Category: Podcast Episode

Economic Mobility with Beth Rhinehart

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

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Becki Womble 1:03
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Beth Rhinehart. Beth is the president and CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce serving both Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. The Bristol Tennessee and Virginia Chamber is a five star accredited organization and has been a leader in economic advocacy since 1909. Prior to joining the chamber in 2015, Beth spent the previous 10 years as Director of Government Relations for wellmont health systems, building key relationships and oversight overseeing Virginia legislative processes as they applied to hospitals and health care. Beth currently serves on the boards for several or local organizations, also including the Virginia Association Chamber of Commerce executives. Beth is a native of Bristol, Virginia, and earned her BS degree from Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Masters of Arts in Teaching and Masters of Science in Counseling degrees from John Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and an MBA from King’s College in Bristol, Tennessee. She’s a 2010 graduate of the Sorenson Institute political leadership program and earned her IOM certification in 2018. She is currently a fellow of the ACCE foundation economic mobility cohort. She completed a fellowship in the ACCE education and talent development division in 2019. And recently completed a business leads fellowship with the US Chamber of Commerce in 2022. She’s a member of the US Chamber of Commerce distinguished committee of 100. And she recently earned her CCE being one of only 172 nationwide out of over 7000 chambers of commerce. Beth, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Beth Rhinehart 3:53
Good morning, Brandon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. The chamber world is an amazing world to work in and to find so many collaborative partners to work alongside. So it’s always an honor anytime we can work together. And this is a great platform to be able to do that.

Probably some that would say probably of most interest would be that have no background and what people would most often think of as a chamber leader. I don’t think any of us wake up or grow up thinking I’m gonna be president of a chamber one day, it’s not one of those sought after careers that most people even don’t always know what a chamber does. So it’s one of those evolution careers in my opinion, where I think the toolkit that you develop and the skills and relationships you build throughout your life lead you along this path and I encourage anybody who’s not a chamber employee to always consider that the the opportunities The exposure, the growth that you experience, because of all the places you touch, as a chamber organization, I highly encourage anybody to consider that.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Yeah, absolutely. So I know, you know, there’s some chamber leaders out there where you can look at him and say, Man, they were really born to be a chamber leader, you know, chamber executive or CEO. And I, and that may be the case, but usually it isn’t evolution and you kind of grow into it. So you might have been born for it, but you still have to grow into it. So good point well taken. Why don’t you share with us a little bit about the Bristol chamber. In your bio, we shared the uniqueness of you covering Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. So kind of having that literal border through your community. But um, tell us more about the chamber size staff budget scope of work, just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

Beth Rhinehart 5:53
Absolutely. So we are 114 years old this year, we were established in May of 1909. We our five star credited chamber, which we’re extremely proud of. If anyone’s gone through an accreditation process, you know how challenging and grueling that can be, but it’s certainly worth every minute of time you put into it. We’re the oldest accredited chamber in Tennessee and the second oldest in Virginia, we we serve to one community, we say it’s one Bristol, but across two state lines. So our downtown historic Main Street, which is called State Street, the yellow lines that run down the center of our community, that’s the actual state line. So businesses on one side, you can be eating in a restaurant on State Street looking at folks in our restaurant or bar on the other side of the street, and they’re in a different state. So pretty unique opportunity that has its challenges for sure. You can imagine we have two local governments to fire departments, to school systems, to police stations, all of the above. So as a chamber, we often become that convener and facilitator for issues that impact the entire community, whether it’s the community at large or our business members. But we you know, that convening role, and the collaborative nature that we bring is critically important, I think, for all chambers, but especially for a community like ours. We have our budgets around one and a quarter million if you include our foundation side. So we have our chamber side of the house, we also have a foundation that owns our facility, but also houses, our leadership and education programs to name just a few. We have seven full time staff and have about 525. Members. All

Brandon Burton 7:49
right. So I’m I’m curious, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked into it to see how many cities there are across the country where there’s literally have the state line going through the middle of the city? Have you ever looked into that? Or is Bristol one of a kind? And I think

Beth Rhinehart 8:04
we’re I think we are one of a kind in the respect that our our remain thoroughfare and our historic downtown that those center lines are the state line. I know there. Are there plenty of border communities and, for example, St. Louis and others that, you know, you you have on both sides of a state line. But I think for us that downtown uniqueness is unique to us.

Brandon Burton 8:32
Yeah, absolutely. It is very unique and intriguing. Just to see how that works with like you said, having to local governments and to fire departments and police it, it just is very interesting to say the least. I would

Beth Rhinehart 8:47
if I could add one quick thing. You know, talking about how times we’re doing COVID, which I hate going back to again, but I think it speaks to the uniqueness here. We had two governors, one in Virginia, one in Tennessee, who approached those safety measures and closures very differently. And so for our downtown and our business community that was very disruptive. And so we played a large role in in helping make sure that everyone could continue to be successful and thrive. When you’re looking out your window at somebody else who’s open till two in the morning and serving customers and their cash registers are ringing when you’re shut down. So it brings about some interesting dynamics.

Brandon Burton 9:33
Yeah, well, it puts you in a tough spot as a chamber leader to at trying to advocate for those businesses with two different governors and two different approaches, but definitely some choppy waters to navigate. So as we get ready to kind of dive into our topic for conversation today, we decided to focus our discussion around economic mobility And I know you guys were recently awarded a grant from ACCE to focus work around economic mobility. And I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 12:53
All right, Beth, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around economic mobility. And maybe before we get too deep into the conversation, I know there’s a lot of newcomers into the chamber world and specifically chamber staff who are listening. When we talk about economic mobility, what does that mean to you? What what is that covering in that scope of work before we go down that path and the discussion

Beth Rhinehart 13:21
started laying and my you know, very high level definition of that would be it’s allowing and supporting and finding ways to promote folks to greater, greater sustainability but personally, professionally for, you know, life stability, it’s it’s, for example, if you have low income workers who by by their own situational background and current situation, need to find a better way to sustain themselves and their families. economic mobility means that you’re supporting them moving from what I’ll call, not necessarily instability, but maybe a point that’s not sustainable to a point of greater grounding and funding and sense of self to where they’re able to live in a manner that that’s the quality of life for them and their families. Right.

Brandon Burton 14:26
So maybe tell us a little bit about the the application process for this grant that I mentioned, you guys were awarded from ACCE and kind of what went into that and know the the work is specifically around low income earners in the community. But what went into that application process and ultimately qualifying you for the grant.

Beth Rhinehart 14:48
Certainly. So a lot of the work that went into this was talking about what we do here from the chamber and in partnership with some Any new work in this field, because as we know, we don’t do this alone. We are a collaborator and a convener. And so we look to really partnering with a lot of folks, especially being that we serve two different states through the bristal lens. So I think it’s really working to find the data that’s available. So we had to do a lot of data mining to find, you know, what’s the average and median salaries, what programs are currently in existence? What are we doing as a chamber to really help folks find the skills they need to maybe to build that pipeline, find opportunities for people to upskill or rescale, and move to different jobs, what jobs are currently available in your community where the skills gaps needed to be supported? So a lot of the work was research and collaboration and finding who those best partners would be to help us throughout this grant process. So writing the grant, of course, describing all the demographics of our community in our greater region, and then goal setting for, you know, are we going to get be able to get people across that finish line and how we’re going to do that? So

Brandon Burton 16:14
you had mentioned goal setting? How do you set goals around this objective of economic mobility? What are some of those key indicators and and benchmarks to show that you’re succeeding in this work?

Beth Rhinehart 16:27
Force? And you’re asking the toughest questions? That is, the toughest question to answer really is, how do you put a number on how many people you’re actually going to get across that finish line? And what defines whether you have been successful? Maybe you don’t fully cross the finish line? If that’s a benchmark, or, you know, how do you get people moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of those, those those key performance indicators for us, included, you know, how many students are we able to fully engage, and I’ll call it graduate from some cohort programs, for example, our manufacturers Excellence Program, which is a boot camp for high school students to go through in partnership with all of our manufacturers, where they end up with at the end of that program, exposure to the manufacturing jobs in this community. And also to have a toolkit of things, they might need to start on the job once they graduate, for example, steel toed shoes, protective eyewear, and ear protection, things like that. So I think that’s one of the ways we look at it and successfully completing programs, how many students have done that, for us, you know, the, the cohort that I ended up in the grant itself is broken into several subgroups, the subgroup that I am in is actually creating a community wide strategy for how our community collectively and collaboratively finds a solution and a path forward. And that was really important, I was really pleased to be able to end up in that group, because for us across that state line, that collaborative necessity, is really at the top of what we need to be working on. So

Brandon Burton 18:18
let’s talk strategy. You had mentioned working with students and exposing them to some of those manufacturing jobs. And I know that would play a part into that strategy. And you’ve mentioned these partnerships and collaboration. But as you approach this work, I mean, are you identifying the individuals that you’re going after to try to help improve quality of life? Or are you presenting the program that hopefully attracts them and draws them into it? How do you approach it? And what does it look like?

Beth Rhinehart 18:50
And great question. And, you know, if we if we go back to the foundation of the group that I’m in, it’s really to create the strategy. So we’re rather than creating specific programs, the identification of programs, and the implementation of those programs is part of this. But the most important goal of the committee or the cohort that I’m in, is truly creating a strategy for how we as a greater community and region define the pathways for folks to move through economic mobility. So the really the goal of the work we will be doing is identifying what programs currently exist. Where are the skills gaps, or the the gaps in the programming for example, for those who are all the players that need to be to the table? As I mentioned earlier, we don’t necessarily do all the work. We are often the facilitator and collaborator for those who do the frontline work, for example, community colleges and four year higher education institutions. As our K 12, our workforce investment boards, our economic developers, all the folks that that have an impact on the population that we’re trying to serve, I think our goal is to create a strategy that has a defined pathway from beginning to success.

Brandon Burton 20:19
So, at what point did you guys jump in with both feet, so to speak, in this work of economic mobility? Is it a newer venture is that something that’s been on your mind, and then you’ve got more gas to throw on the fire? How’s that developed?

Beth Rhinehart 20:38
It’s a little bit of both of those. And I will say that this grant and fellowship application, it was, it was the sweet sauce we’ve been looking for, because it really gives us a focused approach to doing that with the funding attached. And, you know, all of us are resource limited to some degree, you know, we know what work gets done is the work that’s funded. So to have this opportunity of funding by ascending through a CCS Foundation, was really, it couldn’t have come at a better time, we’ve been focusing for a long time in our community on looking at generational poverty that exists. And for our youth, you know, if you have a lot of, of youth in your community, who are third and fourth generation, poverty, situational, they may grow up in a family where they’ve never seen an adult get up and go to work during the day versus living on public assistance. So the key to that mentorship and showing students that pathway, showing our youth that there is a different way, and the value of that and then how to achieve that is critically important. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece, we work very closely with our United Way here, and and they’re very focused, as I know, United Way’s across the country, if you partner with them, they talk a lot about Alice, families, which are asset limited income constrained, employed. And that breaks down to a lot of families who are living at or below the poverty line, are in that ballpark anyway. And very often they are working two to three part time jobs, to try to pay their bills. And the stress that that creates on families, the the inability to afford childcare, that’s quality childcare, you know, access to a lot of the things health care insurance. When you live in that Alice population, there are many challenges to overcome. And the choices that those families have to make are not choices any of us would want to have to make. So that that population of folks who have a lot of those struggles are also a target for folks that we want to try to move to that at average or above salary, which for our community, means you’re able to sustain your family. So there are going to be a lot of different approaches we look at. And I have to you know, give a little disclaimer too. We just started this. So we’re literally fresh on the heels, we just got our award letter. And the last month we’ve had our first kickoff meeting, as a cohort, there’s 11 of us from around the country who were selected for this project. And so it was beautiful to be able to receive that letter and to know that we get to participate in this. So it is very fresh on the front lines of this. So we have a lot of work to do. And I don’t have a lot of the details of what this will look like at the end. But I can tell you that we’re committed and excited to get to work.

Brandon Burton 23:53
Yeah. Now I’d love the idea of helping to create a vision, especially with these youth that don’t have that example to look to of what their real potential can be in what they can do is you know, career and to be able to support a family instead of you know, living off of assistance, like you mentioned, but I see it right now in my own son, you know, he’s finishing his junior year right now, as is looking to college and everything and, and just some of the limiting factors in a vision that an individual youth has for themselves. There’s so you know, bias really on what they’ve seen. And they they’ve lived a short life up to that point. And if they haven’t been exposed to different opportunities or know that some of these opportunities exist, they’re going to be in that same rut as as some of their predecessors. It still blows me away. Sometimes when you hear somebody being a first generation college graduate and their family. I mean, it makes me smile every time I hear it, but it blows me away that you still hear it as often as you do, and helping to grow Right, that vision, I think is, is instrumental in helping people realize their potential and moving forward. So hopefully you guys have some innovative ways that you can roll that out as the program develops. I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody out there listening who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or strategy might you offer for them?

Beth Rhinehart 25:27
I think you know, for us here, I can speak to my experiences here. One is, make sure that you have an extremely engaged and supportive board. I am so blessed here to have that opportunity. You know, we have that doesn’t mean we always agree 100% on everything we’re working on. But I think having your board engaged to where they understand what you’re trying to do, they can provide that fiscal oversight and that strategic vision to help you move your organization forward. So you’re creating the greatest benefit and value to those members. I think that’s a really key part. And that there’s a lot of intentionality around that it’s there’s intentionality around having diversity around the board table. There’s intentionality around how you as a director of your organization, how you engage them. And I think building a very strong trusting relationship is critically important. I over tell if there is such a thing, I always make sure that my board members know more than they need to know really, if there is such a thing, so that they’re never blindsided, but that they know the good, the bad and the ugly, because that’s how we all get better in what we’re doing. And when you feel like you have to hide something, it never leads to a good place. So I would just encourage you, if you have challenging things you’re working on, bring your board and let them help you. Right,

Brandon Burton 26:56
you’d never want your board to be surprised by anything you’re doing. Yes. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Beth Rhinehart 27:12
I would say and it’s something we’ve worked really hard on, moving from the traditional membership model into a tiered investment model, I think is critical. And the reason it’s critical, it’s not just about those investment dollars, it’s really being very mission focused, and how you are delivering benefit and value to your members. So I encourage you, if you haven’t looked at that, please do. So there are so many folks in the chamber world who have gone through it or working on it. There are consultants that are great partners, to chambers, who can help you navigate that, but also lean on each other. There are a lot of people, as I say, who who are happy to share and really help all of us become better at the end of the day. I think that’s important. But I think, you know, another important piece is advocacy. I firmly believe that government relations, advocacy as a business leader, focused community is also one of the greatest values you can provide to your members into the larger community and region. I think folks need to know how to do that. They need to know what the pressing issues are, how to resolve those, and they need that connectivity to the elected members at your local state and federal levels to help you so I encourage you to look to those areas is really your greatest resources and I think value to membership. Absolutely,

Brandon Burton 28:40
I think those are two great. Oh, I’m gonna say tips. But it’s part of that vision of the future of chambers is to if you haven’t already explored the idea of going over to a tiered use model for your membership. There’s, there’s a lot of businesses out there who are willing to pay more than what they are being asked to with the traditional membership model, because they see the work that you’re doing in areas such as advocacy, and they see the value that you provide to the business community and really just community building in general and they want to be a part of it. So I would agree with that part of the vision and and really having a focus there. But that as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and connect with you and learn more about things you’re doing in Bristol or about the discussion that we covered today with economic mobility, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Beth Rhinehart 29:34
Of course and I welcome any outreach and hope that whatever we do here if it can be a value to anyone, my door is always open my phone is always available to be answered. So I’ve been blessed with a lot of people who have done that for me so my email is, brhinehart@bristolchamber.org and and my phone number is 423-989-4850 and our mailing address is 20 Volunteer Parkway, Bristol, Tennessee 37620. And more importantly, come and visit us we are door’s always open. We would love to have anyone if you’re ever traveling through our area please stop and say hello.

Brandon Burton 30:23
Absolutely and I will get that in our show notes for this episode so listeners can go and check it out and connect with you. But I appreciate you being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and putting out there your experience so far around economic mobility and and the the work you’re venturing into with it. I think it is such an important topic and for every community to really see those areas to really uplift and bring everybody to a higher level in their community as far as their living standards and economic status goes. So thank you for for sharing that with us and being with us on the podcast today.

Beth Rhinehart 30:59
Thank you for the opportunity. Love what you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 31:04

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Attracting Remote Talent with Justin Harlan

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

Our guest for this episode is Justin Harlan. Justin is the managing director of Tulsa Remote, a program honored on Fast Company’s prestigious list of world’s most innovative companies for 2022, which recognize its unique approach to attracting remote workers to Tulsa and promoting economic development in the city. Under Justin’s leadership Tulsa remote, the largest relocation incentive program in the US has grown more grown to more than 2200 members. Justin has represented Tulsa remote at international conferences like Web Summit and collision conference, where he shared the power of the programs community building efforts and benefits of remote work. He previously served as the Senior Executive Director for Reading Partners Tulsa launched his career with Teach for America, Oklahoma, when it opened in Tulsa in 2009. and was a founding board member for collegiate Hall College Prep Charter School in Tulsa. Justin’s passion for promoting community growth and development extends to his personal life as well. He and his wife Megan run to fitness studios in Tulsa, pure bar, South Tulsa and row house, South Tulsa, Justin holds a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Tulsa

. Justin, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better. Sure, wait,

Justin Harlan 3:31
it’s good to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the invite. And yeah, it’s a it’s a awesome opportunity just to be able to talk to chamber leaders because so much of our work overlaps with the chamber here. And I think it’s really a team effort as it relates to, you know, attracting people to a city. So this is great. I’m looking forward to the conversation. Let’s see a fun fact about myself, you know, you’ve you’ve rattled off most of what makes me interesting already. I was a music major in college. So that’s often a you know, maybe a fun fact that it doesn’t get read. I initially came to school down here in Tulsa as a singer. So as a vocal performance major and quickly learned that probably wasn’t going to be how I made a career. And so I also added a business degree and you know, kind of thought maybe I can mix the music with the with the business and go into the business side of the arts and got into the nonprofit world. And I’ve never looked back. So there you go. There’s a fun fact that oft often doesn’t make the bio. Yeah, that’s

Brandon Burton 4:30
good. I’m sure there’s more discussion there that can be had. Regardless, it’s always interesting to find how people find themselves in this world today. So I appreciate you sharing that that bit of your background. So I shared a little bit about what Tulsa remote is in the in your bio, but why don’t you take a few minutes and just tell us really what Tulsa remote is what the focus of the program is. Kind of how you go about your work and obviously we’ll get into much deeper calm realization about it throughout the episode, but give us kind of that high level of what is Tulsa remote?

Justin Harlan 5:06
Sure, Tulsa remote is the largest network of remote workers that have come through this incentive program that started in 2019, when we brought about 70 people, and obviously the world changed for all of us in the way that we are working in 2020. And we’ve grown substantially since then. About 380 People came in 2020, about 950 and 2021. We had just under 800. Last year. So yes, we’re up over 2300 people now that have moved to Tulsa and the $10,000 is often made, what makes the headline, because it’s a very unique approach to talent recruitment, but more than the $10,000, which at the end of the day really covers that the moving costs and somebody occurs for moving across the country. It’s the community that really attracts people, it’s the ability to plug into a new town quickly, leave a mark on a midsize city and get connected to remote workers in organic ways that maybe share different aspects of your background, but don’t work directly alongside you. And we’re really good at helping people get plugged into the community and, you know, contribute to Tulsa quickly, which I think is really what makes us stand out and what has led to 90% of people staying beyond that year commitment that they make when they accept that incentive to move to Tulsa.

Brandon Burton 6:23
All right, that definitely helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. I know chambers across the country are they’re battling this idea of being able to support businesses with remote workers and being able to attract remote workers to their community, especially if maybe a spouse takes a relocation to a certain community and and there’s that trailing spouse and and maybe you know, remote work may be an option for them as well. But I’m excited to get in deeper into that conversation. Some of the things you guys have seen and approaches taken as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 8:38
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Brandon Burton 9:09
All right, Justin, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, I’m excited to learn the approach. So first of all, I guess what I’d like to maybe address is oftentimes Chamber of Commerce will be presented with an idea of a new program to implement in a city and maybe they implement it. And then it spins off to become its own nonprofit and operates under its own power, but it was started and spun off by the chamber. From what I understand Tulsa remote kind of started a little bit differently, but you guys do work hand in hand oftentimes with the chamber. So tell us a little bit about the origin of Tulsa remote, how it came to be. And I want to hear it just for the benefit of listeners who you know, are trying to adapt for their community. how something like this might look? Yeah, the origin

Justin Harlan 10:05
story for Tulsa remote really was two different things we’re trying to tackle. And it started at the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and still continues to live there. But like you mentioned, we work hand in hand with the city and the chamber and a lot of different partners to really make this successful. But it really came to be for a couple of different reasons. First, you know, we in Tulsa, and really the state of Oklahoma have been reliant on the oil and gas industry, pretty much in our entire existence as a state. And even in the best of times, that’s a very volatile industry, that can be a roller coaster ride. And, you know, we have a lot of great talented knowledge workers here. But the reality is for us to keep up in the future, we need more. And that was one kind of lightbulb moment, I think early on, it’s how do we attract knowledge workers in a way that isn’t reliant on one company, but goes after the individual. And just so happens that a lot of knowledge workers have been working remotely for a while. And you know, we had obviously no idea pandemic was coming. But you know, in theory, if you can attract remote workers, chances are that’s going to be a knowledge worker. And that was one big thing that was attracted to us in creating the program. We also have learned from programs like Teach for America, which as you read was in my is in some of my career history, that it often takes people have an incentive to get to Tulsa. But once they’re here, they’re very likely to stay, it’s, it’s really easy to get plugged in, it’s really easy to put roots down. And once somebody is actually willing to give it a chance, you’re very likely to fall in love and make this home for a while. And so there was also, you know, in addition to the need for knowledge workers and trying to attract talent, there was also this belief that if we could just incentivize people to come that they would stay, they would stick around, they’d find a home. And that certainly has turned out to be true. But that’s really how the program started is a Talent Recruitment initiative that also knew that it’s going to take a little bit more to get people to get Tulsa chance. But if they do come, they’re going to stick around. All right.

Brandon Burton 12:13
So you guys are primarily identifying remote workers to bring to Tulsa and make Tulsa their home and then continue their current employment in most cases, it sounds like remotely from wherever they’re coming from. How are you approaching specific businesses? I mean, you mentioned you want to focus on the individual rather than businesses. But how do you focus in promote Tulsa to do that, that specific niche audience of somebody who’s able to remote work? And are you providing opportunities for them to remote work while making Tulsa home?

Justin Harlan 12:51
Yeah, you’re exactly right. We’re going after individuals here. And all of them have to have a full time remote job when they come to Tulsa through the program, they have to be over the age of 18 are eligible to work in the United States and have lived outside of the state of Oklahoma for at least a year. And in doing so our recruitment and marketing initiatives are all really pointed at the person. And what we found, especially over the last couple of years, as I believe people have really reassessed their priorities in life and tried to figure out what am I what am I actually looking to get out of life in general, and what’s the role that we want work to play in it? I think cities like Tulsa, midsize cities that are still really affordable, are going to rise to the top as places that people want to be, you know, to kind of give you my Tulsa sales pitch. We have an incredible outdoor amenity scene with the largest public park that is privately funded in the gathering place. It’s free to everybody and just amazing. Named USA, today’s best Park in 2021. We have an amazing food scene where this year we had seven James Beard Award nominations, which is more than Las Vegas, it’s more than the entire State of Kansas and the rest of Oklahoma combined. You know, we have amazing music. So I say all that to say it’s a really high quality of life that gives you everything you want in a city, but it’s at a low cost of living. So you’re paying about half the price for twice as much space as you would in New York or LA or San Francisco. And to me, especially as proximity in our work becomes less important to be able to get that high quality of life and a low cost of living when placed does not matter anymore as it relates to where we’re working. I just think that places like this places like Tulsa are really going to benefit from that. And Tulsa remote is certainly one way that people are coming to the city, but I believe there’s people coming on their own too. We’ve seen a huge positive net migration over the last 13 years and I believe that’ll continue.

Brandon Burton 14:51
Right. So maybe you mentioned this and I just missed it but as far as the $10,000 to grant to help people make the move. Where’s that grants being funded from is that the city itself is that the foundation where where’s the the funds coming from?

Justin Harlan 15:09
Yeah, as of now, I’ll expenses come from the foundation, the entire budget to date has been spent directly from the George Kaiser Family Foundation. We had some recent legislation that was passed in the state of Oklahoma that allows for Tulsa remote to qualify as a proxy organization that’s recruiting quality, remote jobs, we’ve had some legislation in the state since the late 90s, called the quality jobs act. And they actually expanded that to include remote workers in 2020. And then we can basically get reimbursed for the employer tax dollars that are coming to the state through the individual that we recruit up to $10,000. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of things that have to happen in order for us to get that full amount. But the long and short of it is if we continue to recruit the type of people that we are today, it will take us about two years to get that full $10,000 back for each individual. So pretty soon here, we’ll start seeing this program sustained and continued to, you know, pour in financially from the state for the first time, which will be a really great representation of that private and public partnership.

Brandon Burton 16:20
Right. So I know in your in your bios, I introduced you. It mentioned something about your passion for community building and economic development. And I believe I’d shared with you that Doug Griffiths actually recommended that I have you on the podcast and a lot of people listening know him as the author of 13 ways to kill your community. As you look at community building, how does Tulsa remote fit into building Tulsa? Obviously, you’re promoting Tulsa. But how do you see your role with Tulsa remote in in community building?

Justin Harlan 16:57
Yeah, I think first and foremost, it starts with the people that we’re selecting. And we look for people that have an eye for community and a track record that backs up their words, we look for people that have given back to the community that they’re coming from, and have been thoughtful about ways they hope to contribute to the city here. So I think first and foremost, it’s all about that selection process and knowing what you’re looking for, and then finding people that match up to that. And then we have people waiting, when you get here into town through Tulsa remote to get help you connect, we explicitly state on day one, that our goal for you as a member is that you do not need us as Tulsa remote to love the city of Tulsa, I think we’re really doing our job when we help somebody integrate into the community in a way that aligns to their values and passions and gives them real ways to contribute. And a lot of it, I think this is really just community in general, I think a lot of it has to do with how we as individuals enter into a space, what’s the posture that we take, when we’re sitting at a table of people that have been there their entire lives? And we’re entering in for the first time? How do you come in willing, and eager to help, ready to listen, and not coming in with a posture of I’m here to fix everything that might be broken? You know, and I think that a lot of that is also in the coaching and support that we give to our members. If you want to come in and make a difference, I think the very first thing you can do is listen and learn everything that’s already happening and integrate into that. And are there ways you can contribute and make things better? Absolutely. But if you come in guns blazing from the get go, you’re really not going to make a good first impression. And I think that’s incredibly important, as we all consider ways that we can help, you know, form a strong community.

Brandon Burton 18:41
Yeah, I think having that warm welcome. And that posture that you mentioned, I think Doug mentioned that in his book, that’s one of the ways to kill your community is to not welcome outsiders. So being able to be welcoming. Show them that there’s a place there in Tulsa for them and your community. As you’re seeking us, right.

Justin Harlan 18:59
I mean, I often say like we were all you know, we were all new to the city at one point. And if you’ve been here your entire life, you were still new at one point in your journey was a little different, but to you know, to kind of shun people or push them out simply because they’re new, I just think doesn’t pull out what we love about diversity of voice and diversity of thoughts and diversity of background. I just think that that is really what makes us stronger.

Brandon Burton 19:25
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. So as you’re seeking out purposefully, individuals to make the move, you’re making some sort of an approach or pitch to them. And then is there an application process as they go through to make sure that Tulsa is a good fit for them? Or what does that process look like as you try to nurture that relationship to help somebody make the move?

Justin Harlan 19:50
Yeah, the long and short of it is we move really quickly when you apply and then you have a while to decide and we help you along that way too. But once somebody applies to the program, you typically hear back within two to four weeks as to whether you got an interview, you have a quick 20 minute interview. That’s really I think just as much about you getting your questions answered as it is about us double checking that what you said in your application is true and accurate. And then if you get in, you have a year to make the move, you have to be physically present in Tulsa to start your year. And that’s kicks off with an orientation that we do. And then we offer to pay for you to come visit. So once you get in, and we say you’re invited to move to the city through Tulsa remote, we also pay for you to come and check it out kind of a try before you buy type situation. And we roll out the red carpet and make sure that you see all the city has to offer in a way that isn’t sugar coated or fake, but just kind of allows you to decide is this city the right place for you? And for some people the answer that’s going to be no, which we think is perfectly fine. I don’t think that any of us believe Tulsa is a good place for everybody. But we try to really kind of show the pros and cons and of all the different areas of town and really Tulsa as a whole, what are our strengths and weaknesses and then allow people to make the decision for themselves. And then as they move, you know, we provide ample resources to help find housing and get plugged in. And once you’re here on the ground, like I mentioned, you have somebody that’s ready to help you get integrated into the community. And we have a number of events that are happening every month. And really from there, it’s often running in a year it goes your year goes by really fast, often faster than you anticipate. So yeah, that’s a little bit about the process. It’s really straightforward. It’s we try to keep it very easy. And also just, you know, know that everybody’s making a very, very serious decision about their life. And we want to support with the right resources, but also want to empower them to do what’s best for them.

Brandon Burton 21:42
Yeah. So I’m just curious. And in this may be a question that’s out there in left field for you. But is there a some sort of a network of people that have made the move through Tulsa remote that where they can be connected with others who’ve made the move and realize, you know, we’re all in the same boat together? Or is it more anonymous, that as you come, you’re just integrated in the community? Or has that aspect work?

Justin Harlan 22:05
Oh, yeah, I mean, I’d say that’s the biggest value add is there’s 2300 people here, not including spouses and kids, right, when you get into the program, you actually have access to slack. And there’s some channels in there that we use for onboarding people that are onboarding or have not yet moved to Tulsa, but are kind of trying to decide. And there you can meet a number of people that can answer questions for you or tell you their perspective, you meet a lot of people when you come for that visit to and then once you’re here, it’s really just a matter of getting off your couch and getting out into the city to meet people. I mean, there’s stuff happening every week, whether it’s social in nature, or volunteering or professional development. And we also give access to a co working space where people can go and do their remote work. And there’s hundreds of people there as well that you can meet throughout the workday. So once you’re here, there’s honestly no better way to move across the country. You’re as long as you’re taking the initiative to kind of get out of your house and build community. There’s no shortage of opportunities to do so.

Brandon Burton 23:00
Right. So I know Tulsa is a great city. Got a great chamber there, Mike Neil, and he’s leading the great chamber there in Tulsa. Talk to us a little bit about how you go about working with the city and with the chamber to create that community and the warm welcome and any other way that you integrate with the city in the chamber throughout this program?

Justin Harlan 23:24
Yeah, well, I think, first and foremost, our program success is going to live and die by our city’s ability to market itself and brand itself across the country and across the world. And obviously, chambers play a huge role in that. There’s incredible work that the Chamber has done to bring in sporting events or musicians and really put Tulsa on the National Map. And all of that benefits our program where people, you know, have misconceptions that are maybe flipped upside down inside of its head to and maybe then that causes them to maybe get also shot or applied. It’s also remote. We’ve partnered on some close initiatives, for example, we have done South by Southwest the last couple of years, in partnership with the chamber, where we’re really showing off all that Tulsa has to offer for people that are willing to relocate. But at the heart of that at South by Southwest is music, and we’ve got a great, you know, music, film, music arts and culture department at the Chamber, that they’ve selected all the musicians, both years that we’ve been to South by, we’re constantly, you know, working with the city and the chamber as it relates to housing supply and ensuring that this net migration inbound is not impacting people that are already here, within systemic issues, you know, like housing. So yeah, we work really closely just to make sure that we’re all on the same page and that the things that were touting to the nation are aligned with the things that the chamber is also touting and that there’s other cities that we can often learn from through The chamber. So it really does feel like a great partnership where we all have a critical role to play to ensure that Tulsa is on the national scale viewed as a place that people want to be.

Brandon Burton 25:12
Awesome. I appreciate adding that that perspective, just how you you integrate with the with the chamber and leverage on their work, and glue that you’re able to integrate a little bit of your music background there at South by Southwest.

Justin Harlan 25:27
I haven’t been invited to play. So maybe this podcast will be my coming out party.

Brandon Burton 25:32
It’s putting it out there. Yeah, I feel that. Well, I’m curious, you know, as far as a chamber listening, who might be interested and trying to attract some remote workers to their community, I guess without giving away all the secrets, right, you got to hold some advantage. But what, what tips or action items might you share with the Chamber who maybe wants to explore getting into similar line of work?

Justin Harlan 26:02
I don’t think that what I have to share is necessarily rocket science. But what I think we’ve done really well and Tulsa remote is considered what makes our city unique and figured out who is it that we want to attract that we think would be a good fit for what makes our city unique, and then created marketing campaigns around that. And I think everybody’s got something that makes your state city standout. And there’s something about your place that other places do not have. And the more that you can lean into that rather trying to rather than trying to be something that you’re not, or being something that somebody else is that you really want to be, I just think the more that you can lift up, what makes you special, is only going to attract what other you know, the people that are belong and fit in your city are going to see and want to be a part of. And I think that, you know, the special twist that we’ve had on that at Tulsa remote, certainly was a lot about timing. And, you know, the success of the way that our work environment shifted drastically has caused our community to grow like crazy. But I think something that we were doing before Tulsa remote even existed, is leaning into what makes Tulsa a special place, leaning into why people would want to be here right now. And I think the more that cities and chambers could do that, the more successful you’ll be. And the more that you’ll see people coming aligned to the the type of folks that you want to attract. And to me that that’s really applicable across businesses, that’s applicable across cities. And I don’t think there’s, you know, anything in that statement that we didn’t already know, I think playing it out and making it happen in action is really the difficult

Brandon Burton 27:47
part. Yeah, sounds like placemaking is the big factor there and making your community attractive and really highlighting what makes you stand out. You’d mentioned that the marketing campaigns. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Is it purely social media? Is it are you do mailers? What what is the marketing campaign look like? Because he tried to attract these specific individuals.

Justin Harlan 28:12
Yeah, we’ve been really innovative throughout the years and tried a lot of different things early on, you know, the fact that a city was paying people $10,000 To move there and got us a lot of free media or media great. It’s a great headline. We also have paid for social ads or you know, done things on social our social media accounts are some of the best as it relates to just lifting up what’s going on in Tulsa. And I’d recommend folks to check those out and give us a follow, we often try to highlight the day in the life of a member, for example, on social media, where they take over the account and kind of show us everything they’re doing throughout the city, giving those real life kind of testimonials, I think builds perspective, where maybe it’s someone from New York, who’s watching and they’re seeing somebody who just moved here from New York actually love and enjoy what the city has to offer. And they’re taken aback and say, Oh, I didn’t realize that this place could be for me. And so I think that some of that relaxed exposure is important. We’ve also done some referral programs throughout the course of the program, which allows for folks to tell their friends and family and be rewarded if somebody comes to Tulsa and stays throughout the year. And that’s been really successful too. So So yeah, I’d say those are the big ones earned media, paid social and referral. And like I said, so much of our work really relies heavily on the way that Tulsa and Oklahoma are lifted up throughout the country and other ways to

Brandon Burton 29:36
Yeah, I can see in certain communities and maybe you don’t see it so much in Tulsa but I know certain communities may have a certain maybe a stigma or stereotype about their community that maybe they need to address with their marketing. Do you guys get any feedback from people that maybe it made the move and they’re like I was resistant because of this thing, but you helped me overcome that or or it may They don’t make the move because they’re resistant to one thing. Is there a way that you guys are found to gather that kind of data?

Justin Harlan 30:07
Oh, yeah, most definitely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it’s word of mouth. You know, when people do come and visit, telling us what they’re surprised by some of it is actually quantitative data that we have. If people don’t make the move, we ask them why. And so we actually know a lot of the reasons why. But I think the biggest misconceptions about Oklahoma probably won’t surprise you, you know, a lot of it is just the thought that it’s a bunch of cowboys roaming around and, you know, a big field. And that’s certainly not the case. I mean, there’s only 4 million people across the entire state, but a million of them are here in Tulsa, it’s a big city, we have professional sports, we get big music acts, we have a great food scene, it’s a really great place to live. And it’s a quarter of the state’s population. And, you know, it’s it’s a big city, it feels like a big city, there’s certainly places you can see a lot of land, but it takes a little bit to get there. That’s one I think politics is another big one, especially as of late, where folks on the coasts and often view their exposure to Oklahoma and the national media is often around very, very divisive and red, conservative policies. And so it’s almost like this misconception that everybody in Oklahoma believes the same thing. And and I think there’s often pause, as it relates to somebody that’s trying to decide where they want to move, and whether that aligns with their beliefs. You know, I think something that’s unique about Tulsa. And we really consider ourselves a purple city, the state of Oklahoma is undoubtedly red. But there’s a lot of differing viewpoints here in Tulsa, we can disagree in a healthy way, we can have dialogue and debate in a way that moves us forward. And that nature that I just think it’s unique, I think that there’s often especially in this day and age, it feels like you’re one or the other. And I think that when you can find places that really embrace both and talk through differences in a healthy way, I think that’s really going to be what sets it sets us apart in the country over the next decade or so like, these are places we should be tapping into more and learning from, as opposed to oftentimes we hear from our members, they were in a place where that said they really value diversity. But when they really step back and think about who they were surrounding themselves with those people that look just like them and thought just like them. And that’s not all that diverse, you know, when you can come to Oklahoma, or in Tulsa and have a neighbor that looks different from you, and thinks different from you. And you can learn how to actually have that dialogue. That’s a skill set that I think we’re losing. And that is true diversity. That’s how you actually figure out how to healthily disagree and work to a solution that actually benefits everybody.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Yeah, I love that perspective. That’s awesome. So I like asking everyone I have on the podcast, this question, and you’re gonna bring a unique perspective to it. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you imagine the future of chambers going forward and their purpose going forward?

Justin Harlan 33:14
Yeah, well, to me, right now, there’s more opportunity than ever, as people can be mobile, I think that, you know, as jobs increase within the tech world, proximity to the office is only going to become less of a thing, which will allow people to really go where they want and prioritize place and prioritize life over, you know, being required to be stuck somewhere because their job requires them to be. And I think that that really just, it’s a unique moment for chambers that are showcasing all that a city has to offer, because there’s just more opportunity than ever to attract an individual. And like I said earlier, I just think that creates awesome, awesome space and opportunity for folks to lean into what makes them different, and lift up what what makes them unique. And I think if you do that, well, in this day and age, and over the next couple of decades, I think we’re gonna see more and more remote workers. I just think there’s the cities that do that well are really going to gain and lean into where our country is taking us in this tech space and in this future of workspace, and lifting up what makes life good, and just allowing folks to then think about the fact that life looks good there and I can do my job anywhere. That sounds like a good place to be so that that would be my word of encouragement is just lean into what makes you unique and be open to you know, those those people that are willing to relocate and are assessing their priorities in life and be comfortable with work not coming first in that lift up what really makes your city great.

Brandon Burton 34:51
Yeah, I think that’s great, great perspective and, and something I think chambers need to get on board with quit too because that working environment is changing very rapid. We’re seeing from remote work to, you know, these glimpses of what Metaverse might look like, into the future. And it’s not so much the brick and mortar and needing people on Main Street, you know, with shops. So those will be there, too. Bye, bye. Oh, yeah, there’ll be there. But helping those individuals sell online, you know, that would be another way of just being able to think outside the box of what the traditional business structure look like. And I think having remote workers in your community and placemaking for that is a key aspect to it. So appreciate, I would say that

Justin Harlan 35:37
those places that you just mentioned, actually become even more important because remote work does not mean isolation, remote work does not mean that we’re just sitting in our house, and we’re comfortable staying in our pajamas all day and work. I think everybody wants community. I mean, there’s a recent study that showed that 65% of people wouldn’t have somebody to call if an emergency happened. That is like, an all time high for isolation, you know. So I think that those third spaces, whether they’re co working spaces, or gyms, or restaurants, or coffee shops, those actually all become increasingly more important in the world of remote work. Because it’s not that we’re saying we want to be alone. It’s not that we’re saying we want to close the office door and put our head down in our music on, we still need connections, we still need people. And I think that’s what has actually made Tulsa remote thrive is the fact that in the remote work conversation, we’ve also created space and community for people to connect. And there’s a lot of power in that. And the third spaces aren’t going anywhere. In fact, I think, you know, they become even more important to build and expand and make presence and promote, because those are the spots if remote work continues to increase. Those are the spots that people are going to build those connections and build community. Right?

Brandon Burton 36:47
You mentioned co working spaces, and I just a few weeks ago was visiting one and they’ve been completely full and have a waiting list, you know, for months out because people want their community as a as they do remote work. So you’re spot on. Yeah. anybody listening, wanting a good business model has a shared office spaces are huge. But Justin, as we wrap up here wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect you had mentioned following on social, what would be the best ways for them to do that and to be able to connect with you.

Justin Harlan 37:22
Yeah, following on social is great. If you want to add me on LinkedIn, that’s often a place that I do connect with folks. And then if you have any questions for, for us and our program, if you just email info inf o at Tulsa remote.com We’ve got a team of folks that are ready to respond. And if you specifically want to connect with me, you can request for that there as well. And I’d be happy to get in touch. So I appreciate everybody listening and we’re always happy to help from here.

Brandon Burton 37:51
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can look it up and and follow in connect with you. But just it’s been a great conversation. Hopefully it’s opened the minds and perspective of those listening to just what they can do in their community to make them stand out and really showcase what their community is all about. So I appreciate you being with us today and sharing this great work you guys are doing there in Tulsa.

Justin Harlan 38:14
Thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 38:16

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

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Business Building vs. Networking with Sharon Mayer

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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I’m excited today to have Sharon Mayer with us Sharon is the President and CEO of the Allen Fairview Chamber of Commerce and a little bit of background on Sharon. She was named the President CEO of the Allen Chamber in August of 1997. She began her career in her chamber work career as a part time employee at the Arlington Chamber of Commerce in 1989. She then quickly moved up the ranks and in 1995, she accepted the position as president of the DeSoto Chamber. During her tenure at the Arlington chamber she completed the IOM program in record time and continuing education in chamber work is still important to her today she has to Institute for Advanced Management courses that she’s participated in when an SMU and went to Colorado Springs Institute programs. Working with other chambers and within the state association is extremely important to Sharon. during and following her tenure on the TCC board she facilitated retreats for area chambers and assisted in the planning and facilitation for annual programs and chamber basic courses hosted by that association. Sharon joined the Board of Regents for the Center of Chamber Excellence in 2004, where she participated as an instructor for member bait membership basics, and served as Chairman of the Board of Regents. She also served as board member on the North Texas Chamber Executives which represents over 42 chambers in the north Texas area. And as the 2023 board chair. She is a past member of Board of Directors for WAC II, and Sharon serves on the North Texas Commission Board and their executive committee in 2011. Under Sharon’s leadership, the Allen chamber expanded to become the Allen Fairview Chamber of Commerce serving two very diverse communities in 2022, that marks Sharon’s 33rd year in the chamber business, and 25 years as CEO of the Allen Fairview chamber. In 1997. She married Paul Mayer, who’s the CEO of the garland Chamber of Commerce. Together they have five children and nine grandchildren. Sharon, we’re excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Sharon Mayer 4:28
Well, hello, everyone. I am absolutely thrilled to be here with you today and looking forward to our discussion. You pretty much told everybody about my life

Brandon Burton 4:40
secrets, right? There

Sharon Mayer 4:43
are a couple of things that were not included on that. So I have a certification from the University of Texas at Arlington and as a paralegal, which I’ve never used one time in my entire life. I was also I’m a licensed real estate agent and sold one house. But the only reason that I was involved in real estate is because my late husband away, and I owned a real estate company in order for me to keep it going, should anything happen to him? And unfortunately, it did. I had to be a licensed Realtor so that, you know, we built houses. I had a business, especially advertising business that did hand engraving on sunglasses, and our biggest client was Harley Davidson for 1000s of pairs annually. And then guess what they did, they found out that you could go to China and have them stamp for a lot less money. So pretty much tied to that business.

Brandon Burton 5:50
That’s the story of a lot of small businesses these days. Right.

Sharon Mayer 5:53
So so that’s a lot of historical stuff that that I don’t mention in my bio.

Brandon Burton 6:00
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the Allen Fairview chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, just to kind of set the table for discussion.

Sharon Mayer 6:13
All right. So our chamber is right under 600. Members at this time, our budget is a little over 500,000 annually. And I will say that, probably 55% of that goes for staff. Because if you if you don’t invest in those resources, those people resources, then you’re doing your chamber a disservice. I have four and a half, three and a half employees. We have a finance director, a membership director and a programming special events director plus, I am so fortunate to have a part time law student who was actually started with our chamber as an intern when she was in high school, and worked has worked remotely for us all the way through her undergrad, and now her law school. And she’s in her third year of law school. And she works remotely and does all of our social media and marketing and things like that. So and she’s she’s just excellent.

Brandon Burton 7:33
So that was my next question with her working. So I love hearing about chambers utilizing interns first. But then to have her working remote to retain her as she goes through her schooling, what type of stuff she’s doing social media marketing, what other kinds of things do you have her

Sharon Mayer 7:51
to keep the graphics, but she does all the social media stuff. And you know, she does the promotional graphics and things for all of our programming. And I mean, she’s really creative, and does a great job she just completed we just had our annual gala and she did all the collateral for that. And it was it was done as well as the marketing firm that we had been paying $26,000 a year you know, on a contract to do and you know, and she’s she I think she she’s just under $20 An hour and she tracks her time and it’s definitely saving us money plus it puts money in her pocket you know, and

Brandon Burton 8:41
love her find a big chunk of change in the budget like that. Well for our our topic today we’ve titled this episode business building versus networking. And we did that because of the approach that the Allen Fairview chamber takes in approaching their members and, and how they call different things you know, the the Cymatics, if you will, so we’ll get into a much deeper conversation on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 10:58
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Brandon Burton 11:37
All right, Sharon, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break business building versus networking, what’s the difference?

Sharon Mayer 11:46
Great, big, huge difference. So everyone does not everyone does networking, one way or another, obviously. But the reason that we chose to focus on this building business is because you got to go back to our mission, the mission, our mission is to advocate educate and build relationships that enable our communities and our members to prosper. So everything that we do to us back to our mission, and changing the name of what we at one time called Allen net, that was when we were teeny tiny and there were 12 people in the room networking, and then we changed it to Tuesday morning Live, which everybody still calls it Tuesday morning lab, at least those who have been around for a while it has transitioned to now it’s coffee and connections. And so we wanted to use the connecting and the building and all of that together. And it is now grown to around 90 in attendance every week. And these people understand the value of building a business network, which is not the same thing as networking, they do not spend their time shoving their business card in somebody else’s nose under their insight, you know, here, I have something that would benefit you. And you know, just going on and on and talking about yourself. What’s really interesting, if you attend one of our networking’s is that you find out that they’re not talking about themselves. They’re talking about everybody else in the room. They’re talking about how Joe really helped Sammy over here, you know, find a plumber, and it was an emergency he needed somebody. And, and they also have I mean, they have fun with it because they make up silly sayings and silly names about their other businesses. And they just, they make it fun. And I think if you talked about the whole atmosphere, around our business building, whether it’s the morning or whether it’s a an after hours event, or whatever it might be, you’re gonna find that people talk about us as a family, not as a membership organization, because they are all so connected, and their friends and they invite others to come in all the time, which is the reason that it has grown the way that it has. And it all goes back to the to what we originally said is you’re in these seats and in front of these people to build your business. But the best way to build your business is to and we’ll use the word network to network with people that you know I can trust and the people who are in that room Boom, know, like and trust one another. And a byproduct of that is that they know, like and trust staff know, like and trust the organization. And it just, it helps us to increase our influence within the community. But it also helps us when we’re building our membership.

Brandon Burton 15:20
Yeah. So I know, I get the sense that networking is like a four letter word there that now in Fairview chamber? How did you successfully go about changing the mindset for people as they’re set on? Using that four letter word, networking, and converting that to business building?

Sharon Mayer 15:43
We just stopped. We didn’t, we never, we don’t ever tell anybody anything. We just sort of start using a different term ourselves, and move on from there. And it just catches on.

Brandon Burton 16:00
So about how long ago did you guys make the shift from calling these networking events to build business building events? Well, it

Sharon Mayer 16:08
started during and right after the pandemic. You know, that was, you know, well, that was a really horrible time in our lives. And thank God that we’re, you know, on the other side of that, it was also from our chamber perspective, and our engagement. And like I said, our, I guess we’re influenced within the community, probably the best thing that’s ever happened to us. Because our chamber had to keep connecting people, but we had to do it the, you know, like we do now, with Zoom calls a lot of times. And so that was when we thought, you know, okay, we’re not, we’re networking, but we’re not networking. And we’re not doing this face to face thing. So let’s just kind of change the way that we present this and the way we said, so if they became business building opportunities, and we’ve just kind of hung on to it after that.

Brandon Burton 17:09
Yeah. Yeah, I know, a lot of people networking can be a very intimidating phrase, if you say, to a new member, for example, Hey, we have this networking event coming up. And you see the sweat start coming down their foreheads, I got to talk to people and get uncomfortable and do you know, pass out business cards and be sold by everybody in the room, versus changing that and saying, we’re having a built a business building event, come and learn how you can grow your business. And it’s a totally different perspective for the similar kind of outcomes. But it changes that perspective coming into it for a different objective

Sharon Mayer 17:47
does and in fact, if I were to tell you something else, about myself and my husband as well, that nobody that we interact with, when believe is neither one of us are extroverts. We are not, we would rather than being alone in the office door closed, nobody bother you. But you, it’s so it’s not a natural thing for us to do. But at the same time, this is something that we have to learn in our positions, and we put ourselves out there so we can really understand. And I particularly can understand the reluctance of someone to just show up cold at a networking event. So what we have done other than Chase, or is that we make sure that there is someone there to greet them and someone to take them and say, Come over here, let me introduce you to these people, you know, and our members do not sit with their friends, because we tell them when you’re sitting with your friends, you’re not building your business. So you just sit with someone that you don’t know. And the best ones to sit with. And the ones that you get to know really well as time goes by is that if you’re the first person that that a new person that comes to one of our events meets, then they automatically feel like if you’re open and welcoming, and all of that they feel like okay, they’ve made one friend in a group of 90. And so it’s a little less intimidating that way.

Brandon Burton 19:12
Yeah. So I’ve recently heard a term when you’re in a situation like that social setting, that you tend to see the circles of people, right that stand in the circle and talk. And the idea was instead of creating circles to create horseshoes to where it’s open for newcomers where you can be welcoming for newcomers to join the conversation. They don’t feel shut out because they’re looking at everybody’s back. And you purposely leave an opening.

Sharon Mayer 19:38
Yeah, and our volunteers, basically our ambassadors, our business success advocates, both of them. Both groups are really really good about taking a member or a visitor under their wings. And they don’t talk to them about the chamber but they they actually stay And during the 32nd commercials, and they do the first commercial for them, so that they actually feel more comfortable the next time they come back.

Brandon Burton 20:09
Okay. Yeah, I like that having the volunteers there to just help make sure that they have a good experience that they’re meeting people getting connected with those right individuals that will help build their business. So. So you also take a different spin on some other vernacular than your, in your chamber. For example, members versus investors. You had another one it had to do with sponsors, that have sponsors, partners, and so the sponsors, talk to us a little bit about the the thought that goes into those names.

Sharon Mayer 20:48
Well, my staff gets worried when I start thinking. And because I like changing things up, because I think everything gets old, it gets stale. So we may do the same series of Legends, or breakfast meetings. But we don’t call them them. I mean, you know, so So I sit down and I go, Okay, let’s see what would be start, let’s start your day. And then I go start smart topics and relevant themes. So I mean, you know, everything has a meaning to me, I have to have that. So. So we changed the name of start. And then we changed the name Merlin engines to bold bol D stands for nothing, just bold topics, okay. And speakers. So that led to the whole thought process of Okay, now we’re looking for sponsors for these events. And why not just say, hey, come partner with us on this event. Because partnerships, in my opinion, are a much closer, more personal relationship than a sponsorship, sponsors write checks, partners get involved in the whatever event it might be. And we involve them ahead, we promote them like crazy, but we involve them by asking them to come in and introduce the speakers, give them time on the program, you know, to talk about their business. And that’s how we refer to them. So and then you talk about the the member versus investor. So members are easy to lose, investors are a little bit harder. Because what you’re doing is you are working within your organization, but you’re you’re drawing them in, and when you refer to them as investors, then they see that what they’re doing with those dollars, is that they’re investing not in the chamber. They’re investing in their business. And they’re investing in the community and economic growth within our communities. And we use those terminologies all the time, invest in your business, invest in your community.

Brandon Burton 23:12
I like that. Yeah, the investor definitely brings a level of commitment, where a membership is like, you know, see how it works for me see what’s in it for me, right?

Sharon Mayer 23:22
We still get a lot better, you’re always gonna get what’s in it for me.

Brandon Burton 23:26
Right? Right. So another terminology that I picked up on is you don’t necessarily call your volunteers or ambassadors these, you said six business success advocates. Yes. Is that are those essentially ambassadors or do you have ambassadors as well,

Sharon Mayer 23:44
we have ambassadors as well. But what we’ve done is we’ve taken some things away from the ambassadors and given it to this new group that we’ve had in about two years now. So our ambassadors are still the meters in the greeters and the the ribbon cuttings and you know, open houses, all of that. Our business success advocates are BSA as we call them, are focused on retention. And they are focused on building relationships after someone joins Not, not when they show up at one of the coffee and connections or that sort of thing, because they’re the ones that will, will call members, especially first year members every three months. So they’re kinda like a mentor. They tell them about not chamber events, but they tell them about chamber benefits, particularly at whatever level they have joined it because we have a, you know, tiered dues investment schedule. And they forget, they join, they choose this level, and they think, oh, yeah, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. Well, we track what they do and what they don’t do. And so our Business Success Advocate which is really hard to say. I actually have a list and they know what the expectations were when that member joined. And they can relate to them. Because I mean, they’re members themselves. And so they’re peer to peer. And it’s a lot easier. And a lot, it’s really a lot better and more impactful conversation when you’re talking to someone who is is your peer, rather than you’re talking to this chamber staff person.

Brandon Burton 25:28
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m curious, the question comes to my mind, as you talk about these PSAs business success advocates. There, they’re there as mentors to help guide these new investors along their path at the chamber. As a new business joins the chamber invests in their business and their community, are you having the opportunity to evaluate where maybe they can get involved with whether it’s a committee or as a weather ambassador, or Business Success Advocate or partner, whatever it may be?

Sharon Mayer 26:09
Yes, but we do have some rules. You need to be a member for at least a year, before you can join either the investor group or the business success and this good group X PSA Group. But those are the only two where we really have a rule. I mean, we have a dei committee, we have a legislative affairs business advocacy committee. So those were, if that is your, what you’re interested in, then you can join immediately if that’s what you want to do. And we introduce them to these things gradually. It’s all in their membership packet that they you know, but the other thing about membership packets is, you know, they’re drinking through a firehose, instead of, you know, a water fountain or a water bottle, whatever it might be. And they forget and so that’s what the BSA is, do they remind them that you know, here’s an opportunity to hear but also don’t forget, you know, you get on the chamber podcast at your level of membership, you get three minutes on the you know, the podcast, you get a free hole at the golf tournament, you get all you know, other things, the

Brandon Burton 27:28
podcasts that you guys have in your chamber, right.

Sharon Mayer 27:33
Past Al Anon action, don’t ask me why didn’t say Fairview in action, but it started out Elden an action. And that’s the way it’s remained. So yeah. And it’s kind of fun, because we get to talk about our members. And we do and they get to participate depends, like I said, depending on their level of sponsorship members, what’s that word investment? Yes. But yeah, it gets a little tongue twister when you get right down to it. But you know, we have, we have not a huge audience. But we do have our regulars who listen all the time, we have a little over 600 that, you know, that subscribe to the podcast, very easily found right there at the top bar website, on the left hand side, along with our blog, and all the other things that I add to it continually.

Brandon Burton 28:28
That’s great. I’m a big fan of chamber soon podcast, as you can imagine, so glad to hear you’re using that as a platform to tell the stories of your members and, and highlight them. So I’d like these, you know, taking these old terminologies freshen them up a little bit, maybe giving a more meaningful definition to them, to allow these investors to really get more bang for their buck to really build their business stronger, and to see their involvement with the chamber on a different level. So I think this has been a good exercise, and hopefully chambers listening or jotting down, you know, some of their own terminologies that they use, they might be able to freshen up a little bit.

Sharon Mayer 29:13
If you if you don’t look at things annually, whether it’s the name of coffee and connections to you know, whatever it might be and thinking, Okay, we’ve been doing that for two or three years that’s getting really old. Let’s put a little zing in it. It’s like our new member orientation, it was called a new member orientation. And we’re going to call it chamber 411. And guess what time of day, we’re going to have it for 11 at the end, and our battle fab after hours battle. People know people remember those times that are odd, you know, that are off kilter. And they remember for lemon and 505. So that’s what propose things to I mean, there is nothing too small or too big in your chamber that could not stand a little refurbish refresh at once. No. Well,

Brandon Burton 30:08
absolutely. So Sharon, I wanted to ask you if for those listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item might you share with them to accomplish that goal?

Sharon Mayer 30:24
accreditation through the US Chamber, we have gone through the process three times. And we moved from being an accredited chamber to a four star chamber. And then last year, we are awarded our five star chamber recognition. And every single time you go through this process, you have to take a really in depth look at your chamber and what you’re doing. And while a lot of chambers will involve a large group of members, in going through each of these different aspects, we do not and we did not. And we had one or two of our board people involved. And what we found out is volunteers unless you’re in a smaller chamber, or a really, really large chamber, and they understand the benefit of this will drop the ball every single time. So as much as I love them, God bless them, don’t count on them. And so they what it really has done for our chamber and our staff is it’s made us look internally, instead of externally. And, and the feedback that you get from the US Chamber on when we got our four star accreditation. The one little Hickey that we had was Governmental Affairs. And I had four years to fix that. And and what was that mission statement again, advocate, educate and build relationships. So we went to the top of the page. And now we have a very, very, very active business advocacy committee. So it’s, that’s that’s really and that’s important to me, especially in the state of Texas, because we’re kind of crazy here right now.

Brandon Burton 32:21
That is a good tip to go about the accreditation process.

Sharon Mayer 32:26
And you know what? I mean, it’s so gratifying because let me tell you what it did. I have been talking about getting my CCIE and God knows I’m putting this out there to public for 30 years. And after that five star came in, I went okay, that’s checked off my list. Now it’s time for the CC anything. So I am everybody listening

Brandon Burton 32:49
can help keep you accountable to that.

Sharon Mayer 32:54
Email me, Sharon and LM Fairview chamber.com. Wish me luck and ask me how it’s going. And I’ll be happy to share the good, the bad and the ugly.

Brandon Burton 33:02
That’s good. So I like asking everyone I have on the show about how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Sharon Mayer 33:10
You know, what really bothers me is when people say chambers are becoming obsolete, that the younger generation doesn’t know what a chamber is. I was in Austin yesterday. And I was at a legislative affairs thing. But I had a little bit of time. So I went to the mall. And I am walking into the mall next to this young man, and he’s very places how’s your day? Go nuts. Have fun. How’s your son? He said, Are you just out shopping? You’re on your way to work? And I said, No, I’m here for a legislative session. And he said, What do you do? And I said, I run a chamber of commerce. And he looked at me and he was like, I said, you don’t know what Chamber of Commerce is, do you? And he said, no, no. And I said, most people your age No. And most people who are a lot of them who are older than you don’t. And I said, but let me tell you what we do. We advocate educate you build relationships, and keep going back to that. And we are a business association that works on the local level within a town in a community to help businesses thrive. And to help them with so many business issues that are coming up right now. One of the things that and I’m gonna throw this in there you didn’t ask. I’m really proud of our legislative affairs stuff, but I am exceedingly excited about our diversity, equity and inclusion committee. And the fact that we are making such strives to get not only our work with our city and our school districts and to get the word out that this is what we’re doing. But we are working towards getting minority veteran Now, women on LGBT queue businesses certified so that they can actually do business with our local municipalities or county state and beyond that program, once we get that launched is really going to be what will be remembered in our community and within our membership as something that was done well and is extraordinary for them. So

Brandon Burton 35:30
that’s fantastic. So Sharon, before we go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect or keep you accountable and your CCE, you threw your email out there already, but what would be the best way to have someone reach out and connect with you?

Sharon Mayer 35:49
Well, the very best way to is to email me because I will probably answer it at two in the morning. So it’s sharon@allenfairviewchamber.com.

Brandon Burton 36:03
And I will get that in our show notes for this episode. So it can be nice and easy as someone’s listening before they go to bed and they want to send you a message that you can respond to at 2am. There you go. Oh, Sharon, I appreciate having you on the show today and setting aside some time to be with us and share the approach that you guys take there at the Allen Fairview chamber. I think that’s something that’s kind of been on the radar for a lot of chambers. But it just made me that reminder that they needed to keep things fresh, keep things with purpose, to give the best experience for their remember investors.

Sharon Mayer 36:38
I have told you all about our mission statement. I didn’t tell you what our vision is to be an indispensable resource to Allen, Fairview and Collin County businesses. And that’s what we’re continuing to work towards to be indispensable.

Brandon Burton 36:53
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you for for being with us today and sharing your example. I do appreciate it.

Sharon Mayer 37:01
It was my pleasure anytime.

Brandon Burton 37:05
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Media & News Outlet Opportunities with Kellie Goodman Shaffer

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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I’m excited today to have Kelly Goodman Schaffer with us on the podcast for those of you don’t know. Kelly is the President and CEO of the Bedford County Chamber in Pennsylvania. She also serves as the Executive Director of their 501 C three Bedford County Chamber Education Foundation. Kelly was named to the chief executive posts of the chamber in February of 2010. Prior to her entrance into the chamber profession, Kelly served as a marketing director for the Allegheny Mountains Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and Game Director of the PS FCA east west all star football game and Administrative Manager for the Pennsylvania scholastic Football Coaches Association. She also spent more than 20 years as a broadcast sports journalist in Johnstown Altoona State College Television market, most notably leading the award winning sports department for their local CBS affiliate from 1998 to 2008. And host slash writer of the Emmy award winning Penn State Women’s Basketball Coaches shows for WPSU. She was the first woman to hold the post and sports director at the Pennsylvania television station, a multimedia professional, she has additional experiences that have included writing a weekly sports newspaper, column, and magazine features and serving as a play by play announcer for women’s college and high school basketball games, both in television and radio. Kelly served the chamber industry as the 2020 and 2021, Chair of the Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania Association of Chamber Professionals and served on the organization’s board for six years. She’s a graduate of Penn State where she captain, the Lady Lions, varsity softball team. Kelly, we’re excited to have you with us today, you’ve got quite the background there. But I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening. And if you can think of anything else interesting to share with us just so we can get to know you a little better.

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 3:59
I think that was a pretty, pretty thorough, you know, view of my background. But um, it’s very nice to be with you today. And I guess I would just say, you know, I started in, in television and thought really that was like the ultimate dream job, doing sports on television and having that be your job every day. But I am very blessed to say that I have found chamber work to be another dream job. And and I’m glad I get to use the experiences that I’ve had in my previous careers and in the work that I do every day to to promote our business community and, and I love the chamber industry. I love how how generous we all are in sharing our ideas and our successes and what we’ve learned from our failures. And so I appreciate that, that you give this opportunity for chambers to talk about what they do and hopes that we can help each other along.

Brandon Burton 4:51
Absolutely. That’s the whole idea of this platform. Let’s share those successes and failures and for those people who are vulnerable enough Why don’t you take a few minutes tell us a little bit more about the Bedford County Chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber, the scope of work, you’re involved with staff budget, that sort of stuff just to kind of set the course.

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 5:13
So our chamber was incorporated. The modern day chamber was incorporated in 1986. We have found records of our chamber dating back to 1921, we found a ledger of like paper or paper and pencil minutes of a more localized chamber here and in the early 1920s. But our modern day chamber is a county wide chamber. We have about 48,000 people in our county, but we serve the Bedford County region. So we have quite a number of members who are located in counties around us but do business in Bedford County. Today, we have 652 members, we represent over 24,000 employees in our region. And, you know, our job is we really live by the Chamber three cities to be a catalyst for business prosperity, a convener of leaders and influencers and a champion for strong communities. And every single thing that we do, whether it’s an event Initiative Program is measured against those those three aspects of services that we provide to our community. We have a fairly small staff, we have three full time people, including myself and a contracted bookkeeper, we do have another contracted person who helps us with one of our leadership programs, youth leadership, Bedford County, but we are heavily supported by a volunteer community here that have ambassadors, volunteers, volunteer board members, we have an incredible network of servant leaders in our county, many of whom have gone through our own leadership programs, but others who are just very committed to to making the community around them a better place. And so while we have a small staff, we have a lot of power because of all of the of the help that we get from volunteer leaders in our area.

Brandon Burton 6:56
Absolutely. And we just did a couple episodes on volunteer engagement and leadership program. So for people that have been listening to all the episodes, they understand the value of leveraging those those two opportunities specifically. Well, I am excited about our topic for discussion today is a as everybody heard, as I went through Kelly’s background, she’s she has a great background in media and specifically sports media. But our topic that we settled on today is going to be about how we can help your chamber kind of get some of that attention and spotlight from media and news outlets to shine a light on the work that you guys are doing in your own communities. So we’ll dive deeper into this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:32
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Brandon Burton 10:20
All right, Kelly, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about getting your chamber in front of media and news outlets to really showcase the work that your chambers involved with. And I like that you have a background in the sea, you know, to some degree with these news outlets are looking for for stories, and, and maybe some connections, I don’t know, you can get into that a little bit more maybe as he tell the stories, but what are some of these ways that that you’ve found successful to kind of put the spotlight on the chamber and the work you guys are doing?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 10:57
Well, I think as with most chambers, you know, so much of what we do is about relationships, and about networking and building that network. And I think it’s every bit as important to build your network of media partners and friends, as it is to build sponsors for events, and attendees to come to your events. So, I mean, obviously, I have some natural connections with members of the media in our region. But you know, there’s been a lot of new people who’ve come into the media since I moved from the media to the chamber. So you know, we really try to, you know, make welcome anybody who comes into new media outlets in our community, we invite them to our programs and events, not just to cover them, but to to be part of them as a business. You know, your media outlets are also businesses within your community. So recognizing the needs that they have, I think is important. We always have members of the media on our board, whether it be a television representative, a newspaper, representative, or radio, I think that’s really important. We have a lot of partnerships with our local media outlets. So once a month, we provide a full page of content about the chamber and our members and things that we’re doing for the local newspaper. So that’s a win win, because local newspapers need content, they, you know, like many businesses, they’re doing more with less. And if you can provide them with quality, professional content, they will likely use it because they need they need it, they need it as part of their paper. So we have a full page, once a month in our local newspaper, we also contribute feature stories to an annual magazine that we do, we’ve actually had a number of magazine partnerships over the years and magazines tend to come and go or, or evolve and in in what they and what they do. We’ve done a couple of print magazine partnerships, and they’ve transitioned to online, things like that. We also have a partnership with our radio stations, we do a an agriculture, little agriculture minute. So it goes over four stations, we actually have it sponsored by a local business. So we’re able to share information about the importance of the agriculture industry on the radio, and it’s a win win because the radio gets content and they get the advertising dollars, it’s paid for by local business that is positioning themselves as a champion for local agriculture. And the chamber gets the credit for championing that industry in our community. So I think a lot of media, a lot of the media partnerships, and a lot of the media work that we do is under that champion banner of our mission. But the other thing too, I think is really important is to not just use the media to promote yourself, use the media to promote your members. Because if we, you know, I will call I have I have a Monday morning call every week with a local newspaper reporter to give them ideas. Every reporter that will take my phone number, I give them my number. And if they have a day, or they don’t have anything going on, they’ll call me and say do you have a story idea and 99% of the time, the story ideas I offer them are not about the chamber, they’re about our members and about our community and are things that that lift our community up. So whether it’s a nonprofit, or a young entrepreneur, or a new business or whatever, to position your chamber, as you know, a conduit to promote your business community actually promotes your chamber in the process, because those members are appreciative and they’re and they’re your member. So, you know, hopefully they buy into into your mission. So I think that’s another very important piece of it is, you know, the Chamber should be a media outlet in terms of your social media, your website, things like that. And you should also be a conduit to helping your members get media exposure and positioning yourself as kind of a, you know, that convener of leaders and influencers and matching media with stories from your business community.

Brandon Burton 14:49
Right? No, so you hit on a lot of great points there. So one of the things I wanted to highlight is as far as a reporter any reporters out there you need to know your local chamber President right Right, I know that there’s a website out there called HARO, it stands for Help a Reporter Out. And where people can do reporters can go there to find stories or freelancers can post stories on there to help reporters out. And really, chamber is the best help for a reporter because you’re full of stories, you’re plugged into the community. So any any reporters listening, take advantage of that. But I wanted to circle back to you had mentioned that these media outlets, their businesses, so as a chamber to understand what the needs are of those businesses, and I think you’ve touched on some of those, but as far as understanding some of the stories that they need, or what would be applicable for them and helping them be successful. Are there other needs that you think of when you look at a media company as a maybe a magazine or a newspaper or news channel? That is, as far as understanding their needs are things that have stood out? Right?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 15:56
Well, you know, they’re all businesses. So most of them are in need of employees, just like a lot of businesses now, right? I mean, I think our local media outlets are always looking for salespeople, always looking for reporters, looking for all kinds of different positions. So we plug our media into our career fairs or job fairs, and to have like the local television station roll into a high school career fair. It’s such a nice Win win, because they’ll take they’ll typically cover the story if they have people attending. But it’s a, it’s a really cool thing for students to see, you know, a media truck or even a newspaper, or radio, it’s just kids like technology. So it helps it helps build interest in that career and industry in the future. And then also, like I said, just get putting them in leadership positions, because media outlets want the community to be successful as well, media outlets run on advertising, it is in their best interest for businesses to be successful, because businesses that are successful, have money to spend on advertising. So you know, it’s just allowing them to be partners. So we have media partnerships, on almost every event that we do, they’re in kind partnerships. So we we list, you know, a television, radio and newspaper on every event. And we generally get free advertisement from all of them to promote those events. Now, there are some events that we do paid advertising, and we try to recognize that we shouldn’t expect everything for free from the media, because again, they are a business. So you know, we kind of tried to balance that giving them certain benefits that goes with with membership or with event promotion. But also understanding that we need to do some some paid buys, as well, when when we’re able to do that. And then just letting them be part of the conversation. Like I said, we always have a member of the media on our board of directors, and it helps them be tapped in with other other community leaders and other industries. And it also helps those other industries recognize what those media outlets need as well. So really just building those relationships and making those connections.

Brandon Burton 18:01
So I want to that was the next thing I want to touch on is building those relationships building that network, do you just have a section of your say Rolodex, but wow, that data is right. Now? Do you have a tag in your contacts list? It says media so you can you know, kind of keep track of these people? Or are there just you know, a certain certain ones that you know, you know, with this story, this needs to go to this outlet? How do you approach that? And? And really, how do you build those relationships? So it’s nurtured enough. So when you do have a story, they listen and are willing to run with it?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 18:35
Right? Well, I think part of it is, you know, making an effort to be to have a relationship with decision makers. So you know, we’re a small market here, we get a lot of entry level reporters that come in cover things here. And we want to help them as much as we possibly can. I think sometimes that can be a little frustrating, because they are new, they don’t always get things, right, whatever. But some coverage is better than nothing. And having those relationships and building them as those reporters get better as they, you know, improve in their careers is important, but also having having the decision makers at those stations or radio or newspapers. So like at this time, I have a promotions manager of a television station on my board even though the television station is not located in Bedford County, but they appreciate what we do. They appreciate the connections that they make through our chamber. And so they’re part of our leadership. We also have the associate publisher of the local newspaper on our board of directors, they have to kind of be a little bit careful and have a conversation with them beforehand saying that what you hear in the board meetings is confidential and they can’t use that, you know, as stories that kind of thing and we’ve never had that problem with you know, we we we set the expectations for our board members and have them sign confidentiality agreements and we’ve never had somebody from a media outlet on our board you know, betray a confidence and, you know, report something About that another member has, has shared in the board meetings, all of the the relationships that we’ve built through the board and the leadership have been positive. But we’ve had quite a few stories that have come out of board meetings, positive stories about anniversaries of businesses, or new products or new relationships, new partnerships. So just to make sure that those that those people have influence and people that make decisions are included in your chamber, and a lot of that is just calling them and introducing yourself inviting them to things. You know, if they’re able to go to lunch with us, sometimes we’ll invite them to do that. Or just, you know, just to reach out, I think that we rely so much today on texts and emails, and you know, electronic newsletters and social media, but a personal touch, I think really goes a long way. And that I make sure that the media has my cell phone number. And I know part of me hates that I give that out. Because I will I will get texts and calls at all hours of the night. Do you know about this fire? Do you know that this is going on. But I feel like that’s kind of a necessary evil to help to keep those relationships going. And if if they’re calling us about, you know about something that’s happening in our community, sometimes they know before we do if it’s happening, like in the middle of the night or something. So just being part of that conversation, so that you can react to it to help your business community and also, you know, for the media to trust that you’ll give them the right information and help them to the degree that you can, I think is is valuable.

Brandon Burton 21:34
Yeah. I appreciate that. That gives good perspective. And I really appreciate, you know, touching on the, I guess the touchiness of what it could be having a member of the media and your board, because I know that’s a question that a lot of listeners may have is just how do you navigate that? That sounds like just having that open conversation. And it’s worked well for you guys. And it’s worked well all around is what I get out of that.

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 21:59
Yeah. And we have built in safety nets. I mean, our board members signed confidentiality agreements, and if they violate them, we have the right to remove them. So I don’t Yeah, we’ve never had to do that. So I would hope that that would never be the case. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:12
that’s good. So I’m curious to have you share maybe any interesting ways you’re able to attract the attention of media outlets, or maybe some some innovative ways that you guys have approached this. anything come to mind?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 22:29
Um, yeah, I think that one of the ways that we’ve garnered a lot of media attention is through programs and events that we’ve done. And this is one thing I would say to to my chamber friends, and that is, don’t, sometimes we downplay what we do, I think in general chambers do not champion ourselves enough. We don’t value what we provide to the business community enough, we don’t express that value, and we don’t promote ourselves enough. So we do a lot of news releases, both for our own organization, and also for our members. We write stories and send them to the media, as I said, but we also when when we do something innovative, or when we’re part of something in our community that’s innovative, we want to make sure that the businesses we’re working with, and our community gets credit. So when we’re planning events, there’s three things we think about when we plan events, we, you can raise funds, you can make friends, and it can make you famous, and we would never do an event that just makes fun. It has to make funds, and either make you friends or make you famous. But the perfect trifecta is an event that raises funds, makes you friends, and makes your community famous. And we have two of those that we have done in recent years actually, pandemic through the pandemic, that the pandemic actually helped us get these things done. And and they they, you know, were off the charts on all three of those things. So one of them was during the pandemic we share Yeah. During the pandemic, the height of the pandemic. So this is the summer of 2020. Actually, it was in May 2020. I took this idea to our board, you know, what if we if we put up a temporary drive and movie screen, so that we could hold some outdoor events, because here in Pennsylvania, there were very strict rules about gathering inside and everybody was moving events to outside under tents or whatever, because that’s where you were allowed to get people together. So I called a local contractor and I said, you know, if you were going to build a temporary screen, how would you go about doing it? And this tremendous community leader said to me, Oh, this is a great idea. Give me a minute, I’ll get back to you. He called me back the next day. He had engaged an engineer, they had plans and he’s like, we’re not building a temporary screen. We’re building a permanent screen for doing it. We’re doing to do it right. And I’m in 50 days from the time that I got permission from our board to pursue this project. So that was the middle of May, to the day that we cut the ribbon which was July 2 Right before the Fourth of July weekend. We we got to watch our business community come together. 22 to businesses to build a 72 foot wide by 55 foot tall drive and movie screen. It is made with power poles from Bedford Rural Electric Cooperative, the face of it is eight foot by four foot wide fiberglass panels that are fabricated by a local company that in the real world would cost $900 each. And they they did it for us for a song. It was painted, the phrase was painted by a local painter, it was framed by, you know, local construction guys who weren’t allowed to work at the time, like their their projects were all shut down. But they could do this. And we partnered with the Bedford County Fair for a spot on the fairgrounds that we could put this big screen with lots of room for, for parking. And you know, in 50 days, like we say, it was hope, hard work and hometown magic that, that this project came about. And as a result of that, I mean, we got tons of we’re still getting publicity for this. I mean, I’ve gotten calls from, oh, seven or eight people from other states who’ve seen this online or, you know, searched how do you build a drive in movie theater, found our stories on on YouTube or whatever, and ask how you get it done. And it was just, it was the perfect combination of circumstances of businesses that had resources and wanted to do something great in their community. And it was just such a really tough time, you know, for the community. And it was such a good news piece, a good news story, I got a ton of of media and continues to, but we call it the silver lining driving because it was mining in a bad you know, we didn’t call it you know, the Bedford road electric drive, and they would never have wanted us to do that. But because of that we were able to hold church services, we’ve done community theater there, we held our annual dinner there the first year that we had, like 300 people in their cars, beeping their horns for the winners instead of clapping. And and it just, it’s just been such a huge boost for our community. And the other thing too, is one of our big initiatives here is we try to do things that will help us to retain youth, you know, we’re in a rural community. So we lose a lot of young people and to be able to have an event, a resource for events that are family friendly and young people can go to is really nice, it connects young people to the community. So it’s part of our bigger mission, which is to, you know, to enhance the life experience of young people here. So hopefully they want to stay. And because of the support of businesses, I mean, we had almost nothing out of in fact, I will say this, we had nothing out of pocket from the chamber. In this project. It was 100% supported by local businesses, either donating materials, time, talent, we had sponsorships that helped us cover the movie licenses and things like that. But we have so much support for this project, that we make it free for anyone 18 and under to attend, and 19 and over is $5. So we have people coming every Saturday during the summer for old movies, you know, like old Disney movies and Greece. And you know, the classics, we don’t compete with the local movie theater at all. We don’t really show any new new releases. But that was a that was a project that really, I think shows what chambers can do. You know, we could not build that. But we couldn’t get the people around the table that all had the right resources to do it. So we were a catalyst. We were a convener and we were a champion. So yes,

Brandon Burton 28:36
that is awesome. And you guys still use that today? The theater?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 28:39
Yes. Yeah. So we’re getting ready for our fourth season. So we had 2021 22. There’s 23. So the fourth season of of community movies, and we partner with the Bedford County Fair. So we run the theater, we share the profits, profits with the Fair, which is also a nonprofit entity, and they support agriculture. So our number one industry, it all just is such a great, a great partnership.

Brandon Burton 29:01
That is perfect. So you had mentioned that there were two programs that came to mind what is the what’s the other one? The other one

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 29:09
actually, we started the year before the year before COVID. But it really blew up during COVID. So I’ve had this this dream for years and years to put together some kind of drive thru holiday light display, because there’s a really huge one like an hour away from us. And by the time we drive kids up there and sit through the line that’s like several hours long, they never get to see it. So we partnered again with the Bedford County Fair. And because it has lots of barns and electricity and stuff like that, and we said let’s try to do a drive through Christmas light display that promotes our local businesses. So rather than going out and buying commercial lighting, we put it out to our community businesses, organizations, schools, churches, families, if you want a free spot at the fairgrounds to build a light display, you know we’ll we’ll manage it and then we have you know cars that drive through from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We we put it out on I’m on Halloween 2019. And we said we picked a little small spot in the campground at the fairgrounds, and said if we get 30 businesses, we could make this work. We had 72 businesses sign up, we had to put it in a much bigger spot. Last year, we had over 150 participating businesses, the light display is like a mile or just over a mile long, we had, you know, the license plates on the cars from 18 Different states that came through, it’s a really inexpensive family friendly thing to do, it took off during COVID. Because again, it was something people could do in their cars, all the other Christmas events were cancelled. This was a safe, socially distant thing to do. And it just, you know, snowballed. But again, it wasn’t something we could not set up 150 displays ourselves, it has to be things that your business community can do together. But the chamber gets so much credit for it, even though we could never do it by ourselves. You know, so I think positioning ourselves, you know, knowing what we can do, knowing what we’re good at. And what we’re really good at is connecting people and sharing ideas and letting people you know, be part of our ideas and, and letting them build on it is what really has been successful for us. And those two things have gotten our community probably more attention than, you know, much of anything else that I can think of in the last few years.

Brandon Burton 31:18
That’s both make for great stories for any reporter anybody looking for content?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 31:25
Well, we actually even have people like they’ll bring a drone over and fly over the drive in and then they will put it on their website, you know. So that’s, you know, amateur drone operators, but you get that on, you know, on Facebook and stuff. And we couldn’t pay for that advertisement, honestly,

Brandon Burton 31:41
right. Now, that is fantastic. Well, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if there’s any tip or action item that you’d want to share with listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, maybe something related to this topic, or or totally unrelated, what would you have to offer?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 32:00
Well, I think I would just say, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about really serious topics. You know, we we spend a lot of time talking about the latest government affairs, you know, news, businesses, closing people needing work, all those kinds of things. And it’s really important for chambers to be engaged in all of those serious conversations. But I think that the the most traction that we have gotten from our chamber, and that I think chambers have an opportunity to do is really focus on being that champion for your community, tell great stories in your community and tell great stories about your members. So like, here’s one more quick example, we have a new program, we decided that we wanted to support young entrepreneurs, so any entrepreneur under the age of 21, gets a free chamber membership, until they turned 21 In our community, because that’s our way of supporting them, you know, starting their business, our very first one was a seven year old second grader who has a tie dyed t shirt business. And he has been one of the greatest champions for our chambers that I could possibly imagine. And we love being his greatest champion. Yes. And you know, people love stories about young people doing great things. And when we could have our name associated with helping him along the way. And he’s so proud to be a chamber member, when he got his little plaque from our ambassadors, he was just beaming. And just so so proud to be part of something bigger. And I think it made our Chamber members proud to to be Chamber members because he was so excited. And so just all those those kinds of things to just tell the good stories, tell the good news, and be the champion for your chamber. Because in the process, you get so much credit back, I don’t feel like we deserve the credit that we get sometimes. But we’re grateful to have it because that’s what allows us to continue to tell more good stories, and to really be the champion that our business community deserves.

Brandon Burton 33:51
I love that and these days are so many ways to get your story out there. So in the stories of your members is your your highlighting. Kelly I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 34:08
Well, I think that coming out of the pandemic chambers have an opportunity that we have never had before. I know for our chamber and many of the chambers that I work with here in Pennsylvania through the PACP. We did such good work as an industry during the pandemic. We were truly that conduit between government and businesses like we were I think oftentimes chambers were the ones that businesses called looking for help with PPP looking for help with, you know, SBA loans needing information about how to keep your business clean, and even if all we were doing was passing along information from the government or the health department or whatever. We were the ones that our communities turned to in that really dire time. And I think because of that the Chamber industry enjoys a certain degree of loyalty from businesses that maybe we didn’t have before. I think many of our members have have gone from being transactional saying, Am I going to get my money’s worth for this membership to really understanding the aspirational value of our organizations and why it’s important to be connected to something bigger than yourselves, when we could put on, you know, when we could share a, you know, a town hall over the phone with one of our legislators trying to help businesses navigate the waiver system, or, or whatever it was, the chamber was chamber industry was such a key player in trying to keep businesses going through the pandemic. And so these few years since the pandemic, I think, have been an incredible opportunity for chambers to build on that loyalty and to build on the success and the value that we showed during that really hard time. And we would be, I think, remiss if we didn’t take advantage of that opportunity. I think for many, many years, chambers have worried about how, how cheap their dues need to be to get people to invest. And I think we really need to start giving ourselves more credit, and understanding how important Chambers of Commerce are. And if you’re in business, you absolutely should be in the chamber, you should be part of the larger business community, and not just for what businesses get out of it, but for what businesses bring to it by being part of the larger conversation. So I mean, that’s what I would say that we’re trying to do in our chamber, that’s what we talk about in the PACP is really understanding our value as an industry and then working toward, you know, providing what our members need in the future and what our communities need going forward.

Brandon Burton 36:36
I’d love that. That is a great response. So Kelly, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about how you’re gaining the attention of the media outlets in your community. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 36:56
are you can reach me by phone at 814-623-2233 or by email at director@bedfordcountychamber.org. Our website is BedfordCountyChamber.com. We have you know, Facebook, you can reach me on Facebook if you want to. But we always love talking to other chamber people. I’m always inspired by how how much chamber people want to help each other. My best friends are chamber people. And I just feel so fortunate to have found this industry and the great people that are in it. So anything we can do to help someone else we’re more than happy to.

Brandon Burton 37:33
Absolutely, I appreciate that. And I’ll make sure to get your contact information in our show notes for this episodes, anyone can pick those up and reach out and connect with you and learn more. But thank you for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your experience, your knowledge, your background, and especially these, these two examples that you shared with us are really highlighting the ways that chambers can be champions in their community and, and go about highlighting the businesses in their community as well. So thank you for for being with us today. Kelly,

Kellie Goodman Shaffer 38:06
thank you so much for having me. It was nice to talk to you.

Brandon Burton 38:10
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Rapid Membership Growth with Jennifer Vincent

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Jennifer Vincent. Jennifer is the President of the Cambridge Area Chamber of Commerce in Ohio. She has a associate’s degree from Zane State College holds a license and health and life insurance and has over 15 years of experience in sales and marketing. Jennifer is involved in several local organizations and boards throughout her community. She is a 2019 2020 graduate of leadership and Guernsey. She served as a leadership Guernsey administrator for the 2020 2021 class. She was named president of the chamber in June 2021 and served as leadership Guernsey administrator for the 2021 22 as well. Jennifer’s been married for two bow for 11 years together, they have seven children and three grandchildren. And her spare time she enjoys reading, reading, traveling and spending time with family. But Jennifer, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, we’d love to give you an opportunity 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 better.

Jennifer Vincent 3:12
Well, thank you for having me. I am happy to be on here. And I feel like all the interesting things about me you already talked about in the in my bio, as you said, in my spare time, which there isn’t a lot of that. But I love to run and a few years ago because of my love of running a friend and myself. We had started a run group. And we were doing things to give back to our community through our run group. And so we ended up turning that group into a nonprofit. And every year we hold race series and do some other events and then give all the money that we raise to local local charities local groups here in Guernsey County.

Brandon Burton 4:06
Nice. That is a that extra step quite literally that you took there. But that’s that’s neat. I like learning these things about people’s they have you on the show. Why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about the Cambridge area Chamber just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber type a chamber staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for a conversation.

Jennifer Vincent 4:32
Sure. So as you said in my bio, I guess my my story is that I came to the chamber. I officially started in July of 2021 after being named the president in June and our chamber had not had a president serving in this role for 17 months when I took this position And so through a retirement and some other things, and then of course, hate to say it, but COVID That was the reason, you know that we didn’t have someone in this job. So when I, when I came into the chamber, we were the size of it was about 390 and membership. And it was myself and the office manager. The office manager that was here was also in transition, and she was able to get her dream job. So she left right after I took this job. So there was a lot of transitioning going on. I hired a new office manager, I ended up after a year having someone also take over the leadership Guernsey program. So now we are a staff of three. And as of yesterday, we are now a membership of 500. So yeah, yeah, so over the last year and a half plus, I have added 142 new members.

Brandon Burton 6:22
That is fantastic. And that’s a largely what we’ll we’ll spend our discussion on today is the rapid membership growth. So it talks a little bit about the the transition everything going on there at the Chamber before you came in as you came in. But you’ve had a steep learning curve in the short time you’ve been there at the Chamber, but also making a big impact while you’re while you’re learning and getting your feet under you as well so excited to get into this discussion with you and and some of the things you’ve learned along the way as you’ve been doing this and we will dive in deeper in this conversation since we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:18
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Brandon Burton 9:49
All right, Jennifer, we’re back. So you kind of set the stage for us as you came into the chamber you were taken over a role that had been vacant for about 17 months. A lot of transition a lot of moving parts, middle of a pandemic, lots of things happening. So as you came on board at the Chamber, I guess what did you see as your first priorities as you came on board in this position?

Jennifer Vincent 10:20
Um, I mean, it’s probably going to sound obvious, but, you know, coming into the job, it was basically just learning who the current members were, and reaching out to them. And, you know, just letting them know that after 17 months, that obviously now there’s someone in in the role, and seeing what it is they needed from the chamber, as well, as, you know, I was I was learning, learning the job, you know, and learning who all the members were. And, you know, my, my intention was not to come in and say, you know, my top goal was not, gosh, I want 500 members. I just wanted to bring everything back together. And again, I know, this is probably obvious to say, but we were in the middle of a pandemic. So there was not a lot of events and a lot of things happening. There were no business after hours. There were no fundraising events, there was no education programs, like there was just nothing going on. And so coming into it, I, you know, wanted to see, okay, what is it, we can get started back? You know, what events? Can we get started again, and have the networking in the community, to just to get everyone back together? So, I mean, that was kind of the first thing I did was, you know, learn who the members were, and what can I do for all of us to be together?

Brandon Burton 12:04
Yeah. So and that’ll, that’ll take you far, just learning who the members are and what you can do to advance the community. And naturally, I would see some, you know, membership uptick anyway, just by having somebody in the position now, you know, giving some attention to it. But as you have had more of a focus effort on building the membership, and and I don’t think you mentioned in the recording 500 is the highest that the membership has ever been there in Cambridge, right?

Jennifer Vincent 12:39
Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s an that’s a new record.

Brandon Burton 12:43
So congratulations there. But as you started to focus your efforts on on building the membership back up, what were those key priorities had to do in the middle of pandemic express the value the, you know, the unique selling proposition that you had to put in front of members or potential members, as he began signing them up?

Jennifer Vincent 13:09
So, you know, as I said it, I guess, my first thing, again, wasn’t that I just, I wanted to hit that goal, you know, so I want to make that clear, I still want the chamber to be here to be that, that voice of business. And you know, it, I guess it, it was kind of like an organic type thing, right? I just when the board hired me, they said, We want you to think outside of the box, we don’t want you to feel like you have to do what the chamber next door does. You just take this and make it yours. And so I started with just simple little things. The when a new member joins the chamber, I would email them, which I still do, but I email them and say, you know, welcome to the chamber, I want to come and see you and bring your plaque and your membership plaque. And I want to get a picture with you. And so we would in the past that, you know, the chamber would take a picture of the member with their plaque and post it on social media. So I wanted to just change it up a little bit. I’m in the picture with them, handing them the plaque. And when I would post their picture on social media, it’s a picture of us together, and I tell what their businesses and what they do and how you can find them and, you know, just give them a little bit of that, you know, five seconds of fame and some advertising. And it kind of took off as far as like you said, I’m also here. So that helped with membership growth, having someone in the position and then the other thing was What I was thinking a couple of months in, you know, these new members, they’re getting time on social media on the chamber page. What are we doing for the members that have been here? 25 years, 50 years, you know, has people forgot that company XYZ joined the chamber 50 years ago? Of course they have. So what can I do for them. So after tossing around a few ideas, I created member of the week, and every Monday at noon on social media, there’s an article that pops up member of the week. And I started that in October of 21. And I’m, I’m very proud to say I’ve never missed a single Monday, including holidays, I still run the article. But what I do with that, I could very easily just email a questionnaire to that business and say, fill it out and send me a picture. But I actually go to the business. So for the last, I can’t do the math, you have to for me, how many weeks that’s been? So it almost two years. Yeah. Yeah, we’re going on almost two years. So for that many weeks, I have made an appointment with a different business before their articles gonna come out on Monday. And I go see them. I spend time with them. I asked them questions, to be able to write that article, I take pictures of their business, I take pictures of them. And every Monday at noon on social media, that article is posted member of the week, and it gives a little story about how they got started, how they think they’re successful, you know, and been able to be in business. 40 years, I’ve met with some businesses, they’ve been in business 100 years, you know, they’re carrying on the family business. Yeah. So I think that helping our community, remember who some of the members are that have been here, our chambers been in existence, 76 years, helping our community remember those members, I think has largely helped our growth as well. It’s, again, it’s just reminding our community who’s here, and who you should be doing business with

Brandon Burton 17:25
right now. And I think that’s a great approach that you’re taking, I love that you spend the time with each of those members to do that membership spotlight member the week. And as you brainstorm or as chambers listening, brainstorm other ideas. It can be made easy for in some sense that, you know, there’s a manufacturer’s week, you know, that’d be a great week to highlight all the manufacturers in your community. There’s no national ice cream day, you know, what members of your community serve ice cream? Yeah, highlight them tell a little story about them. There’s, I think every every day of the year, there’s some national day, you know, or whatever. So play that to your benefit and highlight them and you don’t have to do it that way. But it’s just an idea as you brainstorm and create your content calendar, which you’re going to put out there be intentional about who you’re reaching out to and why. And as Jennifer seen, it draws attention, it shows that value and keeps people engaged and in renewing their membership and bringing up those members that have been around seemingly forever. So get get creative with it. Think outside the box. So there are there other things as you were given that that directive to think outside the box that you explored and maybe things that worked and things that didn’t work even.

Jennifer Vincent 18:51
Um, yeah, so another thing we started doing know a lot of people use the term lunch and learn as a business meeting, whatever, once a month. And I wanted to just again, change the name a little bit change up what we do. So we call it power lunch. And we don’t hold it every month, because I chose to hold it the first week of the month. And we tend to hit a lot of holidays for some reason. So we ended up having power lunch about six times a year. And typically what we do with Power Lunch is the speaker is from a group or organization rather than let’s say, a business trying to advertise for themselves if that makes sense. So for an example, one of our speakers has been the director of the visitors and convention bureau. And now we still have someone sponsor, so The way it works is if you want to be a sponsor of power lunch, then that is a business, right? That’s doing it, you know, for profit. So they sponsor Power Lunch, they get two tickets to come and eat lunch. And they get 10 minutes to talk about their business before the main speaker. And it’s, that’s went very well. For us, too. It’s a smaller type, venue event, we usually have Around 35 people in the place where we hold that lunch and could only have 40. Anyway, so it’s 30, fives kind of that perfect number. And that’s been really successful, because again, it’s helping to highlight the organizations in our community, that maybe we don’t know what they do, or we forgot how much they do for our community. So and then, of course, you know, we, I hate to say it, you put everything on social media, right? You you post about that lunch, and you know, who sponsored it and, you know, make sure they they get their thank yous. And that helps, too, because, again, there’s, there’s just so many organizations that our community doesn’t know why they’re in existence,

Brandon Burton 21:20
right? Yeah. If it’s not on social media, it didn’t happen. No, exactly. Yeah, I like to say that, you know, social media is used to perpetuate what you’re already doing. So it becomes that larger amplifier of your your power lunch to then amplify what you’re doing with the speakers, we’re about, you know who the sponsor was with these. Remember, the week, you know, you’re already doing the interview, you’re talking to people just naturally, you’re going to talk to others about it, but then putting it out on social media amplifies that message, and just makes what you’re doing go a little further. So directly tied back to the membership growth. Is there a process as far as you know, attracting members as far as onboarding the members that you’ve found to be successful for you? I mean, you’ve been, you brought on a lot of members in a short amount of time. So you’re either running ragged, which the chamber chamber executor has been known to do. Or you you may be starting to establish a system of some sort. But where are you at in that that process?

Jennifer Vincent 22:31
I would say it’s definitely the system. Some of the members have come to come to me and said, I see what you’re doing, and I love it. And then the other thing is, if I see a new business announced on social media, I’m reaching out to them immediately. Hey, congratulations on your new business. I see you’re going to be opening soon. I would love to help you with that. What can I do for you? When can we chat? When can we sit down. So I’m reaching out to them, I’m being proactive. And then once I meet with them, you know, I’m talking to them about the benefits. And this is what we can do for you at the chamber. They fill out their application, then the next step is, like I said, I go back and see them at their business. So I want the picture that goes on social media to be myself and the business owner in front of that business that they’re you know, that’s joining, you know, we post that and at that time, I also give them a packet of information. And just tell them, these are the ways you can get involved. Depending on what it is you need from the chamber, and just go over all those things with them again, I don’t ever want to leave them empty handed. I don’t want them to feel like wow, she got my money. I’ll never see her again. So you know, I leave them with a packet of information on how to get involved. And I always tell them, if you’re not sure what you want to do with the chamber, please don’t be afraid to reach back out to me and say, What can I do? I want to advertise more network more. I need insurance, whatever it is, whatever the reason was, I want them to reach out to me. And then after that, we’re I’m reaching out to the members again, you know, another touch point. We’d love to see you at a business after hours, that type thing because again, I just don’t want them to think, Oh, she got her money. She got her application and we won’t see her hear from her until next year when it’s due again.

Brandon Burton 24:45
Right. So I know I think I’ve shared this example once before but I have a friend who’s a he’s a realtor. And as a newer REALTOR at the time he had reached out to me he had just moved to a new community He knew I did the podcast and I worked with chambers. And he’s like, Hey, should I join my local chamber? And like, well, it depends, you know, what are you trying to do? What’s your what’s your goal? What’s your objective? Like? Would you like to get involved at the chamber? You know, see what kind of committees, you know, see what kind of work your chamber is involved with. It’s the old saying, if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber. But as new members are on boarded, to be able to know what those opportunities are to see, should I join yes or no? and at what level do you want to be involved with, because there’s a lot of ways to be involved. If you want to add, I’d like that you’re spending that time with them and trying to really help them understand the the impact they can have, but also the level of involvement that they get with their membership. That’s a that’s key. Is there anything that you think for, for listeners out there is a focus on membership as a membership isn’t necessarily always the primary focus, but it’s always on your mind? Right? You’re always looking for opportunities. Anything that comes to mind that that other chamber, professionals out there should be thinking of, as they go about recruiting new members.

Jennifer Vincent 26:19
Um, I think that the, the best advices as you’re recruiting the new members, is to also be thinking about what you’re doing day to day or month over month to keep them. You know, you you want to talk to them about joining. But the next question, I’m sure in the back of their mind is okay, I’m joining today. But what, what, what am I going to do with this as we go forward? So what programs do you have that are going to retain them as well? And then, of course, you know, telling them about what you’re doing, is why they will join. And then of course, step two is how you keep them.

Brandon Burton 27:08
Right. And I would encourage anybody to use their membership software to, to put in some of those, those key benchmarks now along their memberships. So if they’ve been in for, you know, two weeks, you know, do they get some kind of an email? Or is that when Jennifer reaches out and schedules, the plaque delivery in the picture and the social media posts, and then a month later, and three months and six months? What are those touch points? Are you making a phone call? Are you sending an email? Are you making a personal visit? Are you having an ambassador go by? Or what are the what are these things to keep these members engaged and fully on boarded in that first year, and, and there’s various membership, software’s can can help you do that, and some of it automating but some of it, just those reminders of, hey, it’s time to reach out to this member and take the next step. So I hope everyone’s leveraging that. Well, as we start to wrap up, Jennifer, I wanted to see if there’s any tips or action items that you might want to suggest for listeners who are looking to take their organization up to the next level, from the things that you’ve learned in your your 18 month sprint, so far, what what stands out to you is some of the things that would really help take an organization to the next level.

Jennifer Vincent 28:27
You know, it’s showing them that, that you care about their business. You know, I gave a lot of I said that I do a lot of things with social media. But the other thing I do is I go to them, I go to their business, whether it’s to talk to them about joining, maybe, I mean, I do everything local, right. shop local, whether it’s using their business for, you know, my things that I need, if just whatever the reason may be that I need to talk to a member. I tried to do it in person. I think that that is something that we have let ourselves get away from. We rely a lot on email and texting. And while that’s a great, maybe first step or second step, I think that the in person, it takes more effort, it takes more time, and the business truly believes that you care about them. If you take the time to go see them, and it’s truly the favorite part of my job. I love I don’t even feel like this is a job. I love what I do. I never get out of bed The morning and not want to come to work. So I love going to see people face to face. It’s my favorite part. And if you incorporate that, in your day to day week over week, having members want to join the chamber is not hard,

Brandon Burton 30:22
right? And what I’ve learned from others is you need to schedule that into your day, because it’s easy for you to schedule it, block it out, and then hold it as an appointment. But nothing beats that personal connection, spending time with somebody and being face to face shaking hands, you know, spending time in their business to show that you care. Yeah. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jennifer Vincent 30:58
chambers are we’re, we are still the voice of business, big or small. And I think that chambers are needed even more so in the future. Because not every business is a brick and mortar. We have so many businesses that are that are online. They’re their storefront is not what you drive downtown. You don’t drive past them. So who is their voice? who advertises for them if they don’t do it themselves? And granted, they are doing it, but they need that extra layer. So I see chambers being even more important now than ever.

Brandon Burton 31:46
Yeah. And I think continuing to adapt and stay relevant as you talk about so many businesses doing things online now that, you know, is your chamber equipped to help them with best practices online or to help someone set up a e commerce Store if they have a brick and mortar so they can sell out the back door to? Yeah, where’s your chamber at in that process of being able to stay relevant and help your members and potential members, these businesses in your community to be able to be relevant in a worldwide marketplace these days? Thank you for that, Jennifer, as we come to a close, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you or learn more about this rapid membership growth. You’ve seen there and strategies that you’ve implemented, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jennifer Vincent 32:43
If they want to start with email first, is the easiest. And my email is president@cambridgeohiochamber.com.

Brandon Burton 32:58
Right, well, we’ll get that in our show notes too. And I’m sure Jennifer would welcome in person visits to if you wanted to show up in person and

Jennifer Vincent 33:06
absolutely come to Cambridge.

Brandon Burton 33:09
Spend some money and spend some time in Cambridge? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, Jennifer, I appreciate it. It’s been great having you on the show and sharing your experiences in your your first 18 months or so they’re on the job and you’re making a big impact and learning a lot along the way as well. So thank you for coming on here and sharing some of these things that you’ve learned with us.

Jennifer Vincent 33:32
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 33:33
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Board Structure with Ralph Schulz

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

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Our guest for this episode is Ralph Schulz. Ralph is the President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, one of middle Tennessee’s oldest and largest business Federation’s. Ralph joined the chamber in 2006, following a 30 year career in nonprofit management, marketing and fundraising. During his tenure, the Chamber played a key role in helping the region emerge from the 2007 recession to a period of unprecedented growth. The chamber’s also led the movement to improve public school performance through the creation of the academics of Nashville established the moving forward initiative to ensure the creation of a regional transportation solution through a cohesive community effort and developed into a respected publisher of data on the Nashville on the Nashville metropolitan statistical area. With an annual publication of the vital signs report, he currently serves on numerous civic and nonprofit boards. And He’s a graduate of the University of Tennessee that, Ralph, we’re excited to have you with us today. Here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Ralph Schulz 3:19
Well, Brandon, it’s great to be on the podcast here with you in chambers do such urgent work and every one of the communities that they’re engaged in that it’s just a pleasure to be a part of the industry and be a part of today’s podcast. You know, I think I think one of the things I probably share with chamber people even though this is my only chamber job ever, even though it’s been 16 years, is I’ve had the chance to live in 11 different cities and eight different states around the country. And Nashville was one of those places that I was fortunate to be able to choose to live in and stay in. So the biggest benefit of all of that is I have seven grandkids and they’re they all live here and I get to see them all the time. And I really do think that that’s kind of linked to the fact that opportunities in Nashville and so you know, their parents have things that they can they can do here and stay here.

Brandon Burton 4:26
That is a great point. Having that that livability aspect of being able to stay in the community that you’re from and be able to raise a family and I think often we see when we talk about workforce and talent development of trying to retain you know, people within our within our communities. So that’s a great testament to be able to have all your your kids and grandkids in the same community with you.

Ralph Schulz 4:53
I tell groups that I speak to all the time that eventually they’re going to realize what a blessing that is

Brandon Burton 4:59
that So, yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Nashville chamber. And we all know Nashville. But give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work, things you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Ralph Schulz 5:20
Well, the Chamber has been around since 1847. But if you really want to track the work that has resulted in the economic boom, and so forth, that we’ve enjoyed in this region, you really go back to about 1990, when the public officials that were elected and business leaders who were interested, really began to focus on reversing what had been about a 20 year decline in the economy. And so the purpose statement for this chamber, which is to create economic prosperity by facilitating community leadership, that’s really the birth of that statement. And and what you see from that time forward is a five year planning process, we’re in our seventh five year plan. And that requires us to have a budget of somewhere in the eight to 9 million category, it requires us to have a staff of 40 to 50 people. We are the regional economic development hub for a 10 County area in this region. But I really want to emphasize that that is a role that we fill, as part of the larger team of economic developers we we interact as, as a partner with TVA on a regional basis with the state economic development operation with local EDA o’s and economic developers throughout that 10 county region. And, and the staff is really kind of devoted to four operational areas, they are devoted to a policy area because we are advocates for our, for our members in the business community. We have a workforce or a talent development team that is really focused on that workforce issue, which we think is going to be our essential priority for at least the next 10 years, and probably the next 20 We have an economic development unit job creation unit that is really focused on the recruiting and the expansion and the creation of jobs in the area. And then, of course, we have that all important growth area that is, you know, the growth team provides the financial fuel and volunteer engagement that allows us to undertake our projects. So, you know, in a nutshell, that’s kind of what we look like.

Brandon Burton 7:56
Yeah, but I would agree with you with the workforce and talent front, that’s a, it’s going to be a long term issue across the country, as so many skills of people that are out of work right now, maybe their skills are not as transferable, you know,

Ralph Schulz 8:15
look at in Middle Tennessee right now, we track the numbers every month, there are about 70,000 job openings available and effort. If every single unemployed person were employed, we’d still have a gap of 30 to 40,000 open jobs, and that reskilling and upskilling of the people who are already here is a major source of being able to fulfill those jobs in migration is strong. Retention is strong because the livability is good. But as affordable housing is a little bit of a challenge. The people who are already here being aligned with the right talent and the right skill for the jobs that are being created is crucial.

Brandon Burton 9:05
For sure. Well, that definitely helps to set the table for our discussion today is we’ve kind of settled on the idea of talking about the way you guys have gone about structuring your board of directors. And I think that’s a an important topic for chambers across the country to pay attention to especially if they’re in a fast growing climate in their region of the country to really make sure that there’s good structure around your board before it gets out of control and runs away from you. So we’ll dive in much deeper into this discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 12:42
All right, Ralph, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about your board structure. And I know you guys were very intentional two years ago as you went about creating a real structure to the board. So maybe you just tell us from a high level, what is the structure of your board look like? And and keep in mind for everybody listening that everything is scalable, right, so they take what Ralph was saying and scale it to your community and and try to visualize how that can work?

Ralph Schulz 13:16
Well, when I arrived at the Chamber in 2006, there were 70 board members, a large Executive Committee, and the general conclusion of the board met board was that the board wasn’t functioning at its best. And so there was a group put together that worked for about nine months to rewrite the bylaws that had been in existence since 1847. And there are a few key things that they focused on. First of all, they felt like the board needed to be a lot smaller, so that it was more functional that the board needed to be the actual decision making body of the organization as compared to say an executive committee and that the duties of the chamber would be divided into two main chunks. The first chunk was the function in the role of the board which was to make policy and to assure the achievements of the chamber in the community. And the second chunk was the staff which was identified as implementation, the implementation aspect of the organization. And so what that meant in board construction was that the board was cut in half in terms of size. The committee structure of the board was shrunk to only two committees and they are the Governance Committee which is responsible for the healthy function of the board. They’re also the personnel can MIDI when one is needed, but that governance committee is really about the function of the board. And the other is the Finance and Audit Committee, which is really about the financial stability and the financial status of the organization. It’s not a fundraising group or whatever. The reason they constructed it that way was because they wanted to focus on policy. And so you don’t see a lot of the typical implementational related committees like a membership committee, or a fundraising committee or an events committee or whatever. But realizing that, that limiting the board to 43 slides, there were still, there were still a lot of business leadership in the community that wanted to participate in a leadership role. They created a category of activity called chartered initiatives. And every year at our budget time, we will take the significant initiatives of the chamber, create a written document around the scope and the reach and the authority and the resources deployed against that initiative. And that charter will be given to a group of volunteers and a volunteer leader to say, Go forth, do good things achieve these objectives, and you have authority contained within this charter that allows you to achieve those goals. I think, you know, for a chamber professional, it’s important to know, though that the Accountable person for that initiatives achievement is a staff person. In other words, at the top of the list, when the Accountable individual is named, it is a staff person that is accountable. The volunteer is not the Accountable person. But they they manage the function of those volunteers and can make decisions about changes and strategies and things like that. But so the fundamental structure of the whole thing is built around the board role of policy, the staff role of implementation, the board takes their policy function seriously, only the board can make policy decisions for the chamber, the executive committee can the Finance Committee in the government Governance Committee have assigned roles, but the board is still king. So when you come on to the chamber board, you’re told that you have no obligation to provide any level of resource or per participating in research, participate in resourcing. But every board member does in their own kind of customized way. But it’s purely voluntary. You’re told that you don’t have to serve on a committee, you volunteer to be on that committee. And that’s the way those committees are, are properly staffed, that you get a certain priority to be considered for leadership of the initiatives. So the main board function is to main pop make policy. And then if you like, I can talk about how people get to the Board of Directors, but you know, the board very, very much functions in that policy space.

Brandon Burton 18:24
So I would like to go down that path. At first, I wanted to just mention, at the very beginning of your comments, or you had mentioned readdressing, the bylaws that hadn’t been touched since 1847. Right? And that just like sent off lights to me that I’m like, Oh, that’s a long time. We just recently had Jeremy Arthur on the podcast. And a lot of people are familiar with Jeremy and his work around governance. And in that was one of the things we touched on was the bylaws need to be something that you’re actively looking at, you’re actively making sure that the roles of your chamber are acting within those bylaws, and making sure you have that leeway that you need to to where you’re not going against your bylaws on accident. So that just really stood out to me. Because by addressing your bylaws, it saw the need for addressing the board issues that you are talking about here. There were

Ralph Schulz 19:25
some really fundamental changes that were made at that point. Instead of membership votes on policy. The board became the the functional policy maker we still serve a our membership. It’s not that we don’t get their input. But but thanks aren’t. The membership doesn’t really have a vote. The terms of officers are were changed to be two year terms because the board wanted to have more continuity and accountability because the feeling was a one year term for board off assessors wasn’t enough to assure that we would have the achievement over time that we needed. You know, the structure of committees, the, you know, all of that policy versus implementation aspect. There, there were a lot of changes in the way that that bite those bylaws shape things. And they have been modified along the way, little tweaks along the way to assure that we can function the way that the board wants us to function. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 20:30
that’s a good example of members voting on changes in 1847. I’m sure the membership was a little smaller than what it is today. Probably a little easier maybe to round up the people for of a bit. So yeah, I just wanted to draw attention to that. But yeah, let’s let’s go down the path of how does somebody find their way onto the board and your recruiting process or just how you work that into the structure?

Ralph Schulz 20:58
Well, the board, the board terms are two three year terms, that’s the maximum you can serve. And every three years, the Governance Committee sits down and creates a board development plan for the next three years. And they have a spreadsheet that they’re working with where, you know, when you think of the largest sense of the of diversity, they’re looking to have people on our board that bring perspectives from variety of industry, variety of geography, sex, or gender, race, et cetera. And they’re factoring all of that into the composition of the board for a three year period. They set minimums for for for participation from each of those categories, so that they are getting the right balance. When it comes to who sits on the board, there are four criteria that they apply to each possible participant on the board. And they all of those things happen to start with the letter I. So we call them the four eyes and our governance committee. First of all, the invitation to board members is to the individual, not to the institution, so you will find from time to time retired executives that are still on our board. And that that focus on the invite in individual invitation is very, is very purposeful. Because when you look at the four eyes that they’re looking for, they’re looking for people who are influential in the community, they are looking for people that are independent in their discussion and their perspective on things. They are looking for people that are informed on the community, and they’re looking for people that are invested in the community. Now, the fifth is institution does sometimes come into play. We’re a healthcare dominated economy. So you know, you always want healthcare representation there. And there’s some institutions that have greater influence than others. But fundamentally, it’s an individual invitation built around those four eyes. So on influence, they want people who can reach out to get feedback and also project information into the community into a sphere of influence. When it comes to independent, they want people that will sit at the table not advocating for their own business or their own industry. But also they want them to be at the table regardless of who else is at the table and willing to express their independent thinking, you know, if they have a client at the table, that doesn’t reshape their their expression. from an investment perspective, it’s not just about investment in the chamber, although at a minimum, you have to be a member of the chamber. But they will tend to engage people at the board level who have been engaged in the chamber in leadership ways, already. And then finally, from an information perspective, our board moves rapidly with support from staff on the issues they confront from a policy perspective. But it’s important that people aren’t starting from zero with regards to the information they have about a particular issue. So those four eyes are the things that that they center around and that governance committee will get together they’ll look at a long list of possibilities. Usually the three year planners have slotted some names for the future that they think would be good to consider. And then after they have settled on name they’d like to nominate, we go meet with those people tell them what the obligations are find out if they’re interested. And then the final step, if they say they’re interested is to place them in front of the board at our annual meeting. And then their orientation begins a couple of months after that.

Brandon Burton 25:20
Very good. Yeah, I love the four eyes, the four plus one, maybe sometimes. But the one that really stands out to me is independent, you know, being able to be independent thinkers. And I think a lot of the others being influential and informed and vested in the community. I think those all are. Yeah, they don’t need any additional explanation. I don’t think I think they make perfect sense. Being an independent, independent thinker, you’re not coming with your own agendas. You’re not they’re trying to better your business, or your pocketbook or anything like that. You’re there for the betterment of the community. And that’s you’re able to express yourself in a way that you’re not needing to be as careful unnecessarily with your comments, because of any other collateral damage, maybe that can happen. So that’s your that’s a key I,

Ralph Schulz 26:15
you’re, you’re expected not to be careful, okay? It, it has to be a free flowing and fast conversation, our board meetings happened five times a year, and they’re two hours. And there’s usually two or three strategic items they have to decide on. So, you know, bring your thought quickly, concisely and powerfully,

Brandon Burton 26:37
right. I like that. Well, as we start wrapping up your eye, we can talk probably another hour on this on your board structure and dive in really deep. But I wanted to see if you have any tip or action item for listeners who really want to take their organization up to the next level, what would you suggest for them?

Ralph Schulz 26:58
You know, I think what brought this chamber to the next level didn’t happen while I was here, it happened in the early 1990s, when the business community said our economy’s in decline. And what we’re missing is a plan. And we’ve decided that the chamber is going to be the place that that plan is is created. Intentional is is a constant buzzword at at this chamber. And I would say that for this chamber, that catalytic activity is that plan, you know, we’ll raise $25 million dollars just for our five year plan. And then there’s another 25 or $30 million added on top of that, that comes to us from other revenue sources. And the real secret to being able to do that work is the is the engagement in the planning process of the business and policy, public public leadership in creating that plan, so you know, as far as catapulting to the next level, understanding what people are seeking to achieve, and then being able to facilitate a process where that that becomes a plan with metrics, activity, investment, et cetera. That’s what will propel the organization forward. I will say one last thing, though, if you don’t have a board with heft, if you don’t have a board that is strong, powerful, independent, willing to take risks, willing to move forward with courage, then you’re likely going to stall. And that’s one of the things I love about this board. And one of the reasons I’ve been here 16 years, is because I’ve never had a board that didn’t have that courage, and didn’t have that willingness to invest in making things happen.

Brandon Burton 29:05
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that tip and that the intentionality of having that plan for your community. Ralph, I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ralph Schulz 29:24
Well, first of all, I think the horizons work of of ACCE is really valuable work and when it was first unveiled, we took it seriously and began to engage in undertaking it. I do think that the future of chambers is still oriented or oriented around bringing prosperity the community we fill that important role as sort of an intermediary between the business community and the public policy arena. If you look at Nashville’s success over 30 years, it’s been B Because there has been a public private partnership with the public arena, defining an environment that encourages investment. And then it’s about bringing investors to to the table. And so I think the larger, the more the more focused. A chamber is on the community development, livability, workforce development, job creation, the more compelling its position is going to be in the future. And I believe that reaching out for, for for for feedback, and offering compelling plans. I think that’s the future of the chamber. I, you know, we’ve heard a lot in the horizons about how the nature of membership is changing, and what causes people to join and what causes people not to join. I think in the end results are what matter. And when people see results, they want to be a part of the team, they may have a different perspective on priority. But when you achieve results, people want to have the opportunity for their priority to rise. So I think the future of chambers is bright, mainly because of that intermediary role that they fill in communities. And I think that the the professional function of the staff, is what will keep it fresh, vibrant and fulfilling, going forward?

Brandon Burton 31:37
Absolutely. I mean, diving back into the horizons, we’ve seen over the last three years or so just how, you know, future telling that report really was to really give heed to that and and to continue looking forward. I think it’s so important.

Ralph Schulz 31:57
And this podcast is part of that.

Brandon Burton 31:59
So thank you. So, Ralph, I like to give an opportunity for anyone listening who maybe wants to dive in deeper or learn more about the structure of your board, or how you guys are doing things they’re in Nashville, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Ralph Schulz 32:19
Well, the best way is to email me at the at rschulz@nashvillechamber.com. Because we do get requests from time to time to have information about board structure, and we’re prepared to provide a package of information. I’m happy to have conversations. Look, I think governance is the absolute root of the effectiveness of an organization. So I’m always happy to share with other chamber professionals our experience, but you said it earlier. And I think it’s worth emphasizing this structure and these protocols. And this practice is very well tailored to the Nashville environment and the Nashville business and political environment. You know, variations on this, you know, are inevitably created in other communities to fit their needs. But we’re always happy to share.

Brandon Burton 33:21
Yeah, and that’s the key, just get that information and adapt it to the best best way to suit your own community and the issues that your chamber is there to address. And your community is not going to look the same as Nashville. So make those make those adjustments where needed. But, Ralph, I really appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today here on chamber chat podcast. You bring a great perspective and an experience with your board structure that hopefully it will help to energize and keep others motivated to make sure that they have a good structure with their board and see the trajectory of their organization move forward in a positive direction. So thank you for being here with us and sharing this today.

Ralph Schulz 34:09
Well, look, I just appreciate the opportunity to be here and appreciate what you’re doing to help help chamber professionals particularly improve their practice and performance. So these podcasts are really valuable.

Brandon Burton 34:21
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Small Staff, Big Impact with Jodi Owczarski

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Jodi Owczarski. For the first five years at the Michigan West Coast Chamber Jodi was accountable for providing leadership in all areas of the organization as well as serving as the integrator within the EOS framework. As the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jody was responsible for all human resources, accounting and finance functions, as well as managing the staff Facilities and Operations and directing the West Coast Leadership Program. As of September 1 2022, Jodi was appointed as president and CEO of the Michigan West Coast chamber. Jodi’s limitless capacity for solving math problems has been essential to creating budgets and balance sheets, and her inviting personality and quick humor, combined with our strategic thinking give her the edge when managing staff communities and volunteers. Jodi’s contagious energy ripples out into our business community. Working with the Chamber is a perfect combination of all Jodi’s previous work experiences, including as a self employed small business owner, serving as the community center director at a nonprofit working in HR for a large manufacturer and overseeing operations for an international consulting firm. Jody currently serves on a variety of boards and throughout the community and including ACCE Jody is an enthusiastic Spartan, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with an emphasis on Human Resource Management from Michigan State University. Jodi, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jodi Owczarski 3:41
Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. Truly, it’s an honor to be able to be a part of your podcast. I’ve been a fan for a long time and thrilled to have the opportunity to share what we’re working on at the West Coast chamber. I don’t know what more I have left. I feel like I could have you’ve summed up my whole life. You know more about me now than maybe my mom would even be able to say so. Thanks for the detailed intro. i Yeah, I’m honored.

Brandon Burton 4:10
Yeah. Well, we get personnel on here. So yeah. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Michigan West Coast chamber just to give us an idea, you know, size of the chamber staff budget that all play well into our discussion today, but also touch on the scope of work that you guys are involved with.

Jodi Owczarski 4:28
Yep, absolutely. So we’re located in Holland, Michigan. I’m glad you said Michigan West Coast chamber, because often if we’re called the West Coast chamber, people think we’re over in California. The West Coast chamber came about about 10 years ago actually when two of our chambers merged to make the West Coast chamber and that’s been a just a great process for us since that time, we have about 1200 members and recently grew our staff to seven so we’ve had a pretty small but mighty team by Stand the number of members that we serve. We are proud to be five star accredited through the US Chamber of Commerce, and hope to get that re accreditation status again when we reapply at this time next year. One unique thing perhaps about our organization is we run on something called EOS. The Entrepreneurial Operating System is maybe not as unique anymore. I think we were the very first chamber in the country to start running on EOS. But we’ve been evangelists because of the game changing that that has been for our organization. So we’re super active in our community, we say that we’re a catalyst for business growth and development. We’re a convener of leaders and influencers and a champion for a thriving community. Maybe not so unique, and we hear that often throughout the chamber community

Brandon Burton 5:51
right. Now, that is great. And I’m glad you mentioned the EOS system. And occasionally I’ll hear it in other podcasts that I listened to entrepreneurial bass podcasts and they’ll bring up the EOS system like the Michigan West Coast team or uses it Yeah. setting a good example with it. So hopefully, through our discussion today, we’ll have an opportunity to explore that a little bit and, and maybe how you guys implement that and along with our topic today. So as we focus on our topic that we’re covering for discussion today, it’s around small staff big impact. And that’s all relative, right? So each community, and staff sizes are all relative to you know, like Jodi mentioned, they’ve got seven staff but serving about 1200 Chamber members. So that is a relative small staff to that size of membership. Right now, some listening might have a membership, two or 300 and maybe be the only one but we’ll talk today about ways to make a big impact with a small staff and really getting the best bang for your buck as we go throughout this conversation today. And we’ll dive into that a little deeper as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 9:19
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Brandon Burton 10:06
All right, Jodi, we’re back. I am anxious to learn more about how you guys make a big impact, especially with your staff size and leveraging opportunities there in your community to serve your Chamber members. So what are some of those fundamental ways that you leverage that impact?

Jodi Owczarski 10:27
You know, the big thing for us, Brandon, I think is that part of Eos is being super clear on who you are, and what your focus area is in for us. When we look at making an impact, we really look at five different areas for us to work in the first being advocacy. I know that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For us, that means that we promote a business friendly environment, through access to elected officials and education on important business related issues. That’s, that’s a big focus for us. The second is business building, we want to help provide visibility connections and resources for business success, that really comes into play with our smaller businesses that are in our chamber. Third area for us is community impact, we think that we can maximize the community, the impact on our community through collaboration and innovation, right? Not everything that we do is business focused, because we know that if the community is strong, business is strong, and vice versa, right? Strong business leads to strong community strong community strong. And so we want to make sure that we’re right at that intersection, to make sure that we can help provide a thriving community. Fourth area for us leadership and talent development, we deliver education and training opportunities for employees to just grow their abilities. This has become especially important threw out this kind of post pandemic time staffs are stretched, thin, people have been pushed into positions that perhaps they weren’t quite ready for, or they’ve not been trained appropriately for, we want to fill that gap and provide opportunities to help develop the leadership and talent skill set within our employee base. And then the last one is inclusivity. We want to foster a culture of belonging within our business community, we want everyone to feel not only like there’s a seat at the table for them, but that we expect them at the table, we welcome them to the table, we’ve got a seat for them, and we want their voice to be present.

Brandon Burton 12:41
Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s imperative, I would say to be clear, and who you are and what your areas of focus are, to be able to know what your day to day tasks and responsibilities are. Right, if you’re not clear that you just kind of wander?

Jodi Owczarski 12:57
Well, and I think honestly, Brandon is the chamber, when people don’t know where to go with something, where do they go, they go to the Chamber of Commerce, right. And so we get inundated with all kinds of I’ll call them opportunities to to be involved. And some of those things are fantastic. But if we don’t know who we are, and what our purpose, what our niches, it would be really easy to just get pulled into a ton of different directions and be less impactful. Knowing what our niches what those five things are that that we’re going to work on. If it doesn’t fit in one of those five, we’re gonna have to say no, for us, and our role may be just helping them find others that might be better suited to help with the work that needs to be done.

Brandon Burton 13:46
Yeah. And you often hear oh, but it’s great exposure. Yeah, the chamber is great. But you know, and I have to remind myself that people also die of exposure, so you need to channel that right,

Jodi Owczarski 13:59
I’m gonna I’m gonna hold on to that one.

Brandon Burton 14:04
So it helps being able to narrow down what that focus is. So you can kind of weed out those extra opportunities or exposure and really hone in on what your work what what you guys are focused on. So once you have that clear identity and focus, taking the staff that you have, how do you leverage your staff into delivering in these five key areas?

Jodi Owczarski 14:28
Yeah, you know, the big thing for us, honestly, Brandon, as we start before, considering staff, and look at what work needs to be done, and then creating those roles. So whether you have a staff of one or a staff of seven, you’ve really got to clarify what that work is. Usually it should be kind of those three to five main pieces of work that need to get done, and then find the right people to do that. And so for us, we work off an accountability chart, so that we’re all on The same page of who’s accountable for what looks a lot like an org chart, but really works more from this accountability standpoint. And once we’ve got that clarity, when all of those other opportunities and exposures come up, we’re again focused back on what are the three to five most important things that we need to focus on. And so we really leverage our staff in that way to make sure we continue to stay honed in and completing the most important work, because there’s always more to do. And I

Brandon Burton 15:33
love that approach of really being, you know, clarifying the work. And as you mentioned, finding the right people. And I’m thinking for those with a really small staff, if they’re a staff of one or two, it may not be where they’re finding the right people to do it. But maybe it’s finding the right time and blocking out the time in their schedule to focus on those areas of work. So really blocking in clarifying what that work isn’t needed needs to be done and assigning the time or the people to that, I think is key,

Jodi Owczarski 16:03
for sure. Further to that, for us, we work in 90 days segments. So we work at a quarter at a time. So at the end of each quarter, we look back and review, how did we do this last quarter accomplishing what we needed to get done. And what’s the most important work that needs to happen in this next 90 days for us to be successful and on track. And so there may be additional tasks and projects and things that bubble up that needs to be tackled in that 90 days. And as we assign those to an individual, it also gives them that clarity and permission really to reprioritize their tasks and know this is my number one priority in this 90 days, this has to get done. And so that that additional clarity really helps keep us on track.

Brandon Burton 16:54
I like that idea gives you a little kind of Sprint’s to be able to be accountable for exact area of work. And, and I’m sure that all fits within those 90 day sprints, or focus all fit within the mission of the chamber as well, it does. I’ve seen as we’re recording this, it’s March of 2023. And we’re coming off of these, these Silicon Valley Banks and everything that have crashed and, and as I’m diving into that a little bit just learning about it. All these banks are public banks, and they look at one quarter at a time to try to perform for their shareholders. But they don’t have that driving mission that’s driving that organism. And you can get in real trouble if you’re just you know, looking at the next month or 90 days or quarter, or whatever it is, without that bigger mission. That’s right purpose and focus. So

Jodi Owczarski 17:50
sure. For us, we back our way in right. So we start with a 10 year target of kind of where do we want to be 10 years from now? And then, if we pictured three years from now, what would be on track to get us to that 10 years, right? And then here’s our one year goals. Here’s our one year plan of what do we need to accomplish in the next 12 months to keep us on track towards that mission? That way any of those 90 day sprints or projects, we call them rocks? align with that to make sure are we on track to meet our goals for the bigger picture, right for that one year plan? And what do we need to do in the next 90 days to make sure we hit those goals?

Brandon Burton 18:32
Yeah, I love that. It may be helpful for listeners who I think a lot of chambers that have heard of the EOS system. But maybe it may not be so easy to just summarize in a nutshell, but maybe give it your best shot just so if someone’s listening and like what is EO that it will just save them a Google search and and just hearing from the chamber that implemented it first. What is it and what how does that work? Yeah.

Jodi Owczarski 19:01
ELS just really takes all of the best business practices from a variety of sources and puts it in one easy to follow kind of recipe or cookbook. For us, it means that we have absolute clarity on who we are, what we’re called to do, what our goals are, and what we need to accomplish those those things. So it’s not anything super unique. It’s just taking all of those best principles and putting them all together in in one place. So it’s it’s having that clarity. It’s giving you a long term vision. Our our strategic plan is really a kind of a two page document that’s called a VTOL vision traction organizer that just has everything in one place. You can ask anyone on our team, what our goals are, where we’re going and what our core values are, and they could just knock those out like this right it’s it’s not That’s something that’s a document that’s put away and we pull out every three years to see if we’re on track. It’s living and breathing in driving the work that we do.

Brandon Burton 20:09
So, for those listening, you may hear Entrepreneurial Operating System and think it’s an app or a program or something, it’s really just more of a framework to kind of structure the organization around and keep you on track with your, your purpose and those core values that you mentioned.

Jodi Owczarski 20:25
Absolutely. There’s a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. That’s the cookbook. So yeah, it’s a pretty easy, a pretty easy read. But once you kind of work your way through that, it’s like, Ah, this makes sense. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:43
So for those who are listening with the smaller staff, and I feel like every chamber out there can really, you know, hone in on this, because I feel like every chamber is always understaffed for everything that’s going on. Once they, you know, kind of focus in on their their areas of work their their areas of focus of purpose, I guess, clarifying the work and who’s going to do the work? What next steps would you suggest or what, what’s the next thing to try to really maximize the impact that they have with their limited staff?

Jodi Owczarski 21:17
You’re exactly right, you gotta have clarity and your purpose and your needs, you’ve got to find the right people, right, that can do that work. And then you’ve got to build the culture that are keen to keep your all stars in place. So it’s really easy, especially for chambers to just burn out, right? Chamber work is that eight to five, Monday through Friday. Chamber work is all encompassing 24/7, if I go to a wedding, I feel like I’m still representing the chamber, right, and so it never ends. So it’s also creating those boundaries for yourself to make sure that you continue to have gas in the tank, to be able to do the work that is so incredibly important for our community. For us, I sound like an EOS evangelist, I swear they’re not paying me to say these things. But a game changer for us this year, is we read another book called The EOS life. And essentially, it boils down to five questions and whether you do EOS or not. I love this self reflection to make sure you stay on track. One is you have to say yes to all five of these questions. Are you doing what you love? Are you doing it with people that you love? Are you making a huge difference? Are you compensated appropriately? And do you have time for other passions? We hold ourselves accountable to those five questions. Because if any of those answers are no, our time here at the Chamber is likely going to be short, right? If we’re not loving the work that we do, we’re going to end up finding our way out. The biggest issue we’ve had, frankly, is time for other passions. And so we continue to put guardrails and bumpers in place to make sure that our team is getting out. And they’ve got time for other things. And I’m asking them, what what makes you happy? What brings you joy? And we’re actually tracking on a scorecard. Are you doing those things? Are you filling that part of yourself so that you can continue to feel vibrant, joyful and prepared to do the work?

Brandon Burton 23:26
Right? Now, that’s so important to avoid that burnout and make sure in developing that culture, make sure people are enjoying life, make sure they enjoy coming to work, that they enjoy the work they’re involved with. And if not, you know, let’s make some adjustments. Let’s see, you know, what does bring them passion, let’s encourage them to take some vacation days, let’s encourage you know, those things that are going to help to sustain you know, a good, a good healthy balance, if there is such a thing.

Jodi Owczarski 23:56
And you know, and there is and I think if you’re a staff of one, you might think that’s almost impossible to do. But I would challenge and say it’s more important than ever, that you can say yes to all five of those things, right? Because it all does boil down to you. So if you can’t say yes to all those things, if it’s if it’s a time issue, then figure out what what has to come off your plate, you can’t do everything. Right. So goes back to knowing what your purpose is, and and making sure that all of your time is spent on those things. And kind of peeling away the rest.

Brandon Burton 24:33
And if you’re a staff of one, just feeling totally overwhelmed, you know, utilize your board, utilize your volunteers, you know, do you guys how do you utilize volunteers in your board there at the West Coast chamber?

Jodi Owczarski 24:46
Great, great question. We’ve really changed the expectations that we have for our volunteers. We had a huge ambassador program we had I think over 100 ambassadors. They were ineffective. It was cliquey. Anybody who wanted to be an ambassador could just be an ambassador. It was more of a social club than anything else. And a couple of years ago, we decided that that just wasn’t representing who we were as an organization. So we pushed pause, and completely flipped that program, we took what we do for our organization, from an EOS clarity standpoint, and put that same principles into place for our ambassadors. And so they had to know who we were and what their purpose was. And we had expectations for them. We’ve started an application process and an interview process for them to be a part of this important team for us. We’re down to I think, 40. Now ambassadors, and they are doing such incredible meaningful work for us that I can’t imagine not having them as a resource, and an extension for our team, we have a very robust member engagement process, we call them journeys. Here, it’s a defined track of what a member can experience, the touch points they’re going to have with our organization. We don’t want them just hearing from us once a year when it’s time for them to write another check, right. And so we’ve got the structure journey, that would happen throughout the year, we can’t do all of those touch points for 1200 members, with a staff of six or seven, not in that do it well. And so we engage our ambassadors to do a lot of that outreach and engagement. And it’s a great opportunity for them, right? It grows their connections for their own job outside of the chamber. But it also provides the that meaningful contact from the Chamber’s perspective, and gives us the insight that we need so that if a membership is at risk, we know about that before, it’s just a lack of payment for an invoice. And so we can get on that issue earlier.

Brandon Burton 27:00
Right now, I love the way you guys are have changed that Ambassador program and really creating that that honed in focus. Do you know how did that transition go go from going from 100? down to four? Because I can just see, listeners be like, yes, that’s our ambassador programs, clicky. It’s way too big and effective. But you don’t want to, you know, push people away. So how do you do that transition?

Jodi Owczarski 27:27
Great question. So the first year, we allowed, we provided clarity on what the new expectations were going to be. And we allowed everyone who was currently an ambassador to reapply, or to apply and be accepted in that first year. But they did have to apply. But we weren’t going to turn any of them away. Some of them with the new expectations in place. They’re kind of like, yeah, that sounds a lot like work to me. And I think I’m out. And so that was great, right? They self selected out. Yes. Others kind of came through that first year and thought, whatever, you know, they they knew how it was going to be. And after that year of clarity and expectations. They’re like, yeah, that felt a lot more like work. I’m out this year. And so it wasn’t an abrupt change. Others, we had to have some direct conversations like, it might be time, you know, you’ve served us well, we’re so appreciative of the number of years of service you’ve had. But it might be time to let somebody else have this opportunity. And that really had gone over pretty well. But you know, it probably took three, three years or so to really get it down now to this just all star all star team of ambassadors.

Brandon Burton 28:45
Yeah. I’ve been intrigued with all these different Ambassador programs that different chambers do and from applications and interviews to I’ve heard of some that, you know, the ambassadors pay to be part of the program. And it really helps to kind of not weed out but really qualify those who are really there to show up and do the work.

Jodi Owczarski 29:07
Absolutely. We’re turning them away now. Right. I mean, I saw the list of I’m thankful I don’t have to make the decisions, because I was like, Oh, are you kidding? This person doesn’t get to be an ambassador. But it’s it’s the right thing. Right. And so now you’re raising the bar and creating it to be something that people aspire to. What a mind shift,

Brandon Burton 29:26
right? Absolutely. And really, if you’re not qualifying those ambassadors as volunteers, somehow it really ends up just creating more work for you either damage control or hands on with each of those volunteers. And so help yourself by by helping to qualify those who are volunteering.

Jodi Owczarski 29:48
100%. You know, that makes me think of something else. Brandon, I think that so often in the chamber industry, we think about we’ll just we’re just grateful for anybody that will help or any members that will join. And we’ve kind of changed that mindset here. So even from a membership perspective, we raid our members a, b, c, d, if we’re clear on who our ideal members are, we spend more time going after those ideal. And we’d spend more time trying to retain those ideal, because we found that we spent so much of our time and energy chasing and dealing with these problematic members that were paying the very lowest tier membership dues, and really weren’t well aligned with chamber membership. Well, we take their money for a membership, absolutely, well, we support them 100%. But we’re not going to spend the same energy chasing after them. And once we gave ourselves that permission, we were so much more impactful. So I mean, we’ve been retained last year, we retained our membership at over 92%. Right, you find the right the right recipe, and it works. The same thing is true. From the volunteer standpoint, I kind of identify and define what’s your ideal Ambassador look like? And go after those people and raise the bar, don’t just be like, oh, we’ll take whatever we can get. Because those problematic ambassadors that don’t align with those expectations. Oh, they are soul sucking, right? It takes all of your time, all of your energy, and they don’t. And you don’t get anything for it. It’s just a double negative.

Brandon Burton 31:33
Yeah, well, and you can go another step with recruiting your board, right? It’s it across the board, whether it’s a member of volunteer board member, and the example he gave with the members, it’s kind of the membership paradox, right, like those that need the most help that need the most attention, can’t afford to pay more than just the basic entry level membership. So being being clear on that is very helpful. Absolutely. So Jody, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, if you have any tip or action items that you might suggest for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you offer them?

Jodi Owczarski 32:14
You know, I think one thing that is often a struggle for people is kind of making decisions based on data. And so I think don’t let data be something that is carrying you use that to inform your decisions, and your work, whether it’s to go to the board and say, I need another person, or if it’s to define new opportunities for you, or if it’s to kill the sacred cow, right? It’s that program that you’ve done forever, use data to help drive those decisions. We have a very robust scorecard system, that we go over once a week as a staff, with those key metrics that show us whether we’re on track or off track. And we use that really to drive the decisions forward, what are we going to continue to do? What do we need to stop doing? Or what additional resources we need to take things to the next level? So don’t be afraid of data really can be your friend?

Brandon Burton 33:14
Yeah. Especially as you go to your board and say, I feel like we need to get rid of the sacred cow versus we need to get rid of the sacred cow look at you know, what it was five years ago? This is what we’re getting now. The engagements not there. The money’s not there, whatever it is, it’s not aligned with our mission anymore, basically.

Jodi Owczarski 33:33
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, sometimes killing those sacred cows are the best things that you can ever do. Because it gives you opportunity, space capacity to do something new that might be more meaningful for your organization, for your community for your members. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

Brandon Burton 33:52
Right? So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jodi Owczarski 34:03
Now, that’s such a great question. I was talking to somebody about that. Yesterday, I talked before about the fact that we’ve got a 10 year target, right? Where are we going to be 10 years from now. And our 10 year target does not include the words Chamber of Commerce, we say that we’re going to be an organization that, right, because I don’t know what this is going to look like. And I don’t want to restrict myself so far to say that I do know what that is. Maybe it’s a chamber of commerce. But we know that we want to be the essential business resource and leading connector in the middle of a thriving and prosperous community, whatever that might look like. I think that that the needs from our business community are evolving so quickly, that we’re going to have to continue to change to be relevant and important for the community to continue to lean out in that way.

Brandon Burton 35:01
Yeah, I like that. I had a thought just as you’re given that response that has never really crossed my mind before. But when you talk about not necessarily being married to the term Chamber of Commerce, I’ve seen a lot of chambers make that shift already, right, where they’re, they’ve changed, they’ve taken chamber out of their name. But, you know, in today’s world of digital, you know, keyword research and you know, as people look at terms they’re find found on search engines. Chamber has multiple definitions, right? If you do a search for chamber, I mean, who knows? What’s going to come up? Right? Is there a more defining word or term that can be coined to really encompass what a Chamber of Commerce does? Right? So more clarity and more focus on allowing the community to understand you know, what this organization does,

Jodi Owczarski 36:05
right? I don’t know what the answer is to that, frankly, and maybe we’ll still be a chamber. But we want to be open enough to the fact that that might not be the same label that we have. But we’ll continue to evaluate that year over year. Regardless of what we’re called, I think that there’s a need for an organization, like a chamber of commerce, to be at the core of, of any community to really help it thrive, and to be the best that it can be,

Brandon Burton 36:37
for sure. But God, this has been a fun conversation. I’m sure people have been jotting notes as they’ve been hearing your talk. But for the listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you maybe learn more about the EOS system, or just in general how you guys are doing things Sarah at the Michigan West Coast chamber, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jodi Owczarski 36:58
Absolutely, I we love that. I love it. Personally, our whole staff does. So I would encourage you to visit our website, WestCoastChamber.org. And take a look, feel free. All of our contact information is on the website on our staff page. So if you’re a membership person and want to connect with Jess or Britt, reach out, they’d be happy to hear from you. If you want to talk to me about chamber in general, or anything about EOS forward thinking, click right there on the LinkedIn, contact me directly there as well. We truly are passionate about the work that we do, and are always honored to have the opportunity to talk with other chamber professionals to help support the work that you’re each doing in your own individual communities.

Brandon Burton 37:45
That’s perfect. We’ll have of course links to your website and staff page and everything in our show notes for this episode. So anybody can can find you there as well. But Jodi, thank you so much for being with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your experience and how you guys are doing things there at the West Coast chamber. I really do appreciate it.

Jodi Owczarski 38:05
Appreciate it. Thanks so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 38:07
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Leveraging Opportunities to Build Businesses with Danielle Fitz-Hugh

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

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Our guest for this episode is Danielle Fitz-Hugh. Danielle has served as President of the Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce since 2017. Having held over the last 16 years positions as president at the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and vice president of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. Prior to the chamber profession, Daniel spent 13 years in the financial and hospitality industries in Charlottesville, Virginia market. She is known for bringing synergy energy and growth through her leadership at the helm of organizations. Danielle currently serves as a fellow for the US Chamber business leads fellowship and as chair of the Virginia association of Chamber of Commerce executives. She has been recognized as the nominee and recipient of several industry awards throughout her career including the 2016 chamber Executive of the Year by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce executives. Danielle’s involved locally and serving on boards of multiple organizations in her community. Danielle is an IOM graduate and received degrees from Averett University and Piedmont Virginia Community College. Danielle is passionate about youth development and spends time organizing officiating and coaching for the Chester church basketball league for 300 Boys ages seven to 17 each year teaching leadership team building and groupthink through sports. Danielle, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 3:39
Yeah, thank you so much Brandon for having me and Hi to all of my chamber family. Across the country we do become our own little family and lean on each other for support and help when we need it. We will send out a lifeline so hi to all of you guys that I’ve sent lifelines to over these many years. And I think the last question was something interesting although you mentioned it in my bio, so most do not know that I coach and referee and run a basketball league and so I will tell you what my husband says is I get a whole new wife for about three months every year because you put on this you know this different hat when you are shepherding and pouring into you and leading them to learn team sports and work together and come up with something that’s called this game of basketball so it’s it’s it’s I don’t know any and I run and I do it for boat mostly boys, but 98% are all boys. And at least in the mid Atlantic region as best I know I might be the only woman running traditionally all boys in this league. I’ve had a few people reach out to me. So that’s pretty unique, although outside the chamber industry that we’re talking about today. You

Brandon Burton 5:00
Yeah, no, that is unique. And kudos to you for doing that. I know, I got a glimpse this year my wife took on being the volleyball Commissioner for our volleyball league in our community. And there’s a lot of work on the back end of that. And if you’re, you know, putting on the league and coaching and doing it all and that’s it’s a lot of work beyond your your day job. So

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 5:23
yeah, I don’t coach as much anymore. But I do love to referees. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 5:30
Well, tell us a little bit about the Chesterfield chamber give us an idea of the size of your chamber scope of work staff budget, just to kind of give us an idea of perspective wise, before we get into our topic today.

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 5:44
Yeah, so the Chesterfield chamber. Next year, we’ll celebrate 25 years. And we’re just around a little under 600 businesses that are members of the chamber and about a half a million dollar budget annually, I have four and a half employees, that includes myself, and we break our staff up because all chambers are very different and kind of how they lay out their work. We have a salesperson or business development manager, then we have someone that handles our marketing, and events programming. And then we have a member relations person, which is really a retention position that works with our members and making sure they’re using the benefits. We’re on a tiered membership level. And so we make, we should make sure that the investment level that they want to use is being taken care of. So they renew, and then a bookkeeper and myself.

Brandon Burton 6:40
Yeah, that engagement aspect is so huge with me, each part is important. Don’t get me wrong, but is there’s nothing worse than it’s time to renew. And they say I didn’t get anything out of the chambers. You didn’t take him. Right, right. Right. Right. So making sure they know, everything the chamber has to offer and really get the full value out of it that

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 7:01
that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.

Brandon Burton 7:03
So are you guys primarily traditional chamber during doing a tourism economic development? What, what kind of work are you involved with?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 7:11
Yeah, so we don’t do traditional tourism or economic development. However, I serve on our local EDA, so I’ve kind of got this two part hat that I wear here in the Commonwealth. And so in our county, you know, I work we work really closely with our locality in a variety of ways. You know, we clearly in all of my communities have been this way, you know, we want to be partners with our local economic development, our regional economic development engine and statewide so that they can get businesses here. And we can take care of them because we want to make sure that we provide opera opportunities for our community to work and live and do business here in Chesterfield.

Brandon Burton 7:59
That’s great. So I am looking forward to our conversation today and our back and forth and setting this up, I can tell you have a passion for helping businesses build and be successful and, and really building strong businesses throughout your community and, and we’re going to be focusing our discussion today around leveraging opportunities to build businesses and tapping into some of Danielle’s experience and I’m sure some stories that she’ll be able to share with us that hopefully, it’ll be very relevant to other chambers that are listening today. So we will dive in deeper in that conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 11:29
All right, Danielle, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today, we’re talking about leveraging opportunities to build businesses. So I know just from some of your background that you shared with me that this is something that’s important to you, as it should be to any chamber executive, right? That should be kind of a passion for us to see, see the businesses in your community thrive and grow and, and really enhance the lives of people throughout your community through successful business. But I would love to hear from your perspective, what type of approach you take when we talk about leveraging opportunities to build businesses.

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 12:11
Yeah, so I really look at it as a two fold of education. So we have community that may or may not be in the background, understanding the day to day need for businesses in our community. And so every community out there has a little bit of that nimbyism that not in my backyard, don’t build it here kind of thing. And that’s not unusual. But I look at businesses, you know, I’m going to reference something and I should give credit, I’m going to give credit to Greg Fairchild, who used to be at the Taylor Murphy Institute at University of Virginia. So he has this theory around whales and dolphins as it relates to business. And so whales would be something like Amazon coming into your community. We just recently announced Lego coming into our community. So it’ll be the first Lego manufacturing facility in the country will be here in Chesterfield. And as they’re coming on board, you know, that will be a large development. I mean, again, who doesn’t want Lego in their community, right? But there are other types of big whales, right? And so I look at the big whales of yes, we need the big whales, but it is really the spool of dolphins that create the community. And those spools are dolphins are your mom and pop T Shirt Company that’s making you have a branded shirt on Brandon. That’s chamber chat. It is your commercial cleaning company that needs to go out there and get contracts. That’s your caterers, it’s your retailers? Those are your businesses right in your community that need the larger employees, larger companies so that they can build a full lifecycle of an opportunity of business opportunity. And so when you think of, Okay, do we want Lego or Amazon in our community so that we can have auxilary businesses then come? Because you don’t want a business desert? I’m sure many of our listeners have driven through a community and you’re going well, where’s the enterprise that there was some big business that left but if you have one whale or two whales in your community, and then you build 50 6600 Dolphins, when that one whale might leave, you still have all the dolphins. And so for me, what really creates opportunity is helping all those dolphins figure out how they can plug in, how can they get their next contract. Are they certified do Do they need to get MBE certified, swim certified, I mean, all these different things to make them the best candidate for their next piece of business.

Brandon Burton 15:09
Right? I love that analogy with the whales and dolphins and, and really in today’s environment, these dolphins can support these whales, you know worldwide really? I mean, that’s exactly right then tap in and get them educated and connect them. It helps having a big whale in your community for sure. But it’s not a deal breaker anymore, right? Like, that’s exactly right, and be very healthy, even without the whale in the community. Yeah, we’re seeing that in a neighboring community to where I am right now, where Universal Studios has announced that they’re bringing in a kind of a smaller scale, like a kid oriented theme park. And you know, for the city, it’s a huge economic development win, right? I mean, you’re bringing in a lot of tourism dollars, you’re bringing in a lot of jobs employment. But the whole idea of not in my backyard, there’s neighborhoods that back right up to that, and I, I can empathize with them. Like, I don’t know that I’d want a theme park in my back. But all the dolphins that that will bring that that will feed that that will really sustain that city for a long time. There are some trade offs and of course, infrastructure that needs to go along with it and the whole nine yards. But

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 16:25
yeah, I mean, infrastructure, education, I mean, money for schools, I mean, every community wants to have the most money going into school budgets, right and localities or are funding those budgets at a high level and in business helps that, right. So nobody wants their home taxes, you know, to go up or their business taxes to go up. But I mean, but the more enterprise you have in a community, the more opportunity to lower your household costs. But it also helps communities have sustainable employee employment. So that, you know, your wife has time to go out and volunteer as Commissioner of a volleyball group. You know, if you’ve got to think and struggle about how to keep the lights on, then you don’t have the time to go out and volunteer, and, or even have the resources to support or sponsor teams, and so forth. So we really look about look at it as an opportunity to provide community so that they can go back and build their community. So we like to say, we build business. So you can build a community

Brandon Burton 17:36
like that. I like that a lot. So I think as far as these whales go, for a large part, and I’m easy to talk about Amazon’s and Lagos and they, they kind of have the business part figured out, right? I mean, if we can create a welcoming environment to welcome them to our community, more power to us. But I see us focusing more of our attention on the dolphins Suzy talked about making sure they’re plugged in and trained. Can you talk to us more about your approach with these dolphins and how you go about finding the NA, I mean, we’re using this as a kind of a parallel, but these dolphins are the smaller businesses support bigger businesses and support your community. So how do you go about finding them learning about what they need addressing those needs, just the the day to day grit, I guess of what it comes down to is supporting these businesses?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 18:28
Well, in our community, we really are about building relationships, and building a community to help you grow organically. So, you know, we really preach the match message of inclusiveness from a business perspective. So our small businesses, which we you know, most communities are small businesses, you just hear more about the large businesses, right. So you know, our smaller businesses, we really are working to make sure that they’ve got their financial house in order. And if they don’t hear the tools through our programming to help them keep their financial house in order, especially when they’re going out after contracts. I mean, really understanding sort of that cash flow model that, you know, you may not be getting paid the same week, because you’ve got to invoice and are they net 30. Net 45, that 90, you know, depending on how they’re working with their contracts on being able to leverage lines of credit so that they can offset that cash flow, demand and stay open and pay employees and that sort of thing. And then building their long term marketing and branding strategy. And through some of our, you know, member partners on what that looks like. So, yes, you have the contract now, but let’s look at what’s down the road for six months, two years, five years from now. So really working with businesses and phased approach So that zero to two year phased approach, you know, the entrepreneur who has a passion who started the business who’s hustling. And you know, I, like I love an analogy killing what they eat when you’re hustling as an entrepreneur. So they’re in the market, and they’re running on that little hamster wheel. So we work with them on building capacity. And then okay, they’re making some money, they’re ready to kind of take that next leveraged approach. And then you’ve got kind of those two year to five year businesses who nail can go after some significant contracts of business for the long term and put some things into place. And we really want to, you know, launch their businesses. So by the time they get to that five year mark, that they are the name that comes up in conversations when thinking about their services, their goods, their products, and the next piece of business that’s on the table. And so we work really hard with our chamber member partners on that education so that they can build not just the business today, but really a sustainable lifetime business.

Brandon Burton 21:07
Right. So I know, as businesses join the chamber, they join for a variety of different reasons, right? Maybe it’s just what they see on the surface, you know, maybe they have a friend and they hear about your Gala. And they really think that’s anything or they’re in it for networking or whatever. So you have this member engagement person on your staff to help share with the full array of services are? How besides having that member engagement person? How do you make sure people are really fully participating? Or at least knowing about everything that you have to offer? And how do you offer some of these things? So some of the education some of the you had mentioned marketing and branding, branding strategies? Are these in person kind of seminars? Are they? How do you what’s your approach?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 22:02
So So Brandon, I might disagree with you just slightly, I might say businesses join for one reason. And that’s to make money. Sure. And the other pieces is how we deliver that. And so for us, we deliver it in a phased approach. So, you know, Brandon at chamber chat, decides they want to join the chamber, they’ve heard amazing things as you all do about your chamber. And they do and they decide to pull the trigger I’m going to join. So what our onboarding looks like is you’ve joined, we now team you up with an ambassador, which is pretty traditional, across our industry, that Ambassador is a member just like you are, who now walks you through all the things that they think are important for you to get involved with. And they stay with you for a year and build this tight community of relationships with you. They meet you at events, they talk to you about different programs, and really create a roadmap for your engagement, and things that you can do, because we do more than just what one member would want. And I tend to tell people all the time, you can’t do everything, because you got to do other pieces of your business, but really work with them on building that roadmap. And then at about the 90 day mark, my member relations person, my engagement person, you know, sets up a meeting with them, and says, Hey, because we’re tiered, which means you don’t just join the chamber, you join and you tell us how you want to engage with us? What value of engagement Do you want. And so based on how you’ve said, when you’ve invested on how you want to engage with us, our member relations person is saying, Hey, you said networking and marketing is important for you as a new business, because you’ve got to get your name and brand out there were 90 days and we still have some pieces that you haven’t done yet. Let’s schedule them for the next nine months. Because sometimes what will happen is a member will join. They forget the thing that bought them to the chamber. Or they only do that one piece, we have a 200 person luncheon every month. So it’s like putting on a gala every month. And so a lot of members join because they want to come to that one that one event. But we do so much more that our member engagement person will say, here is your list of 30 benefits, you know, whatever that list is, let’s go ahead and schedule them for the whole 12 month of this annual investment. That way, you’re not forgetting about your membership. We’re key and we’re also making sure that we keep your brand in front of our members for the whole year versus delivering all the benefits in the first 90 days, six months, four months, whatever that timeframe is so we’ve the engagement person really works with each member on those benefits and getting them across messaging for the whole 12 months of their annual investment lifecycle.

Brandon Burton 25:09
I think that’s a brilliant idea to sit down and say, here’s the main things that would be of most value to you, let’s get them on the calendar, let’s make sure you show up, let’s make sure you participate and be fully engaged, you know, to the extent of what you need for your business to succeed, to meet those expectations.

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 25:28
And we do have, and we do have, like many organizations, we do have some automation that we can do with that to some sort of like a drip automation, to remind certain tiered levels, that these things are coming up, we’ve got some concierge service, and that related to our member engagement person, so much like a concierge at a hotel would work with the hotel guests on making their reservations for the theater, or the next show, we have some concierge services built into our memberships. So at certain investment engagement levels, larger companies are whales, right? They might have someone that manages all of their benefits at that company. And we have some concierge services that allows them to work with us. They’re not going into the system, they don’t have time to log in. We take care of all of that for the for them.

Brandon Burton 26:25
Yeah, that’s so smart. As you’re explaining how you guys approach this, I see all these little rabbit holes that I can go to, for example, and we don’t need to go way down this road. But as your member engagement person reaches out and is helping to plan out the year with each of these members. Is the idea of sponsorships for any of these events ever brought up? Or does that responsibility fall on somebody else within your organization, or just I’m sure people listening here, this is great to schedule this out. And you can give them the opportunity to sponsor you know when or do these things?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 27:06
Yeah, so we take a little different approach to sponsorship, we actually work with a national company called Why GM, Jason EB giving him a shout out. And we run sponsorship once a year for the whole year. And here’s the reason why we work with our members to match their need to fit in front of the right audience with the opportunities that we have. And it also creates space where we’re not going back to members several times a year going, Hey, we’ve got this program. It’s amazing. Do you want to sponsor we make one ask, we talk about what their marketing budget is for the chamber, we work we have volunteers that help us with this campaign. And then we take their marketing budget, much like we do their investment benefits, and spread them out for the year, we take their marketing budget, and spread out opportunities for the full year. So we’ve been doing this for three years. And it really does do an additional piece is that chambers are not chasing money to find the sponsorship to do the work that they want to do that our members are really telling us in front of the year. What are what things are important to them with their checkbooks, they’re sponsoring the things that make sense for them. So if you’ve got this program that you’ve been holding on, you’ve got you know, the sacred cow that you’ve been holding on to, and no one is sponsoring it and you’re trying to beg people to sponsor it during your campaign season, then, baby it’s not what your members want. I mean, members talk with their money. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:43
no, that’s very true. As we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask any tip or action item that you may have for listeners who are desiring to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 29:01
Yeah, I would say you know, the retention part, right. Everybody focuses on sales, getting the new members, everyone focuses on sales. I’m a defensive coach. I believe that if I can keep you from shooting, I don’t have to worry about how many shots you make. Right? That’s right. I believe that if I can keep you in. I don’t have to worry about getting the new the new are gonna come. Yeah, right. So so for for for me that one tip is think about how you strategically organize your teams. Because we know we’ve heard it for decades, that it takes less to keep a member than it does to recruit a new member. So we flip the funnel on upside down and we put the funnel of the retention because then if you’re working on retention, you all of a sudden have 600 Cheerleaders that are saying, come join this organization. And so for us, we’ve turned the ownership to the members, it is their chamber to grow. It is their responsibility to refer. Yeah, and we are at 5% referrals on our new members that come in. And so, I mean, that makes my salespersons job easier because it’s a warm clothes, right? We’re not going and doing cold calls anymore, right? There’s a new model out there. So we are so referral base, because we’re telling the members, if you want more people to market network build relations, to bring them to us. If you’ve enjoyed your membership, and you’re getting benefit from it, refer your friends refer your other referral group connections to our chamber. And we’ve built that way.

Brandon Burton 30:57
Yeah, those are great points. And I love the idea of focusing on retention. And if you keep them for the long term, and over time, your membership fees will increase naturally. And your membership continues to grow, because they’re getting value and bringing people in and just the overall health of the organization continues to get stronger, and you’re not focusing on, you know, like you said, killing what you eat, just constantly going after the next one. And each week, you’re able to grow in a healthy and sustainable way. So that’s a great model you guys are following. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 31:44
Well, I think we will continue to be innovative. Chambers look different today than they did five years ago. If they don’t look different today, they didn’t make it through the last three years, right. And so we’ve got to continue to take risks, our businesses demand it, and we need to follow their direction. So for instance, when businesses had to, you know, open, chambers need to open so we can service them. And I know, you know, we were made open during this past three years, we look different, right? So we are not stuck to traditional models of what work has to look like, because our businesses are not stuck to traditional models of what work needs to look like. So I think using industry as the model, our chambers across the country need to take the lead because they’re able to shift so quickly. And so should our chambers be able to do there’s no more well, we’ve always done it that way. Okay,

Brandon Burton 33:01
yeah. And there’s a being able to be flexible and make that shift, follow the lead of your members, there’s coming out of the last three years, there’s a lot of, you know, innovations that allow for you to be more productive, to be able to service your members better to be able to connect with them, whether it’s a zoom call, whether it’s a you know, Cal a scheduling, you know, mechanism or app or something ways to connect, that we you know, three, four years ago, we weren’t using on a regular That’s exactly right. And now it really allows us to get a lot more done and be a lot more efficient and in the end, you know, serve our members in a better way. So great, great insight into the future. Thank you so much. Yes. So Danielle, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners out there who would like to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things that are in Chesterfield, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 34:01
Yeah, so we’re pretty all of us are pretty active on all social media. You can find us at ChesterfieldChamber.com on social media, we are Chesterfield Chamber VA and as in Virginia, because there are a couple other Chesterfield Chambers in the country. And so since this is a podcast, I’ll make that notation that we are Chesterfield Chamber VA, just follow us like us, you know, follow us on Instagram. And we’ll if you message us there, we will message you and contact you back. Also on LinkedIn, I mean, we are crazy LinkedIn people in our community. So and I will say we also host Blitzer, which is, you know, one of these new pandemic platforms. And so we open it and so occasionally I’ll get businesses from all across the community across the country that will come into it and network because business does not have borders.

Brandon Burton 34:53
Absolutely. Yeah. As we talked about earlier with those dolphins supporting whales outside of your community. So how All right, very good. Well, I appreciate that, Danielle, well, we’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episodes, people can find it there. But feel like we’ve had a great discussion today brought a lot of value and perspective. And I’m sure listeners are taking some notes and things that they can implement and discuss, you know, making some changes to be more productive in and serving the businesses and their community to build stronger businesses and in turn a stronger community. So thank you for being with us today and sharing your experience and insights.

Danielle Fitz-Hugh 35:32
Thank you for having us.

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

Keeping Local Dollars Local with Donna Novitsky

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

Let’s hear from Becky Womble, President of the Bastrop Chamber to hear about her experience with Community Matters.

Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

Our guest for this episode is Donovan ski Donna is the co founder of Yiftee Donna has combined her interests in local community building and her interests in high tech to co found nifty to bring profitable business to local shops and restaurants. Yiftee has grown to more than 500 communities now 15,500 merchants and helped to keep $45 million local to help small businesses just the last three years. Prior to giftee. Donna has led several startup companies and worked with top tier venture capital firm. She teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University and frequently speaks on topics related to entrepreneurship and women in business. Donna holds a BS and industrial engineering with distinction from Stanford University and a Harvard MBA. And Donna, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Donna Novitsky 3:05
Thanks, Brandon. And hello chamber champions. It is such a pleasure to be here. I’ve really enjoyed meeting many of you at the ACCE show and on zoom over the year, last few years. But let’s see something interesting about me. Well, I guess depending on how you count them, as As Brandon mentioned, I’ve been in tech. So Yiftee is my third or my 19th. Startup. out right. So I guess you could say I’m an entrepreneur at heart. My dad taught me that word when I was 12. And it kind of stuck. So I love starting new things and helping others do so too. So I end up doing a lot of coaching and mentoring of young people, which is super fun, because they’re always challenging me to learn new things.

Brandon Burton 3:58
Right now that is that is interesting. I like getting these little facts about people. And I’m sure we could dig in deeper on on how you count those businesses that you’re part of starting. Well, before we dive into our topic for today, why don’t you take a few minutes and just tell us a little bit about Yiftee what Yiftee is kind of the purpose the vision with it. And then we can dive in a little bit deeper on on how it all works.

Donna Novitsky 4:24
Okay, great. So we launched Yiftee over 10 years ago, and for the first five or six years, the business went through the typical startup rollercoaster. In 2018. We did the first what we now call community cards. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But then the pandemic hit in 2020. And many chambers were worried about losing all their small businesses and they were looking for ways to help their members and we happen to have a solution for that. So calm cards as We call them took off. And as bright as Brandon mentioned, were in more than 500 communities and 15,000 local businesses. So I guess you could say we got here with hard work, a lot of stubbornness and even more luck, because who would have predicted a pandemic? We’re a small team. We are 100% remote and our headquarters in the Bay Area. And we have teammates in California, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Florida and Puerto Rico. So we’re all over the place just like you guys.

Brandon Burton 5:35
Awesome. Now that definitely gives a good introduction to what Yiftee is, and I’m excited to get in a little deeper on it as we settled on our topic for this discussion. Today we are going to talk about keeping local dollars local. And as I mentioned in your bio, you guys have helped keep over $45 million local for small businesses and communities across the country. So I’m excited to dive in deeper on this learn how the program works and help tell chambers how they can help keep dollars local in their community as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 8:28
What if you could keep holiday shopping local this year? Launch a community card with Yiftee. And you can. Hi, I’m Raquel from Yiftee. Yiftee works with over 500 chambers, main streets, cities and downtown associations providing custom branded electronic gift cards that can only be redeemed at your local businesses. This program is free for you and your participating businesses. And if you sign up now, you’ll watch your local businesses thrive this holiday season. Email sales@yiftee.com to learn more, that’s sales@yiftee.com.

Brandon Burton 9:08
All right, Donna, we’re back. So tell us what with Yiftee How does it work? You’d mentioned these comm cards. So what is a comm card and how does it work and how does it lead to keeping dollars local?

Donna Novitsky 9:23
Okay, a comm card or community card. It’s a digital gift card and it is branded for a city town or neighborhood and can be redeemed exclusively at the local shops and restaurants in that area. So shout out to Spartanburg South Carolina chamber who was our very first chamber customer back in 2018. Followed by Lake Zurich, Illinois, Niles, Illinois and DeWitt, Iowa. If you’re out there thank you guys. Chambers often make the program a member benefit because they Control specifically which merchants can participate in it. It’s kind of like next generation chamber checks. But we do all the sales, customer service technology and financial management. And our chamber partner in each community promotes the program and recruits the merchants. So it’s a real partnership with the chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:23
So what does the recruitment look like as the chamber goes out to recruit businesses to participate in it? Is their marketing material that’s provided as their scripts is their coaching that goes along with it? What does that look like?

Donna Novitsky 10:36
Oh, that stuff. So in terms of getting the program up and running, we all they have to, there’s no cost. First of all, for the program, the chambers don’t have to pay anything. And the merchants don’t have to pay anything to participate. And it’s backed by MasterCard. So any merchant that takes MasterCard can participate in the program, and there’s no special equipment or integration with their POs that they need. So all they have to do is sign the agreement. And then we’ll have their portal set up within 24 hours. And we start sending lots of materials, there’s a four week launch program with lots of materials. So we’ll give you the copy to recruit an email to send an email message out to your members to invite them to the program. And then when you’re ready, we send what we call an activation card to the merchants, which is a 10 cent prepaid MasterCard, they process that they get the dime. And that registers their POS with us. And that’s how we limit the cards to be used exclusively at your members businesses. So we’re providing a lot of information along the way. Honest, to be honest, the long pole in the tent in terms of getting the program running is, is recruiting the merchants because they are just super busy. And you got to get their attention. So

Brandon Burton 12:05
Right. So in your experience over the years of launching these community card programs, is there an ideal time of year? Or does it depend on the community? Or how did how do you see the most successful timing maybe as far as rolling out a community card?

Donna Novitsky 12:22
Well, as you guys might know, gift cards are the number one requested holiday gift. So that means that your merchants are probably paying more attention to gift card programs at the holidays. So the ideal time to launch it takes about four weeks to launch in general, you can do it faster, but would be probably around September, October, because that’s when your merchants are starting to think about gift card programs. And you’ll it’ll be easier to get their attention. So we do six months worth of business in the month of December. So Oh, wow. By far the high point of the year for for the gift card business.

Brandon Burton 13:15
Yeah. So can you talk to us a little bit more about the digital gift, gift card aspect of it. So it’s a digital gift card in nature. So how does that work? Does it go on their phone? How do they do the transactions? How do they make the purchase? How does that? How’s that all of that structured?

Donna Novitsky 13:32
Right, so this is an all digital program. That’s how we can do it without any cost to the chambers or the merchants. So there’s no little plastic cards. The way that it works is people you’ll have a website where that we host for you, but it’s branded for your community, so you don’t even see it on that website. It’s all about your local community. And people you put a link on your chamber page, a button that says buy our community gift card, and go there to buy the gift card. And it’s just a really simple process that they go through to buy that card online. They can either send it to whoever they want to send it to through email, or they can print them out. So if they want it put it in somebody’s holiday stocking, they just print it out and put it in the in their holiday stocking. Then the recipient will get that either on a piece of paper or through email. And they take it into the shop. When it’s by eat if it’s on paper, they can also save it to their phone with a QR code. And they take it into the shop or the restaurant and show their phone to the say one of your merchants who is participating in the program. They will process that MasterCard, it’s a MasterCard so that merchants gonna process it like a like a phone order. So they would enter that the code from the MasterCard, MasterCard immediately validates that transaction And they know they’re gonna get paid in their normal nightly settlement with all the other credit card transactions from that day. And then the balance on the phone will change. So if you had a $25 card and you bought a cup of coffee, now your phone’s gonna say you have a gift card for $21. And I could go next door to the next shop and get my nails done or buy something in a boutique. So it’s multi use card, just like a MasterCard gift card, but it only works at your members stores.

Brandon Burton 15:31
Yeah. So I see, you know, similarly, I’ve got kids in high school, and every year that football team does their little, they do a fundraiser where they’re selling coupons to local businesses, and, and this year, they went digital with it. So it’s on your phone, you got to go show, if you go to the restaurant, it’s not nearly as high tech, you’re literally showing them the screen. And then they go manually enter it and it’s done. But I see this as being much more valuable in the fact of you have $1 amount that’s fixed with this gift card with this community gift card. And then you have your list of vendors that you can go spend it on whatever you want with any of these vendors, right, like you’re not limited to redeeming, you know, $5 off after a $25 purchase or anything like that. It’s not a confined it’s an actual cash on a card,

Donna Novitsky 16:23
right to build just like any other gift card, but it works at multiple different stores. And you know, until the money runs out on the card.

Brandon Burton 16:31
And then is all the list of vendors is that just kept up to date on the website, or is that within? How do the users of the gift card keep up to date on who’s participating? Yeah, we

Donna Novitsky 16:43
maintain that. So if a merchant if a new merchant joins your chamber and they and you want to add them to the program, they will automatically show up on the website once they run their activation card. And the all the people with cards out there in your community can just click on the card itself, scroll down and see all the participating merchants so it’s automatically updated.

Brandon Burton 17:07
Okay, so as a chamber rolls out a community card program, who are the typical people who are buying the gift cards and why?

Donna Novitsky 17:18
Well, that actually we had some surprises on that. So of course, when you think gift cards, do you think consumers so there’s a healthy chunk of consumer business of the people who buy cards, but also where a lot of our business comes from is bulk purchases. So again, if you have chamber checks, you know you sell a lot at the holidays from local businesses who buy them for their employees so they can keep their money in the community. Well, that has happened in spades with this program so schools will buy them for all the teachers in the school. Kent State University bought 10s of 1000s of dollars for their faculty of the Kent Ohio card. We’ve had Spartanburg had their local hospital buy cards. Frankfort, Kentucky and Riverdale Park Maryland have government programs for low income families where the government funds cards for these families and all the money stays in the community. Realtors and developers in Mountain View California give them as welcome gifts to new tenants and homebuyers. A nonprofit in Bullock, Arizona buys them for their volunteers, employers in Detroit and lots of other cities buy them for employee reward programs. And of course, there are huge corporate orders or holiday gifts. So that was we didn’t understand when we started this company that things you learned that about a third of the 180 $9 billion US gift card market is corporate purchases. Before this program, all that money was going to the big box stores and E commerce like Amazon and Starbucks, right? So now those organizations have a way to keep their dollars in the community. And that has been a great opportunity for us

Brandon Burton 19:23
that really turn the light on in my head going through that explanation because especially at the holiday time, a lot of these major employers, a lot of them are going to be big supporters of the chamber financially, you know, maybe some of the major investors, but they also have a lot of employees in the community. And around the holiday time it’s a normal thing to see whether it’s bonuses or some kind of a gift or maybe they give you know Amazon gift cards or Starbucks gift cards like you’re saying and if they can make that shift and say here’s a community gift card that you can use it any one of these men ders, that’s listed in the community. And instead of sending all of this, you know, purchasing power to Amazon, let’s keep it in our community and have it keep turning over, you know, time and time again. That’s very powerful. So I’m curious it with an individual chamber running their community card program, are they able to keep track? Or is there like a running total of how much money they’re keeping in their community?

Donna Novitsky 20:26
Yeah, there is. So we give them they can run reports anytime they want. As I mentioned earlier, they have a portal and you can log into your portal and run a report and see everybody that has purchased cards, and their how much the dollar value of the card and how much remains on the balance of that card. And they actually have marketing rights to that information. So if you have a chamber newsletter, you could add them to your newsletter or something, you know, contribute to building your community. But my favorite report is the gifts redeemed report. Because in that report, you can see every single transaction that was spent at each merchant in the program, so I could see that $4.27 was spent for a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop, I could see that someone went to a boutique and spent $92. So I can’t we don’t tell you who had the coffee or went to the boutique, that’s a privacy issue. So we don’t share that information. But for your members, you have reports of exactly how much business you have walked into the door in their stores. So yeah, program, you can really show the value added.

Brandon Burton 21:42
Yeah. And there’s really there’s no cost or no downfall really for business to participate to if you’re that local coffee shop or retailer. There’s, there’s no downside to it, it just gets access to more people coming in and to be able to get a report from the chamber saying we’d sent X number of dollars to your business over the last year, whatever the timeframe is, that can be pretty powerful, and and create that stickiness factor with your members with your with your chamber. Yeah, so I can imagine, you know, over the 500 communities that you’re working with, and over the years, that there’s probably been some pitfalls in rolling out a program. What are what are some of these things that you see that maybe get overlooked? Or maybe assume maybe something’s too easy? What are some of these pitfalls rolling out? The community card program?

Donna Novitsky 22:38
Yeah, life happens, right? Go. So honestly, the hardest thing about the program where the snags can happen is on the merchant recruiting side, you know, you think it makes so much sense, because it’s all upside for them, it doesn’t cost him anything, and we’re going to drive business in the door, but they are busy. And this is something new, and it needs to be explained. So sometimes that takes more time than the chamber anticipated. And it just doesn’t happen. Or it doesn’t happen as quickly as they wanted. So that’s one thing to be prepared for. And we’re always upfront about that. The cool thing is, as we and then I guess I would say the other thing is, you guys in chambers wear so many different hats, right? So the program will get launched. But then you’re off to planning, you know, the labor day parade or the Halloween festival or whatever is happening next, because there’s never a dull moment in the chamber. So the focus on marketing the program locally in the community wanes, and then the community forgets about it. So what we’re doing is, since we’ve been able to grow, I’m beginning to have started hiring some people on the 50 end, to help out our chamber partners and help them recruit some of those bulk purchasers or do some local marketing for them, or even help recruit those merchants. So as we grow, we will continue to be able to put more resources into ongoing sales of the cards and training and recruiting of merchants.

Brandon Burton 24:16
Yeah. So the thought just came to me as I say, for example, a chamber says we want to do a community card program. What is the onboarding process? Like? Do you try to get a certain number of vendors on board with it? So there’s some value as you start selling the cards or where’s that balance where that trade off is like Okay, now it’s time to turn this on and start selling the cards.

Donna Novitsky 24:39
Yeah, it’s a chicken and egg thing, isn’t it? Right? You need merchants you need card buyers. So we always say for the merchants. The best way to recruit is every community has two or three trendsetter merchants, you know the ones who are out there ahead of the pack and the other merchants really respect them generally So you start with those guys. And then they can help you recruit the next wave, we’d like to say we’d like to see around 15 to 20 merchants on the program at launch. And that’s plenty. And then it just grows from there. So they can get added in over time as as they figure out what’s going on in want to jump on board.

Brandon Burton 25:21
So that definitely makes sense. And there are those trendsetters and those individuals in the community that have some influence that that can bring others along with them. So great strategy. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask, I’d like asking if there’s any tip or an action item you might have for chambers who are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what what piece of advice might you have to offer?

Becki Womble 25:50
Let’s see. Well, there’s

Donna Novitsky 25:53
one more aspect to the program that I wanted to make sure and cover, which is which was also I mentioned at the beginning that we got here through a lot of luck. This is another part of the luck piece. So since 2021, when the US federal government issued $350 billion to the cities all across the country, 19,000 cities, and in the American rescue plan act, some of that money is still floating around out there. It doesn’t have to be spent until it doesn’t have to be allocated until 2024, or spent until 2026. And a lot of those dollars have found their way to this program. As a bonus program. So for instance, buy $100 card, get a free $50 card. And that is a win all the way around. Because to the merchants, they’re going to see it’s going to triple the grant money, right? To the consumer, they’re getting free money. And also to the merchants, it’s driving foot traffic into their stores, which is what they really need long term is the community shopping there and developing those new shopping habits. So I just want to throw that out there. Because I probably should have mentioned it when you asked about who buys the cards, because that has driven a lot of purchases lately.

Brandon Burton 27:22
Yeah. We also want to circle back to that.

Donna Novitsky 27:25
Yeah, we also have seen some programs sponsored by banks or realtors will sponsor bonus programs. So while it while that’s still that money is still available, it might be worth speaking with your City Office of Economic Development to see what might still be out there on allocated.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
That’s good. Yeah.

Donna Novitsky 27:50
So back to your other question of what to think about now? Well, you know, of course, I would love to, we’d love to chat with you and see if this kind of a program would be a good fit for your community. So that would be the next step, I guess.

Brandon Burton 28:05
Yeah. Well, and as many of you know, EFT is one of the sponsors of chamber chat podcast and the shows only here because of the sponsors that keep it going. So love for you to reach out and check out EFT and see if it’s a good fit for your community. But Donna, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Donna Novitsky 28:34
So like, as I mentioned, we attend various chamber events like the ACCE and some of the regional ones. And it’s clear to us that chambers are really community builders. They bring residents, merchants, employers and city government together for the betterment of the community from a business point of view. And this program is something that we think is that is truly actionable and provides measurable results to the Chamber’s members, both for the employers who purchased the cards and the merchants who redeemed them. So I just see chambers can continuing to do what they do, which is, you know, build their communities from a business point of view. And hopefully, we can be a tool that helps them do that.

Brandon Burton 29:25
Awesome. So why don’t you share with everyone how they can reach out and connect. If you have any other questions about how the community card programs work, and how to get in contact with your team and get things started in their community. What would be the good next step or where would you point them to?

Donna Novitsky 29:42
Sure Yiftee.com and you can sign up there for a demo. We do them three days a week. And usually there’ll be a couple other chambers or sometimes main streets or downtown’s on the demo, which is super fun. It’s like little zoom party we have. And everyone gets to hear each other’s questions. And I love the collaborative nature of this community of chambers. It’s such a joy to work with people. And from there, you’ll get plugged into me or probably you’ll meet Raquel or Tyson on my team. And they’ll be doing a live demo. So you can ask all your questions. And we go from there. We’re happy also to do webinars or demos for your board of directors or whatever helps you.

Brandon Burton 30:33
Yeah. So another question I thought of Do you ever see a chamber and a Downtown Association, Merton to come together in a program like this to really leverage the the impact they both have all the time? Awesome, good deal? Well, I’d encourage everybody to reach out and and check out the demos they offer the FDA offers and just you know, explore it, see if this is a way that you can help keep local dollars local in your community and make a bigger impact as you and your chamber continue to build your community. Donna, I appreciate you coming on with us and spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast and, and I hope a lot of people take you up on the offer to check out what you guys have to offer in their communities.

Donna Novitsky 31:22
Thank you so much. And thanks to all the Chamber Champions out there for what you do. It’s amazing.

Brandon Burton 31:27
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