absolutely. Jamie, it’s been fun having you with me on the podcast, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anybody who might want to reach out and get to know you better connect with you about anything you had to share on the show today. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Connect with Jaime Henning

Jaime Henning 29:06
Yeah, absolutely. So feel free to email me jaime@greeleychamber.com , just Greeleychamber.com You can reach me there. And also I’m on about every social media platform, you can think of Facebook, Insta, Twitter. And we also have a great YouTube channel. So if you’re just looking for ideas, and kind of how we’re connecting to our investor ship, there’s a lot of video content content out there. And the Hello really morning minutes we do in our newsletter to kind of our chamber coffee, common ground. So a lot of ways you can dig in. I’m going to end today too by just saying if you’re not watching Ted Lasso and you’re a leader, you probably should be. I know there are lovers and haters, but I love this quote. And essentially it was about teamwork. I think that you might be so sure you’re one in a million that sometimes you forget that out there. You’re just one of 11 and you’re nowhere without followers and your team and investors So, yeah, you might have the opportunity to lead and it’s a gift but wow, leadership lessons on Ted Lasso I watch it religiously.

Brandon Burton 30:07
Right Ted Lasso and Michael Scott some of the best leaders. Truly, truly appreciate it. Jamie. This is like I said, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on and spending some time with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, and we can stay connected as we as they go forward in the future.

Jaime Henning 30:25
Thank you. So nice to meet you.

Brandon Burton 30:28
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with John Beaman. Because this transcript is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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 appreciates on automation software, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:20
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 for this episode is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Is your chamber struggling to drive the revenue it needs to support your initiatives? It’s a common problem and one that our new title Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions knows a lot about Doug and Bill Holman aren’t just sales consultants. They’re real life chamber guys with 20 plus years of chamber leadership experience. They know how to diagnose and solve member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else. And they’re ready to put that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Call the Harmon Brothers today at 61985 to 1391. Or check them out at HolmanBros.com. That’s holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guests for this episode is John Beeman. John attended Liberty University for college where he studied Business Economics earned an MBA afterwards and later earned a graduate certificate from Yale. Professionally, John started his career in a family owned private equity company, where he successfully started built and sold one of the holdings of the firm. The goal was to flip the business in two years, but they did so in one and a half years while earning a five star rating on home advisor. John currently has ownership in a small business and manages The McGraw Council, which functions as a nonprofit consulting firm to help small businesses achieve their American Dream by implementing proper structure and good management. In less than a year, he helped service 700 clients and delivered resources to over 1500 small businesses nationwide. John, I’m excited to have you with me today on the chamber chat podcast, we would 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 I get to know you a little better.

Something Interesting About John

John Beaman 2:25
Oh, absolutely. Thank you first and foremost for having me on. This is the type of stuff that we’d love to do talking with other local businesses, small businesses kind of about their passion, their why and so forth. A little interesting tip, I’ll give you one that not everyone knows I serve on city council for a small town in Texas and heat. And I’m actually the youngest elected city council in their history. So there’s just a little fun tidbit for them to take where they’re I enjoy giving back. I enjoy serving audits. It’s one way for me to do so. Can tell. So

Brandon Burton 2:53
I know all the Chamber Champions listening is they’ve got their own interactions, the city council members in their city and and I’m here to vouch for you that you’re one of the good ones. Thank you very much, bro business city councilman. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, take a minute and tell us a little bit about your organization, the McGraw Council, tell us what you guys do. Specifically, why I’m having you speak to my audience here on chamber tech podcasts and how it’s applicable.

About the McGraw Council

John Beaman 3:25
Great question. Thank you for opening up with that. So in a nutshell, the McGraw Council is kind of a legacy project for our founder. What we do is consult on the managerial structure side with small businesses. Funny story. When we started, we thought we’re gonna really be focusing on the strategy side of things. But as we started onboarding small businesses, and just for clarity, we define a small business, less than 10 million in revenue, fewer than 20 employees. That’s really who we like to target. Even though the IRS lets you go up to 500 employees, we don’t go that far, there are a lot of really good mid tier consulting firms that work in that realm. But what we saw a lack of supply that really pertain to that small business demographic in that target market that I just mentioned, especially in the service industry. Now we’ve got a total team of about 12. Obviously, it changed a little bit between employees to 99, volunteer, so on and so forth. But what’s interesting is that we are a 100% virtual company. So we actually started during COVID 2020, the summer of 2020. And we use a virtual officing solution called for Bella so it’s like you download this application to computer to your computer and you go into like this virtual campus auditoriums, Expo halls and conference rooms and Office suites. So we literally have a whole office for and one of the buildings and we have our clients come on in there is where we meet with them. It’s where we do our consulting. So our consulting mission pertains like, as I was talking earlier, management structure what we found, the vast majority of small businesses don’t have any manageable systems or structures. It’s very much like the book E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. You have an individual who’s really good at the operations, but they’re not as familiar with the business side. And so they use, I’ll give an example, you see an H back, I gotta tell you what, I’ve been working HVac for 15 years, I’m gonna start HVac business. And we’re like, Heck, yeah, that’s awesome. But before you do that, how are you financing the business? How much do you need? What’s the plan, what’s your marketing niche, what differentiates you from the competition, so on and so forth, that the ideas, we can help them build a tangible asset, something they can liquidate later on, pass along to a family member, and in a perfect world, help them fund their retirement through that now real quick, because when people hear that they think financial advising, we’re not financial advisors, I am not a CPA. That’s not what we focus on, we focus on building the business, the core management structure of the business, that’s kind of how it started and how it’s going. We’re having a great time, it’s a lot of long days, but it is so rewarding to be able to provide to provide a need to provide a service for a knee to fill a gap, so to speak.

Brandon Burton 6:03
Absolutely. And, and I see where that need falls. You know, amongst a lot of these small businesses, like the example you’re saying, with the HVac person, I always think of the dentist, you know, you spend all their money, you go to dental school, you learn how to be a great dentist, you maybe work at somebody else’s practice for a few years and decide to go hang your own shingle. And you know how to drill in teeth and do fillings and everything great. But they don’t have any idea how to run a business necessarily, because they don’t teach that in dental school. So it’s there’s a huge need. And it’s

John Beaman 6:33
so true. And that’s where we love partnering with chambers of commerce, because we have so many resources that we can donate for absolutely no cost, including consulting hours, and exactly what you’re talking about. You see someone who’s really good at what they do, perhaps even the best in the industry, but they don’t understand what it means to run a business. And it’s the reason why a huge portion of small businesses still go on today. I know you’ve heard the statistic about 80% of businesses go under in the first five years, we want to flip that ratio. Once we can say 80% of businesses survive and succeed, then we can kick back and launcher the sweet tea and say you know what we did our duty but until then, it’s full steam ahead.

Brandon Burton 7:10
Absolutely. So the the topic for discussion today is we’ll be focusing around customer journey mapping. And I can see several applications to this one for chamber champions listening, how they can kind of take their members along a customer journey of sorts, but also to help them to help their business members with the journey mapping as well. So I’m excited to get into that discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Customer Journey Mapping

Alright, John, we’re back. And as I teased before the break where we’re talking about customer journey mapping, so I’d like to get into this and see kind of what your thoughts are maybe first of all, from a chamber of commerce perspective, as they deal with Chamber members and kind of in May I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap to with how a chamber would approach this versus how a small business would approach the customer journey mapping. But let me hand the mic over to you.

John Beaman 9:20
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So cut me off if I start going too long here cuz I love talking about this stuff. customer journey mapping is commonly used in the corporate world and in very large firms. They’ll what they find is that I’ll give you a prime example. A lot of auto stores like GE Chevrolet, Ford, a lot of their customer journeys. For people that buy a car, it’s often a couple year process. Small businesses need to take that same rationale the same approach to their business because then they can use it to enhance their forecasting, refocusing on the actual journey. What you’ll find is are generally five steps in that customer journey, you’ll have awareness initial consideration active consideration, purchase decision and then loyalty loop. And each stage is unique each stage is important. But before we go through each individual stage, I want to start off with something that you’re tying, how does this relate to chamber so on so forth. The most common mistake we see in small business is failing to build the customer avatar, I’ll give you a prime example of what that looks like, you’ll have a small business and let’s use a chat business. And those someone’s trying to help them as they tell you what I want to refer you, I know you, I like you, I trust you. Till you press referral, and say anyone with an H back unit goes right over the head of everyone’s mind goes blank, it’s like well, wait, that’s not very much. There, you need to be specific in your target, not necessarily who you serve, you can serve a wide variety. But when you’re investing marketing dollars, you’re investing your time for networking getting involved in your chamber, you need to know your perfect customer, the one that you enjoy working with most, and the one that also makes you the most money, that’s the ideal customer. And as you break that down, you can go into their age, their beliefs, their values, their area of geographic living their area of geographic work, if they’re different. I’ll give you a prime example. I live in Heath, a lot of people in the heath area, live in Heath, but work in Dallas. So knowing that helps us, you know, taught us our target audience and customer avatar to focus in during the day in Dallas, especially in the digital space. And then at night, a little more local. Those are some of the things that you can do to target there. But the other thing real quick, I want to bring up for a chamber of commerce, you probably have multiple customer avatars, let me explain. You’re going to have your traditional small business, your mom and pop business, that’s going to be one client one, customer avatar, you’re also going to have your big corporate sponsors, that’s going to be your bank, your big manufacturer, your big distributor, and they’re going to need different things in the small business. And then they’re also going to be your community leaders, your city council, your county leadership, maybe even your state representation, they all have unique needs. So Chamber of Commerce probably has at least three customer avatars. And it’s not bad if you have 10. But knowing what to present to that customer avatar and who that customer avatar is, what they like, what they need, what they want, that will help you deliver the right solution to them to walk them through that customer journey.

Brandon Burton 12:24
I really liked what you had to say about with creating that customer avatar with focusing on who you enjoy working with. Because we all know that customer that chamber member that we deal with that they are they just don’t fit that ideal avatar that you don’t enjoy working with that one. But you can serve us and still for sure, but you don’t want a whole chamber membership or businesses like that necessarily.

John Beaman 12:49
Exactly. You want to have a diversified portfolio. And then once you kind of have that customer avatar built, then you can walk them through those five steps, you know, building awareness. And that’s really the stage where you go from. I never even heard of that. What is that to? Oh, cool. Yeah, I know you exist. It’s that first impression. And you know, as the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. But it’s true for having a good plant execute, to create that first impression through Ambassador programs, online digital marketing, you know, like it’s some type of welcomed community to new businesses or new residents, there’s another avatar for your residents. It will help you generate that positive first impression that awareness campaigns. And then it moves them to initial consideration where they’re kind of feel free to cut me off your first search and you’re good to pass, then you move into that initial consideration phase and they go, Okay, I know who you are. And I like you. I want to learn, I know kind of what you do. But tell me more. If you play that right again, pitching the solution to their needs to their problem, you can move into active consideration in this stage, they’re going okay, I know that I’ve got something I need to fix, I know you have a solution for it, what I’m trying to verify is that you’re the right person to do it. This is where you kind of want to insert that testimonial that guarantee, so to speak, say hey, we’ve done it before we know what we’re doing. And if that goes successfully, then you move them to the purchase decision. They like you, they know you, they trust you. They need one little push to get them across the finish line. If it’s a small ticket item, like a like a restaurant, for example, a small coupon can go a long way. If it’s a large ticket item like a mortgage, it’s probably going to be more about the ease of working with you. Um, if you’re constantly putting up barriers I need this document now I need this document. Now I need this document, it starts stacking up and you can kill it right there. However, if you can make an easy process if you can show your credible, if you can show your trustworthy, you can push them across that finish line and get the transaction to complete. However, this is probably the second biggest mistake people make most small businesses make. They see the cash move from bank to bank and they say I’m done. successful sale that just begins the resale process that begins the loyalty loop. And this is why it’s so important, it’s seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. If you can successfully complete the loyalty loop, you cut out the first two to three stages of the customer journey maps. Remember how we had awareness, initial consideration, active consideration, purchase decision and loyalty loop? With a successful loyalty loop? You cut out awareness, you certainly cut out initial consideration. And sometimes you can even cut up active consideration and bring them right back in to that purchase decision. I think a prime example is like insurance renewals. If you’re doing it, right, that baby just keeps renewing and renewing and renew. And there’s really no consideration. That’s the perfect loyalty loop model. And any company can focus on this. Mortgage lenders. H fac, dentists, there needs to be a very clear and distinct strategy, though, to move people from one time purchaser to loyal advocate. And I think I’ll give a prime example here of what a loyal advocate looks like. How about a chamber ambassador, they’re members of that Chamber of Commerce for years, year after year after year. And not only are they paying customer for the chamber, but they’re also a voice for them. They’re a mouthpiece, they’re out there advocating for the chamber that is perfect execution of the loyalty loop model. And again, any business Regardless of industry can get such an advocate for them, it might take a little while, like we were talking earlier, it might take a couple years depends on your business model. That’s not inherently a bad thing. As long as you plan for it and account for it in your budgeting in your forecasts in your marketing planning, then it’s just data that you can work with to build that consistent model.

Brandon Burton 16:49
So and I think you hit on a lot of great points, especially as you as you move through that customer journey, those five points. I think for the most part, chambers are pretty good, at least those first four, you know, the building the awareness, initial consideration, active consideration, and even the purchase decision. Can we maybe talk a little bit more about building that loyalty loop from a chamber of commerce perspective? I mean, I have I have a few ideas. But I’m curious to have you riff on it a little bit about how a chamber can go about building that, that loyalty loop with their members, once you’ve already done the hard work of identifying your avatar doing that marketing and getting feet on the ground getting your ambassadors there, they finally join the chamber, how do you retain them for the life of the business?

John Beaman 17:38
You know, we’re actually a part of several Chambers of Commerce nationally, and what we’ve seen with chambers that are really growing quickly, they become the advocate for their members, they are their mouthpiece, so to speak. When a chamber of commerce acquires a member, and they start getting them year after year, after year after year, they’re really engaging with them, they’re really bringing them in. And I think that’s something that chambers of commerce that are really successful and growing, that they’re really able to hone in on, they’re able to focus on the vision of their organization, what they ultimately want to be for most Chambers of Commerce. That’s, in essence, in a nutshell, oversimplified, it’s probably a community bridge, they want to be that community connected, they want to connect people with business with government in all different ways. That’s probably the overlying vision. And so continually pursuing that, and then that increasing and adding value to that value proposition so to speak. That’s really where it can tie into the chamber membership, because our economy is changing. If you rewind about 50 years, we don’t really have any type of digital content, digital media or anything like that. Everyone would immediately goes, Hey, here’s our customer journey map, we go to the chamber, the customer journey map has changed words, let’s go online and look for it. However, I can tell you firsthand experience. If you go to the chamber in person, you’re still going to get way more information than you can find online. But what chambers really, I think need to focus on based on what we’ve seen in working with them, meeting people where they are providing those different connectors to different parts of the community. And really getting in front of the, you know, the popular question that people that chambers always know, what does the chamber do for me? Well, first and foremost, they build community, they build those connections, that’s what they’re there for. They can give you the keys and the roadmap to the end destination where you want to go, they can’t walk the journey for you. But the chamber will walk the journey with you every step of the way. And I think that’s the messaging and the kind of value proposition that chambers can focus on to say, hey, here’s what we do for you. Here’s why it’s important. Oh, and by the way, here are testimonials, people that have been with us for 30 years, you know, 20 years of 10 years. Here’s, you know, small business that joined last year and they close, you know, four deals, they’ve got ROI on their investment by about 5x. That’s how you can consistently build that loyalty loop. And then to your point earlier about, you know, not taking the foot off the gas pedal Once the transaction takes place, always working with them engaging with them, checking in on them, Hey, how are you doing? How are things going? What can we do to serve you? Or I’ll give you a local, you know, local issue being on council, maybe it’s a road bond or a school bond. Hey, what are your thoughts on this? Is there something in here that impacts your business? If so, what does that look like? Because then as that community connector, the chamber can take it back to local government say, hey, our business community is saying these things, we probably need to consider it. That’s how you generate that loyalty where they’ll, when it comes time for renewal, they won’t even say how much you’ll be. Here’s my credit card. Yeah, that’s the goal. This is not about the money, it’s about the value.

Brandon Burton 20:44
Absolutely. And you hit on a lot of things that I was thinking of. So my background and chamber publishing, I get to be kind of the bartender, you know, I get to meet all the Chamber members and hear their stories and what they love about the chamber and what their frustrations are. And I hear from some, you know, I gave the chamber my money to join, and then I never heard from them. Well, that’s a problem, you know, exactly. Got it, you got to stay in that connection, you got to show them the value of the chamber. But I think also being clear on what the expectations are. So when a person joins a business joins a chamber, here’s what you can expect from the chamber, and then lead them through that. So they see where they’re having that expert expectation being delivered upon. And then be active about telling the story of how the chamber is servicing the business community, how they’re building the community. And I’ve seen chambers do this successfully when they send out the renewal notices. And they’ll include the the customer testimonials in the renewal notice, and or they’ll leave a voicemail for somebody and you know, here’s what, you know how the chamber served XYZ business, Sir, here’s how we served you through the pandemic or sent you know, real life examples they can relate to,

John Beaman 21:56
I think something you touched on, which is absolutely paramount, concrete deliverables. I’ll give you one example for our organization, we’re often confused. With coaching, technically, we’re different. And there’s a very distinct difference. We really prefer the term consulting, because we have key concrete deliverables. And so again, when we started, we were self admittedly, we were a little soft, a little qualitative on our value proposition. When we reevaluate it with focus groups, with studies done internally with our existing membership and our existing clients, we tweaked it to where we have key deliverables at specified points in time. And that’s what we started to see the exponential growth, a very clear value proposition with stated delivery, you know, talk about setting the expectations, you do this, this is what this happens after this is when it happens. It’s that type of controlling the narrative, saying, here’s what’s going to happen, and then backing it up to where it’s predictable, sustainable, measurable, these are all critical components in that value proposition and the chambers that are able to do that are the ones that are really able to take their chamber to the next level.

Brandon Burton 23:03
So I’d like to get your thoughts on creating some of those deliverables on the front end, I know, some chambers will get into an email campaign or email marketing campaign, somebody joins, and then they have a automated email series, maybe right first three, three to six months, maybe the first year of their membership to kind of lead that chamber member along. What are your thoughts on something like that, where it’s digital and automated versus the in person? And I know you can only spread yourself so thin. But I’m just curious kind of some of the pros and cons to both approaches.

John Beaman 23:43
You I think the this is a prime example. A lot of times it’s so easy to get pulled into an either or, and the answer is both. You can never replace in person interaction. Even though we are a 100% virtual company, and I absolutely love it, I will also be the first one to tell you there’s nothing like shaking someone’s hand and looking them directly in the eye, you need to have that type of community connection. That being said, you also need to harness digital technology, we have an entire bull, actually, we have a 90 day program was six different courses. And one of those courses is dedicated solely to customer journey mapping. But one of the things we touch on, we are in a digital economy. If you look at the value of digital transactions and such, it’s about it’s a little under two trillion with a T as n tree and T type is a huge, huge economy. We are in the digital world. If you look at customers journeys, over two thirds of them complete their entire journey online from awareness all the way through loyalty purchase. If McKinsey This is a fascinating one, because this study was actually conducted right before COVID started. In 2020 McKinsey and Company found that 75% of consumers purchase their goods and services on the line. So we know for a fact we are enabling Digital Economy, you need to have those automated emails, you need to have those digital service offerings, those digital product offerings. And with chambers, it gets a little complex because you know, being community connected in person interaction is huge. However, there are things you can do to harness digital technology, kind of like what we did at the McGraw Council, where we use virtual office space virtual office sharing, we can connect with people on the other end of the country, we can connect with people in different spots of our region. I’ll give you a prime example that helped us in the DFW area. There were times last year when Rockwall County was open, and Dallas County was shut. And so that we can say, tell you what, rather than worrying about where we’re going to meet who’s open, who’s not just jumping over to office space. So to answer your question, you need both you need to have in person interaction, but you need to harness and leverage those digital technologies, they will make you more effective, they will make you more efficient, and they will increase your value proposition.

Brandon Burton 25:55
Absolutely. I know most chambers that are listening, have some sort of a CRM, some kind of management software. And if you can schedule, you know, a member joins and you schedule a you know, a trickle decane of emails, but then schedule in there and in person visit you know scheduling a phone call, make sure they’re getting your emails, I mean, the worst thing would be a year later you go back to him for renewal. And they’ve never gotten a single email because it all ended up in their spam folder. For some reason. You are preaching

John Beaman 26:21
to the choir, a good written process, standard operating procedures. At month one we do this month two we do this month three we do this, we asked this question at the first meeting, we asked this question at the second meeting. That’s something that’s predictable, it’s sustainable, it’s measurable. And you can write it out in a job description, which helps you grow your organization say, Hey, we’re looking to fill someone or hire someone to fill these roles and duties, you are preaching to the choir, my friend.

Brandon Burton 26:51
And then of course, there’s the storytelling aspect, you know, what a chamber, how they can go about telling how they’re servicing the members in their community. I think every chamber out there is embrace Facebook, you know, they all are doing that, because it’s easy and free. For the most part. YouTube, you know, a lot of jumping on that some are jumping on podcasting. But there’s various channels out there to be able to tell the story. So you have that automated or scheduled, you know, campaign to be able to retain your members and onboard them more or less, but then have some content available that if they want to learn more they can they can freely find it and engage with your chamber.

John Beaman 27:31
Absolutely, absolutely. Providing opportunities to engage making it easy to engage that also, for lack of a better term, make it fun. If people don’t enjoy it, they’re probably not going to come back. Yes. Where it being in business, you need to earn a profit. If you’re not earning a profit, you’re going to eventually have to close doors. However, making up earning a profit having fun are not mutually exclusive things you can do both. That’s the whole idea why a lot of people start with, hey, I want to have fun and want to make money. Awesome, good combination, making it a good fun experience. It’s also profitable. That’s the goal.

Brandon Burton 28:06
Absolutely. Well, John, this is been a blast to visit with you about this, I wanted to get your thoughts on maybe a tip or an action item that a chamber champion listening could do to help lift their organization up to the next level.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

John Beaman 28:20
Oh, I love action items it takes it takes theory and applies it to the real world. So it’s no longer just theory knowledge, its application, my action item would be this. We get this kind of like perverse secret sauce. So listen closely, or identify three of your favorite clients, and then interview them and ask them questions about those five stages of the customer journey map. How did you first hear about us? What made you talk to us? What made you consider us? Why don’t you buy from us? And then lastly, why do you love us so much that you keep coming back each and every year? As you go through that process? You’re going to be able to build a system for selling that is predictable, that is sustainable. That is measurable. And that is the key to your scalability.

Brandon Burton 29:08
Absolutely. I love that idea. Hopefully in those interviews, it’s not you know, you’re hopefully you’re not getting the answers of I just love the chamber president. You know, we’re good friends, you know, I’ve been friends forever. Well, is that helpful? I mean, it is in that in that process.

John Beaman 29:23
It’s not it’s not sustainable. And that’s exactly you hit the nail on the head, it will tell you what you’re doing well, it’ll also show show you some of the shortcomings that you need to tweak and change. And I’ll stop there because I can talk about this for another entire day. But you know, you hit the nail on the head.

Brandon Burton 29:39
But John, what would be a I like to ask everyone this question as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

John Beaman 29:48
Now granted, I’m a little biased because I work with chambers. We’re members of chambers actually serve on the board for one chambers? Well, I think one of the things that Chambers of Commerce need to do there are a couple of things. Number one, they need to continually digitized not at the expense of in person, but adding it to, they need to really control and focus the narrative on being the connector and their community, the bridge builder. And they need to find a way to increase the value proposition. Granted, again, that’s all admit that I’m biased here, adding a tear of consulting to the small businesses that are really mom and pops. That is very powerful, because the mid to large sized companies get the importance of the chamber, and they want to give back, it’s like a dual approach there. For a small business where 100 bucks is a really big deal and can kill them make or break their monthly budget, you need to have immediate pragmatic solutions that can be applied right off the bat, that the results can be seen almost immediately, you need to have something like that. And it might even pertain to some of the things that you do with publishing, you might have a special package, you know, for small business today with his complements of your chamber membership. And you can build all these things into the pricing. But what you want to have is clear deliverables that they can taste, touch and feel so to speak. Right after they sign up. That is a critical component. In my opinion,

Brandon Burton 31:13
I would agree had given them those quick wins. So they can say, Oh, I’m getting a return already on this investment that I made the chamber. I’ll give you a quick northern

John Beaman 31:21
example. It’s because I’m originally from Wisconsin got down here 10 years ago moved here as fast as I could. It’s kind of like building a snowman. It starts off with just a little snowball, but you start rolling that baby and keep going, it becomes a huge 50 pounds snowball. That’s a beast to move. And but it can also become the rock or the foundation. And it’s those little wins early on that build that momentum momentum builds whether it’s good or bad. So started off with a few good things to your point, those few quick easy wins, build the momentum, and it will start to build from there.

Brandon Burton 31:51
I love that momentum builds whether it’s good or bad. Amen, brother. Well, John, before we sign off here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put out some contact information for you maybe get a little bit more specific on the services you offer for chambers so they can if there’s chambers out there interested they could reach out and connect with you and and see how you can help serve their Chamber members to give some of those quick wins and build that good momentum.

Connect with John

John Beaman 32:13
Oh, fabulous. Some of the things that we can do for chambers is deliver no cost resources to their membership, including donating consulting hours, donated products and services, donated ebooks, the list goes on and on. There are a lot of resources that we can provide at no cost to their membership. In terms of getting in touch with us, obviously, we have our website, we have Facebook page, Instagram, YouTube, we have podcast channels, very much like what you’re doing here, where we talk about the journey of small business owners. In terms of reaching out to us, you can send us a Facebook message, you can send an email, I’m gonna give you two emails, we have a company email, which is info@mcgrawcouncil.com. But if someone wanted to reach out to me personally, I’ll give my email as well. That’s going to be john.beaman@mcgrawcouncil.com. Shoot me an email, I’ll tell you what, I’ll get you access to a virtual office space or private space. And we can we can have a little bit of a virtual cup of coffee sometime. guarantee you’ll get a kick out of the experience.

Brandon Burton 33:09
That is awesome. Do you want to put the name of your podcast out there too, and we can get that

John Beaman 33:14
fabulous? Thank you the name of the podcast is called Real Small Business with The McGraw Council. If you were actually on our podcast a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things we love about it. It’s all about being real and authentic. It’s showing what business ownership is really like the good, the bad, the ugly, the up the down. I think there are a lot of people who have misconceptions about small business, they’re like I’m going to be profitable at month three. No, statistically it’s going to be two years but hang in there. Or oh, you must have tons of spare time on your hands as a business owner. Yeah, I’m actually getting less sleep than my corporate job right it’s just things like that, but it’s we have a good time.

Brandon Burton 33:50
So it could go either way. If you’re not in business yet you may you may want to listen to see the reality or you may not want to keep the blinders on so

John Beaman 33:58
Exactly. So true.

Brandon Burton 34:01
Well, I will get that and your your contact information updated in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode 147. But John, I appreciate having you with me today on chamber chat podcast and thank you for spending time with us.

John Beaman 34:16
Thank you so much for having me, Brandon, the honor was mine.

Brandon Burton 34:19
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 34:51
Hey, this is Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner, a weekly monthly planner that you can get on Amazon or Etsy. I wanted to give a shout out to Diane Sawyer of the Reidsville Chamber who emailed me saying I am loving this stuff my admin assistant bought me the planner for Christmas before I could purchase it for myself. The responses and feedback I get from my fellow Chamber Pros are a big deal to me and in fact the updates I make each year if you like physical planners, please check out the 2022 Chamber Post Planner at theizzywest.com That’s theizzywst.com.

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Holly Allen. 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.

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 would love for you to connect with him on LinkedIn. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to 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 Holly Allen Holly is the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce in Ohio. As Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Holly oversees the overall branding of the chamber and its programs as well as the communication with its members and beyond. In addition, Holly leads the promotion of the chamber events and initiatives and works closely with local media outlets to ensure the Dayton region’s business community has a voice. Holly came to the chamber from WDT N TV in October 2014. There she served as anchor of two news today and reported on Dayton area news stories, earning an enterprise reporting and to broadcast writing awards from the Associated Press in 2011. In 2012, Holly was named one of Dayton Business Journal’s 40 under 40. In 2015, she earned her BA in telecommunications with a news focus at Ball State University. I’m excited to have Holly with us today here on chamber tech podcast, Holly Welcome to the show, if you would take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself. So

Something Interesting About Holly

Holly Allen 2:41
that’s not so easy to do this year, something interesting. Well, first of all, hello, Brandon, and all the listeners. And thank you so much for thinking of me and having me on the podcast today. I’m really excited about the conversation today. And how cool is it to be able to talk purely chamber matters, because it seems like Chambers of Commerce are so unique, that it’s only people who have been in it who understand what it’s like to work for a Chamber of Commerce. So I appreciate this podcast quite a bit. Um, so when I think about what’s interesting about me probably the most, you know, you mentioned my background in journalism. So that gives you an idea of what my skill set was coming into the chamber. But one of the things most recently that was interesting was that my family and I were living in China at the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. For my husband’s job, we had moved there. And I was continuing to work part time for the chamber from the other side of the globe until we started to get word of this little virus that was spreading around China and and made it back to Dayton, Ohio. So that was quite an experience and something that I will always remember.

Brandon Burton 3:54
I bet that would be quite a unique experience and to be there on the front lines, so to speak. Yes,

Holly Allen 4:01
yeah. Who would have guessed it would turn into what it is now. So

Brandon Burton 4:05
absolutely. Here we are. Wow. Well, share with us a little bit about the Dayton chamber just so we can get to know a little bit of perspective as we get into our discussion today and kind of let us know about the size staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion.

About the Dayton Area Chamber

Holly Allen 4:23
Sure. Yeah. So the Dayton area Chamber of Commerce is the Regional Chamber in Dayton, Ohio, which is in southwest Ohio. We’re about an hour from the Indiana line and where we are pretty close, our metro area butts up to Cincinnati, their metro area and where we’ve got some areas that both of us cover in between the two the two Metro regions. So our chamber is one of the oldest in the country. It was founded in 1907. We’ve been around for a really long time. So we have a well established brand in the Dayton region. We serve 2200 members currently nine counties. So that surrounding the Dayton metro area. Our budget is about 3 million annually. Although we do have a foundation that works, you know, kind of in tandem on some of our initiatives here at the chamber. It’s called the education Public Education Improvement Fund. Don’t quote me, it’s EPI, that’s what we call it. We call it API. So very well established Chamber of Commerce. And you know, we’ve we, we have initiatives, it especially in diversity, equity inclusion, we do a lot of work and workforce. And kind of from an internal perspective, we’re going through some transitions, because we had the same president and CEO for 26 years, and he retired last August. So we are welcoming a new leader. He’s been with our chamber for about 1616 years. I think that’s right. His name’s Chris Kirschner. So he’s been around, but he is new to the position of president and CEO. And, you know, when you’ve had someone in charge for so, so long, who was so well known in the community and had really set his path for our chamber? It’s it’s a whole new day at the Dayton area Chamber of Commerce. So that gives you a little bit background on who we are and what we do.

Brandon Burton 6:19
Yeah, absolutely. At least it’s good to know that Chris has some longevity there at the Chamber too. So that seems to be the trend.

Holly Allen 6:26
Yeah, yeah, we it was we were really pleasantly surprised when he got got the position, you know, he fully earned it. He has a really great vision for where he wants our organization to go and how He wants us to support the business community. So it’s been it’s been fantastic. But as you can imagine, it’s a lot of change when we weren’t used to change so.

Brandon Burton 6:49
Well, I’m excited to get into our topic of discussion today around marketing thought leadership, as we kind of had some back and forth before leading up to the podcast to this recording. I thought this is a really interesting topic. So I’m excited to dive into it and get a little bit more of the meat meaning behind that and how you guys are marketing thought leadership there at the Dayton chamber. And we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Marketing Thought Leadership

Alright, Holly, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about marketing thought leadership. So at that, I’d hand it over to you and share with us what you guys were doing there. Well, I I know a little bit about what you’re talking about. But yeah, tell us what that means, from your perspective. And, you know, from the marketing, you know, specifically there your chamber how you’re using that thought leadership to really showcase your members,

Holly Allen 8:58
sir. Yeah. Well, Brandon, when you and I talked about this, this is something that I took on early on, when I started you talked a little bit about my history. So coming into my position with you know, 10 plus years as a journalist behind me, I felt like a fish out of water. You know, the the whole like I said, the Chamber of Commerce universe is so is so different than anything I had experienced. And so when I took a look at what our strategy was, I said, Okay, initially, where can I plug in my skill set as a storyteller what you know, where can we plug that into the needs of our members and what we’re doing as a chamber. So when you say thought leadership, my take on that was in public relations, what you want to do is position your organization as an expert in whatever field, right and so as a chamber of commerce, we have access to experts in in every business topic you can think of and one of the things We can do for our members is serve as a reliable source of information that they can use in their businesses. And so the idea is to marry the two, the need and the access we have as a chamber. And so we redid our website, this was back in 2016 2017. And one of the things I did was add kind of a new, we call it a news section, you can call it whatever but and we wanted to use that space for original content. We, at our chamber, my team, there are three of us in the Marketing and Communications Department. And knowing that we have limited resources, we can’t be creating all of that content for our members. So it was about tapping into the experts we have available, and asking them to provide articles, blog posts, whatever you want to call them on topics that our members could then take information away and put it to use. And it turned into over the years, it is a member benefit. Now it was woven into the tiers of our membership, where we say to our members, if you want to submit one of these articles on whatever topic it is that you find your you have experts, and then that is that is part of the upper level tears because they’re getting exposure out of it, or members are getting useful information. And we are the hub that’s connecting it all together.

Brandon Burton 11:27
I love that. And this parallels so well. So obviously, with the podcast, I’ve had several chambers to do. That’s right. That’s what I do in your taking with your knowledge and your background and playing it there at the chamber. But especially since the pandemic I’ve had chambers reaching out to me about podcasting, you know, they see that as a valuable way of being able to tell stories, and but they get overwhelmed with the idea of coming up with content. And it’s like, you know, you don’t need to create all the content, you have valuable resources throughout your community. Interview, your members tell their stories tell how the Chamber’s benefited them as a business. But then you can monetize it like you are with the membership tier, you know, make that be a level and your membership. And absolutely, and maybe not to start off, but once it gets some feet and it starts to grow and go, absolutely you can make that you can monetize that in multiple different ways.

Holly Allen 12:24
Right. You can attest, I mean, you know, putting together a podcast is a heck of a lot of work so so anything you can take off your plate. But I do want to you, you kind of made me think about when you mentioned the pandemic, because this was something that it was eye opening for us when we went into COVID, that we started hearing from our members that they were, you know, a time of such uncertainty, things were changing. So quickly put yourself in the shoes of a business owner, and they didn’t know where to turn for reliable information. And we started hearing more and more from our members that they were so thankful that we were providing information quickly, readily available. And that was really us acting as a curator of content. We weren’t creating everything we put out there. We were curating it from our partners from our members, it became really important for us to tap into attorneys CPAs, you know, other than, you know, of course, we were in contact with the SBA and that sort of thing, but getting that information and putting it together. I wasn’t writing it all, they were submitting some of that information. And we found that it was a really valuable member benefit that I don’t think we realized or we didn’t maximize it before.

Brandon Burton 13:43
Absolutely. So can you share some examples with this? So you mentioned through the pandemic of getting contact with CPAs and attorneys, and obviously SBA may be more normal times what would be you know, some examples of stories that were highlighted or types of businesses maybe that you reached out to that added value to your membership? And just kind of how you go about that with creating, curating the content.

Holly Allen 14:14
Yeah, sure. So normal times, let’s hope that we get to experience normal times again. I think it’s about knowing your membership first and foremost. So I can tell you from our membership that you know quite a bit of them are small to medium sized businesses and so they do not have one of them don’t have a marketing professional on staff. So we know that when we address marketing topics on a you know, small scale for smaller businesses, marketing topics, it’s always a hit, because business owners are interested in knowing how to promote their business, but it’s not necessarily their area of expertise. So we have we’ve partnered this is easy pickings. By the way, if you partner with some of your marketing firms, For your public relations agencies because they know how to do this, they know how to write an article that isn’t salesy, and that’s key. You don’t want it to be salesy or no one’s going to read it. So they know how to write. Basically, it’s native content, it’s advertising. And so they’ll put together topics about, you know, how can you effectively tell a story using video on your social media account, or you know, things, little tips and tricks or tools you can use, that are free or have very little cost associated with them. So that’s easy. And like I said, you know, turning to your attorneys, employment law is always something easy. And a lot of those larger firms, they have market, someone in marketing and their department who’s already writing these pieces, just ask their permission to post it to your chamber website and share with your members. They love it. They get exposure.

Brandon Burton 15:52
Yeah, absolutely. So you had mentioned when you started there at the Chamber, he has added the news page under the website. Since we are on an audio format, can you kind of explain what how that page functions? How are you going about sharing these stories? Is it all video based? Is it articles? Sounds? Like? Do you have some articles as well? So how do you go about sharing these stories?

Holly Allen 16:17
Sure. So it’s mostly in article form, there are a couple of tools out there actually, where you can turn your articles, your blog posts, into videos. So that’s one of the ways we can do it. So we post it in its in its original form, it’s an article and in most cases, it’s posted to the website, and then they’re tagged by topic so that our members can search. And that’s just using WordPress, they have, you know, you can use those tools to do that. And then from there, we share it on our different communication platform. So our E newsletter goes out to our membership, and we’ll tag will include it there. We’ve We’ve found that sharing on LinkedIn, which is our best social media platform has been useful. And then like I said, sometimes you can turn it into another format. So we’ll either turn it into one of those videos, where it’s images, and it has, you know, text that you can post to social media, or we’ll go out and interview the member and add a little video element to share on social media. But that’s the beauty of it, you can take the kernel of an idea and turn it into a bunch of different mediums to tell the story and share it in different ways and get some extra traction from it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 17:36
I love being able to repurpose content. Always write it, what do you think about you know, some people might be hesitant on repurposing content. But everybody, you know, they digest content so differently, some are gonna strictly do social media, some are gonna read your articles, some are sitting on YouTube, you know, and that’s their, their main source. Some are podcasts. So it’s just there’s no shame in repurposing content at all, or even just snippets to kind of pick that that interest. So they kind of click through and see the rest of the content.

Holly Allen 18:13
I think you’re absolutely right. I honestly believe you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t tell the same story in different ways in different formats, because like you said, you’re not reaching the same audience with every communication channel you use. So I think there’s opportunity and you really should be repurposing it. And then cross promoting, you know, you could use your social media posts to be just a tease. Or, you know, we have a quarterly magazine, so I’ll do longer form articles in that print magazine. And I’ll do a shorter version of it on the website as an article or blog posts. So I think you’re absolutely right, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you think that you can’t repurpose content.

Brandon Burton 18:54
Absolutely. I don’t mean to put you on the spot. But it sounds like from the article forum you had mentioned going to the video format do know the name of the tool, it sounded like maybe it’s an more automated kind of thing where you can take the text does something. Oh, my goodness. That’s I didn’t mean Yeah,

Holly Allen 19:13
I know. But I shouldn’t I shouldn’t have even brought it up if I couldn’t tell you which, what the name of it is. Let me figure that out. And I will

Brandon Burton 19:24
you know what, we will put it in the show notes for this episode. So anybody listening? That look? link it in the show notes.

Holly Allen 19:32
I will look at it. I couldn’t remember we use so many tools. I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. But um, I if you don’t follow her name is my nerdy BFF. Is that are you familiar with her? That’s Z. Yep. Yes, yes. Yes, she’s fantastic. And she’s actually how I was turned on to that tool and it will automatically take your blog post from your website and turn it into a video now you can edit it, and there’s a free version so I don’t even pay for it. And then you can post it to social and link back to your website. So you’re driving traffic to the site. So awesome. If Yeah, that’s a good tip get on her newsletter because she’s fantastic.

Lumen5 is a tool to automatically repurpose your blog posts into videos to share on social media.

Brandon Burton 20:07
Yeah. In fact, she she was a guest on the podcast way back when I first started, she was somewhere in the top 10 of the interviews I did I when I started, I kind of had the top 10 people I wanted just as they started off, mainly people that I knew. Yeah, she was one of them. And she came up with a good script. So yeah. I love that. She’s great. So we’ll we’ll figure out what that is. And put it in the show notes for this. I’ll

Holly Allen 20:32
find it. I promise.

Brandon Burton 20:33
Look that up. So I love it. So the the repurposing the content, the automated tools? What kind of feedback are you getting from members as you’re tapping into their stories? What are you? What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What are the?

Holly Allen 20:53
Well, I would say it’s twofold. So on the side of the members, I was really struggling. I don’t know if other chamber professionals deal with this. But I was really struggling when I first started with members who wanted to meet with me, and expected me to do their marketing for them. And at first, I was really frustrated by it, because I was trying to draw that line of No, I work with the chamber, I market, the chamber, and I will give you, you know, I’m happy to meet with you and give you tools and tips. But then I realized why are they asking me to do that. And and I saw that there was an opportunity to provide more marketing and promotional and exposure opportunities through the chamber for those members who didn’t have the tools internally to do so. And so that’s when we started weaving these things into our membership tiers. And I will tell you, those requests have all been stopped. I don’t get asked to market for our members any longer. Because when they need help marketing, I have a whole kit of member benefits, I can hand to them. This is one of them submit an article, it doesn’t it’s not a lot of effort. And I will give you examples to show you how to do it well. So the feedback from our members who are looking for exposure has been fantastic. And it’s taken a load off of me personally. And then the feedback from our members who are receiving the information has been great because we’re we’re not pigeon holing ourselves to the kind of content we can we can provide them. And I think that’s us letting go of, I don’t have to create every nugget that goes out there. And it’s really been, like I said, it’s it’s a thought change from we are not just content creators, we are also content curators, and it’s okay to share things that are useful to our members that we didn’t create.

Brandon Burton 22:42
Yeah, absolutely. I love that whole concept of going from a one to one marketing service. And as you’re given that explanation, I was thinking that is why companies have the FAQ page on their on their websites. And this frequently asked questions, is a fun barded with the same question over and over. So let’s put them all in one place, you get asked a question. You can direct somebody to that, that resource. So you’re creating a whole suite of resources. With it’s a much nicer form of a FAQ. So

Holly Allen 23:17
Oh, you’re absolutely right. And and we did create a page on our website. I know a lot of chambers do this. And but we didn’t we did not have a page on our site that was strictly How can you promote your business through the chamber? So we put a page on the website and did it by membership tier. So I could meet with a member and say, Well, what are your goals? And then say, Here are the options I suggest for you. So it’s it’s I like the way you put it. It’s not a one to one, it’s a one to many, and I’ve given them the tools to do it themselves. Yes.

Brandon Burton 23:47
Yeah. So I’m curious on your, your content schedule. Are you doing something weekly, daily, monthly, just as it comes up ahead? How do you go about putting the content out there?

Holly Allen 24:01
You’re making me tired just asking that question. It’s so hard. Anyone who does marketing and communications for a chamber I’m sure understands it is so hard to keep up with the schedule. We never are digging for content it we are drinking from a firehose, and I think it’s once you start that mindset that you’re always looking for a story idea. They’re everywhere. So our calendar for social media, I’ve shifted some of the roles of our staff, I have someone who is pretty much full time on social media, he does some other things, but so he’s posting multiple times a day to different platforms. As far as these articles, we’ve actually branded them voice of business. Those are as they come in, and I would say it’s, you know, maybe once a month that we’re posting for a member that’s kind of these expert articles. But we’re just we’re constantly creating and repurposing content and plugging it into the different vehicles we have available to us.

Brandon Burton 25:05
Yeah. So you had mentioned the different platforms? Not that I need you to go through all the platforms that you use, if you have a different thought process on what goes where, as far as you know, what goes on LinkedIn versus Facebook versus a blog? What’s your thoughts behind that? Just I see a lot of people just, you know, they produce one piece of content, they put it out everywhere in the same format. Oh, good or bad. So I’m just curious to get your, your input on that. Yeah. So

Holly Allen 25:36
I use, I would say a couple of different thoughts. First is you have to understand who the audience is on each communication channel. So a good example of that is like Twitter, we don’t use Twitter a whole lot. But I’ll tell you why we keep Twitter it’s because that’s where our political audience basis. And we do have an advocacy team here, we have three lobbyists on staff. So when we do anything advocacy related, I make sure we post it to Twitter, and those are quick little bites. And then the flip side of that is think about what is the best way to tell that story. I don’t have to tell it in every single way. I know how to tell a story. But if it’s something that’s more feature in long form, then I’ll do a longer form article with images and put it in our magazine, if it’s something that’s very visual, and you know, there are moving parts and it’s more exciting, like our generation Dayton day when our young professionals go out and do service projects. Well, I’ll do that in a video probably because it’s it’s more visual, and we can tell the story better in that way. So I would say it’s two parts, know your audience, so you know, where you’re sending it out, and then think about the story. And what’s the best way to tell it? And that’s when I can tap into my journalism background a little bit.

Brandon Burton 26:53
Yeah, I love that answer, knowing knowing who the audience is in those different platforms. And and I think, maybe, maybe it’s related or maybe another step further, is think about when they’re using it, too. Oh, yeah. Because if if they’re using it at a time where they are distracted, or they’re just using whatever the social platform is, maybe as a distraction, are they really in a place to engage with what the writer has to put out? So that’s just something to think about? Maybe it is more of a bite size, you know, generate interest, kind of a nugget, then. Yeah, as you try to explore those, those avenues.

Holly Allen 27:28
You’re right. And, and we I’m a big data person, so use the data to guide you. And that’s why I wanted someone who was spending more time on social because I didn’t want to just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and hope it sticks. So he’s pulling those analytics, and he’s really digging into them and looking at what’s working and what’s not. And we do some experimentation, to see what’s gonna grab the most attention, and what’s going to get that engagement that we’re looking for.

Brandon Burton 27:54
Right? And as soon as you find something that works, it’ll change again next month.

Holly Allen 27:58
Or the way they measure i Don’t you just love I mean, Facebook is probably the worst, they’re constantly changing the way they measure things. So that’s hard to keep up with.

Brandon Burton 28:08
Well, Holly, I would like to ask if you might have one tip or action item that we can suggest for chamber champions listening that they can take and maybe implemented their chamber to help take them up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Holly Allen 28:22
Sure, well, I would say for anyone who, you know, you think about telling stories, not everyone has that experience of being a journalist and looking for story ideas. And so I would say the biggest takeaway is to listen to your members, I make a point to go out and meet with them. And I really listen to what they have to say. And I try to walk out of there and say, What are one or two things that I can take away from that conversation of what our member is dealing with or facing that I can turn into a nugget of information? Who can I tap into to provide information to help our fellow members who are in that position? And that’s a story idea. That’s a content, you know, a little piece of content. So I think it’s all about just consciously listening, when you talk to your members,

Brandon Burton 29:11
especially if there’s a trend in those responses that you’re getting that tells you that there’s a need for whatever you’re talking about.

Holly Allen 29:19
It’s something that’s something we’re focusing on with our new leadership is remaining nimble. We don’t have to do things just because we’ve always done them. We need to constantly ask ourselves, when we hear things from members, if we’re hearing a trend, are we addressing it? Do we need to drop something so that we can get on whatever issue they’re facing? Yeah, that’s become more more apparent to us with the pandemic going on?

Brandon Burton 29:43
Absolutely. Yeah. So I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show this question is we’re all curious and interested in the future. How do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Holly Allen 29:57
It’s a great question. I I would say that we have become more of a business concierge. I think the chambers of old, where you join, just to join are a thing of the past, I think that we have to be really responsive to the needs of our business members. And here is our chamber that has translated into more of an old school approach, we are making it a priority that we are visible and being meeting with our members and listening to them and then trying to solve their problems for them, because that’s part of what we do as a Chamber of Commerce. So I think we’re going back to that business concierge model.

Brandon Burton 30:45
I love it. I think that’s a good, good response. I did my best. Well, I wanted to give you an opportunity to put out any contact information for anyone listening who might want to connect with you or see how you guys are doing things or at the Dayton chamber. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you,

Connect with Holly Allen

Holly Allen 31:07
sir? Well, emails probably best. And so my email address is hallen@dacc.org. So that’s like Dayton Area Chamber of commerce.org.

Brandon Burton 31:25
And I will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well as the tool to create the automated (Lumen5)

Holly Allen 31:31
Yes, I do find that tool. Yeah. Great. So I’ll find

Brandon Burton 31:36
it. So the show notes will be at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode 146. But Holly, thank you so much for spending time with me today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I think you’ve provided a lot of value and given a lot of fodder for those listening to think about and see how they might maybe readdress the way that they are doing their their marketing communication approach. Thank you.

Holly Allen 32:00
I hope so thank you so much for having me. And I look forward to I hope I hear from other chamber experts out there because I would love to hear what they’re doing as well. So thanks for this opportunity. This has been fun.

Brandon Burton 32:13
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