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Category: Strategic Planning

Bend Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katy Brooks

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

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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2024 ACCE chamber the year finalist series. Our guest for this episode is Katy Brooks. She is the president and CEO of the Bend Chamber of Commerce in Oregon. Her vision for the chamber is to catalyze and environment where businesses and employees and the community thrive. The chamber supports a collaborative business environment and leads efforts to resolve tough issues like affordable housing and childcare shortage, assisting businesses with resources and advocating for businesses at the local and state level. Katy’s background and economic development coalition building and government relations enables her to understand public policies and issues in order to advocate for the businesses of band as well as forming partnerships and alliances that support a growing business community. Her career has included over 20 years working in public affairs and economic development for the ports of Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. She has been a public affairs and strategic planning consultant for public and private organizations in Oregon, Washington and Alaska and manage Community Relations for the Oregon Department of Tourism. Katy is a member of the Oregon State Early Learning Council and has served on numerous regional, state and city boards and committees. Prior to coming to bend, Katy served on the Public Affairs Committee for the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, and the board of directors for the Washington State Business Association. Katy received her BS at Southern Oregon University with and graduate studies at Portland State University. She’s received extensive training and facilitating public issues and resolving conflict her and her family reside in Bend. But Katy, I am excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast. And first of all, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a 2024 chamber, the year finals. That’s a huge accomplishment. But please take a minute to say hello to all the chamber champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Katy Brooks 3:25
Well, thanks. I’m really, really honored to be here. It’s just so terrific. Being a finalist. And in this fabulous industry that we’re all in. I have been in the chamber world for about eight years since I moved from the coast and port world working for port authorities for a long, long time. And it’s been a great transition. I live here with my family, we do a lot of mountain biking enjoy a bit of a higher elevation than what I was previously at. And for those of you haven’t been to this part of the world is quite beautiful. And it’s full of great things to do outside, which is what we’re all about.

Brandon Burton 4:09
That’s right. It is a beautiful part of the country for sure. Well, please take a few moments and tell us a little bit about the Bend Chamber of Commerce. What makes you guys so special, what’s your your chamber look like the work you’re involved with? Size staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of give us some perspective as we get into our discussion?

Katy Brooks 4:33
Sure. Well, we’ve had quite a bit of population growth. So the business sector has grown as well. We are population of about 110,000. We are on the east side of the caste range. So we are a little bit removed from where most of the population of the state is. So bend is kind of a it’s a mountain community but it’s really a self sufficient ecosystem here. That’s really unique. And it’s something that we take into consideration. Anytime we put any of our strategies together. We have great networking programs. Here we have a really strong advocacy program because our state capitol is in the valley. And to lift up our voice from Central Oregon, we align with a lot of partners here. We build our leaders, we concentrate quite a bit on how we support a system of of leadership and workforce development that can sustain our growth, not just in population, but our business growth and several industry sectors that have taken off here. And we look for our niche initiatives, we look for ways to take on things that we see and our members see as obstacles and impediments or opportunities. And really try to capitalize those and bring up solutions. And I’ll get into that here in a little bit of what that actually looks like.

Brandon Burton 6:04
Yeah, well that’s the crux of the Chamber’s to solve those problems, right that face the community. So very good. Well, as we focus on these chamber, the year finalist episodes who really like to dive in, in more detail on the programs that were submitted on your chamber that your application, I think those are a really good indicator of the type of work you’re involved with and, and where you’re seeing those levels of importance to be able to make an impact in your community. So I’m excited to dive into what those programs are and all those details as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Katy, we’re back. As we dive into the meat of this episode and talking about the programs that were submitted on your chamber, that your application, please share with us what what the first program was? And we’ll dive into that and save the good stuff on second program for for a few minutes.

Katy Brooks 8:52
Yeah, it’s always hard. I’m sure everybody else who submitted an application feels this way, it was hard to choose in some respect. Because we just do so much. And as with all chambers, we have changed so much over the last several years. So when you look at at our programs, it looks like like today rather than yesterday. And it looks like what the key issues are that we’re struggling with here, rather than some of the more traditional things you think about in chamber world. But I’ll I’ll talk a little bit about Ben 101. So Ben 101 was established in collaboration with a bunch of folks from the community from several industry sectors, who said essentially, you know, we are growing faster than any other city in our state we have the more more jobs per capita than any other city in our state and we’re losing touch with the culture we worked really hard to establish we’re very bootstrap kind of a community here. We were lumber mill industry, which declined dramatically in the 80s, we reinvented ourselves. Now we’re biotech, health care sciences, outdoor industry, product development, high tech, all sorts of things are happening here that frankly, didn’t exist 10 years ago. And what happens when you bring that many new people and new industries together, you kind of lose touch with everyone, you go from a small little town to, you’re actually a small city. And that’s got a different dynamic. So Bend 101 brings in key leaders from our community to tell the story of our history, tell the story of our culture, which is be nice, you’re invent, and we’re collaborative, we’re dolphins, we’re not sharks. And we have a lot of ways for people to plug in. So it’s like getting a turbo charge in everything you would want to know if you move to a new place. And not only do you get the information, but we match you up with people from the community in various industries, from the workforce. So it’s not like insta friend, but it’s close to it. It’s it’s hard introductions of folks that you might find really interesting and want to have coffee with later. And then we work with the human resources, folks to really make sure that we follow up. How do your folks feel about this? Did they meet somebody there that they didn’t get to connect with that they want to and really make those connections meaningful? So you have the background information, you know, where we’ve been where we’re going to, and you have access to the people who made it that way? Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:45
So I think it’s interesting to to inform newcomers on the culture of Bend. And I imagine that’s a tough task to try to infuse culture. But what is it? What does it look like this with Bend 101? What’s the format? How do you? How do you structure I love the overall the, you know, the high level view of making those connections and welcoming those newcomers. But when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, what what is the structure of it look like? Well,

Katy Brooks 12:15
we use a lot of humor, because we have some idiosyncrasies and little things about them, like every community does that are pretty funny. And one of ours is our claim to fame is roundabouts. They’re everywhere. And anybody who’s new to bend goes what is going on. You can’t get anywhere without going in a circle. So we kind of poke fun at ourselves, we have a really great welcoming video, where we talk about how friendly we are and kind of help people navigate the why of things and kind of laugh at ourselves a little bit. But then we we give the overall here’s how the city operates. And here’s some information for about 1015 minutes. And then every time we hold a one on one, we do it three times a year we fish feature a different part of bend. For example, last time we did this, we featured our healthcare system, educating folks on what that looks like, how do you access it? Who are the leaders there? Who should you know, what should you know, this month, we are, in fact, this week, we’re holding one that features our park system. Our Park system is amazing. It’s very robust, very well funded. There’s mountain bike trails, literally hundreds of miles you can ride and it connects different communities in Central Oregon. So we’ll share all that information. And then talk a little bit about, hey, this is everybody’s chance right now to reach out to somebody you don’t know, unless make those connections happen. So it’s kind of infusing that cultural welcome as much as we can. It changes a little bit every time we hold the event, depending on the information we share, but the outcome is the same. Right?

Brandon Burton 13:57
So does anybody come to multiple sessions have been one on one? How does that like if you want to learn about the parks? And you didn’t get that in your session? How does that work? Oh,

Katy Brooks 14:07
totally. We have repeat offenders. And because it’s really fun. And we are beer town, we have 14 breweries. And so that’s some fun, people just enjoy showing up and interacting folks that have been here for a really long time. They like to show up. In fact, we reach out to them. We want them there. Because how else are newcomers going to meet the establishment? Right? And so you need some of those people to come multiple times. And really mix it up with the old the new the the in between. And if folks are new, and they think hey, that was great. I want to learn about a different sector because I’m thinking about getting involved, then that’s great.

Brandon Burton 14:49
Yeah, that is that’s fantastic. I love that. The idea of it. I love the execution of it and making all the connections and really welcoming people to a community that really sets them up to thrive from the beginning. And I’m sure there’s success stories that you can share with people that have come in and been able to make those connections and, and be able to get their feet on the ground much quicker so to speak. Absolutely. So as we, as we move along, let’s let’s shift gears into what the second program is it was submitted on your chamber the your application. Yeah,

Katy Brooks 15:26
our workforce housing initiative. So I’m co chairing the ACC II horizon initiative that Sheri Ann is, is heading up. And I was so intrigued by this, and I’ll tell you why it matters to the workforce housing issue, asking people about what is the most pressing issue and opportunity in front of you right now? And then saying, Alright, so in 10 years from now, what would that look like? And how do we get from point A to point B, I think is a really useful thing to do. And we’ve essentially been doing this for a few years. And every year, both in the front windshield and 10 years down the line, people are worried about housing, a little bit of background about bend, it’s, it’s quite lovely here, and I’m sure everybody’s community is. But we we experienced something in Cote COVID that a lot of us didn’t see coming. Obviously, nobody saw the pandemic coming. And that is a lot of folks who are professionals who could work from anywhere, say, why not live in Bend, and they came in during COVID, much of the housing stock has been occupied, and it drove prices up 75% In about two or three years, wow, it’s kind of ridiculous. And we looked around and said, Holy smokes, this is not, we knew it was bad. But now we’re 5000 units behind in a community of 100,000 110,000. That’s, that’s significant. So we hear this from our, our business partners and members all the time, we can’t hire biggest thing that’s deterring us is folks can’t afford to live here. So we started out about three years ago with research. And the research was alright, how do we assess how ready Ben dites are to address this population issue in this housing issue, and we ask questions around density. Because this is, everybody has a little yard and your little house and or it’s a cabin or whatever, and started that conversation about so we’re gonna have to go up, we’re gonna have to get more dense, people are going to be living closer together in certain parts of town. And we’ve tested that. We tested what made everybody accept it and feel better about it. And we use that information to form our platform. And one of the things that we ask that I think is really important is who should be leading this effort. And in that public poll, business sector came out at the top, as did the bend Chamber of Commerce, more than government and more than Housing Authority, nonprofits, etc. So we decided to take this on. So we developed several, several, I guess, strategies from they’re all based on research. And one strategy was alright, what we learned from the initial poll is, folks are hesitant to really talk about densification of a community that was an old mill town. But when we talk about what you get in exchange for that, they’re really willing to do it. So we launched a social media program called I Am bent, trying to educate folks on what this is, we’re not talking about everywhere, we’re talking about places in Bend, that are designed for people for community for Makerspace for art, and also here are the people we want to live in this. It’s a full range. And we would feature nurses and firefighters and massage therapists and artists and restaurant managers, the folks who could not afford to get a place here, rent or to own definitely not own. So we started that education process about two or three years ago, and it’s been going really well. So that’s one piece. The other piece was, what is the go fast button? And how In other words, how do you get more inventory out there as quickly as possible? accessory dwelling units. ADUs are one of those ways. If you have extra property, which a lot of people do here in Bend. If you put a small living unit back there, you can create some income for yourself and help solve the workforce housing issue. So we put together a website on how to build an adu. How do you finance it? How do you permit How do you manage it over time? And it’s just an easy step by step process and then we’ve partnered with the city of Bend to have pre approved plans. And we’re going to be starting to populate that here in the next couple of months of choose your style. And you go through a streamlining process streamlined process. So you’re permitted and ready to go much, much faster and much more less expensive. So the adu is another strategy. The other strategy really dovetailed with our advocacy program. How do we raise our voice as a region, the state level and at the federal level, on the need for affordable and attainable housing. So we met with the Tri County leaders in our area, it’s a pretty big area, and came up with one platform that we went to our legislature with, and it was very effective housing was top of mind with Governor Tina Kotek, this session, and a lot of great programs came out of that. And then finally, we brought in expertise from across the country to really take a look at our zoning, and look at our methodology of getting homes on the ground that are affordable and quickly, and use that person and those methods to inform policy at the local level too. So that was pretty successful. And during this time, we also wanted to do the thing, not just talk about it. And so we raised money, we raised a couple 100,000, and just did an initial investment in a nonprofit Land Trust, who was doing an experiment and the experiment was getting some subsidized housing and a cottage style. So for a lot that’s like 6000 feet by 3000 feet, which is typical city a lot you could put in maybe three to four cottage style homes in there. And so they built these, put it on deed restricted property, but lowered the price enough. So folks in in a below area median income could actually afford the downpayment and to purchase that house, and own the house, not the land, but the house. So we bought down that cost, those homes are net zero, they’re worth about, probably about 600,000. Here, we got it under 200,000. Wow. And all of those homes are now occupied by people who work invent. But the real unique thing about this was we decided we wanted to take a risk. And we wanted to demonstrate how employers can actually participate in solving this problem. So what happens is when you donate money for a certain amount per house, you get extra points preferential points in a lottery. And that lottery is alright, if I own Katy’s ice cream shop, and I give X amount of money to one of those houses, I know one of my employees is going to get that house as long as they qualify. And those qualifications included, you have to earn under 80, ami, you have to have had a job and bend for a year, you have preferential points if you’re a minority, and so on, and you have to be pre approved, you’ve got to be able to buy this house and pay pay the mortgage, that

Brandon Burton 23:13
I was gonna ask about that about the qualifications to purchase that house because I could see somebody say, Oh, what a great deal, like get a $600,000 house for 200,000. But the criteria and the application process for that. And I imagine so the the businesses that help pay into that fund, kind of get first dibs, so to speak as far as their employees being able to apply for that routing, is that correct?

Katy Brooks 23:37
That’s absolutely right. And it’s deed restricted for 99 years. So if the house ever sells the same restrictions apply to the next buyer. The great thing is that shit, that preferential chick comes back to you as an employer. So another one of your employees get a shot at qualifying to buy the house. So we bought down four houses. And instead of using it for my employees at the Chamber, we pushed it out to do a demonstration project with any business event. So if you agreed as a business at Brandon’s candy shop, if you said okay, I’m going to pay $2,500 down to help my employee with the closing costs. And here are my five employees that qualify, you would have had a shot and those employees would have had a shot and that’s what we did. And so, folks all throughout the city, radiology technicians, manager, Windows Store, folks who you think of when you think of middle class or or entry, you know, mid level that had access to this home these homes and it was so successful, that they built 50 more this year. They’re in the process of it, and almost all those 50 homes have been subsidized by employers. They built another 100 You In the adjacent neighborhood, to the west, and another 100 plus to the north of us in another community, and they’re doing the same methodology. So in one year, we went from let’s experiment with four houses and just put these these opportunities out as an employer subsidized formula, and proved a concept that is now over 200, or over 100, no 200 homes that will be occupied and subsidized by employers in the area for 99 years. That

Brandon Burton 25:32
is awesome. I can see it being a template, even that some of these bigger employers might might do their own system, right, where they do housing for their own employees, and almost like a military base used to see you know, military housing, but you could you could do something similar with some of these big

Katy Brooks 25:50
kids so that that people earn equity, the whole point to home ownership. Is that generational wealth, yeah. And so that has to be a part of this and doing it with a partner who’s a nonprofit on deed restricted property was the way to go. And we’re just now rolling out our next investment. We raised about a half a million so far, we’re trying to get over the million for a revolving loan to help nonprofits and builders just put more mid market product out there on deed restricted land. So we’re doing our next experiment. Yeah. Which is what chambers should do.

Brandon Burton 26:34
I love these creative solutions. I mean, starting with the the adu website and encouraging people to build the smaller dwellings on their existing land. I mean, that’s, I think any community would rather see that than a big high rise apartment complex or something, you know, it fits in the community a little better. And then, you know, this path with housing and being able to help people own it own a house is amazing. So kudos to you guys for thinking outside the box and really taking ownership of this and finding a solution. I love this. It’s a it’s a great model that can be followed in other areas, as well. So yeah, as we begin to wrap things up here, these chamber the year finalist episodes, I think are special because you guys are top of the game at the moment, right? So for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what can a tip or or action item might you suggest for them to employ to try to accomplish that goal?

Katy Brooks 27:38
Be willing to take risks, have a have a board? That is you bring along, work with your board? And identify, ask the hard questions identify what the issues are, that’s preventing folks from growing or the opportunities that would help businesses grow, and go for the ones that are gnarly and tough to do that require convening. And a lot of work to bring partnerships online. That is what we are made to do. And get people on board, do your research and make it happen. Because I think there aren’t very many organizations like chambers, who are built for this. And that’s how we’ve all changed right over the many of us went through COVID. And that changed a lot. But I think it’s much, much bigger than that, over the last 10 plus 20 years, something like that. I think that as businesses change, we have to be the first ones to we have to see it, identify it, predict it and do it.

Brandon Burton 28:46
Yeah. On those gnarly goals. That’s what people can get behind. Right? If it’s just something that’s barely going to move the needle, it’s hard to get get their interest and getting behind it. But yeah, there’s big hairy audacious goals, right, that that’s what people can get behind and and get some ownership in. I love that. So I like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future. And I understand you’re working on the horizons report as well. So you might have some additional insight. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see their future and purpose going forward?

Katy Brooks 29:22
So I think chambers are the leading edge. I think that we have an intrinsic design of who we are, to convene, to go beyond partisanship, to ask the harder deeper questions and take things on that don’t have an apparent immediate answer. There aren’t any other types of organizations who can do that in the private sector is a huge responsibility and it’s super fun, by the way. And so I think that is our Our future is asking that what’s 10 year out? Question? If it’s 10 years out, what are the signs? Read it? If you don’t know, ask somebody. That’s the other thing that we do is ask a lot of folks with great expertise. We don’t have to have the answers. We just need to know who to ask. And we have to have the the fortitude to identify things that make sense for us to take on that really requires collective effort, and foresight, and a little bit of risk. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 30:32
I love that chambers being the leading edge and taking on those things that don’t have an apparent answer. And that is the the DNA of what a chamber is, though. And especially when you think of AI and advancements in technology, like there’s there needs to be that continuing purpose of a chamber. And that’s it right there. I love it. So Katy, you mentioned asking if you don’t know as somebody so I’d like to see for people listening who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn a little bit more about how you guys are doing things, doing things in band, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Katy Brooks 31:11
Well, anybody can give me a buzz but my email address is katy@bendchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 31:22
Easy, we will get that in our show notes for this episode as well to to make it easy to look up and connect with you. But Katy, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast and again, huge congratulations to you and your team being selected. As a finalist. It really is a indicator of the impact you guys are making in your community as as indicated through our discussion today. So you guys are are moving that needle and big. Congratulations to you guys.

Katy Brooks 31:49
Thanks so much. We’re so thrilled.

Brandon Burton 31:52
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Strategic Planning Pitfalls with Carol Hamilton

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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.

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.

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

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

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

Our guest for this episode is Carol Hamilton. Carol is principal of grace social selector consulting, LLC, and host of mission impact podcast. Carol helps organizations and teams become more strategic and innovative or greater mission impact. She facilitates strategic planning, mapping an organization’s impact and organizational assessments for nonprofits and associations. Carol, 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 who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Carol Hamilton 2:42
thank you, Brandon, thank you for having me on the podcast. It’s an honor. Yeah, I so my name is Carol Hamilton, gray social sector consulting. And I, I was trying to think about, you know, what, what interesting thing could I share, but I think one that informs the work that I do is that I am the younger sister of a person, my brother has significant disabilities, he’s autistic and profoundly deaf and developmentally disabled and growing up with him, you know, as as, as my older brother, I definitely saw the way in which the world was not built for someone like him. And so for me, when I’m doing my work, I’m always trying to contribute my small part, to really building a world where everyone can thrive where there really no exceptions to that. And so that’s that kind of what is what motivated me to, you know, come into the to the nonprofit sector and want to be part of movements and groups and organizations that are really trying to help build a world where everyone can thrive.

Brandon Burton 3:52
Yeah, I like that it’s nice to to have that that driver you know, behind you that that background that really motivates you to you know, for greater good. So, I think that I imagined that will come into our conversation today and inclusion aspects as a topic today. But based upon your work and the kind of the focus that we wanted to take our conversation today on the podcast is going to be focused around common strategic planning mistakes. So I’m sure you have some examples and things that you can share with us from your experience and meeting with different organizations and going about strategic planning and I’m excited to dive in deeper and learn from these experiences as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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All right, Carol, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about strategic planning mistakes. So for chambers that are tuning in, creating a strategic plan is a integral part of their organization being able to know their mission and purpose going forward. And as they go about creating strategic plans, what are some of these key things that you see that stand out that organizations maybe ought to be aware of? And some of these mistakes, etc, that maybe we can help these chambers avoid some of these pitfalls? By sharing some of your experiences? Yeah,

Carol Hamilton 7:13
yeah, I think pitfalls are probably is a good way to put it. Because certainly nobody goes into the process trying to, you know, have it not be productive and effective for the organization. But I think one of them, and I’ll be a little, I don’t know, whether controversial or contrarian here is that the common wisdom around boards and staff, and I’m sure that there are many of your listeners who are probably maybe on the volunteer side of local chambers, but where they do have staff, it’s been seen that the board, or traditionally been held that the board is the one who’s in charge of strategy. And I, you know, that’s certainly an important role for the board. But I like to take a whole organization approach where really every brain, every part of the brain, both that analytical side, and all the complexities that people bring, all of them are important to the organization’s future, and kind of opening up the conversation, to include more people into how you structure and frame up your vision and will really serve the organization well to help have people be motivated and more motivated to be behind. Whatever you ultimately as a group decide are your big, big goals, the big vision that you’re moving forward. So I would invite leaders to, you know, bring and bring more of a kind of big tent approach so that when a lot of people talk a lot about buy in, and then you know, if they do it with a small group, and then bring the plan to other people and wonder why they’re not excited about it. I would say get the people in the room with you, they’ll get excited about it. Because they’ve been they’ve had a hand in creating that vision. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 9:05
and I think that’s such an important part of creating a vision is getting buy in from as many people as possible and being able to feel like they had a voice and creating that plan. So as it’s unveiled and in you get rubber to the road, you get more people that are willing to participate and help move that mission forward. I like how you, you mentioned how typically, you might see how a board that might be a pitfall, right, where if it’s just the board sitting in a room creating a strategic plan. Maybe they’re missing insights from others in the community. So when you talk about getting more people involved, if you are looking at a chamber of commerce, what examples might you give of other types of people or organizations or what where would you look to to get more involvement in creating that strategic plan? And or chamber. Yeah,

Carol Hamilton 10:01
and I think when I say that it doesn’t mean that everybody is ultimately at, you know, the the planning session or the retreat, it’s that you’ve taken the time to get feedback from a variety of stakeholders, you’ve identified who those stakeholders are, who are important to, you know, moving the vision of your organization forward. You know, the people who are you’re very involved volunteers, your staff, your members, but then wider than that people in the community that you have partners with other other organizations that you have alliances with, the people that you serve, all of those folks will be important, they won’t necessarily all end up in the room making the decisions about the organization, but taking that time to talk to people and get feedback. And oftentimes, that’s where an external party consultant can help out because folks will be more willing to kind of share candidly, with someone who doesn’t have a stake in the outcome. You know, in terms of that, that feedback and input, and will also help to synthesize all that information, because it’s a, it’s a big lift to talk to a lot of people, and then you’ve got so much information, it can feel overwhelming, but how do you sift it down to some of the important nuggets, that then you as a as a smaller group of board, and staff can really chew on and say, Okay, this is what we’re hearing from people, this is what we’ve set ourselves about what we want. And this is a, this is what, you know, this, this is the significance that has for us in our future going forward. And oftentimes, I find that, again, that kind of fear of that big tent is that folks will be overwhelmed by the number of opinions, ideas, all the different things. And in terms of when I’m talking, when I’ve done this work with groups, I’ve actually found that they’ve been surprised by how much agreement there actually is. And pleasantly surprised. And it often will bring issues onto the table that maybe they were thinking and they talked to somebody in the hallway, but you know, after the board meeting, but they they weren’t weren’t willing to bring up in the in the formal session, and so that this process can give, make it safer to have those conversations about critical issues.

Brandon Burton 12:33
I like the point that you make about bringing in a consultant for that specific purpose, because I think there’s a lot of value in bringing in somebody from the outside. I’ve seen myself in that role it were a, I’ll joke about being the bartender, you know, we’re the members, the members of the organization, they’ll tell you all their gripes and all the things you know, that they see wrong with the organization, and the things that they like, and the things that they’re excited about. Sure, exactly. But things that they may not be as open to just telling the chamber directly or to get the face of the chamber executive and say, I disagree with this or that or so having a third party come in, there’s a lot of value to be able to flesh out that real, meaningful data, that information that you can get from people that you wouldn’t get just having your normal day to day conversations. And I think for a chamber staff to be able to try to collect all this feedback, on top of doing their day to day job, it’s a big lift to try to do that and make sense of all the information they’re bringing in. So having a consultant somebody who’s focused on that, and being able to go through with all that information means and present it in a way that makes sense. And you can look at a report and kind of go over and say, Okay, it’s good feedback. So in soliciting that feedback, you’d mentioned talking to individuals. So I imagine there can be an interview portion of soliciting feedback, talking to some of those key stakeholders, surveys, what what are some of the ideal ways you see in soliciting that feedback that have been effective from your experience?

Carol Hamilton 14:24
Yeah, so it’s going to depend on each organization and, and the scope and the scale and, you know, their capacity, the budget, all those things, but generally, it’s a combination of interviews, one on one interviews, focus groups with, you know, groups of people up to eight to 10, and then surveys, and so, some combination of those will will, you know, enable you to really get into what people perceive as the strengths, the challenges, the opportunities, and all the things that are important for the Future of the organization. And I think another mistake that organizations make is thinking that strategic planning is just about about having a retreat. And so for me that that date, that kind of listening tour that you can go on, is a really important fundamental piece to get that good snapshot of where are you at this moment? Where is the organization right now? You know, what are people are saying, across the board? Are challenges and things that are getting in the way? And then what are the strengths that everyone’s seeing and the opportunities? So really being grounded in that kind of what’s our current reality? Right.

Brandon Burton 15:39
And before that retreat happens, you need to have good accurate data to go off of exactly decisions. Right. Exactly. There’s the planning before the retreat that that takes place. Yeah. So

Carol Hamilton 15:51
that’s, that’s part of that data gathering process. Yeah. So

Brandon Burton 15:55
as I’m thinking of these interviews, I think my first thought goes to with the chamber to go to the members of the chamber to get feedback from them, I think it may be important to even solicit others in the business community who are not members to find out what what do they see the role of the chamber being? Why are they not members? You know, they have they been members in the past? What can we get from that experience? But also, committees, right? So there’s different committees within organizations and getting their feedback on their role? And how they see that being a part of the greater organization? And how can things maybe be more efficient? And I don’t know, I’m just trying to think of all the different sources to gather data from to be able to create a rock solid strategic plan. Are there other areas that you would think have to go to for to gather that information?

Carol Hamilton 16:57
Yeah, I mean, you know, usually, I’m working with the organization and a set of small, smaller set of folks from the organization, usually a combination of, you know, staff leadership and board, to really identify who all those important stakeholders are. So the organization will know, you know, who’s really important for us to talk to, and so we’ll work together to come up with that list of okay, who are we going to kind of reserve that one on one interaction with who are we going to invite to more of a group experience? Who are we going to reach out to via a survey? So really thinking through those those important points of you know, who, who most matters to the future of the organization? And also, what do we want to learn from them? You know, what are the big issues that we see that we’re curious about, that we also we kind of know, our perspective on, but how, you know, is that in alignment with how other people are seeing it? So kind of getting that cross check of, you know, is how we’re seeing the things aligning up with everybody else? And, and where’s their agreement? And where’s their, you know, some some divergence of opinion. I

Brandon Burton 18:07
like that. And you said, Something stood out to me, you said, what do we want to learn from them? And that should be the basis of all these interactions? Right? Right, what do we want right from them. And that takes me back to the thought of inclusion when you shared the tidbit about your brother and kind of that lens that it gives you in looking at your work? How do you go about inclusion, and specifically getting these opinions of voices that may not be heard, as regularly as they probably should be?

Carol Hamilton 18:42
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important to think about, you know, as you’re making those decisions about who you’re going to prioritize, to interview and do focus groups, and surveys is really the power dynamics within organization of, are you only favoring people who already have the most power and already have the most voice and already have the most influence with the people that you you talk to one on one? Or are you doing more of a cross section or of the organization so that you get that rich feedback from a variety of people. So it’s it thinking about it in those terms that will help help define and really put inclusion at the at the center. As an organization, if you want to grow, you know, being able to see the wider net is going to be important. So,

Brandon Burton 19:39
yeah, so we’ve talked a lot about gathering that information, the data, and then the retreats is usually what people think about when you think of a strategic plan. So let’s focus a little bit more on the actual implementation of the plan. What how should that look? What are some of those pitfalls that you’ve seen that people need to be aware of to avoid as they go about implementing their strategic plan?

Carol Hamilton 20:07
So before we jump to the implementation, there’s one thing I wanted to say about the retreat, which I think is also another pitfall that people can fall into. And it’s kind of the, I think it’s the thing that leaders fear when they bring a lot of people in. So they fear a retreat that ends with just flip chart after flip chart, after flip chart, have nice ideas. And they haven’t taken the time to talk together. And I actually asked people to do this at the very beginning, before they start brainstorming ideas of how are we going to decide what we’re actually going to do, because you can never do it all. And you can’t do all the good ideas, you know, so you need a way to discern which ones are going to be the ones that you focus on. And so having that conversation upfront of how are we going to make some decisions, and then ensuring that somewhere in the process, you are making some decisions and discernment is so important. Because otherwise you end up with this laundry list plan that isn’t really a plan. It’s just a wish list. And so if you end up with a wish list plan that that gets in the way of implementation. But yeah, I think that’s that’s another key point that being clear with everybody all along the way that you’re going to have to focus on a couple things, you’re going to have to make some decisions. And if you can be clear with everybody, okay, these are the things that we’re looking for, you know, we’re looking for things that are going to grow revenue, we think we’re looking for things that are going to increase member satisfaction that are that are going to, you know, improve our reputation are going to, you know, contribute in some way to community health, whatever it might be. You’ve, you’ve agreed ahead of time, what those criteria are, that they it all aligns with our mission. So that then when you have that long list, you can go through and actually make some decisions.

Brandon Burton 22:12
Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I know. A lot of times, people and even other organizations will come to the chamber and say, here’s a great idea of something that you should do, right? And then it becomes that wish list of others. So I can see where you can have those turns ended up being a long wish list. Yeah, it’d be great if we could do this and that, but when it comes down to it, you need to have the resources to be able to execute and be able to do it well, right? You don’t want to just take something on and then have it be lackluster, and have it end up being a bad representation of your organization because you’re not doing it well. So yeah, moving beyond that wish list and having a solid plan is is huge. That’s important.

Carol Hamilton 23:03
Yeah, so and that list of criteria that you come up with can be great in that instance, of all the different people coming and saying, Well, you should do this. Well, we can run it through this kind of rubric decision making flowchart, if you will, and decide whether it actually fits, you know, fits our goals or not. But I think in terms of moving from, okay, we’ve got a plan, you know, it’s got three to five big goals, no more than that. We’ve identified, what are some of the action steps that we’re going to take, we’ve really gotten clear and gotten shared understanding about what does success look like for each of those. So oftentimes, I’ll see plans that have that big goal, have a couple action steps, but don’t necessarily go that next step of saying, Okay, if we take this action, what do we expect is going to happen? What do we think that’s going to look like that in the way so that we can know whether we’ve had the success. So this is where you get, you know, your your performance indicators, whether that’s some of them will be, you know, quantitative, but some of them may be qualitative, some of them may be, you know, we decided we’re going to take a new approach in membership. And we’re going to work with somebody to come up with a plan around that. And so, you know, the first success item is going to be we, we have a plan. So there’ll be a variety of different things. So with that, then thinking about okay, so this is a plan over three to five years. How do we actually what are we actually going to do in the next six months, just focus on that and not try to predict what you’re doing in year three, I see a lot of people getting caught up in wasting time, trying to nail down every detail over the five year three, three to five year period. And I say just take that for next six months, that next year. And that’s where you do your implementation plan of who’s going to do what by when? I

Brandon Burton 24:56
like that. It’s hard sometimes to Do you get caught up in the big vision, the big plan and you forget that it’s the day to day actions that execute on that five year plan. So as you talk about these performance indicators, it’s probably good to review what those performance indicators are in some sort of a regular interval. Do you have any suggestions on how how often to look bad like, because you can also get caught up on the data and continually look at it and not move the needle or feel like you’re moving the needle? So what’s a? And there’s probably not a straight answer for it. But what would be your guideline to being able to check those performance indicators and see, you know, how things are trending?

Carol Hamilton 25:42
Yeah, so so the two step for me of really making a plan, integrating it into your into how you do your work, is creating that that shorter term implementation plan, but then also coming to agreement about, okay, so we’re going to check in on this at this meeting. Every you know, quarter, or every six months or every year, whatever, you have an agreement again, ahead of time of how you’re going to do that. And then to remember that the strategic plan it you know, we talk about things being living documents all the time, but somehow, in people’s head, once the board has approved it, it becomes this, like, you know, written in stone, sacred document, and it’s not, it’s a plan, things will happen that you can’t anticipate strategic planning is not about predicting the future. It’s about setting your intentions about where you want to put your energy. So you’re going to have to readjust, you’re going to So it’s that kind of balance between, we have some goals, we have some strategy, we have some structure, and we’re going to be flexible. It’s not an either or it’s a both. And so having an agreement about how you’re going to do that, and who’s going to be able to make some updates is really important as well.

Brandon Burton 26:53
Yeah, I think that pandemic taught everybody that need to be able to be flexible. It’s a plan, but we need to be able to pivot and make adjustments where needed. Yep. Yep. So that’s a great point to make. Are there other things when it comes to strategic planning pitfalls that we haven’t addressed that come to mind that we want to make sure to touch on?

Carol Hamilton 27:17
Yeah, I think, um, you know, it’s, it’s when you’re actually doing that decision making about what are you going to focus on over the next three to five years, it’s balancing, you know, we want to stretch, we want to improve, we want to grow. And we don’t want to, again, it’s kind of a different version of that long laundry wishlist. But if the if the aspirations are so beyond where the organization is, it’s also going to fall flat because it just doesn’t match the capacity. So not to just say, Okay, this is this is all we can do, because that’s all we have right now. But being realistic about where you are, and what’s going to move you forward to actually, you know, so that you have the resources to do what you want to do. So having not having those two things be decoupled. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:08
reminds me and I’m terrible at attributing quotes, but I’ll say the quote, you can look up whoever said it, but something to the effect that individuals underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years, but overestimate what they can do in one year. So Oh, my God, or one week, right? Yeah, one way Yeah. You go out and you say, and this year, I’m going to do all these things. And really, it’s like, no, like, you got to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Right? Right, we’re in a 10, five, or even less strategic plan is three to five year plan. Because we see the quote unquote, failures on those smaller timelines, we don’t feel like we can shoot big because we’ve we’ve seen the smaller steps not come through, but we sell ourselves short in realizing what that cumulative effect of having those small effects has over that longer time horizon. So

Carol Hamilton 29:01
yeah, so it’s, it’s the tricky part of trying to find that Goldilocks spot of, you know, just enough stretch, and also, you know, tempered with some realism about, you know, what can we accomplish with what we have? Yeah. And then what do we need to get if we want to do you know, when we want to do more?

Brandon Burton 29:19
Absolutely. Well, Carol, as we start to wrap things up, I like asking for chambers who are listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you have to share with them as they try to accomplish that goal of raising her elevating their, the level of their chamber?

Carol Hamilton 29:40
Yeah, I mean, the the tagline that I use for my podcast is, you know, people who are in the non in the nonprofit sector, who wants to do good in the world without being a martyr to the cause. And so, I think the thing that I’ve been hearing a lot from people recently is when leaders get in their own way of having the organization be overly identified with one person, and to step back and realize that it’s a group effort where it’s always a collective effort. That’s why we have organizations. And so how can you take small steps you were talking about that eating the elephant, one bite at a time to start building leadership capacity throughout your organization. So, you know, asking a staff member to share and facilitate part of a board meeting, if you do the whole thing all the time? You know, just taking small steps, what’s one thing on your to do list somebody else could do? And they could learn from it. I know, it’s easy for you to probably you could probably do it faster. And it might take a little longer to give them all the context. But I think the more we’re building leadership capacity, the the we’re also contributing to the strength of the organization long term.

Brandon Burton 30:53
Absolutely. And I think that’s such a key point to not have the organization be about one person. So it’s about relying on your board and your organization’s your ambassadors are all the different committees and different things that are involved. And I don’t know who eats elephant anyway. But well, right.

Carol Hamilton 31:13
Doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate it. And it doesn’t sound very tasty.

Brandon Burton 31:17
That’s right. Sounds tough. But I also like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how how would you view the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Carol Hamilton 31:29
Well, I guess, I would hope that chambers would join me in my, my goal of trying to contribute to a world that really thrives for that really is built so that everyone can thrive without an exception. So whatever businesses can do to to contribute to helping their community thrive. And have it be you know about about all of us, versus, you know, a few people I, I would love, I would love the chamber movement to be part of that.

Brandon Burton 32:03
Yeah, I think that’s great. Carol, for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about your offerings, and how you might be able to help their organizations, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Carol Hamilton 32:17
So my website’s Grace social sector.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, although my name is pretty common. Carol Hamilton. So also check out mission impact. It’s on all the podcast platforms. You can find me there. So

Brandon Burton 32:35
that’s awesome. And everybody listening is listening to a podcast so they know how to find exactly so looking permission. Carol, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. I appreciate you setting aside some time and being with us today and bringing the value and experience from your perspective and strategic planning and helping to give these chambers that are listening to an extra boost as they go about doing that and there are organizations that really appreciate thank

Carol Hamilton 33:03
you so much. Thanks for the opportunity.

Brandon Burton 33:05
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Workforce Training Center with Jeannie Hebert

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeannie Hiebert. Jeannie has been President and CEO the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts for 15 years. Under her leadership that BVCC has grown and developed into a chamber that works hard for business and the economic vitality of the region. often dubbed the queen of collaboration. Jeannie sits on several business and community boards and meets regularly with local state and federal legislators to make sure the valley voice is heard, and funding is appropriated to support their economic development and small businesses. Since her reign, the BVCC has become known as the go to place and resource for business owners and entrepreneurs to find assistance and funding to grow and develop their business. She has been honored with several awards, including the central Massachusetts outstanding woman in business power 50 manufacturing champion and Central Massachusetts economic development leader. Through her guidance, the Chamber secured over $1 million in funding to build the Blackstone Valley hub for workforce development. A Workforce Training Center located in the Chamber’s Linwood mill building, offering classes focused on advanced manufacturing. These certificate courses are offered to students of all ages throughout Central Massachusetts to help close the work skills gap and provide skilled workers to the region’s employers. Jeannie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Donna Novitsky 16:40
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Brandon Burton 17:34
All right, we’re back. So let’s dive in deeper. I want to know more. So tell us your when did the idea get presented to you for developing the hub? How did things unfold to see the vision come to pass? Well,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 43:22
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Our guest for this episode is Donny Jones. Donny is the Executive Vice President for The Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and the chief Workforce Development Officer for West Alabama Works. He’s responsible for the daily operations of the chamber including financial management and information technology and manages a contractual relationships with vendors and professional service providers. Donny is instrumental in ensuring that the regional workforce systems leverage federal state resources to develop and grow the necessary K through 12 and adult training pipelines to support the current and future workforce. He is a former appointed Member of the governor’s workforce Council, and is currently an appointed Member of the Alabama Workforce Board where he serves on the executive committee and Policy Committee and appointed Member of the governor’s Career Technical Education Task Force to enhance the CTE curriculum and appointed Officer the Alabama committee of credentialing and career pathways and appointed member of the committee for Grade Level Reading. The Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities awarded Donny the Public Service Award for West Alabama and 2019 and 2022. He received his accreditation as a CCE a distinction that less than 4% of leaders in the chamber profession hold. He serves on the board of directors for the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Educational Foundation, ACC foundation board, as well as other committees and ACCE boards. He also worships and teaches at five points Baptist Church reserves as Deacon he’s most known as a husband of Clara is a 29 year educator and father to Carson and Carter, the dining Welcome to chamber tap Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today on the show and love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself.

Donny Jones 3:53
Absolutely. Well, as you can see, I don’t do much but chamber work and work in the community. So but I am a one of the things that I tell people is very interested in the in the chamber world, I don’t play golf. And so I’m one of the only chamber execs you’ll ever made that has never played golf. But I do have four animals that are in the record books that I’ve killed with my bow across the country. So with that being said, most of my board members never mess with me. So anyway, a lot of really cool things are happening in our area. Of course, if you guys have seen the NFL another cool tidbit about our chamber is you probably saw the number one pick with the NFL last night. Jalen is actually right down the street from us or has been his career at the University of Alabama where our chamber is actually just right on the edge of the campus. So a couple of interesting things about us and myself.

Brandon Burton 4:56
That’s right and as we record this, that’s end of April 2020 Three. And then to add on to that this morning, my son is getting ready for school and he tells me yeah, this is the first time that an Alabama players been taken number one overall in the draft. And he’s a big history buff of any sort. So you know, little tidbits like that just really geek him out. So plastic? Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Alabama Regional Chamber and just kind of how you guys are structured scope of work, you guys are involved with size of the chamber staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage?

Donny Jones 5:33
Absolutely, we’re, uh, we’re sometimes a little cold, a little different as a chamber, we’re actually the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce, we serve as nine counties on the western part of the state of Alabama around seven counties. So square foot mileage is about 7500 square miles, our chamber has around 1300 members, and those are all business members, we don’t do individual memberships, representing about 65,000 employees. One of the things that is a little different is we’re the Regional Chamber of Commerce. So today, you’re talking to the executive vice president. Also, we’re the regional workforce Council, Alabama has seven regional councils across the state of Alabama, which is really a sounding board for workforce for industry. We are housed within the chamber, there were the fiscal and managing agents for that. And we’re also the regional workforce board, if you’re familiar with WIOA, and the federal dollars, so and I’m the Executive Director for both of those organizations. So we really have two large boards that work together, our Workforce Board, which is called the West Alabama Works Board, and then our chamber of commerce board. And so simultaneously, we’re always working together and actually who we are, as an organization is one of the largest collaboratives, when it comes to meeting the needs of businesses through that our budget on the chamber side is roughly about two and a half million dollars. And then on the workforce side, which is in combination, it would be close to $4 million organization. So we’re at right now 24 employees, 15 of those employees actually are full time workforce specialists. So as you can see, workforce is the largest portion of our organization. And really, we focus on that as one of our primary objectives to deliver services to our business community, because as you know, workforce is the largest issue that a lot of our businesses are facing. So that’s a little bit about our chamber. And in our services, yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:48
that workforce is always important, but right now is definitely you know, cuts the workout for you with the workforce shortages and just, you know, shifting in the economy in that in that front. But as we focus in on our topic for our discussion today, we settled on the idea of talking about next level of chambers and and this topic intrigues me because chambers are constantly looking to see what’s the next thing that we need to do to be relevant, right? How do we as we look to the future, how are we being relevant? How are we making an impact in our communities, and I feel like we’re going to be touching a lot on that and our conversation today so we will dive in deep on this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Siobhan Kenney  10:25  

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Brandon Burton 11:09
All right, Donny, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about next level of chamber. So tell me what does that mean for you guys there, West Alabama. And as you guys have looked at this scenario, as just, you know, staying relevant and and keeping the chamber in the forefront of the community there. What’s the approach that you guys are taking?

Donny Jones 11:30
Well, let me maybe the best way to tell you this is is the tail of an opportunity that I had this past week to have dinner with one of New York, New York Times bestselling author, Andy Andrews. I don’t know if you know that in traveller. Yeah, absolutely. And the butterfly effect and all that. So, so we were having dinner, he was speaking to a group and, and he said this, he said, you know, the difference, you know, and a lot of people are reading the book, Good to Great. And he said nothing against that book. But everybody is using that now as the Bible of you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People, as 20 years ago. And he said, you know, the problem is, is many of us are trying to go from good to great doing the things that we do, and have always done but doing better and doing better than our competitor. He said, What happens if an organization actually actually looked at doing things completely, in a different way, and looking at it a completely different way of doing business? And he said, That’s really where he’s coming from, as he was saying that I was like, wow, that is exactly what our chamber of commerce, and our focus has been, for so many years, you know, it was, you know, go to chamber Institute and learn more about what other chambers are doing and best practices. But if you really look at that 90% of the time is the best practices of the same things that you’re doing, just trying to find a better way of doing it. And so what we looked at is we said, you know, what, what is our number one key issue for our members out of our 1300? Members? What is the number one issue? And as I’m speaking to different groups across the country? That’s one of the things I asked that question. And I’ll be in a group and I’ll say, How many of you guys as chamber professionals, and your chamber? How many of you do a capital campaign? In a majority of, you know, middle, middle sized or larger chambers do some type of capital campaign, they’ll raise their hand? And then I’ll say, How many of you, in this room did a survey of your business community as you were doing a capital campaign? Well, everybody raises their hand, right? And then I asked the question, how many of you was workforce? One of the key components and an underlying issue that none of them could solve? And had an answer for? A No, everybody kind of look around, look at each other. And then, you know, you’d see hands go up really slow, but most of the hands came up. And then I asked the simple question. How many of you, if that is the number one issue in your community, or one of the top three, have the majority of your staff focused on meeting that need? Not one chamber, except our president that’s in the room, usually, when I’m speaking raises their hand. Because when we look at we’re talking all the time to our small businesses and our industries that we we help and we say, listen to what your customer says, and then meet that need. But yeah, as chambers, we try to get our members to do what we think they need to do as engaging into our organization instead of going out and doing what they need and actually being the voice of business. Now, I’ll be honest with you, Brandon, one of the things as I’m talking about that, it raises the hair on a lot of chamber execs Next, because they’re like, well, by God, what so that’s what we’ve always done. And that’s how we’re gonna do it. I’m like, That’s great. That’s why dinosaurs died. That’s right. So if you look at membership organizations, not just chambers, but when you look at, you know, trade organizations and everything, everyone is struggling with membership, and the digression, I guess, of membership. And then also, you know, we also have best practices don’t know if anybody’s been to their state organizations, or ACCE or US Chamber. And you know, they’ll have a session that says, best 30 ideas, and 30 seconds, or whatever it is. And so they’ll go in there. And there’ll be 100,000 ideas of how to do the same thing the same way, but just put a different makeup on a pig and make it look different. But it’s the same deliverable. And, you know, there are some ideas, and I don’t mean to cut that short, because you can get great ideas, I love those sessions. But at the end of the day, when you look at your structure of the chamber, you know, are you still doing the same things? And so as you see these national trends of of less sponsorship dollars, of being more innovated, how do you, you know, I had somebody one time, say, you know, what, if, if I could sponsor my toilet paper, I put a business’s logo on there, we’re just trying to find more ways that our golf tournaments at our chamber and sessions at this than the other to do those kinds of things. And what it’s doing is, you can only do so much with a product. And then what happens is you degrade it so much that people aren’t really wanting to buy, right. And so what we’re looking at, and what we have done is said, You know what, we’re gonna focus on the number one issue. And in our region, it was workforce development. And so we still do the bread and butter place, don’t get me wrong, we still block and tackle, we still do the networking events, we still do the chamber and sessions, we still do the directories, we do all those things. But our focus really is on helping our businesses grow. And one of their biggest issues in a community where our unemployment rate right now is 1.8%. You know, and our companies are growing, and they’re bleeding at the same time. And so we’re really focused on that. So 15 of our staff members, or really 17 of our staff members are focused every day waking up, meeting that one need. And education and workforce development is where we really focus on, right.

Brandon Burton 17:32
So as you’re explaining all this, to me, it makes perfect sense. And as I think of chambers across the country, I think sometimes they get a little constrained when they think everything we have to do has to be mission focused. And then they go back and look at their mission statement. And well, our mission statement doesn’t say anything about workforce necessarily, you know, so maybe they’ve pigeon holed themselves too much by defining their mission statement. Rather than being that voice of business, and constantly just looking to see what the, what the next thing is they need to do to help businesses be successful and to build a stronger community. So I guess it may be a word of warning, I guess, as you as you drafted your next mission statement to, to look at that what what’s going to leave you that flexibility to be able to pivot and to be able to listen to the needs of your members. And what’s their number one, number two, number three needs that they’re facing? And how can you as a voice of business, step in to help them solve those issues.

Donny Jones 18:32
That’s exactly right. And, you know, we just, we just finished our five year capital campaign, which is, we don’t do a yearly business plan. We have a five year strategy that we implement every day, and we wake up and that’s, that’s our focus. But this year, we did something different this this next five years. And so when you look at and I’m going to be around a while I’m gonna beat the dead horse right here. But I want to say this. When you look at most business plans, for chambers, you have your vision, you have your objectives, you have, you know, your strategies, and they do their SWOT analysis and everything. And, you know, what we’re doing is we’re changing our entire organization to be here’s our vision. And here’s the deliverables period. Because I’d say at most businesses don’t really care about your strategy. They want to know that you’re gonna get things done. And so people are so tired of plans that sit on the shelf and nobody visits them. And we’ve got a plan and we send it out to all of our members and nobody reads it. They put it in file 13 Because they know it’s the same Oh, say Mo. So what we did was we said we’re going to take and we’re going to create a vision of where we want to go for example, in this category is lead business driven workforce and talent development. The vision is specific. It’s two sentences, and then boom, the deliverables. How many people were going to put to work? How many how many outreach events, we’re going to do all those kinds of things. And when you look at a conversation that I don’t know about other chambers, but we have is that our patriarchs are dying out in our communities. And the new leaders that are coming on board are not Civic, rent minded. You know, it’s not, I’m going to invest, because it’s the right thing to do. They are business minded, and they want to know that they’re getting a return on their investment. And so many times chambers make the excuse, well, we’re not really a chamber that makes your cash register ring, we grow the pie for everybody. And, you know, you say things like, rising tide floats, all boats, and we have all this thing, and this new generation of business leaders are looking at you and saying, You’re full of crap. It’s just all smoke and mirrors, and you would sell blind man glasses. And so they, they think that way. And so what we’re doing as a chamber is we’re saying, look, here’s the deal, we’re hearing what you’re saying, and we’re going to focus on delivering those policies, we’re still going to be an advocacy organization in the voice of business. But here’s what we hear you saying, and and that’s what we’re going to work on. And quality of life is one of those things. So what does that mean? I mean, quality of life for every community is different. Does that mean? Well, that’s like saying, random world peace, we’re gonna solve world peace. And so chambers are out there. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re telling everybody, we’re solving world peace, and everybody’s going, whatever. And so what we’re doing there is saying, this is our vision for what quality of life looks like, for our community. And these are the specific things that we’re going to do for you, as a partner in our community. And so that’s where we’re going is really changing this and changing the topics, instead of trying to sell everybody something that they really don’t want. Because people I think respect chambers, I think people you know, intuitively know that they’re important. But when it comes to, am I gonna pay my employees $2 More than hours so that I can actually keep my employees and keep my lights on? Or am I going to pay a membership fee, because it’s the right thing to do. chambers are beginning to lose that battle. So we have to really become a chamber that is consultant driven information and knowledge based, and actually somebody that’s helping companies grow and meet their needs. And so our niche was workforce developmental now.

Brandon Burton 22:32
Yeah. And I think depending on the community, depending on the chamber, the niche may look different. Absolutely. Workforce definitely is a niche where you can have some, you know, absolute deliverables, and you can have data to back up the work that you’ve done to say, here’s the results of the efforts that we put forth on your behalf. And when you look at the your chamber in general, you guys really are larger on the workforce side, budget wise, staff wise, I mean, the attention is going to workforce, because that’s where you hit while I assume that’s where you have those key indicators, you can go back to to measure success, and where you can go back to investors and say, this is where you’re getting your return. So I’m curious as you as you put that focus on workforce. I know we can talk for hours on this, because it’s something passionate that you’re passionate about. But what are what are those areas and workforce? In your bio had mentioned the K through 12? Programs? You know, I’m sure retention, is there education with employee or with employers? What are those those key areas that you’re focusing on with regard to workforce? Sure,

Donny Jones 23:41
absolutely. I’ll give you a prime example. On the K 12 system. We do large regional events, for example, worlds of work that we do, it’s what we call Disney World, steroids for workforce development. So we bring, we shut one of our community colleges down for three days, we bring every ninth grader in the entire region, over 5,009th graders up and they experience all the different job opportunities that we have. And it’s all hands on. And it is a big event. People come from all over the country to actually look at the event and say, how do you all model this? And so we’re in our schools, we’re touching our kids, we’re really all the way down into pre K. We have an educated workforce Academy, where we train all of our superintendents and principals and key leaders in our 12 school systems. We’ve graduated over 470. And they spent an entire year with us learning workforce development in changing the landscape of how educators think about this big topic. Then we’re also involved in our adopted school program, getting industries involved, and ensuring up our education system which is not the best in the country. And so we’ve got a lot of work to do and it’s going to take the into Park community, particularly the business and industry, community to really help shore up our education system. And then another example is bringing those resources. For example, we have this past year, we put over a million dollars in the hands of our industries through our workforce board, and through one grant alone, and we trained over 1100 workers and upskill those workers just in our small region, through our community college system, and being able to fund those kinds of things. We place over 3000 individuals in jobs over the last year, just in one sector. That’s the automotive industry. And then a lot of things into Brandon, here’s another way, and I’m going to chase a rabbit real quick. But how many chambers talk about diversity, equity inclusion, right? Let me give you what real diversity, equity inclusion looks like the 3000 employees that we placed in the automotive industry, because we had Mercedes Benz here, 78% of them were African American, of the 78% 51% were male and 49% were female. So when you begin to talk about what we’re doing for communities, and how we’re trying to be an inclusive community, instead of just having events, which we had our development, diversity, equity inclusion event for the chamber last week, so we still do that. But now we’re having discussions about how we’re really impacting those communities that feel like they haven’t been included. And we’re saying, Look, we’re focusing on your entire community, we’re not talking about these topics, we’re doing something about these topics, we’re making a difference when you look at the difference we’re making on the disposable income and the average, you know, family income for our minority communities, that is growing because of our workforce side. So you know, at the end of the day, I think our society is changing. From a perspective of less, don’t just talk about things, let’s get something done. And it’s time to move the needle. And that’s what our organization is really focused on in our communication is focus on that side of it, you know, not just, hey, look what we’re doing. We’ve done 10 events, this this month, what we’re really focusing on is we’re changing lives every single day. You know, last week alone, we put 100, high school students ninth 10th 11th graders into summer jobs, they’ll actually start in in three weeks, with 20 different employers. And we’re, you know, we’re modeling that out when we’re talking about it. And people are saying, We’ve got people every day that’s calling us and saying, how do we get involved in the work of the chamber because of what you’re doing. So those are the kinds of topics that we’re really focused on.

Brandon Burton 27:56
I love that you can just off top your head, you have these numbers, right? He can tell, you can say, we’ve helped 3000 people and jobs in the automotive sector and then go on to the diversity equity inclusion side, you can say, you know, your percentages of, you know, different races and genders. And those are numbers you can point to and say, here’s how we’re moving the needle. versus you know, we had a networking event, and we had 50 people show up. What came of that I’m sure something good happened. But how do you measure that? Exactly.

Donny Jones 28:26
And that’s, that’s what people want to hear. And what we’ve seen as, like I said, we just finished our capital campaign, the majority of people who increased in some doubled their investment over the next five years in our organization, the majority of those said, we’re investing because of what you’re doing and workforce development because that is key. We’re a huge manufacturing area, even though we have the University of Alabama and a huge healthcare sector. Industry is our big, I guess you’d say employment sector. And so individuals know, you know, that if we don’t solve that problem, because Alabama doesn’t have the largest population. I mean, as I was telling you, 1.8% unemployment is almost like zero. Unemployment, right? So how do we get more people in the participation rate? So we’re doing outreach events every single week. In two weeks, we’ve got what we call our signing day. So all the students that we’ve heard in all these events, you know, our apprenticeship programs and everything is going to look catalogue. Now, it’s not going to have 100,000 People like it did last night on the NFL signing, but we’re going to have a huge signing day and make a big deal that work is valuable. And you know what that resonates with our our, our members or our membership and the businesses and they’re saying you know what the chamber is bringing value back to our community and that is essential, soft skills. It is work is valuable, and we need everybody to be a part of growing In our community. And so it really is, if any of you think about what we’re doing is we’re really doing exactly what everybody else is saying they’re doing, right. But it’s turning that value into, you know, something tangible. And it’s not, Hey, did we do 10 referrals from our website to your community or your business? That’s not what we do. We’re, you know, and so we’re all the time as chamber, folks, we’re like, we gotta tell people about the value of our organization, and we say all these things, but nobody really knows how to do it, besides, create a new flyer with great pictures and people at a networking event and somebody with a governor and a mayor and all this. And so the, it’s the same old, same old. And so that’s why I said, we’re really taking it to the next level. So I’ll give you a kind of a, an analogy of we do things in a real systematic way. So our first five year campaign was called working as one, because we wanted our community to learn that we’re never going to take it to the next level unless we begin to work as one. So guess what the title of our next capital campaign was working.

Brandon Burton 31:17
One’s got to be in there. So working

Donny Jones 31:18
this one. Now, this campaign was actually called all in, because once you get everybody at the table, once everybody is working this one, now everybody has got to be only in to move us to the next level. And so that is really what we’re seeing in our community as people are coming to our chamber and really saying, how do we engage? How do we involve Coulson, you are an organization that’s making a difference. And, you know, I had somebody come to me, actually yesterday and say, I was at church the other day, and I had this family member come, or this church member come to me and say that my kid went to our well 2.0, which it was for graduating seniors, which was four weeks ago, or three weeks ago. And we put 200 kids, and they had 600 job offers, or 200 kids at major industries. And so when you look at that, you know, they were talking about this change this kids laugh. And so now they’re like, how do I get involved? So we’re creating whole new opportunities, where people do engage at a whole different level, because now they’re passionate about what we’re doing. Not just that we’re the chamber. That’s

Brandon Burton 32:31
right. So that leads up very well into my next question, as we start to wrap things up here. I like asking as we frag is for chambers that are listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or action item would you suggest for them to, to consider implementing at their organization?

Donny Jones 32:50
Well, I’m the worst person to say this. But one thing I’ve think that I would suggest, is like the old saying that my mother used to say this all the time to me, which as you can tell, I talk a lot and are very passionate. And sometimes I don’t stop and listen enough, because I think I have all the answers. You know, God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, son. And chambers forget that sometimes. And so what I would say is if you’re going to check your chamber to the next level, is listen with an open and honest mind and hear what they’re really saying. And see what what the real eco ecosystem around your community is. For us, the struggle was workforce. For some communities, it could be loss of population growth, for some, it could be a need for a new strategy and economic development. Whatever that is. I would say that you listen to that, and then look at how you can become the very best at that. So you become the source of that for your community. But then you look at how do I deliver that if it’s economic development? What am I going to do? What am I going to create? How am I going to sell it? And how am I going to let people know that we’re the ones who do it? We hear all the time chambers say this. And Brandon, I don’t know if you’ve had speakers on here that say we don’t toot our own horn enough. Well, the reason you don’t toot your horn enough is because you really probably aren’t doing anything that’s a really of subsequent, you know, need. We every week. We are on the news every week. And we have four stations and usually it’s at least two of those stations. And that’s one of our goals. But if you look at 90% of those newsfeeds, it’s because of what we’re doing in the lives of people because their interest stories, right? So, you know, focusing on making a key difference and what is ain’t going to do and looking at things totally different. Like I said, you’ve still got to do the bread and butter plays. But if you want to grow your organization, I can say this from, you know, what we’ve seen where we went from, you know, seven staff members to 24. And it was all focused on those deliverables. So every new position that we have hired at the Chamber has been to give outcomes and deliverables not to do programmatic work. And so really look at how do you change in that direction? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:30
I love a said that to not only listen more, we hear that sort of tip a lot. But the caveat there of listening with an open and honest mind, because it’s so easy as you hear the needs of of your members or the struggles that they have to become a little defensive, maybe we do that for you, and you try to explain and rather than just listening and realizing maybe we’re not doing it well enough, maybe they don’t know about these things, because we’re not executing in the way that we need to. And

Donny Jones 36:01
I have to confess I was that guy. That’s why I said a lot of times, there’s people that are probably hearing us discuss this today that are actually getting frustrated at hearing me say, because they are so sad. And this is how we’ve always done chamber work. And this is what we’ve been told. And it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just, you can be good to great all day long. And I would encourage you if that’s what you want to be be that. But what we’re talking about today is going from good to the best. Yeah. And that’s a way of thinking about it.

Brandon Burton 36:36
Yeah, that’s great. So as we look to the future of chambers, we’ve been at it feel like we’ve been talking about this all all interview here, but how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Donny Jones 36:50
Wow, that’s a loaded question. For me, particularly when what we’re talking about is a seat chambers that are going to be successful. Um, you know, I think there’s a place for for every chamber, but I think you’re going to see more chambers becoming more like merchants associations, or actually becoming more like a Deloitte deliverable organization, where their staffs are more like consultants that are actually doing incredible things and working with industry to raise the bar. In those sectors, I think you’ll see a lot of chambers becoming more sector driven, where they’re, you know, what they’re doing for manufacturing might look different than what they’re doing for technology, what looks different than what they’re doing, or healthcare. And they’ll probably have specialists that that focus on those key areas. The other thing is, is, once again, I think you’ll see more of a contractual organization that’s doing real contractual top work. For example, like we’re doing in workforce development, where you know, millions of dollars of our organizations actually to deliver services for the state of Alabama, or for a particular entity or a county or a city. You’ll see more of that. And I think you’ll see chambers being more innovative when it comes to those traditional chamber programs, and have they delivered in different ways. But I think you are going to see the larger chambers actually turn into more of more of that focused. This is our sweet spot. And that’s what we’re going to do, because once you try to become all things to all people, amount one HD, is very difficult for for you to actually have a core focus of your organization.

Brandon Burton 38:44
Absolutely. So as we wrap that, wrap it up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more. Hey, you guys are doing there at the West Alabama chamber, what’s the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Donny Jones 39:00
Yeah, absolutely. If you want to reach out to us, our number here is 205-758-7588 websites that I’ll give you is WestAlabamaChamber.com and WestAlabamaWorks.com. We have hosted, I think 20 or so in the last 18 months, communities that have come in and flown in and done benchmarking trails, particularly on our workforce side. So we’re always open to that because we always learn as much from other Chambers as they learned from us. So it’s a great time to exchange. So if you know chambers are interested in that. We have a staff member that actually focuses on working all the details out and helping chambers, create their benchmarking trips on workforce development and flying in and actually doing that. So appreciate all the time, Brandon, thank you for having us here too. But yes, love to talk to anybody that might have questions. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:56
that’s been fantastic having you on the show today. And I think the perspective you bring and the insights the the work you guys are doing is really going from good to best and that best looks different every community. So I hope everyone listening is taking notes on those, those action items they can do to really survey and listen and have that honest heart in mind as they listen to their members to see how you can become the best. So thank you, Donny, for being with us today. I really appreciate it

Thank you enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton
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Destination Master Plan with Cheryl Kilday

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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.

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

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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Our guest for this episode is Cheryl Kilday. And Cheryl is the President and CEO of Destination North Myrtle Beach, formerly known as in North Myrtle Beach Chamber. Cheryl is an expert in destination marketing and management and has spent nearly her entire career working with membership based organizations pursuing economic development. Prior to joining the team in North Myrtle Beach, Cheryl has worked in a similar capacity at organizations in Oregon, Vermont and Washington State. Cheryl has earned the prestigious credential of certified destination management executive and has led three of the organization she has worked with to earn certifications as Destination Management accredited. In North Myrtle Beach they are in the accreditation with distinction. Destination North Myrtle Beach also successfully maintained their five star accreditation through the US Chamber of Commerce. Cheryl and her husband Tim are enjoying living in North Myrtle Beach and adjusting to being empty nesters. But Cheryl, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Cheryl Kilday 3:06
Yeah, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s funny, when I saw that you were going to ask me to tell you something interesting about myself. I don’t think I’m very interesting. Nobody does. Say it was funny because my husband and I have zigzag the country twice. So we started in the northwest and went to Virginia. And then we went back to the northwest. And now we’re here in South Carolina. And one of the things that all four of the communities that I’ve worked in, in the destination work that we’ve done, they’re all very different, but they all have something in common. And that is they all have wine. And we were in the Willamette Valley before Oregon Pinot was really known for, you know, had the reputation it has today. So we started collecting wine many years ago now. And my coworker Aaron said, tell them that that’s where you rest your me. So I have we have a little wine collection. And that’s where I rest my me. Nice.

Brandon Burton 4:09
You may need to tell us a little bit more about that about your me. You know,

Cheryl Kilday 4:14
I guess it’s been a while but we we worked in Northern Virginia and Loudoun County and we put together a series of heritage videos. And they aired on television. It was the first year that tourism related videos was something that the Emmys include in any category, but we were up against PBS stations and all sorts of other you know, really great opportunities and we actually won an Emmy for our series of, of heritage videos that we did.

Brandon Burton 4:46
That is awesome. So that is something interesting.

Cheryl Kilday 4:52
Like right, is it still relevant?

Brandon Burton 4:54
Right, right. Well tell us a little bit about destination North Myrtle Beach just to give us some An idea of the scope of work the size, your organization, budget staff, that sort of thing to kind of set the table for our discussion.

Cheryl Kilday 5:07
So it really starts with our community. You know, we have 22,000 households in North Myrtle Beach, and less than 10,000 of those are permanent residents. So we are absolutely a tourism destination on any given day, visitors outnumber our residents, probably two to one on this load time is of the year and really, significantly over the peak season on Memorial Day to Labor Day. So we are both the tourism organization as well as the Chamber of Commerce. And in South Carolina. That’s a pretty common model. We have seven full time employees and one part time. And we have a contract with our city for the majority of our funding, which is tourism promotion. And then we have about 650 members that our dues paying and we have a budget overall of about 3.2 to 3.5 million All right, he described ourselves as small and mighty.

Brandon Burton 6:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah cuz you guys that you see a lot of traffic there’s through North Myrtle Beach and then with the team this size, and you guys are doing a lot of work carrying a big load so well, for our topic for today, we’ve settled around the idea of talking about destination master plans. So we’ll we’ll get into that conversation what that means how you guys are approaching that work and everything as soon as you get back from this quick break.

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Howdy it’s me, Donna from Yiftee again. Today we get to hear from Christine in upstate New York about her Shop 716 Community card program. She was able to use sponsorship funds for a generous Buy One, Get One program that benefits her whole county.

Christine Langenfeld

Hi this is Christine Langenfeld with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce located in Buffalo, New York. We have partnered with Yiftee on our Shop 716 e-gift card program that has been incredibly, incredibly impactful for our small businesses. So happy to have incorporated this program in our shop local initiative here in Western New York. I highly recommend them and give them a chance to show what they can do.

Donna Novitsky 

Thanks, Christine. So folks, check us out at yiftee.com and sign up for a demo or shoot us an email at sales@yiftee.com

Brandon Burton 9:17
All right, Cheryl, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break we’re talking today about destination master plans. So talk to us about what is what do you see is it a destination master planned and kind of the melding between a destination organization and chamber organization how that fits together?

Cheryl Kilday 9:36
You know, destination master plans are becoming more common. And it really is the combination of looking at how all the different organizations in a community can intersect and share a purpose and vision for a long term plan for the community. So you know it’s different from a marketing plan or a strategic plan. is different from a comprehensive plan that community municipality may be required to have, but they do leverage off of each other. And so what we’ve been working to do is really concentrate with four guiding principles, and to look at what we wanted to do as a community. And we’ve used a quote from Warren Buffett quite a bit, where he talks about how somebody is sitting in the shade today, because somebody a long time ago, planted the tree. And, and so we use that as part of the starting point, because we weren’t really focused on aligning what the residents care about and what they see, for long term. We’ve been a rapidly growing community over the last few years. And there’s some pushback on that. What does the business community need? How do we make sure that we’ve got a thriving and sustainable economy? What are we doing to help the environment and the place that we live as things are changing, and then looking at the visitor experience, because we are built on a tourism economy, so we have to also look at that part of our community. So using those guiding principles, we’ve come up with some areas where we really feel like we can connect, and align all of those interested organizations and individuals to share in how to make a destination Master Plan come to fruition, right.

Brandon Burton 11:23
So you had mentioned how it’s different than a strategic plan or a community vision. And I see destination master plan can be a component of those things, as you have a greater community vision, or as a chamber, if you’ve got tourism responsibilities, having that be part of that strategic plan, that having that specific focus on on the destination and, and being able to align some of those resources and see where that crossover is to really, you know, make it a win win all across the community.

Cheryl Kilday 11:55
And part of that is defining roles, right? Because, you know, you’ve got to chambers in many communities, the there might be a Sports Commission and a tourism and see that separate, you’ve got regional governments, you’ve got local governments, you’ve got so many different places to intersect. And I think it’s really helps when you have a destination master plan, because it does, it defines who leads, and what the role of our organization is, because sometimes we’re an advocate, sometimes we’re a partner, sometimes where support, and sometimes we’re the leader. And so the destination Master Plan and the implementation strategy, we’re putting together a workforce to really look at that and make sure that we’re defining and an and have agreement on who are those leaders conveners, you know, advocates, that sort of thing, so that we aren’t stepping on each other. But we’re also, you know, agreeing that yes, this is in our wheelhouse, and we’ll take the lead on this. So. So that’s one of the first steps. We just got our master plan, literally last week, oh, consulting team. So we’re just in that good timing of looking at that implementation strategy and how to make it work. All right.

Brandon Burton 13:05
So I think that’s an important aspect to consider is the defining of roles. And as you mentioned, sometimes there’s, you know, individuals at the city level or within the chamber, or maybe the tourism is different than the chamber. whose role is it to divine the roles? And how do you say, this is what we’ll do? This is what you do. And I’m sure it’s a convening of mines and being able to hash through some of that, but how did it work for you guys?

Cheryl Kilday 13:33
Right, we had a very inclusive process and developing our master plan. We did twelves subject matter expert groups up there, like focus groups, where they met with the consulting team, we had 25 community leaders, both elected officials, public officials, and business leaders, with an resident HOA type leaders as well. So it’s we had 25 interviews, we had a community town halls twice, we had a resident survey, and we ran that twice. And for a community with, you know, less than 20,000 permanent residents. We had about 4000 people respond to our residents survey. And our consulting team gave us a comparison that when la did a similar study, they had 1000 and thought it was a great response. So I mean, we really had overwhelming participation throughout our development. And because it was so inclusive, we really feel like we we’ve got a good sense of the pulse of where the enthusiasm that concerns the shared opportunities are.

Brandon Burton 14:43
Right. So I’m always curious when I hear a chamber organization talking about reaching out to residents and citizens. First of all, a lot of the common people in in a community have no idea what a Chamber of Commerce does. So how do you go about soliciting? Those, those surveys and responses in a way that that warranted such a great outcome such a great return. Well, we

Cheryl Kilday 15:08
we literally talked about that we were going to do this destination master plan every chance we got. And we have reached out to the HOAs to try to get them involved. And we actually had a steering committee that still exists and one of the bigger HOAs is involved in it, which then also gives her access to work the network of HOA leaders. So that was, I think that was really valuable. I also we use social media and there are a lot of a lot of Facebook groups that I you know, I love Cherry Grove, I love Ocean Drive, you know, we’ve got four different very distinct features here. And so those, you know, each one has a group and there’s a lot of different Face Face Book opportunities. So we use boosted posts to really advertise the, the idea of this, we actually did some billboards, and we did radio and TV, and just really trying to let people know that we were doing it and that we cared about their, that their opinions, we really share those guiding principles and the importance of aligning with residents, because resident quality of life is really important to us. And, you know, we’re doing it in our community is becoming overrun with visitors that doesn’t help the visitor experience or the resident experience. And so to be honest about that, and invite that as part of the conversation, I think matter. Right?

Brandon Burton 16:29
So the for this next question, I’m not going to pretend that you’re the expert on the topic, necessarily. I’d love to get your perspective, although not an expert, you do have an Emmy. So I think it carries some weight. But as chambers listening, what would from your perspective, having gone through this, you know, creating a destination master plan, when would be the right time for a community to consider or to really explore the idea of creating a specific destination master plan. For us, we actually

Cheryl Kilday 17:01
started exploring the idea of doing it. In our last strategic plan, Eddie, Eddie merged, and we’re about a year behind on working on it because of COVID. So I know a lot of communities use COVID to sort of regroup and think about what they wanted to do. And so for some of them as they’re emerging from COVID, that might be a really good time. For us. It was we were crazy busy during COVID, and really didn’t have the same experience as all other communities. Because people wanted to go to the beach, we have so many second homeowners, if you’re going to be shut down, would you rather be shut down in a condo in an urban setting or at the beach? So we actually saw really busy COVID period which had a whole different set of issues, but I think every community has to kind of think about when is this opportunity right for us? How do we gain that trust and access to the residents to be to be really thoughtful about the inclusive factions and and how to bring them together to build trust. So we worked on, we worked on a resident campaign during COVID, because they were really upset with how busy we were. And so we really worked on saying, you know, we understand, we hear you, we are being accountable to you. And this is what we are doing because we were not advertising to for people to come during COVID, we were actually advertising on how to travel safely, because we wanted them to know we cared about people bringing things here and creating other issues. So we actually worked really closely with our residents and use that timeframe to help build trust, and that they knew that we heard them and felt the same way that we were not just about a bottom line, and we’re about people. And and so then the timing worked for us to go ahead and and develop the destination master plan after that. And but I think if we had tried to do it during when that was originally the timeframe, and because we were open we could have but it was the wrong time. So I think that if you look around and say, okay, is this the right time? What else is our community addressing? Is that supported by the development of a master plan? Or is it better to to wait and do it at another time? Another factor for us is that our city is required in South Carolina to do a comprehensive planning are so many years and every five years, they have to refresh it. And 2023 is the year they have to refresh it. And so our master plan becomes a tool for them because they’ve been very involved in this. And so it actually has an opportunity to utilize some of that and have fewer surveys or their own public meetings. It’s kind of shorten some of the things that they need to do that are already addressed in a destination master plan.

Brandon Burton 19:58
Right? I didn’t even think Got that with North Myrtle Beach being a drivable destination for a lot of people during COVID, when it was a little sketchy to get on an airplane or to do certain types of travel that they could hop in their car and still have that vacation experience and be at the beach and everything and outdoors and be safe. That really is a key for being able to drive, you know, success through co essay success in terms of, you know, high traffic with visitors

Cheryl Kilday 20:28
with the Wall Street Journal journal. Journalism, ask us, so, you know, aren’t you worried everybody’s, you know, coming to the beach? And I said, okay, so have you been to our beach, because we have nine miles and wide open beaches. So even if we have 100,000 people here, they’re not all going to be crowded up together, and they’re not all going to be at the beach at the same time. They were living here working remotely their students, you know, in their households were learning remotely. And they were being careful. I mean, we really, we really, as a community didn’t have, you know, these some of the crisis that some communities had, but we were able because, you know, golf and the beach, or to the big outdoor activities here, people, we’re able to do that safely. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:16
So I’m curious as far as so now you have this destination master plan together? What do the action items look at it? Or how do you go about executing on the this master plan?

Cheryl Kilday 21:29
Yeah, that’s now we’re at that stage of wow, we’ve got this plan. So you know, our goals identified in the plan, there’s four key areas, and then those guiding principles that sustainably sustainability, quality of of life, the visitor experience, and all of that those are all in each of these goals, like one of them, I’m just going to take one is to improve accessibility and connectivity. So that’s trails that’s, you know, becoming an autism friendly community and making sure that our hospitality and public amenities have been trained on what that means and are ready for that, that were accessible to all types of travelers, we’ve got some great adaptive surfing here that does that. But what else? You know, what’s, what’s consumer facing? And how can we make sure that that not just for visitors, but for residents is connected and accessible? And all the things that that looks like? So now we’re looking at that implementation plan and looking at what are those specific projects? And what short term midterm and long term because we’re really, this is a 10 year plan. It’s not something we have to knock off in three years. Otherwise, it would be very overwhelming. But we’re really just putting that workforce that cross functional work group together to to address the timing of those are the is as realistic as this, how are we going to fund it? How does the queue work? What’s ready? What’s the most ready? You know, I think it’s great when you receive a plan from a consulting team, they don’t live here. And they, you know, they can go home. But now we live here. And we’re like, Okay, what do we do? And I think there’s a certain value of adding in sort of a readiness model is, what are these that are the most ready? And are they the right ones at the at the right time? And if we queue things up, so we’re not competing against ourselves to try to get things done. How does that work? So at our executive committee meeting yesterday, we agreed that we’re going to reorganize that implementation plan that they gave us and give us some different colors and add in a couple of columns about some of those kinds of likelihood types of things is funding available. And I mean, that’s really important, because it may be aspirational, to have some of those things shorter term that they might be more appropriate mid term, if there’s some funding mechanisms that need to be secured first.

Brandon Burton 23:51
Right. So I think it’s important to mention that or to reiterate maybe that you’d said this is a 10 year plan. So it’s not like things are happening overnight. Like it gives you time and runway to get some of these things done. But along that tenure timeline, how often do you guys reconvene? And kind of, you know, check the pulse on the progress. And it may be correct course where needed and to be able to keep you on that target?

Cheryl Kilday 24:17
Well, I think that we’re planning to keep it top of mind in our organization with a separate budget item, as well as a reporting mechanism. So we’ve got a communications plan that we’re putting together to be accountable for being the shepherds of this plan, so to speak. And, and we will actually include some community campaigning going along as we go and make sure that they stay engaged with this. And so having said that, we are just like I said, we just got this plan last week and implementation strategy. We’re going to start meeting I believe, shortly with the city and our cross functional group. And then I anticipate that at the beginning, they’ll meet monthly and then probably get to a quarterly. And then we’ll probably have a separate reporting out every year. So that there’s a shared annual report on what we, we’ve the collective of who’s got specific roles in the plan, have some sort of shared output, that would be on our website, and ideally, the city would find a place to put on their website and some of the other partners as well. Right.

Brandon Burton 25:27
That’s, that’s good. So before we start wrapping up here, I wanted to see is there anything that we’re missing as far as going through the process of creating a destination marketing plan that should be considered that maybe we haven’t touched on yet in our conversation?

Cheryl Kilday 25:43
Yeah, I think I mean, one of the things that I know that we’re dealing with, since you’ve seen this implementation strategies, really making sure that you’re, that we’re all positioned for success, right? Because there are some things that we’re going to be able to knock off pretty easily and making sure that those are the things that are in the short term part of your plan. But you have to make sure that you have a dose of realism. And so funding is one of the first things that we’re going to be talking about, is making sure that we’ve got the right kind of funding mechanism, our dollars are very restricted for the tourism use. And there’s things that we need to do that we can’t do with the existing funding mechanism. And so how do we tackle that? And so, and I would say that for all of us, it’s not about money. It’s about programming and results that we want. And when you define what that is, then you figure out how the how the funding supports it. But if you start by saying I need x number of dollars, then people are like, well, what are you going to do with those dollars? So if you start by answering that question, first, we think that that will help that funding conversation, not be about, oh, we need money. It’s like we need to figure out how to make these things possible. Right.

Brandon Burton 26:54
I think that’s a really good point. So as we do start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask if you have any tip or action item that you’d like to share for any chamber champions listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What would you offer them?

Cheryl Kilday 27:11
Yeah, I think whether it’s a destination master plan, or just making sure that you’re really well versed in what the comprehensive plan is, and what organizations are out there that have a plan, and have you ever sat down and just kind of asked everybody where you can find that way of supporting one another. You know, I worked in another community where we didn’t do a destination master plan, but we worked on a shared community vision. And we sat down with all the different organizations and understood each other and that helped prevent program creep. But it also helped them be advocates for us, and we can advocate for them. And so there’s certainly ways to accomplish some of the things that destination masterplan does with just having some of those really great opportunities for working together. And years ago, a gentleman that we worked with use the term we all need to be readily available with our coalition’s and alliances, and you develop those relationships when there’s no threat. And you build trust and awareness and appreciation so that when you need somebody, you can call on them. You don’t wait until you need something to try to develop a relationship.

Brandon Burton 28:21
I heard a quote before, and I can’t remember who said it, but I’m going to claim it as mine now, but it’s you dig your well before you’re thirsty, right? So you got to do put in the hard work ahead of time before you actually need something. So building those relationships, understanding what people you know, other organizations do. And then you know, as you need something from each other, you know where to go. And you have that trusted relationship that’s been built over time. And it’s not just coming with the need in the moment, saying I’m thirsty, you know, help me Yeah, like, I don’t know you. So that’s a that’s a great tip. So I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chamber their chambers and their purpose going forward?

Cheryl Kilday 29:07
I think that alignment with residents is changing in our country. I think people expect to be heard and that the balance of business need and resident needs. So I know we’ve worked to personify business, instead of making it seem like we just cared about bottom care about bottom lines, that those are people. We learned that during COVID that the residents were feeling like the the city was only concerned about keeping business open and they didn’t care about the residents. And so we talked about who those businesses are not what they are, but who they are. And you know that that bartender or that accountants or whoever that person is, and the community has a face and so we really tried to give businesses a face. And I think that that is going to continue I think people found their voice residents found their Voice during some of those, you look at whether it’s civil unrest or violence or COVID, there’s been a lot of ways where people have found a voice in our country. And I think we’ve had, as chambers have to hear that, and find those areas where we can reach out and make sure that we’re building alliances with that residence so that we can align and have a successful community.

Brandon Burton 30:23
Yeah. And I think in the world today, with all the social media platforms that are out there, it makes it a lot easier to put a face on these businesses, right, instead of just looking at a list of business names that are members of your organization, you can, you know, be friends with them on Facebook, or Instagram or Tiktok, or whatever they’re on, and really get to know who they are what’s important to them, you know, what’s their family life look like? What are they doing when they’re not, you know, at, you know, styling hair or serving you dinner or whatever it may be. So, I think that’s a great way of looking to the future and really making sure that that we’re listening to the peep the the residents and the business owners in the communities. That’s right. Well, Cheryl, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who are listening who want to maybe reach out to you and learn more about creating a destination master plan or just more how you guys are doing things here in North Myrtle Beach, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you,

Cheryl Kilday 31:25
thank you emails always the best way to reach me and that’s ckilday@destinationnmb.com.

Brandon Burton 31:38
All right, and I will get that in our show notes for this episode as well. So people can pull that up and and reach out and connect with you. But I really appreciate you coming on the show. And I know this is a new thing for you guys that are in North Myrtle Beach, but to be able to be a little bit vulnerable in the process and how you guys set it up and and how you’re looking forward on executing on this this new destination master plan. So thank you for for sharing this experience and insights with us today on chamber chat podcast.

Cheryl Kilday 32:08
Thank you very much.

Brandon Burton 32:10
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Small Staff, Big Impact with Jodi Owczarski

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

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

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 38:07
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Winter Park Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Betsy Gardner Eckbert

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

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.

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.

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

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

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

Our guest for this episode is Betsy Gardner Eckbert. Betsy was raised in Winter Park, Florida, where she came full circle in January 2017 to become the president and CEO of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s focused on innovation and closing the relevancy gap to modernize the organization earning the 2018 chamber Innovation Awards grand prize. Previously in 2009, she moved her family to London, England, where she became Director of Business Development for a mentor consulting limited a UK consulting firm advocating for gender diversity at the board level. She would go on to co found an International Children’s luxury brand of UV protected swimwear long wave apparel limited that was marketed in 14 countries. Building a successful career after taking several years off to raise her two children led Betsy to create relaunch career reentry for professional women at the Chamber of program with more than 100 graduates, many of whom have rejoined to the workforce. In April 2022. The Winter Park Chamber of Commerce released its prosperity scorecard, and ESG embedded scorecard with a commitment to values beyond simply the financial bottom line. Betsy is a graduate of the University of Florida where she was named the 1991 outstanding female leader and has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. She was also a previous guest on Chamber Chat Podcast back on episode 66. For any of you who want to go back and listen to that episode again. But Betsy, it’s a pleasure to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 3:55
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having us and for giving us an opportunity to highlight the work we do that serves the Winter Park community and boast a little bit about the dedication of our team to enhancing the quality of life and business in Winter Park. I really appreciate having this opportunity. And I was reflecting on how much better the conditions are meeting with you today than they were back in the early days of the pandemic where I did a podcast with you from my kitchen, a place I thought I’d be working from for two weeks, which spanned into about four or five months. So we’ve really come a long way since then I’m grateful for the opportunity to be doing this from my office and having a more business like climate for responding to these questions. You know, I think an interesting fact about me is one that my mother hated. And that is a back in in 1999 I took a six week leave of absence from my job and I hiked the Appalachian Trail which my mother described as an unladylike thing to do. Because I was basically living in the woods for six weeks, but it was a really transformational journey for me. I brought a lot of focus into my life, and I was able to move on with intention into the next chapter. But it also taught me a lot about how things don’t go to plan. What happens when you gotta hike through the rain, and when you can’t find the campsite, you’re supposed to find or setting things up in the dark or getting blisters, how you work through and push through some of that stuff has been really helpful for me moving on in through my life. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 5:31
that is really interesting. In the Appalachian Trail, it definitely builds character and a lot of people who spend any time on it. So that is, that’s fantastic. I think that’s awesome. You took that time to do that. I’d love to hear more. But why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Winter Park chamber just to give us an idea of the type of chamber you are the size staff budget scope of work you guys are involved with and kind of go from there to set the table for our discussion.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 5:56
So Winter Park is one mile from the Orlando city line. So that city line is one mile from my office. So we we have we use the Orlando airport we shop at Orlando malls, we drive on Orlando Roads, we’re very much integrated into the Orlando MSA. But Winter Park itself is a 29,000 person community spanning nine square miles. However, we are a $4 billion a year economy. And a lot of that is driven by our top industries health care, higher education we have to higher education institutions within the city of Windsor Park. We have financial services, professional services, real estate, restaurant retail are some of the biggest players in our economy. And what’s interesting is that we’ve got about $130,000 of gross regional product per worker in our economy. So it’s a very robust engine. Even though we’re small, we’re mighty, because primarily a lot of Central Florida CEOs live and to some degree work in Winter Park. So what we lack in size, we make up for an influence. And we’re awfully proud of that. You know, one of the other things to frame for our listeners today is that, you know, our job growth has been 10% over the past five years, which has outpaced the nation by almost 7%. And so what’s happening in our community is a real window into the explosive growth that’s going on in the region. And the wraparound problems that come with explosive growth are ours to solve. So that’s a little snapshot of what we have going on here in Winter Park.

Brandon Burton 7:35
Oh, that’s fantastic. I think he just energized everybody to think how can we be like Winter Park, right? He hasn’t done a great, great work. What

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 7:42
I what I didn’t say is that we’re a category two competitor, which means that we’ve got 15 people on our staff about seven FTEs. And we’ve got a $1.2 million operational budget annually.

Brandon Burton 7:55
All right, that’s perfect. So typically, the way I like to structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application. So what I’d like to do is, is have you tell us at a high level what the two programs are, and then we can dive into each of them a little bit more in depth.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 8:18
So program, one is our relaunch program, which you referenced in my bio, but not just that we started it, we underwent an enormous transformation in the way we delivered that program. And that was to move it from a five session of four hours in length each session live delivery to an online delivery, which we began beta testing in late 20, moving into 21. And then we made the actual launch of the kind of this official model and 2022 was our online platform for delivery, which meant that so much of the curriculum had to be moved to self starting work at home and homework that would come back to our sessions online. We started beta testing this during COVID, naturally, because we couldn’t meet live and in person. And we were concerned that we there was going to be a kind of loss of emphasis or focus or impact to what we were teaching and presenting when we moved to an online model. More importantly, we thought that there was going to be a deterioration of the safe space that’s created for our participants who are struggling with confidence gaps is the reason why they’re not really approaching the job market. And if we don’t have some kind of vulnerability and authenticity in the unpacking of these confidence gaps, we’re not going to help these women close them. So we were concerned moving to an online format would be two dimensional, and it wouldn’t have a sense of togetherness that we had created so well in the classroom. And we were ably served by our vice president of programs, who used her significant get an understanding of program delivery, certainly online delivery and how adults learn to help us create a model that not only worked but exceeded the one that we were delivering before. And we got higher engagement from the women in the class because we mandated Facebook group participation. So people are now connecting to each other for coffee in between classes, and they’re sharing, you know, vulnerabilities and struggles and strengths. They’re sharing when they get hired to be an inspiration to the other people in their class. And so and that lives on those Facebook groups live on and they’re private, of course. So we’re really proud of the way that that that has delivered on our core promise to the people that take the class. But what we hadn’t realized was that we were going to start creating regional and national impact with this program. And, you know, when I came into this role, over six years ago, the board asked me to turn my focus and the focus of our staff to a more regional focus, instead of this parochial Winter Park nine square miles focus, we don’t live, you know, they’re not borders that are sealed off here commercially, or otherwise. So we’ve got to live regionally. So when we offered the class online, we started getting people from all over Florida taking it. And then from there, we actually moved into I think it’s five states total that we’ve delivered the program to now. And chambers over the years have come to us and said, Hey, can you help create this class for us to use and actually, unintentionally we did, by making it available through this online learning platform. So now it’s open to anyone who wants to do it, we do an application process to make sure there’s a good fit for this program, because what I will say is that there are well meaning people who realize that we’ve created an amount of networking, capital, and social capital in this program that people want to take advantage of that don’t quite fit the profile of the woman who’s been staying home with children. And so we want to make sure that we’re filtering for that and filtering for professional women who are well educated about 45% of our participants have advanced degrees, that means Master’s or, or doctorates, who, if you can imagine, are struggling with a confidence gap and failing to re approach the job market because of that. So we desperately need their talent in Winter Park, because our job growth is outpacing our population, which is creating strain on our infrastructure and otherwise, and so we we need these talented women to come back to work. It’s a workforce solution that meets the needs of our community. Because there’s enormous demand for degreed, highly sophisticated, polished professionals to serve in the types of jobs that we have in this community.

Brandon Burton 12:50
Yeah, so there are I love so much about this program. One is it, it was something you had started before the pandemic happened. So you have the in person model, you’re kind of, you know, your hand was forced a little bit to reinvent and reimagine what this could look like. So as you compare the old structure to the new structure, I’m sure there’s things that have stood out to you. But what are some of those main takeaways that you see with with moving to the structure being online?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 13:18
Well, I think it gives. So one of the things that we say to the women who take our classes, we are not going to find a job for you, we’re not going to take the thrill of that away from you. We’re going to teach you exactly how to do it yourself. And then you’re going to feel the pride and satisfaction of knowing you did this on your own. So I think when we shifted the model to have more homework based and less, no one’s going to sit on Zoom for four hours, right? I mean, maybe somebody will, but I don’t know who those people are anymore. So we want to make sure that we’re using our zoom time incredibly preciously. Because it’s very hard to keep adult learners engaged on a zoom platform. And we know that so what we’re trying to do is make sure that you know, we’re doing the the work of, of the women teaching each other what they need to learn in that platform. And we play the role of sophisticate, I’m sorry, a facilitator, and teacher. But what I will say is, having the work shift at home, gives them an even greater sense of ownership of the process, which I think is an as a consequence, we couldn’t have anticipated when we did that. And then I also think they’re getting the opportunity to we make them present a vision board on a video and put it into this Facebook group. And we make them basically interview online, which for many people is going to be their first entree into a career search experience. It’s a zoom interview or a recorded interview. So we make them present themselves on Zoom. And we make them present themselves in recorded videos where they’re presenting who they are, what they’re about, which are actually strategically advantageous to our candidates because they’re probably going to have to do that in the real A world. Now these are technophobes because they’ve been at home. That’s one of the greatest divides between women who are in and out of the workforce is they feel that there’s some big technological boogeyman, that that is going to make it impossible for them to return to work. So when we close those gaps by presenting the recorded interview that is recorded on your phone, or we do the Zoom based interviewing, they no longer have those fears. And they’re much more likely to re approach so that that was one of those sort of unintended consequences that we found that we get asked all the time, when are you moving this back to live? And the answer is never, because it’s much more powerful to deliver it this way. And we’re getting a better result. So with intention, we’re keeping it this way. And it’s really funny, because you know, they only see me on Zoom. And then we’ll end up having live events, because we do recall events with our community, we’ll get together for kind of what we call after care events, they’re, they’re called power ups will bring in alumni and prospective women to come and have hear a topic about something like the imposter syndrome or topics that are relevant to this population. And when they see me for the first time, it’s like they’re seeing somebody from TV, and I’m like they’ve never been in person. So it’s really interesting, that dynamic, but what I do love is that the groups that are forming in these classes have got a greater sense of authenticity and connectedness, because they’re doing shorter touches more frequently on their Facebook group, we just had one get on Fourth of July and was wish everybody Happy Fourth of July, their class ended three months ago. So they’re still very much in touch. And the powerful thing is, when one of them gets a job, it’s role modeling for the rest of the people that get jobs, because it usually takes about six months after our class for them to get hired, on average. So it’s really that’s a really powerful consequence. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 16:52
So I think one of the other things you had mentioned about being intentional about this program is that it’s about building that confidence, or rebuilding the confidence in these women who’ve been out of the workforce for so long. And I see where the online platform, it removes some barriers, where they may not have the confidence to show up to an in person, you know, the seminar event kind of situation. But when it’s online, it the threshold is a lot less to get involved. But then there’s more of a stickiness factor that kind of keeps you in there as well. So I’m sure there’s been examples of that, that you’ve seen people coming out, or maybe just more registrants. And and so maybe talk to that and and also talk about how you broadcast this to the women in your community to attract them to the program.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 17:37
So I really love that you seized upon that, because we we say internally, we measure our success with relaunch in tears, for a woman to come to grips with her competence gap is inherently vulnerable and sometimes terrifying. Maybe it’s a sad process, you know, not all of the women that go through the program are undergoing a fracture in their marriage, but some of them are, and they’re coming to grips with some really painful features of their lives. And so when they can come to us and unruly, sit with that, and kind of let it wash over them and they can work through it, then they’re by the end of our five week course, ready to have the confidence to go back to the workforce. So we they cry more from their own house. So when we’re on the inverse is I didn’t like interviewing with you in my house, but I like interfacing with you in my office versus true for relaunch, they feel much more comfortable at home. And they’ll share more about what’s at the core of their competence gap, which is when the magic happens, that’s when we can really work to close it. So I think that dynamic of being able to, to feel comfortable in their home and they’re each in their homes, they’re all in a way in the most comfortable place they can be it’s private, they’re not exposed. The other piece is in the beginning. They don’t feel like they belong at the Chamber of Commerce building because they’re not in full time work or part time work. So for some of them even. And so, you know, they feel like you’ve got to be a member of the club to come to the chamber, but like you have a right to be here. What’s really interesting is that many of them report because they get member rates on our events a year after they complete our program, as they say the chamber feels familiar and comfortable to them. So they feel like they’ve got a right to come. So it removes that barrier of just physically arriving at the chamber, which I think can be intimidating to some of our participants as well.

Brandon Burton 19:32
Yeah, I think that’s great. As far as the how the program is facilitated? Is that chamber staff that facilitated is it alumni you bring back in? Is it accommodated? What does that look like?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 19:43
Now one of the things we do is we survey every single class so we feel really confident about our delivery model and I teach every class and then our programs manager is Ashley billings, and she helps deliver the class so she’ll do all of the admin she’ll do all of the work of getting everybody there. So each week they get a PDF of their whole workbook. So we, we send them a whole workbook, which we have them get a notebook. And they are meant to print out the PDF worksheets, and fill out their worksheets from the week before and their homework packs. And so Ashley does all of that connective tissue so well, and she’s kind of like their, their concierge, their captain of their ship, and they have a deep connection to her. And I just kind of shoot in and teach the class. One of the things that I think is essential is nobody wants to believe us, we tell them that we can help them. And I think if I didn’t have the authentic journey of my own 13 year career break to stay home and focus on my children and the soul crushing and arresting experience of going back to work and feeling really terrified by it. They wouldn’t they sometimes they don’t even believe me when I tell them that that I can help them right. And so I think Ashley and I are both returned to work moms. And I think if we didn’t have that journey, we wouldn’t have a secret sauce in this program. And I think they have to trust us that we can help them. Because there’s just a shockingly low level of self belief for women who’ve made the choice to stay home with their children. And this is something that’s been documented by reports by McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, this is a very big problem. Because this is what’s called the leaky pipeline for talent. And what we really can’t afford to do, it’s like losing a customer. Once you’ve paid the acquisition cost of a new customer, you don’t want to lose them once we’ve put people in a talent pipeline. And we all know how hard that is to do. And that’s core chamber work to put people in a talent pipeline, the last thing we want to do is lose them. And that’s exactly what happens with women who stay home from work. So it’s hard for us to find these women, you asked about how we find them, it’s hard for us to find them. And we have to buy Facebook ads we have to go through we do presentations at PTA meetings, we reach out to places of worship, we reach out to preschools, but the big most effective thing we do is we ask every woman who completes the class to fill her seat because they all know somebody. And when someone comes to you as a stay at home mom and says, I think this class can help you to it did this for me. That’s the most powerful way for a woman and we create the power up programs so they can come kind of check it out and see the shop window. We also have a luncheon in April every year, where we pay tribute to our woman of influence our woman of influence is a woman who’s in full time work, who has made a difference for bringing other women along in the community. And then we also are now giving our lifetime achievement award to a woman who’s probably retired but still making a significant contribution to the community. I’m pleased that we were just able to honor the former Lieutenant Governor of Florida and that way and so when we’re honoring those senior members of our community, their friends come out. And that’s when we have a graduation ceremony for the people who’ve completed the program so that our participants can meet senior women who can help catalyze career growth and promote awareness of the program.

Brandon Burton 23:21
That’s a great idea. I love it. Well let’s let’s look at shifting gears into the other program on your chamber the your application as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Raquel Borges 25:50
Hi, I’m Raquel I work with Yiftee to help over 500 chambers cities and downtown’s across the US keep local dollars local and support their small businesses. Our CEO Donna Novitsky and I will be at the ACCE Conference in Salt Lake City from July 31 to August 3, and we would love to meet you swing by our booth to say hi and learn about our community gift card program, Community cards are custom branded for your community, and can only be used at your Chamber members businesses, plus the program is free. You can learn more by visiting yiftee.com. That’s yiftee.com or emailing us at sales@yiftee.com. See you at the ACCE Conference.

Brandon Burton 26:39
All right, Betsy, we’re back. So I love everything you had to share with the relaunch program that you guys have is that focused on workforce and bringing women back into the workforce. Let’s shift gears over on to the Winter Park prosperity scorecard what that is and kind of how that came to be and what what all that it encompasses.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 27:01
So as I spoke earlier, we’ve got tremendous pressure on our local economy that wants to grow, and is growing, but not in the way we need it to. And the kind of growth that’s happening is creating enormous strain on our infrastructure. So every time we have a municipal election, which is every year in March, we have the number one issue that rises to the top is traffic. So of course we’re sitting in this area of explosive growth, and you can expect traffic to be a problem. So if you ask people, especially retirees, what do you think is the biggest problem and Winder Park others too much traffic? Well, the reality is we’re operating a $4 billion a year GDP. So there’s a significant enterprise and Winter Park. And we have healthcare needs. We have a hospital here we have two higher education institutions and Winter Park. And there are people who need to get here. Now the reality is Winter Park has 6000 more jobs than people to do them. So how are we going to get them here, they’re going to drive and clog up our roads. So until that changes, we’re going to see a continued strain on traffic infrastructure, road infrastructure and quality of life, quite frankly. And so what we’re looking at is a holistic approach to not only managing growth, but to promoting it, and making sure that we’re taking all the factors into account that we can, as we try to deliver growth that aligns with the values of our community, high emphasis on quality of life, high emphasis on arts and culture, high emphasis on, you know, historical way of doing things. Florida is really about a 70 year old state. And actually, with the advent of air conditioning, that’s when things exploded here, obviously, right? There were bits of Florida for a very long time that still had a frontier feel to it. Now we’re experiencing our centennial this year. And that means that our chamber was founded in 1923, when margins around Winter Park were frontier feeling. And so we’ve had a sustained presence of supporting the business community here for a long time. And we have people who are committed to making sure that winter parks quality of life stays high. But that very little changes here. And so that’s a mismatch with what’s going on one square mile or one mile from our office with respect to Orlando. So we have all these strains on our community. We need to support the growth of our businesses, we need to make sure that we are driving economic growth and not just helping people fight for market share, but actually grow the pie and you do that one of two ways. The first way is you grow in population and the second is that you increase productivity. And so if we’re going to grow in pop violation to meet this delta between 6000 jobs and people, we have to use land differently. And we do not currently permit land use to allow for dense multifamily units, mixed use, that’s just not in our land use code. And so that’s put there by a group of people who are committed to making sure that we don’t have that here. So we can do what keep real estate prices high. Well, they’ve gone so high that we can afford now to welcome innovators, certainly persons of color, people who are new onto the property ladder in Winter Park, because within one year, our single family home price on average rose from $771,000 to 1 million. Wow. So that has long term consequences for our community. And we’re trying to create a and we have created an ESG embedded scorecard that looks at what are we doing with our governance models? Are we taking in people who are previously unseen? Are we making them seen in the models that we’re creating to make this a better double? Or at least triple bottom line community where we’re not just focused on? Are we all making a lot of money? But are we actually creating opportunities for the environment to thrive? Are we doing the right strategic planning to make sure that we’re taking a leadership role in the region on sustainability with respect to energy, we own our own power company. So we have a role to play there? Are we doing the kinds of things that take into account people who are previously not at the table? Again, we grow the pie by increasing population. And certainly when we increase the population of people who haven’t previously been engaging our economy, it’s a competitive advantage to pursue diverse persons to come and participate in our economy. And so that’s a strategic priority for us. And we’re working with our local government to embed these as priorities. But we can’t do that from the perspective of we’re right, and you’re wrong. So we’re trying to move past that binary system of winners and losers, where there’s always a turf war between growth and no growth, we really want to move past that we want to say, Look, these are our community’s problems. Here they are, and they’re data driven, we’re giving you the data so that you can see, these are in fact, our problems. You can’t, you can’t solve for a 6000 delta between jobs and people without creating solutions for that, that are strategic. And so that’s what this scorecard that we released last year, is designed to do is help us strategically plan for the future.

Brandon Burton 32:37
Yeah, with a city the size of yours being nine square miles, I picture it, it can very well be a master plan, community of sorts, you know, where you can go into it with intention, you have to get all the players involved on the same page to be able to present the data, say, here’s where we are, here’s the direction things are going. And here’s how we get from here to there. And to be able to facilitate and convene those people together to really take that lead as a as a chamber, and kind of chart the direction that your community needs to go to service, those needs that are there, like you had mentioned with the traffic and the workforce shortage shortages and things like that. But also looking at the housing and everything else that is tied to that. So I think it’s very forward thinking for you guys to take the lead on this. And since releasing this scorecard, what kind of feedback have you received? What kind of conversations have come out of this?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 33:36
Well, I think it’s, it’s great, because it’s dovetailing with our centennial celebration, and we’ve been able to get a lot of engagement and a lot of community buy in from this. People are excited about it. I think it’s signaling a different kind of look from the chamber than anybody’s seen before. And we’re just really excited about the impact that it’s starting to have in our community.

Brandon Burton 33:59
Awesome, awesome. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, I like asking everyone I have on the show for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you offer to help them accomplish that goal? Well, we’re

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:17
big believers in partnership. And we want to make sure that we’re always aligning with people who can make one plus one equal three, four or five instead of just two. And I think partnership is the key way to get that done.

Brandon Burton 34:30
I would agree partnerships that you can leverage a lot more of your your assets and everything by partnering together and seeing a much greater outcome than just the sum of the parts. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 34:50
So I think it’s important for chambers to be problem solvers going forward. I think it’s important for us to move past the model of of kind of the coffee club. You know, we’ve got to be measuring our ROI and our outcomes. And I think that we’ve got to be anticipating the needs of our members and ideally getting there before they, they can even figure out that it’s a problem for them with a solution.

Brandon Burton 35:17
Yeah. And oftentimes that brings work with it. So you can’t be afraid to work if you’re

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:23
able to do that. We’ve got an incredible team here and very proud of so yeah,

Brandon Burton 35:27
absolutely. Well, Betsy, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with listeners who might want to reach out and learn more about your relaunch program or how you went about the scorecard or anything else, you guys are doing their Winter Park, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect,

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 35:44
I’m pretty easy to find at WinterPark.org. My email address is on the staff section, which is under the about tab. And also, I’m on LinkedIn. So I would love to link in with people. I’m very happy to speak to what we do here and help out in any way I can.

Brandon Burton 36:00
Very good. And we’ll get all of that in our show notes for this episode as well make it easy for people to find it. But Betsy, I am so glad we’re able to get you back on Chamber Chat Podcast, you guys are making an impact in your community doing some great work, I can tell the enthusiasm that you have for this work. And I appreciate you being with us today and sharing about these programs. And I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year.

Betsy Gardner Eckbert 36:25
Thanks, Brandon, we really appreciate that have the opportunity to share what we’re doing here in Winter Park with the Chamber community. So thank you so much for the time today.

Brandon Burton 36:33
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Governance with Jeremy Arthur

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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.

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.

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 to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

When it comes to publishing a Chamber Map directory or Community Guide, Community Matters has a trusted experience to help your chamber accomplish your goals. With different advertising sales models and publication styles, Community Matters will help you create a non-dues revenue machine!

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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Our guest for this episode is Jeremy Arthur. Jeremy currently serves as the executive director of the government and Economic Development Institute at Auburn University. He serves as the chief administrative executive responsible for the total operations of the organization that provides guidance training, professional development, leadership, community development, research and Civic Engagement endeavors across the state of Alabama. Jeremy began his career at the Economic Development Institute at Auburn University and then went on to serve as president of the Pratt Ville Area Chamber of Commerce in Alabama, where he led community development initiatives economic development efforts, tourism plans, and many other programs. Most recently, he served as the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce association of Alabama, and represented all the local chambers of commerce across the state providing guidance training, professional development and leadership and advocacy. He serves on several boards and organizations on the national level state and regional levels, both it within communities and in the chamber industry as well. But Jeremy is a two time Auburn University graduate and is currently a PhD candidate in public administration and public policy. He also holds the CCE designation, which is held by less than 4% of chamber executives nationally. Jeremy, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I know you’ve been on my radars, as we talked about before we got on the recording for some time. And it’s great to finally have you on the show. So love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

Jeremy Arthur 3:43
Hey, Brandon, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I love the term chamber champion, because that’s exactly what Chamber of Commerce executives, professionals and leadership are they are champions to me. I lived in that world for a long time, I still get to play in that world now. Even though I have moved back into higher education, but, uh, thank you for what you do and the service that you provide, just to connect chambers and really celebrate them. It’s been great. I have loved my chamber career, again, ran up to about 1000 member chamber for about 10 years, the largest suburb right outside our State Capitol in Alabama, in Brattleboro and then went on for another eight, nine years to run our State Chamber association 120 chambers in the state. So I’ve done a little bit of everything from lobbying to leading to training to serving to you name it, so put those hats on, so many of your listeners do every day. And I will know that so it’s fun. It’s great to be with you. And thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 4:47
Absolutely. So yeah, you’ve got you’ve got a little bit of experience over your career of doing you know, touching on all these different areas of work. So currently me So tell us a little bit more. I mean, you touched on the panel chamber and, you know, leading the chamber association there in Alabama. Tell us a little bit more about your current work, the University of Auburn and your current position as Executive Director of Government Economic Development Institute, what what does that entail? What does your work look like these days? Right.

Jeremy Arthur 5:21
So really, it expanded my scope and scale of work to add the government piece. So I would say essentially, we’re a training institute. So we do whether in the government arena, whether you’re an elected official, whether you’re an appointed official, whether you’re a merit employee, or when a bureaucrat, and I don’t use that term negatively, that just means someone who works for the government who has a career in the government. We do all sorts of certifications, accreditations career trajectory, basically, professional development, continuing education, all of those things, county commissioners, probate judges, and then whether you work at the DMV, or that you’re a tax assessor, we run all them on the government side of the house. And then our economic development side of the house still keeps me connected to the local Chambers of Commerce. We have certification programs, for chambers for chamber execs, for economic developers all in that arena. So I’ll lump that in and call that community development. And then that even touches on tourism that touches on hospitality. So all those quality of life issues, but then also the professional execution of those duties. That’s what we do at our office as the Training Institute, we have a research arm, because obviously, we’re an institute of higher education. And so we do some publications, looking at issues facing Alabama, that really transcend from one end of the state to the other that a lot of our chambers in the state are trying to tackle that really are issues across the country, whether we’re looking at inflation, whether we’re looking at Medicaid, expansion, Medicare, whether we’re looking at prison, population, education, etc. So that’s a little bit about what we do. And then we offer some community assistance projects partner with a lot of folks to just try to increase wealth and increase training, we do some entrepreneurship, training for businesses, very involved in Main Street. So again, all that is going to bring very clear with chambers steel.

Brandon Burton 7:16
Absolutely. And I appreciate you given that background and in the work that you’re involved with now, because I know, I know, when you announced that you were leaving the chamber to go back to the universe out there. I know there’s a little bit of heartache amongst the chamber professionals, like Jeremy’s leaving, but he’s not right. He’s just he’s not employed at a chamber directly. But he’s still very involved with with chamber work and community development, as he just explained. So the he’s still here, he’s still connected, and he’s on the show today to provide some of that knowledge for us. So thank you, you are too

Jeremy Arthur 7:49
kind. I appreciate that. Some of my literally my best friends I have made through this profession, all over the country. And so I’m very blessed and appreciative of

Brandon Burton 8:00
them. Absolutely. So as we get into our discussion, our topic or area of focus for our discussion today is going to be around governance. And I know you know, people across the country chamber professionals, they may have heard you talk and present on governance at different conferences and so forth. But there’s a lot that haven’t yet. And even for those that have this may be a good you know, good thing to be able to earmark and their podcast player and go back and listen to it again and and reference it often. So I’m excited to get into this conversation with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:23
Hi, it’s me, Donna from Yiftee. Have I mentioned that we’re working with chambers and other leaders on community cards in more than 500 cities across the US. Yiftee is the undisputed leader in community cards because we did it first and have learned a lot and because it’s free for you to set up and free for your members to participate. Plus, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Many chambers have chamber checks or other similar programs. Imagine the benefits of those without the extra costs of staffing, creating and tracking checks and reconciling payments. Community cards are all digital, sold online and always available on the cardholders cell phone. We provide tons of training and marketing materials. Come check us out yiftee.com or email sales@yiftee.com. Back to you Brandon

Brandon Burton 11:18
Alright, Jeremy, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, I know you’ve you’ve presented on governance a lot. So as far as the topic matter goes, I would definitely default to you as far as what what to cover here. But I’d like to just hand the mic over to you and maybe talk about what are some of those key things as the chamber looks at governance and how they work, you know, in connection with the board, and where are those areas of responsibility lie? What are some of those key factors that chambers need to be mindful of, and in running a successful organization?

Jeremy Arthur 11:58
Brandon, I know we laugh. And we started this, I said, it’s hard to make this topic sexy. As much as you said, you know, the evidence is just not that flashy, you know, set the world on fire. But to me, it is critical because you’ve got to get your internal house in order before you can build your external house. And really the sound governance structure is necessary at all levels of the organization, we certainly apply it to the boards or the council’s or our governing authorities that we serve, typically elected about our membership, but really it stretches out to our volunteers what they should know, and how they can support and help with our own governance issues. And then certainly there are key documents that people don’t even think about or related to governments, to governance as a whole. You know, I would start by saying there’s some some board basics and and you’re right, I’ve been blessed. I’ve worked in 14 states. And I just finished one in Virginia two weeks ago, doing board retreats and board orientations and working on government’s governance strategies, I was very fortunate to teach and still also chair, the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management board of trustees. And so I finished that year before last as chair and so taught at all the institute sites and, you know, I work with ACCA, and, and all of our partners and so I’ve done about 300, I think plus of these, and really, it’s if you start fundamentally, it’s it’s with duties. And so when you’re looking at governance, it’s the duty of care. That means as a volunteer leader of an organization, as a board member, let’s say that you are going to make all the decisions you can based on the material that’s available to you and the information that you have, so that you can make a decision in good faith, using the best judgment, you have to reach a reasonable conclusion. So that’s the fundamental definition I think that we’re dealing with. And then subsequent things duty of loyalty, you know, you want to protect the interests of the chamber that you’re serving, don’t do any harm or injury to it. And then I would say you’ve got to review and approve function. So that’s a primary function of a board or a governance entity, where you’re looking at all things relating to the organization to the chamber, the mission, the vision, the strategic plan, the budget, you know, policies and procedures, all of those internal workings. And we’ll talk about bylaws, I’m sure later one of the key governance documents, but then just overseeing those and making sure you’re compliant. And then I guess, kind of maybe two or three more, you’re going to select the board really hires and fires or evaluates the chief staff person. So whether that’s an executive director or President CEO, and then that chief staff person hires and fires evaluates the rest of the staff and

So that’s a key component for them. And then I guess the last piece, I would just say, in basics is that they’re just monitoring the organization and the performance of the board themselves. It’s self governance, it’s peer accountability. So again, being ethical, being fair, being transparent, avoiding conflicts of interest, working for the best interest of the organization, setting that strategic direction, that’s all fundamentally, what a board should be doing. Now, how do you do that? Well, you know, there’s, I would say, there’s,

Brandon Burton 15:38
that’s what we have here for today. So

Jeremy Arthur 15:41
first and foremost, you always hear me talk about the mission statement. And so that is really who you are. It’s usually brief. And it really does guide the actions of the chamber, it states your overall purpose, why you exist, it’s supposed to give you a sense of direction and help guide your decision making. Most of maybe you don’t know it is required by the IRS to have a mission statement. It can be changed, but it’s submitted annually. Certainly, you know, most people are probably familiar with the form 990, but form 1023, or 1024. And again, it really does guide you and that’s what I was gonna say, if you’re doing things that are outside of your mission statement, to me, that’s a red flag, you’ve kind of got that mission drift or that mission creep. You know, fundamentally, I guess, just to organize, you got to have articles of incorporation in most states, and whether that’s done with the Secretary of State’s office, or whether that’s done with the Department of Commerce or whatever. It’s just a legal document that allows you to organize, state your purpose, usually register as a nonprofit, in most cases, a C six above a one C six, which again, is just a tax designation. It really just kind of defines your purpose related to kind of state government. And then I think the key document is your bylaws. There’s a reason if you look at that word, it is by law, though it is your set of rules that you agree, the good thing about it is, most states give you some sort of nonprofit statute to follow. But you’ve set your own rules. It’s how you’re in relation, how you work with your members, how you work with your investors, your partners, and it governs and relates, and regulates your internal structure. So it’s how you do business there. It’s kind of typically broad and very general. But it’s your procedures for your meetings, it’s your boards, it’s how you select your board. It’s how you amend the bylaws, and you know, those kinds of things, all those steps that kind of govern you internally. But please make sure you do what are in it, what’s in that document. And we’ll talk about that, because that is the surefire way. In theory, well, really, in practice, if you violate those bylaws, and it’s pointed out, you can lose your nonprofit status. And so that’s a downer in an overall upbeat Chamber Chat Podcast. But that’s how serious this is. And so, you know, I’ve seen bylaws that, that haven’t been updated in 30 years, you know, that were the original set of bylaws when the chamber was organized. And it still says, you know, we’re going to notify our members of our annual meeting 10 days prior to the meeting via the United States Postal Service, and you know, all those kinds of things and just sort of outdated and it really needs to be updated, refreshed. In fact, our best practice I would say with your bylaws is we instituted an operations committee that meets every third year, because that’s how our board rotation was that theoretically, we could have a third of our board members new every three years. And so this just took an operations operational approach to say we’re just gonna look at all of our operating documents and make sure we’re following them, make sure they’re up to date, make sure they’re current and making helping us meet our mission. And then that leads you know, your policies and procedures, make sure you know policies are not procedures. For example, the policy may be any check over $2,000 has to have two signatures Okay, that’s the policy. The procedure is then the CEO signs it the treasurer signs it you know, it’s been processed through this account, etc. So make sure you know, those are really consistent, but that they also mesh with the bylaws and that none of these documents conflict. You’ve probably got a strategic plan and outlines your your goals and your objectives what you’re trying to do. If you think about it, your budget is even a governance document, because it is your income and expenses. It’s approved by the board. It’s documented oftentimes with line items. And then if you’ve got sort of an annual work plan, I guess that’s kind of the final document in my mind. Just how you can track your progress. Are we meeting our goals? are we implementing the strategic plan? And here’s how we’re doing that? Are we including those performance measures and responsibilities? And are we are the goals in place to help us accomplish that? So all those things are kind of in a solid governance structure model? I guess.

Brandon Burton 20:40
So as you went through a lot of these different documents, these as pieces of the structure, is he talking about budget, and to me that that seems like a commonplace thing to you know, you review your budget on a regular basis, call it a monthly basis, make sure your income expenses are what you expect, and there’s not any surprises coming up. And I know a lot of chambers, they look at their strategic plan, maybe on a three or five year basis, but then review it annually to make sure they’re staying on track. Any guidance as far as how often to be reviewing a mission plan or a mission statement? Or you mentioned the bylaws? You know, maybe the suggestion was every three years, maybe depending on the structure of your, your board and your organization? But correct, what are some of these maybe good practices for keeping these things up to date and making sure that you’re staying on course,

Jeremy Arthur 21:37
that’s why we codified it in our bylaws, you know, if you put a committee in your bylaws, and that committee has to meet. And so that’s why we said, Okay, we’re gonna make sure that this committee meets and ours happens to meet every third year it could meet annually. to really look at it, I mean, I wouldn’t envision that the total direction of a chamber would change that often. I mean, you can get some broad language and a mission statement. But I put the mission statement at the top of every single one of our board agendas, because it gives us focus. And really, I would challenge our board, the boards that I’ve worked for, to say before you make a motion, read that mission statement, and is the action that you’re proposing to obligate the chamber to fulfill, can you find a place for it in that mission statement. And to me, that’s the ultimate way to prevent mission drift or mission creep, and keep you focused on what the task is at hand. Again, the mission statement is your very purpose for being I’m a big fan of moving things into consent agendas, if they don’t require action of the board. But there are board reports that the board needs to be aware of, you know, being a board member is an active process. And it requires an obligation on both parts. And not only the professional staff, of which I was and your listeners probably are. But if you’re a board member, it also requires you to participate and read the things that are sent to you because again, you’re the governing authority. And so if there’s no action item, but it’s important, so that you know the work of the chamber, put it in the consent agenda that requires one motion, again, and it can be voted on that way. And it really streamlines your board meetings, you know, right. And I’ve always said, serving on the chamber board should be a positive experience. And I know when I facilitate a lot of these, I will oftentimes in fact, I think I’ve said it in probably everyone. If the serving on the chamber board is not a positive experience for you, there is no harm, no foul, in bowing out. And for whatever reason, you may have personal circumstances that have changed professional circumstances that have changed, or you’ve just lost the passion. That’s okay. Our lives are constantly changing. And I promise you, you’re not doing that chamber of favor, by hanging on to that board position, just step back for a little bit, we’ll replace you and let’s reconsider you in the future. That’s a hard decision, sometimes a hard discussion, but it shouldn’t be. Because again, you want what’s best for the organization. The leadership wants what’s best for the organization. And so I think we need to really take a look at that. But going back to that mission statement, and those really, if a Motion is made, that’s going to obligate the chamber into an action, make sure it lines up and doesn’t violate your bylaws is within your scope and your scale and really follows your mission statement. So I think that’s some actionable takeaways. Hopefully.

Brandon Burton 24:39
Absolutely. And as you talk about board members and being actively engaged with the board, I think for any any chamber listening to be mindful of that too, as you recruit board members to think is this somebody who has that bandwidth to be actively engaged or is it a status symbol, you know, for them to be on the board?

Jeremy Arthur 25:02
Are they checking a box right? In front of I’m a huge proponent of written job responsibilities and roles for a board member. Give that perspective board member a job description, I’ll send you a sample reach out to me. I mean, there are tons of samples you can Google on, ACCE has tons of samples. Again, to me, it’s the highest compliment and utmost show of respect. Because I’m asking you, here’s what I need from you, potential prospective board member. Here’s the time commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the potential financial commitment I’m asking for. Here’s the attendance requirement that I’m asking for, here’s what I need you to do. Can you objectively look at that, and say, I can do it. Now also, in that job description, is what the chamber Exec is going to provide to you. I’m going to be respectful of your time, I’m going to make sure that our board meetings only last an hour, I’m going to make sure that I’m really seeking your input and your guidance, and I’m not just providing a report to you, I need your I need your expertise, I need you to lead for me. So it is you know, it’s a two way street. But to me, it’s the ultimate show of professionalism and respect so that a prospective board member could determine whether they can say yes or no. And then also during their term, they can continue to evaluate if they’re able to meet that job, responsibility, write it down. It’s not meant to be overly legalistic or, you know, you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that. It’s just again, an agreement of how we need to move forward together.

Brandon Burton 26:42
Right. And like you said, it goes both ways. And I can picture you know, most board members are busy people, there’s some of the busiest people in the community. Right, right, right, you don’t want the person who’s just looking for time to fill, right? Correct. So it says you have busy people on your board, and you’re recruiting busy people, you need to be able to give them some kind of an outline. Otherwise, you’re just saying, hey, we want you on your on our board. And then as you have things come up, you’re getting frustrated, because they’re not responding in a timely manner, or they’re not meeting your expectations. Because you’ve never shared what those expectations were to begin with to see if it was reasonable for them. So I think that is a key point to to apply in your recruiting of board members. Are there other I’m sure there are there are other things that we need to make sure listeners are considering when it comes to governance at their chamber and, and working well with their board and in. And specifically, I’m thinking towards the bylaws and making sure it’s not a fun thing, right to go back and read through your bylaws over? Absolutely. At the same time, you know, animals think of it as is a quite literally a religious practice, right? So that’s somebody in religion, you have your book a scripture, you have your Bible or whatever, you don’t just read a passage of scripture once and then forget about it, right? Someone who’s religious goes back to those scripture passages over and over to ingrain it and make it be part of them. And I see the bylaws kind of being something similar, where you need to go back to it often to become ingrained as part of you and your regular practice.

Jeremy Arthur 28:22
That’s the perfect analogy. And it is incumbent upon really staff more so than board, although it’s applicable to the board, because that’s the rules they follow. But it’s really on you as staff to make sure you’re doing that. And that’s why it’s just good to review them. Again, I think as a as an exec in a chamber, you got to know those bylaws like you said forward, backward, upward, downward, you need to know everything in there. And again, it’s not to be you know, I want to say this and put a disclaimer on there. They couldn’t really be quite vague. So as membership based organizations, while he’s specifically in the state of Alabama where I am, if you can’t tell by my accent, I’m sure you can, you knew it was somewhere in the south listener. But, and Alabama is a membership organization, we’re required to have an annual meeting, at least some event, some opportunity where the entire membership is invited. And typically it looks like when we have a change of officers or an awards banquet, you know, that’s typically where we incorporate that. But it has to have an opportunity and it is a business meeting for all members of the organization to be invited and also have a chance to address the assembly as the whole address the board. Most of the time it doesn’t happen but you understand that but to me if you put that in the bylaws, you can just simply say our organization, our chamber will have an annual meeting period. And I’ve seen so many bylaws that say our annual meeting will be on the third Thursday of September. It will start at six o’clock and it will be at the Civic Center. Well, you just set yourself up for failure if something happens on the third Thursday of September, and the Civic centers booked, I mean, you know, and that sounds trivial. But in theory, you are in violation of your bylaws, you have broken your own rules. And that sets you up for, you know, not good. And it can go as far as litigation, you know, those kinds of things if you have a disgruntled member, and again, I’ve seen things that were not malicious, they were just innocent, I’ve seen people focus on an end date, rather than our pre process, and kind of skirt some things. And again, not malicious at all, but violated the bylaws. And so automatically, you broke your own rules that govern your relationship between you and your members. And when that happens, you lose trust. And it just kind of spirals from there.

Brandon Burton 30:54
Yeah, I can see where we’re leaving a little bit of vagueness, because it’s helpful to be able to have that flexibility to stay within your bylaws, but also be able to adapt, you know, as times change, and if you’re set to be on the, you know, the third Tuesday of, you know, at the Civic Center, and then your your chamber size, you know, doubles in size, which hopefully you can’t fit in the civic center anymore, you know, so

Jeremy Arthur 31:19
and that’s why I said a periodic review of your bylaws is key, because then you can adapt to the changing circumstances you find your chamber in just the prime example you

Brandon Burton 31:30
just used. Right? Very good. Well, Jeremy, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you, if you might have any tip or action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what might you suggest for them?

Jeremy Arthur 31:45
Well, I’m biased, I’m going to tell you the start to go to institute. First and foremost, the Institute for organization management with the US Chamber. Like I said, it just finished my term as Chair of the Board of Trustees, but multiple sites multiple times across the year is really a great foundational program. And then it led me to pursue my CCE, like you said, less than four or 5% of of execs in the country have a certified chamber executive designation. Same way with ACA II and their ca they’re certified Association Executive, all in this realm and arena. I mean, that’s your professional designation and your certification. And it also shows your continuing education. You know, I’m biased now I would say partner with your local University, if you’ve got a regional or a statewide, I happen to have a statewide footprint. And we are all the time they’re Institute’s like mine, whether it’s called a similar name, or something different office of public service, again, professional continuing education, at institutions of higher education, whether it’s a community college, whether it’s a technical college, whether it’s a four year institution, you name it, that can be a great resource. And that also has access to resources that can help you and be a great partner. And so that’s a shameless plug, given what I do now. But it also helps me and, again, keeps me connected to that. And so I think that’s great takeaways, review those documents, don’t let, it’s not a daunting task, reach out for help. We have a great network, your listener, base, your followers here, you can make connections. And then I would say continue to invest, listen to this podcast. I mean, I’ve just listened just recently, we were talking, I travel a lot. And so it’s great for me to be a podcast listener in a car, or on a plane as much as I travel. And so just continue to really benchmark those best practices. And don’t be afraid to ask this community across this country is so helpful, is willing to, I mean, literally counsel, you share best practices. And I’ll be the first to say you call me I’ll tell you where I messed up. And I’ll say, Hey, don’t do this. I did it. And it didn’t work. It might work for you. But let me help you avoid some pitfalls. So I hope that helps, too. But just again, make sure your internal house is in order. Because when it’s in order, the sky’s the limit what you can do externally.

Brandon Burton 34:21
Absolutely. I love those tips. So you can just keep going all day with these lessons you’ve learned. So Jeremy, 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?

Jeremy Arthur 34:37
I think they’re more relevant now than ever before. But I think their roles and their definitions are changing. We’re no longer just an entity that networks we should be an entity that convenes, facilitates and leads and we’re doing just that. When you look at the innovative things that can entities are doing across the state led by their Chamber of Commerce. Because the chamber is seen as that convener of bringing partners together, of making those connections to truly solve real world problems. obvious example here in Alabama for years, our business community and our education community tucked at each other, not with each other, and not to each other. They talked at each other. And we have broken down the silos to really say business community, how can the education community help you? How can they help you train your workers? What do you need to tackle these workforce development issues? What are programs we need to do and again, the Chamber’s across the state, led that charge and are leading that charge. And I will also say, you know, unfortunately, we do find ourselves sometimes in a divisive culture, where you know, that sensational bad news sales, and we have so much good news to sell. And to talk about that we need to, we need to be there, we need to be the front line, for every negative headline, generating for positive headlines because they’re there in your community. And also don’t shortchange yourself, and don’t undersell yourself, something that may you may consider trivial, and it’s just a part of your job, can really be life changing to a lot of people. Tell your story. Tell your story. It’s hard, we’re busy doing the work. So we don’t have time to tell our story. We’re doing the story. But don’t forget to tell your story. Because it’s important, and people should hear it.

Brandon Burton 36:48
Absolutely. I love that great, great vision of the future but also you know, chock full of more tips too. So well thank you Jeremy, for for sharing this, you know, great, great information with us. I hope this is a an episode that listeners go back to often as maybe as you know, a regular basis as they go back to look through bylaws, go back to this episode, I went to Jeremy Slater here, and just you know, jot down your notes and make it a regular practice. But Jeremy, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and connect with you learn more, and just maybe a dive in a little bit deeper. Where Where would you point them to reach out and connect with you?

Jeremy Arthur 37:31
Absolutely. Hey, you can follow me, I’m on all the social media platforms. So Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, our institute, the government and Economic Development Institute, if you just go to auburn.edu, you can find us there. It’s technically auburn.edu/outreach/ged. And you can find us there, we would love to, you know, I will help you if I can help you. Certainly we cover the state of Alabama, but my reach is much broader and much more in scope than that. And I’m willing to help you. And if you’ll reach out to me anyway, also my email just my first initial last name, jarthur@auburn.edu. And I think I’ve given my my employer and my alma mater plugs by saying that Auburn University, so but again, reach out to me if I can help you there are free resources on our website as well that anybody can use. Specifically, I’ll just put a plug, there’s a you’ll see a tab on our website, called know your community, free and open to anybody has great demographic research of literally every community in the country. You can be a comparative research. Again, look at that. And if we can help you, thank you. And then I would just encourage folks, continue to listen to this chamber chat. Even if you see a topic that you say, well, that doesn’t really apply to me listen to it, because I promise you, you will take away something from your guests and their experience. If you listen.

Brandon Burton 39:07
I appreciate that. Jeremy. We will. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, the website I encourage everybody to check out the Know Your Community tab. That sounds like great, great resource there for for anybody listening.

Jeremy Arthur 39:22
So it’s free. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 39:24
it’s free. You can’t beat that. I love that. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us today provided a ton of value for listeners. And this is a the perfect type of programming that we’d like to have. You’re on the podcast. So thank you so much.

Thanks Brandon.

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Chamber Industry Success with Anissa Starnes

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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.

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.

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

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your 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 Community Matters, Inc. With nearly 20 years in the chamber industry and over 100 media awards presented to their chamber partners, community matters provides the R&R that every chamber needs, revenue and recognition.

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

Becki Womble 1:01
I’ve been using Community Matters for probably six or seven years now. And in a previous life, I sold commercial printing so I can highly recommend Community Matters because it’s a complete turnkey job for any busy chamber exec and it’s a wonderful, beautiful printed product whenever you’re finished. And I just I’m very sold on Community Matters. And with a printing background I just big endorsement from me.

Brandon Burton 1:29
To learn how Community Matters can support your chamber with your next publication. Please visit communitymattersinc.com/podcast To request your free media kit and request a proposal to find out what kind of non-dues revenue you can generate.

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

Our guests for this episode is Anissa Starnes. A lot of you may know Anissa, she is certainly no stranger to the chamber industry. She started her chamber career 32 years ago and has worked for and with Chambers of Commerce since that day. She is passionate about helping to recruit and retain strong talent for the industry and helping chambers strengthen their programs of work and revenue. You may know her as a faculty member of the US Chamber institutes for organization management, where she educates on board governance, revenue generation and all things related to chamber success. And Anissa has been retained for over 25 executive searches and has spoken in front of more than 35,000 people evangelizing on marketing storytelling and the importance of work life harmony.

Anissa, 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 we can get to know you a little better.

Anissa Starnes 2:42
Great. Thank you, Brandon, I certainly appreciate you having me here with you and your audience today. And it’s a pleasure to be here with you. And as far as something interesting, gosh, the first thing that just popped into my mind is because I was telling the story yesterday, I actually ran a full marathon at 26.2 marathon before I ever ran a 5k. So I went big from the very beginning. I ended up doing four full marathons and then back down to half marathons and then five K’s. But I just decided to set that goal for myself and went big from the beginning. And it’s taught me a lot of life life lessons, as far as setting goals and training for them. And I’ve always said once you run a marathon, it really takes the word can’t out of your vocabulary. So it’s something I’m pretty proud of.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Yeah, so I don’t use the word can’t with it. But I’ve been a runner for probably the better part of 15 years, but I just have no desire to run a full marathon.

Anissa Starnes 3:53
I didn’t either Brandon, I really, I kind of got tricked into it for a charity fundraising. And I never loved it. It was for me all about the go and the metal at the end in the cold beer when you can celebrate but certainly never loved it either.

Brandon Burton 4:12
Yeah, done the half marathons and I’ll do that. But before I’m I just, I have no interest. So yeah, congratulations. I knew

Anissa Starnes 4:21
I did a half first I would never do the full because then you know, you have to double it.

Brandon Burton 4:26
Right. So it’s all about the mindset, right. So that’s right. Well, and so at this point, I usually will ask the guests that I have on to tell us about their chamber size staff budget. Rather than do that. How about you just give us kind of how you got to where you are now in your career and working with chambers. What does that look like? And what’s your involvement been, you know, from 32 years ago when he started to now?

Anissa Starnes 4:51
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve been on staff at four different chambers all in the Carolinas. I started my career at the Charlotte you chamber where I live now and is my home, stayed there for almost 10 years and then move to chamber just a little south of Charlotte, and then to two other chambers in the Carolinas, took a break during that time and was the CEO of a nonprofit called Girls on the Run International, which is headquartered here in Charlotte, and is a self empowerment program for girls third through eighth grade. But even when I was with Girls on the Run, I was still teaching Institute and still very involved with chambers and went on to work for about eight years at Constant Contact, where I’ve probably met a lot of your listeners, through my work at constant contact in their chamber management program, and loved that. And then Constant Contact was purchased and bought out. So our division went away and went out on my own at that time and became a consultant. And so I’ve been here, there and everywhere, but always around in and around chamber work. And a year ago, a year ago, march 1, actually, I joined why GM total resource campaign, many of your listeners know Jason Eb, who’s the founder and president and CEO of YG. Em, and he and I have been friends for many years and have talked about working together. And we finally jumped off and did it a year ago. And it’s been a lot of fun. A lot of hard work. But it’s working out for us. That is fantastic.

Brandon Burton 6:35
How did you get your start your introduction to the chamber?

Anissa Starnes 6:40
Oh, gosh, everybody has one of those great stories, where we didn’t even know what a chamber was when we got there. But my sister worked for an employment agency and needed somebody to work six weeks a temporary assignment, while some one was on maternity leave. And I did not even know what a chamber was. When I got there, I was the assistant to the assistant to the president and CEO. And my job was to help plan the annual meeting. And when I say help plan, I use that loosely, my job was to get the name tags in the name tag holders basically, and but the person did not come back to work from her leave. And I was offered a job supporting the membership department. And I thought I would stay there for you know, a year or two until I decided what was next in my life. And I’ve never left. So I had a great mentor in Carroll Gray, who was my first chamber CEO, who eventually, you know, saw something in me and sent me to institute and really mentored me into the fact that it could actually be a lucrative career. And I fell in love with it, like so many people that are in the industry today. And so I’ve just, you know, kind of stuck with it.

Brandon Burton 8:00
I love that. And what a happy coincidence or placement or whatever you want to call it. I’m glad that you got placed to work on a temporary assignment. It’s made very well every day. That’s right. So as we wanted to introduce our topic for discussion today, and very loosely, we’re going to be talking about chamber industry success. And that can mean a whole lot of different things. We can take a lot of different angles to that. But just to give an idea. Some of the things that we’ll touch on in our conversation today is recruiting and retaining chamber staff being more career ready, fighting burnout, the importance of having a personal board, avoiding mission drift, and also the importance of finding the funding, if there’s two strategic partnerships to create those opportunities. And we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 11:04
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Brandon Burton 11:59
All right. And so we are back from our break. So we have a lot of things that we’ll touch on in this episode. And I imagine it’ll go at a pretty quick tempo. But as we start off, why don’t you touch on some of the the recruiting and retaining? What are some of those things that chamber staff should be looking for in that arena, towards having a successful chamber and just success in the industry?

Anissa Starnes 12:23
Sure, I think first and foremost is attitude. You know, I have been so blessed to have such great mentors my entire career, and more than one have shared with me, you know, look for the attitude, you can train the experience. But chamber work is not something you go to a four year school unnecessarily can learn all of the ins and outs. So looking for that right person that’s going to bring that positive attitude and that willingness to do whatever it takes every day. Because as we all know, when you get to work, no matter what your title is, you never know what’s going to happen to you that day and and what your responsibilities are going to be. So having that positive attitude is just key to success.

Brandon Burton 13:07
Absolutely. I think that is a huge factor to pay attention to as you’re looking to hire somebody but also anybody listening who’s already in their chamber role. Just pay attention to your attitude, pay attention to how you’re responding to members and, and staff and your board and volunteers to attitude. Really. They can go a long ways. absolutely can. Let’s let’s touch on being career ready. What are some things that the Chamber staff can do to be ready for their career, but also to help advance and further developing their career?

Anissa Starnes 13:42
Yeah, I think this, this would be a tip for everyone. Whether you are entry level, just getting started in a position at the Chamber, or whether you’re already a president and CEO, is to keep your resume updated. You know, so many people don’t start doing that until they’re looking for their next row. And it’s so much easier to keep it fresh and updated. Even if it’s not in a format where you can share at least keeping a ongoing list of all of your successes. We don’t often think of ourselves and share our successes so easily because we’re taught to put the volunteers out there. But we have successes as chamber staff so keeping an ongoing list. However you do that whether it’s in a spreadsheet or in a legal padding your desk, whatever works for you, but making sure that you keep up with all of your professional development, what conferences you attend, what courses you take, what sessions you lead, all of your your increase in your membership, your increasing your budget, all of your successes, just keeping a running list of it. That goes a long way in helping to build your resume, but also when you go to apply for your seat CEE through ACC II, the certified chamber exec or either your CAE through ASAE. That sounds like an awful lot of letters. But it helps keep that when you go to apply that you have that all at your fingertips to be able to track and look back at all of the things you’ve done. So that it makes it easier to not only apply for one of those certifications, but also to put it on your resume.

Brandon Burton 15:28
Yeah. So maybe you could touch on the and I love the all those tips about staying organized to have your your resume ready in at your fingertips. As far as the career readiness and advancement. Can you speak to a little bit about when a chamber professional maybe needs to look at making a change, maybe looking at another community to move to because I know you get so vested in one community, you almost feel like you’d be training them right? If you leave and go somewhere else. So help, you know through that mindset and that struggle, that internal battle that somebody may have?

Anissa Starnes 16:03
Well, I certainly and that’s a great question, Brandon, because I’ve certainly seen some people that think they’ve stayed too long, and then think they can’t make a move. And I don’t think that’s ever the case, I think you can make a move, and you know, when you’re ready to start looking at it. But also keeping in mind that you have to keep yourself and your family at the forefront of that, that everybody else is doing that your board’s going to expect you to do it. So keeping in mind with what your goals are, and knowing what your goals are. If you eventually want to lead a Metro Chamber, then you probably need to put some steps in place. You know, if you’re at a much smaller chamber, for instance, I mentioned Carol Gray, my first president CEO, he told me, you know, once I said I want to make this a career, he said you have to start planning to leave. And I didn’t really understand that at a young age. But he helped me see that I was going to have to leave a Metro Chamber, go to a much smaller chamber in order to move up. And, you know, looking at what that meant to me and what type of community I wanted to live in and my family. Just knowing what those goals are. And putting some steps into place is huge towards that. But yeah, I think everybody has to look out for yourself. And sometimes we’re not so good at that we look at look out for others first and making those moves, you kind of your gut will tell you, I’ve always been a good listener of my gut. But it tells you when it’s time to start putting some steps in a place to make that that next move.

Brandon Burton 17:44
And sometimes it’s hard for the servant leaders to think about themselves right to the next step for themselves. But this may even bring us to the next point of fighting burnout. Because I think sometimes that gut feeling is Gee, I’m really getting burned out here. In my current situation, let me see if it’s time to move tend to look on. Is that a factor to bring into it? Or how can they address the burnout issue as a chamber exec or even chamber staff? Because it seems like the clock never turns off? Right? You’re always seem to be on?

Anissa Starnes 18:15
Oh, gosh, we would need a whole week to talk about this. Because I’ve certainly lived it and been through it and have talked about it for the last couple of years. And and it’s it’s something our industry faces for sure. Every day. I wish I could remember who who I can attribute this to that shared this with me years ago, but they said, Never send an email. Never write on social when you’re upset and never quit your job when you’re having a bad day. Because tomorrow’s is likely to be a really good day. And so burnout, we’ve certainly just like every industry, we have lost a lot of good people over the last couple of years. Because since COVID, I would go out on a limb and say that chamber professionals have worked harder these last three years than ever in the history of chambers. They were called on to do things that nobody else before them had ever been called on to do and to take the brunt of, of or the responsibility rather of taking care of the business community at large in a big way. And so even before that, we saw burnout, but we certainly have seen it the last couple of years. And I would push back on the you’re always own. And I do push back on that a lot. I’m

Brandon Burton 19:33
glad to do. Yeah,

Anissa Starnes 19:35
I push back on that with with professionals all the time when I hear them say it’s a 24/7 job 365. You know, chamber folks are doing a critically important job. But it is not the end of the world. It’s not if they take a day off. I’ve heard somebody say you know we’re not curing cancer. I wish we were but we’re not. What we’re doing is very, very important work, but not as important as taking care of ourselves and putting our families first. And it’s still going to be there, whether we take a week off, or two weeks off, take a sabbatical, come back even stronger. I owe my entire career. And then I’m sitting here talking to you today, because I had a president and CEO that that saw was burnout and said, Hey, you’re gonna go take some time off, and I’m gonna pay you for it. But you’re gonna go take a few weeks off and come back stronger. And I thought he had lost his mind. Because I wanted to just keep plugging along. And I was too important to be missed. So I thought, and I really think I would have ended up quitting and going somewhere else. Had he not given me that time. And we’ve just got to take care of ourselves first. And it’s, you know, that, that analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask first, before you put your put it on your community and your members. It’s so true. But yeah, it’s, we can do our job. And chamber professionals can do their job just as effectively, if not more. So, when they take time to take care of themselves first,

Brandon Burton 21:25
right, I actually just got back from a week long cruise, and I chose to not buy the internet package. So I was forcing myself for a week to be totally disconnected. And to be honest, it was a gift to my wife for anniversary, she’s like I see all the distraction, I just need you for a week. So it was fantastic. So I would totally encourage a cruise with no internet to anybody listening. But also you lean on your staff lean on your volunteers lean on your board to help pick up some of those pieces, it doesn’t need to all be on your shoulders. And if you can, properly you know, work with them. And as a leader to work with them, you should be able to take some time off and have the confidence that your team is going to keep things going while you’re away.

Anissa Starnes 22:10
Well, I would I would add to that to Brandon that CEOs are sometimes really good at telling their staff to do it. And then they’re not doing it themselves. And staff, staff watch the leaders. And they emulate what they see. And so I would encourage not only the staff members to do it, but the CEOs themselves because it’s just critical. And we have we have some chambers now in the network that are doing a really good job of it. And COVID has helped fortunately, kind of break away from those old traditional ones. And I’ve seen a lot of chambers. What’s the word I’m looking for actually revised their entire operations manual to give more vacation days as the chambers now some going to unlimited vacation days as long as the metrics are met. So there’s some cool new things happening out there that people have modified their their employee manuals to make sure that that we’re taking care of our teams.

Brandon Burton 23:17
Yeah, I love that so important. Another important thing that I see is the importance of having a personal board of directors for yourself. Talk to us about that. What does that mean, from your perspective? And I have some thoughts as well.

Anissa Starnes 23:31
Well, it’s one of the things I learned it institute that wasn’t in a classroom setting. It happened just over, you know, dinner one night, somebody said, Do you have a personal board? And I said, What does that even mean? Yes, I have a board of directors. And they said no, who are your personal board? Who are the people you trust the most to tell you the truth. Whether you need to look in the mirror, do things differently, who are people who are going to not just tell you what you need to hear, but provide you input based on on what you need to hear not what you want to hear, doesn’t have to be a big group, it can be four or five people. It doesn’t even have to be people in your same industry. But people that you respect that you look up to that you want to emulate, and use them. It doesn’t do you any good to have them if you don’t actually use them whether that doesn’t have to be a monthly meeting, by any means. But people that you can just pick up the phone and call and say, Hey, this is what I’m facing. And I think I know what I need to do. But let me run it by you and be willing to listen to what they have to say. But I’m very, very fortunate that I have a great board of directors personally and I know that they won’t tell me just what I want to hear that they’re going to be honest and open with me and that has really helped guide me throughout my career both personally and professionally.

Brandon Burton 24:59
Yeah, know that is so good, I part of a small we call it a mastermind. So it’s our own little personal board that we can do that, you know, we can have honesty, we bounce ideas off each other say, here’s a problem I’m facing right now and be able to get some ideas where you’re thinking more than just your own thoughts, and be able to get a little more clarity on things. In fact, a while ago, I had Betty kept standing on the on the podcast, and she referred to her board as her kitchen cabinet. I loved it, you know, you’re you’re in your kitchen, oftentimes, and you’re on a zoom call with him or phone call. And it’s just that personal to her in the friendships that develop out of it are just amazing.

Anissa Starnes 25:38
So absolutely.

Brandon Burton 25:41
So let’s, let’s touch a little bit on mission drift, I think that can also play into the burnout side of things. But having that clear focus on mission, what can chambers do to avoid that, that drift from away from their mission?

Anissa Starnes 25:56
Well, you know, this, this might be an unpopular opinion, the way I’m gonna say it, but in some ways, I think COVID was one of the best things to ever happen to the chamber industry, certainly not COVID in the pandemic itself, and how it negatively affected the world. But what it did do is it gave the chamber industry a time to stop doing what we’ve always done, and look at things differently. And I’ve seen a lot of chambers change their program of work since COVID. And have stopped saying yes to everything. And chambers for so long have been the catch all of everything. And then community of, well, we need somebody to do this. Well, let’s give it to the chamber, they can do it. And the chamber has historically said yes to a lot of those things. And what I’ve seen now is chambers are have moved the other way to saying Does that fit our mission? And if the answer is no, then we’re saying no to doing it. We might support it, we might assist with it, but we’re not going to lead it. And so I think it’s critical that chambers really know what their mission is. And stick to that and let that be the the beacon that that leads them just to saying yes, or saying no, when asked to take something on and building the program of work around their mission. And there’s nothing wrong in the world with chambers doing events, and programs that, you know, they create, and that they want to be non dues, revenue generators. But everything chambers do should fit their mission. And I’m starting to see that that a lot more chambers are have been kind of open to that of you know, let’s stop saying yes all the time and making sure it makes sense for the organization.

Brandon Burton 27:58
Right, and look at some of those other C’s right, you can be that convener to bring those ideas and present them to another organization who might be better fitted better suited to take it. And you can still be a champion for that event or that whatever that initiative is, but just not the main driving champion of it. And and still be supportive. So and no doesn’t have to be a no completely, I guess, is what we’re getting at. All right. So now that the important thing that I know everybody’s hanging on to hear about is the funding, you know, creating strategic, strategic parts, I can’t speak, creating strategic sponsorship programs to be able to fund these activities that your chamber does, what are what are some thoughts and maybe some, I don’t know, a brainstorm of different ideas that chamber can explore.

Anissa Starnes 28:46
Well, one thing that that makes my partnership and me going to work with why GM, so much fun is it’s really been refreshing for me to see the change on that side of things. I started my career, as I mentioned in membership, and I was one of the first I think second, Charlotte was the second chamber to ever do a total resource campaign after Atlanta. And I went kicking and screaming to transition from a membership campaign over to a total resource campaign. And total resource campaigns TRCs for short, have changed so much over the years, thankfully, to YG Yum, who really has a strong business model. And I would say this if I was not working with YG and right now it’s why I’ve always been a fan of their work is it’s looking at sponsorships differently. We really don’t even use the word sponsorship. We use business opportunities and advertising opportunities. It’s a way to engage members that might only pay their dues every year, but otherwise never show up. Never engage. They you’d support the chamber by their membership that that’s it, and presenting the opportunities in a way that engages the member and puts them in a position to partner and to sponsor events and programs and initiatives that they really believe in. It just heightens their their awareness and heightens their public the public’s view of their company by partnering with a program initiative or any event that they believe in. So there’s a lot of money being left on the table we see with chambers, because a lot of chambers develop their sponsorships based on what they’ve always done. Like, for instance, I was on a chamber website yesterday, and I saw they had this fantastic event, it was a women’s event. But their sponsorships levels were 1000 for the top 750 502 50. And when I went back and looked at years before their sponsorship levels were the exact same. And we all know we’re paying more every day when we go to the store to the gas pump, whatever. chambers are paying more now for their catering, their signage, their venues. But they haven’t looked at what they’re charging their members to make sure that they’re not only covering their cost, but they’re making the non dues revenue they should be making on the sponsorships. So just taking a look and evaluating your sponsorship levels, making sure that the deliverables match the dollar that you’re charging. And looking at it with a fresh set of eyes is huge. There’s so much opportunity there for chambers to start with a clean, fresh sheet of paper and develop their sponsorship opportunities. And then sell them whether you do it through a trc or whether you’re doing it with a staff driven marketing, execution, whatever it is just evaluating what you’re offering, and making sure that the levels match the deliverables that you’re agreeing to give.

Brandon Burton 32:14
Absolutely. So a lot of people know that I got into chamber industry, you can say through chamber publishing. So I see, you know, I often joke about feeling like a bartender as I would go out and meet with Chamber members about advertising. And there would be a sense of guilt of you know, I joined I joined the chamber two years ago or three years ago, all I ever do is pay my dues because I can’t make it to the luncheons you know, I’m busy, I can’t make it to the after hours. I can’t do these things. But I like the chamber. Like the work they’re involved with. I like their mission, I want to support it. And they see that advertising as a way it’s an avenue to accomplish those things. It’s a way to be supportive of the chamber without being at all the things. So as you’re talking about sponsorship and business opportunities, I’m just a second witness, you can say that there are businesses out there that are ready and willing to give your organization money because they believe in what you’re doing. But they don’t see that clear path right now as to what that best avenue would be. Absolutely. Here’s a lot of opportunity. What is it? This has been great. We’re not done yet, though. So I’d like to ask if you might have a tip or an action item, for chambers that are listening who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What would you suggest?

Anissa Starnes 33:37
This is gonna give some listeners heartburn? I’m afraid if I say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway. saying no. Saying no to being asked to serve on yet another committee saying no to taking on a new event that someone in the community thinks is a great idea. Saying no to taking on more work that doesn’t fit your mission. Say no, once you learn how is a lot easier than you think it is. And you really don’t have to give a whole lot of explanation as to why you’re saying no. But just saying no, that the timing is not right for us. Or no, we don’t think that’s in our mission. Or no, I don’t have the bandwidth to do that. Whatever that is. I get asked a lot by new execs, what is the number one thing you think I should do in my first six months as a new executive? My answer is always say no to joining every thing you’re asked to join. Because as a new CEO, or as an existing CEO, really even as as chamber staff. We get asked to participate in everything. Because we know everybody we know everything They think, and they want us on their boards, they want us in Rotary, they want us here, they’re in everywhere. And that first six months, and really even after, if your bandwidth is full, just saying, No, I can’t take that on right now, we’ll go a long way towards helping with the burnout. The first six months, first of all, should be spent getting your own house in order and learning the business of the chamber where you are, if you’re new, if you’re an existing staff member, or CEO, you know, just you want to give 110% on any board you sit on. And you really can’t do that if you’re serving eight to 10 boards, and doing a disservice, I think, to those that you do say yes to if you’re over committing. So saying no, I think is is something hard for most of us to learn. But once we do, it really can help a lot in going a long way towards helping you stay stay focused on on the task at hand.

Brandon Burton 36:08
Yeah. And I like to the simple response. He said, just No, I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Because really, you don’t owe an explanation to everybody. But you know, there’s going to be some expectation on their ends that will Why are you telling me no, and that’s a simple enough without getting into the weeds as to why it doesn’t align with your mission or whatever, just I just don’t have the bandwidth right now, that should be sufficient. So I always like asking everybody, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, you

Anissa Starnes 36:41
guys have seen so much change over the last couple of years that I think is a positive change. ACCE has been instrumental in leading this in the industry, but keeping chambers on track, again, with the mission, and we’ve talked a lot about that today. But I am seeing chambers take on some really audacious programming and initiatives that years ago, we wouldn’t have touched with a 10 foot pole, whether that’s, you know, workforce development, childcare issues, you know, social justice issues, I’m seeing chambers really take on the big stuff. And it is making chambers even more relevant than they’ve always been. And, you know, it’s, it’s easy to show the value to the business community of what a chamber of commerce membership can do for you, you know, years ago, we used to tell everybody, and anybody that’s listening, that’s been here, you know, in the chamber work more than 10 years has certainly probably used this, of, you know, the chamber is just like a gym membership, you have to go, and you have to show up and put on your shoes and get on the treadmill. So you have to be on a committee, you have to show up in an event. And that is not true anymore. We should never say that. chambers are working for the business community every single day, whether you show up or not. So if you do have someone that says I can’t be on a committee, I can’t come to business after hours, I can’t, you know, lead a task force. That’s okay, we’re working just as hard for you every single day. But we have to be able to tell that story of how we’re doing that, we have to wave the flag and say, This is the good stuff we’re working on. This is the success we’ve had. This is where we need your support. Because chambers are more relevant today than ever, I believe. And a lot of great work is being done in communities. And I just it’s an exciting time to be a part of the chamber community because chambers have seen it, they’ve they’ve started making those changes, they’ve stopped doing some of the events, they’ve always done just to make $2,000. They’re putting their resources, both monetary and human resources towards things that are really making an impact. So I just believe it to my soul that that chambers are making more of an impact today than ever,

Brandon Burton 39:14
while they’re doing the work that’s making the impact and the funding is available to drive it to so instead of just writing like the example you gave, of exerting all these resources to get $2,000 In return, you can be involved in much more important and meaningful work. And there’s businesses willing to support that financially to help drive it 100% agree. Yeah. Well, and so this has been great. I really appreciate you joining us here on Chamber Chat Podcast today I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may not be connected with you already. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Anissa Starnes 39:53
Thank you for that opportunity. And if anybody’s listening that knows me you know I love social media. So absolutely Connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. But certainly my email is anissa@ygmtrc.com.

Brandon Burton 40:12
Good deal, we will get that in the show notes, both links to your social media accounts and your email. So anyone listening who’s on the treadmill or out running a marathon right now while they’re listening, they can check the show notes and they get back that and this I really do appreciate you setting aside some time and, and going through all these really powerful topics. I think that all lead to chamber industry success. So thank you for doing that and spending time with us today.

Anissa Starnes 40:40
Thank you, Brandon. And thank you for all you do for the industry. You’ve had some great podcast. I’ve always enjoyed listening and thank you for all you do.

Brandon Burton 40:50
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