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Category: Vision

Elevating Engagement with Amanda Lea Kaiser

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

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

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Amanda Lea Kaiser. Amanda is a keynote speaker and author of Elevating Engagement: Uncommon Strategies for Creating a Thriving Member Community. Through her research, Amanda is at the forefront of exploring how member and attendee engagement is rapidly changing when within professional communities. I’ll have to say as a side note, as I read through her book, I very much was able to visualize all of you as listeners, both attending your state and national chamber conferences and engaging on those levels, but also taking some of these lessons learned to your local chamber organization. So as we go through our conversation today, I hope you can see some of those parallels as well. But Amanda, I wanted to welcome you to the show give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and if you wouldn’t mind sharing something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 2:58
All right. Hey, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here on your podcast and hello Chamber Champions. It’s it’s great to be here. Okay, something interesting about myself. So I got my start at Crayola and I rose up the ranks and marketing so I’ve got a classic marketing background. And and now I’m the keynote speaker but maybe even more interesting than that. I’ve got a two kittens adopted me during COVID I don’t know if if you’re a cat dad, but they adopt us I don’t think we adopt them. And and I named them after Muppets. So I love the Muppets, Kermit and all of those guys. So so my cat’s names are Robin in between. And you might see them running in and out because that’s what they do. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 3:44
Yeah, I did notice the Kermit quote in the book as well. So that carries through. I’m not a cat, dad. But I understand what you mean. It doesn’t matter how much you like the cat they have to like you to adopt. Right? Well, I am excited to get into our topic of conversation today. I think chambers across the country, even globally, are constantly thinking about the ways to elevate the engagement of their membership or their investors or those who participate in their organization at at any level. I often will out I’ll hear chambers talk about doing the yellow highlighter exercise where they will print out their membership list and then with a yellow highlighter, go through and mark any chamber member who’s participated or actively engaged with the Chamber in any way. And that may be the main sponsor of their annual banquet. It may be the sponsor of their board room, or maybe just somebody who’s constantly liking their Facebook posts. So literally any level of engagement and as they do this yellow highlighter exercise, oftentimes there’s not a whole lot of Yeah, low on that sheet once it’s marked up. So I think we’ll, we’ll be in for a treat today with a lot of these tips and ideas around how to elevate engagement with our memberships. So we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 8:31
All right, Amanda, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re, we’re talking about elevating engagement, you’ve got a book all about it. Some could say maybe you’re an expert on it. And I’m a little bit hesitant at all really setting the stage that way. I think I told you before we got on the recording. It’s like introducing a comedian and telling everybody how funny that comedian is and then your your setup to deliver. So you know, no pressure at all, but I’m looking forward to an engaging conversation. Good. So maybe let’s just start with why did you write the book like what what was it about your background and maybe personal history that led up to this moment where you’re like, there needs to be a book about elevating engagement of these membership organizations? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 9:21
so Okay, so let me give you just a kind of quick, sober, quick, speedy history to get us to this point. So like I said, I started at Crayola. And then I had a couple of jobs in my career where I worked at an advertising agency and then I landed in a NAT at a national association. So I worked I worked in for a higher ed Association. Super cool. It was the first time that I even realized that associations and chambers and they were even a thing I just didn’t know until that point until I started working for them and I was director of marketing there. And and it just completely We opened my eyes. And I was so delighted by how collegial these professional groups are. They’re, they’re really fantastic. So I decided to open up my own business. And I was a qualitative researcher, my, my marketing focus has always been on research. And I decided to pursue the qualitative research side of things. And during my time, as a qualitative researcher, I worked with 33 different associations and got a chance to personally talk to 477 members from all different walks of life. And the conversations with them did two things, one, I would ask them about their industry or their profession. And the second thing that I asked them about was, what is it like to be a member? What is it like to attend? You know, what is engagement like, and all of that, and as I was conducting these interviews, one thing that I found is there’s this gap between members, and attendees and, and leadership, right. And so, so that’s why I wrote the book, I wanted to close that gap. And just to give you a sense of the gap is, is, you know, members, our members are having an experience there, whenever they engage with us, they’re having an experience, and very often when we’re on the inside, and I can say this, for sure, as the as being a staff person on an association, a lot of what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide value, we’re trying to do the administrative stuff very right. And we’re not, we’re not focused on the experience. And so, so that’s what this book is all about. The book is all about closing the gap. And and I’m also doing a ton of keynoting. Right now. And so I start out every time by saying we’re here to close that gap between you and your members.

Brandon Burton 11:52
Yeah, I like that. I think that’s a good summary. And that does kind of set the stage a little bit here. So my background is in chamber publishing. And often I’ll even joke with some of the different advertisers Chamber members that were selling ads to that. I often will hear a chamber member say that they want to advertise and whatever the chamber publication is, because there’s almost a sense of guilt, that they join the chamber at some point. And they see all the emails from the chamber about the networking mixer, the after hours, the Chamber luncheon, annual banquet, you know, there’s always something that golf tournament. And there’s a sense of guilt that they can’t be at all of the things, you know, they work during the day, so they can’t go to the luncheon or they’ve got family life after work. So they can’t go to the after hours. So they see doing some sort of advertising with the chamber as a way to engage. So how would you look at engagement? How do you define engagement? As you look at a membership organization, I guess what counts when it comes to? To engagement? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 13:04
So So advertising counts and attending accounts. So so let me let me kind of step back, though, because what I tend to do is I tend to define engagement, the way a member would defined engagement and the way members define engagement is almost solely around emotions. And I actually, I asked when I when I keynote, I asked my audience this, I’ll ask them what is what does engagement feel like when you’re really engaged? What does that feel like? And I’ll ask them to, to recount a professional or personal community that they’re very, very engaged in, you know, what, when that makes their heart very happy. And so this is some of what they’ll say they’ll they’ll say, I feel valued. I feel welcomed, I feel belonging, connected, excited, inspired, it’s energizing, I feel included. I feel focused, I feel peaceful, I feel worthy. I feel like I’m being seen. That’s just some of the words this is I got 139 responses. But those are some of the key words that came up over and over again, so. So engagement is all about emotions. And when you’re when your members or our members are making decisions to engage, they’re making very emotional decisions. That what they’re what they’re what they’re trying to work out and might not be even conscious. But unconsciously they’re trying to say is this community for people like me, do people like me join a chamber like this? You know, do people like me go to events like this? Do Am I gonna find my people here? Am I gonna be long am I you know, all of those things. That’s, that’s the kind of what’s going on in the back of their minds. And so, I, I love to define engagement all around how members see engagement, because you’re right when we when we on the business side, talk about engagement. We’re talking about joins and when rules and registrations and opens and reads and click throughs and all of that. So we’re talking about the metrics of engagement. But I love to think about engagement as that, that very emotional emotions and feelings that drive those decisions to engage. And so that’s that’s typically where I’m coming from. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:26
What you said almost sound like a Seth Godin quote, right? People like us do things like this. Yeah. And it’ll often talked about enrollment, right? So the engagement level kind of at Next stage is yes, I want to engage. And now I’m going to enroll I am all in, I’m going to fully participate. And I know that’s a few steps down from where how you kind of break down that, that member journey, or that the experience journey. So maybe touch on that a little bit, because I think so much of that, the beginning of that membership journey is where that emotion really is probably at its peak. There’s some reason why they’re choosing to attend the conference or choosing to join the chamber. And I’ll say everybody does it for slightly different reasons. But understanding what that emotion what that driver is, I think, is so key to being able to help them have a successful journey going forward with the chamber. Yeah, can outline that for

Amanda Lea Kaiser 16:28
us? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m so glad that you started touching on well, you know, what, what happens at the beginning, because So, for most professional communities, what they find is new members are the most fragile members. And, and so, you know, people, if you look at your metrics, you might see people join, and then they never engage. And then it’s not a surprise when they don’t renew, right, and, and so, so they’re very, very fragile. And, and so what we need to do is start appealing to their emotions, one of the one of the things that I often will say, when people are asking for, like, what is the definition of engagement, I’ll say, there’s two parts, there’s, there’s value, so we got to provide value. And the other part is positive experiences. So you want to provide good value and positive experiences. And when you do that, members will engage. And I would wager to bet that your chambers provide lots of amazing value, you know, people, all of you chamber pros, you’re doing all of these events, you’re publishing, you’re emailing, you’re providing all kinds of really amazing things and lots and lots of value. And it’s, it’s frustrating when people aren’t joining, and or it’s or renewing or engaging in, in some way. And so the, the piece that’s often missing is the experience part, the the part that triggers all of the emotions, and, and so this is very salient for new members, you know, new members join, they often don’t understand how to really engage, there is the old the emails are coming in there is I’ve heard that, Brandon, that guilt factor that you were talking about in so from so many different types of members, you know, they’re, they’re sending me emails, I feel like I and what they will say is, I’m not engaging, and it’s, it’s my fault. It’s not them, they’re, they’re making every effort, it’s me, right? And, and I can see that there’s a lot of benefits, I can see that there’s a lot of events and in what they would normally tell me is I feel like I’ve got to start going to these events, which I can never do, because the timing doesn’t work out. Or I’ve got to spend a lot of time on their website, understanding what they do. And I just don’t I don’t have the time yet. And, and so I think what we need to figure out is how to connect a lot quicker with them, you know, how to have how to provide a teeny bit of value so that they understand that taking that leap to come to your events makes a lot of sense. And also connecting on that emotional level. And you do that with experiences. So are there phone calls? Are there? Is there kind of a special quick Fitbit fun email that you could write to them, you know, what are all of the experiences that you can provide to new members that will get them saying this is not only going to be worth my time, but I think that this is going to be a really fun group. There’s a lot of energy. I’m super excited.

Brandon Burton 19:35
Yeah. And as you’re saying that it reminds me in the chamber industry, there’s a lot of focus on with the engagement of members to try to make the shift from being a transactional relationship to be more of a transformational relationship and that way, hopefully, if that’s communicated and modeled in correct ways, the guilt factor hopefully isn’t there. as much because they’re not in it, they didn’t join to say what’s in it for me, but they’re they joined to be part of something bigger, that’s making a positive impact in their community. I see some chambers that have the option to join their chamber right on their website, we can enter your name, credit card information, and click Submit. And you’re done. You’re a member. And I’m sure there’s the onboarding emails that come in. But that chamber doesn’t know anything about that member, why they joined, they didn’t really share their mission, their vision, any of that. And oftentimes, those are coming from another member as a referral. So you know, you need to be a part of the chamber, right? So I think right from the beginning, there tends to be a little bit of a disconnect. And I love in the book, you talked about doing a listening tour. And I think that could probably come in and in a couple different stages along the member journey. But to really tap into that emotion and their why you want to maybe expand a little bit on the listening tour, and how that can kind of pull on that emotion. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 21:08
absolutely. So let me let me give you a couple of tangible stories that I heard dirt while I was while I was interviewing members. So. So there’s a couple of associations that were doing a really good job, and I got a chance to figure out what they were doing from their member saying I was on I was the recipient of the listening tour. And so there’s one, one association that did a very interesting thing. Now they had not very many members joining. It wasn’t like they were having hundreds of members join every week, they might have been having 10s of members join every week. And and so the the director of marketing of that particular organization, would schedule a call, it was about a 20 minute call with every single new member. And during that call, she would ask them a series of questions, you know, hey, tell me about yourself. And when did you start working at this company? Or when did you you know, when did you start the company? She would, she would ask them questions about projects, they were working on what their goals were, what their mission was, what if they’re having any challenges, she might even ask them, you know, what, tell me about some trends. And she would, she would take careful notes, and she listen intently. And at the end of the call, probably with maybe, I don’t know, three, four minutes to go, she would say this has been so interesting. And there’s a couple of things that I heard you talk about, that we might be able to help out with, there’s you talked about this really interesting project that you’re working on. And not many of our members are working on a project like this, but I know that Sue is. And I would love to introduce you, it’d be okay, if I introduced you to Sue, I think she’s a couple of steps ahead of you. And, but you know, I can introduce you via email in and then she will, she would also say and I also heard you talk about this system, that we’ve got some data from some of our research, or we’ve got an event coming up where we’re going to be talking about this topic, we’d love to have you I’m going to follow up with some emails. And so you know, she get off the phone and immediately send some emails, one introducing that new member to sue a longtime member and tell in telling Sue and you know, reminding this this person while why she was introducing them, and then she would follow up with a separate email saying, hey, you know, as we were talking, I told you, I was going to send you this research report and this invite to this event and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that that’s very time consuming very hands on for this organization that works. Because they don’t have a lot of members. Other organizations, there is the listening tour where you get into your car, you know, or your your get your staff into a van, and you book breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or you go to people’s offices or places of work or factories and and you spend 15 or 20 minutes with them doing the same kind of thing, asking them questions, touring, just being there letting them be seen. And it’s such a pleasure because now when they come to an event, they already know a friendly face. So there’s there’s that part. The other thing is if you are with a chamber that’s maybe spans a large geographic area, there’s a virtual orientation events. Now the virtual orientation events are not orientation webinars, there are much more responsive than that. So so people come you know, your new members come into a Zoom meeting. And then you ask them the same kind of questions, you know, where, where do you work what what kind of organization is your company? Tell us a little bit about it. What are some of your goals? What are some of the projects that you’re working on? And then as everybody’s feeding information to you, you the host can do some pattern matching for the biggest things that people are They’re struggling with and then make that link for them between their problem back to the to what the chamber provides in terms of, of benefits or upcoming meetings or something like that. So. So I love that you were talking about, you know, these these member listening tours, because there’s so many ways that they actually work, Brandon. And that’s really the key to it all. When when you know your members and you hear them talking over and over about their goals, then then we serve them a lot better. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:30
there was one chamber executive I talked to one time and he talked about how he’ll do three breakfasts each day, they’ll go meet with different members there. The first one maybe is just having a coffee is the second breakfast, awesome makes the third one, maybe a phase three. So he’s breaking it up. But he’s getting to three different member businesses to have these breakfasts. And he’s meeting with other members there. So like the levels of engagement with the organization with the members is on multiple levels, and able to gather a lot of that very important information to be able to better serve the member. And I love that. So it does kind of seem like though in today with everything digital, and we’ve got in person events, we got virtual events, we get emails, get social media, we’ve got podcasts, we’ve got YouTube, we’ve got all these different ways to get our messaging out there. Does that make it harder or easier to engage members? Like how it I think I can see both sides of the coin, but I’d love to hear your approach and maybe how chambers might want to look at this. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 26:41
what I’m hearing across the board is, is engagement is getting harder, it’s harder to engage attendees most virtually and in person, it’s harder, harder to engage members, it’s harder to get those opens and reads. It’s just I think it’s harder. And some people are saying, you know, this is not uniform. There’s some associations and some chambers that are seeing these bright spots, like, hey, we went back into person. And and, and we’ve got some of our in person events are doing amazing. And we’re still doing virtual, and some of those are doing amazing. So this is not, engagement isn’t universally going down the tubes. But I think it is getting harder. And one of the reasons why it’s getting harder is is really time and attention. You just hit on it, Brandon, there’s so many ways that we’re trying to reach members. But there’s so many ways that they’re getting content and they’re connecting. And they’re you know that it’s just sort of, we all have a very frantic pace of life these days. And so we’ve got to do something different to engage members than what we did before. And I’m so glad that you asked that question about communications, because this is sort of a really great time to talk about how you not only provide value, but you also provide the experience so so every time we communicate, there’s two things that we’re trying to do. The first is the what we say. And that’s the value, it’s the message we’re trying to get across. The second thing we’re trying to do is is or the second thing we communicate is how we say it. And this is the tone, it’s the voice. And and this might be something that you’ve talked about a lot in publishing is the tone or the voice. And so I love to think about tone on a continuum. And so on one side of the continuum, there’s the very institutional tone, the very professional polished tone, it’s a lot of big words, it’s when we’ve got our business hat on, that’s the tone we tend to fall into is the institutional tone. On the other end of the continuum, I have a what I call the best friend forever tone, sometimes we’ll also call it the happy dog tone. So if you go into your personal email, and you read, you just quickly, like scan your personal email of all of the brands and companies and products you really love. They’re talking to you and the happy dog tone, there’s emoji, there’s hashtags, it’s casual, they’re talking to you like they’re your best friend. But for some reason, when we’re doing business to business, and we put our business hats on, we talk very, we tend to talk very institutional. And so I just like to remind everybody, that tone is on a continuum, and you can pick anywhere you want to be, and especially with your new members, they’re they’re looking for all of those cues on whether to belong, you know, is this the place for people like me, they’re looking for those belonging cues. And when you can warm up your tone in your emails or warm up your tone and your phone calls, you know, or any of the information you’re sending out to new members. They the sense that they sense that this is going to be a happy, warm, lovely place for them to meet other people and connect.

Brandon Burton 29:54
Yeah. So when I think of, maybe an in person or even a virtual event I think to on an event stage, it’s a maybe a little easier to gauge the engagement. You can see if people are looking down at their phone or distracted or getting up to get a drink or, you know, just the distraction, where as we try to with these communication channels, I’d love that you brought the the tone and the voice into the happy dog messaging. Besides maybe some of these metrics that we look at the open rates and social engagement tools, are there other ways that we can see if our message is landing, right? If we’re how do we get that kind of feedback when we’re not in a room or a Zoom Room even to be able to get that that instant? Hopefully, positive feedback. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 30:47
yeah. So people are always asking me how, how do you measure engagement and and there are, you know, I think when your members are doing the yellow highlighter exercise, they’re measuring engagement, looking at your renewals, it’s a measured metric and a measure of engagement. And so as you’re engaging members and attendees differently, you’re going to see that metric go up some some organizations use Net Promoter Score, some of them do things as sophisticated as Engagement scoring. And so again, over time, if you’re, if you’re focused on those experiences, you’re gonna see those those metrics go up. But, but it’s engagement is a tough one. Because it’s very hard to make one change, it’s very hard to say, Okay, we’re gonna make this one event more experiential, and we’re gonna see renewals fly off the chart, that’s not the way it works, right? There’s, there’s, there’s not a lot of like one to one direct comparisons, you just sort of see a general lift over time. So So I think sometimes we have to measure engagement, again, with our own emotions, which is, you know, is there what’s the energy like? Okay, so we’re making it we’re making some improvements to try to be more engaging and say this one event? Was the energy better? Did people walk out smiling, you know, for virtual, one of the things that I think is a really good predictor of a virtual meeting is what’s going on with the chat. Now, you can do a lot of things to have a really robust chat and as a, as a very often speaker, I love the robust chat. I love when I’m talking. And people are busy in the chat and they’re talking to each other. And they’re asking each other questions and they’re tuning in to listen to me and they’re plussing up what I say and then plussing up what everybody else says. And that’s for me that schools because because they’re sure they might be listening to me and engaging with me, but they’re in if they’re engaging with each other. That’s lovely, too. So, so if you’re doing lots of virtual events have chat ambassadors in there. And that can be a micro volunteering opportunity for one of your members. Or it could be a staff, you know, job, but have those chat ambassadors in there that are, you know, they’re plussing up what other people say? And they’re asking questions, and they’re, they’re kind of saying, Oh, this, you know, the speaker said this, what do you think about this, everybody and, and really try to foster that excitement and get it going. And that’s, that’s You’ll sense the energy, you’ll, you’ll sense it, whether you’re virtual or in person, and that that’s almost I think, is Valley or it is as valid as some of those tangible metrics.

Brandon Burton 33:26
Yeah. So I hope this doesn’t feel like we’re taking a step back. But I was thinking about the emotion as people engage with an organization that emotion is, you’re able to maybe give them some small wins along the way. So in the book, you talk about, like speaking from stage, there’s little engagement questions or things you can do to warm up the room, right. So they’re engaging on a very minimal risk or risk free environment where they have nothing to lose if they just participate and engage. And as a member joins an organization. And there’s other little quick wins, I’ll say that you can do to kind of trigger that emotion or positively reinforced that emotion of yes, you’re here for a good reason. We’re here to listen to like, all of those things. Are there any strategies or tips that you want to share around maybe those small quick wins to warm up the audience or the new member, to help encourage them to give them that confidence to be able to engage at higher levels as they progress through their their membership journey?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 34:38
Yeah, let me let me tell you about a totally unexpected story that I heard when I was doing those interviews and it’s a it’s a story that I heard over and over and over in different ways with different words. But what I would hear people say is I went to my very first event for this organization. And while I was waiting in the registration Mine welcomer I didn’t know it at the time, but people were circulating, and they were talking to all of us in the line. And in somebody stopped and talked to me, and it was maybe just two sentences. And it was it, it made me feel like this community is super open and warm and welcoming. And it and I felt like I had to step out of my shell and I am going to, to just talk to other people, I’m going to introduce myself to other people and just see how it goes. And so, so it’s like, new members come in, and we have to give them the teeniest little nudge or a teeny little bit of permission, so that they can go and make their experience great for themselves. And so whenever we can do that, it’s great. So So let’s see, how do you do that you can do that with welcomers that in person events, you know, kind of warming up the crowd for in person or virtual events. Think about your icebreaker, you know, what is what is a an icebreaker question or an activity that is super safe and super easy. And so I’ll give you just an example, when I’m getting together a group and I want to get them to be really creative, I want to I want the group bubbling up lots of ideas, I want them collaborating with each other. And the topic is not is not very serious, you know, it’s we’re working on, we’re just going to work together on this problem. And we’re gonna have a really great time doing it. One of the questions that I love to ask is, would you like to be a dragon? Or have a dragon and why? And in the why is the key, you know, you can pick either one, but I love to ask why. And so you can ask that, you know, in person, with a smaller group, you can ask it on, you know, virtual meeting and get people responding in the chat. But that, you know, again, you’re you’re popping them out of the expected stuff. And in the their professional world, and you’re bringing them into sort of a different surprising experience where they can have a little bit of fun with it. They tap in their answer, and now they’ve started participating, which is half the battle, because once once you start once, then you’ll you’ll form that habit and you’ll keep participating. That’s

Brandon Burton 37:12
awesome. Having read the book, I knew that was the question you’re gonna you’re gonna bring up it’s I was waiting for the dragon question. So I’m glad you glad you brought it out. As we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask usually I’ll ask for maybe a tip or action item for listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level. And what you would offer I think I may want to read phrase that too, for an organization that a chamber listening who would like to level up the engagement of their members to the next level? Where should they start? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 37:50
yeah, absolutely. Oh, let me backtrack and tell you one other one. So if you’re looking for more icebreakers, or energizers the other one that is surprisingly, super fun, and people get you know, they have this very fun argument about it is, is a hot dog a sandwich. So what do you think Brandon? Is the hot dog sandwich? Or is it not a sandwich?

Brandon Burton 38:13
I’m gonna go yes. Is it the same way a cheesesteak is the sandwich.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:17
Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So so interesting. Usually, usually groups completely divide. And there’s some squabbling around if a hotdog is a sandwich and to my knowledge, there’s no real answer, you know, just like, Alright, are you know, is white chocolate, chocolate, you know, again, you get the you know, those are those are fun cup questions to ask.

Brandon Burton 38:40
In cornbread, and you have a corndog. Now, that’s a whole nother topic. I don’t agree with that. Yes,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:47
yeah. Yeah, that feels not sandwich like to me, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so. So what, you know, what can they do to take things to the next level, what, what I would suggest is go and start identifying all of your transactions anytime you have a transaction. So joining as a transaction renewing as a transaction, opening an email is transaction registering as a transaction registration at your events as a transaction. And in so think about and so like, anytime the staff has a job to do, you’re doing administrative stuff for that transaction. So think about how you can seamlessly keep doing the administrative part of it, and then layer the expensive experience on top of it. So that’s, that’s how you close that gap is to keep doing what you’re doing in terms of the transaction and the administrative stuff, but now figure out how to layer the positive experience on top. It’s easier than you think it is. So like, let’s say you’re, you’re you’re doing registration at one of your events, and you’ve got you know, 100 people coming through the door, and you need to give them all badges within 10 minutes or something like that, you know, people are coming at you, and you’ve got to log them. And you got to give them all their badges, even even in those moments where you’re so busy and so frantic, just smile, like just keep giving them a genuine smile. And now you’ve layered on that positive experience. I

Brandon Burton 40:22
love that. And I was thinking, I don’t know, man, I don’t know if this holds true all the way through or not. But if, in talking about those micro wins, as you know, micro positive experiences and micro engagements. Hopefully, if they’re engaging on that small risk free level, a way of maybe measuring that as if they’re engaging again, like if they’re taking another step, you know, on that journey. And if they’re, if they’re stalling out, if you make that initial engagement, and they stall out, maybe the communication needs to be refined, maybe you need to get more information. But they hopefully should be making another step and other engagement along the way. Would you agree with that? Or is that just totally my own thought? totally

Amanda Lea Kaiser 41:13
right. So I have identified it fine. I’ve identified six stages of engagement, and is exactly what you’re talking about that that at each stage, there’s generally speaking, a barrier for people to take that next step into the next stage of engagement. And so to the extent that we can be aware of all of those six, six stages, and just constantly helping people have those micro wins, and in sort of taking that next step, if they want to, one, one thing that happens is you know, sometimes like, boards will get burnt out and a new member, a new face will come to an event for the first time and a board member will rush up and say, We’re so happy you’re here. Have you ever thought about being on the board and the new members panicking and saying, oh my gosh, I don’t even know who you people are yet. And so you can’t rush people up the six stages of engagement, but what you can do is make the opportunity available if they want to. So if you you know, the book is elevating engagement, and right there in the beginning, I detail all of the six stages, and each chapter is devoted to one of those stages. And I talk about the the kind of go no go decisions that members are making at every single one of those stage stages. And then I just try to give you hundreds of ideas for helping them move from one stage to the next. Again, if they want to work, we don’t rush them, we just make those opportunities all available to them. And, and yeah, I think I love I was taking notes while you were talking Brandon, because this idea of micro wins or micro engagements. I just I love that terminology. And I hadn’t thought about it or articulated it that way. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to steal that from you. Because I think it’s cool.

Brandon Burton 43:04
Yeah, just reference me twice. And then you can own it after that. So a real life example that, that I was reminded of and reading the book, you you mentioned that the board members, you know, maybe seeking a replacement for their seat during the board recruitment. So my, my wife was the volleyball Commissioner for our local youth volleyball organization. And our two youngest, well, all of our girls played volleyball through it. So we felt invested. And she was giving back to the community and doing her thing and just ended up with a lot of things on her plate. And she was completely overwhelmed. It was draining all of her energy. So she would talk to the other volleyball moms, she would say, this is wiping me out. Do you want to take it from me? Do you want to do you want to do this? And everyone kept saying, No, it was like, You need to change your approach. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be a negative experience. You don’t need to lie to them, but just share what it entails, share what the upsides are, and let them make a decision. But if you sell it as you know, this is so time consuming and is totally drained me. I think the example he gave in the book is a board member saying you know, I’ve I’ve been affected finite, you know, negatively financially, you know, in serving on the board. Nobody’s gonna want to take your spot, right. So you don’t want to scare people away with being over engaged, maybe? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 44:35
And then then a staff members, we can also get a handle on that as well. You know, if, if we feel like it’s hard for volunteers to volunteer, we can look at their roles. We can look at the time commitment, we can look at dividing things up we can but just like it just like we were talking about with new members, you know, we want to take new members and give them that little nudge to help them keep progressing along their membership journey, you can do the same thing with volunteers. I love thinking about the volunteer journey as well. And, you know, start the volunteer journey with a micro volunteering opportunity and then slowly build. And I think a lot of time as a staff people, we tend to think about volunteer roles is very specific things if you’re on a board, if you’re on a committee, those are volunteer roles, but to members welcoming as a volunteer role speaking is volunteer role hosting as volunteer role, right, and, and so, so think about all of those non traditional things that we want to do to engage members like like being a chat ambassador, and have that be a volunteer role. And, and so, you know, maybe people are spending three minutes volunteering, or 10 minutes volunteering, or 30 minutes volunteering, but now you’ve just flex their muscles so that if there’s a chance to do another volunteer role, they might take you up on it. Right.

Brandon Burton 45:59
I love that. So I like asking everyone that I have on the show this question that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, and I’ll broaden that and say, just associations in general, how do you see the future of chambers and associations going forward?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 46:17
Yeah, I see it really bright. There’s, there’s such a need, you know, when, whenever there’s a need in the community, there’s the business propositions, I think the future is really bright. And it’s just about how to engage differently. And I, from the research, I see that the answer is in the experiential side of things. And again, I think I said this a little bit earlier that I would wager to bet a lot of your chambers are offering a ton of value. And if you offer even more value, that’s great. But it might not get you to engagement, what you got to start doing is focusing on those positive experiences. And so a really quick way to think about that in this is something that you can play with you with your staff or talk to your board about or your committees about is just start saying, you know, the any, anytime somebody starts asking what do our members need, you know, what do our website visitors need? What are our attendees need? What do people need? Start laying or layering on that question, which is how do we want them to feel? And so? So when you ask, how do we want them to feel? And this is an easy thing that we that you could try even tomorrow, right? The next time you’re writing an email, think, how do I want the reader to feel and you kind of lock in that emotion in your brain that you want them to feel happy or joyful or hopeful or something like that. And when you type your message will actually totally change in quality? In in, that’s a really great experience. So just always, always keep asking, How do I want people to feel? How do I want them to feel when they come to our website? How do I want them to feel when they walk in the door of our event? How do I want them to feel when they’re advertising or hosting or sponsoring or any of those things. And that that’ll that’ll get you to the experiences part. I

Brandon Burton 48:11
love that that’s a good gauge right there just to kind of make sure that what we’re doing is the right thing and getting people to to engage and feel good and hit on those emotions that brought them there in the first place. So Amanda, I enjoyed this conversation and having you on the podcast, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or share where they can find your book or anything like that, that you’d like to share with the audience feel free.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 48:42
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me at amandaleakaiser.com. It’s Amanda, Lea, and then Kaiser like the role.com. There’s information about the book there. It’s there’s information about speaking, there’s a newsletter all about engagement that I put out once once a week that you can sign up for if you’d like or you can type elevating engagement into Amazon or any online bookseller and you’ll find my book there.

Brandon Burton 49:09
I love it. Well get that in our show notes for this episode. But like I said, this has been an engaging conversation and I hope the listeners feel so as well. And that it may prompt them to make some micro wins to put themselves out there a little bit to touch on those emotions understand why their members are there and what can you do to make them feel the way that you’d want them to feel. So Amanda, thanks again for being with us today and for sharing your your insights and for for sharing this book as well.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 49:41
Thank you so much, Brandon, this has been delightful.

Brandon Burton 49:45
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Fostering a Sense of Belonging with Velma Knowles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Velma Knowles, Velma is a Gallup strength certified coach, human behavioral expert and best selling author from helping to build the Conservation Legacy of the Bahamas to leading award winning membership growth for associations. Boundless passion is helping organizations build a value driven culture of belonging. Velma enjoys photographing birds riding bikes and pretending she likes to exercise, Velma and mix excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little bit better.

Velma Knowles 2:37
Well, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here today on your Chamber Chat Podcast. And thank you for the kind introduction. Something that listeners might not know about me, other than you’ve revealed my big secret, which is I’m from the islands of the Bahamas, now living here in the United States. But one of the things that they may not know is that I cut a demo recording at the age of 17 in the hopes of becoming a big country and western singer, which we know by the end of this episode, that did not happen.

Brandon Burton 3:18
That’s exciting, though. Not everybody can say that. And it’s kind of putting their their neck out there. So to speak, and and take a risk. So good job. So I’m curious where in the Bahamas are you from? Yeah,

Velma Knowles 3:31
so I was originally born on the island, the island of Nassau New Providence, like so officially now. And I have family throughout mostly in the Abacos and in Long Island.

Brandon Burton 3:43
Okay, well, hopefully you have a chance to get back there often.

Velma Knowles 3:47
So I do try to go several several times a year. Yeah, that’s

Brandon Burton 3:52
great. So I like giving all of the guests that I have on the show and opportunity just to tell a little bit about the work that you do. Kind of your business structure how you serve, especially when it comes specifically to Chambers of Commerce. How your your work aligns with chambers. Sure.

Velma Knowles 4:12
Yeah. Thank you again for that opportunity. For those that might not know me or a little bit about me, my career includes 20 Plus, and I always say plus because after 20 years to stop counting, but yeah, does 20 years working inside so I’m one that has been inside the not for not for profit space, especially in the association and world of providing services to members. And my span of expertise encompasses marketing, a membership engagement, retention and growth board, strategic planning and engagement and then of course, leadership development. And I want to just caveat that leaders To me are across the organization, they’re not those that are in higher positions. But I think everyone in the organization is a leader in one way or another. My last position was the vice president of member experience with a little brand that folks might have heard of called AAA. And so today, triple A services about 60 million members across the United States, and then Canada, Europe worldwide for the other arms of that Federation. In 2017, I had the opportunity to venture out on my own, and I felt called to serve more associations. And so today, I have my own business. It’s called leaders pathway where leaders go to grow. And that word leaders means you as the individual and your organization, I believe that your organization can only grow higher as you as the leader grows higher. And so it all starts inside, in order for it to grow outside. I work with chambers, not for profit, which could be donor based organizations, member based organ associations across the country. And my focus is really to help them create this culture of belonging where the members, the employees, and the board, which is that that ultimate leadership in there, they feel like they belong in that organization. And I know we’ll talk a little bit more about that as we go forward. But I truly believe that when you as an a leader of a member based organization, when you create that culture of belonging, you’re going to solve the challenges that you face around engagement, which I know is like top of the line and on everyone’s buying, retention, which we are we’re struggling with across the board, and then ultimately moving from stagnation or, you know, a declining growth to a sustainable model for growth. So I hope that level sets a little bit about me, I do executive coaching, I do strategic planning, I do public speaking for workshops, and conferences. And I also do employee retreats and membership planning. Very

Brandon Burton 7:18
good. Now, that definitely gives us a good snapshot of the work that you’re involved with. And I love the focus on leadership. And I think no matter what position you serve at at a chamber, that you are a leader, you’re helping to drive the vision for your community. And if you are the chamber executive, you should be thinking about training the next leader, right? So at some point, you will leave and you want to make sure you’re leaving the organization in a good position to continue growing and have that strength. And I love to you when in the context of leaders, you talked about kind of hitting the the potential and everything I think it’s John Maxwell talks about the lid, yes, the organization is only as as good as the leader right if the leader caps at a certain point and the organization caps so we want to be able to unleash that lid so that the organization can grow so well Velma and I’m excited to get into our conversation today. And we’ll be focusing our you know, the bulk of our conversation around the idea of fostering a sense of belonging as you alluded to, and specifically to impact membership growth. So we will dive deeper into this conversation as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 10:52
Hey there, Donna Novitsky, CEO of Yiftee here, and we are all about the shop local movement. We’re working with more than 500 communities like yours and 15,000 small businesses like your members. We’re big fans of Brandon and his Chamber Chat Podcast, so we’re helping to sponsor the show. But while I’ve got you here, what’s a Yiftee? You ask? It’s a digital gift card branded for your chamber that people spend only at the local shops that you authorize. In 2022 we drove 10’s of millions of dollars to small businesses in the US. The program is free for chambers and free for your local shops. You can sign up for a live zoom demo with me or one of my teammates yiftee.com/demo or email sales@yiftee.com. That’s why Yiftee.com. That’s it for now back to the show.

Brandon Burton 11:50
All right, Velma. We’re back. So as we talk about fostering a sense of belonging to impact membership growth, what does that look like? From your perspective? I know you had mentioned, you know, fostering a sense of belonging for members B, it also mentioned for the board. So how do these dynamics play together for the strength of the organization? Yeah,

Velma Knowles 12:12
sure. Well, if the if you haven’t heard me speak yet, you’ll you’ll hear this message over and over again. And that is that I believe that there are three things that everyone everyone wants in life, it doesn’t matter if you are the board member, the member of the organization, the staff and employees, there’s three things that everyone wants. And what they want is to be seen, to be heard, and to be valued. See, to me fostering a sense of belonging is you have to build a connection. And in order to do that, you need to be able to see people for who they are to hear them the voice and the things that are on their mind. And then to value them and their contribution. Engagement is not an activity. And when I when I look at what the you know, my my clients are doing what chambers and associations or member organizations in general, what they do is there like a heavy focus on engagement, and I totally my whole heart understand why. But engagement is is not an activity that you do, you don’t, you know, have this webinar or have this conference to get people engaged or recruit people into volunteer, it’s about a connection. And when people are connected to the mission, and when they’re connected to the individuals. That’s when you see this sense of belonging happening. I’ll give you a good example. Myself, okay, I was a member of an organization that shall remain anonymous, because we’re not promoting anyone. And then, you know, this worldwide pandemic, came into play some time in our life here. And in the end, all of a sudden, a lot of things kind of shut down. And so when it was time to renew my membership, I was like, Well, you know, I can’t I can’t go to the functions that can’t do things the normal way. And so I, I paused, I know, I paused my membership, or full disclosure, and I said, I’m not going to renew. And then you know, as things started to get back into what we would consider the next stage of this work, force, the next work environment that we’re in and, and moving on to the future. I said, you know, what, I miss my connections. I miss the people that I was so close to when I was there. And so literally, I really, you know, reinstated my my membership and they took me back. And the big idea whether it was a webinar, which is, you know, a service you provide, or whether it was the annual conference, or whether it was the mag Xen I got or whether it was, you know, a lunch and learn that they had or coffee club that you got to go to whatever the Chamber’s had available to us. It was an opportunity to connect with those people that I have a relationship with. And so I say that to say that when you create a sense of belonging, you’re really creating a place for people to connect. People need to feel like I’m seeing when I’m there, people recognize me, Hey, Brian, great to see you. I, you know, me, and you’re connecting with me, you hear me? If I tell you that I have this problem or this challenge in my business, you hear what I have to say. And it’s not just listening for the sake of listening, but it’s listening with a focus on how do you help me solve that? And if you can’t solve it specifically from the chamber, how can you connect me to a resource that you might have that can help you solve that? And then do you value me, and I don’t mean value in the sense of the dollars that I pay for my membership, I mean, value me in the sense that you appreciate what I can bring to the table, maybe there’s a specific strength that I have, or a specific expertise that you could tap into, that is a resource for someone else in my community here in my chamber, that that has a need. And so I just feel like personal connections, build engagement. And engagement is, is fortifies retention, and retention gives you results. But connections are not products. It’s a personal connection. It’s not a product, like a webinar, or conference, or any of the beautiful things that we use, those are just vehicles to help us create that connection.

Brandon Burton 16:59
So you’re really upsetting the paradigm they’re not an activity and personal connections are not a product. Right? So, man. I appreciate the three things you talked about. Everybody needs to be seen, heard and valued. And, and I think from a board perspective, as as a chamber executive working with the board, I think those three things are, they’re super important to implement. And I think you can be very strategic with how you do that. Because you’re, you’re dealing with a limited, you know, a finite amount of people, right, that you’re trying to have seen be seen, heard and valued. As you open that up to the membership in general, everybody tends to join the chamber for different reasons. They I mean, they all join probably to raise their bottom line, right to make a little more money, benefit their company, but the way they the vehicles to get there, they see different value with the chamber. Right. So as a chamber approaches individual members, how do you make those personal connections to help them be seen heard and valued? Sure.

Velma Knowles 18:15
Yeah. And I think it gets to how do you create those communities within the community. And and I say that because coming from, you know, working inside a very large Association, and then working voluntarily with some chambers offering support to help them in their membership growth. As a member of that chamber. What I’ve found is that, you know, all members are important. Get ready for this one, but all members are not equal. And so what that means is that if you as a an association, you have a very small staff, even if you’re a big chamber, you have a small staff, and you can’t be all things to all people. And so marketing segmentation, which is not anything new here, but really trying to understand that 8020 principle, but warming what is known as these micro communities, or a community or, you know, a special interest group is another way of labeling it, but it’s a community within the community. So you have a member base, and then you look at that member base, and you say, who’s really, you know, my, my big 8020? Right, the the members that are truly engaged, that are volunteering, that are sponsoring that are doing the things that elevate the whole chamber, and then you say what of those individuals what is the needs that they have and form groups so that other people can connect on a smaller scale to get their problem solved and see a greater value in In the return for the dollars that they’re investing in, so I think it begins with really understanding, you know, where it where are the chamber champions, we will use your word a coin here, which I love. Where are those champions, those chamber friends that are inside the association and organization? And how can you create those sub communities that allow others to come in and feel seen, heard and valued, because it’s a smaller group, where everyone can have a place? You know, when you when you when you look back, and you research the whole idea around? Why chambers exists? Why, why what is a chamber of commerce, a Chamber of Commerce is really a place to, we’ll use the word network, which is the kind of the old school hat, right? Because that kind of has a different connotation. What is networking, ooh, nobody likes to network, I want to bring that forward to today’s and I want to modernize it in the 21st century. And it’s connection, it is not networking here, here’s a business card like speed date, it’s truly connecting and being seen, heard and valued. And I think when we can put on that, that member, first that people first sense of, of a culture, we’re trying to build those connections in a genuine way. And I really want to say genuine, genuine rapport. That’s when you reap the benefits of greater engagement, retention and growth.

Brandon Burton 21:34
So great, great response, the thought that comes to my mind, is this unnamed organization that you are a member of and drop the membership for a short time and then miss the connections that you had. Was it the connections with the leadership of that organization? Or was it the connections with the other individual members of the organization?

Velma Knowles 21:57
Very good question. And so let me let me do this. First and foremost, it is the members first, and for to me, they were members in that association or organization that I couldn’t wait to hug again, I couldn’t wait to see to talk of old stories and to make new memories. But did I have a connection within the leadership, I would say that it was selected. And, and it’s because you know, when you when you have, when you have a staff, and I’ve been in those shoes, you’re working in a small organization where you got a lot of members, but you’ve got a job to do. And so you’re very focused on trying to get the job to do and, and sometimes you can miss the person, when you’re focused on getting that project. And this is in any organization, you know, we tend to focus on project project project, but then we missed the person. And I think for me, it’s been where certain individuals in the leadership of the organization has seen me, and they hear me and they value me, and they’re like, oh, yeah, great, you know, and there’s that connection. But then unfortunately, that doesn’t trickle down to the entire team, even if their entire team is five people. And so that’s why I go back full circle, that, to create that culture of belonging has to begin on the inside, you know, if your employees feel like they’re seen, heard and valued, you’re going to foster that type of behavior, that’s going to then trickle outside. And then any member in your organization any prospective or like, I like to call them future member, any future member is going to be like, I gotta belong, they have random makes me feel like I missing out on something, I gotta, I just want to be there. Because I want to be among that, you know, people like Brandon. And I think that’s where the opportunity, that’s why I’m heavily passionate about, you know, your, your leadership has to in leadership across the organization, they have to buy into this culture of belonging, and then live that out every day for your members to be able to experience that and then want to stay.

Brandon Burton 24:10
I thought that’s where your response might go. So like,

Velma Knowles 24:18
oh, my gosh, I feel like Okay, pass the test.

Brandon Burton 24:24
So, I love the line that you had said about how all members are important, but they’re not equal.

Velma Knowles 24:31
Yeah, I

Brandon Burton 24:32
just need to let it sink in. Right. Yeah. Usually

Velma Knowles 24:35
when I say that, when I’m at board, you know, when I’m with my clients, and I do a board strategic planning session and, and, you know, we were talking about membership member engagement, member experience, and then they’ll, you know, they kind of throw some things at me and I’ll say, Well, you know, just let this sit for a minute. Okay, I’m gonna let this just let this plane land here. And and I tell them, you know, members are important. And everybody’s like nodding their head. Absolutely. You know, because they’re all members, everyone on the board is a member, right? Yeah, in different levels of capacity representing their companies. And I said, but all members are not equal. And then I’m like, will they ever bring me back to work for them again, right? So you know, and then it kind of sinks in, and then one or two people will say, Well, can you expand on that a little bit. And so I think that it’s, it’s not to take anything away from the the value of each individual in a member, you know, organization or customer if for that matter, because, you know, I wrote the book, the valuable leader, that’s my shameful plug in. And so I, I truly believe everyone brings value, but you’re running a business, the chamber is a business, it’s not for profit. It’s not nonprofit, right? It’s a it’s a business. And so you have to apply some strategic business processes. And that that’s one of them. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:03
and I think oftentimes, those members that are of higher value and value, there’s different ways to assess value with a member, right. But you talked about an 8020 rule. So you may look at that 20%, that are really bringing in 80% of those key metrics. And that may be a good pool to look at, as you’re looking for future ambassadors there, people get what your chamber does, or people who can get on board with your vision, and help make those connections with other businesses in the community. So I love that you point that out, you draw attention to the 8020 principle, and, and lean into that. So there’s a lot there. So I feel like I have to ask you, you have a term called Tiger Teams, can you tell us a little bit of Tiger team is and

Velma Knowles 27:00
yeah, tiger team. So when I was working inside the association world, one of the things that I got tasked by the CEO to do was to turn around a membership deficit. Now, you know, this is a big number. But if you put everything in perspective, wherever you are in the world, if you are losing members, it is a big number. Okay? Because it’s a problem that you have a big challenge you have to face. And so we had a, we had a huge member deficit that needed to turn around. And I was in the marketing department. And if you work in any support area of a company, you know that you’re there to serve the operations teams. And so to be called on to lead such an important task. First and foremost, I had the considered it a career opportunity for a promotion, or a career limiting move. And, and so thankfully, it turned out that I had the opportunity to literally turn this deficit around. But I didn’t do it by myself. And I always say that whenever I engage or work with, you know, coaching for for clients, or if I’m a part of the board planning, I always say that I don’t, I don’t have all the answers. But all the answers are in this room. And so I had this idea creatively, to tap into the various what I would call experts in each department. And so no matter how small your organization is, it’s got individuals that have a different discipline, a different set of lenses, if you will, that they look at the business every day. And so they see things and have a perspective, that’s very different than yours, right? And sometimes, I know we can, we can have such a deep focus on what we’re doing that we end up with blind spots, I like to call them blind spots where we just can’t see what’s what’s outside of our vision, and someone coming from a different lens can see what maybe you can’t and so, the idea was to bring together this group of people and the marketer in me said, nobody wants another job to do especially in a small organization. How do I how do I, how do I motivate? Or how do I inspire? How do I, you know, just bring this group where they want to belong to this to this challenge that we have this task force and it was called the task force, the membership retention Task Force, and I was like, Ah, I think you know, that just painful, right? And so I decided that I was gonna rebrand it, and I came up with teen Tiger. And so the tiger was a inside marketing strategy, if you will. that I created. And so I came up with a new name. And the team Tiger consisted of those that were going to be very passionate about running after, you know, running after the members that we were losing in the hopes of bringing them back and setting the stage to really give a roar, if you will, around how important it is to belong, the value proposition that you would get and really shoring up some of the things that that we felt we were missing. And so team Tiger became known throughout the organization, I just started talking it up. And it was interesting, because within eight months to a year, after testing a lot of ideas, I had people volunteering, can I be on Team Tiger? And so I was like, Well, you know, we’re really right now we’re just trying to kind of manage, because we didn’t want it to be too big either. Because then it becomes, you know, it becomes a place where it’s harder to have everyone be seen, heard and valued, right, becomes too big. So we did, we did rotate folks off because of other responsibilities and to bring in new perspectives. But it worked. So well. And you know, that it, we not only turned around the deficit, but we exceeded our goal within the time of budget. And so it’s safe to say I was able to keep my job. But then after, after that time, in the in that organization, I got tapped by another CEO, because sometimes people think, well, that’s a one and done. And, you know, it was a silver bullet. And you guys had some tricks of the trade. And for a while there, I thought that to Brendan, but then I got tapped by another CEO. And he said, I heard about what you did in this organization leading this team Tiger. And I was like, wow, you know, news travels. And he said, I would like to, I’d like to talk to you about doing some consulting workforce. And I was like, Well, I don’t really consult but I coach, there’s a big difference, you know, because I think you’ve got the power and you’ve got the talent, they just need a different lens, a different perspective, right, someone to come in and kind of cheer them on champion them and their cause and their tie in and reenergize them. And, and so I had the opportunity to engage with them, it was three weeks of doing some preliminary roll, you know, just kind of getting the lay of the land. And then I was asked to go to present to the board. So they flew me up for a 20 minute presentation. And I couldn’t even go to the board meeting, this was so funny, because they flew me to did to go to the board. But I can only come in the board room at the time of my presentation, which was only going to be for 20 minutes. And so I was like, okay, so I went in, I really didn’t have anything to report on. I mean, it’s three weeks, so you can’t really get a good feel for Okay, here’s, here’s the solutions you need right now. But I, I did present a business case. And, and not only a case, but a pathway forward, if you will, I call it the pathway principle. And it’s just really four things for them to have to look at, you know, know your numbers. And so really getting into your your data, your member data, know your numbers, know your resources, you got to know resources. And when I talk about resources, I talk about who you have in the organization, and who you have outside your organization, resources, like staff, or like members that are a part of your organization in your chamber. And they have expertise, but but also your partners, and your vendors, right, or industry vendor partners, because they’re due or different. Sponsors may be different as well. But those expertise, so know your resources, number three is you have to know your value. So is the value that you bring to your member base, relevant, as my good friend, Mary buyers would say, is the relevance there today as it was when you first started. And I think you know, for all of us, we have to take a look at what our value is, as we go forward. And then the fourth step on that pathway principle is really to know your plan. And that sounds very simple. But it’s not easy. Because everybody’s got a day to day job. And so I just presented that pathway principle and the thesis that I had so far, and at the end of 20 minutes, my my time was over. And we met when we met at around six 630 for cocktails, and it was then in there that the CEO said I’d like To bring you on board 100% full time, we want you to work with our organization to turn around our membership, retention deficit. And I thought, Okay, I got a year. And three years later with Team Tiger inside another organization, we won the Federation growth award for the highest net growth. Year over year, every year, we exceeded budget. So it’s not me, I really, really really don’t want to, to shortchange anyone here it is the collective connection. I’ll go back to that, again, of having the right people on Team tiger with with a focus of creating that culture where they want to belong, and where people want to belong as members to

Brandon Burton 35:51
very good. And your right, team Tiger sounds way more sexy than membership retention task force. So for anyone out there who’s on a membership retention Task Force, maybe, you know, think about rebranding it. Yeah,

Velma Knowles 36:03
I tell you, it goes. It’s just built curiosity. And you know, curiosity sparks interests, and interests, then return gives you a return on your investment.

Brandon Burton 36:15
Right? Well, Velma, as we start to wrap things up here, I want to ask you for any chamber champions that are out there listening who wants to take their organization up to the next level? What kind of tip or action item might you share with them that they can implement it their organization?

Velma Knowles 36:33
Right? Oh, yeah. When I thought about this question, because in full disclosure, you gave me all these questions. And, and I thought, well, what would what would I want someone to say to me, and I could rattle off several different tactics that you can test. But I think they’re shortchanged. And I don’t think you have to know more about that chamber in order to really give them good direction there. So for me, I would say, if there’s one thing I would, would challenge, or even encourage my chamber champions to do is to, first and foremost, look at, look at your, your organization, your communication to your members, and to your future members. And ask yourself, Am I focused on communicating how I solve the problems that I know they have? Or am I focused on communicating the services that I offer? I think there’s a big difference between, you know, when you say, I’m going to communicate the problem, the solutions to the problems I solve, versus the services that I offer. Services are, you know, things that you get from membership. But everyone has those services, right? I mean, just about even even for profit organizations now have member based organizations, Facebook, and Amazon, and they have magazines, and, you know, they may not have conferences, but they’ve got a lot of different other benefits that that that are traditional in our membership model. So I think when you focus on selling the problem that you solve, giving them the solutions to the things that you can provide, I think that that over the service, because it services services, that is what I expect, solutions is what I need. Right?

Brandon Burton 38:27
I had heard a quote, it’s been a few years back now, but it went to the the effect of if you can define the problem better than your future customer or client member, whoever it is, they assume that you have the answer. So if you can get good at defining their problem, they will assume that you have the answer. So to your point with communication that is key. So as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Velma Knowles 39:00
Oh, you are going to be so surprised by this one. But I think the future of my chamber champions out there, and I would, I would invite all businesses, so if they they listen in anyone outside of this listens in, I think that your greatest future opportunity is focused on connection. You know, the Surgeon General of the United States here has reported in this timeframe that we’re in that one of the greatest health crisis is not it’s not heart disease, it’s not, you know, smoking or cancer or any of those other really, you know, detrimental health issues that that we face. It’s it’s loneliness. And the solution to that is connection, and it brings us full circle because the primary reason of the existence for our chambers is to connect people So I really, really believe that I’ll use the quote that, you know, if you want to be stronger. You know, if you if you want, how does it go, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go further go together. And I think partnerships through collaboration is a way that you’re going to be able to provide solutions to problems that don’t even exist today for your future members and existing members. And it’s going to allow you to be viewed as innovative, creative, and a leader in really bringing organizations together. And I think that is going to elevate your board leadership. It’s going to elevate your member engagement, increase your employee retention, and it’s going to give you a sustainable organization for the future.

Brandon Burton 40:56
Very good. I love it. Getting back to the basics back to the roots of what chambers are all about. Well, Velma, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information or places you’d like to point people to follow you or connect with you and learn more about the services you offer. Anything you touched on today. Where would you point them to? To connect with you?

Velma Knowles 41:19
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Thank you, again, so much, Brandon, for the opportunity to be on the Chamber Chat Podcast I and to be such a an easygoing post. So I appreciate that. No real tough, tough questions here. But thank you so much for helping me be well prepared for our listeners. It’s really truly my honor to serve today. And I’m very easy to find. i My website is my name Velma Knowles and so it’s VelmaKnowles.com. And if you go there, I have some resources that are just free that you know, anyone can tap into some of them are on membership, and some are on leadership blindspots communication things that can help your team inside the organization level up, if you will, and then help your help your organization from a growth retention engagement standpoint. So I would just suggest go to VelmaKnowles.com, of course, I’m on LinkedIn, under the same name, and, and so and social media channels as well. I’m in on YouTube, I have a small podcast, a YouTube podcast called Your Leadership Chat.

Brandon Burton 42:32
Very good love podcast. So I know you check out Velma there. And we’ll we’ll get all of that in our show notes to make it easy for people to click and follow yes and learn more about what you have to offer. But I appreciate you spending time with us today. Here on chamber tap podcast, you provided a lot of value, a lot of perspectives. I took a lot of notes, and a lot of good. I don’t want to just say one liners because I think that shortchanges them but those lines that make you think you know and make you kind of look internally a little bit more and a little deeper on the the comments he made today. So thank you for for coming on and sharing that and I really do think you’ve provided a ton of value for us today.

Velma Knowles 43:14
Thank you, and thank you to the listeners and for supporting the Chamber Chat Podcast.

Brandon Burton 43:21
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Innovation & Experimentation with Mary Byers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton
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Next Level of Chamber with Donny Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Donny Jones. Donny is the Executive Vice President for The Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and the chief Workforce Development Officer for West Alabama Works. He’s responsible for the daily operations of the chamber including financial management and information technology and manages a contractual relationships with vendors and professional service providers. Donny is instrumental in ensuring that the regional workforce systems leverage federal state resources to develop and grow the necessary K through 12 and adult training pipelines to support the current and future workforce. He is a former appointed Member of the governor’s workforce Council, and is currently an appointed Member of the Alabama Workforce Board where he serves on the executive committee and Policy Committee and appointed Member of the governor’s Career Technical Education Task Force to enhance the CTE curriculum and appointed Officer the Alabama committee of credentialing and career pathways and appointed member of the committee for Grade Level Reading. The Governor’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities awarded Donny the Public Service Award for West Alabama and 2019 and 2022. He received his accreditation as a CCE a distinction that less than 4% of leaders in the chamber profession hold. He serves on the board of directors for the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Educational Foundation, ACC foundation board, as well as other committees and ACCE boards. He also worships and teaches at five points Baptist Church reserves as Deacon he’s most known as a husband of Clara is a 29 year educator and father to Carson and Carter, the dining Welcome to chamber tap Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today on the show and love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself.

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

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

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

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

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Siobhan Kenney  10:25  

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Donna Novitsky  10:56  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton
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Destination Master Plan with Cheryl Kilday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Learn how you can partner with Community Matters, Inc. to produce your next Chamber Directory, Community Guide or Map.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Christine Langenfeld

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Donna Novitsky 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheryl Kilday 32:08
Thank you very much.

Brandon Burton 32:10
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Orlando Economic Partnership-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Tim Giuliani

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Donna Novitsky 11:01
Hey everybody, Donna from Yiftee here today, just like Brandon, we’re bringing you a guest speaker. First up is Gina from Durham, North Carolina. We’ve sold more than 3300 community cards in Durham, that are being spent at 51 different merchants. There’s something for everyone.

Gina Rozier 11:19
I’m Gina Rozier, Director of Marketing, Communication and Peacekeeping for Downtown Durham Incorporated. And I’m a very happy Yiftee customer.  We’re the Bull City, and we created our spendable community card with Yiftee years ago. Our participating businesses love it and we had our best ever sales figures last year. Yiftee is great to work with. They help with marketing the program and it is truly turnkey for us in our businesses. Choosing Yiftee has been a great decision for downtown Durham.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Giuliani 35:46
Thank you really appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 35:48
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Portland Metro Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Andrew Hoan

Miles Burdine Chamber Chat Podcast promo image.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our guest for this episode is Andrew Hoan. Andrew is the President and CEO of the Portland Metro Chamber, which was also a Chamber the Year Finalist last year. Andrew joined the organization in 2018 with years of successful business association executive leadership experience. Previously, Andrew served as the President and CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, which was a word of the 2017 New York State Chamber of Commerce of the year. He’s a resident of Rose City with his wife Karina and children, Theo Rocky and area. For those of you who listen to the podcast for a while may remember Andrew from last year’s chamber, the year finalist series if you want to go back and check that out was episode 185. But Andrew, I’m excited to have you back with us on Chamber Chat Podcast, congratulations to you and your team for being selected again as chamber in the year finalists. Love for you to say hello to the audience and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better. Sure,

Andrew Hoan 3:12
thanks, Brandon. And hello, everybody. And just thrilled to be back here for several reasons to be on the podcast, of course, but then also to be a finalist for chamber of the year. And it really is it’s a super honor. Because you realize that chambers everywhere, especially in big cities are facing so many challenges, and working so hard to bring our communities back and to be positive in a post pandemic world. And it is not easy. And so to be in consideration is an honor. And we’re up against Boston Orlando, which are incredible cities and awesome Chambers of Commerce. So we’re excited to go to Salt Lake City and compete but also just to be in that mentioned is exciting to be on this show to talk about is even better. So you know, for those that don’t know me, I feel really special because I’ve gotten to see and live in different parts of the world. I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which we call the fresh coast. And then I moved out to Brooklyn, New York for nearly two decades. So I lived on the East Coast. And then my wife was recruited to come out here to Portland, Oregon. She’s a incredible physician and surgeon and so we’ve made our home here on the Left Coast. For almost five years. I started my job precisely five years and four days ago. So it’s been a wild ride. And that’s a little bit about myself. Well, happy

Brandon Burton 4:38
chamber anniversary there. Portland. will tell us a little bit more about the Portland Metro Chamber just to give us an idea of the scope of work size staff budget just to kind of prepare us for our conversation today.

Andrew Hoan 4:55
Sure. So the Portland Metro Chamber was founded in 1870. So we’re 153 years old, and it’s had an a storied history throughout throughout the years. And the modern iteration came about in 2002, where the downtown business group and the Regional Chamber of Commerce decided to form an affiliation and legal binding agreement between the two. And ever since then we’ve been known as the alliance. And so our modern chamber was established in 2002. And today, between the three affiliates that make up our alliance, the chamber, downtown Portland’s Business Improvement District, and partners in diversity, which is a diversity, equity and inclusion workspace effort. We have nearly 30 staffers, we have 2200 members, and we serve the 213 blocks of downtown Portland, with Fishel downtown business improvement district services like security and cleaning and retail promotion and marketing and things that you want downtown’s to be. So that’s who we are. And we just launched our sort of newest name and brand identity, we brought forward the the chamber name again, because it was sort of hiding in the background. And we also launched the three year strategic plan as well, simultaneously. So we get to the sort of be in the position now, to be proactive and looking into the future. But that’s a little bit about ourselves and about where we’re going.

Brandon Burton 6:32
Awesome. Yeah, I remember last year, the downtown Yeah, portion of the work that you guys do really caught me by a little bit of surprise, it says a chamber that that’s not something you normally hear chambers doing, but something you guys take on and then are in our managing well. So that’s, that’s definitely unique. So the way that I like to structure these chamber, the year finalist interviews is to really focus our attention on the two programs that you guys submitted on your chamber, the year finalist application. So maybe just at a high level, mentioned what the two programs are, and then we can circle back and a little more depth on each of those.

Andrew Hoan 7:15
Sure. So I’ll start with the first one. And it’s it’s unusual to hear good tax news for businesses, especially out here on the West Coast. And so I’ll start with our successes, on something that took a whole lot of time and effort. And that is completely reforming the business tax codes here in the city, county and our metro region, which is a government body as well. And the result, the headlines are this, because of our actions. The year that began here, 2023, every locally headquartered company will see their business taxes go down. And before this year, we had the unfair condition where businesses that that were from other places could operate in our community and not pay local taxes. And so clearly, that was unfair. And so we reached an incredible, call collaborative opportunity with our local governments, local elected officials to synchronize and change all three levels of governments tax codes simultaneously. And it took two years to do this, it took a lawsuit, and it took a lot of elbow grease. But we got to where we wanted to where all government side in their best interest to support their local business community, noting that it was not going to impact their revenues, and that it was going to strengthen our economy. And so this happened at the very tail end of 2022. And we were able to share the good news with our members and the region. And beyond that Portland, Oregon, and our region can work together on tax reform to the benefit of our local employer community, and that it wasn’t us versus them conversation. Again, though, it did involve a lawsuit. So there was a little bit of angst there at the same time, not gonna lie. And it created what I think to be the conditions to further improving the tax conditions for our business community here. And it’s no secret that we pay very high taxes in this region. Voters have elected to do that time and again, but it was it was too much in our community, our business community, our economy were hurting. And so this was a collaboration and then I think, a shared victory by all three governments that we were very proud of. And we built on that success ever since then. And I’d mentioned before we started talking that just this last May, we were able to, for the first time in over a decade, as the Chamber of Commerce, defeat a local citizen. tax initiative that was just really, really wacky. And we not only defeated it, but the victory margin was 80% opposed to the new tax and 20% in favor. And so I would just ask anybody to think about whether or not anyone’s agreed at 80% on anything in any community of late. And to note that Portland, Oregon, where, you know, socialist registration is out numbers, Republicans in our community was able to defeat a tax measure that that squares with your perception. And so I’d say not only did we reformed taxes, we prevented new ones from happening. And now we’re having really honest and open conversations about what’s the right thing to invest in as a community, whether we’re overburdened, and that doing it in a way that’s super antagonistic, but more collaborative, and focused on what our core issues are. So that’s, that’s number one that may need

Brandon Burton 10:51
to file in amendments with your chamber your application to be able to include that part, right. But eating? Yeah, it’s true.

Andrew Hoan 10:59
We thought about it, you know, and it was the success to was shared by a lot of people it was, you know, we have citizens initiative, like a lot of communities do. And people endorse or, you know, either side, yes or no. And what was a point of pride for us in this effort was that almost every single elected official in our region joined us. And usually, we would be in these opposing sides on tax issues. But I think we proved from last year when you work together to reform taxes, that it can be a win win. And so I think we built trust. And then we built on that trust so that they were able to join our side openly, and then involved community groups, specifically culturally oriented organizations that don’t traditionally take sides on taxes, but that we had also build trust and relationships with so that they were our chief spokesperson. And it wasn’t the business community saying no new taxes. It was our Asian Pacific Islander community, our Hispanic and Latino communities. And you know, our Congress member was one of our chief spokesperson, Earl Blumenauer, who’s not exactly a conservative anti tax leader. So we had great success there. And we’re gonna keep working on it and keep building trust and collaboration on these issues that impact our businesses.

Brandon Burton 12:16
So I’m curious with that initiative, what, what really no, we’re kind of going out of format here. I wanted high level and then details we’re getting into the details. So yeah, what was that driver that made you guys society needed to focus on tax reform in your city, the county and the Metro

Andrew Hoan 12:33
is so unfair on the surface, and we had a complete disconnect. So the business taxes that were created locally, we’re not aligned with our state business taxes. So it started off as sort of basic, this is just bad policies, you just looked at the surface of it. And you know, you’re a company that’s that’s headquartered in Portland, and you’re paying one kind of tax to Portland, and you’re paying another kind of tax to Oregon, and just was creating a sort of administrative mess. So you had a good problem statement. And then secondly, you looked at a company that might be safe from, you know, not to pick on Arizona, but let’s just call it a law firm from Arizona. Could be sir, you know, serving a client here in Portland. And a Portland law firm serving a client here in Portland, and the Portland law firm was paying an Arizona one wasn’t. So there was just fundamental unfairness there. And so by capturing out of state activity here locally, by doing what’s called market based sourcing for our taxes, we were able to capture that out of state activity, which again, it just was principally unfair, and most other locations had moved to that type of taxes. And we were the only organization that could do that sort of really heavy, frankly, boring work. But that was really important to our members absolutely no, resulted in the net savings, because that same Portland firm now is paying less in taxes versus the Arizona which is just getting to parity with a local companies. So there was there were that problem statement that just we couldn’t get away from, and we’re the only entity that could could drive it. And then it was for our members, they are going to see significant financial benefit from this. It’s not a lowering of the rates. It’s just fairness that allows their burden to be decreased. And it was just a matter of convincing the governments that it was a win for them to because when Oregon did this the state, it resulted in a net increase in revenue to the state. And so we were able to demonstrate that hate past can predict the future. You win, we win our companies win this is this is a win win. So it was just a matter of getting through the hard work of opening people’s minds to doing tax reform work and not thinking about it like it’s it’s an antagonistic experience, but a collaborative and positive one where everyone can win.

Brandon Burton 14:52
Yeah. Now that that program that tax reform definitely makes a big impact throughout the entire metro Oh yeah, like you explained the city, county and Metro. And so I’m thinking we need to kind of shift gears into your your other topic and let’s dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 17:31
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Brandon Burton 18:25
All right, Andrew, we’re back. So what is the second program that you guys submitted on your application for chamber the year?

Andrew Hoan 18:33
Sure. www.OregonStateofSport.com. And as someone who moved here from the outside, you know, there’s a big difference in culture between Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon, it lasts similarities, but one of the big cultural differences is that Portlanders are very demure, you know, they don’t want to talk about their successes, they want to be humble. And that’s that, to me is a positive value. And in Brooklyn, you know, you go to Brooklyn, and people are like, Hey, I’m from Brooklyn, and you know, this is the greatest city on earth and don’t mess with us. And so I think it’s interesting, because when I came here, you know, you realize that the region had completely failed to capitalize on the thing that it is truly better than anybody else had, which is what we design the world wears. And whether you’re in outdoor, you know, high adventure activities, or you’re in fitness, you know, you are either climbing on Metolius gear, or you’re running in Nike sneakers and and what we make and wear and design here, everyone is wearing and yet nobody knows about that. So there’s a fundamental disconnect between our economic strategy and the way we market our region, and our own sort of cultural desire to be humble and not talk about our successes. Have, we decided coming out of the pandemic that we needed to focus on a new economic strategy that was predicated on our strengths. And it is one thing, but it was going to be a Portland, and valus are collaborating along with our state partners, and so we formed a quick analysis of proved what we all know that we have more companies, we have more employees. And we produce more economic outcomes in the athletic outdoor team and recreation, business ecosystem than any other place in the country. And that we wanted the world to know. So we launched this brand, this name, this website that’s focused on all the things you want, business attraction, growth work workforce development partner with academic centers, and cross regional collaboration, in part inspired by the work of our peers over in North Carolina, that has been branding themselves in a way the Research Triangle for a long time. So there’s this sense of focusing in on cluster based economic stress assaults and good outcomes for your business community and grows local businesses. And so after we launched this analysis, and this branding exercise, we’ve gotten to work on the policy front. And this has been adopted by our city’s economic development corporation, our region’s economic development corporation, we have a task force bill that’s nearly out of the state legislature right now to establish this as direction for our economic focus for the state. And we’ve had huge wins locally, where it’s pivoted the entire way that our local governments have thought about economic development, where they are pairing their objectives with supporting the state of sport ecosystem. And that’s resulted in simple things like huge wins on events like Formula E, which is going to be happening this weekend, specifically, because we’ve focused on attracting these major athletic and team based conferences and competitions to an entire expo center that is now going to be repositioned, and repurposed as an indoor athletic competition facility, one that will be unrivaled in the entire west coast, because we’re capable of hosting these types of large scale events. And we proved it last year, with the world Track and Field games, they came here for the first time to America. And right here in Oregon, where the first Nike was produced over in Hayward field in Eugene. So we’re building on our strengths. We’re converting that into a real economic development synergies and major investments by our local governments. And we see this as a huge potential to build on the economic engine that’s already driving growth, and to catalyze cross regional collaborations between places like bend and Eugene and Portland that didn’t always work together before, even though that’s we’re the flagship city. But they’re the places that have the major academic centers and the research campuses. So this is about borrowing from other people’s playbooks building on our successes and being a chamber that leading an economic development strategy, because the private sector knows how to get this done. And so we’re putting our voices first. And we’re bringing our governments along with us,

Brandon Burton 23:25
right. Now, to me, it makes a lot of sense. And you’ve got those other models that you can look at, like you mentioned the Research Triangle, North Carolina. And it makes a lot of sense to bring those synergies together. How has it been received throughout the community as a, I guess, community at large, right, because it’s a large area that you’re talking about. But from you know, those those natives to Oregon who may be a little hesitant to be boastful or to showcase you know, the good positive wins, things that are happening, how’s that been adopted and kind of changing that mindset of, you know, we’ve got something special here to show off to the world.

Andrew Hoan 24:06
I think that it’s now become a marker, because and I’ll give examples of this. Portland is in line right now, to attract a WNBA franchise, and our United States senator who’s the Chair of the Finance Committee, US Senate, Ron Wyden is working with us and our coalition to do the attraction of a WNBA franchise to Portland, and it fits all the things that we care about. So it’s about aligning our values and our culture, along with economic strategy and doing in a collaborative way. And we’re making that hard pitch right now to attract a franchise. Secondly, we’re also in line for a Major League Baseball franchise and so we have an MLB initiative here. It’s really going to be us on the West Coast and maybe a couple other cities that are vying for an expansion team but we are laying the groundwork now with our partners in government. To build a new stadium here in the city to acquire the land that makes that happen, and to make that hard pitch to the commissioner’s office about why Portland is the right place. So what it’s done is it’s just sort of the light bulb went off, you know, everybody’s like, Oh, right, yeah, we are the center of athletic and outdoor activity. And, yes, these big franchises are exciting. But who wouldn’t want to be a WNBA team in the place where Air Jordans were great. You know, come on, it’s just an incredible opportunity. And, you know, we really are in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t have that sort of galvanizing team base right now. Because you know, if it’s not in Seattle, or in Portland, it doesn’t exist. And there’s a lot of space between us and the rest of the country. But we’ve seen that the community embraces this type of economic development strategy already, because they’re just ravenous fans. And I’ll give an example, Major League Soccer opened up here, you know, over a decade ago, and the Portland Timbers and thorns are unrivaled successes, the thorns is, I think, arguably the most successful women’s soccer franchise on earth. And the brand and imagery in the fan base, loves and embraces the team. And it’s just to us the revelation, that community is already there. We in the business community just needed to sync up with the way that people in Portland felt about themselves for so long. And to give it a name and a brand and identity. So now all these efforts are finally working together in a way that is super collaborative and is going to move the needle if we land these two franchises, they’ll be game changers for

Brandon Burton 26:46
quite literally game. So that is super exciting. And I guess you need that balance after working on all the tech stuff, right? The super boring, the super exciting, you got to get out of that contrast. No these things they don’t happen overnight, right like to be able to be in position for Major League Baseball franchise or WNBA franchise, like if you guys weren’t already doing things well in that in your community to be able to attract the attention and be be a major player in that the running for these teams. It doesn’t happen overnight. So this is exciting stuff. I’m going to be, you know, keeping my eye on on Portland and seeing what happens here the next, you know, short future. But as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share maybe any tips or action items for listener who is really wanting to take their organization up to the next level what what kind of tips or advice might you offer to them?

Andrew Hoan 27:52
You know, I think reflecting now, five years into this job and the conditions of the city, our policy and our effectiveness five years ago versus where they are today. It was a really hard transition for me personally to come to Portland, where it felt like the business community was reviled that the job was impossible. And we couldn’t get anything done today feeling like there’s nothing we can’t do, we just have to be selective about what we engage in. I think what has borne the most fruit, which I believe is the thing that no chamber person should ignore, is to understand that you are inheriting an instance that will live beyond you. And that you have to focus on the fundamentals to be able to do the stuff that we’re talking about today. And when I mean fundamentals, I really mean inwardly looking staff and board development. And I look at our board now versus where it was five years ago. And this is not about somebody did something bad five years ago, it’s just we didn’t have strategic direction, we didn’t have goals in terms of behaviors and outcomes on our board. People didn’t understand how we’re making decisions. And it took a lot of time, effort and energy to build a strategic thinking on our board. That right now I can say looking at it five years on is what actually allows us to do the things that we do and it gives us the authority and influence that we need to be able to do our work externally. Because we have the weight of a highly functionally functioning collaborative board. And then secondly, on the staff side, you know, I think this gets right now everyone’s talking about building corporate culture. And you know, I think it’s almost become a cliche now but we have all gone through this unbelievably impactful experience last three years and staffs across every organization chain numbers are part of that have really gone through their own emotional journeys, physical ones tragedy, you know, political upheaval, you know, everybody’s feeling that impact about where we are as a society. And so as a chamber leader, and executive, you got to take care of your teams, because I look now at our staff, they work together, they support each other so that they know if if, if, for whatever reason, they’re dropping balls, or they’re just maybe lagging, or something’s impacting their work, or they’re stressed out and challenged, that people have their back. And that’s really a good thing. So staff and board, don’t ignore it, focus on it, and every investment you make into those two buckets will pay dividends in the long run.

Brandon Burton 30:50
I love that, that, uh, that response seems well, so well thought out. And the things that really stand out to me is, like you said, when coming in there and looking at some of these tasks as being impossible to now kind of be an unstoppable, right. Collective, but also looking at at the institution, you know, living beyond you, I think that’s huge to give that perspective, and, and we’re all making that that impact right now. And in your moment of time, but what you’re building and the community around you is going to live on well beyond you. That’s powerful. So maybe along those lines, how do you see the future of chambers going forward and their their purpose going forward?

Andrew Hoan 31:36
Well, you know, I think about chambers, I think about, you know, I’m biased towards the fact that we tend to represent, you know, large urban centers, you know, I think that’s probably most people know that every single city, big and small, has a chamber of commerce, and states do as well. But I think most people really connect with their local Chamber of Commerce, because it’s like, Who can I trust to tell me about what’s happening in my city and in my town, and chambers tend to be that unassailable voice of reason. And I think of it now more importantly, because cities and downtown’s we’re looking at very differently. You know, the, what happened with the pandemic and hybrid work will completely up and what happens with urban centers in the future. And I think that’s the Chamber’s of the future. Where we are today has never been more critical and understanding our downtown’s and downtown’s matter, because they’re where everybody comes together. They’re welcoming places. And right now they are hurting. I don’t know one city anywhere in this country that isn’t feeling that there’s something that’s really challenging the fundamentals there. And I believe in cities, I believe in urban centers, and chambers play a huge role in thinking about what comes next. And so the chamber the future, is focused on how do we future proof? How do we adapt, learn and create a more vibrant center city for all and I think that’s what we all need to be focused on talking about as we move our organizations into the future.

Brandon Burton 33:18
Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a good vision, looking forward. And hopefully, we’ll prove out well, his chambers have that focus on on the downtown’s and the city centers. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to learn more about how you guys are doing things, they’re in Portland, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you? Sure,

Andrew Hoan 33:44
you can reach out to me at andrew@portlandmetrochamber.com brand new email, but serves the same purpose. And I love to hear from people across the country. We love to work with other chambers. And so I would love to hear from you and reach out and happy to grab a virtual cup of coffee or if you ever in Portland, we welcome you in our home. And we have a beautiful office that overlooks this resplendent environment. City and say you’re always walking with us.

Brandon Burton 34:16
Awesome. I appreciate that. We’ll we’ll get your email in the show notes as well. But everybody got to take Andrew up on that offer of that virtual cup of coffee or, or just learning more about how they’re they’re doing things. They’re in Portland. But Andrew, it’s been a pleasure having you back on the podcast and talking all good things Portland. Wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year and I look forward to chatting with you next time.

Andrew Hoan 34:46
Thanks so much, Brandon. Take care.

Brandon Burton 34:49
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Winter Park Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Betsy Gardner Eckbert

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Betsy Gardner Eckbert. Betsy was raised in Winter Park, Florida, where she came full circle in January 2017 to become the president and CEO of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s focused on innovation and closing the relevancy gap to modernize the organization earning the 2018 chamber Innovation Awards grand prize. Previously in 2009, she moved her family to London, England, where she became Director of Business Development for a mentor consulting limited a UK consulting firm advocating for gender diversity at the board level. She would go on to co found an International Children’s luxury brand of UV protected swimwear long wave apparel limited that was marketed in 14 countries. Building a successful career after taking several years off to raise her two children led Betsy to create relaunch career reentry for professional women at the Chamber of program with more than 100 graduates, many of whom have rejoined to the workforce. In April 2022. The Winter Park Chamber of Commerce released its prosperity scorecard, and ESG embedded scorecard with a commitment to values beyond simply the financial bottom line. Betsy is a graduate of the University of Florida where she was named the 1991 outstanding female leader and has been inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. She was also a previous guest on Chamber Chat Podcast back on episode 66. For any of you who want to go back and listen to that episode again. But Betsy, it’s a pleasure to have you back with us on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Raquel Borges 25:50
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Brandon Burton 26:39
All right, Betsy, we’re back. So I love everything you had to share with the relaunch program that you guys have is that focused on workforce and bringing women back into the workforce. Let’s shift gears over on to the Winter Park prosperity scorecard what that is and kind of how that came to be and what what all that it encompasses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 36:33
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Chamber Industry Success with Anissa Starnes

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

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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 host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:29
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Our guests for this episode is Anissa Starnes. A lot of you may know Anissa, she is certainly no stranger to the chamber industry. She started her chamber career 32 years ago and has worked for and with Chambers of Commerce since that day. She is passionate about helping to recruit and retain strong talent for the industry and helping chambers strengthen their programs of work and revenue. You may know her as a faculty member of the US Chamber institutes for organization management, where she educates on board governance, revenue generation and all things related to chamber success. And Anissa has been retained for over 25 executive searches and has spoken in front of more than 35,000 people evangelizing on marketing storytelling and the importance of work life harmony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 19:33
glad to do. Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anissa Starnes 25:38
So absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 40:50
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