Category: relevance

Policy & Advocacy with Brian Francis

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Brian Francis. Brian is founder and CEO of Lumin Strategies, a firm that helps Chambers of Commerce build eight plus advocacy programs through one on one consulting and a signature of advocacy framework online program. Brian’s experience covers nearly all facets of the policy and political world from political campaign leadership on successful bond referendum to successful advocacy as a registered lobbyists. He is past public affairs officer for Mecklenburg County and past vice president of public policy programs at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. He founded lumen strategies in 2016. This year, Brian joins the faculty for the US Chamber Institute of Organizational Management. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Davidson College, whose basketball program he’s supported since before Steph Curry. Brian, 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. Well,

Brian Francis 3:11
great. Thanks, Brandon. I’m really excited to be with you all today. And you hit on one interest, perhaps interesting thing about me I’m big, big college basketball fan. So the last couple months have obviously been a lot of fun for me, both for my alma mater, Davidson College, but also in the Big East. My son is a freshman at Butler this year. And so we’ve been following them. A more controversial thing about me perhaps one of my passions is that I think we should eliminate timezones. And we can certainly talk about that. But that’s probably a different podcast.

Brandon Burton 3:42
Yeah, you can get on your soapbox there for a moment right. Now, that’s great. So I’d like for you to take just a few minutes and tell us a little bit about lumens strategies, what the company is like, who you serve, and it’s about advocacy, but just maybe in a brief nutshell, to kind of set the stage for discussion. Yeah,

Brian Francis 4:04
probably like a lot of companies. You know, we’ve evolved over time. So we’ve been in business for about eight years, we started as a strategic communications consulting firm, that really dabbled in a lot of different areas. But over the last several years, we’ve really honed in on chambers of commerce and helping them build advocacy programs. And we we do that two ways. One, we work one on one with chambers in a consulting role many times serving essentially as the VP of public policy for their Chamber of Commerce. In fact, some of our clients put us on their staff page as their Director of Advocacy or VP of public policy. And we also work with chambers of commerce through our signature online program, the advocacy framework. This is oftentimes for chambers that maybe are a little bit smaller, aren’t looking for the kind of the investment required to have somebody working directly with them. But what to get involved with advocacy wants to learn how to do advocacy, and through our program, we basically teach them how to institute and run a public policy or advocacy program.

Brandon Burton 5:06
That’s very helpful. And as listener might guess, we’ve decided on a topic for our discussion today to be centered around advocacy since you guys are kind of the experts on that. So we look, we look forward to dive in deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Brian, we’re back. So before the break, when you were telling us a little bit about lumen strategies, it’s obviously a company that you built around helping chambers of commerce and build advocacy programs. Why do you think that advocacy programs are so important for chambers to be involved with?

Brian Francis 7:23
Well, if you think about chambers of commerce, historically, really, the whole reason we have Chambers of Commerce is to help businesses in a community grow. And chambers do a lot of great work around networking activities, helping their members meet potential customers. But I think a core part of helping the business community grows, ensuring that there is a public policy climate that allows for businesses to grow. And really, Chambers of Commerce were instituted to represent business interests in their community. And so from a foundational perspective, I think it’s really important. I think it’s also really important as you talk to maybe your higher investor members, you know, a lot of times if you have a manufacturer in your community, they’re not looking to sell to the community, their market is global. If they’re going to get involved in the chamber, they need a different value proposition. And really the value proposition for them is what are you doing to make the overall business climate better, so their business can succeed? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 8:25
And I know chambers of all different sizes, you know, they’re in different areas of spectrum, right, as far as being involved with advocacy. So I’m hopeful that our conversation today will help shed some light on different ways to get involved on an advocacy front, whether that’s bringing in somebody like yourself to help with that effort, or just to expose them in ways to to better support those business members that they have. So kind of along those lines with advocacy. I think there’s a real argument to have ag advocacy as an investor hook. Right. So as you’re going after new members, you’re trying to bring in new businesses to join the chamber. How would you see using advocacy as an investor hook? Well,

Brian Francis 9:15
I really do think it is something and you have to think about your high level investors, it is a way to get them to participate more in your chamber and to put more money into your chamber. And you there’s some four boxes out there people will have probably seen when you think about your Chamber members, you have chambers who Chamber members who are looking to get something from your chamber, and you have Chamber members who are looking to get something done. And one of the things we talked about is you we often think about the return on investment for members and a lot of members are looking for that return on investment. And if you think about you know a lot of your smaller members, your local retailer or maybe a residential realtor or a copier salesman, they’re looking to find customers and they’re going to measure their return on how many customers? And how much revenue Did you directly produce for them? Like I mentioned for a manufacturer or maybe even a bank or a bigger member of your community, and oftentimes the longer member longer time members of your community, those who are the pillars of the community, as it were, they’re not really looking for that so much the return they’re looking for is, how much can they grow their business, because you have helped foster a climate that is positive to them. I would also say, you know, for those smaller members, there is a direct return as well in in North Carolina, a couple years ago, there was a tax issue related to PPP loans, that local Chambers of Commerce got behind and ultimately saved small business in North Carolina $640 million through their advocacy. Now that 640 million was 5000. Here, 5000. There, but that was it made a big difference to a lot of small chamber members. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 10:57
absolutely. And I think there’s a lot of examples through the pandemic, and the PPP loans and things of that nature, where you can really see the advocacy efforts of chambers really being recognized, especially by those businesses that maybe were more transactional, to begin with, and kind of moves them over to the transformational side of things and understanding the bigger picture of what chambers can do. You didn’t necessarily use those that phrase of transactional, the transformational, but are there other ways that you can see where you can take somebody from a transactional relationship to more than transformational in this kind of a advocacy conversation

Brian Francis 11:36
100%. And in fact, one of the things I would say is you need to talk about that value. I’ve seen this with a lot of chambers we work with they they’ll have a tiered do structure, which I 100% support, and I think it is the direction all the chambers need to go and if they don’t have one already, but when you get to those higher tiers, the value that the Chamber often puts on that piece of paper is we will give you a foursome at our golf tournament, or we will give you a table at our annual meeting. And a lot of times, that’s not necessarily what those larger investors are looking for. What they’re really looking for, is we saved your company money by helping navigate this regulation or changing this local zoning regulation, or, you know, we were at the forefront of this tax policy change that is making a difference of 10s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars for your business. So part of it is changing what you talk about and recognizing the and giving credit to those people because of your investment, we were able to do this advocacy. And because we were able to do this advocacy, you saw this return.

Brandon Burton 12:45
Absolutely, yeah. But just the examples he gave there, I can see where some members may say I’m, I’m really just not a golfer like that doesn’t appeal to me, or I really don’t need to go to another meeting, like as much as I appreciate the prime table at the annual meeting, I don’t really care to go, you know, whereas if they can look to the chamber and say, Man, you guys really helped us tackle this big issue of child care, or workforce or whatever it may be, then they can really see where the needle is moving with their business with the involvement with the chamber. So

Brian Francis 13:18
absolutely, I mean, we I think we forget, sometimes sometimes it can be a hassle to have to try to fill a table. And so you’re actually making your members life more difficult on by trying to give them something that they really aren’t looking for. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:32
So great arguments for being involved with advocacy, what from your experience, and just reasonings that you can see why. What holds the chamber back from getting involved with advocacy.

Brian Francis 13:44
I would say the first thing and I hear this all the time is chamber presidents executive directors and their boards say, we don’t want to get involved in politics. And oftentimes that comes from a bad experience that maybe they had years ago where somebody said the chamber is too political. And so we’re dropping our membership. And one of the things that we emphasize to people, we’re not talking about getting involved in politics, we’re talking about getting involved in policy. And here’s the distinction that I make politics is about people and power. Policy is about laws and regulations. And I will put the caveat out there. There are some chambers out there who get involved in politics, they have PACs, they endorse candidates. And I would say that’s kind of at the end, you talked before about a spectrum that’s at the end of the spectrum. If you’ve never done anything in the political realm or the policy realm before, that’s not where you start. Where you start is identifying the issues that matter to your members and working on those issues, regardless of who supports them. So this isn’t, hey, we’re going to support this ordinance because the mayor asked us to it’s we’re going to support this ordinance because we had a rigorous process to identify what is important to our members. And they’ve told us this is an important issue that needs to be corrected in order for their business to grow.

Brandon Burton 15:03
Absolutely. And I would even say even some of the pushback that they might have gotten in the past, I think getting involved with politics rather than policy is an obvious reason why they might hear some of that pushback, but there’s always going to be somebody who’s not happy with something, and they tend to be the loudest, right? So if you’ve got 1000 members, or 400 members, and you hear that one squeaky wheel, you know, that’s not indicative of what everybody else is thinking. So everybody else is cheering you on, even though they may not be coming to your front door to patch on the back.

Brian Francis 15:37
You know, that’s 100% Correct. And I imagine most of your audience are chamber staff, folks. And that’s one of the things that we talk about. When that squeaky wheel starts to squeak, we think it’s very important for your chamber to have a member driven policy process where you have a committee that’s developing the policies, it’s reviewed by your executive committee, it’s approved by your board. So when that squeaky wheel calls up the director and says, Why did you decide this? The director can say, Whoa, I didn’t decide this, this was decided by our members, by the people who participate, who learned about the issue and identified it as being something important for us to be involved

Brandon Burton 16:15
in. Right, right. And I think for all the staff to be able to understand this is how you respond when when there is opposition. I think that’s very important. So I can understand your chambers may not want to get involved with politics. But to think more on the policy side, I think would hopefully generate some interest for chambers to get involved. Are there other reasons that that you can see why chambers hesitate from getting involved with advocacy? Yeah, so

Brian Francis 16:45
I think once chambers make the decision, they want to get involved in policy. The next step is where do I start? And where do I find the time to do it. So a lot of chamber executives don’t have experience in the policy world. They, they literally don’t know where to start. And then also, you run into this all the time, especially with your smaller chambers. You know, there’s 1000, things that they have going on, you need to get your invoices out, you’ve got business after hours, you have to plan annual meetings coming up. The local school system wants to talk about workforce development, where do you find the time to put together a policy program and and I’ll say, that’s really where we step in. Both from our past experience, I’ve been involved in the political and policy arena for more than 25 years, we kind of have the expertise of how the process works. But then also, from the capacity standpoint, we try to make it easy for our clients in either our consulting or our online program by providing email templates, draft agendas, really all the work that needs to be done behind the scenes we do for them, so that they can just go out and execute on on running the policy program. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 18:00
no, I can see where where the expertise and capacity could be, you know, hurdles to overcome. Maybe starting with with expertise, if you don’t feel like you’re equipped to be able to handle this, what are some solutions or ways to overcome it? I think every chamber needs to be involved on some level on that spectrum with advocacy and policy. But how do you overcome that big hurdle of not having, you know, the not being fully equipped, or you may not feel like you’re equipped enough to handle these these topics? Well,

Brian Francis 18:32
I think the first thing is to accept and feel confident that it’s okay that you don’t understand every issue in the middlee. Elected officials don’t lobbyists don’t There are a lot of niche areas. And so the first thing I would do is say, look for your experts. So if there is an issue that a lot of members are talking about health insurance costs, and you have an insurance agent or representative who’s a member of your chamber, go to them to look for information, go to the local hospital system. If broadband is a a coming issue in your community and and investing there, look to the telecom providers that may be involved. So within your membership, you have a lot of expertise. And one thing you can do is look to your members to help educate you on their areas of of expertise. The second thing I would do and this varies a little bit from state to state, but oftentimes the State Chamber of Commerce can be a great resource. We work in South Carolina quite a bit and the South Carolina chamber does a great job every week of putting out a an email and a social media post that has just three things to know. And oftentimes, those are focused on policy issues that are moving through their legislature. And so you can often kind of repurpose that content and share it back out to your members and establish yourself as an expert just by finding the information for your members that they don’t have time to find.

Brandon Burton 19:57
Yeah, and that that helps with The Capacity stand front too, if you’re able to have a trusted source, like a State Chamber who’s doing a lot of the legwork, they have staff members who are facing, you know, the advocacy issues, and being able to put that out, be involved, like tap into that resource, but then repurpose it, then it shows Hey, we’re tapped into knowing what’s in the know, and what’s important to you. And, and all of that, are there other ways as far as tapping into the capacity issue, that time issue for chambers with getting involved? Or is that the the main thing you’d go to?

Brian Francis 20:34
So I think those are definitely helps. You know, I would say, if you have volunteers who have capacity, this is a great way to plug them in. One of my favorite tricks, so to speak, is to find a former chair of your board, who still wants to be involved. A lot of times, you know, these chairs kind of they they have their chairmanship year, they’ll have their immediate past chair year, and they still want to be involved with the chamber, they’re not sure what to do next. And so getting them involved in chairing a policy committee, you’re drawing on somebody who has a lot of experience and a lot of leadership within your your organization. And so you can rely on them. You know, and I’d say, your drawl from other Chambers of Commerce. You know, a lot of that one of the important things to get started is developing a legislative agenda. And Chambers of Commerce typically will put those on to their websites. So go around to other communities that are of like size to yours in the state are maybe even a little bit bigger, maybe more involved with it and see what they’re talking about. And use that as a jumping off point.

Brandon Burton 21:39
I love that. It’s it’s always good to collaborate good ideas from other chambers. And and the the idea of using a past chair, I think is is crucial, because they’re intimately involved with the the goings on with the chamber. They understand the mission and vision they’ve been highly involved. And to be able to keep them involved in a meaningful way, I think is a great way to utilize a past chair, that’s a great idea.

Brian Francis 22:03
Well, the other thing I would say to with working with other chambers in advocacy, coalition building is really important. And so sometimes people are like, Why do you still want to take what somebody else did, and I can make some arguments, you shouldn’t just do that, because you want your members invested in your policy positions. So I always say use them as ideas, rather than just taking something old cloth from somebody else. But once you say, hey, childcare, and ensuring that we have more childcare workers is an important issue to us, and we want to work on it, you can leverage the other chambers who have said the same thing to work together. And not everybody has to be the leader and carry all the water on each issue. Sometimes simply saying me to our chamber to supports this can really help move something forward. And the other people who have already identified that issue will be happy to have you working with them, and won’t really see it as you’re taking something from them, but rather, you’re adding something to their efforts.

Brandon Burton 23:02
Right. And I think as far as coalition’s go, especially with a regional focus, if you’ve got the chambers within your county or a Tri County area where you’re facing a lot of the similar issues together, it’s one thing from a chamber from another state, there’s still value that can be found there for sure. But you definitely wouldn’t want to copy paste, you know what they’re doing. And then South Carolina if you’re in Tennessee, for example. But if you’ve got other chambers in your county, that you can collaborate together and really build something that’s efficient and meaningful for your members. I agree.

Brian Francis 23:36
And particularly because we’ve really tried to focus our clients on working at the state level, what we have said is at the federal level, it’s just so big. And the process, especially these days is so unwieldy. It’s hard to have influence. And at the local level, a lot of stuff just happens kind of ad hoc, you know, you run into the mayor, and you talk about an issue and it gets resolved. But the state process, it’s it is more of a process. There’s a timeline that needs to be involved. There’s, there’s a lot more work, that move happens to move something through. But chambers really can have a lot of influence. You’re seeing your state reps, hopefully, you’re seeing your state senators, they’re calling on you for advice, and it’s a place where you can really have an impact. Right?

Brandon Burton 24:18
Absolutely, you can make that impact. And I’d like to argue that maybe it does make an impact on the federal level if enough states are doing it and the broader level can see what’s important. But Brian, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for the chamber listening who’s interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What tip or strategy might you offer to them to try to accomplish that goal?

Brian Francis 24:43
So the first thing I would say is have a conversation with your board. You know, this is really I’ve started by saying needs to be a member driven process and that starts with your leader members who are on your board of directors. Talk to them about why you You think advocacy is important, we have on our website or by contacting me, I can send to you a PowerPoint draft presentation that you can literally drop your Chamber’s name into. And it kind of walks through how to have that conversation, a lot of what we talked about today about how to talk to them about being involved in policy, not politics. What you need to do to get started with kind of the steps are that you’ll go through the process, but the very first thing you need to do is have buy in from your board, because this is not an easy thing to do. If it is staff driven, you really need to have that volunteer leadership on board.

Brandon Burton 25:34
Absolutely. So I like asking this question to everyone that I have on the podcast, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian Francis 25:48
So the first thing I would say, obviously, we know we’re a much more global economy. So the the hometown member to member transactions become less and less prevalent, it’s easy to find a website provider who’s across the country across the world. And so I think there is a need for chambers to evolve, and to continue to provide that value. But I would also say, when you look at the political world these days, I would say that we are oftentimes dominated by extreme conversations or folks who are more at the the ideological fringe. And I think there is a need for a common sense, bro business policy advocate in just about every community. And it’s if the chamber is not doing it, we always say if the chamber is not the voice for business, then business has no voice in the community. And so I really think the futures of chambers, if they are going to continue to be relevant, they have to be involved in providing that voice to say, regardless of all the stuff that people are talking about, that elected officials are talking about, here are the things that we really need to do to invest in our community, to invest in our workforce and to promote our businesses so that our economy can continue to thrive.

Brandon Burton 27:07
Right. And I think you hit on the political fringes, I think so much of that we see on the national level, right? Watch news channels and things like that, where you get in the local levels, you get into local policy and and even state policy. And you don’t see quite as you know, dramatic ends of the you know, the those political fringes that the opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s a lot more in the middle. And there’s a lot more that chambers can can stand on as being that same center and being able to bring people together, that I think that that vision you have of chambers, the future, I think is spot on. So thank you for sharing that. I wanted to give you an opportunity, Brian to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you or ask for the PowerPoint that you mentioned, to be able to have these conversations at their board, what would be the best way for listener to reach out and connect with you?

Brian Francis 28:04
Well, I’d say there’s two great ways. First of all, you can always email me is bfrancis@luminstrat.com, that’s L u m, I n s t r a t, or connect with me on LinkedIn on Brian Francis, from North Carolina, Davidson College, that should give you enough to find me, we try to put out a lot of content that is helpful for chambers of commerce through the LinkedIn. And so that would be a great place as well. That’s

Brandon Burton 28:32
perfect. And we’ll get that in the show notes as well make it easy to find and, and I would encourage everyone to reach out to Brian and ask for that PowerPoint to be able to start these conversations with your board. They will to get ideas of where on that spectrum you want to jump in at and getting involved with policy and advocacy at your chamber. And, and maybe you’re already involved. But let’s see, you know, how can you continue moving that needle. But, Brian, it’s been great having you with us today. I appreciate you taking some time to deal with us here on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you’ve pulled back the curtain on a lot of important topics and around policy and chambers getting involved and overcoming you know some of the hurdles that they might see as hurdles, but to see that it is possible to move, move past and move through those obstacles to really get involved in a meaningful way. So I appreciate you being on here and sharing your expertise with us. Well,

Brian Francis 29:29
thank you for having me, Brandon. Maybe I can come back and talk about Thompson sometime.

Brandon Burton 29:33
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Civic Engagement with Candance Brake

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Candance Brake. Candance is the President and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce in Kentucky. She has held the CEO position since 2015 and has a career dedicated to Community and Economic Development. She served as a three term city commissioner from 2004 to 2010, serving on conditions that led to the downtown placemaking strategy and the region shift to a knowledge based economic development strategy. Prior to holding public office, she served as executive vice president of the greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation and deputy judge slash slash executive for the Davies county fiscal court. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Western Kentucky University. She served on numerous boards and Ken Ken Commission’s throughout her career. She’s also a member of ACC and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce executives and the Kentuckians for better transportation. That candidates 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 that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Candance Brake 3:13
Well, thank you so much for having me branded and thanks to Carlos Phillips for passing my name on to you. He’s a rockstar around here. So and hello to all my fellow champ chamber executives. We you know we’re all right now grinding it out. And I’m think we’re all probably dealing with legislative sessions no matter where we live around the country. So it’s it’s such an energizing part of my life to be a part of a group of people who are really pushing our country forward as we push our communities forward sometimes against all the odds. So thanks for having me here today.

Brandon Burton 3:46
Yes, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. Just to give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to set the yeah for our discussion.

Candance Brake 3:59
So we actually are in the Evansville, MSA to put it in perspective of where we’re located. So we’re close to Illinois, Indiana and content. We’re in Kentucky. So we’re in a tri state area. And we have around 180,000 and RMSA. Ellen’s borough is a town of around 60 in a county of around 120. And our chamber we represent around 1000 members. Our membership goes all the way from health care to nonprofit to churches and mostly predominantly small businesses most chambers are our annual budget is a little over a million dollars. And so we operate small we have a small team of four that serves those 1000 members and we’re always trying to like every other chamber our size, we’re trying to offer more programs and and do more things for our communities because we know that that what we can do even from a programming perspective is going to translate into economic growth for our region. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 4:58
absolutely. Yeah. for staff to service 1000 members, you guys are hustling you guys are you’ve got really good efficiencies and programs in place. So

Candance Brake 5:08
I would say both I would say yes really lucky to have each other to great team.

Brandon Burton 5:14
Very good. Well, I’m excited for our topic today as we dive into that, around the the idea of civic engagement, and I think you have a unique perspective to bring to this topic. And I think across the country, there’s, you know, chamber chamber leaders from all different walks of life, some that are just starting day one today, and others that have had a whole career as a chamber executive. And you know, maybe some feel like they haven’t been given the keys or the permission to get involved civically, so I’m excited to dive into that with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Candance we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the topic today of civic engagement. So I would like to hear from you. Just to start off, let’s let’s hear from your perspective. What should a chamber be thinking of when it comes to being involved civically in their community?

Candance Brake 7:55
So yeah, I think a lot of that Brandon depends on the size of the community or the chamber is our community. As I said earlier, we’re we’re considered a rural area. But we do have an urban center, we’ve got just a really interesting mix of what we do here economically, but also, you know, with with people who live here, we have a rising M Afghan refugee population, and then several other refugee populations that are coming to our community that we’re very excited about. And we actually have, I believe I’m bragging, but sometimes I can go just a little too far. But I believe we have the highest refugee certification rate in the country. And that’s due to the fact that we have people in our community that are that are working tirelessly to do this. So in that that person who’s in charge of that is actually our chamber executive committee. So we try to have had built a bench that really understands the community engagement piece. People who don’t see big pictures often have a hard time understanding why chambers would need to be involved in civic engagement. You know, but all the the national studies that you’ve seen, show that communities around the country that people are dealing with an ever growing sense of isolation. And isolation is not good for human beings for mental health, but it’s also not good for economies. You know, people need to feel like they’re part of things to be productive citizens. So that’s where we start started. A few years back deliberately, we engaged a data person to look at our civic engagement levels and where they were as compared to around 50 other peer communities around the country. And those peer communities would have been communities without interstates like our community and without for your public universities we have to private colleges in our community, but that public universities we know it was a giant game changer for our community. So we looked at peer communities to see how we stacked up to those with regard to civic engagement. And what we found was we were we were clearly lacking in some some very critical roles. And our board at that point said, Okay, it’s time for us to do something proactive and jumpstart where we are, as a region, or we’re going to fall behind. And that’s when we came together. And we developed a Leadership Institute. And that we started it at the chamber, and we nurtured it over a year long period. And now it is a standalone nonprofit, that it’s a nonpartisan, it’s a think tank, but it’s also a do tank, okay, we’re, we’re they’re really making things happen. But that that organization, which is in our building, but but separate, it’s really, it’s already making some great headway in civic engagement pieces.

Brandon Burton 10:55
That’s fantastic. So I would love to know a little bit more about the Leadership Institute, kind of the purpose and mission behind that kind of the work that’s driven there. But also, as I touched on in the the introduction, those who have been in chamber work long enough, have figured out how hopefully, they figured out how to get a seat at the table, how to be involved civically, but those who are brand new, maybe we can just, you know, work it into the conversation as to where they can feel the ownership and the responsibility to really take charge. You

Candance Brake 11:30
know, and I do think, and this is coming from a female perspective, but I do see, you know, a lot of chamber presidents around the country, this, this disposition is being occupied predominantly more and more by more females, I think. And that’s just anecdotal. But women have a harder time of getting sometimes just taking their seat at the table. That’s what we do. That’s what we need to do. So you know, it’s not a matter of asking for it. It’s just taking it. And, you know, stepping out of our comfort zone, we’re representing the business community, we’re representing nonprofits, and people who want to make things happen. And, you know, to me, anytime I would feel hesitant on getting that seat, I think about this isn’t about me, this is about all the people that I’m representing that write a check to my organization to fund our work. And I have to do this for them. Right.

Brandon Burton 12:22
Yeah. I think that’s a really good perspective to bring that it’s not about you, you gotta get over the uncomfortable kind of situation and just take charge and realize it’s for the people you represent.

Candance Brake 12:33
And that makes it a lot easier to be to push your way in the day when you realize it’s this isn’t about me. This is about, you know, it’s about all those other folks.

Brandon Burton 12:41
It is and as you push a certain agenda to it’s not about you or your political views at all. It’s about representing the business community. So yes, yeah. So tell us a little more about the Leadership Institute, then about what that involves. And kind of the the origins of that and how it’s how it’s become what it is now spun off into its own nonprofit. It

Candance Brake 13:00
was really an origins of, of business community and business leaders around our table and nonprofit execs and higher ed leaders and people that were seeing that we had. We don’t if you don’t know how to say this in a constructive way, but a lack of intergenerational leadership in our community. The majority of our elected officials at that time, it was actually a maybe all of them were white men, Catholic, over the average age, I think was 71. That’s

Brandon Burton 13:35
normal, right?

Candance Brake 13:38
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, that’s city and county. Okay. That was all of our elected officials. Local. So, you know, it’s it was a matter of of the chamber going, Okay. This is not working for us, you know, we have to bring everyone to the table. Everyone has a unique perspective. And we have to create a city where people want to be if we’re going to compete, and we’re all saying this, and everybody that’s listening to it is shaking their head, because this is what we all deal with every day. But but the Leadership Institute was formed on that knowledge and the foundation that we have to do something we can’t be passive, and wait for someone else to do something. A cultural piece in our community has been really over the last 30 years, is to look to elected officials to lead and to kind of acquiesce, the role of citizen engagement to them. So our leadership institute is it’s more about Grassroots Leadership. It’s involving everyone and teaching people in their role as citizen teaching them how to get power for things that matter to them and that they feel like matters to the community. We have bases on the Kansas leadership Center’s adaptive leadership model And we do adaptive leadership training quarterly for people who have been in other leadership programs in the community that are interested. And that’s been really, really interesting and cool to watch. People, the light bulbs come on in people’s eyes, you know, like, oh, I don’t have to be an elected official, I don’t have to make this change. And we have some really great things happening now because of that.

Brandon Burton 15:23
Yeah. So personally, you took civic engagement to another level, right? You worked at the chamber, and then became an elected official for a time period. And all right back to the chamber. And I understand there in Owensboro, there’s a little bit of a history of, of a chamber staff becoming elected officials. So but I’d love to know what perspective that brings for you, as well, from having the chamber point of view. And then as the elected official, and then bringing it back to the chamber. Yeah.

Candance Brake 15:53
And also with the county, because I was on the county staff to was their administrator for a while. So yeah, I think the local government experience as an elected official, but also as a staff person, it gives it really gives you an inside an inside knowledge on the nuances of how they operate, first of all, you know, but also, you know, it’s kind of there’s no mystery in it kind of takes the veil off. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s representative government, and they’re here to represent us. And, you know, that’s all I don’t know. So that’s, you

Brandon Burton 16:27
know, that’s, that’s good. In that experience, was there talk about chambers of commerce that are trying to get the local chamber involved at different things are very siloed. No, the

Candance Brake 16:40
chamber, the chamber was always, what’s the chamber going to think about this? What’s the chamber gonna say? And then, when we did our we did that massive economic development placemaking strategy piece downtown, the Chamber support for that was critical, because we did write attacks to find it was $150 million in infrastructure improvements, and then 40 million from the federal government’s thanks to Senator McConnell. But but we had to raise those, we had to raise taxes. So the chamber coming to that meeting, when we raised it, and we had a, we had a City Commission chamber full of very angry, very loud, as anyone can imagine. And there was, it was one of the toughest meetings I’ve had, and I’ve had some tough ones. But having the chamber there to stand up and support us, was invaluable. It didn’t slow the den of the The cave people, the citizens against virtually everything. But it did, it did. It did give us the wind, I don’t know, in the courage, you know. So as a chamber president, now I know how important our role is, to those elected officials and to the staff, you know, because sometimes the staff are doing things that the elected officials don’t like, but the chamber wants them to do it. So it, you know, we have an important lobbying role within all the things that happen in the community,

Brandon Burton 18:04
right. And every community is so different on what their needs are and what those hot topics are at the moment. But for, for somebody who may be newer in the position, what would be a good first step to try to maybe level up there or get involved civically? And really? No, it’s about taking the seat, but really making the introductions trying to go to lunch with somebody like what what would you suggest, like tactic wise, to try to get involved?

Candance Brake 18:33
So I think I think the adaptive leadership model is the most important, you know, because your core constituents are going to depend on what issues you know, and if you were moving into a new community, I think that would be one of the more difficult chamber roles to take, because you have to find out, you know, who, where’s the power? And who are the players? Who can you trust that you have to do a lot more listening? than speaking for I would say here, you know, and that’s what I did you have to learn the rollback, but you do have to learn? who’s listening to whom, and, you know, who are the experts in what areas and and who are the, you know, we’re the hidden roadblocks or the hidden. I don’t say enemies, but the people that are going to try to kill projects in progress.

Brandon Burton 19:21
Yeah. So do you find that as a chamber, you’re taking issues to your local governments? Or are you seeing what the local governments do and trying to get behind those things that support local business? Or does it go both ways? How does how’s that relationship?

Candance Brake 19:35
It’s absolutely a mixture. You know, it’s there every day is a different, you know, piece of our partnership, but some days, it’s them coming to us and some days, it’s our going to them. But regardless, it’s that partnership is is very important to all of us here. And it’s the only thing that we can when people stopped talking, we stopped moving forward,

Brandon Burton 19:56
right, right. Now I think that’s so key. You So I always like asking this question. So for listeners who are out there who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item, might you suggest that they can maybe try implementing at their own chamber to see some positive results?

Candance Brake 20:17
Well, I think, for smaller chambers, one of the problems is that we don’t have, we don’t have the time to do things that we need to do. And I think one part of what what I did when I got into this position was we had all of these active committees. And I have a different philosophy on that of the committee meetings, because I worked on the echo chamber days where we had small business committee that had to meet once a month, we had to have the programming we had to do, and then staffed for other committees, and all I was doing was staff and committees, and not doing work, or not doing the important work for the community. So we have, we did an essential, basically an inventory on really where we are the chamber, we are a small business committee, I there’s there seems to be, so we eliminated things, and then we shifted to programming. And that has been, that’s been something I think that’s made us very successful. It has helped us engage a different group of people in the community through our programming. And it’s also given us an opportunity to develop some non dues revenue potential. And I mean, we all know that the non dues revenue is very important to our, to our existence.

Brandon Burton 21:32
Yes, no, I think that’s such a key point to touch on and, and really just taking that inventory of, you know, what is it that’s that’s sucking all your time out? Doing

Candance Brake 21:41
this? You know, why are we doing this? And is this really feeding our mission the way it needs to? Right? Yes.

Brandon Burton 21:46
So it’s not only the time, but it’s the energy that gets sucked into, like you were saying these different committees, right. So then when it comes back to that important work of really moving the ball forward, there’s nothing left in the tank. So I think being able to reassess, eliminate, shift those priorities and programming, I think you guys are, that’s, that’s great. A great tip. For listeners to really take inventory and see what they can do.

Candance Brake 22:12
You gotta be brave to do it, because it ruffles feathers. And you have old timers who have had been on the Small Business Committee for 35 years. And you know, that’s that was their thing. So, you know, but you got to find a way to get those people can onboard to. That’s

Brandon Burton 22:25
right. In fact, we just we did an episode a few weeks ago about overcoming the vocal minority. So if you miss sang, go back and listen to that, like

Candance Brake 22:34
we can do. I think we need to know a lot about that. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 22:38
Absolutely. So I like asking everybody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Candance Brake 22:49
Well, I think as our local communities across the country become more nationalized in our politics, I think chambers are going to be more and more important than ever, we have, we have an existential piece, particularly in in areas like islands burrow, where we have lost corporate headquarters, and those corporate headquarters, when they move to other communities around the country, they lose that loyalty that they would have to their local chambers. You know, Walmart was thinking that they’re not members. But we do, you know, everything that we do helps Walmart, and but you look at so many different companies that have taken chambers off of their radar screens. And in essence, what they’re doing is making money in a community. And throughout, then they’ll give some money to a non charity, and then think that checks their block when the chamber is doing the heavy lifting for the charity as well. So we have to figure out how to articulate to those those corporations, why we are important, and get people to understand that and care about it. So I think that’s going to be a real challenge. But the scary part is there’s that big challenge there. But there’s also the vacuum that we have to fill with the leadership piece. And you look around the country, and I look at my colleagues and the great work they’re doing. And and I believe more than ever, you know, and I, I believe that chamber chambers of commerce, can can make our country better I really do. Because they don’t care what party you’re in. They don’t care what your private agendas are. We’re just trying to move the community forward. We’re to me with a great example of, of really how, how our country can work, you know better.

Brandon Burton 24:41
Yeah, no, and I think you hit on something there with really getting that that messaging down to these big corporations that are more national national chains because they do they look at the bottom line and what’s going to make the most profit and then they’ll give something back to the community but it’s not. It’s not hitting where it counts the most. Yeah, it’s for show. It is it is. It’s for show. And I’ve seen that and seen the messaging that these big corporations put out about, essentially just that it’s about the bottom line. Yeah, yeah. So if if anybody hits on something that works well, there, you know, please share it with us. I’ll have you on the podcast, and we’ll talk all about it. Yeah. Both candidates for for anyone listening who would like to reach out and connect with you or learn a little bit more about how you guys approach your civic engagement there in Owensboro, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Candance Brake 25:38
My email, which is cbrake@owensboro.com. That’s love to hear from from colleagues from around the country. Yeah, energizing and empowering because we are really all going through. And I will say one more thing that I would give to a younger or a new person in the chamber world is find another chamber executive, somewhere that’s leading that’s similar to your organization that you can call, and you might be calling to cuss about the the mayor, or you might be calling to cry because your board chair, you know, did something, you know, but But it’s having that person that you can trust. And that really understands, because, as we all know, nobody understands like how insane this world is, until they’ve been in it and the complexities and the balancing act and everything we do every day. There’s just there’s not a lot of folks that understand it. Yeah. So when we talk to chamber time, because chamber time here, you know, one week is actually about two years, it feels like right, I mean, yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:42
so now it’s true. And I think that’s such a great piece of advice. And I would even add to it that as you look to the other chamber executive, the other chamber professional to connect with and have your chamber time. Look at where you are professionally and look at someone who’s maybe a step or two ahead of you, however you determine that. But there’s some real icons in the chamber world. It may seem unattainable to get to where they’re at, if you try to connect with them right away, but look at somebody who’s a step or two ahead of you. That’s doable. You can you can get there and you can look to the adding more people to your chamber time,

Candance Brake 27:21
we all know and we all know Brandon and I know you feel the same way we all know that, that it’s feels makes us feel just as good to be that person that’s called the younger and the more aspiring and makes we could just as much as all of it, you know, as we do when we call the person that’s two years or two things at the wrong from us. It’s yeah, it takes all of us

Brandon Burton 27:40
you get all those reminders of when you were in that position a few years before and like, oh, yeah, that’s why we do this now. Right?

Candance Brake 27:47
And also, you know, it always works out.

Brandon Burton 27:49
That’s right. That’s right. Well, I will get your email in our show notes for this episode. So anyone can look you up there and connect with you. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time today amid your busy chamber schedule to view with us and offer your experience and insights especially on this important topic of civic engagement. So thank you for being with us today.

Candance Brake 28:12
Thank you so much for inviting me and thanks to everyone else for all the great work you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 28:17
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Rapid Growth After Pandemic with Christine Cribb

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

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Our guest for this episode is Christine Cribb. Christine has been at the helm as the President and CEO of the Cleveland County Chamber in North Carolina for the past two and a half years. With an infectious energy a hunger for smart growth and a passion for helping businesses thrive. Christine has now left her mark on two chambers. Christine’s impressive track record and chamber world speaks volumes about her dedication and expertise. In her previous role she led the largest chamber per capita in the state of Washington, and accomplishment that exemplifies her talent for driving success. The chamber team not only grew the chamber, led and represented the business community but the Oak Harbor Chamber Fourth of July festival was voted number seven in the country by USA Today’s readers poll. In 2019. Christine was voted Community Leader of the Year by her peers solidifying her reputation as an exceptional leader. After spending most of the pandemic in Italy, Christine returned to the States to continue the work she loves. Chamber world took her to Cleveland County Chamber of Commerce where she conducted a listening tour and has since become a unstoppable force of innovation and growth. Her contagious enthusiasm or it has propelled the Cleveland County Chamber to new heights introducing over 15 New trailblazing chamber events and programs that have invigorated the business community all over the county and beyond. Her leadership has grown the chamber Upon her arrival at 325 members in July of 2021 to 619 members today. So Christine, I’m thrilled to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Christine Cribb 3:51
Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Brandon for having me today. Team, your chamber champions, I so much admire and respect what you do every single day you bounce so many hats. And it’s just a profession that has so much pride and joy. And very few people know what’s going on behind the scenes at or on on any given day. So I just I love this world and love being part of it. I think most interesting thing about me, of course, I’m a new grandmother. So to me, being a brand new grandmother is for the first time is just a pure joy with my family on a personal level. I will share that when I went to Italy. I left for Italy in January 2020. And the pandemic hit that February and I was in Italy for a year, which was about the best adult timeout you could imagine. And being from Can you imagine being from chamber world. Please don’t anyone feel sorry for me in any way because I do Drink a lot of wine. And I learned how to cook Italian. And when the airport’s opened back up, I knew that I needed to go back doing the work I love to do. And I did a nationwide search to return to chamber world to make a difference for businesses. Very

Unknown Speaker 5:15
good. My

Christine Cribb 5:16
little gold. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 5:18
So I figured there was more of a story there to the Italy detour with that some people would say stuck there. But it sounds like you didn’t you didn’t feel stuck you if you enjoyed your time there. So

Christine Cribb 5:34
exactly. And when I came here, I enjoyed hearing people’s stories on how they pivoted. And it was really meant to be moment when you can’t do anything. I’m in Italy, I cannot do anything. But watch, listen here. Watch how businesses were trying to pivot watch what they were doing differently. So I came back. So it just feeling very energized to to continue to help businesses. So yeah, but I did learn how to cook a lot of Italian food, I can tell you that I enjoyed. I enjoyed that as a

Brandon Burton 6:11
great skill to have. So will tell us a little bit about the Cleveland County Chamber just to give us an idea. We talked about the size and 619 members now but what is the staff situation look like the type the scope of work, you guys are involved with? Budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our conversation?

Christine Cribb 6:31
Oh, sure, absolutely. So when I joined the chamber, we were in July 2021, we were still attached to economic development partners. So that was well over a million dollar budget. But most of that was economic development partners. So we started from scratch. When they separated from us. We had at the time, five employees. We took it down. By fall of 2021. We took it down to to an administrative assistant and myself. So I wore all the hats of membership sponsor sponsorship, invoicing, billing, and I had an administrative assistant that was doing the scheduling that I told her, I was brand new in the community, I wanted to meet with every person I needed to meet with. And so she set my schedule, and I set out Google Maps, and I started to just meet people and cultivate and establish relationships. It was a it was, it was really a challenge. We also updated the website. So internally, we were putting a brand new website together, we flipped databases, which everyone knows that that can be a nightmare, I foolishly thought it would take us three months. And it actually took us almost a year to get it within really good working in a good working way. And then I hired my our master plan with the board was to hire more people as contract employees instead of employees inside the chamber building. So we have a two story building three offices upstairs. So we filled those three offices upstairs with leasing. And that funding was the revenue stream to help improve capital improvements for the chamber foundation. So people wonder what what the great value is of a chamber foundation, the foundation owns this building that that were housed in, in Uptown Shelby. And that leased property upstairs funnels for capital improvement projects to take care of the building. So we now have three employees. I’m I’m answering your question in a long, long sentence but it but it’s really exciting because we took bookkeeping out of office and the end had that, that contract. We took some marketing off and put that into contract employee. We our Monday minute our newsletter that was all done remotely as with a contract employee until I just brought her in last year. So now we have 2.8 members of the staff with a and looking to hire in fourth quarter one more member of the team. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 9:21
So going along with our topic for our discussion today’s we’re going to focus on the rapid growth that you guys have seen, especially coming out of the pandemic and since you’ve arrived there at the Cleveland County Chamber that plays right along with seeing the staff numbers as you guys you know had the economic development you know parts and you see those staff members leave but then building it back up to kind of match what you guys are doing with membership levels there is pretty impressive. So I am excited to dive in deeper on On the discussion for today and really learning what you guys did to really drive this rapid growth and I know you’ve got this infectious personality and a drive to really make things happen, but we’ll dive in deeper on that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Christine, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to focus our conversation today around the rapid growth that you guys have seen since you came on board there at the Cleveland County Chamber and especially coming out of the pandemic. I know, through the pandemic, obviously chambers everywhere were challenged, but also were able to really show their value, which at a time where their member businesses might be struggling chambers were able to really step up to be that that resource that they go to to help strengthen the business community. But I’d love to hear some of these experiences and kind of what those drivers were to help with this rapid growth.

Christine Cribb 13:25
Door. Thank you. So we I had a philosophy and I had it in my previous chamber that we don’t chase members, we attract members. And so that’s probably one of my best gold nuggets is I have not knocked on one door, nor has anyone on my team and said, you are a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Here’s my card. Let me tell you about the chamber. I’ve been very dependent on the chamber board ambassadors and fellow Chamber members. Now when I got here, it was kind of like the perfect storm brand. And because we’re coming out of the pandemic, there is one annual month or one monthly event and two annual events. And I remember telling staff that there there will be five in the next year monthly events. So I tell people, we introduced programs that do not if you only had a business after hours, and people would say well, I have to get home and I have to cook dinner for my children or do homework bla bla bla, I can’t attend a business after hours. Well, that that wouldn’t work in my chamber world because we have a business over breakfast, which is for the morning people which is a networking opportunity and a gold nugget speaker and then we have our member luncheon where we introduce our new members along with networking and a great gold nugget of a keynote speaker. And then we also have business after hours and every month we have to lunch and learns. And so I tell people if you if that doesn’t fit in your schedule any one Have those, I’m in bed by nine o’clock, and I can’t help you anymore. But I’m imagining that it would fit, you know, offering enough programs that fit with people with their schedules. So that was kind of the the brainstorm behind it is to create enough programs not to be I wasn’t afraid to fail, create enough events and programs that members would fit into member schedule to participate and be part of the chamber. And then really messaging what the chamber does, you know, we do not do community events. So we’re in my past chamber, we did, like four major community events here we don’t we are resources, marketing, continuing education, and networking. And we just drive home that if anyone was to give our 32nd speech, spiel of what the chamber does, we get to share, we are these four things. And our sole purpose is to help businesses succeed, we are not funded by the city, the county, or the state, we are a member driven organization with the goal of helping businesses succeed. That’s all it takes. And then when people repeat that, that’s where the growth comes from our social media presence had a lot to do with it. People walked in the door and said, I’m watching what you’re doing on social media, and I want to be part of it. So it was it was twofold. It was people talking about what we do and understanding when people say, oh, yeah, I’m a member of the chamber. Well, why are you a member, our ambassadors and our board? And those people actively involved in sponsorships and things like that? They can answer that question very easily.

Brandon Burton 16:41
Yeah. So let’s lean into those two areas a little bit more. So I think word of mouth is always the best form of marketing. So you said you’re trying to lean on other members and your board members, investors, that sort of thing to really drive is the buzz about what the Chamber’s doing. You’re not out there knocking on the doors, as you said. So what built that enthusiasm, that energy would infuse that energy to get these members talking? Was it the creating the events first? And then they were talking about them? Because they came in and experienced it? Or did you create a buzz that led to the events? Or what? How did that origin even

Christine Cribb 17:23
deeper? That’s a great question. So the first thing I did July through September 2021, is I went on a listening tour. And I made sure that what we were going to create as a team. And what I was going to pitch to the board at the board retreat in that October was what members wanted. So we did surveys, and I did a listening tour, I learned the past, I learned about the future and learned about the state of the businesses coming out of the pandemic, which is very different than before. So I listened. And then I vetted numerous things, not only from my past, that worked well, but I wanted to make sure they would work well here. I vetted it through the ambassador program, we each took a program, or an event that we had that had been pitched to me and we vetted it among the ambassadors. And then at the board retreat that October, I pitched the following year, what we were going to do. So when we share, you know, here’s what we’re going to do for 2022. We’re going to introduce nine new programs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it had all been vetted very well, it wasn’t just, you know, I have the enthusiasm and I have the the risk, I’m willing to take a risk in something failing to try to do something different than what had ever been done before. Also watching from the sidelines during the Chamber’s had to pivot drastically and make sure that their value was so relevant in the community, I didn’t want to just be, you know, when you ask someone, why are you a member of the chamber? Oh, we’ve been a member for 40 years, because we always have been or we should be, I want the answer to be. We’re a member the chamber because why wouldn’t you be? That’s the answer that I want one woman out.

Brandon Burton 19:13
I like to elevating that what that answer is in thinking is people are asking what is the better answer providing that experience for them to have the better answer that better response.

Christine Cribb 19:23
So we meet the other thing Brandon we do, which is just a staple in this chamber and with the ambassadors is we do not say the word no, there is no negative. The sounds kind of corny, but it’s just my philosophy. There are no negative words expressed. So if somebody comes in and says, I want you to blow up my logo in nine places, and I want you to do it for $100. Well, of course that answer is going to be no, but we never say the word. Now we say let’s Sit down and talk about the sponsorship packet. And let me show you what’s available. We we train staff, that there is never a negative word spoken in the office. And there is never we work around making sure that we do not use the word no to our members. Because we all know that chamber membership is an option, not in necessity. We’re not the electric bill. But we want to make sure that people feel like they cannot live without their business will not succeed without the energy that this chamber is putting behind them. Right?

Brandon Burton 20:31
Yeah, I’d love that mentality. So tell us a little bit more about the social media experience in the presence that you guys built there. And now you’d mentioned that you had now have that outsourced to do the marketing, if I understood that correctly. But what were some of those drivers on the social media front that really created engagement and, and brought people out?

Christine Cribb 20:56
Sure, the advantage I had was social media, specifically, Facebook was very active during pandemic coming into Cleveland County, North Carolina from Oak Harbor on would be island in Washington State, I had brought a following with me of chamber people if I could and businesses that wanted to see what what we what what I was going to do next where where I was. And so I actually started with my following personally, and then would forward it on to the chambers to the Chamber’s Facebook page and started to drive some traffic that way. And we focused on the energy of every single thing we did, about, for example, yesterday, we did, I spoke at BNI, presented at BNI at 730. In the morning, we did a ribbon cutting at four in the afternoon for a new nail salon. And then we had our gentleman’s bourbon dinner and tasting last night that started at 630. All of those went up on Facebook, to just remind people of all the things we’re doing to help businesses succeed in Cleveland County. So we put everything up there that the answer, the simplest answer is, the recipe is simply be positive in your posts, and post what a joy it is and how humbled you are to serve and get those posts up to show people the energy and what you’re doing. If you’re not on social media. How will people know what you’re doing? You know, if you’re so bogged down in the the the constant tasks of doing your chamber work? How do people know what you’re doing? And I feel like Facebook has been really a great tool for us.

Brandon Burton 22:47
Yeah, that’s interesting, taking your personal following and helping to build your your chamber following the chamber Facebook page that says interesting approach. I love how you mentioned when you came on board at the Cleveland County Chamber, you did this listening tours even around and want to know the businesses what the community was all about. Since then, the membership has almost doubled. I mean, you guys are knocking on the door of doubling the membership. And so that tells me there was a lot of members in the club or a lot of businesses in the community that were not currently members. So as you did the listening tour, as new members join that maybe been in the community for a while. What were some of the some of the feedback that you received have, maybe were, you know, things have been missing the mark in the past or things that you were doing that they noticed that they wanted to be a part of. I’m curious what some of those responses

Christine Cribb 23:50
are. So are. The message that we put out is definitely that we represent the business community in all of Cleveland County. So some people thought maybe the chamber was a little more exclusive. Some people thought maybe the chamber was more about the big businesses and not small business. Some people thought it was you know, a little bit of an old boys network down here. And I just reassured everyone that it’s it’s the Cleveland County Chamber of Commerce represents all businesses in Cleveland County, like we are a membership driven, but we were the biggest networking organization in Cleveland County, and we represent everyone. Now everyone also knows that coming out of the pandemic businesses started at such a historic pace that we also grabbed a hold of an awful lot of them. People that were small business that said, I’m going to get out of that work I have done in the past and I’m going to live my dream of being an entrepreneur and doing blank. So we welcomed them, we partnered with the Small Business Center at the community college to make sure that they had business plans and were prepared for things that would come up that they that were not their expertise, and just nurtured those. Now, we also all know, and we’re very realistic. So while we’re proud of our growth, we’re very realistic that only 70 that 75% of all new businesses will fail in the first five years. So at that growth that came out of the pandemic, we’re probably going to plan a decrease three and five years from now knowing that not all of them will succeed, but they did the energy that has already been established. Somebody says, I’m starting a business, they are going to come in, and we’re going to help tools and the resources to succeed. Some businesses had left the chamber prior to pandemic, for whatever reason, didn’t find the value. And we heard they, you know, we saw them come back, while businesses didn’t know that small businesses could be part of the chamber. And with that domino effect of people talking about all the events and the programs that we were doing, that brought them back in the door. So it was kind of multifaceted of who came in the door. But it all led back to someone telling someone else about the energy or the programs or I’m starting a business. Oh, you should go talk to the chamber. So getting the word out about what the chamber did was was the most critical, critical of that to make all that happen? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:31
absolutely. So when you came onto the the Cleveland County Chamber Did you? Did you have a goal when it came to membership is that? If you did has that been shared? Have you exceeded that? Are you still working towards it? I’m curious.

Christine Cribb 26:49
Let’s this so that anyone that knows me knows that I would have a goal. So that’s the first board retreat, a board retreat in 2021. I shared with the board that there was no reason this chamber and at the time, were 340. Probably by then. I said there’s no reason this chamber is not 1000 member chamber. And I remember the awkward silence that attacks there, because they just thought that membership was a struggle, right? That that chambers get that that stigma that you have to knock on a door and pitch somebody why you need to be a chamber member, and it’s not the right fit for everyone. So to me, I don’t need there’s 20,000 registered businesses and the registered deeds in Cleveland County, I don’t need 20,000 of them. I want to help those that want that need these benefits to help their businesses. And there is no reason we’re not going to hit 1000. I did not think we would accelerate at this pace. I’ll be honest, I thought it would take five, seven years to get to that 1000. But I anticipate that we’ll get there in the next two or three years now.

Brandon Burton 28:02
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love the big goals and the ability to believe it and to go after it. And it’s happening. So congratulations to you guys.

Christine Cribb 28:15
Thank you, Brandon. I also want to share that that the one I mentioned earlier that I’m not afraid to fail, we did it programmed, that did not work well. And I had no problem saying, you know, we gave it three shots, and it did not work. And so let’s do something else. So I’m not afraid to fail. So we introduced something. And if it works, that’s awesome. And if not, let’s just keep reinventing it. Let’s not stick in be stuck in what we’ve always done. Let’s do something new and different, or change it. Last year, we introduced a professional women’s luncheon. And to me, we needed I had one sponsor, and we needed 40. Women to to for me to think that I had it be a success. Well, we had RSVPs of 100. And that was capacity. And so we were sold out and we had a great keynote speaker come in and share stories. And it was very inspirational. And this year, so people were already asking what are what is the plan for next year. So 2024 we took it to a bigger venue. We’re going to be sold out at 200. We have a keynote speaker from the Ritz Carlton Leadership Center coming in, and we just reinvented it and made it bigger. So I am not afraid to just take a risk. If that professional women’s luncheon had not been successful, we would have gone on and tried something different. But that one was was a home run home run

Brandon Burton 29:41
for sure. I love that being able to cut the ones that aren’t serving you and lean in harder on the ones that are and before we started the recording, I had mentioned that the new event that you guys added last night, right for the first time. I’m going to tell a little bit about that and the success from there.

Christine Cribb 29:58
Absolutely So bourbon is a really a big deal here. And the people I’ve met that collect the bourbon that look for unique bottles, just kept resonating with me. And so last fall, I had this idea because we have a building that will be 40 years old and in 2025. And we have a revenue stream that supports some capital improvements. But we needed to beef up that funding a little bit more to get more work done. So we started something called the gentleman bourbon tasting and dinner. And it is at a new venue, which is has a like a speakeasy feel, and the the revenue made from it will go toward capital improvement. But it sold out we did small just like professional women’s luncheon, or Yeah, the professional women’s lunch, we did smile, we did a dinner a beautiful dinner with for 24 and did a very phenomenal raffle item. And both were sold out within three days. So we added a second night, which is tonight. And we’ll do an instant replay of the bourbon dinner and tasting. But I’m also and it does seem to be it’s going to net a few, quite a few $1,000. So it’s, it’s really great. But once again, if it wasn’t, I’d be totally okay with that. Like, if it didn’t work, then we’ll go do something else. But apparently I hit the nail on the head with this bourbon theme.

Brandon Burton 31:39
That’s fantastic. I love hearing the stories and, and being able to own up to when it’s not going to work to be able to cut the loss. So I love that

Christine Cribb 31:48
right. And let me share one let me serve on because I know that lots of chambers, they have a hard time pitching their board. And there’s some a mentor of mine once said, you manage up and you manage down so you manage your staff, obviously, but you also manage your board and you make sure they’re the board is crystal clear on what their responsibility is. And if a board member is passionate about marketing, then there’s a chairman of your marketing committee. And they you’re you’re tapping into what they want to contribute to the chamber. The other thing that’s really important to me is a good healthy relationship with your board of directors is really, really critical. But I’m also not afraid to ask anyone for an extra sponsorship. So somebody pays their membership dues. And oh, and we had a huge dues increase. Brandon this past year. So a year ago, I’m a believer that your operations need to equal your dues rather than your your revenue from your dues. I think most chambers operate that way. So programs and events, build better programs and events. That’s what they’ve that funding should do. But membership dues needs to equal your operating costs. So your operation budget and membership dues should be pretty much in line with each other. So we did a membership dues increase. And my philosophy was if somebody is not complaining about how much they’re paying for dues, then you’re not charging enough. Yeah. Think about think about that. So we increased from a basic membership dues here was $300. We increased it 25% and went to $400. And we have zero pushback. Wow. Not one person said so. And now that funding is equal to our operations budget. So that that was a, you know, an end to convince the board that this is best practices is that the Chamber revenue from their membership dues equals your operations budget. So let’s make that happen. And if we lose members along the way, I promise we’ll gain them in the long run. And we did not lose one member.

Brandon Burton 34:04
So

Christine Cribb 34:06
taking a risk like that, yeah, take a risk like that. Brandon, where if it had failed, I was prepared to say the worst case scenario is we start to lose members, but we will gain them back with the new members that will join that will pay $400. And we did not lose a member I we were taking a risk again, right? Yeah. So you have to be a risk taker. And you have to be positive about it the whole time. Like you can’t say, you know, I’ve listened to some cohorts that and they feel so bogged down, that their energy resonates with their staff, it resonates with their members, and it needs to be positive. So my background is in Macy’s specialty stores. I was their new store coordinator in the Midwest, a long, long time ago, but their philosophy was when you hit the floor, it’s showtime. And that’s kind of the philosophy here you know, you might have had a flat tire or the baby spit up on you or what Whatever. And I’m really sorry. And we can talk about that behind the scenes. But when you’re in front of a member in the community, it’s showtime you are you represent all the energy. And so your energy equal, what is in your membership? So if you’re positive and happy and you know, get it going on, then then that’s what’s your membership is going to resonate. And do you make everyone happy? No, but I’m a full. I’m a firm believer that we don’t need to make everyone happy. And if it’s not the right fit, you are welcome to leave the chamber. I don’t we don’t have to have a person that’s unhappy with the Chamber of Commerce as a member happily say goodbye. I’m sorry. Not a good bit.

Brandon Burton 35:41
Yeah. Such a great lesson there. And for chambers out there that are looking at needing to increase their dues, yeah, the revenue from their dues. This is a great example here at 25% increase with zero pushback. And I understand every community and chamber is different. But there’s one there, there’s room to increase and grow. So thank you for sharing.

Christine Cribb 36:07
Absolutely, and preparing for the worst case scenario. So someone came in and said, You know, I can’t afford $400 a year if they had said that, I would have obviously wanted to coach them on their business plan. But then I would also work with them. Right. So we could do quarterly payments, or we can do very seldom do I do monthly, but I could have done, you know, I was willing to say the worst case scenario, and somebody says that. Yeah, I was willing to work with him. It wasn’t just black and white. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:40
I love that. So as we start to wrap Yeah, as we started to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask for those that are listening who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you want to share with them that they can maybe take back to their chamber to implement?

Christine Cribb 37:01
I would do. Let’s see, when I walked in the door, we have a non negotiable list and that that positive attitude is non negotiable. So there’s that starts in house, I would take a look at not why it wouldn’t work. But what if it did work? Like I would give everything you’ve ever pitched thought of that anybody has said, you know, people come into our offices, and they say, You know what the chamber should do. And they say that as if you’re sitting, sitting back eating bonbons all day, right? Yes, and you want to say, oh, gosh, thank you so much for that. Now, I will give up my my cheesecake here and I will go do what you asked me to do. I would say throw everything on the wall and see what sticks. You know, throw all that spaghetti on the wall and take a risk. And don’t be afraid to fail. But along with that comes a great positive attitude. It comes with a great board relationship. Because if I ever thought I had to you know, if I had to think twice about the job I was doing because of my board of directors, I would not be doing this, we would not be as successful as we are right now. We have 100% support of a board that was huge. When I got here, we downsize it. I’ve an advisory committee, I vet things through them. Every I communicate with them regularly, there is no doubt in the board’s mind what’s going on at the chamber and what we’re doing, having them along for the ride. And then build programs that attract people don’t chase members build programs that attract but do it in a way that members had a part of what was going on. They had a part of creating it, man, you get a piece of that. You give someone an idea. Somebody gives you an idea, and you’re actually taking it and bringing it to fruition. They were thrilled. You know they’re there. They’re part of your chamber, then that’s more than just writing and chat.

Brandon Burton 38:58
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, they become an advocate for where you guys are doing them too and helping to share that. That greater good. And there

Christine Cribb 39:09
goes the word of mouth. The word of mouth. I’m telling you, I’ve not knocked on one door and not given my card to one person and said, Are you a chamber member? I’ve not done it. So even last night at the Bergen event, seven of the attendees were not Chamber members and three of them came up after and said we used to be members and now I’d like to rejoin So my number is going to increase in just just this week alone. But and I didn’t say a word it was the premier sponsor said if you are not a chamber member right now you you need to think twice about that decision. And we got three members and I never said a word I never pitched other than what we do and what the funding was going toward for the event last night. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:56
I love it and it wasn’t exclusive member only event. So you open it up and you know, opportunities so good.

Christine Cribb 40:04
We also most all of our events, so even a lunch and learn is no fee for a chamber member but a $10 fee for a non member. And generally at every lunch and learn there is someone who is a non member, and we get to I get to come in, they do a roundtable, and I introduced the chamber and what we do, and that’s it, most all of our events have a member and non member fee. Right?

Brandon Burton 40:28
Yeah, I love it. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Christine Cribb 40:40
I feel if I, when I give my 32nd Get a pitch about a chamber, we have to constantly reinvent ourselves and stay relevant. So when I did that listening tour when I got here, Brandon, I could get a lot of appointments, but I could not get one appointment with a elected official. So it told me that the chamber was not relevant when it came to elected officials. Now, we have a legislative affairs committee, we have a legislative affairs agenda. And last spring, we had 195 people attend a Monday morning at 730 legislative breakfast. So cultivating those relationships and being relevant, like don’t think it’s just the way it’s always been, is the way we can do it going forward. Before I got here, I did a nationwide search and I interviewed with six different chambers. And I got six different job offers, which told me I probably have a screw loose to get back into this business. But I was just passionate when I came back from Italy about coming back and helping businesses succeed. And in doing that some chambers weren’t even opened back up yet brand and like they were still scared about what the future would hold. And I would say you have to take risks and you have to reinvent yourself all the time, you have to be relevant, reinvent yourself to what is relevant, and stay positive and energize. And when you think what we do what our responsibility is as a chamber is to offer business resources. We offer marketing, we offer continuing education, and networking opportunities. Those four things are what businesses need to succeed. So as long as you’re reinventing yourself to focus on those four purposes, at least, that’s within our chamber. If those four pillars are the reason we’re here to help businesses succeed, those are what we have to reinvent every year and make sure every one of them is at the best capacity we can provide to help businesses succeed. That’s the future of the chamber, I believe. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 42:47
I love that love that glimpse of the future. I wanted to make sure you had a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out learn a little more from us figure out how you guys are doing things are in the Cleveland County Chamber, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Christine Cribb 43:07
Well, that’s wonderful. They could connect three ways you can certainly connect over messenger on Facebook at my Facebook is Christine Cribb. You could connect via email christine@clevelandchamber.org. And I’m happy to give my spell out 360-632-6533 To reach out best way is a text. If you email as all chamber world knows if you’re at the first email when I sit down, you are in luck, and you are thrilled that I just replied. But if you are the 80th one, you’re like, why isn’t that woman replied to my email yet. So anyway, any of those ways, I’m happy to reach out I’ve mentored a few chamber directors. And I’m just thrilled at this work. I love that we make a difference in the business community. We had a member that came in wanting to do something that was a sponsorship. When I first got here, he did website. And he then got involved in the chamber just from a conversation with staff and myself. He went from seven clients to 32 clients and he’s hiring two new part time people. And it’s because he just immersed himself in getting his card out there and talking to people and attending events and he became an ambassador and he contributes his success with with getting involved in the chamber. So it works.

Brandon Burton 44:39
Yes, I love it. I love it. But Christine, I have enjoyed having you on the show today. I love the enthusiasm, the passion that you bring to your chamber work and sharing the experiences and stories that you’ve experienced, especially over the last two and a half years. As you’ve seen this rapid growth or Cleveland County Chamber I appreciate you putting aside time to be with us today. And wish you the best on reaching that goal of 1000 Plus members there at your chamber thing. Thank you for being with us today.

Christine Cribb 45:16
Thank you so much Brandon. It was such an absolute pleasure and I love this world and I love I love chambers and helping businesses succeed. It’s an absolute pleasure that you had me on as a guest. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 45:28
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Chambers Promoting Themselves with Brian Bondy

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Brian Bondi, Brian has been with the Granbury Chamber of Commerce in Texas since April 21. Brian has been a part of the Chamber of Commerce work in Texas and Missouri for over 30 years serving as a volunteer committee member, Committee Chair, Board member and board officer before transitioning to the other side of the desk with the Northwest communities Chamber of Commerce in suburban St. Louis. He has been a Rotarian for more than 20 years, having served as club presidents in both Kerrville and San Marcos, Texas, and is also at Paul Harris fellow. Brian has graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University and also has earned the IOM designation through his participation and graduation from the US Chamber of Commerce Institute. Brian and his wife Jean have two adult daughters and Lauren who teaches in Mansfield ISD and Aaron earned her master’s and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, and one awesome granddaughter Emery who turned to in July. But Brian, 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 better.

Brian Bondy 3:16
Brandon, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. There’s really not a lot to me, other than I can truly say that my claim to fame was I was a contestant on the prices, right. And I got up on stage with Bob Barker a long time ago, did not win the car. And, you know, I still have to live that down to this day.

Brandon Burton 3:40
That is awesome, though. Not many people can say that. I mean, I guess a lot of people can but not many people, you know, can say they’ve been on the prices. Right? Exactly. That’s right. That’s cool. So maybe just a side tangent, my wife’s uncle. He was on prices right in the 80s. So Bob Barker, and he did win the Showcase Showdown, one at all. And then like 30 years later, so just it was just a couple years ago, actually that he was back on again with Drew Carey, and won both showcases. So he’s been on twice and one one at all twice. And I don’t know many people have done that. But it was it was pretty amazing. And he shared pictures of you know, when he was on in the 80s. And then just a couple of years ago and it was pretty neat.

Brian Bondy 4:27
That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, my my true memory array of it wasn’t the show itself. But immediately after the taping was over all of the contestants that got on stage that won something were immediately taken behind stage to fill out the appropriate tax forms,

Brandon Burton 4:42
right. The important stuff was Yeah, yeah. Well, that is that’s interesting. That’s neat. I appreciate you sharing that with us and DeMonte to take a few moments and tell us a little bit about the Granberry chamber just to kind of set the stage for our conversation. Since the day to give everyone an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work staff budget, that sort of thing before we dive into our discussion.

Brian Bondy 5:08
So the robbery chamber was founded in 1952. And we are about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Texas. We are a true standalone community even though a good portion of our workforce commutes to the Metroplex of just under 900 members and a budget of a little over $600,000 We do not engage in economic development with the city or county and we do not engage in any of the visitors bureau with the hotel motel tax dollars. So everything that our chamber generates is done through membership investments, or special events and our programming and in marketing marketing events. And the chamber that we like to say is where the largest chamber and the smallest city in Texas

Brandon Burton 5:58
Yeah, no, that’s true. And you guys you guys do definitely have things working on on all cylinders that they’ve been blessed to do some work with you guys down there in the Granberry chamber and love the community and you guys are rocking it so keep up the great work.

Brian Bondy 6:14
Thank you appreciate that.

Brandon Burton 6:16
As we get into our topic today I think it’s a very relevant topic for chambers across the country and as we talk about the need and and value and chambers promoting themselves and very often chambers don’t want it to their own horn or it may feel a little awkward to be no self promotion tends to have some negative context to it. But I think what the chamber self promoting is not so much the chamber necessarily is it’s promoting your members and activities and the benefits and the ways that you can promote your members so I’m super interested to hear your your spin your angle on this as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Brian, we’re back. So tell us how does the Granbury Chamber approached the idea of promoting the chamber? As I mentioned before the break, there’s that that idea of self promoting maybe has that negative context. But I don’t believe it has to be that way. And I don’t think you believe that either. So what’s your guys approach to it?

Brian Bondy 9:13
So just by way of background, you know, for years and years, you know, chambers focused almost exclusively on their members. And there’s nothing wrong with that, quite frankly, that’s a big part of what our mission is, is to help our businesses grow and get better and tooting their horns is a big part of how we grew. But the worst thing in the world that I have heard over the years is I had no idea that chamber could do that, because we don’t get our message out.

Brandon Burton 9:40
Or what does the chamber do? Right. Exactly.

Brian Bondy 9:44
And how many recordings have you done over the years that have said that exact same thing? Our aim is not necessarily to put an end to that but at least put a dent in it. And I’ll just start with when we move to Granbury I Right community, great Chamber of Commerce. But the messaging had had been totally lost in in the COVID translation, right. So not only did we take the steps to rebrand the chamber, create a new logo, build a new website, but we really did hit on the idea that it’s time to promote ourselves. And that involves a lot of social media. Because let’s face it, back in the day, we had a couple of options, you could promote yourself through your newspaper, maybe some radio, but for the most part, doing any kind of television or video was was really kind of out of the realm of realistic unless you were a Metro Chamber of Commerce with with especially deep pocket, the advent of relatively inexpensive video opportunities, as well as social media members should be jumping on this right now.

Brandon Burton 10:56
Absolutely. So as you guys take that approach, what what is the type of messaging you tend to get out as you are maybe some of the recent campaigns maybe that you guys have put out there to promote the chamber and the work that you guys are involved with.

Brian Bondy 11:10
So I’m really excited that we’re having this conversation today. Because within the next week or so, we’re going to be rolling out a testimonial campaign. In fact, we’re going to roll it out at our banquet at the end of January. And essentially, we recorded probably two dozen people at our marketing firms headquarters. And we wanted them to say what’s the one word that makes you think of the Chamber of Commerce. And the beauty of this is you’re gonna get a different word for every person that we talk to. And that’s going to be an opportunity for us to toot our horns, it says, it’s not just about networking, it’s about advocacy. It’s about marketing, it’s about relationships, it’s about going the extra mile, it’s about caring about the community. And so I’m talking about chambers have to be willing to step up to the plate to promote themselves.

Brandon Burton 12:05
Yes, I love that, that whole idea of testimonials in general, I mean, you’re you’re able to generate great feedback one, so you can learn, you know, the impact you’re making on your Chamber members. But then you’re able to see where they see the value in the chamber. So you can you know, take that information and get from them leaning a little heavier or, or maybe find those areas that you feel like you’re doing some positive work, but nobody’s mentioning that. And maybe, maybe you need to lean in a little harder, or maybe you scrap that piece of that work. But these testimonials, then you’re able to repurpose in several ways to say you’re capturing him on video. But then I would imagine there’s a strategy out there to, you know, unroll, you know, some other posts and other other ways of sharing these messages that they’re putting out there with their testimonials, am I am I hitting on point with that

Brian Bondy 12:59
you are nailing it to the wall, let me tell you, you know, the beauty of having a lot of good B roll footage is we can pull tidbits anytime we need to right. And that’s what I would tell the people that were coming in look, I’m not looking for, you know, a 10 minute discussion. I’m just looking for a couple of soundbites that I can pull out edit down and use whenever we have something going on. And and the real beautiful thing about promoting yourself is it’s not coming from staff, it’s coming from people who are already members of the chamber, they believe in the mission. And the message also goes out to those who are Chamber members, why they should become part of the organization.

Brandon Burton 13:41
Right? So with these members that you’ll be highlighting, I love the idea of being able to repurpose that content, as you put it out there for the community to see for other potential members possibly to see. Are you somehow identifying the individual, their company, what type of business they are just to kind of give that flavor in the community as to what types of businesses you serve? Or what’s that part of the vision look like?

Brian Bondy 14:10
Yeah, we’re very fortunate. It’s a it’s a small town. And most of the people that have come into the studio to do the recording are pretty well known. So we may not do any any character generation with our first generation of of spots. But we can see that going down the road as we create other content, where we want to be able to identify that, you know, this is our CEO of our hospital, or superintendent of schools. So then it ends an air of credibility to the person who’s who’s talking. And that way the person who listens and sees what they’re, what they’re going what we’ve put out there. They’ll like, oh, I never even thought about doing something like that. Right

Brandon Burton 14:52
now. That’s so valuable. Now, you had mentioned social media being a great tool. Are chambers to be able to get messaging out like this and affordable way? What does this strategy look like across the different social platforms? Because I can see maybe having a YouTube channel and obviously Facebook, a lot of people are on Instagram and reels and all that as the list goes on and on. But what are some of those things that you guys have thought of as specifically, it may be good just to hone in on this campaign. As you you know, repurpose content and take those those tidbits out that you edit down? What are some of those ways you envision being able to maybe amplify these messages?

Brian Bondy 15:37
That’s a great question. And we’re very fortunate, I’ve got some very tech savvy staff members, which is really good for me, because it keeps me out of that fray. And it’s safer that way. But, but we have consciously built a calendar of posts, Facebook, Instagram, are our primary tools right now. We are building a setting up a YouTube page where we can take these videos and but but we consciously post something three times a day, whether we’re doing a spotlight on one of our ambassadors, one of our board members, one of our members themselves, and most of the time, they’re either live video, or they’re they’re created in a real. And we do that with our ribbon cuttings, we do that with our special events. And what we’ve seen over the last two and a half years, is a significant increase in followers. But even more so a significant increase in the organic reach of our of our posts, and a lot of shares that are taking place. And that just helps get our message out to even that many more potential customers. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:53
I often will think that chambers are built for social media, right? I mean, you’ve put up a post and you highlight a member. So you’ve got the individual who has an interest in sharing it that their business has an interest in sharing it. So that organic reach, ideally should just, I mean, you guys should have very deep roots in the community by just highlighting your your members and board members and ambassadors, and all these different things that you just mentioned. And the

Brian Bondy 17:20
really good example is we we’ve started a business summit every September. And it’s two years old, both years it’s been a sellout. And both years, we’ve used social media at the front end to promote our speaker lineup, and then at the back end to do a wrap up. And the views range from six to 7000. Post event. And so what we’re learning is we’re building this following that they want more, they want to see what else we’re doing. And we’re hoping to push that to those that are not necessarily members right now. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 18:01
So the organic reach is super helpful, super important. But we also know these different platforms are constantly changing algorithms, and they want to make sure that you’re paying to play it often in a lot of cases. So do you guys set aside a portion of your budget to purposely promote certain posts or to have certain campaigns that you want to put put a few dollars behind to get a little more traction? Right

Brian Bondy 18:32
question? And the answer to that is absolutely, yes. And this is where we fundamentally changed how we want to operate. We know that we have to spend money to make money. And the cost per spot on social media is still relatively inexpensive. And if you’re a chamber that really is trying to promote what you’re doing, who you are, who your customers are, and who your customers could be, then even if you set aside $500 a month, you can see impact from that money.

Brandon Burton 19:05
Yeah. So for some businesses, and I say businesses rather than chambers, they can promote their product or service on social media, and they can see the ROI, right you put you know, $1 in you get $2 back. What are some of those key metrics that you guys look at as a chamber to see that you’re getting a positive return on the the ad spends that you’re putting out there?

Brian Bondy 19:32
Like question again. So ROI on testimonial is going to be hard to measure. A lot of that is we’re building awareness, we’re building confidence that the brand is one to be very reliable, and one you can hang your hat with. Well, the flip side of that is if we are doing events specific, like the previously mentioned women and Business Summit, or our banquet or for to July celebration, those we’re gonna see in potentially more participants buying tickets, more sponsorships. And that’s kind of what I look for is, especially as we are event related, are we seeing a bump in in interest? Are we seeing a bump in potential sponsor inquiries? And I would have to say that the the initial results are yes, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Brandon Burton 20:23
That’s, that’s great. Yeah, a lot of times, we’ll look at the likes and the views and shares, which are good, they make you feel good that it’s getting the message out there. But some would say that they’re vanity metrics, right, that they don’t really bring the money in. But I think it’s a little different with the chamber where you are so event focused, and, you know, getting the awareness out there driving people in to whatever those events are. So as long as you’re able to keep track of attendance and ticket sales and revenue generated from these events, I think that’s a great correlation to see that these, the ad spends and the it beyond the the money put aside for spending on social media, but the time and staff effort to to put in to build that brand on social media, it’s good to have that, that returned to be able to see that it’s worth that time.

Brian Bondy 21:19
So that the it goes back to the one of the things that I said, at the very beginning of the worst thing we could hear is I had no idea that the Chamber did that. And some of this begins to address that very issue. To fact that whether it’s a special event, or even a testimonial from a member, to have somebody come and say, Hey, I saw that, I am so glad to know that you guys have the ability to do X, Y, Z, tell me more. I just opened the door to a potential customer, a potential member sponsor. That’s where the intangible part of the promotional dollars spent begins to pay off. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:01
So do you know do you ever have direct engagements with posts where they say, those those kinds of words, I had no idea the chamber does this and tell me more? Are they reaching out to the chamber directly? Or is it when your membership person reaches out that they make those connections? How do you see these things kind of develop?

Brian Bondy 22:21
Yeah, that’s a great question as well. It’s interesting. We’ve had a couple that have responded in the in the chat line, hey, can you send me some more information and reach out to me, and we’ve done that, and I think that’s a terrific direct response, direct opportunity that that came up. We also do, we do our candidate forums for the various election cycles, we’ll stream those live on our on our Facebook page, and the engagement that we get from that, not always positive, but we’re getting engagement. And that’s, that’s a big part of marketing, the chamber is doing things like that, where we have engaged members and the community in the product that we’re putting out there.

Brandon Burton 23:07
And that’s a great point with streaming the candidate forums. As far as getting engagement and algorithms, algorithms like it when there’s a little bit of controversy. So if you can get the negative and positive comments going in something like a candidate form, I think that’s going to really help that organic reach and get it in front of the people that you’re hoping to reach.

Brian Bondy 23:30
So exactly, exactly that.

Brandon Burton 23:34
Well, I like asking, for chambers that are out there listening, if if there’s any tips or action items that you might offer to a chamber who’s looking to maybe take their chamber up to the next level, what might you offer to the to that organization?

Brian Bondy 23:52
A couple of things. Number one, I can’t underestimate the value of a good relationship with your local media, whether it’s a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local television station, they they’re looking for content just as much as you’re looking to put content out there. And we were fortunate to have some really good relationships with our local media. And part of that equation is, you know, we all have smartphones that have video and audio capabilities, you’ve got a marketing tool in your hand every time you’re out there. And don’t be afraid to use it because that that’s a big part of how you can make your chamber stand out was just a moment of talking to somebody with the recording on and put it out there. Hey, remember you’re gonna love it, but be we’re going to hear you and and once again, it goes back. I had no idea you guys could do that.

Brandon Burton 24:50
Yeah. So do you ever see any awkwardness if you’re talking to a member and pull out the phone Hey, do you mind if I record I know a lot of men members love it because they know you’re going to put it out there on social media. Do you ever get any of the awkward cameras say, oh, no, I don’t know, I’m not I don’t have my makeup, you know, or whatever. Any any awkward moments that the media lighten the conversation a little bit.

Brian Bondy 25:16
Obviously, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have those awkward situations. The reality is, you know, people don’t think they look that good, until they see themselves and they’re like, Oh, that wasn’t so bad. And, and we’ve had that before. But for the most part, I would say, an overwhelming majority are a okay with it at the end of the day, because they know what the end result is. They’re gonna get some publicity out of it. Right?

Brandon Burton 25:42
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s great. And just to be able to overcome that, and know, you know, there may be those awkward moments. But in the end, it’s, it’s to help that business win, right, help that individual get their message out to so. And we both die at the end of the day with that? Yes, absolutely. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Brian Bondy 26:11
You know, chambers have changed so much over the last 25 to 30 years. For the most part, if I look back to the 90s. Yeah, we were pretty much networking based organizations, everything we live for was based on that, it will forward to advocacy being probably our number one focus. And that’s where chambers going forward are going to have to step their feet into into that muck. It doesn’t mean they have to take positions, but they need to be able to inform their members on what’s going on in their community in their region. Because business and government don’t always see eye to eye, the chamber is fortunate and should be fortunate enough to have the bully pulpit to be able to say, Whoa, timeout, this is going to affect a lot of people, the larger Chambers of Commerce in metro areas have been doing this for a long time, I can tell you that rural America needs to wake up and start doing this. It can’t just be about parades, it can’t just about all of the events that we’ve done for 50 6070 years, we’re going to have to get in and get a little bit dirty. And that makes boards very nervous. And it makes staff very nervous, because it’s something that we’re not comfortable doing. But all of my training tells me that if we don’t, we risk losing our members interest because the value proposition begins to decrease. And ultimately, just like any business, if we can’t show the value for the investment, we’re gonna lose them. And

Brandon Burton 27:44
well, and as we’ve talked about today, being able to have those conversations around advocacy and policies that are being put out there, it also helped drive your your social media engagement. So get it out there stand up for the for your businesses and your community. And it may cause some controversy. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You can lean into that and really have some positive effects and influences out of a little bit of controversy. So

Brian Bondy 28:15
I think our members have come to expect something like that. And I think that as chambers continue to stay relevant in the in the coming years and decades, we’re going to have to continue to evolve ourselves. We can’t, you know, it’s advocacy today, it could be something totally different 10 years from now, that we all had saw that was coming, but it kind of hit us squarely between the eyes. But that’s part of how we we manifest and grow ourselves is to be aware of those trends that are coming down the pike.

Brandon Burton 28:51
Right. And I’ve seen in working with chambers and Chamber members for several years. Like you said, members come to expect the advocacy part from the chamber. And there’s been Chamber members that I’ve talked to that have expressed their frustration and disappointment that their chamber didn’t advocate for their business when, you know, XYZ happened, you know, when the road was torn up for an expansion and nobody consulted the businesses about the impact or creating a driveway for people to sell access to businesses, like where’s the chamber and you know, they created an expectation that the Chamber should be standing up for their rights and helping them be successful. So great point.

Brian Bondy 29:33
Yeah. And the hard part is, you know, if you’ve talked to a lot of chamber professionals, and that is, you know, it’s one thing to say it’s another thing to do it because you’re dealing with a lot of interior political climates within each of the communities where that may be frowned upon. And so what really becomes important is for that, that board of directors and that chamber staff to be on the same Ah, understanding that, hey, get a bloody nose on this, but we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons. And at the end of the day, used to say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And that kind of can can live with that.

Brandon Burton 30:11
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, Brian, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn a little more about how you guys are approaching things at the Granberry chamber, especially when it comes to promoting yourself, what would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect? Obviously,

Brian Bondy 30:32
the best way for us is through our email. I mean, that is, that’s probably the quickest, easiest and best way. brian@granburychamber.com. And of course, you can always call us My office number is 817-458-8442 to look us up on Facebook. And we’re getting ready to branch out into a few other platforms. But that it’s a good idea for if you want to see what we’re doing to take a look at us either on the web or on our social media.

Brandon Burton 31:12
Right Do I will get all that in our show notes for this episode too. And, and hopefully, as you branch out into other areas of social media, there’s going to be some cross promotion so that anybody wants to follow your Facebook page and see some of those other things that are coming on the horizon. I’m sure exactly. That, Brian, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast with us today. I appreciate you sharing your perspective lessons that you guys have learned and promoting yourselves and the great value that comes from chambers being a little bit bold and saying this is what we do. And we’re here to show you. So thanks for for spending time with us today.

Brian Bondy 31:48
Ryan, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 31:51
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Overcoming the Vocal Minority with Janet Kenefsky

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Janet Kenefsky and Janet is the Vice President of Operations for the Greater Vancouver Chamber, overseeing the Chamber’s day to day and strategic programming and internal operations, creating structured processes for the organization to strengthen its core mission and becoming the inclusive and innovative provider of programming and resources. Janet brings over 20 years of experience in nonprofit leadership and organizational strategic development, along with a strong background in government relations and international trade development. She is the business community representative for Clark County’s Law and Justice Council sits on the lodging and Tax Committee for the City of Vancouver and recently selected for and completed the US Chamber Foundation’s workforce fellowship. Her passion and volunteerism are focused on providing greater economic opportunities for businesses and employee growth in the workplace. Janet, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Janet Kenefsky 4:12
Well hello to everybody out there yet my Janet Kenefsky and I represent the Greater Vancouver chamber recently the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce and like many we drop the commerce but we’re still a b2b organization um, something about myself and I think maybe it goes into some of the interview today. When you look at personality wise, I am a strong Enneagram eight I’m Clifton Strengths I lead with strategic so a lot of the discussion we’ll have today falls within my my personality traits and I’ve tried to own up to him and so it might differ from from others that that I work with in the timber industry, but hopefully I’ll use that as a strength E and TJ You extrovert. Yeah, it helps. It helps guide a lot of what I do in the chamber world and be comfortable with how I lead. That’s

Brandon Burton 5:08
great. Well, it definitely will be a leadership focused episode here on the podcast today. So that lean into your strengths there for sure. Tell us a little bit about the Greater Vancouver Chamber. You mentioned you guys recently dropped the F commerce off the title. But tell us a little bit more about the chamber, Scope of Work size staff budget things you guys were involved with, just to kind of give us a little more perspective, as we get into our discussion today.

Janet Kenefsky 5:36
The Greater Vancouver Chamber so we’re located in southwest Washington, for those who who don’t know where Vancouver, Washington is. We represent a community. I’d say we’re about 415,000 that are in the Vancouver city. And then we represent around 511 512,000 that are in the county that we represent. We have approximately 1200 members, another 400 members that are part of programming, some entrepreneurship, training and nonprofit. We do have about 116 nonprofits as part of our membership. So it’s pretty large. We represent four legislative districts 12 policymakers that we work really closely with on the state level. And then we have various programs. We have nine full time staff and then an outside accounting firm that we work with. And we are a great team.

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Donna Novitsky 8:11
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 9:06
Alright, Janet, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned that the topic being overcoming the vocal minority, so oftentimes, this minority, they tend to be the loudest in the community that and it may be easy to lean into the few voices that are really expressing their discontent with whatever’s going on. And think that that represents the greater whole of the business community. So I would love to hear in your time at the chambers, changes that either you guys have implemented or changes that you guys have removed. And maybe where some of the that opposition. It’s kind of surface its head from the vocal minority.

Janet Kenefsky 9:51
Yeah. So I think first of all, the vocal minority comes from passion. So we recognize that we can we can approach the vocal minority and get frustrated with them, try to push them out. But we recognize early, it is a good thing that they have such passion passion for the program passion for the chamber passion for their community. And sometimes it’s just not directed in the right way or, or they feel like they’re losing something. So we have, there was a I pulled it up here. So there was a quote that I saw on on Facebook, this was many months ago. And it just left me It says, cities that avoid change to keep a few people from being upset today. And sure that everyone will be upset tomorrow. And that’s that summed it up that that talks about, if you’re reluctant to change, because maybe it’s a couple of people on your board, maybe it’s a couple of people that are on your own, or maybe it’s your ambassador team, maybe it’s people that go to your morning networking and show up every, you know, week for free coffee and doughnuts and networking, and they don’t want to see it go. If you if you’re afraid to let those go, you’ll never be able to find programming that really benefits the wider community. So for our chamber in 2019, is when I joined. So I was able to give a fresh perspective to what was happening, what the programs I attended. And I noticed something right off the bat, there were the same people going to the events. And while to some people that might look good, like, wow, we have 2030, you know, 40 people going to this event every single month. This is amazing. But what I was recognizing was it was the same 20 3040 people going to events every single month. And mind you we’re in 500,000 people in our community, surely we can pull 2030 people, but to some you fill a room, a small room of 2030 people, it looks good. And that’s what success is. And your friends are there and everybody feels good. But remember, we’re part of economic development and opening up the tent for more. So. So I looked around at some of our events, and when new people were coming, and we were proud 20 new people registered for this event, then the next week, 20 new people 30 new companies signed up for this event. And then at the end of the month, Brandon who should be there, you should have hundreds of people there of all these new people. But what was happening was we were getting excited about the new people signing up. But the new people signing up weren’t coming back. Right. So you have to recognize that that some of the programming just wasn’t being adopted by a wider audience. And some reason they felt uncomfortable coming back or felt this is not for me. So what do we do? We cut programs, we look we ask people, we find out where are people meeting? Where are where are they doing their connections, if not at a chamber event. And so yeah, we we made a decision off the bat, to, to rebrand to just kind of reflect our community a little bit, or a lot better, and make sure that our programs shouldn’t have 2030 people, and then we should have 200 people in them. And that’s where we are today. And we can talk a little bit about that. That’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 13:09
That’s a great setup. And I wanted to circle back a little bit at the beginning and said something about these people, the vocal minority, they have a passion. And I love that that’s identified because you’d much rather than have a passion for the chamber and things you’re doing versus being disengaged. But as you come across these individuals with passion that don’t want to see these things change, how do you help redirect that passion, help them catch that vision of what you’re trying to build, it’s bigger and better. That has led to now having these events of 200 plus people in attendance. So

Janet Kenefsky 13:47
I’m going to be honest with you, and we recognize the passion, we provided an opportunity. And it wasn’t a surprise, they wanted nothing to do with it. So when we look at our our ambassador program, I’ll give an example. People in the community would say I don’t want to join the chamber. It’s a clique. It’s, you know, you hear the same words in the chamber industry. They don’t represent us too. Clicky. And maybe I didn’t know what they were talking about until I saw it firsthand. It was just it became a beast of themselves. And then when you looked at our social media, when you looked at the Chamber’s branding, over decades, that we had ambassadors that were bright red blazers that were front and center on every company on every picture, every posting on our website, it was everywhere it was read, read read, and then we started looking at some of these posts and it wasn’t about the company anymore. And the chambers we can fool ourselves by saying no, these are historic programs, the Chamber ambassador program, we can never get rid of that. Well it became a click and it became not about the companies that we were trying to promote. It became about those red coats trying to get front and center getting their picture you know taken and let isn’t less about those organizations that we were supposed to be celebrating? So when we took away that program, we and COVID helped. We offered an application process like many others, and and we had expectations out there and 100% of our maybe 2530. That ambassador said, Yeah, peace out. That’s not going to happen. We want nothing to do with it. Okay, that’s fine. And then we thought, Should we redesign this? We need to have one, right? We’re a chamber, we need to have a program. Maybe we just call it something different because the word Ambassador now in our region is not a great one, because it was cliquish. So how do you get revive an ambassador program with the same brand and the same, you know, connotation? So we thought maybe we’ll call it chamber champions, maybe we will call it something else. And then we, yeah, we have diplomats, chamber diplomats and whatnot. But then we thought, why do we need one? Yeah, why? Why do we even need one to begin with granted, we need volunteers, we know that. And that’s really the role that they serve. But as an extension of our organization, we’re very keen on ensuring that our branding our image, our messaging is exactly on point. And it’s difficult to do with ambassadors who are out there speaking for you. Right. So we have volunteer programs. And what we did is we just posted a volunteer signup page on our website, said, here are some really great programs, who wants to volunteer US Bank, Chase Bank, small businesses, we want you to show up and wear your logo on your shirt, bring your entire team. And guess what we have hundreds of people that say I want to come out for your lemonade day program, I my team wants to come out and volunteer for your golf tournament for your women’s golf tournament. So we have no shortage. And now we have passion. And now they can represent their own company while showing they’re giving back to the community. So it’s, it’s it’s a way that we’ve evolved. And I will tell you, I looked at and many chambers around here. And I would encourage you to do this. If you’re a chamber listening, we looked at the amount of administration that took part in trying to organize, get ambassadors to fill out forms and to go to locations and show their sign up and some have point systems and it took a full time staff person. And I think we had 890 email messages like in a two month period, just trying to coordinate our old Ambassador crew, to give you an example of just how intensive it is. We thought I could use that staff personnel their time and energy into something different and working on our programs and not managing people that had jobs that were now taking 110% of their time post COVID. Right. So these ambassadors remember, are part of your community and working full time jobs. So we needed to be very careful with the demands on our volunteers.

Brandon Burton 17:53
Yeah. So I love first of all, the idea of having the volunteers come and having them wear their T shirts that their logos and promote their business while they’re supporting whatever the event is that the chamber is sponsoring or putting on. I have to ask as far as the old ambassador program, it’s what kind of feedback did you get? Like you said 100% of them said, No, we don’t want to be a part of that. So was there something just that repulsive about it? Or just because it was so different? What was the what was the stark difference besides the red coat and being in front of, you know, front and center in the pictures? Yeah.

Janet Kenefsky 18:29
So. So our ambassadors liked to drink, they like to drink at events. So of course, the ambassador’s wanted to be recognized for all the hard work they did. So they wanted you to pay their membership and whatnot. But they, they were it was just very inclusive. And it turned out it wasn’t about the community again, they didn’t, it was about themselves, how could they get together? So they weren’t happy? I will tell you, they weren’t happy. They didn’t go quietly Yes, I said they pieced out but you know, they call the newspaper. One of them was on the newspaper in team so they call the newspaper a newspaper called the board and I told our staff who were very nervous because again a lot of the staff at that time didn’t like change and and they knew what the ambassador with the red coats meant to the community because they’re very visible for decades might do so not everybody knows the ins and outs of what what’s happening. So, so yeah, the the newspaper did an article on it, and it went away. So we started the year off with no ambassador program. It hit the newspaper, the announcements were made, and then nothing. No one cared brand and nobody cared. What happened. What happened was we started getting we started getting members coming out of the woodworks and when I say Woodworks, I made the Woodworks. We started getting professional organizations, accounting firms, engineering firms, legal teams, all starting to apply for chamber membership. We got a lot of emails and our team Got a lot of communication saying it’s about time. And we would never have known that. Again, they never told us that to our face, but they told us in their lack of membership. So when I say we weren’t representing the community in which we served, they were waiting for us to level up, they were waiting for us to get more inclusive, they were waiting for us to get more contemporary and represent them. And we were in a position where we had people applying to us where we used to have to go out and ask them, and they politely say, not for me. Not right now. So yeah, it it, it told us a big story. And it was a really great lesson for our staff who, who understood that you can make tough decisions. And really, you know, you can anger a few people, but the community is watching. They’re waiting for the chamber to step up and lead. And, and good things can happen from it. It’s not always bad. So you know, it’s it was a good lesson for everybody. We held our breath, for sure, trying to figure out what the community feedback was going to be. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:06
So I know a lot of times in the chamber world, we’ll talk about how important it is to listen to your members, which is super important. It’s important to you know, listen to data, collect data and listen to make data driven decisions. This example you gave with the ambassador program, your members weren’t telling you anything. I guess you could say data as far as participation levels, but they’re up right. Yeah, yeah, lack thereof. But what specific triggers, you’d mentioned looking at the photos of the different like ribbon cuttings and whatnot. But were there certain triggers that stood out to you guys as a chamber that says, hey, we need to address this, like, this is not working the way it’s intended? Or we’re not getting the results we’re looking for? What What was that trigger that made you guys go down that rabbit holes?

Janet Kenefsky 21:55
There were a couple of things. So I come from I have an HR background. So I look at things as are we going to get in trouble? Is this even legal? Should? Should they be drinking during during hours? What are they what are they actually providing to our other members in the community? So at the beginning, when we tried to say, Okay, listen, ambassadors, we’re going to use you to go out and talk about some of the legislative priorities, you don’t need to know about them. But just let it you know, companies know that there’s something out there and we, we got a big middle finger from that, like, that’s not what we’re doing. We’re here just to have fun, and we’re family. So there were a lot of things that told us one insurance was not if you talk to your insurance provider, and we had one on our board, who was very supportive of getting rid of this program, because they’re like, this is a huge liability. They your ambassadors as an extension of working on your behalf should not be drinking at your events, your staff should not be drinking at your events. No, you should not have a bar inside your chamber office to have drinks during board meetings. out on the golf course, we had, we had an ambassador that was drunk on a on a golf cart, taking advantage of the adult beverages that were on the course for the golfers. And that was a huge liability, because they’re getting in a car leaving. And so we’re very lucky that nothing happened. But when you start looking at the liability issues, if nothing else, the perception and the visibility of how they’re representing you. And this is your chosen group. I mean, that’s literally the word ambassador, they are you that that it just wasn’t a good look. So we needed to, we needed to put a stop to that. And that was something that was pretty black and white on on the legal aspect on the insurance aspect. And a lot of people say nothing’s happened so far. So as long as nothing happens, but it will, it will end and we just didn’t want to be around for that. So we

Brandon Burton 23:49
if it’s not broken, don’t fix it right out. There are some indicators. It’s like, no, we need to fix this before it does break. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you talked a little bit about these, like networking events where you would have the same 20 to 30 people and now you’re 200 and upward from you know, at these gatherings tell us what does that look like now besides you know, you need a bigger room. There’s more people what’s changed in the messaging and attracting more participants to those events.

Janet Kenefsky 24:20
I think it’s pretty holistic when you look at at the same time we did away with programs we rebranded we were very vocal about our programming. So whereas a lot of visibility comes from chambers, ribbon cuttings, right, we put that on our social media for our chamber now it’s like less than 5% of what we do 3% of what we do, but it looked like everything that we did, right so now we’re very intentional of showing different programming different types of people that are attending our programming. Our morning networking, the coffee connections, we always wondered if you look back. Okay, so there’s a roomful of sales, people and realtors Selling to each other, you know, with a couple like how did how does that work when then we realized it was a way for them to gather, they just wanted to gather there wasn’t like real work happening or networking because they’re all salespeople selling to each other, it doesn’t happen. So that’s why they weren’t growing because people weren’t finding a need for them. So we did away with that because less and less people other than those realtors and banks and whatnot, community liaisons. They didn’t, they didn’t network in the morning, the people that we wanted, there didn’t know work in the morning. So you have to go where they’re going. Happy hours, having our business after hours, was a really good one. So when we scrapped the morning networking, you know, those 20 people who went we heard from them for a couple of weeks. And then never again, we don’t have people pounding down our door saying, Hey, when are you bringing this back? But what we did do our business after hours did grow. But like many chambers, we had an opportunity to take a look and say, Okay, what is our business after hours now? Yeah, we had 60 7080 people attending, but now we decided, Okay, how are we going to get these business after hours, month after month that finding a location and finding a host was really difficult, Brandon, our staff was going out and asking people would you please host next month, and the nominal fee was like $400, to host a business after hours. And you bring food and beverage and we’ll bring the people. And then when this transition happened when our rebranding happened when we started reprogramming, and showing that we were an inclusive provider, we were a big tent, people started coming out in droves. Coming out in droves, I’ll say that several times, because we were really surprised at the number of people coming out. So then we started looking at our business after hours and saying, here’s the deal. This is we’re undervaluing our programs in a big way we’re bringing a lot of people, we have a lot of connections, people are looking to us now as leaders. So we’re going to hold our business after hours, once a month, we’re going to charge almost $2,000 to have a business after hours. And then we’re going to bring the people and the company will invest another 1000 2000 $3,000 in food and entertainment. And we are currently booked through 2025. So we’re taking host, we have down payments for every single business after hours, 2024 and 2025. And we have half of 2026 built, built out. So they are becoming the place to be we have probably a minimum of two 300 People at some of the locations that have limits, but we’re seeing this last one, we had about 350 people in attendance and the social media is going wild on it still and we’re we’re days about a week out from it. And yeah, it’s it’s, it’s something people want to attend the vibe is there. They’re meeting new people, we’re now seeing more executives than we ever have. And when I say executives, I mean those organizations that are 20 3040 people and above, not our smaller business executives, which are very important to us. And they’re certainly coming out as well. But our board is made up of executives. So we have a high level board at our chamber, we’re very specific and who we have on there. Typically we say they’re the ones that sign the front of the checks, right. So and and they’re coming out and they’re meeting people and they’re seeing the vibe in the community. Whereas before business after hours, and some of our programming doesn’t really resonate with with top C suite of organizations. But it does now. And from there, we’re able to parlay that into now we have CEO groups, we have an executive Women’s Council made up of 80 of the top women’s C suite in the region and policymakers in addition to that, so yeah, it’s there’s a whole new vibe, a whole new energy, and with a little discomfort, came a lot of growth in rewards. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:50
I like to have a little bit of discomfort comes to growth and rewards. And as you’re telling the story of that experience, what stands out to me is the investment. So you said going from about $400 to host an event like that to about 2000. Plus, they’re investing another couple 1000 into food and entertainment and drinks, whatever. But that really up levels, the quality of the event, where before if you just showed up and you got a coffee and donut, there’s not much to it, you don’t walk away saying wow, that was a great event. But if the host is they’ve got a lot more skin in the game. You can bet it’s going to be a high quality event, you know, probably nine out of 10 times that people will walk away from they’ll take pictures from they’ll share it with others. It’ll spread, right.

Janet Kenefsky 29:34
Yeah, there’s a lot of FOMO that’s happening out there. Absolutely. And now we have big developers that are coming building businesses building high rises and developments that are securing us for the location when they so that they can unveil it and and attract new tenants attract so it’s, it’s for for companies to be able to showcase but other companies can come and enjoy. So I think we offer In times and chambers, we undervalue everything, we apologize for everything. We are our own worst enemy in the industry. And just one of the things that I’m passionate is about is, is stopping this victim mentality. And I’m huge about that. And if I can go to the grave, you know, fighting that it’ll be stopping the victim mentality we have in this industry.

Brandon Burton 30:23
So I know you’re passionate about pet Share, share a little bit more, if you don’t mind about stopping the victim mentality, I think it’s so important, especially in relation to this topic. Yeah.

Janet Kenefsky 30:34
So here’s, I come at it this way. Um, again, I know it can be tough at times, and we I’m okay, making those tough decisions and, you know, pull up your bootstraps, but oftentimes, and you’ve said it in a chamber, chat podcast in the past, that sometimes we, we don’t always have the executive directors with experience, right. And with inexperience comes major mistakes, and a lot of a lot of undervaluing both yourself as a leader. And because this could be your first job, out of the gate, and and it’s going to be difficult for you. And we apologize a lot. And we, we look to our our board members and others that you know, for leadership, help and experience. And we wonder why we don’t get respect, and we don’t get people coming to us? Well, it goes hand in hand, you know, people respect an organization that has a leader that can stand up and, and really understand the industry and support. And I understand that small communities don’t invest in their chamber, and you get what you get, and I get that. But what happens is a lot of these chambers, they form communities where they complain, and I get it, we all need peers to complain. But what the others do is they go, you’re right, you know, you’re right. It does suck to be a chamber, we’re underrepresented. And we’re never thanked and this is a thankless job. And, and I cringe every time I hear that, and I want to ask every chamber out there, stop it. Stop it, stop it right now. Because this is the only industry I am aware of that talks like that about themselves. It’s the only industry I’m aware of that hires a 24 year old as an executive director, first of all, who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And granted, I understand why it would be sexy, I would take it to, but then we complain about it. And we support that person for their misery. And we say You know what, if you’re going to be a chamber executive, it’s going to get, it’s going to suck, you’re not going to get paid, you’re going to be overworked, and everybody starts cheering we’re in the same boat together. And I want to say stop it. Because we you should be acting like a business you should be setting the standard. Our staff is is well paid, we have great benefits, we have huge respect in the community. We love it, we get applications to join our chamber every single week that are unsolicited. Some stalkers, I want to be a part of it. But I you know, I go back, Brandon, stop it if we can stop that mentality. Because one of the things I’ll see and I’ll give you an example, when we inadvertently want to create community, even in our chamber, peers, that’s what we’re doing is we’re creating chamber community by misery, right. But it it tells the community that’s watching, this is not an industry you want to be a part of this is not something that’s sustainable are going to grow. And then companies like ours, organizations like mine, our chambers are going to end up taking over these smaller chambers, because they’re going to they’re going to create their what they’re manifesting, right, so we need them to stay around. We need chambers to be around forever. And it’s really important that we stop that. So yeah, I’m very passionate about that. We have an example. There was a chamber I heard talking about how their board of directors were talking about them in a side meeting without them. Well, yeah, that’s a problem. And that wouldn’t happen in most organizations. But there’s there’s lack of trust there. Right. And the chamber community came out and said, You should hire a lawyer. This is ridiculous, this discrimination, you should you know, you should quit and then you should sue them and blah, blah, blah. Well, what they didn’t know was that chamber executive who was complaining about this was being investigated for embezzlement, right, so So you have a chamber executive that were rallying behind saying, we poor you, you know, you, we get it and you don’t you don’t know what others are going through. So if we can keep it positive, if we can support him with education, support him with podcasts like this, support him with with real truth and not join the pity party. I think we’re gonna do much better for our industry.

Brandon Burton 34:43
I love that I wish there was a way I could take that snippet and just share it with every chamber board of directors out there. So the next time they’re going to hire an executive, they know what to look for and to kind of give that pep talk instead of falling into that victim mentality and it’s gonna stink and yeah, we can’t afford it. as much but you know, really build them up and help them recognize the true power that a Chamber of Commerce has, like chambers have a lot of power. They’re not elected, you know, but they wield a lot of power with the connections and being able to convene people together and have a seat at the table and bring people together. So, yeah,

Janet Kenefsky 35:19
I think if you’re a chamber and your comfort level, is creating a board with your friends, and the small businesses that you’re peers with, that you’re comfortable with, that’s never a good board, you need a board that is used to strategic planning, you need a board that is used to making tough decisions, you need a board, that’s going to give you the pros and the cons play devil’s advocate, that have financial savvy, that tells you know, that secures your next 10 and 20 years on this planet, you know, so we get ourselves into real huge issues by creating boards that tell us yes, that our friends and then wonder why they turn on us and vote to, you know, vote you off the island. And we shouldn’t be surprised at that. But that’s our comfort level sometimes. And we need to get outside our comfort level, and really build a mastermind people around us that will make sure that we can strengthen an organization not through drama, not through bad decisions, but real evidence based business decisions that will help bolster the chamber industry, both professionally and strategically in the future. That’s it’s imperative.

Brandon Burton 36:27
Yeah, I love that. Well, as we begin to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, I got a couple questions I like asking everybody I have on the show. So one is as if you have any tips or action items, for listeners who are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, you just gave a great tip about overcoming the victim mentality. But is there something else you might want to offer to the listeners,

Janet Kenefsky 36:50
I would say surround yourself with, with people that can help you with that visionary. So I recognize that through the pandemic, for example, we thrived. We had chambers across the country closing their doors, we had chambers across the country that were, you know, slashing their their prices, because you couldn’t be in person and, and giving, you know sponsors a break on, on money, we doubled our prices, we doubled our prices, we didn’t apologize for it. But also, what we recognized was I came to the table as a visionary. And I adopt that role. And that’s one of the things that I do for our chamber is build programs and kind of figure out what that value is for the for the community. But a lot of people don’t have that. And so if you don’t have a visionary on your team, and if it’s not you surround yourself with it, whether it’s on the board or a confidant, you need to surround your team with people that are unlike you. So a lot of chambers may not have had a visionary at the helm. But they had a board executive member or something that was able to step up and help them with that. So leaders come in all shapes and sizes, leaders come with all different backgrounds. You don’t have to be a visionary to lead. But if you’re not comfortable with certain aspects, make sure you have that at your fingertips. So that for me is really important. And it could be an ambassador of yours, it could be anybody that you have access to. But if you don’t like change, that doesn’t mean don’t change, it means you’re gonna have to do it in order to get more relevant, but you need to have support and others in the community that can help you manage change. That’s why it’s a whole department Change management is is a is a degree in itself. Right? So yeah, surround yourself.

Brandon Burton 38:35
Like the same says, you know, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right, right. So, but as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? So

Janet Kenefsky 38:47
I see the chambers and the purpose going forward of being the place for business, you should be there first knock on the door, there is no wrong door, when it comes to trying to get services and area, but we want to be their first request, you should be the organization that if anybody has a question 10 out of 10 people say, Oh, go ask the chamber. That’s your business resource provider. So we’re going to be a really big presence, it might unfortunately mean that we’re going to be less of the small mom and pop chambers and more of the regional chambers, because, you know, we try and level up our friends around us and all communities. But we are going to be the the resource for business for connection for advocacy work and, and I see us as being the go to for all of our legislators, if they’re going to need the pulse of the community. They’re going to be they’re going to be our best friends in the fight going forward. So yeah, the one stop shop.

Brandon Burton 39:45
I love that be the place for business. I love it. But Jana, this has been fun having you on the show. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing Anything that the Greater Vancouver chamber, how would you suggest that they reach out and connect with you?

Janet Kenefsky 40:04
We have VancouverUSA.com, our social media handles our greater Vancouver Chamber. We’re on Instagram, we’re on LinkedIn, something I highly recommend for all chambers to be on so that people can easily find you. And I’m on LinkedIn as well under Janet Kenefsky. So I invite anybody, and I watch our social media channels. That’s a good way to see what other people are doing. Go ahead and start following us and you’ll start seeing some of the things that we do that might differ and might give some inspiration. I know we checked other chambers out for that same inspiration.

Brandon Burton 40:42
Yeah, I love it. That’s a great tip as well follow other chambers. Oh, Janet, thank you for setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast, you’ve presented a really great perspective and I love the approach you guys have taken the kind of the unapologetic way of overcoming that vocal minority but doing it in a way to really up level your chamber really giving more meaning to the rest of the membership and and really, as you’ve demonstrated through these different examples, boosting the engagement of your members, this has been fantastic. Thank you.
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New CEO & Change Agent with Ali Rauch

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Ali Rauch. Ali is the President and CEO of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce. While she’s celebrating just three and a half years in this role, she is not new to serving in the Opelika Chamber. She has served many years on the OPA like is 20 Under 40 leadership program board of directors as well as the Women’s Business Council and total resource campaign. In just three short years, she’s led her team to at best of the best five star accreditation to the US Chamber of Commerce raised two and a half million dollars for the Chamber’s forward Opelika good Strategic Community Economic Development Initiative and with the support from her team led a record breaking reach sponsorship campaign in 2022. She also spearheaded a comprehensive brand refresh. Additionally, she was selected to the US chambers business leads fellowship program, and is in the midst of her IOM certification all while changing the landscape and scope of services they open like a chamber offers to their community. Prior to her role at the Chamber, she worked in a wide array of industries including software manufacturing, higher education and most notably franchising and food services, where she served eight years as the director of marketing for Chicken Salad Chick vs had a hand in helping the brand grow from just three stores to 160. She brings a unique perspective to her leadership role at the chamber. Ali is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned a Bachelors of Science in speech communications. She also holds an associate’s degree in communications from Lakeland College. She followed loved hope like it were her future husband, Todd chose to attend Auburn University following his military career and they’ve called up like their home ever since an Ali, I’m super 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 share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better. Well,

Ali Rauch 4:09
thank you so much, Brandon, it is an honor to join you today. My bio is quite comprehensive. So some of my little facts are certainly in there. But I think what I’ll do since I’m looking at your San Francisco helmet, my fun fact is going to be that I’m a shareholder for the Green Bay Packers and I am a massive fan grew up on grew up in the Midwest, actually in Illinois in the middle of bear country. But we were the one Packer family in our town. And so I’m a very, very passionate fan and very much looking forward to our opportunity to win and get into the playoffs this weekend. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 4:50
Yeah. And I’ve been I’ve been impressed with Jordan love and him stepping right into that role and they’ve done a great job. So yeah, awesome. Well tell us a little bit about the scope like a chamber, just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work. You guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today. Yeah,

Ali Rauch 5:12
you bet. So Opelika is in the Auburn Opelika MSA. And so what that means is, if you’re not familiar with Auburn, or Auburn, or Leica, it’s in the southeast in the kind of east central portion of Alabama. So Auburn is home to Auburn University, that college town, and we are that sister city, that has long since been the kind of hub for business in the area. They’re kind of the hub for education, and we’ve been the hub for business, we’ve got a community college in our town, we have a massive amount of industry. And over the past, you know, 20 years, our city has really focused they manage our economic development. So they have focused a lot on diversifying our industry. So we’ve just got a really healthy business community in our town, we have a population of about 33,000. But if you look at the overall surrounding community, we’re between 120 and 180, depending how far you go out in terms of total population, and our chamber, although 33,000 is our town, and if we were to just really cover that, I think we would be considered to be pretty large, we have a membership of just under 1000. In fact, we are looking forward to breaking that 1000 In the next couple of months, we’ve been very, very close. And we have an annual budget of just under a million dollars. And that has almost doubled since I took on took over about three and a half years ago. And so when we talk about kind of the the massive amount of change that we have undergone, that has been part of it. And let’s see, we’ve got a staff of eight, just became a staff of eight, we started as a staff of four, now staff of eight with our most recent hire, which is a business and Workforce Development Director, which we’ll get to when you talk about some of the projects we’ve worked on. And yeah, I think I think that about sums it up.

Brandon Burton 7:17
Very good. That is exciting kind of teaser, you know at that membership growth, and then just about doubling the budget. And so hopefully everyone’s ears are perking up about what what did these changes that you brought into the chamber. And we’ve we’ve titled this episode as new CEO and change agents. So as Ali’s come into this role as we went through her bio and everything, she’s brought a unique perspective to the chamber world, and taking what she knew and working with the chamber and being able to take what she heard knowledge from the outside chamber world and kind of marrying these two together has really been a great change agent. And I’m excited to get into what some of these changes are and how you’ve been able to introduce them and just the experience that you’ve had. But I also want to just put it out there for listeners that it always can feel maybe a little overwhelming when you hear about all the change or things that you need to be doing. And so for those listening, you don’t need to do at all, you know, just listen and see what makes sense for your community. And maybe none of it is things that you need to apply right now maybe you’re already doing a lot of these things. But as we know change is inevitable. So we need to always be looking for what changes and adjustments we do need to make within our organizations to continue staying relevant. So we’ll dive much deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Hey everybody, Donna from Yiftee here today, just like Brandon, we’re bringing you a guest speaker. First up is Gina from Durham, North Carolina. We’ve sold more than 3300 community cards in Durham, that are being spent at 51 different merchants. There’s something for everyone.

Gina Rozier 10:45

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Donna Novitsky 11:13

Thanks, Gina. Wondering how you can have your own community card for free. Check out yiftee.com for next steps. Now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:25
All right, Ali, we’re back. I’d love to just hand you the microphone. Tell us what are some of these changes, I’m sure you’ve got a long list there that you can just barely rattle off some of these changes that you’ve helped drive since you’ve come in this role as CEO. But what are some of those more notable changes, and what has been kind of the the impetus for that?

Ali Rauch 11:47
I think the biggest change that we have really undergone at the Opelika Chamber has been just the overall direction of who we are as an organization. The chamber has been around for 82 years. So it is long standing, it is trusted. It has been very well taken care of for many, many years. But it was very much in a state of complacency. Everything was fine. But it wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t I don’t know, it just it was just there, you know, and I loved it, I was involved. So it wasn’t bad. It was all good things. It just, I come in with a lot of energy. I don’t know if you can feel that for me. But I am a very energetic, very positive. And so one of the first things that I did was to dive in, of course, you got to look at your bylaws truly understand those. But the first thing that we did was we we changed our mission or vision or core values. I rewrote our personnel manual, a ton of policies about the overall direction is what was that first major thing. And honestly, the thing that forced my hand to do that was our accreditation was due with the US Chamber of Commerce. And so this was nine months into my first year as CEO, I’ve got all this paperwork to do. And I’ve done it in my life. And so I was able to take a look at the last 15 years worth of like you do accreditation every five years. And so I was able to look at the last three applications and really get an understanding of where we’ve been. And then I took that as an opportunity and gave myself a deadline and said, Well, you know, we need a new personnel manual, when we need new HR policies. We’ve got to make sure our branding is on point. All those things were kind of sparked by that accreditation change. And so I did not ever think we could possibly get to a five star accreditation and for us to have jumped in my first time to go from four to five star was just I celebrated a lot.

Brandon Burton 13:58
That is awesome. Yeah, it

Ali Rauch 14:00
was huge. But so kind of the core foundation was a big initial change. And we change our vision to be a leading catalyst for a better Opelika. So it really widened our umbrella of what we can do on behalf of our community. While our mission actually changed to be strengthening our community as the champion for business, because we really found that people have no idea what a chamber is literally no clue. Most of the time they think we just do business after hours or cocktail parties or ribbon cuttings. And we wanted our team, our board, our volunteers, everybody to be able to have a simple, singular line that says what is the chamber, we strengthen our community as the champion for business. And so changing that was was a big moment for us and making sure that business was the leading edge element of that. It’s very, very easy to try and serve everybody. But you have to remember, we’re here to serve the business community.

Brandon Burton 15:07
Yeah. I love that just that little tagline that slogan, you can say to we strengthen businesses a champion. We’re busy for our business community. Is that right? Is that how you said it

Ali Rauch 15:18
strengthen, strengthen our community as a champion for business? Yeah, yes,

Brandon Burton 15:22
yes, I had the essence there. So that’s something that every chamber can take, though, you know, do your R&D, you know, take that simplified phrase, that’s something that your board that your volunteers that your staff that new members should be able to understand as a part of your organization. This is what the chamber does. And then from there, obviously gets into mission and vision, things like that. But I love that just having that simple phrase of what is the chamber do, this is who we are, you got that simple response. It’s true.

Ali Rauch 15:53
And one thing that was really great about that, too, is not only did we update our mission to say that, but then our work reflected that. For me, I came from the private business sector, my whole career had been in business. And I also was a marketer. And so I had this unique perspective about what businesses want. And they they are joining the chamber most of the time, to help build awareness and to build relationships on behalf of their business. So because I had that marketing perspective, and understood what they are looking for, from an ROI perspective, we changed a lot of what we offered and what we focused on, so that we could deliver what the businesses need, you know, sometimes you gotta kill those sacred cows and do things they Oh, well, we’ve always done them. But is that what your business community needs? That’s a good question to ask. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:47
I was gonna ask you about that, with your marketing background coming into the chamber world, I know that there’s a there’s some overlap, but there’s also you come into it with eyes wide open of this is what businesses are looking for. And here’s an organization you’re coming into that has been doing, I’m guessing a lot of the same things for a long time, and maybe needed a refresh. So being able to take that, that vision that you’ve had that experience and being able to apply it to the chamber, or there may be some other areas where you’re able to apply your marketing background into creating the identity for your chamber and, and phrases like that, that you just shared? Where else have you seen that background and marketing come in handy in this role,

Ali Rauch 17:30
literally everywhere. So you mentioned in my bio, that we did a a brand refresh, that was huge, you know, I had had been a part of brand refreshes for two different years, I built a brand from the ground up at Chicken Salad Chick. So coming in, I knew we needed that fresh face. And I had high expectations and kind of I want I mean, it needs to be relevant and modern. And today. And so redoing all of our email newsletters, all of our communication, we launched a brand new website last year, we refreshed our magazine, and that one, an ACC e communication and excellence award last year ACC which was amazing. But I think one area that is probably out there that I’ve been able to use it that is unexpected is that we created a conference, it’s actually coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s called the All Things marketing conference. It is just literally a baby that I have created, that my team has come on board and helped and we have made it happen. And and so it’s a one day JAM PACKED conference that people can attend from all over, you’re welcome to if anybody wants to check it out, go to a black chamber.com. But so, you know, like, like a regular conference, you’re gonna pay a fee to attend and include your meals, but you’re gonna listen to a lineup of speakers. And for me, I was getting questions from businesses, especially restaurants, all the time asking for my marketing expertise. And I realized I can’t teach everybody one on one. What if we were to actually teach everybody at once and this became an annual thing. And so I, you know, grabbed grabbed a few of my members who I consider to be really great marketing experts for their specific fields, pulled them together, created a committee and said, This is what I want to do, what would it look like? And so the one we have coming up on January 19 has, we’ve got two keynote speakers, six different breakout sessions, plus a bonus section session, and we’re going to teach everything from traditional marketing to digital advertising to content creation. And numerous people are not only active chamber volunteers, but also former chamber employees like we get it and our keynote speaker is a lady named Lena Trivedi. And if you haven’t heard her story, I encourage you to go to Apple TV and watch the beat The bubble starring Elizabeth Banks. It is essentially the story of how Beanie Babies became what they were. And Lena was an employee at PTI at the time and was really a pioneer of E commerce. And so she’s going to come down and speak and share her story. And, but we created that from the ground up. And now, you know, that’s the opportunity for us to serve 200 to 220. Businesses, if not more, we’ve got the room to grow. But we have an opportunity to teach our business community what they need to know to be better marketers, which is, I would say, 75% of what the businesses need our help from is marketing, because they just most of the time, don’t know what they’re doing. And, and they are an entrepreneur, so they’re passionate about what they’re passionate about, but not necessarily marketing. And so my skill set has just really come in here to create this conference from the ground up. And it’s awesome. It was just this moment of pure, like, Joy. And like, I just, I couldn’t believe it. We did it last year. And now we’re on our second year, and it’s gonna be

Brandon Burton 21:06
awesome. That is awesome. And I think that, you know, strikes a resonance with, with businesses, small businesses, especially where we had talked before we hit record, that the reason that I started the podcast is really to help small businesses that ultimately, that’s what it comes down to my whole career. And chamber publishing has been about helping small businesses and, and there’s some chambers frankly, it becomes more of a membership organization that it kind of stops there and the help, it’s hard to see that connection of where that help and support is for small businesses. And the businesses recognize that I mean, just the honest truth, as I’ve met with Chamber members in a wide variety of different chambers over the years, a lot of them have a hard time making that connection. So having a conference like this, it really offers that direct support for marketing, which is it’s a tangible thing that they can take back to their business and see positive results, see an increase in sales, see that that needle move from efforts at the Chamber is putting out there and making available these opportunities for. I also know in my background with with chamber publishing, I’m talking to businesses about advertising. So I’m seeing what their strategy will call it. And or lack thereof, or lack thereof, most of them don’t have a strategy and any advertising they do. It’s more maybe branding, you know, they’re they’re putting a branding ad out there. But there’s no call to action, there’s no way to collect any information and remarket it like there’s so many different layers that you can put on to marketing and advertising that the small businesses either they don’t know, or they don’t have the bandwidth, or they don’t know the tools that are available. And I just love that you guys are doing this. This is a this is what chambers should be doing to help small businesses be successful. So kudos,

Ali Rauch 23:04
and meanwhile, thank you, I appreciate it. Meanwhile, it’s also an opportunity for us to feature a few of our businesses that will then gain clients as a result of this conference. We sell sponsorships for this conference through our annual reach or total resource campaign. And and then we have ticket sales. So like, this is also like a revenue generating opportunity. And it’s just bigger than what chambers have traditionally done in the past. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:32
yeah, for sure. So, as you have helped to introduce a lot of these changes the brand refresh this marketing campaign, that magazine, there’s been a lot of things. I’m sure there’s other things we haven’t even touched on yet. As you go to introduce these changes, do you find that you have some autonomy just within the organization, you and your staff, or our most of these things? Indeed get Board approval? Or where does that threshold come at your organization?

Ali Rauch 24:05
We, I am very blessed to have a board that trusts me. Pretty implicitly, it’s wonderful. So I have a very supportive board. Typically what will happen is that myself and my team, we do a lot of things together. So this is not like the, hey, Ally’s done all this now. I couldn’t do it without them. So we, we will come up with our ideas and we’ll say this is what we want to do. New programs, all things marketing, Summit, things like that. That was just us. We decided to do that no board approval or anything like that. But with you know, the mission and the vision and things like that. That was something that our staff decided on and the set and then presented it to our board for approval. And so that was certainly a big honestly, it was very easy discussion. It was a unanimous vote. So that made it because we’re being Very thoughtful and doing our homework in advance. They trust us and support those decisions. You know, one of the biggest things that we decided to do that was very involved for the board of directors was our forward over like a campaign, which was our strategic economic development initiative to raise money. Because we are, you can’t tell I’m I’m actually sitting in my office, which was a home that was built in 1895. And I’ve got, I have turned two closets into what we now call co offices, because you just got to make it work. And we’re at max capacity. And, and honestly, we also don’t have a space that our businesses can actually use the way they need it. And so what started out as a need for more meeting space or business space, but also kind of transformed into, hey, let’s start tackling bigger challenges in our community. And so our Florida Blanca initiative raised were actually 3.1 million right now. And that’s going to enable us to work on workforce development for our region, build out some more entrepreneurship training programs, and then also move into a renovated building that will host not only event space for us to be able to host most of our own events, but there will be a visitor center, a boardroom and a business incubator and other things. And so that was very much a, I hired a consultant, we worked with power 10 to do that. But all of that the board was very involved with because I needed them to actually execute it. Because you know, you think about a lot of your board members are going to invest in something like that. But they also have to be willing to put their name and face on it. To say, Yes, we support this. So that was one that was very, very high, highly involved from our board of directors.

Brandon Burton 26:55
Yeah. And it’s awesome to have such a supportive board of directors. And I know a lot of listeners out there do have very supportive boards. So hopefully those relationships are good and cohesive and allow for that autonomy that I’ve set. I was going to ask you about the capital campaigns that you kind of alluded to there, as well as your total resource campaign. So are both of those newer things implemented since you’ve taken the role of as CEO? Or is there have had those been part of the organization before? So

Ali Rauch 27:28
our total resource campaign had actually been a part of the organization for quite a long time, I think we were in year nine, when I started, and I was a volunteer for our total resource campaign for two years prior to joining the job or joining the chamber as the CEO. So that one was long standing. However, we learned, you know, I inherited a team that had had been there for quite a few, I mean, 1415 years, they they were tenured and experienced, and also a little bit tired. And and so when some of the changes that I made, encouraged the retirement or moving on other people, you know, I’m I’m young, I’m aggressive, energetic. So I just kind of changed things quickly. And that became uncomfortable for some some people. And so when they decided to move on to other things, that was the first one, I actually got on a conversation with Jason from YG, MCRC. And he just straight up told me he’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not what I recommend. And I was like, Oh,

Brandon Burton 28:42
I love that. Jason. Yeah.

Ali Rauch 28:45
Well, I have to be right there with it. But it was true. We we had just been, you know, Hey, turn on our website. And that was it. And there was not strategy, there was not thought and so we are conducting a capital campaign, which is brand new, very aggressive, we need to raise $3 million happening right over here. And we started asking for money in March of 2021. That year, September of 2021. We did a brand new refresh of our reach campaign. So first, wait, no, wait, I think we maybe it might have been a year apart. But either way, we had a total resource campaign going on and our capital campaign going on simultaneously, which was stressful. But it’s doable, because typically that money comes from different buckets, you know, a total resource campaign, those dollars are typically going to be coming from your business’s marketing budget, whereas a capital campaign those dollars are going to be coming from a higher level investment perspective and you’re talking to different people to sell those things. But the capital campaign was certainly new but that reach campaign we saw We now call it reach not a TRC. But thinking of all the branding changes that we do, but we did a brand refresh of our reach campaign, which means that we not only renamed it, but we took away every like week started as if we were brand new client with Jason. And YGM. Because we realized we needed to think more strategically about what we offer and what our price points were, what the benefits were. And so although it’s been around for 12 years now, it was new brand new two years ago, because of that refresh that we did. And that’s really where we went from averaging about $175,000 in sales for the last five to six years or so, to. Let’s see, I think we got up to Oh, 368,000 that’s where we ended. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:56
Yeah, that’s awesome. That is awesome. Wow. So you’ve touched on a lot of things here. I can see for for listener out there, maybe that the overwhelm sitting a little bit, but hopefully, they’re taking notes and just seeing some things that might they might want to revisit at their, their chamber. But I wanted to ask you, for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, maybe give them a little bit of a refresh, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them to try to implement and try to maybe reinvigorate life in their organization?

Ali Rauch 31:36
I’m gonna make two recommendations. And the first one we talked about before we pressed record, read Horseshoes vs. Chess by Dave Adkisson. That was, I was a brand new CEO just a couple months into my job when that book came out. And I read it. And it made me think big. It may he outlines the future of chambers, which, you know, we’re not going to be those if we’re going to be doing what we should be doing for the future. We’re going to be working on meaningful things, not just ribbon cuttings and after hours, and so read his book, and process and think, What does your community need? So that would be recommendation number one. And then my second recommendation, I actually is firsthand advice that I was given by Jim Page, who was the longtime CEO of the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce in Tuscaloosa. Because the first conference I went to, I just, I had so many pages of notes. And it was like drinking through a firehose, and I was like, I have so much work to do, what am I going to do? And he literally sat me down and he said, Pick 123 things. That’s it. 123 things that you want to try and work on. Nothing more, because you can, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, you got to you got to pace yourself? You’ve got to prioritize and tackle

Brandon Burton 33:01
three bytes at a time, right?

Ali Rauch 33:03
123? Yeah. No, that doesn’t help ask you to you know,

Brandon Burton 33:09
that’s right. That’s right. Now Jen has excellent, excellent mentor and to take advice from him that that’s very wise. And, and Dave’s book, Horseshoes vs. Chess. For those listening, you know, for a long time he was on an episode and 111 when the book first came out, kind of gave a synopsis of the book and how it came to be. But it really is that book, I think, is the definition of what a chamber is or should be. And as your role as a chamber CEO or Executive Director, whatever the title is, leading a chamber really gives a great definition for what your role should be what your work should look like, and what the future of chambers looks like. So that kind of leads right into the next question, actually, is I’d like to ask and everyone I have on the show that how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ali Rauch 34:04
I think the future of the chamber is really about doing bigger, more meaningful work. You know, for us, we have never in a million years had the responsibility of making sure our businesses have the people resources that they need to be successful. And we just a few months ago, were, you know, given the reins to lead our region for workforce development. That’s a huge job. And that’s a big deal. But there’s also opportunity for funding that comes from both state and federal levels that can help grow our organization significantly, not just as an organization, but the impact that we’re making. So I think the future is just very doing more meaningful work and thinking about that meaningful work. I think that the Chamber of Commerce And I’ve learned in this role, we have a significant amount of influence and prominence in our community. You know, I have great relationships with the mayors in the area with our state representatives and our senators, you know, our, our kickoff for our Florida like a campaign after we had raised just over $2 million was Katie Britt, who at the time was the president of the Business Council of Alabama and running for Senate. And now she’s a state senator from the state of Alabama. And so we have great relationships from an advocacy perspective that we can contact and, and talk about those bigger challenges. So, advocacy is a key part of it. But I still think that although that might always be a part of what we do, doing the more meaningful work that achieves what your business community needs, which is going to vary for everyone. But that’s where I see the future of chambers.

Brandon Burton 35:59
Absolutely bigger and more meaningful work. I love that alley. This has been a fun conversation, energetic it’s full of life. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and maybe learn more about some of these changes even from implemented and how you’ve gone about introducing them and getting buy in and all that good stuff that we didn’t get to touch on every aspect or in this conversation today. But what would be a good way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Ali Rauch 36:31
Yeah, I I certainly welcome this was. This was almost like draining a firehose of all the things and so please don’t get overwhelmed by that I am I am here as a resource. I would love to either chat with you chat with your chamber, whatever whatever it is that I can help with. You can find me my email address is Ali a li at OpelikaChamber.com. You can find me on all the social social channel channels. You can find me on all the social channels at Ali Vice Rauch. So a li v ice ra uch. But really, I mean I’m an I’m an open book and give me a call shoot me a text my cell is 334-737-9354. And all of this can be found on my website or on our chamber website. OpelikaChamber.com. Very

Brandon Burton 37:24
good. And we’ll get all that in our show notes for this episode too. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you. But Ali, this has been great having you on the show. I appreciate you setting aside some time to be with us today on chamber chat podcast and wish you the best with the future chambers that future changes that you have to implement. They’re at your chamber and and going forward into the future. Thanks a lot.

Ali Rauch 37:46
Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 37:49
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Data & Technology with Jaime di Paulo

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

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Our guest for this episode is Jaime de Paulo. Jaime is President and CEO of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a prominent organization dedicated to networking advocating for and developing the Hispanic business community in the Midwest. Since assuming leadership and 2019. Jaime has spearheaded numerous initiatives and collaborations positioning ahcc as a finalist in the 13th world chambers Congress, the largest economic forum for chambers and businesses worldwide. Jaime’s exceptional exceptional leadership and contributions have garnered recognition and accolades. He became a distinguished member of the Economic Club of Chicago and infinite influential organization connecting leaders in Chicago’s economic circles. The government of Mexico officially acknowledged him as one of the most influential Mexican Americans in the Midwest, highlighting his significance with the region’s economic landscape. Moreover, he received the 2022 American Mexican Association’s Leader of the Year Award, which celebrates his dedication to the community and his role within the broader Latino community. Driven by his commitment to empowering Latino entrepreneurs, Jaime has worked to strengthen the Latin X incubator program in collaboration with 1871, a renowned business incubator. This initiative supports young Hispanic tech companies, fostering innovation and providing them with opportunities to secure capital funds. Outside of his professional pursuits, Jaime is married and is a proud father of three sons and a daughter. Hi, man, 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 listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Jaime di Paulo 4:01
thank you, Brandon. I want to thank you first for inviting me to this wonderful chat and thanks to the listeners because we are out there doing the good work or that empowers more businesses. And, you know, feel proud of what we do. I mean, I would just sharing with you that the Our job is very significant, and it means a lot to small businesses. So kudos to all my chamber colleagues out there listening. You know, I was born in while I had I Mexico, I grew up in the United States. My father was American. And you know, when I was when I went to high school, I went back to Mexico, and I became a DJ. I was a renowned DJ back in the late 80s in that club in Acapulco called the baby oh, so some of you have been there some of you have not but if you compare it the baby oh, it was the comparison to studio 51 in New York City and next. So it’s a it was a big Back in the day, so you know, I lost my hair since then. But anyway,

Brandon Burton 5:05
that is awesome. I love getting these these fun facts about people and never would have guessed it. But that’s a, that is a great fact about you. So thank you. Well, tell us a little bit about the Illinois Hispanic Chamber, size of the chamber scope of work, kind of airy cover staff, that sort of thing. Just to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Jaime di Paulo 5:29
We one of the bigger chambers around we have 19 staff members, and we’re about to hire eight more we just announced last week. So we just, you know, we do a lot of government contracting. Our main focus is making sure minority owned companies have access to government contracting, because we see that as the future of our companies to scale. So that’s the reason why we are a bigger chamber than the norm. We have for example, we have an SBDC. In our Office of Small Business Development Center, we have what is called a PTAC. It’s not it’s called Apex which is a Procurement Technical Assistance Center, which helps minority owned companies get certifications so that so they can access government contracting. We contract with the United States Department of Transportation, for example, we in Region eight with we represent six states we help minority owned companies access us do T contracts, including water and airports and, and you know, and highways and all that. And then we also have a big contract with the Illinois Tollway, which is the, the you know, the Tollway authority here in this in the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois. So we make sure minority owned companies get hired and started working for them to scale this company. So we are a little bit bigger than a normal chamber. We have all these programs in between that’s why we bigger we our budget is about five and a half million dollars a year including that one and a half million dollar grant thing that just got to the beginning of next year. So we are growing certainly, since I started with a seven employees now we are you know 19 plus a couple full times 27

Brandon Burton 7:09
Yeah, I was seven so we put a big. Wow. Yeah, you guys are rockin and rollin and get your work cut out for you. That’s That’s awesome. I love it. So personally, I’m excited to get into our topic for discussion today. And as we kind of went back and forth a little bit we focused on the the areas of data and technology. And I know those are kind of hot topics for individuals and chambers at this time, especially with the emergence of AI and you know all sorts of things in that realm. But we will dive in much deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:09
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:07
All right. Hi, me, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around data and technology. And I know as a chamber, it’s super important to be able to make data driven decisions, right as we go about, you know, working in our organizations and knowing what the course of action to take on different things. But I’d love to know how you guys are implementing data and technology. And I know they’re related, but also kind of separate at the same time. So feel free to just take us whatever direction you’d like there and and we’ll we’ll go down that path. Certainly,

Jaime di Paulo 11:42
we belong to a small niche group called the Aspen Institute that help us download data. I was in New York City last week with the McKenzie group, and they just released new data on the state of Latinos in the in the United States. So everything we do is related to that particular data. So we got to make sure we have a significant impact on that data. For example, when this when the SBA talks about small businesses, they’re talking about 500 employees or less is a quick fact that in nationally, Hispanic or Latino businesses are under 20 employees. So when the SBA talks about small businesses, we’re not I believe, we’re not even on the picture, because we’re so small, so Chambers of Commerce just becomes very, very relevant to help those businesses scale, right. So everything we do, every program that we implement, everything we do is related to data, we and then in the technology side, we are fortunate enough to have our our offices at 1871. If you Google 1871, you’re going to see is the one of the number one or two incubators for technology in the world for businesses. So our office is right there. And the where the technology is made with it, technology happens. And we believe in technology. And we also believe that minorities should have an opportunity to develop new technologies, new applications, or whatever are solutions, and have the venture capital injected into those companies. And because we are offices there at 1871, we’ve been able to move that up a little bit. For example, 90% of new technology companies a surface every day in the world are Hispanic owned, but what percent of those Hispanic owned 90% Get get capital injected to it. So there’s a big disparity. And so our job here is to make sure the venture capital gets injected into minority owned companies awesome. We realize the data for example, we created a policy institute in our chamber. And we figured out how to create a scorecard using artificial intelligence. And in because of our 30 years in business that we have, we have a lot of data. We actually know what a procurement means and everything in between. So every bill that comes to the state of Illinois, we track and then we can create a scorecard for our legislative elected officials. So now we know who’s our big champion and who is and who we got to work with AI in terms of legislation stuff, using artificial intelligence, web scraping and all these other tools and utilizing the same model. We match it into contracts, for example. Right, so now you’ve seen we create a program called Kodama, you mentioned I was in Geneva and the world in the world Chambers of Commerce symposium and this past summer and because of that particular program that week, that particular solution that we curated is called Kodama contract radar Maximizer, which basically it matches contracts with capability statements in seconds. You know, when I mentioned we 20 employees or less we are busy working, we don’t have the staff or the knowledge to go search for contracts or government contracts, right. So This tool is going to revolutionize how people, you know, access those contracts because now you have everything on your hand, you just give me your capability statement or match it with the technology. And we’ll put in front of you contracts. So you basically qualify for it. In seconds. We are testing it right now, we did a couple of pilot programs in Lake County in the northern Chicago, we working with the City of Chicago to disclose our spending money. So now we know what kind of bunch contracts are happening. So we gonna be able to match him with companies. So we are about to launch a nationally and this thing is going to be an incredible tool tool for me chamber to use to help their

Brandon Burton 15:38
whims. That’s awesome. He said, It’s called Kurama.

Jaime di Paulo 15:41
What am I CLR AMA, contract radar maximize your website is there.

Brandon Burton 15:51
So let’s hone in on that a little bit more. I mean, I’m just full of excitement as I hear you talk about that and match in the contracts. And so when you have a chamber member, what would their experience be? Like, you know, applying karama? How would they access it how what what information they put in to get that instantaneous, almost feedback.

Jaime di Paulo 16:13
For example, if you, I’m sure everybody has heard of the government, federal government, they have what it’s called next codes, right? Every every, for example, you in construction, there’s a special number they gave you. So when you search for contracts, you use that particular code to identify yourself as a construction or, or cement or brick layer, or landscaper, or whatever it may be. So now utilizing that code and web scraping stuff analysis, or vectrus was called vectorize, which something I don’t understand, but my team does

Brandon Burton 16:51
have a team. Yeah, young people that

Jaime di Paulo 16:53
do the technology, we’re now able to if you put everything in like a company comes to us, we teach them how to do a capability statement, which is basically a one pager of who you are in one piece of paper and that particular. So it has different codes and different keywords that we can run into the system we came up with in the system will will search and will spit out the contracts you actually qualify for according to what you told us who you are as a company. Okay.

Brandon Burton 17:24
And then as far as going after those contracts, you guys provide any kind of support to help them figure out how to do that. And you had mentioned that earlier helping them get contracts? Yeah, how’s that process? Look,

Jaime di Paulo 17:38
we have what is called a PTAC, Procurement Technical Assistance Center that actually helps you have staff that will take you by the hand and show you how to apply. We’re working on technology right? Now this is going to actually self populate the application at what point the what you told us, so it’s coming. I mean, we a little bit step below that. But you know, a year or so we’re gonna have that on hand. So what I’m envisioning in nobody here, you’re gonna be able to fill out 80% of the application automatically. So yeah, finances and you know, that kind of stuff. But that’s something we, you know, you got to work with you on accountants.

Brandon Burton 18:17
So what kind of advantages do you see for your members in utilizing this type of technology and these tools that you’re making available for them?

Jaime di Paulo 18:28
Well, you know, when you go to even the playing field, for example, you know, that these huge companies out there, they have personality, all they do a search for contracts, now, we’re going to have the necessary tools for zero small companies have access to those contracts. So we’re going to revolutionize how the United States does government contracting, for example, right? So if you are a minority, like Hispanic, African American women, veteran or Asian, you are considered a minority in the United States. And so those are the guys who try to push so they can even they play? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 19:03
I’m glad that you said that that way, even in the the playing field. So I think that’s what AI that’s what it does, you know, a lot of people have the concept of AI is for the big companies are the ones that have the budget and understand how to use it and all that. But really, AI is going to level the playing field across so many different platforms. That I’m glad that that’s the vision is it levels, the playing field and brings your members up to a competitive level across the nation.

Jaime di Paulo 19:30
You know, AI can be a scary thing, but it can be used properly. It’s a wonderful tool, and nothing we use in it properly. Right? So who knows what AI is going to take us in the future. But at the end of the day, we need to take advantage of those tools and use it to the event to to scale our companies, right?

Brandon Burton 19:48
Yeah. So do you have somebody internally that’s working on the technology with the AI to develop these these platforms, or do you consult with somebody or how’s this being developed? So, within your chamber,

Jaime di Paulo 20:01
we actually have to two engineers, you know, just coding full time and the director of the program. Wow.

Brandon Burton 20:11
So not everybody has that on their staff. But where would somebody get started, you know, maybe a local chamber, you’re wanting to implement some of these things? How would you suggest they get started,

Jaime di Paulo 20:24
we, we don’t we still working on the model, we don’t know how we’re going to do it, we license it or just give it away, or we got to make a little money on it. But our intent is to bring up our companies and across the United States, we’ve been in conversation with Walmart, for example, you know, in government contracting, every contract is public information. Private is not so having this tool, access private corporations, like for example, Walmart, Target and Home Depot, whoever it is, we need to create partnerships directly with those companies. So we will talk into Walmart and the Google and some other companies so they can have access to this to this tool. So they can do some hiring. But it’s gonna that’s gonna be a little bit more difficult, because it’s not public information, those contracts. So yeah, work to be done.

Brandon Burton 21:18
Gotta get them to play along with you, right? That’s right. So the the technology incubator, I’d like to maybe hear some of the things that you’ve seen, you know, birthed out of that incubator there. I get excited here and about this technology programs, and you know, what people are into and what’s kind of cutting edge, but what are what are some of these things that you’ve seen come out of there? No,

Jaime di Paulo 21:45
it’s amazing what goes through our, our offices there, we got companies, for example, we have a Latina woman, micro cycle is her company, she she basically figured out that I mushroom eats concrete, how I have, but she’s been taking marketing that technology, and it’s a solution for the landfills, for example. Right? So she’s been scaling at a pace you have never seen, right? We have a company that, you know, that connect hero, it’s using utilizing technology in the retirement homes, and connecting them with families. It’s an amazing thing. And these two companies, for example, they’re they’re growing big time. And those are companies that we helped start, you know, so it’s, and we have, you know, work, we just graduated a cohort of 25 companies last week. So, you know, we have about 400 companies we’ve worked with, and 80% of them are still still in business trying to get that capital so they can scale up. So some of those, like, cycling clinic here on it, and a few others are beyond that, right. So it’s very cool. Spot hero, for example, I don’t know if you heard of that, that came out of the incubator. It’s not a Hispanic guy, but it came out of the incubator, I had an opportunity to meet him, it’s a tool you use for to find a parking space, low costs around, okay, Spot hero, so, so as many companies like that,

Brandon Burton 23:21
I like it, I like hearing these these different ideas. And it’s got to be a sense of pride, seeing these people come with an idea and watching it grow and watching them be successful and looking for that additional funding to continue, you know, adding fuel to the fire, so to speak.

Jaime di Paulo 23:37
And he was a good one, there’s a guy whose name is Ricky, like a loud, young Latino guy. His family has a cleaning, Office Cleaning Service, right? So thinking outside the box, this guy actually created the technology in training, so so he can help companies, show people how they can become a cleaning company, so they can have access to cleaning contracts, and the guy is making millions for that app. And so who I wish I would have thought of that. I mean, that. So it says good example, that this guy probably and I want to go pee in offices. But he kept the family business with using technology. Now they’re scaling up big time. So that’s the goal here because you know, in our communities, for example, in Chicago, there’s a famous street car 26th Street, which is basically 99% of those businesses are Hispanic gone. But those are immigrants that came to United States with nothing and they started a business and now what’s happening their sons and daughters are graduating from high school from from college and they don’t want to go and work at that particular restaurant. They want to work in technology downtown. So how you combine both right so that’s been a big issue in our chamber. How are you going to encourage your sons and daughters to take over the business and using technology? This So restaurant guy that has 45 restaurants in the city, Chicago, and the sun just to cover the businesses, what are they doing, they kept the business, same recipes and everything. But adding technology now they’re they’re packaging tacos and put them on grocery stores. So that’s the kind of stuff that we’ve seen. And we’re very excited about keeping the restaurant as it is, but using technology to scale and policing design and data that went to college. Right. So that’s, that’s pretty encouraging. That’s very cool.

Brandon Burton 25:28
Yeah, that is very cool. I like that all these examples that you’re you’re showing, or they’re helping others continue as well. So it’s not it’s not replacing another business is not, you know, harming another industry, but it’s, it’s bringing everybody up to a higher level,

Jaime di Paulo 25:46
leveraging that technology for the own use. Really? Exactly.

Brandon Burton 25:50
Yeah. So is there anything else as far as the data and technology that you want to make sure we hit on before we we move on?

Jaime di Paulo 26:01
No, I think you know, chambers should use technology to I mean, you we have a lot of tools out there that can enhance our chambers to the benefit of the members, right? Databases. I mean, the keys are chambers keeping your database and then the, everything you do is not in writing in them or happen. So that’s how we created the technology we created. So this tool, the Kurama tools, because we have 30 years of data. So now we actually know what a pig, what’s a contract that based on data and notes. Right? So that’s how you do it. Really? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:37
Yeah, I guess, to your point, when you’re training an AI model, to do something for you, you have to feed it data to be able to learn what it is you’re looking for, and what it needs to put out. So as long as you can, can collect the data up front and all along the way, every interaction, every touch point should have a data point to it, that you can go back to and be able to plug it in, as you see applicable down in the future.

Jaime di Paulo 27:07
You using key words, for example, saving those key words, it’s, it’s called web scraping. So you can actually take a document and show the document, identify this key words, and then it’s tracks that key words and puts it somewhere else. Now you have a you know, now you chamber instead of being, you know, business incubator, at the small business incubator for businesses, you take out the then you just keep small businesses and incubator and those two words are keywords. So now the tool searches for those key words and legislation. And if any bill comes out or any of those key two key words you identified, it flags it, and now you have a couple of key words you can track and you can lobby or whatever.

Brandon Burton 27:53
That makes a lot of sense. That

Jaime di Paulo 27:55
was easy. Well, it sounds easy to explain, but you need to have the back office doing it.

Brandon Burton 28:00
That’s right. That’s right. And then get that machine up and running. Right. And once it gets going, just just keep feeding it that good data. So as we, as we start to wrap up here, I like asking for chamber listening, who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to consider implementing it their organization?

Jaime di Paulo 28:28
Well, you know, first, you know, as every chamber knows, we don’t we don’t we don’t do miracles, right? You get out of the chamber, when you put into the chamber, you know, it’s like, uh, you know, like, I tell my members, look, this is Mina chamber member is like having a, you know, a gym subscription, right? If you don’t go, you don’t, you’re gonna you’re gonna see results. So, partying from that, we need to, you know, people do not come to you just because you name is the Chamber of Commerce, you need to have parents, right, you need to have programs, classes, events, whatever it is to attract people to the chamber. I think that’s the key. So I call them carrots, right? So you wiggle the carrot, and then they’ll come, but you need to Google it. Good, right. So for example, you need to make sure this, you know, chambers were known for network events. Right? Now, it’s a lot of competition and network events. So we’ve got to start thinking outside of the box and how to do events, very more unique and those events because there’s a lot of groups out there doing, you know, after our event, so think outside the box, get some more carrots, encourage corporations to get involved in actually, you know, encourage those corporations to hire those small companies that you represent. That’s the key. And then for example, what I try to do is, for example, a big corporation comes on board as a corporate member. I actually have like, a piece of paper that encourage them it’s not a legal document or anything Ellison just make him sign something as promised, I will give an opportunity to your members to apply for right something that is good to sell to the small businesses so they can come in and be part of the chamber. Sometimes it’s good sometimes they don’t. Right. I

Brandon Burton 30:16
like that. Just a commitment to Medicare and Yeah,

Jaime di Paulo 30:21
nothing. Nothing about it. It’s just on paper, right?

Brandon Burton 30:25
And of a pledge. Yeah, I like that. But I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers. And I feel like we’ve been talking about this throughout this whole episode here. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jaime di Paulo 30:43
Well, chambers are the key. There, they’re a necessary tool for small businesses to scale, we have the knowledge, we have the connections, and we have the access to well to your clients, or contracts or whatever it may be, your members need. So Chambers of Commerce will never go away. Because of that reason. Everybody needs somebody, you know, you if you’re an accountant, to focus on your accountant, but you don’t know anything about marketing, we can help you do that. We can help you bring clients to you, we can help you promote your business, we can help you do other things. But you need to focus on your business and give us give the chamber an opportunity that can help you business scale. So it’s like an artist, you know, an artist should be should be drawing pictures, right? Not marketing themselves. So you need to, you know, understand that. That’s what chambers do we help you market your business, we help you scale your business, we’ll help you with connections with with financial, financial institutions. Because the number one thing is small businesses. theme is access to capital. One is me, not every bank is suit for anybody. So we have many we have like a smorgasbord of banks, we can actually know what the what’s the right banking institutions for your particular business, right. So that’s the kind of stuff we bring to the table, the chamber, so we never gonna go away. I mean, if you don’t work, you’re gonna go away. But if you add value to those businesses, you’re good,

Brandon Burton 32:15
right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea of, you know, chamber is necessary for businesses to scale. And if your chamber believes that, if your chamber is promoting that, if you’re putting that out as a carrot to attract the businesses, because you have what it takes for them to scale, then you’re right, chambers are not going to go anywhere, and they become necessary in their communities. Okay, we

Jaime di Paulo 32:40
create example. Right? And then we we chambers do a lot of workshops, right with our members, but we never had something structured certified. Right. So we went to the city colleges, which is a local community college. So I told the chancellor, look, let’s create a curriculum, I certify curriculum and and show people how to run a business properly. We did that. So now we launching you know, we had two cohorts or two classes, it’s a 4040 hour class that teach you about finances, marketing, legal stuff. Inventory. So now you we have a certified program, you can people actually go and get a credit, credit, credit, college credit, take this particular class and you when you graduate, you know how to run a business properly, because we know that businesses get into businesses because many reasons and not necessarily everybody is suitable to run a business. So teaching them how to use to how to run a business properly is the key to the success of your business. And so you utilizing the local colleges, you know, get you all members can become teachers, the classes, it’s a win win for everybody, really. So.

Brandon Burton 33:51
Yeah, absolutely creating those good partnerships. Well, as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening who might be interested in anything you talked about and maybe wants to learn more or just connect with you in general, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jaime di Paulo 34:11
Well, our website is, you know, IHCCBusiness.net HCC meaning Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. My personal email is jaime@ihccbusiness.net. Those two if you Google our chamber, you can find me on LinkedIn Jaime de Paulo. We have I’m very active on LinkedIn. Our website, you can find me there and you can you know, access all the programs or you can email me for sure and then I will get back to you.

Brandon Burton 34:48
That is perfect. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well so people can pull it up and reach out and connect with you. But Jaime, this has been great having you on Chamber Chat Podcast. I appreciate your time. Taking the time and, and telling us you know what you guys are doing in the realm of data and technology and these AI tools, and you guys are just full of exciting stuff going on right now that really, I think will end up being models for other chambers to follow. So thanks for blazing that trail and sharing some of these insights with us today. I really appreciate it.

Jaime di Paulo 35:19
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate your time and you know, don’t give up.

Brandon Burton 35:23
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New Teacher Program with Renee Earls

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Renee Earl’s Renee has proudly served as a president and CEO of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce in Texas. Since 2016. Native of Odessa, Renee believes that she has the best job in town. She works alongside a team of staff and volunteers to promote her hometown community through special events, membership, Economic Development and Tourism. Renee is a graduate of Texas Tech University where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. So I do have Renee on Zoom and I see the guns up so you guys can’t see that. Sal? Yeah, you got to do it. Right. But she started her career as a reporter and morning anchor at the Odessa Midland ABC affiliate. Then she spent 14 years in the health care arena serving as a community community as the communications Marketing Executive Director for Medical Center Health System. After volunteering for the Odessa chamber for decades and serving as our board chair Renee was thrilled to take on the role full time. She also has what she calls her midnight job. In 1999. She and her husband became the fifth owners of the Odesain. Magazine, a bimonthly community publication, which has been in print since 1964. Renee has served on numerous boards locally including the Odessa college and Ector county ISD Education foundations, and nonprofit management center of the Permian Basin United Way of the Junior League of Odessa. Renee serves as elder at connection Christian church. She’s a board member for the Texas Chamber of Commerce executives, having just completed the year as vice president of professional development and chair of the annual State Conference, which was held in Odessa this last summer. For 2024, she will serve as the TCC II VP of Governmental Relations. Together with her husband rich, they have three grown children, two grandchildren, and her motto for a successful life is whatever thy hand finds to do do it with all thy might. Rene, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Renee Earls 4:21
Wonderful. Well, thank you for having me. And thank you for allowing me to talk about what the Odessa chamber does. You know, we’re out here in West Texas. But as you mentioned, we hosted the State Chamber conference this last summer and we just have great feedback. You know, I’m blessed to be from this community born and raised, left long enough to go to college and came back and I honestly would not live anywhere else. And I’m a huge champion of my community and I just encourage those who haven’t been to West Texas in a while to come visit us come see us. We have a lot of opportunities here. So

Brandon Burton 4:55
absolutely. And I was at the TCCE conference and it was was a it was a success if you guys did a fantastic job, the venue and hosting and just everything about it was just fantastic. So great job. No, I

Renee Earls 5:09
think one of the the the most important thing that we have in our community, world oil and gas community. So obviously the resources below the ground are what is literally fueling the world. But it’s our people here who are just fantastic very much roll up your sleeves, get the job done, leave a lot of grids, and you won’t find better people than here in Odessa and West Texas. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:33
no, that’s that’s, that’s fantastic. So that’s a little bit about Odessa, tell us a little bit about the Odessa Chamber, just to give us an idea of the size of your staff Scope of Work budget, just that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Renee Earls 5:48
So our chamber is one of the few chambers left in the in the industry that actually is the three legged stool. So we have the operation side, we have you know, the membership, the events. One of the programs that we’re going to talk about today from the membership side of the of the office, the operations, We’re also fortunate to have a contract with our city to run the economic development aspect of the community through our Odessa Development Corporation. So we have a economic development staff. And then we also have the tourism arm that we received funding from the city through Hotel Motel. So as a total, we have a staff of 18 here in our chamber. And those are pretty well divided between those three departments. We also have a community foundation, where we just focus on you know, just as it says community projects, things that come up in the community. And we have about 775 Members, we’re having our first membership drive in January for the first time in almost 20 years. And we are turning 90 in 2024. So we are looking to hit that 900 mark. And it would be nice if we went over the 1000 mark. So that’s kind of a little bit about our chamber, our operations department itself is a little over 1,000,003 in budget. So overall, we’re about a $3.4 million chamber budget wise with the three departments.

Brandon Burton 7:19
Yeah, that’s very good. That definitely helps give that perspective and 90 years coming up. That’ll be exciting, especially to cross that 900 threshold. It’ll be huge. Yeah, and I know it’s there. I know you guys are going to do it. So yeah, that’s awesome. Well, for our topic today, we kind of settled on the idea of talking about the new teacher program that you guys do there Theodosia chamber. I’m excited to dive into this learn more about the kind of the unique aspect and approach you guys take to it. And we’ll dive into this much deeper since get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:13
Hi, it’s me, Donna from Yiftee. Have I mentioned that we’re working with chambers and other leaders on community cards in more than 500 cities across the US. Yiftee is the undisputed leader in community cards because we did it first and have learned a lot and because it’s free for you to set up and free for your members to participate. Plus, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Many chambers have chamber checks or other similar programs. Imagine the benefits of those without the extra costs of staffing, creating and tracking checks and reconciling payments. Community cards are all digital, sold online and always available on the cardholders cell phone. We provide tons of training and marketing materials. Come check us out yiftee.com or email sales@yiftee.com. Back to you Brandon

Brandon Burton 11:08
All right, Renee, we’re back. As we dive into the discussion today about your new teacher program. I guess first of all, do you guys have you? Is it branded with a certain name? And just answer that one first, I guess we

Renee Earls 11:24
host right before school kicks off and into July 1 part of August. We call it our new teacher reception. It’s been a breakfast. It’s been a tailgate party. It’s been a reception. So it’s basically just a big party for our new teachers with our school district. I

Brandon Burton 11:44
love it. So I guess let’s just start at the beginning the origins How did this program come about? What was the need? Was it presented you guys you guys come together just tell us how this became how it started and how it’s evolved? Sure.

Renee Earls 12:02
So we were actually approached by one of the superintendents at the time, just a little over a decade ago, maybe 12 years ago, the chamber was approached about hosting something new for teachers coming into the market. The Odessa market is somewhat unique in that at one time, you know, we have between three and 400 vacancies for teachers. You know, we’re talking in like June, before school. That is a huge number. And so we obviously wanted to do something that made them really, you know, learn about the community. And most of those were coming from out of the area. You know, we were they were the district was recruiting Ector County ISD was recruiting from not only all over the country, but they also bring in teachers from different parts of the world. And we wanted them to learn about Odessa, we wanted to connect them with our businesses. We wanted to just thank them for taking on a profession that is, you know, probably one of the most valued most important professions, you know, teaching our students, our future, our workforce. So the superintendent came to us and said, Let’s do something. So we came up with at the time, a new teacher breakfast. So we brought him in to our big can What if the time what we would call our you know, our Coliseum a big event center. And it was like a pep rally. You know, we had the students out there, the cheerleaders and the band and the mascots and they would come in and you know, they ran under the tunnel and it just really set the tone for the school year. They would come in there are you know, 50 to 60 booths from our Chamber members because when they come into town, they need a bank, they need an insurance salesman, they need to find a place to go get their hair cut, they need a place to dry cleaners, they need to get their nails done, they want to go shopping, I mean all the things that a person when they moved to a community they need so it was a win win. The teachers felt wonderful. They left there with literally bags full of goodies. We were giving out door prizes, T these, you know cash rewards gift cards, the vendors that we had, were just giving away incredible gifts and breakfast and we had speakers we had, of course our superintendent, we had our mayor, we had our county judge, we had our state representative, all the leaders in the community welcoming these teachers, again, some coming from far away some coming from, you know the area or maybe they lived here and we’re going back into the field. I remember one gentleman told me this was about five years into it. He said he had literally driven his car from out of state moving to Odessa and that was he had literally driven into the parking lot that morning and this was his first impression. Wow. Um, so um, and through the years, you know, after COVID hit, we couldn’t have an indoor breakfast. But you know, we’re still having school we still have new teachers coming in. So we went to the famous Ratliff Stadium, which is known for Friday Night Lights, where the Friday Night Lights community, we go to Ratliff stadium and we had a tailgate. So they literally would drive through the parking lot to the vendors and, you know, had their windows down, and they were throwing stuff in their bags that we would give them. And again, it was just a lot of fun. You know, we gave them food, we gave them coffee, and they never got another car. And the cool thing about that is many of them had their kids and their families in the cars with them. So even though COVID had hit, we did that for a couple of years. And it worked out great. So once COVID was over, and we could go back inside, we did the tailgate in the morning, it rained, we did the tailgate in the afternoon, it was really hot. So we said, you know, we’re gonna go back indoors. So we went back to the Marriott where, you know, we have a beautiful new hotel, we wanted to show that off, what a beautiful reception with lots of food. And again, going through the booths, this last year, we had it at one of our other hotels here, the fundo, a little larger. And it was just it’s a fun time we give out incredible prizes. And the district really, you know, they really encourage those new teachers to come in, they’ve had two days of training, and they end up their their training time at our events. And our members love it because it gives them an opportunity to see you know, 400 people in a two hour time span and get their product and their information in front of them. And it just really kicks off the school year with a fantastic culture and attitude.

Brandon Burton 16:57
Yeah, I love it. So what a great way to welcome these teachers into a new community for it sounds like a lot of them, it’s a new community for them. Let’s talk a little bit about the logistics of it. Right. So you had mentioned vendors a few times. So I anticipate that they’re, they’re paying to have a booth of some sort, they’re sponsoring the program somehow. So kind of walk us through what does that look like, as far as the logistics of obviously, you’re serving food of some sort, whether it’s a breakfast or dinner, whatever, some something at this reception. So there’s moving parts to it. So kind of walk us through what that looks like,

Renee Earls 17:37
you know, any chamber professional knows that the leading up, there are hours of planning, and then you have this two hour event, it’s kind of like a wedding, you plan and plan and plan the minutes over. And we do have sponsors for this, we have a program, our Platinum sponsors where they at the beginning of the year, they commit to sponsoring every event we have. So we have about 25 of those. So they’re premier sponsors of that event. And then we also have a presenting sponsors. And like $1,000, you know, we probably have 10 or so of those. And then we have breakfast sponsors at about $500. And we might have about 10 of those. And depending on where we have it, obviously we haven’t a hotel, you know, they’re they’re responsible for where we’re purchasing the food from them from the catering. We have one particular credit union, that since we’ve started they every year, they get, you know, a very nice Yeti style mug, they fill it up with either, you know, if it’s breakfast, they’re doing a great coffee setup with every kind of flavor, you can imagine, they probably have 10 or 15 of their staff members, they have aprons, they it’s a huge deal for them, and that everyone wants to get to that booth. In fact, a couple of times they’ve run out because everybody goes people want to go to in the afternoon they’re filling it with you know different flavors of of tea from HTO. So these vendors will either they’re either a sponsor a breakfast sponsor, or they can just purchase a booth space. I think we’ve we’ve gone from you know, about two to $300 for the booth space. And we have the draping, we provide the table a couple of chairs, and they come in and dress that booth that almost like a business expo. Yeah. And basically that’s what it is because they’re going up and down rows to to learn about these different industries. We give them a piece of paper to encourage them to go to everyone and so once it’s complete, and they’ve seen it, you know, they’re putting their name in a big drawing. So, it there’s a lot of logistics to it. But again, our members love it. We start promoting it several months in advance and we fill up and honestly we’re Are, we’re running out of space. So. But it’s a great opportunity, it’s a lot of fun.

Brandon Burton 20:05
I think it is a great opportunity when you have, like you mentioned three to 400 new teachers coming in, to be able to match them up with local businesses in the community. So that I think that’s so key. When you’re new to a community and you’re looking to get established in a new community, you need a place to bank you need an insurance person, you need a physician, you need a dentist, you all these different things to get established in the community. So being able to help match them up with those Chamber members that are vendors or sponsors that the program, I think,

Renee Earls 20:37
benefit of being a chamber member to, you know, we have other groups who will come in and say, well, we want to have a booth, well, you’re not a chamber member. So that encourages them to to become a chamber member, I will say Chevron is has been our host or our our major sponsor from the get go. And every year we give the teachers are really nice, special gift. And for years, we were giving them something that they would put in the trunk of their car, it was like a trunk holder. And you know, it’s like a cloth bag, it had the chevron logo, it had the ECSD logo, it had our logo. We did that for years. And we listened to the teachers this last year, because they said, you know, many of our teachers are going from classroom to classroom and they they drag along that little, you know, things. So we’ve got them a wheeled cart that had the logos on it. And, you know, they love that. And again, I mean, they just filled it up, and we’ve had teachers, you know, post on social media, they’re getting all these awesome items. And many of our vendors will do things that they can utilize in their classroom, you know, supplies, because we all know, teachers are having to go and spend money out of their own pocket for supplies, and so many of our vendors will just fill them up with things that they can use in their classroom. And, you know, these teachers come to us and they’re emotional, and they’re just so thankful. And it’s it’s a great feeling. And we’ve been encouraged other chambers to do this, you know, in the in the chamber industry. We have that very important R&D that we talked about, which is rip off and duplicate. We want everyone to rip off and duplicate this program because it’s great. It’s a it’s an easy way to really promote your members and and make these teachers in such an important profession feel good. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 22:27
I love the idea of the wheelie tote, right. So it’s got your logos on it, they’re gonna use it every day, it’s being seen every day, all the other teachers are using them, versus something that sits in their trunk, and nobody’s ever gonna see it. I mean, it serves a purpose, and it’s a great gift. But to be able to have that win win, you know, all the way around. I love that. And then just to be able to see the involvement that the Chamber has with the schools. My wife actually works at our kids elementary school and not as a teacher, but front office and through COVID. You know, the kids weren’t allowed to drink out of the drinking fountains, right. So there was a realtor, local business realtor came in, he brought two pallets of water bottles to the school. Now, the kids all had water bottles. I don’t know how many months that lasted. But so just to see that involvement, when whether it’s a business or the chamber, getting involved with the schools, everybody notices, you know, they’re appreciative they see, you know, they’re grateful that somebody cares about them and providing tools and resources that they need. So, so important. And I know you guys are very connected with your local school district there. A while back, we had Chris Mead on the show, and he talked about the pen pal program that that you guys started with Odessa, Ukraine. You want to take a moment, just kind of tell your point of view story on that.

Renee Earls 23:54
Chris Mead, this was a fabulous idea that he had, he reached out to me and and he had some connections there in Odessa, Ukraine. And they are, you know, our sister city, if you will. And he just had this wonderful idea to connect students in Odessa, Ukraine was students in Odessa, Texas. So we got a hold of our school district, they then put us in touch with, I believe some of the social or history teachers. And so those teachers and those students started literally writing back and forth. Some of them had zoom meetings back and forth. And it was just amazing to see these students from two different worlds. Connect and at a time when things were so volatile in Odessa, Ukraine and they just really needed to hear from others that they were supporting them and, you know, the art of writing is really gone as well. You know, the pen pal program. I mean, that’s just not something people don’t write personal notes anymore. And we saw this too. units do that, and the teachers loved it. And again, that all goes back to Chris Mead and the idea that he had, so kudos to him. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:07
But what I love about that is a program like that doesn’t happen unless you already have that relationship with the school district. And just the lives that are being touched on both sides, both here and in Odessa, Texas, and there, and in Odessa, Ukraine, lives are being touched, stories are being shared, they’re being enriched by each other. And it’s all facilitated by having those relationships, through things like this through the new teacher welcome program and building that goodwill.

Renee Earls 25:37
You know, that’s what chambers are all about are about relationships. And we’re so fortunate to have very healthy relationships with our educational partners either in the our school district, we just recently passed, our community passed a bond for our school district, and our chamber really got behind that, as far as endorsing it in just that. One, we wanted people to go to the polls and vote because we’ve seen such voter apathy. Not very many people, you know, going to the polls, so we encouraged a very active voting awareness program. But also, these, again, are our future workforce, these students who are in school today will be working for us, they will be our bosses, they will be running these companies in this community, and we have to have a strong education program vient, the ISD. We have private members here that are private schools, we have charter schools, and then of course, our community college, and our university, we are so fortunate to have really good programs and partners with our education.

Brandon Burton 26:49
Industry. Absolutely. So it’s so important. I love it. And appreciate you highlighting, you know, this, this new teacher program or reception new teacher reception, I’d love to give you an opportunity for any chambers listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item might you offer to them to to consider maybe implementing at their own chamber?

Renee Earls 27:14
You know, one thing I think that is so valuable is just talking to other colleagues in the chamber industry, find out what other chambers are doing, find out what will work in your community and make it your own. Um, you know, we talked about this new teacher program at a Texas chamber conference probably five years ago, just highlighting what we do, in a room of about, you know, 100 people, and it was a, it was almost like speed dating, you find out, you know, a program that’s working in a community, you get some info on it, you go to the next person, well, we all got, you know, five to 10 ideas that day. And I think it’s so important to just find out what other groups are doing, don’t reinvent the wheel, find out something that you can take in your community and make it make it your own. And, you know, again, those relationships are so valuable, and not only the relationships with our own members in our own community, but with colleagues throughout the state in the country, and what’s happening and just like listening to your podcast, people get so many ideas, and can again, take that into their own chamber, and make it work for them.

Brandon Burton 28:23
That’s the idea. That’s the hope everybody listens, gets those ideas, and then, you know, takes what may be valuable to their own community and implemented and do their R&D and be a successful chamber, right? Well, Renee, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Renee Earls 28:49
You know, chambers have have really changed a lot. membership organizations in general have changed over the many decades. We’re not your grandmother or your grandfather’s chamber anymore. And we can’t think that way. We can’t act that way. I think it’s so important that you know, because we are a membership based organization. If you look at any chambers budget any more. A large portion of your budget is not tied to actual memberships, because we’ve had to think of other ways to be successful and to create dollars for different programs. So I see, you know, the chamber is a major part of any community, or at least it should be, you know, our chamber is fortunate in that we have we’re we’re built on 90 years of just incredible volunteers who have served prior to us and have made our community what it is. And it’s so important for us to I tell people for an organization that’s supposed to be non political, you know, chambers are political. We we work with our all members, we work with all leaders, regardless of, you know, our, our party affiliation. And regardless of how we feel on certain issues, we all have to get along, we all have to work, our goal should always be with our community in mind. And I think for any, any chamber to thrive and continue to grow, is we have to continue to build those relationships, continue to meet in the middle, if you will, and just be the community cheerleader that talks about all the things that are happening in community, good and bad. But be the the person in the middle who can bring the people to the table to have a respectful conversation about how your community can grow, you know, be the be the liaison be the one who pulls everyone, the collaborator who pulls everyone together.

Brandon Burton 30:59
Absolutely. Yeah, chambers are political, but hopefully not divisive, like politics. Typically, you’re bringing into the middle. So I love that point. And in showing that role that chambers have in the future of being that same center and helping to be at the table and bring parties together to be able to come to a common goal and moving your community forward. I love that. Well, Renee, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone listening, who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about the new teacher reception or anything else you guys are doing there in Odessa, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect? Well, we

Renee Earls 31:40
would love to hear from you. Again, I think it’s so valuable for chamber professionals to connect with each other. So you can always reach out to us on our Facebook, Odessa chamber, make sure it’s Texas, there are a couple of chambers throughout the country at Odessa chambers, you can always, you know, email me at renee@odessachamber.com. And reach out to us here at the Chamber 432-332-9111 with lead to visit with you put you in connection with any of our staff on any of our programs that we’re working on. And follow us on social media. Again, I think we have to support each other as chamber professionals and just rely on each other to work us through you know, chamber profession is, as we said, at the beginning of this, you know, I feel like I have the best job in the community because I get to promote the chamber in my own community. But chamber work is hard. Chamber work is stressful. We’re working with a lot of personalities and a lot of people a lot of volunteers but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t be doing anything else. It’s it’s the peak of my career that I’ve I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. And you know, take time for yourself and rely on each other to see what’s working in what’s not.

Brandon Burton 33:02
I love it. So we will get your contact info in our show notes so people can pull that up and connect with you. But Renee, this has been so much fun having you on the podcast and learning more about the new teacher reception and the relationship you guys have with the your local school district there. And I appreciate your example and willingness to be with us today and providing all this value for us. Thank you for being with us today.

Renee Earls 33:25
Well thank you so much for giving the chambers a voice and for all of us to be able to learn from each other and through the programs that you do. And thank you for having me and thank you for allowing me to highlight great things happening here in Odessa, Texas.

Brandon Burton 33:41
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Workforce Training Center with Jeannie Hebert

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Jeannie Hiebert. Jeannie has been President and CEO the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts for 15 years. Under her leadership that BVCC has grown and developed into a chamber that works hard for business and the economic vitality of the region. often dubbed the queen of collaboration. Jeannie sits on several business and community boards and meets regularly with local state and federal legislators to make sure the valley voice is heard, and funding is appropriated to support their economic development and small businesses. Since her reign, the BVCC has become known as the go to place and resource for business owners and entrepreneurs to find assistance and funding to grow and develop their business. She has been honored with several awards, including the central Massachusetts outstanding woman in business power 50 manufacturing champion and Central Massachusetts economic development leader. Through her guidance, the Chamber secured over $1 million in funding to build the Blackstone Valley hub for workforce development. A Workforce Training Center located in the Chamber’s Linwood mill building, offering classes focused on advanced manufacturing. These certificate courses are offered to students of all ages throughout Central Massachusetts to help close the work skills gap and provide skilled workers to the region’s employers. Jeannie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jeannie Hebert 3:43
Here, Brandon, thank you. I’m excited to be here today. Hello to everyone, all of our chamber colleagues there. And I am also an animal rights activist and help with rescuing animals in need. I do have you know dogs of my own. But I did rescue for African elephants. And they lived with me for two years. And we were able to secure some good homes for them. One of them Willie my favorite. He was the largest working African elephant in North America. And we found him a great home at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So I used to go visit Willie there. So they were wonderful animals. It was a once in a lifetime experience. And I’m happy that we were able to find good homes for them because they had a terrible beginning.

Brandon Burton 4:41
So I have to say this is a first year the first guest on the podcast who’s rescued an elephant let alone for so. That is amazing. And I’m sure the stories about these elephants could go on for days. Lots of a unique experience. As a fan, I’m sure

Jeannie Hebert 5:01
they’re a unique experience they very intelligent, fun animals. One fun fact is I used to, you know, we used to wash them in the morning. And I would spray them with the hose. Use that big, big brush that you use when you wash your car, then grab the leaf blower to dry them before they would roll in the dirt and get dirty again. And invariably when I put the hose down, another one of the elephants would pick it up in their trunk, and they would spray me I thought that was a funny thing.

Brandon Burton 5:35
They got a sense of humor.

Jeannie Hebert 5:38
sensitive when we interacted very well, they were they were like my kids. So I missed them terribly. But they they needed to be in places where people who were better to take care of that could happen. So they had good lives. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Blackstone Valley Chamber. Just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Jeannie Hebert 6:09
Sure. Our chamber we have about 500 members. We were very active, we mean business and we listened well. We we listened to the needs of our members. And we’re very proactive in meeting their needs. That’s how the hub came about. We our service area is 13 towns from Worcester, Massachusetts, which is the second largest city in New England, to the Rhode Island border, just to kind of give you an idea of where we are central mass is kind of cow. It’s the belt to the middle of Massachusetts. And we work with everyone in Massachusetts. We collaborate a lot, you know, Queen of collaboration. But there is a field gap across the state and I think across the nation, really. And we found that a lot of the covenants of vocational schools because of a program we have here called the MKS. That funding is attached to it. So why are the MCAT scores on the more funding the schools are getting? So vocational schools have unfortunately changed their covenant and they are accepting more epidemic with superior students over vocational and superior students and the public schools. You have an influx of students who really want vocational training, they’re looking to go to work, and they’re not able to get it at public school level. So when we found this out and working with many of our manufacturers, the Blackstone Valley is the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, who Samuel Slater, who came here and started textile mills. And the mill is actually where we are, it’s a converted former textile mill of the whitened family. We’re in Waynesville named after that family, when we we would run the job fairs like everybody dies, and, you know, help them and it just wasn’t working. They weren’t getting skilled labor. And I was hearing, you know, I didn’t know this work, I have to turn it down. So when I found out that this was happening at the vocational level, I spoke with our legislators started doing some digging. And we were able to secure some funding from the Department of Education, and took on the legislation set the chamber, we take on the task to build a workforce training manager and said, yes, so long behold, we took over part of the middle, we didn’t build that out. And we have a design lab, we’ll hang on filling computers with CAD, and we have computer lab and we have a great fabrication laboratory. And it has 3d printers, augmented welding. We have mills and lane that start out with manual and it also has the coding, but the students learn how to use them manually. And they learn how to code. And we’ve recently just taken over the other end of the mill and put in a full electronics learn. And we’re building our robotics lab right now. So we’re meeting as the needs of our members change and evolve. We are meeting their needs well over now. million dollars in investment now.

Brandon Burton 10:02
And it’s typically for the hub,

Jeannie Hebert 10:04
specifically for the hub, but it helps us to grow our chamber. Because we’re training the workforce for many years, our members, and even those that are outside of our region support our chamber because of that constant with other chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:26
So I’m curious staff size, when you take on a project like this, just for all the chambers listening like this sounds great, but I’m sure she’s got like a huge staff to take this on. Right. So what is your staff size look like? The chamber

Jeannie Hebert 10:38
staff, there’s three of us. Okay, okay. And for a while. for probably a year when we were dealing with the billing, and so forth, there was no other staff. So I was doing two jobs, and it was exhausting. But it was very rewarding. But once the school was able to open, and we were ready to accept students, I hired an executive director, or the third Executive Director right now. She’s amazing. Um, I now have an operations director. He’s amazing. He’s, I’ve been tapping into retirement pool. He’s a retired engineer that worked in was head of Northeast for Thermo Fisher. So he’s got a wealth of information. And honestly, he can take anything from it to put a lock on a door for losing meeting diverged. In Bob ovens, our Executive Director, Ashley Bregman. She is a graduate of WPM, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And she was also teaching robotics. She’s has an engineering degree, obviously, academic or teaching. So she’s perfect as an executive director. And we have several teachers, Instructor of some are retired vocational teachers. And some teach at night when we for the night courses, and they teach at the local vocational school. And one is an engineering teacher at one of our high schools. And we’re growing to the point where we’re building campuses in our high schools in the area, we’re up to 22 districts. So obviously, we’re working with high schools, but it’s not that we’re servicing. And we also teach incumbent workers. So some of the manufacturers who hire people with no skills, we listen to them, and we build a custom curriculum for them. And they will send their workers to us. And we do like a six or 12 week course for them. So when they go back, and they still work that you know, it’s worth studying. But when they finish their course and get their certifications, they’re more than an entry level here or mid level. Yeah, it really makes a big difference for them. So in the fall right now, because this year, Nast mass fire, who handles all the career, work with people who were looking for Jones, across the state awarded us the Youth Works grant, which means we’re now working with 16 to 23 year olds who are in a disadvantaged financial state, to their families. And we find them jobs and almost apprentice programs. We do have an apprentice program too. So we hired people to handle that under the umbrella. And we just received the connecting activities grant, which is K through 12. So now we’re working with elementary school students too. So we have at the hub 15 employees now running the hub, thank goodness, I would need to never ever sleep again. And we threes that work at the Chamber, but we interact all the time. So it’s, you know, it’s one big family, and we were growing so fast. At one point, someone would come in and like go Who is that? What is this name? What was this?

Brandon Burton 14:36
Do? Yeah, that’s great. Well, that definitely that helps to set the table for more of our discussion. I’ve got a lot of follow up questions for you about the hub and we’ll dive deeper into this in the whole topic of developing a workforce training center as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Donna Novitsky 16:40
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 17:34
All right, we’re back. So let’s dive in deeper. I want to know more. So tell us your when did the idea get presented to you for developing the hub? How did things unfold to see the vision come to pass? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 17:52
we’ve been open and seeing students for five years now. But it took a good two years to get it going. Because we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do. We knew there was a huge problem, especially in our area. For our you know, manufacturers just couldn’t find any employees and we’re in, as I said, job fairs were not working at all. It just wasn’t working. And I went to a skills America conference at the vocational school. And the superintendent, there was bragging that 90% of his students were going to college. And then I went what’s going on here? And I spoke with one of the students who was given who had a display on being electrician and I said, Oh, why are you going to be electrician? Because that week I want a grid. I like to have an electrician in my office crying because he’s done pretty good in Okay, location of school that he wanted to pass. And, you know, they were telling us they had a waitlist of six months students. And I talked to that student and I said, Oh, you’re gonna be an electrician. Oh, I’m going to Cornell. I’m going into sports medicine. Oh my god. You took up four years that that gentleman son could have had to become an electrician. So you know, a light bulb went off and said we need we need an we need somewhere where these students that the public school system parents that can go for training because the superintendents were telling me they didn’t know what to do with these students that will be coming discipline problems. They didn’t have the vocational training that the students wanted. The dropout rate was going up. So we aligned ourselves in office and I went to the legislators told them the problem. We have great legislators very approachable in our area. And we put together a plan And they connected me with our patients Department of Education. We applied for a work skills grant. And our first one skills Grant was half a million dollars. And we, you know, put together a plan to do the build out. It takes it does take a village, it really does. I mean, I can say, Oh, I built a school. I didn’t do it alone, and had a lot of help. And it was a process and even the middle owner. You know, our landlord was very understanding, very cooperative. And we all work together, and everyone was looking forward to it. They came together, I had some naysayers. I have one very prominent business person, say to me, you’re a dreamer. It’s never gonna happen. This is not going to work. So when, when I got last year, I got the manufacturing Champion award. I said, you know, I told that story. And I actually have a little locket that, like, my significant other gave me that people say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. And I said that to, to the audience, it was all out there. Most of the manufacturers told them a dream or been looking at, you know, I can see. Yeah, you know, span, so that really fit in perfectly. But, you know, that’s how it started. And we’re growing like crazy. And it’s wonderful to see these students, they come to us dejected, because they couldn’t get into the school they wanted to get into. And when they learn the skill, then amazing picture. They just have that vocation. And the brain is wired, for whatever it might be the body aches or electronics or CNC machining or, you know, developing coding, CAD, and we even have a shop where they we have businesses come to us that want merchandise, personalized, we’ve believed a quarter and upstream we have I hate to say it, but our biggest customers in the cannabis industry distilleries and breweries, they went through classes to action, the cannabis industry, they want human doors with their logo on it. So the kids do that. And then they buy from us and the money goes back into school and help to, you know, pay for another student. So it’s terrific.

Brandon Burton 22:31
Face the mill, you had mentioned it is a previous manufacturing mill, before you guys moved in with the hub, was it actively being used before then had it sat vacant for a while, like what was the the revitalization of the the space? How did that look?

Jeannie Hebert 22:51
That was very interesting, because that bill was that mill was slated to be demolished. So ironically, we were located in the same town but a few streets over in another building. And we worked with the our landlord, now the mill owner to connect him with an amazing grant writer. And they were able to get a grant and start renovating. It was a cartel. Everybody else fell away except for these two people bill and Patti gianopolous, who believed in the project. And they partnered with another organization for over 55 subsidized housing. So above us three floors above us is over 55 subsidized housing. And I have an interesting story. They are how we interact with them. But it’s it came together over a period of I think two and a half years that they were able to renovate the mill. It’s beautiful. It has great architectural elements for big, huge wooden beams that have all been sanded so that they’re natural. Now, you know, they they were painted that hospital clean beautiful granite and brick in the windows of huge and it’s just really, really lovely. So they’re above us were below and we said why don’t we move in the mill and we moved into the new in 2016. And then 2018 We started the school. So a lot of history and had the elements or pictures of what it was. And there’s several mills in the town that were in northbridge and throughout the valley, and a lot of them were owned by the whitened family. And so our area of North there just called whiteness fell. So it’s really beautiful. It has a tower or any house out which is It’s a cute little shop now. So it’s, it’s, it’s bustling. We have. We’re there. We at the school, we have a physical therapy, we have a gym, we have a barbershop that’s run by naturalized citizens, former immigrants, and we’ve just helped them with their expanding. We have Girls on the Run. We have we were named the National Park by President Obama. So we have our rangers are there that national heritage corridor and the National Park is located there. So the national park rangers have a brewery in one of the other buildings because there’s a number of buildings usually. So it’s a pretty busy place. Oh, and beautiful woman owned business. That is a crepe or a company is another modern day Helsinki. And it’s a great little restaurant that’s been restored and invest. You know, it looks industrial. But it’s so it’s a unique place. And it’s a wonderful gathering place for the community interaction. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:16
that sounds awesome. So as you’re talking about how it came to be, it sounds like in the collaboration, I see where you get the title mokwena collaboration, but to be able to have, you know, somebody who’s familiar with grant writing, to be able to help see a vision and help bring things together to to see these things come, you know, kind of unfold and come together. Two of the things I wanted to ask you about, you’ve mentioned them, but I wanted to dig in just a little bit more. So there’s these certificate programs that the students come through, I imagine that there are varying lengths depending on what their focus of work is. So if you could touch on that, and then also touch on how you work with the schools, you had mentioned the K through 12. Now with these districts, what does that look like with those relationships and, and interacting with them?

Jeannie Hebert 27:06
Sure, well, the certificate programs are varied, some are custom that we utilize for incumbent workers. And some are standardized. Like we have, as I said, the Miller augmented augmented welding, that’s six to 12 week course, depending upon the type of welding, but it’s industry accepted, we would not have purchased them if our manufacturers didn’t try them out and say, oh, yeah, this is just like real world. And they do after they get their certificate, we bring them to one of our couple of our partners yr fab and package steel systems, who make metal buildings, all for all over the world. And invariably, they will say to the students are so come see me, you know that so they have great skills. So that’s one certificate we have. We have an OSHA, obviously, we do OSHA 10, everybody gets an OSHA 10. Everyone, we have a reentry program as well with the sheriff’s department. So we start teaching OSHA in the jail before they’re released. And when they’re released, they come to the school, and they get hands on training, that everybody gets OSHA training, we have what’s called Mecalac, which is a Massachusetts certificate, and it’s through mas MEP, which is manufacturing extension partnership. So this brings you through all of the steps of what manufacturing needs, like would have shot now. It would teach measurements, believe it or not, we’re finding graduates of high school have no idea how to use tape or read a tape measure or ruler. And they cannot even tell turn on the clock unless it’s digital. If you say to them, it’s quarter. They’ll go and they don’t know what that is. We had one guidance counselor say they had a disqualifying when they were monitoring the number six certificate examinations, because he pulled out his phone and I said, take out your phone. He said I wanted to see what time it was. They said there’s a clock on the wall. He said I can’t read it. No one ever taught me how to read. Like when we went to school first grade, they had the clock remember you

Brandon Burton 29:37
missing the mark somewhere, right? Yeah, I remember. I remember doing worksheets like that. Yeah. Don’t

Jeannie Hebert 29:42
do that. More than he is on job no more curse if they can’t. I was talking to a business that we were helping out. yesterday. She it’s called hair jewelry. She’s an archaeologist and she had an intern from one of the quality If he didn’t know how they couldn’t read the report from the patient because they didn’t know how to read cursive, so we’re really missing the mark in our schools. So these are the things that we try to address. But back to the certifications, we have those certifications with custom certifications. And then at some of the campuses that thought like Brookdale campus, which is one of our close up spirit campus, which is another one of our towns, their certifications. outsprinting is focusing on carpentry. Newbury is also property Hopedale, a cyber security. So we get certifications for those types of industries where the students are learning we even started, we help them get and I always say this wrong. And in a Tom baton, table, virtual. It’s almost like mines, US operations,

Brandon Burton 30:59
operators. That’s how I was gonna guess when you said that? Yeah, it’s a real body,

Jeannie Hebert 31:03
but they have a human meaning male, human woman, dog, cat, rather, Frog, which I love, because now they might have dissected me animals. But it’s very realistic. Students were showing me their skills. And I said, I was getting woozy and you’re doing a great job, right? I gotta go to the next. It’s like, Oh, yeah. That table alone costs $100,000. So we were able to help the school right grant, so that they have that. So Arginine is we helped a lot of the schools get DNS. So maybe you go to help deal, but you want to take manufactory. So you have to close the hub, or maybe your middle bring you to market sure you want to do you know, introduction to some kind of medical research. And that’s it helped. So we do is we’ll move the kids around. So they will take these courses together. The one principal said to me, it was hilarious. He goes, Yeah, these kids are all working together in class. And then on the weekend, they beat the heck out of each other on the football field. Because that’s great. So we put classes together, not necessarily by school, but on a subject. So the students get to even try it out, we’ll do a trial. You know, they’ll come and say, Oh, I think I want to do this. And they might try it and so on. That’s not Well, maybe you want to try that? Oh, yeah, that’s a better fit for me. So we do that, too. So that’s so it’s some of the certifications that we offer, I’m sure there’s a lot more that escapes me right now. But the K through 12 that we had the smaller kids, I think a good example would be rewarded grant kind of nothing for the energies that it was for younger kids to learn about engineering. So we had camp over the summer. And kids would come in the morning, and they’ll have a little bite to eat. And then they would learn about engineering and mechatronics and robotics and make make something. Mr. Evans, our engineer ran this program. So they’d make something and they put it all together, they do it on the computer, and they’d make it. And he would say to them, did you have fun? You know, you did you know what that was? Well, they have engineering. And the robotics is we have these really cute little robot, these, this is very key in first, and second graders, paying them. And they were like, they know, control robots, but they had to program them to make them work. And they were able to do that. And we have these little robots that look a little Michael Jackson, they had a damn thing. They were dancing with each other. And they were doing tasks and picking things out, handing them to each other. But it’s a natural for these kids. They blow me away. And it’s amazing. And then some of the middle school kids, we had codons, which are cooperatives are going to occur in an industry. They do the stuff where people say, Oh, robots are gonna take my job. Well, did you really want to keep ticking boxes and putting them here? You know, you don’t want to do that. You want to be the one telling the robots to do that. Use your brain. So what these students were doing, I went in after they kind of let a they taught them how to work, how to program them. They could like Legos out so they could build make the robots build. And then I they had free time. So I went in and they began to have the robots and they can like be stitched in Your hands. And I go, What are you doing the courts very proud of their sword fighting.

So I mean, this is a concept thing, maybe learn through having fun, but it’s part of what they would do in a job situation, they would have to program the robots to do a task. And some of them have 345 robots interacting with each other and completing a task. And that’s pretty complicated. For like, an eighth grader, too. So I just like I said, they blow me away. One of the older kids, it was a birthday, what’s what was like three of them, they came in, and they gave me these beautiful stainless steel shakers that had an unusual shape, then you throw them on the machine. And they gave her to me, it’s a birthday gift. And they said, Missmiss look, we even put pain on the top. So you can tell which is which. program that and have the drill press drill, drill it, and then had Christmas was just from a piece of aluminum or stainless steel that they had. And they design them themselves and made those, then it was just amazing that they did pocket some of the kids from shoestring High School, which is my hometown, they were making Christmas ornaments out of brought up some of the metal and like drill guns, and they were beautiful. And then they made dreidels to the trails are gorgeous, they were intricate, they were terrific. So it was, you know, it’s a fun, fun thing to learn. But while they’re learning there, we say to them, you’re an engineer, you just love

Brandon Burton 36:55
that. I love it, they have these opportunities, and they get that confidence and explore these these future career opportunities. This is such a invaluable resource for your community. So applaud and Pat, pat on the back to you guys and your team for for executing this and integrating it into the schools as well.

Jeannie Hebert 37:14
Thank you. We have a great team. We really do. I’m really fortunate really blessed. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:19
So as we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask if, if you might have any tips or action items for chamber folks that are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you offer for them? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 37:34
I think you know, you need to listen to your members, which you know, most of my chamber colleagues do. Every region is different. What works for me might not work for you. But if you listen to what your members need, or what your municipalities are your region, we work very closely with all of our municipalities and our legislators in and listen and get advice on how to meet those needs. And then you know, collaborate with the great resources that you have in your region, we have wonderful educational institution, terrific educators, innovative people on and, you know, we’ve worked together and they’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work. So I think, you know, sometimes you look at a project and you think that’s really daunting. But when you you know, I hate this analogy, but how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Brandon Burton 38:37
Especially after your introduction today, no, no elephants on the table.

Jeannie Hebert 38:43
And your chamber will grow. We are gaining members inside and outside our region. Because of the services that we provide, and I’m not stealing numbers from anyone, what we do is, if I see that I’m getting a number of members, someone, you know, reaching out to me, I reach out to that chamber and say, You know what, I’ve got like five industry people that have come to me, why don’t we do a collaboration and we have an affiliation with like seven other chambers, and will offer a discount, but you have to be a member of the region’s chamber first. And then I’ll give you this note to join us. And we’ll provide everything but we do provide a lot of services without membership to and I know that I get criticized from some chambers for that, but it comes back, you know, comes around and it’s a pleasure for me to work with a number of people to help them and you know, it’s great to work together but no, just listen to your members or You read and see what the needs are and think about and seek out people with resources that I can drop in on how to develop focus to meet those who

Brandon Burton 40:11
have that so important. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeannie Hebert 40:22
I think we’re going to have to really prove that we are a worthy organization. And you know, we’re going to, to be a good resource for your members. It’s not, as we all know, already, I’m preaching to the choir here. It’s not like the inundating myself, the fog of news best attitude where Jimmy Anderson would say, I’m going to the chamber dinner, you know, like everyone already knew how to join the Chamber of Commerce. There’s too many people into the new organizations billing for the that dues that dues revenue, and I don’t think that dues revenue is going to be our is already isn’t our main revenue stream, we have to find other revenue streams. And it’s going to be to run instances

Brandon Burton 41:21
of it. Good advice. Jeanne, I want to do give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the hub and how you guys went about this, this great big project, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jeannie Hebert 41:44
Well, through email, which is jhebert@blackstonevalley.org. So that’s email. And if you want to learn about, you can go to our website, which is BlackstoneValley.org. And you can also check out The Hub at be thehub.org. And if you go to our website, there’s a tab and it’ll bring you right over to the hub. And I’m happy to share any information to help with anything, any resources and, you know, whatever we can do to help you with programs. And if you want to take on a project like this to go get them and we’ll help you every any way I can.

Brandon Burton 42:42
I love it. Thank you so much. So this has been great having you on the podcast today. I love getting these insights from chambers that have taken on a unique projects and have a neat approach to it. revitalizing a building that was set to be torn down and really changed the outlook of the community. I love it. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these experiences and insight and, and I’m hoping it gave you know a few people out there that drive to take on some of those big hairy audacious goals. Thank you for being with us today.

Jeannie Hebert 43:15
Thank you very much. Thanks Brandon for the opportunity we really appreciate you’ve ever thought my way I’d love to give me a tour.

Brandon Burton 43:22
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