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Brandon Burton (00:00.706)
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. Today’s guest brings three decades of Chamber leadership across Pittsburgh’s economic and business development landscape. Chris Heck is the President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce.

where he’s been instrumental in driving growth and innovation. Under his leadership, the PAACC has seen remarkable expansion and he’s the visionary behind the airport area corporate partnership and initiative dedicated to advancing economic development throughout the region. Chris’s executive experience spans top tier organizations, including the Pittsburgh Technology Center, or excuse me, the Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Marsh USA, K &L Gates LLP, Fifth Third Bank, and the SMC Business Councils. A proud graduate of Florida Atlantic University with a BA in Business Administration and Management, Chris also serves as a second class Petty Officer in the US Coast Guard Reserves. Deeply committed to community service, Chris currently chairs the Allegheny County Airport Authority Foundation.

and holds board roles with institutions like the Pittsburgh Technical College, Robert Morris University, and Rosedale Technical College. He’s also a proud member of Leadership Pittsburgh Class 35. Chris Heck is a dynamic leader, a seasoned strategist, and a passionate advocate for relational prosperity. Let’s dive into this incredible conversation and insights with Chris Heck.

Chris, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Love to.

Chris Heck (01:56.578)
All right, Brandon, thank you. Thank you for that introduction. know, as we craft our bios, you never really get a chance for someone to recite them back to you in a public forum. it was cool to listen to that and look at my background from where I stand right now. So thank you for that. But it’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Brandon Burton (02:09.814)
Right?

Brandon Burton (02:21.688)
You’re welcome. We’re glad to have you. I like asking the guests that I have on the show to share something interesting about themselves so we can get to know you a little bit better before we dive into our conversation.

Chris Heck (02:35.797)
Well, totally unrelated to the chamber world. You mentioned my collegiate experience with Florida Atlantic University. And as a lover of the ocean and the sea and the water, yes, I was in the Coast Guard for six years and parlayed a lot of that to

diving and fishing and living in the Keys. If anyone has ever had the opportunity to visit the Florida Keys, it’s something. I did something very unique with a former petty officer, friend of mine. I went skydiving in the Keys, which was very, very interesting and jumping out of a plane at 3,500 feet with water everywhere.

Brandon Burton (03:23.182)
Huh.

Chris Heck (03:32.047)
and land very, a very short strip of land to land on. was both challenging and one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my life. So that was a little bit unique.

Brandon Burton (03:40.034)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (03:47.758)
That is unique. That’s something I hope to never do, but I’m glad you did.

Chris Heck (03:55.573)
Yeah, was in my early 20s, Brandon, when I did that. So that was a long time ago.

Brandon Burton (03:55.65)
I’ve done the indoor skydiving.

Brandon Burton (04:03.918)
Yeah, that’s great. And thank you for your service too. We appreciate that. Well, tell us a little bit about your chamber. Help give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work, budget, just to set the stage for our conversation today.

Chris Heck (04:08.693)
Absolutely.

Chris Heck (04:14.474)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (04:19.221)
Yeah, yeah, I’d to. knowing my audience is a chamber leadership audience, most of you are familiar with the basic building blocks of the Chamber of Commerce. And when I was recruited to come here in 2017 is when I came here, I never thought that a Chamber of Commerce would be where I would end up.

Brandon Burton (04:38.616)
Thank you.

Chris Heck (04:48.799)
Okay, I had some great association management work in the past, but I never really thought that this would be where my final landing pad would be. And the Pittsburgh Airport area Chamber of Commerce is a 120 year old chamber. So we’re ingrained in the community here.

Brandon Burton (05:12.718)
Thank

Chris Heck (05:17.657)
And when I learned about what the opportunities were to lead this organization, I was thrilled and humbled, if you will, to be asked to do that. So the chamber is not the largest in the East Coast, if you will. We hover around 850 companies.

Brandon Burton (05:35.224)
Just…

Chris Heck (05:43.003)
And as you know, as chamber leaders, that number tends to go up and down. But one of the unique things that we have is we’re situated in a high growth, high density corporate area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that has a population growth

Brandon Burton (06:07.341)
Thank

Chris Heck (06:12.757)
of probably two or 3 % annually right now. there’s unlike any other area, we’re very fortunate to be in this area that has an international airport as the nucleus of the 31 communities that we represent. So when you have something like that, which is an anchor

Brandon Burton (06:36.782)
So, I mean, that’s the thing about the state of…

Chris Heck (06:42.313)
business that offers critical mass for companies, for members and things like that, you’re in a good situation. And we know that the airport itself is really part of some of our success. one of the very first things that I did, getting back to the chamber a little bit, we’re small in terms of staff. We have four and a half…

Well, four and a half employees, one is part-time, but we’ve got about seven different committees. And that’s where we’re really able to grow and manage growth of double digits every month. And it’s unique as I go across the state and the region and speak to other chamber leaders.

Brandon Burton (07:26.958)
Thanks

Chris Heck (07:41.408)
I don’t know of another chamber that has sustained double digit growth over the last two years. We’re talking 11, 12, sometimes 18 new members. we’re very, very fortunate to see that growth. Our chamber has a fabulous reputation of being the type of organization that really embraces

the companies that we represent, but more importantly, the community that we represent. And that is very, very important to us. I’m sort of the spokesperson in the media, in economic development circles, as the guy to go to in the airport corridor, it’s called, at his 31 communities that we represent. And we have a great mix.

Brandon Burton (08:37.784)
Cheers.

Chris Heck (08:41.319)
of companies. And I always say, you know, lot of these chambers that are around us have the majority is retail. And to me, a chamber that has 80 70 80 % retail is not, you know, really what what what I I want to I want to be where the business is driving the local economy. And that is where we are. We have energy companies like you have in

Brandon Burton (08:44.718)
Thank

Brandon Burton (09:02.19)
you

Chris Heck (09:09.909)
in Texas, the energy companies, because of the natural gas excavation that we have here with the Marcella Shale, we have so many things going on that are diverse. And it really makes a great mix of companies that we represent. And it just makes my job a lot easier.

Brandon Burton (09:33.485)
Yeah, it does in some regards, right? And others we’ll talk about as we get into our episode here. But that definitely helps to give that perspective that, you know, where you guys sit in the region and the communities and that whole outlook. So today we’re going to dive in deeper on just overall, just chamber management. How do you manage that growth and retaining those members and just chamber leadership in general? And we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Chris, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking chamber leadership. And you mentioned some of the things that you guys are blessed with there in your region and there in Pennsylvania. Growth, you mentioned it makes your job easier and it does, but it also comes with challenges too, as we’re familiar with. Me being in Texas, we see the growth and the challenges that come with it as well. But if you could talk to us about

Chris Heck (10:24.617)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (10:34.066)
what it’s like to manage the growth while also paying attention to those current members and being able to retain those relationships and memberships long term. What’s your approach like and hopefully don’t make it too complicated.

Chris Heck (10:50.269)
Yeah, no, and it’s really it’s no secret. I think a lot of your audience probably does, depending on their maybe length of service, if you will, with their their particular chamber, you figured out that, you know, to be to be really hands on. Let me just back up a minute. So I’m the President and CEO. I do have an executive director. I do have.

Brandon Burton (11:18.904)
Okay.

Chris Heck (11:19.541)
Okay, so a lot of chambers just have that one level of executive director and then maybe a membership director and an offense and an office manager, you know, that we went a little bit different because I’m very fortunate to have an executive director that’s been here for 24 years. So she knows all the ins and outs about, and that gives me the opportunity

Brandon Burton (11:40.014)
There you go.

Chris Heck (11:47.798)
to be extremely hands-on with our members, okay? An example of that is we decided not to have a director of membership sales. We’re gonna give that a try, and we’re in our second year of not having a full-time membership salesperson because…

Brandon Burton (12:07.714)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (12:14.291)
between myself and our executive director, we feel that we can manage the incoming, we could do that sort of that sales work on our own without a true sales professional, whatever it is. And that seems to be working quite well. I will say we stretch ourselves pretty thin when it comes to.

managing the growth and what is what do I mean by managing the growth? Well, when you have 12 new members every month, you have to make sure that your process for onboarding, you know, that critical time when you bring those new members on, it’s so critical that first year, actually, the first six months is critical to the retention that you’re hoping to get.

for the next few years out of these, right? So we have an onboarding process that I feel is second to none with our ambassador committee, with myself, with handwritten notes, a membership box, all sorts of things, and a phone call and a meeting from me to welcome those companies onboard. Again, very hands-on and…

Brandon Burton (13:13.592)
Right.

Chris Heck (13:38.654)
We stress to the new members that we understand why you joined and we’re here to help you connect, make some contacts and you’re not on an island by yourself once you send us that membership check. So if I could stress anything, it is a lot of work to manage the growth.

Brandon Burton (13:40.814)
you

Chris Heck (14:07.945)
We seem to have a formula in doing that, which is hands-on and making sure that every phone call is answered, every email is answered. you know, we started the whole conversation by this whole thing is not rocket science, we’re able to make a decision if someone is maybe just, you know, they’re unhappy.

Maybe with something that we do, we all have the ability to fix that problem, whether it’s extending their membership another three, six months, or offering them a few events that they could come to at no charge, if they bring a guest and things like that. So even though we’ve been around for a long time,

I have implemented a culture here that whatever my staff thinks is best, to keep that member happy, we will do. And I think they all understand that. And it’s been something that we have kind of lived with. And I think that’s one of the other areas that make our retention level of 87 percent.

plus pretty high up there.

Brandon Burton (15:39.842)
Those are some creative ideas with retention that you talked about. I’ve not heard of other chambers that will extend maybe three more months to help a member who wasn’t satisfied with some certain outcome.

Chris Heck (15:48.958)
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, realistically, Brandon, is it any skin off our back if we extend someone’s membership three more months or whatever it is? No, no, it’s not. so, you know, there’s, I’m gonna talk a little bit about affinity programs because everybody’s had, you know,

Brandon Burton (15:55.971)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (16:01.261)
Now.

Chris Heck (16:18.303)
people come in and pitch an affinity program, a non-revenue, non-membership revenue stream, non-due stream or whatever it is. We’re very, very selective of those companies that we partner with. And I personally start those programs with an introduction from me. I just did two today to a new energy provider that we’re gonna give a shot with for the next year because we…

Brandon Burton (16:24.108)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (16:48.127)
think that this is the right fit for us. And I’ve committed to making about 20 introductions to high-use energy use companies. And so far, every one of them has said, sure, bring them in, introduce me to them. And it’s a little bit more hand-holding than most, but it’s worth it. It’s definitely worth it.

Brandon Burton (17:13.9)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if it all ends up being a win-win-win, that’s what matters, right? A lot of times, those affinity programs, you really have to be careful and examine them and just look at the details before you get too far along.

Chris Heck (17:21.855)
That’s right. That’s right.

Chris Heck (17:32.104)
Yeah, and don’t be afraid to cut them loose if they’re just, they talk the talk at the beginning of maybe a year cycle or whatever. And then you’re looking at the reports every month and you’re saying to yourself, really, you said that you were going to bring in X and I don’t even see the activity that you’re doing out there. think, know, so I’ve had the, I’ve been in the position to do that more often than I would like to.

Brandon Burton (17:59.235)
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. So I wanted to circle back to your onboarding process. You went down a list quickly of different things that you do in the onboarding process. But I think that’s so important for that long-term retention and being able to do it in a way that’s sustainable when you are seeing a high amount of growth. I can see where it could be difficult where you commit to

Chris Heck (18:11.977)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton (18:27.342)
You had handwritten notes as one of the things you mentioned. And I can see, you know,

Chris Heck (18:32.565)
It’s so unique, Brandon. So, just to give you a little synopsis of our onboarding process, a new member comes in, the membership gets processed through accounting, receipts are sent and all that other stuff. Within 48 hours of us receiving the application and the payment for that, our executive director, a phone call

goes out to them. As soon as that phone call of welcoming them to our chamber and thanking them for joining our chamber, I’m the next call. So now the CEO and President is basically doing the same thing, getting to know the person. And after a quick thank you for joining, I ask, tell me about your business.

You know, I don’t want you to listen to what I have to say. You’ve joined the chamber already, right? I want to hear, I want to hear why you joined. I want to hear about your business. want to hear about some opportunities that you might be thinking about of connectivity with our members, whatever, you know, and they really appreciate, my God, the President of the chamber called me and is asking me about our business and people up to talk, right?

Brandon Burton (19:30.882)
Yeah, this is about you.

Chris Heck (19:57.078)
So those are very, very two simple things. Then the entire list of let’s call it 10 new members goes directly to our ambassador committee. The ambassador committee of 23 people they meet monthly, they take that list and they distribute each new member company to an ambassador. So an ambassador now,

Brandon Burton (19:57.57)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (20:25.351)
is assigned to that company, but every ambassador sends a handwritten note welcoming them on their own station or their stationery. If it’s PNC Bank, we’re welcoming you to the chamber, whatever it is. So now they’re getting a bunch and they also get that chamber welcome kit, that box.

Brandon Burton (20:42.093)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (20:53.203)
I don’t know if that’s a little old school, but there’s an actual box that they get with a bunch of stuff, the bylaws, the board list, calendar of events, some affinity program things or whatever for, you whatever, but it’s, a little plaque, I’m a proud member of the chamber. so they get that and then,

Brandon Burton (21:15.597)
Yes.

Chris Heck (21:22.303)
Then they get a call on the operations side to make sure that everyone from their company that they want to be a part of the account and get the invitation is listed, you know, not just that one person that sent out. goes, the primary is the primary, yes, but you could add 10 other people to that account.

Brandon Burton (21:38.306)
Yeah, not just the primary rep, but yeah, get the HR person, or the accounting, or sales.

Chris Heck (21:50.026)
because we understand that from a revenue generation side, we put a lot of quality in our events. That’s where we’re able, you know, if someone’s spending $450 on membership dues, that’s nice. That really doesn’t pay the bills. You know, it’s nice to have that ongoing.

Brandon Burton (22:14.402)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (22:18.421)
revenue. The key is engaging them from the beginning. now you get three or four employees every month or every quarter spending 50, 60, 80 bucks or whatever on events. And that’s where you start to see the event. And try to tell that we had a whole sales team.

Brandon Burton (22:39.682)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (22:44.585)
before we had a sales manager, had sales reps, had all that stuff. And I tried to tell them that, that the importance, the model that we have on the revenue side is not about that one shot of the company that sends us, know, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, they want a ribbon cutting, right? So they join.

Brandon Burton (23:09.036)
Yeah, they do the ones for the ribbon cutting and that’s it. Yeah.

Chris Heck (23:11.827)
And they do that one thing and you never hear back from them. I mean, what does that get us? So I think you understand that that is where, and we’re all on the same page with that. And we have had members come to us and say, you know what? We belong to five or six different organizations. Never have we had an onboarding process that was so personalized.

Brandon Burton (23:20.59)
But it’s a great strategy.

Chris Heck (23:41.021)
and authentic as yours was. And I think that really helps.

Brandon Burton (23:43.523)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a great strategy, making sure that their list gets built out beyond their primary contact, because a lot of times a primary contact maybe is not the one that gets super involved. But then a couple of years down the road when they’re making a decision, maybe they have a harder financial year and they’re trying to decide, do we stay with the chamber?

And if they’ve got a list of eight different employees that are involved and you got six of them advocating for involvement with the chamber, because they see the value, then that makes it a whole lot better. Just stick around. Yeah. I love that.

Chris Heck (24:09.834)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (24:18.611)
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, Brandon, exactly. So another, the last thing that’s a little bit new, and you and I spoke offline about this a little bit, is, you know, we’re in an area where higher education technology, in particular, we’re in the backyard of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

So with that comes the technology boom. have so many autonomous vehicles. We have all these different technology for robotics and AI. So I was like, how do we incorporate some of the things to our chamber to make us relevant, to make us unique, make us different?

Brandon Burton (24:55.608)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (25:14.35)
You’ve got to show you’re leading, right? Yeah.

Chris Heck (25:17.619)
And that’s where we engaged with our friend Craig Turner. And I said, look, I joined a chamber. He goes, I’ve got a very simple AI related platform. They join, they log on to this AI platform. They answer a few questions and they get what we call a a value.

roadmap and that value roadmap tells them, okay, you’ve answered these five or six questions. Here is your roadmap of maximizing the value that you can get out of this chamber. And that report goes instantaneously back to them. We get a copy and all of a sudden the guy’s like, wow, I just joined this chamber.

five days later, I’m filling out an AI questionnaire and I’ve got a value roadmap that will give me some suggestions on how to maximize the value that I’m paying for in this chamber. So it’s a nice little modern trinket and it seems to be working pretty well.

Brandon Burton (26:33.838)
But it’s important, like you said, you’re a hub of innovation and technology and as a chamber, beyond just being relevant, you have to show that you’re leading the way, that you understand the technology, the implications of technology and AI in their business. And look, we’re using it too. You’re leading by example. Yeah.

Chris Heck (26:57.011)
Right, right, right. And who would ever think, I mean, a chamber of commerce, there’s thousands across the country, right? Some of them are very small and some of them are very old school where you, you you join a chamber and you go, you go to a local restaurant and you have a beer and you meet some insurance broker and that’s basically all you do.

Brandon Burton (27:16.822)
And that’s the end of the story. Yeah. That’s great. Now you’ve definitely you’ve hit on some great points here. And as far as the managing the growth and leading into that longer term retention and really just leading out, I was hoping we’d have time to touch a little bit more on the committees. I think when you talk about leading a chamber, you’re effectively using committees, it sounds like.

Chris Heck (27:46.217)
Yes.

Brandon Burton (27:46.294)
and that makes your job a little bit easier. Do you want to take a minute or two and touch on that and the implications?

Chris Heck (27:50.014)
Yeah, yeah, we, you know, the largest is the ambassador committee. I look at our board as a committee as well, because we lean on them often for just a lot, you know, a lot of a lot of different things. We have a government relations and advocacy committee. So the larger companies do have that community relations and government relations director.

So I’m the one who’s doing the work with our elected officials on a regular basis. So it’s very important that that committee understands what our priorities are for accuracy. So we do have that. We have about five different signature events. Each one of those signature events has its own committee. So the golf outing, for instance, just to give an idea.

There’s 15 members of the golf outing committee. They do everything from ideas of additional revenue generation to getting auction items for the golf outing. So we don’t have to do more. And then there’s four or five other events that do that. We’re introducing this year two new networks, once a peer network, which is a HR peer network.

Brandon Burton (29:01.282)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (29:16.179)
So we’re going out to those companies that have a dedicated HR professional and saying, hey, you’ve been a member of our chamber. Here’s an opportunity for you as the HR director to meet with your peers and talk about whatever you want to talk about. We’re not going to drive that. There’s no money involved. It’s just, you know, and I’ll tell you what, HR people

Brandon Burton (29:36.344)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (29:45.51)
love to get out of the office and meet with peers and exchange ideas. The other peer network is the sales and marketing peer network, which totally goes off the rails sometimes. know, a bunch of sales guys in a room. So that those are those are a couple of networks are not committees necessarily, but we’re introducing those.

Brandon Burton (29:49.312)
I’m sorry.

Brandon Burton (30:01.25)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Chris Heck (30:15.093)
a marketing and communications committee and that helps me because now you have social media that everybody’s talking about, right? And how do you manage that correctly? And so that committee does everything from design to does the posting and does a lot of that stuff. So that really helps. So you can see where we go with these committees.

Brandon Burton (30:39.288)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (30:43.221)
and we have a very small staff, but the committees really, really help. The ambassadors are great. I know I’m missing a committee somewhere. Government Affairs, Marketing and Communications, the board, and I think that might be it. I think that’s about it.

Brandon Burton (31:05.004)
Yeah. I set you up for that to, yeah, to forget a name or something. So that one’s on me. But, as we start to wrap.

Chris Heck (31:10.431)
Hahaha

Brandon Burton (31:18.638)
you for those listening who are wanting to take their organization up to the next level what kind of tip or action item would you leave with them as they strive towards that goal?

Chris Heck (31:30.255)
wow. I, you know, I think, I think this is kind of more of a life lesson than it is a lesson in managing or leading a chamber. and I just had this conversation yesterday, so the timing is pretty good. I do have a philosophy that the first thing in the conversation that I have is

put myself in their shoes. If I put myself in their shoes and I’m listening to what I have to say, it better be something that I truly believe in. I think it’s important that when you’re talking to someone,

Brandon Burton (32:02.424)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (32:26.293)
The customer is always first. We know that. That’s old school. But it’s important for you to understand, wow, whatever I’m going to say or whatever I’m going to pitch or whatever I’m going to sort of put in play here, if I don’t sincerely believe it myself, then it’s not going to work. So that seems to really help me.

in putting myself in the shoes of that person on the other side of the table, right? And is it something that is truly honest and effective? And what I buy that, what I buy, because we’re all selling, right? So what I buy, what I’m listening to. And that’s, I think my dad told me that. My dad was a salesman all of his life. And he’s like,

Brandon Burton (33:01.208)
Yeah.

Brandon Burton (33:09.87)
Right.

Chris Heck (33:23.871)
Hey, you know, if you don’t buy it yourself, nobody’s going to buy it. So that’s just something that I’ve used and tried to. You the other thing is chamber membership is not rocket science. It’s very, very basic business development, marketing, connectivity, support of a great organization that you should believe in.

Again, I think the integrity of what we do as chamber leaders is pretty good to hold on to. You never really question whether or not you’re selling a bunch of crap or are you really, really passionate about what you do. And I’m pretty passionate about chamber membership, because if it’s done right, you know, it really does help.

someone’s business. It really does make a difference.

Brandon Burton (34:22.316)
Yeah, can make a big impact. Yeah. Very good. Well, Chris, I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of Chambers. So how do you see the future of Chambers of Commerce and their purpose going forward?

Chris Heck (34:34.439)
Ooh.

You know, I like to say that, know, the sky’s the limit with the Chamber of Commerce. And I sometimes look at what the future is of the way we do business, the future of how people interact with each other. I have four children.

And I’m the first one to say, get off your phone and just talk to people, you know, face to face and all that. you see these trends with AI and with these different things that are so much different than our generation would use because I think, so I hope that Chamber

Chambers of Commerce continue to add value and add benefit. I’m not 100 % sure that in the future we’re going to see as much as we see, have seen over, you know, what was the last time that you were in a room with 200 people, 250 people listening to someone

who was really, really interesting. It’s not every day, right? It’s not every day that you’re able to do that. And that’s what I’m afraid we’re kind of, as a society, as a business community might be moving away from. And that’s scary to think of, is that’s what a chamber of commerce does bring. It brings that personal, you know,

Brandon Burton (36:09.944)
Well, let’s see. No.

Chris Heck (36:34.641)
opportunity to learn something where a lot of people right now are thinking, I could learn that online. I could do that. I could literally do that on something, you know, not as personal. So I’d love to say, I think, you know, the chamber of commerce world is is is absolutely going to, you know, break every record and do everything like that.

Brandon Burton (36:37.954)
Yeah.

Chris Heck (37:04.179)
I hope so, but there are some variables that we never thought would be there, right? That are there now, which that old handshake and that whole, know, hey, Bill, I’d like you to meet Jim. He’s a great so-and-so. He could probably save you a lot of money. That whole thing, you know, is what I hope, I hope continues.

Brandon Burton (37:10.818)
Right.

Brandon Burton (37:28.812)
Right? Yeah.

Which is scary because that’s a reflection on society as a whole. And you want to see society hold up. we’ll hope for the best and work on preserving it.

Chris Heck (37:37.397)
That’s right.

Chris Heck (37:46.389)
Yeah, well, I know we’re getting ready to wrap up and I don’t know who’s going to be listening. But again, my name is Chris Hack. I run the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce in about 11 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. And, you know, 412-264-6272 is our number here. Our website is

If you ever are in the area or would like to chat about anything, I’m happy to spend some time with you and learn about what you guys are doing.

Brandon Burton (38:31.01)
That’s perfect. Well, make sure we get that in our show notes for this episode and make it easy for listeners to reach out and connect if they have some further questions or want to learn more about how you’re doing things. But Chris, this has been great having you on the show. I’m glad it worked out with our schedules. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun and covered a lot of good ground. So thank you.

Chris Heck (38:42.687)
Please do, yeah.

That’s been fun. Yeah.

Good. Good, Brandon. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Brandon Burton (38:53.974)
You bet.

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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.

Our title sponsor for this episode is Bringing Local Back. Remember when your community could turn to a local TV station or newspaper for the latest updates and affordable ads? Those days may be fading, but the need for local connection remains. That’s why we created Bringing Local Back, a game changing platform that restores the local visibility and advertising power to your community. It’s more than just tech. It’s about driving engagement and creating new revenue for your chamber. Ready to see the future visit bringinglocalback.com to schedule your demo today. This is the future of local commerce.

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber, the year finalist series. And as our guest for this episode, we have Juliet Abdel and Bob Ross with the Greater Topeka Partnership. Juliet serves as the president of the Greater Topeka Chamber, making history as the first woman to lead the organization since its founding in 1933 she’s recognized among the top 1% of chamber executives nationwide, and contributes her expertise to various leadership and advisory boards, including the ACCE and Leadership Program of the Rockies. Juliet’s commitment to community service is evident through her involvement with organizations like the American Heart Association’s Go Red program and women of heart, as well as her service on the US Chamber board of directors. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Studies and has authored publications on female empowerment and entrepreneurship. Juliet strategic leadership has earned statewide and national recognition as she is multilingual, speaking English, Arabic and Turkish. Bob is the Chief Marketing Officer for the greater Topeka partnership, and he plays a key role in promoting economic growth and community development in Topeka and shiny County. A Topeka native Bob has extensive experience in merchandise allocation and planning, having spent over 15 years at Payless shoe source, including leading international operations in Israel, Peru, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia. Bob returned to Topeka in 2019 and now contributes his expertise to advancing the initiatives of the Greater Topeka Partnership, working alongside Juliet to drive growth and success for the region. But Bob Juliet, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. We’re excited to have you on the show today. Congratulations to you guys, and your team has been selected as a chamber of the year finalist. It’s very exciting, but I wanted to give you both a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening, and if you would humor us and share something interesting about yourself, so we can all get to know you both a little bit better. Juliet, you want to go first

Juliet Abdel 3:26
Sure. Thank you so much, Brandon for having us both on here. You’ve done an exceptionally a great job about summarizing our achievements, and it’s so well, and I’m just, you know, gawking at myself without even, you know, blinking an eye. But no super exciting time for us, of course, and to see our organization gets to this level and and to have this attention on a lot of the initiatives and programs that we have going on. So you know, you’ve already led with a lot of amazing things. So one interesting thing about myself is I’m branded as the self care boss, because I always continue to advocate for self care and holistic wellness by focusing on mental, emotional and physical well being. So in my personal life, I do a lot of speaking engagements. I lead Love Yourself boot camps. I am a published author, international radio show host, and that is what holds me personally accountable to my own personal goals in life, and having that balance as much as I can have in a crazy, busy world that we live in, I

Brandon Burton 4:27
love that. That’s awesome. Bob, how about yourself?

Bob Ross 4:31
Well, Julie, it’s a tough act to follow, but I will say, you know, probably a distinguishing factor of me, as I’m a proud dad of five kids that keep me very, very, very busy, and my per capita income very, very low, as I am constantly navigating their dreams. But it’s also part of the reason why I’m so passionate about this work, because I do believe what chambers can do is they really set the table for future generations, and so leaving the private sector after. For 20 years, it allowed me to discover an industry which is about, you know, investing in that future generation by creating a better community, you know, for my kids. And I think that that’s, you know, exciting work. And I think that often the chamber industry is not fully understood. But when people do work and discover it. They realize it’s, you know, really such an important part of the mission of, you know, handing off a better generation to the one that comes behind us. So, so, yeah, that’s a little about

Brandon Burton 5:32
me. That’s great not to put you on the spot, Bob. But what’s the range of the

Bob Ross 5:36
kids now? They are my youngest. She is 15. My oldest is 23 and so, yeah, so I got three in college, which is why I constantly feel broke. 24/7 is that I often tell people, it’s like, you think when they’re 18, that you are good. No, they just become more expensive after they’re 18. And but, yeah, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Like I said, they definitely keep me on my toes. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 6:00
that’s great. Um, well, Juliet, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the greater Topeka partnership. Just to give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work, you guys are involved with budget, just kind of set the stage.

Juliet Abdel 6:13
Sure. I’m going to give a 3000 foot perspective. I think Bob said it so well when people don’t understand what our industry is and how much of a hidden gem it is. Let’s even further add to that, these layers of differences between one community to the next and how Chambers of Commerce is operate. Our community is super unique because we have this collaborative structure that’s Brandon as the greater Topeka partnership. And what that essentially means is we have four organizations that have come together, that touch Economic Community Development, all agreeing to this economic vitality and pursuing this hope, happiness and wealth for Topeka and the surrounding region. And we do that through cross collaboration, through working together to advance initiatives and projects forward, and of course, through sharing resources, staff and even office space. So when we’re looking at the entire partnership, that’s upward of 40 employees that work here, about a $13 million budget that’s mixed between public and private sector, the individual entities that make us up, of course, represent collectively, the 1000 plus members that we have in the surrounding community, and that’s businesses, it’s nonprofits, it’s key stakeholders that you can think of and attribute to our population in that in our service areas, about 178,000 so the four organizations that came together, of course, were the Chamber of Commerce, which I lead, as you shared, that is A group that’s focused on government affairs, regulatory support, public policy efforts, connecting businesses to resources and, of course, to their elected officials. Go to pica, who will spend some time on as it relates to this specific effort, handles all of our economic development for Topeka and Shawnee County, focusing on business retention expansion, support, through incentives, through workforce development, childcare, and through different events and trainings that are designed to equip those businesses with ultimate success. Visit Topeka is focused on attracting people to our area and activating our residents and ensuring that people are aware of the things that that they can visibly go out and see, things they can do, where to stay, shop and dine and essentially invest in a community, if they’re coming from outside and if they’re internally here, then grow to appreciate the things that make us truly unique. And the fourth being downtown Topeka, which is focused on ensuring that our heartbeat for the community continues to thrive and continues to be available to those merchants that make up your traditional Main Street corridor. And so they focus on things like safety, Beautification and grants, and again, being that resource for those businesses that are in the area. So four powerful organizations that convene and collaborate and partner under the name of the greater Topeka partnership. We’re still separate organizations, separate budgets, bylaws. We just have this very incestuous relationship that I find my best to explain. I

Brandon Burton 9:13
think you did a fantastic job explaining it, and I love how you guys can take advantage of that overlap to be able to share some staff and some responsibilities, but still keep things separate. I also really like with visit Topeka, you talked about activating residents. I’m like that is such a great term to activate residents so well for the majority of our conversation today, what we want to do is focus on the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application that are being highlighted, and we will dive into those with much greater detail as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 12:40
All right, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to cover the two program synopsis that were included in your chamber of the year application. Lindsay, it’s my understanding you had a significant, pretty significant role in the application and pulling everything together. So I’d like to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight, I know there’s two different programs, one about an airport, one about move to Jackson. Do you want to highlight move to Jackson for us first, and what that program, what the origins were, kind of the background and and how things have evolved to what it is today.

Brandon Burton 12:36
All right, we are back, as I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the two programs from your chamber of the year application, Bob, I want to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight the first program, which I believe you called choose Topeka, 2.0 you want to tell us what that’s all about.

Bob Ross 12:55
Absolutely choose Topeka began in 2019 as a program through our economic development organization, go Topeka, and you have to understand the funding model for go Topeka, we enjoy a percentage of a half cent sales tax, which generates about $5 million a year, and funding that can be used to attract businesses through traditional business attraction efforts. It’s used to invest in our small businesses to encourage growth within our community, but uniquely, we began to look at how we can deploy those dollars to enhance and attract talent. And with Topeka, it’s a unique community that, you know, I often tell people, up until 1980 this community was growing at about a 20% decennial rate, but through the 90s and 2000s our growth really stalled to really be pretty much low single digits to flat as we started moving into 2020, and choose. Topeka was a program that was initiated to reintroduce our community, not just to the state of Kansas, but to the region and across the world. And part of that was driven by the fact that Topeka is a community over the last 10 years, has radically chose to reinvest in itself, with over $500 million put into our downtown with new business growth, and we’ve done the work to rebuild our community. Now we wanted essentially people to essentially rediscover it, because as late as 2020, over 40% of our workforce chose to work in Topeka but live outside the community. So the Choose program was developed with one core component, which is offering people up to $15,000 to relocate to Topeka and Shawnee County if they were to work for one of our local employers during the pandemic, we layered in a remote work incentive, which became very popular. But then in 2023 we relaunched the program as choose Topeka 2.0 we sunset. The remote worker incentive. But decided to look at, what does Topeka need to do to compete for talent and raise awareness as our community as a place to work, live and play, and what advantages could we offer that conversation? And choose Topeka 2.0 layered in a $5,000 relocation grant to those that formerly lived in our community, $5,000 to those who are transitioning veterans, because we have nearby Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth, as well as our own local Air National Guard and Air Force contingent here in Topeka. But then we also started to consider what other ways could we attract the workforce we need in our community? And we began to look at just the strengths our community had to offer. And we noticed immediately, Topeka has a very strong and proud Hispanic heritage. Often say there were three communities or three groups that originally founded the city back in the 19th century. They were abolitionists, freed slaves and Mexican immigrants that came to build the railroad. To build the railroad, and so for over 100 years, our Mexican community, you know, has thrived for 92 years. We have a vibrant Fiesta, and we really have a lot of Latino excellence within our city. So we decided, You know what, let’s capitalize on that, knowing that there are 100,000 Spanish speakers in the Kansas City Metro, which is 45 minutes to our east, and there’s over 300,000 Spanish speakers across the state of Kansas, how do we begin to reach out to them and let them know if you’re legally eligible to work and Topeka and Shawnee County, we want you that this is a community that’s Very welcoming that we have jobs here we are growing. And how do we begin to speak and engage with them about the programs, like our incentive programs and other assets, which makes peak a really dynamic place to live. And so what we did was is we essentially started producing all of our collateral in Spanish, including 110 page tourism and relocation guide. And then we began to also court our national media, because we enjoy a great relationship with a New Jersey based PR firm, and we began to really just talk about this intentionality with Spanish language, and that really captured a lot of interest. We were able to welcome Telemundo into our community. And October of 2023 we were able to get the Wall Street Journal here. And there was a disruptive element to a community that identified Hispanic migration is a solution to a problem, not a problem. We also worked with local nonprofits, and there’s a group called top city promise, which began to actively work with refugee groups that were legally eligible to work in the United States following the onset of the Ukraine war. And through that program, although they’re not eligible for the incentive per se, we were able to essentially come alongside them and see what we can do to connect them to employers. And that particular program brought over 200 Ukrainian refugees who had work eligibility through the United for Ukraine program, we were able to get them job placement at a 90% rate, serving important workforce needs within our community. And I will say, after our Telemundo appearance, that particular moment went viral across Spanish language, Tiktok garnering billions of views across the Spanish speaking world, and really drove a highly motivated population to find a way to Topeka. I mean, we had, within days, people showing up at our door saying, you know, knocking on our door, asking for information about how they can relocate their business to Topeka. We had one gentleman, his son and his grandfather, who have a business in New Jersey, who said they heard about Topeka is a great place for Hispanics, and they wanted to see what they could do, and so we had to rapidly spin up our Spanish speaking staff to be able to engage these communities also address some misconceptions about the program, and, you know, really kind of harness that momentum. It has proven to be incredibly successful, to the point where the Brookings Report released data at the spring of this year, which showed that 99% of Topeka is growth over the last year, was from foreign born groups, and that’s a tremendous movement, because when you do live in Kansas, you’re in a community which is fantastic, but we’re often considered flyover country. So you know, trying to get a mobilized workforce from around the country that is considering where they want to live, getting on their radar was the first hurdle. So we tried to activate every vehicle at our disposal. And so I think between the incentives and our foreign language outreach, we were able to really make a dent and reverse a trend some additional metrics showing how the progress has. Worked. You know that decline in population or stagnation has been reversed to the point in 2023 we led the state of Kansas in population growth. We now boast one of the top 10 housing markets in the United States, and in the fall of 2023 we ended up rising up to be the number one housing market in the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal and realtor.com so this, this intentionality focused with, you know, a pretty bold use of funding really helped push us forward we’re now. One of our biggest concerns is, how do we keep up with the housing demand? Because Topeka was not quite ready for the shift in momentum that we enjoyed. That was

Brandon Burton 20:40
going to be one of my questions. There’s going to be these the fallout from such growth so quickly. And I love how you said you took what may be considered a problem in some communities and really seeing it as a strength, as an asset and an asset. But when you have that kind of rapid growth overnight, that that creates other problems, right? But absolutely, but problems we’re all happy to deal with because it means progress. So I can imagine, when there’s in most communities, there’s a pretty large segment of the community that has a certain level of comfort with how things are, and then they see a disruption like this that comes in, even though it’s a good thing that are going to be kind of that squeaky wheel in a community. I’m curious, where was there any attention that needed to be paid to the policy side of this to make sure that everything Bob talked about making sure people are legally able to work in the community? Juliet, what what was the approach from the policy standpoint? Yeah,

Juliet Abdel 21:43
that’s such a great question, and it’s, it’s always one of those where explaining the structure really explains how we approach everything, because we know that things naturally happen as initiatives are are brought forward. So there are three things that I just want to quickly unpack and all of these amazing comments that Bob threw out there. One is, of course, from a policy perspective, we’re here for our business community and make sure that that it is favorable for their continued growth and for them to continue to thrive in the space that they’re in. And we know a crucial component to that is things, not only in the space of economic development, but to really pare that down even further. That touches workforce development. It touches housing and it touches cost of living, and that’s all of those marry into this economic prosperity piece that we spoke to earlier. So this initiative was one, as Bob was sharing earlier. You know, it really was focused and came out of our Go economic development arm, but it touched a number of different sectors in our community, as he shared, right the military component transitional soldiers that touches our chamber, because we have a military Relations Council that’s purely designed to build this defense ecosystem to support with workforce development opportunities for those that have served. I mean, Kansas has over seven different installations across the state, and we have, of course, our Kansas Air National Guard that’s here, are 1/90 refueling wing, and then Forbes field. So it naturally had that overlap that’s there. The component of the housing piece is super interesting, because I don’t know what community isn’t feeling a strain on housing. We just have had such a boom in all places possible. And so to that, you know, to that end, we’ve always continued to advocate that we need to come up with simpler and easier solutions for those that are looking to do business in our community, to find it easy to enter our market. And what are those things that we can do to make it more of an opportune environment for someone to invest in building new homes or building homes that are the missing middle we have a number of our businesses that support a diversity of housing. So it’s not just one type of housing. It is all of them that we are looking to try and continue to see come live, the single family homes, the condos, affordable housing, and the whole gamut. Because it’s people become economically more mobile. They they also transition into different types of rentals or home ownership. And then the component of you know this perception is everyone’s reality sometimes. So semantics are really important in this conversation. That’s why we specifically worded it as legally eligible individuals that are here because we know that all types of residents contribute to our pipelines, but we also rely on a significant number of workers that come from outside of the US to feed into our different industries. And so our continued approach has been we need immigration reform that makes sense, while we understand that we want to protect our nation and our interests and and keep as much focus on the process as possible, and really having a great structure. There is a backlog on worker visa permits. There are times where individuals are here and they’re here working, but it’s been delayed in their process to continue to. Send out, and that creates uncertainty. And anytime there’s uncertainty, it causes disruption in our businesses and their ability to kind of forecast moving forward as well. So I know that touches a few different things, but I wanted to throw it out there, because as Bob was sharing, I was like, Oh, this is another piece we we overlap, and that that relationship that we have helps us in making sure the messaging is appropriate, and we’re thinking of all the things that we can

Brandon Burton 25:25
possible. Yeah, I like to think of it as job security at the chamber. You know, you guys create a great program that drives, you know, workforce development and economic development, but it creates other things that you need to address now, you know, like we talked about with housing and and things like that, immigration reform, things that that need to be addressed and and keeps the the relevancy for what the chamber does. But let’s, I love that program. Let’s shift gears and and turn the focus on the second program. Bob, if you want to highlight what the second program is, you guys submitted on your application?

Bob Ross 26:01
Yeah, absolutely. You know, at Topeka, like many communities around the country, you know, back in the 1980s this city invested in the development of a real destination Mall. It was a million square foot piece of retail real estate. Vanna White came to cut the ribbon on it. It really embodied everything that the 80s and 90s and early 2000s represented in terms of mall traffic and became a real draw across the state, like most malls across the country, towards the 2000 10s and going through the pandemic, that piece of real estate in our community, which anchors a billion dollar commercial corridor for us really started to see distress. You know, shopping patterns were changing. That million square foot piece of retail real estate began to decline to the point where we only had about 25% occupancy in it, and we had a more predatory real estate developer purchase the mall post pandemic, without really the intention of developing the asset for long term success. So our community recognized it as a potential real challenge, not just to you know, our continued ability to attack or attract and retain talent, but also to really project ourselves as a destination across the region. And we were fortunate that in 2023 one of our major employers, advisors Excel, saw the potential in that real estate to make it a development project which could enhance their own growth plans, but also give back to the community that gave them success. So advisors Excel is one of the largest financial marketing firms and wealth management groups in the country. They have over 1000 employees, and they are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, and their rapid growth has led to increasing demand for how do they keep up with the ability to work from work and provide office space for all their staff within Topeka, their founders identified the mall is a solution to this challenge, and they purchased that mall with the intention of redeveloping it into 400,000 square feet of office space as well as 600,000 square feet mixed use dining restaurant lifestyle space. Because as also, offices and employers across the country are figuring out how to incentivize workers to be back in the office and be happy about it. They really saw the ability of creating this new mixed use campus as a way of really rewarding their employees for being back in the office space, contributing to that sense of corporate culture, but providing the amenities that they need. So now how the partnership features in this particular conversation, we began to think of ways that we could enhance this effort and draw awareness for this retail redevelopment project, and what our team decided to do was to look at how we do our annual meeting and re imagine that is a way of being a part of this catalytic announcement of a new future for Westridge Mall. So we took our annual meeting, we moved it into the mall, and we really created a 1980s themed mall party, and brought in a popular 1980s pop star, Tiffany, known for her mall tour during that era, to really headline our event. And everyone came and themed attire. You know, you had stonewashed jeans and people tight rolling their jeans and neon T shirts. And we also worked with our local businesses to essentially re skin the food court so that it would look like a 1980s food court. And this really proved to be an exciting event for our community. It normally annual meetings tend to be kind of closed off events where people buy their tables and we still. Had that element involved in ours, but since it was held in the food court, the programming and the experience was also open to the public for the first time. So you did buy tables as normal, but the public was invited to kind of stand outside of the event zone and enjoy the the concert, hear about the community’s progress, and it really proved to be an exciting way of kind of jump starting that mall project and raising awareness for it on a national scale. As our as advisors Excel and their team looks to reintroduce that property to national retailers and bringing businesses back. So I always like to use it as a way of encouraging chambers of commerce across the country to get creative with their programming and see how even existing things that they’re doing can be leveraged, leveraged or reimagined, to provide added value to their businesses and economic development

Brandon Burton 30:56
projects. That’s awesome. I’m having all these flashbacks in my mind of the 80s and what the malls look like in their hat. So I’m curious, did you guys serve hot dog on the stick and Orange Julius?

Bob Ross 31:06
We did. We absolutely had an we did. We had an Orange Julius sought. We also set up a GTP shots the instead of glamor shots, where people could get a feather boa and get their their pictures. So we brought in a DeLorean from Back to the Future. We really created a pretty exciting event, especially for those that grew up in the 80s and 90s. It it re awoken people how much they loved having the mall space, and got people excited about the project, because we know it’s going to be a couple of years before this mall gets rebuilt and redeveloped. So it got people really engaged and looking for ways to be a part of the momentum. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 31:43
So Is there plans to continue? You talked about enhancing the efforts that this mixed use development space looks like as a chamber. Do you guys have continued plans to try to continue drawing a focus there and keep that excitement up for the development

Bob Ross 31:59
Absolutely. Yeah, the partnership. We’re fortunate, because we do, you know, share assets across all four entities. And so we actually do leverage our ability for graphic design, for marketing, to be able to support our key economic development projects as a way of enhancing how go to pica. Can invest in projects without investing dollars. So we work very closely with the team of advisors Excel and the mall management team creating collateral which allows them to sell the community and to help them to tell the story of whites. Peak is a great place for retail and restaurant to invest in. And we also work very closely with those retail site selectors as they visit, by meeting those teams, and once again, just talking up why coming back to this mall and coming back to this community at this time is a great opportunity, because retail and dining isn’t always a focus for economic development groups like go Topeka, but We see these kind of passive ways to engage that are not necessarily dollar incentive driven, is an important way of contributing to that ecosystem, because if you don’t have great retail and dining, it’s hard to get the people to move and it’s hard to get the businesses to relocate. So we’ve gotten very engaged and just actually led a tour last week of them all, and spoke about what this project means for our community.

Brandon Burton 33:24
That’s awesome. I love it. And the idea of using your annual meeting as that delivery system to highlight the development in the community, I think is such a great idea. And I’ve seen other chambers utilize their annual meeting for similar purposes, and probably not to this scale, but, but it’s a great, great tool to utilize. As we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to to ask you both for chambers listening who want to take their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you both have to offer and trying to accomplish that goal.

Juliet Abdel 34:00
You know, I always say the sky is the limit in our industry. We are we’re so unique and fortunate that we can get creative and we can be nimble and agile and and and our hands being involved in so many parts of our community allow us to do that and really to have champions that surround those efforts. So don’t be afraid to kind of be bold and look at look and seek those opportunities. And then the other part of it is for us to continue to be relevant. It’s super necessary for us to take those bold opportunities and not continue to do what we’ve always done, because what was working decades ago, or, you know, years ago, isn’t what works today, and if we continue to do the same things over and over again, then we start losing our relevancy. And so to be and continue to be relevant, we have to have a pulse for what’s in the community, and be brave enough to take those bold, bold actions to guide and steer those conversations

Brandon Burton 34:59
Absolutely. Great, Bob, what thoughts might you have to share?

Bob Ross 35:02
Yeah, I would just say, just I speak to a lot of chambers across the country about the idea of what the partnership model represents, and I think there is incredible value in getting those kind of community stakeholder organizations in each city together, even if they’re not a part of a formal partnership, to really align on shared mission and value. So getting your main street, your tourism, your eco Devo, your chamber of commerce around the table, figuring out your strategy and working together to advance with one voice. What I found that hurt Topeka during those years in which population stagnated, you had each of these different verticals, all kind of marching to their own drum, all kind of fighting for their own turf. And we hit a point in our community’s growth where we needed to come together, and our business leaders pushed for it, and so that created the partnership, where it forced every entity to give up a certain amount of authority and autonomy, but allowed each one to now activate more powerfully because they’re not operating alone. They’re able to share costs, they’re able to share vision, and so even if a chamber is not able to create a partnership model, just be very intentional about seeking out and working with those stakeholders in your community so that you don’t have to do this alone, and that everyone is working together off the same script. And I think when you can do that, and you’re all singing along to the same song, your entire community is going to thrive as a result.

Brandon Burton 36:29
Yeah, absolutely. Juliet, I’ll focus this question to you, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward.

Juliet Abdel 36:41
You know, I think what we’re seeing now already is this review of membership and investment in our organizations, and the older concept of, you know, you join and you get as much as you put into it, it’s becoming increasingly less likely to be the case because, because more and more people are occupied running their business day in and day out, and so the ability for us to become more of an extension of their team, continue to pivot and do things for them ahead of when it impacts them, and provide them solutions to them ahead of time. I think that’s where we’re seeing most success in our industry is continuing to be relevant, continuing to be forward thinking, and continuing to know that it’s not this join you have to come to every single thing, but it’s invest instead, into what opportunities around you that continue to ensure that you thrive, and that that would probably be where I feel the direction is, you know, There’s a I’ll point to, and this is because here’s my board plugin for ACC. I’ll point to the horizon initiative that was just released. And if you’re not privy to this, the study that was conducted was after, you know, over a decade from the last time that we had a study, and the idea was to try and look at what does the future of chambers look like, and how do we continue to operate? But some of the contents of that study really focused on being catalytic, convening and champion your community, and in operating in all of those spaces simultaneously as an organization that continues to breathe life into into the populations that we serve. So if you haven’t already done so, pick that horizon up, because it has some really good nuggets of the things that you can be doing and things to watch out for and really start to incorporate into the future.

Brandon Burton 38:31
Yeah, for anybody who’s is just living under a rock and doesn’t know horizon, look at the original one from 10 years ago, and look at 2.0 and you’ll, you’ll kind of be blown away to to read the the first horizon initiative and and to realize how spot on it really was, and if we look at that forward with the 2.0 I anticipate similar accuracy. So, so before we let you go. I wanted to give you both an opportunity to share any contact information for people who may want to reach out and learn more about the programs that have been highlighted, or just in general, how you guys are doing things there in Topeka, what would be the best way for individuals to reach out and connect with you both?

Juliet Abdel 39:16
So I will, I’ll start, and then I’ll throw it at you, Bob, but GreaterTopekaPartnership.com has all the information about all these organizations and the functions of what we do and how we operate, also has links to the any external affiliate entities that we have underneath us, as our social media does as well. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and several other platforms. I will say personally, you can find me on LinkedIn, Juliet Abdel and I always am open to new friends and more friends, and that is the way that we continue to support one another, is by continuing to grow our network, sharing those best practices and seeing seeing when we need that support, if there’s others that can help lend that. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can also find me on Instagram at Ms. Juliet Abdel, or on Facebook, and happy to connect with you on any of those platforms.

Brandon Burton 40:05
Perfect, Bob. How about yourself? Where can people find you or reach out to you?

Bob Ross 40:09
Absolutely. I encourage anyone they can reach out to me directly at bob.ross@topekapartnership.com as Juliet said, you’re welcome to also reach out over LinkedIn. You know, we’re just happy to use our experience to help other chambers really kind of solve problems. And we’ve had to solve a lot of problems ourselves over the last, you know, seven and 10 years. So anything we can do to kind of, you know, share from that with our our peers is always a welcome conversation to have. So I encourage anyone to reach out, and we’re happy to have a conversation.

Brandon Burton 40:39
Very good. We’ll be sure to get all that in our show notes for this episode as well, to make it easy to connect. But wanted to thank you both for spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, for highlighting these programs and and really the great impact you guys are making there in the Topeka area, and continue to make those, those big, bold moves and continue impacting your communities. You guys are doing a great job, and I wish you guys Best of luck this chamber of

Bob Ross 41:06
the year. Thank you. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 41:09
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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.

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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber of the year finalist series. And our guests for this episode are Kyle Spurgeon and Lindsay Dawkins moon, representing the greater Jackson chamber. Kyle is the president and CEO of the greater Jackson chamber. Under his leadership, the chamber was named 2024 Tennessee chamber of the year, and is one of only 174 accredited chambers in the US with prior experience at Jackson Energy Authority and at the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Kyle has been instrumental in facilitating over $8 billion in capital investment. He serves on several statewide boards and was appointed to the Tennessee Board of Regents in 2023 Kyle lives with his wife, Melissa, their five children and two grandchildren and a spoiled dog. Lindsay is the Chief of Staff at the Greater Jackson chamber, where she leads the efforts in the forward Jackson investment, campaign, marketing and board relations, joining the chamber in 2022 Lindsay is a 2013 graduate of leadership Jackson. And outside of her professional life, she enjoys working out, traveling and supporting the Atlanta Braves, but Lindsay and Kyle, I’m excited to have you guys with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, and I guess Kyle to have you back on the show, this is a good reason to be back as a Chamber of the Year Finalists. But congratulations. Want to give you guys a chance to say hello to all the listeners out there, and if you would share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little

Kyle Spurgeon 2:47
better. Well, Brandon, thank you for the invitation to be back. And I hate to start something and correct something you said, but I need to make it perfectly clear that my wife and I do not live with five kids and two grandkids and a dog. We are empty nesters. Okay, they’re the two grandkids. We love them, but we can send them back.

Brandon Burton 3:09
I had all sorts of questions about that, so thank you.

Kyle Spurgeon 3:14
So that dog is uberly spoiled. So absolutely, yeah, we excited to be back on here and excited to be named a chamber of the year finalist. That’s such great recognition for our chamber, but for our team here and all of our investors, that’s where the credit goes, because they allow us to do something that I know I love to do every day, and the judging from the smile that Lindsay has on her face about 95% of the time, I think, I think she likes it too.

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 3:49
That’s great. I agree it for nine We’ll even say 98% of the time. You know, there’s always a few, few days, but it’s great and excited that we are a finalist. And I think it just speaks to like Kyle said, what our staff does, what our board does, what our community really is a part of. And so that’s always fun. I’ll give my fun little fun fact, I was actually talking to a friend about this. I always like to say, I’ve been to the Amazon before, and got to spend a few days roughing it in the Amazon. So not too many people that I’ve known have been able to do that, but that’s an interesting little trip a couple of years ago.

Brandon Burton 4:33
I bet that sounds like quite the experience. That’s awesome. Well, Kyle, would you tell us a little bit more about the greater Jackson chamber, just to kind of set the stage for our discussion. Give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff, the scope of work you guys are involved with budget and that sort of things, just to prepare us. Yeah, and

Kyle Spurgeon 4:55
I think you said something when you started this podcast about chamber champions. Uh, that’s something I think you can describe our team, that we’re champions for West Tennessee, specifically Jackson, Madison County. Our chamber, we have 1065 plus or minus members. Budget just over $2 million we serve. And I use this a lot. We’re kind of the capital of rural West Tennessee, where the largest city between Memphis and Nashville, right on Interstate 40. And there’s a lot of growth occurring here. You may be aware that blue oval city, which is Ford’s $5.6 billion project announced three years ago, they’ll be operational in 2027 so we’re seeing tremendous growth in this part of the country. And one of the things I brag about, and I wish I had come up with this, but it was a previous chairman 10 to 12 years ago, and it still holds true, is this chamber has a seat at the table at every major conversation that’s going on in this community, and that is either through a staff member, a board member, an executive committee member, whatever that is. So we are ingrained in this community and throughout West Tennessee, we’ve got great brand identity, and that’s something we protect very hard in what we’re doing through our program of work, how we’re influencing growth in this area. One of the things about Jackson, Jackson is we are extremely selective in that if you look at our economic development program, not every company that wants to locate in this area may be a fit for Jackson. So we’re we’re attracting companies high capex projects, lower employment count, two to three to 400 and then higher wage. That’s the type of stuff that we’re after. And then this chamber, we also do leadership programs, interact with our small businesses. We lead in many different ways. Just started a new effort this year that Lindsay led the State Games of Tennessee. The inaugural event was held over the past three weekends, and that was a huge success. And so we the recognition to be named a finalist for chamber of the year. I think really validates a lot of the work that we’re doing in Jackson and West Tennessee.

Brandon Burton 7:17
Absolutely, I would say. So that’s it’s a testament to the big strides you guys are making in the community and, and I love how you talked about being having a seat at all of the tables, all the discussions that are going on in the community, and, and I like how you pointed out that it’s not necessarily you that has to be at all the things, right? You’ve got board members, ambassadors, you know, people sitting on different committees and so forth that are out there with the seat at the table, and I think that’s a huge lesson for chambers listening to leverage those volunteers and committee members and board members to really get out there in the community and make that impact. Thank you for

Kyle Spurgeon 7:58
that. Yeah, I think in my role as the president, CEO, and I’ve been in this spot for 15 years. I don’t have to know everything. I don’t have to know the answer to everything. My main job is being able to connect and facilitate so people can get those answers and we can push things forward. And with that, yes, we’ve, I’ve been very fortunate through my career here in the team has changed over time, but we’ve always had good people here, and we attract good people and their hearts in the right place. And, you know, in the chamber world, there’s no room for narcissist, right? And they spread that love around. It’s not about, you know, we all get credit at different times for different things, but your success is built around the team,

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 8:40
absolutely. And I think Brandon, to add to that of you know, he talked about, we have a seat at the table. Sometimes that the lead seat, but sometimes that is just a seat at the table and helping and being in a supportive role. And so I think of being part of that team, but knowing our place on the team and knowing what is best for the community. Because, yeah, sometimes we do have to champion things and be in some of the projects that we’ll talk about that some of them, we have more supportive role, and some we are leading it. But I think that that’s a big thing of talking about our team, that we it’s not that we need credit for it. We really do want the best for Jackson, Madison County in the region. Yeah. So

Brandon Burton 9:25
important to understand your role, to have the seat, but understand the role, and to not take on more than the chamber can handle either, but be involved with it all. So thank you for that distinction. So in these chamber of the year finalist episodes, I like to spend the majority of our time highlighting the two programs of work that were submitted in your chamber of the year application. So we’re going to dive into those as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 12:40
All right, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re going to cover the two program synopsis that were included in your chamber of the year application. Lindsay, it’s my understanding you had a significant, pretty significant role in the application and pulling everything together. So I’d like to hand the microphone over to you and have you highlight, I know there’s two different programs, one about an airport, one about move to Jackson. Do you want to highlight move to Jackson for us first, and what that program, what the origins were, kind of the background and and how things have evolved to what it is today.

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 13:20
Yeah. So you know, when we think about the region, and what has taken place over the past several years is industries are moving here. Kyle mentioned Blue Oval city, and the development that has happened a little west from us, that people are moving here, but they have a choice, and so it’s, where are they going to live? Where are they going to raise their family? Where are they going to spend their dollars? And so Jackson is a great place to live and work and play and raise a family. And we know that we’re we’re champions of it. We believe it, but we need to tell others and also help our industries filling those employment gaps that they have. And so our move to Jackson campaign is that initiative to help bring people to our area to live and to be able to work and raise a family. And so we started this about a year and a half ago as a thought of, once again, in direct response to Blue Oval city of we need something, an active campaign to help attract people, because we have our visit Jackson, which is for tourism, but moving to Jackson is different From being a tourist and so different focus, exactly, and so we kind of spearheaded this project and creating a website that people could go and find a I like to call it a one stop shop of all things Jackson. You’re going to get a brief overview of everything from quality of life to. Health care to education to housing to job opportunities. And then we’re going to send you kind of where to go and find deep information of but on the surface level, you can find everything about Jackson on this site. And then from there, of being able to actually do some direct impact, direct targeting for folks. And so we we want to obviously target Blue Oval city. And so we have lots of geo fencing around that area to kind of send those messages of, Hey, Jackson. We have jobs available. We have good quality of life. We have excellent education and different options. And then, once again, just things to do. So different messages that we are sending to different folks. Louisville City is one of them. And then we also are targeting our healthcare workers, because we have a partnership with West Tennessee healthcare that nursing is also an area that we need more nursing, nurses in our area. And so we’re able to geo fence these schools, the universities that they actually recruit from. So always like to say, we’re those creeper people that you know you you get those messages, and you’re like, how did they know? Or how did they Right, right? And so some other different ways that we’re doing this is, it’s called War notices. So when businesses industries, if they’re closing, they have to report to the state of how many people they’re laying off, if it’s temporary, if it’s furloughed, and dates that go with it. So we actually look at states all surrounding us, and states that we know people are moving from, and we keep up with their war notices. And so we geofence those industries that are closing, okay, we’re particular to and what we do. And we’re, we have certain targets that our industries need. And so we’re, we’re pretty specific in who we’re kind of after. And

Brandon Burton 17:16
so is there a certain radius that you target with the geo fencing in those communities? Like, would you go, I don’t know, 10 hours away in a car drive, or how close do you try to keep it to Jackson? So

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 17:29
we have a 200 mile radius, okay, that we do. And then just from hearing from realtors and other research that we know there might be some other states, maybe outside of that 200 mile radius, but we know that people are coming from that area, or jobs that are similar, that people would potentially be moving from that and so we’re doing that, and then we also from we do a wage and benefit survey, where we partner with Union University, and they do this interview and different metrics with our industries, but they also have these employment codes that can say, Here’s engineering, here’s mechanical engineering, and it’s based on codes, and we know how many people within our current existing industries of what they need? Kind of, okay, we need 50 mechanical engineers in our area, so we’re actually taking those codes and we can put that into our data that we’re doing for geo fencing, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of that stuff as well. Like I said, it’s one of those really creepy things that you like. How can you even do some of this stuff? But our main focus, though, is being strategic. Of thinking about like, okay, plant closings that are similar to us, yeah, or jobs that are people are already here looking for. This is what we need, because we want to support our existing industries in the work that they’re doing, and they’re the jobs that they need. And so that’s what these marketing efforts are are doing, and, yeah, helping refill the people that they need, and then just we’re getting random people from just outside, because our cost of living is lower, our housing cost lower than a lot of other places. And so they’re being attracted to our area, yeah.

Brandon Burton 19:35
So I think of you know, a lot of chambers traditionally have done and still do like relocation packets, right? Yep, and I see move to Jackson as almost being a virtual relocation packet that connects all those dots for somebody looking to relocate to a community, to your community. I’m curious more on the geo fencing, because being strategic and. Yeah, I think a lot of listeners, they may know or they’ve heard of geo fencing, and I don’t expect you to give a full tutorial on how to do it, but how could somebody get started in learning about geo fencing and kind of get the groundwork of how that works?

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 20:15
I think my best advice is, I will tell you I’m not an expert in this at all it is. It is very nuanced and detailed. It can be as basic as you want it, but then as detailed as you

Brandon Burton 20:30
can tail it in the better, it’ll work exactly.

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 20:33
And so we kind of looked at early on, okay, do we want to take this on ourselves, or do we want to actually bring in a partner? And our best case was, let’s bring somebody in, and this is all they do. Smart and so we have a chamber member that their business is this, that that’s what they do, and they have actually worked with a couple relocation places in different parts of the country. They worked at a place in Pennsylvania where they were it was an entity there trying to get people who have lived there, grew up there, they moved and they were trying to get them to come back. So different targeting campaigns for them and so just having their experience, to me, is the best case. Not saying that people can’t do it on their own, but if you have somebody that is skilled in that area, I would, I would go with them, because you’ll get your bang for your buck.

Brandon Burton 21:38
Yeah. Kyle, do you have anything you want to add to the move to Jackson campaign? Or did Lindsay, yeah, cover it all.

Kyle Spurgeon 21:47
It’s so Lindsay talked about, you know, the external part of that, where we’re going out, the inward piece is it’s really been helpful. It’s a tool for us, for especially our real estate folks and our HR managers that if I’m in a meeting or someone from our economic development team, hey, we are struggling. We’re trying to get some folks to move here, whatever. We don’t have enough resources. We point them to that website. And one of the things we’ve done, of course, in the chamber business, we are, we are very protective of our members this website, although it’s done, by the way, by the chamber and funded through our investors, there are folks on there, and we may point folks or that look at the site to non Chamber members. Now, of course, we’re trying to get them to join, but if you’re looking at moving here, as good as our chamber is not 100% of the business is the law, yeah. So it’s become a real tool for us. And you know, you mentioned looking at what chambers do, the relocation packages, yeah, let’s be very honest, that is inefficient. You’ve got somebody pulling together all these magazines and maps and different things and loading them up into a piece and sending it out. And that’s not, in our opinion, the best way to do it. Send them to your website. You look at it on your phone, look at it on your computer, whatever. That is much more efficient, and it’s easy for us to give other people the opportunity to utilize that site? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 23:24
makes a lot of sense. Well, let’s shift gears to the second program, or the other program that was on the application regarding the airport Lindsay. Do you want to kick off with that program was,

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 23:39
yeah. Yeah. So this one, I love our move to Jackson, and I get to work directly with that, and it impacts a lot of people, but our airport is a very tangible thing that people can see within our community, and has made, I’m going to say, a big strides in continuing, making a big impact in Jackson, but not just there the region. And so we’ll, I’ll talk a little bit about it. I’ll let Kyle talk more details of it. He was involved a little bit more than I was in the back end of it, but so we were able to help. And this is where I go back to if we lead or if we support, and you know, we kind of led move to Jackson campaign and the airport was we, we led at times and supported at times. I felt like we were a little bit of both in in our role. And so for the longest time, and I will say I was one that flew it a couple of times that did not have the greatest experience of we had his fed, what eight to 10 people on it that went to Atlanta. Sometimes it would make it there. Sometimes it would get canceled. I had one of those. Ships where it got delayed and delayed and ended up missing a connecting flight. And so I was a big proponent of us getting an upgraded air carrier. And so we were able to help facilitate getting a 50 seat jet service. And part of the Essential Air Service was the department of transportation here in Jackson. And when you talk about having an eight to 10 seater that sometimes made it to Atlanta, was late a lot of times. And then we go to a 50 seat jet that is on time over 95% of the time. That’s a huge difference of what this works does for our community and the region, of giving them an opportunity. And Denver air connection not only goes to Atlanta, but it also goes to Chicago. And so we have opened another door of travel, and not just domestic travel, but international travel, because you think of both Chicago and Atlanta hubs for international connections. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:14
that’s that’s a great backdrop, I think, to kind of set the stage for the airport and why the need was there, Kyle, can you tell us more about what the Chamber’s involvement was like? Lindsay said, sometimes taking the lead, sometimes in support that that seems like a hard balance to keep in place, but you guys have pulled it off. So tell us what the involvement was and how that worked.

Kyle Spurgeon 26:37
Yeah. And I’ll say, you know, there’s a saying. I think there used to be a lot of T shirts you could buy. It’s either lead, follow or get the heck out of the way. Yeah, we seldom get the heck out of the way. He just Lindsey described this exactly right. There were portions of this that we led. There’s other parts where, yeah, our expertise is not airports. So we were a partner, but all throughout it, we are a part of that effort. And yeah, we did. I think the last time Jackson had jet service was back in the late 1990s and your listeners, unless you’re driving, don’t do this if you’re driving, but pull up a map and look at where Jackson is, right on Interstate 40, as I said before, between Memphis and Nashville. And when you’re traveling somewhere, you go to a website, and you know, if you’re going to New York City, if you’re going to Chicago, Atlanta, your choice is really or fly out of Nashville or Memphis, which are both great airports. We are blessed to be two hours from Nashville and an hour and 10 minutes from the Memphis airport. So those are choices, but we didn’t have the type of service that a capital city, as we’ve described earlier, in a region like ours really needs to continue to grow. And the demands were there to continue service to Atlanta. We consistently heard, hey, just get us to Chicago now. We have that with Denver air connection. They’ve been a great partner to this community. We have TSA service in place, and TSA and you think about this, if you’re going, if the flight is booked solid, it means you’re going to be the 50th person on the plane.

Brandon Burton 28:22
DS DFW is my airport by it. So having only 50 people online is a dream. You know,

Kyle Spurgeon 28:28
I’d love that. And we have a lot of companies with headquarters, or folks that live in Chicago, in Atlanta, they can now fly directly here, and everything is there, rental car service, parking, and, gosh, it may go up to five to 10 bucks a day, but right now, parking at our Jackson Regional Airport is free. Wow. What this will do for us? It’ll make us Tennessee’s sixth primary airport. And on the number side of that and the dollar side, it means we’re going to qualify for another $850,000 in FAA funding, which for a small regional airport, that is a lot of money. Some other things about Denver air connection. They have code share agreements with Delta united and American Airlines, I think they either recently did or let it, or adding Alaskan Alaska Airlines to that. So it is a I was just on the phone with a friend Sunday, who had flown to Chicago and was coming back. And it’s, it’s been a fantastic upgrade for our community, and it puts us more on the map, as far as a place that’s recognized as a destination. Because, you know, if you’re a town the size of Jackson, our county is 100,000 over 60,000 in the city, people expect reliable commercial air service. We now have that. And. And our hope is that, because now, you know, folks are never happy. It’s like, Alright, you got Chicago and Atlanta. When are we going to

Brandon Burton 30:08
Dallas? Right? That was my next question. You gotta be coming to Dallas next. Right?

Kyle Spurgeon 30:14
My answer is, utilize what we’ve got. And I’m sure Denver air connection will consider other routes. But right now, we’re being very successful. The plane’s not always full, as with any plane, but you see 3040, 45 people on those jets majority of the time.

Brandon Burton 30:32
That’s great. Hey, that’s such a huge impact in the community. And I can imagine as blue oval city, you know, gets up and running to in a couple of years here like that, need for the airport is going to be that much more. And I’m sure those flights will be full pretty much every time. And

Kyle Spurgeon 30:50
you look at Blue Oval city, it’s about 25 minutes from the airport, and blue oval cities at exit 42 between Jackson and Memphis, it is easier to get to Jackson Regional Airport than it is the Memphis airport. Now, naturally, Memphis has got more flights and choices, but if flying to Chicago or Atlanta or connecting through one of those destinations is your preference from that site is much easier to fly to Jackson.

Brandon Burton 31:20
Yeah, huge upgrade. So that’s awesome. Well, as we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to pose a question to both of you. We’ll get a two for one here. But for those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you suggest in them trying to accomplish that goal?

Kyle Spurgeon 31:46
Lindsay, you want to go first? Or

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 31:48
that’s a really good question, and it’s hard to narrow it down to just one thing, because there’s so many different things that could be. I mean, I mean, I think when I think of the greater Jackson chamber, I think of our team that we’ve built, and if you have a good, cohesive team, it makes all the difference. And not saying that other chambers have bad teams or anything like that, but making sure that you’ve built a good team, that it kind of like Kyle said, he doesn’t have to be at everything, because he’s built a team that can do the job and get the job done, and are passionate people in their areas, skilled in their areas, and are doing great work within the community. So building a good team. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:43
I think that’s great.

Kyle Spurgeon 32:44
Yeah, you’ve made my answer easy and Brandon, I’m not going to take the easy way out, although it sounds like it. I’m going to expand on the team piece, okay, because you have to have that good internal team in place, calling internal the chamber. External wise, we have a great team just specifically on the economic development side, city of Jackson, Madison County. We are the quarterback of all economic development activity. Jackson Energy Authority. Here is a member of that team, Mandy White, who is our Chief Economic Development Officer. She leads those efforts, and it’s very selfless everyone on that team. No one cares who gets credit. But we all show up. We know what our role is, and we pursue those projects. And I will tell you the number of projects once they visit Jackson, our closure rate is extremely high with those because they see a team, and they see a team that works together extremely well. And do if we offer a package to an industrial client, or we make a statement at a meeting, they see that on the back end, we do that. We take care of it. We take care of our existing industries. We take care of our small businesses. Here, we run those great leadership programs, but it’s not one individual, it’s not one person, it is that entire team, and it starts with the Chamber team, but we wouldn’t be successful without that community team out there allowing us to do our work. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 34:17
I love that answer, so that’s perfect. I like being able to have that vision, get all the staff on board, have that broaden out to the community at large. Of here’s the direction that our community can go and catch that vision and get everybody on the same page with it, and the chamber is perfectly aligned to be the driver of that. I love that answer, but I like Go ahead. Yeah, I want

Kyle Spurgeon 34:41
to, if we’ve got one minute, I want to brag on our team here, something absolutely I mentioned to you few weeks ago. We started with the inaugural State Games of Tennessee. Lindsay. You’re not going to negotiate with her on anything, but I’ll tell you, she’s a tough negoti. We had a crew come in that managed all the AV for our opening ceremonies to get the rate a little bit less expensive. Lindsay volunteered our entire team to help set up a stage. Now, this wasn’t any stage. It came with a with a full crew, and they were they said, here’s what you gotta do. This what the stage looks like. So as CEO, I said, and watched when our team got directions on what to do, but those directions were not specific to Lindsay, you do this. Kyle, you do that. Logan, you do this. We all fell into place. And the next thing I know, it’s like an assembly line. But no one was told where to go. And I sit back, and I’ve shared this story a lot, it just it made me extremely proud to run an organization to where no one said, Hey, I gotta do this, or you do that. The job got done. It got done very efficiently, and everyone fell into place and did it the way they should, and didn’t worry about themselves. They worried about the team, and we got it done. That’s

Brandon Burton 36:05
a great example, and you got to save a few bucks on it, too. So great job. Lindsay

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 36:11
and and our, our tech company, said that we were the best to work with. So that’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 36:19
So I like asking everyone I have on the show about the future of chambers. So how did, how did the two of you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward may

Kyle Spurgeon 36:30
start this time. Lindsay, I’ll let

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 36:32
you go first. Then, yeah,

Kyle Spurgeon 36:34
I see chambers in that are run well and have the support in a community continuing to broaden their influence. And you know, we talked earlier about those tables, we set more tables too, and we invite other folks to that table. And when you organize your effort, and you lead a team with your chamber, and then that community team, it enables your chamber and your community to grow more and more efficiently. So what I see is that those chambers that have the vision are able to set in an increasing role the vision for the entire community, because we’re conveners and facilitators, and when you do that, right, you’re going to be able to influence that change and make suggestions and get more buy in that’s going to lead to success for your community. So I see us becoming even more influential than we are now.

Brandon Burton 37:36
Yeah, you upgrade your airports by doing that. So that’s right, that’s right. Lindsay, what’s your thought on the future of chambers?

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 37:44
Yeah, I think, you know, I’ve only been in the chamber business for a few years, but being in, you know, prior experience of organizations that were part of chambers and involved in them, I think it’s just, it’s becoming so much more you have the, I’m going to say, membership side, and you have to take care of those members, but that is just a very small piece of what the chamber and what their future kind of looks like. And I think kind of piggybacking on Kyle of being more change makers and leading that change within the community, but also obviously staying within the vision and mission of the chamber, and also changing within the times of the community as well. Because I think one of our biggest things is we see what’s happening at the moment or in the future, and it changes. Airport wasn’t necessarily a big topic many years ago, but recently it is. There’s projects that we’re working on right now that I would say 10 years ago really wasn’t important to our community, but it’s important right now, and we get to be the people that lead those conversations, and and so I think it’s just being able to change within the times within your community, and being a little you’re still serving your members, but that’s not all you’re doing. It is really being that change maker for your area.

Kyle Spurgeon 39:16
Yeah, Brandon, I want to add you, don’t you forget. I want to add one more thing, sure, what Lindsay just said, because we talk about team, and I want to brag on our team here again, if you lead a chamber, part of your personality had better be you’re the idea person. And I’ve been here 15 years, and I look back, you know, when I travel, whether it’s for chamber or personal whatever, you send emails or texts back, because you learn something in another community. You learn something at a conference. There is no way that a chamber can take all the ideas that the CEO generates. So you’d better surround yourself with folks, and in my case, like Lindsay and Mandy and others that are here, they can help you filter those ideas. Because if not, yeah, we’ve all got a mission statement and a vision, but there’s so much that we can do, but you must be strategic in figuring out where you need to spend your time. So folks that sit in my tight chair as the president and CEO surround yourself with those people who are not afraid to tell you, No, gosh, Kyle, that’s a great idea, but we got to focus on this, and that’s what’s going to make you successful. Yeah?

Brandon Burton 40:26
And keep that book of ideas, because it may come in handy in the future, but right now, let’s stay the course,

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 40:32
right? Yeah, that’s, that’s what I tell him. It’s a, it’s a, maybe no right now, but later, it is going to be a really good one, right? Yeah,

Brandon Burton 40:41
that’s great. So this has been fun having you both on the podcast. I want to give you a chance to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in Jackson. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect, and where would you point them?

Kyle Spurgeon 41:00
When do you go for I mean, I’m going to give my direct email.

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 41:04
Yeah, I think that that’s the best way our I mean, our website is JacksonTN.com, but the easiest way to reach out to us is email. Mine is ldawkins@jacksontn.com.

Kyle Spurgeon 41:18
that is kspurgeon@jacksontn.com.

Brandon Burton 41:24
that’s perfect, and we’ll get it. Get both your emails and website and our show notes for this episode to make it easy to find. But um, again, thank you for spending time with us today, on on Chamber Chat Podcast, for really setting a high bar on on what chamber should be doing, the impact that we can be making in our communities. And I wish you guys and your team Best of luck as Chamber of the Year.

Lindsay Dawkins Moon 41:47
Thank you. Brandon.

Brandon Burton 41:50
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 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
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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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