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Small Business with Tom Sullivan

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

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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Thomas Sullivan. Thomas is the Vice President of Small Business Policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, working with the US Chamber’s nationwide network. Tom harnesses the views of small businesses and translates that grassroots power into federal policies that bolster free enterprise and reward entrepreneurships. He also runs a US Chamber Small Business Council, engaging those members on a regular basis to increase Small Business input and involvement in chamber initiatives. Tom’s advocacy career spans from creating Legal Center at the National Federation of Independent Business to General Counsel at the Bipartisan Policy Center to building the innovative lending platform Association. Tom received unanimous Senate approval to serve as SBA Chief Counsel for advocacy at the George W Bush administration, and remains active in the bush Cheney alumni network. Tom and his wife live in Virginia and are blessed with two teenage sons. Tom serves on the board for the Global Entrepreneurship Network and is a graduate of the Chamber’s four year Ioan credential program. Tom, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well. Thank

Tom Sullivan 2:37
you. Brandon, hello all the chamber chat listeners, it’s great to be with you today. Let’s see something interesting about me. Well, you know Brandon, when you and I were chatting about the day that this podcast will air, April one, not only is it April Fool’s Day, but it is a day that is forever etched in my memory and pain in my lower back, because I have significant structure in my lower back where several of my vertebrae are fused together, and that was done on April 1, a long time ago, so I’ll Never forget that day. It is certainly something interesting, yeah,

Brandon Burton 3:22
and hopefully it’s improved your life since then,

Tom Sullivan 3:27
it has, definitely has. I can, I can, I can use both legs regularly. So yes, it’s, it’s, it worked. That

Brandon Burton 3:35
is a good improvement, for sure. Yeah, well, Tom usually I have the guests tell a little bit about their chamber size, staff, budget, scope of work being at the US Chamber, why don’t you instead tell us a little bit more about your role with the US Chamber to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Well, Brandon,

Tom Sullivan 3:54
thank you. So first of all, I am a little bit biased, but I do have the best job at the United States Chamber of Commerce here in Washington, DC. The reason it’s the best job is I get to spend every day talking with folks who are probably listening to this podcast local state chamber leaders as well as their small business members. Now I get the added benefit of taking what I learned from all of those wonderful folks and advocate before Congress and the White House, but I truly think it is the best job, mostly because I get to talk with small business owners every day.

Brandon Burton 4:29
Absolutely, I can totally understand why you would say it’s the best job in the world. That’s I love working with chambers for that very reason, they’re the ones that are dealing with people that are on the front lines with, you know, putting bread on the table, so to speak, for families across this country. Well, for our topic of conversation today, we’re going to spend the majority of our focus on small business on the local and the national scale. And. And bringing in some of your expertise, some of the things that you’ve seen, and some things that you may see on the horizon as well, with regard to small business, and we’ll dive into this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Joe Duemig
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Rose Duemig
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Joe Duemig
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Brandon Burton
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All right. Tom, we are back. So as we turn our focus today on small business, on the local and the national scale, I know your focus is on that all the time, but what are some of the things that you see as you, as you interact with chambers across the country, as you, you know, pay attention to the needs of small businesses. What are those things that are top of mind right now, things that to be paying attention about? To be fair, we are recording this in in December of 2024 so by the time this comes out in in April 2025 we may see a little bit of a different climate, but at this point, how do you see things, and what are those things that are top of mind? Well,

Tom Sullivan 9:10
thank you Brandon, and thank you also for letting the listeners know that here in December, while we’re awaiting president elect Trump to take office, there is some uncertainty, and I’m sure that by April, all that uncertainty, you know, smooth sailing, but, but seriously, there are some things that will certainly still be front and center on the radar as your listeners are listening right now. Probably the thing that has been on every small business owners radar for close to three years has been inflation. This has been the the strongest headwind for small business growth for three years and. There certainly have been proposals to reduce inflation and whatever those proposals are, small businesses are going to be the largest cheerleading section, because it it has been a wet blanket on growth for small businesses that have been anxious for that growth to take off for some time. So solutions to inflation are front and center for every small business in the country, and most of my job is trying to look at small business policy through the lenses of growth, and that means through the lenses of those policy solutions designed to reduce inflation.

Brandon Burton 10:45
And that is such a hot topic, for sure. And even as this is released in April of 2025 inflation is not one of those things that you can just turn a dial and it’s fixed right. There’s, it’s a it’s that small steering of that ship, that that makes those, those changes. And some of this gets done on the, you know, the advocacy front. Some of it is, you know, when it comes to importing and exporting and where these goods are coming from, and there’s a lot that plays into the cost of goods, right to Yeah, what we look at with inflation, but for sure, on the local level, for the local chambers listening, is there, are there things that they can do to whether it’s to help with inflation or or to put minds at ease of their members and help them to navigate their way through the uncertainty with with inflation. Well, let’s, let’s

Tom Sullivan 11:45
start first hit on your your question about, How do they help? And I just want every listener to know how important it is to show up. And I don’t mean just show up was switching on the zoom camera or picking up the phone. I mean, coming to Washington, DC and having your voices heard. I mean, this is something I do every day. And you know, it’s nice when lawmakers are sick of seeing my face, but every time a small business owner comes from the district that has elected this member of Congress. Every time they go into the office. That’s what makes a difference. I mean, the best lobbyist I have ever met, and I’m saying that with full acknowledgement that my wife is a lobbyist. So the best lobbyist I have ever met is Yasin Taru from Knoxville, Tennessee. He owns a falafel shop, and he comes to Washington, DC, and, you know, he gets the selfie pictures with with members of Congress and all that stuff. But then when the member of Congress sits down and the staff around them take out their notepads and pencils. He says, Look, he starts locally. Hey, when are you going to, you know, you said you were going to have some federal money to rebuild that bridge. Like, how’s that going? Where’s the progress? Because I haven’t seen the construction trucks pulling up yet. And and the member of Congress looks at the staff member and says, okay, yeah, we got to follow up with that. And then Yaseen generally, then goes on to tax policy. It says, Look, you know, some of these tax provisions really have to be made permanent, because it helps me and it helps millions of other small businesses around the meeting ends, Yasin goes home to his beautiful family, and then it’s up to me and my colleagues at the US Chamber of Commerce, along with the colleagues of chambers all over the United States, to make sure that there’s follow up capitalizing on that local small business owners advocacy. And I could tell you, Brandon, it makes a huge, huge difference. Every Yaffe in Toru who shows up in a member of Congress’s office, is worth 20 times when I show up. Yeah, so the magnifying impact really, really does make a difference. And now I know that small business owners, you know, they gotta make enough profit at the end of the day so that the lights can get turned on the following day, and they’ve got to make enough money so that food does get on the table of their employees. So it’s hard just to pick up and go to Washington, DC, but I can assure every small business owner it makes a difference, and what makes an extra difference is when they talk with their local chamber first, make sure they get their message down so that they know what the ask is that will help them as a small business and will help the entire community of small businesses that honestly, they’re representing when they make that trip to Washington, DC.

Brandon Burton 14:57
Yeah, and I see you know. All the time, these chambers that do their Washington DC fly in and, you know, maybe bring some of their people from their board, who are these business owners, and be able to present their voices and concerns and what their needs are. And I know not every chamber has the ability to do that, but there is strength in numbers. So the more, the more that show up and can plea that case and hopefully be in line with each other too, so you don’t have one chamber contradicting what another saying, right? Well,

Tom Sullivan 15:29
you know, we we do more to just have folks come and and speak their mind than we do worrying about whether or not everyone is on the same page. One small business owner has a different view of how their business can grow, and the federal incentives to make that happen, it’s not going to be so different from another. Growth is primarily the main talking point, and small business owners know what it means to grow. They know what it it means to grow as an economy that actually bolsters the America as a superpower instead of making it weaker by adding deficit. So we don’t worry that much about exact messaging. We worry mostly to make sure that our representatives are speaking through the lenses of growth, to their their policy makers. And I should also at least acknowledge you don’t have to come to Washington, DC. Every member of Congress has local district offices. And when they’re when they come back home to the voters who elected them, they want to visit with small businesses. Not only is it a great photo op, but it is also great from a Chamber of Commerce’s perspective, that that small business owner gets the undivided attention of the elected leader through the entire visit. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:54
that’s a good point. So a couple times now you’ve mentioned looking at things through the the lens of growth, or presenting things from that that perspective, and as I think of these, a lot of the lawmakers, they’ve they’ve been in politics their their adult life, right? They, a lot of them have not run and operated a business themselves. So is there any maybe best practices on how to communicate through that lens of growth that can be relatable to those that they need to relate it to? Well,

Tom Sullivan 17:24
what a great question. The answer is yes, there is some advice. So first of all, the advice is, be who you are. Don’t try to be a lobbyist from Washington, DC. Don’t try to be like the most caught up on the latest scandal of the hour. Just be who you are and tell your story and practice your story, either with your loved ones or your local chamber leader, and have them ask questions the way that a member of Congress would I love telling a very recent story that happened. We have been already aggressively meeting with Congress to promote the pro growth aspects of tax policy that are set to expire at the end of 2025 Our campaign is designed to make those provisions permanent, so that at the end of 2025 all of a sudden, small business owners don’t wake up with an enormous tax bill that they didn’t expect. And we brought in a local small business from Bucha, Arizona, who sells hay, alfalfa, if you want to be more specific. And he was wonderful. He was meeting with Dave Schweikert, who is a member of Congress, who serves on the tax writing committee, and and Dick Cardo, who’s the owner of Cardo hay company. He said, you know, all this, this whole discussion of taxes, is just so complicated, and it’s this is awkward for me as a small business owner, I don’t really know what to say. All I know is, for the past five years, I have been saving a little bit every year in order to buy this piece of machinery that bails hay and puts the hay on my truck in a way that I don’t have to because I’m getting older and I can’t do it anymore. And, and the congressional staffer looked at dick and said, Oh my gosh, that like, that’s the example we’ve been looking for. Yes. And he said, Where are you gonna buy this equipment? He said, Oh well, you know, I, my friend down the street, sells this particular piece of equipment, we’re going to get it there. And so all of a sudden, Dick is just telling his story and what he’s been doing, which is saving some dollars at the end of every year, which is made possible through some tax deductions that are set to expire. Not only is he saving that to spend it. He’s spending it for his business to grow, and he’s also spending it at a neighboring business that will allow them to grow. And so the reason I tell you that story is sometimes we make it too complicated, and it’s as simple as telling your story that connects your local experience with a national policy that is designed to promote growth, and that’s what Dick did. And I’ll continue telling that story to anyone who will listen. What

Brandon Burton 20:32
a great example. And you know, sometimes there’s sometimes government can get in the way of that growth, and we want to be able to take down some of those barriers, eliminate some of those things. And for him to say, I’m trying to save a little bit each year to make his job easier, but be more productive, to help his business, help others. And then, as you’re explaining this, the whole thought of inflation creeps back in here too. I mean, that ties right back into it when he’s saving a little bit each year, but that little bit is less than is less and less each year because of that. So it all. It all plays into it. So does it. Does wonderful example. Is there anything that local chambers can do to help with their their members, maybe to put their mind cities or to to help them carry on, you know, through a lens of growth that will allow them to maybe not focus on the the negative effects so much of inflation, but continue to look at opportunities to grow and control what you can control and and maybe encourage others to help you in the other areas,

Tom Sullivan 21:43
there certainly are ways that local chambers can learn from each other, perhaps learn from you and me and others. You know. One of them is Institute. You know, the Institute of organization management, otherwise known as Institute or IOM. I’m a winter Institute graduate down in Tucson, Arizona. You know the networks and learnings that all Institute graduates benefit from carry on for the rest of their professional lives. And when you’re struggling with something all of a sudden, you have this immediate network of other chamber professionals who hopefully are listening to this podcast. And that does provide comfort, it does provide certainty, and it does provide paths forward. The other thing to do is to recognize that that the relationship with the US Chamber of Commerce is intended to be a two way value proposition, and the access that our 1600 local, state and regional Chambers of Commerce have who pay a small amount in order to be part of that network. Their value is gained from getting the regular insider information about what’s going on, and then we encourage those local chamber executives to share it with their membership, so that that connectivity, which really chambers are famous for because that’s what we basically do. At our core, is we connect people work. We’re the community connectors, and the more that we can lean into that connectedness, whether it’s through IOM Institute or whether it’s from being part of what we call the Federation, sounds like a Star Wars term, but really it’s just a term that is assigned to this incredible network of both trade associations and local, state and regional Chambers of Commerce. So just leaning into that connectivity, I think, diminishes some of the fear, some of the uncertainty, and does create some really long, lasting bonds.

Brandon Burton 24:03
I think that’s great advice. And anybody who I know has been through the IOM program would would echo that. And in fact, it’s often a action item that that guests will share with others, is to build that professional network and to to have those peers that you can lean upon and in the, you know, the US Chamber, even to lean upon. Well, what other what other things come to mind when you go about your work with focusing on small businesses and that, that lens for growth, what what other things are top of mind for you at the moment?

Tom Sullivan 24:39
Well, you know, one of the things that is constantly top of mind are the day to day challenges of small business owners. I mean, I’m lucky to deal with national policy issues, so tax, health care, regulatory policy, those types of things are within my remit. But you know, what about. About choosing a payroll provider? What you know? What about finding an inventory management system? All of these things that are, are the that that are worries, concerns, and, quite frankly, opportunities at a small business level, the US, Chamber of Commerce, traditionally never really addressed those daily needs until COVID, when COVID hit, this desperate need for information was absorbed by our then new CEO, who was a small business owner herself, Suzanne Clark, and she heard this thirst, she felt this thirst for practical information, and we responded by launching a small business digital platform. It’s called co CEO, that digital platform is designed to answer these questions that small business owners have that are daily challenges, and the greatest thing about CO is that the answers come from other small business owners. So how do you choose a payroll provider? Well, there are stories on this small business digital platform called CO that interview a small business owner, and that small business owner tells how she chose a payroll provider or manages a supply chain or how they could figure out how the heck to hire a really good employee like these, these things that keep small business owners up at night are answered by their peers through this digital platform that is available for anyone, and Our local and State Chambers of Commerce are certainly taking advantage of it by by embedding the CO platform into their communications with their members, and it is open to anyone who has a good internet connection. And I’m just really happy that now that COVID is in our rear view mirror our commitment to answer daily questions and challenges small businesses face continues to be a priority. I think that that has to do in a large part because our CEO is Suzanne Clark, is a former small business owner, but it also is an example of how we saw something, we built it into our new muscle memory, and we’re committed to continue it long term.

Brandon Burton 27:46
Yeah, that is that’s a great example and great resource. So if the chambers listening have not been utilizing co I’d encourage them to check it out and see where it makes sense to implement it with your members, and, like Tom said, embedded into your communications, because it sounds like a wonderful resource. Well, Tom, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for the chambers listening who may be wanting to, you know, take their chamber up to the next level. What kind of tips or action item might you share with them to try to accomplish that goal. Well,

Tom Sullivan 28:23
I’ll go back to my friends at IOM and Institute in the Federation. You there is a chamber of commerce accreditation process, and those five star chambers around the United States are the best of the best, and that means that that process isn’t easy, but I’ve never heard a five star chamber saying, Wow, that was a heck of a waste of time. I mean, the other way around, we hear like, you know, I had no time for it, and it was hard. But now that we got our accreditation, it was worth it. And I think the chambers that are looking to go to the next level should look very seriously at the Chamber’s accreditation program and see if they can jump in with both feet,

Brandon Burton 29:18
and even if, even if they’re not awarded with a five star accreditation. It’s a good refining process to go through the exercise and see where you where you stack up, and where you can find areas to improve and be more efficient as an organization. Well, Tom, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tom Sullivan 29:41
So Brandon, in this digital world we live in, I think there’s an even greater need and appreciation for the convening power of chambers. Now we we have the luxury now of convening in a multitude of ways, but it’s still convening. Yeah, um. And whatever flavor that takes. I do think that the power of networks that are made possible through the convening are actually at an all time high. I say that also with the realization that for the past five years we’ve had record breaking new business starts, and that means there are all these new small businesses looking for connectivity, looking for network opportunities, virtually and in person, and chambers of commerce are uniquely situated to capitalize on it.

Brandon Burton 30:37
I love that, the idea of the power of the networks. I’ve heard a quote before, and I can’t attribute who I heard it from, but talked about digging your well before you’re thirsty, you know, you make those contacts, you have that network built. And then when there’s a need there, you’re not trying to develop those relationships right then in that moment, because you already have them, you can send out that message and say, Hey, I need help with this, you know. And you know those contacts who can help you. So great, great piece of advice and and way to look forward with the future of chambers, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn some more about what you have to offer in terms of a small business support. Where would you point them? What would be the best way to connect?

Tom Sullivan 31:27
The best way is through LinkedIn. Under Thomas Sullivan US Chamber of Commerce, you’ll you’ll find my LinkedIn profile. I tend to lean into LinkedIn a little bit more than some other social media platforms. I find the the dialog a little bit more respectful on on LinkedIn than some other social media platforms. But if, if those other social media platforms are your are your thing, my handle is smallbizpatriot, and that’s probably the easiest way to get me.

Brandon Burton 32:00
All right, we will make sure to get that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy to find you and connect with you on LinkedIn. But Tom this has been great having you on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking some time to be with us today and to share some of these insights and and like you said, the the lens for growth. I love that, that perspective, and that’s really the way every chamber should be looking at small businesses in their community, is through that lens for growth. What can they do to help remove obstacles? What can they do to help create that network to allow for that growth? And this has been a valuable conversation, so I appreciate you.

Tom Sullivan 32:38
Well, Brandon, right back at you. I appreciate you, and I certainly appreciate all of the chamber executives who are listening, and in particular because of the great work that they do for their small business members.

Brandon Burton 32:53
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Income Generating Community Masterplan with Rudy Flores

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

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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Rudy Flores. Rudy is the President and CEO of the Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, also known as the LSRCC. He is a passionate advocate for small business and community development. Over Rudy’s 13 year tenure, he’s grown the LSRCC budget by 354% and led the creation of a community wide master plan that has driven significant public investments. He also manages the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Improvement Program and has secured grants to enhance organizational resilience and foster peer to peer training. Rudy serves as a chair on the US Chamber in on the US chambers, Institute for organizational management, Board of Regents and the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, demonstrating his commitment to advancing the chamber industry. Rudy, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah,

Rudy Flores 2:16
thanks for having me today. You know, I am in a different type of chamber, I think, than most of our industry, where it’s in the inner city Chicago is a little different than most, where every neighborhood within the city proper has a Chamber of Commerce. So I’m in a square mile area that has 45,000 residents. So that’s usually shocking to people. And the business mix. We have about 800 business licenses within that square mile. So that’s something I think that’s unique. And then about myself, that’s something I that people usually find really interesting, is I just bought a car in March of 2023 so two years ago, I went 22 years without having a vehicle. I’ve always lived in more dense urban settings, Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia and Chicago, so never really needed a car, and decided to finally get one and do some more exploring and being on the two boards that you mentioned, I’ve been traveling a lot more to different chambers through my role, and it’s been really interesting and unique to go and visit, you know, rural chambers, suburban chambers. And the one thing I like to tell people is, like, you know what? We’re all the same. We all have the same struggles, the successes. It’s just our geographies are different. So it’s been really fun for me having a car and getting to drive around and, they, know, experience the chamber industry.

Brandon Burton 3:42
Yeah, that is, it is interesting. So was it an adjustment to drive again? Like to skip behind the wheel?

Rudy Flores 3:50
Yeah, I still rent cars here and there, you know. I mean, you still have to have a car originally, but, you know, it’s, I’m don’t have the downtime of, like, reading a book while on transit and stuff like that. So that’s a little different or, you know, but now I’m switching to podcasts.

Brandon Burton 4:07
Good deal. I’m glad, glad we could support that for you. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Lincoln Square Ravenswood chamber. Just give us an idea. I mean, you, you’d mentioned the 45,000 population, that square mile. It definitely is unique. But give us an idea, size, staff, budget, scope of work. I mean, it is a unique type of chamber. So just to dive into that a little bit and help help us get our minds wrapped around that, I guess.

Rudy Flores 4:39
Yeah, so when I started in was that 2011 it was just at two and a half of us, you know, two full time, one part time. Now we’re at five full time, one part time. We have a little over 300 members. Why? What else our budget is? When I started was right around three. 100,000 the last two years we’ve been over a million. So, you know, growth has been a really important thing, like trying to diversify our income, it’s been a big focus. And that’s that you mentioned in my bio, a peer to peer grant where we train other chamber professionals. It’s been about, how do you grow your budget without, you know, overworking your employees, or, you know, only having limited employees and stuff like that. So that’s been a big focus on mine, just because I love the industry that we’re in. But you know, in my community, in Lincoln, COVID area of Chicago, we’re on the north side. We’re about a mile and a half from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play. So the members that we have, a lot of them are brick and mortar retail restaurants. So I know a lot of chambers have, like the CVBS or the main street organizations, so we kind of more aligned with that, but doesn’t mean we don’t have the professional services and stuff like that. So for us, it’s always having to find a balance of like, our bread and butter is that brick and mortar retail restaurant. So we’re doing a lot of events where it’s consumer facing, but still having to figure out the right mix of things we’re doing to create benefits for those lawyers, accountants, you know, insurance agents, things like that.

Brandon Burton 6:14
Yeah. So with one square mile that you’re working with when it comes to events and different things like that, do you have a venue that you go to, like your go to venue that you use? Or how do you when you don’t have the entire city necessarily to to pull from, or maybe you do, I don’t know. I mean, how do you, how do you approach that when you have different events and where you need to utilize a venue of sorts, yeah.

Rudy Flores 6:41
So, I mean, the public street, it’s like, our biggest venue. So we, Chicago is really well known for street festivals. You know, if you’ve been to Chicago, hopefully you’ve been in the summer, when our weather is amazing. If you’ve been in the winter, it’s a different amazing. It’s cold and windy. You know, earlier this week, it was a negative three windshell, you know, at eight o’clock in the morning. So, so we really, we had two street festivals that we do in one’s in the second week of July, and then the other one is the first weekend of October. The one in the summer has about 40,000 attendees. It’s music, craft beer, local businesses and food. And where the one in October is called Apple fest. It’s a Fall Harvest Festival where we bring farms in from around the Midwest and kind of celebrate the return of fall. We hit 70,000 people this year. The we closed down almost a half a mile of our main business corridor. And it’s all about promoting local businesses. And so that’s where, like a big, big money generator for us, is that those are fundraising efforts for the for the organization, but also our members are selling product and stuff and making money. But then we do our smaller things, like in the winter we have, we’re lucky, an industrial corridor that, over the years, has turned into more like event spaces and more artists and startups and galleries and stuff like that. So we do rent some of those venues and do things indoors. We used to do galas. We don’t really do that anymore, because our membership isn’t really looking for that kind of stuff. So we do a lot more business to consumer facing events. We do things like wine strolls and beer crawls and stuff like that, where you basically go and taste like for our wine store, we go, we get wine distributors to be within each of our businesses. They can be from dental offices to a retail store, and you buy a ticket as a consumer and go and taste wine. But it’s marketing the business, because you’re not walking into something. So we do a whole bunch of different things. We also run 22 weeks of farmers markets twice a week. So we have 78 days of programmed community events that we put on throughout the year. Wow, that’ll

Brandon Burton 8:54
keep you busy. It does well. That definitely helps give some more context around, you know, setting the stage for our discussion today, and we’re going to focus most of our conversation around that community master plan, and specifically with the income generation that comes from this community master plan. And we’ll dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Rudy, we are back, so let’s, let’s dive into this community master plan. Tell us what it’s about, kind of how the vision came to be implementation, and, of course, get to the money part of it. That’s what everybody wants to know.

Rudy Flores 12:47
Yeah. So we started in, let’s say, like around 2013 or 14, seeing a lot of interest in developers coming into the community, and we had one specific street the city came into and did a streetscape, meaning they came in and redid, all the sidewalks did decorative plantings, like the brick crosswalks and stuff like that. And the in that street that they redid had a lot of just parking lots or, like, old industrial buildings that weren’t really being utilized anymore and stuff like that. And all of a sudden, developers started coming in, buying these properties, started building and multi unit homes were ground floor, some commercial and upper floors being either condos or apartments. And I noticed, like the residents of the area, like complaining. You go to these public meetings and everybody’s super angry and and everyone seen, I’d go to these as the as the chamber director, and and listen. And one thing I noticed was that people kept feeling like they weren’t being heard, they weren’t part of the process, and saying there’s no plan. And I, coming from an urban planning background, I spent my bachelor’s and my master’s programs in community planning. I was like, we need to look at not just individual properties, the way they’re developing and having public meetings talking about it, but let’s look at our entire community holistically. Bring people together to weigh in on what’s the direction they want to see growth happen, or maybe not see growth, and also letting everybody have a say, because I feel like most people that go to the in person public meetings are typically the angry ones, exactly the NIMBYs. And there are NIMBYs. And if you don’t know what NIMBY is, it’s not in my backyard and NIMBYs, yes, in my backyard, yes. And so, and there needs to be a balance, right? You can’t make everybody happy. So there needs to be a give and take. And so we were like, what can the chamber do? Because. Is backing up a little bit. Our community, starting in 2000 started to see a decline in population, and it’s a fairly affluent community now. It was originally the German area of Chicago, and over time, it’s just it’s changed into just being a mix of different people. But what was happening was our public schools, our district was getting better, so we had families moving in, and they were taking, we call them flats. They’re homes that are like each level is a different apartment, basically, so two flat or three flat, and converting them to single family. So it wasn’t changing the look and feel of the community, but what was happening is we were losing the density. And what happens then is then the businesses have less customers, and so we’re like, we need denser housing. The Chamber doesn’t want to get involved in like, the residential area drama, that’s what I call it, but the arterials, which are our commercial corridors, that’s the chamber like, that’s like, you know, our our territory, doing air quotes here. And so we were like, how do we advocate for growth along those commercial corridors to have denser housing so younger people can move in, or maybe, you know, individuals or couples that don’t have children, that are probably going to go out more and spend more money and still keep the fabric of those residential areas the way they are. So we have, basically, in the chambers, the umbrella organization of a we have a business improvement district, a taxing district that focuses on like public way, esthetics, cleaning and greening, holiday decorations. Can do some marketing programming. We do street pull banners and things like that, things like Main Street organizations do, and I know some communities have business improvement districts, so we call them special service areas here in Chicago, so that has its own board called a commission. So both the board of the chamber and that board of that taxing district both agreed to kind of partner together to put some funds together to do this community plan. And one of our goals was like, we really want it to not just be about pretty pictures of like, this is what we want things to look like. Because I tend to think that when people create these, like, elaborate plans, that just they look beautiful and they sit on a bookshelf and don’t go anywhere. We wanted data. That was the biggest piece. We still had pretty pictures, but we really wanted to have the data of what the community wanted, and so what we did was a lot of surveys and public meetings and and built this interactive website because we wanted to meet the residents and and employee employees who come into the community and people just visit. We wanted everybody to have a say and be able to give their thoughts and opinions on the way that they felt most comfortable doing. And so with the website, the way we developed, it was almost like a Pinterest, if you’ve been on Pinterest before, where you could post ideas, pictures, comments, whatever, about what you would like to see, and then people could add to it, or they could actually rank it, and if you got more likes and stuff that posted to go higher up on that that page. So that’s one way of getting people’s thoughts and opinions. We also had a map where you could place things on a map, if you, if your brain works that way, where you like to see a map, you’re like, oh, this intersection is difficult to cross that or, Oh, this would be a great place for a park or whatnot. You could post things on a map, and then we would have digital surveys. People would fill those out, and then we would make sure that all these ways that we’re trying and then go, sorry, and then go back to, like, the public meetings. We also hosted public meetings so you could weigh in on that as well. What we did was, though, ensured that we were marketing this, not just through a newsletter, but also through different social media channels. We’ve, as an organization, currently have over 40,000 followers between Facebook and Instagram. We’ve always had a really strong marketing presence, and so we really utilized those tools, so newsletters and social media and some media as well. We we have a PR firm, so we do some to our like our local online paper, we do some TV, media and stuff like that to publicize what we’re doing. So trying to make sure that we were being thoughtful and looking and creating a plan on how to get the buy in. And so through the whole process, the three or four surveys we did, we’d have like, 2000 entries for each one, wow, and, and we always make sure we do it where it’s multiple choice, right? Because most people don’t want to write, you know, anything. But we’d also always put like the other or a comment box, and we would get. 1000s of comments. It was, it was incredible to see, because I’ve done surveys so many times, but people were so invested in the project that we just got all this really great data. And so it really, it was. It really created a really great plan. And then the reason it really took off after that was because our elected officials saw the engagement that we were getting, and they were like, Oh, wow, this is my constituents. Like, right? That are weighing in. And they’re like, All right, well, this is what we’re we’re seeing and hearing because of the chamber. What can we do to actually start implementing these pieces?

Brandon Burton 20:43
Yeah. And I can see that being replicated in chamber of any size, really. If you start developing a vision, start, you know, doing the surveys, getting the feedback. I like the idea of the Pinterest type website, the maps, the surveys, compiling all the data, but, but that’s a key factor right there, is having the the elected officials seeing, hey, something’s going on here, and I need to be involved. And let’s see if we can make some of this stuff happen. It’s a

Rudy Flores 21:13
it also, it also, though the community too was really exciting because, again, there’s those original meetings with those developers coming in and developing projects without really

Brandon Burton 21:22
having the feedback coming in. Like, do we want this or not? Right, exactly. So people

Rudy Flores 21:27
were like, Oh my gosh, I have an outlet that I can finally have a voice. And it started to make people understand the chamber more, start to sign up for our information, and we now became, like, a bigger leader in our community. And then our politicians were like, oh, I need to start working with the chamber board. That’s

Brandon Burton 21:50
right, that’s awesome. So how did this start gaining traction? Once the elected officials say, hey, we need to be involved more. Let’s see how we can make some of this stuff happen. How did, how did things actually develop in, you know, seeing the ball move forward. Yeah. So,

Rudy Flores 22:07
you know, our area is split with different council members and our state rep and our state senator and stuff like that. And so everybody obviously wants a piece of the pie, and they want their piece to be first, and so that was the tricky part. So what we did? So we adopted the plan in 2019 it took a little over a year to do the plan, and we decided to do the plans, a big, overarching plan, right? It’s not something that’s super detailed about any one thing. It comes, you know, just talking about all different pieces with some recommendations on what are the things you probably should start first? So what we did was those recommendations started to do like these bite sized studies each year afterwards, and balanced it between our two council members, because that’s who we work with the closest so we’re two we’re calling wards here in Chicago. So we have the 47th Ward and the 40th ward. And we did two different studies, one in 2020 in our 40th Ward and one in 2021 in our 47th ward. And that was a way for us to work with both offices so they both know they’re getting a piece of the pie and seeing how we can do a deeper study in these in two different projects. The first project was an underutilized block of a street that, over time, had been rerouted so it was just like an empty street of nothing. And we did this a temporary Plaza during the COVID years to see, would this space eventually be able to be turned into a park, like a city park, and it worked pretty well, and that, working with the council member, was able to secure, I think, like, $12 million not just for the plaza itself, but to redo the entire commercial corridor in the section of this area which was kind of a blighted part of our of our community. And then the following year, we did a deeper dive study around our transit station, which was is in the center of our central business district for our community, to re look at an under utilized Plaza and a parking lot that we use for our farmers market and some festivals occur there about how can we make the parking lot that look like a parking lot? So be for parking when it’s not being used for some activation, but then if it’s being used for the farmers market or festival, it doesn’t feel like you’re standing in a parking lot. So what’s going to happen is it’s going to be pavement converted into like brick pavers and stuff like that, and then the plaza that’s next to it that’s very under utilized is going to be incorporated into it. So it all feels like this, like nice little landscaped area. And so both of those studies happen year after year, much cheaper than the big project that we were doing originally, but came from that, um. And then that those two little projects, both of our council members took that information and then started to look for funding sources, through public dollars that could help implement them, so we would not have been able to fund the actual construction and the construction for the first projects occurring right now. Hopefully we’re wrapping up this spring, and the other one is starting this spring and will hopefully be finished within a year.

Brandon Burton 25:25
Okay, that’s awesome, but I like seeing that, the vision that gets caught, and then, you know, seeing that the ideas spread. So the idea of this being a so you get these, these big improvement projects right as part of the master plan, and there’s big expense that comes along with that. Like you said, you know, elected officials are going after the funding, looking for that, but we’ve also talked about this being income generating for the chamber. So how does that play into the overall master plan? Well,

Rudy Flores 26:02
there’s a couple, a couple of things. So the Some people ask, what does this have to do with a business organization? Right where in enhancing the public way? Well, the public way, you know, the prettier it is, the more likely consumers are going to come and support the businesses along that. And so the current businesses started. The ones that were part of members already knew what we’re trying to do. The ones that weren’t, oh, seeing that the chamber is really trying to invest in their area to ensure that they’re going to see growth of, you know, foot traffic and stuff like that. And then we also started to see, like, developers looking at now properties we have, I think, like 400 plus units now being built within this, this confined area because of the plan, because they know that all of this investment, public investments, coming. But we started having people like, message us, like businesses message us, and we’re like, Hey, I saw the work you’re doing. How do I get involved in this. Like, it just started to build a conversation, because we just became more noticeable. Like, it wasn’t just about the events that we do. If you’re not brick and mortar retail restaurant, you might not want to do some of our public facing events. It wasn’t about the networking. It was just this, this change that’s happening, I think, in the chamber world in the last couple of decades, where it’s not just about networking, because you can network in so many ways. It’s just another component to showing what a business organization is doing to try to create more business for businesses,

Brandon Burton 27:36
right? So it’s very organic. The revenue generating is organic, and these businesses seeing the value, wanting to be a part of the chamber, wanting to support, wanting to just be engaged more fully. So have you, I know construction, you’ve got two sides of the coin, right? It’s very positive. It’s exciting to see new growth, new development, and then you’ve got the headache of dealing with the reality of this road’s closed for some time, or I can’t go the way I normally would go, or access to my business might be altered a little bit. Yep. So are you hearing any of that feedback yet? Is, how do you how do you deal with that through I, I’m I’m in Texas, and we get we’ve got a lot of growth here and and we see that with construction, where, especially, you know, access to businesses, and it’s an opportunity where a chamber can step up and help provide some solutions, right? But what obstacles are you seeing coming up, and how do you go about helping to resolve those obstacles.

Rudy Flores 28:41
Yeah, so the research we had done before the construction started, we knew that usually, when there’s the construction happening on the street that you’re located on your your sales might dip by 25% you know, at minimum, sometimes. And yeah, because just getting to the business or finding parking or just being able to walk down the sidewalk becomes difficult. You know, we learned that the hard way, like having to communicate better, like more often trying to meet people where they need to find their the communication, like the one of the first projects I we could have done better, getting the word out about what’s what to anticipate, and so learning from the mistakes of like, maybe not. We didn’t walk door to door handing out flyers. Right now, we have the contractors on the construction team, like working with our local government, having them go and ensure that they’re handing out individual flyers. We’re already emailing and stuff like that, but we all know we get a bazillion emails, and if you’re a small business, you’re wearing so many hats, you’re going to miss a lot. So that was one thing. We also started to do weekly contract meetings. So the chamber attends it with the contractors, our government official offices, somebody also attends it, but it’s open to the public. So. So if a business has a concern about maybe, you know, they’re getting deliveries or stuff like that, they can join that call. Or if they have any grapes, you know, they can just make sure that the team that’s doing the construction and can hear it. The construction started to become phased instead of just doing a whole street at one time, like three blocks at a time, only on one side of the street, so you’re not just disrupting everybody and everything. Started to look at the way that logistics of each project were being done. So you know, we had to learn the hard way. But at the main takeaway is, there’s never too much communication, and I think it’s our role to ensure that we communicate the way that people want to receive the information. It’s not always about what’s easiest for us. It’s about how to get that message out there and then being able to show like I did a printed delivery, I did a email, I did a phone call, or whatever you can do, because then it really shows you care. And those little things, I think that’s what makes chambers really unique and special, and I think that’s what makes the businesses happier. And then they want to be a part of you and continue being a part of

Brandon Burton 31:15
you. Yeah, I think sometimes we’re afraid to try to reach out one more time or one other way, because we don’t want to over Burton, the recipient, right? The Chamber members, yes, and when it’s going to directly affect their business. I think if you feel that prompting, if you feel like maybe I need to call too, or I need to, you know, do a personal flyer, whatever it is, I’d say follow that gut instinct, yeah,

Rudy Flores 31:40
because it’s not us asking for money. Like, they probably, that’s what they’re not looking at your sales like, Hey, can you sponsor this or whatnot? This is like, hey, I want to ensure that you’re ready to anticipate any, you know, things that might put a pause and in your business, or, you know, in consumer spending,

Brandon Burton 31:56
yeah, well, it definitely seems like an exciting time you guys got a lot going on, great vision and and lots of opportunity. I like to ask for, for those listening, who are, you know, wanting to take their chamber up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you suggest to them and trying to accomplish that goal? So

Rudy Flores 32:19
the big thing for us is, was the the money that needed to be utilized right to do this project. And so, you know, having a reserve is extremely important. If you know you’re around around 2008 in the recession, hopefully your chamber started to make sure they were having a reserve after that issue, especially through 2020 Yeah, right, right. If you didn’t have a reserve, I know some chambers that you know, closed because of it. So we’re lucky that we, you know, have learned over the course of decades and had a large reserve, and so we had started to budget, to put money aside for this project. The way that we’re doing that is through our festivals, so communicating to the public that when you’re coming to our festival and donating money, because we asked for donations at our entrances, that money we’re saying is going towards these kind of projects. So being very transparent about where the money is going, I think the community then really, like, starts to notice and understand and they want to support you. So that’s been that was our biggest thing. So I just budgeting is extremely important, and really ensuring that you’re trying to raise money. I think that, from my perspective, a lot of chambers tend to be afraid to charge for what they’re doing. But we do great work, and we don’t work for free, and so we are a business at the end of the day, and so really looking at, how do you generate money, not only to grow but also to do bigger projects. And then if you can tell the story of why you’re increasing your fees or asking for donations because of what you the projects you want to do, I think that goes a long way.

Brandon Burton 33:58
So with those business and community improvements going on, and you incorporate that into these events, and saying that these the money, the funds that are donated here, help to support that. Are you seeing an increase of people participating with those donations? Has the needle moved with that, or as far as how that’s being communicated and then and reciprocated on the back end?

Rudy Flores 34:19
Great question from our local community, yes, but as we were becoming more well known, so like the event I mentioned that happens in the fall Apple fest, we went from 50,000 people in 2023 to 70,000 in 2024 we did not see an increase in our gate donations for that event, it stayed the same. So our thoughts are our community that’s been coming take care is hanging, yeah, but now we’re pulling from a much wider audience that’s not going to have the connection to our community. They’re coming for the event and not not for like I want to make sure that this community is strong. Yeah, and so we now need to relook at our messaging and stuff. And how do you communicate that when everyone’s trying just to walk into the event, how do you market like, why this event is more than just getting a slice of apple buyer or buying a bushel of apples?

Brandon Burton 35:14
That is really good feedback, though. It’s good information to know that it’s being supported locally. You know, the community locally understands and that messaging is getting to them. And I can see somebody coming from out of town like, Hey, I don’t live here. What do I care? Right? I just exactly so, yeah, now that is interesting. Well, I like asking everyone that I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Rudy Flores 35:43
You know, I think that you it has to be very mission focused. The younger generation, we know is not joining our organizations like the older generation. And I think part of that is because, not because they don’t want to be a part of something, is that they want to do something that’s like ensuring It’s more meaningful to what their beliefs are. And so I really believe it’s us having to really stand behind what our organization stands for, communicating that and showing that value. So it isn’t about the events like it was. I just the events of getting together and meeting somebody. There’s so many ways of meeting other people. It has you have to have a purpose that people feel emotional about. And so I think that that is one of the things. And I think economic development, I think that, you know, government is pulled so thin, and we seem to expect government to do everything, and in this example we’re talking about today, we took the initiative to do the plan ourselves, because we knew that our local government didn’t have the capacity to do it like they’re doing projects in our downtown and not in our neighborhoods, which is fine, like our downtown needs it, but we wanted to ensure that we were in control of our own destiny and our own community. And I think that that’s a direction that a lot of chambers can go, and I don’t think they need to do it alone. You can partner with somebody, because these can get costly. So finding another nonprofit organization that has shared values that you can bring, you know, resources together to do these kind of things, or do little, you know, small little studies that grow into a bigger one. There’s, there’s so many different ways you can do

Brandon Burton 37:27
it. Yeah, I like that. Being mission focused and communicating with that mission is clearly so people understand that the cause, the purpose, like, what is it you’re getting behind? And it’s still, it drives me crazy to this day when somebody will ask me, What does the Chamber of Commerce do?

Rudy Flores 37:44
Same here? Well, where do

Brandon Burton 37:47
we start, and which chamber are you talking about, right? Well, Rudy, this is great. And I think there’s you know, things that can be scaled too for other communities to be able to look at what you guys are doing here, and creating that vision and that sense of community, and driving that forward as to what the community wants things to look like and to be able to take some initiative on that. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about your approach or how you guys are doing things there. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you? Yeah,

Rudy Flores 38:22
well, first you can go to our website. It’s LincolnSquare.org on the far right drop down menu as our SSA. That’s our taxing district that shows the master plan and everything we’ve spoken about today is broken down into pieces and actually the entire process of how we did it. So that’s there publicly available. My name is Rudy, r, u, d, y, you can email me at rudy@lincolnsquare.org. Happy to chat. This is I nerd out into this kind of stuff. So happy to talk about it, or just contact us at the contact box on our on our website, and that’ll get to me.

Brandon Burton 38:58
That’s perfect. Well, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode too, and make it easy to find you. But Rudy, I appreciate you taking time to be with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing some of these successes and vision that you guys have, and the really how you guys are moving the needle and seeing the the improvement of your community. It’s it’s fantastic.

So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me.


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Chamber Turnaround with Warren Call

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Warren. Call Warren is the President and CEO of Traverse Connect, the economic development organization focused on advancing the economic vitality of the Grand Traverse region in Michigan. Traverse connect hosts the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, a coalition of 18 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations representing over 7500 businesses across northern Michigan that advocates for economic competitiveness and pro growth rural business policies. Warren’s role is to lead strategy for the organization, advocate for area businesses, represent the region globally and collaborate with local, state and national organizations on critical issues related to economic development and regional competitiveness. He holds leadership roles in several public policy initiatives dedicated to economic expansion, and was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Board of Directors for the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. Prior to joining traverse connect, Warren served as vice president and regional manager for Huntington National Bank with oversight board investments in private banking across northern Michigan. He holds an MBA in international finance from St John’s University, and a BA in history from Michigan State University, where he was the captain of the Michigan State University Alpine Ski Team. Warren, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah.

Warren Call 2:45
Hello, Brandon, thanks for the opportunity, and welcome all the chamber champions that are out there listening. It’s, it’s a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, Warren, call from, from Traverse, connect in Traverse City, Michigan, kind of maybe a little bit of background for me. The as you mentioned there in the in the bio ski racer, skiing is kind of my thing. I grew up in in a ski family. My parents both worked in the resort business, so we, we kind of lived there. And so I grew up skiing all the time. I was a high school and college racer. Worked in the ski business for a while in Utah, as well as in in Michigan. My brother was it was also chief of course for World Cup races in Colorado. And so we do a lot of traveling for skiing. We ski a lot here, and then been in a number of avalanches due to, due to my skiing experiences. Wow,

Brandon Burton 3:49
see, I’ve never been much of a skier. I’ve been snowboarding a couple times, but nothing. I can’t do it. It’s just not me. And I see videos of these people to get caught up in avalanches and like, that’s why I don’t do so that is interesting, though, and definitely an address adrenaline rush, I’m sure, absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit more about traverse, connect, give us an idea of size, scope of work, staff, budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation today.

Warren Call 4:22
Yeah. So for anyone that’s not familiar with with Traverse City, traverse City’s Northern Michigan, the northern lower Michigan. So there’s the university the Upper Peninsula, the up, as we call it. We’re in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The pinky of the mitt is, is basically where we are from a map standpoint, right on Lake Michigan. We’re about four hours north of Detroit, six hours north of Chicago, one of our claims to fame, Good Morning America, named us the most beautiful place in America due to Lake Michigan and the dunes and all that kind of stuff. Um. We’re Travers Connect is a hybrid entity. We’re both a Regional Chamber of Commerce and a regional economic development organization covering the five counties around Traverse City are, we’re we’re a small town, we’re a small region. We’re a Micropolitan Statistical Area. So think about 150,000 people in kind of the the micropolitan area our our chamber organization has 1000 member companies here in our in our five county footprint, we have about a $3 million budget and a staff of 11 here in Traverse City, we have a brand portfolio, as we call it, because again, we’re, we’ve, we’ve expanded beyond being just a traditional chamber. So we have under the traverse connect brand. We’re, we both have the five County Chamber of Commerce services as well as direct economic development for for this region. So business attraction, business retention strategies, you know, incentives for for business relocation, things like that. We also have what’s called the northern Michigan chamber Alliance, as you mentioned, and proud to report that it’s now 19 chambers of commerce and economic development organizations across the footprint. So that footprint is basically the northern half of the mid northern Lower Peninsula, and then all of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So the reason for that is from an advocacy and public policy standpoint. When our team is in Lansing, the capital of Michigan, or in Washington, DC, we’re not speaking on behalf of just Traverse City or just our micropolitan region. We’re speaking on behalf of all of Northern Michigan with a unified voice. We also kind of going through that band, brand portfolio further we’ve got, we house the Traverse City young professionals organization. We also have the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council. So that’s a subset entity that’s obviously focused on manufacturing. And then we run what’s called Michigan’s creative coast. That’s a talent attraction program for our region that is nationally, trying to attract talent to to Northern Michigan, so that that’s, that’s kind of us in a in a very brief nutshell.

Brandon Burton 7:36
And we could do, we could do about eight or nine podcast episodes and all these different branches that you guys are involved with within your your brand portfolio. It’s fascinating. I imagine, with the the 18th chamber now in the northern Michigan Alliance, that you’re probably close to 8000 businesses or so that are being represented on that, that advocacy front.

Warren Call 7:58
Yeah, our, our Director of Government Relations was actually just looking at that yesterday. She’s She’s put out a updated survey to all those those organizations, because we do want to make sure that I think we’re probably close to, or maybe over 8000 at this at this point. So you know, that’s, that’s a lot of businesses and a lot of organizations that we represent. And again, from an from an from an advocacy and public policy standpoint, you know, Northern Michigan, as with many rural areas and rural communities, you know, you can sometimes get lost in the mix. From a standpoint of, you know, in Michigan, Detroit speaks pretty loudly. Grand Rapids speaks pretty loudly. We want to make sure that policy makers know that the rural areas of northern Michigan are important too, and so we have that unified voice to speak on behalf of the rural areas.

Brandon Burton 8:50
I love it. It’s a great idea and a great strategy. So our focus for our conversation today is we’ve titled The episode is chamber turnaround. So we’re going to dive in deep onto to how traverse, connect became what it is today, and kind of the background story to that and and I’m sure a lot of the story can resonate with other chamber leaders across the country as they hear it, but we’ll dive in deep into that story and experience as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Warren, we’re back. So tell us, what is the background? What’s the story on on traverse connect, how did it come to be and and this whole idea of chamber turnaround, I think it’s safe to assume that things maybe weren’t as ideal, and then things had to happen to to get it on track to where it is today.

Warren Call 12:56
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting Brandon, because what what we face here in the Grand Traverse region, the Traverse City area is unlike a lot of Michigan, or actually a lot of the kind of the industrial upper midwest Great Lakes region, we’re actually growing. We have really been on a pretty good trajectory from a growth standpoint, for a while, and what we needed was we had a lot of great institutions and a lot of great initiatives that were they were they were they were well intentioned, and they were well meaning, and what they weren’t is they weren’t modernized for our environment. So what we really needed to do is we needed to take kind of that big picture of Chamber of Commerce, services, economic development, and we needed to modernize our approach, or for the region. And what that really related to was we had a lot of organizations that were doing good things, but a lot of it was siloed. So there wasn’t a lot of coordination across some initiatives there wasn’t full coordination across the region. And so what we looked at was an opportunity to reimagine what business support services, in kind of its most general sense, looked like in our region. And it became, frankly, a wholesale reconstruction of of our organization and of of the approach to economic development and and Chamber of Commerce services for the entire region. So, from a from a background standpoint, it really, it really started back in in probably 2016 2017 there was, there was a number of initiatives that had kind of gone by the wayside. So a kind of an older, traditional public sector, county led Economic Development Corporation had gone dormant and didn’t have a lot of operations in it at the same time. Um, 100 plus year old Regional Chamber of Commerce, I wouldn’t say had, had certainly was still functioning and well functioning, but it was pretty traditional, and it was perhaps even a little bit stale in its approach.

Brandon Burton 15:15
I’ve heard that before from chambers have been around a long time. Yeah, right. And fantastic

Warren Call 15:21
legacy, very successful legacy, but needed, needed a refresh, basically, yeah, and then we had a number of initiatives that had newer initiatives that were important, so, especially in innovation and technology. So a new tech incubator had been stood up. A couple other good initiatives, but they were, they were in their own silos and not plugged into some of the other things that were going on. So a number of us, and I should, I should probably point out that I have no background in economic development or Chamber of Commerce services. So back at this point, I was actually working in the in the finance industry for a national bank with I was overseeing their northern Michigan operations. So I was involved in these things, but as a as a volunteer board member, yeah, so I was a volunteer board member on the Economic Development Corporation and on the technology incubator, and I was involved in one of the committees through the chamber, and there was things like that. But so we work, we were working as a community to re envision what economic development and Chamber of Commerce services should look like. And it there was a couple of retirements at some of these different organizations, and so we looked at that as an opportunity to kind of rethink what it what everything should look like. And at that point, I got asked by some of the people that you know, they said, well, great, but if we’re going to reconstitute everything, we want you to move from being a board member to being the guy in the chair. So I didn’t expect to be in that role. But that’s, that’s how it happened.

Brandon Burton 17:02
It sounds like maybe you spoke too much in these board meetings. I think so. I think, I

Warren Call 17:07
think I shared my opinion a few too many times, right? So what we ended up doing is the county’s Economic Development Corporation was reformatted with with new board members. I was, I was, again at that point, the volunteer chair of that organization, when we reconstituted it. And what we did is we, we built a strategic plan for rebuilding everything. And so that that process happened through 2017 2018 and then in 2019 I stepped into this role at traverse Connect, which at that point was a kind of a community development organization that hadn’t really found its footing. And so we, we, then my job was to work with a consultant that we had hired and build a strategic plan, not just for my organization, but for the entire region. So this really was a soup to nuts kind of approach. We had community wide forums, we had a listening tour. We had a steering committee made up of key leaders from business industry nonprofits from across the region, kind of, as I call it. That was our big shots group, right? We had prominent CEOs and other leaders who, you know, have influence. And what we ended up doing is through, through those public listening tours, those, those, those the kind of the road show as it was, the industry forums that we, you know, we brought together the manufacturers, and we brought together the healthcare providers, and we, you know, all these things. We ended up basically opening the hood, ripping everything out, and putting it all back together again in a new in a new structure. So we merged Travers connect and the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce together into one entity that’s now called Travers Connect. We spun off a couple of of subsidiaries that were no longer, you know, relevant, and we we then merged in over time, we merged in some of these other things. We expanded that chamber Alliance. It had gone when we went from 12, now up to 19 members. We also brought in and merged the Grand Traverse area manufacturing council as a now a subsidiary of our organization. And really what it was was we took all these outdated structures and we were trying to address the fact that we had growth in the region, which was positive, but we also had a lot of growth challenges. So we’re a very popular. Destination for tourism. We’re a popular destination for second homes, and those are very valuable aspects of our economy, but they’re not our only aspects of our economy. We have actually a lot of technology. We have a lot of advanced manufacturing. We actually have more employment in manufacturing than Michigan’s average. And for anyone that knows Michigan, there’s a lot that says a lot, right? So people think of us as a great place for vacations and beaches and cherry pie, but what they don’t realize that there’s also a lot of other things going on in manufacturing, in technology, in agriculture, so advanced value added agriculture, right? We, you know, if, if your kids ever eat, go, go squeeze, you know, applesauce in the packet that’s made right here in a very massive facility here, matern, the French company that has their their location here, we make a lot of wine that gets shipped all over the world, etc. So we’ve got a lot of things beyond tourism and and second home ownership, which are important to us. But one of the challenges there is we have a high cost of living because so many people want to either be here part of the time or be here, you know, for vacation, etc. So we have workforce challenges. So while we’re population was growing, our working age population was declining. Yeah, so 35 to 49 year olds, that core working age population, the people that run businesses, that you know, teach school, that have kids in the school system, that you know sit on nonprofit boards that kind of your core working age population that had declined by 7% between 2010 and 2019 Wow. So you can’t have a vibrant year round economy and community if you don’t have the people that are here year round working and, you know, getting their kids into snow pants and out to school the next day, right? It’s, you’ve got to, you’ve got to have that, that that year round population. So that was a wake up call to our region that we needed to do something. And so that was kind of all of the the work we did to institute a new structure and develop a new a new strategic plan was focused on the fact that we need to be a year round economy so and I can go into more more detail about, kind of, some of the key highlights of that, but I wanted to pause and see if,

Brandon Burton 22:33
yeah, I think that’s important to dive into some of those key highlights. I’m always curious as well, when there’s restructuring like this that goes on as to it. And you gave a great background about you being sitting on, on the two boards and ideas, you know, bubbling up. But you know, when you put the rubber to the roads to have the traction to actually implement these changes, it can be kind of sticky. You know, when you’re dealing with with leadership, with other organizations, multiple boards. So as as you talk to your next point, if you can try to work some of that into about the approach and and for a chamber listening, you know, not everybody’s has that perfect timing where everything aligns to just make it happen, but the vision is there of this is the direction our community needs to go. So if you can kind of speak to that a little bit too, as you in your response, yeah,

Warren Call 23:30
and there, there’s, there’s a lot there. But certainly, I think the key things here that we learned were that over communication. And I just mean complete, over communication and repeating. The reasons why we’re doing this were really key aspects of our approach, I think, because what we found was that, you know, people, people fear change. Yes, and organizations fear change. But really, when it comes down to it, there’s actually not a fear of change. They fear change because they fear loss. People equate change with loss. They think that the change you’re making is going to result in some kind of loss for them. And so we had to really do our homework to show that this change was not going to result in loss, it was going to result in gain for the community.

Brandon Burton 24:28
That’s a great framing. I like that. So

Warren Call 24:31
really thinking about, again, what you need when you’re going to implement big change like this, especially with 100 plus year organizations, and you know that legacy of the Chamber of Commerce and things like that, you’ve got to show that you’re respecting and building on that legacy and enhancing what it’s going to do going forward, not taking away from it. So part of that is, again, like I said, over communicating. So. Part of that is having a clear enemy. So again, from our perspective, that clear enemy was we lost 10% of the working age population between 2010 and 2019 right? I think I said 7% before, but it was actually 10% we lost 10% of that working age population in that that time period that got people’s attention, and that was the enemy, and we were able to focus our efforts around that enemy that allowed organizations to really work together. It allowed, you know, we had a business leader meeting with a county commissioner, meeting with a nonprofit, you know, hospital leader, all of them could agree that if you lose your working age population, you’re in trouble. So that that focused everyone’s mind, and it allowed us to do a couple of key things. Number one, I think it helped everybody kind of check their ego at the door, because it wasn’t about their organization or their project, it was about defeating that, that enemy, and then it also allowed us, I think, some latitude to what we ended up calling slaughtering some sacred cows. It’s

Brandon Burton 26:12
important, yeah, because everyone

Warren Call 26:15
realized that if we were going to address this issue of work, losing the working age population, we had to to come up with some new solutions. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the framing that helped us. I also think it was important that we did a lot of listening first. So we, we hired, sorry, we formed that kind of, what I called the Big Shots group, the key leaders across community as a steering committee, people that are trusted across business, industry, nonprofit, etc, that that helped. Then that steering committee was the one that gave me direction, and gave our consultants direction, and then we did these community wide forums, we did the listening tour, we did the workshops that were open to everyone. So we really we incorporated everyone’s feedback. And I think it’s important to do that regardless of what you’re doing. But here’s the thing you got to think about. And I think chamber professionals know this, you’re never going to make everybody happy, right? So that our new solution, our new structure, our new strategic plan, I think it’s well done. But of course, there, there’s going to people, be people that are going to not like some aspect of it, right? But being able to say we asked everyone for their opinion was really important, right? Even if we didn’t incorporate their opinion, maybe they didn’t like the final product, but we asked everybody. Nobody was nobody was on Ask. Everyone got tired of hearing my talking points because I repeated them so many times, and our steering committee repeated them so many times, but at least everyone felt like they were, they were heard.

Brandon Burton 28:03
It goes back to that over communication. And nobody can say, you know, I didn’t know this is happening, right? You’re talking about it, and you’re not catching them by surprise,

Warren Call 28:13
right? So that’s, that’s what resulted in, for example, the decision to have a hybrid structure, you know, our our leading private sector businesses were really tired of the chamber asking them for money and sponsorship and dues, and then the economic development corporation trying to get some funding, and then the tech incubator and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, one entity that that has a really, you know, clear mandate. Now, you know, my private sector business leaders can say, I’m writing a check to traverse, connect, to do this, this and this right, so that, that we came really clear. And so it gave us, it gave us focus and clarity too. And we were, we were really intentional. And the end result of that, that hybrid structure and our strategic plan outlined exactly where we were going to lead, where we were going to support and where we weren’t going to get involved. So our focus became, you know, Travers Connect is going to our mission is to look at the economic vitality, strengthen the economic vitality of this region by growing family sustaining careers. So family sustaining careers year round. You can afford to live here. You can afford to put your kids in child care, etc. You can afford a house, a family, sustaining career is kind of the North Star. The way we do that in our three pillars of primary focus is the economic competitiveness of the region. Number one, strengthening that. Number two, direct support for business. Businesses, number three talent, making sure we’ve got talent attraction development and that continuum of of talent development, then we were really specific about where we’re going to support. We support the technology incubator in early stage company development. We’re not the leader in early stage. They’re the leader. We support them. We’re not the leader in housing development, but there’s an entity called housing north. They’re the leader in housing development. We support their efforts. So we’re really clear about, you know, some of those, there’s a community development. So some of the kind of more societal, environmental things. Yeah, we’re not the leader in that, but we support the community development coalition that is the leader in that. Okay,

Brandon Burton 30:51
this is all super fascinating, and I could see it’s a big undertaking as well, but being able to align the needs within the community to be able to say what’s important. How do we want to, you know, advance the future going forward, you said, create these family sustaining careers. Can you talk a little bit about some of the the outcomes that you’re seeing from these changes? How is the the temperature change? How has the mood changed in the community by implementing this. Well,

Warren Call 31:24
certainly, you know, again, as chamber professionals, know you’re never going to make everybody happy. So there’s still the same things that we always have, right? We still have challenges with with, you know, elected officials not agreeing with each other and different priorities. And always that tension between managing appropriate growth versus maintaining our character and our charm of our communities. Those are always things that continue to be items of debate. But I think where there’s where there’s really clear success in there’s probably three things I would touch on that have really been been clear success. First of those is under that, that banner of the Northern Michigan chamber Alliance, the opportunity to to leverage the connection between economic development and public policy, that that’s been really helpful for us across all of Northern Michigan, so that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and other kind of policy leaders know what our priorities are, and they know that we’re we’re focused on it. They know that we need funding for our initiatives. They know that when we’re when we’re out there trying to recruit an advanced manufacturing company to come to Northern Michigan. They know that it’s part of a concerted strategy. So I think that that was one really, one really big win, especially since, you know, again, we’re a fantastic place to vacation. We’re a fantastic place for second homes and so a lot of policy leaders downstate, Michigan, that’s what they think of when they think of Traverse City. And that’s great. We want to, want them to continue to think about that, and that to be continued to be a strong part of our economy. But also we’re a great place for an advanced manufacturing entity to relocate. So that that’s one thing. The second thing is, it’s allowed us to leverage some unique attributes of our community to focus on cluster development, industry. Cluster development, we’re not going to be a place that Ford or GM are going to set up a huge production facility. That’s not the right fit for us. That’s the right fit for downstate Michigan, the right fit for us, from a cluster development, is freshwater research and innovation. We’re on Lake Michigan. We’re a great place for research and development as it relates to water technologies, marine technologies, things like that. We’re a great place for value added agriculture, as I mentioned, we’re a great place for testing and deployment of drone technologies. Our our local college is is a leader in the Midwest for drone technologies, and the way that drone technologies are need to be developed for rural communities. Think of agricultural uses. Think of rural healthcare delivery, both with drones and with telemedicine. Those are things that are unique to our region. So we’re leveraging our unique things to develop these industry clusters in rural health, in drone deployment, in marine technologies, to again, Grow family sustaining careers, right? We want, we want, you know, if, if some company is going to build the next, you know, advanced underwater drone research product, we want that to be, to be done here, right? Because we the. This is a good place to do it. And then the final thing I would talk touch on is Michigan’s creative coast, our our talent attraction initiative. We, I think we, we had a good plan and we built a good program. We also got really lucky Brandon, because we built this nationally focused talent attraction brand, and it went live about three weeks before the pandemic hit, wow, and one of our big initiatives as part of that was with remote work and technology. If you can work anywhere, why wouldn’t you want to work here? And our timing could not have been better, because all of a sudden the world realized they could do things from anywhere, and it’s been a huge growth for us. We’ve been able to attract entrepreneurs, remote workers, technology, biopharmaceutical entities. It’s just been phenomenal from a standpoint of attracting talent and attracting entrepreneurs,

Brandon Burton 36:03
that is huge. Yeah, I appreciate you touching on those three areas. And when you’re talking about economic development leveraging, you know, working with the public policy, the thought came to me, it used to be that the media kept government in check and made sure that, you know, trying to keep them honest, we’ll say, Right? But now I see that shift being more with with chambers and economic development on the advocacy front to keep governments in check. And if they know that you’re you’ve got your eye on these, you know, policies that affect business, then it’s hard to get something past a group, you know, of 18 chambers that are, you know, form this alliance to to make sure that business is being protected and it’s a fertile place for business to grow and thrive. So these, these are great areas, great successes that are, that are coming out of this and and I feel like in the format that we have for this podcast, we might have bitten off a little more than we could chew, because I could, I could listen to you for a couple hours, you know, going in depth with all of these, you know, different aspects and the the winds that are coming out of this. But I appreciate you being able to try to condense this to to work with this format, and kind of give a glimpse of what’s possible as you align resources and ideas and and getting you know the stakeholders involved, and really convening them all together to to create a good cause going forward in your community and region. As we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to see if there’s any any tip or action item that you would share with the Chamber who’s wanting to take their organization up to the next level. What would you suggest for them? You

Warren Call 37:51
know, what I learned in this process Brandon was, I think the key thing is leverage. Chamber leaders have way more leverage than a lot of them that real they realize or that they use. And I think, you know, chambers, chambers, and chamber leaders oftentimes are kind of the key servant of the community, and that’s that’s an important role, but I think it’s important to remember that it’s a servant leader role, and I think there’s an opportunity to have a bit more swagger in your community and and take the initiative. Be bold, you know, be authentic, but also be the authority, because, because the chamber knows more of what’s going on than most other people in the in the region, yes, build a vacuum, fill the vacuum of leadership, and really leverage that. And I think you can do that with your staff. I think you can do that with your board, your community, obviously, elected officials. So that’s what I would say. I think the best way to do that is, is to quantify things. And so metrics and quantifying helps you to leverage your authority.

Brandon Burton 38:58
I like that having the data to back up what you’re trying to accomplish and and I love that word leverage too. It brings power, quite literally, as you apply apply a force with leverage, you’re able to do a lot more than what you can do on your own. Absolutely, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, you know,

Warren Call 39:22
I think it’s gonna be really interesting. I think that, you know, as a as an industry, you know, as everyone knows, you know that that struggle for for member retention, I think, is always gonna is, is always gonna be there. And we don’t need to get into all the kind of the traditional things about, you know, retention and non dues, revenue and all that kind of stuff. But the key thing is, the chamber was always thought of as the authority, traditionally on business issues. Then the internet comes along and business leaders feel like they can kind of get information from other sources, so they don’t necessarily need to be involved. In the chamber, they don’t need to be members. I think that’s been a struggle over the last, you know, 20 years. I think maybe, and I don’t know for sure, but maybe as the internet becomes less of an information source and more of just a confusing mix of everyone’s opinion, maybe there’s a need again, for kind of that trusted authority, that authentic, trusted authority. And I would, I would love to see chambers and economic development organizations fill that role, because I think it could be kind of a full circle thing where, you know, there’s, there’s a million websites, and you really don’t know what’s going on, so you might need to just go talk to your local or regional chamber to figure out what’s really going on with business issues.

Brandon Burton 40:46
Yeah, I like that. I’ve never thought of it in that context before, but I like that. It gives you something to think about and see that that full circle come back around right? Well, warm for for those listening who may want to reach out and learn more about how things have developed, there at traverse connect, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? You

Warren Call 41:10
know, I’m, I’m 100% against email. I think it’s a waste. There’s, there’s actually a really good book called world without email. If you haven’t read it, you should my cell phone, 231-651-9174,

Brandon Burton 41:27
alright, we’ll get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for for people to reach out and connect with you. But Warren, this has been great having you on and thank you for you know, kind of pulling back the curtain and showing what took place to create travers, connect and aligning all those desires, interests, abilities, to be able to bring them in under one roof, and also shut off some of those sacred cows that may weigh you down a little bit. This is a great exercise that probably every chamber needs to go through on some regular basis, maybe not to the same extent, but to really see what the purpose is and what’s driving them. But thank you for sharing your experiences with us today. This has been fantastic, and I really appreciate it. My,

Warren Call 42:18
my, my appreciation to you, Brandon. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having

Brandon Burton 42:24
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Create a Thriving Community with Nikki Devitt

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Nikki Devitt. Nikki is the President and CEO of the Petoskey Regional Chamber of Commerce, a passionate community champion. She’s honored to lead an organization that emboldens positive outcomes by building a culture of thriving business to create a thriving community. With a background in broadcasting, management and marketing, she works creatively to build relationships and connections that foster positive change and growth. Nikki currently serves as chair of the Northern Michigan chamber Alliance, a coalition of 18 chambers and economic development organizations advocating for rural central business policies. She was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to serve on the Michigan statewide Housing Partnership to help facilitate Michigan’s first ever statewide housing plan. She’s on the board of directors for ACCE, a board regent for the US Chamber Institute for organization management, and is on the board of directors for the Michigan Association of Chamber of Commerce professionals. She’s a graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce business leads fellowship program, the Association of Chamber of Commerce executives, leadership and diversity cohort, and is a US Chamber of Commerce, Institute of organizational management graduate. She is a member of the Petoskey noon Rotary Club, and she donates her time to the Northern Community Mediation, Little Traverse, Pacific Theater and Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan. Nikki lives in Petoskey, Michigan, and spends as much time as she can hiking and enjoying all the beauty Northern Michigan has to offer. And Nikki, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Thank

Nikki Devitt 3:01
you, Brandon, and it is Petoskey.

Brandon Burton 3:06
I should ask these questions before we start.

Nikki Devitt 3:09
It’s okay. It’s Petoskey, Michigan. There’s a long history there, which is pretty fantastic. So thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity. It’s just absolutely a wonderful thing that we can do to as chamber professionals, to speak to one another, to learn from other one another, and share from one another. So I really appreciate that very much. And being here something interesting, I guess, or unique. That is, you know, not in my bio, although that sounds interesting in a lot of ways, I guess, is that. So I do have a broadcasting background about 10 years, and also spent a little bit of time as an audio book narrator, so something that kept me busy when I wasn’t on the stage. So I’ve spent a lot of time as well performing since I was a child, and still perform in our local community theater. Very

Brandon Burton 4:05
cool. So what type of broadcast it was? TV, or right? TV? Radio? No. Radio. You were built for this. This is awesome radio.

Nikki Devitt 4:15
I’ve done a few podcasts here and there, yes. So I was, you know, started out on the sales and marketing side, and then eventually was lucky enough to have the honor to be operations and programs for a very large cluster of stations, and spent quite a bit of time on the air as well. So kind of did every facet of it. And broadcasting is a fascinating industry, and I think until I ran into the chamber industry, I thought there was probably nothing as challenging. And then I entered chamber life,

Brandon Burton 4:49
yeah, and the story is still being written, exactly. Well, tell us a little bit about the Petoskey Chamber of Commerce. To give us an idea of the size staff, scope of work, budget, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today,

Nikki Devitt 5:05
absolutely so our chamber is is, like many, I find it so fascinating. How many chambers are over 100 years old? We’ll celebrate 105 years next year, and we are so Petoskey, Michigan, is located at the very pretty much northwest tip of the Lower Peninsula. So for those who aren’t familiar with the lower and upper peninsula, I am about 35 miles from the Mackinac Bridge, and then I can be in our beautiful upper peninsula, which to Michiganders, as we like to call ourselves, is just a place that is hard to describe, unless you have the opportunity to be there. So Northern Michigan is a wonderful resort community. We’re built on a tourism economy. So our chamber is unique in the sense that we have a very thriving year round community. Our population in the city of Petoskey, or townships, if you will, incorporate, it is about 16,000 our county has about 34,000 so we’re not very large, but we essentially triple to quadruple that population in our summer months, and also have a huge uptick in our winter months as well, because we are a year round destination with our beautiful Lake Michigan, but also fantastic ski resorts. So there’s all kinds of things that you can do. So with that in mind, and our Chamber’s history and our community’s history, we’re also put in a situation where we are lucky enough to be on places in our state that has a huge tribal history. So Petoskey actually is goes back to Ignatius badass gay, who was the first Chief of our area, way back when, and the late 1700s or late 1800s and so our community is very diverse in the sense that we have a very rich cultural history here, and yet we cater to a new element of people coming to discover this region. So we have about 770 members. We’re one of the larger chambers in the state of Michigan, especially geographically and population wise. And we have four full time staff, and about 500,000 is our budget. So we do a lot with a little, if you will, from a small staff standpoint, and I like to consider us an impact chamber. And so that means that while we still host a farmer’s market every summer and do an art show in the summer in our beautiful park, we are a very much an advocacy chamber. So we’re very involved in our community’s future, whether that be economically, how we look at it, from a prosperity way, and also still maintaining that traditional programming of networking events, we like to call them connecting events, and then a very heavy programming piece that we utilize to make sure that our members have the tools at their disposal to grow their business, enhance their employees and enhance their relationship within our community and those around us. Oh,

Brandon Burton 8:07
that’s awesome. There’s a lot going on, and I’m always impressed by the chambers that can do so much with you know, little staff, and it’s just it’s a great testament to the work that you guys do. So sounds like you’re doing great work. And we’ll focus our discussion today on creating a thriving community, which is going to go on very well with the continuation of what you shared with us so far, but we’ll dive in much deeper on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 7:58
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All right, Nikki, we’re back. So as we talk today about creating a thriving community, what sort of things have you seen? Obviously, every community is a little different. Every chamber is a little different. What works for you guys? Aaron Petoskey and to create a thriving community? And it sounds like I don’t know, I’ll let you define what you see as community, because I think the definition of community kind of changes over time.

Nikki Devitt 11:18
It does change. I think one of the most important factors that we take into consideration at our chamber is that the line between the business need and the community need is not a line at all. They are so interwoven within each other, we believe that from our standpoint, that our businesses only thrive when our community thrives. So we’re really looking at things in our community that impact our community and therefore would impact our businesses. So things that we hear about all the time now and more and more chambers are really into this space. Is what is that workforce impact? Is it housing? Is it childcare? Is it education? Where are the hurdles? Where are the places that our businesses need to grow and enhance themselves? We talk a lot in the state of Michigan about attracting talent, while we very much know in Northwest Michigan that we need to attract talent, we also need to retain talent. And so for us, the thriving community is giving our businesses the tools that they need to really, truly be the best that they can be. And we believe that, you know, it’s a basic conscious capitalism standpoint, if you will, the advancement of the human quality of life happens when your community is doing sustainable business practices. So that is everything that’s looking at, are you taking care of your employees? Are you taking care of your environment? Are you looking at the future of what your community could look like? So for us, we call it just chamber passion, and when you want to build a thriving community, you have to remember that first and foremost, everybody is involved, and everyone has a voice. And as we all know, that can be a very difficult prospect. With 770 members, not all of them have the same exact needs. So for us to make sure that our community thrives and our businesses thrive, we have to be nimble and we have to be ready to if we don’t have the answers or the resources to make sure that we find them and provide them for our businesses, so that our community can grow, and that everyone who wants to live and work in this beautiful, incredible place that I get to call home, has that opportunity

Brandon Burton 13:35
that’s awesome. So you touched on a ton of things there in that response, and as I, as I revisit some of that, I’m hoping you can dive in a little bit deeper. But as you talk about creating a thriving community, you talked about for these businesses to be the examples you gave, are you taking care of your employees in the environment and but then you talk about all the voices that come from people in the community and the businesses, and 770 members. So there’s a lot that needs to go out from the chamber, and a lot that comes in, as far as you know, feedback and data and so forth. So what is your approach? Because it’s hard to tackle everything all at once, so there has to be some strategy and how you build a thriving community. What, what approaches do you do from a strategy side to implement some of these things? First and foremost,

Nikki Devitt 14:29
it’s collaboration. You can’t do anything alone and community. I mean, by definition, is the work of many, not the work of one. So as a chamber, you have to realize that you are, at best, the collaborator that no one else can be. So you have to put yourself into the position when you’re looking at the issues that impact a community’s success, especially our members. Success is who needs to be at the table and whether as the. Where you’re leading those conversations, or you’re participating in them as the voice of business, you have to make sure that everybody that needs to be at that successful roundtable discussion is always there. So I mean COVID, I think we use as an example in chambers now more than ever, and I think it’s a fantastic thing that we do chambers. Were able to step into a space where we were working with our municipalities, our local government, our state government, as well, as you know, our human resources elements within our community, whether that be your health department or your hospital. How are you making sure that everybody knew what was going on and what challenges were coming for your community? It’s that same concept, except you do it for every issue that you have. So always making sure that, from a strategic standpoint, you reach out to the players that need to be involved for whatever that issue is. So if it’s housing, are you making sure that you have those relationships and that they have the information, say, from a you know, what your planning and zoning committees look like. Do they understand where the challenges are? Have they heard a business, whoa, why they can’t get employees or retain employees? Do they understand that it could be something that is within their power to address and change? And then, are you also making sure that the voices that come in are not just your big business, but your small business. So I think it’s that one first and foremost is strategically you have to if you’re talking about a thriving community, collaboration has to be your first step, and the recognition that you can’t do it alone. And it’s going to take many, many people to work on each of these individual issues to push a community as a whole forward. Yes,

Brandon Burton 16:43
yeah, you said it very well. Collaboration, as far as the what you have to work with within your staff, with within the office, how do you how do you disseminate, you know, all the things you need to do to kind of spark that collaboration and take some of the voices that you’re hearing and taking them back to those other partners in collaboration.

Nikki Devitt 17:07
I think you said it really well, though. You said with your staff. So I think that’s kind of it’s like, you know, if you’re gonna talk the talk, walk the walk, one of the first

things we do, and we’ve understood with our staff is we all have different skill sets. We all have different places of passion. We work with our members differently. So while we have defined titles and roles, we are a staff that works very collaboratively at all times, because we understand that, whether it be convening a work group to discuss child care challenges in our community, or whether it be instituting a program of work that is going to be more HR focused for some of our businesses, that helps them understand some best practices for talent retention that we have to be able to nimbly flex between those things as staff to make sure that we’re putting our resources forward, just as we’re asking our community members, our community leaders and our agencies to do to work together. So you’ve got to kind of lead with that mentality from a strategic standpoint as well, or you will burn your staff out in seconds. It does mean that we’re constantly having to adapt to circumstances within our community. Sometimes you put a lot more effort into one topic or one challenge, and then three months later, that’s something that you have to put a little bit on the back burner because something else has elevated itself into being a prior need for your community. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:39
I can see that for sure. So I’m curious, do you guys segment your membership at all to see, like, which ones have you know this need, like you’ve mentioned? HR, so if that is a need for, say, 20% of the businesses, business members, do you segment that or do you leave it open for any member? Because maybe there’s a need you don’t know about. I’m just curious on the approach. We do a lot of

Nikki Devitt 19:02
targeting. So everything that we offer, especially from a programming standpoint, or when we do say, you know, we do a housing Town Hall, we do Hot Topic conversations on childcare, on workforce, on legislative issues, all those things. So it’s always open to our full membership and our community as well. We make sure, especially if it is an issue that drives the community, that it is something that is open to anyone in the community, regardless of membership, when our programming is focusing on those talent attraction issues, what’s the corporate Transparency Act look like? What does the you know, latest Bill look like in the house? That how it could impact you? And there’s a lot going on with Michigan right now, and some of those, those we will open up to our home membership, but then we take a strategic approach from a staff standpoint, and say, who should be at this table? Who do we have to reach out to and maybe give a personal invitation to make sure that they are part of this conversation and or. Knowing that we know our businesses well enough, because we’re still a really small town, that which ones are going to be greatly impacted by whatever this may be, or who’s going to get the most of a benefit fact from it, and who do we make sure that they understand? So it’s always an open ended approach to everything, but then we dive down after the fact, usually give it a little bit, see where the interest lies, see who’s excited about it, and then start doing those targeted approaches by segmenting our membership based on just our category structure and how we know them. And that seems to have always worked quite well for us.

Brandon Burton 20:35
Yeah, sounds like a great approach. The worry I have with segmenting is that, you know, somebody gets invited to attend, and you have a seat at the table, and somebody else says, I had no idea the chamber even does that, not that they wanted a seat at the table, but they need to know, you know what? What is it the chamber does, and being able to get that messaging out there, so your approach seems to be well balanced, and it’s open for anybody, but then kind of hone in on those that that really need to be there. So some

Nikki Devitt 21:03
of our individual members always need that you know that special touch, and we know that, yeah, you have to know your membership well. You have to know your community well, especially when you’re taking this kind of approach. And always keep in the back of your mind that no matter what your best intentions are, you may, at some point, make someone feel like they were left out. And you have to be prepared and ready to, you know, remedy that in the best way that you can. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 21:29
so going back to the title, or the topic for this discussion, is creating a thriving community. And I’m asking, on behalf of a listener in, you know, I’m not even going to name a state, because I don’t want to get in trouble with anybody, but

Nikki Devitt 21:45
you’re doing it right now,

Brandon Burton 21:48
in the middle of nowhere. That says, you know, Nikki’s doing great. This is a, you know, she’s doing fascinating things, but she lives in a beautiful part of Northern Michigan. Got a lot of tourism. It brings people in year round. It might be a smaller community, but the reach is so much bigger. You know, I’m here in, you know, fill in the blank. How can somebody who maybe doesn’t see their community in the same light as you do? I can feel the love that you have for your community. Others may not have that same view, right? So, how can we, how can we help someone get excited about or to have that ability to create a thriving community? Because I think your enthusiasm drives that as well.

Nikki Devitt 22:30
I think, well, the first thing is, is, if you don’t feel that way about your community, why are you there? You have to have the passion for your community. First and foremost, I would be remiss if I, you know, I realize I can paint a picture that makes it look perfect, but you know, we have some huge challenges in our region and in our community in general, in that we are, while we are a, you know, mid sized, you know, chamber and pretty big for our area. We’re also in a very rural, remote area. It just happens to be pretty but rural areas come with a lot of challenges. I think my the bane of my existence will always be infrastructure. Water and Sewer are the absolute barrier to housing or commercial development or anything that we could possibly look out for future, forward thinking. And also we are a very, I’ll say, a non diverse community. So in a lot of ways, that presents challenges as the world changes, as our business needs change, what we are able to that’s just push forward is a strong sense of a term, but what we’re able to introduce our businesses to. So we have a lot of challenges, and it’s very difficult sometimes, when you see something that’s a pretty shiny Penny, to understand that maybe the other side isn’t so great. So you have to have passion, first and foremost, for your community, and you have to look at, what are our resources that make us unique. What is something about our community that makes us special? Why do our businesses choose to invest here and stay here? And you have to really believe that that is something worth fighting for and getting behind and really, really protecting, if you will, protecting from the mindset that your community isn’t special, because every community is special, if you really look into it and find what that is that makes it a place where somebody wants to live and work, and why a business wants to be there. So I think finding the passion is the first piece, and then the second piece to that comes with being aware of what your challenges are. Being aware there are obstacles you will never overcome. You can’t you can lay the groundwork for somebody 1015, 20 years from now to tackle that issue, and you can make sure that that’s an aware, an awareness to your community. But you can’t fix everything, but you have to love it first and foremost.

Brandon Burton 24:57
Yeah, I love that. The question you ask is, what makes your community special? Or find something to find, find what that is. And I’ve seen some communities that you know, what makes them special is a certain industry you know, that thrived 50 years ago, that maybe isn’t around in their community anymore, but they still recognize that. They still do a parade about it. They still have roots, you know, in that industry. And I think that’s great for a start. And then let’s look at what’s that next thing, you know, what this area was great for this industry for a reason. How can we make things great again? But I love that passion needs to drive all of it. So, absolutely fantastic. Um, so I like asking this question for listeners out there who are looking to take their organization up to the next level, or they have that that goal or desire in their mind, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them in trying to accomplish that goal?

Nikki Devitt 25:57
I think you have to take a very strong assessment of where you are and where you want to go. I mean, it’s strategic planning. 101, where are you today, and what makes your chamber what it is in your community? What? What do you do so well that the neighbor chamber couldn’t, couldn’t top it, that they want to, they want to R and D, that they want to rip off and duplicate that all day long. So taking stock of where you are and what you do well helps you determine where you want to go and what you can do better. And really, truly believing in your organization and your community is the first piece, and a very, very important piece, is you have to have the right people in the right seats. Everybody has to be on board to go with where you want to go and grow how you want to grow. And that’s a hard conversation sometimes, especially from a CEO standpoint, is to is everybody rowing the boat in the right direction? Because I truly believe that the best chamber is the chambers that is is a team. They are. They’re almost like an organism. They work so well together, and they believe so much in their mission and their vision and where they’re headed. So you have to make sure that critical piece is into place, or getting to that space in time that you want to and that goal that you have for your organization is either going to be something you won’t achieve or it’s going to take you a long time and a lot

Brandon Burton 27:28
of heartache. Yeah, I like that strategic planning 101, you got to have a vision of know where you are and where do you want to go and how you’re going to get there, so and have

Nikki Devitt 27:39
grace and space with yourself. Know that it takes time, and know that you’re never going to get everything in the time frame. You think either, you think we can do this in a year, two years, two years go by, you go, wow, we only moved the needle about 60% remember you moved the needle? Yeah, and remember that you went from where you were to where you are now, and that’s progress. And really, truly, credit yourself for that. Credit your team.

Brandon Burton 28:07
I wish I could remember who said the quote, but how people overestimate what they can do in a year but underestimate what they can do in 10 years, right? So absolutely moving the needle, but in that 10 year range, you’re really gonna see progress. Well, Nikki, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Nikki Devitt 28:29
You know, I truly believe I’m a big I would say supporters is an understatement. I’m a believer in acces Horizon Report, when the first one came out, it was so, let’s just say, comforting to see that. Here’s, you know, our national chamber organization, saying, these are the places chambers belong and should be, and the things that matter. And thinking, all right, we got 10 years to get there, and then 2020 hit. We all went, Oh, wow, look. We we just did all that in five years. Yeah. And so it comes back to kind of what the core theory really truly is of, you know, the horizon initiatives. And if you are not familiar, if you are listening and you do not know what the Horizon Report is. And by the way, little hint tidbit that the updated 2035

reports out. It comes out by very shortly. So we’re super excited about that,

but you have to look into that, because it really truly talks about that chambers are the most trusted entity. And the future of chambers, it’s limitless, because we truly, truly are the conveners. We truly are the entity that isn’t just the voice of business. We’re the voice of communities. We have the power to shape and build not just our businesses, but our communities and the Horizon Report, really. Helps you kind of hone in on that and and say, there’s, you know, nine of the different initiatives, and they’re everything from timeless to timely to linchpin initiatives. And it gives you the opportunity to look into it and go, okay, my community, this is never going to be an issue, or it’s not an issue that my chamber is willing or ready to get behind. But there might be others that you look at and say, Yes, this is something we need to go because these are things that are going to affect us all. I mean, we know without a doubt scarcity and abundance and political and social fragmentation, and you can’t even get into what technology is doing as far as affecting business and our future in the population shifts that we’re having, these are all huge, huge things, and and chambers, really truly are the only entity uniquely positioned to engage in all of them and really truly make a difference.

Brandon Burton 30:57
Yeah, sounds like you’ve drunk the Kool Aid too. So that’s

Nikki Devitt 31:01
I did. I can’t deny it.

Brandon Burton 31:04
Going back and looking at the first Horizon Report, for somebody who’s just hearing about it now, to go back and look at it, you have the advantage of hindsight, of saying, Wow, that you know, this really came to pass, like this really the way? Yeah, I mean, it’s, it kind of makes your, you know, hair stand up on the back of your neck, because you’re getting it absolutely

Nikki Devitt 31:24
does. Because if you could read it and think about the fact that it came out, you know, with the intention of being having come it would all come to fruition by next year. So it came out 10 years ago, and you look at it and realize that 2020 you as a chamber professional, whatever month it was, April, May, June, July, whatever, in that year that you woke up that day and you went to bed that night and realized what you accomplished from a chamber perspective, and you read that report and you go, Oh, wow. Okay,

then I just hit all nine of those in eight hours or 12, depending on what you were working but yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 32:04
Very good. Well, Nikki, this has been fun having you on. I love your energy. I love the enthusiasm. I love the impact that you’re making there. Toski, thank you for being with us today. Please share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you. Where would you point them to?

Nikki Devitt 32:22
I would absolutely and I’ll spell it because Heaven knows you can’t pronounce nobody. Don’t worry, nobody can pronounce it. Petoskeychamber.com and that’s P, E, T, o, s, k, e, y, chamber.com and my email is really easy. Nikki, nikki@petoskeychamber.com, and I would love to hear from anyone and just wish everyone the best for 2025 because I think that chambers are going to be needed once again, like we always have been, percent, you know, over a century, now more than ever. So this is our time to really bring our communities and together and elevate our businesses

Brandon Burton 33:02
Absolutely, and we’ll get that in our show notes. Make it easy. People don’t have to spell. They can just click and make it easy to connect with you. But thanks again. This has been wonderful, and wish you the best as you continue to build a thriving community.

Nikki Devitt 33:17
Thank you so much.

Brandon Burton 33:18
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Thinking Big with Ryan Tarrant

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Ryan Tarrant. Ryan is currently the President and CEO of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce and Experience Jackson, Jackson County’s destination marketing organization. In this role, he leads a strategy and vision to improve the regular quality of life in Jackson County for businesses and residents through advocacy, collaboration and destination development. Ryan previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Business Leaders for Michigan, the state business roundtable, which he dedicated to making Michigan a top 10 state for jobs, education, widely shared prosperity and and a healthy economy, where he oversaw the execution of the organization’s work plan and public policy engagement strategy. He also has prior experience as a chamber executive, where his success included securing more than a million dollars in public funding for an award winning talent attraction and retention initiative, and created a robust advocacy strategy that drove community infrastructure projects, place made, placemaking activities and engagement with local, state and federal officials. Prior to his work in membership based organizations, Ryan held a variety of positions in government and politics, serving as chief of staff to US Representative John Molinar and as a district director for us, rep dave Camp and run numerous federal campaigns. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Saginaw Valley State University, and he and his wife, Cheryl, have two mostly adult children and reside in Jackson, Michigan. Ryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ryan Tarrant 2:59
Yeah, thanks, Brandon. You know, reading through that bio, it’s starting to make me just feel old. You know, I didn’t feel that old before. And you know, have those Boomer, growing children that tend to go leave for college and then come home and stay for a little bit. So, you know, hopefully we’ll be empty nesters soon. But yeah, I grew up in a mid sized town similar to Jackson, you know, we’ve got 30,000 people grew up in Bay City, Michigan, and, you know, great town had a, had a great upbringing, you know, you had the river, you had the lake, you know, grew up, you know, sailing and doing those things. You know, they have a sailing association. So, you know, really, every kid in the community can go out and learn to sail. And, you know, just, just kind of a fantastic place to grow up and live, you know, real sense of community. But one of the things, you know, it’s a traditional Midwest blue collar town, and so, you know, over the years, as you lose some of that manufacturing, you know, I think there’s a tendency for people to kind of say, well, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re just, you know, I think Madonna called it the dirty little town, because she grew up there as well. Okay, you know. So, so I think for me, you know, growing up in Bay City, you had a region, and Bay City kind of always felt like that, that little bit of a red headed stepchild. You had Midland with the headquarters of Dow, and you had Saginaw that was twice as big and, and so, you know, you always felt a little bit less than maybe, but, you know, so I think that’s what’s kind of drawn me into to the chamber world.

Brandon Burton 4:31
Yeah, it turns into a fighter. It sounds like little scrappy. Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So as far as the the chamber goes, what? What’s the size look like? Staff, scope of work, things you guys are involved with?

Ryan Tarrant 4:48
Yeah. So our chamber is about little shy of 700 members, you know, budgets little north of 600,000 and then I also run experience Jackson, which is our destination. Marketing organization, which is actually housed in the same building, but has a completely separate board, had combined. We have a staff of 10, and then the combined budgets, you know, roughly about 1,000,006 or 1,000,007 between the two. So two distinctly different missions. You know, from the chamber perspective. We we have a strategic plan that, you know, really tries to put our members first. You know that customer service, what our events look like. How are we connecting our members? You know, you’re kind of, if anybody thinks of a chamber, it’s, it’s that traditional chamber experience, but it’s really only, you know, probably a quarter of a third of what we do. You know, the other two pieces are, how do we impact our community? You know, what kinds of things can we? Can we take on? Can we convene and collaborate on to to improve the community? And then the third leg of the stool for us is, is that government affairs and advocacy work? You know, here in Michigan, we we’ve seen some some changes for businesses on the public policy side. And, you know, how do we, how do we push back on that when we need to? How do we, how do we work with our elected officials on some of those issues? And, you know, so over the last year, I’ve been here about 14 months this year, we we’ve had some issues with aggressive panhandling, you know, coming out of the out of the pandemic, I think a lot more communities have dealt with, you know, homelessness, panhandling and some of those types of issues, maybe more than they had in the past. You know, we got to the point where in our downtown, specifically, it was getting pretty aggressive. We have a self described progressive city council, okay, who had had pushed back on it for a long time and and so we spent about nine months working with them, to come to a compromise agreement early in the summer, to to kind of abate that a little bit as far as that aggressive behavior, as far loitering and accosting. And so, you know, had some success there. You know, we go after a lot of different state appropriations, earmarks, if you will, to to kind of ramp up projects, and that’s kind of the scope of what we do. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:04
well, that should set the stage for our discussion today. You guys are busy, for sure, get your hands in some several things and making an impact, but we’re going to focus our discussion today around thinking big and some of these big swings you guys have tried and these ideas that that come to you, and I’m excited to dive into this conversation and learn from these things you present to us today as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ryan, we’re back. I mentioned before the break. We’re talking about thinking big today. So in all these different areas of work that you guys are involved with, what are how do you incorporate thinking big? That might be the better way of asking it. How do you incorporate it? You know, every

Ryan Tarrant 9:53
community has its own personality, I would say. And you know, a lot of places in the Midwest you look at and. And and those these communities kind of take a look. And, you know, in our state, if you’re in a mid sized community, you look and you say, Okay, well, you know, Grand Rapids and Detroit sort of get everything and you know, and they’re doing a phenomenal job. I mean, you know, we all know, know about the NFL draft in Detroit and things happening in Grand Rapids with beer city, and then you’ve got Traverse City up north and and so they get a lot of play and a lot of a lot of credit for things. And I think we can, we can have a little bit of fall into a little bit of a rut where we just sort of expect to get, get what we get, and move forward, and nothing really changes, you know. And I think we take a little bit of a different perspective on it, which is, you know, kind of that, why not us? You know, if, if there’s, there’s these opportunities out there, you know, I mentioned appropriation as far as the government advocacy side goes, you know, why not us? You know, if you’re not even asking, you’re never going to get anything, and everything’s always going to be the same. You know, downtown Jackson seen a lot of redevelopment over the last decade or so. I mean, it’s really come back. You have restaurants, you have businesses downtown, and, you know, we have Consumers Energy, which is, you know, either number one or number two, as far as the biggest energy companies in the state that’s headquartered on one end of our downtown, the other end of the downtown, on the other hand, has something called the Hays hotel. It’s this historic hotel, 10 stories, and it’s been vacant for 21 years. And as I came into the community, and you know, I we would talk about the Hays hotel, and you would have people who would just kind of roll their eyes because they’ve all heard it before, and something’s going to happen with it. You know, fast forward and, and there’s a developer who’s who’s committed to it, and, and, you know, through our conversations with them, learned that there was a little bit of a gap with with all of the the different funding components, you know, you look at over the last couple of years, the increases in interest rates and labor shortages and supplies. And so, you know, it would seem that every time they would fill a gap, there was, you know, maybe another hurdle at the back end. So, you know, we kind of took a look at that and said, Well, you know, what if we tried to hit the easy button here a little bit. And so we engaged with our elected representatives at the state capitol and and kind of had that conversation and said, Look, this is, this is sort of that, that transformational project that kind of completes downtown and books and bookends Consumers Energy to then start to infill some of those, those side streets. You know, we were successful in securing we, we actually asked for $3 million and secured four and a half million dollars. Wow, yeah, they treated it a little bit like the 2023, housing market. You know, you put it up for 100 and they give you 150 right? But, you know, those are the types of things that you know, if you say, why not us? And you make the ask, you know, it’s okay to fail. You know, nothing changes if you fail, but nothing changes if you don’t try either.

Brandon Burton 13:05
Yeah? So, and if you do fail, you learn something, and you can apply it to the next, the next, you know, big idea, right? That’s exactly right, yeah. So, as we talk about big thinking, I I can’t help but think of you can’t have big thoughts if you don’t have big vision, right? If you don’t see a bigger plan or bigger vision for your community, can you speak towards that as to how you see Jackson County, what the possibilities are, what how you would like to see yourself in the future, and to be able to apply that to these big ideas that you’re working towards?

Ryan Tarrant 13:42
Yeah, I’m a big fan of, you know, looking at what others are doing and kind of figuring some of those pieces out, like, what are those aspirational goals? You know, I mentioned Grand Rapids, you know, there’s some other communities out there. We actually transitioned one of our team members into more of a data and analytics role, you know, he has a skill set for it, and so, you know, he’s been doing a lot of this. And, you know, not just kind of the, you know, hey, we’re going to do a community assessment and ask people how they feel. You know, we’ve been doing those for 40 years. And over the last 60 years, the city has lost 40% of its population because people’s feelings aren’t based on anything that you know maybe is real or or achievable. And so, you know, we look at at similar communities and find those comparable communities, then, you know, okay, what are, what are their chambers doing? Who is that, that sort of spark plug in the community, that organization, or that individual, you know what? What’s caused them to grow to, you know, achieve additional educational attainment, those types of things. And so, you know, for us, over the last couple of months, we’ve started to look at some of those things. And you know, you can look at Grand Rapids, and the things that we found are, you know, the two biggest keys to to growth seem to be, you know, persistence in your goal and strategies. And you. Yeah, and then, you know, having sort of some spark or some leader that that actually moves it forward. And when I talk about that persists, persistence, when you look at Grand Rapids, you know that that downtown redevelopment in Grand Rapids started in the mid 70s when Gerald Ford was president. You know, the Secret Service, when he became president, told him he couldn’t do a parade in His own hometown because there were so many vacant buildings and they couldn’t secure him. So, you know, fast forward a few years, and they had a conference center come in, and then, you know, and then it was a civic arena, and then it was a medical mile and a four year institution. And it’s been driven by, you know, collaborative efforts, but also by a couple of larger corporations or families that are located there. You know, similar things can be seen around the country. You know, you look at Bentonville, Arkansas with with the Walmart and Walden family, and then you look at places that that have the opportunity to do those things, but maybe don’t have that one or two businesses or individual that individuals with wealth that can kind of pull it off and keep people together. And what does that look like? You know, I talked to our peers in Mankato, Minnesota last week, and, you know, talking to them, and that persistence is there too, you know, they, they’ve, over the last 40 years, had these 20 year plans. I mean, they’re telling me they’re on number three. And so how do we create that? I mean, you’re talking mid 80s, yeah, how many changes of leadership have we had in since the mid 80s? You know, I’ve been in in communities where where you look at things and you go, Okay, there’s this collective group of leaders who have this vision and support each other and collaborate. But then you have one or two leave, and you have another one retire. And if, if that vision isn’t written down, and you’re not not pulling in those successors immediately into that, those leadership roles and to help with that vision, it starts to fall apart. And so, you know, it’s, it’s that keeping people together and that consistency in what you’re doing. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 17:06
now I love that, the creating that vision, and being able to see where there’s certain individuals in a community that maybe carry more influence they might, and I’m not talking necessarily elected officials, but you gave the example of the Walton family, and, you know, they’ve got money, they’ve got influence, big business. How do you get those people within your community to kind of, I don’t know how to say this, in the way that that I intend, but to engage, but to to not be so hyper focused on their individual business growth and success, but to be able to look at the greater picture of the community and get them to engage in the community, to see it grow and success and succeed by applying some of their skills and connections and abilities to the greater good

Ryan Tarrant 17:55
and and I think the biggest, the biggest key there. I mean, you know, you talk to economic developers. And you know what number one or number two is always people, if you’re talking to site selectors, on what’s the first thing they look at if they’re going to go into a community, right? It’s, do you have the quality and quantity of workforce, you know? So when you start talking to those, those you know, whether it’s an individual or a larger corporation, you know, everything I try and do comes from a perspective of, you know, talent, attraction, retention. You know, is this something that’s going to help us attract and retain talent, or is it just something that that we’re doing to do and how does it move the needle? You know, on our destination marketing organization side, you know, we’re making a big outdoor Bucha. Because, you know, we have something called the Irish hills in our county, and there’s, there’s opportunities for for gravel biking out there, which is the fastest segment of cycling. You know, we’ve got 11 miles of mountain biking trails, and our one of our city parks that just needs to be regrouped and maybe added to. And so, you know, how do we do that? Because now those things translate to those quality of life amenities that, you know, when one of our major corporations, or even, you know, a physical therapy organization, is hiring somebody out of college, you know, do you want to go to Jackson, or do you want to go to Chicago? And if you don’t have those quality of life amenities that, you know, you’re not going to compete with the big city lifestyle, but that’s okay. Utilize the assets you have, but make them as good as they can be. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:27
that makes a lot of sense. That place making aspect is huge. And I love the example you gave, the Hayes Hotel. I’m in Texas, and there’s a big historic hotel not too far from where I’m at, that has been vacant since, I believe, the 50s. So it’s been it’s quite the icon. People see it, but just now, things are starting to happen to revitalize it. And it’s great to see it’s great to see those success stories and to see it turn around. And it’s something that builds a community. Be around it too, where you can see progress happening on like, a magnified level, right? Yeah,

Ryan Tarrant 20:07
yeah. And those are the sort of transformational things that you see in a community that, yeah, you know, it’s sort of the I mentioned the last decade in downtown Jackson. And you know that that, to me, is that transformational piece that sparks the next decade.

Brandon Burton 20:22
Absolutely, are there some other big things that that you’ve taken a swing at, or, you know, that they would fall into this category of big thinking that we need to highlight?

Ryan Tarrant 20:35
Yeah, so, you know, you mentioned big things, and I mentioned, you know, a lot of lot of mid sized communities out there, you know, sometimes I think in a in the chambers, we can get hyper focused on our day to day. We’re all so busy, you know, all of those things, but, but we’ve really gotta, gotta kind of identify some of those swings. I mean, we can do that by focusing a little bit, right? Yeah, you know, making sure we’re training our sites and we leave that capacity for for those big swings, you know, but for us, I, you know, revamping those, those mountain biking trails are one of our big pushes for next year, you know, because what we’ve learned is, is, if you’re in that 12 to 20 mile range of mountain biking trails, and you develop them so, you know, you I guess, and I’m learning about Cycling right now, apparently it’s like skiing. They have green so little kids can do it and like me, and then they have black diamonds that are really challenging. And, you know, I break my neck so, you know, bringing in a trail builder to develop that and to add miles to it, so that we can draw people in, you know. And it’s in one of the, you know, I would say probably lower income or more diverse neighborhoods in the city. And so the proximity of it, you know, it’s not just doing that for talent attraction, but how do you make that accessible to everybody? So as a piece of that conversation, we’re looking at it and saying, Okay, can we do a mount like library, if you will, where, you know, a kid from the neighborhood can walk down and and, you know, show his card and essentially rent a bike without paying for it, just like the library and go ride the trails and have fun. You know, you want, you want those things to be accessible for everybody. You want everybody to be able to enjoy them, you know, and to do that because it gives you that, that sense of community pride, because with each one of those things you accomplish, it, it builds on itself. You know, we’ve got, we’ve got another nonprofit in town that’s called the hope kitchen, that’s taking the old Masonic Hall and creating a community kitchen, teaching kitchen to sort of train chefs in front of the house. And, you know, to make sure that that we have that pipeline of of talent for our restaurants, so that, you know, when somebody comes into town, or when you go downtown or to a restaurant in our community, you’re getting the service that you you expect. I mean, I think we’ve all been out to eat over the last couple of years, since COVID and and it always feels like, you know, a lot of time, I wouldn’t say always, but often times it feels like, you know, maybe that level of service that we were accustomed to pre COVID is not the same as post COVID, yep. And so, you know, teaching those people, you know how to do that, and and for us, you know, how do we support that? You know, when they need, when they need to purchase their equipment. How do we how do we help them, whether it’s with with grant funding, through the advocacy process, you know, those types of things. So yeah, so those are some of the, some of the things that that are on our radar right now.

Brandon Burton 23:33
And actually just saw this last week, restaurant that had a sign posted on their door said, No, dine in, just take out only, and it’s something that’s stuck ever since COVID and and I hope that’s because the the data is telling them that’s the best solution for them, but my fear is they can’t get the staff to do dine in or decide easier at the community the Customer Services has fallen out something,

Ryan Tarrant 24:01
yeah, the worst one I’ve seen. I saw was I actually tried to order a pizza online, and got a note when I tried to to click Order, and it said, we’re short staffed. We’re taking time to orders for tomorrow. What I got pizza from somewhere else. I think I still have pizza. So yeah, but yeah, that was the most bizarre one. I mean, they updated their their website, and they’re ordering, oh my goodness, that quickly, that you know, hey, we’re just, we’re busy, and we can’t keep up, so we’re just not taking any more

Brandon Burton 24:35
orders. Wow. But hopefully your appetite is still there tomorrow. So that’s crazy. Well, as as we start to wrap up here, I like asking for the chamber that’s listening, who’s trying to elevate their organization to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you suggest for them and trying to accomplish that goal? So

Ryan Tarrant 24:55
I think we were, we were sort of, you know, in that mindset of. You know, about a year ago, when we were sounds like, yeah, strategic planning, right? You know, how do we elevate to the next level? We hadn’t done a lot of community initiatives or, you know, over the past few years, we hadn’t done a lot of advocacy work for our members over the past few years. And so, you know, they’ve been doing kind of this, you know, event to event kind of mindset. And so one of the things that we did was we actually developed a survey for other chambers. And so, you know, I mentioned our revenues about 600,000 so we kind of kind of broke it out into those peer chamber, Chamber organizations, and then sort of those aspirational chambers that are in that next level at 700,000 to a million or so. And we really went through and kind of said, you know, how many, how many events do you have that would be considered, you know, kind of, quote, unquote, Premier events, you know, your annual meeting, or your community awards or, or those types of things and, and, you know, how many of these advocacy pieces do you do, you know, kind of went down the line to try and benchmark a little bit to see, you know, at different levels, is, is there a different, you know, what does that look like? You know, are we doing something that’s a little bit off and, and what we found from it, you know, we had, we had, it actually ended up getting 1010, or 11 responses, you know, we, we targeted, who we who we asked. But we it was split evenly between those, you know, smaller in our our level, and then those larger organizations. And what we found was, the larger you are, the less you do. It’s hard to think about, but say it again, right? Or at least the forward facing of what you do is less larger you are, you know, because so many of us think of events, the less you do. Yeah, and it was that, you know, it felt like, as you got to that larger, larger revenue size, and you start to get north of 700,000 you know, those organizations are focusing more, doing fewer premier events, probably doing them really well. But part of that is because they’re transitioning from doing more events to more of that community based work, more of that advocacy style work. And even within that advocacy work, they’re more focused. They might pick three or four priorities that they want to work on, versus having, you know, 10 or 15 and and throwing everything at the at the wall and seeing what sticks. So, yeah, you know, I think that that next level for all of us is, is probably being more focused, you know, we, we, and we can fall into that. I mean, I’m, I’m as guilty as everybody else, right? We get so busy, you know, that there’s so many things going on, and sometimes it’s hard to to put that focus and pinpoint on on that one thing that your members need. But you know, I think at the end of the day, you know, for us, if, if we can accomplish that, that top priority, versus numbers 10 through 20, I think our members are going to be happier with us. We’re going to continue to grow, and, you know, the community is going to be better for in the future.

Brandon Burton 27:59
Yeah, but it sounds like having your new data and analytics person is a great step in that direction, to really focus.

Ryan Tarrant 28:07
It does help to look at data. You know, fewer feelings, more things based on data, really, I think, helps us move the needle a little bit. So, yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:16
I just heard the other day somebody was trying to bring back an event after the pandemic, and they put out an email to all their followers and whatnot, and said, you know, if we get enough interest, we’ll put it on. And there was like 300 or so people that responded, yeah, we want to do this. And then the person thought, you know what this is? Just feelings, you know, let me put this out there again, to the ones that said that they want to come and have them put down a 50% deposit, and if we don’t get enough, we’ll refund everything. We won’t do it, but if we get enough, we’ll move forward. And I think he said, Out of the 300 plus, you know people of interest, I think six people put down a deposit. He’s like, we’re not doing it. So I pay cancel it.

Ryan Tarrant 29:03
And I started looking at our events, and kind of said, you know, and talk to our team about if people don’t want to come to an event, you know, they may say they want it in our survey end of year survey, which, you know, we do every year, to kind of, kind of benchmark ourselves and see how we’re doing and what their needs are. And they may say they want all the networking in the world. You know, for us, we offer 22 networking events a year for a grand total of $90 you know, it, it’s literally sort of boosted by sponsors and different things. But if you’re not going to come to it, but you say you want it, we’ll just stop doing it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:39
yeah. Don’t need the practice, right, right?

Ryan Tarrant 29:43
It shows that, you know, we’re a week post election. It shows that sometimes the data and the polling can be

Brandon Burton 29:48
off. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, Ryan, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ryan Tarrant 29:57
I don’t know that the purpose changes. All that much. I mean, you know, we’re, we’re still going to have that need for businesses who who want to get together, and who want to want to network with one another, develop those relationships. But I think, you know, if there’s any change at all, it’s probably that more and more of that is going to be about that, that bigger picture work that you’re doing. I mean, when we look at our community work, we’re not thinking of, are we doing this? Does it benefit our members? It’s, are we doing this? And does this benefit the community as a whole? You know, if, if the city of Jackson grows, and the county of Jackson grows and we have a bigger employer base, it certainly helps, helps our members. And so, you know, we worry less about those types of things, you know, right now, we, we are we awaiting word on a million dollar grant that we partnered with our local two year college on. And as a part of that, it’s workforce development, you know, is building out a workforce development collaborative to make sure our educational attainment is where it needs to be, and that all of our workforce development partners are working together, you know. And so about a quarter of that 250,000 would be essentially directed to the chamber to run that piece of it, you know. So, so I think you know that community based piece is probably the biggest thing. If, if people aren’t already doing that, how do you impact your community? You know, we know our businesses want to impact their community. That’s why they’ve, you know, for 70 years, sponsored Little League teams, right? You know, done those types of things. They sponsor the local booster club like they they want their people to have community pride. They want to want to see their community and be be proud of where they’re from, and say, you know, you should come visit. You should move here. It’s a great community, you know. And I think the chamber really in in most places, can be a driver of what we look what their community looks like in the next you know, 1015, 20 years,

Brandon Burton 31:48
yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. Well, Ryan, for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson County, or maybe you’re one of the aspirational chambers that they’re looking up towards. But what would be the best way to to point somebody to reach out and connect with you? Sure my

Ryan Tarrant 32:09
email address is ryan@jacksonchamber.org, and my cell phone, because I actually got rid of my desk phone. I don’t use it anyway, is 989-708-7683,

Brandon Burton 32:26
that’s perfect, and we’ll get this in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy to find, but I appreciate you carving out some time to spend with us today on chamber chat podcast, sharing the example you guys are setting there in Jackson County and and sharing these ideas and some of these big things, these swings you guys are taking, I appreciate that, and it’s provided a lot of value to listeners today. So thank you for that.

Ryan Tarrant 32:49
Appreciate it. Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 32:50
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Your Chamber Does That with John Tayer

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is John Tayer as President and CEO of the Boulder Chamber in Colorado, John is honored to lead the organization that serves as boulders unified voice for business interests advances the community’s economic vitality and provides valuable business support services. Prior to joining the boulder chamber in 2012 John was Public Affairs and Communications Director for the pharmaceutical manufacturing company Roche, Colorado Corporation, and policy development director at the Boulder City Manager’s office. John also spent six years as the boulder area’s elected representative to the Regional Transportation District. As a native of Brookline, Massachusetts. John earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. Spent a couple of years working on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and moved to Boulder 34 years ago to earn a law degree from the University of Colorado. He now resides in South Boulder with his wife Molly, and enjoys playing outdoors, accessing local cultural attractions, and generally loves his community. But John, 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 that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better,

John Tayer 2:27
Sure. Brandon, and thank you so much for reaching out and offering to include me in your podcast series. You know. I’ll just say this that you know i a Just so appreciate my chamber colleagues and I learned so much from conversations with them. One of my favorite things is getting together with them at professional conferences. And so this kind of a podcast is a great opportunity to for me to just share my thinking, but I look forward to just listening to others as well as I have previously. I will say that just if you think about me, just as a individual, quirky as I am, I’d say just I love the chamber universe and the work that we do. And I’m sure we’ll get into the details of that, but it is somewhat overwhelming. I mean, we are engaged in so many aspects of our communities, our schedules are, you know, seven or gosh, I get up so early, like four in the morning to get my emails done till late at night, and then just get up and do it again. So in order to balance that kind of a work lifestyle, I would say something different about me that might be relatable to other chamber directors, and that is, I have to be very compulsive about how I schedule in time to exercise and to engage in activities outside of my chamber experience. And what that looked like for quite some time was for three years, three months and three days. I ran five k5, kilometers or more every day, not skipping a day, and whether it was ice storms, the snow, rain, wind, crazy wind days. So you know, for me, that was a just a great way to a keep a consistent pattern of Exercise and Health, but just for also just finding a way to get space where I could just release my mind and think about some of the key issues that I was addressing at work or in life, just amazingly important. So I think maybe the compulsive nature, there’s other elements of that in my life, things I’ve done, but that might be something a little bit unusual to just to give you a sense of my character, yeah, that’s

Brandon Burton 4:56
a that is quite the feat. I. I’ll say, I I’m run. I’ve run as well. I Fitness is important to me. But most mornings, I’m getting my my oldest daughter up at 5am get her going and and I’ll take that time, I’ll get her up, and then I’ll put on the shoes and go out for a run. And in Texas, it’s either like, you gotta beat the sun up, or else, you know, it’ll beat you up, you know, on your run, yeah. So, so I do that, but this week I got her up, and we had a cold front come through, and it was, like, in the 30s, and it’s like, wow, I’m not up for yet. I’m gonna wait for the sun to come up today. Wow. So the fact we’re out nice and,

John Tayer 5:39
yeah, we haven’t had anything like that up here in Colorado. So interesting,

Brandon Burton 5:44
yeah, but I enjoy your your sentiment about, you know, going to chamber conferences and interacting with colleagues and learning from them, spending time with them, and I don’t think we have them enough. So that’s where this podcast kind of fills that void and gives us that, hit that we need in between. So love it, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about the boulder chamber. Give us an idea of the size, number of staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget to kind of set the stage for our conversation today?

John Tayer 6:14
Sure. So the boulder chamber is about 1200 and mid 1200 membership, shooting for 1300 we are a we have about 21 staff members. And just to describe the character of it, we’re one of those chambers that has the opportunity to have economic vitality under our umbrella. So we serve as the economic development agency for Boulder and the broader region from a chamber perspective. And for me, I just we might get into this later, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, in terms of just that marriage of economic vitality underneath the typical chamber functions. So that’s, I think, key, about a $2.6 million budget and just a wide array of just activities that probably aren’t typical of a chamber. So we’ll get into some of that in our conversation. I’m

Brandon Burton 7:16
sure. Yes, absolutely, and and I agree. I think being able to have that marriage of chamber and economic development, makes a lot of sense. As far as that cohesiveness and really building community, you need to be able to be on the same page. So even if they’re separate organizations, being able to come together and be on the same page,

John Tayer 7:35
absolutely. I mean, I hate seeing when you have an Economic Development Authority, separate from the chamber, and they’re competing for funding events for, you know, the elbow throwing around what activities are within their purview. It’s, it’s, to me, that’s undermines Community and Economic Vitality.

Brandon Burton 7:56
Yes, I would agree with that. So we settled on a topic for our conversation today around your chamber does that and that can either that can be a statement or that can be a question. So we’ll get into that much deeper as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, John, we’re back, and before the break I’d mentioned so your chamber. Does that can be a statement or a question, as as we approach the topic today, what, what direction do you want to go with it? First is a statement or a question?

John Tayer 10:09
You know, I’d say that it’s a it’s a statement and, and we do that, it’s, you know, got a period, but it might as well have an exclamation point at the at the back of the the end of it. And the point of that statement is, when you think about chamber organizations, many folks, they’ll say, Well, what does a chamber do? I mean, you’d like to think that the job that you’re doing daily and working your tail off, and folks would completely understand it and have awareness of what Chamber organizations do. But when you, when you talk to average business leaders, citizens on the street, many of them have no idea what a chamber is. And they, they’re, you know, once I tell them what I do, I’m the head of the boulder chamber, they they’ll next question is, and then what do you do for work? And I have to this is actually a full time, more than full time job, really. And so you know the chamber, your chamber does, that is a statement about you should know what your chamber does. And if you you know, if you’re have an issue as a business, if you’re thinking about a community issue that’s impacting the economy, you should talk to us. And so, you know, it’s an expression for us about the just wide range of activities and programs that our chamber is involved with. And you know, I’ll just touch on it. But I mentioned, I mean, we have the traditional three areas of chamber activity, member support and marketing, services and networking. We have our advocacy, which is the being the voice for business interests. And I would say that, you know, that was for us, a very important element of our own sustainability and our strength as it as an organization drawing in members. And then third is that economic vitality element. So we, we are the economic development group looking to retain and attract businesses, to carry the data resources for our community on the health and vitality of our economy and generally helping businesses build toward their future vision. But in addition to that, we’ve taken on significant other ancillary activities that are important to business success. So for example, when we think about one of the challenges for business activity in our region, it’s workforce retention and attraction. And so we’ve we’ve had to approach things like workforce development, helping to develop the talent that we have in our community, to serve the best, serve and align with the businesses needs for different expertise and skills. In addition, we become very active in housing policy, because it’s become very expensive to live in central boulder. So how do we help to develop a ray of housing, not just in Boulder, but around the region? And then third, just as another example, and there’s so many more, we are very active in transportation, where the transportation management organization for our community, and that is facilitating workforce mobility that is in around Boulder, but also, more importantly for workforce retention and attraction, it is what helps us facilitate longer regional commutes for Our workforce, making it really convenient for them to travel to Boulder for work and back maybe to housing outside of our community.

Brandon Burton 14:09
So that gives a great scope of some of those things that you guys are involved with. I love that even in your email signature, you say your chamber does that, you know, so you’re, resonating, that you’re putting that out there and that messaging to your community. So for those listening, yeah, I’m thinking of the chamber executive who’s already overwhelmed, who’s like, we can’t take on one more thing right now. And then somebody in the community will come to the chamber and say, Hey, I think you should do this. So talk to us about that. How do you approach when the new ideas, either if it self generated within the chamber, or ideas are presented to you from the outside, how do you figure out how that aligns with your mission, if it’s something that you’re going to take on and to really run with? Tagline of your chamber. Does that? How does that fit in with this? What

John Tayer 15:03
a brilliant question, a brilliant question. Because I will tell you that that was one of the conversation elements when we did our rebranding to think about, you know, the message that that sends is that, do we become the sponge for just about anything that a chamber can do, because that is one of the greatest challenges in this role, is figuring out what are the things we don’t do, what are the the the opportunities to have an impact on our community, on the economic vitality of our area and support our businesses. And you know, every day, somebody’s calling and saying, Hey, we’re having this parade, and we’d love the chamber to lead it, and you know all this. So how do we approach the decision making around what is appropriate for our organization? And I won’t claim to be expert on this. In fact, if you talk to our staff team, they say we need to do a better job at this. And I think we all with that. But it first starts with the strategic plan. We the way we plan strategically is every year we do, we update our strategic plan. So it’s not a three year plan or five year plan that we we we point toward we know that the conditions in our community and our economy are changing all the time. So every year, we do a soup to nuts review, and that’s everything from just making sure that our mission, our vision, are still in in alignment with what we want them to be, making sure our core values are are still what we feel are critical for our organization to represent. But then you start getting into the meat of the work, of the strategic plan, and we have key pillars they relate to the kinds of things I mentioned earlier, things like being the voice, being the the strong economic vitality pillar member support those kinds of things, a little bit broader scope to to them and nuance. And then, you know, those things don’t change that much. But then underneath are the activities that support success in those key pillar areas, and that is reviewed every year, and they change regularly. I mean, sometimes, you know, we’ll have programs that go on, and we know that they will for a number of years, but other times, we have a mission or goal project that we’re pursuing. We know it, and hope that it’ll be a one year, one and then we’ll be able to move on to something else. But under that umbrella, every year, we’re doing a check to make sure that we are keeping a focus on achieving our key pillar, pillar goals, strategic priorities and the programs, all our programs need to lead toward that we look to weed out things that maybe are no longer serving us in those areas, and then that sets the pace for the year, and we try to be strict about not deviating too far from What we set at the beginning of the year. But you know, opportunities come forward, and so when that happens, we do have a tool for analyzing. Are these things that you know are aligned with our mission? Are they going to serve our goals? Is it something that we have the capacity to take on, whether it’s financially or whether it’s with our staff team. And sometimes there are creative ways that we can either support others in achieving a goal and still be tied in a way that is comfortable and strategic for us. And then at other times, we just have to say sorry. We just can’t be involved with that at this time and and try to offer support and guidance, but you have to make that difficult decision, and you know that at times can be disappointing for folks, but I think the greater clarity you can provide to them up front without hemming and hawing, is serves, serves you long term. And last thing I’ll say about that is we just actually made a decision to take on, for example, the film commission under our umbrella, and something that I really excited about, wanted to pursue, and had to listen to our, my staff team, when they said, you know, no, not now. And this was, this was quite over a couple of years, really. And there, then came a point where we said, Okay, now we see that this fits with us. We see how we can adopt it. And. A way that doesn’t over Burton, our staff, team and resources. So it’s not always a permanent, no, it can be a hey, not now, but maybe in the future.

Brandon Burton 20:12
Yeah, I like how you say you have a tool for analyzing, you know, whether or not something is a fit or something you can take on, is there like a canned response when you get a phone call or an email to one of your 2021, staff members? How does that filter in from the the original source to that feedback of, yes, let’s explore this. Or, you know, how can we support you in another way with your parade or whatever it is, how is the staff trained to handle you know, as more things come your way, you

John Tayer 20:53
know, I think each of them have a different approach. I’ll say just my style. I mean, I just tend to be an exuberant person in general. So my initial response is, wow, that is an exciting idea, if I think it’s a great idea. And boy, I’d love to think about how we could be engaged with that. And then I will absorb as much information as I can. Usually entail some sort of a meeting and discussion. I’ll bring in the appropriate staff folks to have that conversation, and then the statement is, hey, I need to bring it back to the team. It’s kind of and I think folks respect that’s fair when I, when I, when I offer that. I’m really excited about it, but I need to take it back to the team. You know, it’s, it’s an honest statement. I mean, if I don’t think that this is a fit, then I’ll usually let them know. But I really do rely on the team. We have so such great, great staff team members and partners that I want to make sure that they buy in our I meet with our leadership team every week, we walk through just the list of issues that are coming to us, whether they’re existing projects or new ideas. And I’m always testing with them, and there’s some very hard conversations that they have, and you know, listen to periodically, I’ll get reprimanded because I got somebody a little bit too excited about the potential of working with us, and they’re like, wait a minute, you know? And I, you know, they’re they’re right to do that. And so I respect them and look for them to give me honest push back when it’s taking on something that is just not within our capacity, or maybe even not a good fit for us? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:40
So I like that approach. I think it’s good to show if there’s some genuine interest to express that, but take it back to the team, and it all has to go through that filter. I think that makes a lot of sense. So I had mentioned before you’ve got the tagline in your your email signature of your chamber. Does that? How do you guys go about telling the story? I mean, you guys are involved in so many things. How do you let your community know exactly what it is you’re involved with? I mean, it’s, it’s in your email signature. You’re on the podcast today talking about it. What are, what are other ways that you’re getting the messaging out there? This is what the Chamber’s doing to advance our community.

John Tayer 23:20
Yeah. So listen, I will defer to our expertise in the marketing era staff team. But you know what we will often do is tell the story through our programs and activities and so we, we, we are very aggressive in our media outreach, our editorial commentary, in our video content, all sorts of ways of communicating that we have this broad scope. And you know for me, some of the most effective tools are the opinion pieces that we write, which allow us to speak up on issues that are important to our businesses, important to our community, and indicate that our organization is at the table, playing a critical role, Speaking on behalf of business interests. I say, always say business interests in harmony with the values of our community, which we shared, environmental sustainability, social equity, but at the same time making it clear, hey, this is the impact this issue will have, or the position. This is why we’re taking this position on a particular issue area. And so to me, these kinds of proactive free media opportunities are really important, having a relationship with our local newspaper reporters so that they know and think to call us on the kinds of activities that we’re working on. And so we. Balanced that kind of approach with just our own marketing messaging, which covers an array of topic areas. We have newsletters in the economic vitality area, in our public policy programs area and in general membership, and try to meet them out in a way that doesn’t overwhelm our membership and our business community, but is demonstrating that we’re active in all of these different areas. I

Brandon Burton 25:31
like that, especially those opinion pieces and your idea of, you know, showing the business interests in conjunction with the community interests. I think it’s so important to show that that alignment there. When you take take something to the team to evaluate whether or not we’re going to take this on as something new that the Chamber does talk to us a little bit about what you look at, as far as the financial aspect, because all of it’s going to take some kind of staff time. I would assume most of these things are going to take staff time. There’s a cost to that. Are these programs? Are they going to be revenue generators? Are you going to have to go after grants? Are you going to so talk to us about the financial aspect as you, as you bring on new programs or new initiatives? Yeah.

John Tayer 26:16
So for me, that it starts with the foundation of the the characterization I have for our organization and any 501 c6 or 501 c3 and that is we are a non profit business, and that means that we have a mission and purpose to our work. We there are specific goals that we have for the work that we do, and we want to be incredibly impactful in those areas, but we know that we cannot achieve those goals or have as much of an impact if we don’t operate as a normal business that has a mindset of bringing in revenue that helps us to employ the staff, team members, pay them in a way that is appropriate for their expertise and skill levels, and also invest in the tools and and and support services that allow us to drive toward those, those those goals. So for everything that we do, we’re always assessing, how can we pay for that? What are the the sponsors? What are the the grant programs? And also thinking about some of the programs that maybe not drawing in direct revenue, but are a driver for membership at standard or even higher levels, because we’re doing that work. So there is that revenue assessment for just about everything we do. You know, there are some things that you would, you would say, Okay, we are doing this because that is a chamber activity. Were so many fewer of those than when I first came on board. I mean, there was just, I’d say, just an array of activities that we said, Well, we do that because it’s, you know what a chamber does? Well, let’s find out how we can turn that into a revenue, revenue generating mechanism for organization that allows us to do that and also supports our other operations and activities. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:35
I appreciate that perspective. I think hopefully that’ll help others that are, you know, facing those challenges to bring this on. How do we do this? Figuring out a way to pay for it, to make it all work, is super important. It’s, I

John Tayer 28:48
will say, Brandon. It’s a philosophy that just it. You know, even myself, you know, when I came in, you know, I will tell you that I wasn’t somebody who understood. I wasn’t, didn’t come up through the chamber ranks. I came into the organization and wasn’t clear on all the, you know, the Chamber financing tools and but was focused and compelled by the mission. And I think that’s probably most of the staff team members that that join. They want to serve and support our businesses. They want to achieve things that are important for our community and our economy. That said making sure that everybody has a mindset of generating revenue to then support and keeping some expenses at the lowest possible rate that allows us to perform our mission to do the programs and initiatives that we find so compelling and that lead us toward achieving our mission.

Brandon Burton 29:48
Yeah, that’s perfect. Well, as we shift gears here a little bit, I wanted to to ask for the chamber listening, who’s interested in taking their organization up to the. Next Level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them? And as they try to accomplish this goal,

John Tayer 30:07
you know, I I listen. I first of all just, I say this with all humility, because there’s so many chamber leaders out there that I follow, and think I need to take that on so but what has been successful for I think our organization are a couple of really key elements. So one is that I do believe that there is a very critical need to represent business interests and represent them in a way that is constructive, that drives goal toward goal policy, goals that support our businesses, and I think, to the extent that that becomes a significant area of investment for chambers, to me, I’ve seen that propel colleagues around our region to much greater success and impact in their communities, and also a greater financial base. It’s it’s the larger businesses, the ones that have the capacity to invest in your work. They want to see you speak up on their behalf to help make sure that their businesses can operate most efficiently and effectively in their community, and at the same time they they want to be represented responsibly in a way that isn’t, you know, you know, hell with business interests. I mean, we have, I always joke that we have these beautiful flat irons that are the back backdrop to our community and really the the symbol of our our communities, just beauty. And, you know, I joke that, you know, we’re never going to be the chamber that says, let’s, let’s tear down the the flat irons and sell off that sandstone, because it’s really good for business. No, we are about long term business vitality and economic strength and the vitality of our community for the long term. So for me, that’s the character of advocacy that I think is so important for our business. In addition, I then move toward the economic vitality side of the equation. And to me, it’s not just the classic business retention and attraction and for us strong strengths and data collection and understanding the vitality of our community, but it’s the programs that have a broader, long term impact on our community, things that aren’t going to be addressed in you know, either a single, you know, you know, one month action or activity, but also aren’t things that are just part of your daily work. So for example, we have homelessness has become an issue in our community, housing costs are significant challenge for for our workforce. So we took on what we call the greatest challenges to our economy and to our community under the umbrella of what’s called the boulder Together program, and that initiative is allowing us to describe and define those issues that are of most concern to our businesses, and then attract resources that help us to tackle them for specific goals, to to for for Our community and for our economy. And so we’ve, you know, now in our seventh year, I think seventh year, yes, seventh year of Boulder together, and we’ve been able to see really important progress in transportation programs, in housing generation and in we developed an entirely new workforce development program through the boulder together umbrella, and I’d say that’s the message to our to fellow colleagues, and I know a number of them are doing this, but it’s instrumental to our success, and that is identifying the greatest challenges that our businesses have for their success and their their vision for the future, and then outreaching to them for support to tackle those issues with specific programs and initiatives that, to me, has helped to define Our organization as a leader in much broader scope of activities that I don’t think are typical for a chamber organization. I

Brandon Burton 34:49
love that answer that identifying those biggest challenges and go attack it. Yeah, go, go after it. Go get it. And I, I wrote down the the comment you made about the. Character of advocacy. I love the way you said that, and I think that resonates very well, John, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

John Tayer 35:13
Yeah, well, you know, listen, I’m a chamber believer. And you know, when I think about the state of our society, and that the challenge we have in communities, but nationally, internationally, just communicating and and getting folks together to address these very difficult issues. I see Chambers as becoming the place where we come together diverse perspectives, but with understanding that we have common goals. We want our businesses to be successful, we want our economy to thrive, and we want our communities to be wholly sustainable. And so a chamber organization has become that unusual place in society now where you can bring folks together in a in a in a in a in a problem solving nature brass tacks not not no fluff, but really pointing toward solutions that are actionable and drive toward positive results together. And I find that that’s just the the opportunity for chambers, especially in this day and age, it’s, it’s, it’s a community center, and it’s a place for achieving results that in many ways are are even our government entities are not capable of given the the consternation at the political sphere. So I see chambers evolving and developing to become bigger players in a whole array of community issues that impact our economy and business success. So I’m bullish on where we position ourselves for the future, and I’m just excited about just, of course, our own chamber. But just chambers writ large,

Brandon Burton 37:14
it’s a great vision. I love it. John, I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are approaching things there in Boulder. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

John Tayer 37:29
Well, I’m glad to reach or be connected with on LinkedIn. You can find me John, John Taylor, T, A, y, E, R, you can also email me directly at john.tayer@boulderchamber.com, and if you feel compelled, give me a call. 303-442-1058, and you know, I’ll just say this that I’m glad to respond to any questions. Just share what we know I was just emailing just yesterday, somebody on our team, and I said, Let’s do it. Let’s do that. R and D rip off and duplicate the work of other chambers. It’s just, you know, this is not a competitive business. This is a business of collaboration toward a broader vision of healthy economies, strong businesses and strong communities, and so anything that we can learn from each other and successes that we can share a newer to our common collective benefit. So I’m looking forward to getting any calls or questions folks have about the work we do, and I’m sure I’ll be reaching out to them after they call me and say, Well, how did you approach it? Right, right? Thank you for that opportunity. Brandon,

Brandon Burton 38:47
yeah, it definitely is a collaborative effort. So we’ll, we’ll make sure to get your contact information in our show notes for this episode make it easy for listeners to find you. But John, I wanted to thank you for spending time with us today and just, you know, shedding a little bit of light about how you guys are approaching things at the Boulder Chamber, the impact you’re making and those things that you guys do in Boulder so thank you for being with us today.

John Tayer 39:12
Your chamber does that. Just, you know that I’m sure your chamber, whoever’s chamber, does that too. Great.

Brandon Burton 39:20
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Creating a Chamber of Impact with Matt Lofy

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Matt low fee. Matt is the President, CEO of the Worthington area Chamber. And since joining the Worthington area Chamber in August 2021 he’s been driven by his vision, which is he wants their chamber to serve as a igniter of positive change, rather than merely serving as a resource to cope with change. Matt’s strategic focus on business advocacy, bridge building with key stakeholders and relentless pursuit of relevance has significantly strengthened the Chamber’s influence and engagement with local businesses, amplifying the voice of business, his initiatives led to a 20% increase in local business engagement within the his first year. This impact resulted in him being named as one of the chamber industry’s top emerging leaders, as a 40 under 40 honor honoree by ACCE and a 2023 chamber professional of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce executives of Ohio. Prior to this position at the Chamber, Matt served in numerous roles within the Westerville area Chamber, including executive director of leadership at Westerville he also taught morning spin classes for over a decade, and is a veteran of the United States Coast Guard. In addition to his professional success, Matt finds joy in his roles as a husband and father to his beautiful wife, Heather and their two young children, Tuckerman and Caroline. He’s also the founder and co host of the award winning Dadass Podcast, Matt, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Matt Lofy 2:51
Absolutely. Thank you so much Brandon for this opportunity, and thank you to all the chamber champions who are listening. You know a fun fact I like to share you had mentioned about my my podcast and from one podcast post to another, one of my fun facts is we actually used our podcast platform, not so much to grow beyond just a local podcast, but to actually advocate. So we’ve worked with our Columbus City Council the last two years to advocate to get we’ve now had over 300 changing tables put into men’s and gender neutral restrooms throughout businesses and nonprofits in the city of Columbus, and so as a way to marry my passion project And my chamber career, to really bridge build with a public private partnership. So we’ve been able to do that and advocate for easier access to changing tables. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:48
awesome. I’m convinced that chamber work is like a drug. You just get addicted to it, and then whatever you do in life, it’s going to tie back to the chamber somehow. So that’s proof and point right there.

Matt Lofy 3:58
So absolutely can’t get away from it. I drank the Kool Aid. That’s right,

Brandon Burton 4:02
that’s right. I need to find out where to go to get awards for podcast. I’ve yet to win an award. So congratulations to dadas podcast. That’s pretty cool.

Matt Lofy 4:11
There was a local one here. So really, I think we joke, but we’re pretty serious. It was our mom, my colleague, and my mom and all their older friends who are retired, just voting daily. That’s all it was. So don’t

Brandon Burton 4:24
awesome,

Matt Lofy 4:25
but now we can say winning.

Brandon Burton 4:26
We can edit that out. Nobody has to know. No,

Unknown Speaker 4:29
it’s our secret.

Brandon Burton 4:30
That’s right. But tell us a little bit about the Worthington area Chamber. Give us an idea of your chamber size, staff, budget, scope of work. You guys are involved with just to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Matt Lofy 4:42
Yeah, for anyone who’s not familiar with Columbus, imagine a big circle around a major city. We are at the north, north central part of Central Ohio, and Columbus, which we actually get confused. Worthington, Minnesota. When I when I first started, I was told that half of the phone calls in Minnesota, in Worthington, Minnesota, are phone calls for Worthington, Ohio, but we’re a small chamber of commerce of roughly 550 member businesses, a modest budget in the mid 300,000 range, and a staff of two currently putting out roughly 65 to 70 events and organized meetings a year. So we were doing quite a bit for two people in terms of the scope. We went from a chamber that really wasn’t was kind of in a decline prior to COVID to not not being relevant or impacting our community or supporting our businesses during COVID. So really, we’ve done a lot as a two person team to bring back all networks. So from our Soho groups, small office, home office, which we call Small Business Roundtable, to our Women’s Business Network, yp, those all have been started from scratch within the last two to three years. So just to really show where we’ve been and how far we’ve come just in three years, and then we’re in a city that’s four and a half to five miles square, miles in size. Our school districts four times that, because we pulled from the city of Columbus, and so that’s really the taste of our community and our chamber in, you know, 90 seconds or less.

Brandon Burton 6:32
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. So you came into the chamber world at a very interesting time. So I think that’s going to play in well, your story with our topic today about creating a chamber of impact, because I’m sure you’re able to see all of the opportunity around you at that timing of when you came into the chamber here. But we’ll dive in much deeper in that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Matt, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about creating a chamber of impact. So how did coming into the Worthington area Chamber in August of 21 How did that timing affect your thinking going into creating a chamber of impact and the opportunity that you saw at that time frame?

Matt Lofy 9:07
That’s that’s a great question. We had our challenges, just as a lot of chambers did, because of the impact of COVID. What I had kind of up against me coming into this role is one I left another chamber in a neighboring community, but not in the president role that did everything, I think, right during COVID, coming to a chamber that hadn’t done much to impact the community or the businesses. So I had a different lens to look through, but at the same time, because of where we’re situated in in central Ohio, we pull from Columbus public health. So after my first week, we actually got put into a six month mask mandate. So there were just some extra layers that were added. But how I looked at it, it was because we hadn’t impacted our community and our businesses. I had a four. Whole deck of cards to play with, because no one was going to question and say, well, we didn’t do things this way. No one really remembered that. And so I jokingly say I came in like, I pulled a Miley Cyrus and came in like a record. Oh, yeah, I have to right. All I had to say is, I came in like Miley Cyrus, and you knew it, that’s right. But at that point, it was okay. We have a mask mandate, but we have to be seen. And so I started to really look at ways to how do we amplify the voice of business and our chamber without having events here in the first few days and not having the relationships? And so we use it as a way to completely flip our ineffective emails and getting squared away with three separate monthly email newsletters that went out and specifically targeting different areas of interest for our businesses. Instead of just showing and sending out future events and and things like that. We had to get better and more strategic with the way we reached out. One of the first things I did on social social media was I wanted to be seen and build a relationship when I couldn’t be in person and build relationships. And so with without knowing, at the time of your podcast, I kind of stole your name and created a chamber chat with Matt. Video, okay, bi weekly, where it was just me. I had my own theme music and introduction, and it was me sitting in my office, or even in my my basement office, giving key updates of what the business is doing. We might not be able to meet together right now, but this is what your investment in our chamber, in us is helping us do to impact you, your business and our community. So it really allowed us to take non existent social media and email and flip them upside down and more impactful, as well as start to strategize, you know, unfortunately, six months out what our impact would be when it comes to reigniting our network. So that was really what we did, you know, from day one to the first six months outside of cleaning out the organization and getting the house in order.

Brandon Burton 12:13
Yeah, now I can appreciate coming in and people don’t remember what the programs were before, but to be able to have kind of that almost a blank slate. I mean, you could do essentially what, what you wanted to, but to be able to be strategic about the emails going out. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that? You said, going from those ineffective emails, which I think everybody listening knows exactly what you’re talking about, and what are the what’s the strategy behind your three purposeful emails each month,

Matt Lofy 12:41
yeah, and let me, let me first go on the record, because I always want to say things first. I don’t have the magic formula. So I don’t want anyone to be like, oh, you know, or think that. I think that I have it all figured out. But I think from my previous role doing communications at another chamber to just emails I’ve gotten from other organizations. We get too fixated of we got to throw all this stuff into one email, and then we tend to sometimes get so bogged down about events that all we’re sending our event correspondence. Don’t look at my social media right now, because that’s all I’m doing. But I looked at, let’s get the events out of all of our emails, and let’s look at respecting people’s inboxes. And here’s how we’ve done it. And again, this is just one man one Chamber’s way to do it, but either the final days of a month or the first days of a month, depending on when, when that falls in the week, I send an events bulletin out that just has picture header, brief description and a CLICK HERE button, and we list out five events for the month with a corresponding social media post. We’ve we went from emails that we’re getting in the teens to the low 20s of open rates to mid 40s to low 60s. Open rates, click rates, I won’t talk about because I want to stay with the numbers that make me sound that’s right, that’s right, but open rate wise, and then what we’re seeing on registrations, in terms of revenue, we’re certainly seeing a huge amount of investment of revenue coming in per email specifically for our events bulletin, but then the second week of each month, that’s what I refer to as our member highlight cycle in our business connections email, where we’re putting out things in our Member Notes section, accolades about businesses, businesses who are hosting maybe an upcoming Lunch and Learn, or businesses we’re partnering with, as well as announcing our new businesses. And then somewhere in there a link to our events calendar, because again, I don’t want to bog down everything with give us more money come to more events. And then the third week, I try and put more advocacy efforts in there upcoming major events, but talking about what the takeaways would be at those events. You. So much about the event, and then any other major things that we’re doing impacting, you know, our city or regionally, and that’s been a really good winning formula for us. And hopefully anyone that you know wants to possibly use that, maybe it works for them. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 15:17
and I’d like how you said you still have your events in there, but you’re not drawing all the attention right to the events, but it’s in there. It’s like, oh yeah, I saw an email a week or two ago. It talked about an event. Oh, here it is, right here, and you can click on it, but you’re not focused on, give us money, give us money, right?

Matt Lofy 15:35
And that’s kind of the lens. And you’ve been in the industry for for a long time. I mean, sometimes we get a little too focused on events or revenue, you know, without respecting what we’re putting into people’s inboxes. And I think, you know, I’m a relationship builder. I’m a relational leader. And I think chamber leaders need to start thinking more relational than transactional. And that’s how I also try and view the emails, yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:00
and I think most chamber staff are probably guilty, at least at times where the next event’s coming up, and that’s all you can focus on, is the next event, and just getting bogged down with with that and nothing else, and forgetting that that one event is not the reason why 90 plus percent of your members joined right? Like it’s important for you in that time, because that’s what you’re focused on. But they all are members for so many other reasons, that as you reach out and communicate with them, you gotta be touching on those points as well,

Matt Lofy 16:31
well and and just in a what is the chamber done for me? Aspect, if, if we’re not putting that in the in the in the emails or in the newsletters to the membership they you know, I count that as retention, so, you know, we’re sharing out information, but also saying, Here’s what we’ve done since this last advocacy update, or here’s what we’re doing shortly. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of different things strategically, if we put it in the newsletter, that can go into recruiting new businesses, retaining businesses, beyond just getting butts in seats for another event, right?

Brandon Burton 17:08
Exactly. So the emails, that’s a great example of of making that shift to creating a chamber of impact. What are some other areas that you were able to attack as you came into the chamber there,

Matt Lofy 17:22
one of the things that we needed to do is our our community being as small as it is, like the city, not the school district, again, four and a half, five square miles, we’re so disconnected in a small community that we have a pro and not so pro business nonprofit that has started through the last decade in our community, not called the chamber, Okay, which one I thought was an issue, because we’re not relevant. We weren’t having an impact. That those groups had to start. We should have been convening both sides. But at the same time, if there’s those two groups, no one’s hitting that that 80% in the middle, the same center. So one of the things that I wanted to make sure that we did was get heard, and two of the things I did quickly was try and identify and make those relationships with key stakeholders. And I’m sure that’s not anything new that any chamber person that’s been in the industry for a while has heard, but I probably met with key stakeholders more than I did businesses, just to make sure that we built those bridges, and also we’re being heard of what’s to come from this new chamber and our pursuit of relevance and the impact we wanted, so no one was caught off guard or challenged. And that was the biggest piece, because a lot of what I was saying at that time was deemed political and well, the Chamber’s never done that before. That’s not going to go well. And I go, I assure you, I have surveys and countless of data points that our businesses want this, and chambers are doing this across the industry. This is only new here, and so I kept those voices, those stakeholders, close in that to ensure that they they knew what was coming from our chamber, and now they’ve been on board, even if they are challenging. And I think that really massaging those relationships and building those collaborations, especially with those that aren’t on board with what the chamber is doing, is key. And the other aspect is at the same time, we started a podcast called amplify Worthington that allowed me to use that as a platform to say it even louder to businesses, but also to the community, and then we did it in in a collaboration with our economic development director. So it’s a little bit, possibly a little bit different of approach for a chamber podcast, compared to some who highlight just primarily what the chamber is doing and what businesses are doing, and those. Us to were probably the best investment of time outside of of re kind of retooling our chamber.

Brandon Burton 20:06
I’m a huge fan of chambers having a podcast. I even have a little course. If anybody wants to explore having a podcast for your chamber, it’ll be in our show notes, but going back to your meetings with the key stakeholders you didn’t necessarily say these words, but this is how I heard it. So correct me, if I’m wrong or if there’s a different take, you weren’t going and asking for permission necessarily to say, these are the changes I want, but it was more just so they’re not surprised when they see the changes coming, that they can be on the right side of things and not be like, Whoa, who’s Matt. Think he is coming in here, changing everything, but just saying, Hey, here’s some things that can be impactful for our community. Wanted to bring you in the loop and let you know some things that are coming down the pipeline. Is that, is that kind of accurate, or did I get that off? Yeah, I

Matt Lofy 20:58
You probably even said it better than than what I said. That’s exactly it. I think, as chamber leaders, we also serve as community architects, and the best way to do things smoother is to ensure everyone knows what’s to come, but also to say change in our community at some point, some level, is coming. Let’s control that change and do what’s best for our community. And the only way we can do that is if you join the conversation. And so yeah, 100% I think that that is one of the things we should do, and not ask for that permission, like you said, but just include the voices so that they they feel heard through this transition,

Brandon Burton 21:40
right? I think the worst case is you can come in with a big change and surprise them, and then you’re going to meet, get met with the resistance all the way along, where, if they have a heads up of it, and they feel like they’re in the know, it’s going to go a lot smoother to push along something new. Yeah. So you mentioned, as you came in to the chamber, was kind of on a decline through COVID and everything. You guys have implemented some of these changes. How are you seeing the needle move at this point, now that you’re three years into it?

Matt Lofy 22:10
Yeah, I feel like we have an aircraft carrier moving full steam ahead in the ocean while also going forward on the course, it is altering the course at the same time. So I’m like, I’m just starting my fourth year, and it’s like I’m still having to clean this up. But I think what what we’ve seen greatly is we’ve had a steady flow of new members, and then having to really work extra hard on getting better contacts of those that we want to return retain, just because there’s so much turnover. So we’re still seeing those battles, which I’m sure there’s a lot of people nodding right now listening like, oh, in there. Brother, yeah. But one of the things that we’re seeing is we’re getting a lot more initiatives up and running, and a lot more businesses who have not been engaged are starting to get more engaged and start poking their head out at events or in my inbox. And that’s the most flattering, especially seeing people you know, with all due respect to those leaders before me that said, I haven’t been a part of the chamber in X amount of years, and I’d like to come back. And that’s that’s been a lot of what we’re hearing now. That’s

Brandon Burton 23:23
very rewarding to know that the work you’re doing is being noticed and really making an impact. To be able to not just retain but bring back some of those members that have dropped at some point along the way. So that’s, that’s awesome. I can imagine that those members that hung through COVID and everything too are like, wow, the chamber is like, revitalized, like, they’re really making an impact right now. So I would imagine that first year retention for those, aside from just financial strain through the pandemic, if they could see that impact, that they would hang on.

Matt Lofy 24:00
We’re getting there. I don’t have we didn’t have good enough numbers to know what that retainment level was at the beginning. But yeah, we are starting to hear that. You know what? One of the things to maybe, hopefully not getting too far off your point, one of the things we did with those that dropped and didn’t want to reinvest in our chamber. I still wanted to show value on investment in the chamber and respect and support our Chamber members first. But I worked a little extra hard, and maybe this is political and there’ll be a lot of hate emails or anything that comes through to you or me, I still busted my hump almost as much for non member businesses to see, to show them the value of a vibrant and strong chamber, and I got a lot of return on that. And I don’t mean that ignorantly. I think sometimes, as leaders, we. Too caught up of oh, you’re a non member, or you’re not in, you’re not involved with the Chamber anymore, and we forget them. I’ve tried to work really hard to say, You know what? If maybe it’s a no for them about being a part of the chamber. Let’s talk about how, because at the end of the day, if they come to one event and they find value in the chamber, they found value in me as their chamber President value in our mission, and at the end of the day, we’re chamber leaders, but we also have to think like civic entrepreneurs. We also got that revenue, and so we saw a lot in these first three years, and I’m still seeing now a lot of the networks, like our Women’s Business Network, half of the women coming to these luncheons are non members, but I can almost have enough data points to show this has been one of the best networks to bring in new members and new investors in our chamber by dropping the real significance of how we treat a member versus a non member. Again, wanting to show the value on investment for members, but that’s really been something through this transition to whether they were dropped or they just didn’t see the chamber as relevant, back, you know, a month ago or a couple years ago, that I think, has been one of the biggest things that have led to a success for us, not saying no to supporting them or being involved in the chamber, but asking ourselves as a two person team, How do we get them a part of the chamber or involved with the chamber? And that’s been a huge game changer for us, and we’ve actually gotten positive feedback. Hey, thanks for not being pushy and really wanting to help me first, and now it helped me see what the chamber really means.

Brandon Burton 26:36
Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point. And I think we forget as chambers, we think, you know membership, membership. You know everybody’s got to be a member. And we forget that each business has its own different walk of life, so to speak, where some businesses and maybe against their corporate policy to join a local chamber because they had a bad experience in another community, another state, whatever. So as a policy, they can’t join a chamber, but if you have an event that resonates with their mission, then they’ll sign up and they’ll be a sponsor. They’ll they’ll be there for it. So being able to be there for all the businesses in the community and to show value to the community at large, rather than just being hyper focused on membership, I think is a very smart approach,

Matt Lofy 27:25
yeah. And I know, you know, I can hear the comments and the emails coming in that disagree with that approach. And if not those emails coming to me, they’re coming to you, right? But I think in a day and age to you know, let’s, let’s see the reality. All membership organizations are seeing declines, right from veterans groups to other membership organizations are seeing declines in membership we as chambers, if we want to have a great impact, we need to also switch our mindset. But at the same time, I can think right off the top of my head, five different businesses who’ve come to our events paid a non member price. But if I tallied up how many times I’ve seen them at paid events this year, they’ve done more than their share of an investment in an annual membership and a one time or two time lunch that most of those who are members coming to one or two events have invested so, you know, getting away from mission and thinking about, you know, being a civic entrepreneur, in a sense, having that hat on. I still got that money, yeah, and they got to see the value in the chamber. So I think we got to shift that mindset too. Sorry if I got too far off.

Brandon Burton 28:34
No, it’s all about being community architects, as you said before. So, yeah, I love it. Love the thought process there. Matt, I wanted to ask for chambers listening that are wanting to take their chamber up to the next level. I’d argue that you’ve done that there at the Worthington area Chamber. What kind of tip or action item, what piece of advice might you share with with that chamber who’s looking to take their organization up to the next level.

Matt Lofy 29:07
You know, I think it’s kind of a, I have one answer, kind of a two part response to that. I think, in order to really continue to grow your chamber, and we’re still doing this ourselves, so I don’t want to sound like I have it all figured out, but we have to take chances in doing something that we’ve never done. And if you’re a chamber that is doing things differently than how they’ve been done, what’s that next thing for us to be doing and and to that end, for me right now is we’ve kind of gotten things back our way. I think for us, being here in central Ohio, which is a growing community, is I’m also having a mindset now that’s a little new for me. I want to think regionally to better impact locally. So I really challenge. A two part answer there. Think about what’s that next thing that your chamber needs to do? And just like I said earlier, Channel your inner Miley Cyrus and do it as a wreck, be a wrecking ball. And then secondly, let’s start thinking a little bit more regionally and bring that home locally for that change to really spark that positive change. Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 30:21
like that a lot. I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers, and how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Matt Lofy 30:34
You know, that is the million dollar question. If I had it figured out, I would be probably living on an island right now, and not in a two person office, but I think for chambers, we have to adapt to what’s to come. That’s why I’m excited about the horizon initiative being updated. I think chambers need to stop thinking so small in some ways, or at least for the smaller chambers, and start thinking a little bit more broadly in what our impact is. Where are we serving and where are we not serving? What chances and opportunities do we need to take? But on on top of that, I think the future of chambers lie in being that that connector for all voices to cut through the noise and be that trusted source that we need to be, and hopefully we’re all serving right now, so that we can hit that same center, that 80% that’s not in the know, or that is voiceless or just isn’t aware right now. And that’s that’s where I think the future lies, right there in the that, that same center. And we have to address that, and we need to address it yesterday, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 31:47
And if you knew all the answers, you could write the horizon 2.0 all by yourself. But this is right, yeah,

Matt Lofy 31:57
absolutely. And again, we don’t have it all figured out. I just want to say that one more time, but some of the risks we’ve taken and some of the initiatives we’ve done have definitely helped us do more than what I thought we could do possible in three years. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:12
absolutely. Well, Matt, before I let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the Worthington area Chamber. What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? Thank

Matt Lofy 32:29
you for that opportunity. I’d love to connect, especially on LinkedIn. I’m huge on LinkedIn. You can just find me at Matt. Matt low fee, l, o, F, y, on LinkedIn, or you can email me at mlofy@worthingtonchamber.org and you can just find more about us at WorthingtonChamber.org I’d love to connect in any way that’s perfect.

Brandon Burton 32:53
And we’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy to find you and connect with you. But Matt, this is this has been fun to to have you on Chamber Chat Podcast to share your story and the the impact that your chamber making now in the community, and kudos to you and in in your your two person team for being able to to do this. I know there’s others involved, there’s there’s volunteers, and there’s board and all that, but you guys are doing things right to be able to right the ship and turn in the right direction. So thanks for sharing that with us today.

Matt Lofy 33:29
Thank you, and thank you for this opportunity. I certainly appreciate it’s been an honor.

Brandon Burton 33:33
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Chamberpad with Houssem Touil

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Houssem Touil. Houssem, for the past 10 years, has worked with chambers of commerce, business associations and employer organizations across the Mediterranean Africa and Eastern Europe, where he’s delivered projects which have impacted the private sector and civil society on both the local and regional scale. During that time, he wore many hats, such as employee, consultant, member, board member and chamber president, which gives him a new perspective on the private sector challenges and opportunities. By the age of 27 he co founded the Tunisia Estonian Chamber of Commerce, bilateral chamber between Estonia and Tunisia, his home country, where he serves as the president since 2019. He is now the founder of Chamberpad and newsletter for chambers of commerce, Houssem, I’m excited to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast. Sam was a guest back on Episode 120 for anyone who’s curious and wants to go back and check out that episode as well, but please take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little

Houssem Touil 2:25
better. Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks, Brandon, so it’s been three years and a half now I think I think you’re right. Yeah, yeah, three years and half, like Time flies. So thanks for having me, and thanks everyone for for tuning in. So my name is Houssem. I’m the founder of Chamberpad and also presidential comms, just like you mentioned it. So I had the privilege of working with Chambers of Commerce of several sizes and budgets, and had many hats, as you mentioned earlier, which has given me unique insight into how businesses and chambers can effectively collaborate. So this experience, coupled with conversations with industry peers, has really fueled my passion for launching chamber pad, and also have a background in media communication. So yeah, so we know that chamber pad aims to be at the forefront of those discussions. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:23
kind of a natural fit with the media and communications background, to do something in that field, right and blend it in with the Chamber world. Yes, and I definitely see it being relevant in today’s world, where the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller with technology and communication skills. And you know, for you and you know, for you and I to be able to be on the opposite sides of the planet right now and be able to talk over zoom as if we’re in the same room, and the world is very small, and a lot of the trends that we see happening globally are happening in our own backyard. So being able to know what’s going on and maybe getting that glimpse, you know, a step or two before it happens in our own community is crucial to staying relevant as a chamber. So I’m excited to have you on for that perspective. But maybe before we, before we go down that road of talking about chamber pad and what it is, it is kind of a unique situation with the Tunisia Estonia Chamber. So take a moment just to explain what that is for listeners, and how does that work at the bilateral chamber and and just give us that perspective.

Houssem Touil 4:31
Yeah, sure. So, so it’s not for profit. And so, so it’s so why is 21st so it’s 20. I mean, it’s like, this small country, and they have, like, 99% of their public services are digital. So basically, you do pretty much everything online with with the government, and also it’s, it’s very tech savvy. They have, like. You know, it’s, it’s startup country where they have, like, the most numbers of of startups per capita. And at the same time, you know, my country, we are small, but not that small in size, but I’ve seen that. There’s also a lot of similarities, and we can learn a lot from them, start by implementing, or at least learning from how they build, like digital savvy, digital side country. So basically, in Tunisia, we have also, like a lot of IT companies. So most of the time this is it focused more than everything else. So basically, we’re like a technology chamber, or at least technology focus chamber, where we help our local startups to expand via startup visa, for example, in Estonia, they can also this enable them to to get access to to European markets, to alleviate a lot of a lot of barriers, and reduce the cost of doing business. Sometimes it also offers them to other markets, not just the European market, also in Tunisia, every year, we have over 65,000 graduates, about 10,000 to 11,000 of them are engineers, or at least they work in the stem so, so basically they are trilingual, and most of the time they don’t just, like, find a job right away. Give me the perspective, like the local economy and so on. So it’s not that easy to find a job like right away when you graduate. So basically, most of them, they end up, like working as freelancer, or they leave the country to other places. And so here comes Estonia with a model called the residency. So basically you become like a virtual resident of the country. But it doesn’t give you, like additional rights, like additional civic rights. They just give you most of the time, like, let’s say, commercial rights to interact with the government, and you can stay wherever you are in the world. So you don’t relocate. You stay where you are. You can have access to the same opportunity just like, or at least almost like you would relocate over there. So, yeah. So this is another, another pain point that we have addressed, especially that we have, like, a massive brain drain. So we’re trying to keeping tasks local

Brandon Burton 7:33
well, and it’s another example of the world getting smaller and and you guys definitely can’t do things the way things have always been done as chambers, because it’s very technology focused and needing to stay on the forefront of all that. Out of curiosity, how do you measure membership and growth and that with with the chamber with this type of structure?

Houssem Touil 7:57
Yeah, so this also another way we looked at how we could operate at the chamber. So usually a chamber would just, you know, like, you set up the chamber. Let’s say, if you’re like, private, low chamber, you set it up as a nonprofit. You bring in some, like, industry, industry peers, and you say, Okay, we’re going to set up the chamber. And you start, like, drafting the roadmap, and start acquiring members to get to what you have planned, like do events, trade delegations and policy briefs and so on. But we have acted differently. Said, Okay, instead of focusing on having members, how many have renewed? How many are engaged or not or job that. So I said, Okay, we are going to act as a cluster. And so basically we said we are going to be like, not just like a local cluster, but on both sides. So we went to the clusters over there in Estonia, and we said, Okay, so here are the possibilities where we can collaborate in the short term, mid term and actually long term. And here are probably, like, some discussions that you could also take, take part of, like knowledge exchange, for example, and trade delegations or bid for tenders like Tunisia, spending like lot and working with multilateral stakeholders like World Bank and African Development Bank and so on to digitize the public services so and they have experience with that. So I say, okay, maybe let’s just like match sometimes we do on a case by case basis. So instead of bringing you like 500 companies from both sides together, or even 100 let’s just do it like on case by case basis. So we started operating first for startups, and we had like few startups getting there. They had that they. Startup visa. We also had a couple of startups from Australia coming here the startup shop. We have, like, a unique framework here for startups called the startup act. And they operating thanks to its thanks to its framework incentives. Then we had some IT companies bidding together as joint ventures. They are working not just Tunisia, but also in Africa, actually in the Middle East. So, yeah, we are seeing, like a lot of it’s actually new perspective. So it’s we find it, it’s a new, I’m not gonna say like it’s a new model or something, but we just like explored something that you wouldn’t just like think of when, when, when you draft your roadmap. So usually we think of events, trade delegation and so on. But I said, Okay, let’s just go with whatever opportunity we can see is, let’s just go with that. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:58
I like that. So Houssem is obviously an outside the box thinker, which is why we wanted to have him on the show. Today, we’re going to focus most of our conversation around Chamberpad. This is a new newsletter that hose him has founded and put out into the world. So we’re going to learn about what it is, what the purpose is, and everything about it. As soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Houssem, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we see the world getting smaller and smaller. There’s great value in getting perspective from people and other other parts, other regions of the world, just to see what’s going on there and see what we can apply in our own community. Tell us what is Chamberpad. We talked about it being a newsletter, but I know it’s new. I think you’re what four, four newsletters into it and, and I will say, from a content producer myself, sometimes our best stuff comes out early before we have a big following. So I’m going to urge everybody to start following Chamberpad right now so you can get all the good stuff. But it’ll, it’ll continue to be great, I’m sure. Yeah, tell tell us what it is and what it all it entails, and where the idea come from. Yeah,

Houssem Touil 14:06
like that. But you know, like when you start at the beginning, you’re like, you put yourself, yeah, you put

Brandon Burton 14:11
your best foot forward. You got great content, and you’ve got a small so you gotta, gotta grow it and get in front of more people.

Houssem Touil 14:19
Yeah? You can relate, yes, yeah, and so. So Chamberpad is, is a newsletter designed specifically for the chambers of commerce ecosystem. So the staff, the executives, the board members, the volunteers, the members also, and also the service providers, the policy makers and so on. So anyone who is like on the could be around, like the Chamber of Commerce ecosystem. So, like, I’ve seen, like a pattern I saw, like a gap in the market where chambers needed, like, easily digestible. Or centralized source of information. And so this comes as frustration as the chamber President myself, so I find, I mean, I know that, like, the perspective sometimes could be different, because it’s just like between two countries. So basically, you can have like, top two, three news outlets between two countries, where you could just, you know, see the news everything related to to the government or private sector or whatever. But this, also, I have another hat, which is working with chambers in from all sizes, different culture, different countries, different cultures. So basically, you are like, you know, sometimes you you find yourself in information overload, so or overload that you don’t know where to get your information exactly. You can see, can go through, you know, like your Twitter or x spread. You can go through your Facebook timeline and go through the LinkedIn news feed, and basically you wouldn’t be able to digest, like, all of it. So basically, we said, okay, let’s have like, one source of information. And I started thinking more into it to see, like, how relevant it is. So started like, let’s say, tracking how many news there are related to all of this, like, related to to the chambers, to the employee organizations, to Business Association and so on, versus like there is, on average, about 14,000 euros per month only related to to chambers and and, yeah, and this is actually just in English, so it’s not like, also like, try to imagine how many this could be in other languages, like in French or in Chinese or in Arabic and in Spanish or Portuguese. So I guess it’s going to be more like just in English, just like 14,000 and so say, okay, maybe we can do something and be so the first, first idea would be to become aggregator. But also that wouldn’t solve the problem, since there are actually 14,000 years. So I wouldn’t read 14,000 years per month, because the context is extremely different. So I said, Okay, so maybe do like a digest, like every week you spend the whole week, like hustling, doing whatever you do with requiring members, visiting your member, advocating on their behalf, you know, talking to the media, doing events or whatever said by the end of the week, or at least. So basically we release every Thursday. They said, by the end of the week, you’ll get the top news and the top events and the top publications, and now also the best latest Podcast, episode, chamber, chat podcast, yeah, that you can listen to. So it’s not just about reading it, but also listening and any I mean, I find that format better than actually doing an aggregator, some, something like Hacker News. I don’t know if you know what I can use. No, I’m not familiar with that. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, in circumvent there’s like, there’s like, hacking news. It’s a platform where, like, hundreds and hundreds of news drop every day, almost, about technology and so on. So I said, I mean, you gotta spend like, your day in front of hacking news to read in years. So basically, you went to the anywhere. So I said, Okay, this to just do the newsletter and take it from there. So we set up like a roadmap, and I said, okay, like our missions to provide actionable insights, trends, events, best practices to chambers across across the globe. So whether they are a local chamber in a small town or a large international network, they could be a continental chamber or State Chamber or whatever. So yeah, for now, we’re just newsletter but and we’re also have like subscribers from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and also even from the Caribbean. So yeah, I mean very much this is like exciting times, and very much looking forward to where this is going to take us. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:32
no, I love the idea for it and and, like you said, to be able to try to curate these different articles and news outlets from, you know, worldwide, from the global scene. And it would be quite the undertaking to really dive in and do that all, but as you come across these things of interest, to kind of keep note of it and put it together. And what I like is it’s an easily digestible newsletter. So you’re not seeing just article after article, but you you have it broken down. Right at the top where it says, like, for example, this week there were six news articles that you referenced, three publications, one podcast episode, and four events you know around the world, yeah. And then you have it broken down by those categories, and like, bullet points and links to the full articles or registration for events and things like that. And I don’t know just kind of future casting this, I see you could become that source where people are coming to you with articles and information. You know, here’s something for the newsletter. You know, our Chamber’s doing this, or our, you know, National Association of chamber in certain countries doing this, or whatever it may be, just to put it out there in the newsletter. I think it’s a great platform. And glad to see somebody’s picking up the ball and running with it and doing doing this. So, yeah, kudos. Kudos to you the idea.

Houssem Touil 20:51
Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, we already started having some people reaching out, actually. So they reach out even by the email that they find at the bottom of the newsletter, or by link there, I’ll say, oh, you should actually put this. Or why not look at this? So, yeah, basically, so feel free to send, I mean, yeah, we’re happy to to include it,

Brandon Burton 21:15
yeah. And I think for a busy chamber executive or chamber staff to be able to to get this email every Thursday. Open it up, and you can scan right through it, see what what things are of interest to you and what’s relevant to you. Click on that. And I know, you know, lots of people get different emails from various organizations, maybe like Harvard Business Review. I know they do like a weekly email, and people really look forward to those because it has so much valuable content in it. And that’s how I see Chamberpad being, is that resource specific for chamber executives, chamber staff, to be able to see what’s going on in a lot of different markets all at once, and you can go back and reference it. It’s got all the links there. So you’re not needing to search worldwide to find these things, but it’s being curated and presented to you. So nice job. What else would you want to share about Chamberpad for listeners, just to get them into it, to get them to understand what it is and where it offers value for them. Is there anything else that you’d add?

Houssem Touil 22:24
Yeah, sure. So so far now we started as as a newsletter we read by chamber leaders from 29 countries so far, and and what we what we plan on doing, is actually to become one stop shop for all affiliations related to chambers. So this is just like the digest you get to just digest of 10 years. But eventually, we’re planning on starting doing our own webinars, for example, in the beginning, we have also started to initiate discussions with chamber industry events, where we are could become media partners for the events as well. We’re also working. We’re about to roll out our platform so it’s the same address, like chamberpa.com is the same for now, you can just go there and subscribe for the newsletter. We will keep the newsletter, of course, because we all need to keep the weekly digest over there. But also, we are going to start doing interviews and promoting. You know, most of the time we have to promote economy. So we just hear about the top economies most of the time, always doing what, but we often forget about all the others in all the great job that they are doing. Some subjects, for example, like the free trade agreements, like if your chamber, for example, you have members who export, let’s say, like, fruits and vegetables. You would want to know about another your chamber peer in another country which says, you say, hey, both are our country are actually have a free trade agreements, and fruits and vegetables are actually included in that. So we have either eliminated tariffs, or we have actually reduced the the tariff rates. So basically, you as a chamber, you would actually tell say, Okay, why don’t you just like, go to this country, listen to this webinar, lead to everything they have to tell you about how you could export to their countries, and thus you make more money, you hire more people, and also you stick with the chamber. So basically, it’s it’s sometimes I see that maybe can talk about it later. A place like future for chambers and so on. But sometimes you can just, like, do it all as as the chamber executive yourself, like, you know, you can just do everything, right? Sometimes someone has to do something for you resist

Brandon Burton 25:15
the temptation, right? Yeah,

Houssem Touil 25:20
yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it started, I mean, like, you know, I’ve been listening to your your podcast for three years and a half now, and every time, you know, I get, like, new perspectives from new people. Sometimes, you know, it’s sometimes it could be related to, to the place where they are operating from. Or sometimes it could be like subject. So yeah, like we can do, we can do, like webinars on specific subjects, but basically they’re going to be around countries. And we’re very thrilled to be like partners with chamber chat podcast. I mean, it’s like, really my favorite podcast, like every week goes into it. So basically, we have that you listen to Brandon every week, but also you read what her writes to you every week. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:08
goes hand in hand. I love it, yeah. So you’d mentioned earlier you have a marketing communications background. So how is that? Have you been able to lean into that as you’ve launched chamber pad?

Houssem Touil 26:26
Yes, very good question. So, so you need so when you look at for example. So I said earlier, would be like tracking the number of news that we find, like every week we also, let’s say, like since the opportunity and checked, let’s say the trainings related to related to chambers, what they are talking about and so on. I’ve seen that most of the time they’re still operating in the same way. And what do I mean by that? I mean from immediate perspective, like for now, when you go through all kinds of reports, you can go to reports just related to like certain sides of chambers, or in certain continent for chambers, you will see that many say that they have reduced engagement rate, while others say that they they have like, more members dropping than actually renewing. Others said that they were actually seeing like spike in membership. And we said, Okay, so maybe I should, like, you know, initiate some discussions with some people, and try to see why, like what’s going on. And sometimes what what you get is just you find that these people, they communicate with different generations at the same time. So they communicate with my generation, the millennials. They communicate also with the Gen Z. They communicate also with the boomers. And so I think that chambers, right now, should become a media machine. I mean, at certain time they become a network. Actually, they started as a network. And, you know, actually started about, like, over 400 years ago in the port of southern France, Marseille. They’re just, you know, they started, you know, like going to the port over there, and they had, like, issues with the pirates in the Mediterranean. And then they see the occasion, and they find out that traders, merchants are meeting with each other. So basically, they also see the occasion to start doing business together, and then later on. So So it started as a network, and then from the network key to move to a network as a powerhouse. And you know, you go, you become member your chamber is going to defend you. They’re going to, you know, voice your concern to the local, state, federal, nation, whatever authorities your concern and and now I think that they should become actually medial nation. And this is, this is not an option, because the world has changed a lot, and even with covid, like covid is actually despite, like, all the negative downsides of covid and so on. But I think that it has also, like, accelerated the future, and it has actually brought it to open doorstep. So I think, yes, chambers should become media machines.

Brandon Burton 29:46
I love that, and I’m going to take that as an endorsement. You know, recently launched the Bringing Local Back platform that was part of the vision is chambers being a media machine and establishing a platform that makes it easy. Easy to put your content out in your community, to really showcase your members, to really be that go to source for information in your community. So I love that testimonial of it, because that is the that’s the idea about that, that bringing local back campaign. So thank you for that. Sure. I like asking everyone I have on the show for any kind of tip or action item that you might have for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level. What would you suggest for them?

Houssem Touil 30:33
Oh, yeah, actually, there are quite a few. So first of all, maybe actually start to embrace AI like, you know, AI is not like chatgpt, it’s not clothing, it’s not perplexity, and it’s not Canva and like the magic writer of LinkedIn, or whatever it’s, it’s much more. I mean, it’s this, it’s part of this. It’s empowering, like content creation and all of that. But there are also other things that you should actually embrace in AI, for example, something like automations start to automate. And actually, I think that I’ve said this in the first episode with you, I think said automate. And actually, even three years later, I still talk to my peers, and most of the time they don’t automate, yeah, but actually automate. Automate often. Like, there’s so many things that you cannot automate for sure, but things which are repetitive make it automated, make it autopilot, like, save even like five hours per week or 10 hours per week, or even as low as two hours per week, like, just automate your workflow, like, try to gain some time, automated repetitive tasks and to get more space for creative work, for example, or to have more members, or to talk more to to your to our existing members, also at the same time, maybe you should actually shift more of their member engagement strategies online, for example, like, you know, we live like in digital era, and sometimes remember, expect real time expand real time updates, sometimes like some personal content. I know that it’s not that obvious to do it for certain types or sizes of chambers, but do as much as you can from where you understand, like, for example, I’ve seen some chambers they said, Okay, we are going to do like, virtual secretaria. So basically, don’t call us on the phone and tell us what, what you need and so on. Like just, there’s like, there’s like a chat bot in in the website, you can just talk to it, and if it is something that you know, like your interface, you chat with the interface. If it doesn’t give you the proper answers to what you want. This is actually when would be able to get access to a phone number and call us, but you can also send us an email. I mean, try to automate as much as possible, also with different engagement stores, I found that some chambers, for example, they do work with us consistently. I know that, for example, some chamber in in small town doesn’t mean I mean they probably they, they cannot do that because, you know, they can just like, do an event, like, every once in a while, and that’s enough. But if you’re like Metro Chamber, like very big city, you cannot, like, reach everyone at the same time and bring them together on site. So have something like, you know, give them real time date. I mean, they don’t need to get to wait for your monthly newsletter to tell them what you did for them, like, do it real time. Do it Real Time. I mean, they will feel that you actually care more about them, that you are more present than you actually wait for it. And do you know it’s just like another thing that you just another thing yet to check at the end of the month, and said, Okay, this news database, what we’ve been doing, like, No, do it real time.

Brandon Burton 34:31
Yeah, I like that. Doing it real time and also recording it, having a library of these real time, going back to being that media machine, right? If you can provide asynchronous information where somebody can digest it on their own time, instead of needing to be at the meeting or at the luncheon at a specific time in person, they they have the option to catch it virtually, or if they can’t see it today, but they can watch it tomorrow. Then that’s even better, because you’re getting more exposure to more people that way. Your your your thought about automation too, I think is spot on. I’ve seen it’ll free up time and the give give room for that creative work, like you mentioned. But it also makes your systems that much better when you can automate processes, because the input every the data that’s coming into, it’s going to be the same. And just a simple example, as I’ve seen with some chambers, is they input membership information, for example, the contact name, depending on who is entering the information in, they might include a prefix of Mr. Or Mrs. You know, Jones or whatever, and then the next person who’s entering in membership information just as first and last name. So then you have inconsistencies in your data all over the place. So having a system and automating it’s going to clean things up a ton and make it so much easier to process that data in a meaningful way. Well, Hussein, before we let you go, you alluded to it earlier, but as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Houssem Touil 36:22
Yeah, so, so, as I mentioned earlier, so chamber stars as network and then as advocacy powerhouse, and now they should become media machines. But actually, in order to become media machine, you should be able to I think that instead of like everyone doing their own thing, you know, aside, maybe you should have something that we have our own key message, the same key messages that we deliver like we harmonize all the benefits that you get from joining channel. But also, at the same time, we should also harmonize the key messages of what could not work in your favor if you don’t join as well. Because, for example, if you have some kind of issue, sometimes you just cannot solve it on your own. We we sometimes forget that channels of commerce also have mandates depending on the countries they’re operating from. So sometimes, if you want to deal with the government, for example, on a certain issue, you cannot do it on your own, only vi chamber. So you have, for example, you want to advocate to change some regulations, for example, which are harming you. Or maybe you said, Okay, I have suggestions for something new, which actually we could implement, which kind of bring us more dollars and hire more people, and especially keeping both local. So you can only do that with your chamber. When you look at the world’s biggest companies, actually, what they do is just, you see that everything is online, but no like, they have like public affairs team who actually or which actually work with chambers to actually negotiate with the governments and so on to implement new kind of regulations. So, yeah, I think that it’s like Bill Gates, or, I don’t know who said it before, like, if your business is on the internet, then it will be out of business. I think that should, like, harmonize the set of key messages which go like, if your business is not chamber member, then your business will go out of business. So, yeah, I think yeah, that’s it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 38:57
No, that’s great. I appreciate that. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect to learn more about what you’re doing, but probably most importantly, how to subscribe to chamber pads. They can get this news, this curated news, sent to them each week. What’s the best way? Where would you point them to do these things? Yeah,

Houssem Touil 39:21
sure. So you go to chamberpad.com so basically, you will, it’s a landing page. The first thing you’re gonna see is to actually just insert your email and subscribe, and later on, you can start reading, have access to all the archives. And every week, like every Thursday, you will you will have, like the weekly digest every week, every Thursday in your inbox. You will also find my contact information within the newsletter, so you can find my full name. We send 12. It’s the same on LinkedIn, and you can. Also find my email. It’s my initials, so ht@chamberpad.com,

Brandon Burton 40:07
that’s perfect, and as normal, we’ll get all this in our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find and subscribe and get people in contact with you. But Sam, this has been great having you back on chamber chat podcast, the partnership going forward with with chamber pad as well. And wish you best of luck going forward and and seeing it grow and see see where it goes from here. So thanks for being with us today.

Houssem Touil 40:33
Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 40:36
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What Today’s Member Really Want with Barry Phillips

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

Our guest for this episode is Barry Phillips. Barry owned his first software company at age 21 and learned to wear many hats, from head of sales to marketing to it. Plus he’s been a CEO a few times as well. The one constant in his career is that he loves to run teams and organizations, and was actually good at it. Ultimately, his real passion is helping others grow. He’s still doing that today, but he’s changed his focus from large companies like HP Ernst and Young and visa to small and mid sized businesses, and he does this exclusively by working with chambers of commerce across the country, Barry’s been able to help businesses make real rubber hits the road changes that make a positive difference in the organization and the lives of its leaders. Barry injects fun into his speaking, training and consulting. He loves instilling new ideas, and is all about changing process and behaviors to make real positive impact. But Barry, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Barry Phillips 2:17
Okay. Well, thank you. I’m glad to be here Brandon. I like that the chamber, Chamber of champions. That’s quite the alliteration you got going. There something interesting about me, I think you mean in the personal sense. I guess stuff that’s unique is I own 17 dutch ovens. Do you even know what a Dutch oven is? I

Brandon Burton 2:39
do? Yes, I grew up in scouting and whatnot. So, oh yeah,

Barry Phillips 2:45
those cast iron pots you you picture the old wagon master with his thing hanging over a fire, and that’s kind of what it was in the 1800s still with look kind of the same with the cooking has advanced quite a bit, and I’ve done competition cooking with those things as well. So I do all sorts of cooking, but kind of getting known for the Dutch oven stuff, I guess, just because it’s a little bit more unique than other things. But that’s something unique about me anyway.

Brandon Burton 3:14
How does one amass a collection of 17 dutch ovens?

Barry Phillips 3:18
Well, you purchased them one of the time.

Brandon Burton 3:21
Is it on accident, or is it purpose?

Barry Phillips 3:24
My first one is I had a brother in law come up in California and bought a whole bunch of them to take back to to people in California. And he got there and counted them and realized that he had two more than he actually paid for. He said, would you take these back to the store for me? And I said, well, so I just called up the store and said, how much you want for these things? I don’t want things? I didn’t want to drive the store was about an hour away, and I didn’t want to do that, so I I just paid for them, and so, well, I’ve got a little might look like cooking with them, and just kind of went from there.

Brandon Burton 3:53
The rest is history, as they say, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about your company. I know I shared some of that in your bio, but tell us what it is that you do your interest in chambers and the work that you do with them and and kind of help set the stage for a conversation today. Well,

Barry Phillips 4:10
my background is I’m a serial entrepreneur, and I have been doing that for years, running my own businesses a lot, and I’ve worked inside billion dollar corporations and things as well, but I’ve spent a lot of time in training and consulting. And as you said, your bio big companies like Hewlett Packard or Ernst and younger bees are 10 worth those kinds of companies, and had some good success. There really good success. But still, the organizations are so large it’s really hard to affect real change. And so kind of in the post covid world, obviously, there weren’t a lot of folks out there wanting to do in person training and going into corporations to help do things that way. People were pretty timid there for a while, and so I thought to myself, you know, I’ve always worked with small businesses as well. I like them the best, because you can affect real change and much faster. Yeah. And so I thought, well, where you go for that? Well, Chambers of Commerce seemed like a logical place. And so I started playing with some chambers and speaking and doing some training inside their organizations, and I found some interesting commonalities, and that is that most chambers didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t, didn’t take a lot of research to figure that one out. It was kind of blatant there, but I found that the members really needed the training just as much as a big corporation of probably more people that own small to mid sized businesses. There’s a lot of stuff they need to do that they don’t normally know how to do when you start a business because you love what it is you do. If it’s a restaurant, you are a good cook, and so you thought you’d start a restaurant up, or you want a clothing boutique, you know, you liked fashion, or whatever. And all of a sudden, you find out, when you get into business, there’s these annoying things called people that you have to deal with all the time. And it’s a people business. I don’t care what your business is. I don’t care if you’re a plumber, you are in, still in a people business, because you have to go out and deal with customers. And customers are always human beings. No matter how much AI wants to affect our lives, you still will get money paid to you by another person. That’s how life works. And so my background is really in those areas of helping not I mean, I have done a lot of marketing. My first job was in an advertising agency as a graphic artist, and I’ve worked in and doing marketing and sales and all those things. I was top salesman worldwide. In fact, the people can’t see this, but I’m going to show you Brandon. You see the picture of me standing by that Corvette? I do. They won that Corvette for being top salesman in the world. And so got some background and those kinds of things as well. But that’s, again, a people skill, right? And so ultimately, started sharing that with other companies, and doing my own training and consulting, and have done that for a number of years as well, and just really trying to help people out and anything from that. I mean, they need to know about finance. They need to know about all sorts of things, but usually they have a primary skill set in one area and know a little bit about the other things, but they don’t know everything they need to know to really make their business go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:26
I always think of the example of a dentist who goes to dental school. They spend a lot of time, lots of education, learning how to drill teeth and put in fillings and, you know, do work in your mouth, right? But how much do they get taught about how to hire and how to work with an office staff, and how to file taxes and how to do these different aspects that are important and necessary with running a business

Barry Phillips 7:50
well. And, you know, funny, because I’ve helped some desks, I’ve done, done some training with them, and I remember when Dennis coming to me and saying, Ah, you know, I’ve got all these assistants and all these. There’s all these women in this office, and I just don’t really know how to keep them on track, keep them doing the right things. And as I delve into it, the people in the office are saying, you know, he’s a good dentist, but he doesn’t really know how to work with people and how to motivate people, and and, and that’s the thing, when you are top level in a business, doesn’t matter what it is. You affect way more than you think you do. You just do. And it’s different for people, because they think, Well, you know, things are going well. Sometimes they think it’s all them, and that’s probably not completely true, but if it’s going bad, it’s definitely a big part of you, because most companies don’t die from competitors beating them. Most companies implode one way or the other. They make wrong choices, they don’t stay up with their markets. But all these things are are leadership issues. They’re not staying on top of the things they need to to make the business work. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 8:59
that makes a lot of sense, and that is actually a perfect segue to introduce what our topic for our conversation is today, which is, we’ll be focusing our conversation around what members really want and actually probably what they need, but we’ll, we’ll dive in much deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Barry, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking today about what it is that members really want. So as a chamber of commerce listening, they’ve got, you know, likely, hundreds, maybe over 1000 members. Possibly these are all different businesses. But what are some of these commonalities? What are these things that they really want and that they need, especially as it comes to their membership, and how the chamber can help affect change with these members?

Barry Phillips 11:38
Yeah, and that’s a pretty broad subject for you, for what they want, what they really, really want. I tried to get you to sing that with me, but yeah, no, go. Yeah, they wouldn’t like my singing either. But there are some things they that they know they want, and there’s a lot of things that they need and should want, and that’s where a chamber is really important because they’ve got a one prove the relevancy a chamber has to be something more than what people think of a chamber when they aren’t in one, right? They think a chamber is there to give me a little bit of networking opportunity, and maybe they do a ribbon cutting ceremony for me. And they kind of don’t know all the things that a chamber can do for them, but what the chamber can do for them is the things that they really want and they really need, one of which is training. I’ve obviously been in that world for years and and good training is expensive. I mean, guys like me, not, you know, I’m not saying I’m anything special that way, but people like me that go out and do this, they’re five to 15 to $20,000 a day, small companies aren’t going to touch that. They just can’t. There’s no way they can afford it. And that’s where I kind of came in with my what I’m doing with chambers, was trying to find a way to make that completely affordable for chambers to bring to their members and so but the things that they really want first and foremost, if they’re astute and they’re good leaders, trying to do the right things, is they understand their stuff they don’t know. And they need to understand things about leading people managing teams. How do you get these people to perform? How do you get them to stay How do you get them to be happy and productive? All those things, those are skills that can be learned. Not everybody’s a natural born leader that just walks in and and when they smile, the little twinkle happens on their tooth, and everybody loves them. That doesn’t typically happen. We learn this stuff, right? We get good at it because we’ve practiced it.

Brandon Burton 13:37
That’s so key, because so many people, I think, will try to wing it. You know, they where they it really, what it falls back to is what they’ve seen, right? Yeah, so the examples that they’ve seen in their life, maybe they worked for an employer that did something, you know, this way. So they see that as that’s the way things get done, and very well, and probably oftentimes, is that example that they are falling back on, is probably not the best example. And if you look at, you know, how well were they liked, how well did you know, what was their retention of their staff like? You know, all these different things, but that’s what you have to fall back on. Is what you’ve seen, you know, so as an example for you, and the

Barry Phillips 14:17
first step for them is to realize, well, I wrote a book on leadership. In fact, in the opening sentence is, it’s your fault, and then the second sentence is, what? What is your fault? Whatever it was that caused you to finally read a leadership book. But people have more influence and impact on their companies. Think about that. If you’re loyal to a company, you just love it there. Why is that? Is it because you like the logo, you’re just completely in love with the product, whatever it is, the answer is, you like the people you’ll work with and the people you work for. That’s what makes you love a company, because in the larger organizations, you can find people who love working there and people who hate working there. And the difference is they’re the people around them. And. Leaders set the tone of all that stuff, and so they just got to learn those skills of how to if communicate effectively. They’ve got to learn the basics of sales and marketing. There’s just so many things that they need to do to be able to do this job. And they do have to understand a bit about business. You have to set your business up correctly so that you are in the right tax you know, for you know, most people start off with it. They’re just a sole proprietor, or something simple like that. But as that grows, you know, as one of my companies grew, my accountant said you don’t change. You need to be a Sub S Corporation. You shouldn’t be that anymore. It’s killing you in taxes on yourself, and first year I flipped, I made $6,000 more just on the tax savings from the previous year. You just have to know those things. You don’t have to be an expert at it, but you have to know enough that you can read a P and L and a balance sheet. If you don’t know what those are, you better learn what those are. This is the stuff will make your business work or die, because if you don’t, if you’re just running it completely off a spreadsheet and just kind of winging it, that’s going to come back to bite you, yeah, especially if your company is successful.

Brandon Burton 16:09
Well, in that example, there’s, there’s a time where you need to bring in an expert, you know, your accountant, for example. But before you do that, you need to be able to look at your PNL and what your balance sheet looks like, and be able to see, Okay, that looks like, maybe something’s off here. Or I need to put more attention here. And then, then you can take it to the expert and say, help me out here, because you’ve been able to notice something. If you just, you know, outsource it all to the accountant. Very rarely are they going to come to you and say, you know, I’m noticing some things here. There’s, you’re just one in their list, and if you’re not paying attention for yourself, things will continue to get missed well,

Barry Phillips 16:46
and you hate to bring this up, but if, if a company ever gets embezzled, it’s just by the accountants, because he’s controlling all the money. And some business owner just said, I don’t want to know about that stuff. It stresses me. You handle it. You can’t just do that. You have to have your fingers in it enough to know what’s going on and to understand it. You never want to completely trust those critical things of your business, not that you’re the best one at doing them or the fastest of doing them, but you can do them, you can understand what’s going on. So that means financial is one of those places you start very first structure your company, right? And then understand finances. You need to understand what it really takes to grow your business. It’s amazing how many people don’t really know what their what their product, whatever it is costs. What is the real cost of that? You know, people out there at a restaurant selling food, and if they were to add up all their costs, they’re selling this plate for less than that, it actually cost them to make what are they doing? Isn’t that crazy? What? But you see it on, you know, reality TV shows or whatever. But it happens in real life all the time. If you don’t have a hold of your numbers, you’re nuts. I mean, you have to know that stuff.

Brandon Burton 17:56
Yeah. So you’ve touched on a few things here, from taxes and finances, to HR to I’ll even say the culture within the company, within the business. What are some of these other things that come top of mind to you? Of things you’ve come across people, let

Barry Phillips 18:12
me touch real quickly on the what one you just said? You just said, culture? Yeah, a good friend of mine started a business. He started several businesses, but when he started his last one, in particular, he was just all about culture. That’s all he cared about, was culture. Culture. Culture said, Dude, it’s just you and and your partner that you’re starting this with. What do you what do you mean? Culture? He said, Well, you have to understand culture is how we treat each other, and we have to figure that out, and we have to do it right. And now his company happens to be the largest company in the HR world, or mid to small sized businesses, and they’re in the top 10 in the world for having the best culture people want to be there. He can even pay them a little bit less if he wants to, because they love being there so much. He could probably get away with that. But part of his culture is treating his people well. He does things like, after 40 hours of work, you’re out of here, you do not take work home with you. You’ll be in trouble if you do. We insist that you don’t be here more than 40 hours a week. He gives them paid vacation. In fact, he pays for their vacation. Bring me back receipts, and I’ll pay $2,500 for airline tickets and hotel rooms and whatever He wants His people to have good lives. It’s a culture that’s phenomenal. So that’s one of the things. When you build the right culture, it attracts good people. The people want to stay, and all those things start to happen. So they need to understand that human side, probably more than anything.

Brandon Burton 19:44
Yeah, that’s a good example, a real good case study right there, as far as culture goes,

Barry Phillips 19:50
Yeah, I mean, now that he has 1000s of employees, it’s pretty tough to turn that wheel when you got 1000s of people to do it differently. Yeah, there are ways to do that. I. And then they need to understand what really matters to their people. I ask this to people all the time, what is more important to you, shareholders, employees or customers? Who do you focus on? And I get all three of those answers in a room whenever I ask it. So Brandon, what’s the answer?

Brandon Burton 20:20
Well, I think your employees need to be up there at the top, otherwise you can’t serve your shareholders or your customers, because you won’t have the employees to make things happen.

Barry Phillips 20:30
See, you should put a ghost star on your forehead. You got that exactly right, right? It is people, you see companies that are customer focused, customer focused, customer focused, and people hate working there. I mean, Amazon will now hire you off their website without even interviewing you if they’re so desperate for employees. And it’s part of the culture. Yes, they try to treat customers well, but if you don’t treat the people well, because guess what happens when you treat people well? They like their jobs. They’re happy with their jobs. That comes through to customers. Customers want to be associated with a business like that, they actually get more money coming in and more sales because of that, which then makes the shareholder happy. It’s the only way it works to get all three of them happy is to focus on your people. They actually matter most. Yeah, so you are dead on on that one awesome

Brandon Burton 21:16
I’ve pat myself on the back. Yeah, you should. So what are some of these other areas that stand out to you about what, what Chamber members really want, or what they need that they maybe they don’t know they want it because but they need it to be able to understand, to be able to operate their business. Well,

Barry Phillips 21:35
one of the things is, we got to talk about technology a little bit. They have to understand what’s going on in their online footprint. And you’ll hear some people saying, let’s try. We’ll have an online footprint. Oh yes, you do. If you don’t have one, it’s happening to you. There is conversation somewhere about you going online, and if you’re not controlling that, if you’re not involved in that, then you’re in trouble. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert at social media and all that stuff and and necessarily be doing all those things. You can have somebody help you with that, set that stuff up, give you a great website, all those things. But you have to know what matters for your business. You have to know where the focus is. You know, I think it was John Paul Getty once said that half of all marketing is waste. Yeah, half of our marketing and advertising is wasted. We just don’t know which half. Well, that’s no longer true, because you can actually do testing online if you know what you’re doing and see, oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that does work. And all of a sudden you start to know which half is a waste, and you start focusing your marketing in the right places. If you’re in a tourist business, there are certain websites and things that matter to you. If you’re not in that business, then maybe you don’t want your TripAdvisor probably does not matter to you if you’re a clothing store, but it might if you’re selling things in a tourist town, it might still matter to you, but you have to know those kinds of things. And while somebody else may manage that, when people start to comment about you online, you’re the one that needs to answer. You need to look every single day whether you like it or not, and have people show you how to do it. You need to go and talk about and respond back to people’s positive comments and their negative comments and tell them what you’re doing to fix it and invite them back. And invite them back so they can you can show them the changes you’ve made. All that kind of stuff matters. You need to get your your things set up correctly with Google, so that you are controlling your brand and your name and that you’re on the map correctly, and all those things you can do. But you have to know how and it matters, no matter what your business is, there’s nobody, hardly anymore that go, that goes and does business without checking out a company first online. Yes, it’ll be partly your website, but it’ll be your social media footprint in whatever places that matter. Probably Google searches are big deals no matter who you are, yeah, like, a like Google or not, they still kind of own the world of people searching and looking for reviews and things like that.

Brandon Burton 24:07
Yeah, and I’ve mentioned it before on the podcast, but my background has been in advertising and media and chamber publishing and whatnot. And Chamber members all the time will talk to me about the ad that they’re placing with the chamber, and they’ll want to get into the details of you know, well, what bullet points should I put in the ad? What? What about the phone number? Should I have a unique phone number? And, like, really trying to overthink things, and to your point, nobody does business with anybody without checking them out online first. So you want to put that, that carrot out there that really draws the attention, take them to your website, have a unique call to action, and then there’s a process to be able to educate them about the rest of the things you do. But if you try to bombard with too much on the front end, they’re going to ignore you, and they’re going to go to your website anyways. If there’s any interest to learn more, you know,

Barry Phillips 24:59
and. Again, no matter what your business is, you need to learn what your pitch is. What do people think of you? What is, what is the image you have to others? I don’t care how much you know about what you do and how cool you think that is. Does that matter? Even with what I am now doing for chambers, it used to take me 40 minutes in a zoom call to explain it to you. I went to a couple live events, and that’s, in fact, where you and I met, at one of those, and I, by the end of that, I could do my entire pitch in about a minute and a half. Yeah, I had learned what people cared about, or what they didn’t, not what I cared about, but what they cared about, because that’s one of the key things, is you better be selling what people want, not what you have?

Brandon Burton 25:40
Yeah, they talk about they call it the elevator pitch, right? You got 60 seconds in front of somebody, and if you can’t explain what you do, then do you really know what you do? Do you know?

Barry Phillips 25:50
Because the point is, people are going to look at you, and if they don’t get you, they’re not going to give you 510, minutes to figure out what you are. They’re going to give you a few seconds. And if you can’t hone down what you are, even if you’re a restaurant or something like that, that ought to be obvious. Well, we sell food, yeah. But why should I come into yours versus the other five on the same block? Right? They need to get you very, very quickly. And you need to hone that down any business, even if, again, if you’re a pipe fitter, I don’t care what it is, they need to understand why you and what it is you do very, very quickly. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:24
great stuff. As we begin to wrap things up here, I like asking everyone I have on the show that for chambers listening who are trying to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with that chamber to help them accomplish that goal?

Barry Phillips 26:45
Well, for chambers, it’s interesting because some chambers are pretty aggressive about forward thinking, and some are just trying to hang on and trying to rebuild back from the pandemic and all those kinds of things. But they need to understand they’ve got to have unique offerings that give them something that others don’t have, that the chamber can provide, that they can’t get any other way. Networking is certainly that you need to have good networking opportunities for people to get to know people. But you know, if they’re still in the same room week after week or month after month, looking at the same people, that’s not as stimulated as needs to be. So you need to be growing and bringing new people in. And I know it sounds self serving, but you need a training component with what I’m doing for chambers, for example, you they can’t get any new way through the chamber. They couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t come close to affording it any other way. And so you need to have things like that that are things that chambers need to help with. Maybe you can bring on a a consultant once in a while, really good people that will help people understand how to do the financial parts of their business. They need to have HR experts. You need to be bringing them a stream of people that can give them what they need, so that they can have a reason to keep coming back to you. I mean, that’s, that’s the bottom line. Are you still relevant to me? Now I don’t need you to do a ribbon cutting ceremony anymore. What can you do for me now? Why should I come back this year? You gotta stay relevant. You gotta get them tangible stuff that matters.

Brandon Burton 28:15
And the good news for a chamber and staying relevant is there’s always new things. With how fast the economy moves these days, with how fast technology moves, there’s always a need to educate and to get more valuable information from your members who don’t have the time to do the research themselves and to put it all out there. But maybe it’s a lunch and learn kind of a format. You come for lunch. They’re going to eat lunch anyways. And can they take something away as they do that? Maybe it’s a podcast episode where you bring on an expert and they’re sharing these tips. Maybe it’s bringing in somebody like Barry who has his platform to be able to train and educate and bring your members to the next level. And

Barry Phillips 28:56
I will tell you, you’ve all been to one of those Lunch and Learns where you thought you’re going to get 45 minutes of education. What you got was a 45 minute sales pitch. Right? Make sure you’re not bringing somebody in that just wants to sell you on their insurance or on whatever you need. To get speakers that come and bring real content that people need without doing a pushy sales pitch on them. That’s what they need.

Brandon Burton 29:18
Yeah, because otherwise they won’t come back to the next lunch and learn, and they’ll think the chambers just, they just sell to me all the time, right? Yeah. So Well, Barry, I like asking everyone, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, I know you’re you’ve dove into the the chamber world, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Barry Phillips 29:43
Well, chambers do have a lot of purposes, some of which from the past still are relevant to the future. Right? Good. Chambers are even involved in what is best for small businesses from the Washington political front, and they’re making affiliations with the. Know the local town councils and mayors all the way up to their state senates and those kinds of things where they can have that impact. And that’s important. They’ve got to keep doing that. But they do need to be able to provide things online. They need to give people a reason to come back and think about the chamber. You’re an association. Most of them aren’t associated directly with with the local government. Some are, but why? Why are they doing that? What is it you’re bringing to them? Education is a big, big piece of that, but so is giving them the ability to meet other people, to have horizons open to them. You need to be going as a chamber to events where you can see what the next thing is, and you start bringing new things on board, and always bringing new ideas and new products and things to them that you know people will. Some people think, Oh, I can’t raise my rates on my people. Well, you can’t. If you don’t show value, if you show enough value you can and it will make a big difference. You just got to be willing to go out there and say, here’s where, what we give you that you can’t get any place else, to be able to list off the education, the the help with HR, the help with whatever it is that you think is relevant for your for your people, and how to do that, and you’ve got to make sure that you can again, for you, you gotta have a sales pitch that’s very quick. Here’s what the chamber can do for you. Here’s the unique things we offer. You can’t get any place else, and you get this all for this amount of money. That’s a steal. That’s

Brandon Burton 31:32
right. And I love that. Taking it back to the sales pitch of the chamber, everybody’s in a sales good.

Unknown Speaker 31:39
I mean, you just don’t having that line

Brandon Burton 31:40
of this is what we provide that you can’t get anywhere else. That is so key. So I love it. Barry, I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and learn more about the services you offer, or just more about what we discussed today in this podcast episode. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect with you?

Barry Phillips 32:04
Well, there’s a couple of things. I’ve created a special website just for the heads of chambers, and it’s called chamber offer.com pretty easy to remember. You go there and there’s like eight little videos, then they’re all partly me on there. Sorry about that, but you’ll, you’ll be able to go through and I’ll walk you through all the things that that I offer with my online what I offer as a way for chambers to bring an online resource that’s live, that’s engaging and has a permanent library of stuff to it as well, bringing great content of education to your people. And it’s such a way that chambers can actually make money off of it. And it’s something that your members just really, really need. And so if you go to my regular website, BarryKPhillips.com you’ll get a flavor of my background there that that particular websites probably more suited for the big companies that I’ve worked with over the years, but you’ll see who I am there. Chamberoffer.com will give you exactly what you need, but contact me directly. Just go to Barry at Barry K Phillips com and reach out. I’d love to talk with you. Um, the phone number is 801-358-5525.

Brandon Burton 33:16
very good, and we will get all that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for everyone to click on chamber offer.com and and see exactly what it is that you offer in your your stance with what you can do to help chambers. But Barry, this has been a great conversation. Hopefully it’s got the wheels turning with those chambers that are listening and and thinking of ways to really stay relevant and to put their value out there within their business community and stay top of mind for those businesses in their community. So thank you for sharing all this with us today, and it’s been great to have you on the show.

Barry Phillips 33:47
Thanks for having me. Brandon, I really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 33:51
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