Category: relevance

Reinventing Chamber Brand with Lindsay Griffin-Boylan

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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.

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

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Brandon Burton 1:00
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Our guest for this episode is Lindsey Griffin Boylan. Lindsay is the president and CEO of the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber in Pennsylvania. She’s a graduate of LaSalle University where she received her bachelor’s degree in business. Lindsay began her career at the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber as the events and program manager and has since worked her way into her current position as president CEO, and is the first woman and young professional to hold the position since the organization began in 1884. In her pre chamber life, she worked for Comcast spectator that Philadelphia 70 Sixers while cobia arena, Mohegan Sun and Pocono downs, and Genetti Hotel Conference Center. Hopefully I’m saying those right. Lindsay is passionate and engaged with the community and is a board member and committee member of several organizations in the Northeast Pennsylvania area, all working towards betterment of their community. She was born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania and currently resides in Harvey’s Lake, and is proud to be able to live work and play in the area she grew up in, and be able to make a difference each day. Lindsay, welcome to chamber chat Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today, 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.

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 2:59
Yeah, thank you so much, Brandon, I’m very happy to be here. And I know my team and I are big fans of this because I think we’re all trying to really connect with in our chamber industry and, and really the past few years having all their challenges, can you learn new things and the ideas and I know something that we’re all really striving towards, as we’re all trying to help our community. So I’m really, really excited to be here today. And certainly share what I can and, you know, happy to happy to connect with everybody that’s listening. Something interesting about myself, I think, really, you kind of read my bio, and it’s a little bit, I think, a little different and unique as to how I got here. But you know, I think that I had always been really an event lover, I love bringing people together. I like to kind of seeing that collectiveness. And, yeah, I mean, I started out my chamber, really not knowing what a chamber was about seven years ago, now seven and half years ago, and really just saw what the role was in the community, and just really fell in love with all of it. So I think, really had just worked my way up into the current position that I have now. And I think it’s a really exciting time to be in industry. It’s a tiring time at the same time, but it’s a really cool way that we’re all sort of reinventing. So I was really in sports marketing. That’s what I kind of came out as, and that was really my first my first job essentially, when I and I left the area I originally was from NEPA. I left and said, Hey, I want to, you know, want to kind of get out of here and I moved to Philadelphia had some great experiences out there and realized really how incredible this area was. And when I came back, I knew I wanted to be part of making a change and making it so that you know and goal is our younger people. We end up retaining them they don’t want to leave they want to stay here and make this their home. So I think my Interesting thing is kind of how I’ve gotten here, but I’m very happy to be here at the same time.

Brandon Burton 4:48
Very good. Thank you for sharing that background. I can see you know, a lot of young people going through school sports marketing is very attractive. You know, it’s a it’s a glamorous type proposition and I can see where that attracts people chamber work not so much like you said, you came into it not really knowing what a chamber does. And I don’t think you’re too different than other people. And that way is to get, you know, being introduced to chamber work. But we’re glad you’re here. So thank you. Unless you tell us a little bit about the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber just to give us an idea of size, scope of work, staff budget, that sort of thing, just to give us some perspective, before we dive into our conversation,

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 5:28
sir, yes, so we are located right in the works bare sort of Scranton area in northeastern Pennsylvania, we were formerly known as the greater Wilkesboro Chamber of Commerce, and that we’ll talk about that in a little bit. I know. But we have rebranded to the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce about two and a half years ago. And really, that was to be representative of a lot of our members to make sure that we were servicing, you know, everyone in our community in the best way possible, and really start to get that collectiveness that we know that regions that are doing, you know, the collective sort of way of working together, are seeing success. So we represent a little over 600 Members, we have a team of 10. So my incredible team who really has just been so amazing at pivoting, reinventing the wheel looking at new things. So, you know, we’re able to really focus on a few different areas that we’ll talk about today. But we also so we have our chamber of commerce division, we also have our chamber of business and industry, which is our 501 C three, and it’s our foundation, which is allowing us to do a lot of our workforce development, economic development, and what houses our entrepreneurial development, which is called books fair connect. And then we also, you know, have many different affiliates that will fall under that as far as our councils, our committees. So we are really covering, I’d say a wide variety of, you know, we have our government affairs, we have, you know, our women’s network, our Young Professionals Network, we have a nonprofit network, so many different, you know, items that are going to kind of umbrella underneath that. But my incredible team, really kind of each manages one of those aspects and collectively, we operate as the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce. So

Brandon Burton 7:16
that definitely gives some good perspective and kind of teasing the topic a little bit as far as what we’ll be focusing our conversation on today around reinventing the chamber brand so you had mentioned about two and a half years ago, you guys really dove in into making that change. So we’ll we’ll dive in much deeper into why that what drove that and what that experience is like as soon as you get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 10:34
All right, Lindsay, we’re back. So I’m curious, you had mentioned as you were telling about your chamber, that you guys went about, I guess, the beginning of this rebrand about two and a half years ago. And, you know, curiously, I’m just wondering, does it have anything to do with COVID during that timeframe, and taking a deeper look at your organization, what you had to offer?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 10:57
Yeah, actually, interestingly, happened right before COVID. So we had, I think one of the big things that my team and I had really been very focused on was we have a lot of different, you know, in our area, and it’s a smaller territory, we had a lot of, we have many different chambers, covering different communities, we had many different economic development organizations. And what we noticed was that really, unless you were in our sphere, it was really hard to understand what was here, what resources were available. So if we did have a business, you know, moving into the area, or looking at our area, or a family that wanted to relocate here, there wasn’t really that one stop place to kind of, you know, collectively get those resources. We always say we’re never the ones that are doing every single piece of this work, you know, we never want to reinvent the wheel, we have a lot of amazing partners, but we wanted to make it easier for everyone else to find them. So with the rebrand, you know, I think we were representing members that were all throughout the Wyoming Valley. So we really wanted to reposition ourselves as our tagline is elevate the valley. So we use elevate symbol, which I really love, because elevate to us is really just kind of getting, you know, making sure that our residents or businesses are connected in the best way possible for success. And that goes beyond, you know, just obviously, we’re very focused on businesses and you know, recruiting retention, and ensuring the ones that are here are successful. But we also know that there has to be a lot of work done on, you know, our residents here and quality of life that we need to make this the best place to live, work and play. So with with the rebrand, we wanted to kind of not only sort of reinvent what our chamber was, our chamber has been around since 1884, we were heavily involved in real estate. So we, you know, had that was a very strong background of ours, a lot of our programs and initiatives sort of had taken a little bit of a backseat at that time, as that’s really what the organization’s focus was. So as we moved into the future, you know, and we got the team on board that we have now we noticed what the need was in our community. To have an organization like this, you know, not only do we change the name, but we changed the logo, we changed the way we operate, we changed the way that we did membership, as far as making sure that our door was open to anyone and everyone, especially to be a part a lot of those councils I talked about, you don’t have to be a chamber member to sit on diversity, equity and inclusion or women’s network or young professionals. We welcome anyone and everyone to the table, because we noticed and one of the things when I came on board was, you know, I noticed a lot of the people that were on our board and other boards and you know, different organizations were a lot of the same people. And we weren’t really seeing that. The diversification that we know what community needs, if you really want to help anyone and everyone, it’s having that representation, making those decisions and feeling like you know, they want to sit at that table. And they can and they can be a part of their area and moving their area forward. So we did a lot of work, not only, like I said, just on the outside of what our logo looks like, and what our website looked like, and what our membership guide looked like, but really who we are in the community and what our position was. And that’s been a lot of the work over the past few years, but really started with the rebrand.

Brandon Burton 14:05
Yeah, I think a name and a logo. Those are very much the surface things right? That’s it. Everybody sees that you think of the rebrand. But really, as I hear this, it’s an opportunity for you to look at what synergies there are, you know, as you have different volunteers working with different organizations, how can you bring things together, but also taking a look at maybe reevaluating and in the scope of work that you guys were involved with? And you You touched a little bit on that by being involved with real estate and as you went about the rebrand, what was that experience? Like looking at the work that you were involved with? And then really making a concerted focus on what the chamber needed to be focused on?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 14:39
Yeah, I mean, I think always right, and we’re doing this constantly as chamber professionals of what is our role, what is the need in the community, it’s going to change, you know, every few years and based on what happens and certainly pandemic was, I always say I think the pandemic was an acceleration for change that had been happening for a while I think chambers rarely had to look at themselves. And this was pre pandemic of how am I, you know, how will I be relevant? What is the value? How are we reinventing ourselves to keep up with this next generation, what businesses are now looking for? We know that younger people are participating differently with their communities with different organizations and memberships. So we started to look at that prior and I think that the pandemic completely accelerated that change where you had to look at Where’s where are the gaps in my community right now? What can I fell? And I always say, during the pandemic, I think we were a little bit of everything to everyone. I think that’s what we all did, right? We were trying to kind of help residents find, you know, medical information, we were trying to help businesses get funding and grants and understand the programs that were coming out from the state and federal level. But we were also just trying to push out anything we could to help our communities. And so I feel like now it’s at a place where we’re able to kind of hone in on really, what is our mission? Now. I mean, I think, who, while our mission hasn’t necessarily changed, the way we execute that has to be so I think, looking at our past is really interesting for me always, because our organization was very involved in essentially developing a lot of land now, that is booming in our community. So a lot of our industrial parks, and they’re full, we have, you know, world class businesses that are right here in northeastern Pennsylvania. And so that was a great place for us to be at at that time of making sure this area gets developed for the future and, and secure that, and that is what happens. And I think now is we’re able to say, where are we needed? Now? I think, you know, we just launched our 2023 2025 strategic plan. And I think it’s really great to be able to look at, you know, what is happening now that we’re kind of moving into this next period of, you know, post pandemic, and and where are the needs. And I think for us, it’s, you know, business and community advocacy is a big goal of ours, workforce development, workforce pipeline development, which we know is such a buzzword. And, you know, we have a lot of cool pilot programs, we’re really big on pilot programs and grants that we do to see how things work. And then, you know, work on partnerships that we can see those continued in the community. regional connectivity, like I said, I’m never a go it alone person either, as my team, I think there’s a lot of great organizations, I think we all have our heads down, and we’re working 100 miles a minute. But I know that when we can collectively put that into one package, that’s where we’re going to see a lot of that regional success. And we have so I think that’s a continued, it’s a pillar for us now, to continue those strong. The strong regional partnerships to solve the area’s most pressing issues. And quality of life, like I mentioned, is a huge focus of ours, I think that we know that without a healthy, you know, nonprofit community business community, giving our residents the resources that they need, we won’t have that workforce that we all want, right, we won’t have the continued continued success that we want to see happen in the area. So you’ll see us also do a lot of things on the quality of life side, I’ll be involved in community concerts, and a lot of young professional events, youth events, you know, getting out there and being a part of a lot of the different things that are making this area one that people enjoy and want to live in. So those are really the four things that we majorly focus on. And it’s interesting to kind of look at the plants from years ago as to where we are now, Mission still the same, we’re just doing it very differently to be relevant to what our community needs.

Brandon Burton 18:20
Right? I love how you mentioned that you guys are big on pilot programs, because it gives you a chance to kind of test the waters, see if it’s something that chamber wants to take on or find that community partner that you could, you know, hand things off to or partner with. Along the way with the rebrand or even leading up to it. What did you guys do as far as collecting data, maybe surveys or feedback to kind of course, the direction that the Chamber needed to go looking into the future?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 18:48
Yeah, I mean, we had, when we really started on a lot of this work, too, we had worked with Kyle Sexton, who really helped us look at our membership guide, and we looked at the tiered use model of really making sure that again, we were offering the most value we can so we really, we had we had, you know, pulled our membership, you know, asked about kind of what the relevant things were to them, what they were finding the most benefit from, that led us to our to dues transition which we underwent, which again, is still something that is very successful for us. And I think, you know, something that we’re definitely glad we did to see that retention, again, allowing members to participate in the way that is most beneficial to them. And also, it’s helped us out on you know, generate a little extra revenue in the membership department when we know, that’s just been a challenge, you know, nationally for years. So, we also kind of looked at all of our programs and we you know, talked with our boards, we talked to our members, and we you know sort of really asked what do you guys you know, what is still relevant here? What, what are we doing that we shouldn’t be doing? What are we doing that you want to see more of and what are we not doing at all that you really feel like we should be a part of, so we did a lot of that back work, you know, through mainly a lot of those conversations, but also through our Have some surveys that had been put out there to discuss, like what kind of programming would be relevant, and reaching out to new communities that, frankly, were never involved with us and never had anything to do with us really didn’t have that trust in a chamber to say, you know why? What could we do to really make sure you have a seat at the table and that you want to be involved and that you feel welcomed, and that we’re inclusive, and that this is something you want to be a part of. And that’s still a lot of work we do to this day, because it’s, you know, it’s something that we’re still very focused on. So a lot of back end work is done to get initially sort of the focus of where we were going to go with the rebrand and kind of the relaunch of all of our programs and initiatives. But that work continues to this day. It’s it’s an ever, ever flowing process of really, again, understanding the community’s needs and making sure that’s fitting into our mission.

Brandon Burton 20:47
That leads perfectly into my next thought I was thinking as a chamber goes to rebrand, like, I don’t think you can officially say, All right, we’re done. You know, the rebranding is complete. It’s never ending, right? It just keeps going. You keep evolving as a chamber as you continue to stay relevant to your community. But as you were going through this intensive process of a rebrand, were there any gaps that you noticed or surprises that came up as you were either gathering that data or trying to implement a new direction?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 21:17
I think that some of the feedback from the community was not surprising. I think some people, though, still really are challenged to understand what a chamber is what a chamber does, what specifically we were doing. I think the model of a lot of people still thinking that you had to be on a board or be certain level to participate and be part of conversations is still something that we work towards. I think that the general and not that it’s a negative, I think people had a sort of connotation of really what our sphere was. And, you know, I think that misunderstanding and really telling our story and having people understand who we are, what we do, and what the mission of the chamber is, is one that, you know, remains to be a challenge. I think it’s always something we all have to be clear on. And I know that as we’re all doing many different things. And a lot of organizations, like I said, you know, we have an economic development side and a chamber side and really having people understand truly what we do, I think was something that was eye opening during that process. But I think it also encouraged us to tell our story about our to make sure that we can be brought back chamber ambassadors to really help us get the mission out there and, and strengthen that, you know, making our social media clear. Again, making sure to have those one on one conversations with, you know, people that we wanted to have involved with us that represented different communities to sort of break down those barriers of sometimes I don’t want to say it was a negative connotation, but I think they had a very clear picture in their mind of what a chamber was, and really reintroducing what that means now for the community and who we are. So I think that was really one of the challenges that and then of course, when you change your name, right, I think that was a little bit of confusion for for a minute of how we how we got that transition, but honestly, I think just continuing to be very cohesive. And you know, we have an excellent marketing team here. But how we were putting that out there so that people really understood that change, but also that it was still, you know, our organization and making sure that all made a lot of sense when we put it out there and packaged up.

Brandon Burton 23:26
So I have to ask, did you guys crack the code on being able to communicate clearly what a chamber does to your community?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 23:34
I don’t think we’ve cracked the code, I think we’ve gotten a few of the digits on the code lockbox. But it’s something we always work towards. I mean, I think that we have certainly done and through through social media, through outreach, through our ambassadors, through all the many people, I think one of the coolest things that we did was, and I sort of mentioned this, but we opened up all of our councils to anyone, so they didn’t have to have an affiliation. And that’s helped us a lot, because now we have, you know, young professionals has over 500 500 of them that that are joining into that effort. Di we have, you know, now extremely great council that sort of leads that and, you know, there’s there’s a few 100 people that will be involved with that when we do those efforts, women’s network. So having all of them really, you know, cultivating those groups, and essentially having them understand your mission, who we are, who the team is, what we’re doing and getting that out, there has been a huge piece to us those, getting the community involved and having them sort of help us get that message out there and tell the story. I mean, we did start doing a lot of different mediums where obviously we use social and we show you know all the cool things the team is up to and what the community is doing. But we do a piece once a quarter, we’re still a big print area here in northeastern Pennsylvania in the paper that talks about all those councils and members and you know what’s happening in the community. So I think we’ve tried to reach people in many different ways. And and, you know, speaking in high school, speaking at colleges, all those different things to try to really get that message of who we are out there is a lot of the work that we’ve been doing, I still think we have a lot of work to do on that, especially because you know, this year, we’re sort of, again, putting a new strategic plan out, and you’re gonna see us in doing some different things. So I think that will always be, but we rely on our wonderful media partners in the area, we rely on our ambassadors. And, you know, it’s one of our actual goals, when we talk a little bit more about what our pillar that’s quality of life is telling our story better, but also telling the area story better. So when someone says, Hey, I want to move my business or my family to Northeastern PA, we have a really cool way that, you know, we’re putting those things together and with all of our partners, of course, to really clearly show how this area is that best place and that, you know, we can help link them. And that’s essentially what I think we are at the end of the day, we’re a convener of all these great things in this community. And we’re the ones that can bring all that together, and fill in the gaps where needed. But you know, convening those conversations, being the ones that kind of bring all those pieces into one place, and, and helping to create that change.

Brandon Burton 26:15
I like the idea of leading that community involvement. So then those community members can go out and tell the story of hey, this is what the Chamber’s involved with. I think that’s very smart. And to be able to get them involved in different levels, like you mentioned, the high schools and the colleges. I’d like to have you to maybe touch a little bit more on the social media outreach that you do, because I don’t imagine you guys are saying, Here’s the definition of what a chamber is, or here’s what our mission is necessarily, but how are you telling the story of your chamber through social media?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 26:46
Yeah, I mean, we, we really tried to, again, focus a lot on, you know, putting out the different programs, we have the different events, we have things like that, but telling it more. So from a perspective of, you know, if it was one of the pilot programs, we did an economic development to help kids with coding skills or something like that, telling the story about success. I’m telling the story of the businesses that are, you know, ribbon cuttings, and the different types of things that we have really connecting with those members, and telling those stories. So I think we really tried to make it less of an advertisement for the chamber, but more so showing through those types of really, you know, I think personalizing it in a way that’s really showing the different touch points that we have in the community. So I think that we use social as a tool of, you know, enjoying the team, when we’re when we’re out, having lunch somewhere and having fun, or we’re supporting heart month right now, which it is, you know, and helping our local hospitals and medical organizations really promoting that we’ve we’ve tried to really make it something that looks, you know, inviting and welcoming, and that we’re part of this community and, and showing that through all the different pieces that we have. Because I think when we’re highlighting, yes, we’re having, you know, we’re at an event or we’re having, you know, this this government affairs or, you know, we’re doing this, we’re launching a new workforce program. I think showing those in sort of more of a storytelling mode is the way that we’ve really started to capture a lot of people that are following us that are engaging with it. So I again, we have a great marketing team here that that has really focused on that and making sure that we’re telling that story in a good way. That’s that’s welcoming more people into that mix.

Brandon Burton 28:26
That’s fantastic. So I wanted to ask, just as a point of clarity, you mentioned at the beginning, when you were talking about your chamber kind of scope of work, and everything you had mentioned, you guys have a foundation was a foundation set up prior to the rebrand and I’m asking because for a chamber who may be considering a rebrand, should they consider introducing a foundation into their chamber as part of that rebrand?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 28:53
Yeah, so our foundation was set up prior. So we did have a C three prior to that rebrand. But you know, this, that entity, which essentially is what our economic development is run through, is, is one that had been also rebranded many years back. So so we really wanted to change the ways that we were operating that so we had developed a entrepreneurial program, which we call again, connect, who was called books fair connect still is, which is a free system for entrepreneurs, businesses to go through any stage of their life cycle to again, get connected with all the different partners that would help a business grow and succeed in NEPA. So literally, we just put all the partners in one place, a business could come in, and it flowed through there. So Kinect was really the launch of how we started really redoing our foundational side. So we started doing a lot of work on we have a really cool incubator that’s in the basement of the building I’m in now, which again, is for entrepreneurs, startups and gets them into our community and out into our business community. And we started developing programs underneath that. But then also, you know what it allows us to do do is essentially every year have what we call the chamber foundation pledge, which is a great campaign that is really aimed at fundraising, to be able to allow us to do the work that we’re doing. So when we talk about, you know, the pilots programs that we’re doing, including our workforce, or one that we’re now doing with 11th, and 12th, graders in schools, it’s really going to focus a lot on that foundational work we’re doing. So it’s allowed us to, essentially, you know, contribute, obviously, to the organization, financially, which is, which is a big piece, but it also allows us to give back. So through that foundation, you know, we’re able to give out grants, sometimes for small businesses to start operating, you know, we’re able to do a lot of great work, we’re allowed to apply for obviously, different grants and initiatives that the C three will allow us to that are very much focused on what our mission is. So the foundation was there, we’re definitely utilizing it in a different way now, which is great, because I think it has to be a big piece of how, if you’re, if an organization is able to how you’re able to continue growing? You know, I know, as things get challenging, but I think that a lot of our work now, you know, while I do think that, you know, we’re starting, we’re seeing, you know, growth and stabilization and membership and events. So obviously, as we’re coming out of the pandemic, you know, when you’re looking at how can we truly grow and continue to do you know, more work in the community. And what we want to do this, the C three in the foundational side is what’s really allowing me to continue growing my team and doing a lot of things that align with those missions.

Brandon Burton 31:31
I appreciate the testimony on foundations, I feel like every chamber needs to have one. And if you don’t have one, you know, start the conversation, see what you need to do to get started. But Lindsey, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you earlier, you had mentioned that your your goal, the slogans chambers to elevate the valley, I want to challenge you to help elevate the chamber of champions that are listening, for those that are listening that want to take their chamber up to the next level, elevate them What tip or action item might you have to help them accomplish that?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 32:05
I would say, you know, I and I definitely feel this because I know we all have felt it. It’s been a challenging for a few years. You know, I think that really it shook a lot up. I know that we were working all throughout the entire pandemic, I mean, harder, right, it was it was more difficult, we sometimes have less resources. But I would say that what what my my view on it has been in what my you know, I’ve definitely tried to instill in my team is that it’s also an incredible time to reinvent ourselves. And I think we’ve had a lot of energy and momentum around that. And I think we’ve kept that with us that we have now this opportunity to really be the ones that you know, I think they they always mentioned, you know, on a lot of the chamber, national efforts, and a lot of the things we talked about this chamber boom, I think people looked at us all during the pandemic and said, I don’t know where to go, there’s a ton of information. I’m getting a million emails, it’s, it’s confusing, you know, where should I turn, and a lot of them turn to us. And I think taking advantage of that right now and saying, you know, we are having this amazing opportunity of being in this position in our communities? And how do we really take advantage of that to make sure that that continues, and that we remain that leader that people continue to look to. And I think that’s something that while it was challenging, we looked at it as an incredible opportunity, and one that we were happy to take on and take that position in our area. And one that you know, I always say we feel very humbled and honored always have that people find that, you know, we’re a resource to come to, and you know, that they’re looking to us for that. So I think just remaining up to that challenge. And looking at it as a cool time to reinvent is is one of the tips that I would get, because I think right now, in all of our communities, which are all going to be different yet sort of the same. You know, all these different aspects of what we’re looking to do every day, I would say are ones that, again, I think we can be the conveners of I think we can show our strength, I think that we can show different ways that we can continue to grow and evolve as chambers. And just like, again, taking advantage of, you know, the community, really wanting to embrace us right now and how the best way to do that and embracing the community. Being inclusive, being open, inviting new people to your table, I think is one of the key things that we’ve really, that’s what we’ve really focused on.

Brandon Burton 34:20
I love how you stay on brand to with reinventing I mean, that’s just the theme through this whole episode. So the next question I like asking everyone I have on the podcast, and he may have already touched on the answer with that last reply. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 34:40
I think chambers will, as I kind of touched on a little bit, but I think chambers will continue to be that you know if they if they pivot and adapt to really what’s happening and really look at their communities and decide what gaps they’re going to fill. I think chambers will continue to make really great partnerships with their area that might be with others. chambers that might be with other organizations that are similar in their, in their scope, I think that the industry is going to have to continue to evolve. Like I said, I think this next generation coming up just doesn’t participate in the same way that paths have. So I think you’re going to have to find new ways to engage them, I always say I get very excited about this next generation, because they will be the most socially minded and entrepreneurial will have ever seen. So I’d say that you have to embrace that next generation coming in, and make sure that they are invited to sit at your table. If they are not, they will leave your area and go sit in a community, where are they are, because that’s the truth, they want to be involved with their area, they want to make change. And that’s, that’s a big fact of them. And it’s exciting to me, because we need a generation like that, that is going to really be the ones that that helped to make some positive change and be engaged. So I think that our industry is going to continue to make sure that diversity, equity and inclusion is a part of what how we’re operating now, I think we should all be looking at our boards or committees, our membership, making sure we’re representative, and we’re embracing the community we have and that we have resources for for everyone that, you know, are accessible. And I think that again, you’re gonna see a lot of chambers get into really cool, different stuff. I mean, I’m already seeing it with housing and transportation. And, you know, obviously, I know a lot of us are focused on workforce. But I think you’re going to see a lot of people come up with creative, you know, partnerships to be able to solve those issues and in turn stabilize their organizations, because I think it’s going to be a key for all of us to look at how do we stay in our communities? How do we stay relevant? How do we stay growing, and bring people on to do I know the massive amount of work all of us have, but you know, the work we’re excited to do and happy to do? So I think it’s going to be continuing to kind of adapt to those things, looking at your community and saying, Where are the gaps, what’s not being filled? Where we need it? And you know, how can we really fulfill that and get the right people on board with us, there’s never really a grab that you know, or program that we you’re going to see us do that as solo, I mean, we’re either working with a local economic health organization and other chamber, a different partner that may be involved. I think that that connectivity is also a huge piece that people need to embrace. No longer should we be in silos we should be working together, there’s too many problems to solve. Doing it together, I think is much more impactful. So I’d also say doing it as collaboration is something that I’m really hoping that that everyone else is also embracing.

Brandon Burton 37:33
I love that response. I especially like the the idea of looking to the future of this generation coming up being socially minded and entrepreneurial, and making sure that we invite them to have a seat at the table. And I think that plays well into the connectivity because these young professionals that are coming up. They may be working from home on a laptop individually in their own silo. But usually when we think of silos, we think, you know, different industries maybe or different areas of work. But I think those silos will look different as we go into the future and being able to help break those down and solve some of these bigger problems together. So thank you for that. I wanted to give you an opportunity Lindsey to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect with you and learn how you guys are doing things there at the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 38:25
Sure, thank you. So I can certainly be reached i Welcome to Talk to Anyone from the industry, I think it’s always one of the best things ever is to connect within our industry because I’ve learned so much every time and it’s just great to have others that are you know, kind of doing similar missions and getting new ideas. So I can be reached at my email, which is lindsay@wyomingvalleychamber.org. And that’s also can be found right on our website. I’m all of my team is accessible on there as well. So on our WyomingValleyChamber.org website, you’ll see my incredible team, what they focus in, you know, what their initiatives all are. So anything I talked to, I didn’t get to talk too much in detail today. But who manages you know, our di Council, our membership, all of our different networks, young professionals, all those types of things. The team is all on there and always happy to connect with anyone within the chamber world and ideas share.

Brandon Burton 39:19
That is perfect. I will get that in our show notes. And I appreciate the generosity and being able to connect with others and share ideas and help solve these problems together. I appreciate that Lindsey and thank you for spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I feel like you’ve provided a lot of value for those listening for those who may be considering a rebrand of themselves or just that continual evolution and reinventing of the their chamber themselves. So thank you so much for that.

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 39:46
Thank you so much.

Brandon Burton 31:03
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Chamber Utility for NFTs with Ronnie Russell

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him.

Kris Johnson 0:41
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:23
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Our guest for this episode is Ronnie Russell. Ronnie is an active duty retired infantry men from the United States Army with 22 years of service. He’s been deployed to Iraq twice and Bosnia once and has been awarded the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal Joint Service Achievement Medal and numerous Army Commendation Medals. He’s also a former infantry drill sergeant at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he has dedicated countless hours to training American sons. In 2010. Ronnie was nominated for the NAACP Service Award, and was the 32nd, recipient of the blacks and government Award. He is also co founder of the Texas Black Pages, a black business directory that represents 254 counties. He currently serves as the president of the Innovation Black Chamber of Commerce in Greater Fort Hood, Texas area.

Ronnie, 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 and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.

Ronnie Russell 2:37
So, again, thank you. And I appreciate the platform itself and for everybody to know and understand Cambridge business, dedicated business. So for some time ago, I was trying to figure out, like the why, because the area where we are at the Greater Fort Hood area where we’re dead center between Waco and Austin. But there was no economic representation in the Killeen Fort Hood area. So of course, I’m going out, I’m going to other chambers asking them like, can you bring a satellite chamber in our city? And I did that for a while, but then I was like, like, why am I gonna ask someone to do something that I have the ability to do myself. So I say that to say, programs that your city don’t have created, resources that your city might not have, go out and find it, and bring it into the city. So just keep looking, keep striving keep adjusting, then everything is gonna work out.

Brandon Burton 3:44
And I love that you just took control. And did it reminds me of that quote from Gandhi, you know, to be the change that you want to see in the world. So nobody else is doing it, then, you know, take it on and be the change yourself. So tell us a little bit about the innovation Black Chamber just to give us an idea of, you know, scope of work, the size, the number of members budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of give us an idea and perspective where you’re coming from before we get into our discussion today.

Ronnie Russell 4:15
All right, so the innovation Black Chamber of Commerce was launched in 2019. February 16. Two weeks later, COVID hit so we’re locked in the storm. But we weathered the storm. And that was the great thing about it because at the time, you know, a lot of organ bladder, other organizations, especially the more senior Chamber organizations, they were in in person meetings and meet and greets and whatever it is, but it took time for those to transition into the digital aspect. And we started digital. So because we started digital, we started creating workshops. We started developing new systems from the digital aspect. So we were, like the formalities of how and who we are. As a people, we’ve always gone to in person. But the hybrid is something new. So because we started digital, and now we’re at with the in person, hybrid is a development of pulling people in that haven’t seen faces in a long time, and allowing those who are not comfortable with getting in front of physical, a physical audience to keep them safe. So we develop through that time. We’ve been averaging at least 86 members a year just just growing and expanding and developing. Um, the reason why we’re called the innovation Black Chamber of Commerce, because we didn’t want to get fixed into the constitution and bylaws in restricting us by staying in the city of Killeen, because it allows us to move as fast or as slow and develop and grow into other outlying areas that do not have a demographic representation of a Black Chamber of Commerce. So we have members in Killeen, of course, Fort Hood, Parker, hi, Temple, Belton. We’re out Copperas Cove huddle, Round Rock, Georgetown, because those cities that are major within population, and rich within resources don’t have didn’t have and still don’t have a Black Chamber representation. So it allows us to maneuver in that space. So we’re as fluid as possible without the restrictions of, of the city, or county line. But we’ve grown considerably, I think the first year our budget was only like, honestly, like 25 27,000, because we were we were digital. So it wasn’t that

Brandon Burton 7:03
we didn’t have the rent and everything and all that.

Ronnie Russell 7:07
Correct. So then the budget second year, changed to maybe about 5055. Because now we were buying more things and developing more assets and digital assets as well. I do a lot of stuff. I’m a creative, I built the website, I do all the graphics, I do all of the marketing, I create everything that is needed. Like even the NFT that we develop, I did all the r&d and in bringing that to fruition. So I’m just blessed to have the ability to create where a lot of other chambers who don’t have that, that marketing in house, they have to pay that. And now it’s an expense. I don’t have those expenses of marketing, because I do it myself because I’m social media certified, as well as meta certified as well. My next certification I want Google, but a lot of that stays in house, but we were blessed. And in in the transition into our third year. Now we we I think we, the 990 has data like 108 108,000 hours, okay, and it’s just, it’s just the beginning for me. And knowing what we have. Now we have 251 members, we just we have we got a bank that we just been developing with. And last year, they put in like $2.5 million into our membership with over 750,000 in deposits and transfers into the bank, they just been doing a phenomenal job with helping us out. We’re kind of a hybrid. And I say that to say we have a lot of community engagement, as well as a lot of business development. At the same time, because we have to speak the language of the community by also understanding that we have to advocate for the business community and bring in and pull in those resources at the same time because in our area, we don’t have a CDFI at all. The closest CDFI of people fund and lift fund and Texas mezzanine as well as what’s the other one? I forgot the other one but those CDFIs we don’t have. So I have to go out like now I’m in Austin right now after go out of our way to find the non traditional funding resources and bring them back in into the city so it’s I’m not gonna call it hard work. It’s it’s a worthwhile journey. Yeah, that that I don’t believe how As a final destination, but we will always be reshaping reforming. And we’re going into changing out membership now because, you know, we hit our third year. So we’re bringing in new board members, the the, the original board members, some of them are transitioning up through the advisory board why we bring in new blood membership is changing. Seats, the our EDC is changing seat. So we’re just just growing and developing and reshaping our corps.

Brandon Burton 10:38
That’s awesome. It’s great to have that perspective. Congratulations on year over year doubling your budget. Yeah, hopefully they have clips going in the foreseeable future. So as we have Rodney on the podcast today, we’re going to be focusing our conversation around the utility that chambers can find within NF T’s Ronnie had mentioned to kind of drop that in there as he was talking about it about the chamber that we will dive deeper into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Ronnie, we’re back. So I know I mentioned this to you before we hit record but for everybody listening, the way this kind of developed is I’m part of a small mastermind group of you know, a couple other people that service the chamber industry. And as we were meeting one evening, I was kind of sharing my vision with them of how I see chambers embracing, you know, chambers, the future embracing NFT technology for whether it be for membership or ticket sales or access essentially, a lot of times people think of NF T’s as being you know, eight images and stuff on these blockchain networks. And I think there’s so much more utility to NF T’s that chambers of Congress can really get behind and whenever you look at a an NFT project, they always talk about building a community around that project. And like you know, bingo, you know, lights went off for me and then chambers are all about building communities. So how do we integrate these two chambers of commerce in fts. And while we’re in this mastermind meeting, one of the members of our group did a little Google search for chambers and NFT. And, and Ronnie pops up that the innovation Black Chamber they have incorporated and NFT for ticket sales. So Ronnie, tell us about how that came to be, and how you went about the development of the NF T and maybe a little bit of background. So for those listening who may not be familiar with what an NF t is just to kind of bring them up to speed real quick before you dive in.

Ronnie Russell 15:37
Right? So for me, again, I wanted to be innovative in an in our approach. But in being innovative in the approach, you have to create something new and you have to create something different. So let me read to you what the NFT is, it’s first of all, just to make sure that everybody knows because a lot of times we see it as we’re more afraid of the early adoption of it. And because we’re afraid of the early adoption, then we don’t feel like it’s something that it’s something that that like we can be a part of. So NFT is a non fungible token, which means that it is unique and can’t be replaced. It is the physical is a contrast physical money and cryptocurrency. So the cryptocurrency space is, is volatile. I mean it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. But the one thing that makes that make your NFT different is it will always have value. So what we did with ours, which we actually launched it last year, because we have a we have Texas Black Business Week, which is every second year I mean every second week of February, every year like we’ve been doing it because originally Texas Black Business Week was Texas black pages. And when when I when I launched the chamber I yielded over two IVCC because I didn’t want to compete with my own in my own city with my own events why yielded over so what we did with it when we created the NF t. So I found someone because being with Texas blank page, we have over 17,000 businesses listed within a directory. So I found a SaaS company that also build in our T. So I reached out and told him what I wanted and wanted to create a ticket item. So what happens with your ticketed item, you have to have several other platforms with metamath as well as open seat. So meta mask is where you’re going to have your cryptocurrency storage and you have to have a digital wallet. So that’s your grinder wallet. Right? Correct. Correct. And then you’re going to have to go to open sea and create that account for your crypto wallet to send the money to as well as when people buy it. So what happens is, let’s say you and your organization create the cryptocurrency non fungible token the NFT he created early adoption. So when our our opening ceremony for the Business Week, we gave away 10 fungible tokens. Well, once they give away, we have complimentary, complimentary 10 fungible token. So now that creates the early adoption, because a lot of people want to receive something that they didn’t have to pay for. So the early adopters really begin at that time. So then we did the early adopters, because we created 100 of them. So through the early adoption, we got people to want to go and find out and do research, what NFT was, and how is it beneficial for them. So the NFT that they’ve gotten at no cost to them, already had $100 value on it. So now, that $100 value for them, they got it at no cost. So then what happens is they want to go and buy more. So you as your organization, and when people purchase those NFPs they’re getting money. I mean, you’re receiving income from it. But now it holds value on there, and it’s kind of like buying stocks and bonds, but then when you buy it and then however the market fluctuates, then the value increase, but your cryptocurrency holds a much more stronger baseline with the value of it. So it just helps you out a whole lot more. Now we haven’t transitioned into the website of having a crypto platform where you can get your MBA estimate of your membership by purchasing your your membership through cryptocurrency. But we wanted to do it with events just to test the market. So if you’re thinking about going into the NFP perspective, figure out how are you going to do the early adoption? Because the early adoption is going to get people interested in learning more about what cryptocurrency is, and then you as an organization, you begin to figure out how is it going to benefit you in the organization as well, because because you’re a 501, C three, and they’re right there, they’re purchasing these products. Now they want to write it off, but the value still stays. They can write it off, but it’s still worth 100 hours. So they didn’t lose anything. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 20:40
no, that’s a that’s a neat perspective. And I love how you guys really focused on a trial with a specific event to see, you know, to build out the technology, see how it works. Go about educating your members about it. That’s uh, one of the hurdles that I see is with chambers adopting NFT technology is educating their membership base. So did you take any special steps to educate with this event? Did you just do NFT tickets? Or did you have traditional ticket sales two, sorry, two questions. And one, they’re

Ronnie Russell 21:18
both, we actually did both. So what we did is, of course, here we have the tangible ticket, and the non tangible tickets, of course, which is the NFL, the NFL, the non fungible token. So we tokenized our tickets. I’m gonna say that, again, you tokenize our tickets through the NRP, which is the non fungible token. And what we did was, we had the company that created the NFP itself, actually have them host, a Digital Workshop on Zoom, to get people to be much more educated on what the NFC was. So then the individual that won those non fungible tokens, then we had an additional workshop because they had to show them how they bow to receive it. Because once you receive once you want the NFT, you have to now be able to receive it. So I had to go in, get the go into open See, get the alphanumeric code, and then take that code and then send it to your account. So one, because you want that doesn’t necessarily mean that the work is over with no, you still have to download metamath, you still have to download and create an open sea account in order for me to thin your new cryptocurrency or your new NFT to you in order for it to digitally show up in their in their open sea.

Brandon Burton 22:57
So for those listening, so meta mask is going to be your crypto wallet that you use to receive these the NFT. In exchange crypto, it’s your storage, your wallet, that’s where you host these digital assets. Open see is more of that marketplace, right? Where you can post the NF T’s for sale. And there’s also an aftermarket right for NF Ts. So with this specific NFT that you guys created, is it good for the one event? Is it good for future events to how does it retain its value after the one after the event that you sold them for?

Ronnie Russell 23:37
Again, as cryptocurrencies so the value stays. So we can either repurpose it, or we can keep it as is because right now when you go to Open see you type in innovation, Black Chamber of Commerce, you’re going to see the hologram ticket that was created. So say this year, we’ll say this year during Black Business Week at the launch, we say now we’re going to offer a minted non fungible token from last year. So now the value is going to increase because last year’s price is not today’s price when you when you look at it, so you can just repurpose it and do the same thing. Or instead of doing a complimentary because the education has already been there. So now you can say today’s value, even do a silent auction silent auction with the NFT. So and then again, it’s going to gain more money from the donations of it. So now the winner again, they get the same thing as everybody else who did it with a complimentary service, because they’ve seen it before they understand it now. Well they have a knowledge base about it. So then if another way to do it because even to what you’re selling oxygen because it’s an NF t you take it in Put it on a big screen TV. And it you know in a rotates and everybody see you get the oohs and ahhs and stuff like that. So now through the silent auction of NF T’s, you’re going to make money. And again, in the person that purchased that NF T, they’re going to then take that whole purchase that purchase order that they’ve gotten from the NFT. And they’re gonna write that off. So you’re gonna get money from the silent auction, and they’re going to have a NFT, that they’re going to have value. So now another thing that I want you to know, when they purchased that NFT, and it’s being bought, the value of the NFT, that you have less, I mean, you have left now and goes up, because it’s purchased. Another thing that people can do what your NF t is, because it’s on a marketplace, people can go to like, now we’ve had a couple of hits, because again, open sea is an open market, we had a couple of hits, and people coming in and looking to buy our NF tees and and go through a whole auction process to where they said, Okay, I purchased it for $5 Somebody come out and see it, like no app purchased it for 10. So it just creates an ongoing marketplace by just doing one thing, by allowing yourself to be an early adopter, in creating something that, that that has a lifespan as long as it still exists in the market. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:28
So about two years ago, that’s when I was first getting introduced to NF Ts and and I you know, purchase Bitcoin and stuff. But prior to that, but the NF T’s were really starting to come on the scene. And at the same time I was in the process of creating a podcasting course to teach chambers had a podcast, we had a podcast. And the idea hit me, you know, if I created a limited amount, say, you know, 10, or 20 of the podcast courses, but tokenize it as an NFT. And then sell it. So once the chamber knows how to podcast, they don’t need the course anymore, they can resell that and in essence, be marketing to continue to market that course to other chambers. And you could build in a royalty with it to to where maybe you get 10% back on each resale. So it continues to be sold and promoted and produced and pushed out there. I didn’t go that course just because I didn’t have the technical know how to pull it all together. But in concept at that that could be a great utility, whether it’s a chamber or anybody else with courses in the future. But what are some other utilities that you see on the horizon for chambers to utilize and FTS and cryptocurrency?

Ronnie Russell 27:46
I mean, membership, but that’s really if you’re, if the community that you’re in, is really strong as a real good knowledge base, what NF T’s and crypto is and even offering NFT workshops for your members. I mean, even if you excuse me, even if you don’t use it to tokenize some of the things that you do, but you can still offer it as a workshop for your members as well as a workshop for the community. open sea has a grant that they do in order for awhile to assist you with teaching about the NFT process. So there’s grant money that’s out there for innovation. And that’s something that you can use to add into the scope of work with with your workshops, because it’s still early adoption, it’s still early, you know, even though it’s been out for maybe two years going on three years, it’s still early adoption is less than five years. So it’s still early Within those stages, though, I will say just take a look at it and see if it’s beneficial for you for one. And then from those benefits. Now you can add it as a benefit for your corporate sponsor. So they come in, they pay 5000 10,000 15,000 3000, whatever it is, and now that comes with the NFT. So now that corporation or that sponsor that you used to come in at a certain level, like say for your chamber banquets, or your community engagement events, so now you can tokenize their sponsorship by creating they’re taking their logo, of course getting permission, taking their logo and tokenizing their logo to say that this is the 2023 sponsor for whatever. So now you tokenize it so now you’re creating value even after the event is over. So now the event forever lives on because you have tokenized their support

Brandon Burton 30:00
That’s awesome. Yeah, I would follow a similar model, I think that you guys did as you look at memberships. So maybe you don’t do it for your entire membership and maybe a segment, right? Maybe you look at your young entrepreneurs, and you can have, they tend to be some of those early adopters. And if you can explain that, you know, membership for young entrepreneurs is done through an NF T. And that’s gonna get you access to online trainings, and all these different things that are focused for the young entrepreneurs. And then as they grow up, you know, through, you know, their business life through their, their professional career, you slowly start to integrate that throughout the rest of the chamber memberships. And, you know, if that young entrepreneur were to get a different job, or to, you know, heaven forbid, you know, move out of the community, they can either hang on to that as a valuable non fungible token, or they could go to somewhere like open sea and resell it, and be an advocate for your chamber and continuing to sell memberships. I think there’s a lot of utility there. Right? So going back to the ticketing, so you tokenize a ticket as as people showed up to the event, how do you go about you know, accepting the tickets as it you know, a paper traditional paper ticket versus ticketing on an NFT that they pull up on their phone?

Ronnie Russell 31:22
Well, on your back office, open, see, it actually, lets you know who actually purchased it. So they just create your your normal atom analog list of what you who purchased it, and then they come, then they can either they can show it, and then they can then you as organizations still line that particular NFT, owner and ticket purchaser off on your list. So it’s not something out maybe in the in the foreseeable future, which I do know there is a platform that that does do tokenized ticketing, so they can create that tokenized ticketing. And then I believe they do have a QR code, so they can check you in kind of like you do with Eventbrite and other platforms. So I think there is one that’s out there, I did find one, but I went, I wanted to go more. So more so with a open sea account, as opposed to just that one ticket item on that platform. Because once it’s over, it’s over, open feed, keep it a lot longer. So that that’s what we did. And that’s why I made that decision on not just using it as a ticketed items, but use it as a item for ticketing, which extends the life of the event.

Brandon Burton 32:41
Yeah. So I know there’s been a lot of examples out there of entrepreneurs that have launched NFT projects and communities around it. The one that comes to mind is Gary Vaynerchuk, right with his V friends. So maybe rather than going into the whole story of Gary Vaynerchuk, and V friends, people can Google that and get, you know, the background on what that was, but maybe just in a nutshell, he created these little animated characters. And anybody that bought these NF T’s, there’s like 10,000 of them, they would get access to his annual conference that he does for his fans for the next three years. So that one NFT purchase retains its value, you have an image that’s tradable, it’s non fungible, it’s your own, you know, your own property that you purchase, then there’s a lot of after sale market on that, but it retains the value for the next three years, especially with access to his conference. And then he does these airdrops and you know, other, you know, giveaways to those holders of his NFT. So, it incentivizes people to hang on to it and continues to build value on that. So, I just mentioned that put it out there. So chambers can think of other ways to maybe build on the technology and see the offerings that their chamber has to offer and, and see where some things might like that. But Ronny is, as you’ve gone through this experiment, was it worthwhile, would you do it again?

Ronnie Russell 34:16
Um, would I do it again? I will, I will approach it differently. Okay. What lessons did you learn do it again? Yeah. early adoption is is is hard with different age groups. My city the city of Killeen is a young city. But when it comes to Chamber members, a lot of them are older. So the early adoption with the older Chamber members in them is the devil like, I already don’t like to get online with you trying to shove this down my throat. Like I don’t have a habit pay for it. So I, I would do it differently. Like I would pose several NFT workshop, and just invite not just your members, but invite the community to come and be a part of it. Because now when they see your your chamber, actually doing something with NF T’s, then it allows them to feel like, okay, that’s a place that I can go to, they won’t make them feel like the chamber is a nursing home with a bunch of old people in it, right? But it allowed them to say, okay, they talk in my language. And let me go in here and see how I can be an asset. Like maybe you can begin to develop a digital committee and everything in a digital committee is totally different than just marketing is actually digitizing the process, assisting members with digitizing their paperwork, and it just totally changes the game when you’re speaking the language of the youth. So now they want to be a part of what you’re doing, instead of just being what their thing is. That’s what old people. So I will use that the early adoption workshop prior to launching in a ticketed item NF T with people who are already afraid of going online.

Brandon Burton 36:23
And that’s so important for just staying relevant as a chamber going forward. You don’t want to push your your longtime lifetime members do something new, that’s going to push them away. But for those early adopters, and to be able to continue to stay relevant, maybe do it for a segment of your of your membership population and just slowly integrate it. Was there a cost involved with creating the NFT? What does that look like you You said he had worked with the SAS company?

Ronnie Russell 36:52
There there. I think we were there. Maybe third client, okay. It wasn’t expensive. But even after we came, we had two members that we sent to them. So we got kind of, you know, some some money on the back end. That wasn’t how it started. It was like, you know, what you brought us to clients. So this is what we’re going to do for you. So it was kind of a good give and take, when it comes to I think we only pay maybe 450. Okay, for it. So again, it wasn’t expensive. But their work was good. But I will say if you’re thinking about going into the NFP look at their work, go to their open see account, and ensure that you’re getting something that was that is tailored to you and your organization. The one thing that I would do different from a design perspective, is to ensure that the design that they’re doing for you doesn’t look like somebody else’s design that they did. Because they they did a blockchain, you’re like, Oh man, that’s nice. But then you go to the, to their open sea account like, man, one thing you did to take my take their logo out, put my logo in, and then you change their color. But my color. Yeah. So make sure that you create something that is tailored and designed for you. And not a you universal and then like everybody else that they’ve done.

Brandon Burton 38:24
That’s good insight. As far as pricing the NFT. Did you price it in dollars or Aetherium or Solana or what did you price it in?

Ronnie Russell 38:34
It wasn’t Aetherium they use the theory. Okay? Because they had also look at, like, what’s the cost of the of the week that we had to deal with? So it won’t be I’m charging you this month, I mean this much. But then you got this much and gas fee. So you’re like, Man, the value ain’t the same or more because you got hit with so much. So many feeds with just purchasing it. So again, the company that went through using Ethereum, so it would depend on like, even when you’re doing it, make sure they’re there, they’re open enough to educate you about it and educates you through the entire process. Like it’s kind of like the customer journey. So have them walk you through the entire journey like like, I am the person that is purchasing the NFT now walk me through it, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. Now, I’m

Brandon Burton 39:31
just curious from a back end side of it, do you do you keep those sales in Aetherium? Did you convert it back to dollars as you put it into Bitcoin or how did that look after the sale?

Ronnie Russell 39:43
Of course the market fluctuates, but keeping it in, in the in the crypto space, it allows that to be a market that your marketplace so then when you do want to convert it and push it through your metamath gives me send it from Coinbase to traditional bank. I wanted to keep it any theory and because at the time the market was fluctuating as far as the cryptocurrency was was going, so I kept it in there. It’s kind of like, if you take it out too early, now you lost all this value because it unhit again. So I kept it in there.

Brandon Burton 40:22
Okay, good deal. So as we start wrapping up, I wanted to ask you for any chambers that are out there listening that are looking to take their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item, might you suggest whether it’s related to the NFT space or anything else? What What would you have to offer?

Ronnie Russell 40:42
This, don’t be afraid of technology. Like our three buckets in the chamber itself is Business Technology, and veteran. And I want it to ensure that there was a technology agenda. Because a lot of people are afraid when they hear the word technology because there is a there are developed fears. When it comes to technology. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean that you can’t find out. And when you begin to find out, that’s when you become an asset to be valuable to those who need the information that you just obtain. So don’t be afraid of technology, learn the technology, understand the technology, repurpose the information that you that you just found.

Brandon Burton 41:32
That is a that’s a great tip there especially like repurposing that information that you find. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ronnie Russell 41:48
I think chambers need to be more of a conduit when it comes to crowdfunding. Because for us we do a lot of giving. And because we do a lot of giving we we we have a lot that we receive, like for our Juneteenth festival is actually crowdfunding. Okay, it looks like a festival to the eye. But on a back end. It’s it’s a program. It’s an economic program. We give away 10,000 hours a year, during our Juneteenth festival, first prize, get five second, get three. And third, get to. So as the sponsors pay into your program, repurpose the sponsorship and pour that back out into the community. Because the community is where the members lead. And the community is where who go and support the business that are not your member. So those members that are not your members seeing what you do, because for our Juneteenth festival with the June team, grant, it can be a member or not, that come and be a part of it. But when you’re an asset from a economic perspective, so then it becomes a resource and a value to the community because you have value and you have valuable value is something that is presented valuable is a resource, it is a resource that then becomes duplicated, because it is always going to be needed, because it was always going to meet a need. Because problems is just a need that meet a need that that that needs to be met. So look at what needs need to be met, and then create a program that meets the needs of the issue.

Brandon Burton 43:50
I love it very well said. So, Ronnie, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners that like to reach out and connect and learn more maybe about building an NFT or looking for a referral to the SAS company that did this for you what, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect and learn more?

Ronnie Russell 44:11
Yeah, so you can find and follow the Innovation Black Chamber of Commerce on Facebook, Instagram. Going to website innovationbcc.org. There’s lots of social proof that’s out there. So if you want to send an email, you can send an email to info@Innovationbcc.org or you can give us a call at 254-415-9951 and I’m in the heart of Texas, Central Texas. So I have no issue with with coming and speaking whatever it is, is at no cost to you. I will pull up and show up longer it means that I’ll pull up as though

Brandon Burton 44:58
that is a great offer right there because Ronnie covered a lot of valuable information with us today. I hope everybody was taking notes, maybe re listen to this one again, dive in a little bit deeper and learn more about NFT technology and see where those overlaps are for your chamber for your community, how you can apply this sustain relevant going forward into the future. But Ronnie, thank you so much for joining us today for sharing your experience and how you guys have gone through this and, and really just painting a picture of how NF Ts can really meet a need for Chambers of Commerce. I really appreciate that.

Ronnie Russell 45:36
So thank you for that.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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5 Lessons Learned in 2022

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

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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.

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

Jason Mock 0:39
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 0:56
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

For this episode, I decided to do a top five lessons learned in 2022. Now as I record this, it is Christmas Eve 2022. And this episode we’ll be releasing on the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years. So purposely, I want to keep this episode a little shorter, just so you can still get some good value out of it and ideas. But I want you to be able to spend time with your family and get those things done around the house that you don’t normally have time to do because you’re your normal busy schedule. So before I get into those top five lessons learned now some of the lessons that I’ll share are ones that were directly related to podcast episodes that I’ve I’ve put out over this last year. And some are just lessons from observing the world and things going on in the environment. So keep that in mind as I go through the lessons. But before I get into those lessons, I wanted to share a personal lesson, I guess you can say that I’ve learned and that is that over, I guess almost four years now doing the podcast, I have reached a point where my time is being stretched very thin, a lot of responsibilities on my plate. And I’m at the point where I need to bring on some help somebody to help to edit and produce the podcast episodes, just to free up a little bit more of my time to where I can focus more intently on getting great guests on the podcast and other projects and special interests that I have to develop that are related to the show. So with that I’ve in you’re familiar as a chamber professional is you see a need for growth within your chamber. The next question is how do you go about providing the financial backing to justify it. And we just had a great episode last week, I believe it was last week where we had Susan Williams on. And she talked about staffing. So that episode came at a really good time for me, as I’m thinking about things that I need to do to staff up the podcast, and create a better experience for all of you as well. So continue to serve, you know, bigger and better going forward in the future. So as I was trying to figure out the best way of doing this, we do have some regular show sponsors. So I would love for you to support them and, you know, buy their product support their businesses, because that keeps their sponsorships coming to Chamber Chat Podcast. But I also, over the years have received messages and emails and ran into some of you at conferences, who have expressed the great value that that you find out of the podcast that lessons learned the way you’re able to stay and be able to stay engaged and continue to learn within the chamber space. So if you are one of those people, and you would like to find a way to support the podcast, a way to continue to see the growth of it. What I decided to do was I created a page on my website so chamberchatpodcast.com/support where you can become a sponsor yourself.

So when I created the podcast, the goal was to always have it be free. And that is still my goal to have this be a free resource, especially for those chambers that don’t have the resources to go to chamber conferences and be a part of their local or state association. I wanted to create a resource for them to be able to learn best practices and tips and strategies so they can better serve their business community. Ready. So this will always be free. What I posted on this page on my website, though the support page is different options if you would like to provide some financial support. So this suggestion, and these are just suggestions, so if you wanted to give a different amount, you can reach out and and contact me and we can set up a different structure. But just to make it easy. The suggested amounts, if you are a single listener, be $5 a month. And if you are comfortable doing that, I would appreciate that it would help to you know, if we, if we get several of you doing $5 A month that would definitely help to pay somebody to produce the podcasts for me. Hopefully, you are also sharing the podcast with your staff. So if you have different staff sizes, if you have a smaller staff, maybe two to five staff members, maybe you do $10 a month for your medium size in you know, five to 15 staff members, maybe $20 a month. And if you’re a larger staff more and there’s even a Superfan option. So if you want to check those out, see what makes the most sense for you. Maybe it comes out like as a single listener, maybe the $5 a month comes out of your personal credit card. If you’re doing it for your staff, maybe that becomes an office expense to help support and train sustain your your staff. So I’ll let you decide what what works best for you and your situation there. But with that aside, we’ll we’ll move on to the top five lessons that I’ve learned in 2022. And we’ll get into that as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, we are back. So the top five lessons that I have from 2022. Again, these are these are no particular order necessarily. They’re just what stood out to me as I look back on the year. So one, the first lesson that I’ll highlight is the importance for chambers to be advocates, while also remaining as a sane center in their community. So Though we had an episode 162, Marc Cohen from the Greater Rochester Chamber was on and he talked about the role of chambers and advocacy and policy. And it was a great episode, I would highly recommend people go back and listen to that one. But also Episode 175, we had Bill Connors, on from Boise talking about being the same center at your chamber. So not being too extreme one way or the other, but really listening to what those needs are of your members. And then creating programs around that supporting candidates and policies that would enable strong business in your community. So there’s a lot of good that in those two episodes right there.

The second lesson that I wanted to highlight was the great value that comes out of collaborating and creating partnerships with others. So these may be collaborations or partnerships with other chambers. They may be another organization in your region, maybe a Convention Visitors Bureau, maybe an economic development, maybe your city itself. But what really came to mind is like created the CIO, or came up with this lesson learned. It was from a reflection, as I look back on some of the chamber, the year finalist interviews that I did this year. And a couple of those chambers, partnered with local banks through the COVID pandemic to help get funding to their members. And as we know, funding was extremely important at that time. And that was a very good strategic partnership for those chambers that took advantage of that. So keep your eyes open, keep them peeled for opportunities to create collaborations or partnerships that make sense to benefit your members.

The third lesson from 2022 that I wanted to highlight was actually an episode all in itself. So it was episode 188, with Jordan Clemons from Greater Louisville Inc. And he talked all about LinkedIn, for growing your chamber membership. And he has a great strategy. If you haven’t heard that episode, I would encourage you to listen or at least have your your membership staff listen to it, as he has a whole strategy of how he uses LinkedIn specifically, to put posts out that really highlight your community and drives a lot of engagement. And then he’s able to see who engages with those posts, learn more about them through their LinkedIn profile, and then reach out to them and create a dialogue that’s already a warm conversation because they’ve already interacted with his post. And by utilizing the strategy, he’s exceeded his sales goals year after year, and really done a great job for GLI. So getting that was episode 188. If you’d like to go back and listen to that one again.

The fourth lesson that I wanted to highlight was the importance of leaning into digital to create relevant and personal communication channels, or strategies. And we had a great, great episode with Sara Ray, and Episode 166, where she talked about just this, about creating relevant personalized communications, specifically through email. So when you look at your email response rate, your email engagement, you’re probably not as satisfied as you’d like to be, if you’re like any other chamber, but by creating relevant content. So as you look at what, why did this member join your chamber? What are they expecting? What are their expectations? What are they looking for what needs do they have to support their business. And then if you can customize your communication to these members based on their needs and desires, that will put your engagement through the roof, both on the digital front with email engagements or social posts, but also for having people show up to events that are relevant to them. That way, they’re not just tone, you know, tuning out everything that comes from the chamber because so much of it’s not relevant to them. Now they’re only getting things that are relevant to them so they pay more attention and engage at a much higher level.

The fifth lesson fifth and final lesson that I will highlight from 2022 is really a personal observation as I look at business environments, economy trends, I see a future where chambers Of Commerce can really benefit by embracing cryptocurrency and NFTs. So for those of you who may not be familiar, NFT stands for non fungible token, meaning there can only be one of that token. So think of it as maybe a coin or an image or some kind of a digital asset that has kind of like a stamp on it that says this is a one of one one of a kind token. And with that NFT’s initially kind of rolled out as expensive JPEGs. So, people would put out these digital images of cats or, you know, different cartoon type characters, and they would sell them for ridiculous amounts of money. It made zero sense to me, I can’t understand why anybody got behind that. But as I learned more about it, and heard about people creating NFT projects, they really focused on the community building aspect of NFT projects. And then my ears perked up. And I had somewhat of an aha moment. Right that anytime I hear the word community, I think Chambers of Commerce need to be involved. So when you look at building an NFT project, creating a community around it, how can a chamber of commerce utilize this? So here’s an example. I recently came out with a chamber podcasting guide to teach chambers how to create a podcast. About the same time I was creating that, that course that chamber podcasting course, I was learning more about NFT’s. And I thought, I wish the technology was developed enough that I could release this course as an NFT. So in other words, if I had access, I launched this course and I have 10 tokens, let’s say that are NFT’s non fungible tokens to access this course, then I can sell them to chambers, as a chamber takes a course learns how to podcast, then they don’t need the course anymore, because they know the material that’s in there, they could then turn around and resell that NFT to another chamber, who can then learn to podcast and that first chamber can get, you know, some or all or more of their investment back of what they initially paid. And within that NFT there are smart contracts that are involved. So within the smart contract, I could write in there a commission. So every time that NFT is resold, or every time that course is resold, I could get a 10% commission, let’s say, based on whatever the sale price was. So think about how would that apply to your chamber? Do you have programs? Do you have courses? Do you have tutorials, do you have different resources, that could be packaged as an NFT, that would allow for your members to market your product and services that would allow them to regain maybe their initial investment in that in that token, and continue to promote that to other businesses in your community. So that is a thought that I had had. But as I continue to think of chambers of commerce utilizing NFT’s many of you already have a tiered dues membership platform. So maybe you look at offering membership as NFTs. So if you have a different NFT for each level of your membership, and you have a certain number of NFT’s for each level, as a chamber member maybe levels up to a higher level of membership, they can sell their initial membership to another member and become an advocate for bringing other businesses into the chamber.

If a chamber were to move out of the community, they don’t have to just lose their chamber benefits but they could resell their membership to another business, there could be a whole other resale market. And with that, you can have the smart contract involved where you’re making revenue off of that every time that membership is resold. But my thought with this is you end up having your members become advocates who are out there are ambassadors we can say that are out there really promoting the value they get from the chamber especially as they go to resell their NFTs and level up their membership. So I don’t know that the technology is ready For Chamber’s to jump right into the NFT space, but something to keep in mind is as we look to the future, look to the kids look to the youth who are playing video games. They’re playing games like Minecraft, and Roblox and fortnight, you know, games like that you and I may look at them as games. I don’t play them. I don’t know much about them. My kids play them. And what I do know is that lots of commerce is being done within these meta verses. So dropped a couple of words there. So commerce when I hear commerce, I think Chamber of Commerce, how should a chamber be involved? There’s commerce happening in these digital platforms. And it is these games are levels of Metaverse where they’re buying and selling digital goods, whether it’s a skin or clothes, or a gun, or some sort of a weapon or a horse or whatever these things are they’re buying and selling and trading. Commerce is happening in the digital landscape. How can your chamber be involved? So have that in your mind? Because we hear these promises of the metaverse coming, which would be kind of an all inclusive digital landscape. I I don’t know I have some reservations about a full full blown metaverse. But there are definitely Metaverse landscapes that are out there. So pay attention to those see if there’s any way that makes sense for your chamber to be involved, especially as these youth aged up into the working class, the the the people that are being employed in your communities, what can your chamber do to be involved in that space? So with that, it may come back to NFT’s as NFTs even in these games. There can be NFT’s that are bought and sold that are a hat or some kind of a article of clothing that is an NFT but it can be utilized within the metaverse. So there’s a ton of opportunity here. So I guess moral of the story with this lesson number five of the future of chambers, embracing crypto and NFTs is learn about it. Be ready as the shift comes to your chamber can stay relevant. That is the biggest advice that I can give you right there. But with that, that summarizes the top five lessons that I have to share with you from 2022.

And again, I’m going to plug it if you would like to take a look at being a supporter of Chamber Chat Podcast. That website is chamberchatpodcast.com/support to see the different sponsorship levels that we have available there. So if you could check it out, I’d really appreciate it. Otherwise, we will look forward to see you again next week, and I wish you all a happy and safe New Year.

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

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

Looking 25 Years into the Future with Bryan Derreberry

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

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Introduction

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

And now your host, he enjoys smoked meat from his Traeger, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Jason Mock 0:45
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 1:02
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Our guest for this episode is Bryan Derreberry. As President and CEO of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce for 11 years, Bryan leads one of South Carolina’s largest chambers in its regional advancement work. Bryan has an established executive management track record, featuring more than 30 years in chamber leadership and advocacy roles. Prior to joining the Charleston Metro Chamber. Bryan was president and CEO of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce in Wichita, Kansas, where he directed the state’s largest Metro Chamber for seven and a half years. He also served as president and CEO of the Catawba County, North Carolina and Middleton Ohio Chambers of Commerce respectively. Bryan began his chamber career as a state lobbyist for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, of course in Ohio. He holds holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Wittenberg University and is and has completed graduate coursework towards a combined MA and PhD in American politics, and international relations from the American University. Bryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a

Bryan Derreberry 2:31
little bit better. Well, Brandon, thank you for the opportunity. You know, it’s I love when you say chamber champions, because I I think about all my colleagues across the country and the amazingly important work they do and strengthening their business communities and advancing their regions. And I think one of the interesting parts of my background is my intention, when I started my career, was to go into lobbying full time, and had that chance with the Greater Cincinnati chamber. And at that time, that was the fourth largest chamber in America and represented that business community in Columbus, Ohio, four days a week and really treasured the opportunity. And somebody said to me, do you miss your lobbying days? And I think one of the things that people can learn about chamber executives, is that I said, I lobby as much now as I did when I did it full time, right? This looks different. I said it different audiences, different opportunities. A lot of times, it could be anything from a neighborhood association, embracing a new piece of infrastructure, or a group that’s not familiar with our chamber, we launched a major DNI effort three years ago. So we’re, we’re speaking out in numerous communities in our metro area, and sharing with them about the chamber for the first time. So it’s powerful to think about how every chamber exec in the country and many of their teammates day in and day out need great lobbying skills. So those degrees and that initial experience have really served me well.

Brandon Burton 4:15
Absolutely, yes. And I firmly believe that anyone listening to this it’s involved with the chamber, they are champions for their community and and when I tried thinking of a name for the audience, you know, that that seemed to fit well, so kind of rolls off your tongue but it has great meaning to so thanks for for recognizing that and you take a moment and tell us a little bit more about the the Charleston Metro Chamber to kind of the type of chamber Scope of Work size, staff budget, that sort of thing. Just to give us some perspective before we dive into our conversation.

Bryan Derreberry 4:52
You bet. We have 1600 members. A budget that said six and a half have million 30 full time staff members. And we have four primary platforms that we deliver our work through. Number one, like every chamber, a significant membership platform. Number two, a important government relations platform. We have three full time lobbyists on our team, one up in the state house in Colombia, and then two that work locally with our three counties and 30 municipalities. I think that’s a distinctive flavor for our organization, with regard to how important it is to get alignment, in all those communities, and I’ll talk a little bit later about, we use a partner ethos to lobby versus the bloody nose ethos that seems to be typical for the rest of our United States today. And that serves us very well. We have a large community advancement platform. And within that platform, we do diversity, equity and inclusion work. We do significant professional development programming work for our members. And also we do workforce and talent development. And then our marketing and communications platform is the fourth platform with regard to making sure not only that membership, can actively get engaged in what we do, but also the 830,000 people. And 165,000 employees represented by our membership, have an appreciation for what goes on within the chamber. So a very gifted group of folks, board of directors of 68, Executive Committee of 26. So very actively involving all the sectors in our metro area, and the volunteer leadership of our chamber. And I know one thing that chamber champions understand out there is that a lot of times we have to explain to people that we are a volunteer, directed organization. And they’ll come to us and say, Oh, you need to take a position on this issue. Well, we’ll go through our committee structure, and determine whether we take a position on the issue or not, it’s not my decision, or our government relations team, or our workforce development team to make a policy decision. It’s the responsibility of our volunteers. And I think after a number of years here, people now appreciate that, and they value that. So I think that’s another dynamic of our chamber is we very much want to put our members and key leadership roles in directing the chamber, we see ourselves as a regional advancement organization. So we look at that three county metro area and we look at big Rakesh used to work on already mentioned diversity, equity, inclusion, housing, attainability, mobility solutions, overall quality of business environment. So significant work that will advance our region over the next 25 to 50 years.

Brandon Burton 8:09
Right. I love that the fact that you pointed out you know, if the issue gets presented to the chamber, you take it to your committees, your board. A while back, I had Matt Morrow from the Springfield, Missouri chamber on the podcast, and he talked a lot about the wisdom of crowds. And when especially when you have a board of that size, 68 and different committees and whatnot, as you bring a different different topics in there. They all come in from their different backgrounds and experience and be able to know what the vision is the direction the Chamber’s trying to go. And then from there, combined experience and wisdom, they’re gonna land on the best possible outcome and direction to take up on different issues and policies even so glad you pointed that out.

Bryan Derreberry 8:57
You know, Brandon, I would strongly agree with your assessment. I am. This is my 36th year in the profession and I, overall, those board meetings, executive committee meetings, government relations committee meetings, I’ve seen the wisdom of our leaders proven out time and again. And I think another thing that every chamber champion listening recognizes is that they may come up with a position that’s contrary to what I personally believe, on a policy issue, maybe even what our team believes. And at the end of the day, we step forward and implement that decision, because it is their organization. So I think if you’re young and you’re chamber champion development, it’s important to realize that and of course, we want passionate people in our profession. And we want people that are highly skilled and able to craft how an issue needs to be examined. But then you have to be responsible to the degree See that it may end up somewhere that you didn’t imagine it would go. In over all those years, I’ve never seen it a selection of an outcome or a policy position that wasn’t best for the business community. So my encouragement would be to trust, that leadership, trust working with them to find the right pathway forward for your community. And there’s an old saying, you and I both heard of Brandon, you know, if they write it, they’ll underwrite it. And they, if they develop it and fill, it’s their own, they will get up and give public testimony, they’ll provide funding for lobbying efforts. So that’s part of the beauty of this profession is that, you know, we do lead heterogeneous organizations. This is not the American Dental Association or the American Medical Association. So we’ll have everything from a sole proprietor to somebody leading Joint Base Charleston here with 26,000 employees, and all across that spectrum, people will bring input an interest, and that’ll craft a composite position, or a composite direction. That’s really powerful. Right? Takes a lot of patients.

Brandon Burton 11:16
That’s right, it does. It takes a lot of patients. So our topic for discussion today, I’m a big fan of helping people and even chambers to understand the potential the power within them to become something greater. And for our discussion today, we’re focusing on looking 25 years into the future, which I think is very important in that aspect as far as realizing what the potential is of your organization, to be able to see what direction you can go and what needs to happen. You know, those those baby steps so to speak between here and there, and we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Bryan, we’re back. And as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about looking 25 years into the future as a chamber organization looking into the future. What at the end of this conversation, I’ll ask you how you see the future of chambers going forward. But in the meantime, before we get to that future and How do you see from here moving forward over the next 25 years,

Bryan Derreberry 15:04
Brandon and we do something that we feel is particularly powerful. About mid year we’ll begin a process called annual partnership calls. So we will go to somewhere between 180 to 250 of our members. And we sit down. And we ask a couple of questions that influence what that runway looks like over the next 25 years. The first question is, talk about the next three to five years of your company, and identify where you think there are excellent opportunities for your competitive growth, and then identify things that are impediments, speed bumps, and then we just, were quiet. And I think anytime you ask somebody about their company, and how they’re doing, where they’re going, what’s working, what’s challenging, you get really good, really good input. And the other the other question that really registers with them is that if there were one to two things in our metro area that you could change for the better, what would they be? So I’d love to tell you, we come back with a lot of disparate information and no agreement, we come back with a real clear picture as to what are the most significant opportunities, and what are the most pressing challenges. And when we look at those in combination, a lot of what we described on how we’re designed as an organization is influenced by the annual partnership calls in our area housing attainability is the number one regional issue. It will be a 25 year fix. To get the proper stock, the proper pricing, we’re in a real challenge with regard to our supply versus our demand. We’re growing by 33 net people a day, and we’re just having a hard time providing workforce housing that’s affordable. So we have a huge coalition working on that all three counties, public sector partners, private sector leaders, citizens, different associations. And we know right now we’re at 6000 houses behind for attainable housing in our metro market. That’s a couple of decades. So another one is mobility solutions, we’re getting ready in 2026 to undertake high speed bus lanes. So major mass transit project 21 Miles 2020 stops along the way. And for our metro, you know, if you’re in a, we were just in Boston for Metro leadership visit, they’ve been hopping on the tee for a while now. For us, that’s an important first step, there will be other lines to follow. But removing, even if we can remove eight to 10% of the traffic from our highways, that extends their longevity, it cuts down on congestion. So those are the kinds of issues that emerge. And it’s not us sitting in some room at the Chamber, figuring out where we go the next 25 years. It’s the people that want to be the employers, the citizens, the electeds, that continue to help our region thrive, identify where we’re going. And in that mix, there are many of our elected bodies, there are stakeholder partners. So we’re getting a really great level of input that’s formulating where we go. The other thing we just completed, we did an 18 month study. It’s called one region roadmap and used SP Friedman out of Chicago, Illinois to undertake our effort. And what it does, as a lot of communities don’t know what those big rock issues are, doesn’t take very long to figure those out. But this is going to be a 10 year plan, where every year we’ll identify five to seven priorities for the region to work on collectively. And there will be we’re using a local governing network,

which my political science professors from long ago would have really liked hearing. But what that is it means there’ll be a lead agent, we’re going to be the lead agent for housing attainability will involve other stakeholders throughout the community. And then we’ll begin to work on gaining annual metric identified success and creating more attainable housing. So equitable did Dual accesses another one, entrepreneurial development is another one. But this gives us a roadmap as a region for a decade. And at the heart of the one reaching roadmap is equitable access for all of our citizens to living, learning and earning opportunities. So I think you have to have a foundational piece that engages everyone. And that’s the piece, we want everybody to be able to have those attributes as we move through the decades ahead. So listen, well build a strategic plan that has lead agents that will be responsible for the work that’s being undertaken. And they get after it year in and year out, we have a large steering committee that will evaluate each of the lead agents on an annual basis to make sure they’re performing. So you know, it’s the classic thing brand. And if you if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and we’re just really dedicated to that kind of work. And I would encourage chamber champions across the country that are listening, there’s a couple of key learnings in there. Number one, you want to bring as many people along as possible. So get out and talk to your members, talk to your elected officials, talk to the people that you’re going to need to do this with. We never say the chamber is going to do this work. We say along with our partners, we’re gonna tackle these annual priorities. The other thing is to make them concrete. That’s hard for a lot of communities. I’ve been in other communities that love to study and talk. But when you say annually, we’re going to achieve x, y, we’re gonna accomplish why. And then you report on it, then you have credibility, then it’s not a study that goes and sits on the shelf and collect stuff. So listen, well, engage others be concrete, and produce results. So we’re, we’re excited about one region roadmap, we kick it off in October. So when you and I talk this time next year, yeah, I’ll be able to, I’ll be able to tell you more about getting divorced in one region roadmap.

Brandon Burton 22:18
Yeah. So I know leading up to this discussion, you had shared with me, some of these topics that you guys are looking on. Maybe areas of focus, as you look to the future of Charleston, and and you talked about some of these, like the attainable housing and the you know, the infrastructure and mobility and things like that, as you have these different. We’ll call them topics areas of focus. How do you go about focusing on each one? I assume there’s some sort of a committee for each area of focus? Is that right? Have you said it’s one thing to create division, and we need to expand and put some focus and, and work over in these areas? But then how do you go from that, that vision to actually rolling it out to? Let’s take some action on these different steps? What does that look like there in Charleston?

Bryan Derreberry 23:12
You know, it’s interesting, and I think inherent in your in your question is a couple of things for chamber champions number one, regardless of the size of your chamber, and I have a deep passion for chambers that have staff under the number of 10. I think they work harder than any other chamber in the country, you’re going to need to hire some experts. We’ve been very intentional over the past 11 years, that we add people to our team that have significant expertise. So while they won’t do it on their own, they have a career track record in the areas whether it’s workforce development, government relations, diversity, equity and inclusion, attainable housing. They’re an expert. Because I think that you’ll be pleased as a chamber when you make that investment. And when you’re smaller, and maybe one or two major issues. So we’ve been very intentional about in that group of 30. Hiring people that have that level of expertise. The other thing that we’ve done is built a very strong committee structure. So however, those issues are moving through our organization, there are one or two or more committees that will be touching them. And we’ll be following through on what we commit to do organizationally to achieve results. The final thing is a talk a little bit about that local governing network and if anybody would like information on that we’re happy to share. You have to engage the whole region. So you look at something like the high speed bus lanes. Our Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments is working with all the governments along that set of high speed bus lane routes. We’re working through our regional policy committee, which handles all of our local regional work. But there also is going to be a lead agent in that area that will pull together, how many ever stakeholders are required to implement. So a lot of it’s leveraging what I call critical mass. So you got some key folks at the top that have expertise, and then they’re bringing partners together to, in this instance, transportation, overlays for development on those 20 bus stops. So you know, there’s some sophistication that’s required when you do that kind of work. So, you know, my encouragement would get experts on your team, make sure the region understands the top issues, bring stakeholders together, that can move the issue. And then, again, metrics that make sure over 510 1520 years, you’re making progress, because in that timeframe, Brandon, you and I both know, you’re gonna have different mayors, you’re going to have different city councils, you’re going to have different county councils, you’re going to have a different state legislative delegation. So you have to be you chamber, and top stakeholders that are in it for the long run, you have to keep the plumb line very clear, and keep coming back to the issues. Because a lot of times public and private sector partners can get easily distracted. So that’s the other thing is that we look at all of our work as forever work. Okay, you’re forever doing housing affordability, you’re forever improving infrastructure. You’re forever maintaining your business climate. For us as a coastal community, you’re forever looking at resiliency. So part of that is developing a drumbeat internally to be in it for the long game. Yeah, every year, as you said, you want to have annual achievements. But you have to have those long game goals, talented team, great partners, focus and metrics to be able to move to we call them big rock issues. Because they don’t go away. You know, somebody said, you know, we have funding, we have something called Accelerate greater Charleston that funds. A lot of the professional staff that the technical professional staff is somebody said, Well, when are we going to stop doing accelerate greater Charleston? And we just smile, and we say never,

Brandon Burton 27:50
whenever you give up, you know, like,

Bryan Derreberry 27:53
you want to quit? Yeah, you know, and last one out, cut off the lights. And what I think what helps private sector companies, especially if they’re developing products, have said, you have an r&d arm, don’t you? And they Oh, yeah, we have research and development. Well, for chambers, your research and development is positioning the region for the future and putting the building blocks in place. I said, if your r&d went away, you’d be selling the same product over and over, you’re always looking to improve. And that begins to help people wrap their brains around. Okay, this is forever work. This is a long game. And the other beauty I just shared earlier, we went to Boston with 100 leaders, is get your leaders out to other metro markets that have like opportunities and challenges. So they can see the kind of work they’ve done. And then we come home and people say, hey, we saw how they did that in Boston, we can do that. Or they come home and say, wow, they had a big miss, we can really learn from that. So when we tackle a like issue, we don’t make the same mistakes. The other beauty of that trip is that you think all the leaders in your community know each other and kind of have a comparable set of aspirations. They don’t know. So when you get 100 people together that are having lunch and dinner and some staying up till college late hours, getting to know each other better. They come home aligned. You know, a lot of this is about not only what you’re tackling, but its alignment, and persistence. So that annual trip kind of says, Okay, we’ve gotten to x with high speed bus lanes. So we’re gonna go look at somebody that’s either built them all the way out, or maybe they have light rail. So again, it’s I call it staying 20% dissatisfied. Yeah, never, never 100% satisfied. that you have to continually prod the region to achieve at a higher level. Part of the challenge to Brandon is that, you know, I’ve been in places that are BB plus communities, it’s hard to get a BB plus to an A, it’s really easier to take a C or a D and pop it up to an A, because people feel the threat. They feel the need for collaboration and alignment. You know, when you’re a B plus, you’re kind of fat and happy. Right? Do we really need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:33
you’re too comfortable? Any adjustments? Yeah.

Bryan Derreberry 30:37
And that’s when we say there are 396 other mshs in this nation, that one our employers and they want our talent. So yes, we need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:45
Yeah, that’s I love that point. And that being the 20% just satisfied it. Yes. Always, always looking for that room to improve. I love that. salutely. So and I’m sure this answer will vary. But as there are different committees and whatnot on these different topics. You had mentioned doing these leadership visits to other cities, which I think is awesome. It’s a great way to look at a certain topic and how a city that you may aspire to be like and in certain aspects that I see great value in that. As far as the nitty gritty, the day to day. How often do some of these committees meet as a monthly? Is it weekly? Is it quarterly? Are they all different? Depending on what it is? How do you? How do you say that in your community?

Bryan Derreberry 31:32
There, at least monthly, if not twice a month. And we’re big believers, our board this year will have had 10 board meetings and 10 executive committee meetings. You know, I hear people say, Oh, we you know, chamber champions. I apologize if I’m stepping on toes. Oh, we do a quarterly. Okay, these kinds of issues. If you do a quarterly and somebody misses a quarterly meeting, they miss half a year. Yeah. Okay. We call that creating a drumbeat. Whether it’s committees that are working on policy, or programs or initiatives, or executive committee and board. If you lose the drumbeat within your organization on key issues, you’re not going to be able to move fast enough to make a difference. Well, they’re all busy people. And I’m gonna give you a great example. Brandon, we tried to go to every other month when I was in Wichita, and the board rebelled. That’s a cool message. Yeah, one I’m meet monthly. So I think sometimes, yeah, it’s a lot of work. We have an amazing executive ops team. And it’s a lot of work to do 20 meetings a year with, you know, large lead volunteer bodies. And it’s the work we signed up for.

Brandon Burton 32:58
Absolutely. And it’s that forever work as it’s that forever work.

Bryan Derreberry 33:03
And, you know, the the thing we talk about is, and I just met with our exec ops team yesterday, and they’re incredible. And we said, our goal is to create an experience for every volunteer that has never been met or matched in our metro area, from knowing about their family, their names, their interest, and taking care of them. So when it comes time for one of them to be an officer, or to lead a committee or to get more of their people engaged Hekia I’m going to deal with the Charleston Metro Chamber. And so that that kind of intentional focus. And that’s why we sold out that trip to Boston in record time. And we don’t want to take 200 people, you know, we’re kind of like 100 Yeah, you know, if you get over 100, you start to have a three ring circus, and they don’t bond the same way. Yeah. But that that internal clock for us? It’s kind of like a metronome. How are we honoring them and engaging them. So they think I’ve never had a volunteer experience like this. Because let’s face it, we are battling for their time, talent and treasure, there are 4600 non enough for profits, and just the greater Charleston area. You know, as your communities get bigger, that’s probably 15,000 20,000 25,000. So it’s pretty rarefied air to get top leaders. The other thing we do a little bit different because we are really committed to the ENI is that we don’t have to have the the gal or the guy in the corner office. A lot of organizations just say, Oh, I only want the CEO or the president. Right. Well, we’ll say is give me number three, or number four, that will be that CEO and president in 10 to 15 years Yeah, so we can have the level of gender ethnic, racial diversity on our board that reflects our community. It also makes us a lot more healthy from an organizational standpoint,

Brandon Burton 35:13
and possibly more time to give to the purpose and the cause that you’re working on to always go for the number one, they’re going to be some of the busiest people. Not that the number three or four is not busy, but they’re able to work it in a little bit more and build that future along with you. So you’ve hit on some really awesome points in our discussion here. If you were to try to condense down to maybe a tip or an action item for chamber champions listening that want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you put out there and suggest for them to consider

Bryan Derreberry 35:53
my greatest tip would be pick one to three things in become an expert. And that that’s going to weave right back into what we’ve been talking about Brandon, you’ve got to be committed to do it long term. So let’s say you pick developing a pipeline from your high schools and middle schools for your top two or three business sectors just know front side that that’s going to be 15 to 25 years. Think what we learned during the pandemic, because it was probably a sharing experience for every chamber and business member Association in our nation is that it was the meaningful work that maintained our most significant investors. It wasn’t the business after hours, it wasn’t the networking events. It was they could look at the chamber. And the chamber in our metro area got together with the council of governments and other stakeholders. And we created a whole reopening strategy for our metro marketplace. We met every day at four o’clock, Monday through Thursday for almost six months to get the region opened again. I felt like I had a whole new family. And sometimes it got irritating. But I wouldn’t have traded that we build bonds between organizations and governments that we never had before. So that would be my tip be be substantive, be relevant. And we use a term I think it’s the you know, if you were to ask me the the Chamber’s magic power, our secret sauce, we use a term called seine center, sa N E. Your chamber, chamber champions can be the same center on these issues, you can bring parties together. And whether it’s workforce development, whether it’s diversity, equity, inclusion, whether it’s housing attainability, whether it’s infrastructure solutions, whether it’s recruitment and retention of either businesses or employees, you can be the organization that brings all the parties together, that need to be aligned to do the work. That to me is what a chamber really is. Our mission statement is initiate advocate and empower the region to produce a prosperous business environment. And it’s a little different than a lot of chambers. Because they flip business environment in a region, we know that our region has to have the ingredients that are aligned to make employers, employees and citizens successful. So look at the region as your laboratory, look at your county as your laboratory. If you’re a City Chamber, look at your city as a laboratory, and find those one to three things that really need to be worked on. That would be my greatest encouragement. And and when you do it, you’re gonna get real popular real fast. So you’re gonna have to learn how to say no, yeah. That’s right, because let’s say this camera does such a good job on developing those middle and high school talent pipelines for industry. We wanted to do this now. We wanted to do that. So I think the other thing is to when you do those annual partnership calls, as I mentioned to you, we didn’t come back with 50 Things came back with probably five to seven things that every employer is focused on. So you know, stick to those critical realities, and and go deep and do a great job. And then when it comes renewal time and recruitment time, somebody will say, Oh, yeah, that chamber. They really have the best interest of the business. Unity in our region in mind, they’re worth investing in. So that would be my do stuff that matters and do it. Well.

Brandon Burton 40:09
I love that. So the question that I mentioned at the very beginning that that we would circle back to towards the end is how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Bryan Derreberry 40:21
I’m bullish, I think about what’s occurred over the window is what we’re in pandemic endemic, the past two, three quarters of a year, and I know for our chamber just to bring it home to right here, we look totally different than when we entered. We have a set of members, a set of stakeholders, a set of raving fans in the community, because of how we opened up our organization, for allowing us to assist anybody that needed help. And that that runs a little counter to the the typical Oh, we only help members. Well, when when your community is facing what we’ve all faced. During the pandemic, you help everybody you can help. And you make again, choices. So we look very different today, we look more open to diverse partners, diverse audiences. And we’re working on stuff a lot of chambers, you know, 20 years ago, maybe if you were in a major metro community, you were doing DNI, but I think chambers are going to be leaders for their regions, excuse me. And the years ahead, unlike any other time, I think that the credibility of the chamber when they tackle those issues, even if they’re not successful, and they’re going to be successful in the vast majority of instances. I think there’s a caring tone and tenor and a level of respect by leaders saying, Yeah, we need a rallying point. And I think I think it’s changed. And if your your chambers worth its salt, it’ll step into that opportunity and, and really make a big difference. SOT I’m very excited for the future. However, I do believe one of the things we continually learn is that it can’t, it can’t be all about the fun stuff. Right. And I mean, there are, somebody said to me, how many organizations in your community do networking events, somewhat goods? Probably all 46 months? not for profits? Yeah. So yes, do we have strong programming? We do. We do. But we’re probably one of the communities leaders for providing professional development programming. We have the six different leadership types of offerings. So we know right now, as you well know, in your market, Brandon, attracting and retaining talent is the number one business issue. So again, always making sure your chamber is plugged into what’s relevant, and then providing it with the highest level of expertise you can undertake. And if you’re small, don’t let that slow you down. You’ve got people in your membership. You’ve got volunteers and members that can come alongside of you, and build out the type of programming that you need. That’s one of the powers of small communities is that they can really rally that type of asset set and make it work. So I’m excited. I’m, you know, I think that chambers have always been amazingly relevant. We celebrate a little birthday next year. Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna be 250 years old. Wow. That we’re the we’re the oldest continuing operating chamber in America. So founded three years before our nation became a country. I’d say we’re in it for the long game.

Brandon Burton 44:13
Yeah, doing that forever work. I love it. So I’d love for you to be able to share some, any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn sure but as you’re doing there in Charleston,

Bryan Derreberry 44:27
it’s it’s a really easy, bderreberry@charlestonchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 44:43
That is perfect. And I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode, too. So if somebody always,

Bryan Derreberry 44:48
always happy to talk this profession, and you know, I think your question Brandon on the future is that many chambers are at an inflection point. Mm. But there were ways that they used to do things and things that used to matter. And the inflection point is some of those still have value. The greater value though is marshaling the the leaders and assets of your community and aligning them and doing significant work. So we’re at that neat juncture, so many chambers have already crossed over. And if anybody wants to talk about the both the rewards and the pitfalls, because it’s hard when you enter into a new area of work. And also there are ways to enter in that you can have some immediate victories and set yourself up for long term success.

Brandon Burton 45:47
Yeah, I think that’s important to be able to have that encouragement going along that, that you are going in the right direction. So I love that. Bryan, I appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, providing, you know, great vision and insight for chamber champions listening. I’m sure everyone got a lot of value out of this. But thank you for being a part of the program today. I appreciate it.

Bryan Derreberry 46:13
Well, I love you championing our industry. I believe so greatly in the work that I see peer organizations and colleagues do across the country and America is great because of great chambers. So thank you for being an advocate.

Brandon Burton 44:58
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Chambernomics with Don McCoy

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

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

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Introduction

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

Now, your host he would like to hear what your biggest obstacles are. Right now are your chamber. He’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the chamber chat podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Diane Rogers, President and CEO of the Rancho Cordova Area Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for her.

Diann Rogers 0:47
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:01
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Don McCoy. Don is the current president of the Fulshear Katie Area Chamber of Commerce in Texas and he has been since its inception in late 2013. Don has played a vital role in growing this local chamber from only a handful of businesses to becoming one of the fastest growing chambers in Texas with over 600 business members. Don is a seasoned marketing professional who brings over 40 years of experience to the table. He is an idea guy who excels at marketing, project management promotions, public relations and event planning. He has the proven ability to mastermind and lead creative teams energized clients and the ability to achieve objectives in an effective manner. In addition, Don is and has been an accomplished actor, director, producer, spokesperson, Master of Ceremonies and motivational speaker. He’s appeared in directed and produced several movie and television programs. He can be heard saying I’m really famous, but nobody knows it. Dan is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University with a major in management, marketing and a minor in Spanish. He speaks Spanish fluently and he’s lived and grew up in Venezuela, Mexico, Scotland, England and Iran. He’s also travelled extensively throughout and around the world. He currently lives in Cinco Ranch Katie, with his three legged Husky Wyatt. Don, I’m excited to have you with me on chamber chat podcast today, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something else interesting about yourself. That’s a great bio.

Don McCoy 3:24
Well, thank you very much, Brandon, it’s a real pleasure to be here. And i i Hello chamber champions out there, I hope today we can give you some nuggets of knowledge that might help you in any way, shape or form. I think you kind of hit all the highlights there i i guess probably some of the things in my background, everything you’ve ever done. And I will tell you this, regardless of where you came from, when you used to say you were an actor, it used to be a really what restaurant you work at, because it’s not necessarily a full time job. But you have seen me you just don’t realize maybe you have but meaning a lot of celebrities direct your lifetime and being in that type of business and even waiting tables. You know, sometimes you’re wondering why why am I doing this or, well, God has that plan. And, and I have found that everything I’ve experienced in my life up to this point, has led me to this job as a chamber, CEO and president. I use all those skills somehow, some way, whether I’m in front of people, I mean, I used to be the king of medieval times performing in front of 1000s of people nightly, and you get used to crowds and and as a chamber. Executive, you need to be able to have that way to ad lib skills to communicate with large, large groups of people or this the ideal person. And sometimes our job Brandon requires a little bit of acting skills, you know, you got to look interested you got to pretend you’re interested in what you’re hearing. and you know all the myriad of questions us chambers get all the time. And it’s important to that person they are they wouldn’t be asking but to yourself behind the scenes you made one. What do you call me about a category or tree for? Yeah, no, yeah. But I always say look at students use it over acting. And always provide a solution, whether I can get the cat out of your tree is inconsequential. But if I can get someone to call or someone that will definitely help you that you can mention my name, and it gets you through the gatekeeper a little bit, then you become a real key person, which we’ll talk about later have influence in your

Brandon Burton 5:38
community. Yeah, like that. I like that response. Before we get into our topic, tell us a little bit about the Fulshear. Katie area Chamber just to give some perspective where you’re coming from, you’d mentioned about 600 members in the bio, but tell us about the staff budget type of work you’re involved with and things like that.

Don McCoy 5:57
Right? Well, right off the bat. It’s, I’m glad my team is in here to hear you say staff, we don’t use the word staff we use. We’re all one team. But it was in late 2013, that this community had a number of businesses, but they felt they weren’t being representative. So representatives. So they wanted to start a chamber rather than being a business division of another chamber. And so I just happened to be at the right place the right time back visiting here at home and my brother had moved out here to Fulcher and Fulshear. Katie, it a lot of people will say we’re out. We’re west of Houston. But I like to tell everybody, Houston is east of us. And they’ll make themselves to start right. That’s right. And, and we weren’t just the Fulshear chamber, but Katie’s and other town, and we have just grown exponentially. This area is a very high growth area. And maybe that’s why our phone is starting to read even more and more. But there it is high net worth high growth. Look it up. It’s crazy. I mean, our town is, I think the second safest town in Texas, I have to do the shout out my brother happens to be the police department Captain here. So

Brandon Burton 7:09
he’s doing his job, then.

Don McCoy 7:11
Yeah. So we started out with just a handful of businesses. And then you know, we kind of picked the low of the low hanging fruit and me not knowing really, I knew what chambers did. But I wanted to make something that was truly different. That was tangible, that was a benefit to the members, and really bring something to the table. And so we did that, and we’ll talk about that a bit. But it started growing and going and it Swilly on personality, there was no cliques, people sit, this is sort of different, I go to the meetings, I feel different. Everyone is welcoming. And I’ve put in a thing called BFF. You know, the best friends forever, we had a we call it a B Fulshear. Friendly. And we kind of stole that a little bit. And then we say, you know by Fulcher and it just started to take off and people gravitated to it and nothing helps you better than word of mouth. And now we’re at 630. Members. And you know, I’m just was naive at the time, even up to this point and going, Okay, we want to reach a it’s not the amount of numbers, it’s the quality of members you have. And, you know, I understand the 630 is a large chamber. Okay, I mean, now that I’ve gone through IOM and everything, I get it, but in the beginning, I don’t know, I’m just trying to help people. And our budget runs anywhere about about 400k a year. So we’re still the least expensive chamber in the area when it comes to your dues. We are on the not tear does. We’re just you got one level, second level third level. Yeah. And, you know, at 325 a year to be to I tell people, we’re never cheap. I hate that word. But I tell folks, we’re the least expensive marketing dollar you could ever spend. And you’re in anything that you do to get your business noticed, noticed and recognized. Because you’d go out and spend money, companies on advertising and things like that. You’ve got to educate what a chamber really brings to the table. Besides being the representative at the table of government, we also offer a lot of tools to really help your business get a foothold and an inflationary times during COVID We were met with all those same challenges, and we continue to grow. So I think that’s a real testament to really focusing on what the needs of your members truly are rather than what yours are internally. He’s right

Brandon Burton 9:49
yeah, so I can tell you’re a marketing guy, you know, just the way you rephrase cheap to be in the least expensive marketing spend. Yeah, yeah. And it’s uh, yeah, There’s a lot of value in that. So that’s a, that’s great. But here’s

Don McCoy 10:03
what’s crazy, you know, Brandon, we we’ve started out with just me. And then I hired another person. And then we had a third person now just had a third person, retire the God bless her and she doesn’t have to. So now it’s back to two of us. And I never thought I mean, we’re finding how to be more efficient and reliant on the technologies that are available to us to manage a 600 plus chamber with two people, it becomes a bit of a challenge, but we’re doing it so don’t negate what the technology can help you.

Brandon Burton 10:36
Yeah. Now I can imagine and I like your introduction to the chamber world, you kind of had blinders on, you know, I don’t care so much what others are doing. I just want to go help people and I do it the best way I know how and it’s really taken off and served served you and your members very well. So that’s. So for our topic of discussion today, we settled on the topic of chamber nomics. So we’ll we’ll dive into what that means and everything as soon as we get back from our quick break.

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Don, we’re back. So chambernomics. Tell us okay, what is chambernomics mean to you as you, as you look at that word, it looks like a word that that’s been made up. So what does that mean to you? It looks like a blend of economics. So I

Topic-Chambernomics

Don McCoy 14:13
gotta give a shout. Rachel, who’s our VP of membership? She’s the one that we were just talking about, you know, training and Euro chamber 101. And a lot of chambers have, you know, when you join the chamber, here’s what you learn how about chamber and what it can do for you. And she came up with this chamber nomics. And I said, that’s, that’s beautiful. And so immediately, I went right to Google, I mean, the GoDaddy and I, it’s available, I bought it. So we own chambernomics.com. And, and then we coordinated that with our back office, software provider, chamber nation. And I now represent chamber nomics. And what that means to us is dedicated to we explore all kinds of issues and ideas relating to your Business, the economy, the community, it’s all written right there at the top. And I’m reading off of it. And, you know, it’s sort of I’m an idea guy, and it’s just an Idea Factory on how to what other things can I bring? Or can we make that or make our businesses really want to be in the chamber? And as we say, in chamber world, you know, those golden handcuffs? You’ve heard that before? Those are the things that if I leave, if I leave the chamber, I lose this. And then so it’s a real retention tool. Now we use chamber that is on a nationwide basis, the Chamber nomics is teaching them how we can you help their business get better. And there’s a lot of links in there that you can go look at and things like that, and chamber nadex.com. Now locally, I use chamber nomics as a as the name of our training. And so we do a chamber nomics class, the first and last Tuesday of every month at a different restaurant, and we eat first, and they happen to have a private room. And then we have video, and I get on, and I show everyone, hey, here’s how you upload your flyer for your upcoming event. Here’s your press release. And when you submit your press release, it goes out to all of our media contacts through our software. We just teach them all the different advertising tools and how to upload your video because sometimes, people learn in different ways. And people learn learn one on one, they also learn by watching a video of something on how it’s done, which a lot of people do and then people learn in a classroom setting. So the chamber nomics locally is our classroom setting. And, but our goal is to teach all of our members what our system does. Now, it’s really some people get a little scared of technology. And it’s not hard. And I say just kind of dive into it, bite it off a piece at a time. But if you do absolutely nothing with our back office system, we’re still creating tremendous search engine optimization for you and you’re getting ranked higher brand that go up. But if you stopped doing, you’re ready, but I’d say I had one number that came in the other day, it was called the Delaney. It’s an assisted living facility that’s in our chamber. And they had forgotten to change the management, but they had to say marketing person, and their traffic capture page that we make for them. It’s called a marketing landing page. In addition to their website, it complements it fell off, it went away. Well, she did a audit on her presence on social media. And they had dropped to the third page on Google without all the ads. And she said, what happened? And they said, Well, you used to have this traffic capture page that was doing a lot of work for you. And since it went away, you fell. Immediately, they popped back on and now they’re back on the first page on searches for assisted living in our area. So it just shows you there’s real power in a lot of online presence and digital presence and

Brandon Burton 18:00
talk to us more about the traffic capture page. So that’s built in with within this chamber nomics program or chamber nomics is really just telling them what all you have to offer kind of a platform of doing that,

Don McCoy 18:12
right. Yeah, chamber nomics is really telling them all we have to offer, but the traffic capture page is really a, you know, a, it’s a system that takes in, you know, you can go to a website and of any business and you get kind of lost because there’s a lot of information there and you don’t know quite where to go, okay. But the traffic capture page is something that is simple, easy, very quick. And if you want to go to their website, from there, you can get links to it. But it is search engine optimized, you can control what kind of photographs you put in there, you can put your catalog page in there, we offer a commission free checkout system, I’ll show you even our chamber, we even have a mobile app that’s very interesting that if you go scan a QR code, this kind of is our chamber. But this everybody gets one of these

Brandon Burton 19:08
I know it’s a little thin, every member gets their own app for their own app, their home address.

Don McCoy 19:13
And all of this takes you to your to your website about you, they can call you from here, they can message you from here, they can even share their business card, I can click this right here and let you scan that QR code and my information will drop into your phone. Nice. These are small, small little tools that are that are so available that you can do on your own or through our back office system. I got to sing their praises. But what happens with our system when you join our chamber, it takes us 10 days to put together your your your marketing system. And we build about 12 pages of stuff about your business. And we take it all off of your website and what we know about you and what you filled out in your app. application, and then you can go in and refine it. But if you don’t do anything, you’re still getting the benefit. So

Brandon Burton 20:07
cool. So what about it’s not as common these days, but every now and then I’ll come across a business that doesn’t have a website yet? Is there still a way of building out those pages to give those members a digital footprint?

Don McCoy 20:19
You know, thank you. Yes, absolutely. Because you would fill out the pertinent information, our team will go get photographs of that we’ve already paid for their, you know, their their commitment, or they

Brandon Burton 20:32
call the stock images.

Don McCoy 20:34
And we own some of the stock images, but we, we examine your business, and we build your traffic capture page. And what’s really cool, is, if you have a URL about your business, but you don’t have a website, you can have that URL point to the traffic capture page. Okay. And then a lot, a lot of our members just use that as their as their website, because it works.

Brandon Burton 21:00
Right. That’s great. So, you know, I think I think initially, maybe when, when Google and the stronger search engines started to roll out, I’m sure there’s some chambers out there that maybe felt a little bit threatened that people could just go to Google and find answers they’re looking for. And rather than seeing that as competition to the value proposition, you have you actually you guys are leaning into it, and saying, let’s provide a lot more information. So doing a lot of the legwork for your members, so they can show up better on search engines, and were like a bigger bang for their buck.

Don McCoy 21:36
It’s even during the pandemic talk about coming up with ideas. You know, we couldn’t go to trade shows for a while. I mean, there was none existing. So what did we do, we went and created a virtual tradeshow booth, which we still have an existence now. And you can it looks just like a table, you have a video insert in the bottom that people can watch, you can go and click here to schedule a calendar meeting or get on their zoom call. And you know, and a lot of our business say, Hey, if you’re interested to learn more about us and want to meet later, just go to my virtual tradeshow booth and, and fill out the information and watch what we do. And then we’ll get in touch with you that way. So it’s always sitting there working for you as a, as a tourist center of your business basically, right? That is awesome. And video and video is now the way to go to I mean, coming from a film and TV background. I mean, nowadays, video is so simple to put up. And then we make it even simpler in our back office, all you got to do is click here, your camera on your on your computer, and you can talk about your business. And that is and then throw into that those key words. And I will tell you just a hint. Any pictures you’re starting to put up right now, any videos, you always see that alt text at the bottom of that, you got to start filling that out. Because just a word of warning that there’s a lot of lawyers out there going after websites and things that if you’re not ADA compliant on your social media or on your website, meaning Language Hearing and alt text for your pictures, you can be sued. And that’s crazy. And so we offer that as well. We have a buttons all over our website where you can we can translate everything we do even on our mobile app, we can translate it to any language in the entire country and let you listen to it in that language.

Brandon Burton 23:33
Wow, that is impressive.

Don McCoy 23:36
It’s pretty cool. It really is

Brandon Burton 23:37
sent you mentioned earlier something about having the importance of having a strong digital footprint.

Don McCoy 23:43
Yeah, yeah, it sounds this. This is something that is really cool. And you guys can look it up anywhere. There’s a lot of companies out there that do what is called key person of influence. And this is something I’ve really latched on to here at our chamber. And what our goal is, is to make every member in our chamber a key person of influence in their industry, and have a true Omni presence on digital, Omni presence. And what this is, every industry has an inner circle, every industry has one, you know even the chamber world brand and has an inner circle. And and these are people of influence. These are people you look to and they whatever they say I mean, I don’t know if anybody knows Pat McCoy out of Idaho, but I fell in love with him at my first IOM a year. And I still stay in touch with him and I treat him as he owns chamber mentor.com Great Guy gotta follow his blog. And, you know, he influenced me, to me, he’s a key person. But what we’re going to start doing is we’re going to have a rather than a leadership type course, we are instituting how to become a key person of influence. And this is something we’re doing here in the Houston area and we hope to expand nationwide with you A couple of folks that I’ve gotten in tune with, but our first one is in November, and we’ve partnered up with the United States, Mexico Chamber of Commerce, us. If anybody wants to check it out and get more deep into it, we’re at kp O, I got VIP. And that means key person of influence that VIP keep KP Oli, and it’ll explain everything there. But you know, we’re always in a state and someone wants said the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement, you know. And so the other thing if you don’t, and this is about a $4,500 course, and it’s going to we’re going to do this, what this will do for you is it will, it’ll read people will regard you after this course, they’re going to regard you as a high value individual, I want to meet that person, I need that person to come talk to my business or whatever your business is, you could become the expert in ice cream, if you have an ice cream store, because when they go search ice cream, you’re everywhere. You’re Who is this guy, and then you’ll get VIP treatment anywhere in the world. I kid you not, my friend has his website called speaking Dubai. And he goes to Dubai all the time he gets invited, he’s going to curse out. And he’s the one that’s helping us put this together. And then you get opportunities out the wazoo presented to you all the time,

Brandon Burton 26:22
you get asked to come on podcasts and stuff like that.

Don McCoy 26:25
Exactly. Yeah, you’re right. And you know what this for me is a another digital asset that’ll be out there. And we even have a questions on our website that you know, am I getting what I what I’m worth? Am I getting paid for whatever you take this, I took this question or take me 10 minutes to do it. And I scored a zero. I thought I was pretty good. You know, hey, I’m in the movies. You can find me on IMDb, but But it’s pretty eye awakening. So we do pre event coaching and all this. And if you’re interested in more about it, I’d be happy to hook you up. But it’s, this is the way to go. And even on our website at Fulshear katie.com. I invite anybody to take a look at grow and protect and when you go to grow and protect, that’s an app that we now have. It cost our members a whopping $1 for an entire year to have access to over 250 lessons and courses that will help you be a better business person. I’m talking how to how to make your LinkedIn and world class. I mean really how to do it. And these are all like 15 minute lessons with a video attached to it. There you go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 27:43
that’s right. Okay, got Frank’s card. He’s on my radar to be yes. So he’ll be on to talk more about grown protect.

Don McCoy 27:50
And I’ll leave it I’ll leave it there. But I’d say Frank is also part of our KPI KPI. He’s part of the key person of influence. And Frank before and he’s 77 years old, and doing what he did on cybersecurity. And this man is such a key person of influence in cybersecurity, he gets they call him out of Dubai say, would you come over and talk to our company, they fly into Dubai, he spends a week there and gets paid for it.

Brandon Burton 28:21
So so this is interesting. So there’s the aspect of helping your members become key people of influence. But how about for chamber executive? How about for somebody establishing their career in the chamber world? How? How should they go about being a key person of influence?

Don McCoy 28:40
I will tell you this is probably one of the most important things because in your in your, in your world, or your community. You need to be that person that everybody looks to for ideas and solutions. I mean, the mayor, the residents, I mean, you really can’t you should not be able to go to any restaurant without talking to somebody, I made a comment. I went to a gala last night. And it was for a local charity. And I went to go get a couple of drinks at the bar down there at the other end of the of the room. And I was bringing a friend back one. And by the time I got back the ice had almost melted. He says Where have you been? I said it took me 20 minutes to walk from the bar all the way across the room because I kept getting stopped by a number of people. But that’s awesome. You can work that. And so if you become even starting out if you’re going to IOM or if you’re going to be ACCE conference or the Texas chamber or any of these executive conferences, make sure you get pictures of yourself talking to the keynote speakers and and create a file on your desktop that has you just drop pictures in there. And then anytime you want to put those up on the internet or put them up on your Facebook and things like that Google loves that new information. So it is thing. And so you put your name with it and attach it to that event, tag yourself. And then you start to become the key person of influence. It’s not that hard, but you’d be surprised you as an executive are in the presence of greatness on a regular basis, whether it be with your look, your governor, your mayors, your representatives, you know, any number of people, even local business people that are well respected in your community. Go out, take them to lunch, get a picture with them, you know, everybody, let’s do a selfie. Okay. I mean, that’s what makes you look at this guy. Look, Brandon is probably got 1000 You probably got 1000 pictures of yourself with notables? Right. Yeah, lots

Brandon Burton 30:41
of them. Yeah.

Don McCoy 30:42
I mean, when I was in the film business, I always got a picture with me and Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson, me and Patrick Swayze. And that and you know, so when I go on auditions, you know, and Oliver Stone sees all the my resume and these pictures before the digital world, but it was actually in my in my portfolio. It was, Wow, you’ve been around, you know, a lot of people that I know. And so there’s a certain sense of confidence and people, it’s what we call pre suasion. If you’ve used that coin, I love the coin these words, and pre suasion as a way that before anyone needs you. They’re already persuaded to liking it, say, and to me, that that, that is half the battle because people judge you within about the first one minute of meeting you face to face. I met Brandon at what we run into each other, but we never really actually met till tccc. Yeah, yeah, and Rocco. And you know, and it’s busy, and we’re all doing our thing. But we connected we finally connected now, I think he’s a great guy, or I wouldn’t be here. Hopefully he likes me too. All right.

Brandon Burton 31:51
That’s right. But

Don McCoy 31:53
he knew about me already, somehow, some way I kind of already knew about him. So I was already pre slated to be interested in Brandon and the Chamber chat. And I asked, How can I get involved and help out. So that’s how this comes, comes to play. And then if you can teach yourself, your team that you work with, and let them they’ll be key people of influence, give them the power to make decisions on your behalf. Nothing can be even if they make a mistake you learn from and grow from it. But give your team that power to do it. And they’ll come in and say and be excited, guess what I did today? And you go, man, that’s fantastic. Oh, no, we got to correct that. But it’s okay. You know, it doesn’t hurt. So executives, start, start looking at this grow and protect, start learning how to be tell your story, tell your chamber story, tell your own story. Because a good friend of mine, Jack working at one day, you’ll get to meet him. He’s a fantastic sales guy. He wrote a book called Life as a sales call. He’s really a good book. And he likes to say that most businesses and chambers, were always concerned about ROI, return on investment. And that’s okay, that’s cool. It’s necessary. But what we got to really concentrate on is our O R. And that’s the return on relationships. And if you don’t have a relationship with everyone in your community, you’re always gonna suffer. So always think of that return on a relationship again, what am I gonna do about the cabinetry, okay, why are you even asking me that, but I’m very interested. And now guess what, I’m a hero to that person. And they will talk my they will sing my praises wherever they go. So I’ve got another salesman working for me out

Brandon Burton 33:44
there. That’s right. Yeah, I like how you came back around to the cabinetry. And your example of how we met at TCC. That’s, that’s perfect. Because I had heard about you, I knew some of the stuff you were doing your chamber, you’d heard about me, we made the connection. The one thing we didn’t do is get a picture. So next time we’re with each other, we gotta get a picture. And

Don McCoy 34:07
now I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna screenshot talking right here. And this is what I’m doing right now on my in I’m doing it right here. A big smile. Brandon here. Yeah. I got it now.

Brandon Burton 34:25
Person one next time. So as we start to wrap up, though, I wanted to ask you if you have any tips or action items based on anything that we’ve covered today, for the chamber listening who’d like to take their organization up to the next level, what would you suggest? Well,

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Don McCoy 34:41
you know, I and I know a lot of the thing is, the status quo is all I mean, you’ve probably heard it a million times is Think outside the box. My team has got a sign on the front of my door hanging above my door. It says Don has another idea. and whether they’re good ideas or bad ideas, it doesn’t matter. Clear your cash every now and then of your ideas, because that’ll let new ones come in. But get them out there. And whether it’s it doesn’t have to be the whole ball of wax. But if it’s just something in that idea that might spark someone else to take it to another level, do it. Don’t be afraid to throw your ideas out there for fear of looking crazier, you know, but when you come from the acting world, you know, you act and you are foolish, sometimes on stage or whatever you do, and you just have to throw that caution to the wind. And people will start to respect you as an idea person. And I think it’s highly, highly important that you continue to improve yourself and find things like this key person of influence, or this grow and protect or just get on YouTube and start watching TED Talks. If you have a little issue, maybe talking to pub in the public. There’s tons of things in ideas and tips. back I’ll give you one right now. Small tip. You ready? Yes. My glasses, say this. But back when I was in film school, Adam Roark was one of my teachers. He was a real famous actor with Hells Angels if you’re older, but me and Lou Diamond Phillips, we’re in the same class together Alibaba guy, right? Yeah. And so he said, there he goes, You know what the difference between a good actor and a bad actor is, and we’re all sitting there going? Experience. He said, eyebrows. Eyebrows. What do you mean by eyebrows? The tip he gave us is watching TV ever go see a bad movie and an actor or even you’re talking to somebody their face never moves. They’re just remembering their lines. And I’m gonna tell you about my chamber, my chamber is best and you need to be part of my chamber. And then you just give that whole thing. But he said if you move, you’re good actors and good salespeople, and people who are passionate about what they do, their eyebrows will move just a little bit before they say anything. So hey, let me tell you about my chamber see it because what that is, so consciously, is telling the listener Hang on, I’m about to say something pretty important. So they automatically tune in to you, if you just move your eyebrows just ever so slightly. Some people do it naturally. Some people have to think about it. But if you watch people on podiums, nothing against our state representative yesterday, but he was the emcee of the gala. But he was sort of deadpan. But if your face is animated, and move your eyebrows just ever so slightly, you You are now persuaded somebody to listen to.

Brandon Burton 37:34
Right? I like that. Now everybody listening is thinking about their eyebrows and what they’re doing. And yeah, I think of the rock. Right? He does that one. Yeah. And it gets your attention. So

Don McCoy 37:46
there you go. And don’t and please don’t think that, Oh, I’m over exaggerating my eyebrows, it will come naturally trust Dan. But if you truly believe in what you’re doing, and find a good software, program, whatever works best for you. But be aware, there’s a lot of software’s out there that work for you, in chamber management, but as to help you manage your database. I like mine, because it not only helps me manage my database, but it also helps have tools for my members to use. And to me, that’s the most important part of it. And some of you may be Richard scalding from time to time he said he was at the event and everything. And he lives in Texas now. So I got him to move from California.

Brandon Burton 38:28
That’s right. And he’s he’s one of the sponsors of the show. So if you want to plug it, you know, Chamber Nation,

Don McCoy 38:34
well, I promise you, you’ll never meet a nicer guy and his wife and his whole team. He’s one of those guys that I brainstorm with. And I say, hey, if your software could do this, that would be awesome. And he goes, let me see what I can do. And sure enough, he came out with it. I mean, we it’s our plaque system. I won’t get into that. But that’s what is so cool about having somebody that you can, whether it works or not get the idea can make it happen. You know, in film and TV, I used to edit on beta Ubaid, remember beta tape, or film years ago, and I didn’t know how to work the editing machine. But I knew the guy that did and I said, I know you can do this. So I want you to make it look like this. Yeah, he doesn’t. So you always need your producer director and then you need the guy. Because as somebody once said, as patent lawyers said, CEOs like us right here, we are working 1015 20 years in the future. Okay, but you need a team that is working in the hearing now your see Oh, getting the job done here in the present. So try to keep that perspective to

Brandon Burton 39:45
like that. That is great. A great tip right there. Speaking of those lines, as we look to the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, how do you see chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Don McCoy 39:57
Well, I’m gonna say they, a lot of us, a lot of them need to change and get with it. Okay? Come into the future and embrace the technology. Because it’ll it’ll, it’ll run right past us so fast, you won’t know what happened. The entire world is going to this is this is this is the world and, and, and if you can’t reach my chamber here or call me or find me or whatever, even Voice Search, I’m people voice search, I am now searchable by voice. And people are using that. But the future of chambers are to still represent your businesses at the table of government, don’t lose sight of that. And to be the community key, whether they call that the kid the last 10. Because if you become that important, and if the chamber went away in your community today, would your community fill it? Yeah, they should. So be that be that chamber of influence in that connector, and that catalyst and the champion for the community, but in the future, embrace all these new technologies coming along, because that’s going to set you up for tremendous success. And as some people retire out of the chamber world, and it happens all the time, technology can replace some of those things and make it easier for the new folks coming in. Because imagine, I don’t know what the average age of a CEO is, in chamber world, I really don’t, that’d be interesting to find out what but I mean, if you’re not up on technology, the next generation, the millennials, in the whatever’s there, whatever their names are, that are highly technical oriented with the Snapchats, and the whole things. They’re the ones that are going to take over in the chamber world, and they’re not gonna want to start at square one. That’s right. They want to see you already have a presence on Facebook, they want to see you have the tick tock, they want to see you have all this other stuff. And that’s going to attract really great talent to your team. That’ll make you even more successful. Don’t be afraid to be the idea person, the executive, but look for that talent that can come in here and work your social media to the enth degree and it’s nothing to them. And you’re sitting here going, what do I do? What is this? That’s where you got to go. Because it’s, it’s important. It really is at 63. I never thought I’d be well versed in but my mother is 83 and she can work Facebook like a charm. It’s unbelievable. So

Brandon Burton 42:30
awesome. I love there.

Don McCoy 42:31
Yeah, just get out there and do it. It’s easy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 42:35
So Don, what would be the best way for any listeners to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about anything you’ve shared? Or how you’re doing things? Their culture? Absolutely.

Connect with Don McCoy

Don McCoy 42:45
My email and my, my phone number is at chambernomics.com. And that’s, you could always call the chamber here and ask for me. I’m very accessible. My phone number is is on the chambernomics website, you can find me on Facebook, Don McCoy facebook.com, forward slash Don McCoy. Go in there and make me your friend, LinkedIn, I try to use it all. I tell you, and if you try to message me on Facebook, what’s at email, and I wish if somebody out there can find the technology to write if you’re if you know that if I get a message on Messenger, WhatsApp, email, this this, and it funnels into one app. You’ll make a million dollars today, I kid you not. But just reach out, give us a call. I’ll call you back. And I’d be happy to walk you through or answer any questions you might have. I’m, I’m here to not only help our businesses, but to help you and which helps America live or not. I’m a big patriot. And this country is fantastic. And we still have the freedom to do business. And so let’s do it. That’s the commerce there’s another website for you called letsdocommerce.com.

Brandon Burton 44:06
Well, I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But this has been a fun conversation. Hopefully it’s percolating some ideas and people listening and take something and run with it at your chambers back at home. But Don, thank you for thank you for being with us today and providing so much value. My pleasure,

Don McCoy 44:24
Brandon, keep doing the good work you’re doing you are a blessed individual, to the community and to our to our community here in the chamber world. And likewise, if there’s anything I can do for you, Brandon or anybody out there, thank you, God bless you all for what you’re doing. We know it’s a tough job, but, uh, keep up the good work and you’ll be blessed every day.

Brandon Burton 44:46

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Retention with Josh (JT) Torres & Isaac Lee

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Josh (JT) Torres and Isaac Lee. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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

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Introduction

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

Unknown Speaker 0:14
And now, your host, he always enjoys getting new pair of running shoes. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello chamber champions. Welcome to chamber chat podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.

Tony Felker 0:45
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:06
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

For today’s episode, we are we have two guests with us we have Josh Torres or j t as we’ll refer to him and Isaac Lee and in JT and Isaac are the co founders of chamber life. Josh is a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple businesses with multiple successful business ventures with a current focus and responsibility as co founder for the strategy sales, operation and alignment of the North America chamber life business. His style is innovative, creative and putting people first to benefit from the technology to ensure a better quality of productivity and success for chamber teams. He is enthusiastic, optimistic and future oriented individual with a high energy level, having a creative capacity to recognize and pursue opportunities naturally capable of setting up the internal systems procedures and processes necessary to operate a business with a focus on cash flow, sales and revenue at all times. Driven to be proactive in his approaches to everything with the vision to lead and inspire others. He has led chambers and associations for over 19 years and is married his wife Cindy and they have five children residing in Northwest Ohio. Isaac has a background in running chambers of commerce as well as economic development organizations. He has over 15 years of experience in these two industries. In addition to being a co founder of chamber life, Isaac is the executive director for stupid county EDC in the northeast corner of Indiana. Isaac has also served as a board member and consultant to the Chamber of Commerce executives of Ohio, where he has worked with hundreds of chambers and economic development organizations across the state of Ohio and Indiana, identifying the best practices as well as comprehensive policies to help move organizations forward in their communities. In 2012, Isaac was awarded the 20 under 40 award in the Toledo market in Ohio, and in 2013, Isaac was voted by his peers for the 2012 Professional of the Year Award through the Chamber of Commerce executives of Ohio. In 2019, Isaac was awarded the 40 under 40 Award by the Greater Fort Wayne Business Journal. In 2020. He was selected as one of the nation’s top 50 economic development professionals by consultant Connect. Isaac received his MBA from Defiance College and received his bachelor’s in marketing and human resources from the University of Toledo Isaac has been married his wife Kristin for almost 19 years and they have four children. But Isaac and JT I’m glad to have you with me today on chamber chat podcast. Why don’t you both take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions listening and and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Josh (JT) Torres 4:12
Hey, chamber peeps, JT here. So excited to be on the show today. love working with all of you, in the state of Ohio and across the country. Super stoked to be here. One thing about me that I pride myself in I have a serious addiction with fitness and working out. And really every day regiment. So that’s something that I spend a lot about two hours in the morning doing before I start my day.

Brandon Burton 4:40
Very good. I should show you my my office space here. Doubles is my gym. So maybe afterwards. I’ll give you

Isaac Lee 4:48
a little time. And Brandon and guests thank you again for allowing us to take this opportunity to talk to folks. We’ve been in your shoes so we love speaking the chamberlain And we’re just talking about it. What’s what our best practices are? A unique thing about me, and I’m not too proud to say it right now. But I am a Notre Dame fan. And yes, I know we lost him. Wonderful last week. I’ve heard it all. But I’m a diehard Irish fan. So I’ll be hanging on.

Brandon Burton 5:17
It’s a rough start to the season, but you can’t be where you are without being a Notre Dame fan. Right? That’s true. Like I said, I’m glad to have you both with me today. As we dive in, usually, at this point, if I’m interviewing a chamber staff, or chamber executive, I haven’t talked a little bit about their chamber, but as cofounders of chamber life, tell us what is chamber life? What do you guys do? And as you service chambers of commerce, and just give everyone a bit little better idea of what chamber life is?

Isaac Lee 5:50
Absolutely. Josh, do you want to start it?

Josh (JT) Torres 5:52
Yeah, go ahead. I will. Absolutely. So you know, chamber life really takes two things that are most important to the business and chambers and I say business because we’re a business as a chamber organization, not a not a nonprofit, we were really want to run this as a business as chamber printers, as I like to call them. So you know, we came up with chamber life has a way to automate your task with recruitment and retention, that will do in dry, hopefully higher retention and conversion rates for your prospects that will ultimately lead to higher engagement, and making sure that all of your members are touched multiple times a year with with automated tasks that are assigned with our within our software. So we’re we’re excited about chamber life and the ability to take a pain in the market that’s been been there for many, many years, and automate that process for many.

Brandon Burton 6:42
Very good Isaac, do you have anything you’d like to add on, on what chamber life’s about?

Isaac Lee 6:47
I think it like several entrepreneurs, or founders of technologies or software. This was born out of frustration of Josh and I being in the industry and having the same struggles that many of your listeners are having, in terms of these packages, these platforms working for us, not just with us. And there was an opportunity to really automate some of these tasks that are very extremely important into our role of being a relationship based organization. So we often use the term it was built by you for you. When we talk about chamber life it because it’s truly sincere.

Brandon Burton 7:26
Very good. I appreciate that. That helps give a snapshot of what it is you guys do so and coming from from two guys that have experienced in chamber world and like you said, being built up built by you for you, because you are one of them. Thank you. So we’ve decided, as we go about this episode today to focus our discussion around that R word that JT had mentioned of retention. So we’ll be talking about membership retention, and maybe some approaches to take as when it comes to membership retention that maybe you haven’t tried before. Maybe it’s just maybe a different approach different perspective. But we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, guys, we are back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about membership retention, as we think of chambers out there the frustration like Isaac mentioned of how do you get these people to come back year after year see the value that they get for their membership. As you look at retention in membership, maybe JT what what comes to mind as as things that a chamber should maybe have a focus on or pay attention to when it comes to retention.

Topic-Retention

Josh (JT) Torres 11:33
So I think one of the things that you know, for many years we’ve focused on is the R word retention. But I really feel that moving ahead, you know, for the future of chambers, we need to focus on two things culture and the experience, there’s two things to culture that as chambers, we really need to make sure that we are focused on the internal culture, which is inside your boardroom, inside your inside your office walls, and then the external culture, outside your membership outside and your community culture is a big deal. And if we’re not managing and leading culture, that can really affect the our ability to retain, that culture can affect your brand, your brand, awareness, your promotion of your brand, and then really be able to tell the story of what are people saying about your organization. So culture is a big deal. The other thing is, by driving culture, we drive experience, what type of member experience are you having, at the after hours at the luncheon at the golf outing, even within your own board meetings with a new member orientation? Is that experience superior? That drives a culture of inclusivity welcoming and making sure that we’re always going to be there to take care of our members?

Brandon Burton 12:47
Like that. Isaac, do you have any thoughts as far as what a chamber should be thinking of when it comes to retention?

Isaac Lee 12:54
Yeah, and actually, it’s going back a little bit in our history to how a lot of our chambers were formed. It’s relationship based transactions, and I struggle saying the word transactions, but it truly is that think about the life of 200 members or an organization, a chamber the size of 200 members, that’s 200 relationships, and not all relationships are the same. So you really need to understand what each one of those relationships are looking for. Some are very needy want to be at all your events, some are just hey, I’m here for the benefits and everything else is a cherry on top, understand what that relationship is, and drive that home each and every year. Everything else that you try to do with that member to get them out of their space, might not achieve the same goal or return on investment in terms of your time your spending. So really understand what your members are, what they’re trying to do with the relationship that you have with them. And really concentrate on that.

Brandon Burton 13:54
Like that, if you’re saying relationships. And what I hear out of that is expectations. Like as you develop these relationships, you’re better understanding what the expectation is for each of these members. And oftentimes, if you’ve got a 200 member base, you’ve got probably close to 200 different expectations of what they’re looking for from you as a chamber. So without building those relationships and understanding what that expectation is, it makes it hard to create the culture and experience it’s a value to them, to keep them around for a long time and in for them to recognize the value they provide. As we circle back JT, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the culture. How do you decide what direction as a chamber? What direction do you go with creating culture and what your culture looks and feels like?

Josh (JT) Torres 14:49
So that’s a great question. So two things you really need to understand your membership and make sure that the is your board of directors set up to really good view Have what who your members are? Who sits on that board table? Is there a board matrix that represents as best as you can your total membership? That’s one thing. And the second thing is in the office, what type of training and professional development are we doing to help drive culture drive engagement, and make sure we have very much chamber execs that are excited to come to work, they know what they’re doing. They have the tools and the resources to be successful. And then that culture with in that office, you know, who was the best fit to drive membership retention, or do sales or do events, those types of things, many of our, our peers in the industry are solo chamber printers, they’re by themselves in the office full time or part time. And we have many out there that listen, that are volunteer run, that are trying someday to become revenue driven to the point where they can have a paid position. So really understanding Do we have the right fit? The right personas at the board representing the community? And then internally, do we have the right fit of individuals with the personas that can drive engagement and innovation inside the office?

Brandon Burton 16:07
So without being too abstract, I mean, is there a couple examples of culture like what comes to my mind it obviously every chamber is different. But just to throw some examples out there. If you create a culture of at our chamber, we show up and support new businesses with a ribbon cutting, or at our chamber, we do an annual, you know, luncheon for the first responders will say, we have a great respect in our community for first responders, and that becomes part of the culture. Is there some examples you can think of that, and I am hesitant, because I don’t want a chamber to listen and say, Oh, I have to do that. Right. It has to be catered for your community. But what would be some real examples of that being too abstract as to what culture could look like?

Josh (JT) Torres 17:02
So one, one example that we share in our association work and we’ve we still unfortunately have in our industry is the lack of welcoming at some that sometimes our luncheon or after hours, just by creatures of habit. And just in most instances by accident, when you have a new prospect that’s trying to join the chamber, or they’re a brand new member, and they come to an event, they don’t know anyone. And then they’re not maybe assign an ambassador or assign a board member to look after them with their on the registration list. That right there is a sense of how you can create an experience based upon the welcoming culture, they walk into a room and an after hours, two things happen, you know, they’ve got to be introduced. And then they’ve got to be able to follow through. So by driving engagement at those events, and making sure you’re inclusive and welcoming to that member, will give them a positive culture experience that will then hopefully drive more of that retention piece for them.

Brandon Burton 17:58
Isaac, do you have any thoughts that come up as far as what culture could look like some examples?

Isaac Lee 18:03
Yeah, so Josh is looking external to the organization, we just did a training last week internal to chambers of commerce, specifically for boards. And I’ll take that angle, we have a culture of your board, there’s usually three different expectations. At some core, there’s these expectations, it’s either the board members offering their time t talent is another T or treasurer. And we’re trying to teach that our staff and our board should understand what the culture is or what the nature is of that board member to have a good mix, it’s very difficult to have somebody who’s only there to offer their treasure, be the one to volunteer at all their events, meaning nations a treasure, but the ones that’s offering up their treasure, there may they may not offer up their time. That’s not what their skill set is. And we shouldn’t expect them to do otherwise, unless it also matches with what their motives are of the treasurer. So it’s the culture that we set within our board or organizations can also matter and have a deep impact on the success of our organization.

Brandon Burton 19:06
Like that. I like that response a lot. As we look at experience, creating a positive experience that helps you have that culture that is going to drive the experience. Isaac, may we start with you on this, you know, going down this path with creating that experience for members or bore me go either direction you want with that, but how do you go about creating that experience?

Isaac Lee 19:33
So one of the things that I recall for myself, when I was at the Defiance area Chamber, I had an experience where I was really paying attention to the relationship of my member and I found out that this local business of mine, there was a husband who was running the organization and assumed because of his title he was he was the go to. It wasn’t the case. Actually, it was a family owned business. And the wife did the books, but in a relationship Yep, it was unique in the sense that I was at an event. With them asking for sponsorships, I had been unsuccessful. But I listened to a conversation between these two individuals about this party that they were getting ready to have in the coming week. And the party was not about a family member was actually about a dog. very daring dog to this family. A couple of weeks later, I had seen the wife and the husband at another event, and something drew me upon the fact I should ask about how the party went. I did. This coincided with an ask of about $3,000, that up until that point, I asked about the dog, I was not successful. So when you think about, you know what it means to really drive home with a relationship, it wasn’t anything else that I offered at the Chamber of Commerce as an executive director, other than the willingness to care and ask about a family pet.

Brandon Burton 20:55
I like that that’s a, that’s huge, just being able to get on a relationship level with them, where I like to say you’re building a relationship of trust, you’re not just coming after them for money for the sponsorship, you’re showing the care and interest in them. So that definitely creates a better experience.

Isaac Lee 21:13
Now there’s follow up there to Brandon. Right. So after that, when I was there, guess who got a birthday card?

Brandon Burton 21:20
The dog? Yes. Awesome. So Jay, to me, from your perspective of creating experience.

Josh (JT) Torres 21:32
So no birthday cards to dogs? I’ll say that I haven’t had that in my tenure. But I really think what drives an incredible experience is when you identify the pain that a said business is having. And identify, again, that chamber provides, you know, chambers have fantastic where, with networking? Well, sometimes we need to up our ante and really understand what’s it What’s that business experiencing? You know, and how do we give them a feature not a benefit, let’s talk features, not benefits. Let’s talk about what feature the chamber we can provide to them to have the ultimate experience. And most quite honestly, if you can solve that pain with a game that may be networking that may be some of the great affinity programs that are out there that may be program and educational work that you provide to them. That may be work that you’re doing in advocacy, workforce development, talent, attraction DNI, whatever that pain is, if you have a game, which I’d like to call a feature, that definitely drives the experience, because then they realize, ah, someone is going to be able to help me. And somebody’s going to be able to guide me through navigating my challenge.

Brandon Burton 22:43
I love that I heard a quote A while ago, and I wish I could remember who it was. But it said something to the effect that if you can identify the pain for your customer, or will say your member better than they can describe it, that they’ll automatically assume that you have the answer that you have to solution. So if you can go about identifying what these pains are, then they’re going to come to you for the feature for the the gain for that benefit that you have to offer to them, and create a positive experience going forward. So I had a while back, I had read a book called you’re invited. And the whole book is about creating experiences for people were added, I can go down a deep rabbit hole with what the books all about. But one of the takeaways that I got from it and relating it to the chamber world is chambers are known for their networking events. Right? Right. And when you open up a networking event for any business, in your membership, people come they’re super uncomfortable, they might grab a drink, once they’re done, they’re out of there, you know, if they don’t have their buddy there that, you know, meet up with that networking can be super uncomfortable. But if you had a carefully curated mixer, say for example, for real estate, and you had title companies and you had banks and you had real estate agents, and they all have a common interest with each other, then all of a sudden, they have a reason to talk to each other, you know, the, the realtor may not have the need to talk to the vet when they don’t have a pet, you know, necessarily so it just creates some more, you know, natural experiences to build upon. And that really struck me as far as creating experience within a chamber is even just looking at it from the point of view of networking events that I’d like to have anybody I have on the show. Think of any any tips or action items as we we’ve got you both on and you both have great experience in the chamber world. So I see this as being like a bonus episode, a two for one. But what kind of tips or action items would you share for the chamber champion listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, Isaac, but we’ll go with you first.

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Isaac Lee 25:07
So I think one of the things Josh and I have been talking about and is at the core of chamber life. And what we do in terms of some of the automation is looking at the 90 days prior to an invoice as a great deal of opportunity. Far too often we catch them after they’ve started the invoicing and asking them for money, we need to really work on the relationship, 90 days prior to that invoice being created. That way when they get the invoice, the ability for that company to remember why you’re providing or what you’re providing and why it’s important. It’s a quick recall, it’s a quick payment, you’re not being judged against another invoice, especially for smaller businesses who might be on a shoestring budget, they’re going to recall it a lot quicker so that 90 days prior to an invoice is extremely important in a relationship.

Brandon Burton 25:59
I think that is so valuable. Have you seen metrics of you know, chambers that do implement the 90 days before versus ones that don’t? And what that retention rate looks like?

Isaac Lee 26:08
Yes, so chamber champions out there will probably relate to this, we’ve seen a pretty long, extensive accounts receivable report 90 plus days, right? Yeah, we’ve been able to show some pretty good track record records of reducing that by half, again, you’re still gonna have some folks that just don’t pay or corporations that just take longer 30 to 45 days, we understand that. But those that should be paying right on time, we’ve seen a drastic increase in how fast a chamber will receive its cash. Lauren is a GAO report and allowing us to spend more time elsewhere.

Brandon Burton 26:44
But what I like about that is when you’re building that relationship, or putting more attention into that relationship will say 90 days before the invoice is created, you’re doing the work to meet those expectations for that member before that time comes versus once the invoice is created. And then you’re trying to collect payment trying to see you know, resolve problems. And it’s a whole different skill set on how you approach and handle the the situation. So being able to stay more congruent with what your values are. And mission is as a chamber. That’s that is huge to have more focus on that that relationship 90 days prior. JT, how about you a tip or action item.

Josh (JT) Torres 27:29
So I call it the SW factor SW skilling will. So I think in the world today, we’ve got people that have the skill, and we got people that have the will, if they don’t have one or the other, what do we do to help them. So specifically with chamber staff and the teams that we work with across the state, and across the country with with some of the work we do, we’ve got brand new executives coming in to have the will, but we really want to make sure they have the skill. So it’s really near and dear to Isaac and I to make sure that we set up chambers for success, we just set up executives for success for career pathways for chamber, chamber management, and leadership, quite honestly. And then look at our boards of directors that continue to turn over there’s board burnout, no different than there’s executive burnout. And we find a lot of the times that we have board members that are willing to serve, but they don’t have the skill. They don’t understand what’s expected of them at that board of directors table, they don’t understand what’s expected of their skills, the skills that we can leverage of theirs, to really understand how to govern the Chamber of Commerce, and then you’ve got your members, they’ve got the will. But do they have the skills specifically to network? You know, I think chambers have a huge opportunity to do education attainment in networking. You know, we bring all these people to these events to network, some of are very uncomfortable. But then if networking is one of our number one spaces in some of in chambers, what are we doing to educate that member on how to specifically have the skill to to actually network understand the follow up afterwards, that drives more value for their experience?

Brandon Burton 28:57
I think that’s a valuable resource right there teaching how to network. Again, like I mentioned, can be super uncomfortable and and and it can be perceived you go to that experience. And it doesn’t go well as being a total waste of time. And what value does the chamber have for me, if that’s what their main selling proposition is? So being able to set them up for success, I think is huge. And goes right back to retention as well. 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 chambers and their purpose going forward? JT, let’s we’ll go with you first this time.

Future of Chambers

Josh (JT) Torres 29:38
So I think the great business startup is happening and we see individuals that have had the skill for many years working for others start working for themselves. So I think entrepreneurialism and driving freelance and the gig economy I think is here to stay. I think chambers need to embrace and, and really empower entrepreneurship in their communities and be at the table with centers that provide that or find a way to quite honestly crowdfund a entrepreneurial community or create that ecosystem or be part of that ecosystem. I think that’s a big deal. Second to that I want and hope that chambers across North America, we, you know, again, we work in different parts of the country, even into Canada. And in the south Caribbean, there are there is absolutely an opportunity in the next five to 10 years and chambers for us to be driving global economy, just your chambers, having more of that virtual reality, the AI with chambers across the globe, having meetups with chambers in England, having meetups with chambers in Hawaii, Maine, chambers in Canada, and having live online networking opportunities that drive more of the global economy and get people really introduced to other parts of the world. I think chambers are positioned to do that fantastically.

Brandon Burton 30:57
I’m glad you touched on that the AI and the virtual experience, because we gained a little bit of that through COVID, learning how to use Zoom and do that sort of thing. But I think as we look to the future, for me, I actually am just releasing a blog post about this right now too. But as we look to the future, I like to look at, you know, the kids that are being raised right now, what are they into what’s their level of engagement, and they’re all playing these, you know, immersive, we would call them the video game, right? Whether it’s fortnight or Roblox or you know, any of these immersive type of games. And it’s not a start and a finish, like they’re living a life within this game. And they’re actually doing commerce within these games. So as a chamber of commerce looking to the future, they really should be looking at what that future generation is doing. And figure out how to get involved with that, you know, virtual commerce that’s that is going on, because it is very real. Isaac, what about you? How do you see the future and purpose of chambers,

Isaac Lee 32:05
I see the future that if you don’t change, you will become irrelevant. And what I mean by that is, most chambers have ran events the same way for a very long time. And there’s not anything wrong with that. But because of demographics, because of generational changes, and the things that the younger population are looking to get out of that relationship. Some of our older events have a tendency to fall by the wayside, declining revenues, declining attendance, they don’t offer the opportunity for them to be virtual, or engaged virtually pre and post the event. So really look at the things that you value within your organization, the events that you do, and find ways to introduce the opportunity to allow those to happen pre and post in a virtual environment, getting all populations involved, both young and old. From all of them different demographics and diversities to make sure that we’re preparing ourselves for what what comes ahead in terms of the way the population looks, it’s going to change, it’s changing now,

Brandon Burton 33:10
right underneath our nose, like that. And obviously, there’s a lot of events that chambers put on. But if you focus on maybe that big event that you do each year, or maybe it’s a couple of events, as you’re sharing that Isaac, I was thinking at ACC conferences here, they had the app people were engaging, you know, week leading up to it. And even a few days after the conference, you know, continuing to have those discussions and network virtually but then when you’re there in person, it was that much better. So great example I wanted to give you both an opportunity to share any contact information for people who’d like to reach out and connect with you and why don’t you share who would be the ideal type of chamber to work with chamber life and who could you best service

Connect with Isaac Lee & JT

Isaac Lee 33:59
Ooh, Josh, you want to go you want me to

Josh (JT) Torres 34:03
so I would say are the best benefit that we can provide for executives is a small to midsize chamber that is really our, our, our sweet spot. We provide a in addition to our automated productivity tool chamber life, we provide chamber moguls, which is a very much accelerated approach to leadership training, not management training for chambers. So we’re really in the business to take managers test and to make them leaders. So our software of course, does that one component piece where we automate the technology to give you more time to go out and build your business your chamber. So I think that that is definitely a our audience, our core audience.

Brandon Burton 34:51
Very good. Brandon, I add on that Isaac,

Isaac Lee 34:54
I was just gonna say I would add to it. In addition to the small and medium sized chambers, there’s really three things that we know our end users who excel in the system are doing, or have done in the past. If you write on post it notes and have them in your office, if you have a journal, and these are not all encompassing, by the way, if you have a journal and you use it actively, or if you have reminders in either Outlook or or Google or any other email services system, chamber life can help you with your organization.

Brandon Burton 35:26
So I think he just hit on everybody there between posted notes, journals, and the those reminders so. So contact information, what would be the best way for these especially small and midsize chambers to reach out and connect with you guys.

Josh (JT) Torres 35:42
So they can go to our website, YourChamberLife.com. And they’ll be able to get our information on there, they’ll be able to book a demo to either speak with us further about these types of opportunities, or take a test drive of our software.

Brandon Burton 36:01
Very good. I will get that in our show notes for this episode. So people can find that easily if they forget to add your to the beginning of that or whatever. So they can just go to the shownotes and find that. But Isaac, JT, I appreciate you guys taking some time to be with me today here on chamber chat podcast and and addressing an important issue of retention. I mean, that’s it’s kind of that stress that’s on top of every chambers. How do we keep these members that keep showing our value and relevancy? So, thank you for sharing your insight and experience with us and I’ve appreciate it.

Isaac Lee 36:38
Thank you, Brandon. We appreciate it. Tim.

Josh (JT) Torres 36:40
Thanks, everyone.

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

Presenting Employment Opportunities to the Classroom with Bret Schanzenbach

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

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

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Introduction

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

And now, your host. He worked for staples. Well in high school, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Kris Johnson

Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 2:03

You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us today for episode 191 of Chamber Chat Podcast. We are getting up there in the episode numbers. But for this episode, we have Brett Johnson back with us and Brett is he’s served as the president and CEO of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce in California since January 2019. Brett is a native Californian and resident of San Diego’s North County since 1971. He came to the Carlsbad position from the VISTA Chamber of Commerce where he served as CEO for nine years is corporate background before the chamber was in residential real estate and the software industry. In 1992. He helped start the technical difference Inc, a human resource software company. before venturing into the corporate world. Brett spent seven years as a youth minister, Brett graduated from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio, earning a BA in psychology and a BA in theology. He earned his master’s in theological studies from the University of Dallas in 2001. He and his wife Jolene reside in Vista, California, and they’ve been blessed with six children and two grandchildren so far. Brett, I’m looking forward to having you with me on the podcast today. And and I want to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Bret Schanzenbach 3:07
Morning, Brandon, thank you so much for having me as a guest today. I’m excited to be here and have conversation. Something interesting. I mean, you read my bio, so that stole most of the stuff that’s actually interesting about me, I guess I would say one thing that’s interesting is, you know, like a lot of people like backed into the chamber career, I don’t know if anybody truly like goes to college and thinks, oh, I want to be a chamber executive when I grow up, you know, so, and the way I backed into my chamber career was through the real estate industry, I did real estate for eight years and found out that I hated it. And, you know, as you mentioned, my wife and I have six kids and you know, real estate, you have to obviously work on your client’s terms. And so they usually are available on nights, weekends, holidays, you know, things like that. And after a while, I just really did not enjoy that industry. And, but that’s the industry that got me super engaged with my local chamber. When I was a realtor, I had joined my chamber, joined a committee got invited to the board of directors and because of all that, you know, it’s how I got really familiar with the impact chambers could have in a in a community. And when the guy who was the executive of my local board there that I was part of, he decided to move back to the Midwest with his wife. You know, I’m like, Oh, this is great opportunity to get out of this because I’m so done with real estate and I didn’t really know exactly what I was getting into but you know, I so but I backed in. I had I remember having a conversation with him one day when we were talking about him leaving and me possibly applying for the job. And I said Um, I don’t actually know what you do on a day to day basis. What do you

Brandon Burton 5:07
board member? Yeah, what you do?

Bret Schanzenbach 5:10
So, but I threw my hat in the ring. And now I’ve been in the industry for 14 and a half years, I think it is or, or I’m in my 14th year, however that works and love it.

Brandon Burton 5:24
As I say, hopefully it’s going better for you than real estate. So yeah, I really do love it. And maybe that needs to be the question I ask people is how did you find your way into the chamber world? Because everybody has a unique story about how they are? Yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 5:38
that is so true. You know, one of my neighboring chamber execs. He is one of those guys that came right out of college and got a job at his local chamber and moved his way up and all that jazz. But that is so rare. It’s mostly people who have come from all kinds of different. You do find a lot of people who served at a chamber before they became an exec. But the stories are so different.

Brandon Burton 6:02
Right? Yeah, I always find it fascinating. So thank you for sharing your journey. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about the Carlsbad chamber just to give us an idea of size staff budget, kind of scope of work to give us an idea of what you guys do there.

Bret Schanzenbach 6:20
Sure. So we are located as you mentioned, in North San Diego County. We’re about 3530 35 miles from the city of San Diego itself. And we our community itself, is about 115,000 people in in our suburb here. But for our part of San Diego County, we’re kind of the economic hub. We have a robust tourism industry, but we also have robust industry in general, which is a nice combination, and at least in San Diego County is pretty rare besides the city of San Diego. We are we’re the number two generator and tourism dollars in our county behind the city of San Diego itself. And and I think we have the third largest industrial park in San Diego County. So both we have this great mix of both, you know, like biotech and high tech and that kind of stuff. And then the tourism side. So that’s great. Our chamber itself, we have right around 1000 members, little over 1000 members. San Diego County has 43 chambers of commerce, and we’re the second largest with the city of San Diego, the Regional Chamber in San Diego being the largest. So we’re the second largest chamber in the county, we have about a $1.3 million budget staff of nine. We do not our community has we have separate visitor Bureau, we have a separate Downtown Association. Our city has its own economic development department. So we don’t have any of those other add ons that some chambers do. But we obviously we work very closely with all of those entities matter of fact, we meet regularly have a great rapport with them. But but we don’t fulfill those, you know, those specific roles, like getting funding to be say a visitor center or a manage the downtown or any of those things. So So yeah, that’s a little bit about us. I have a very large board of directors. That was kind of the biggest, one of the biggest changes coming from my previous chamber where we we had what I thought was a big board at the time, like of 17. And, you know, I have 35 voting members and, you know, for other like, advisory members and then other emeritus members, we have a large board here.

Brandon Burton 8:56
Yeah, they work for a lot of people. That definitely helps paint the picture for sure kind of where you guys sit and the type of work I’m involved with.

Bret Schanzenbach 9:06
I do work for a lot of people. It’s very true.

Brandon Burton 9:11
Well, I’m excited to get into our topic for our discussion. Today we’re we’re going to be focusing our discussion around presenting employment opportunities to youth in the classroom. And we’ll dive more into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Bret, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about presenting employment opportunities to the classroom today. I know our our scheduling of recording this is being worked around both you and I both volunteering at at church youth camps and so forth. So I know for me, and I may be speaking for you as well, that the rising generation is important to me. And and I think for chambers in general to look at that future employment pipeline and creating a vibrant economy in your community. So I’m excited to have you tell us what the Carlsbad chamber has been doing to introduce these these students, these youth to what a future can look like in your community through the various employment opportunities.

Topic-Presenting Employment Opportunities to the Classroom

Bret Schanzenbach 13:05
Yeah, thank you for that lead in it is a very important topic for all chambers. And I feel like as we go to our conferences, and you know, you attend webinars, and you see this topic comes up more and more and more, because it’s a it’s not just a local issue. It’s a nationwide issue. And if I could, before I explain what we’re currently at, I want to paint a little bit of a picture of what we used to do. That led up to our current initiative and our chamber, like probably many others who are listening in, we’re very engaged at one point or another in trying to bring together the world of work and the classroom, you know, to bring those together as you as you alluded to, and what we had been doing before, we had this program called talent, cities, and we brought eighth graders out on field trips to actual businesses, like different manufacturing type businesses, et cetera, et cetera. And instead of just doing like a tour of the business, we specifically crafted a tour where they would stop strategically at different places at the company that they were visiting, and they would get a little interview with somebody. So a couple of those stops would be like, on a shop floor, for instance. And then a couple of stops would be more like in research and development and marketing and sales, things like that. So there’s always this mix, kind of a, the blue collar, the white collar type things, but we at each stop, they would hear from a staff member and employee who would talk about who they were, what they did, what they liked about it, what was challenging about it, and how they got to this point in their career. And our goal with that bringing those kids out on site was to just broaden their perspective. Have a little bit because what mostly we found is that most students know what their mom and their dad do if they have both parents. And sometimes they don’t even know what their parents do. Because sometimes what their parents do, they just, they just have no way of actually knowing what they do. But beyond that, they just know the big hero jobs like teacher, firefighter, policeman, military, you know, stuff like that. So our goal was to try to broaden their perspectives just a little on what kinds of jobs and career opportunities could be available to them. And when we started that program that we called Talent cities, it was we felt that was successful, like we would actually pull the kids before they would go through with this kind of a tour, field trip, etc. And then we would survey them again, after and we got some great comments, like one that really stuck out in my mind, one of the kids said, you know, I never thought I could use my love of art in, you know, a work setting or a job or a career or whatever. So things like that. That was exactly what we were hoping to do is help them to see a little bit bigger than they had had a chance to up to that point in their life. But we ran into challenges. So that program, when I was at the VISTA chamber, we ran 1,000/8 graders through in like an 18 month period of time. And at least out here in Southern California field trips are challenging for school districts, and all those logistics that they have to go through to make a field trip happen are not simple. And then secondly, I found that I was constantly going back to the same four or five different companies saying, Hey, I got another group of 38th graders or 20, you know, whatever, for you guys to host. And so, you know, it becomes challenging for businesses to interrupt their flow to do that on a regular basis. So all that being said, That was that was the precursor, when COVID hit, obviously, the whole world pivoted towards virtual learning, virtual interaction, et cetera, et cetera. And at the same time, our local hospital out here was working on some initiatives to help their career readiness workforce pipeline get developed. And so they were interested in, in creating some videos to help broaden people’s awareness of career opportunities within healthcare. Most people when they think of healthcare, all they think of as a nurse and a doctor. And obviously, when you have a big hospital, there’s usually something like, I think our hospital has, like 2200 employees. So there’s all kinds of careers, that all the way from marketing, you know, down to techs and an

Brandon Burton 18:00
average janitors, you know, everything Yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 18:03
you got it, you got it. So there’s, there’s so much diversity within just a company like that. So they approached us and and so what we ended up putting together and one of the things I love about this is, this was a collaboration with three different chambers of commerce here in my area. So we the Carlsbad chamber, our two neighbors directly nearest the Oceanside chamber and the VISTA chamber, the hospital that I just mentioned, and then our regional EDC edge, our Regional Economic Development Council for our area, the five of us together collaborated on this project. And we went out to our local county representative and said, Hey, we have this idea. And so luckily, he bought into the idea that I’m going to share and funded it because this stuff doesn’t happen without some money behind it. But we created a web portal. And it’s called SoCal. And that’s an acronym that I always forget, but it stands for student opportunities for career awareness and learning. SoCal, and the website is called SoCal workforce.org, SoCal workforce.org. And so we created this web portal. And what we did as we were starting to conceive it, and one of the pieces that was really important to us as we wanted to do this in conjunction with our schools, we didn’t, we didn’t want to do this in some silo by ourselves and just do what we thought made sense. So we worked with the three school districts in the three communities that I just mentioned, Carlsbad, Oceanside and VISTA. And we said, hey, here’s this idea we have, we want to make this evergreen portal of jobs and careers, a video library, if you will, that you can use in the cloud. last room to expose students to the real world of work. And they love the idea, we met with them like two or three times during the process of developing it. And, and when we unveiled it in January of this year 2022, they were ecstatic. And so what the web portal has, when you go there, and it’s open to anybody, so it could be like a teacher who’s navigating this or an individual student, or like, anybody who’s in a, looking to change directions in life, right? Anybody can use this, this website, but you can look up job or career opportunities, three different ways, by industry, by company name, or by a job itself. So like industry, you could look and say, oh, what kinds of things exist in my area in healthcare and tech, in, you know, in public safety, or whatever the case might be? Or, Hey, I’ve heard of, in our area that, you know, there’s some big name companies like ViaSat, or Nordson, or, you know, whatever the company is, I’ve heard of that company, what jobs might be, what careers do they even have, I don’t even know what they do. Or you could just go the path of, you know, like, I want to know more about being an engineer or want to know more about being a this or that. So whatever way you navigate, you eventually get down to these three minute videos. And what we did is we shot all the videos on location. At the site where the worker works, we wanted it really, in their workspace in their flow, like all the B roll, we didn’t use any third party just B roll that you can just purchase, you know, anywhere, everything is shot at the actual site where these people work. And we interview these these various workers. And it’s the same kind of interview that I mentioned earlier, who they are, what they do, what do they like about it? What’s challenging about it?

How do they get to this point in their career, if they were adding a staff member to their team, what would they be looking for. And so in these three minute videos, you get a really good snapshot of a real life, you know, place of work, job, career, etc. And, on our portal, another piece that I really like, because we were trying to think of it from the student perspective is, when you get down to the actual job, before you watch the video, there’s a description there, hey, here’s a little bit about the job. Here’s what the average person in San Diego County makes, who, who performs this job, here’s the job outlook for the next five to 10 years for that profession, in our area. And then if, you know, educational resources are like if you need a degree or a certificate or something to do that job, here’s a couple of links of local institutions who offer those certificates or degrees, etc. And so then with all that background, and they can watch the three minute you know, video and and get to know, that particular job, career, etc. And school districts, when we rolled it out in January, we’re over the moon, they love it. Now, it’s not that a school district can’t like if they wanted to bring, oh, let’s let’s look at a day in the life of the engineer. They can they have resources, they can find that that’s out there. But what our school districts really loved about this project was that it’s so localized. So these are companies that they’re, the students may have heard of, these are places that they’ve driven by, I mean, these are right here in their backyard. And it just the teachers were so excited about making it tangible to their students.

Brandon Burton 24:02
So I’m gonna circle back towards some of the beginning of your comments, and you mentioned that students often will only know what their parents have done it Yeah, just funny. When I was in third grade, I drew some attention from the school when I told them that my dad sold drugs because a pharmaceutical sales rep but I would hear him come home talking about the new drug that he’s marketing. So you know, naturally when we talk about what is your dad do for a living my dad sold drugs so that prompted a parent teacher conference and Oh, no that so that was interesting. But so with these, this web portal and video library I love this idea that I love being able to have the different angles being able to filter by industry company and job type. Are you primarily focusing on the bigger companies because they have so many different levels, different types of positions? Or do you have some of the smaller entrepreneurs even that are highlighting what a day in the life of their work is? Like?

Bret Schanzenbach 25:11
Yeah, good question. Um, it is it is intended to be a mix of both. But initially, it was, when we were at the conception phase and trying to get it off the ground, it was a little bit easier to go to some of the bigger companies who have a diversity of roles already, and say, hey, you know, we want to shoot three different, you know, jobs through different roles at your company. But, but we have both some, so we have some large companies, but we also have some, I would say, medium sized companies. And, and when we launched in January, our goal was to get, I think our goal was to have 60 videos on the portal at launch. And we ended up we met that goal. And currently there’s, there’s 80, I’m trying to think through the numbers. Yeah, currently, there’s 80. And our goal by the end of this calendar year is to get to 100. And then obviously, continue to grow it but but yeah, the so we’re trying to diverse, like to your point, we’re trying to diversify as we grow, and get a more industries be more diversity of size of companies and things. The county supervisor who really bought into this initially, he wanted us to have a healthy mix of things that did not require going to get a four year degree. Sure. And as you probably know, there’s, you know, obviously, there’s the big push in the schools for STEM, and, you know, that kind of stuff. So we wanted to have, obviously, that kind of stuff, too. So we worked really hard. So there’s like some, there’s some construction jobs, you know, what I mean, there’s welders and you know, that kind of stuff in the midst of off. So there’s engineers and you know, etc. So we’re worked hard to try to have that kind of diversity in there.

Brandon Burton 27:07
Yeah. And I can see this library just growing over time with expanding the different companies. But there’s always going to be the need for an accountant and a lawyer and a doctor in some of those staples. But then you see new careers popping up to you know, from I’m thinking when the smartphones came out, and you had app developers, and that wasn’t like you had software designers, but now specifically apps and now. So we see technology shifting with, you know, the metaverse and things like that. And, you know, what is the career going to look like 10 years from now, it might look very different. But exposing these students to those opportunities might help them avoid, you know, eight years in the real estate industry if they don’t like that, right.

Bret Schanzenbach 27:53
Yeah, no, you’re but you’re you’re spot on it. I mean, there’s people who have careers right now that five years ago, those things didn’t even exist. So you know, so theoretically, somebody entering college today, you know, might end up in a career a few years from now, that doesn’t even exist as they start college at least. And Title and name like you, like an app developer. At one point, there was no such thing, right? Or what exactly is an influencer again, but making a lot of money at it. I don’t know what that means. You know, so that is a challenge to, but the other thing that we’re doing is one of the challenges we had when, you know, when I was sharing that example, at my previous chamber, where we were working hard to bring the, the classroom world into the real world of work. We were doing it within our given community, you know, I was the VISTA chamber, and these were Vista businesses, and this was the Vista school district and, but at least in our area, and I know, every region could be, you know, have some differences here. But in our area where we are a suburban, you know, area, it doesn’t make sense to do it. siloed but community by community, which is why this regional approach we felt made a lot more sense. Like, I live in community a I work in community b I go to school and community see my churches in community D. I mean, that’s, that’s actually true for me what I just said, you know, so it was really important for us to take a broader perspective, here in Carlsbad. There. 80,000 people come to work every day, but only 20,000 of those actually live in Carlsbad. So that’s a lot of people coming to work from neighboring communities. And so we had that mindset. So now what where we’re at is, since we launched in January, we’ve now added three more communities to our portfolio, San Marcos Escondido Encinitas have all joined us and their school districts as well. So we’re growing it growing the footprint of it geographically. And then as you already were talking about the companies, the jobs, the those kind of operates, the industries are growing as well. And so we eventually see it hopefully being county wide, but that’s going to take a little while, but county wide, and, you know, just continuing to expand the diversity of opportunities to,

Brandon Burton 30:27
I think it goes to show, maybe the definition of community is changing to some degree, you know, between online communities got your physical communities, you’ve got cities that were established before transportation was as robust as it is now, and, and the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. So as we silo and say, We are the Carlsbad community, you’re really discounting a lot of opportunity from the neighboring areas that, you know, your residents or employers employees are interacting in those cities anyway. So maybe just kind of a reset on what community actually means.

Bret Schanzenbach 31:02
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. You know, we’re, we’re very fluid in this area, and I believe, probably in a lot of areas, and as you pointed out, transportation being, you know, robust, but this, this portal has been, you know, a great collaboration, and I think, in our industry, you know, that’s really important, you know, in the chamber industry to collaborate together, look for me, you know, how can we create win wins, you know, and it, it’s a, it’s been a really great thing for us to collectively work together on and create value for all of our memberships in this in this region. And our, you know, our bigger members who have a tendency to be members of multiple chambers, they love seeing this to, you know, they love seeing our chambers all work together on on big, more enterprise level projects. So, so that’s been a positive, I think our biggest challenge, you know, as we, we initially got that grant, which was super helpful, but, you know, to grow it, there has to be funding so, videography, high quality videography, and editing doesn’t come free. And, and we have done it at a very high level. So we’re at the point where, okay, we’re looking for some more grants and streams of funding. But we’re also going straight to the companies and say, Hey, if you want your company, you know, featured here, we have a path for that. So we’ve created corporate pricing for those that want to be added. It was interesting when we launched some industries that we hadn’t really thought of jumped up and said, Oh, we want to be featured. And so you know, a municipality, their, their water division, they’re like, We need to promote career opportunities in this field. You know, people don’t think about this. And so they jumped on board and sponsored, you know, right away and got some video shot at, at their, whatever water division at their municipality. So there’s, you know, there’s different pockets that we hadn’t really anticipated. And right now I’m working. You know, I mentioned at the outset that we have a strong tourism in Carlsbad. But at the moment, there is no tourism or hospitality listed on our portal at all. So I’m currently in dialogue with them, they they’re really hurting for workforce right now, after the pandemic, it’s been a challenge getting getting staffed back up to the levels, both at restaurants and hotels, and but we just hosted a panel discussion on tourism about two weeks ago, and they were all talking about how they need to, you know, promote careers within tourism. So, so we had a discussion this week about how they could get into our portal. So we’re putting a proposal together for them to to get some video shot at their place. So, you know, I love that, that we have this tool to be able to help serve those who have that need right now.

Brandon Burton 34:05
Yeah, I love that. And thank you for touching on the funding part of it too, because I was going to ask that next about day, how do you make all this happen? And yeah, variety of sources and, and being creative as you go along to and looking for those new opportunities.

Bret Schanzenbach 34:19
Very true. I mean, obviously, there we all in our communities know of some, some go to little, you know, channels where we go after funding for this or that, but eventually, you know, we need business to step up. You know, we were looking regionally at funding sources. You know, our local congressman really liked the idea what so one of the things that’s been that’s come up though, is multiple people have said, hey, it would be great. If your portal could be like a one stop shop for internships, companies who want to host interns, you know, people who want to have an internship and it could be a one stop shop and You know, we’re dealing with all these different jurisdictions now different school districts, and you know, all this stuff. And they all have their own

Brandon Burton 35:08
parameters. And yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 35:10
exactly. So it’s like, oh, boy, how do we do this? So that’s probably like version three of the portal. Not even version two. But so those are things we’re aspiring to, though and are on our radar to continue to evolve, how this portal can continue to serve the needs of our community now that it’s launched, and it’s getting on people’s radar.

Brandon Burton 35:33
Yeah, I really liked that. But as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, for anybody listening? What tip or action item might you share with them to any chamber that’s looking to take their organization up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Bret Schanzenbach 35:51
Yeah, that’s, um, you know, it’s a great question we talked about here. And, and other people have heard in the industry, that we can’t, we can’t be our grandfather’s chamber. You know, the chamber, the days when you think of kind of like, there was a time where businesses join the chamber, and you can pick a variety of reasons, the chamber was the go to place for networking, that was probably the easiest chamber was the go to place for advocacy, you know, you know, things like that. And we don’t have the market cornered on any of those things anymore. I mean, there’s a million ways to network from meet up and you know, online tools to lead clubs and all that kind of stuff. There’s so many ways to network, besides even just social networking. And then advocacy, every industry has its own, you know, vehicle, you know, their own Association, that advocates just for their specific niche needs, and really watches their back. And I still think chambers are excellent at broad scale advocacy, and networking, and all that kind of stuff. But we don’t have the market cornered on any of those things that used to be kind of synonymous with why you need to join a chamber. So we’re constantly asking, asking ourselves, you know, what is our you know, value proposition? What are we bringing to the table that nobody else is bringing to the table, which is part and parcel with this, this discussion we just had today, this is one piece of it for us, you know. So we’re, we’re involved in workforce development in about five or six different fingers or different ways. This SoCal project was just one of them. But that’s, for us, it was like, nobody, when I left broad scape, broad scale, nobody’s involved in this, nobody can bring to the table what we can and workforce development, the relationship with the companies and the relationship with a schools which already we have, you know, we can we can be this bridge that nobody else can serve. So we’ve, that’s one of the stakes we put in the ground, this is going to be a value proposition that we have for our membership. But looking at those things, what do you bring to the table that not nobody else is, you know, Rotary can’t bring to the table or, you know, some nonprofit in your community can’t bring to the table or some Meetup group can’t bring to the table, you know, what, what is it that’s unique. And so we look for those things we and we have, you know, we’re constantly developing new initiatives, which is a little daunting, to be honest, we have to be careful, we don’t get out of a mission and, and go off on some tangent, but, but, and I think, and one other thing I want to, I want to point out 25 years ago, when people thought of economic development, they primarily thought of, let’s try to get Company X or company wide to come to our city. And they’ll bring good jobs, and that’ll be good for the community. And we even saw it like five or six years ago, like the whole country was tripping over themselves to try and get the next you know, Amazon headquarters, you know, and it was almost comical, but and there’s I’m not saying that’s not valid, but even before COVID We knew and now since COVID We really know that people can be from work from anywhere. Yeah, you know, they don’t you it doesn’t matter where their job is. It’s where do they want to be and so we have to create a community that attracts people that want to be there not because their company’s there. So what does that mean? Well, what attracts people you got to have, you know, low crime rate, great schools, affordable housing, amenities and parks and stuff that people want, you know, a good entrepreneurial environment, you know, business friendly, me all these factors together. There are what make places desirable for people to locate. And, and, and be. So we have to be about all of it. You know, we can’t just be siloed in, we’re a business organization, we are going to work with business. That’s long gone. And so we’re constantly looking at how can we make a positive impact in all those areas, so that we can make our community a great place to, you know, live workplace shop, dying vacation visit, you know, all of that. And so it’s it’s exciting, but it’s daunting. It’s a, the the ways you can engage that are never ending, which wakes me up and gets me excited. And also overwhelms me sometimes at two o’clock in the morning. But that’s what I love about the industry.

Brandon Burton 40:51
Now, and I think something you touched on is, it’s the shift of placemaking. Like it used to be, you’re attracting business, and now it’s attracting those employees, attracting those people that want to live in your community. And I think your response, it may answer my next question, but I like asking everybody I have on the show, as we look to the future chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Bret Schanzenbach 41:16
Yeah, I think that the role that we serve as a hub within the community is so vital and important, and valuable, so valuable, you know, we can pull together stakeholders from so many different things from from public safety, and government, to education and nonprofits and business and we can put them in the same room. And, and sometimes you don’t maybe only need two or three of those fingers for what your initiative is, but, but you can, we can pull together things that nobody else can and, and so we have to, we have to embrace that role. And you know, find the issues within our communities that are meaningful, and, and go after them and be the solution. We don’t have to have all the answers, but be the one that convenes everybody to help create the positive movement for the community. And I think if we wholeheartedly embrace that role will continue to be relevant, and will continue to have a reason to exist. But you know, if we just kind of bury our head, and like, we’re the business community, I think that’s too narrow. And I feel like most chambers have evolved beyond that. But, but I see going forward, just we have to take that up, you know, wholeheartedly and run with that mentality to be community leaders, not just business leaders.

Brandon Burton 42:42
Right. And being that that embracing being a convener is is so important, and you guys are setting a great example with the SoCal program. Because that’s exactly what you’re doing is you’re bringing those those right people to the table to help provide opportunities for the the youth coming up that are going to be the future workforce. Yeah. So Brad, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about the SoCal program or how you go through all the things in Carlsbad, what’s the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Connect with Bret Schanzenbach

Bret Schanzenbach 43:18
Sure. I have the easiest email in the world. So one of my emails is ceo@carlsbad.org. And you can email me the if somebody wanted to check out that website I mentioned socalworkforce.org. And you can see more. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on all those different. I don’t know social media thing is, you know, I respond I actually check messages on LinkedIn. If anybody messages me on the other ones, I don’t check those but but you can connect with people all the time on LinkedIn, especially chamber pros. I love connecting with other chamber professionals. Because I value them and you know, there’s none of us has all the answers in this world of of what we do in the chamber. So I love learning and meeting other people and hearing what’s working in their communities and seeing if there’s any tidbits I can bring back to my community. So yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. Email me ceo@carlsbad.org. And yeah, love to connect.

Brandon Burton 44:28
Very good. I’ll make sure if we get all that in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamber chat. podcast.com/episode 191. But Brad, this has been great having you on the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and sharing this great example of what you guys and you know, in collaboration with your neighboring Chambers as well are doing and it’s a great template that others can look to and build upon themselves.

Bret Schanzenbach 44:55
Well, thank you so much for the invitation, Brandon, I really enjoyed it.

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

Doing Commerce in the Metaverse

Future of Chambers

As I interview guests on Chamber Chat Podcast, I always ask the same question at the end of each episode. That question is “how do you see the future of chambers of commerce and their purpose going forward?”. I get a lot of great answers to this question as it forces us to take a glimpse into the future. Of course nobody really knows what the future holds, but it is a good idea as hall of fame hockey player, Wayne Gretzky says to skate to where the puck is going.

In an effort to gain a better understanding of where the future is going, I believe it is a good idea to look at the habits, trends, and even addictions of the next generations. One of the biggest trends or addictions that I notice is the widespread adoption of immersive role playing “games”. I put games in quotation marks because as it may appear to be a game to older generations, the ones who are immersed in these platforms are living another life within that ecosystem.

Traditional Video Games vs. Metaverse Games

When I was growing up, my friends and I would get together to play Nintendo games. We would play games like Super Mario Bros., Tecmo Super Bowl, and later Street Fighter II. Each new gaming system would bring along greater capacity for more realistic graphics. To play these games, we would insert a game cartridge into the gaming system. We would play until the game was over, we were out of lifes, or until an upset sibling turned the system off. The games of today are very different. Today, these games are connected through the internet to other gaming devices and many of these games can be played on a variety of platforms (TV screen, PC, smartphone, etc.).

Another differentiating factor is that these games don’t necessarily end. A player has their avatar or character in a virtual world where they “live”. These avatars have homes, cars, clothes, among other possessions that they can collect, purchase, or trade throughout their virtual experience. Did you notice that I said purchase? Yes, these avatars are purchasing goods and services within the virtual world. They are doing commerce.

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Metaverse Now

When we hear or talk about the Metaverse, it is really an abstract concept of virtual worlds. We tend to think about how this might look in the future while ignoring that this is happening NOW! The next generations are already plugged into the Metaverse and doing commerce there.

What grabbed my attention around this topic is the annual sales from the top three virtual or Metaverse platforms in comparison to one of the top real goods online retailers. The combined annual sales of Roblox ($2.206B), Fortnite ($5.8B), and Minecraft ($380M) is $8.386B while Etsy, one of the top online retailers for real goods, has a total annual sales of $2.414B. These three Metaverse games are out performing Etsy by 4X! Is that worth taking note of?

Some of the world’s biggest companies and brands are starting to create digital products specifically for the Metaverse. Nike has even launched virtual shoes. Many of these brands are tying their digital products to an NFT which is also connected to a physical product.

Doing Digital Commerce

So, again, as we look to the future, if we look at those people who will be doing business and commerce in the future, what can we learn? We learn that they are already comfortable with conducting business through a screen, a headset, and even an avatar. We learn that their world is much smaller than the world a traditional business person might be used to. When we are not limited by geography a whole new world of possibilities opens up.

As a chamber leader, I would suggest you spend some time with your children or grandchildren to learn more about what their virtual worlds look like. Find out what they enjoy about their virtual experiences. I believe that soon enough, we will no longer call these virtual worlds or virtual experiences, they will just be integrated into our everyday lives.

Directories, magazines, maps, and digital…
Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.

It may be worth your time to bring on an intern who can help to make the connection between traditional business and virtual commerce. Once your chamber members see that the puck is going in this direction, they will need to lean on their chamber to get up to speed quickly. Now is the time for you to learn so you can help your member businesses pivot as the ecosystem matures. There is space for every chamber of commerce in the Metaverse world. There will also be a huge upside for those who partake in the first mover advantage.

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Automated New Member Onboarding

Chambers are Busy

No matter the size of your chamber, there never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done. As a result, we tend to prioritize the most urgent tasks to be done first. This constant triage of tasks inevitably leads to certain tasks falling lower and lower on the proverbial to-do list. We may not notice the cost of procrastinating some tasks until it is too late. One of these tasks that can easily fall by the wayside is new member onboarding. This article will explain the benefits of creating an automation series to onboard new members.

Traditionally, many chambers of commerce will assign a chamber ambassador to help orient a new member on everything the chamber has to offer. I know you probably have fantastic ambassadors. Ambassadors tend to be those who are hyper-involved and want to be a part of everything the chamber is doing. This is great. These ambassadors also have businesses and families to run, and life to live. Your ambassadors are also human and subject to human error. Inevitably something will slip through the cracks, not on purpose, but missed nonetheless.

Email Onboarding

By creating an automated email onboarding campaign, you can drip feed relevant information to new members while also making sure all of the basics are covered. By setting up the expectation with your new members to be on the lookout for emails, maybe on a weekly basis to help them get the most out of their membership, then you have their attention.

As new members join your chamber, it is always a good practice to learn more about the reason(s) they decided to join and what their expectations are. Are they a transactional member or a transformational member? Should they be connected with your young professionals group or a senior service alliance? By gaining this knowledge, you can create an experience for them where you are connecting them with appropriate events, committees, and people. This information will also help you decide what information you send them in your onboarding email series.

Relevant Communication

Sara Ray from the Douglas County Chamber was a guest on the podcast a couple months ago and she dove in deep about creating relevant and personalized communication. If you are at all interested in this topic, I would highly recommend you going back to listen to that episode.

As much as you may disagree, not every member needs to get an email about your next luncheon or mixer. You should segment your email audience to only deliver the most relevant information to each recipient. Mass email campaigns run the risk of finding their way into junk or spam folders if there is not enough engagement by the recipients.

There are many software options out there for sending automated emails. If you are like many other chambers, then you are likely using Constant Contact, or possibly MailChimp. These have been the most common options that I have seen. Setting up an automated email onboarding series will require some dedicated attention to get started, but that brainpower and attention should only need to focus on this task one time versus creating a custom response every time a new member has a question. Your goal should be to put yourself in the new member’s shoes and provide answers to the questions that they have before they ever ask the question. I had once heard a quote that said something like “if you can define the problem better than your customer, then they will assume you have the answer”. Defining your member’s problems or needs before they ask will also build credibility that your chamber understands what their expectations are.

Directories, magazines, maps, and digital…
Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.

Learn to Automate for ROI

I am not the expert in creating email automation campaigns, but Sara Ray and the Douglas County Chamber have a great template. Google will also provide some great tips and resources to get you started. There are also online trainings available across the web that can help to shortcut your learning curve drastically.

“Associations with onboarding, orientation, or welcoming plans boost their new member renewal rates. Local/State associations show the biggest difference in new member renewal rates, jumping from 75% to 82% after similar program implementation.”
2017 New Member Engagement Study by Dynamic Benchmarking & Kaiser Insights LLC

Depending on the size of your chamber, a 7% increase in your membership renewal rate could be a substantial amount of revenue, not only from the increase in membership dues but also the non-dues value that comes from retaining these members for a longer period of time.

Join Interactive Training

Create Deeper Member Relationships

We now live in a time where AI learns our habits. Predictive text assists our typing by showing us the word or phrase that we were going to type letter by letter with a simple keystroke or tap on our screen. We have a curated viewing experience on platforms like Netflix. Our attention spans no longer allow for the extra clutter. No matter what platform you decide to use, it is important to your relevance to only send emails to your members that they will care about. This will result in building a more meaningful relationship with each of your members while freeing up some of your bandwidth.

Please join our email list to receive new blog posts are they are released. You will stay in the loop with any announcements related to the podcast or the Chamber world in general.

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