Category: Technology

Chambers Leveraging AI with Kaytee Lorentzen

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Kaytee Lorentzen. Kaytee is the Director of Communications and events at the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. She spearheads the Chamber’s multifaceted marketing communications initiative engaging with a diverse array of stakeholders including Chamber members, the public media board and staff members. Her role involves closely collaborating with every department to craft coherent and compelling communication and marketing materials that cater to their unique needs. Beyond communications, she meticulously organizes and oversees the myriad of events that the Chamber orchestrates ensuring that they align with the organization’s objectives and standards. Kaytee has been a part of the chamber team since May of 2021, initially as a marketing and communications coordinator before stepping into the role as marketing and communications manager in January 2023, and subsequently evolving into her current position in September 2023. Before joining the chamber as a staff member, she was a member of the chamber with her photography business for four years. Kaytee holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from Ball State University. She’s a graduate from the Indiana chamber Executives Association, who’s your chamber Academy in June 2022, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Purdue University. And Kaytee, I am very excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast. I would 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.

Kaytee Lorentzen 3:37
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Brandon, for having me on. I’ve been listening to your podcast ever since I have been a chamber professional. So I was super excited to get this opportunity. You helped me grow into this position. So I appreciate that. And everyone that’s been on the podcast as well. Just a little something interesting about myself. That isn’t in my bio. If I had a you know, a separate universe life, then I probably would have been a detective. I love true crime stuff. It’s kind of weird. Much I Love it. But even growing up I was, you know, doing forensics, trying to figure out fingerprinting and putting clues together. So that is what, but I would be in a different life. That’s

Brandon Burton 4:21
That is interesting. And there’s something to that the thrill of solving a mystery. You know, my my wife, she works at our kids elementary school. She’s the front desk receptionist and every now and then she’ll come home from work and say, I should have a detective badge. Like my GED today, you know, usually it’s some you know, kid in the neighborhood that’s caused some mischief, and they get caught on a ring doorbell camera or something. So the police will bring it to the school and say Do you recognize this kid? So she solves the mysteries. But there’s there’s something to that at the thrill of solving a mystery for sure. Oh,

Kaytee Lorentzen 4:55
yeah, like watching it on television shows I’m all about okay, I wonder if this happens. Next. Right,

Brandon Burton 5:01
right. Well tell us a little bit more about the greater Bloomington chamber just to give us an idea of the size staff scope of work. The tight you know, what kind of work you guys are involved with just to kind of set the table for our discussion. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 5:14
absolutely. So the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce is located in Bloomington, Indiana. We are the home of Indiana University. So go Hoosiers, which is very ironic considering I go to Purdue University for graduate education. We Are Rivals so that’s really fun to be a part of. But the greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce, we have six full time staff members and one part time staff. And all ton of interns. Currently we have one high school intern to undergrad scholar intern. So they’ll be with us for all four of their undergrad years, and two grad fellows which are also going to be with us for their whole grad program. So that’s how many we have a ton of people here. And we have about 850 members currently, Bloomington itself, the size is about 80,000 people. And then Monroe County, which is the county that Bloomington resides in is about 140,000 we say we are the greater Bloomington So yes, we do have a lot of Bloomington businesses but also more Monroe County and surrounding.

Brandon Burton 6:25
Very good that that definitely helps to give some perspective and even going through your bio just in the marketing communications as you’ve had different roles, shows you guys are you’ve got to you’ve got a good amount of staff and get a good team there to work with. So that’s awesome. Well, our topic that we’ve settled on for today is very relevant and timely for all the buzz that’s going around right now around chat GPT and AI and generative AI and so we’re gonna dive in deeper in that discussion today. Katie has done some some great presentations on this at different conferences. So we’re going to kind of tap into her her wealth of knowledge to be able to share some of that, with all you chamber pros as we as we move forward in this conversation. We’ll dive into that as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 9:03
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Brandon Burton 9:57
All right, Kaytee, we are back And so I’m excited to learn how you’re using generative AI and just AI in general, as a chamber professional, where you see the use cases and where it’s helped to save you time make your job easier. And does it save you time at this point? You know, or is it just the learning and everything, but it ends up making your job easier. I’d love just to hear how you’re integrating this. And hopefully spark some ideas for listeners maybe want to explore some of these aspects of utilizing AI at their chamber.

Kaytee Lorentzen 10:32
Absolutely. So first and foremost, like artificial intelligence is just this plethora of things. So it pretty much all ultimately is intended to make computers do things that when done by people are described as having indicated intelligence. So I was very skeptical at first, I’m not one of those people who typically jump on bandwagons. So in November of last year, or sorry, to it would be November 2022. At that point, when it came out, I was like, I don’t know about this chat. GBT, it kind of seems a little not in my realm. Then I tried it. All I did was just asked a few questions. And I was like, wow, I just opened the door to something that’s going to make my life so much easier, just by asking it simple questions. And the more I’ve been using it, the more I have learned how to write the prompts that are necessary for it to generate the kind of answers that I’m meeting. So for example, the one thing I use it a lot for is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. It sounds very dated, and some of its not customer focused. And that’s more of what it needs to be. You want it to say, like I asked it, this is what we currently have on our website for our membership benefits. Can you rewrite this in more of a customer focused realm or point of view, and also give some examples of why it’s important for somebody to join the Chamber of Commerce. And they will give you a full list like, a lot of the time, if you ask it for list, it’ll give it to you. And now that I’ve used it so much, it thinks that I like list all the time. So it will continuously give me list until I say please stop putting into the list. I just need a paragraph. Yeah. And then it typically apologizes. It goes, Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me fix that for you. Right, right. The big thing that I’m doing right now is just rewriting a lot of our website copy. I’ve also used it for social media copy. I’ve even asked it to create social, like a social media plan. Small Business Week was something I was like, Okay, I want to do something different. I don’t just want to say, yeah, it’s Small Business Week, let’s celebrate small business. Let’s actually make some sort of content with it. And so it was able to give me five different days of social media content that all I had to do was just pretty much copy and paste and find some graphics and photos to go with it. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:59
So talk to us a little bit more about rewriting the website copy. Are you literally are you copy and pasting paragraphs from your website, login in chat? GPT? Are you able to give a link to the website and say, scan this page? And tell me how how does that interface work for those listening?

Kaytee Lorentzen 13:15
Yeah, it depends on what program you’re using, and what version of the program you’re using. I know, some websites will do that. But not all of them, like I primarily use to actually btw and chat GPT for. So I use the paid version. But I don’t put a link in there. I literally copy and paste the exact information so that way I like because a lot of our content is pretty long website page. So I just was like, No, I just want this section rewritten in this point of view, and then obviously, the main thing is, I always say, double check, it’s work. Because you never know what is gonna pop out and you want to edit it. I don’t ever think that you should copy and paste directly from whatever chat GBT or you know, whatever generative AI system you’re using, you need to go in and, like have oversight, it gets you 80% of the way there. But you need to go in and edit and finesse it and make it more your voice.

Brandon Burton 14:16
Yes, so you shared your experience in November of 20 I guess it’s 2022 right when chat GPT was made public and available for everybody to use. And I remember going to Thanksgiving dinner my brother in law was like Oh, you gotta check this out. And he’s he’s a very loud in your face kind of person anyway, so he’s shoving his phone everybody’s facing you ask it a question and just very excited about it and like, Okay, calm down. You know, so I asked him a few questions and and really the responses I got back because I was asking business related questions. You know, how can I create a social media posts from my podcast or tell me about a chamber of commerce, like what Chambers of Commerce do and just that feedback I was getting from it initially. You needed to verify, you know, the stuff it was kicking out. And granted, this is Chad GBT three. So it wasn’t it hadn’t scanned, you know nearly as much of the of the web and things like that. But an example of just this last week, I’ve got a daughter in fifth grade, she came home with a math problem in her homework that she wasn’t able to figure out. And my, I think it was my son who’s a senior single as chat GPT. And, like, first of all, it seems like cheating or, and then your homework to plug it in. But like, we worked through the problem, got the answer? And then I’m like, I’m gonna try this, you know. So I asked chat GBT exactly how the question was on the homework. And immediately it spit back an answer. And it wasn’t the right answer. So I gave it some clarifying, you know, prompts along with it, then it apologize, spit back and other answer, and it never came up with the right answer. And after verifying, like more and more of the criteria with it, it kept apologizing, but then we kept giving me the same answer over and over. And like, okay, and this is still catch up three GPT 3.5. So it wasn’t the paid version, maybe that would have gotten me better results, but goes to the point of you need to verify you can’t just trust everything that it puts out as being doctrine, like you got to, you got to really read it, you got to make sure it’s accurate. And some may say, Well, does that really save you time then? So how would you approach that with if you need to verify everything? How does that aspect work and time saving, or you know, the application into real world scenarios?

Kaytee Lorentzen 16:36
I think it varies on what you’re planning on using chat GPT for so if you’re using it for research, that can definitely still take you some more time, it hasn’t been able to scan everything, and it’s still learning, it’s still, you know, it’s still a child, and it’s learning new tech. Yeah, it’s still a baby, it’s still trying to figure out what it’s doing. But for me, I use it more for things that I know are fact based, like hard numbers type of thing. I use it more for like the colorful language. For an example, there was one way someone emailed us and I was trying to explain to them, I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say. But also saying it in a much better way. Because right, there are some times where your brain just you know, when that clicker icon just keeps going on a blink word screen. That’s how I felt with this. I was like, I don’t know how to say this. So I just asked chat GPT. And it gave me a much better way of writing it. That actually was exactly what I wanted to say. But I just didn’t have the words or the sound mind at that point. I think it was like 430 on a Friday or something. And it put it all together and flowed nicely. So that was something I more use it for is earliest for chatty BTW I use it more for that aspect. Even if you asked it to give you a source, sometimes it makes it up. So but at least if you can look up and see if that source even exists. And that sometimes works. I think I’ve only used it a few times with statistics. And then what I’ll do is I’ll just copy and paste this statistic that it gives me and look up where it is in Google. Yeah, just to verify, make sure that’s fine. But yeah, it varies, because I’ve also heard similar situations with homework, where someone it was I think it was NPR that I was listening to. And they were saying, Well, my daughter was doing homework. And they and I’m a history major. And it asked if this particular person in history was pro separation of church and state or against it, and it gave the wrong answer. And they were like, That’s not right. So I if you ever ask it fact, based information like that, then I would at least just copy and paste what it gave you and ask it as much question as you can to get where they got it from, quote unquote. And then you can find it on the internet pretty quickly. So

Brandon Burton 19:10
is there a value to giving it feedback to say that’s not a correct answer? Or yes, I’m gonna challenge the answer a little.

Kaytee Lorentzen 19:18
I think so because it’s learning based off of what you are giving it as well. So like if you there’s even after every single prompts that it gives you, was this, what you were looking for? Was this not and then there’s a thumbs up, thumbs down and you just put that in there it actually is teaching it. That’s another way that it’s learning on giving the correct answers. So if other people start asking similar questions or something like that, it’s it’s now learning based off of our responses, right, right.

Brandon Burton 19:49
And I think you know, although some of the information you get may not be totally accurate need to verify if you’re having some writer’s block going on or looking for ideas Just to be able to put a prompt in and receive, you know, a ton of ideas and, you know, pretty much instantaneously, things that will get those creative juices going in your mind, again, that I’ve heard it said that it’s not to replace your own thinking in your own mind, but it’s to supplement it’s to add to what you’re already doing. Yes. Yeah. I know, in an example that I had, there was a chamber professional that I mentioned, how much they enjoy the podcast, and you know, very nice email about what they have appreciated. So this is great. Would you mind putting this as a review on Apple podcasts? And they try it and try it couldn’t figure it out? Like, can you tell me how to leave a review? Like, let me ask Chet GPT. So I just did, how do you leave a review for by and just copy and paste it? And I could have typed the response and said, Here’s how you do it. But to look up each, you know, the website and give a link and here and there and back and forth? Just that plug it in chat? GPT it was all right, copy, paste, send and it was done. And it was easy. It was easy.

Kaytee Lorentzen 21:05
Yeah, as long as you just review it and be like, Yeah, that’s exactly how you do it, then you can just copy and paste, which is nice. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. Even for scripts for videos that we do. I’ve asked it to make it you can even ask it. Can you make this more of a TED Talk style, and it will completely read rewrite it? I did that actually the first time I presented this at the Indiana chamber Executives Association Conference. Hi, how do you write my intro? I didn’t like how it was like, have a we tried TED Talk style? Yeah, very different. It was, it almost felt like when you were reading it out loud, exactly how it starts. Right. Any TED Talk? So

Brandon Burton 21:50
maybe let’s talk about that a little bit about the prompts that we put into to any AI, generative AI assistant. What kind of things do we need to consider? Because I think we’re very much a lot of the public is very much still in the mindset of Google, right? You put in? What is this? He put in a question, get a response. So talk to us about a prompt, and maybe becoming a prompt engineer, so to speak.

Kaytee Lorentzen 22:17
Yes, yes. So that is something I’ve definitely been trying to hone my skills on, is learning how to create the best prompts. I always say, garbage in, garbage out. So whatever. If you give it like subpar information, it’s going to give you a subpar answer. So you want to make sure that it has as much information as you can possibly give it. Like if you’re trying to make a all do something pretty simple, like a social media post, if you tell it your audience exactly who it’s supposed to cater to, you can even tell it more of like your customer persona, it will give you a much better answer and a less generic answer, it’ll become more personalized. So that’s a lot of the time why I copy and paste a lot of our content when I’m asking it to rewrite it. So I say take this and move it to something more like this other thing. So that could be you know, saying it needs it needs to have more colorful language, can you make it sound more professional, this needs to be more towards small business owner, not necessarily the big business, so you can change up exactly what you’re wanting it to do. But the more specific the better it is.

Brandon Burton 23:37
Yeah. So as you’re given that response reminds me I had recently read a book called The AI whispers method. And it it’s a, it’s an AI generative fiction novel. So it takes the whole hero storyline and plugs it into to teach you how to use AI. And it talks a lot about generating prompts. And even asking, like, for example, with Chet GPT, to act as a math teacher or act as a math professor to give me an answer to this problem or act as a sports historian and tell me why, you know, this scenario is happening or so being able to get that context of act as if or act as a different, you know, expert in different fields, it’s able to tap into different resources and really understand what it is that you’re looking for. So as I played around with that there’s a lot of power in the act as prompt when you plug that into chat. GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 24:45
Absolutely. That’s actually something I do for our customer journey type of thing. I said to chat GPT act as if you are a brand new business. You’ve never heard of the Chamber of Commerce. You We are interested in it because someone mentioned that it’s a great thing to join, why should they join? What are their pain points? What are their objectives? What are the rebuttals to those objectives? So you can really start tailoring your content to better address their pain points and why you’re the solution to their problems.

Brandon Burton 25:19
Right. I love that. So let’s, let’s maybe circle back a little bit more to the generative AI. Discussion. So you mentioned you, you’ve used it to rewrite website content, you use it for social media posts. What other applications are you seeing in the chamber world, specifically for using generative AI? That

Kaytee Lorentzen 25:40
is a fabulous question. So for me, I have been using it more obviously, for the marketing aspect of it. I’ve even asked it to write event descriptions. So what makes people come into the event more? What makes it more appealing, besides just saying, you know, come to this chamber event at this day, on this time at this place, we look forward to expanding your network hope to see you there. It sounds the exact same every single time. So how do I change it up and make it sound more exciting? What makes that chamber member have to be at that event. So I use that a lot for to change up the descriptions. I’ve also asked it to make correct like full social media campaigns, not just the captions itself. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the market research different emails to members. So like how, like, if you’re saying I want people to fill out this survey, what makes someone fill out this, if you ask to attribute it, right, this email, enticing people to fill out this survey that doesn’t. Obviously, we’re all nonprofits, we don’t have a whole lot of money to give out as an incentive. So without incentives, I’m creating different types of plans for customer journeys. The one that I’ve used the most often is writing up ours, we have a sponsorship book that we do all at one time, kind of like why GM does. And so I’ve asked it to rewrite our sponsorship book and why people should sponsor it and why it’s important to sponsor it. And then lately, I have noticed AI disclosures on your website, writing a disclaimer for your website, we actually didn’t have quite a few like the privacy policies, those things that you’re supposed to have on your website. And so I was like, I’m gonna see if Chad GPD can come up with something very like simple and then obviously run it by our lawyer, just to make sure everything sounds great. But it really helps take out a lot of the guesswork for us. We didn’t have to do you know, how many hours of research trying to make sure that what we had in there? Would it be? Sound for us to use, even if it’s just like a blanket one? I think ours is our AI disclaimer is probably two paragraphs, just saying, you know, we use AI, there are things that may be generated by AI that come out here, but there’s always human oversight, ultimately, is what it says but in some more legalese term. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:15
Like that. So I guess that brings up a good talk at a good point to talk about as well, where I know I’ve been at chamber conferences and breakout sessions you you lead some these breakout sessions, where we talk about AI? And the question always comes up as far as the legality, the copyright issues if you’re especially like image generation, right? So if you’re asking generative AI to produce an image for you, who owns the rights to that, is there copyright issues if you’re bringing in certain elements into that? So if you would speak a little bit to the legality and regulations around AI and what we need to kind of be aware of and kind of look out for as we kind of navigate through this new world of artificial intelligence?

Kaytee Lorentzen 29:03
Absolutely. This is definitely something we need. As chamber professionals. If you’re using AI just to keep up to date on there are quite a few websites that you can track legislation. And there’s a lot on AI. Currently, right now, as of August 30, of 2023, the US Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register on copyright. And AR pretty much just means they’re going to be studying it to see kind of whether legislation or regulatory steps are even warranted, and also just steps to advise Congress on any legislation that does come through. But anything right now made by something other than human is not protected by copyright. So if I like the API disclosure I was talking about I can’t if someone else wanted to copy and paste it and use it, they legally can. And I can’t cry that that’s copyright. So that’s it. One thing that we have to look at, right now a lot of people are getting frustrated with the image portion of it, I haven’t used that aspect too much, because I still feel like there is a lot of stock photo that I can use in that aspect. And I don’t need to just create an image that we don’t have. But other people are saying that it’s very unfair to the artists, which I do, as someone who’s a photographer, I get that completely. And it takes, you know, scanning my work to use someone else’s yet that’s not exactly something I’m a fan of. But I am interested to see where that’s going to be going and legislations and any what Congress is planning on doing on that. And I do think that they’re in a very interesting position right now. And I think they do need to take that whole issue very seriously, that AI is here, and it’s going to, it’s, you know, people are still scared of it. But it was very similar to like, when the internet happened, it, everyone was scared of it, it was this big thing that everyone’s like, this is going to change the world. It did. But now if we look back, if you don’t have a website, you’re not really relevant. Or you’re not considered trustworthy. So if that’s something similar what AI is gonna do, that’s, I’m just very interested to see where it’s gonna go, what regulations we’re gonna have. So just keeping up to date, making sure that we are using it legally, then that is something that we do need to do, and do our due diligence on it, as you know, people that are in the community seen as a trustworthy and leader.

Brandon Burton 31:42
Yeah, for sure. Now, it’s definitely important to keep that on the forefront with any legislation that comes out. But I think to your point with the internet, you know, if you didn’t adopt the internet and have a website, now, you’re kind of irrelevant. And I see a very similar course with AI. And just the AI technology has been adopted quicker than any other technology in the history of mankind. I don’t know, besides like the fire, maybe I don’t know. But. But as far as the technology goes, it’s been adopted very quickly. And I could easily see in five or 10 years maybe doesn’t even take that long, that there’s going to be two types of chambers, right? There’s going to be the ones that use AI and the ones that are no longer around, essentially, because they’re not relevant. And they’re not able to really leverage the power that comes from Ai, especially when you’re dealing with limited budgets, and being nonprofits and all that. There’s a lot of leverage. Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 32:38
and I completely understand why it would seem intimidating or scary at first, because I was in that same exact boat. But as soon as I tried it, I was very surprised at the fact that I felt like it was something that anyone and everyone can use. Even if you’re just asking simple questions like, can you give me a recipe for a very simple meal like something, it’s something you can just play around with and have fun. And the more you use it, the more you find things that you can use it for? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 33:09
I’ve heard people will take, you know, just random ingredients they have in the refrigerator and say I’ve got these seven ingredients, give me a recipe of something, I can make it it’ll do it. So where would you suggest somebody gets started with a journey in AI and just kind of getting their mind wrapped around it? Yeah,

Kaytee Lorentzen 33:28
I would say just pick up like one or any of the generative AI tools that we have available. Google’s version is Bard. And then there’s chat GPT. There’s all just, obviously, Google, because Google or cert, go in your search engine, and ask it for a generative AI tool, and just start asking it questions. And the more you do it, the more you’ll get better at asking the I don’t want to write questions, but better questions, you refine the questions, you refine the questions to get the answers that you’re looking for. And then you start, that’s when your wheels start turning and figuring out where can I apply this in my professional life? Right.

Brandon Burton 34:10
So I didn’t give you a heads up that I was going to ask you this question. So if we need to edit it out, we can but I’m curious. What are you excited about on the forefront that you see coming with AI in the next weeks, months years?

Kaytee Lorentzen 34:24
I’m just excited to see the evolution of where it’s going. It just reminds me of like when the first iPhone came out, like and just seeing how it evolves and where it’s at now that it’s pretty much a part of our daily lives. If you’re an Apple user, obviously. It’s something that I am just excited to see where it’s gonna go. I’m excited to see how our legislation will take this and you hopefully use it for the good obviously, there’s always some bad actors, but I think Oh, For all this is going to be something that’s extremely well received in, in our world. Right?

Brandon Burton 35:07
I think there’s just a world of opportunity available. And quite honestly, I don’t know if legislation can keep up with the trends and the way things will develop. But we need to be plugged in and not be burying our head in the sand pretending like it’ll go away because it’s not going to go away. Well, Katie, as we look to the future, actually, let me back up before I ask that question for a chamber who’s listening who wants to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share for them to try to accomplish that goal?

Kaytee Lorentzen 35:42
I would say, the tip to use is embrace playing. I know that sounds so weird, but embrace that it’s something new embrace change, it will make a world of a difference. Because I can even tell you even in my office, as soon as people started embracing this tool, it was a game changer. Like our membership director, she now uses that a lot to help personalize each individual sales email, instead of just having like this copy and paste mentality of the same type of email, she can personalize it a lot more saying, this is the industry this person is in. And now she says that she really can’t go without it. Our operations manager uses it to help create some Excel documents, like it’s different things, the more you play with it, and embrace the change that it can bring, the better I think we’ll all be.

Brandon Burton 36:41
Absolutely, it reminds me. Last year, our church, we were putting together a fundraiser for our youth program at church. And I was trying to get the text together for the flyers that we’re gonna go out and promote on social media and everything. And I was just having the hardest time trying to make all the words fit on this flyer without being crowded and like telling what we’re trying to accomplish. And I told my wife, this Super Chat GPT will say I plug it in, give it the prompts, and it spit back and answer those beautiful, perfect, and we use that going forward. Like if I would have just done that from the beginning, it would have saved me so much time and headache and just beating my head against a wall trying to figure something out. That wasn’t coming to me. And it was it’s a great tool. So I would encourage everybody to embrace the play and embrace the change. Because I think initially, you and I both had this similar initial reactions I get I’ll know about this chat GPT steps, the more you get into it, you see more and more applications where it can assist you and make your life a little bit easier. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kaytee Lorentzen 37:53
You know, it’s funny as I was like, you know, how do I answer? Because I knew this one was coming, right? Because I hear from everyone. So I asked chat GPT what they thought. And it gave me a gave me a list of nine different things. But I would like to kind of summarize what because a lot of it is things that I thought of but I was like how do I make this sound? Great. I do see a lot of the future of chambers using innovation and technology adaptation, obviously, for me using AI and GPT. I do see that. And I think with that we will become leaders in the business space in general. I think it will bring forward I’m trying to think of the correct word that I want to use. But it will bring forward this leadership of how the standard should be set on business and how they can embrace it as well. And I think that we’ll have a lot of Gosh, I’m trying to figure out

Brandon Burton 39:04
here, but you can plug it as chat GPT

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:09
Pretty much yeah, just focusing on the technological changes focusing on small business and it’s going to just help leverage that and just, you know, promote this business atmosphere that I think will be that will occur encourage all of that.

Brandon Burton 39:33
Yeah, I can definitely see that and we need to be embrace the innovation that comes with technology. Yes.

Kaytee Lorentzen 39:43
You pretty much said exactly what I was wanting to say. All

Brandon Burton 39:45
right, well, whether you know it or not, you said it at some point in there because I wrote it down and he said well, Katie, I want to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who want to reach out and learn more, maybe Do you see some of the slides or anything you’ve shared at different conferences or whatever you’re willing to share and help out with them? What would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Kaytee Lorentzen 40:09
The best way is probably through either email or through LinkedIn. So my email is just klorentzen@chamberbloomington.org. And my LinkedIn, you can just find me, Katie Lorentzen, and I spell it differently. So I’ll spell it here for you guys. It is Kaytee and then my last name Lorentzen. And either a message on either of those are typically the best way to get a hold of me just because I am all over the place. And my phone is always on me. So those two apps right there for me.

Brandon Burton 40:45
That’s perfect. And we’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can pull that up and have easy access to reach out. But I appreciate all the value you offered to listeners today here on chamber tap podcast for sharing your experience of exploring and being innovative using generative AI and I just, you know, it’ll be fun to look back at this episode a year from now and be like, Wow, things have really advanced in the last year. So I know I’m excited. Yeah, but thank you for being with us today. This has been a fun and enlightening conversation. So thank you.

Kaytee Lorentzen 41:18
Thank you for having me.

Brandon Burton 41:19
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Data & Technology with Jaime di Paulo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 35:23
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Innovation & Experimentation with Mary Byers

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Mary Byers, Mary is co author for of Race for Relevance, Five Radical Changes for Associations and Road to Relevance, Five Strategies for Competitive Associations. She’s the former director of communications and Member Services for the Illinois Dental Society, and served in that capacity for nine years prior to starting her consulting business in 1998. Mary specializes in working with volunteer association leaders and chief staff executives to help define their roles and clarify their vision through leadership conference programming, facilitating strategic planning retreats and coaching. Mary is a certified Association Executive and a certified speaking professional. She is also the author of nine books. That Mary, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Mary Byers 2:58
I appreciate that. Brandon, I’m delighted to be here. And I love the impact that chambers make on the business leaders in the community and the communities themselves. So extra special day for me in terms of helping encourage your audience. Something interesting about me that not many people know is that I am a frustrated tap dancer. I love it. My feet just don’t move as quickly as I would like them to. And I’m also a amateur improv lover. So that’s I’ve been taking some improv lessons lately. And I’m looking forward to more. That’s

Brandon Burton 3:38
awesome. I can see where the speech and improv have some correlations and some crossover when you’re on the stage and needing to think on the fly. So that it goes along with professional development, right?

Mary Byers 3:51
I think it definitely for in my case, especially Sure, right? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 3:57
Well, normally, I would ask you how you know about your chamber size staff budget, but since you’re not a chamber, let’s just tell us a little about a little bit about the consulting work you do kind of who you try to work with impact to try to make the kind of course that you take and just give us a little bit of background.

Mary Byers 4:18
I started as an association staffer for one state level organization and one for an international organization. And that led into the work that I do you have now and I work with a wide variety of organization, trade associations, professional membership societies, and I work with them of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked with over 400 of them. And that gives me a view of what’s happening, what’s challenging organizations but I also recognize that each is unique and they have their own culture, history and traditions. So I love being able to encourage Association chamber professionals. to share what I’m seeing in the marketplace, and then to provide some resources for them so that as they grow in their roles and in their organizations, they have some resources to help them do that. Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 5:12
That’s great work you’re involved with. So for our topic for our discussion today, we settled on the idea of talking about innovation and experimentation. And I love this idea because chambers of commerce, as you’re probably aware, and and I would venture to say associations in general are always looking to what they can do to remain relevant to their members and and the people they serve. So I think innovation and experimentation is crucial to remaining relevant, and we will dive much deeper into this conversation as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 7:42
Hi, it’s me, Donna from Yiftee. Have I mentioned that we’re working with chambers and other leaders on community cards in more than 500 cities across the US. Yiftee is the undisputed leader in community cards because we did it first and have learned a lot and because it’s free for you to set up and free for your members to participate. Plus, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Many chambers have chamber checks or other similar programs. Imagine the benefits of those without the extra costs of staffing, creating and tracking checks and reconciling payments. Community cards are all digital, sold online and always available on the cardholders cell phone. We provide tons of training and marketing materials. Come check us out yiftee.com or email sales@yiftee.com. Back to you Brandon.

Brandon Burton 8:37
All right, Mary, we’re back from our break there. And as I mentioned, before we we took that pause. We’re focusing our discussion today around innovation and experimentation. And I know you as the author of the book race for relevance, this correlates very well. But I guess first of all, what what should chambers and associations be thinking about? Now as we’re sitting in 2023? And, and I hope we’re safe and saying post pandemic? What are what are some of those things they should be focusing on?

Mary Byers 9:13
Okay, first of all, let me define how I think about innovation. If I walked into the room and said, I want you to come up with a new program and service from scratch. That’s intimidating. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to do. So when I talk about innovation, I’m really talking about doing something differently. And when you look at it that way, we’re looking at small changes, possibly making big differences. We’re looking at experimentation, as you mentioned, and we’ll talk more about that as we go along. But But small risks, calculated risks, and then learning from the market as we take some of those small risks. And then the other thing that I would encourage people to be thinking about is What I call the 10% pledge. And that is committing to evolve 10% of what you’re currently doing, whether it’s 10% of your fundraising, 10% of your programming, 10% of your special projects, 10% of your communications, that way, you are engaged in continuous innovation or continuous improvement, which some organizations call it, and it doesn’t become a thing that we have to go to the board and ask for permission to do, it becomes something that becomes part and parcel of who we are. And we know that member’s needs were changing prior to the pan damnit, as I like to call it, because I think that’s just an apt description of what we’ve been through. And they’re, they’re changing as a result on the other side as well, too. And if we are continuously evolving, then we don’t have to engage in these big projects or big programs or big changes, and there might need to be some revolutionary innovation. But I think evolutionary innovation is more realistic for chambers, quite honestly. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:12
In fact, as you’re talking about that 10% pledge, I think, as chambers often, if they have an event or something of that nature, they’re conducting surveys and collecting data, either along the way, or post event. And, excuse me, collecting that data is perfect to put into that 10%, as you’re talking about to build to make those incremental changes as evolutionary changes, to continue improving and staying relevant. So I think that’s a great tip.

Mary Byers 11:41
And I’m surprised by how many organizations do surveying, especially post event serving, and then when it’s time to plan next year, somehow that data has stuck at it. We don’t look at it, we don’t use it. And yet, if we’re really listening to our market and our members, and we’re hearing what’s being said, many of the ideas that would help us innovate, are there. We don’t even have to come up with them. We just have to respond to them. Right?

Brandon Burton 12:13
Yeah, absolutely. So and I think that’s, that’s great. So the explanation you had there about how you look at innovation and experimentation, I think is great for kind of setting that mindset as we go about our discussion today. But maybe going back to that question about what what associations and chambers need to be thinking about, as we’re in this post pandemic timeframe.

Mary Byers 12:39
If I were sitting in a leadership role with an organization, I would be asking several questions. One wouldn’t be have members needs and expect expectations changed? And if so how? I would be asking, What can we help members do that they can’t do for themselves? Because I think that helps lead to our value proposition. And I would also be asking, how can we help members work less stressfully more profitably, and more productively? And I think one of the things that challenge chambers quite honestly, is you don’t have just one type of business, represented in the chamber, you’re not all restaurants, you’re not all retail stores. And every group has different needs. And so it’s, I guess another thing that I would encourage them to think about is segmenting their membership, and taking a look at the different categories represented. And then if you think about a Venn diagram, you know, that harkens back to grade school or high school, what are the commonalities, so if you do have restaurants, and you do have golf courses, and you do have retail shops, where are the common needs, and then if you can focus on those common needs, you’re going to be relevant to more of your membership, rather than being fragmented. And when everything is important, nothing is important. So I think an exercise of this nature helps focus. And when we focus we can make more of an impact.

Brandon Burton 14:18
Absolutely. And I couldn’t agree more and trying to figure out what are those common needs and and oftentimes a Venn diagram is a good way to visualize that see, where all that overlap is and where to where to focus that that time and effort. I think as we are recording this for May of 2023. Technology is abuzz right now with all sorts of things from blockchain to AI to you name it, but how do you see technology, the relevance of technology for a chamber and you know the relevance of it in adopting it and experimenting with it.

Mary Byers 15:02
Base for relevance came out in 2011. And in 2021, we produced an anniversary 10th anniversary edition. And one of the things I’m proud of, is the fact that the chapter on technology completely changed the base 10, meaning that technology is extremely important to how we deliver programs and service was the same. But we had new case studies, new data. We believe that this has to be an important aspect of strategy for organizations. So in addition to his strategic plan, I believe all chambers should also have a technology plan. I years ago, a friend of mine who’s a realtor suggested that we look around every year in our house and ask if we were going to sell our home this year, what would we need to do, and pick one project and do it. And the reason she suggested that is then we could enjoy the upgrades while we were living in the home rather than waiting to upgrade before we sold the home. And we also would be ready, then when it was time to sell the home, there wouldn’t be a long list of things that we had to do, because we had been keeping up with it. And I think the same thing is true with chambers, I think each year, we need to look around and say if we were going to upgrade our technology, what would we do? And then we need to go do it. We actually in 2011, we took a look at what percentage associations were spending on technology, it was 4.1% of their budgets. And when that got to that it was actually 1.6%. And yet, when you look at the impact that technology has on how we can deliver member programs and services, it’s huge. So our research show that for profit companies, we’re spending around seven to 8% of their gross revenue, not their net gross ology. So if we were to even aspire to half of that, we would be in a better position. So not only do we need a strategic plan, we need a technology plan. And we need to know and most know, most technology plans are going to last longer than a year, because technology is changing constantly. And as you said, new things are being introduced AI, we’re still looking at the impact of that. But part of the challenges for many or Chamber organizations, especially they are they’re varying sizes, and they have varying budgets, but we must double down on our commitment to technology. Here’s a question and additional question to be thinking about, and that is, how can we take the chamber to members, rather than always asking members to come to the chamber? Right. And technology’s one way to do that?

Brandon Burton 17:56
Absolutely. So I think that’s fascinating looking at the percentage being spent on technology in associations versus, you know, in the the for profit world. And yeah, I guess there’s the caveat with that is a lot of these technology, software’s will say, and we’ll have a free or maybe a nonprofit rate. So there’s reasons you could justify why they spend less and, you know, be be resourceful, by all means, but the point is to start integrating some of that technology. In your research and case studies, Were there certain things that stood out to you that would maybe be that, like, going back to your analogy of getting your house ready for sale, right, like a kitchen bathrooms, those things have the biggest ROI, right? So as you look at associations, what kinds of things technology wise, would you say, have the most ROI to try to implement implement sooner than later,

Mary Byers 18:55
making sure that you have a database that is flexible, so that you can actually pull data that you need and can use without investing a lot of time into that. I think a lot of associations don’t even realize what kind of data they’re sitting on. And so they’re not using, that’d be the first thing that making sure that your database is robust and flexible, so that it will help you with what you need. We also want to be thinking about automating and systematizing. Most chambers have smaller staffs. I’m surprised sometimes by the way that we are still manually taking registrations handling new dues or you know, new members. So anything that would help us streamline our workload, because we want to free up our staff to do the things that staff does best and that is relationship building, interfacing with members troubleshooting, solving problems getting out into the community. So any thing that would free up staff time, I think would be an important piece of it. Right? Our web presence absolutely needs to be modern, easy to search. Friendly. If you think about it, it is our first impression. When members are interested in joining, they go to the website. So how user friendly is it? We have to think about the member experience, when I find what I need, when I need it? Are things streamlined? Is it frustrating? How hard is it to use that I always tell people go try to join your organization. And pretend you have never seen your website or your processes before. So see it with fresh eyes, and then find the places that are frustrating. And then start with those.

Brandon Burton 20:49
I would say I would add, you know, have somebody who’s totally not in the chamber world. Look at your website, you know how? Because then you’ll know is your website telling the story of what your chamber does, like will that individual have an understanding of what a chamber is or what your chamber is? In your points on that the automation, I think of the example of the dentists you know, who goes to dental school, they learn how to be a great dentist, that’s what they do is they work on teeth, but if they have to spend, you know, 50% of their day, doing paperwork and moving things along the process, when there’s tools out there that will move it along. And that that would be the equivalent of the chamber being out there in the community and helping businesses be successful. And there’s tools like like Zapier, you know, that will connect a lot of these other technologies to be able to move things along in the process automatically. And, and relatively inexpensive. So you need to be exploring those different options, because there’s, there’s a lot of great tools, but you got to set aside that that 10% of the time to study it, research it and explore it, right. Yeah,

Mary Byers 22:00
and that’s one of the great things we’ve seen change in the last 10 years, since the first edition of the book was written, we now have more options, more apps, more plugins, it used to be that you would have to do a huge technology upgrade. And we’d go to the board and we’d get money. And then we would go through all the stress and strain of getting the new application installed. And then we would just live with that until it was time to do another upgrade. But you know, much like looking around your house and seeing what needs to be done. We can do that with technology now. And we can, we can say this is working, this isn’t we need to change this out, we need to plug this in. So we’ve got more flexibility. And now that we’ve gone to service as a subscription model, it’s more affordable. So rather than having a huge upfront commitment financially, we can basically pay as we go. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s gotten, you know, so much cheaper, that technology isn’t going to take a bite out of our budget. But I think we have to recognize the power of technology, and make sure that it is creating the kind of return on investment that we deserve for that, for that investment that we’re making

Brandon Burton 23:19
on that pay as you go model allows you to experiment a little more to and see if it really does work before you commit to buying a whole big price tag package. So I know you had shared a tip earlier on this. But I wanted to ask specifically about how to build a culture of innovation at a chamber. You know, there’s the old saying of you know, things have always been done this way. And of course, you want to break that mold. So how do you create a culture where people are thinking kind of what is that next step? What is what is the thing we can do to improve what we do here at our organization.

Mary Byers 23:58
The first thing I think we have to acknowledge is the importance of innovation, because the only way we’re going to change is by innovating. And this became an area of interest to me after the book was written because I started noticing the difference between organizations that were thriving, versus those that were just surviving. And those that were thriving, were actively innovating. They had a not only a verbal commitment to it, but a strategic commitment to it. They recognize that innovation requires experimentation. And so they change their language around how they even talk about it. They don’t talk in terms of success and failure. They talk in terms of success and learning. And so that takes some of the stigma away from innovation. So there has to be a commitment. There has to be it has to be part of the cultural value. We have to recognize and reward innovation, rather than punish it when It doesn’t work. And honestly, the board really has to have buy in for that, because the board’s role is to make sure that the Chamber has the expertise and the funding that they need to innovate. So some organizations actually have a line item in their budget, dedicated to innovation so that the staff doesn’t have to go to the board every time they want to try something new. They also other organizations will earmark a percentage of reserves, perhaps each year toward innovation. So we want to make the barriers to innovation as low as possible. And if I have to beg for money, every time I want to try something new, that certainly doesn’t encourage innovation, it actually discourages it. So the board has to really understand the role of innovation, they need to support it, and they need to adequately finance fit.

Brandon Burton 25:54
Yeah, I like that. I like the whole mindset of success and learning. So it’s not success and failure, success and learning. So I wanted to ask you, you’ve got a phrase called dual transformation. So how can dual transformation help a chamber remain relevant.

Mary Byers 26:12
So this is actually a concept from the for profit world. And dual transformation really means that you service today’s business model, while you’re building the future of the organization. So I’ll give you an example of what this might have looked like for a group at one of my clients actually explained it to me is flying the airplane while you’re still building. Yeah, and that’s, I think that was kind of a good metaphor. And, you know, very picturesque when you think about keeping a plane afloat while still building it. You know, we’ve seen a moved for, for some organizations to go to a tiered membership model. So this isn’t a chamber, but the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association adopted a tiered model in 2016, because they wanted members to essentially be able to choose their own adventure. So they have three package levels. The first level really was for those who were just getting started in veterinary medicine maybe didn’t have a lot of financial resources, but they wanted to offer them a home, and access to some education and resources that would be beneficial to them. The middle package was the one they expected most members to take advantage of. And it was the package that offered what previously had been available for their membership. And then the third package essentially was for the whole practice. So you pay more, you can enroll as many people in your practice as you want into the membership. And they built the model that way that other organizations have gone to a subscription model from a membership annual membership model. They’re billing on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis. And again, it’s flexibility. They’re letting their members choose how they want to engage. So those are some examples of small changes that have had a big impact. One group that I’m familiar with, when they went to the subscription model, the monthly model actually increased their membership by 11%, just by offering them flexibility. So it wasn’t a huge change, although they had a few things they had to do on the back end with the technology. And they had to do a little bit of experimentation there to see how that was going to work. But that’s one of my favorite things about it, quite honestly is a small changes can have a big difference. But the dual transformation idea is that you are doing everything you need to do in 2023 to meet members needs, simultaneously, thinking about what your membership model is going to look like what the business model is going to look like in 2020 before 2025 2026. So it’s actually made things a little bit more complex, because we have to worry about today and tomorrow at the same time. But it’s a concept I think that is worth borrowing from for profit, America, especially when we talk to our boards about the complexity of the environment. One of the other things that we’ve seen change in the last 10 years is competition has heated up and it is coming from all sorts of places. I think we have to acknowledge how that’s challenging our models and use innovation to mitigate the impact on chambers.

Brandon Burton 29:49
Yeah, I like that. The dual transformation doing what you need to do today, while also looking at the future reminds me though the Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going right. He’s in the game. He’s doing what he needs to do, but he’s going to where the puck is going. And I think that’s so crucial for us to have our eye on the future and not be left in the past. So no, admittedly,

Mary Byers 30:11
Wayne makes it sound really easy, right. So I think he had a sixth sense that a lot of other hockey players didn’t have. And I’m pretty sure he had eyes on the side in the back of his head, too, because that’s almost what it takes to be able to skate to where the puck is going.

Brandon Burton 30:28
And he already knew that I escaped. So that’s a big accomplishment.

Mary Byers 30:33
I would agree with that. Right.

Brandon Burton 30:35
So as we begin to wrap things up here, I like asking if you have any tip or strategy or action items that you would suggest for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level.

Mary Byers 30:49
So this is going to sound too simple, and counterintuitive, but it’s the best tip I have to offer chamber professionals. And that is get away from the office on a quarterly basis. I’ve been doing this since 2016. And I actually found a retreat center that is close to me. And I check in with a pad of paper, my calendar and a pen. And I try to minimize electronics. And even if I have a cell phone with me, I put my Do Not Disturb on and I try not to look at it until it’s bedtime on the first night. And then I usually work until noon or late in the day, second day. And essentially what I’m doing is I’m dividing my year into quarters. And I’m looking at what needs my attention over the next quarter. And the next year. And I’m making some longer term plans. I’m making some longer strategy plans. One of the first things I did when I started this is I went back, and I chunked my career. Okay, what was true about the start of my career, what became true about the next piece of my career, and essentially, I was able to identify pivot points. And I think this has value to a chamber exec as well set aside some time to go back and look over the past couple of years past five years, 10 years, your whole your chambers whole history. Where were there strategic decisions made. That allowed the, the chamber to get momentum, or to really make an impact. And understanding backwards will actually help you strategize forwards. So that was the long way of saying, I think chamber execs need to get out of the office for at least a day, four times a year, no phones, no members, no interruptions, and strictly think about how they think about strategy. And to look at both the past and the future, and to look at where they can get pivot points that will help accelerate the value and relevance of their chambers going forward. So

Brandon Burton 33:12
as you do this, how long do you take when you Is it two days, three days a week? Usually,

Mary Byers 33:19
I do it overnight. And I plan on the first day and I spend most of the second day. So I would say on average, it’s a day and a half. Okay, so I’m spending three what is that day and a half day and a half, three, six, I’m spending six full days a year outside of my office, away from any interruptions. And I find that the more time I spend on the front end, the more I gain on the back end. So when I do it, I’m strategizing about my own business. But I’m also strategizing about my clients and how I serve them. And so the equivalent for a chamber would be strategizing about their role, their personal role in growth and development, and then also strategizing on behalf of how the organization serves members and how that’s changing. And I really believe that the changes we were seeing before the pandemic have been accelerated. But the pandemic gave us a tailwind. And now we have a choice coming out of this. And I think of it as no longer business as usual, but business as unusual. And how can we harness what’s happened for the good of our chambers. I also like to think about whether what we’re seeing is for now, or forever. So we’re coming out of the pandemic now. And so some of the trends that we’re seeing now may or may not be in existence in two, five or 10 years, that if some of the trends are in existence in two or five years, what does that mean for your organization? For a lot of chambers, they became more relevant because they were answering questions for members about, can we open? How can we open? When can we open? What does that look like, depending on what state they were located in? So that crisis actually increased our relevance. What can we learn from where we leaned in, during the pandemic that will help us going forward in our chamber?

Brandon Burton 35:21
I love that. That’s a great, great tip there. Say, I like asking all the guests that I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Mary Byers 35:38
I am very bullish on the future of all associations and chambers. However, in order to remain relevant, we’re going to have to continuously evolve. I do not think that if we stayed the same, that we will be as meaningful. Comfort and complacency are the enemy of relevance. And that’s why I think every chamber professional needs to be focused on continuously evolving what their business model looks like. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:11
and that’s so difficult, right? We say comfort and complacency are the enemy and, and that’s all human nature wants is to be comfortable. They don’t want to do the hard thing. You don’t want to do the painful thing. But those are the things that see growth and positive change is being able to push through and get out of that comfort zone. I think that’s it,

Mary Byers 36:32
I think, because there was so much stress and pressure and innovating on the fly. I think for many people, we’re sort of like, we’re in recovery mode. Right now. We’re sort of like who, wow, we made it through that. But we also build resilience muscles. And my biggest fear is that we our desire to go back is stronger than our desire to create a proactive go forward strategy. So I do think there is a role for rest and recovery. But we have to be careful that that doesn’t become our modus operandi. You know, we were tired, we were overwhelmed. We got through it. Now we got to keep going. Right? Absolutely.

Brandon Burton 37:16
Well, Mary, this has been a great conversation, I appreciate the the point of view and perspective that you bring to this topic, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and learn more and connect with you what would be the best way for them to do that?

Mary Byers 37:34
I appreciate that. Brandon, thank you. It’s simply my marybyers.com. There are resources there. And I also have AssociationInnovation.today. We did a report with loyalty Research Center, where we took a look at what high performing innovative organizations are doing. And there is a free report there. So anybody that’s interested in building an innovative culture in their organization can access that report. There’s a lot of food for thought. We talked about weak innovation, culture, strong innovation culture as we talk about how its funded. And we just talked about what you should be thinking about if you want to be an innovator.

Brandon Burton 38:19
Awesome. Yeah, everybody needs to take you up on that and go see that that free report. So well. We’ll have both of those websites linked in our show notes for this episode, so people can hop on there and click through to the websites. But Mary, thank you for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast for sharing your insights and, and the future looking vision that you have for associations and chambers of commerce. I really do appreciate it.

Mary Byers 38:47
Thank you. It’s been my privilege to be here. And thank you for the work that you do because I believe that educating, encouraging, connecting, and allowing people to tap into other people’s good ideas is where many forms of innovation come from. So thanks for your work as well.

Brandon Burton
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Clean Energy & Chambers with Ryan Evans

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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 Ryan Evans. Ryan joined the Chamber for Innovation and Clean Energy in March 2019 and serves as the executive director. Prior to being named Executive Director Ryan was a member of CICS National Advisory Board for six years. Previously, Ryan served as president of the Utah Solar Energy Association for three years, which is a trade association he co founded was an executive for 13 years with the Salt Lake Chamber, which is one of the largest chambers of commerce in the country, and served as the Executive Administrator for the Utah State Chamber of Commerce. Ryan is a recognized leader and regional speaker both locally and nationally on renewable energy policy and economic impacts of air quality community engagement and relationship building. Ryan is an IOM graduate, and now serves on the US Chambers National Board of Trustees. Ryan attended the University of Vermont and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Utah. Ryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Ryan Evans 3:12
Thank you, Brandon, appreciate the opportunity to be on the chamber chat podcast. Listen to you a bunch of times. And this is great to actually be able to speak with you and speak with the Chamber Champions listening in today. Something fun for me, I guess, in terms of interest for me, I’ve been in the chamber and association industry for just over 20 years now. It’s kind of crazy how that journey started. I was an entrepreneur. Prior to being in the chamber industry, I own my own restaurant, I was a trained chef at one point when that when I left that partnership as a lot of restaurants don’t, you know, have the tendency to fail. I was one of those. One of those cases, started looking for a job that would maybe help given or maybe work given my managerial background, but not something that actually I didn’t want to start from scratch again. So I started looking for sales positions, knowing that at least that way, if I worked hard, I could make money. And sure enough, the Salt Lake chamber was hiring at the time. And little did I know that that would lead to a 20 year career after starting they’re making $13,000 An hour plus or $13,000.

Brandon Burton 4:18
Are they still hiring? Let me sign up

Ryan Evans 4:22
1000 a year plus commissions and I made it work pretty good. But yeah, 30,000 hour would be one heck of an opportunity. That’s right. So I know that that all steamrolled into, you know getting into clean energy and eventually this role here where I get to meld both the clean energy world and the Chamber history that I have, and it’s a great relationship. So it’s been great. Absolutely. It’s

Brandon Burton 4:44
like your background has been perfect for this union to bring into the chambers for innovation to clean energy very much. So speaking to that, tell us a little bit about the chambers of the chambers for innovation, clean energy, just kind of The size, the scope of work staff, just give us some perspective of where you’re coming from, with the organization to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. Absolutely, thank

Ryan Evans 5:10
you. So chambers renovation and clean energy as we affectionately like to call it, CIC II, as you alluded to Brandon, we are a national network of about 1300 chambers and economic development associations across the country, doesn’t mean we work with every single one of those every single year. But those are the groups that we stay in touch with quite a bit that we work with. Our whole role is to help advance the clean energy economy, at chambers innovation in clean energy, we’re not an environmental group, we’re not anti anything, we are strictly clean energy experts, and help to look to educate chambers on how they can capitalize on this growing segment of our economy, how they can be better involved in promoting good clean energy policy, how they can what what they need to know, to better understand the technology that exists and how to get past a lot of the misinformation that’s out there, whether Pro or negative regarding clean energy, we do a lot of best practice sharing of what chambers are doing across the country. And then we’ll get in and we’ll even advise chambers on particular public policy issues at the state or local level that they may be experiencing. firsthand. So again, we you know, our whole role is to work with chambers. And we do that for free. We have funding in place that allows us to work with any chamber anywhere. Typically, I mentioned 1300. But typically we work with we try to work in about seven or eight priority states at one time. And he states where we spend a little extra time, given that they’ve got more opportunity for clean energy or more challenges being presented for clean energy. And so we sort of rotate that out on on any given year. But as of right now, the states where we spend most of our time are Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina, Virginia, and in some work in the Northeast as

Brandon Burton 7:04
well. All right, well, that definitely helps give some perspective as to the kind of work you’re involved with and the the approach you take with some of the these chambers and 1300 chambers that you work with. As we focus our discussion today. I’m kind of halfway joking. But when I say we’re going to talk about clean energy and chambers, even if they don’t think that it matters or something that they care about at the moment, we’ll talk about why it does matter. And how your local chamber can get involved, why you should be involved, what opportunities are out there. And we’ll dive into this discussion much deeper as soon as you get back from this quick break.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Donna Novitsky 9:33
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Brandon Burton 10:27
All right, Ryan, we’re back. So as I alluded to, before the break, today, we’re diving into how chambers can get involved with with clean energy, why they should care, maybe that’s a good starting point, as far as why chamber should care about focusing on clean energy. And then you mentioned a couple items, you know, before the break is to, you know, the economic impact and things like that. But talk to us a little bit about why chambers should have clean energy on their radar and be intentional about trying to promote clean energy in their communities.

Ryan Evans 11:02
Sure, thank you. You know, honestly, this conversation would have been pretty different five years ago. But now, I think there’s no doubt that anybody, you know, nobody has a doubt that we are in the midst of an energy transformation in the United States of America and across the across the globe, really, we are, over the last several years, clean energy speed between solar and wind have been responsible for more than 90% of new electric generation built across the country. So in other words, we still have a lot of our electricity coming from natural gas, which is the number one on the fossil fuel side. And again, we’re not anti anything, we’re all of the above, we just truly know that the Clean Energy Economics will win out in the end, as natural gas started to actually overtake coal. Many years ago, when coal was the workhorse for electricity, then it became natural gas. And it still is natural gas. But now it’s really starting to shift towards more renewable energy sources. So that’s sort of number one is that we’re looking at the future of America being very much powered, whether it’s 100%, like some people think, or at least very high into the 80s, a 90%, by some sort of cleaner energy than we have now. So that’s a significant number one. Number two, your members care about their utility bills. That’s one of the highest costs of doing business in any state. So what is your electricity and heating bills look like? And where is that source of that pain point coming from? In most states, that’s still natural gas. And for a long time, natural gas was a great lower cost option for communities. Now, however, we’ve seen, especially in the last two years, the fluctuation within the volatility of natural gas pricing. So a lot of corporations are really being attracted to the fact that solar and wind are now the cheapest form of electricity you can get. And when you enter into a contract for these corporations that again, are members of chambers all over the country, they’re locking into those price points that they sign these contracts for, for anywhere from 20 to 35 years. So there’s absolute predictability in their electrical costs going forward, at least for that segment that they’re getting from clean energy. The other factor that I’ll mention is it just brings it back to home wherever you are, there are clean energy jobs being created on a regular basis. There are more people in employed in the solar industry alone than all of fossil fuel industries combined. That’s just solar. That’s not wind, that’s not electric vehicles. That’s not batteries and energy storage, and energy efficiency. So clean energy is a job creator, like no other. And then it brings home capital investment, it brings home economic opportunities and tax revenues for communities. So there are lots of reasons why chambers should engage or at least be interested, and at the very least be willing to provide good information to their communities, because there’s just there’s a lot to it. And a lot of voices get heard. And I think it’s given the amount of opportunity and challenges there are, it’s just important to at least be a good provider of information for your members and your community as a whole.

Brandon Burton 14:32
Right. So it’s been a couple of years ago now but our electric provider, I’m in Texas in our electric provider, we’re part of a co op and each year they do a brisket dinner, you know so we can go and as a member of the Co Op, they provide the brisket dinner, they do a little dog and pony show about the work they’re doing and at this particular dinner I was at they put up on the slideshow, this solar farm that they had and like, Wait, that’s like, right around the corner from my house. And I had no idea that the solar farm was there. And sure enough, I’m pulling up the Google satellite images, and it’s, you know, probably a mile from my house, and had no idea. But if it was a natural gas plant or something else, like, other things would definitely stand out, and you would notice, but um, just the clean energy can make such an impact in a community without being, you know, super noticeable. But so I think that our Electric Co Op did a good job of explaining that. But as far as the chamber goes, he said, you know, most importantly, even if it’s just sharing, you know, accurate good information with their community with their members. Obviously, we can point them to you to your organization to get some that that good information to share. But as the chamber looks to get involved and say, Yeah, this is important that we create jobs in clean energy, because that’s where the future is going. Or it’s important for us to help lower those utility rates for our member businesses, and for just our community in general to be able to thrive more and have more discretionary income, all these different points that you touched on the job creation. If a chamber wanted to get involved, where do they start with being able to try to move the ball try to move the needle, so to speak in their community?

Ryan Evans 16:27
There’s, there’s quite a few places you can start. And actually, I want to jump back really quick if it’s okay, Brandon, and just common, Texas, just because you brought up Texas and you brought up two things that I’m pretty passionate about. One is realistically, most solar installations you don’t notice. So you’re absolutely right, there’s a lot of misinformation that they’re obstructive that they’re an eyesore. But yet, most times people have no idea that they’re within a mile or two of their home, because they have that low profile, and you can put up trees around them, you can put up shrubs and bushes around them. So I appreciate and love the fact that you didn’t even notice not necessarily. But then also just on Texas really quick. It’s Texas is one of my favorite stories to tell because even though they have been traditionally one of the the number one oil and gas state in the country, and they are known as an oil and gas state and Houston particular huge oil and gas market, right. Yet, Texas is the number two state in the nation for most solar installations in terms of size of those installations combined. And number one, as far as wind, this is a state that truly embraces the all of the above energy form, you know, mentality in an incredible way. And, you know, chambers, like the Greater Houston partnership, for example, are all in on this all of the above factor and even looking at new technologies like carbon capture, and all these other great things that we see out there. So I just want to throw my you know, throw a shout out for taxes just in terms of, you know, that typical state that has learned that they don’t have to just be dependent on that fossil fuel economy that there is this huge other opportunity out there for the state and for electrical ratepayers and whatnot.

Brandon Burton 18:07
I will say if you ever drive between Abilene and San Angelo, you will see the wind. As far as your eye can see, you will see windmills. So

Ryan Evans 18:16
yeah, there’s a lot of places around the country that are like that, where you just see them. But a lot of cases, there’s really not much else there. So they may as well, Saturday. Right, right. And you know, as far as how you get involved, there’s lots of ways number one, I guarantee that almost every single chamber in the country has some sort of clean energy industry a company within their membership, it may not be a solar installer, it may not be a manufacturer of solar or wind turbine parts. But it might be somebody who supplies workforce to that it might be a company that is a fencing company that puts up temporary fencing around renewable energy installations as they’re going up. So there’s, it’s incredible the supply chain that exists out into the clean energy world. So one, look at your own membership and see who’s there and see what the important issues are to talk to your utility. I always recommend you, you know, work with your utility on clean energy, because ultimately, they’re going to be the one that does a lot of it outside of the private companies that develop. But don’t also take the utilities word for it completely ask questions, look for what might be the best opportunities for your entire region and start a business Coalition for you know, that looks at sustainability and clean energy by starting a committee like that. It’s amazing what you’ll learn from your members in terms of what they’re doing to either procure clean energy on their own or through the utility, what they’re doing internally to improve their emissions outcomes so they’re more sustainable. It’s it’s pretty impressive to see what businesses do and it’s one great thing chambers can do is promote what their businesses are doing. Proactiv basis as well, that’s that’s just a great thing. Another thing that you can do, if you want to get involved is reach out to us, of course, I’m not going to give a sales pitch there. But that’s what we do. If there’s, you know, we’re happy to chat with any chamber anywhere all the time, just to say, hey, here’s the hotspots that we see, maybe this is a chance for you to engage. And lastly, look in your state for some sort of a state level clean energy or solar industry association. So prior to, as you mentioned, in the my introduction, I was the president and founder of the Utah solar industry association, we worked with chambers all across the state, trying to help educate them on solar policy and clean energy policy and how they can help protect the jobs that, you know, we’re being built by this industry within the state. So look to those associations and bring them as partners or ask them to be members, so they can kind of make sure your members are informed on the hot topics of the day regarding the clean energy industries. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:58
So I don’t mean to keep going back to stuff to this example, in Texas. So chambers are known for being conveners, right. And as I see a lot of this land, like with these wind farms that we’re talking about, not only are they wind farms, but they have their oil rigs that are going, they have their cattle that are grazing on the fields. And so they’ve got multiple streams of income using this land that’s very agricultural based. And if a chamber can see and recognize these opportunities, be that convener to make some introductions to help introduce some of these clean energy capabilities. On to that, that rancher or that person who has an oil rig set up or whatever it may be, I mean, we’re talking things that are very hyper focused in Texas, for sure. But other parts of the country, the land may be used for something else, but it could also be used, in addition to for wind or solar. So that convener make those introductions. Yeah,

Ryan Evans 21:58
no, that’s a great point number one. Yeah. So always and chamber should know this. And they do know this. And mean, chambers are conveners of the voice of business, the, you know, the, they’re the convener of the business communities, and realistically for their whole community. So there is an opportunity just to talk to people about what is possible. And yeah, in Texas, you will often see wind turbines right next to oil rigs, and maybe cattle grazing as well. In Ohio, you may see a solar installation, where, you know, maybe 5%, of a generational farm is being utilized for solar energy along with 5% of another farm nearby them and 10% of another farm nearby them. But those, that five or 10% of the farm property is actually giving annual revenue anywhere from 100,000 to $300,000. A year to those farm owners. And a lot of cases, it’s helping keep farmland in a family name and helping them not to have to sell it off, or because it’s a lease arrangement, or even turn some other land into a subdivision for homes. I mean, that’s, that’s just and once you put homes in that property’s gone with a solar installation for, you know, for example, in a rural farming community, typically those panels have been in the ground for, you know, 30 to 35 years, but at the same time, like you say, you’re farming on the rest of your property, you can still do some agriculture underneath the solar panels. And a lot of case you can still graze animals like sheep throughout an entire solar area. So yeah, there are lots of other ways that you can promote the land and utilize the land for economic or just community benefit.

Brandon Burton 23:40
Right. And from the farmer perspective, I say, you know, there’s a lot of government subsidies for farmers to either not grow a crop or to grow, you know, more, you know, mono cropping, you know, which has its own issues. So to be able to introduce another stream of income for these farmers could really help them actually farm what they need to and want to farm versus what the government’s paying them to do. And it gives them a lot more freedom. Absolutely. And

Ryan Evans 24:07
if you get farmer start on this, a lot of them are going to tell you, this is a property rights thing. If I want to put solar on my farm, I want to put solar on my farm, and they get pretty passionate about it speak out in lots of different state houses across the country on their property rights. And it’s don’t get in the middle of a farmer and their property rights. I’ll tell you that much right now.

Brandon Burton 24:25
That’s right. So for chambers that are listening, I’d like to hear maybe a an innovative example or two where you’ve seen whether it’s a chamber stepping into introduce clean energy policy or just implementation of some sort. What are some of these innovative things that you’ve seen across the country as as people try to lean more heavily into clean energy? Yeah,

Ryan Evans 24:52
there’s, I don’t know if I can go to innovative on how chambers participate, but I can give some really Good examples of how chambers have engaged. Okay. Oh. And that’s it’s just sometimes tough because chambers are generalists for the most part, right, they need to know a lot about a lot of different industries. And so sometimes it’s really hard to dig really far into one particular topic or subject matter. But you know, in the case of chambers, one thing that we are always encouraged by is when we see coalitions of chambers that stand up for clean energy. So we’ve seen it in Ohio, when Chambers as a collective whole, all stood up and spoke out against negative anti renewable energy legislation a few years ago, in the Northeast, and now in the southeast, we’re seeing a lot of rallying by chambers to support the possibility of offshore wind development, off the coast of the East Coast. And we’re beginning to see a little bit of that in the, in the south er, in the in the south, and in the West, and the Gulf Coast and off in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, and Oregon and Washington. So we see a lot of this convening and working together. We’ve seen everything from electric vehicle ride and drive and demonstrations, to clean energy industry, hosted forums and conferences, all around renewable energy and sustainability. We’ve seen energy tours. So in Utah, where I used to live, the Salt Lake chamber had few years in a row had done energy tours, where they took their members out to various energy installations. And one of them was all about clean energy, taking them to wind taken to a solar farm, etc, etc. In and, you know, clean energy, sort of a broad topic, but, and even just a couple of weeks now, the St. Pete chamber in Florida is doing a sustainability and resilience tour, they’re going to take some of their members down to see how, amongst other things, clean energy benefited certain areas to keep the lights on, as well as other resilience efforts from some of the other communities that they can bring back to St. Pete to learn from so that they are a more resilient, more resilient community for future storms. So lots of different ways that chambers have been engaged, whether it’s op eds, whether it’s events, or just, you know, fighting for good policy at a state house or the federal level.

Brandon Burton 27:29
Very good. Those are all really good examples and ways that chambers can definitely get involved. So this question may be coming from left field for you. And if you don’t want to answer it, we can edit it out. How have you seen any integration with with Bitcoin miners? And no, there’s been a lot of talk about the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining. And then Bitcoin miners trying to make the argument with clean energy and using some of these resources to offset some of those carbon emissions and whatnot. I’ll be

Ryan Evans 28:09
honest, you may want to edit this out, I don’t know Brandon, I can give a little editorial on that. It’s, it’s a tough sell, because it is high high energy usage. So we, however, did see you know, in for a little bit in Miami, we started talking about it because the local government in Miami was really trying hard to attract some Bitcoin industry there. But that energy usage was really tough, because, you know, Florida can only expand so much in terms of their energy development, their energy usage, etc. And, you know, one of the selling factors was they have such a huge nuclear, new as nuclear energy is such a huge part of their overall energy resources. And, you know, the Bitcoin it was trying to sell that, but all of that energy was already being utilized for something else. So all of this would have just been, they would have had to develop new energy. And at that point, you’ve for the most part, it’s going to make sense to build solar. So I think in general, when it comes to Bitcoin, it’s great. There is an opportunity there, but it should not be done trying to sell it as utilizing existing resources. I think in a lot of ways. If you are going to law and try to get some bitcoin manufacturing and mining going on in your communities, you really do need to look at how are we going to provide new generation to, to supply that particular operation? Yeah. All right. Well,

Brandon Burton 29:40
we’ll we’ll see what we do with that. So I’d like to ask everyone I have on the show, if there’s any tips or action items that you’d be willing to share with those listening, if they wanted to maybe get involved more with clean energy in their communities or We’re maybe something totally off topic, but for these chambers who want to take their organization up to the next level, what would you offer for them?

Ryan Evans 30:07
Thank you. Yeah, I’ve got a few things. So number one, if not every chamber is engaged in advocacy. And I understand that, at the very minimum, though Chambers as the voice of business and conveners in their community should look to be a good source of reliable information. And much like a lot of other things in the world, there’s so much misinformation put out in the world about clean energy. There are so many groups that are not local, yet, they’ll bring in people from, you know, from far away to come in and fight renewable energy projects in small communities, and make it seem like this opposition is so loud, we call them NIMBY groups, so not my backyard groups. So if nothing else, I think it’s really important that chambers look to be sources of good third party reliable expert information. So that those that actually live in the community can, you know, can really look at the facts and say, We want to make a good informed decision. So that’s, that’s sort of number one. Another just sort of tip and maybe a tidbit that I want to throw out there. There is, you know, chambers by nature tend to really love bipartisan policy. That’s sort of how we work right, we bring people together so that we can find the common ground, what’s best for the business community, what’s best for an economy, an advocate for that, whether it’s coming from the AR side, or the D side, it doesn’t really matter, we try to find the best possible policy for business businesses in our state. You know, and we certainly saw a really good example of that in the bipartisan infrastructure package that was passed two years ago, phenomenal is twice something 20 years in the making, it’s something we should all be proud of in the chamber industry that we’ve all fought for it. And that’s going to lead to everything from bridges and roads, but also to transmission lines for more utilities, for more electric vehicle charging infrastructure out there in the world as we make this transition. So there’s lots of clean energy angles on that. But the tidbit that I want to share that, yeah, I built it up to get to it. There was, you know, not a lot of chambers love the fact that the inflation Reduction Act was passed on a partisan basis. And I understand that, and I completely agree, this is a tidbit that I think is really important for people to understand. If you take away all of the other aspects of the inflation Reduction Act, and only look at the clean energy provisions within that which, you know, amounted to about a $379 billion package way, way less than what that quote unquote, green New Deal was being presented as many many years ago. But that particular legislation, just the clean energy provisions, almost every single major component of that policy has a history of bipartisan support. And a and a lot of them have a proven return on investment for that type of state tax incentive. As a lot of people say that inflation Reduction Act is really carrot heavy, and very stick light, meaning it’s all about the incentives trying to you know, trying to drive innovation and spur this new aspect to our economy, rather than penalizing and putting out more regulatory efforts that none of us really like to see in the world. So again, just I think it’s really important that something that I’ve been very passionate about is saying, if you just take out those clean energy aspects, you will see that so many of them either had bipartisan support, or suggested by and promoted by Republicans versus the Democrats that voted for the package. So really just go beyond the talking points of partisan and say, Ah, actually, there’s some really great stuff in here that’s proven value, and has proven to be supported by both sides of the aisle and people across the country.

Brandon Burton 33:56
Right. I appreciate you sharing the tips and tidbits with us there. As we look to the future of chambers, and I see a lot of the work you’re doing is future leaning. But as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers in their purpose going forward?

Ryan Evans 34:15
I think chambers have a more important role now than they’ve ever had before. We’ve, you know, been building up the chamber industry for 100 years, you know, over the last 10 years, I think they’ve gotten more and more influential. Really, there’s so much within the industry that’s really looking to lift up chambers, whether it’s a rural chamber, a State Chamber, a Regional Chamber, whatever it may be. But I think now is maybe more important a time than ever, because there is so much that at least that I see legislation that tends to move from state to state and Statehouse to statehouse and so it’s an opportunity not only to really stand up for your business community and those things in your state or your region that you see as important to your quality of life. But it’s, you know, it’s really this chance to look and say, Hey, what’s happening over in this state? And is that going to come to my state? Because chances are these days it is. And I bring up things in my own mind when I say this, but things like dei policies, so you know, something that the Chamber world has been super passionate about, and very much engaged in terms of advocating for more dei within their communities within their businesses and building up certification programs around Dei. Yet, in a lot of states, we’re starting to see anti from various administrations and now maybe state houses of the legislature, we’re starting to see sort of pushback on that dei work. And it’s, you know, this isn’t even in the world of clean energy for me, but it’s really important to chambers, and therefore, it’s sort of just a good example of things to look for, that you can learn from other states, what they’ve already gone through and say, Hey, is there a good chance that’s going to come to my state? And how do I either fight it off or engage it depending upon what the policy might be? How do we best represent the business community, rather than being caught off guard, let’s make sure that we’ve got our best arguments upfront and ready to go to help be, you know, again, that longtime voice of business for our community and represent our members the best we can. I

Brandon Burton 36:27
love that perspective. And that’s really one of the greatest opportunities of living in the United States is you’re able to look at other states and the models that they do and, you know, be in these individual laboratories and saying, This is what worked well there. And this is didn’t you know, and as we apply it in our communities in our state, this is why it could be good, or why it would be a disaster and really be able to make a good argument based on facts and data. So I think that’s a great perspective. Well, Ryan, this has been a for me at least, it’s been a fun conversation. It’s been an eye opening conversation, I’m sure for many, but for any listeners who wanted to reach out and connect with you to learn more about what the Chamber’s been have raised innovation and clean energy can do and, and how you can maybe work with them, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect? hit

Ryan Evans 37:16
our website, which is ChambersforInnovation.com. Feel free to email me directly my email is revans@chambersforinnovation.com. More than happy to chat with anyone, whether it’s just a question, you want to do more, you’ve got something that you’re just not sure about whatever the case, the issue may be, and again, this can be anything from electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging, to offshore wind supply chain to solar and wind, whatever it is, if we don’t know the answer within our team, we certainly can point you in the right direction to some some great experts out there in the world, that can be a really good news resource for you.

Brandon Burton 37:57
That’s awesome. I will get that in our show notes for this episode, as well. So people can pull that up and get in contact with you. But it’s been great to have you on the podcast. Ryan, I appreciate you setting aside some time and and to share some of these insights with the Chamber champions that listen and to really help sharpen their focus on why focus on clean energy in their communities is important. So thank you for being with us today.

Ryan Evans 38:22
Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 38:24
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Orlando Economic Partnership-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Tim Giuliani

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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 Tim Giuliani. Tim is advancing the pace of change and altering the perceptions of a place best known for tourism by reconceptualizing. The Orlando region’s economic future as the President and CEO of the Orlando Economic Partnership, Tim is leading the multi year pursuit to create a new model for economic and community development that changes the status quo and establishes a new path forward towards broad based prosperity for all. Before joining the partnership, Tim was the president and CEO at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. He also led the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce and Council for Economic outreach. He lives in Orlando with his wife and three children. It Tim, we’re excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast. First of all, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as chamber the year finalist. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tim Giuliani 3:06
Sure, appreciate you having me on. Certainly appreciate the recognition from ACCE for our organization. And as far as something interesting to start with, I guess, in the ways we use our free time, if you want to call it that. I coach a softball team, a travel softball team made up of 11 11 year old girls, and that’s a nice fun activity and development activity I get to do, you know, a few times a week.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Yeah, so any free time you might have had is the slug dried up with that. I know how those travel teams go. Yeah, it can be all inclusive, for sure. Yeah,

Tim Giuliani 3:51
these girls are serious. And I think I learned a lot growing up about leadership through baseball. And I think it’s a wonderful way to learn a lot about drive and determination and consistency. coachability teamwork, all of the things that are required in the workplace are things that you can learn on the softball field.

Brandon Burton 4:10
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the Orlando economic partnership just to give us a maybe a better idea of the type of chamber you are the size staff Scope of Work budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.

Tim Giuliani 4:27
Yeah, our organization is only about seven years old. It was the result of a merger between the EDC of Metro Orlando and the Central Florida partnership which included the Orlando Chamber of Commerce. So we’re, we’re essentially a consolidated if you will, you know, economic development and Regional Chamber. We were given kind of white canvas as to what sort of chambers need to be doing in the 21st century without so much attachment to the to the legacy ways of do Doing business. And so we’re loving million dollar organization, we have a staff of about 45. And we’re just, you know, all focused on advancing broad based prosperity in Central Florida.

Brandon Burton 5:14
I love it. I love the name to Orlando economic partnership. So it’s not just focused on economic development, but it’s really is the partnership with the businesses. And in general, AMC can adopt set convener ability of chambers of commerce by encapsulating

Tim Giuliani 5:28
focuses on it focuses on that we don’t offer a lot of things that I’ve done earlier in my career as it relates to networking, or, or marketing and advertising. It’s much more, you know, a smaller group of companies that are interested in making change and improving the economy here. And they choose to do that by partnering with us.

Brandon Burton 5:50
Right? That’s great. So the way that we like to structure these chamber the year interviews is, I’d like to have you tell us what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber, that your application just at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and dive into each of them in much more detail.

Tim Giuliani 6:10
Here, the first project is that we created the first of its kind, regional, digital twin. And so you have several 100 square miles of Central Florida. And when we host companies, or market executives or executives from, you know, corporate that’s looking at expansion, or asset allocation within central Florida, we’re able, instead of having to worry about driving them around all of Central Florida, you know, from the Space Coast, to UCF, to the airport, to our summer to conduct our cluster, etc. You know, we’re able to immerse them in a in a digital twin of our entire region. And then we overlay, like 80 data sources on top of that. So almost any question that anyone has, can be answered in a very engaging way with a digital twin that was largely made in Orlando. So it is an authentic representation of our tech community, which something that we have in spades. However, that’s not part of the brand that people know Orlando for, in most cases. So it allows us to put that technology forward, and then use it in very practical ways.

Brandon Burton 7:23
So yeah, I want to learn a lot more about that. I’ve got a lot of questions for you on it. But what’s the other program you guys submitted on your application?

Tim Giuliani 7:31
Yeah, the other program is part of part of an ongoing 10 year effort to build a semiconductor cluster here in Central Florida. There’s only about 17 states that really have semiconductor activity. You know, now, it’s a lot more popular than it was six, seven years ago, when we were in the throes of moving the ball forward. But in this in this last year, we were successful at attracting a $50 million federal grant that’s locally matched. So it’s a total of $75 million investment in all things to build that industry cluster here. So it’s a big shot in the arm a big step forward. And so we focused on the benefits and the work that we put into attracting and winning that federal grant out of there was like 570 Something applications nationwide, we won the only award in Florida. So that’s pretty remarkable. That speaks

Brandon Burton 8:34
volumes for sure. So I’m excited to dive into both of these programs in much more detail right after this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 11:01
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Gina Rozier 11:19
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Donna Novitsky 11:48
Thanks, Gina. Wondering how you can have your own community card for free. Check out yiftee.com for next steps. Now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 12:00
All right, Tim, we’re back. So let’s let’s circle back and tell us more about this digital twin, I want to figure out how you guys did this. What sort of platform are you using? Is this? You know, to use it on your phone? Do you need a headset? Like how does this work?

Tim Giuliani 12:17
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, it’d be easier if you were an older listeners, we’re just kind of sitting in the same room in front of our display. But essentially, what we’ve created is a digital reconstruction of the region. And so you’ve, you’ve seen something similar on Google Maps to give you a frame of reference, okay. However, the magic is really, in bringing that to life in more three dimensional ways. And also overlaying all of the data. On top of sort of that that terrain or that map, we partnered with Unity Technologies and unity. You know, if there’s any 10 to 13 year olds listening, they’ve just got excited because they know unity, because they play their games all the time. And unity is a gaming platform. So essentially, we created a video game of Orlando. And it allows, you know, the use of a tablet, and standing in front of a full 180 degree LED wall, LEDs coming out of the floor into translucent panels. So you get a three dimensional perspective, you’re able to tour the entire region, dive into it, go down to more street level, and then see all the data on top of it. Whether you’re wondering about home prices, you’re wondering about income, educational attainment levels, prices and availability of commercial real estate buildings, classes of commercial real estate buildings, almost anything that you can look up in an Excel spreadsheet we have for our audiences live. And so currently, we’re we’ve executed phase one, which means it’s available in our office in our Marketing Center. It’s also available on a headset. So you put on an Oculus, and you get to enter the digital twin. It’s made on a platform that’s viewable almost anywhere. So tablet computer, Oculus, the Apple vision pro unities development, you know is the platform you can develop for that new product. So as essentially, as we get into phase two, and it comes off essentially our servers and goes into the cloud, it’ll then be accessible from anywhere.

Brandon Burton 14:35
Wow. That’s a that answers my next question. I was gonna ask if there’s a link that we can share in this episode where people can check it out and see what it looks like. That sounds like that’s part of Phase Two as I think

Tim Giuliani 14:48
but we put together a site orlando.org/digitaltwin, where you can really understand the capabilities and what it looks like and how we use it. You So there’s, it’s surprisingly, I mean, it’s got a lot of press, it’s very leading edge, we partnered with unity. Obviously, this is very applicable across the country across the world as cities, think about, you know, all the sensors that are out there all the data that’s out there. How do you visualize that and use that in in ways that help your current business and this for us really check that box.

Brandon Burton 15:27
So you had mentioned, basically anything you can find on the spreadsheet you can find on this digital twin as you kind of explore and dive in a little deeper throughout the whole platform. I imagine a lot of that is plugins on the back end. So as data is inputted and it gets updated live within the platform, I would assume. What about other updates along the way, when there’s new businesses or new development? How does that get implemented into the platform?

Tim Giuliani 15:56
Yeah, so the interesting thing about this project was it, you know, as we talked about it, as we were seeking to enable, you know, over the last six years, we built up reserves, and we ran, sort of net positive on our revenue. And so we had to make an investment. And we had to convince our, our board our finance committee, this was a smart investment for us to make. And so the challenge, though, was describing something that doesn’t exist, right. And so what we realized, you know, there’s gonna, there’s almost unlimited use cases for our members, community leaders to you to utilize this technology. But it was so hard for them to conceptualize without seeing it. So we move forward with phase one. And essentially, now you can see it, understand it, see its capabilities, understand how it can work for your business. And now we’re at a phase, where we’re talking to all sorts of partners, from transportation agencies, to utilities to developers, about taking this digital twin to the next level. So it’s really, you got to see it to really appreciate what it can do.

Brandon Burton 17:07
Yeah. Just my background has been in chamber publishing. So like, one of the things that we would do was maps, right for cities. So this kind of strikes a chord with me, because we would do digital versions of the maps. And there’s different plugins, like you’re saying, like, as it evolves, you can go to transportation kind of plugins, and you can see, you know, kind of live traffic updates and things like that, which is, it’s super intriguing to me. And I’m sure it’ll continue to evolve, too. But I can see this as a great tool as far as attracting, you know, economic development and showing available space and just that tour of the city. Do you? I don’t know exactly how to ask this question. I know some things you can definitely portray in that digital format. Some things you just have to be there. Right. So what percentage maybe do you think covers the check those boxes? As far as? Yeah, maybe you don’t need to be here in person or it gets a person so far, to where they say, yeah, now we need to plan a trip to come to Orlando and actually be there and see things in person? Or do they need to? I don’t know.

Tim Giuliani 18:18
Yeah, no, it’s changing, right. We landed a lot of projects during COVID, where they made like one quick visit. Yeah. So I think I think that’s changed a little bit. There’s two real answers I can give you. One is when we put it in the headset, and we’re in New York, and we’re talking to executives or site selection consultants, they could put on the headphones, the headset without ever visiting Orlando, and they could really get an immersive perspective on available sites and buildings, and their their relative connectedness to the rest of the community and what we have to offer so yeah, so that’s an example where someone doesn’t have to visit, they can get an initial look. And it’s much better than a brochure. Right, right. Second case is so pretend you’re visiting Orlando, and you’ve got, say, 24 to 36 hours here, which is typical. You know, we’re able to give them a great geographic orientation, because one thing I can assure you is that most people listening this podcast that don’t live in Florida, I really view it as a blob with Miami at the southern tip. And what we’re able to do is geographically orient people to the connectivity because, you know, Central Florida is really founded on its connectivity, not only from Disney’s perspective as sort of the crossroads of Florida, but over to the Space Coast, and our our particular longitude, latitude, and its ability to get to space. So we’ve benefited from that. So that continues to drive decisions and we want to show that connectivity which we can do, and then we can show them the have the sort of communities and areas which they’re considering. And then we get in the car and we can go to, you know, two or three places. So it just creates an opportunity to give someone a much better picture of Central Florida without putting them in the car and boring them with hours and hours of driving around to see things, we can just do that in our marketing center.

Brandon Burton 20:24
So when you say you get in the car in this virtual sense, what does that look like? I imagine you can just really shortcut a lot of the traffic and the distance and everything and say, Okay, now you go, here we head south. And here’s this place.

Tim Giuliani 20:37
Yeah, it’s just a flyover. And it’s really, you know, if we were standing in the studio, I’d be holding a tablet. And you’d be standing, you know, 1015 feet away from the monitors. And, and we would be pinching and zooming just like you do on your phone. Right? When you look at a map, and we’ll be showing you and, you know, taking you to UCF and showing you the second largest university in America, and then sort of driving along i Four into downtown Orlando and giving you that perspective. So then when we get out in the car, you know, we can only maybe we visit two or three sites, as opposed to having to make 10 or 11 visits around the region. So it just narrowed down. Yeah, I think when companies are looking at cities, they’re not just looking at one, they’re looking at multiple and so you’re trying to create a competitive advantage and a better experience. And we think this creates a better experience when someone’s considering an investment here in Orlando.

Brandon Burton 21:34
Right? Yeah. And I can see, as you, you know, do a presentation like this, obviously, you want to show the highlights, right, those things that are going to attract the business. And I know Orlando has no downsides to it, right. But I mean, some cities out there, they might have some spots that they might want to cover up and not show. So just to be able to kind of narrow things down and say, here’s the highlights and pique the interest of bring a visit, I think is a huge key in the selling factor.

Tim Giuliani 21:59
Yeah, and actually, for some of the areas, you know, that you kind of casually mentioned, that haven’t gotten a lot of investment over time, we’re actually partnering with some of them as well, so that they have the ability to make the same type of presentation to investors. Because some of those areas are very well connected to the the infrastructure of Central Florida, they’re very close to higher education institutions. And so they’re, you know, overlaid with opportunity zones and other special tax districts and that provide benefits to companies. So it actually not only enables us to show the highlights of Central Florida, but it allows us to showcase the opportunities that may have been overlooked, because maybe they weren’t part of that brochure, or that website in the past. So you know, it’s still early, but it’s an interesting way to think about showcasing the entire community,

Brandon Burton 22:51
right. So we’ll get the link to the digital twin in our show notes for this episode for listeners that want to go and check it out and kind of play around and see what it looks like. I think that would be good to get some visuals on it. But let’s let’s shift gears over into the second program focused on the semiconductor industry and creating that cluster there. Before we got on the podcast and started recording, I’d actually kind of poked around your guys’s website, and I noticed you have a good number of staff that are dedicated to the semiconductor industry. So this is definitely something that’s an area of focus and of importance to you. But tell us more about that. And the focus you guys have with semiconductors.

Tim Giuliani 23:36
Yeah, actually, this, this win that we featured in our application allowed us to build a team focused on semiconductors, because I can assure you, I cannot go through the supply chain dynamics, the parts, the tools, it’s a very specific knowledge base of which you need to be able to communicate with these companies. Because what they do is so highly technical. And, you know, over the last 10 years, we’ve there’s this piece of property, it’s 500 acres, just south of Orlando, in Osceola County, and the EDC at the time, and the county decided to come together, they kind of had two options, they could invest in a new spring training site for Major League Baseball team. Or they could go a different direction and do something to try to diversify their economy in the technology space. And so that’s the path that they went down. And over time, you know, now if I drove you over to what’s called Neo city, you’ve got 500 acres that the county owns. There’s all the infrastructures laid roads, utilities, water, stormwater, etc. There’s a fab. So that $160 million facility that currently is leased by sky water technologies. They’re a semiconductor, global foundry that their US owned. So they have an important niche in this whole semiconductor conversation and DOD. Many people don’t know that Orlando is actually heavily invested in by Department of Defense. And we have a long history of military instalments and investment. In fact, they’re all the branches of the government have offices here, some rather large, all around the areas of modeling and simulation. And all of that uses technology nowadays. And so we have a big defense base here. So the semiconductor you kind of think space, you think defense, and now you begin to understand sort of a niche that’s available here in semiconductors. And over time, we’ve worked to build that cluster. And then we were awarded a $50 million grant, through the regional build back better challenge, there was over 500 applications, I think there was about 25 announced winners, we were one of those 25. And so that combined local match and federal dollars, it means a $75 million enhancement, to those cluster building activities here. So we’re really excited about the path we’re on to provide a niche to the semiconductor industry that’s looking to restore, particularly as it relates to space, and defense. And as it relates to if you want to get technical into advanced packaging, which is a an area of product that’s provided by that industry.

Brandon Burton 26:36
So I guess that leads into the question I was gonna ask as to why you got you guys wanted to get into the niche of semiconductors. And that makes sense that the space aspect with the Department of Defense and looking into the future, are there other opportunities, you are kind of targeting in the semiconductor spaces, in addition to what’s already there? Yeah, I

Tim Giuliani 27:00
think that, you know, those are some industry verticals that they’re interested in. But I think as it relates to the technology and the product offering, you know, I don’t see us landing the next $10 billion Intel plant. That’s not, I don’t think that’s in the cards for us. What I do think is in the cards is, you know, advanced packaging. So think about when you were younger, you took apart a radio, and you found a really solid green board with the chips and transistors and connections on it. Well, that hard piece is the packaging. And so now the advanced packaging is when you’re putting multiple chips together. And that board has now become bendable. So it’s they can go into a lot more devices and helmets and different different things. That even though, you know as we seek to onshore or restore more chip manufacturing, you know, China still has about a 98% market share of this advanced packaging process. So we think that this important niche, so you need specific tools that are multimillion dollar tools that are in our fab here. We think that this advanced packaging component of the supply chain is a niche that we could do well in here in Central Florida.

Brandon Burton 28:24
Yeah. Oh, yeah. China’s got 98% of the market, if you can get most of the market share in the in the States, then you’d be winning in our country, so that’s great. So these are two great programs, obviously making a big impact in driving Orlando forward and making an impact in the community, especially as a chamber the year finalists, I like asking this question as far as chambers that are out there looking to take their chamber up to the next level. What tips or, or advice or action items might you have for for someone trying to accomplish that goal?

Tim Giuliani 29:06
My suggestion, I think, coming up in the industry, and I’ve been in this line of work myself for about 18 years. What we’re taught is a lot of what’s called strategic planning. And I think that there, you know, that’s a part of the strategy, but to really get a forward looking strategy, I really believe you need to adopt a strategic foresight process. And the planning can certainly come later. But I think you’ve got to really understand from the outside in, you know what, what’s going on in the marketplace. The world is quickly changing, and what are those variety of trends that are out there, and then pare that down to a set of drivers of what’s really going to impact our work. In our region, and understanding what what’s driving change, and then be able to think about what what you do to achieve your goals in the face of that change. So I just think it’s a different perspective and mindset that strategic foresight brings that enables, you know, the idea of coming up with a digital twin came directly out of that process. And it’s, it’s really digitally transforming our work as we speak. And we’re only in phase one. I mean, there’s unlimited ability. Now, as it relates to you know, transportation is one of our big priorities as it is for a lot of chambers. And as it relates to making future investments, you know, we’re now able to put in to the digital twin scenarios of what a new train line would bring, and what that would do to traffic and how to communicate that to elected officials in the larger media and public. So I think it just, you know, it came out of that strategic foresight process of understanding what was coming online from a technology perspective, and then being able to see how that relates to us. And then we were able to build a plan off of that.

Brandon Burton 31:13
That’s awesome. Yeah, I’d love you know, hearing the the other uses for the digital twin to that’ll, that’ll help with advocacy and those things that are important in the region. So that in the terminology is Strategic Foresight process, is there a formal process that you go through that kind of a structure that you follow? I don’t know if you’re prepared to speak to that, but that it is very intriguing to me.

Tim Giuliani 31:38
Yes, absolutely. There’s, you know, if you if you’re interested, there’s some online courses, the Institute, the future has a great online course kind of Crash Course and understanding strategic foresight. You know, it’s, it’s also, you know, what futurists use. And I know, some people may have preconceived notions of what that might be, and how many eight balls that entails. Right. But I can assure you it’s a it’s a business process. A lot of leading companies are leveraging this technique or this mindset in their companies to really think of whether it’s consumer insights, strategic foresight, so there’s definitely a process. I went through a program at the University of Houston. So University of Houston, University of Hawaii are the two universities in the US that have for decades had programs focused on strategic foresight. So there’s, there’s obviously books, websites, courses, higher education, certifications, etc. To help anybody become more familiar with that process.

Brandon Burton 32:41
Yeah, that’s great. Great, I love it. So speaking of futurists, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tim Giuliani 32:53
Well, I’ve, I’ve always maybe had a slightly different take on things. And I really feel that the sort of things we’ve we did 15 years ago, and I did them too, you know, I’ve created directories I’ve edited. I’ve gotten the calls when we, you know, put the wrong phone number address, you know, I understand sort of those things that have been consistent in our industry. But I think, you know, over time, some of them have gotten commoditized and easily available online, through LinkedIn, through meetup through a variety of sources. And I think we’ve got to keep innovating in a way that’s just focused on impact, you know, what is going to drive the future of the region? What needs to be undertaken? You know, how do we set priorities for the community, that’s to the benefit of everybody. And I think we play an important role as chambers in setting those community priorities, by convening, and by, you know, kind of being the same center or the one that is able to be focused on progress and a longer time horizon than most elected officials have. And so I think we have that niche of we bring the community together, we help to set priorities or longer term, in our perspective, and then building programming and advocacy and work that’s tied to that mission, in my opinion, is a better and more sustainable technique than trying to be all things to all size companies and all parts of the community. I don’t I don’t think that’s actually attainable.

Brandon Burton 34:38
Yeah, I think you’re I think you’re right, figuring out what that impact is and setting those priorities, convening and be in the same center I think is spot on. Well, Tim, as we, before we let you go, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about the digital twin and Have you got that going or anything that we’ve talked about today? What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Tim Giuliani 35:05
Yeah, absolutely. I think LinkedIn is really the best way. I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn or communicate, at least initially that way. But LinkedIn, I think the easiest way to get in touch with me

Brandon Burton 35:20
good deal, and I’ll have your, your profile linked on the well, so yeah, that’ll work.

Tim Giuliani 35:28
It’s not many of us. So under that name, so should be easy to find.

Brandon Burton 35:31
That’s right. Now well, we’ll get that in there. But I really appreciate you setting aside some time to spend with us today. You’re on Chamber Chat Podcasts and wish you and your team Best of luck is chamber the year and congratulations on the great impact you guys are making.

Tim Giuliani 35:46
Thank you really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 35:48
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Innovative Partnerships with Kris Adams

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

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

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

Jason Mock 0:38
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 0:54
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
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Our guest for this episode is Kris Adams. Kris is the is with the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce as the director of Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit, Kris comes to the chamber from a career of service with nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining the chamber team, he served as the director of development for restoration village, a local Women and Children’s Shelter. He holds a master’s degree in Strategic Communication from Arkansas State University, a Master’s of divinity degree from Union Presbyterian seminary, and an undergraduate degree in religion from Liberty University. Kris believes that technology can be a force for good to improve the lives of everyone.

Kris, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Kris Adams 1:59
Hi, everyone, it’s a pleasure to be part of the podcast and know the interesting thing about me that was alluded to and my introduction is I know that a lot of us come to chamber life from from different backgrounds. And mine took a really interesting route through really starting off with schooling and training in religious studies and theological studies, which I know sounds like an odd mix to jump into technology, and chamber work. But really, it’s all about community building, about finding ways to engage with people, break down barriers and get people to collaborate together. And so it was a really good sort of start and set up to get me ready for the work that I’m doing today here in Bentonville,

Brandon Burton 2:44
right. No, I there’s a lot of similarities, I believe with religion and churches and the structure of community is in crosses over into chamber work to build communities and strengthen each other. So absolutely. I see the parallels there. So why don’t you take a moment to share us with us a little bit about the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce for those who’ve been listening to the podcast for a while may remember, we had Graham cod, who was the former President CEO of Bentonville chamber on an episode 114, where he talked about the value of placemaking in your community. But Kris, tell us is kind of the scope of work for the Bentonville chamber size, budget staff, that sort of thing. Just to give us some perspective. Yeah.

Kris Adams 3:35
The greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce is situated in the northwest corner of Arkansas. Our claim to fame is that we are the home of Walmart, Tyson Foods and JB Hunt. It’s a it’s a wonderful community that really most people don’t even realize exists until they come out and visit and see really what we’re known for. But beyond those big local players, one of the big draws to Northwest Arkansas is of course the university that is in Fayetteville, and we’re getting to be known as the mountain biking capital of the world. So it’s a really picturesque part of the natural state if you’ve never heard of it before. Our chamber has about 1100 members with a retention rate of about 88%. We have a budget of about 1.8 million and a seven person team guiding the ship and moving things forward here in the greater Bentonville area.

Brandon Burton 4:38
And I can attest to it. I’ve been to Bentonville several times and it is a beautiful place. And really you guys have a great corner there in Northwest Arkansas. So we had a kind of a roundabout way how we got to having Kris on the podcast. So I’ll give just a little bit of background last year at the Mako conference One of his colleagues, former colleagues, Andre, I had was part of one of his breakout sessions. And he spoke a lot about technology and how their chambers implementing a lot of these systems and whatnot into their, their office into their, their ecosystem there. And I had reached out to Andre and found out that he was no longer at the chamber. And as we got talking, he’s like, You really need to talk to Kris, like Kris is working with the, with the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit. And he’s really, you know, a big driver for a lot of these things that we’re doing and that we’re involved with. So Kris is here with us today, we’re going to focus our conversation around technology around you know, some of these things that can be implemented at your chamber, but also, and probably more, more of a focus around partnerships that you can make with those in your region in your city and your community around innovation. So we will dive in deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Richard Scully 7:16
We all know there are three words in Chamber of Commerce. So we suggest that you manage the chamber and will manage the commerce between both teams will deliver a lot more value back to members. We invite you to take a look at our Let’s Do Commerce Program by visiting www.letsdocommerce.com. You’ll be able to engage and promote membership like never before. And with our integrated chamber kiosk and community clicker program, the potential is enormous. To schedule a visit with me that works best for you, please visit RichardsCalendar.com. As we like to say here at Chamber Nation, join the chamber and get results.

Donna Novitsky 8:00
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 8:56
All right, Kris, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we will be talking about innovative partnerships. So I’d like to learn more, and maybe have you you know, tell the audience what the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit is to kind of give us an idea of of what that’s all about. And maybe that will kind of guide us in the direction as to developing those partnerships.

Kris Adams 9:21
Absolutely. The NWA Tech Summit, as we call it for short. Started 10 years ago, this will be our 10th year going in. And it serves as the premiere Technology Conference in the heartland. And it originally began as a collaborative work of small business owners and leaders in the local community who wanted to get together to talk technology and really discuss how they could stay ahead of the curve with all the different things, excuse me all the different things that were happening in the tech world that was impacting their businesses, and over the years it’s grown exponentially from this grassroots level work to include all of our larger local corporations, Walmart, Tyson, JB Hunt, the University of Arkansas, to include a lot of the tech players who have hubs and offices in this area, and do business with those groups. Everyone from Google to Intel and IBM, Red Hat, and Microsoft. And what’s really a joy is to see how all these different tech companies collaborate and work together through our committee through our planning, and in the conference itself, to put together just some stellar content that is applicable for everyone from high school students that attend all the way up through CEOs of these organizations that join us at the event. The event itself is multi day and runs about we had over 1700 Total registered attendees last year, about 137 presenters and 27 states beyond Arkansas were represented in our attendance. Wow. So that’s the event in a nutshell.

Brandon Burton 11:07
Yeah, that’s quite the scope. So the origins for it What? What was the kickoff to say we need to formalize a summit around technology here in Northwest Arkansas?

Kris Adams 11:20
Well, 10 years ago, we would have been coming on the back end of things like the the.com, boom and of the 90s. And watching Social Media sort of just in its heyday. And I know a lot of organizations were trying to figure out, you know, beyond those things, what was what was coming down the pike, I think one of the early slogans of the tech summit was this tagline of what’s next after next. And not just this idea of being prepared for the future, but being prepared for what’s what’s after the immediate future. And coming in the next three to five to seven years. And in our area, with the organizations and companies involved supply chain has always been a tremendous issue. And really COVID helped bring that again to the forefront of a lot of discussions. And so a lot of our technology, discussions revolve around ideas of supply chain mobility, how to how to stay relevant in those areas where we’re just seeing massive changes and shifts in technology impacting companies, both large and small, in our area and beyond.

Brandon Burton 12:35
So as you as you guys have developed this Tech Summit and in develop some of these partnerships, and are you needing to reach out to some of these businesses to be involved, or imagine you’ve got several of them kind of knocking on your door at this point, saying we want to be involved, how’s that developed?

Kris Adams 12:54
Well, you know, it’s really interesting how some of these relationships develop organically. One of the interesting bits of news that happened this last year was about some of the partnerships being developed between the state of Arkansas and Oklahoma, specifically in the area of new mobility and future mobility. So things like autonomous drones, drone delivery, there’s a good working relationship happening between the two states, as you know, we’re really trying to be a part of that push into what’s coming next for delivering goods, transforming the way we think about how you get places and move things. And, you know, we have good friends connected to the to the summit over in Tulsa through Tulsa innovation labs, and some of those partnerships that and the things that they’re working on over there. They just lend themselves to really great organic connections, where we’re doing a lot of the same work less than two hours away. And we see it as a really an opportunity to be collaborative partners and help further this conversation that can better benefit both of our areas, really the region as a whole, this northwest corner of Arkansas, and the quarter of Oklahoma that includes Tulsa, and then up into Missouri as well. And we even see some attend from Kansas City. So there’s this really unique desire to see this little corner of the world that we’re in this region here in the heartland develop and become our thought leader. Some have already started saying that they want to see this area become the Silicon Valley of mobility, specifically that that’s a goal for Arkansas. And I think that’s an A wonderfully ambitious goal. And so as we’re all trying to chase some of these shared dreams and visions for what technology can do for our local areas, it just makes so much more sense to collaborate together to share our thought leaders and our innovative approaches, so that we can all learn from each other and better that from the the insights that each of us are gaining.

Brandon Burton 15:03
Right? So you mentioned about the Tulsa innovation lab. So that being a partnership and collaborative partnership, how is that? Is it a formal partnership structure? How is how are these relationships built and developed?

Kris Adams 15:20
Yeah, a lot of these organizations come on to our event as sponsors or providers of content. They help us put together dynamic presentations that really speak into, you know, what their organizations are. Experts in Tulsa innovation labs spoke both on these automated delivery systems like drones, but they’re also well known for cybersecurity and the work that they do, trying to research how to keep platforms secure. And so their unique spin on content for us was, how to secure those autonomous drones and what that looks like in the future. And so, really, it’s it’s this unique play of us figuring out who’s the experts in which area, and getting them to be able to share to a crowd of individuals who probably have some really interesting perspectives on how they, they might be able to roll out things like this for their organization, and get them to share their insight and their wealth of knowledge. So that we can all kind of learn together from the best of the best that are already doing the work. So they provide a really unique and interesting viewpoints. When they come to speak, we have another good working relationship with a lot of our public school systems. in Bentonville, there is a program for juniors and seniors called Ignite, where it is technical training everything from kids who are juniors and seniors getting their licensure and certifications to be able to work in the hospitals, to getting their FAA certifications that they can get at 16, to fly drones, to all sorts of other business marketing type innovations. And we actually had students from that group come and present at the Tech Summit to speak about the innovation that they’re learning about. And we had some of our partnering companies then present to this same group of students, how they could move up throughout their careers in the area, through getting internships, finding ways to get into their company, post college, and then the careers that they could eventually have and stay and live and work in this area for some of these larger organizations that call the greater Bentonville area home. So there are some really unique partnerships that we develop that we highlighted the Tech Summit where everyone shares their expertise, and kind of their niche for what they do in tech and how it benefits the community.

Brandon Burton 17:58
Right. So as you’re talking, I’m thinking not necessarily every chamber needs or can even justify doing a Tech Summit, right? Every chamber is different. You’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber, right? But as you look at your community, what is that thing that you can get behind? What is that thing that is unique to your region, to your community that you can maybe build some sort of a summit like this, where you can develop those partnerships, because really, what it comes down to is, as Kris is just talking about these things, and partnering with the school district, you’re you’re working on economic development, you’re working on workforce and talent attraction, and in recruitment, and really just continuing to build your region and and attracting people to it. There in Bentonville just happens to be around technology. But it’s exciting. Everybody likes to learn what the latest and greatest what the next next. That’s right.

Kris Adams 18:57
You know, I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, it’s not that the goal is to replicate a tech summit at every chamber. I think the goal is to really listen to your your Chamber members and your constituency to find out more about them about what they do, and what they’re, what their commonalities are, what binds them together. And where were those shared threads of interest and expertise, because that’s really how the Tech Summit developed was, it was a natural fit for the organizations and members in our area. And so I think that the chambers do well to really listen to their members to get to know them, to find out what their passions and their interests are, what what are they working on that gets them excited and gets them up in the morning and then trying to see where that connects with all those organizations that are part of your membership that you know, maybe your top 10% of engaged members, you know, what is it that that is that commonality between all of them And then trying to build something big and unique based on that, because where there’s a shared love, and a shared passion and a shared interest, that’s when it’s going to be most natural, and people will get behind it so much quicker. I think you hit the nail on the head there.

Brandon Burton 20:14
And maybe continuing on this thread. There in Bentonville. You’d mentioned Walmart, JB Hunt, you know, you got some big companies that logistics and transportation that are their big issues and ways that need to be, you know, innovative going forward. So for the listeners, if you look in your community, think of who are your major employers? Who are those big manufacturing firms in your area? What other businesses support those other big manufacturers or big employers? And how can we align some of these resources to be able to help support them help support the community in general, because I see that kind of a model that you guys have taken here of saying, here’s the big industry in Bentonville. There’s a lot of other industries that support that. Now let’s build something that can support all of them to further develop and create a stronger community. So it correct me if I’m wrong, that sounds like the kind of a template that you guys follow.

Kris Adams 21:17
Oh, that’s, that’s absolutely it. And the beauty of it is to that there are just so many issues that revolve not just around around tech, but just workforce in general. It’s always about talent, attraction, retention, how to benefit not just all that the larger organizations, but the small to mid sized, that are participating in the community as well. And then really assisting those who need help getting access to to be part of this community group, you know, we provide through the Tech Summit, complimentary access to students, educators, entrepreneurs, military and veterans, really just trying to be able to bring the community together around the things that unite us, even those who may not necessarily have thought they could have access to something at this level, and making sure that they feel included and that they can be part of the conversation as well.

Brandon Burton 22:12
Yeah. And I think we’re you guys have really, you know, struck gold, we’ll say or struck oil struggled. For you guys a strike oil is where you found that niche for those those companies in your region. But you, you found that common ground that people can get excited about, you know, people want to sponsor the event, people want to show up, they want to learn they want to know what’s going on. So again, for those listening, what can you build excitement for? But maybe let’s, let’s talk more about the tech summit itself. So you had mentioned it being the largest event of the year for you guys 10 years into it? You obviously have sponsors for it. You mentioned how many people registered and attend and speakers. As far as putting on that event, so it’s multi day? are you renting out facilities? Are you selling tickets to different events within it? Are you just tell us more of the structure of the event itself?

Kris Adams 23:13
Yeah, so the events really revolves around a simple structure for programming. When we do plenary sessions, it’s everybody either all in one room, or all watching one group of people and then a live stream of that to all our other sites. That’s why we did it multisite last year, and focusing just on one thing, one program happening at that moment. And then we do that for a couple sessions, and then move into our breakout sessions where we have multiple tracks going on at the same time. And those tracks then sort of revolve around whatever’s current and trending in tech. This year, we’re looking at some new tracks that we’re going to be bringing out to address sort of the innovation that’s happening now. And it’s in the news every day, we’re focusing on automation and AI, security and privacy, retail innovation, which is the perfect fit, knowing sort of our local community and makeup track on starting up and scaling up for entrepreneurs in the area. And then I track on data science, and analytics is really what we hope to put together. So the event revolves around those big large group sessions, smaller breakout sessions where you can dig in a little deeper on a specific topic. And then one of the things that we know all of our participating organizations love our demo boots, getting to showcase their products, their their toys, the cool things that they’re doing in tech. And so this year, we’re running with the theme of the year of the machines because we want to see everybody bring all their cool tech out last year. We had drone up bring one of their their drones to show off which they They’re a lot bigger than people imagine. They’re pretty hefty. For for flying around. It’s not the Toy Drones that buy off Amazon by any means. We had Tyson Foods bring out one of their robots that actually is automated and moves some of their chicken pieces. And they demoed that and show that off. We had a robotic dog that came out last year, from our friends up near Joplin, Missouri. They came down with some of that really cool tech, people who were really concerned as to what was going on as we had two or three robotic dogs running around the square in downtown Bentonville. Tech Summit, people just haven’t seen that. And so it was, it was fascinating to see. And then, yeah, just lots of lots of cool things like that. Ganic, which if you don’t know them, they do autonomous vehicles, and delivery for Walmart. They’ve had one of their autonomous trucks that drives itself parked outside part of the Tech Summit so that people could take a look at it, and see all the cool little bells and whistles with that. Just fascinating piece of machinery. And just like that’s, I’m a tech fan. I look at something like that. And it scares the living daylights out of me, because I don’t I don’t understand how we even begin to piece something that complex together. Because it all relies even on the smallest of parts comes down to the cameras that read and interpret the road. And then all the sensors. Yeah, yeah. So it’s, it’s so it’s so much more interesting now that we’re post COVID We’re back fully in person. It’s it’s tech that you can touch, see and feel. And that’s really cutting edge and really just fascinating to, to see and hear people share their expertise about, you know, how it works, what it does, and why it’s so vital for what’s coming in the future.

Brandon Burton 26:54
Yeah, yeah, hearing about the the see touch and feel the technology, I can’t help but think of, you know, what used to be the world’s fairs, you know, people would come out to see the, you know, the first ferris wheel or the light bulb or the washing machine, you know, these these things that just blew your mind at the time. And now there’s, you know, technology, it seemed to kind of level out there for a while, and now we’re having more leaps and bounds and technology, and people are excited to see what the future holds. So I’m curious, how do you guys go about advertising the summit? How far reaching Do you try to attract people and vendors and sponsors and so forth,

Kris Adams 27:34
it’s really interesting part of it is that we’ll see a lot of natural growth that happens just as word spreads. As you know who’s coming on and who’s talking at the event. We were blessed this year to have some really high level presenters from Walmart and Tyson and Red Hat that had some great social followings that were kind enough, you know, to help share the event, promote it, we do a lot to promote it within the within the chamber itself to share it among our members. And then we we did some targeted email marketing, television spots, some partnerships with local other organizations, our chamber does not include our sort of tourism department visit Bentonville or our downtown area, which is downtown Bentonville, Inc. But we work collaboratively with them to help get the word out about the event and promote it to people who may be in the area to to those who live and work in Bentonville and make sure that it was on their radar. And so it was really a multi pronged approach as we tried to get the word out and make sure that people knew that the Tech Summit was happening. This year, we’re going to be doing a lot of the same and we really hope to capitalize on some of those people that have brand new tech looking to show it off, we’ll be reaching out to to new companies that that have that shiny, new, amazing toy that we really want to show off. And we hope that if there’s anybody listening, who’s got something like that, that maybe isn’t on our radar that they’d reach out as well. Get in touch with us and let us know what cool tech they’re playing around with. That would be a good fit to show off and demo and talk about at the Tech Summit.

Brandon Burton 29:25
I was waiting for you to come around today. You’re going on these podcasts and promoting it and advertising right. Now, as we start wrapping up here, Kris, I’d like asking everybody that have on the show if you know from the things that you’ve experienced and learned in your time with the chamber, what might be a tip or an action item that you could share with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level?

Kris Adams 29:52
You know, I am I’m a fan of always being willing to to take other people’s opinions and insights and perspectives into putting together an event like this, I think that, you know, when we silo ourselves to a couple people to a couple of voices, we can end up with with events that are good, but really don’t reflect the broader creativity that exists when we engage in dialogue with others. And so whether it’s me being the crazy one around the office, shouting ideas into the sounding board and trying to get feedback from my wonderful team, that seriously has no end to great insights, that they’ve spoken into this event, to our committee, our chairs, some of the local players, you know, in specific tech areas, you know, just asking them, you know, hey, what do you think about this track? How can we make it better? What can we do to get really on point with our pro, excuse me our programming, because that’s not my area of expertise. I think dialogue like that is crucial, because that dialogue just makes everything so much more robust and stellar, as we get different opinions, different insights, different voices, at the conversation table to make things more diverse, more interesting, and really make it more collaborative people. People want to come to something that they’ve had a part in building. And so that’s, that would be my challenge. And tip is to engage as many as you can bring as many seats and voices to the table as possible, because you’ll be surprised at how how creative and wonderful people are in contributing to an event like this if just given the opportunity to

Brandon Burton 31:44
Yeah, yeah, embrace that. The ability to be a convener, I would say, yeah. And to be able to lean on the counsel of others to be able to develop something great. So the other question, I like asking, and I’m curious to hear what your response would be being that you’re, you’re tied in so much with the technology space. But as we look to the future, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Kris Adams 32:15
No, I think the future of chambers is it really, it’s going to parallel a lot of what we see in technology, chambers are going to need to find ways to position themselves as as useful. And as current with what’s happening in the world around them. We’ve, we’ve seen technology come and go so much quicker than we ever have before. We were joking around when we were talking about the tech summit about how fun would it be? We do giveaways of like tech prizes, you know, like VR headset or something like that. We said, How funny would it be if we gave away as gag gifts, like some of the old outdated tech that either never took off? Or that only those of us of like a certain age would remember like it would be great to give out a Walkman. Because it’s no dated now. And I think that that that’s like the prime example of, you know, what, what chambers have to do, they have to find ways to stay current to stay moving forward. And really to think bold, and, you know, dare to dream some of these really high and lofty dreams for how they can continue to best serve their members in in ways that maybe they hadn’t before. I think that’s going to be the continued push for not just chambers, but for all organizations is how do we stay relevant and move forward with the times while maintaining our identity and for chambers, our identities and our it’s not just in our chamber, but it’s in our members in our local communities. And I think that’s that’s the tension that we’ve got,

Brandon Burton 33:42
for sure. Yeah, the the old piece of tech that came to my mind was remember the old Sony memory sticks like not a card but a memory stick that Sony had. But I think you guys should do that you should start collecting the Walkmans and disc men’s and the CD, all kinds of good speakers, the mini disc players, laser disc players. Yeah, just you guys can have a great pool of prizes. So yeah. They might be valuable at this point to I don’t know,

Kris Adams 34:10
it could be collector’s items. You never know. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 34:13
Well, Kris, if anyone listening wanted to reach out and connect with you learn more about the tech summit or anything you guys have gone on there and Bentonville what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Kris Adams 34:23
Yeah, if you want to learn more about the event, you can visit NWA tech summit.com To learn more about our chamber you can visit greater bentonville.com to connect with me directly. You can find me on LinkedIn or you can shoot me an email at Kay Adams at greater bentonville.com I love to talk tech with you about chamber things in general and religious Get Connected always. Like I mentioned always want to hear another great voice and opinion to chime in to the conversation. Who knows what a great idea you might have to share. Love to hear it.

Brandon Burton 34:55
Awesome. Well, we will get all of your contact info in our show notes for this Episodes and people can look it up and reach out and connect with you. But, Kris, I really appreciate you setting aside some time and joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and sharing about the exciting things going on with the NWA Tech Summit. And things you guys have gone on there in the Bentonville chamber. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brandon.

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Chamber Utility for NFTs with Ronnie Russell

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:23
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

Ronnie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ronnie Russell 45:36
So thank you for that.

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