Category: Strategic Planning

Long-Term Vision with Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer

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

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Our guest for this episode is Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer. Johnna is the President and CEO of the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC. She has a distinguished background in leadership roles, including serving as president and CEO of the Regional Economic Development Institute Cincinnati, and holding leadership positions at Duke Energy Citigroup, United Way of Greater Cincinnati in Ohio and Kentucky, the O’Bannon County Chamber of Commerce and the Jackson Downtown Development Corporation in Tennessee. John is a proud graduate of the University of Memphis for her Bachelor’s in communications. Thomas Moore University for MBA, and she attended the University of Oklahoma Economic Development Institute where she earned a certificate in economic development from the International Economic Development Council as the inaugural President and CEO of the Regional Economic Development Institute in Cincinnati. Johnna led a 15 County, three state regional economic development organization. Under her leadership, the R, E, D I, Cincinnati achieved 175 project wins, created 25,000 jobs and secured $1.4 billion in capital investment within four years in 2022 she became the president and CEO of the Colorado Springs chamber and EDC, Southern Colorado’s largest Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Organization. Since then, she’s led major initiatives in aerospace and defense, develop, Defense Development, legislative advocacy, and has successfully overseen the securing of 29 economic development projects, creating over 5000 jobs and attracting over 1.1 point $8 billion in capital investment. Johnna, I’m excited to have you with us today, here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself, so we can all get to know you a little better.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 3:02
Oh, well, thank you so much. I’m honored to be with you. And want to say hello to all my colleagues out there. And really want to say, just, just keep doing what you’re doing. Some days I feel like these are thankless jobs, and we’re carrying the weight of our communities and trying to make big things happen. But just know you’re never alone. I’ve been doing this a long time, and you are making a difference

Brandon Burton 3:26
Absolutely.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 3:29
So if I, if I think about something interesting, let’s see I’m I was born and raised in Tennessee and lived in Ohio for over 20 years, and after the the pandemic, I said, I’m going to do like a millennial and and I’m not a millennial, if you’re, if you’re looking at me right now, and said, you know, where do I want to live versus where do I have to live? Our children were grown, and I had had a lot of success at ready Cincinnati, and said, Do I Do I really need or have to stay in the Midwest? And my husband and I said, Let’s go to a beautiful place that’s fast growing, and let’s see if we can make a difference there. And so I came to Colorado Springs, and have not looked back. It’s been fantastic, but very unusual for someone that’s almost in their 50s to do that, versus someone that maybe were in their 20s. So very unique path that that I’ve taken,

Brandon Burton 4:27
yeah, you could have fooled me. I thought you were a millennial. So flat

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 4:31
flattery works on me. You think

Brandon Burton 4:34
my friend? So you guys did what a lot of people did and took off to Colorado. It’s beautiful country there and and lots of good reasons to be there, but tell us a little bit more about the Colorado Springs chamber and EDC to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Help us get an idea of the size staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget to kind of set the stage,

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 4:56
sure. So we’re the second largest chamber. The state of Colorado, behind the Metro Denver chamber, we’re the second largest city in the state of Colorado. It’s about three quarters of a million people in our metropolitan statistical area. It’s a community that’s made up of five military installations, which is really unusual. It’s a huge part of our economy, which has really led to that large aerospace and defense sector here, our chamber and EDC has over 1000 members. I have a six and a half million dollar budget. We host not only typical chamber functions such as government affairs and Small Business Services and membership services, but we also have the economic development arm of our organization. Our community is the size that it works well for it to be joined together as one organization. We also host a group called the Pikes Peak Housing Network, where you’re in a faster growing state like we’re in in a fast growing region, affordable and attainable housing are a real issue, and so this organization works constantly to try to try to help solve, how do we have more housing in our in our region? And then we also host the Small Business Development Center in our region to a very important piece to to work for small business and entrepreneurs, just as we work for primary employers, primary sector, and trying to recruit and retain them. So some traditional goals and some non traditional roles, that’s

Brandon Burton 6:28
great. It’s enough to keep you busy, for sure, and it’s a neat dynamic, having the military, you know, involved there as well, and having that focus. Yeah, it

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 6:37
is. This is my first community to have such a military presence. But when you have, when you have one army installation and four aerospace I’m sorry, when you have four bases that are around the space and the Air Force, it’s, it’s a huge part of your economy, and it really adds to the fabric of our community,

Brandon Burton 7:01
absolutely so for our discussion today, we’re going to, we’ve titled this episode long term vision. I like being able to talk vision with chambers so other chambers can hear and maybe get some ideas and maybe broaden their minds as to, you know, what’s happening in Colorado Springs. Maybe it can be scaled to, you know, wherever they’re at in the country, so we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Johnna, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to focus our discussion around long term vision for Colorado Springs. But first, we’ve alluded to it a couple times already. The tremendous growth there in Colorado Springs, what’s drawing so many businesses to want to choose to invest into to grow in Colorado Springs in that region.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 11:04
Well, I think it’s a variety of things. I think number one, Colorado has so much natural beauty and such an outdoor lifestyle, I can literally walk out my office door Brandon and be on three trails. So we have about 600 hiking biking trails in our region. You can be in the mountains and minutes. It’s a really, it’s a lifestyle state. And what I mean is we all talk about that we want balance in our life and harmony in our life. Well, people have moved to this state because they’re living it. So where talent comes then follows business. We know the importance of, after you have a good site for an economic development prospect, you have to show can you get the talent. So Colorado has was a was a net benefactor during during COVID, and continues to grow as a state. Colorado Springs has really taking off because you have big city amenities, but you have a small town atmosphere. We are not a ski town, but you can be to in, you can be skiing in an hour and a half away from us. But then you had, we’re not a mountain town. So we, we have lots of we have lots of amenities because of the aerospace and defense culture here, even in in in down times, in an economy, quite often for national security reasons, our economy bounces back quickly and and and goes down less severe than what some other communities might face that are so dependent on other sectors. I think it’s it’s also that during the pandemic, a lot of young people realized that they didn’t have to live in the super high priced cities, and could move to more mid tier cities, mid size, and have a lot of the same amenities. We have the arts, we have sports here, we have universities, and so they could have all those amenities, but maybe not the big city prices or, unfortunately, some of the the other things that that go along with, with, with the large cities, the the taxes and homelessness and crime and and things such as that. So this city’s really done well because of that. And then I will give my team some credit. I think it’s important when you’re the chamber and the EDC that you’re on the forefront of selling your community, telling your story, or it’s told for you, and you may not, but what is told, if you’re not getting in front of that, and this is a community that, I would say is the best kept secret in Colorado, in a lot of respects, it’s fast changing, and so we’re out there working on those national news stories, I would think Any Chamber of Commerce would want to be going out and telling their story. We work very closely with our Convention and Visitors Bureau to try to recruit tourism to this area, so that while we have tourist is one part of our economy, we also have primary sector employers, and we’re doing that in aerospace and defense, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing are our three areas of focus, and the chamber in EDC where we lead that charge, I like to say we’re the quarterback of the team, and then we have a whole lot of great folks on our offensive line, our city, our county, our utilities, our state organization and such. So I think that’s contributed to our success.

Brandon Burton 14:21
That’s great. I’m glad you got to the point of bragging on your team and telling the story of the work you guys are doing and what Colorado Springs has to offer to create that narrative so it’s not being created for you. I’m a big believer in being an agent of action like that. So how do you guys there at the Chamber in EDC? How do you go about advocating for for sound and a sound environment for business to be conducted?

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 14:47
Well, I’m a I’m a big proponent of the Entrepreneurial Operating System that Gina Wickman has has coined, and it’s in the book traction. I’ve used this in several organizations that I’ve. And we adopted that when I first moved here, little over three years ago now. And so just what you said, we do not measure activity here at the Chamber in EDC. We measure outcomes. And that could be really hard for chambers of commerce, because you have a lot of competing priorities. You have a lot of legacy programs that people have done for years and years and and it can be chambers are famous for adding things on. We’re not very good for taking things away. So this chamber, we really have evaluated all of our programming, all of our events, all of all of our initiatives that we’re focusing on, from government affairs to economic development and in between, and if we don’t have measurable outcomes, it’s hard for us to sell to our constituents, to our membership, why we’re doing it. So we do this crazy thing, we stop, we stop doing it if it is not working. And so I would just encourage your listeners that as they’re leading their chamber organizations and trying to decide and help shape the future of their community. Measurable outcomes can make all the difference, and I believe in the smart principle of specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time based. So put those together so you agree with your board on what success actually is, and then you can all celebrate together. But if, if you as staff, have a different mindset of what that is than your board, you’re not going to see success for your community, and frankly, you might be out of a job. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 16:35
I love how you said that you there at the chamber. You guys don’t measure activity. You measure you measure outcomes, and that’s really where the rubber meets the road, and you can really see the needle move in your community. Is by by measuring those outcomes. And that is, I think, the definition of success that you’re talking about is seeing those outcomes that are measurable. So it

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 16:55
is, and that doesn’t mean, you know, did we? Did we have 250 events this year. Oh, my goodness gracious. That exhausts me to even hear that, right? And you know, real outcomes. This is hard work. We’re working on things like housing affordability and attainability, child care in our community, retaining our military installations, ensuring that we’re having good policy at our state and local level, for for business and low regulation. We’re working on Union bills right now. We’re we’re working on a K through 12 program to ensure that we can have homegrown talent, not just imported talent to the state of Colorado. These are not easy topics, and they don’t happen overnight. But if it’s not the chamber doing it, who is

Brandon Burton 17:42
That’s right? So that’s a good transition. I wanted to ask you about workforce, and if workforce is a struggle throughout the country, but what initiatives you kind of touched on them a little bit there. But what initiatives are you guys doing there in Colorado Springs to address it the workforce challenges that so many communities are seeing? Yeah,

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 18:00
you know, we’re fortunate because we’re the second most educated state in the Union, but when you peel back that onion, it’s because of so many people that move into the pop move into the state of Colorado. It is not necessarily that it’s our homegrown talent. So when you really look at our test scores and graduation rates and such. And this is, this is the same all over the country, but we’re actually going deep and looking at this on how do we solve it? Because I don’t believe in the long term the United States, you know, we’re short on population for jobs of the future, so not all communities are going to succeed. And we want to be sure that we’re seen as a mega region, with both our partners, all the way to Denver to all the way down to Pueblo Colorado, as a mega region of Front Range talent, the Front Range, or the front range of mountains here in Colorado. So we’re going deep with our 17 school districts in our metropolitan area to evaluate those test scores, to evaluate the why. And we’ve created an initiative called innovate Pikes Peak, and we’re partnering with education experts, a group called Peak education, because I’m not an education expert, we’re business people and but we’re trying to solve an issue that will produce talent for us in the future. Again, homegrown talent. Because I’ll remind everyone Brandon that while business and chambers sometimes shy away from getting involved in education, we should remember that while maybe your children have choices in life, not all children do, and if they’re not graduating with a great start and maybe certification, certificates, some some college, two plus two programs, they’re going to live in your community. They’re not going anywhere. So they can either live in your community or they can live on your community. So we believe that the chamber and. See has a role to play in ensuring that those young people graduate with a great start. So this innovate pipes peak is all about evaluating career pathing and whether that be a college track or that be a technical track. We think that the two blend together. So we’re working with our higher education and our K through 12 right now in the business community is really leading on defining those paths and where we need to be involved for the future, because the duplication of resources and the teacher pay and all of this does not add to success for our children long term. So we’re stepping in, we’re leaning in on that. We’ve got those measurable outcomes, and this is a big, hairy, audacious goal that we’re working on, but by the end of the year, we’ll have a pathway, a roadmap for our business community to follow

Brandon Burton 20:51
Absolutely and you know, I haven’t seen any formal surveys on this, or anything. Maybe you have, but it seems like youth, as they graduate high school, they feel like their future, either they stay in their community and don’t go anywhere, or they have to leave the community to go to school and get a job and and in very select communities, you see the sense of pride where a student graduates. And like I live in Colorado Springs, I want to raise my family here. I want to have build a career here. So there’s something to that, building that sense of pride within the community, where they don’t have to feel like the grass is greener, you know, five states away, to go to school and get a start their career somewhere else. But have that be the desire even. And maybe they do go somewhere for school, but they come back because they see the opportunities and that pride within the community.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 21:43
I think I’ve heard the quote before that the grass is not always greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it. So I think it’s the chamber and EDCs role to water that grass. How are we ensuring that there are opportunities for young people? How are we ensuring that they can afford to live in our community, to buy a home. You know, the most likely to move are an 18 to 34 year old. And so if we can make sure that the Colorado Springs metropolitan area is on their radar, even if they go away to school, we want them to think, wow, it was pretty cool where I lived, and I want to go back. So we like that boomerang effect too, because then they’re bringing back fresh ideas and perspectives too when they have lived somewhere else. But we’re working hard to build on that population, and I think any chamber needs to be focused on that. If you’re lucky enough that people just show up in your community, good for you, but I don’t think that’s the case for most communities anymore.

Brandon Burton 22:44
Yeah, I think it helps for like you’re saying that boomerang effect, to be able to see a contrast of another community and say, You know what the grass is really green back where I grew up. So let me go back there. Yeah,

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 22:54
that’s things like nightlife and outdoor activities and things that young people want and desire are are different than where I am in at this point in my life and career, but I think that’s why we have to ask the right questions and young professional organizations being active in your area. We started a we started a program called Find your calls, and we use cos and everything, because it’s Colorado Springs, but find your calls the play on words. And it’s a, it’s a suite of talent initiatives to recruit, engage and connect young professionals, young people. One of those programs is called Hello cos so, and it’s about, it’s a, it’s a summer intern program. So when interns come to our region to to work in the summer, housing was a big issue for three months to find somewhere to live. I mean, are you going to find it on Craigslist in somebody’s basement? That’s just scary. So, you know, we we worked with Colorado College, and we have a safe environment for those young people to live in the summer, and then the chamber and EDC does all the fun wrap around programming. So while they’re out of work, we we hike up Pikes Peak with them. We go to a switchback soccer game. We introduce them to speed dating with military generals in the region, where they can have interaction with people that are in charge of our national security, in our in our country, we think that chambers in EDC should be doing things to help our business community recruit that talent and then help that, help that young person fall in love with the region. Maybe they fall in love with the job too, but if they have a great experience in your community, they’re going to want to come back.

Brandon Burton 24:43
Yeah, well, and inevitably, other jobs will come, and people that are already employed are going to go to the new job, and so you got to backfill all the time. And you know, what I’m hearing is it’s not so much intent, you know, just to focus on the K through 12 and helping create, create a career. Path, but it’s really place making within the community. So they have a desire to be there. They want to be there. They love being there. So I think that’s just as important. Yeah, so I think you’ve touched on it in different aspects. But the next question I wanted to ask is, how do you see what is, what is your long term vision for Colorado, for the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 25:24
Well, for us, I would say that for you know, so goes the community. So goes the Chamber in EDC. And we are, we are a community that has growing pains. And I’ll and I’ll say this so things that, the things that we’re having to work on are a how do you maintain a low tax, low tax environment, but at the same time you have big needs, such as road improvements and high quality schools, maintaining our military bases. We talked about housing, we talked about child care for young families. This is a really big deal, and something that the pandemic just exacerbated the problem, particularly for women and people of color needing to get back to work full time, working on all these issues. I call them growing pains, because we’re fortunate that we have these growing pains. If we weren’t a fast growing community, this wouldn’t be the issue. But with that the Chamber and EDC, we’ve tried to set those goals, set those measurements, and then where we focus, where we measure, is where we will succeed. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. You announced, you talked about some of our economic development announcements when, when you in the introduction, we weren’t, we weren’t seeing that until three years ago, and now we’re one of the top locations in the state for new announcements. It’s where we focused. We said we’ve got to get more of a diversity of primary employers in our region, and that’s where we focused. We’re now trying to solve those big issues Brandon that will make it where it’s the right environment for business to be able to thrive in place, expand or locate to our region. So I’ve given you several of those examples, and that’s where we’re spending our day. And I would just tell my colleagues out there that it’s not about party planning, it’s not about business after hours, it’s it’s, it’s not about having the best gala in the community. Those things are a means to the ends. Those are a networking opportunity. I think the future of chambers and economic development Corps are solving big issues for the community, coming alongside government where government cannot, cannot solve the issue because, either because they’re a public entity, or they just don’t have the dollars. And how are we being the conduit between business and private, the private sector of business, community officials and government officials? I think that’s the role for a chamber to play,

Brandon Burton 27:58
Absolutely and I love that, that vision that you have, where you focus is what’s going to grow, right? You got to keep watering those areas, make that grass green? Yes. So I like asking, as I have guests on the show, as for chambers that are out there listening, what kind of tip or action item might you share with the Chamber who’s trying to take their organization up to the next level. I feel like you’ve shared some good tips. But is there anything else that you want to expose and share with those listening?

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 28:29
Well, I think that I would just say, I know that many of our chambers, you know, I have 2528 people on on our team. So we’re, we’re a large organization for a nonprofit, especially for our size, but we’re doing a lot of things. I think number one, what I’ve learned through my career, and it sounds a little cliche, but it’s so true, is you can get a lot more done when you surround yourself with the right people, and when you don’t care who gets the credit. So we work really hard on our internal culture. We have a we have a culture of excellence and accountability. It is. These are lifestyle jobs. We don’t work. We don’t work eight to five here. We work when the clients need us. We do a lot of evening events and weekend things going on. But, but I would say that putting the right people around you as a leader in the chamber world or the economic development world will allow you to do more, and it will free you up as a leader to be more visionary and forward thinking and making sure that you’re helping drive results for the future, but you need people on your team that are also integrators of the mission, that are going deep and working hard to to close projects and to find wins in the community and work on big, big goals. So surround yourself with the right people, and then our philosophy here is, as long as we get the win, we don’t care who gets the credit. So quite. Often we may be carrying a heavy load on a project or an initiative, but we make sure that all of our partners are equally thanked and appreciated. Then there are other times, our partners are taking the lead and and we’re serving as a resource to them, and I just think you can get a lot more done when that’s your philosophy and that’s the way that you’re pushing forward? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:21
working as a team, right? So we’ve talked about the long term vision for Colorado Springs. The next question I have for you is, as we look to the future of the chamber industry, Chambers of Commerce in general, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 30:40
Well, I think it’s an interesting time for our industry and profession. I’ve been in and around this work for almost 30 years now, and seen it in four different states. I would say that all chambers, if you’re not constantly thinking about how you’re reinventing yourself and how you’re adding value for your membership, you’re going to lose membership. You’re going to be left behind. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, because our economy is changing so fast, and because the access to resources and artificial intelligence now and being able to reach people across the web, I don’t think businesses feel the need to be a member of a chamber of commerce, as they did maybe 50 years ago, 30 years ago, even longer. I liken it to years ago, our parents, our fathers. Usually it was typical, were members of the Rotary Club, and Rotary Club was the place to go so you could meet other businessmen or and at that time, it was man, but business people now and and do business and find ways to network. People have so many choices now as as businesses on how they connect with their customers and how they connect with other business people, that unless you’re constantly thinking about your value add as a chamber I think it’s going to be hard to make the case of Why be a member of the Chamber of Commerce when businesses are having to make choices about payroll and and health insurance and other things, or do they pay their chamber membership? We may get put at the bottom of the barrel. So I would recommend finding non dues, revenue sources. What are programs you can offer that are at a fee that add value, not add what are data sources you have that not everyone in your community has? Are there? Are there? Is there information or programming or something that you can do that’s a value add that I constantly say we need non dues revenue. Non dues revenue because just depending on a membership model for the future, I’m not so sold on that’s going to work long term, maybe, maybe in my career length. But those of you that are starting in chamber world in your 20s and 30s, now, I think we’re going to live in a very different society in 10 to 20 years, and you if, if you’re not at the table, you might find yourself on the menu. So get to that table and make sure you’re adding value that others others don’t have, and you’re differentiating yourself as an association. Yeah, and

Brandon Burton 33:17
I think it’s important to not just look at your chamber as a membership association, but as a business, operate it as a business and find those income generating. You know, you’re calling them non dues revenue, but in the end, it’s income generating, and that’s the only way to thrive and stay healthy as a business. So yeah, constantly

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 33:36
people will will say to me, Well, Well, John, you know, the chamber is here to just do good community work. And I said, and that’s a business unto itself. If I can’t make payroll, I can’t have our organization doing this work you’re asking us to do. I’m a business too. I have a profit and loss statement like every other business, and I think you hit that on the head. It’s important for us to be seen and think of our business in that way as chamber leaders.

Brandon Burton 34:05
Yeah, well, Johnna, this has been great having you on the show and sharing your insights and some of the exciting things that are happening in Colorado Springs, the impact your organization is having in the community. I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn some of the strategies you guys are are working on, maybe without giving away all the secrets. But how would you have them reach out and connect with you?

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 34:30
Well, number one, I do believe that there are no new ideas. You just need to borrow ideas from our partners. So go out there and meet with other chambers and find those find those leads. You know, we have a national organization association that we can all tap into, but if they’d like to speak with me, I’d be flattered and more than happy to help in any way. You can find me on LinkedIn under Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, you can find me on our website is ColoradoSpringsChamberEDC.com, and my phone number 719-500-9485, or my email is jreederkleymeyer@cscedc.com. I’d be happy to speak with anyone and be be flattered to get a call perfect.

Brandon Burton 35:26
We’ll make sure all that is in our show notes for this episode make it easy to find and connect with you. And I just want to thank you again for setting aside some time to be with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, sharing some of your experiences and tips that you’ve learned from and being willing to share them with the Chamber community, we appreciate it.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer 35:44
It’s my pleasure. Good luck to everyone out there. Keep making big things happen in your community.

Brandon Burton 35:49
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World Cafe Model for Board Retreats with Elaine Spalding

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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.

Today. I’m joined by Elaine Spalding, president of the Rowan Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina, with over 30 years of Chamber Leadership Experience. Actually, we just learned 40 years of Chamber Leadership Experience across multiple states. Elaine has helped the Rowan chamber or national recognition recognition, and was named the 2020, Chamber Executive of the Year by Carolina Chamber Executives Association. She’s a CCE and an IOM graduate. She’s deeply involved in economic development, education and community leadership. But Elaine, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Elaine Spalding 1:57
Thank you, Brandon, I love chatting with you before just learning about our both our backgrounds, experience in both Texas and California, and it’s been my honor to work for Chambers of Commerce now for I just totaled it up 40 years in Oregon, Texas, Kentucky and Of course, now North Carolina, and this is our favorite spot. We love it here. My husband and I get out and go hiking and kayaking, and we love the outdoors. We have two dogs, and they run us ragged, and just enjoying the beautiful state of North Carolina.

Brandon Burton 2:37
It is a beautiful part of the country. So I’m curious, what kind of dogs do you have?

Elaine Spalding 2:42
Oh, they’re both mutts we always adopt from rescue shelters. And one is a hunting dog black and white mix, and one is a really odd looking

Speaker 1 2:55
Beagle mix. Those are the best, the odd looking ones, right? Love them.

Elaine Spalding 3:00
Everybody stops and goes, what is that dog? Burton? Just love

Brandon Burton 3:05
them. Couldn’t recreate it if you tried? Yeah, one of a kind. Yeah, I love it. Well, tell us a little bit about the Rowan chamber, just to give us an idea of the size staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Elaine Spalding 3:21
Yes, thank you so much for inviting it’s it’s really, the timing is perfect. Uh, we are celebrating our 100th anniversary for the Rowan chamber here in Salisbury, North Carolina. And so we just had our 99th annual gala meeting, which was tremendously successful. And all year long, we’re recognizing long term businesses in the community. We have over 800 Chamber members here in Rowan County, representing 60,000 employees in our community, very active business community, and we’ll be lifting up those long term businesses all year long with special promotions, with recognition on our website and all of our chamber newsletters and our social media. And in January of 2026, Brandon, you’ll have to come and join us. We’ll be having our 100th annual gala meeting.

Brandon Burton 4:15
Wow, that that’ll be something to plan for. I’m sure they could. You don’t get 100 I mean, that’s a, that’s quite the milestone. I mean, that’ll be something to celebrate,

Elaine Spalding 4:26
for sure. It’s a, it’s a wonderful community. We happen to have Food Lion, for folks that are from the southeastern part of the United States, we’ll know Food Lion. Grocery stores. Food Lion is headquartered here. They’re our largest employer. And then, if anybody knows the wonderful soda Cheerwine, we have a big cheer one festival here in Salisbury, North Carolina, and they’re over 100 years old as a company as well. So we’ll be lifting up a lot of those firms like that.

Brandon Burton 4:56
That’s awesome. It’s neat to be able to. To bring those into as part of the celebration and celebrate their success as well, right? That’s awesome. Well, I’m excited for our topic today. As we were planning this this recording today, we landed on the idea of talking about the World Cafe model for board retreats. And I have to admit, this is something new for me. So be learning as we go through this episode, but I look forward to diving in much deeper on this as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Elaine, we’re back. So tell us, what is the World Cafe model for board retreats?

Elaine Spalding 8:49
Thank you for asking Brandon. It was a new concept for us as well. We have a wonderful new board member who works at Catawba College. Her name is Dr Christine Lynn. And I said, you know, I’ve been doing the same sort of format for our board retreats. I’d love to do something different. And she said, Oh, I can help you facilitate the World Cafe model. And it was beautiful, quick, easy way to get input from all of our board members and not have the boring sort of breakout sessions and report back sessions, so you basically just have all the board members going around to, kind of like, you know, sort of the speed dating assignments, where there’s different tables with the different focus areas of the chamber, business advocacy, workforce development, our minority business programs, young professionals, all the different things. There’s butcher block paper out there’s somebody that does a quick thumbnail sketch of where we are and what the challenges are in that area that get all these ideas from the board members. There’s seven minutes at each station, and you go around to every table. So everyone gives input. They they summarize it quickly at the end, and then your board votes on what the top priorities for the next year will be. I love the World Cafe model. So

Brandon Burton 10:13
how long does this day it sounds like you can, you know, bust it out in about two or three hours. Is that accurate?

Elaine Spalding 10:21
Yes, it depends on how many core areas you want your board to really focus on. So, you know, you just do rounds, and it’s seven minutes at each table. So, you know, you could, you could make it as long or short as you wanted to. Our program lasted the breakout part of it just lasted for an hour and a half.

Brandon Burton 10:39
Okay, so I know part of the idea with the board retreat is you get these board members together, and you spend time together, and it’s kind of that team building, and you get to feel like you’re you’re moving towards that common purpose and goal. Does this World Cafe model? Does that facilitate some of that same kind of team building feeling and environment that a traditional board retreat might do,

Elaine Spalding 11:03
right? And what I love about it, you know, group dynamics you always have in with our business leaders. You’ve got the Type A personalities, you know, the ones that know everything. And then there are those quiet leaders who really do know everything, but yet they might not contribute at that same high energy level. So it gives the extroverts and the introverts the opportunity to both share and we ended up with some wonderful new ideas and new ways to approach some problems that the chamber had been struggling with for a couple years, and a whole new focus on a very successful community leadership program, and we’ve just started a new youth leadership program. And so I think it’s, it’s that that model that really gets folks to contribute at whatever their comfort level is,

Brandon Burton 11:59
yeah. So how many times have you done the World Cafe model? Well,

Elaine Spalding 12:04
since our board retreat, we also used it for our leadership Rowan program and for our youth leadership program and the same sort of experience, you know, just fantastic ideas coming out from a quick, quick turnaround time. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:21
So structurally, do you feel like you need to bring in a facilitator, like you had one in your community there to facilitate the World Cafe model? Or is there a kind of a template? I think it’s nice having a facilitator, because you have somebody who’s kind of non partisan that can kind of help create the vision and whatnot. But how would a chamber who’s interested in in the World Cafe model? How can they?

Elaine Spalding 12:45
Yeah, I’d be happy to share information from Dr Christine Lynn. I’m sure she could help them with the the structure and the template. But I also googled it when she first talked with me about it, and there’s some pretty easy steps that you can get online for the World Cafe model, and it’s a relatively new concept, but I think one that’s really taken off for these kind of strategic planning initiatives.

Brandon Burton 13:10
Yeah, that makes, makes a lot of sense. And if she’s, if she’s done this for you, I’m sure she’s available for others, and

Elaine Spalding 13:16
she is a great volunteer. And fortunately, the college lets her. She works in the strategic planning area, so they love to get her out. It’s good for the college as well. So she’s done some things for some other chambers here in the region already. So yeah, it’s been good.

Brandon Burton 13:32
So I like the idea, like you said, you get those type A personalities and get those quieter personality but it gives everybody that option, to be able to share their voice, feel like they’re being heard, to contribute to what that vision is for the community or for the organization, whether it’s your young professionals or whatever, whatever group it is that you’re working with, right? What are some of the other positive outlooks or positive outcomes you see from utilizing this sort of model, yeah, I

Elaine Spalding 14:01
think that really making sure that we are listening to all the voices within our chamber, we have been very intentional about having a focused peer to peer support groups and, you know, we do the breakfast programs and after hours mixers and all that sort of stuff, but really focusing on our young professionals, our minority business council, our women in business groups and our agribusiness group, and getting folks that are dealing with the same issues and problems in their work a day world and The peer to peer support. Them coming up with programs and ideas for professional development that would be helpful to them and them just supporting each other. You know, we are growing here in North Carolina, lots of new people coming in, which is wonderful, and we want to make them feel welcome. We also particularly. With our young professionals. Want to retain them in our community, and so that program really helps, you know, open the door, welcome them to the community. They get some buddies. They can go meet at the brew pub. And, you know, whatever they may be interested in, if it’s if they’re interested in sports, or if they’re interested in arts and culture they can find a group of buddies to hang out with through the chamber, and I think that’s the best service that we can be as a business advocacy organization is just connecting our businesses together, connecting our newcomers in the community, and helping our employers retain those young professionals that they brought into the community. So that, you know, when somebody from a larger community says, Hey, we can offer you a little more money, they’re saying, No, I really like this community. I like the friends I’ve made, and I want to stay here.

Brandon Burton 15:54
Yeah, get them so ingrained that they’re afraid to leave right. Probably wouldn’t make the same friends or connections if you go somewhere else, right? Yeah,

Elaine Spalding 16:05
that’s, yeah, that’s part of what we do as chamber people, is to connect, but to be that, that convener, and to really be that champion for the business community that

Brandon Burton 16:15
makes such a positive environment for them to thrive anyways, right? Why would you want to leave, right? That’s great. So as you use this, this World Cafe model, have you seen any, maybe, any gaps within it, that, as you utilize it like well, we needed to tweak it here or there to really make it fit for our community, for our organization, or is it just perfect?

Elaine Spalding 16:42
You know, it’s like with all new things, you do make some adjustments as you go through it. But I I think that for so long, we were focused on having all these PowerPoint presentations and all the new technology. And, I mean, this is really just pretty basic. You put that butcher block paper out. People are writing down ideas, and then you capture it, you know, and have all the documents that you can share electronically. But I think that our volunteers, at least, were really looking for something more tangible, like that, that they could get their hands on and really feel like that they have contributed, and they see their ideas, you know, on that piece of paper.

Brandon Burton 17:23
Yeah, it’s funny how old ideas become new again, right? And we try to outsmart ourselves with all this technology and ways to approach things. And then when we come back to what really works well is the stuff that had been done a while back, right? And we maybe abandoned or forgot about. And so being able to go back to the roots, as they say,

Elaine Spalding 17:43
Yeah, and when I think having the smaller groups where you can really have a discussion, you know, if you get over about, you know, six to seven people, then not everyone feels like they can contribute. So having the smaller groups all sitting there together, you know, rattling off ideas is just a beautiful experience,

Brandon Burton 18:01
yeah, so what? What is the ideal number? He said, Not more than six or seven, but you need more than two. I mean, what?

Elaine Spalding 18:10
Yeah, you know? I mean, just like when you get folks around a dinner table, you know, if you get over about six, you can’t hear everyone’s conversation. So about six to seven is ideal for these kind of World Cafe breakouts groups.

Brandon Burton 18:24
Okay, that’s good to know. Yeah. Any anything else about the the World Cafe model that you want to highlight for us again, with me not familiar with it at all, I gotta rely on somebody who’s experienced this. No.

Elaine Spalding 18:38
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share. I would just tell my fellow chamber buddies that you know, if you’re looking for something to to jazz up your boring board retreats, this might be a good model to look at the World Cafe model.

Brandon Burton 18:53
I mean, nobody listening does boring board retreats. But I mean maybe for somebody who hasn’t listened before, I’m just

Unknown Speaker 19:00
kidding. Their first time,

Brandon Burton 19:04
that’s right, they’ll have to keep this, you know, pin this episode, so when they are sitting at that boring boardroom tree, like, Wait, there’s a better way, right?

Elaine Spalding 19:14
We’re always happy to share. And you know, I I learned so much from my chamber peers. I love these kinds of opportunities, because no matter how long you’ve been in the business, or if you’re relatively new to the business, you know, you can always pick up one or two ideas from being involved in, you know, your chamber execs Association, either at the state level, the regional level, or with ACCE,

Brandon Burton 19:39
yeah, and, and I love doing these episodes for that reason, to be able to share ideas and for others to be able to pick up on them. But even as you’re talking about, you know, the young professional groups, I’m thinking nowadays, just about every chamber has a young professionals group, and they’re all talking about, you know, what are the needs? What are the struggles? What. Are we in? And I would guess, from one community to the next, a lot of them are coming up with a lot of the same challenges and solutions. I mean, there’s uniqueness for communities, for sure, but being able to share some of the best practices and things that are discovered, it really helps to shortcut some of that struggle to be able to overcome and find solutions. So, right, yes, lean into those, those you know, professional development groups and connections to build those and and strengthen your communities. Yep. Well, Elaine, I like asking for listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level. What kind of tip or action item might you share with them to accomplish that

Elaine Spalding 20:45
goal? Yes, well, I am a big believer in the three C’s Chambers of Commerce being a convener. We’ve talked about that being a champion and a catalyst, and really kind of grouping your marketing materials around those and I can send you a graphic of this, but we did for, for our, I don’t know if you can see that, but for by the numbers, for 2024 wrapped around all of the things that we have done, you know, the different events, the business advocacy programs, to Our state level and two trips to Washington DC, talked about the real value of the chamber, and I think now more than ever, our business leaders are looking for our local chambers to really be that business advocacy organization and to not be afraid to take on the big issues in your community. We in North Carolina, of course, have dealt recently with Hurricane Helene. Our friends in the mountains region of North Carolina and all of the rest of the chambers around the state have rallied around them and supported those business communities. And I think that’s the real beauty of being in this industry, being in chamber work, you can always reach out to another chamber that may have gone through a similar disaster. And I think of our friends in California with the fires, and this industry is so helpful. So I always encourage especially chamber professionals that are new to this business, to reach out to the folks around you. Reach out to professionals like yourself, Brandon, that that may know a couple of other folks have experienced a similar situation and can walk you through how they handled it. You know, every community is different, and you may need to tweak it a little bit, but boy, if somebody already has a successful model, you can certainly learn by that. And I think those best practices, benchmarking your chamber against others in the industry and tapping into this beautiful resource that we have within the chamber industry is just a wonderful, wonderful thing, and I I hope that everyone takes advantages of situations like chamber chat and any other resources that might be available to the chamber executives.

Brandon Burton 23:15
Yeah, great tips. I love that any anybody can plug chamber chat anytime they want, I will fully endorse that

Elaine Spalding 23:26
I love that I love this business, and I love helping other chamber people. So when you call it, I thought, yeah, sure, you know. I mean, we could, we could talk about anything you want. And I am always happy to sit down and talk with other chamber folks and I, as I said at the beginning, I always learn more from them than I think they can from somebody like me who’s been in the business and work for a couple of different chambers. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:50
absolutely. Well, Elaine, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? Yeah,

Elaine Spalding 24:00
you know, ACC just released the new horizon yesterday, yeah, oh my gosh. And I poured through that last night. And I think all of the new things that chambers are being asked to deal with, some of these, you know, the environmental issues that we’re dealing with, housing issues that a lot of communities are dealing with around the country, child care issues. I mean, we’re still dealing with so many things since the pandemic that we really need to come together and support, not just the businesses, but our entire communities and the really good chambers are getting involved in some of these areas that we traditionally had not been involved with. So I think getting those experts that in your community can help the business community understand and continue to be that business champion, but be the convener in your community. So that your business, your elected officials, your education leaders, can all be at the same table and helping to solve problems in your community.

Brandon Burton 25:11
Absolutely, it’s it’s fascinating. Usually, when I ask that question, a lot of people will refer back to the original horizons report, and now that we’ve got the updated report, I’m curious to see how these and how that question gets answered, yeah, the next year or two, right? That it is fascinating.

Elaine Spalding 25:32
Yeah, I think that that’s that’s the beauty of this industry, again, kind of coming together and thinking about the future and how we can all work together to help our local communities, to help chambers of commerce, you know, all across the country.

Brandon Burton 25:47
Yeah, well, Elaine, this has been a blast to have you on the podcast with us. Today, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about your approach at the World Cafe model, or just how you guys are doing things there in Rowan, what, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? Sure?

Elaine Spalding 26:10
You know, as all chamber people do we run from meeting to meeting, best best to send me an email espalding@rowanchamber.com the phone number here at the Chamber is 704-633-4221, but best to send me an email, give me a couple of times that are good for you, and I’ll schedule a conference call time, and we’ll get it done.

Brandon Burton 26:32
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes for this episode to make it easy for them to find that and and connect with you. But thank you for spending time with us today and sharing your experience with the World Cafe model introducing something new to many of us. I hope this has been a fun conversation. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 26:52
Thank you. Brandon, I really appreciate the invitation.

Brandon Burton 26:56
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Chamber Turnaround with Warren Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 26:12
important, yeah, because everyone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 42:24
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Creating Conveners with Tara Lea

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

Our guest for this episode is Tara Lea. Tara has been involved in the chamber industry at the local, state and regional level for the past decade, with a passion for leadership and a commitment to making a difference. Tara currently serves as a Vice President of Community Affairs at the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce. In this role, she orchestrates programs and initiatives aimed at cultivating the next generation of leaders and empowering individuals to enact positive change in their spheres of influence. Prior to the Nebraska chamber, Tara was the president and CEO of the Fremont Area Chamber of Commerce. In that role, she managed the strategic, fiscal and programmatic goals for the Fremont Chamber of Commerce. She also served as a spokesperson for the chamber through their region. With almost 600 members in the Fremont area Chamber. It’s the sixth largest and one of the oldest chambers in the state of Nebraska. Tara started her career, her chamber career as the president of the Ralston Area Chamber of Commerce, a 275 member organization dedicated to creating business and community vitality. She’s had. She has a very active role in creating the Ralston 20 year development plan. Prior to joining the chamber industry, Tara was employed at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Professional Golf Management Program, and as the educational specialist recruiting students from across the country to make Nebraska their home. Tara has served as a board member for a variety of civic and government organizations. She’s She was elected to the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce executives and Mid America Chamber of Commerce executive board of directors by her peers, and is currently past chairman of both organizations. Tara has been recognized for both service and professional leadership through the Midlands Business Business Journal, 40 under 40 Leadership Award. She has earned her Bachelor’s of Journalism and Broadcasting and has a master’s in educational leadership from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Tara is also a 2021, graduate of the US Chamber of Commerce IOM program. Tara, we’re excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,

Tara Lea 3:32
thanks, Brandon, and hello to all my chamber friends across the country, so excited to be on the podcast today to share just a little bit of knowledge that I probably ripped off and duplicated. From some of my friends across the state over the years. My bio is very long with some big words that chatgpt helped me make up. So thank you, Brandon for sharing that. But a big thing that you see in there is Nebraska has mentioned many, many, many times. Born and raised Nebraska, very proud Nebraskan. I think something interesting about myself, and I’m going back a few years here, but when I was a senior in high school, I was both a Nebraska cow queen and pig queen in the same year. So I got to go around the state of Nebraska to fairs and community events and hand out ribbons and just be a promoter of short horn cattle and the pork industry across the state. So I think my, my love for Nebraska, and kind of ending up here in the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce role probably started way back in high school

Brandon Burton 4:31
and talk about something to aspire to, cow queen and pig queen. Wow,

Tara Lea 4:36
just the royalty of Nebraska. You know, I still get the crown out once in a while. No, I’m just kidding,

Brandon Burton 4:41
and we’ve got her on the show today, folks, I love it. But tell us a little bit about the Nebraska chamber, obviously, State Chamber, but give us some perspective the size scope of work, how you guys are involved working with other chambers staff. Just to you. Kind of get our mindset straight as before we go into this conversation today,

Tara Lea 5:04
absolutely so. As you mentioned from my bio Brandon, I’ve kind of climbed the chamber ladder here. I like to say I started a small chamber, went to a mid sized chamber. Now at the Nebraska State Chamber, it’s an entirely new beast and animal compared to the local chambers. We have about 1000 members here at The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, and our focus is obviously statewide. So we want to make a huge difference from Western Nebraska all the way to Eastern and North and South. We want to cover the whole state. So as most chambers do, we do a lot of lobbying for our businesses and communities across the state. But my role, which is new, is really to work with the local chambers across the state of Nebraska as well. So I kind of have that inside track and know what a weird job that we have. So I can be that person to new folks who come into a chamber role and help do some training and education for them. I can also, if they, you know, chambers have issues or events or things they have questions on, we’re the resource for them, trying to do a lot more meetings with the local chamber folks. So in a way, we’re making all the local chambers an extension of the State Chamber, and I think that’s just going to make the entire state a whole lot stronger as we move forward with that. Here at The Nebraska chamber, we have 12 employees that are here in the office, and then we just started a new initiative a couple months ago, which is also my baby, called six regions one Nebraska. And we’ve hired six navigators across the state, who then are kind of an extension of the chamber as well, working on some regional projects in each of those, those communities, in those areas.

Brandon Burton 6:36
Man, that you guys are busy. I mean, this is, this is awesome. I love, especially your role, this new role that’s been created, and seeing the local chambers becoming an extension of the State Chamber and and having the six navigators. I mean, Nebraska is not a small state. I mean, you get in the East Coast and you get states you can drive across in 30 minutes. Not so much in Nebraska, right? So it makes a lot of sense to have your your delegates?

Tara Lea 7:03
Well, it makes a huge difference, because even for the 12 of us, you know, each of us trying to get out to the western side of the state, it’s eight hours across the state, so we were not spending nearly as much time out there as we should have been. So yes, to have somebody right there in the community, to always be a resource has just been huge for us.

Brandon Burton 7:19
Yeah. Now that is fantastic. And really, that could be a whole podcast episode there. But our focus for our conversation today is going to be around creating conveners. So maybe some of that comes into the conversation today when we talk about, you know, helping to lift up some of these chambers, get them trained and educated, but ultimately creating conveners and and becoming one of those, you know, pillars in that C, you know, the 3c of chambers. So we look forward to diving deeper into this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Tara, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, our topic for our conversation today is creating conveners. So as you hear that topic and the approach to your work, what does that mean to you? How do you approach creating conveners in your day to day work?

Tara Lea 10:20
So that has been just a passion of mine the entire time I’ve been in the chamber industry. I mean, even at the local level, it’s so important to bring together not just your your members and local businesses, but make sure they’re still working with city government and county government and, you know, make all of us working together to move things forward in the right direction. So now, in my role, literally, I get to do it every single day. So I mentioned the six regions one Nebraska initiative. I also run our leadership Nebraska program. So I know we have a ton of leadership programs across the country. Each of them has its own awesome element, but, you know, a lot of are very similar as well, but that’s really where I have the opportunity. We have about 350 Alumni members who we do events for throughout the year. And then each year, we take a class of between 30 and 35 those folks are from all across the state, and then we go visit different communities across the state. So at that time, it’s all about those introductions, bringing people together. It’s amazing to see, even years later, folks that are working together because they met at an alumni event or they were in class together. So I really think that’s to form those partnerships is huge, and anything I can do to make that happen is just a true passion of mine,

Brandon Burton 11:32
absolutely. So tell us a little bit more about that. As you as you take these alumni, you divide up, you go out and visit others. What? What does that look like? What do you provide? What’s the curriculum, if you will?

Tara Lea 11:43
Yeah, great question. So again, if you have a local Chamber Leadership Program, you’re probably meeting one day a month or something along those lines. For leadership, we meet three days a month, so it is a huge time commitment for folks, but we start at noon on a Wednesday and wrap up on noon on a Friday. And the whole goal, obviously, is there’s a leadership development component, which is huge, but it’s also the relationship. So we are making sure the folks in this class are getting in front of the mayors of communities, or just the key people that are in that community, senators, whoever that might be, and then the top business leaders in those communities as well. So they have that resource and they know them. And then we take a lot of behind the scenes tours as well. So Nebraska is a large manufacturing state, so we get to see some really cool things that are made right here in the state of Nebraska. Each month, we’re in a different part of the state. So we do southeast, we do Western, northeast, central Lincoln, Omaha. We hit kind of all some of the hot spots across the state. And again, just to showcase it’s usually focused on the top hitting issues within a state right now. So obviously, this year, child care comes up in every single session. We go to communities and see what kind of facilities they have or how they’re kind of battling. The child care shortage crisis across the state. Housing has been huge for a number of years. It’s fun to go see some of the small homes and just or the things that are being created, you know, in these communities, to make sure they’re covering the housing they need, housing they need, and then just workforce. So issues in Nebraska, but also issues across the whole state, we are not going to find an answer. Unfortunately, I wish we had that crystal ball that told us, Hey, here’s the answer to all of this. And if someone listening does have that, please call me and tell me what that is. But it’s just nice to see what other folks are doing, so then the people in the class can take those ideas back to their communities and help build and try to solve some of these issues that we have across the state.

Brandon Burton 13:38
Even if somebody has solved it. It’s probably only solvable in their community and whatever adaptations need to happen. So the thought came to me as you’re explaining how this, how the program works with these visits, these manufacturing facilities, you know, just getting out and seeing, you know, the childcare place, the the workforce and the housing issues. How is this all working towards the goal of creating conveners? Or would you say that’s the goal? Absolutely

Tara Lea 14:09
is the goal. And I think it happens every single session, because someone will meet someone that then they can go work with or push a project forward, because they had the opportunity to convene and meet with those folks while they were on a tour, listening to a panel of speakers. Even just the leadership development, it’s it’s getting those folks in the class stronger and more knowledgeable, so that they can then go back to their communities and bring everybody together, convene people that need to be in the room to push things forward and make things happen across the state.

Brandon Burton 14:39
Absolutely, I was thinking just the just the perspective that’s opened up to these individuals to go through the program, I think is so valuable in creating conveners, to be able to look at a problem from multiple angles and say, Yeah, I know somebody over here. Let’s bring them in. Let’s and maybe that’s getting more into the catalyst phase. Is the you know that that other C, but I think being a convener is so important to be able to have those connections, bring them in, have that perspective, to approach things from from different, different angles, really, absolutely

Tara Lea 15:12
and as a State Chamber, we just really want to see all of our local communities advance and grow. And so that is obviously huge for us is when we can bring folks together and do some the right people, so then they can go back and make an impact within their community.

Brandon Burton 15:25
Absolutely. So I know we’re talking a lot about the leadership Nebraska, can we talk a little bit about how you work with chambers too? Because I want to know, because I feel like there’s some convener development going on with those chambers too. As you work with the local chambers, what are those interactions like? And what do you do to promote them, to support them, to train them. What does that look like? Yeah,

Tara Lea 15:55
so that’s something we’ve really focused on the last couple of years as well. We have no no better value than our local chambers across the state. They are huge resources for us as the Nebraska chamber. So we want to make sure folks are loving their job and wanting to continue working in the chamber industry. Obviously, that’s kind of an issue we’ve had across the state as well, as is folks kind of get burnt out or whatever issues might arise. So we really want to focus on, what can we do to make their lives a little bit easier? So the Nebraska chamber association is our statewide group of chamber executives, and we meet every other week on a zoom call where we’ll bring in experts in the chamber field. Maybe sometimes it’s just a social media expert, an HR expert, just people who can come in and educate our local chamber executives so that then they can be a resource in their local areas and their local communities. We also do two conferences a year where we get as many people together as we can. It’s usually two to three days, and it’s just pure professional development education, but also that awesome time to be with your colleagues who do the things that you do, day in and day out, and they understand how how this job is, so it can be a resource for folks moving forward, just to have that, that person to go to and talk to when needed. As far as spreading the word the chamber newsletter, we love to get local chambers in there. And one of my dear friends in Fall city and I Amber Holly started a podcast a couple of months ago called chamber chatter boxes, where we just interview local chambers and they talk about what makes their community unique, some of the events they have going on. We really encourage folks across the rest of the state or region to go and visit those communities in our podcast. So not nearly the level of the chamber chat yet Brandon, but we have goals to aspire 12 episodes in someday, we will also be at 309

Brandon Burton 17:47
Awesome, awesome. I love hearing chambers podcast. So this is, you know, going through COVID. That was kind of the vision that I saw. Is with the pivoting. I even set up a page on my website called the podcast pivot, right? So during during COVID, chambers still needed to get their messaging out and, and some did, you know, Zoom calls, and they used other tools where they could, you know, put out video. But podcasting, when people are at home and they’re doing different things, and they can listen and and be able to be educated while they’re doing other things, is so important. And I think the world we live in today where everybody’s so busy, that’s a way to reach people, absolutely, podcast so

Tara Lea 18:27
and drive time, yeah? I mean, just drive time in our state too. People in our car a lot, yeah, driving throughout Nebraska. So it’s a nice time to just pop on a podcast and use that, that that windshield time for good, absolutely,

Brandon Burton 18:40
instead of just listening to radio or whatever, I mean, right? Music, yeah, we all have those songs embedded in our mind already, so we don’t need to keep reinforcing. We can, you know, broaden our minds. But

Tara Lea 18:53
that’s right, I could sing a little bit for you if you want to. No, I’m just happy to everyone would turn their this podcast off right now if I started that.

Brandon Burton 19:00
But I was just gonna, I was just gonna say how great you sounded, you know, with the microphone and the podcast set up. So we’ll leave it right there. But

Tara Lea 19:07
perfect, sounds good.

Brandon Burton 19:11
So you guys meet twice a year for a conference that’s you. That’s kind of unique. I see most, most state association, State Chambers, are doing, you know, once a year. So do you know what was behind that? To do it twice a year, and is a turnout similar for both, or is one more supported than the other? Yeah,

Tara Lea 19:32
so we have a fall conference every year, and that’s probably that’s been going on for as long as I’ve been in the chamber industry, and we kind of rotate that across the state, so every region has a chance to be host and show off what they’re doing. That is our bigger event that definitely gets more chamber execs there. And then in the spring, we do what we call mini institutes. It’s just a two day session. It’s typically either centrally located in the state of Nebraska or Omaha, Lincoln area. And that started. Gosh, probably five or six years ago, just because people wanted more they wanted to get together more often. They wanted more education opportunities. And that one, it’s a little less attended, but again, it’s just a two day event, so sometimes people coming from further distances, it’s, you know, can I justify the day and a half compared to the three days? And so we tried to keep the prices really low on that too. We know there’s not a huge budget for professional development, a lot of small chambers, so we keep it under $100 for both of those conferences, and try to provide as much value as we can while folks are together. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 20:33
that’s great. I think for those listening who may be on a board for their state association, just take some ideas. See if there’s value in your state to do something similar. But from Tara’s perspective, it’s all about strengthening Nebraska. So don’t, don’t, don’t compete too Right, right? Don’t

Tara Lea 20:50
get too good. Go ahead and do a few things, but you know, don’t. Don’t be as good as us. Just kidding,

the whole country will be better if everybody works together. So it’s all good.

Brandon Burton 21:00
Absolutely. I love it. I love these approaches. I mean, you guys are, it seems like you’re doing things right, to build up leaders to to turn them into conveners that are going to strengthen their communities, be that extension of the Nebraska chamber throughout the state. I love the strategy that you guys are making. Is there anything else to the approach that you guys are taking that’s worth noting again, for those listening who may be taking something, taking what they hear today, back to state association or or up to their State Chamber and say, Hey, can we do this surgery? Have you thought about this? What? What would you suggest? Yeah, I

Tara Lea 21:36
know I mentioned it, but I really there’s so much value in having someone at the local level. And that’s, I think, when I came from a local chamber to the state that was the biggest piece that was missing. It was, you know, we were expecting our members to come to us all the time. And even at local chambers, we do that too, where it’s like we’re hosting these events. If they’re members, they should be coming to our events, coffees, urban cuttings, whatever it may be. At the State Chamber, we were hosting three events a year, and expecting folks to just show up. Well, that’s that’s not a great way to do business. That’s not a way we find out what our members need and want. So statewide, I think the best thing we did is have these local navigators in communities, where they can get out and hear from each individual member, or even if they’re not members, just communities across the state, local chambers, I think, do the same thing. And I’ve really stressed this to my local chamber friends, is that you need to meet one on one with with as many members as you can. We’re here to make the business community a better place. And if we don’t know what the issues are that our business leaders are facing, there’s no way we can do that. So that one on one, time that you spend with your members is so valuable and so important and and even if, you know, no solution comes out of it, just the fact that your business member feels heard is huge for them. And when that invoice comes around to pay again, you know, the following year, they’re going to remember that time they spent with you, and it’s going to be a lot easier for them to write that check, instead of, you know, debating if they continue their membership or not,

Brandon Burton 22:59
yeah, and this, I mean, I feel like we see this model from the US Chamber, where they have representatives that they come and they’re going to state conferences, and they’re going to local chamber, you know, events and being, being seen, being present, taking note on what, what are the issues of importance, and being able to take them back to the US Chamber say, Okay, let’s focus on these things. So it’s a great, great model. It seems to be working for them. So why not? Why not do it in Nebraska, or whatever state you’re in right now? So exactly

Tara Lea 23:32
Brita. The other thing I was going to mention that we do is, I know, when I was a local chamber exec, the lobbying side of things was not my cup of tea. I didn’t, didn’t follow very well. I didn’t, didn’t understand a lot about it. I can easily admit that. But so what we do at the State Chamber also is, during the legislative session, we’re giving our local chambers kind of cheat sheets that they can then share in their newsletters or meetings with their government affairs council, where we’re basically like handing it to them with the Cliff Notes, like, yes, here’s the big things that are happening during the session or even happened this week at the state capitol. Feel free to do a social media tweet that’s similar to this, or, you know, whatever it might be, just really getting those resources to the folks that aren’t comfortable with it and don’t, you know, I would never want to do a newsletter and put something that I wasn’t 100% sure about, and now we’re just taking the guesswork out of it for the local chambers. And here you serving on a platter, like here it is. Go ahead and just copy and paste, and then if they have questions, our government affairs folks here at The Nebraska chamber are amazing and more than willing to go out and do lunch and learns and things with the local Chambers as well with their businesses, so that it kind of takes some pressure off that local chamber leader and the experts can come in and really talk about what’s going on in the capital.

Brandon Burton 24:44
Yeah, and advocacy should be such a huge part of each local chamber, and we all know chambers typically run understaffed, so to be able to put in the time individually to do the research, take an opinion to say what’s best for our business community, that’s a huge and. That’s a full time job, really, yeah, and absolutely, to be able to have that support from the State Chamber to say, Here it is. Now, I would suggest for everybody still read it, you know, look at but yes, use that as a resource to promote and put out there and and call it your own, you know, say, in a partnership with the State Chamber, this is what we were standing on, and it’s hard to go wrong if you take that approach. So great point. Nobody

Tara Lea 25:27
goes to school to learn how to be a chamber professional, and we wear so many different hats that it’s just nice when we can have, you know, help out there along the way to make us look better. That’s always a good thing, absolutely.

Brandon Burton 25:39
Well, Tara, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask, on behalf of a listener who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, you’ve shared some great, great tips and strategies, but what might you offer for a chamber that’s trying to accomplish that goal of of taking their chamber to the next level?

Tara Lea 25:55
Yeah, don’t be scared to try new things. I think we kind of get in our little ruts of we’ve always done it this way, so we’re going to keep doing it that way. And I think that mentality, hopefully, is changing a little bit as we’ve all had to reinvent ourselves, especially through the COVID years and things like that. But I think just go ahead and try that event. If you’re if you’re not sure if it’s going to work or not, do it one year if it flops, who cares? Don’t do the next year. If you are looking to change some initiatives within your city your community, go talk to the mayor. Go make those relationships happen so that you can really push things forward. But you can’t be scared to try new things, because we’re ever changing and continuing to show our value to our members and our communities. So take the leap and do whatever fun event or initiative that you’re hoping to achieve,

Brandon Burton 26:43
absolutely. That’s great advice. As we look to the future of chambers, I always like to see, you know, what does your crystal ball say? How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward? Well, let

Tara Lea 26:56
me wait my taro cards out here. No, I’m just kidding. So I could not be more excited for I feel the future of chambers are going throughout our country. I mentioned before COVID, like we all did a rebrand, right? We were worried. What are we going to look like when we come out on the other side of this? We can’t do things the way we always did. I truly believe chambers are stronger now than we were five years ago. I think we’re just going to continue to grow. I do see some more partnerships happening, whether it be regional chambers forming or more economic development and chamber folks merging. I think that’s probably the way things are going to go. But I think we’re only going to be stronger because of that. So I think, yeah, I have no doubt that chambers will continue to play a huge role in their communities. They will be the people who know everything about what’s going on and the place that folks go to to find the latest and greatest information. And I can’t be I can’t wait to be part of the ride, and it’s so fun where I’m at now, because I not only get to see it at the state level, but I really get to see it happening in the local communities as well, and that is absolutely amazing. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 28:01
I love that vision of the future, and I am going to plug just our previous episode with Angela Wilson. She talked about negotiating contracts. So that is the future, with chambers merging and taking on more of an economic development role. Give that episode a listen and just really get into what you need to be considering as you approach contracts with these different partnerships. But I love that, that vision of the future. So thank you, Tara, absolutely. Yeah. So I wanted to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you. Learn more about how the Nebraska chamber is approaching different things, or what they can do to to strengthen their chamber. What would you Where would you point people to to reach out and connect?

Tara Lea 28:45
Yeah, I am always available via email. I might take two emails, like it did when Brandon tried to set this up today, but I promise I will try to get back to you much of the first one. My email is just tlea@nechamber.com, again, T, L, E, A, at, N, E, chamber.com, or I’m always available. You can call me at 402-480-6918,

they also have a great Nebraska chamber has a website that’s great leadership. Nebraska has an awesome website. I would also, if you’re interested in leadership program, would follow leaders from Nebraska on Facebook. We’re always posting the fun things that we’re doing, so feel free to give that a follow and and steal some ideas from us as well.

Brandon Burton 29:31
That’s perfect. We’ll, we’ll do our best to link all of that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy to find all the places and and links. But Tara, this has been great having you on chamber chat podcast. I love the energy and enthusiasm and the insight that you brought to us today, and appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you so much. Well,

Tara Lea 29:52
I so appreciate the opportunity and all the local chambers and State Chambers keep doing great work. Really proud of you, and can’t end without saying, Go Big Red.

Brandon Burton 30:00
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Bend Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katy Brooks

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

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

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 Carol Hamilton. Carol is principal of Grace Social Selector Consulting, LLC, and host of Nonprofit 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, Grace 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 GraceSocialSector.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, although my name is pretty common. Carol Hamilton. So also check out Nonprofit Mission: Impact. It’s on all the podcast platforms. You can find me there.

Brandon Burton 32:35
So 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Next Level of Chamber with Donny Jones

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

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Our guest for this episode is 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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Hey, this is Donna. Yiftee community cards are free for you, free for your members and they bring lots of new sales and foot traffic into your local shops and restaurants. But don’t take it from me. Here’s Siobhan from Truckee, California to tell you about her program.

Siobhan Kenney 10:25

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Donna Novitsky 10:56

Thanks Siobhan. If you’d like to join Truckee in supporting the shop local movement, check us out yiftee.com or send an email to sales@yiftee.com.

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is 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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Christine Langenfeld

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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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