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

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

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

I’ll your host, he speaks one language. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Before we jump into this episode, I wanted to let everyone know about our Chamber Pros Planner giveaway raffle that we’re doing this year we did it last year but Izzy West has been kind enough to partner with the podcast again to give away five Chamber Pros Planners for 2023. So any of you listening if you leave a review for the show, either an apple podcast or even on Facebook under the Chamber Chat Podcast page, and send me a screenshot at Brandon@chamberchatpodcast.com I’ll enter you into a raffle to win one of Izzy West’s 2023 Chamber Pros Planners.

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

Diann Rogers 1:20
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:33
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Our guest for this episode is David Brown. David has recently joined next generation consulting as lead consultant. He is the retired president and CEO of the Greater Omaha chamber, one of the largest and most highly accredited chambers in the nation. Some of you may remember I had David on the podcast back in episode 71. We’re on episode 199. Now to give you some perspective, it’s been a little bit backed by 30 years of experience and economic development and chamber administration David led the chamber with bold vision and contagious enthusiasm. The organization advocated for strong business, climate and community building created opportunities for member visibility and business connections pursued investment and jobs for the region strengthen leaders and the community and enhance the region’s brand and image. Under his leadership, the Chamber partnered with the United Way of the Midlands and the Urban League of Nebraska to develop Omaha 2040 a 20 year vision for the region. initiatives focused on Diversity Equity and Inclusion, regional mass transit, redevelopment of the urban core economic development and talent attraction and retention. During his tenure in Omaha, the Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership, Omaha’s regional economic development effort led by the Chamber successfully landed 972 projects representing 56,433 jobs and nearly $15 billion in capital investments since 2004. David began his career in organization management in Michigan in 1983, as President of the Monroe County Industrial Development Corporation, and director of the port of Monroe. He served 10 years in Indiana as a fourth grader Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, versus vice president of economic development and then as president, his next assignment took him to South Carolina where he was president and CEO of the greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce. David assumed the role as President CEO of the Greater Omaha chamber in October 2003 is a graduate of Dartmouth College with academic specialties and industrial location and environmental studies. David, I’m excited to have you back with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

David Brown 4:47
Are you brand new thanks for having me. I I knew he’d been on not so recently, but I didn’t realize that it was back in 2020. That was in the height of all things disruptive happening in the world. So Good to be here when things are a little bit more subtle than they were back then I think we all learned a lot about ourselves and about our world and a lot our communities in the last few years, you know, I’ve been fortunate to have been married to a terrific woman for 40 years. Maggie and I met in 81. And we’re married in 82. We have two sons, 28 and 38. The older one is a videographer, and photographer by trade, and my youngest son was an opera singer. So I’m not exactly sure how we ended up with such artsy kids, considering I’ve been in the chamber world, how life but it’s been remarkable to see them express their talents. And when they perform or showing showcasing things, you can’t be proud or so lots of folks don’t really know that about my family. So that’s a way to kind of see and maybe how I think and why I think we why I think the way I do. So it’s been it’s been a great career. And again, a great life. And as I was told just earlier today, you really haven’t really retired, you just sort of started years that one career and have to decide kind of what’s your how much time you’re going to be spending retiring versus how much time you’re going to be spending working. So that’s been an interesting challenge figuring this out.

Brandon Burton 6:19
That’s right. And well, I’m sure touch on that a bit more in our conversation today. It is great to see your kids, you know, develop their talents or skills and watch them flourish. And it doesn’t, you know, you can’t help but have a sense of pride

David Brown 6:34
as you see them do this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, everyone, as they should be, are so proud of what their kids accomplishments are. I’m just amazed by skills that they have that I can’t even get close to. So I’m wondering how they’ve got the interest and found all this energy and artistic ability. But it’s, I think just getting a more gratified by the fact that I know I can’t do what they do. So it’s really interesting to watch them do their thing.

Brandon Burton 6:58
Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned in your bio, that you are retired now as president, CEO of the Greater Omaha chamber. And now you’re the lead consultant at Next Generation consulting? Sure, would you take a minute and tell us a little bit about next generation consulting and what that is how you guys, you know, who’s your ideal clan clients who you work with type of work you do? perspective.

David Brown 7:26
So next generation consulting is the consulting firm that was started by Rebecca Ryan, who was a futurist 1517 years ago, and I met her in 2003, when she helped us establish our first young professionals Council in Omaha when I got there. And she came in and just talked about what best practices were and how to make an effective yp group, which is now I think, one of the largest in the country, it definitely has the largest blind key events where we’ll get 16 1700 People at an annual yp Summit. And we’ve really converted what started out as a networking opportunity for young professionals to kind of build their network into not just that, but also leadership training, opportunity, and knowledge opportunity to get young people engaged in strategic discussions around the community. So we really went from Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t do more of a young professionals to now there are a dynamic part of virtually every strategic discussion that happens in your law community. And in our community, their last count that I when I was still there was about 50 or 60 young professional organizations, within companies and within other nonprofits and with other industries that grew out of initial work that we did with Rebecca back in 2003. So, you know, Rebecca is a force of nature. If you’ve met her or have seen her speak, you know, that she can handle a crowd and motivate a community like just about nobody else that I’ve ever seen. But she’s also a pretty significant, a very significant player and help helping communities solve problems. So over the years after 2003, we started calling her whenever there was something that something that just wasn’t quite clicking. And then finally, in 2017, we called her and said, Look, we’ve been doing strategic planning, the same way. We’ve been doing it for decades, and we need to do something different if we want to have different results. And so can you give us a hand thinking through this? And so as a result of that, we went through the Strategic Foresight process that is a futurist process that helps communities figure out what they want to be 1020 3040 50 years from now. It’s been a an industry norm for utility companies and for communities who have to build big infrastructure to use futuristic concepts. To get their stuff done. But for communities, it’s kind of difficult to think I’m going to try and figure out what my community is going to be like 20 years from now. So for the first time, we did that in Omaha, and we’ve created, as you mentioned, Omar 2040, which was a fascinating process. And what’s really intriguing to me is that it helped us think about what we needed to do differently, given the fact that the community was going to change over the next 20 years. And the work that we did to figure out how it was going to change help us figure out what we should be doing to accommodate that change. Or if we needed to create disruption, that would stop some kind of change and create something else, we could figure out how to do that. So it worked for us, it was a great process for us. And over that timeline, I got to know Rebecca really well, she got to know me really well. And we realized that maybe there was a role that I could play when I whenever I retired at the time, it wasn’t something that was going to be imminent. And then I might be able to be helpful to other communities with the experience that I had in the communities that I’d been in. So when I finally realized that I was probably going to be retiring sometime in the spring of 22, we started talking, and that was about 18 months prior to retirement happening, just trying to figure out if there was a fit, or not, I had, and you know, for her, and we’ll talk about the process of getting there. But next generation consulting does work with communities and helping them build visions for the future. We can talk about that process, if you like as we move on here. But they also work with industry, utilities, etc. And helping them try and figure out, you know, their future process. And they really do a lot of training of teams and staff so that they can become adept to thinking like a futurist too. And using these this methodology to make a lot of decisions throughout their time. So it’s a interesting fit. And so far, I’ve done a couple of projects with her and, you know, it’s working, it seems like so far, so good.

Brandon Burton 12:08
That’s good. I love that futuristic mindset, you know, is it reminds me of the great Wayne Gretzky, you know that those quote of you got to skate to where the puck is going, you know, you can’t go to where it was, because then you missed the boat.

David Brown 12:20
You use that term before, it’s a great analogy, because that’s really what we’re doing, right? I mean, think of anything that you’ve set as a goal. It usually isn’t a goal for tomorrow, it’s a goal for something substantial down the road, you got to figure out how to get there. But you got to know where you’re going first. Exactly. And that’s always been a challenge. If if you do strategic planning as the way it’s traditionally been done, you look back five years, see what happened, what worked, what didn’t work, discard the stuff that didn’t add some more stuff on the front side, you look at some new trends you might be aware of, and you build a five year plan and figure out a way to pay for it and implement it and do it again, five years later. And we’ve all done it that way. This instead says let’s put a mark in the sand about where we want to be and what we want to be. And then let’s backcast from that a series of opportunities to make differences in the community. So you actually get to that end goal. And it’s a fun process. It’s a lot of work. But it’s well worth it because it becomes that foundational context. And that was the one thing I found in Omaha is our chairman looked at that and said, Now I know why we do what we do. Because I can look at 2040 and see where we’re going. And I can see the steps we’re taking to get us there. Yeah, he used it in every speech there on it saying context is important. You got to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and where you’re going. So it’s a great tool for communities to use.

Brandon Burton 13:40
Absolutely. Well as we get into our topic for discussion today. We’re going to focus on what life is like you know, going through retirement so life after retirement as a chamber exec and the nuances with it and different mindset changes. We’ll we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Izzy West 15:14
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Brandon Burton 15:47

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All right, David, we’re back. As it is, before our break, we’re going to talk about life after retirement. So you kind of alluded to it a little bit into how you ended up with next generation consulting. But what was that transition like? And as you go through explaining, I want to try to keep in mind for maybe the younger chamber professionals that are listening, the things that they can do now, as they prepare, you know, down the road talk talk about 20 years down the road, where that puck is going, what can their retirement look like and start planning now as they go that direction? How’s it been for you so far?

David Brown 17:30
Well, it has been terrific, but I must admit it, it’s harder to be retired than it is to be working. Because your natural inclination is to work. And so even just sitting here in my office at my house, my inclination is to find out what else is there out there that I can work on. And I’ve got to constantly remind myself that yeah, that’s not what this is supposed to be about your work when you want to work, but you play when you want to play. So when my granddaughter shows up, the computer turns off and we go do stuff with my granddaughter. So you know, there’s a there’s there is a transition time you got to play in there. I will tell you your intro though, started really interestingly, you really do have to start thinking about your retirement 20 years in advance. And I say that because chamber world is not the most lucrative world and a world to to make work to be become wealthy. And so you got to be thinking about how are you going to support yourself and your spouse and your family, when you finally decide to hang up the Spurs and actually retire. And so you have to do a lot of financial planning, find somebody you trust in the community and just start thinking about, what is it going to look like, when you moving forward? Now it sounds basic, but it’s always kind of the last thing and the to do list, you know, call that financial person and see what they think. And then implementing that plan is not never real simple, because there’s to take some courage, number one, it takes some focus number two and some commitment that you’re going to make some decisions that will you’ll benefit down the road from so the first thing I would tell chamber executives, if you hadn’t been thinking about yet, you how you’re going to invest your money and how you’re going to have money there for your retirement. You can’t start soon enough, and you start started engaging in that in that process, and then doing what you commit to do. I’m actually going to do these things, I’m going to have the specific reason to do it. And I’m going to actually get that work done. But you know, I think then when you actually start getting closer to the time that you’re going to retire, I found that I had to kind of fit it in between the next big items that I knew were coming down the road. So for us it was a five year fundraising campaign and development of a new five year strategy. And so even though those all related to the vision that we had, there are steps along the way to get there as all as you chamber execs figure you know you don’t start a new five year plan the year before the plan supposed to take effect that you started three years earlier and you start are trying to figure out all those steps. So. So for me it was about did I have it in me to do yet another five year plan? If I did, I needed to probably stay two or three more years because the money had to be raised. And the plan had to be built and had to be sold to investors and finally realized that while I could do it, I’m not sure that I wanted to do it. And I was old enough that I could make that choice if the timing was right for me to retire. So. So first off, I started really thinking about five years before I made the decision to retire, what’s coming up, that is going to be hanging out there that I need to make a decision about my engagement in it, because I can either retire this year and retire Three years later, but what’s it going to be? So you got to do some forward planning of your own about what’s coming down the pike that you’re gonna be responsible for?

Brandon Burton 20:53
It’s a little different than other careers where you can decide, yeah, give it six more months or end of the year and retire? I mean, if you commit to stick around, you’re committing, you know, like you said, like, another three years, yeah, be able to get to that next, or that next big event, or hurdle, or whatever it

David Brown 21:08
is never six months is always Yeah, because those things take years to get done. So as always, okay, three more years of this, yep. When you weigh the financial benefit, versus the psychological benefits or downs, and you’ve figured out what, what you want to do, but then I think, I don’t know chamber exec, that is gonna go to the public park and observe their naval for the next 25 years, once they retire, you know, they’re just not going to sit there and contemplate life, they’re going to be busy, they’re going to do things and you got to plan for them. Because you’re right now you’re busy doing nonprofit boards that you’re engaged in are carrying out activities that you need to get your job done, or raising money or networking, doing something. And then all of a sudden, you’re not gonna be doing that. And so the next phase was good now that I realize I want to retire. And I think I know what I want to retire. And I’ve done the financial planning to allow me to retire. What’s retirement gonna look like? And do I want to keep working at least part time for a few years just to keep using my contacts, keep doing the things that I did well, and trying to kind of take that to the next level? Or do I really want to do something totally different? Or do I just basically want to do nothing and just spend time traveling with family etc. And those are all options that you need to consider. And you got to really think about those hard because if you haven’t figured it out, by the time you actually close your office for the last time, the next day is pretty stark. If the phone doesn’t ring, you don’t have another project meeting to go to even

Brandon Burton 22:45
wide open.

David Brown 22:46
All of a sudden, it’s like, you know, I thought I had 1000 people that just needed to talk to me every day. And they did when I was the head of the chamber. But now there’s somebody else there and your time is over, those calls don’t come. And so you’re really dependent upon yourself to figure out what you’re going to do next.

Brandon Burton 23:05
Right. So how has that transition worked for you with staying busy after leaving the chamber? And do you have a clear enough vision? Yeah, looking back. I mean, it’s been a little bit now to be able to look back and say, I feel like I plan? Well, and

David Brown 23:19
I think so for me, I said, Look, I think I want to work about 25% of the time, and I want to make about this much money. And I had to see if that was possible. And so I’ve got a couple of clients that I’m working with in the Omaha area, and I’ve got work with Nebraska, I mean, next generation consulting with Rebecca. And that feels about 25% of my time. And I’m, it’s working well, I’m enjoying what I’m doing. What I really had to figure out is, as I mentioned earlier, pulling back away from this computer and turning everything off and just going to do sometimes nothing. Many most times something but still just realizing that retirements about 75% of my time right now. And it’ll be that way for probably five years, I think. Then five years from now we’ll reassess and to say, you know, is it something that I really want to keep doing? Or is it time to really sort of hanging up and by then I’ll have figured out all the other stuff that we’ll be doing that I’m missing by having 25% of my time, taken up by consulting, but I must admit I’m having a blast. Rebecca and her team are fun to work with. They have really fun projects. I’m working in Des Moines right now with her on a project. I’ve worked a little bit with her on the Iowa City project. There’s a whole bunch of projects coming up down the pike for communities that are doing 20 year visions. And I’ve got an interesting perspective because I was the customer of this for a long time. Now I’m learning about what’s behind the curtain. How’s the sausage really being made and how is it actually happened? And those two blended together, I think add a nice complement to Rebecca and her team.

Brandon Burton 24:58
Yeah, well and you also come from a unique perspective where you’ve been in different parts of the country, Indiana and South Carolina and Nebraska to be able to see how different things work and taking ideas from what’s worked in other communities. And of course, your network of other chamber professionals you’ve met throughout your career, I mean, great resources to be able to rely on and really develop a good strategy for for change very

David Brown 25:23
much. So I think the work in ACCE that I did when I was in that on that board are involved in committees, you meet a lot of great people there. And so naledi able to use those, that network that you’ve created. But you really, really think about who are the thinkers in this business, and they were the ones that I can call and say, Hey, what would you do about this, or something happening in your community that would help us resolve that. So this network is still there. Chamber execs move around is that they do in every profession, but I keep track of them, they make sure that I’m talking to folks on a pretty regular basis, just to make sure I know what’s going on out there that don’t get stale, by it has been a lot of fun to see peers out there in the field doing this work. And to see the kind of issues that they’re coming up with, you know, they’re dramatic and dynamic and really forward thinking that can change communities and most communities do need to change just because 20 years from now is gonna be different than it is today. So it’s so far it’s work.

Brandon Burton 26:22
Right? So you brought up an important thing to discuss, I believe, is that chamber execs that move from one chamber to another and it happens a lot. You talked about the transition of leaving chamber world and going into retirement. What how about the transition of, you know, exiting one chamber going to another Are you still looking at the timing should what sort of things should be considered here before someone leaves one chamber to another?

David Brown 26:50
Well, I’ve always I went, as you mentioned, I went to from four or five different organizations. And for me, it was always about maybe a larger community with different challenges. In one case, as you mentioned, geography was important, we had an opportunity to do some work in the south, and we had my wife and I had never lived there and never worked there. So it was an opportunity to kind of experience what was going on there. Which is, you know, each of the regions of the country do economic development differently. I think, weather brother says a lot about that. But we were able to learn a lot, you need to go different places. So so for me to make a decision to leave it was always about am I gonna get to something bigger, maybe something better, I didn’t want to be at a place that was so big, that chambers couldn’t have an impact. So I kind of moved around to I got to a point where I was picking the right size city with the right size chamber that had the right level of gifted authority, even if it wasn’t official authority to get things done. So you have to think about that it is not a matter of just lateral moves, I think you got to think about where you want you where your skill set might be the most useful. And then, you know, when you when you do make a transition, one thing you really got to keep in mind, your contact list doesn’t help you a little liquid you move to the new town. The things that give us strength as chamber execs is the network that we build automatically. And your contact list was was my contact, this was the envy of just about everybody in town, because I had, I knew millions of people that seemed like and knew how to get in touch up, I didn’t know the number off the top of my head, then you move to another town, it’s like, well, I know 12 People, six of them were on the search committee. Six of them ran the executive at the board. And nobody else it takes a lot of than focus energy to get to know people and and make that network another part of that that resource that makes you so valuable in the community. So that’s that was the one thing that surprised me. Every time I left somewhere, I figured this is going to really be valuable. Take my rolodex with me. And

Brandon Burton 28:54
yeah, so we’re seeing a lot of changes in chamber world right now. You know, transitioning from one chamber to another, any tips on how to build those networks in the new community? Yeah, I

David Brown 29:05
always thought and I think in his last gig, even though it was back in 2003, it was about just being everywhere at once for that first 100 days. And it had to be everywhere talking to everybody. They had to I always thought that they had to see that my level of energy was going to be far greater than anyone else’s, that I was going to be aggressive about meeting people. That was gonna follow up on things that I said I would do mean that building the network with the key decision makers, and maybe even the next tier was just crucial. And so I would, despite what communities might put in front of you and say, Here’s we want you to get done 100 days, in that first 100 days, the most important thing you can do is become part of the community. People got to know you, they got to see you. They’ve got to shake your hand. And they’ve got to know they can actually call you and you’ll remember them make a difference. There’s no greater compliment you can pay it anyway. And then you remember them when you see them or remember them when they call you. And that’s work. You know, it isn’t like you’re going to be networking, you are going to be networking, you know, 1215 hours a day. But you need to remember who you met. And you need to know, we have to have a system in place to do that. And so if you can do that, that makes everything else work. Now, people will say, Well, yeah, he’s part of the community, he’s working really hard to become part of the community. And let’s, let’s give him a chance to see if he can really do what he says he can do. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:28
like that. So I’d like to ask just in general, for chambers listening, what tip or action item might you have for them if they’re looking to try to elevate their chamber up to the next level?

David Brown 30:43
So I have found that I mentioned a little bit earlier, chambers have no authority to do a damn thing, right? I mean, we weren’t elected. We weren’t appointed, you know, we got we’ve got momentum behind us because of our membership or because of the projects we work on. But, frankly, we have no legal reason why anybody would listen to us come to a meeting and do anything like that. For me, the way we engage the community and other leaders was what made us the big convener that we were. So I found during COVID. And during the social unrest following the George Floyd’s death, and since then, that the biggest resource I had was the number of other leaders, particularly in nonprofits or government entities, that I counted as more than just acquaintances that trusted me and I trusted them. And then we did things together. Because during COVID, that meant that we picked up the phone and call each other and met as a group and said, How can we help solve this, and we’ve problem solved together because we trusted each other. But trust doesn’t just come overnight, and not just based on need, because there’s a catastrophe around. It’s something you build over time. So I think, you know, chambers can’t do everything, and they’re not supposed to do everything. But United Way’s are the same way. They’re not supposed to do everything. But they’re important parts of the social fabric of a community. We mentioned the Urban League in Omaha, we used them as a partner, because we knew that we were becoming more and more diverse. And we needed to have a diverse voice telling us what was going on in the community. So we ended up with about 75 partner organizations that we worked with on any given day. And I could tell you, which of those organizations were interested in what issues and we constantly pulled them in. And those discussions and they did the same thing. You gain sort of sort of a mutual credibility. So if they get the chamber involved, they can say the chambers were this and that all of a sudden, the Chamber credibility is layered on top of their own. And vice versa. You know, if you say United Way, as a partner with us, all of a sudden, all those folks that are united way fans and maybe not too terribly engaged in the chamber, all of a sudden become people that want to be involved with you, too. So I think a way you can help build your chambers ability to get things done, is engaging with other leaders, and building a network and a collaborative process and engaged leaders of other organizations who might also not have any authority to do anything. But just by virtue of the organization they represent and the numbers they have and the commitment their boards have, you can get more done together,

Brandon Burton 33:10
strengthen numbers, for sure. So going back to the analogy of skating to where the puck is like asking everyone how they see the future of chambers going forward.

David Brown 33:24
Yeah, you know, I’ve always thought that chambers are. They’re underestimated by how much they can get done by in building a community. All the things we’ve talked about here, from identifying resources to dealing with other leaders to doing strategic planning and thinking big picture. Those are really about building your community. And chambers have historically, maybe not been in that space. But if you do it right, you can be about the business of making your community successful for the next 2030 4050 years. And sometimes that means changing things being the disrupter. And I think that’s the future of chambers chambers are have to be able to create and a sense that they are more than just an organization that helps build networks. They have to be more than the other the organization that does economic development, if your chamber does economic development or public policy or via whatever those things are, that you’re focused on. Because chambers need to be thinking big picture about what that community needs to be like. And there’s nobody out there really that is paid to do that. You know, they’re if they’re an a planning organization within a community, they get caught up in the same things that chambers get caught up in the minutiae of getting something done out the door on deadline. Chambers, I think have the the ability to bring all kinds of resources to the table to think about what needs to happen next. And then to be about the business of building it. So Having the chamber the future is one that’s in the middle of major conversations and all their communities and talking about the future, and then seeing that future become reality.

Brandon Burton 35:09
I love that. No, it goes back to having that vision, you know, seeing what your community can become, and then back backtracking that into today and then making the steps to get there to the future. So,

David Brown 35:21
you know, it’s important that that vision isn’t just yours, it can’t just be able to change. And is this the United Way’s vision is that and your believes is that there needs to be a community, and really a regional vision that people realize is put together by lots of voices and are supported by lots of different folks that they can relate to?

Brandon Burton 35:39
Yeah, and the regional emphasis is becoming more and more important to

David Brown 35:42
our reasons really big. I think we all learned during the pandemic that there were no local answers. There were all regional, state and, and federal, or even large region answers. And I think you can go back and look at a lot of those different scenarios that happened over the years. And we’d all be surprised by how many times we went to a regional response, rather than just a local response. You know, parochialism is dead. community pride isn’t by being proactive about your decision and your actions really isn’t going to be an effective way to function moving in the future,

Brandon Burton 36:15
I don’t think, right? Absolutely. David, it’s been fun having you back on the podcast with us, I’d love to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for anyone who wants to reach out and connect with you or next level consulting, what would be the best way to reach out and

David Brown 36:31
I’m going to give you two ways to do that. I’ve got a Rebecca Ryan, email address. So it’s real simple. It’s DB@RebeccaRyan.com. So you can you can reach me there whenever you want to, if you want to chat about what we’ve done, or how we do it, or how you might be able to work with next generation on a project. And I’ll give you my cell number every most everybody in the world has it. So it’s 402-616-4175. Feel free to text me or call me and I’ll be happy to reach back out and talk to you.

Brandon Burton 37:04
Alright, David’s phone, he said has not been ringing since he retired. So let’s make a new order up and stay right. David, thank you for coming back on the show with us. It’s great to hear about this transition into retirement to still have that fire for community development. And glad to see you’re still heavily involved with the work of helping to develop communities.

David Brown 37:29
Appreciate that. Thanks for having me on again, Brandon. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 37:33
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

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

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

Unknown Speaker 0:14
Now, your host he would love any tips on how to get rid of gophers from your yard. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Before we jump into this episode, I wanted to let everyone know about our Chamber Pros Planner giveaway raffle that we’re doing this year we did it last year but Izzy West has been kind enough to partner with the podcast again to give away five Chamber Pros Planners for 2023. So any of you listening if you leave a review for the show, either an apple podcast or even on Facebook under the Chamber Chat Podcast page, and send me a screenshot at Brandon@chamberchatpodcast.com I’ll enter you into a raffle to win one of Izzy West’s 2023 Chamber Pros Planners.

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

Tony Felker 1:24
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:46
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Tammy. Well, Brock Tammy has been serving in multiple roles in the chamber industry since 2009. First, she served as a board member for two years before that same chamber, the Hayes Chamber of Commerce hired Tammy as our president CEO. Under her direction, the chamber was a 2013 ACCE finalists for chamber the year after nine years in this role, Tammy launched her own professional consulting, training and coaching business Girl Twin Solutions LLC, and aspect of her business includes serving as interim executive leadership roles such as Fort Hays State University Alumni Association, called the Thomas County Chamber of Commerce and Pratt Area Chamber of Commerce. She enjoys the challenge of leading organizations through transfer through transformational change. Tammy received her BA in her MS and communications. In 2014. She completed her IOM designation, and she earned her certified Association Executive in 2016. She continues to aid professionals and their professional growth while teaching students at the fhsu as an adjunct instructor, Tammy, I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast. This is a I feel like we’ve had a lot of anticipation building up to having you on the show. So this is great. 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 better.

Tammy Wellbrock 3:23
Well, and I suppose you’re looking for something more interesting that I liked the color yellow. Yeah. So you know, Brandon, thank you so much for letting me be a part of your podcast. And certainly, I’m kind of geeking out on. Oh my gosh, I’m with Brandon Burton. He’s so famous. And so you know, I It is a pleasure to be able to get get a chance to be a part of your show and part of your mission. And so, something interesting about me well, you know, when I was that same question, I call it my unicorn, what makes me memorable, and what makes me unique. And I, I was going through that exercise when I was coming up with my new business name, and when you are my age, and so 50 years ago twins were of natural creation. It was not perhaps infertility drug induced. And so, back in the day when I was being birthed my brother and I, my twin brother and I were one of the only set of boy girl twins that were in our area. I mean, in our school League, and yes, I grew up in a very small, rural Midwestern area. And so I I got mailed to the twins in our hometown i i was called the girl twin And to this day when I am trying to make a reference of something about growing up, and people may be trying to see if they knew me and build those connections report, I will explain to them well, do you remember the girl twin from my hometown? Oh, yeah, I remember you. And so that’s, you know, that’s, I think it is unusual. I think it’s something memorable. Twins are certainly not quite so rare these days. But so girl twin solutions, it is that was the name of how I took the journey and coming up with my business. But also, I think it’s interesting, the the roll, I’ve been asked what’s it like to have been a twin? And I’m like, I don’t know, what’s it like to be a single, right? I don’t know anything different. But what I can tell you is that I had one point in my life, had to teach myself to use singular pronouns, instead of the plural. And to this day, when I slip into reminiscing about my childhood, it goes to WWE. Us. And not me or my and, and I think that’s kind of an intriguing forecast into team dynamics. I say, I’ve been embracing team dynamics since birth. I couldn’t say the womb, because if you’re a science, you know, knowledgeable scientist, you’d know that that’s not possible. For boy girl twins. But with that being said, I you know, I just think it’s it’s a, it’s a fun aspect to think about, I have been working in a team environment since a child, I think in ways of how can we do more effectively and efficiently. Working together? I just, I just always thought that way. Because I could see right away, I could do more when my twin and I were working together versus working apart.

Brandon Burton 6:56
Even in the womb, I’m sure you guys figured out some system of who gets to kick when and whose feet go where and all that. So I don’t know.

Tammy Wellbrock 7:02
Well, somehow I pushed him out first. And so I came second. I think there was some talk in there. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:10
there you go. So you told us a little bit how you came up with the name girl, twin solutions, tell us a little bit more about your company, what you do with the consulting and working with chambers. And it just gives us a better picture for maybe a little bit more background as we set the table for discussion.

Tammy Wellbrock 7:25
Perfect, perfect. So as you had shared in my bio, I have chamber experience. I also have teaching experience and so and management, I’ve been in three different industries, including the chamber, and I’ve been in leadership roles, executive level. And so I’ve always been in ways of influencing or impacting others, and I am, I find that extremely rewarding. So then when you take the the experience of leading a chamber, and seeing how that role, is, it’s crucial to be able to influence the work environment. And so if you have I mean, what better way to keep employees in your community, and to keep those employees trained and successful, but to offer them those professional development opportunity. So as a chamber exec, I was bringing in different workshops, Series speakers, on a variety of different excuse me different different thoughts and ideas and training and tools and to help our business community be more effective in whatever it is that they were trying to achieve. And so with that, I then saw that value that chambers were bringing to their communities. And I fell in love with some of those that we continue to see in the industry. Frank Kenny inspired me, David Walker inspired me, Kyle Sexton, Kathy Hi, you know, all of those names I was I had in our community or I was working on trying to get him to our community. And so I thought, you know, that’s what I want to be when I grow up. And that’s in essence, what I what I have strived to do. In reality, though, I also know that there is an opportunity for area businesses to be able to hire and not just area I mean, we with technology and the capability of flying, I can go anywhere. But you know, at that point, I also then really enjoy trying to expand the reach. Just because I think I have something to offer different entities and my hope is that business can help whether it’s an organization or whether it’s an individual just be a better version of themselves. today than they were yesterday so that they can continue to grow tomorrow.

Brandon Burton 10:03
That’s so important just comparing ourselves to yesterday and continue to see that improvement. And I firmly believe that’s the purpose of life is just to keep improving. So thank you for that background. Our topic for our conversation today is going to be around building resiliency. And I think so often we focus on you know, the Chamber professionals that are out there serving you know, the servant leaders, they’re out there helping their members helping the business community helping their community in general, grow and progress and get stronger and then just be the best that it can be. And we often neglect putting the focus back on the chamber professional and making sure you’re taking the best care of yourself. So we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Izzy West 13:28
Hey, this is Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner, a weekly monthly planner featuring weekly meeting notes, habit tracking and 12 week goals. Last year, Emily Roberts of the Madison Area Chamber commented on the Chamber Pros Facebook group, “This is my first time getting this planner and it’s great. It’s specific for chamber professional and it has lots of notes room. Checkout Izzy West’s website to get a better picture of it.” So you had heard her go to TheIzzyWest.com. To learn more about the Chamber Pros Planner. I have a video you can watch of me slowly flipping through the book so you can decide if it’s right for you.

Brandon Burton 14:02
All right, Tammy, we are back. As we get into our topic of building resiliency today, I think it would be great just to have you share your story as a chamber executive and how it kind of led up to this topic that we’re covering today.

Tammy Wellbrock 14:17
I thank you for that. I would imagine a lot of people on this podcast will see themselves in my description. An executive that has been placed in a position of influence and opportunity to help a community he or she loves greatly. And and in a job description that is probably written exactly for their skill set. And that was me. I really felt that I became the person I was meant to be when I was working at the chamber. And I found myself you know you Your five, year six, just depleted. But you know, I kept thinking, I need to, I need to keep driving forward, I need to keep you know, keep doing more. Because you know, your success is built on it really. People have short memories. So you got to keep striving to do more and to do more. And and in fact, one time I remember thinking, why do they push us so hard? And it kind of hit me when I realized, Tammy, you’re doing it to yourself. But who are they? Yeah, are they? It’s you. But at that point, by year nine, I had gained more weight than was healthy. I had removed almost everything from my world that I did that also drove joy, that refilled my Well, if I love to sing, but I felt like I didn’t have enough time to sing. So I cut that out of my world. I love to write No, unless it’s writing for something professional. So everything I did, I put my entire time into just almost kind of surviving and focused on the chamber. I do have a family, I do have, at the time, it was a young son, he’s now in college. But you know, it just I felt so depleted. And by my ninth year, I didn’t have the energy, the zest, the drive anymore, and things were making me mad. And things that shouldn’t make me mad. But I just had a shorter fuse. And so I knew that I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do in the way I wanted to do it. And so I I did some soul searching came up with this business, trying to refill my well, but then, you know, then a global pandemic hit. And so it really made me curious about how how burnout is such, it’s so prevalent in our society. And I was I was a casualty of it. So through that burnout story, I again, that curiosity drove me to understand why could somebody living her best career dream burnout. And what I’m going to share today is a lot to help others recognize, perhaps through my own straw trials, that maybe I can keep somebody else from burning out. And so it truly is, don’t do as I did follow what I say because I didn’t live this. I’m but I’m trying to now.

Brandon Burton 17:39
And I’m a big believer that some people have to learn lessons the hard way, you know, and other people may be a little more wiser than us can learn from other people’s experience. So hopefully those listening can learn from you learn from what you went through and, and maybe see those those markers as we talk about some of these stress indicators and things like that. Because that seems to be it was the stress piling on that eliminated the things that you loved in life that you were, you know, taken eliminating one at a time out of your life. But let’s say you know what, what’s the difference you see between stress and resiliency and bringing it back to the topic?

Tammy Wellbrock 18:19
Well, and you know, stress turns to burnout. So those two kind of are on one side and resiliency is on the other. So stress, the stress is is inevitable. I mean, we will incur stress, and it’s a healthy part of our life, when it becomes unhealthy is when you don’t manage it, and then you get to burnout. So burnout is the the negative result of stress, but stress, phenol, it, it can help us achieve it can give us drive. And we the thing that’s fascinating about stress is everybody responds to different stressors in their own unique way. And so because of that the experts really struggle in defining not what is stress we but why why we get to stress. And so acute and chronic stress, again, both short term and long term aspects, it can impact our mental and emotional well being our physical. And so but it’s it is, like I said experts have a hard time defining it, measuring it, and understanding what triggers it and how to prevent it. But so everybody is in a unique situation. And if I may just share, I’m going to do some broad strokes today. That may, there may be scalable aspects that each person can listen to. One thing though, while I do believe that I have a lot of value to be able to provide today, I do want to just give this quick little disclaimer. I am not a trained psychologist, a counselor or therapist. I am somebody who experienced burnout and I’m fascinated with redefining that Life and what resiliency means. And so, please know that if you are at a point listening, I hope that I can inspire you. But you know, but it may be you need some extra professional assistance on your journey. But back to your question about the difference between stress and resiliency. Let’s find fascinating though, to find out to become more resilient, you must go through those stressful times resiliency is you are able to then deal with that change and uncertainty and be more, let’s say nimble, yes, people call it a bounce back. But it’s it’s being able to adapt and respond to those circumstances in a more healthy manner to find where you can learn from those challenging times. But then also to be proactive and creating boundaries that are that are necessary for you in maintaining that, that lifestyle. And the beautiful thing about resiliency is it can be nurtured. It can be developed, it can be learned. So if you feel like oh, I just don’t, I just am not resilient. It’s okay, you can learn that. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:14
So, and you’re right. Stress is, you know, it’s one of those things, it’s like it’s calorie free, you don’t always see you don’t always see all the you know, negative responses of stress right away. Usually, it’s a accumulation of stress before you see the negative impacts in your life. And it can really creep in in very small doses. And it just builds up if you don’t find a way to relieve it and release some of that stress.

Tammy Wellbrock 21:39
But no, go ahead.

Brandon Burton 21:40
I was just as I was reminded of just a real short story that I had heard a few years ago, this, you know, this man, he wants to a new pickup truck here. He keeps trying to convince his wife, I need this truck, I need the strike. And finally she she says, Okay, go get your truck, gets a truck says I’m gonna go out in the mountains and cut some firewood. So he goes out in the mountains, no cell phone service or anything. And he’s out there, you know, beautiful Ryan in his new his new truck. And he’s cutting down these trees and making use firewood, he’s got this big stack on. And while he’s been out there, the snow storm came. So now the road and everything is snowed in, he’s got his pile of wood and his head better get home, it’s starting to get dark. And so he gets in his truck. And he’s stuck, you know, this nice new four wheel drive truck, it’s stuck in the snow. And he can’t call for help. He’s he’s just stuck. And he thinks well, as long as I’m here. And Mizel start loading the firewood in the truck. And he puts the wood in the bed of the truck and, and he tries again. And finally we’re having that extra weight that load in the bed of the truck, he was able to get traction and able to go. So the moral of the story is yes, some level of stress is necessary for us to get traction and to move forward in a positive direction in life. But if you get too weighed down, if you put all the trees, all the firewood in the truck, he also would have gone nowhere, he would have burned out quickly. So it’s uh that story resonated well to me when when I first heard it. So hopefully, that helps somebody else as well.

Tammy Wellbrock 23:15
So stealing that, thank you. Yes, you were adding to my future repertoire. But it is, you know, it’s funny, because I thought you were talking about you go out into the mountains. With that I thought somewhere your story was going to lead to a bear. Oh, and so yeah, but let me add the fact that our bodies will respond in a physiological, neurological manner to stress in the same way. So we we respond to a bear and our brains are prepared to survive to protect us. And they weren’t they were intended to, you know, that flight fight or freeze mind frame, you know, very intuitive. And so our body looks at a bear approaching us in the same manner that we may have taxes due tomorrow.

Brandon Burton 24:10
So yeah, in our world today, we create these stresses that are seemingly life threatening in the moment, when we can take a step back, like, Oh, hold on, this is not a bear. This is something I can do it. But that’s a good point. So there’s there are these natural responses that come up to stress. What are some of the things that you mentioned the three F’s, but how? How does our body respond as we come across stress?

Tammy Wellbrock 24:36
Well, you know, there’s there’s definitely something happening in terms of, you know, like, if you’re fighting, you’re doing something, if you’re flight, you’re obviously trying to escape, freeze, you play dead. And so you know, you may be like me, I almost numbed myself with food. I’m an emotional eater, but, but our brain has a split second. to move us into some type of action or inaction, if you will, if you play dead, but it’s definitely everybody understands that when you’re in that stressful time, our, our blood starts pumping harder or adrenaline starts going, there’s a lot of hormonal activity, muscles tense, I mean, our sensitivity to, to, to pain is diminishing. I mean, all of that is done as a way to protect us senses are heightened, etc. And so the brain, though, is going to continue to stay in that stress mode, to continue to protect you, and tell you tell your brain that it’s safe, your body is safe. And so when you’re in that, that moment of just whatever’s happening, and you know it when it’s happening, that’s when you actually are getting past that you need to have a way of completing the cycle, completing that cycle to tell your brain, hey, I’m okay. We’re good. And so because then if you don’t do that, that’s when the burnout piece comes. And so I do have some tips on how to complete that cycle, do you want me to continue to share and keep going or

Brandon Burton 26:17
so I’m a big fitness junkie. So all things how the body works just totally intrigued me. And when you talk about stress, like the fight or flight and freeze being the other one, if you think about your body in general, so if you’re, you’re eating, you’re digesting, like your body does, it has IT systems to be able to function. And if you’re constantly under stress, the blood that should be in your stomach to digest food and you know, build your body and go, you know, do what your body’s supposed to do, is being diverted to your extremity. So you can run so you can fight so you can do these things that are responses to stress. And if we’re constantly in that state, the rest of our body is not going to function optimally. And really, I mean, that’s a lesson that I learned a while ago. And like that’s, that’s pretty powerful. So yes, tell us about the cycles, how to complete the cycle, so we can kind of reset our body to be able to function properly again,

Tammy Wellbrock 27:17
will you call yourself an exercise junkie? Let’s just I think that’s your term. But yeah, cool. So physical activity, I guess at that point, is the single most effective strategy that is more immediate, telling your body that you’re safe. And that certainly makes sense. And if you go into a doctor about any type of issues that may be stress related, they’re probably going to tell you what you need to exercise. You know, I wish I was that person. And I’m not. And so it was like, so when I would go in those stressful moments during my Chamber Leadership. I’m like, I can’t even find time to sleep, how am I going to find time to exercise and it wasn’t something I made as a priority. And it wasn’t something I was interested. And so but you know, certainly I understand physical activity. But there are other ways to continue doing this. And so, for instance, breathing, and breathing is the most gentle manner to unlock any type of stress, trauma, it’s a great place to start because you can do it anywhere. And any body function, you know, whatever shape or size or interest, we all can use breathing techniques. And so laughter is another I mean, if you think about having that great belly laugh with your friends, or over a joke or comedy, you feel better. So it makes sense that laughter creative expression, I mentioned to you that I stopped writing, but well stopped writing for pleasure. Let’s put it that way. But creative expression could be maybe you’re a photographer, maybe you’re an artist, maybe you’re a singer, I also had stopped singing all of those aspects of creative expression. We almost remove those from our life because we think it’s taking away from you know, we’re adding more stress to our life because of it’s just one more thing we have to do when in essence, it may be what’s refilling your well. And at that point, if it drives the energy forward in within you, then it’s a healthy, it’s a healthy aspect to continue doing positive social interaction. We mentioned the laughter I think a lot of times, but you don’t have to go and just laugh with your friends but having that social interaction of, of having somebody being intentional, and and supportive, you know, that we just can find so much weather, and that’s probably why walking with a friend can even be more profound. than just walking by yourself, or workout buddy or whatever, a good cry, a good cry, I mean, how many of how many of you listeners have really just felt better after they’ve had this emotional vomit, so to speak, where, you know, you just let it all out, but you feel better a good cry can release those emotions that are getting trapped within. And affection. Affection is something that I love the idea of affection. And it’s not necessarily with somebody, another person, but let me just share if, if you did the act of petting your dog or your cat for 2020 minutes or less, that can have the same amount of release and completing the cycle as a 20 minute walk. And affection could be if you if you do a a hug. For instance, if you go in and hug somebody, and you make that lasts for, let’s just say 20 seconds, think about, it’s really awkward to do a 22nd hug with a stranger or equate it somebody that you trust, and and that affection level. In fact, they also have a six second kiss. And think about that you’ve got a special somebody in your life. It’s weird, if you did it with somebody not so special, I would not recommend it.

Brandon Burton 31:29
I have something to say about that.

Tammy Wellbrock 31:34
But you know, six seconds is a long time. And you just are in the moment at that point. And it just all of those things can be done by anybody, regardless of your social status, your position, your desire to exercise your time, you can do breathing at your desk, you just had an upset phone call, you know, an hour ago pop a joke and just go have a good laugh. But it’s it’s the intentional and purposeful action, that’s crucial to, to stopping that small stress to becoming a burnout issue. So that’s, that’s you need to stop the stress before you can build on the resiliency is the is the thing that we need.

Brandon Burton 32:20
As you went through these different ways to process and kind of unwind the stress some of these things you can stack on top of each other to right, as you pet your dog, you can deep breathe, you know, as you pet your dog, you can talk to your dog and create some of that social interaction.

Tammy Wellbrock 32:37
And I laugh when my dogs doing so.

Brandon Burton 32:40
Right? Yeah. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, people come home, and they need to often unwind, you know, from the stress of the day. And what’s this, the typical things people go to food or alcohol tend to be those, those two things to kind of numb out and be able to get into a place where you can sleep at night and start over again. And neither one is going to eliminate or get rid of that stress load that you’re carrying.

Tammy Wellbrock 33:08
You’re just borrowing one moment to add on a problem later, you’re gonna have to deal with, right. And there’s a lot of apps and a lot of resources, blogs, blogs, whatever. And I have a list of resources. If anybody wants to email me, we’ll, we’ll share more of that. But if I have, I have something that I can send out to the listeners that can give them other ideas, because I, it may seem so simple to how we’re talking about it today branded, but I get it, when when you’re just not in a best frame of mind. You kind of need some of those tools at your fingertips.

Brandon Burton 33:49
Right? Yeah, I was also thinking every now and then we have the very stressful situation that comes up, you know, you get the bad news of something, you get a text from a angry, you know, chamber member, or you get the disgruntled email, you know, and it’s really easy to fire back the email receipt, do this do the text response. And what I’ve learned is creating space between the stimulus and your response. So you get that text that really triggers you create some space, do some deep breathing, maybe give it an hour or two before you respond, because you don’t owe it to him to get back to him immediately. And you’re going to be more level headed, you’ll be able to process that initial stress load before you respond. And it’ll be a much better conversation, I promise.

Tammy Wellbrock 34:40
Crew. I you know, I often had somebody that just triggered me, and every time I got an email from this individual, I was immediately angry and something about that made me you know something about the Word structure, whatever it was when I read that email, I went to an interview quotation that was always negative. I sat on it. And usually I would, I didn’t do it necessarily, I would sit on it because I wanted to share my frustration with my husband later. And I’d pull up that email and I’d read it to him. And it didn’t even have those buzzwords. Yeah, I’m like, wait a minute, what about this made me so angry. And if I would have in the moment, I was ready to just jump on this person. But because I wanted to plot my revenge, you know, and how my husband helped me, then I realized I, that was, that was pretty powerful to realize that, you know, something triggered me in the moment, I interpreted it negatively. Later, it didn’t trigger in the same way. And I didn’t see it in the same light.

Brandon Burton 35:46
But and it’s empowering to when you can choose to act rather than react, like there’s a difference there. So I know you’ve got four steps to building resiliency. So let’s, let’s cover what these four steps are. So we can help out all these chamber professionals out there who are like, give us the answers.

Tammy Wellbrock 36:04
Well, absolutely. And you know, it, I love what you said it can it resiliency, and and and learning from these moments, it’s not just about getting through and bouncing back through the stressful times, you can, you can really experience some profound personal growth. And, and as well as maybe keep yourself from creating more stress and drama later. So, you know, psychologists define resilience as a process of adapting well, in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. And it can be learned. And so how you deal with all those situations, and being able to come up with those different strategies, helps you remain calm, be able to perceive those stressful circumstances in a different light. And it can eventually help you with that, that aspect of positivity overall. And so here’s some key points before I get to those four, challenging times do not determine the outcome of your life. You know, greater resiliency is truly empowering. And it’s not something some people were blessed with, and you don’t have it. No, it is something that you can learn because in but resiliency involves behaviors, thoughts, actions that are learnable. But it does take time and intentionality. And it’s reframing those emotional reactions from negative to positive. Because think about it, our emotions are driving our behavior. And focusing on what you can control is key. So let’s talk about that. The four steps that you mentioned, are are, let me just first say, and then I’ll come back to them. The first one is connection. The second is wellness. The third is healthy thinking. And the fourth is meaning. So let’s just talk about that connection was number one. Focus on finding individuals who validate your feelings, those connections can help you understand you’re not alone. Those people though, they need to be trustworthy, and they need to be compassionate. And, but but it doesn’t have to be a one on one, it could be a social group. And those social groups can come from your civic connections, your religious, your niche hobbies, whatever the case may be. But having the connection is key. Keep in mind, I think those people that were like me that identify work ethic as always being busy. Well, what was the first thing I did, I dropped those connections. And in the chamber world, if you think about our connections become almost horizontal in nature, we are getting quantity, not necessarily quality. And I literally Odede on people. Because I was just about meeting new people meeting new people meeting new people, but not depth of people. And I think in the chamber world, a lot of people are that way that I can see that resonates with you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re in the people business. And so connection doesn’t necessarily mean getting a lot of Facebook,

Facebook friends, it’s the deeper connection with them. So wellness, we kind of talked about that wellness can be anywhere from that physical, to the emotional to the spiritual to the mental well being. It’s self care. And it’s it’s always something realistic. I mean, I think it’s a realistic goal to try to manage stress. But the reality is, you’ll never eliminate it. So what can you do to you know, to complete those cycles of stress that we talked about earlier? Or what kind of boundaries can you do? You in your chamber world? And, you know, we can we don’t have time to go into the boundaries. But certainly, if it’s important, yes, yeah, they are an important variable. I mean, you know, think about if if you don’t have enough salary wages to continue in your job to be able to feed your family, and now you’re upset because your board isn’t listening, but you’re going to end up leaving, because that’s, that’s, that’s a boundary that is important. Well, then why not? Why not? Try to realistically approach that and go talk to your board? Because if you’re gonna leave anyway, why not try to do that self care? And so, healthy thinking, is literally the act of reframing your thoughts? And so if you can look at some of those triggers and understand them better, why, why do you always react this way to Joe, you know, Joe just walks in the room. And immediately, you’re kicked in need to be curious about those kinds of reactions. But also, kind of like with my delay on reading the email, I think I started becoming curious, why was I always triggered by this email, you know, this person’s email. And, and as soon as you can, I mean, I continue to remain triggered. So I just learned not to respond right away and wait, because knowing I’d look at it differently, but it can certainly a new perspective can help you accept change, and live with more hope and positivity. And then the last is meaning, and meaning is finding your purpose. And I think so many chamber individuals are living that purpose, they are working in a job that gives them great meaning. But these are all four steps. I mean, one itself doesn’t necessarily do it alone. And so you know, finding the meaning finding your purpose, if you have indeed found the job of your dreams, or maybe just that you find so rewarding, what a shame, it would be if you’re not remaining in that position. And so, you know, focusing on others, fostering your self discovery, and developing goals are ways to find meaning.

Brandon Burton 42:22
I love that. As we start to wrap things up here, we’ve had a great conversation, but I wanted to see if you might have any tip or action item for listeners who want to take their chamber up to the next level, how could they do that in a healthy way?

Tammy Wellbrock 42:42
You know, if you are depleted, personally, how can you take an organization to the next level? I mean, you may have great ideas. But if you don’t have the energy and the drive to I mean, you’re just dealing with trying to get up in the morning, you’re going to struggle in that area. So self care, is the the answer I get if you’ve got to take care of yourself. And if you’re if you’re near, I mean, you may be so fresh in your role, and you are just so inspired and energized. And you’re thinking, Tammy, you are so silly. All your advice doesn’t impact me. Well, I would have thought that in my first 234 years in the chamber, I was on fire. And you know what you have to be on fire to burn out, there has to be a flame burning so brightly before it can be extinguished. So I wish I would have if I could learn now, if I could talk to me in year one, it would be slow down, Nelly, you don’t have to achieve all this first year, you need something in year seven, you need something in your tin. And that’s okay. You don’t have to do it in year one through three. And so I think basically, being able to create those boundaries that were important and to communicate effectively with those people that needed to support me, whether that was my staff on my board, so that they understood the reality of what we were living. And like I said, you know, during this time, I was mad at that group of that faceless, nameless group of they for pushing me. And it was actually me.

Brandon Burton 44:28
Yeah, I like that. So I like asking everyone I have on the show this question as we look at the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tammy Wellbrock 44:41
Well, I could answer that in a lot of different questions. But let me I guess let’s just stay true to this theme of of resiliency. I find it disturbing and distressing, how many people whether it’s through Facebook or just commerce, issues with chamber professionals. They, they believe that it’s okay to work for nothing they believe it’s, it’s what we should be doing to volunteer our time and not get paid. No. I mean, if, if indeed, chambers are supposed to be the voice of our local businesses, then I think our chambers themselves, our office needs to embody the ideal workplace. And that means I think chamber executives should be creating a safe a fun, I believe in fun, innovative, sustainable, and obviously successful work environment. But I think the goal should also be create the work environment, other businesses, ie your members seek to emulate. I really think if you can be the business, the ideal business that others are seeking to vie. I think that why then if you can help another business, not be so stressed to help another professional remain in their job and remain true to their passion and their work? Didn’t that part of what we’re trying to do in terms of overall workplace development? So that’s, that’s my thought.

Brandon Burton 46:17
No, that’s great. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information with chamber champions who’d like to reach out and connect you had mentioned he had some other additional resources and and tools that will help them what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect more with you?

Tammy Wellbrock 46:34
Well, if they can remember my name, and spell it correctly. It’s Tammy. Wellbrock, and that is traditional spelling tammy@tammywellbrock.com. And then if you wanted to email it’s even simpler. Tammy at Tammy. Well, brock.com You know, I certainly don’t mind phone calls and I can give you that real quick. My only number to reach me for anything is 785-639-2743. I take texts, I respond to emails, I respond to phone calls. Yes, I even answer those phone calls that say it could be possible scam or spam. Possible scam. And so I even answered them, because I was gonna be hard. But yes, any of those ways.

Brandon Burton 47:34
Oh, Tammy, this is great. I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. So anyone listening can go there and reach out and connect with you. But such an important topic. I hope everyone listening got a lot out of our conversation today. And thanks again for setting aside some time to join us today on chamber chat podcast.

Tammy Wellbrock 47:53
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 47:54

Brandon Burton 44:58
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Welcome to the episodes page of the Chamber Chat Podcast.  Here you will find an archive of past episodes with show notes and links to websites and articles that are mentioned in each show.  Comments are welcomed for each episode since we can all learn from each other.  From this episode page, you are also able to share specific episodes on social media.  Thanks for being here.

-Brandon Burton, Host