fbpx Skip to content

Category: Vision

Reinventing Chamber Brand with Lindsay Griffin-Boylan

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.

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

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

Tony Felker 0:37
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:00
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Chamber leaders know firsthand how unexpected disturbances in the business environment have become the norm. Even the most experienced membership reps need to continually evolve to overcome these disruptions and create new opportunities. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round sales coaching and mentoring your membership rep needs to navigate change and continue driving revenue for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching. 

Our guest for this episode is Lindsey Griffin Boylan. Lindsay is the president and CEO of the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber in Pennsylvania. She’s a graduate of LaSalle University where she received her bachelor’s degree in business. Lindsay began her career at the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber as the events and program manager and has since worked her way into her current position as president CEO, and is the first woman and young professional to hold the position since the organization began in 1884. In her pre chamber life, she worked for Comcast spectator that Philadelphia 70 Sixers while cobia arena, Mohegan Sun and Pocono downs, and Genetti Hotel Conference Center. Hopefully I’m saying those right. Lindsay is passionate and engaged with the community and is a board member and committee member of several organizations in the Northeast Pennsylvania area, all working towards betterment of their community. She was born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania and currently resides in Harvey’s Lake, and is proud to be able to live work and play in the area she grew up in, and be able to make a difference each day. Lindsay, welcome to chamber chat Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today, 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.

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 2:59
Yeah, thank you so much, Brandon, I’m very happy to be here. And I know my team and I are big fans of this because I think we’re all trying to really connect with in our chamber industry and, and really the past few years having all their challenges, can you learn new things and the ideas and I know something that we’re all really striving towards, as we’re all trying to help our community. So I’m really, really excited to be here today. And certainly share what I can and, you know, happy to happy to connect with everybody that’s listening. Something interesting about myself, I think, really, you kind of read my bio, and it’s a little bit, I think, a little different and unique as to how I got here. But you know, I think that I had always been really an event lover, I love bringing people together. I like to kind of seeing that collectiveness. And, yeah, I mean, I started out my chamber, really not knowing what a chamber was about seven years ago, now seven and half years ago, and really just saw what the role was in the community, and just really fell in love with all of it. So I think, really had just worked my way up into the current position that I have now. And I think it’s a really exciting time to be in industry. It’s a tiring time at the same time, but it’s a really cool way that we’re all sort of reinventing. So I was really in sports marketing. That’s what I kind of came out as, and that was really my first my first job essentially, when I and I left the area I originally was from NEPA. I left and said, Hey, I want to, you know, want to kind of get out of here and I moved to Philadelphia had some great experiences out there and realized really how incredible this area was. And when I came back, I knew I wanted to be part of making a change and making it so that you know and goal is our younger people. We end up retaining them they don’t want to leave they want to stay here and make this their home. So I think my Interesting thing is kind of how I’ve gotten here, but I’m very happy to be here at the same time.

Brandon Burton 4:48
Very good. Thank you for sharing that background. I can see you know, a lot of young people going through school sports marketing is very attractive. You know, it’s a it’s a glamorous type proposition and I can see where that attracts people chamber work not so much like you said, you came into it not really knowing what a chamber does. And I don’t think you’re too different than other people. And that way is to get, you know, being introduced to chamber work. But we’re glad you’re here. So thank you. Unless you tell us a little bit about the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber just to give us an idea of size, scope of work, staff budget, that sort of thing, just to give us some perspective, before we dive into our conversation,

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 5:28
sir, yes, so we are located right in the works bare sort of Scranton area in northeastern Pennsylvania, we were formerly known as the greater Wilkesboro Chamber of Commerce, and that we’ll talk about that in a little bit. I know. But we have rebranded to the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce about two and a half years ago. And really, that was to be representative of a lot of our members to make sure that we were servicing, you know, everyone in our community in the best way possible, and really start to get that collectiveness that we know that regions that are doing, you know, the collective sort of way of working together, are seeing success. So we represent a little over 600 Members, we have a team of 10. So my incredible team who really has just been so amazing at pivoting, reinventing the wheel looking at new things. So, you know, we’re able to really focus on a few different areas that we’ll talk about today. But we also so we have our chamber of commerce division, we also have our chamber of business and industry, which is our 501 C three, and it’s our foundation, which is allowing us to do a lot of our workforce development, economic development, and what houses our entrepreneurial development, which is called books fair connect. And then we also, you know, have many different affiliates that will fall under that as far as our councils, our committees. So we are really covering, I’d say a wide variety of, you know, we have our government affairs, we have, you know, our women’s network, our Young Professionals Network, we have a nonprofit network, so many different, you know, items that are going to kind of umbrella underneath that. But my incredible team, really kind of each manages one of those aspects and collectively, we operate as the greater Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce. So

Brandon Burton 7:16
that definitely gives some good perspective and kind of teasing the topic a little bit as far as what we’ll be focusing our conversation on today around reinventing the chamber brand so you had mentioned about two and a half years ago, you guys really dove in into making that change. So we’ll we’ll dive in much deeper into why that what drove that and what that experience is like as soon as you get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Richard Scully 8:52
We all know there are three words in Chamber of Commerce. So we suggest that you manage the chamber and will manage the commerce between both teams will deliver a lot more value back to members. We invite you to take a look at our Let’s Do Commerce Program by visiting www.letsdocommerce.com. You’ll be able to engage and promote membership like never before. And with our integrated chamber kiosk and community clicker program, the potential is enormous. To schedule a visit with me that works best for you, please visit RichardsCalendar.com. As we like to say here at Chamber Nation, join the chamber and get results.

Donna Novitsky 9:36
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 10:34
All right, Lindsay, we’re back. So I’m curious, you had mentioned as you were telling about your chamber, that you guys went about, I guess, the beginning of this rebrand about two and a half years ago. And, you know, curiously, I’m just wondering, does it have anything to do with COVID during that timeframe, and taking a deeper look at your organization, what you had to offer?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 10:57
Yeah, actually, interestingly, happened right before COVID. So we had, I think one of the big things that my team and I had really been very focused on was we have a lot of different, you know, in our area, and it’s a smaller territory, we had a lot of, we have many different chambers, covering different communities, we had many different economic development organizations. And what we noticed was that really, unless you were in our sphere, it was really hard to understand what was here, what resources were available. So if we did have a business, you know, moving into the area, or looking at our area, or a family that wanted to relocate here, there wasn’t really that one stop place to kind of, you know, collectively get those resources. We always say we’re never the ones that are doing every single piece of this work, you know, we never want to reinvent the wheel, we have a lot of amazing partners, but we wanted to make it easier for everyone else to find them. So with the rebrand, you know, I think we were representing members that were all throughout the Wyoming Valley. So we really wanted to reposition ourselves as our tagline is elevate the valley. So we use elevate symbol, which I really love, because elevate to us is really just kind of getting, you know, making sure that our residents or businesses are connected in the best way possible for success. And that goes beyond, you know, just obviously, we’re very focused on businesses and you know, recruiting retention, and ensuring the ones that are here are successful. But we also know that there has to be a lot of work done on, you know, our residents here and quality of life that we need to make this the best place to live, work and play. So with with the rebrand, we wanted to kind of not only sort of reinvent what our chamber was, our chamber has been around since 1884, we were heavily involved in real estate. So we, you know, had that was a very strong background of ours, a lot of our programs and initiatives sort of had taken a little bit of a backseat at that time, as that’s really what the organization’s focus was. So as we moved into the future, you know, and we got the team on board that we have now we noticed what the need was in our community. To have an organization like this, you know, not only do we change the name, but we changed the logo, we changed the way we operate, we changed the way that we did membership, as far as making sure that our door was open to anyone and everyone, especially to be a part a lot of those councils I talked about, you don’t have to be a chamber member to sit on diversity, equity and inclusion or women’s network or young professionals. We welcome anyone and everyone to the table, because we noticed and one of the things when I came on board was, you know, I noticed a lot of the people that were on our board and other boards and you know, different organizations were a lot of the same people. And we weren’t really seeing that. The diversification that we know what community needs, if you really want to help anyone and everyone, it’s having that representation, making those decisions and feeling like you know, they want to sit at that table. And they can and they can be a part of their area and moving their area forward. So we did a lot of work, not only, like I said, just on the outside of what our logo looks like, and what our website looked like, and what our membership guide looked like, but really who we are in the community and what our position was. And that’s been a lot of the work over the past few years, but really started with the rebrand.

Brandon Burton 14:05
Yeah, I think a name and a logo. Those are very much the surface things right? That’s it. Everybody sees that you think of the rebrand. But really, as I hear this, it’s an opportunity for you to look at what synergies there are, you know, as you have different volunteers working with different organizations, how can you bring things together, but also taking a look at maybe reevaluating and in the scope of work that you guys were involved with? And you You touched a little bit on that by being involved with real estate and as you went about the rebrand, what was that experience? Like looking at the work that you were involved with? And then really making a concerted focus on what the chamber needed to be focused on?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 14:39
Yeah, I mean, I think always right, and we’re doing this constantly as chamber professionals of what is our role, what is the need in the community, it’s going to change, you know, every few years and based on what happens and certainly pandemic was, I always say I think the pandemic was an acceleration for change that had been happening for a while I think chambers rarely had to look at themselves. And this was pre pandemic of how am I, you know, how will I be relevant? What is the value? How are we reinventing ourselves to keep up with this next generation, what businesses are now looking for? We know that younger people are participating differently with their communities with different organizations and memberships. So we started to look at that prior and I think that the pandemic completely accelerated that change where you had to look at Where’s where are the gaps in my community right now? What can I fell? And I always say, during the pandemic, I think we were a little bit of everything to everyone. I think that’s what we all did, right? We were trying to kind of help residents find, you know, medical information, we were trying to help businesses get funding and grants and understand the programs that were coming out from the state and federal level. But we were also just trying to push out anything we could to help our communities. And so I feel like now it’s at a place where we’re able to kind of hone in on really, what is our mission? Now. I mean, I think, who, while our mission hasn’t necessarily changed, the way we execute that has to be so I think, looking at our past is really interesting for me always, because our organization was very involved in essentially developing a lot of land now, that is booming in our community. So a lot of our industrial parks, and they’re full, we have, you know, world class businesses that are right here in northeastern Pennsylvania. And so that was a great place for us to be at at that time of making sure this area gets developed for the future and, and secure that, and that is what happens. And I think now is we’re able to say, where are we needed? Now? I think, you know, we just launched our 2023 2025 strategic plan. And I think it’s really great to be able to look at, you know, what is happening now that we’re kind of moving into this next period of, you know, post pandemic, and and where are the needs. And I think for us, it’s, you know, business and community advocacy is a big goal of ours, workforce development, workforce pipeline development, which we know is such a buzzword. And, you know, we have a lot of cool pilot programs, we’re really big on pilot programs and grants that we do to see how things work. And then, you know, work on partnerships that we can see those continued in the community. regional connectivity, like I said, I’m never a go it alone person either, as my team, I think there’s a lot of great organizations, I think we all have our heads down, and we’re working 100 miles a minute. But I know that when we can collectively put that into one package, that’s where we’re going to see a lot of that regional success. And we have so I think that’s a continued, it’s a pillar for us now, to continue those strong. The strong regional partnerships to solve the area’s most pressing issues. And quality of life, like I mentioned, is a huge focus of ours, I think that we know that without a healthy, you know, nonprofit community business community, giving our residents the resources that they need, we won’t have that workforce that we all want, right, we won’t have the continued continued success that we want to see happen in the area. So you’ll see us also do a lot of things on the quality of life side, I’ll be involved in community concerts, and a lot of young professional events, youth events, you know, getting out there and being a part of a lot of the different things that are making this area one that people enjoy and want to live in. So those are really the four things that we majorly focus on. And it’s interesting to kind of look at the plants from years ago as to where we are now, Mission still the same, we’re just doing it very differently to be relevant to what our community needs.

Brandon Burton 18:20
Right? I love how you mentioned that you guys are big on pilot programs, because it gives you a chance to kind of test the waters, see if it’s something that chamber wants to take on or find that community partner that you could, you know, hand things off to or partner with. Along the way with the rebrand or even leading up to it. What did you guys do as far as collecting data, maybe surveys or feedback to kind of course, the direction that the Chamber needed to go looking into the future?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 18:48
Yeah, I mean, we had, when we really started on a lot of this work, too, we had worked with Kyle Sexton, who really helped us look at our membership guide, and we looked at the tiered use model of really making sure that again, we were offering the most value we can so we really, we had we had, you know, pulled our membership, you know, asked about kind of what the relevant things were to them, what they were finding the most benefit from, that led us to our to dues transition which we underwent, which again, is still something that is very successful for us. And I think, you know, something that we’re definitely glad we did to see that retention, again, allowing members to participate in the way that is most beneficial to them. And also, it’s helped us out on you know, generate a little extra revenue in the membership department when we know, that’s just been a challenge, you know, nationally for years. So, we also kind of looked at all of our programs and we you know, talked with our boards, we talked to our members, and we you know sort of really asked what do you guys you know, what is still relevant here? What, what are we doing that we shouldn’t be doing? What are we doing that you want to see more of and what are we not doing at all that you really feel like we should be a part of, so we did a lot of that back work, you know, through mainly a lot of those conversations, but also through our Have some surveys that had been put out there to discuss, like what kind of programming would be relevant, and reaching out to new communities that, frankly, were never involved with us and never had anything to do with us really didn’t have that trust in a chamber to say, you know why? What could we do to really make sure you have a seat at the table and that you want to be involved and that you feel welcomed, and that we’re inclusive, and that this is something you want to be a part of. And that’s still a lot of work we do to this day, because it’s, you know, it’s something that we’re still very focused on. So a lot of back end work is done to get initially sort of the focus of where we were going to go with the rebrand and kind of the relaunch of all of our programs and initiatives. But that work continues to this day. It’s it’s an ever, ever flowing process of really, again, understanding the community’s needs and making sure that’s fitting into our mission.

Brandon Burton 20:47
That leads perfectly into my next thought I was thinking as a chamber goes to rebrand, like, I don’t think you can officially say, All right, we’re done. You know, the rebranding is complete. It’s never ending, right? It just keeps going. You keep evolving as a chamber as you continue to stay relevant to your community. But as you were going through this intensive process of a rebrand, were there any gaps that you noticed or surprises that came up as you were either gathering that data or trying to implement a new direction?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 21:17
I think that some of the feedback from the community was not surprising. I think some people, though, still really are challenged to understand what a chamber is what a chamber does, what specifically we were doing. I think the model of a lot of people still thinking that you had to be on a board or be certain level to participate and be part of conversations is still something that we work towards. I think that the general and not that it’s a negative, I think people had a sort of connotation of really what our sphere was. And, you know, I think that misunderstanding and really telling our story and having people understand who we are, what we do, and what the mission of the chamber is, is one that, you know, remains to be a challenge. I think it’s always something we all have to be clear on. And I know that as we’re all doing many different things. And a lot of organizations, like I said, you know, we have an economic development side and a chamber side and really having people understand truly what we do, I think was something that was eye opening during that process. But I think it also encouraged us to tell our story about our to make sure that we can be brought back chamber ambassadors to really help us get the mission out there and, and strengthen that, you know, making our social media clear. Again, making sure to have those one on one conversations with, you know, people that we wanted to have involved with us that represented different communities to sort of break down those barriers of sometimes I don’t want to say it was a negative connotation, but I think they had a very clear picture in their mind of what a chamber was, and really reintroducing what that means now for the community and who we are. So I think that was really one of the challenges that and then of course, when you change your name, right, I think that was a little bit of confusion for for a minute of how we how we got that transition, but honestly, I think just continuing to be very cohesive. And you know, we have an excellent marketing team here. But how we were putting that out there so that people really understood that change, but also that it was still, you know, our organization and making sure that all made a lot of sense when we put it out there and packaged up.

Brandon Burton 23:26
So I have to ask, did you guys crack the code on being able to communicate clearly what a chamber does to your community?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 23:34
I don’t think we’ve cracked the code, I think we’ve gotten a few of the digits on the code lockbox. But it’s something we always work towards. I mean, I think that we have certainly done and through through social media, through outreach, through our ambassadors, through all the many people, I think one of the coolest things that we did was, and I sort of mentioned this, but we opened up all of our councils to anyone, so they didn’t have to have an affiliation. And that’s helped us a lot, because now we have, you know, young professionals has over 500 500 of them that that are joining into that effort. Di we have, you know, now extremely great council that sort of leads that and, you know, there’s there’s a few 100 people that will be involved with that when we do those efforts, women’s network. So having all of them really, you know, cultivating those groups, and essentially having them understand your mission, who we are, who the team is, what we’re doing and getting that out, there has been a huge piece to us those, getting the community involved and having them sort of help us get that message out there and tell the story. I mean, we did start doing a lot of different mediums where obviously we use social and we show you know all the cool things the team is up to and what the community is doing. But we do a piece once a quarter, we’re still a big print area here in northeastern Pennsylvania in the paper that talks about all those councils and members and you know what’s happening in the community. So I think we’ve tried to reach people in many different ways. And and, you know, speaking in high school, speaking at colleges, all those different things to try to really get that message of who we are out there is a lot of the work that we’ve been doing, I still think we have a lot of work to do on that, especially because you know, this year, we’re sort of, again, putting a new strategic plan out, and you’re gonna see us in doing some different things. So I think that will always be, but we rely on our wonderful media partners in the area, we rely on our ambassadors. And, you know, it’s one of our actual goals, when we talk a little bit more about what our pillar that’s quality of life is telling our story better, but also telling the area story better. So when someone says, Hey, I want to move my business or my family to Northeastern PA, we have a really cool way that, you know, we’re putting those things together and with all of our partners, of course, to really clearly show how this area is that best place and that, you know, we can help link them. And that’s essentially what I think we are at the end of the day, we’re a convener of all these great things in this community. And we’re the ones that can bring all that together, and fill in the gaps where needed. But you know, convening those conversations, being the ones that kind of bring all those pieces into one place, and, and helping to create that change.

Brandon Burton 26:15
I like the idea of leading that community involvement. So then those community members can go out and tell the story of hey, this is what the Chamber’s involved with. I think that’s very smart. And to be able to get them involved in different levels, like you mentioned, the high schools and the colleges. I’d like to have you to maybe touch a little bit more on the social media outreach that you do, because I don’t imagine you guys are saying, Here’s the definition of what a chamber is, or here’s what our mission is necessarily, but how are you telling the story of your chamber through social media?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 26:46
Yeah, I mean, we, we really tried to, again, focus a lot on, you know, putting out the different programs, we have the different events, we have things like that, but telling it more. So from a perspective of, you know, if it was one of the pilot programs, we did an economic development to help kids with coding skills or something like that, telling the story about success. I’m telling the story of the businesses that are, you know, ribbon cuttings, and the different types of things that we have really connecting with those members, and telling those stories. So I think we really tried to make it less of an advertisement for the chamber, but more so showing through those types of really, you know, I think personalizing it in a way that’s really showing the different touch points that we have in the community. So I think that we use social as a tool of, you know, enjoying the team, when we’re when we’re out, having lunch somewhere and having fun, or we’re supporting heart month right now, which it is, you know, and helping our local hospitals and medical organizations really promoting that we’ve we’ve tried to really make it something that looks, you know, inviting and welcoming, and that we’re part of this community and, and showing that through all the different pieces that we have. Because I think when we’re highlighting, yes, we’re having, you know, we’re at an event or we’re having, you know, this this government affairs or, you know, we’re doing this, we’re launching a new workforce program. I think showing those in sort of more of a storytelling mode is the way that we’ve really started to capture a lot of people that are following us that are engaging with it. So I again, we have a great marketing team here that that has really focused on that and making sure that we’re telling that story in a good way. That’s that’s welcoming more people into that mix.

Brandon Burton 28:26
That’s fantastic. So I wanted to ask, just as a point of clarity, you mentioned at the beginning, when you were talking about your chamber kind of scope of work, and everything you had mentioned, you guys have a foundation was a foundation set up prior to the rebrand and I’m asking because for a chamber who may be considering a rebrand, should they consider introducing a foundation into their chamber as part of that rebrand?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 28:53
Yeah, so our foundation was set up prior. So we did have a C three prior to that rebrand. But you know, this, that entity, which essentially is what our economic development is run through, is, is one that had been also rebranded many years back. So so we really wanted to change the ways that we were operating that so we had developed a entrepreneurial program, which we call again, connect, who was called books fair connect still is, which is a free system for entrepreneurs, businesses to go through any stage of their life cycle to again, get connected with all the different partners that would help a business grow and succeed in NEPA. So literally, we just put all the partners in one place, a business could come in, and it flowed through there. So Kinect was really the launch of how we started really redoing our foundational side. So we started doing a lot of work on we have a really cool incubator that’s in the basement of the building I’m in now, which again, is for entrepreneurs, startups and gets them into our community and out into our business community. And we started developing programs underneath that. But then also, you know what it allows us to do do is essentially every year have what we call the chamber foundation pledge, which is a great campaign that is really aimed at fundraising, to be able to allow us to do the work that we’re doing. So when we talk about, you know, the pilots programs that we’re doing, including our workforce, or one that we’re now doing with 11th, and 12th, graders in schools, it’s really going to focus a lot on that foundational work we’re doing. So it’s allowed us to, essentially, you know, contribute, obviously, to the organization, financially, which is, which is a big piece, but it also allows us to give back. So through that foundation, you know, we’re able to give out grants, sometimes for small businesses to start operating, you know, we’re able to do a lot of great work, we’re allowed to apply for obviously, different grants and initiatives that the C three will allow us to that are very much focused on what our mission is. So the foundation was there, we’re definitely utilizing it in a different way now, which is great, because I think it has to be a big piece of how, if you’re, if an organization is able to how you’re able to continue growing? You know, I know, as things get challenging, but I think that a lot of our work now, you know, while I do think that, you know, we’re starting, we’re seeing, you know, growth and stabilization and membership and events. So obviously, as we’re coming out of the pandemic, you know, when you’re looking at how can we truly grow and continue to do you know, more work in the community. And what we want to do this, the C three in the foundational side is what’s really allowing me to continue growing my team and doing a lot of things that align with those missions.

Brandon Burton 31:31
I appreciate the testimony on foundations, I feel like every chamber needs to have one. And if you don’t have one, you know, start the conversation, see what you need to do to get started. But Lindsey, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you earlier, you had mentioned that your your goal, the slogans chambers to elevate the valley, I want to challenge you to help elevate the chamber of champions that are listening, for those that are listening that want to take their chamber up to the next level, elevate them What tip or action item might you have to help them accomplish that?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 32:05
I would say, you know, I and I definitely feel this because I know we all have felt it. It’s been a challenging for a few years. You know, I think that really it shook a lot up. I know that we were working all throughout the entire pandemic, I mean, harder, right, it was it was more difficult, we sometimes have less resources. But I would say that what what my my view on it has been in what my you know, I’ve definitely tried to instill in my team is that it’s also an incredible time to reinvent ourselves. And I think we’ve had a lot of energy and momentum around that. And I think we’ve kept that with us that we have now this opportunity to really be the ones that you know, I think they they always mentioned, you know, on a lot of the chamber, national efforts, and a lot of the things we talked about this chamber boom, I think people looked at us all during the pandemic and said, I don’t know where to go, there’s a ton of information. I’m getting a million emails, it’s, it’s confusing, you know, where should I turn, and a lot of them turn to us. And I think taking advantage of that right now and saying, you know, we are having this amazing opportunity of being in this position in our communities? And how do we really take advantage of that to make sure that that continues, and that we remain that leader that people continue to look to. And I think that’s something that while it was challenging, we looked at it as an incredible opportunity, and one that we were happy to take on and take that position in our area. And one that you know, I always say we feel very humbled and honored always have that people find that, you know, we’re a resource to come to, and you know, that they’re looking to us for that. So I think just remaining up to that challenge. And looking at it as a cool time to reinvent is is one of the tips that I would get, because I think right now, in all of our communities, which are all going to be different yet sort of the same. You know, all these different aspects of what we’re looking to do every day, I would say are ones that, again, I think we can be the conveners of I think we can show our strength, I think that we can show different ways that we can continue to grow and evolve as chambers. And just like, again, taking advantage of, you know, the community, really wanting to embrace us right now and how the best way to do that and embracing the community. Being inclusive, being open, inviting new people to your table, I think is one of the key things that we’ve really, that’s what we’ve really focused on.

Brandon Burton 34:20
I love how you stay on brand to with reinventing I mean, that’s just the theme through this whole episode. So the next question I like asking everyone I have on the podcast, and he may have already touched on the answer with that last reply. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 34:40
I think chambers will, as I kind of touched on a little bit, but I think chambers will continue to be that you know if they if they pivot and adapt to really what’s happening and really look at their communities and decide what gaps they’re going to fill. I think chambers will continue to make really great partnerships with their area that might be with others. chambers that might be with other organizations that are similar in their, in their scope, I think that the industry is going to have to continue to evolve. Like I said, I think this next generation coming up just doesn’t participate in the same way that paths have. So I think you’re going to have to find new ways to engage them, I always say I get very excited about this next generation, because they will be the most socially minded and entrepreneurial will have ever seen. So I’d say that you have to embrace that next generation coming in, and make sure that they are invited to sit at your table. If they are not, they will leave your area and go sit in a community, where are they are, because that’s the truth, they want to be involved with their area, they want to make change. And that’s, that’s a big fact of them. And it’s exciting to me, because we need a generation like that, that is going to really be the ones that that helped to make some positive change and be engaged. So I think that our industry is going to continue to make sure that diversity, equity and inclusion is a part of what how we’re operating now, I think we should all be looking at our boards or committees, our membership, making sure we’re representative, and we’re embracing the community we have and that we have resources for for everyone that, you know, are accessible. And I think that again, you’re gonna see a lot of chambers get into really cool, different stuff. I mean, I’m already seeing it with housing and transportation. And, you know, obviously, I know a lot of us are focused on workforce. But I think you’re going to see a lot of people come up with creative, you know, partnerships to be able to solve those issues and in turn stabilize their organizations, because I think it’s going to be a key for all of us to look at how do we stay in our communities? How do we stay relevant? How do we stay growing, and bring people on to do I know the massive amount of work all of us have, but you know, the work we’re excited to do and happy to do? So I think it’s going to be continuing to kind of adapt to those things, looking at your community and saying, Where are the gaps, what’s not being filled? Where we need it? And you know, how can we really fulfill that and get the right people on board with us, there’s never really a grab that you know, or program that we you’re going to see us do that as solo, I mean, we’re either working with a local economic health organization and other chamber, a different partner that may be involved. I think that that connectivity is also a huge piece that people need to embrace. No longer should we be in silos we should be working together, there’s too many problems to solve. Doing it together, I think is much more impactful. So I’d also say doing it as collaboration is something that I’m really hoping that that everyone else is also embracing.

Brandon Burton 37:33
I love that response. I especially like the the idea of looking to the future of this generation coming up being socially minded and entrepreneurial, and making sure that we invite them to have a seat at the table. And I think that plays well into the connectivity because these young professionals that are coming up. They may be working from home on a laptop individually in their own silo. But usually when we think of silos, we think, you know, different industries maybe or different areas of work. But I think those silos will look different as we go into the future and being able to help break those down and solve some of these bigger problems together. So thank you for that. I wanted to give you an opportunity Lindsey to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect with you and learn how you guys are doing things there at the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 38:25
Sure, thank you. So I can certainly be reached i Welcome to Talk to Anyone from the industry, I think it’s always one of the best things ever is to connect within our industry because I’ve learned so much every time and it’s just great to have others that are you know, kind of doing similar missions and getting new ideas. So I can be reached at my email, which is lindsay@wyomingvalleychamber.org. And that’s also can be found right on our website. I’m all of my team is accessible on there as well. So on our WyomingValleyChamber.org website, you’ll see my incredible team, what they focus in, you know, what their initiatives all are. So anything I talked to, I didn’t get to talk too much in detail today. But who manages you know, our di Council, our membership, all of our different networks, young professionals, all those types of things. The team is all on there and always happy to connect with anyone within the chamber world and ideas share.

Brandon Burton 39:19
That is perfect. I will get that in our show notes. And I appreciate the generosity and being able to connect with others and share ideas and help solve these problems together. I appreciate that Lindsey and thank you for spending time with us today here on chamber chat podcast. I feel like you’ve provided a lot of value for those listening for those who may be considering a rebrand of themselves or just that continual evolution and reinventing of the their chamber themselves. So thank you so much for that.

Lindsay Griffin-Boylan 39:46
Thank you so much.

Brandon Burton 31:03
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Focus on Purpose & Mission with Mick Fleming

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

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

Tony Felker 0:39
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:00
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

I’m excited about this week’s guest. Our guest for today is Mick Fleming. In addition to serving as the CEO for the primary National Association for Chamber of Commerce professionals for 16 years, Mick has provided strategic planning, consulting support, and direct motivation to hundreds of chambers and associations of all sizes. He retired from ACCE at the end of 2017 and launched chamber counselor LLC. In addition to his Cornell University degree, Mick is a graduate of Duke University’s credit bearing Leadership Program, as well as the Aspen Institute’s immersion program for C level leaders. He was a 15 year member of the US chambers committee of 100 and the Council of State Chambers in 2018. Chamber led chamber legend Frank Ryle presented Mick with the pillar of chamber Professional Award. During eight years of service as Vice Chairman of the world chambers Federation, he worked on collaborative projects with chambers in the world’s largest cities and nations. Throughout his tenure Mick championed initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion in the chamber and business worlds. His writings include making your chamber make a difference. And the horizons initiative, which we’ve referenced often, as well as a key section of the retooling for growth book, as well as numerous white papers and curriculum development. Mick and his wife, Barbara, who are both natives of buffalo have resided in Northern Virginia for 22 years now,

Mick, as I mentioned, I’m I’m excited to have you with us today on chamber tap podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and friends out there listening and share something interesting about yourself that maybe we haven’t heard before.

Mick Fleming 2:55
Well, I have I don’t have a resume, I have a twisted past. That’s what I have. So I’ll tell you what I can I appreciate the invitation. I’ve known about the chat for a long time and love some of the stuff that you have some of it’s very practical. I mean, you know, finance stuff, and, you know, governance stuff. And so I think those things are extremely valuable, because a lot of people like I did back into the careers of chamber work. Almost everybody in the business has done something else first. And so I think it’s really great to have those basics. And, you know, there are people who can scare you to death with their talks about compliance and so forth. But just to have a, you know, a peer talk about these things, I think is really is really more valuable. So what can I tell you about something interesting about my past? I was in Jackson college. And so I and Cornell is a huge institution in New York state. So having gone there, I got a lot of help. People always talk about that left your first job and your second job and that, you know, so many people don’t have that kind of help. And I did. And then of course, I had proved that I was worth it for the next. Whatever tenure I stayed. I had some other weird things on the side. I I never ran a chamber until 2019 where I ran one for a summer as an interim CEO. From my chamber, my community said in 2019 That was 2019 Okay, it was it was a great awakening because I find out I found out why none of you sleep at night. And the chamber was having difficulties. And I’ll bring up something else later about the necessity of keeping the board and engaged in the in the purpose stuff. But anyway, I had a, I’ve had a great run. And I started off as a teacher and coach and moved on from there to other things got my first association job. I don’t know, I think in like 1980, or something like that. Okay, 82. And that was at the Business Council of New York State, which is a combination of the manufacturers and the chamber and economic developers across the country, across the state. And so that’s what I did to get into this business. I actually got in because they entered this. Somebody entered me for this distinguished business advocate thing when I was working in a publishing shop, okay. And so I was one of the winners. That was the Business Council and I used that, to get acquainted with them. They had a magazine, I was a publisher, and it all worked from there. And three different jobs. Their first one was publishing. Second one was general marketing communications. And the last one was public policy where I learned how to come up with new euphemisms for lobbying. Right, right. Yeah, Director of Government Relations. Yeah. All those kinds of words, instead of telling your mother you’re a lobbyist.

Brandon Burton 6:52
That’s right. Now, that’s a great perspective. So normally, I have people tell about, you know, their chamber size perspective, you know, scope of work, budget, that sort of thing, but it’s a treat to have you on because I always get a little bit worried when I see people like yourself, you come to the towards the end of your chamber career and you don’t get ready to retire. And I think Darren I missed having Mick on the podcast. And then as luck would have it, our paths cross and glad that we’re able to get you on today because I know you you bring a great amount of knowledge and experience as well. After leading ACC as well. So our our topic for discussion today is going to be around the importance of chambers focusing on their purpose and mission. And we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Success happens over time not overnight. It’s why fortune 500 companies and other forward thinking businesses are shifting to a more continuous learning format to coach and support their salespeople. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching brings the same ongoing improvement opportunity to chamber membership salespeople visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching for your membership pro. 

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Alright, Mick we’re back. So I mentioned before the break that we will focus our discussion today around focus the importance for chambers to focus on their mission and purpose. You’ve had experience working with chambers, not only throughout the United States, but throughout the world. And I’m sure you’ve seen maybe some of these, some of the mission creep that comes in and just share with us maybe some of those experiences that have kind of been red flags. It’s like, oh, this is not your lane to get into. And, and you know, it’s come back to where you should be focused at?

Mick Fleming 11:05
Well, I think it’s good to raise this sometime last, we’ll do it here. I produced a speech and a presentation and booklet on it was called The Seven Deadly Sins. And what if you could know now what you’ll know, then? And so I came up with these. I actually, a guy from South Carolina was the one who came, Chavez said, Mick, you know, all these stories, you talk to all these people on the way out of their jobs? Could you tell what, what did they tell you. So that’s I came up with this. And the number one thing that I came up with in terms of the seven sins was almost universally across everybody I talked to was less lack of focus. And they just get hold too wide. And their resources run too thin. When that starts to happen, and they also get more disorganized, they don’t know which things are priority. So I really try to concentrate on that when I can talk to boards of directors, especially when I did those. And I still do some outreach and and do you know, day to day long sessions, about 90% of the time, they work great. And about 10% of the time, the exec doesn’t last very long after the session. I’m not harsh, it’s just, you know, when sometimes it’s just somebody finds out what they didn’t know, board or whatever. So that that context thing is really important. So when I talk about purpose, I always talk about purpose first, and, and, and mission second. So as you move into this thing, to try to write strategic disadvantages and marketing.

Brandon Burton 13:05
So I was asked maybe before diving into the first and second purpose and mission, how do you see them being different? You know, some people might hear purpose and mission and think, yeah, we’ve got a mission statement. And that’s our purpose. And it just blends together. So how do you differentiate that purpose and mission, then we can get in a little deeper

Mick Fleming 13:25
using Disney did a great job Disney Institute on that very question. And they brought in people that they really know about these things, three, including the guy from Hewlett Packard, and all these things, actually Packard himself. So here’s the thing, they the big thing about purpose is that there’s a very good chance that that purpose should last for 100 years. And a mission is who you represent, and what you’re going to do for them. And so you can almost think of two different stairways leading up to the Why did a purpose. One is this overall expectations and and what do we want to be? And what are our principles? And what’s the community about? How can we help the community while helping the members? That’s the that’s the big purpose statement. And then the other one is, you know, well, how do we help these people? The business people themselves as opposed to, you know, changing the world. How do we get to a why for that work? And if you put those two together at the end, you got to why and for both, both areas. The one actually for the work is easy. You’re, but you have to take it as stairways stair steps. You start off with something, let’s say, like, example might be, you know, we convene business and community and you take the next step and that the why for that is one voice is better than 30,000 voices or 50 voices. So we’ll have more strength than you have to get away from that. Well, what are we trying to do with that influence? And then you keep moving up that chain until you get to really the epitome, which is, you know, why do we even bother with all this stuff? And so I think that’s the way on purpose. It’s much it’s grander, it’s something that will last. It’s not subject to the whims of the next strategic planning group, or the next

Brandon Burton 15:53
CEO. Right, that purpose should help drive those strategic planning sessions. Right. Understanding that purpose. And you see a lot of chambers have mission statements, but you don’t see a whole lot. They have purpose statements, right? Yes,

Mick Fleming 16:08
some of the mission ones are good enough that they make. Yeah, it’s aspirational in that way. The other problem, I think with it is that it’s I shouldn’t say, Brian, look at the opportunity related to this is that you got to figure out what you’re selling. And for many people in the chamber world, everything that nothing in the mission is ever mentioned on a sales call. What’s mentioned in a sales call is you get to do this, you get by that you get to be a sponsor for this, we will take you on a trip to capitol, it’s all services. And the mission is, is not to have a great golf tournament. So and the mission, the mission doesn’t even have to have a magazine unless there’s a purpose for the magazine. So if you don’t have that, then and your staff isn’t trained, and you aren’t, aren’t focusing on those things that are bigger and more meaningful, it’ll be very hard to get big contributions, I’ll call it. Revenue above the rate card. Yeah, whatever your rate sheet is, anybody above that? Is somebody who’s either getting something from the organization specifically, like help with some transportation problem or something. And then the other thing is they’ll have they get to ask, you know, those people get asked for lots of stuff and sponsorship and stuff. And they mostly though it’s kind of a contribution, even a sponsorship, they there’s no way to measure how much value that is to the company. So those are the things that I think that’s why the mission and purpose are so important is that once in a while you got to sit across especially from big, a potentially big map or, or big sponsor, and talk about the things in those two stairways. Right.

Brandon Burton 18:14
So and I can see where somebody in the community may come to the chamber and say the chamber needs to head up this initiative. Because what we believe the chamber is well connected, you can make this happen. And so they want to dump it on the chamber. And in some instances, maybe that aligns with the purpose of what the chamber is trying to accomplish. But it doesn’t align with the mission. Right? Right. So to be able to be clear on where that fits, and if it really, if it fits both criteria, first, your purpose and then your mission. But then being well enough, connected throughout the community that you can say maybe this isn’t meant for the chamber to do but this organization can help and we’ll support it. However, we can

Mick Fleming 18:59
just have to watch out a little bit if you inherit some of those things, right. One of the things that I tell new execs or, or people who want to move into the business is to are getting CEO interview. You have to find out how, you know, unrestricted, the unrestricted. On your finances, how unrestricted is it. My best example is up in Seattle, and they had this one program, I think it was a homeless program. And they got this money to see see to get it going. And it was this expectation that the chamber would be doing this and they didn’t have the money. They didn’t know why they were doing it. So that can be a new exec comes in and says Where am I going to come up with that $100,000 a year. So I think those things so you got to be a little careful though. There was another place down in Baton Rouge where the new CEO said I’m not going to, we’re not going to do this Christmas parade, what does that have to do with the chamber. And so he says, We’re not going to do that. And the next day, the front page of chamber kills Santa Claus. You got to watch out, you got to sometimes some of the best things to do though is to farm it out, maybe to an aspirational organization, not just one that’s through one of your big hot shots. But, you know, an organization, maybe the Community Foundation, or sometimes it can even be youth, young people.

Brandon Burton 20:38
So we laugh about that the Chamber killing Santa Claus, but really, it’s it is an opportunity to tell the community what it is the chamber does, they’re not about the parties and pageants and parades, but you’re about meaningful work, that’s going to move the needle. So I can see where it may have a negative context and spin to it.

Mick Fleming 21:00
Jim Collins who I like wrote, Good to Great, here’s the draw these three circles come together in Venn diagram. And he says, You’re, you’re good at it. You like it, and somebody will pay you for it. And the nonprofit world, it’s down your mission, you’re the best your only provider, and you have a business model. And so those are the things people have to think about, I should spend at least some of their time in the center of that those circles. Yeah. I like to talk for a minute if I could about this. thing, I learned a couple of things. One is a policy imperative. Now, we’re chambers, there might have been a time when it was that you didn’t have to talk about the issues, and you could just get people’s butts in the seats. But I think especially for meaningful investors that want to make the community better and the business community better. I think there’s some things that have to be done on policy, not necessarily politics, I realized that it’s an overflow of lots of times, but policy work can be written in a way that doesn’t insult and it allows the chamber to be the sane middle. Some people think that’s an impossibility now, because everything’s so fractured. But I still think the same same little is the place that chambers can play in policy work without getting their heads cut off. And if they don’t lay there, somebody’s gonna say, Well, you don’t stand for anything that. So I think it’s important.

Brandon Burton 22:44
Yeah, I think if you keep that focus on what’s pro business, what’s good for the businesses in your community, it’s hard to even get into the political side of it, if all you’re doing is focusing on the business aspect and the impact of businesses. And that’s your that’s what you’re standing for.

Mick Fleming 23:01
Right. The only thing I wanted to mention was the textual leadership role. In the Duke thing that I went through, there was six domains of leadership. And in talking about the future, for chambers, the biggest thing that changed out of my life after going through that was one of the six paradigms of leadership. It’s called contextual leadership. And that’s, I didn’t know that until I went through that I didn’t know it. I’m 35 employees, I didn’t know they didn’t know what was going on. And of my 30 board members, I didn’t know they didn’t know. And getting transparent about as much as you can, that doesn’t involve you know, hurting somebody or HR or something. But being transparent, just made my life so much easier, and being taking time to explain our purpose. And our, our mission meant so much. And my life got so much easier. I mean, I was in a position where I was they were so out of touch. I was so out of touch. And I would give them the same assignment to two different people. Yeah, I, you know, they did not they didn’t object. So, it got some of that is because of lack of focus. Yeah, it was I was doing things that were, you know, offline, I do some things that we would just staff would be sent to do things that were not necessarily get on the mission. Yeah, I don’t want to I don’t want to cut off the hobbyist thing that you guys have to do programming to make some money. I would say though, that if you include staff time, it doesn’t make much money. So they program you run should have value above money, because it’s really not a huge margin that you have from any of the events you run except possible your maybe two biggest community wide events. You know, the awards dinner or whatever you call it, usually make some money is probably one of the thing that makes some real money. But the smaller grouping things and the committee running and all those kinds of things are usually they have to have a value that is there’s a real binding thing for the members. Right. And that’s that matters. But yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:39
So I wanted to circle back he had mentioned at the beginning talking about board engagement. So it Do you want to circle back to that at this point about keeping the board engaged when it comes to purpose and mission?

Mick Fleming 25:54
Well, I think an awful lot of people on boards think that their contribution to the chamber or their contribution to the community, is to have their name on the list of directors. They think that’s the thing. And they don’t think that they don’t necessarily think they’ve got other work to do. And I understand that. I tell people that if I had a large company CEO on my board, I would much rather have them make three phone calls a year, then show up every month or every other month for a board meeting, right? One, we got to economic development or economic loss issue to work on. Second one, we got an issue in politics, we got to work. And third, we got a mission with a member we’re going to lose, I would rather have that than have them show up everywhere, anywhere. So the board that matters is there’s this activist group, I call it the after school group or the detention group. And they’re the ones who actually care about which way you go. Which way, it’s not necessarily the Executive Committee. It could be somebody in any level, and you get a handful of those people. And you can probably manage the organization. Other than the representative stuff, you have to have some boards that those five people are whatever number you pick, they don’t have to be elitist. They just have to be with you and shaping you and you shape them. And I think that’s the critical part and part of the board, then they also can say yes, when you do a strategic planning change, and you’re no longer going to do the Christmas parade and you’re going to instead take a trip to Capitol. That’s something that they can help you with that gets talked about. And I don’t get blindsided and the board doesn’t get blindsided with those that insulation that you have from some people who get you on. Another thing, I think, is that it’s very important to figure out your terms of service. And what terms mean, and how far out to stretch the board group and you know, as your seventh chair elect already decided. Elect elect elect. And one of the reasons for that is that when you name somebody, a future leader or chair elect, you’re going to be doing work for to train for two execs, for for two CEOs. So you’ve got to watch out. The only thing I think that chambers lose focus on is they do things not just that are off mission, but they do things that they just don’t know how to say no to because the board asked somebody on the board asked for it. Right. You know, I’m on the heart fund, I think you guys could really help out if you came up with volunteers and did the blah, blah, blah. And how do you say no, how do you say no to the hospital? How do you say no to the school? And so carving out your niche, and each of those things is, is the only way to keep the peace? Probably unless you can use your five specialists?

Brandon Burton 29:20
Yeah, well, I think it goes back to just being familiar yourself with what your purpose and mission is. Because, again, going back to so many chambers have a mission statement, but they let that mission creep come in. And then when you’re in a board meeting, and the school district says hey, I think that you guys need to get volunteers together for this and put together a whole new program. If you don’t have that mission and purpose on the front of your mind, then it’s very easy to just kind of go along with it. Instead of saying, yeah, we’ve got more important work to do, but maybe we can put you in contact with people that that can run with this.

Mick Fleming 29:56
Now the most important program we ran in that summer that I worked in The Chamber of business is they had a great thing with the school that fit perfectly into the mission. That was an ethics day. Or even maybe two days for seniors in high school, okay. And the presenters and sponsors were all people who gave a crap about that, you know, accountants and lawyers and, and ministers. And I mean, it was, it was wonderful program. All you had to do is say we’re doing it and money would come in. Yeah, I’m not saying that’s what everybody should do. But see, find those ones where there’s a obvious audience and interest, for

Brandon Burton 30:41
sure. So covered a lot of a lot of great stuff. In our conversation today, I wanted to see if there is maybe one tip or action item that you would share for a chamber who’s wanting to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you offer them?

Mick Fleming 31:00
Well, I just got back a couple of weeks ago from the winter Institute. I talked about future chambers and associations. And I’ll tell you the thing that as I worked on that script in that show, the thing that came to mind most is that change, change, change, change, change is hard to work with. And if you have credit, imagine the things that you couldn’t imagine the things that people might think today that was going on 10 years ago, or five years ago. So you’ve been through, by the way, congratulations to everybody in the chamber row for getting through the pandemic. I mean, I don’t know how you did it. I didn’t retire because of the pandemic. But I’m really glad I wasn’t.

Brandon Burton 31:46
Well, they had this really good reason initiative, Dilip to so

Mick Fleming 31:50
very engineering and did a great job. Here that including getting all of you some PPP money. Okay, so here’s my tip, the Navy SEALs used to go into attack, and they think they had everything planned, and have all these weapons on how many boats we’re gonna need all that kind of stuff and to get to the beach, and somebody’s playing beach soccer. And they can’t even come through without, you know, collateral damage. Or some, you know, warlord died and they’re having to park a parade down the middle of town. They can’t. So they finally figured out that we’re going to have to do is to make themselves ready to handle whatever comes next. But the whole strategy should be how do I make it. So I’ll be able to handle whatever comes next. That means I gotta look at personnel, I got all the resources, all this kind of stuff, you’re gonna be realistic, I don’t think you have to say, we’re going to know everything about everything. Just you know, people can project a little bit for you and help you find those issues where

your strategy is, are we going to be ready. We don’t know if it’s going to be a flood

virus, a war that got a slump. The loss of our CEO, it could be all of those things. One that you don’t have to worry about. It’s like a scandal with your Chairman, Chairman of the Board, you can do about that. You don’t want to plan for it unless you want to do a program for dealing with the press. So I think that that’s the best thing I can say is you don’t know what’s changed. It’s common. strategy isn’t like all these to do list. It’s, How are we going to be ready,

Brandon Burton 33:36
be ready for the unexpected? expected to come? It’s gonna come. So I’m excited at this next question, I have to ask you. Every one I have on the show, I like asking them how they see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward. A lot of times the answers reference the horizon initiative. So I’m excited to hear you know, at this point here in 2023. How do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Mick Fleming 34:11
I wish it wouldn’t have been so correct. Raising my prediction. I mean, you know, the importance of international dealing with your organization. Can anybody see that not being continuing to grow, that your community, your employers? So that’s the kind of thing I think. And that strategy of being ready for whatever comes next is, think about that. You can think about your own issues. If you already have some say what’s gonna happen with that interstate that somebody’s directing our way or that major shipping change that we’re going to have warships in our report or whatever it is. And think that through if there’s if there’s the likelihood of some kind of military issue is, you know, the Mountain Group in Northern New York and Watertown, are they likely to be called in? Let’s see about that. I think that’s the prep thing you can think about. I also think that the be I was really surprised, honestly, that the last two comments, one economic and one personal crisis didn’t lead to more consolidation. Right. You know, the 2009 thing, I thought everybody was going to be scrambling to just, you know, collect whatever they can collect, and, and hook up with anybody that could hook up. And this time, I thought there’d be more regional linkage, or just expanding? I don’t see the themes. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t see that happening a lot in the US, you know, the whole all of Great Britain has 22 chamber. Really? Yeah. And, you know, we have, we have one, sometimes we have, you know, one is the county chamber with this name, and the other one is the city chamber with that name, right. I think some of that is going to have to be looked at, not just the volume, but of chambers. But you know, there’s divisions of labor that can happen all over the place. And, you know, saying that you’re, you know, arm and arm with the Economic Development Group, even though they get all the glory. That’s not a bad thing to get hooked up to, if there’s a publisher in town, and they’re doing these things that are about, you know, health day, and they all run these business publications, especially run all these special things for accountants and everybody. So I think finding partners is going to be a big deal, whether it’s formalized, or in formalized, I think that it’s going to be necessary. I think programming is going to have to grow up to a level where it’s better than not necessarily better, because in person is always better. But at least as good as or almost as good as the best you can get on the web.

Brandon Burton 37:31
Right. Now, I appreciate that, that insight and thought that you’ve given to that to the continued look forward to the future of chambers. But Mick as we wrap up here, today, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, anyone that’s, you know, wondering where you’re at, or how to get in contact with you what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Mick Fleming 37:53
Okay. I think the easiest way to get me as email and that’s mick@mickfleming.com, pretty hard to forget. Let me as one eminent and my phone numbers not off limits. So if somebody wants to talk to me about a specific topic or want to invite me to town, the numbers 703-216-5525. And if I’m not the person that fits best with what you might need, I know somebody who is so we can help with that. I do like to still go. I’d said I did the institute thing this year, I still like to go out and work with individual chambers. Once 2020 came, I had two great years of retired business 18 and 19. It was great. March 12 2020, the government announced all the shutdowns March 13 My three clients for the summer went away. So I kind of said, you know, I’m not gonna try to push the wagon up the hill, I’m gonna just take what comes in instead of marketing. Yeah. So that I, you know, I still like to do it. I’m not expensive. And also, most things are pretty short. Yeah, it’s like a day and a half and you get rid of me some of the other accounts, consultants, you know, they, they want to lifetime contracts, right. So I’m, I’m quick, I can do it. Topically or I can do it. The overall stuff like we talked about today.

Brandon Burton 39:42
That’s great. And I’ll get that in our show notes as well for this episode. And maybe just a side note, make is part of the chamber chat champions Facebook group as well, where we post each episode in and allow for some conversation around the topics of each podcast episode. So that may be another way where you can find Mick online. So, Mick, thank you for setting aside time with us today. Like I said, I’ve been looking forward to having you on the podcast. I’m glad it worked out. And thank you for the great information, valuable information that you deliver today. I really appreciate it.

Mick Fleming 40:18
Well, Brandon was great to be asked. Thank you for doing this.

Brandon Burton 40:21
Oh, you’re welcome.

Mick Fleming 40:23
This is not something that an individual will take on very often for an entire industry. And you’ve got both some guts and some brains to do it. Thank you.

Brandon Burton 40:35
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Origin Story to 200 Episodes and Beyond

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

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.

And now, your host. He always enjoys the sense of accomplishment after doing yard work is my dad Brandon Burton.

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

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

Jason Mock 0:47
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 1:03
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

You’re joining us today for episode number 200. This is quite the milestone as you can imagine, as I’ve been about this podcasting journey. This is signifying of almost four years of doing the podcast with one episode each week, so a regular weekly frequency. And as I look back over the last four years, almost, I see that I’ve had 176 different guests that I’ve interviewed on the podcast. And there’s several that I’ve had on the podcast a couple of times because they were up for chamber of the year as a chamber of the year finalists of ACC. And as they do those chamber their finalist interviews each year. And it really solidifies that I’m getting some of the best chamber folks on the podcast and I get them again, as the chamber, the year finalist tells me that they’re doing something right. But in addition, 276 different guests. I’ve also done a few different book reviews and interviewed some authors of books.

So as we’re coming up on this as being Thanksgiving week, coming up upon the holiday season, I figured you may have a little bit of downtime, maybe to where you might want to pick up a book and give it a good read. So I was going to run through the books that I’ve highlighted on the podcast over the last four years. So if you feel so inspired to pick one up and give it a read over Christmas break, or or download it on your Kindle and read it over Thanksgiving, or whatever fits you best.

The very first book that I had highlighted on the podcast is called Superfans. And that’s a book by Pat Flynn. And if you wanted to dive in a little deeper on that, that was found in episode number 38 of the podcast. So Pat Flynn, I was made familiar with Pat over, he was a guest on another podcast that I listened to. It was a investing podcast, and he was talking about the the ROI on having your own business and said, you know, essentially that ROI is 1,000%. Everything is a is a return assuming you do business well. But it really intrigued me how he went about the interview on on that investing podcast that I listened to. And in that interview, he had mentioned that he has a podcast called Smart Passive Income. And at the time, his whole motto, I guess is that he was a crash, the crash test dummy for online business. So he would try things out and then be very transparent on his podcast into letting his followers know you know what works and what doesn’t work. So I subscribe to his podcast. I’ve listened to it for several years now but he came out with this book called Superfans where he talks about creating a identity for your following for your members maybe at your chamber and creating a name for this following hence, you know, I came up with Chamber Champions for the listeners of Chamber Chat Podcast because of his book so made a good impact on me but he really highlights several great factors that create a good following and not just followers but actual Will superfans for what you’re doing. So in the chamber world, there’s ambassadors, and if you can imagine every ambassador being a superfan, or having more members be super fans and doing Ambassador work and a natural way. Anyways, I think there’s a lot of value and it’s not as chamber specific book, but a lot of what he talks about in that book can translate over into chamber world. The second book that I had highlighted on the podcast, was back in episode 49. In the book was called Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden. And Rory, I was introduced to this book, he was a speaker at TCCE. So the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives conference several years ago, that I picked up a copy of his book then. And I just found it to be very interesting. I mean, obviously, he was there speaking at a chamber conference, he had some resonance with the Chamber industry. And his book. The title, take the stairs essentially means if there’s an easy way and a hard way, and he challenges you to take the harder way, there’s more benefits and taking the stairs, that versus taking the elevator, for example. So he outlined some real world examples as to why it’s better to take the stairs. So after those two, those two books are really just book reviews, there are books that I read, that resonated well with me that I thought translated well to the chamber industry. The next several books that I highlighted, I actually got to have the author of the book on the podcast, which was great, it was a fantastic experience to have these authors. Some of them you may be very familiar with. So the first one was, From Relevant to Essential. And that’s the book that Casey Steinbacher wrote. So that’s episode number 106. If you wanted to go back and check that out, and from irrelevant to essential, it is a Kindle book. So you’re not going to get a hard copy of it. It is digital only. But it is a great read. It talks about how chambers need to embrace being influencers, in this new economy and moving forward. You’ve got social media influencers and chambers need to be community influencers in a variety of different ways. So she highlights some great examples in there and creates a vision really of what you can do to to become that influencer in your community. And any any of you who have heard me talk or do my presentation about chamber podcasting. I lean heavily on those teachings that Casey outlined in her book because so many of those resonate into the podcasting space for chambers in creating that a chamber of influence. It was just a few weeks after having Casey on the podcast that I was finally able to get Dave Adkisson. On the podcast. We’ve been talking back and forth for about a year because he was working on his new book, Horseshoes vs. Chess well knew at the time. And he was trying to wait until the book came out to actually come on the podcast and do the interviews. So as soon as I launched, we lined it up. And horseshoes versus chests. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. I feel like it is the best book that I’ve come across for a chamber professional to really grasp the idea of what a Chamber of Commerce is, what it can be. And also to explain to others like how many times you’ve come across somebody who has no idea what a Chamber of Commerce does. Dave does a great job outlining what a Chamber of Commerce is and and he likens the the title horseshoes versus chests that he took that from from one of his mentors who likened the chamber work to either a game of horseshoes or a game of chess. He said some people think the chamber work is like a game of horseshoes where you show up at a picnic. You throw some horseshoes, and if you get close to the stake, you get a point versus chess where you have very, you know various different pieces and each piece is allowed to do certain things. And you can only move one piece at a time to move towards your goal. And he likened those chess pieces to the different factors in your community, your school district, your city, your economic development, your tourism, all of those different things and being able to get them to work in unison with each other towards a common goal so that as a as a community builder as a chamber leader, horseshoes versus chests is a must. You need to pick up that book if you haven’t already. The next book that author that I had on the podcast to highlight the book was done Doug Griffiths with his book 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. I know a lot of chamber professionals are familiar with this book. Rebecca Wildeboer, she started a Facebook group for 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. And that’s actually how I gotten in connected with Doug to have him on the podcast. And I just love his approach to, you know, saying, if your goal is to kill your community, how would you start, and then those are all those red flags you need to look out for in your community to avoid, and then do the opposite, do those things that will help build your community help your community thrive into the future.

After that book I had let’s see, I had actually Hardy Smith was the episode before 13 ways to kill your community. So Hardy Smith, he wrote Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game. And from my background, my experience with chamber work chamber industry, this book opened my eyes to how a board works, how it operates, the things that need to be considered when selecting new members. The interaction between a chamber leader and the board of directors. And really it just was a fantastic read, not necessarily like an entertaining kind of read, but it’s one very informational, very, it’s just a good resource base to have to better understand how to operate with your board. And from the same publisher for stop the nonprofit board game, board blame game rather, I had Julie Henry on and she wrote Wisdom from the Wild. And this book, although it’s not chamber specific, it is leader specific. It’s pulling these leadership qualities leadership traits that we see from the wild, and how they manifest in the business world and in leadership. So that was a great read and really seeing like in the animal kingdom. Certain animals have no idea that other animals exist yet they’re very reliant on each other, whether they know that or not. And there’s a lot of correlations, in chamber work and in the business world, all together with that. So those are the seven books that I have highlighted so far on the podcast, and next week’s episode, I do have slotted to highlight another book. So be ready and to pay attention to that.

But if any of you you’re trying to jot these names down to these books, I would encourage you if you haven’t already, check out the Chamber Pros Planner by Izzy West. She does a terrific planner for chamber professionals. And in there there’s a she has like a blank page with a bookshelf. So you can write in names of books that are on your wish list to read. So I would encourage you to pick up her planner, it’ll help you keep stay on track. But it also has that place to keep a record of these books he’d like to circle back and read at some point. Which also brings me to the fact that we are doing a giveaway with Izzy for her chamber pros planner. So if you are interested in getting a free copy of the 2023 chamber pros planner, what you need to do is go to Apple podcasts and leave a review for chamber chat podcast. Or you can also go on Facebook to the chamber chat podcast Facebook page and leave a review there. Then take a screenshot of your review and email it to me at Brandon@chamberchatpodcast.com and I will enter you in to a raffle to win one of five of these chamber pro planners. You can also pick one up and purchase one if you’d like it the is us.com but with that we’re going to take a quick break, hear from our sponsors and then get into the rest of the program.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Oftentimes Chamber Nation’s customers agree that since Amazon is all centralized then why not their own community including their professional service providers. 

Since Chamber Nation includes a full-service membership services department to handle all of the new member onboarding and ongoing support at no extra cost to the Members, this is now possible. 

Once the program is all set up, each member going forward will receive monthly membership ROI reports. The entire community will also have access to community-wide economic development reports that are terrific for supporting grant opportunities too. 

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Izzy West 16:32
Hey, this is Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner a weekly, monthly planner that you can get on Amazon or Etsy I wanted to give a shout out to Diane Sawyer other Reedsville Chamber who emailed me saying “I am loving this stuff my admin assistant bought me the planner for Christmas before I could purchase it for myself”. The responses and feedback I get from my fellow chamber pros are a big deal to me. And in fact the updates I make each year if you like physical planners, please check out the Chamber Pros Planner at TheIzzyWest.com. That’s TheIzzyWest.com.

Brandon Burton 17:06
All right, we’re back. So for the the rest of the program the rest of the episode today what I wanted to do being that I’m celebrating the 200th episode of chamber chat podcast, I wanted to just pause and go back in time a little bit. tell you how I got into the chamber world a lot of the chamber professionals interviewees that I have on the show, we spend a lot of time talking about how did I get into the chamber world headed what’s my background like? So this gives an opportunity for all of you to learn a little bit more about my background, how I got into the chamber world, how I got to where I am now. And we’ll talk a little bit about what I see coming up in the future. So back in 2006, I was a recent college graduate. I had been married for about three years. And my wife and I just had our first baby. So our son had just had been born a few months prior. But as I graduated college I was looking to, for my degree was in business management. And I wanted to get into the pharmaceutical sales industry. So I put out the applications. I’ve been doing the interviews, and I had quite a few interviews lined up. That was happened to be the career that my dad got into. So as a chamber professional, you know, that youth as they grow up, they tend to know what their parents did. And my dad had a great career in the, in the pharmaceutical industry. So I thought, yeah, I’ll go down that road, too. So I had a lot of interviews, each interview would get to the same part where they would ask me about my sales experience. I didn’t have a whole lot to lean on. I had, you know, a little bit of sales experience working at Staples in high school, I did retail at Staples. So I would sell, you know, warranty packages on computer or furniture pieces or something like that at Staples. But really, I was doing more stocking shelves in anything. So not a whole lot of real sales experience. But after several interviews where I got to that same hang up in the interview process, I decided, you know, I need to put this on hold. And I just need to get a job where I’m doing sales, I need to sell something, anything, I don’t care, I just need to get two years experience doing sales. So that’s where I came across community matters. community matters, Inc is a chamber publisher, so they work with chambers to do maps and directories. And you guys you may work with community matters. You may have another publisher, but you’re familiar with maps and directories for chambers so I got into that selling ads and that this is great. You know, we’re We’re supporting the Chamber of Commerce, we’re helping support small businesses and providing a, an affordable way to advertise and get their name out in the community. And I really enjoyed it. But as my two year mark came up, I was ready to ready to jump ship ready to get back into what I wanted to do with the pharmaceutical industry. And as luck would have it, right when that two year period came up, is when the recession of 2008 hit. And as it happened, pharmaceutical companies were laying off any of their newer sales reps. So had I gotten one of those jobs, I would have been without a job very shortly. So I took a look at internally at myself and said, You know what, I actually really like what I’m doing. I like who I’m working with, I like what I’m doing. So let me let me stick it stick out with stick this out. So I decided to stay with community matters, and kept selling each year I got better and better. And eventually, our the opportunity came up for me to be promoted and to become the sales manager for the company and manage the other sales reps. So I started doing that and decided you know what this job that started as a job at a college is very much becoming a career. So I decided to look at it as a career and refined my sales process became more and more of a refined sales rep. And got my other sales reps trained up on how to be great sales reps. And as a company, we did a great job, you know, year after year growth. Just really, we’re all in and doing great work with chambers. So great reputation in the chamber industry as well. So as much as I was loving that I was driving all over Texas, which as you know, is a huge state. And as I would drive around Texas, going from one chamber to another, I would find myself listening to the radio a lot. And as I listened to the radio, and I’d leave one market and get into another I kept losing the reception for whatever station I was listening to. So after time, that kind of got frustrating. And I stumbled across podcasts. And I thought this is great, I can look up any topic that I’m interested in. And I can learn more about it as I drive. And as I spend time in the car, I can continue learning and developing myself as a salesperson or as an entrepreneur or any aspect of life that I wanted to improve on. So I started listening to a lot of podcasts. And while listening to a lot of podcasts, and still working with a lot of different chambers of all different sizes. I started to notice that not every chamber was the same. You know, we have the saying in the industry that if you’ve seen one chamber, you’ve seen one chamber? Well, I got to see that firsthand. That is I met with these chambers, some chambers I could tell were operating very well, because as I met with their Chamber members, and sold ads, the sales process was super smooth than others. It was a struggle the whole time. And I would often feel like the bartender, you know, as I would meet with these different business owners, they would tell me their gripes with the chamber, or they would tell me how great their chamber was. And I started to think about this and wonder why is it that there’s such such a chasm between these different types of chambers. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that these chambers that were struggling, they were not necessarily the chambers that were going to their state conferences, or the ACC conference, or they weren’t engaged with others in the industry. And I thought there’s got to be a way to reach these chambers and help them out, help them be successful and in turn be able to help their business community and their community in general thrive. And that’s when I had my aha moment. I thought a podcast is a way to reach these audiences that gets a free resource for people to listen to. And I can interview some of the best in the industry and share tips and strategies and best practices on what people are doing at their chambers. And then you can take an adopt in and apply whatever you need to to your own community to your own chamber and see what works. So I did that. I decided I’m going to give this at least two years. Like even if I don’t make a dime for two years. I’m going to give it I’m going to be all in and see if this has any legs. See what we can do with this. So that was beginning of 2019 is when I started chamber chat podcast. And as we know, the world changed in 2020 So I was a little over a year into doing the podcast when the world shut down. And suddenly, I had chambers that were reaching out to me saying, I see you do a chamber focus podcast. And we want to learn how to podcast we want to be able to reach our members because we can’t gather together anymore. We can’t do our luncheons, we can’t do our ribbon cuttings, we can’t do those things that we used to do on a regular basis, because the world is shut down. So I was blessed with the opportunity to help several chambers. With getting a podcast started. I had created a free resource, a chamber podcasting guide, that walk through how to get a get a podcast started and and grow an audience. And then even just more recently, I created a chamber podcast course that goes into a lot more depth shows you real live examples of how to use the software, how to do the editing, how to get your podcast up on the your podcast hosts, get it out on the different platforms, how to structure and organize your podcast, so all of the nitty gritty details about it. So I created a course for that which I was able to share with those who had downloaded the podcast guide. And that was a great way to to be able to continue to help chambers podcast. And in fact, being that we’re celebrating the 200th episode of chamber chat podcast, I want to make an offer to you if you’re interested in podcasting at your chamber. For we’ll say for two weeks, I’m going to take the price of the podcast course normally it’s $400. We’ll cut it in half. So for Episode 200, we’ll do a sale for two weeks at $200 for the podcast course. So the link will be in the show notes for this episode. But you can also go to chamber chat podcast.com/pivot. And there’ll be a link to the course there as well.

But even if you’re not quite ready to start a podcast, but you know that’s on the horizon of something you want to do, it’s a great time to get the course at a discounted rate and hang on to it until you’re ready to go through it. Anyways. So that’s that’s been another way that I’ve been able to help chambers with getting into podcasting themselves. And now, where I see myself is, I’m four years into this. And at about the two year mark. So getting through the COVID, experience the shutdowns, seeing more traction with chambers getting into podcasting. That’s when I had sponsors start to read start to reach out to me to advertise on the podcast. And I thought how amazing is that? I told myself I give myself at least two years, even if I didn’t make anything. And it was probably a month before that two year mark, I got the first check from an affiliate sponsor that I had on the podcast, which is swiping the credit card processing company. And they’re a great, great partner of the podcast and they have been from the beginning. And probably a month after that. I had somebody reach out to me I had at my community, they reached out to me and asked about being the sponsor. And when you know about two weeks later, the Holman brothers reached out to me about being a sponsor. And then soon after that I got in contact with Richard at at chamber nation. And he got started up as a sponsor and Izzy West has been a sponsor. And so it’s just continued to grow. And I meet other I guess potential sponsors are other businesses that are focused on the chamber industry at different conferences and just the tons of opportunities have opened up through through the sponsorship opportunity, in fact, when the listeners had listened to he’s been listening to the podcast for a while. And he went to the International Chamber of Commerce conference last November and was going around to all the different vendors asking if they had heard about chamber tap podcasts and how they needed to connect with me about being a sponsor. And I had some sponsors come out of that as well. So I love having good ambassadors good super fans out there, spreading the word so thank you for that. So at this point where I’m at with career wise the podcast wise with life in general. I I’m still the sales manager for community matters. So still doing chamber publishing and our can our company continues to grow we continue to get new Sales Reps continue to sign up new chambers to do their publications for them. And we can sit continue to see a strong demand for those publications. We obviously, I every now and then I have this little printing paranoia that comes about me wondering where the print industry is going to be 10 years from now. So we’re constantly trying to evolve and trying to stay in front of the game with digital products. digital offerings are our maps that we do, for chambers have a fantastic interactive map that people just love. So we’re continuing to innovate and grow that business. Obviously, I’m still doing the podcast as well. And it’s really taken off. So thank you to everybody listening. 200 episodes has been quite the journey. And when I started, I thought, yeah, probably at some point, I’ll be at 200 episodes, but here we are, we’ve made it to 200. And I imagine much more going on in the future. So recently, in personal life. So those of you who’ve been listening for a while you hear the little intros, I have my kids do a little intro before each episode. And we’ll see how long that continues, because it’s really hard to come up with little facts to share before each episode, but it’s fun to do with the kids get some involved. But I’ve got four kids right now that are ranging from almost nine. So next month, the youngest will be nine and the oldest is about to turn 17. So we’ve got quite the range there. But I’ve also, in the last few months been asked to take on a much larger role at my church. And for those of you who know I’m, I’m a I belong to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I’ve been asked to serve as a bishop at our church, which is kind of a part time job within itself on top of my regular work and the podcast and everything else. But it’s a great way to be able to serve the members of our congregation and in the community as well. And along with that as serving as a bishop, I don’t necessarily like there’s no pay involved. It’s all voluntary, but it’s kind of expected to be kind of a five year commitment is what they what they look at when they ask for, for someone to serve in that capacity. But I work with various committees, which I see being similar to board of directors to be able to get input and group consensus and the power of a group thinking so a lot of parallels there to the chamber world. But needless to say, that has taken a lot more of my time. So you know, going forward, as I put out podcast episodes, I may not get as fancy or as detailed on the social media posts, I may just try to automate a whole bunch of it, just to get it out there. But I would love it if those of you listening those of you fans super fans of the podcast, if you can help perpetuate that get it out to your chamber contacts help grow the fan base of the podcast and listenership I would greatly appreciate that. But in this role serving in the church, it gives me more opportunities where I’m speaking in front of people, I’m speaking from the pulpit up on the on the front of the sand, gives me a lot more of that experience, which is great, and correlates well into the podcast side. And as I look forward, kind of in the future of what I’m doing with the podcast and career wise and everything. I do see myself doing more speaking engagements, doing maybe some breakout sessions at conferences, and being able to maybe consult a little bit more with chambers on different topics, maybe not just podcasting, maybe I’m not just that podcasting niche, but being able to branch out in other areas too. And along those lines, I thought maybe you know, in the future, maybe I start doing like a quarterly webinar where chambers can sign up and join a webinar and we can just dive in deep on a certain topic on like a quarterly basis. I think that would be kind of fun. And yeah, I see myself starting another podcast as well. Kind of related to chamber chat podcast, but with a different spin to it. So I’ve been kicking that one around for probably a year and a half now and just trying to find the time to do it. Not that it’s getting any easier right now but I’m constantly looking for that runway to get that podcast started as well. But you know, needless to say I’ve jumped in with both feet into this chamber industry. And I love it. I love working with you guys. I love supporting you guys and bringing people onto the show, who know their stuff, who are doing fantastic things at their chamber and in their community. And I hope you’re getting a lot of value out of this podcast. I hope that as you listen, that you may be reached out to some of the guests that I’ve had on the show and ask them, how are they doing things how, you know, tell me more about what you said on this episode, and continue to broaden your network in the chamber industry. So that way, when you go to conferences, you see more people, you know, if you see me at a conference, come up and tell me, you know, come say hi, introduce yourself, I’d love to meet you. But this is great. I mean, I, I love the chamber industry. I love the impact that you all are making in your communities. And I just give you that encouragement to keep keep doing it. Keep doing that important work, because it is important, you are making a difference. And at some point, as you look back in your career, you’ll be able to see some milestones that you’ve made, you’ll be able to see students who you’ve helped develop into the workforce, you’ll see businesses and maybe industries that have been created in your tenure, serving at your chamber. So keep up that great work, continue to be innovative, look for new ways to serve, stay relevant. We talk about that a lot on the podcast. So continue to stay relevant and be innovative.

But that that kind of gets you up to speed on everything that I’ve been up to these last 200 episodes. It’s hard to say that I mean, it’s great. I just it’s hard to believe that Marty at 200 episodes. And big thank you to everybody who’s been on the show. And thank you to those in the future who will be on the show because it’s without you there wouldn’t be anything here to broadcast and to put out for listeners. So thank you all for your participation and for listening. And, you know, let’s say continue to share this good work continue to share the chamber practices and best practices you have with others in the industry. But thank you for being out there. Thank you for participating, and we’ll see you around next week.

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

When you really think about it, is it realistic to expect your membership rep to deliver consistent results without consistent coaching? Much like an elite athlete, your membership rep must be aligned and performing at their best which doesn’t happen automatically. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching programs supply the indispensable training, guidance and support your membership rep needs to keep their performance in high gear. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Looking 25 Years into the Future with Bryan Derreberry

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Bryan Derreberry. 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.

Introduction

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.

And now your host, he enjoys smoked meat from his Traeger, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

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

Jason Mock 0:45
Two years ago, we brought in Holman Brothers to help our organization go to that next level. And in those two years, our team has transformed the way that we think about sponsorships and non dues revenue. And I would really encourage you if you’re looking to take your chamber to the next level to bring on the Holman Brothers.

Brandon Burton 1:02
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Bryan Derreberry. As President and CEO of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce for 11 years, Bryan leads one of South Carolina’s largest chambers in its regional advancement work. Bryan has an established executive management track record, featuring more than 30 years in chamber leadership and advocacy roles. Prior to joining the Charleston Metro Chamber. Bryan was president and CEO of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce in Wichita, Kansas, where he directed the state’s largest Metro Chamber for seven and a half years. He also served as president and CEO of the Catawba County, North Carolina and Middleton Ohio Chambers of Commerce respectively. Bryan began his chamber career as a state lobbyist for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, of course in Ohio. He holds holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Wittenberg University and is and has completed graduate coursework towards a combined MA and PhD in American politics, and international relations from the American University. Bryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a

Bryan Derreberry 2:31
little bit better. Well, Brandon, thank you for the opportunity. You know, it’s I love when you say chamber champions, because I I think about all my colleagues across the country and the amazingly important work they do and strengthening their business communities and advancing their regions. And I think one of the interesting parts of my background is my intention, when I started my career, was to go into lobbying full time, and had that chance with the Greater Cincinnati chamber. And at that time, that was the fourth largest chamber in America and represented that business community in Columbus, Ohio, four days a week and really treasured the opportunity. And somebody said to me, do you miss your lobbying days? And I think one of the things that people can learn about chamber executives, is that I said, I lobby as much now as I did when I did it full time, right? This looks different. I said it different audiences, different opportunities. A lot of times, it could be anything from a neighborhood association, embracing a new piece of infrastructure, or a group that’s not familiar with our chamber, we launched a major DNI effort three years ago. So we’re, we’re speaking out in numerous communities in our metro area, and sharing with them about the chamber for the first time. So it’s powerful to think about how every chamber exec in the country and many of their teammates day in and day out need great lobbying skills. So those degrees and that initial experience have really served me well.

Brandon Burton 4:15
Absolutely, yes. And I firmly believe that anyone listening to this it’s involved with the chamber, they are champions for their community and and when I tried thinking of a name for the audience, you know, that that seemed to fit well, so kind of rolls off your tongue but it has great meaning to so thanks for for recognizing that and you take a moment and tell us a little bit more about the the Charleston Metro Chamber to kind of the type of chamber Scope of Work size, staff budget, that sort of thing. Just to give us some perspective before we dive into our conversation.

Bryan Derreberry 4:52
You bet. We have 1600 members. A budget that said six and a half have million 30 full time staff members. And we have four primary platforms that we deliver our work through. Number one, like every chamber, a significant membership platform. Number two, a important government relations platform. We have three full time lobbyists on our team, one up in the state house in Colombia, and then two that work locally with our three counties and 30 municipalities. I think that’s a distinctive flavor for our organization, with regard to how important it is to get alignment, in all those communities, and I’ll talk a little bit later about, we use a partner ethos to lobby versus the bloody nose ethos that seems to be typical for the rest of our United States today. And that serves us very well. We have a large community advancement platform. And within that platform, we do diversity, equity and inclusion work. We do significant professional development programming work for our members. And also we do workforce and talent development. And then our marketing and communications platform is the fourth platform with regard to making sure not only that membership, can actively get engaged in what we do, but also the 830,000 people. And 165,000 employees represented by our membership, have an appreciation for what goes on within the chamber. So a very gifted group of folks, board of directors of 68, Executive Committee of 26. So very actively involving all the sectors in our metro area, and the volunteer leadership of our chamber. And I know one thing that chamber champions understand out there is that a lot of times we have to explain to people that we are a volunteer, directed organization. And they’ll come to us and say, Oh, you need to take a position on this issue. Well, we’ll go through our committee structure, and determine whether we take a position on the issue or not, it’s not my decision, or our government relations team, or our workforce development team to make a policy decision. It’s the responsibility of our volunteers. And I think after a number of years here, people now appreciate that, and they value that. So I think that’s another dynamic of our chamber is we very much want to put our members and key leadership roles in directing the chamber, we see ourselves as a regional advancement organization. So we look at that three county metro area and we look at big Rakesh used to work on already mentioned diversity, equity, inclusion, housing, attainability, mobility solutions, overall quality of business environment. So significant work that will advance our region over the next 25 to 50 years.

Brandon Burton 8:09
Right. I love that the fact that you pointed out you know, if the issue gets presented to the chamber, you take it to your committees, your board. A while back, I had Matt Morrow from the Springfield, Missouri chamber on the podcast, and he talked a lot about the wisdom of crowds. And when especially when you have a board of that size, 68 and different committees and whatnot, as you bring a different different topics in there. They all come in from their different backgrounds and experience and be able to know what the vision is the direction the Chamber’s trying to go. And then from there, combined experience and wisdom, they’re gonna land on the best possible outcome and direction to take up on different issues and policies even so glad you pointed that out.

Bryan Derreberry 8:57
You know, Brandon, I would strongly agree with your assessment. I am. This is my 36th year in the profession and I, overall, those board meetings, executive committee meetings, government relations committee meetings, I’ve seen the wisdom of our leaders proven out time and again. And I think another thing that every chamber champion listening recognizes is that they may come up with a position that’s contrary to what I personally believe, on a policy issue, maybe even what our team believes. And at the end of the day, we step forward and implement that decision, because it is their organization. So I think if you’re young and you’re chamber champion development, it’s important to realize that and of course, we want passionate people in our profession. And we want people that are highly skilled and able to craft how an issue needs to be examined. But then you have to be responsible to the degree See that it may end up somewhere that you didn’t imagine it would go. In over all those years, I’ve never seen it a selection of an outcome or a policy position that wasn’t best for the business community. So my encouragement would be to trust, that leadership, trust working with them to find the right pathway forward for your community. And there’s an old saying, you and I both heard of Brandon, you know, if they write it, they’ll underwrite it. And they, if they develop it and fill, it’s their own, they will get up and give public testimony, they’ll provide funding for lobbying efforts. So that’s part of the beauty of this profession is that, you know, we do lead heterogeneous organizations. This is not the American Dental Association or the American Medical Association. So we’ll have everything from a sole proprietor to somebody leading Joint Base Charleston here with 26,000 employees, and all across that spectrum, people will bring input an interest, and that’ll craft a composite position, or a composite direction. That’s really powerful. Right? Takes a lot of patients.

Brandon Burton 11:16
That’s right, it does. It takes a lot of patients. So our topic for discussion today, I’m a big fan of helping people and even chambers to understand the potential the power within them to become something greater. And for our discussion today, we’re focusing on looking 25 years into the future, which I think is very important in that aspect as far as realizing what the potential is of your organization, to be able to see what direction you can go and what needs to happen. You know, those those baby steps so to speak between here and there, and we’ll dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

From frustrations trying to connect with decision makers to trouble demonstrating value to difficulties adjusting to an uncertain post COVID world who does your membership rep turn to for expert membership sales advice? Holman Brothers can help right now. They’re year round Next Level Coaching program supplies a total coaching and mentoring support system in a way that’s never been available for membership pros. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

All right, Bryan, we’re back. And as I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about looking 25 years into the future as a chamber organization looking into the future. What at the end of this conversation, I’ll ask you how you see the future of chambers going forward. But in the meantime, before we get to that future and How do you see from here moving forward over the next 25 years,

Bryan Derreberry 15:04
Brandon and we do something that we feel is particularly powerful. About mid year we’ll begin a process called annual partnership calls. So we will go to somewhere between 180 to 250 of our members. And we sit down. And we ask a couple of questions that influence what that runway looks like over the next 25 years. The first question is, talk about the next three to five years of your company, and identify where you think there are excellent opportunities for your competitive growth, and then identify things that are impediments, speed bumps, and then we just, were quiet. And I think anytime you ask somebody about their company, and how they’re doing, where they’re going, what’s working, what’s challenging, you get really good, really good input. And the other the other question that really registers with them is that if there were one to two things in our metro area that you could change for the better, what would they be? So I’d love to tell you, we come back with a lot of disparate information and no agreement, we come back with a real clear picture as to what are the most significant opportunities, and what are the most pressing challenges. And when we look at those in combination, a lot of what we described on how we’re designed as an organization is influenced by the annual partnership calls in our area housing attainability is the number one regional issue. It will be a 25 year fix. To get the proper stock, the proper pricing, we’re in a real challenge with regard to our supply versus our demand. We’re growing by 33 net people a day, and we’re just having a hard time providing workforce housing that’s affordable. So we have a huge coalition working on that all three counties, public sector partners, private sector leaders, citizens, different associations. And we know right now we’re at 6000 houses behind for attainable housing in our metro market. That’s a couple of decades. So another one is mobility solutions, we’re getting ready in 2026 to undertake high speed bus lanes. So major mass transit project 21 Miles 2020 stops along the way. And for our metro, you know, if you’re in a, we were just in Boston for Metro leadership visit, they’ve been hopping on the tee for a while now. For us, that’s an important first step, there will be other lines to follow. But removing, even if we can remove eight to 10% of the traffic from our highways, that extends their longevity, it cuts down on congestion. So those are the kinds of issues that emerge. And it’s not us sitting in some room at the Chamber, figuring out where we go the next 25 years. It’s the people that want to be the employers, the citizens, the electeds, that continue to help our region thrive, identify where we’re going. And in that mix, there are many of our elected bodies, there are stakeholder partners. So we’re getting a really great level of input that’s formulating where we go. The other thing we just completed, we did an 18 month study. It’s called one region roadmap and used SP Friedman out of Chicago, Illinois to undertake our effort. And what it does, as a lot of communities don’t know what those big rock issues are, doesn’t take very long to figure those out. But this is going to be a 10 year plan, where every year we’ll identify five to seven priorities for the region to work on collectively. And there will be we’re using a local governing network,

which my political science professors from long ago would have really liked hearing. But what that is it means there’ll be a lead agent, we’re going to be the lead agent for housing attainability will involve other stakeholders throughout the community. And then we’ll begin to work on gaining annual metric identified success and creating more attainable housing. So equitable did Dual accesses another one, entrepreneurial development is another one. But this gives us a roadmap as a region for a decade. And at the heart of the one reaching roadmap is equitable access for all of our citizens to living, learning and earning opportunities. So I think you have to have a foundational piece that engages everyone. And that’s the piece, we want everybody to be able to have those attributes as we move through the decades ahead. So listen, well build a strategic plan that has lead agents that will be responsible for the work that’s being undertaken. And they get after it year in and year out, we have a large steering committee that will evaluate each of the lead agents on an annual basis to make sure they’re performing. So you know, it’s the classic thing brand. And if you if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and we’re just really dedicated to that kind of work. And I would encourage chamber champions across the country that are listening, there’s a couple of key learnings in there. Number one, you want to bring as many people along as possible. So get out and talk to your members, talk to your elected officials, talk to the people that you’re going to need to do this with. We never say the chamber is going to do this work. We say along with our partners, we’re gonna tackle these annual priorities. The other thing is to make them concrete. That’s hard for a lot of communities. I’ve been in other communities that love to study and talk. But when you say annually, we’re going to achieve x, y, we’re gonna accomplish why. And then you report on it, then you have credibility, then it’s not a study that goes and sits on the shelf and collect stuff. So listen, well, engage others be concrete, and produce results. So we’re, we’re excited about one region roadmap, we kick it off in October. So when you and I talk this time next year, yeah, I’ll be able to, I’ll be able to tell you more about getting divorced in one region roadmap.

Brandon Burton 22:18
Yeah. So I know leading up to this discussion, you had shared with me, some of these topics that you guys are looking on. Maybe areas of focus, as you look to the future of Charleston, and and you talked about some of these, like the attainable housing and the you know, the infrastructure and mobility and things like that, as you have these different. We’ll call them topics areas of focus. How do you go about focusing on each one? I assume there’s some sort of a committee for each area of focus? Is that right? Have you said it’s one thing to create division, and we need to expand and put some focus and, and work over in these areas? But then how do you go from that, that vision to actually rolling it out to? Let’s take some action on these different steps? What does that look like there in Charleston?

Bryan Derreberry 23:12
You know, it’s interesting, and I think inherent in your in your question is a couple of things for chamber champions number one, regardless of the size of your chamber, and I have a deep passion for chambers that have staff under the number of 10. I think they work harder than any other chamber in the country, you’re going to need to hire some experts. We’ve been very intentional over the past 11 years, that we add people to our team that have significant expertise. So while they won’t do it on their own, they have a career track record in the areas whether it’s workforce development, government relations, diversity, equity and inclusion, attainable housing. They’re an expert. Because I think that you’ll be pleased as a chamber when you make that investment. And when you’re smaller, and maybe one or two major issues. So we’ve been very intentional about in that group of 30. Hiring people that have that level of expertise. The other thing that we’ve done is built a very strong committee structure. So however, those issues are moving through our organization, there are one or two or more committees that will be touching them. And we’ll be following through on what we commit to do organizationally to achieve results. The final thing is a talk a little bit about that local governing network and if anybody would like information on that we’re happy to share. You have to engage the whole region. So you look at something like the high speed bus lanes. Our Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments is working with all the governments along that set of high speed bus lane routes. We’re working through our regional policy committee, which handles all of our local regional work. But there also is going to be a lead agent in that area that will pull together, how many ever stakeholders are required to implement. So a lot of it’s leveraging what I call critical mass. So you got some key folks at the top that have expertise, and then they’re bringing partners together to, in this instance, transportation, overlays for development on those 20 bus stops. So you know, there’s some sophistication that’s required when you do that kind of work. So, you know, my encouragement would get experts on your team, make sure the region understands the top issues, bring stakeholders together, that can move the issue. And then, again, metrics that make sure over 510 1520 years, you’re making progress, because in that timeframe, Brandon, you and I both know, you’re gonna have different mayors, you’re going to have different city councils, you’re going to have different county councils, you’re going to have a different state legislative delegation. So you have to be you chamber, and top stakeholders that are in it for the long run, you have to keep the plumb line very clear, and keep coming back to the issues. Because a lot of times public and private sector partners can get easily distracted. So that’s the other thing is that we look at all of our work as forever work. Okay, you’re forever doing housing affordability, you’re forever improving infrastructure. You’re forever maintaining your business climate. For us as a coastal community, you’re forever looking at resiliency. So part of that is developing a drumbeat internally to be in it for the long game. Yeah, every year, as you said, you want to have annual achievements. But you have to have those long game goals, talented team, great partners, focus and metrics to be able to move to we call them big rock issues. Because they don’t go away. You know, somebody said, you know, we have funding, we have something called Accelerate greater Charleston that funds. A lot of the professional staff that the technical professional staff is somebody said, Well, when are we going to stop doing accelerate greater Charleston? And we just smile, and we say never,

Brandon Burton 27:50
whenever you give up, you know, like,

Bryan Derreberry 27:53
you want to quit? Yeah, you know, and last one out, cut off the lights. And what I think what helps private sector companies, especially if they’re developing products, have said, you have an r&d arm, don’t you? And they Oh, yeah, we have research and development. Well, for chambers, your research and development is positioning the region for the future and putting the building blocks in place. I said, if your r&d went away, you’d be selling the same product over and over, you’re always looking to improve. And that begins to help people wrap their brains around. Okay, this is forever work. This is a long game. And the other beauty I just shared earlier, we went to Boston with 100 leaders, is get your leaders out to other metro markets that have like opportunities and challenges. So they can see the kind of work they’ve done. And then we come home and people say, hey, we saw how they did that in Boston, we can do that. Or they come home and say, wow, they had a big miss, we can really learn from that. So when we tackle a like issue, we don’t make the same mistakes. The other beauty of that trip is that you think all the leaders in your community know each other and kind of have a comparable set of aspirations. They don’t know. So when you get 100 people together that are having lunch and dinner and some staying up till college late hours, getting to know each other better. They come home aligned. You know, a lot of this is about not only what you’re tackling, but its alignment, and persistence. So that annual trip kind of says, Okay, we’ve gotten to x with high speed bus lanes. So we’re gonna go look at somebody that’s either built them all the way out, or maybe they have light rail. So again, it’s I call it staying 20% dissatisfied. Yeah, never, never 100% satisfied. that you have to continually prod the region to achieve at a higher level. Part of the challenge to Brandon is that, you know, I’ve been in places that are BB plus communities, it’s hard to get a BB plus to an A, it’s really easier to take a C or a D and pop it up to an A, because people feel the threat. They feel the need for collaboration and alignment. You know, when you’re a B plus, you’re kind of fat and happy. Right? Do we really need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:33
you’re too comfortable? Any adjustments? Yeah.

Bryan Derreberry 30:37
And that’s when we say there are 396 other mshs in this nation, that one our employers and they want our talent. So yes, we need to be in a

Brandon Burton 30:45
Yeah, that’s I love that point. And that being the 20% just satisfied it. Yes. Always, always looking for that room to improve. I love that. salutely. So and I’m sure this answer will vary. But as there are different committees and whatnot on these different topics. You had mentioned doing these leadership visits to other cities, which I think is awesome. It’s a great way to look at a certain topic and how a city that you may aspire to be like and in certain aspects that I see great value in that. As far as the nitty gritty, the day to day. How often do some of these committees meet as a monthly? Is it weekly? Is it quarterly? Are they all different? Depending on what it is? How do you? How do you say that in your community?

Bryan Derreberry 31:32
There, at least monthly, if not twice a month. And we’re big believers, our board this year will have had 10 board meetings and 10 executive committee meetings. You know, I hear people say, Oh, we you know, chamber champions. I apologize if I’m stepping on toes. Oh, we do a quarterly. Okay, these kinds of issues. If you do a quarterly and somebody misses a quarterly meeting, they miss half a year. Yeah. Okay. We call that creating a drumbeat. Whether it’s committees that are working on policy, or programs or initiatives, or executive committee and board. If you lose the drumbeat within your organization on key issues, you’re not going to be able to move fast enough to make a difference. Well, they’re all busy people. And I’m gonna give you a great example. Brandon, we tried to go to every other month when I was in Wichita, and the board rebelled. That’s a cool message. Yeah, one I’m meet monthly. So I think sometimes, yeah, it’s a lot of work. We have an amazing executive ops team. And it’s a lot of work to do 20 meetings a year with, you know, large lead volunteer bodies. And it’s the work we signed up for.

Brandon Burton 32:58
Absolutely. And it’s that forever work as it’s that forever work.

Bryan Derreberry 33:03
And, you know, the the thing we talk about is, and I just met with our exec ops team yesterday, and they’re incredible. And we said, our goal is to create an experience for every volunteer that has never been met or matched in our metro area, from knowing about their family, their names, their interest, and taking care of them. So when it comes time for one of them to be an officer, or to lead a committee or to get more of their people engaged Hekia I’m going to deal with the Charleston Metro Chamber. And so that that kind of intentional focus. And that’s why we sold out that trip to Boston in record time. And we don’t want to take 200 people, you know, we’re kind of like 100 Yeah, you know, if you get over 100, you start to have a three ring circus, and they don’t bond the same way. Yeah. But that that internal clock for us? It’s kind of like a metronome. How are we honoring them and engaging them. So they think I’ve never had a volunteer experience like this. Because let’s face it, we are battling for their time, talent and treasure, there are 4600 non enough for profits, and just the greater Charleston area. You know, as your communities get bigger, that’s probably 15,000 20,000 25,000. So it’s pretty rarefied air to get top leaders. The other thing we do a little bit different because we are really committed to the ENI is that we don’t have to have the the gal or the guy in the corner office. A lot of organizations just say, Oh, I only want the CEO or the president. Right. Well, we’ll say is give me number three, or number four, that will be that CEO and president in 10 to 15 years Yeah, so we can have the level of gender ethnic, racial diversity on our board that reflects our community. It also makes us a lot more healthy from an organizational standpoint,

Brandon Burton 35:13
and possibly more time to give to the purpose and the cause that you’re working on to always go for the number one, they’re going to be some of the busiest people. Not that the number three or four is not busy, but they’re able to work it in a little bit more and build that future along with you. So you’ve hit on some really awesome points in our discussion here. If you were to try to condense down to maybe a tip or an action item for chamber champions listening that want to take their chamber up to the next level, what would you put out there and suggest for them to consider

Bryan Derreberry 35:53
my greatest tip would be pick one to three things in become an expert. And that that’s going to weave right back into what we’ve been talking about Brandon, you’ve got to be committed to do it long term. So let’s say you pick developing a pipeline from your high schools and middle schools for your top two or three business sectors just know front side that that’s going to be 15 to 25 years. Think what we learned during the pandemic, because it was probably a sharing experience for every chamber and business member Association in our nation is that it was the meaningful work that maintained our most significant investors. It wasn’t the business after hours, it wasn’t the networking events. It was they could look at the chamber. And the chamber in our metro area got together with the council of governments and other stakeholders. And we created a whole reopening strategy for our metro marketplace. We met every day at four o’clock, Monday through Thursday for almost six months to get the region opened again. I felt like I had a whole new family. And sometimes it got irritating. But I wouldn’t have traded that we build bonds between organizations and governments that we never had before. So that would be my tip be be substantive, be relevant. And we use a term I think it’s the you know, if you were to ask me the the Chamber’s magic power, our secret sauce, we use a term called seine center, sa N E. Your chamber, chamber champions can be the same center on these issues, you can bring parties together. And whether it’s workforce development, whether it’s diversity, equity, inclusion, whether it’s housing attainability, whether it’s infrastructure solutions, whether it’s recruitment and retention of either businesses or employees, you can be the organization that brings all the parties together, that need to be aligned to do the work. That to me is what a chamber really is. Our mission statement is initiate advocate and empower the region to produce a prosperous business environment. And it’s a little different than a lot of chambers. Because they flip business environment in a region, we know that our region has to have the ingredients that are aligned to make employers, employees and citizens successful. So look at the region as your laboratory, look at your county as your laboratory. If you’re a City Chamber, look at your city as a laboratory, and find those one to three things that really need to be worked on. That would be my greatest encouragement. And and when you do it, you’re gonna get real popular real fast. So you’re gonna have to learn how to say no, yeah. That’s right, because let’s say this camera does such a good job on developing those middle and high school talent pipelines for industry. We wanted to do this now. We wanted to do that. So I think the other thing is to when you do those annual partnership calls, as I mentioned to you, we didn’t come back with 50 Things came back with probably five to seven things that every employer is focused on. So you know, stick to those critical realities, and and go deep and do a great job. And then when it comes renewal time and recruitment time, somebody will say, Oh, yeah, that chamber. They really have the best interest of the business. Unity in our region in mind, they’re worth investing in. So that would be my do stuff that matters and do it. Well.

Brandon Burton 40:09
I love that. So the question that I mentioned at the very beginning that that we would circle back to towards the end is how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Bryan Derreberry 40:21
I’m bullish, I think about what’s occurred over the window is what we’re in pandemic endemic, the past two, three quarters of a year, and I know for our chamber just to bring it home to right here, we look totally different than when we entered. We have a set of members, a set of stakeholders, a set of raving fans in the community, because of how we opened up our organization, for allowing us to assist anybody that needed help. And that that runs a little counter to the the typical Oh, we only help members. Well, when when your community is facing what we’ve all faced. During the pandemic, you help everybody you can help. And you make again, choices. So we look very different today, we look more open to diverse partners, diverse audiences. And we’re working on stuff a lot of chambers, you know, 20 years ago, maybe if you were in a major metro community, you were doing DNI, but I think chambers are going to be leaders for their regions, excuse me. And the years ahead, unlike any other time, I think that the credibility of the chamber when they tackle those issues, even if they’re not successful, and they’re going to be successful in the vast majority of instances. I think there’s a caring tone and tenor and a level of respect by leaders saying, Yeah, we need a rallying point. And I think I think it’s changed. And if your your chambers worth its salt, it’ll step into that opportunity and, and really make a big difference. SOT I’m very excited for the future. However, I do believe one of the things we continually learn is that it can’t, it can’t be all about the fun stuff. Right. And I mean, there are, somebody said to me, how many organizations in your community do networking events, somewhat goods? Probably all 46 months? not for profits? Yeah. So yes, do we have strong programming? We do. We do. But we’re probably one of the communities leaders for providing professional development programming. We have the six different leadership types of offerings. So we know right now, as you well know, in your market, Brandon, attracting and retaining talent is the number one business issue. So again, always making sure your chamber is plugged into what’s relevant, and then providing it with the highest level of expertise you can undertake. And if you’re small, don’t let that slow you down. You’ve got people in your membership. You’ve got volunteers and members that can come alongside of you, and build out the type of programming that you need. That’s one of the powers of small communities is that they can really rally that type of asset set and make it work. So I’m excited. I’m, you know, I think that chambers have always been amazingly relevant. We celebrate a little birthday next year. Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna be 250 years old. Wow. That we’re the we’re the oldest continuing operating chamber in America. So founded three years before our nation became a country. I’d say we’re in it for the long game.

Brandon Burton 44:13
Yeah, doing that forever work. I love it. So I’d love for you to be able to share some, any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn sure but as you’re doing there in Charleston,

Bryan Derreberry 44:27
it’s it’s a really easy, bderreberry@charlestonchamber.org.

Brandon Burton 44:43
That is perfect. And I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode, too. So if somebody always,

Bryan Derreberry 44:48
always happy to talk this profession, and you know, I think your question Brandon on the future is that many chambers are at an inflection point. Mm. But there were ways that they used to do things and things that used to matter. And the inflection point is some of those still have value. The greater value though is marshaling the the leaders and assets of your community and aligning them and doing significant work. So we’re at that neat juncture, so many chambers have already crossed over. And if anybody wants to talk about the both the rewards and the pitfalls, because it’s hard when you enter into a new area of work. And also there are ways to enter in that you can have some immediate victories and set yourself up for long term success.

Brandon Burton 45:47
Yeah, I think that’s important to be able to have that encouragement going along that, that you are going in the right direction. So I love that. Bryan, I appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast, providing, you know, great vision and insight for chamber champions listening. I’m sure everyone got a lot of value out of this. But thank you for being a part of the program today. I appreciate it.

Bryan Derreberry 46:13
Well, I love you championing our industry. I believe so greatly in the work that I see peer organizations and colleagues do across the country and America is great because of great chambers. So thank you for being an advocate.

Brandon Burton 44:58
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Chambernomics with Don McCoy

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Don McCoy. 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.

Introduction

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.

Now, your host he would like to hear what your biggest obstacles are. Right now are your chamber. He’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello, chamber champions. Welcome to the chamber chat podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Diann Rogers 0:47
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:01
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Chamber leaders know firsthand how unexpected disturbances in the business environment have become the norm. Even the most experienced membership reps need to continually evolve to overcome these disruptions and create new opportunities. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round sales coaching and mentoring your membership rep needs to navigate change and continue driving revenue for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Don McCoy. Don is the current president of the Fulshear Katie Area Chamber of Commerce in Texas and he has been since its inception in late 2013. Don has played a vital role in growing this local chamber from only a handful of businesses to becoming one of the fastest growing chambers in Texas with over 600 business members. Don is a seasoned marketing professional who brings over 40 years of experience to the table. He is an idea guy who excels at marketing, project management promotions, public relations and event planning. He has the proven ability to mastermind and lead creative teams energized clients and the ability to achieve objectives in an effective manner. In addition, Don is and has been an accomplished actor, director, producer, spokesperson, Master of Ceremonies and motivational speaker. He’s appeared in directed and produced several movie and television programs. He can be heard saying I’m really famous, but nobody knows it. Dan is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University with a major in management, marketing and a minor in Spanish. He speaks Spanish fluently and he’s lived and grew up in Venezuela, Mexico, Scotland, England and Iran. He’s also travelled extensively throughout and around the world. He currently lives in Cinco Ranch Katie, with his three legged Husky Wyatt. Don, I’m excited to have you with me on chamber chat podcast today, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something else interesting about yourself. That’s a great bio.

Don McCoy 3:24
Well, thank you very much, Brandon, it’s a real pleasure to be here. And i i Hello chamber champions out there, I hope today we can give you some nuggets of knowledge that might help you in any way, shape or form. I think you kind of hit all the highlights there i i guess probably some of the things in my background, everything you’ve ever done. And I will tell you this, regardless of where you came from, when you used to say you were an actor, it used to be a really what restaurant you work at, because it’s not necessarily a full time job. But you have seen me you just don’t realize maybe you have but meaning a lot of celebrities direct your lifetime and being in that type of business and even waiting tables. You know, sometimes you’re wondering why why am I doing this or, well, God has that plan. And, and I have found that everything I’ve experienced in my life up to this point, has led me to this job as a chamber, CEO and president. I use all those skills somehow, some way, whether I’m in front of people, I mean, I used to be the king of medieval times performing in front of 1000s of people nightly, and you get used to crowds and and as a chamber. Executive, you need to be able to have that way to ad lib skills to communicate with large, large groups of people or this the ideal person. And sometimes our job Brandon requires a little bit of acting skills, you know, you got to look interested you got to pretend you’re interested in what you’re hearing. and you know all the myriad of questions us chambers get all the time. And it’s important to that person they are they wouldn’t be asking but to yourself behind the scenes you made one. What do you call me about a category or tree for? Yeah, no, yeah. But I always say look at students use it over acting. And always provide a solution, whether I can get the cat out of your tree is inconsequential. But if I can get someone to call or someone that will definitely help you that you can mention my name, and it gets you through the gatekeeper a little bit, then you become a real key person, which we’ll talk about later have influence in your

Brandon Burton 5:38
community. Yeah, like that. I like that response. Before we get into our topic, tell us a little bit about the Fulshear. Katie area Chamber just to give some perspective where you’re coming from, you’d mentioned about 600 members in the bio, but tell us about the staff budget type of work you’re involved with and things like that.

Don McCoy 5:57
Right? Well, right off the bat. It’s, I’m glad my team is in here to hear you say staff, we don’t use the word staff we use. We’re all one team. But it was in late 2013, that this community had a number of businesses, but they felt they weren’t being representative. So representatives. So they wanted to start a chamber rather than being a business division of another chamber. And so I just happened to be at the right place the right time back visiting here at home and my brother had moved out here to Fulcher and Fulshear. Katie, it a lot of people will say we’re out. We’re west of Houston. But I like to tell everybody, Houston is east of us. And they’ll make themselves to start right. That’s right. And, and we weren’t just the Fulshear chamber, but Katie’s and other town, and we have just grown exponentially. This area is a very high growth area. And maybe that’s why our phone is starting to read even more and more. But there it is high net worth high growth. Look it up. It’s crazy. I mean, our town is, I think the second safest town in Texas, I have to do the shout out my brother happens to be the police department Captain here. So

Brandon Burton 7:09
he’s doing his job, then.

Don McCoy 7:11
Yeah. So we started out with just a handful of businesses. And then you know, we kind of picked the low of the low hanging fruit and me not knowing really, I knew what chambers did. But I wanted to make something that was truly different. That was tangible, that was a benefit to the members, and really bring something to the table. And so we did that, and we’ll talk about that a bit. But it started growing and going and it Swilly on personality, there was no cliques, people sit, this is sort of different, I go to the meetings, I feel different. Everyone is welcoming. And I’ve put in a thing called BFF. You know, the best friends forever, we had a we call it a B Fulshear. Friendly. And we kind of stole that a little bit. And then we say, you know by Fulcher and it just started to take off and people gravitated to it and nothing helps you better than word of mouth. And now we’re at 630. Members. And you know, I’m just was naive at the time, even up to this point and going, Okay, we want to reach a it’s not the amount of numbers, it’s the quality of members you have. And, you know, I understand the 630 is a large chamber. Okay, I mean, now that I’ve gone through IOM and everything, I get it, but in the beginning, I don’t know, I’m just trying to help people. And our budget runs anywhere about about 400k a year. So we’re still the least expensive chamber in the area when it comes to your dues. We are on the not tear does. We’re just you got one level, second level third level. Yeah. And, you know, at 325 a year to be to I tell people, we’re never cheap. I hate that word. But I tell folks, we’re the least expensive marketing dollar you could ever spend. And you’re in anything that you do to get your business noticed, noticed and recognized. Because you’d go out and spend money, companies on advertising and things like that. You’ve got to educate what a chamber really brings to the table. Besides being the representative at the table of government, we also offer a lot of tools to really help your business get a foothold and an inflationary times during COVID We were met with all those same challenges, and we continue to grow. So I think that’s a real testament to really focusing on what the needs of your members truly are rather than what yours are internally. He’s right

Brandon Burton 9:49
yeah, so I can tell you’re a marketing guy, you know, just the way you rephrase cheap to be in the least expensive marketing spend. Yeah, yeah. And it’s uh, yeah, There’s a lot of value in that. So that’s a, that’s great. But here’s

Don McCoy 10:03
what’s crazy, you know, Brandon, we we’ve started out with just me. And then I hired another person. And then we had a third person now just had a third person, retire the God bless her and she doesn’t have to. So now it’s back to two of us. And I never thought I mean, we’re finding how to be more efficient and reliant on the technologies that are available to us to manage a 600 plus chamber with two people, it becomes a bit of a challenge, but we’re doing it so don’t negate what the technology can help you.

Brandon Burton 10:36
Yeah. Now I can imagine and I like your introduction to the chamber world, you kind of had blinders on, you know, I don’t care so much what others are doing. I just want to go help people and I do it the best way I know how and it’s really taken off and served served you and your members very well. So that’s. So for our topic of discussion today, we settled on the topic of chamber nomics. So we’ll we’ll dive into what that means and everything as soon as we get back from our quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Oftentimes Chamber Nation’s customers agree that since Amazon is all centralized then why not their own community including their professional service providers. 

Since Chamber Nation includes a full-service membership services department to handle all of the new member onboarding and ongoing support at no extra cost to the Members, this is now possible. 

Once the program is all set up, each member going forward will receive monthly membership ROI reports. The entire community will also have access to community-wide economic development reports that are terrific for supporting grant opportunities too. 

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Don, we’re back. So chambernomics. Tell us okay, what is chambernomics mean to you as you, as you look at that word, it looks like a word that that’s been made up. So what does that mean to you? It looks like a blend of economics. So I

Topic-Chambernomics

Don McCoy 14:13
gotta give a shout. Rachel, who’s our VP of membership? She’s the one that we were just talking about, you know, training and Euro chamber 101. And a lot of chambers have, you know, when you join the chamber, here’s what you learn how about chamber and what it can do for you. And she came up with this chamber nomics. And I said, that’s, that’s beautiful. And so immediately, I went right to Google, I mean, the GoDaddy and I, it’s available, I bought it. So we own chambernomics.com. And, and then we coordinated that with our back office, software provider, chamber nation. And I now represent chamber nomics. And what that means to us is dedicated to we explore all kinds of issues and ideas relating to your Business, the economy, the community, it’s all written right there at the top. And I’m reading off of it. And, you know, it’s sort of I’m an idea guy, and it’s just an Idea Factory on how to what other things can I bring? Or can we make that or make our businesses really want to be in the chamber? And as we say, in chamber world, you know, those golden handcuffs? You’ve heard that before? Those are the things that if I leave, if I leave the chamber, I lose this. And then so it’s a real retention tool. Now we use chamber that is on a nationwide basis, the Chamber nomics is teaching them how we can you help their business get better. And there’s a lot of links in there that you can go look at and things like that, and chamber nadex.com. Now locally, I use chamber nomics as a as the name of our training. And so we do a chamber nomics class, the first and last Tuesday of every month at a different restaurant, and we eat first, and they happen to have a private room. And then we have video, and I get on, and I show everyone, hey, here’s how you upload your flyer for your upcoming event. Here’s your press release. And when you submit your press release, it goes out to all of our media contacts through our software. We just teach them all the different advertising tools and how to upload your video because sometimes, people learn in different ways. And people learn learn one on one, they also learn by watching a video of something on how it’s done, which a lot of people do and then people learn in a classroom setting. So the chamber nomics locally is our classroom setting. And, but our goal is to teach all of our members what our system does. Now, it’s really some people get a little scared of technology. And it’s not hard. And I say just kind of dive into it, bite it off a piece at a time. But if you do absolutely nothing with our back office system, we’re still creating tremendous search engine optimization for you and you’re getting ranked higher brand that go up. But if you stopped doing, you’re ready, but I’d say I had one number that came in the other day, it was called the Delaney. It’s an assisted living facility that’s in our chamber. And they had forgotten to change the management, but they had to say marketing person, and their traffic capture page that we make for them. It’s called a marketing landing page. In addition to their website, it complements it fell off, it went away. Well, she did a audit on her presence on social media. And they had dropped to the third page on Google without all the ads. And she said, what happened? And they said, Well, you used to have this traffic capture page that was doing a lot of work for you. And since it went away, you fell. Immediately, they popped back on and now they’re back on the first page on searches for assisted living in our area. So it just shows you there’s real power in a lot of online presence and digital presence and

Brandon Burton 18:00
talk to us more about the traffic capture page. So that’s built in with within this chamber nomics program or chamber nomics is really just telling them what all you have to offer kind of a platform of doing that,

Don McCoy 18:12
right. Yeah, chamber nomics is really telling them all we have to offer, but the traffic capture page is really a, you know, a, it’s a system that takes in, you know, you can go to a website and of any business and you get kind of lost because there’s a lot of information there and you don’t know quite where to go, okay. But the traffic capture page is something that is simple, easy, very quick. And if you want to go to their website, from there, you can get links to it. But it is search engine optimized, you can control what kind of photographs you put in there, you can put your catalog page in there, we offer a commission free checkout system, I’ll show you even our chamber, we even have a mobile app that’s very interesting that if you go scan a QR code, this kind of is our chamber. But this everybody gets one of these

Brandon Burton 19:08
I know it’s a little thin, every member gets their own app for their own app, their home address.

Don McCoy 19:13
And all of this takes you to your to your website about you, they can call you from here, they can message you from here, they can even share their business card, I can click this right here and let you scan that QR code and my information will drop into your phone. Nice. These are small, small little tools that are that are so available that you can do on your own or through our back office system. I got to sing their praises. But what happens with our system when you join our chamber, it takes us 10 days to put together your your your marketing system. And we build about 12 pages of stuff about your business. And we take it all off of your website and what we know about you and what you filled out in your app. application, and then you can go in and refine it. But if you don’t do anything, you’re still getting the benefit. So

Brandon Burton 20:07
cool. So what about it’s not as common these days, but every now and then I’ll come across a business that doesn’t have a website yet? Is there still a way of building out those pages to give those members a digital footprint?

Don McCoy 20:19
You know, thank you. Yes, absolutely. Because you would fill out the pertinent information, our team will go get photographs of that we’ve already paid for their, you know, their their commitment, or they

Brandon Burton 20:32
call the stock images.

Don McCoy 20:34
And we own some of the stock images, but we, we examine your business, and we build your traffic capture page. And what’s really cool, is, if you have a URL about your business, but you don’t have a website, you can have that URL point to the traffic capture page. Okay. And then a lot, a lot of our members just use that as their as their website, because it works.

Brandon Burton 21:00
Right. That’s great. So, you know, I think I think initially, maybe when, when Google and the stronger search engines started to roll out, I’m sure there’s some chambers out there that maybe felt a little bit threatened that people could just go to Google and find answers they’re looking for. And rather than seeing that as competition to the value proposition, you have you actually you guys are leaning into it, and saying, let’s provide a lot more information. So doing a lot of the legwork for your members, so they can show up better on search engines, and were like a bigger bang for their buck.

Don McCoy 21:36
It’s even during the pandemic talk about coming up with ideas. You know, we couldn’t go to trade shows for a while. I mean, there was none existing. So what did we do, we went and created a virtual tradeshow booth, which we still have an existence now. And you can it looks just like a table, you have a video insert in the bottom that people can watch, you can go and click here to schedule a calendar meeting or get on their zoom call. And you know, and a lot of our business say, Hey, if you’re interested to learn more about us and want to meet later, just go to my virtual tradeshow booth and, and fill out the information and watch what we do. And then we’ll get in touch with you that way. So it’s always sitting there working for you as a, as a tourist center of your business basically, right? That is awesome. And video and video is now the way to go to I mean, coming from a film and TV background. I mean, nowadays, video is so simple to put up. And then we make it even simpler in our back office, all you got to do is click here, your camera on your on your computer, and you can talk about your business. And that is and then throw into that those key words. And I will tell you just a hint. Any pictures you’re starting to put up right now, any videos, you always see that alt text at the bottom of that, you got to start filling that out. Because just a word of warning that there’s a lot of lawyers out there going after websites and things that if you’re not ADA compliant on your social media or on your website, meaning Language Hearing and alt text for your pictures, you can be sued. And that’s crazy. And so we offer that as well. We have a buttons all over our website where you can we can translate everything we do even on our mobile app, we can translate it to any language in the entire country and let you listen to it in that language.

Brandon Burton 23:33
Wow, that is impressive.

Don McCoy 23:36
It’s pretty cool. It really is

Brandon Burton 23:37
sent you mentioned earlier something about having the importance of having a strong digital footprint.

Don McCoy 23:43
Yeah, yeah, it sounds this. This is something that is really cool. And you guys can look it up anywhere. There’s a lot of companies out there that do what is called key person of influence. And this is something I’ve really latched on to here at our chamber. And what our goal is, is to make every member in our chamber a key person of influence in their industry, and have a true Omni presence on digital, Omni presence. And what this is, every industry has an inner circle, every industry has one, you know even the chamber world brand and has an inner circle. And and these are people of influence. These are people you look to and they whatever they say I mean, I don’t know if anybody knows Pat McCoy out of Idaho, but I fell in love with him at my first IOM a year. And I still stay in touch with him and I treat him as he owns chamber mentor.com Great Guy gotta follow his blog. And, you know, he influenced me, to me, he’s a key person. But what we’re going to start doing is we’re going to have a rather than a leadership type course, we are instituting how to become a key person of influence. And this is something we’re doing here in the Houston area and we hope to expand nationwide with you A couple of folks that I’ve gotten in tune with, but our first one is in November, and we’ve partnered up with the United States, Mexico Chamber of Commerce, us. If anybody wants to check it out and get more deep into it, we’re at kp O, I got VIP. And that means key person of influence that VIP keep KP Oli, and it’ll explain everything there. But you know, we’re always in a state and someone wants said the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement, you know. And so the other thing if you don’t, and this is about a $4,500 course, and it’s going to we’re going to do this, what this will do for you is it will, it’ll read people will regard you after this course, they’re going to regard you as a high value individual, I want to meet that person, I need that person to come talk to my business or whatever your business is, you could become the expert in ice cream, if you have an ice cream store, because when they go search ice cream, you’re everywhere. You’re Who is this guy, and then you’ll get VIP treatment anywhere in the world. I kid you not, my friend has his website called speaking Dubai. And he goes to Dubai all the time he gets invited, he’s going to curse out. And he’s the one that’s helping us put this together. And then you get opportunities out the wazoo presented to you all the time,

Brandon Burton 26:22
you get asked to come on podcasts and stuff like that.

Don McCoy 26:25
Exactly. Yeah, you’re right. And you know what this for me is a another digital asset that’ll be out there. And we even have a questions on our website that you know, am I getting what I what I’m worth? Am I getting paid for whatever you take this, I took this question or take me 10 minutes to do it. And I scored a zero. I thought I was pretty good. You know, hey, I’m in the movies. You can find me on IMDb, but But it’s pretty eye awakening. So we do pre event coaching and all this. And if you’re interested in more about it, I’d be happy to hook you up. But it’s, this is the way to go. And even on our website at Fulshear katie.com. I invite anybody to take a look at grow and protect and when you go to grow and protect, that’s an app that we now have. It cost our members a whopping $1 for an entire year to have access to over 250 lessons and courses that will help you be a better business person. I’m talking how to how to make your LinkedIn and world class. I mean really how to do it. And these are all like 15 minute lessons with a video attached to it. There you go. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 27:43
that’s right. Okay, got Frank’s card. He’s on my radar to be yes. So he’ll be on to talk more about grown protect.

Don McCoy 27:50
And I’ll leave it I’ll leave it there. But I’d say Frank is also part of our KPI KPI. He’s part of the key person of influence. And Frank before and he’s 77 years old, and doing what he did on cybersecurity. And this man is such a key person of influence in cybersecurity, he gets they call him out of Dubai say, would you come over and talk to our company, they fly into Dubai, he spends a week there and gets paid for it.

Brandon Burton 28:21
So so this is interesting. So there’s the aspect of helping your members become key people of influence. But how about for chamber executive? How about for somebody establishing their career in the chamber world? How? How should they go about being a key person of influence?

Don McCoy 28:40
I will tell you this is probably one of the most important things because in your in your, in your world, or your community. You need to be that person that everybody looks to for ideas and solutions. I mean, the mayor, the residents, I mean, you really can’t you should not be able to go to any restaurant without talking to somebody, I made a comment. I went to a gala last night. And it was for a local charity. And I went to go get a couple of drinks at the bar down there at the other end of the of the room. And I was bringing a friend back one. And by the time I got back the ice had almost melted. He says Where have you been? I said it took me 20 minutes to walk from the bar all the way across the room because I kept getting stopped by a number of people. But that’s awesome. You can work that. And so if you become even starting out if you’re going to IOM or if you’re going to be ACCE conference or the Texas chamber or any of these executive conferences, make sure you get pictures of yourself talking to the keynote speakers and and create a file on your desktop that has you just drop pictures in there. And then anytime you want to put those up on the internet or put them up on your Facebook and things like that Google loves that new information. So it is thing. And so you put your name with it and attach it to that event, tag yourself. And then you start to become the key person of influence. It’s not that hard, but you’d be surprised you as an executive are in the presence of greatness on a regular basis, whether it be with your look, your governor, your mayors, your representatives, you know, any number of people, even local business people that are well respected in your community. Go out, take them to lunch, get a picture with them, you know, everybody, let’s do a selfie. Okay. I mean, that’s what makes you look at this guy. Look, Brandon is probably got 1000 You probably got 1000 pictures of yourself with notables? Right. Yeah, lots

Brandon Burton 30:41
of them. Yeah.

Don McCoy 30:42
I mean, when I was in the film business, I always got a picture with me and Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson, me and Patrick Swayze. And that and you know, so when I go on auditions, you know, and Oliver Stone sees all the my resume and these pictures before the digital world, but it was actually in my in my portfolio. It was, Wow, you’ve been around, you know, a lot of people that I know. And so there’s a certain sense of confidence and people, it’s what we call pre suasion. If you’ve used that coin, I love the coin these words, and pre suasion as a way that before anyone needs you. They’re already persuaded to liking it, say, and to me, that that, that is half the battle because people judge you within about the first one minute of meeting you face to face. I met Brandon at what we run into each other, but we never really actually met till tccc. Yeah, yeah, and Rocco. And you know, and it’s busy, and we’re all doing our thing. But we connected we finally connected now, I think he’s a great guy, or I wouldn’t be here. Hopefully he likes me too. All right.

Brandon Burton 31:51
That’s right. But

Don McCoy 31:53
he knew about me already, somehow, some way I kind of already knew about him. So I was already pre slated to be interested in Brandon and the Chamber chat. And I asked, How can I get involved and help out. So that’s how this comes, comes to play. And then if you can teach yourself, your team that you work with, and let them they’ll be key people of influence, give them the power to make decisions on your behalf. Nothing can be even if they make a mistake you learn from and grow from it. But give your team that power to do it. And they’ll come in and say and be excited, guess what I did today? And you go, man, that’s fantastic. Oh, no, we got to correct that. But it’s okay. You know, it doesn’t hurt. So executives, start, start looking at this grow and protect, start learning how to be tell your story, tell your chamber story, tell your own story. Because a good friend of mine, Jack working at one day, you’ll get to meet him. He’s a fantastic sales guy. He wrote a book called Life as a sales call. He’s really a good book. And he likes to say that most businesses and chambers, were always concerned about ROI, return on investment. And that’s okay, that’s cool. It’s necessary. But what we got to really concentrate on is our O R. And that’s the return on relationships. And if you don’t have a relationship with everyone in your community, you’re always gonna suffer. So always think of that return on a relationship again, what am I gonna do about the cabinetry, okay, why are you even asking me that, but I’m very interested. And now guess what, I’m a hero to that person. And they will talk my they will sing my praises wherever they go. So I’ve got another salesman working for me out

Brandon Burton 33:44
there. That’s right. Yeah, I like how you came back around to the cabinetry. And your example of how we met at TCC. That’s, that’s perfect. Because I had heard about you, I knew some of the stuff you were doing your chamber, you’d heard about me, we made the connection. The one thing we didn’t do is get a picture. So next time we’re with each other, we gotta get a picture. And

Don McCoy 34:07
now I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna screenshot talking right here. And this is what I’m doing right now on my in I’m doing it right here. A big smile. Brandon here. Yeah. I got it now.

Brandon Burton 34:25
Person one next time. So as we start to wrap up, though, I wanted to ask you if you have any tips or action items based on anything that we’ve covered today, for the chamber listening who’d like to take their organization up to the next level, what would you suggest? Well,

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Don McCoy 34:41
you know, I and I know a lot of the thing is, the status quo is all I mean, you’ve probably heard it a million times is Think outside the box. My team has got a sign on the front of my door hanging above my door. It says Don has another idea. and whether they’re good ideas or bad ideas, it doesn’t matter. Clear your cash every now and then of your ideas, because that’ll let new ones come in. But get them out there. And whether it’s it doesn’t have to be the whole ball of wax. But if it’s just something in that idea that might spark someone else to take it to another level, do it. Don’t be afraid to throw your ideas out there for fear of looking crazier, you know, but when you come from the acting world, you know, you act and you are foolish, sometimes on stage or whatever you do, and you just have to throw that caution to the wind. And people will start to respect you as an idea person. And I think it’s highly, highly important that you continue to improve yourself and find things like this key person of influence, or this grow and protect or just get on YouTube and start watching TED Talks. If you have a little issue, maybe talking to pub in the public. There’s tons of things in ideas and tips. back I’ll give you one right now. Small tip. You ready? Yes. My glasses, say this. But back when I was in film school, Adam Roark was one of my teachers. He was a real famous actor with Hells Angels if you’re older, but me and Lou Diamond Phillips, we’re in the same class together Alibaba guy, right? Yeah. And so he said, there he goes, You know what the difference between a good actor and a bad actor is, and we’re all sitting there going? Experience. He said, eyebrows. Eyebrows. What do you mean by eyebrows? The tip he gave us is watching TV ever go see a bad movie and an actor or even you’re talking to somebody their face never moves. They’re just remembering their lines. And I’m gonna tell you about my chamber, my chamber is best and you need to be part of my chamber. And then you just give that whole thing. But he said if you move, you’re good actors and good salespeople, and people who are passionate about what they do, their eyebrows will move just a little bit before they say anything. So hey, let me tell you about my chamber see it because what that is, so consciously, is telling the listener Hang on, I’m about to say something pretty important. So they automatically tune in to you, if you just move your eyebrows just ever so slightly. Some people do it naturally. Some people have to think about it. But if you watch people on podiums, nothing against our state representative yesterday, but he was the emcee of the gala. But he was sort of deadpan. But if your face is animated, and move your eyebrows just ever so slightly, you You are now persuaded somebody to listen to.

Brandon Burton 37:34
Right? I like that. Now everybody listening is thinking about their eyebrows and what they’re doing. And yeah, I think of the rock. Right? He does that one. Yeah. And it gets your attention. So

Don McCoy 37:46
there you go. And don’t and please don’t think that, Oh, I’m over exaggerating my eyebrows, it will come naturally trust Dan. But if you truly believe in what you’re doing, and find a good software, program, whatever works best for you. But be aware, there’s a lot of software’s out there that work for you, in chamber management, but as to help you manage your database. I like mine, because it not only helps me manage my database, but it also helps have tools for my members to use. And to me, that’s the most important part of it. And some of you may be Richard scalding from time to time he said he was at the event and everything. And he lives in Texas now. So I got him to move from California.

Brandon Burton 38:28
That’s right. And he’s he’s one of the sponsors of the show. So if you want to plug it, you know, Chamber Nation,

Don McCoy 38:34
well, I promise you, you’ll never meet a nicer guy and his wife and his whole team. He’s one of those guys that I brainstorm with. And I say, hey, if your software could do this, that would be awesome. And he goes, let me see what I can do. And sure enough, he came out with it. I mean, we it’s our plaque system. I won’t get into that. But that’s what is so cool about having somebody that you can, whether it works or not get the idea can make it happen. You know, in film and TV, I used to edit on beta Ubaid, remember beta tape, or film years ago, and I didn’t know how to work the editing machine. But I knew the guy that did and I said, I know you can do this. So I want you to make it look like this. Yeah, he doesn’t. So you always need your producer director and then you need the guy. Because as somebody once said, as patent lawyers said, CEOs like us right here, we are working 1015 20 years in the future. Okay, but you need a team that is working in the hearing now your see Oh, getting the job done here in the present. So try to keep that perspective to

Brandon Burton 39:45
like that. That is great. A great tip right there. Speaking of those lines, as we look to the future of chambers and their purpose going forward, how do you see chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Don McCoy 39:57
Well, I’m gonna say they, a lot of us, a lot of them need to change and get with it. Okay? Come into the future and embrace the technology. Because it’ll it’ll, it’ll run right past us so fast, you won’t know what happened. The entire world is going to this is this is this is the world and, and, and if you can’t reach my chamber here or call me or find me or whatever, even Voice Search, I’m people voice search, I am now searchable by voice. And people are using that. But the future of chambers are to still represent your businesses at the table of government, don’t lose sight of that. And to be the community key, whether they call that the kid the last 10. Because if you become that important, and if the chamber went away in your community today, would your community fill it? Yeah, they should. So be that be that chamber of influence in that connector, and that catalyst and the champion for the community, but in the future, embrace all these new technologies coming along, because that’s going to set you up for tremendous success. And as some people retire out of the chamber world, and it happens all the time, technology can replace some of those things and make it easier for the new folks coming in. Because imagine, I don’t know what the average age of a CEO is, in chamber world, I really don’t, that’d be interesting to find out what but I mean, if you’re not up on technology, the next generation, the millennials, in the whatever’s there, whatever their names are, that are highly technical oriented with the Snapchats, and the whole things. They’re the ones that are going to take over in the chamber world, and they’re not gonna want to start at square one. That’s right. They want to see you already have a presence on Facebook, they want to see you have the tick tock, they want to see you have all this other stuff. And that’s going to attract really great talent to your team. That’ll make you even more successful. Don’t be afraid to be the idea person, the executive, but look for that talent that can come in here and work your social media to the enth degree and it’s nothing to them. And you’re sitting here going, what do I do? What is this? That’s where you got to go. Because it’s, it’s important. It really is at 63. I never thought I’d be well versed in but my mother is 83 and she can work Facebook like a charm. It’s unbelievable. So

Brandon Burton 42:30
awesome. I love there.

Don McCoy 42:31
Yeah, just get out there and do it. It’s easy. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 42:35
So Don, what would be the best way for any listeners to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about anything you’ve shared? Or how you’re doing things? Their culture? Absolutely.

Connect with Don McCoy

Don McCoy 42:45
My email and my, my phone number is at chambernomics.com. And that’s, you could always call the chamber here and ask for me. I’m very accessible. My phone number is is on the chambernomics website, you can find me on Facebook, Don McCoy facebook.com, forward slash Don McCoy. Go in there and make me your friend, LinkedIn, I try to use it all. I tell you, and if you try to message me on Facebook, what’s at email, and I wish if somebody out there can find the technology to write if you’re if you know that if I get a message on Messenger, WhatsApp, email, this this, and it funnels into one app. You’ll make a million dollars today, I kid you not. But just reach out, give us a call. I’ll call you back. And I’d be happy to walk you through or answer any questions you might have. I’m, I’m here to not only help our businesses, but to help you and which helps America live or not. I’m a big patriot. And this country is fantastic. And we still have the freedom to do business. And so let’s do it. That’s the commerce there’s another website for you called letsdocommerce.com.

Brandon Burton 44:06
Well, I will get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But this has been a fun conversation. Hopefully it’s percolating some ideas and people listening and take something and run with it at your chambers back at home. But Don, thank you for thank you for being with us today and providing so much value. My pleasure,

Don McCoy 44:24
Brandon, keep doing the good work you’re doing you are a blessed individual, to the community and to our to our community here in the chamber world. And likewise, if there’s anything I can do for you, Brandon or anybody out there, thank you, God bless you all for what you’re doing. We know it’s a tough job, but, uh, keep up the good work and you’ll be blessed every day.

Brandon Burton 44:46

Brandon Burton 44:58
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Would you be interested in creating even more value from the processes that you’re already doing on a daily basis, Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees and swipe it can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more non dues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/cc and you can join many other Chambers as you begin swiping with Swypit!

Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Eugene Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Brittany Quick-Warner

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Brittany Quick-Warner. 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.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host, he realizes that the next generation is already doing commerce in the metaverse.

He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:22
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Diann Rogers 0:47
As a medium sized chamber, we recognize that it’s absolutely critical to have a well qualified and well trained membership development person. Holman Brothers trained that person, recruited that person then they even trained me on how to manage that person. We’re grateful for the support we got.

Brandon Burton 1:02
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for another episode and our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series and for this episode, we’re joined by Brittany Quick-Warner. Brittany is the president and CEO of the Eugene Area Chamber in Oregon. Brittany has successfully served in multiple capacities in her seven years with the chamber. Beginning in late 2016. Brittany served as interim president and CEO during the sudden medical leave and passing of the long term president and CEO and was ultimately selected in September 2017. To serve as the next President and CEO of the Eugene chamber. Brittany is the youngest and first known woman to lead the 1200 member organization. She has been active in the community since her arrival, serving as board member for several organizations including onward Eugene, travel Lane County, the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene, bring recycling, better Eugene Springfield transportation and the Junior League of Eugene, as well as serving on the Eugene sustainability Commission and the Lane County poverty and homelessness board. She currently serves on the board of directors for WAC II and ACC. Brittany, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast and congratulations being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. I’d love for you to take a minute 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.

Brittany Quick-Warner 2:41
Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it. Super excited to be here with everyone. Like Brandon said, my name is Brittany and I have the honor of being the chamber CEO here at the Eugene Oregon chamber. I have actually been with our chamber for nine years, I realized, as you read that my bio, um, the small things that you’ve never remember to do. Yeah, so it’ll be nine years this summer. And when I got into this job, it was one of those things I definitely never knew or thought I would be a chamber staffer. I really honestly came into it not really knowing exactly what Chambers of Commerce do so. But I very quickly caught the bug and have been incredibly honored and blessed to have opportunities within the industry that have really kept me here because it’s a little bit sticky once you get really dug in. So something people don’t know or might not know about me. So I’m from the Midwest, I grew up in Kansas City. And my whole life I was a huge weather nerd actually got my bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science and was on the tornado chasing team. And that’s one of the I think most um, I don’t know, one of the saddest things about moving to the West Coast is we have much more boring weather.

Brandon Burton 4:02
We don’t have tornadoes, and yeah, exactly

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:04
my husband’s like, Okay, you have a different bar than most people. But yeah, and actually, I worked in emergency management before I moved to Eugene. So I work for the State Emergency Management Office in Missouri. And it is remarkable how many of the skills that I learned in that job, I deployed over the last couple of years as chamber CEO during the pandemic, so you never know where those previous lives will come back. So

Brandon Burton 4:30
yeah, so I’m in the Texas area. So I know what it’s like when these tornadoes pop up. And it is very interesting. And I’ll have family and friends call me and say, Are you okay? And I am on my back porch watching this thing, you know?

Brittany Quick-Warner 4:45
Yeah, it’s funny when I talk to people and worrying about that. They’re just like, wait, what? How are you kidding? I’m like, no, that’s just when you’re from the Midwest. You just kind of get used to it.

Brandon Burton 4:54
Let’s roll with it. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the Eugene’s. chamber, give us an idea of the size of the chamber staff budget scope of work just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

About the Eugene Area Chamber

Brittany Quick-Warner 5:09
Yeah, of course. So our chamber has about 1200 Members, we have kind of bounced around between second and third largest chamber in the state of Oregon. We have currently 15 staff. When I got into this position five years ago, we had about six staff. So we’ve grown really quickly and pretty significantly in the last five years. We our budget this year is about 1.9 million. And it’s pretty split between a couple of different revenue streams. So we obviously have our membership base, which is about 30% of our income. We also just a couple years ago, which we can talk a little bit more about launched onward, Eugene, which is the economic development kind of entity for our region after a lot of turmoil in that space as a community for a while. And so a good portion of our income comes through the management of that entity. And then our sponsorships are about 35% of what our revenue is and and then we do a handful of events that bring in a little bit of revenue to

Brandon Burton 6:20
Alright, that’s good. Yeah, that that really helps to kind of set the table for discussion. So as a one of these chamber the year finalist episodes but at what I’ve been doing, what I like to do is focus on the two programs, the program synopsis included on your chamber the year application, and I look forward to learning about these programs and sharing some of those details as soon as they get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chambers of Commerce have been around for over 400 years promoting communities all over the World. But today so much is found digitally that Chamber Nation believes it’s critical that there is a custodian of local digital information. They believe the Chamber is in a perfect position to be that organization. 

Chamber Nation provides an amazing membership management system you use to manage the chamber and the community. They also deliver a complete membership development system that they manage for you to be sure your membership community is fully documented for search and much more. Essentially, Chamber Nation delivers an entire membership support department which is perfect for those Chambers with a limited budget that needs to do more.

With Chamber Nation not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

When you really think about it, is it realistic to expect your membership rep to deliver consistent results without consistent coaching? Much like an elite athlete, your membership rep must be aligned and performing at their best which doesn’t happen automatically. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching programs supply the indispensable training, guidance and support your membership rep needs to keep their performance in high gear. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Alright, Brittany, we’re back. If you would just take us through what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application, maybe just from a high level and then we’ll we can circle back and go into some more detail on those programs.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

Brittany Quick-Warner 9:52
Yeah, of course. So this was our first time applying for chamber of the year at least in my tenure, and honestly we were pretty intimidated by the process for a while. And I will say it’s not an easy or it’s not a quick process. There’s a lot of time and effort that has to be put into it. But for those of you listening who think, oh, gosh, I don’t know if I could ever do that. It’s totally worth it. And I will say that because one of the things is it forces you to really think about, okay, where have we found success? And what programs do we have that are really cutting edge, and we’re really kind of pushing the envelope. And I think as chamber executives, we, we sometimes often move on to the next thing very quickly, without celebrating like, hey, we actually are doing some good stuff here. And we should, we should think about that. So it was hard for us to kind of whittle it down to a couple of programs that we really wanted to highlight. But the two that we did choose, one of them is last year, we launched a freemium membership model. So a basic membership that is 100%, free to, to folks to join the chamber, and took a lot of time to really analyze that decision to do that. Think about pros and cons. But ultimately, the reasoning behind it were was a couple of reasons. One, we were diving really deep into work on equity, inclusion and diversity and really trying to analyze internally, what can we do as an organization to really create a more equitable, membership and organization and more inclusive, and have a lot of listening sessions with bipoc members in our community and businesses who maybe weren’t members of the chamber and giving some perspective as to why. So that’s one piece. But then we also do a lot of advocacy as an organization. And we wanted to make sure that we could really bring in as many businesses as possible to help advocate on their behalf. Which leads to the second synopsis that we applied, using, which is the work we’ve been doing around homelessness. So the city of Eugene and Lane County, which is a county we sit in, we have more than 4000 individuals living on the streets of our community on housed. It’s one of the highest per capita in the country. And it is a really, it’s a crisis. And it is growing. And it’s feels to a lot of folks in the community like it’s completely out of control. And that was an issue that our businesses really kind of stepped up and said, we have got to do something and where is the chamber out on this issue? And how are we influencing the future of, of our community and the prosperity of these individuals who have living on the streets. So we dove in really deep, and we can talk a little bit more about the details of that program. But ultimately, what we ended up doing was releasing a really extensive report on the state of homelessness in our community. And then that has catalyzed a ton of things that have come out of it. One of it being a business leaders taskforce of over 100 businesses who’ve come together to really say we want to provide leadership in this space. So I can go into more detail about

Brandon Burton 13:09
let’s, let’s start with that one. So homelessness, and the focus you guys are putting on there, because I think there’s, there’s so many unique traits and attributes, you know, they go across that topic that, hey, and you guys probably ever realized there’s no one one size fits all right, for all the different reasons why somebody may be homeless. So as you dug in, and did research and and looked at what the problem is, what are some of those things that you’ve discovered? And have you gone about addressing it?

Brittany Quick-Warner 13:42
Yeah, good question. So when we decided that we needed to have some sort of voice in this, I very much said to my board, I don’t know what our role should be. At this point. There’s a lot of places where it feels like, we need improvements. And I don’t know what the Chamber’s role is. And I think we have two options. One, we can either just get really mad and angry about the state of this crisis and marched down to City Hall and pound our fists on the table and tell our city councilors, you have to do something about this. Which if I looked, you know, if I fast forward five years, and I looked back at this moment, I could not honestly say that I felt like that would make an impact on the number of people sleeping on the streets. And the other option was to get really deep and strategic and to to flex that problem solving muscle that a lot of chambers have that they might not feel like this is their problem to solve. But the reality is it’s impacting our businesses. It’s impacting our local economy. It’s impacting the overall livability of our community. And those individuals living on the streets obviously are in dire need of someone to advocate for better quality of life as well. So we decided to go that route. It was the harder of the two options. But what that looked like was, was us as it’s chamber has staff going out and having individual conversations with over 200 people in our community to really understand the issue deeper and to try to help suss out what are some of the barriers or the roadblocks that we’re facing in our system that has gotten to this point, we talked to unhoused individuals themselves, we talked to business owners to every nonprofit that works in this space in our community, which there’s a lot of them. We talked to communities across the country to try to find out best practices, what others are doing. And ultimately, what we had was about 250 pages of notes from all of these conversations that we realized we needed to do something with. And we knew we weren’t the experts on this. But we had gleaned an enormous amount of information that we really felt like if we could summarize this down and boil it to a handful of recommendations, just based on what we’ve learned from all these experts in our community, that we could bring a lot more clarity to the conversation. And so that’s what we did, we’re gonna release this report, which is a living document where, you know, we’re kind of always sort of going back and finding ways to improve or other ideas. But one of the things, you know, that we heard a lot in the community is we don’t know what’s happening in this space, or whatever is happening isn’t working, or we don’t think anything is happening at all. And all of those things were leading to this sense of hopelessness amongst community members that we will never be able to get our heads wrapped around this problem. So out of that, what we came up with was eight recommendations that we felt like if we could focus in on these eight areas, and move some initiatives forward together as a community, that we can make a real, real dent, in in that enhanced number. And a couple of key areas that we really pushed on is one, better accountability and transparency. Our city and county officials are the entities that control really the conversation around homelessness and services and funding. And they’re doing good work. But there’s not very good communication or transparency coming out of those entities. And so it’s causing this sense of hopelessness. The second was, there was no, there is no clear shared vision, every person we talked to had a different idea of what the end goal was. And we all know that without a really clear shared vision for what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re going to be going in different directions. Even if we all have the same sort of, you know, good hearted intentions.

We also knew that our community needed to take a serious look at how we’re holding people accountable. And that was something that we knew was going to get us a little bit of pushback, because a lot of times in this space, people don’t want to associate crime and homelessness. And we weren’t trying to by any way, say that we’re trying to criminalize homelessness, but there is crime happening on our streets that people need to be held accountable for. We also talked about good data, about wraparound services and how individuals we might be getting them into shelter, but we’re not providing them this the services they need to actually get well. So those eight recommendations came out. And one of the biggest ones that we’ve been pushing all along is this crisis is bigger than our city and our county can handle on their own, it’s bigger than our nonprofit community can handle on its own. It is to the point where it is truly the entire community’s issue that we all have to come together around the table to try and solve. And we’ve honestly, I think, gotten a surprising amount of pushback from some of our local park or government partners in sort of letting go of of some of those pieces and allowing private sector to come to the table to say, What could we be doing to contribute positively to this conversation. So that idea of collective impact and a shared vision is one that we’ve really been trying to hone in on as a chamber and to try to convene enough voices to actually achieve that shared that shared vision, or identify and then achieve that shared vision. So all of this really like capacity building community building work, is exactly where I think chambers should be in their communities. And while it feels maybe like that’s not a space that we should operate in, I think it 100% is if you’re living up to being the convener, catalyst champion chamber for your community, right. And there is a bottom line impact on businesses. So I do think there’s an argument for the chamber being involved in that conversation. We’ve been able to catalyze some really cool projects out of this. We’ve had private sector folks who are now coming to the table who’ve never been engaged in this and they’re coming up with these really big visionary ideas that they have the resources to execute on, that no one else had even thought about, including that person in the conversation and now they’re adding to the pie instead of splitting it up amongst other nonprofits. So it’s been a year Ever since we really started digging into this, and we’ve already, you know, we’ve already seen about 200 temporary, but emergency shelters open up that private sector individuals gave their space to be used for that, that were not happening before the chamber got involved in this conversation, we have a couple of workforce pilots, where we have a local business owner who’s starting an entire different business line specifically, and only for hiring unhoused individuals and building a workforce pipeline for them to get trained into other industry jobs in the community. We have really great communications out to businesses about how to protect their properties, how to report issues, if they have them resources for if they do have crime, or an incident happen. So, you know, we’re some low hanging fruit, but then also some really cool. Like I said, visionary projects that wouldn’t have happened if the chamber hadn’t has said, Hey, let us bring all these businesses to the conversation as well.

Brandon Burton 20:59
Right now, as I think of this topic, I view it as an onion, right, it’s got all these layers to it. And I agree, I think the chamber is the perfect entity to peel back those layers and to convene, you kind of reorganize and put put things together and get those right, you know, example together and look at what the real problems are. Because it for whatever reason, and you know, various cities throughout the country. Homelessness tends to be attracted to certain cities, for whatever reason, you know, for a variety of reasons, we’ll say. So to be able to identify what those reasons are, and then why you go about trying to solve the problem, to not make it more attractive for you know, to drum. It’s it’s a, it’s a balance and multiple layers,

Brittany Quick-Warner 21:46
for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I think just setting the table, like I said, for more people to come and sit and contribute positive ideas, and that’s something we’ve been very intentional about is this is not a space for you to come in to complain or event, right. We’ve all done that. We all know what the issues are. This is a place for you to say, okay, given all this information, I have here some ideas that I want to bring to the conversation. And it’s we’ve been really successful in that. And I think that’s one thing that even if there’s skeptics out there about the chamber, really leading this conversation, what we’ve gotten is great feedback that they feel like, okay, this is definitely constructive. It’s, you know, it’s moving us in the right direction, and not just distracting us from the overall goal, which has been really rewarding,

Brandon Burton 22:31
right. And in the end, it makes a huge impact on the community as a whole. So I think that’s a great, great program, great area of focus, for sure. Let’s shift gears a little bit over to your freemium model. Curious, did you guys reach out and talk to like Tom Baldrige or any of these other chambers that have rolled out freemium models in the past? Yeah, so

Brittany Quick-Warner 22:55
we, there was a couple of chambers out there that we knew when we started doing this research. And so we did we sit down, we sat down Tiffany Esposito down in Florida. And I believe my staff might have talked to Tom as well. Just to say, like, you know, you’re a few few months ahead of us, like, how’s it going? And we got good feedback from them that, you know, so far, so good. And our board was definitely interested in, in just looking at membership structures overall differently and trying to say, like, are we being proactive in the way that we’re sort of selling ourselves to the community. And it helped, I had a tech CEO as my board chair, during the time that we were having this discussion and, and he’s, he was the first one to say, like, our business model is totally based on freemium, you know, applications and services that we then convert into paid customers. And so you know, he really encouraged us to look at that at that model as not a way to give away our membership. But to bring more people in who we maybe wouldn’t have had the hook for prior to offering an option that really does just expose them to all the things that they could be investing in, right.

Brandon Burton 24:08
And chambers often say they’re the voice of business. And to be able to say, we’re the voice of business, but not your business, because you’re not a dues paying member doesn’t really seem right either. So I like the idea of a freemium model and being there as a support for all the business in your community. It’s just a matter of making it work to where the revenue still works out and your chamber can still function, right? Yeah. And

Brittany Quick-Warner 24:31
the Yeah, honestly, the pandemic was a big motivator for us because what we did is a lot of our a lot of our programs and the training and the information resources that we were putting out to the community, we took down that paywall for all of it during a pandemic. We wanted anyone and everyone who has a business to be to hear about and to have access to these resources. We did a lot of web hours and trainings on all of the federal regulations and you know, grants and all all of these things that were coming out. And we were not restricted to just members in that space. And so what we saw was a lot of people that had never engaged with the chamber, and then also would have never heard about any of those resources, if it wasn’t for the chamber reaching out to them, even though they weren’t a member saying, hey, take a look at this thing. And so that is what really inspired us to say, like, Okay, we could do this, we could open it up, we could bring more people under the umbrella. And then it’s on us as chamber staff, and as you know, our board leadership to show the value of their investment. So they hopefully transition up to a paid member, we’re just coming up on a year of this program. Actually, July one is when we launched it last year. And so right now, our membership staff have a strategy for getting, you know, obviously, they’ve been coordinating or engaging with those members all year, but making sure to sit down and have those sales conversations about hey, come in at this other level. And here’s the benefits we can provide. And here’s what your investment is getting you. And so that was one of the other motivations is it’s a built in sales pipeline, right? How many Tony chambers have sat there and sort of like bang their heads against the wall saying, where’s my leads? How do I get more leads in my sales pipeline, and we have 150 new members that are in our premium membership that now are built in sales pipeline for selling paid memberships. So, so far, we’ve done good, and in some of those conversions, we’re still sort of waiting on the big kind of number of how many of those people transition in the first year. So preliminarily, the numbers look good as far as our ability to retain and to bring in new members. But you know, jury’s still out a little bit to see how it ends up after a year.

Brandon Burton 26:52
So as you rolled out this program, the premium model, how did you go about informing the businesses in your community? Did you get a business list from the county and just do a mass mailing? Or how did you go about the messaging to get that out?

Brittany Quick-Warner 27:07
Yeah, good question. So our community, I think, is disadvantaged in that we don’t have a business license program. And so there is no formal like registration here locally for businesses, which would be so fantastic. And I’m we’re trying to convince our city, that’s a good idea. So it’s been really word of mouth, we leaned heavily on our board and some of our other members to sort of say, hey, invite somebody that you know, who maybe wants to consider the chamber, we had a really strong sort of marketing strategy, that first three months of the program, we did radio, we did TV, we had commercials, I was kind of going around and speaking to rotary clubs and other entities that have business affiliates, or memberships. And we had, we saw a lot of folks start coming in, and that in that first three months with just that general promotion, and then we’ve kind of just left it open. And as we’ve engaged folks, we we didn’t set a strong sort of number. On the freemium side, if we want to hit X number of members, we have an overall membership goal. And so, you know, that freemium membership will help us get to those numbers that we’re trying to achieve that way. But, you know, we were pretty regimen in the whole process, you know, we did a lot of deep work with our board to help them, you know, make sure they were comfortable with it, talk to other chambers laid out what the program would look like, got very specific on the benefits for that free membership, it’s very scaled back from what are other benefits offer, obviously. And then we did a lot of kind of focus groups talking to folks and got their feedback on it and, and then ultimately launched it. And it has helped us save some members, too. That wasn’t the main goal. But we have some businesses that you all know, did not fare well during the pandemic, and they appreciate want to continue to support the chamber. But financially, they aren’t able to, we’re able to bump them down to that freemium level, and then flag their membership database to like, get them back up, hopefully the next year. So instead of losing them all together, we get to keep them in the chamber kind of channels and networks, and then hopefully come bring them back up to a paid member later.

Brandon Burton 29:19
Yeah. And as far as to sharing information with them, and keeping them in the loop of what you’re doing advocacy wise, and things like that doesn’t really cost anything, you know, timewise so why not just keep them involved?

Brittany Quick-Warner 29:31
Yeah, and the other thing that, you know, that we have, we’re monitoring as well is the non dues revenue that they bring in, right, so our freemium members, now we’re on our email list, they see all the events that we have, and they’re paying to attend those events that they wouldn’t have been before they are a member. So we are seeing a good amount of of non dues revenue coming from those free members who are now advertising and they have a higher cost for advertising because you’re not a paid member for attending events. So yeah, there’s a little bit of that happening too, which is good, because we’re at least capturing some sort of revenue from that additional base of membership.

Brandon Burton 30:07
Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. So I wanted to ask you, Brittany, if How do you see the role of the Eugene chamber there in your community?

Brittany Quick-Warner 30:20
How do I see the roll? So, for those of you who are not familiar with ACC II, came out with the Horizon Report a handful of years ago. And in that report, there are a handful of sort of realities that they were predicting that chambers and associations and just sort of the world in general were leaning towards. And one of the things that really stuck out for me in that Horizon Report in which I, you know, I’m constantly going back to with our staff, is this idea of being the sane center. And, and not being afraid to dive into issues, but really, truly trying to bring a non bias perspective to the conversation. We have done advocacy for a long time. But even more so in the last couple of years, have really leaned into this place of being able to, to pull people from all across the community together to say, Look, our overall goal is economic prosperity, and people living happy, healthy lives in this community. And to do that we can’t be, you know, politically, ideological in one way or the other as a chamber. And so we want to represent the st center, the place where I feel like we can find some alignment. And I really think that in our community, our chamber has been really respected for that. And it’s a place that I’m proud for us to be we’re very data driven, we want to see the the actual impacts not just this hyperbolic kind of fear mongering. And because of that, I think we’ve been really successful in our advocacy because people really do respect how much kind of deep research we do on issues before we come out with a position or try to advocate.

Brandon Burton 32:02
Yeah, and I think being the same Senator goes back to the chamber, just seeing a trusted resource to like you had mentioned through the pandemic, these small businesses not knowing where to turn for some of these answers. And you could look at a social media post, or you could look to the chamber who’s done the research. And and same thing with being the same Senator, you can watch these polarizing news channels, or you can look at the Chamber who’s looking at the data and looking out for your interest as a business in the community.

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:27
Yeah, absolutely. And I you know, not to downplay, it’s not easy, often hearing that voice, because it takes a lot more work to actually have done your homework and, and to seek out multiple sources and to really hear both sides out.

Brandon Burton 32:41
And to put aside prices, right? Yep,

Brittany Quick-Warner 32:44
exactly, exactly. However, I think it gets us further in the long run. So it’s worth the extra effort upfront.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Absolutely. So Brittany, what might be maybe a tip or an action item for listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Brittany Quick-Warner 33:03
Oh, my goodness, I think one of the things that I did early on that really kind of opened my eyes to what’s possible, is I I sat down and like very methodically went through chambers and other communities that I felt like, I wanted to be right, who we aspire to be like, and almost every one of them was in a community that was bigger than us that had more resources than us that had more members. And they weren’t able to do bigger things. Because of that, that level. And I think often if we just kind of look at the folks who are our peers, or who have are similarly resourced, we kind of keep our minds kind of close to what we could be doing. We implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or Eos, which is explained in a book called traction. And Jane Clark at the Michigan West chamber was the speaker at an ACC conference about five and a half years ago that I heard talk about this. And I was absolutely, I just felt like, oh my gosh, someone just planted this in front of me the exact time that I needed it. We were in chaos art, my CEO had just passed away. We were trying to get our feet together under us. I was a new CEO. So I had never managed an organization before. And I desperately needed a tool to help us just like organize and set goals, and just get really strategic with our work. And that US process has helped us do that. But one of the things in that process is looking at 10 years out on a horizon and then backing up three years in one year, and actually visualizing what your organization will look like in 10 years and putting numbers to it. We put a revenue goal, we put a member size we put a retention rate, we put the number of staff that we wanted to see. So and then we backed up In three years, so 2022 was our three year or three year out picture for when we started this. We had envisioned 14 staff in our organization. And we were six people when we started doing this. Here we are in 2022. With 15 staff members, we envision a $2 million revenue. Here we are 1.9. I’m hoping we we beat our budget, and we get that 2 million we envisioned applying for and winning chamber of the year. So we’ll see, I think the honor of at least being a finalist, and you can look at it from three years ago, it was on our list of like, what is what do we imagine for ourselves? And it was remarkable to me how much just that sort of very specific visioning helped us actually get there, right, like putting an actual number to it. And then creating a roadmap to hit that number. And chambers of any size could do that. Right? It’s not it doesn’t have to be like, Oh, well, they’re a big chamber, or they, you know, have X number of members or whatever. Absolutely, you can do that as a one person, staff, volunteer staff member, you know, you can say, in 10 years, what I want to look like in three years, and then how do I get there? So to me, I feel like I we I owe a lot of credit to James Clark is with us process. And then just to our staff for being willing to dream big. We like to, I like to think about it as well, not how sometimes we we How the heck out of things, but we just need to sort of say what is our big vision, and let’s not tear it apart the first time it gets thrown out into the world, and then figure out how to get there. So yeah,

Brandon Burton 36:38
I love that creating that vision, it shows you what’s possible. And then as you create that roadmap, it aligns the resources to make it happen. Yeah. And as it comes together, it’s kind of like, holy smokes, how did this happen? Together, but we have a cup of

Brittany Quick-Warner 36:53
staff who are not with our chamber anymore. They’ve graduated out into the community, I like to say, who wrote me when they saw we post about the chamber of the year, nom, and they’re like, that was on our three year vision, like we actually did it. So it’s kind of fun to like, pull back in some folks who had been there. And they were a part of that. And they remember

Brandon Burton 37:11
that, too. It was impactful that they remember the timeline, and they know that it’s happening. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, as we look to the future of chambers, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Brittany Quick-Warner 37:27
Oh, gosh, I think a lot about this being on the WAC and ACC board. I feel, and we’ve heard this from leaders in the industry over the last couple years, I feel like chambers are more valuable and more needed than ever right now. And a lot of it is because of so much just polarization in our world. And I think if chambers can rise above the fray, and really play that same center role and take that problem solver role seriously, communities are going to be desperate for someone who they can look to who’s local, who understands their local issues. It’s not some, you know, outside of the community, who has the interest of everyone in the community at heart and who can who can convene, and do so in a way that people respect and they want to they want to be a part of it. So to me, chambers of the future are not, I think will always be interested in in businesses and representing businesses, because I think the private sector is one that desperately needs to be a part of the solution. But I think that we’re going to be challenged to with solving bigger community issues than just sort of taxes and opposing taxes or supporting taxes, right. It’s homelessness. It’s our housing crisis, its climate and energy. It’s, you know, some of these big hairy issues that our country is facing. If all our chambers got together and really pushed out an agenda around homelessness at the federal level, I think we could do an enormous amount of good at actually impacting this crisis. So that’s where I feel like the future of chambers are is solving those big community issues that are desperate for someone with with respect to step up and solve them.

Brandon Burton 39:11
Yeah, well, everybody heard it here, first Britney’s vision of the future. So we’ll see. What’s the timeframe on this year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:18
Three years, give me three years

Brandon Burton 39:21
will solve all the world’s issues, at least the country’s issues and three. So Brittany, I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect and learn more about how you guys are doing things here in Eugene, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with

Connect with Brittany Quick-Warner

Brittany Quick-Warner 39:39
you? Absolutely. So my email brittanyw@eugenechamber.com. And happy to also have folks give my cell phone or my office phone a call. If you go to the Eugene chamber website on our staff page, you can find those numbers as well. And I Absolutely love connecting with other chambers. I was very lucky to have other CEOs who said yes to me when I was new in this role, and still do for me to pick their brains. So I love returning the favor.

Brandon Burton 40:11
It’s so important. It really is. Well, Brittany, this has been a great discussion. I’ve had a lot of fun learning from you and and learning about these programs you guys are implementing and really making a difference there. And Eugene, so thank you for spending time with us today. And I wish you and your staff Best of luck as chamber the year.

Brittany Quick-Warner 40:31
Yes, thank you so much for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 40:34
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

Conway Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Brad Lacy

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Brad Lacy. 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.

Introduction

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.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
Now your host he prefers taking notes with a pen and paper, he’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:20
Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Tony Felker 0:46
One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.

Brandon Burton 1:08
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Successful membership salespeople are problem solvers. They ask better questions, uncover more problems and pinpoint how their chamber can help. It’s how they consistently drive better membership sales outcomes. Here’s the hurdle. Most membership salespeople don’t get enough coaching to recruit like this. Holman Brothers Next Level Coaching supplies the year round guidance that your membership rep needs to drive growth for your chamber. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Guest Introduction

This is a special episode and our 2022 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist series, and our guests for this episode is Brad Lacy, the President and CEO of the Conway Area Chamber in Arkansas. Brad is a native of Ida Arkansas and began his economic development career in 1997 with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission as a community development consultant and later as a project manager where he worked to recruit companies to the state. Brad has served as president and CEO of the Conway Development Corporation or CDC, the city of Conway’s nonprofit economic development entities since 2000. In December of 2006, Brad became the president CEO of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce. It marked the first time in nearly two decades at the chamber and CDC had been under the same leadership, the leadership of the same person. The combined management of both organizations brings the city larger staff to focus on economic development activities. In 2013. The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce was named chamber the year by ACCE and in 2018, was named runner up. Brad holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Central Arkansas, the Masters of Public Administration from the University of Arkansas Little Rock. He’s a graduate of the Community Development Institute at UCA, the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for organization management. Brad is a former member of the University of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees and has served two terms on the Board of Regents for the US Chamber West Institute of organization management. I’m excited to have Brad back with me on Chamber Chat Podcast, he was a guest way back in episode 103, where we talked about the way they go about their annual meeting. So if anybody wants to go back in the archive and check that out, it was a fantastic episode. But Brad, welcome back to Chamber Chat Podcast, go out and say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little better.

Brad Lacy 4:01
Yeah, well, thanks for thanks for asking. I’m not sure I’m all that. Interesting. Maybe the most interesting things that I’ve been in the job over 20 years and have only been in one community that doesn’t seem to be very common these days in the chamber world. So that’s true. Yeah, maybe maybe that’s the interesting thing.

Brandon Burton 4:25
Good deal. Well, tell us maybe some background, this specs, if you will, on the Conway area, chamber size, location, budget, staff, that sort of thing, just to give us some perspective.

About the Conway Area Chamber

Brad Lacy 4:38
Yeah. So first, just a little on the city. So the city Conway is part of the Little Rock North Little Rock Conway MSA so we’re the Northern Gateway to the Little Rock MSA. The city has about 70,000 people. It is a little bit of several things. So it’s a College Town it has has three colleges and universities. A percentage of our population commutes into little rock to work every day. But most of our people stay here because it’s very much a business center too. So it’s not exactly a suburb, it’s not exactly a college town, it’s kind of a little of four or five things all mixed up, which makes us a little bit interesting. The Chamber itself has been around since 1891, and was formed to recruit the colleges here. So we’ve always had a real tied to the educational community here. And through the years, there have been a series of sister organizations that spin off from the chamber. So the other the biggest one being the CDC, as you mentioned in the intro, which is an economic development entity that spun off in 1959. And that was the that was the organization that initially hired me 23 years ago. And so today, what you have is really this collection of organizations that are tied through management agreements. And so the staff, which there’s a staff of 18, we manage, really, the assets and the work of those several organizations, budget is going to be anywhere from five to $7 million a year, which is a pretty big budget, especially for our community our size. But when you put all of those organizations together, that’s what that’s what it looks like. And on the economic development side, there’s a lot of property that’s involved. So land leases, building leases, land sales. And so that’s where a lot of that revenue comes from. But it’s an extremely diverse revenue stream, which is really by design and helps us sort of navigate changes in the economy or changes in one member, you know, leaving or whatever. So it’s pretty good model we think,

Brandon Burton 7:11
yeah. Sounds like from the wide scope of demographics even of what makes up Conway really creates a great personal identity as a as a community, it seems like for sure. And you mentioned 18 staff and I got to meet some of your staff at the Mako conference. And you’re surrounded by some great people so for sure you’ve got a good good people there around you. So that that always helps.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

So as we’re doing these chamber, the year finalist interviews, what I like to do is focus on the two programs that you submitted on your application for chamber the year. So maybe just from a high level what’s address what those two programs are and then we can go in a little bit deeper and have you share some of the more nitty gritty about each program.

Brad Lacy 10:07
Sure. So the first one is a visioning committee wide visioning process called Conway 2035. We do a community wide visioning process every decade. Well, not really decade if you’re looking at the census, but every 10 years, so we did well, I guess it is, it does line up with the census. So actually, 2010 was the first year that we did that it was extremely important for us as a community. Because it really marked the first time that any entity had asked the community at large what they wanted to see for the city. And what happens is you get some agreement from larger groups of people on where not only the chamber, but city government. various nonprofits should be focusing their time and energy. And we did a lot of really great things in that decade between 2010 and 2020. So, and there was sort of a mid, mid, mid like 2015, we we convened sort of a smaller group of people to do a little bit of a correction to the plan to see, you know, what have we accomplished, were there some things that we needed to change, based off of things that were happening in the in the country. So 2020 Mark, really the year that we were supposed to renew that. So we had gotten everything ready, we had pulled our steering committee together, and we’re getting ready to meet with them. And it was a week, really after everything closed down. So that first program was really how did we do that? How do you how do you do a city wide visioning process when you can’t convene people? Because we did, we did it and we finished it. So the second one is our festival so we have a very oddly named festival, Toad Suck days. That is, that’s the name of it,

Brandon Burton 12:20
set that head on with the name. So that is what is Toad Suck days.

Brad Lacy 12:25
So my my EVP, Jamie Gates says that no southern city that’s worth anything, doesn’t have a festival named after a food or an animal. And so ours is named after toads, believe it or not, it’s a it’s a festival that volunteers started 41 years ago. And it really turned into something big. And as is the case in many communities, when things outgrow volunteers, they give them to the chamber. times you may not want them. This was one that you know, ended up being really good. It’s a very iconic festival in Arkansas, with a funny name. But throughout the history of the festival, we’ve raised $2 million for primarily educational nonprofits in the city, and some community development. So the festival is really the conduit through which we do a lot of charitable giving. But it also helps pay, you know, helps pay the bills because 100 to 125,000 people come to the festival. And there’s a lot of revenue that comes from that. So

Brandon Burton 13:48
sorry, I was maybe let’s just go deeper right now and untold sick days. So as you go about the planning of it each year, as its annual festival, do you know which nonprofits you’re targeting to support as you go about beginning it? Is their target goals going into it? How do you go about your planning and in strategy of

Brad Lacy 14:12
it? So historically, the money was earmarked for college scholarships for County students who were choosing to go to one of the three schools in Conway. So historically, that’s where all the money went. Internally, we decided to take a different course probably 10 years ago, with the creation of the Arkansas scholarship lottery. Voters approved a lottery in Arkansas. All of the proceeds from that are going to scholarships. So really, if you want to go to college here, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get some help, for the most part, and we didn’t really think that maybe our money now needed to go to scholarships. So we started investing heavily in pre K. And STEM education for elementary school students. So there’s some various various programs that we put money into, that really hit on those, those topics. Now, we also do a decent amount of money for downtown Conway, because that’s where we have the festival. So believe it or not, not everyone’s a fan of us closing the heart of the city down for three days. So, so we, we buy about 20, to $25,000 worth of hanging baskets that go up in downtown after the festival and the city partners with us on that, and takes care of them through summer and fall. And so our downtown is sort of known for those, those hanging baskets. So, you know, we can do between probably, in a slow year, maybe 60,000, upwards to 80, or $90,000, in charitable giving directly from the festival. Now, the other thing that has happened through the years is we will sort of approve what we call sanctioned events that are allowed to use the festival name. And so this is where other nonprofits benefit. So the Kiwanis Club, for instance, has done a 5k 10k for years where they raise money. And that’s the Toad Suck 5k 10k. There’s a literacy organization that does the tour to Toad, which is bike race. So there’s all these, there’s all these other things that are happening, as well as we have nonprofits, that we have a certain number of vendor spots available for free to nonprofits, to help raise money. So the festival is really much bigger than just what it does for us. In the community loves it and region, really so.

Brandon Burton 17:12
So with the charitable giving, is that structured through a foundation or just directly through the chamber? How does that look?

Brad Lacy 17:21
So the festival itself is a 501 C three, organization that is wholly owned by the chamber. All right.

Brandon Burton 17:34
So I know, in particular, with your chamber, that your application, you had some unique challenges, around DedSec day should particularly during the, you know, the COVID, shutdowns and whatnot. So tell us about how you guys address that and how you navigated through still being able to do the good work that you did and bring community together when you come together? How did you approach that?

Brad Lacy 18:01
So and by March, when things shut down, and when you look at the way that we raise money. Most of our big sponsors were in place by that because the festival happens the first weekend of May. Okay, so we had all these commitments from corporate sponsors to, you know, be a part of the 2020 Festival, and then you figure out, well, we’re six weeks away from festival that we’re not going to have. So what do we do? And I think our first, you know, maybe our first inclination was that we’re just not going to do anything and then give the money back or not kill these people or whatever. Because I think like many people, we were just in a state of shock, right? I mean, like, you know, I was thinking, how are we going to survive this? You know, how do you how do you survive when at least part of your revenue comes from being able to convene people and you can’t compete with people? That’s a real problem. But what we what we decided was that we could pivot and we could do a series of things we could sort of deconstruct the festival and offer people experiences which in fact, they needed and wanted because after, you know, a few weeks, your your cabin fever sets in, and, and so we sort of deconstructed the festival and figured out that we could do some of the best parts of it. Regardless if we had a traditional festival, so we came up with some new things. So really, one of the first ones was an airplane parade where we partnered with the Pilots Association, that is here. in Conway, and we asked them if they would do an airplane parade throughout the city. And this was several weeks into the lockdown, and super safe, everybody can just stand out in their yard. We, you know, promoted it heavily, not only on social media, but our local newspaper promoted it. And I mean, there were 1000s of people in their yards. And we had dozens of planes that participated in we had planes that came in to participate, you know, some fighter jets did some formation type things. And so, you know, we had some sponsors attached to it. So we actually made some money off of that, that we needed at the time. And so that really, I think, gave us some confidence that we could, that we could do this festival in pieces. And so another one was, we did a Nature and Science drive thru. People were, you know, hungry to do stuff with their children. So we partnered with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Little Rock zoo, the Museum of Discovery, and maybe a couple of others to do these big exhibits. We put them in the middle of one of the university campuses. And then

we internally called it the drive thru zoo, that you know, the rule was you couldn’t get out of your car, but you could certainly drive through and you could see the penguins from the Little Rock zoo, you could go past the giant aquariums that Game and Fish broad. You could drive through these exhibits. And once again, people were hungry for it. They wanted to do things with their children. And we were going to do that from like three to six. Well, by four o’clock, the queue was so long wrapping through the campus that we had to start turning people away, because it was going to take us two hours to get everyone through the queue and see things. So we really started started building some confidence that we could provide some things that the community and really the region needed, would allow us to monetize it so that we could survive. And then we turned to television to we started buying blocks of time on network TV and the Little Rock market. And so we did a virtual concert one night where we asked friends that had really Arkansas based performers to perform for us and do a virtual concert at a particular time on the CBS affiliate and another great success. And so we just, we put a lot of different things together. That late spring and summer. That became the festival,

Brandon Burton 23:08
isn’t it, that’s about how long of a span that is.

Brad Lacy 23:11
So that was probably over three months that we did all of those things. And then you get to 2021. And things have loosened up a bit. But we still weren’t quite ready to go. First. As I say, you know, we were the first week of May. I didn’t want to be the first festival to you know, go forward. So it was the 40th anniversary of the festival. And so we decided we would again deconstruct the festival and do 40 days of Toad Suck. And so we brought the airplane parade back, we brought the Nature and Science drive through back except at this point, you didn’t have to drive through you could walk through because things were different than they were a year before. And we actually did our first real concert in person in a venue. We brought country music artists, Jimmy Allen to town and did a concert on UCaaS campus. And really, I think there there were several things there. One, it allowed us to continue to do charitable giving, which I wouldn’t have thought we could do. It allowed us to survive. Because we always take us you know 100 I think about $135,000 is what we end up charging back as a management fee from the chamber. So if you lose that chunk of money,

Brandon Burton 24:44
yeah, that makes an impact. You’re cutting salaries

Brad Lacy 24:47
or you’re cutting positions you’re doing something so you know, we did not want to do that and we did not want to use reserves and we did not do any of those things. We managed to survive and and that and ever lay anyone off. And then also just, it means so much this is kind of interesting, but it means a lot to the community to do the festival. Children love it. I mean, it’s really built around kids. And so to not do it, and not sort of recognize the legacy of it just seemed to be, you know, a terrible idea. And we should at least do our best to keep it going until we can have it for real. And, you know, the good news is, we had it for real this year. And it was crazy. I mean, it’s the best year we’ve ever had, we were very blessed. We had perfect weather, which we almost never have a full weekend at perfect weather. But we did this time. And everything was just more, you know, more revenue, more shirt sales more this more that. So there was definitely pent up demand for it.

Brandon Burton 26:03
That is awesome. Well, let’s circle back for a few minutes on your on the Conway 2035, the visioning program there. It is understand similar kind of circumstances when you need to be convening people together. First of all, I was glad to hear you say that you guys are revisiting like you get your 10 year vision, but then you’re revisiting it at the halfway point and kind of taking a barometer of seeing where you’re going because politically, things change, right technology changes, community demographics change. So there’s a lot of lot of reasons to kind of check the temperature, if you will. But take us through that in the next couple of minutes of how the the visioning program came together.

Brad Lacy 26:50
So in a normal year, what you do is is, well, the really the first part of it didn’t really matter, because the the important. First component of this is, is pulling together a diverse steering committee that represents sort of as many aspects of the community as you can get. So not only race, ethnicity, gender, and age, but things like how long have they lived here, like we always try to have one person on the committee who’s moved here in the last year or two, because they certainly have a different perspective about Conway than someone who’s lived here their whole life. But we have one of those people who’ve lived here their whole life, because their perspective is important, too. So we had we’d spent a lot of time and we had, I think, a 13 person steering committee that was just a cross section of the community. And we were getting ready to convene them when the pandemic hit. And obviously, we didn’t, well, by early June, I think we decided to at least get them together in person, and let them make the call on whether or not we were going to try to go through with this thing. And so we took we took a ballroom at UCA and had the I mean, it was like Vladimir Putin trying to meet with 20 people when you see those pictures of him with all this distance between Yeah, yeah, you know, so imagine putting 30 people in a gigantic Ballroom in a in a square table, where we add, you know, I don’t know, 40 feet between people are so dumb, it was crazy. But it was the only thing we could think of that would really be safe. So you know, we all meet wear masks, we put them at this table. And we just said, Look, should we move forward with this? Should we not we’re going to do what you want us to do. And if you tell us to go, we’re going to figure out how to do this. And to have one every one of them said we have to do this, like this is the most important thing we can do. We cannot we do not need to stay focused on what’s happening. Now. We need to come out of this stronger as a community, we need to give people hope. We need to ask people questions about what they want on the other side of this. And so Absolutely, we need to we need to do this. So the next part of this is the same regardless if it had been pre or pre pandemic or pandemic and that is we do a survey tool, just really through Survey Monkey, where we asked people to look at a list of like 40 to 45 topics, things like job creation trails. police fire. Anything almost that you could think of is pretty exhaustive list about things that might be important in a in a community. And we simply ask each resident who wants to fill it out to checkmark all the things that they think are important that we should focus on. So if you want to check 40 boxes, you can if you want to check to you can well, then we asked of these, what are your top three priorities? And then do you want to participate in writing plan? And if so, pick one section that you would want to help, right. So if you go back to 2010, we had 1400 people that participated at that level when filling the survey out. This time, we had over 1800 people that participated. And of the 1800, we had a few 100 that said they wanted to participate in writing plan. So here’s where you’re, you know, here’s, here’s where you hit the nitty gritty, like, how do you pull those people together? Because normally,

you would have four or five in person meetings, I mean, what we would normally do is take every volunteer that wanted to write the plan, meet in an auditorium and go over I mean, here’s how we’re going to do this, you know, and then we’re dividing them up, and they have their first meeting, and then they set subsequent meetings for the next three months. And they really craft this plan. Well, obviously, we can’t do that. So what do we do? So we reached out to the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, which is a partner of ours that is in the neighboring community, and they do strategic they help communities with strategic plans really all over the place. And we just said, Look, we don’t know how to do this. Now. We need we need professional facilitators, because obviously, we’re going to have to use Zoom. And so that’s what we did. We hired Winrock to do that for us, and had a series of zoom meetings that took the place of the in person meetings. And it worked. I mean, it was, it was bizarre, because you were, you know, you somebody would be in their bed on this busier,

Brandon Burton 32:28
because there’s a quiet place in the house, right? When you

Brad Lacy 32:31
always have them after work anyway, you’re always doing them, you know, six or seven, because that’s when people can meet. So you’re really getting this glimpse into people’s lives, you know, like someone’s cooking dinner and is, is talking about, you know, soccer park, or whatever. And so, so we did that throughout the remainder of 2020. And then they really put it all together for us. And then by April of 2021, we had a summit at their facility. They have a big meeting facility with hotel rooms and a restaurant and everything. And so we convened over 50 community leaders in April, and we were all still masks, I’ll never forget it. We still had masks on. And took that plan and kind of did the final what for on it. And then that steering committee ultimately put their blessing on it. And by the early fall of 2021, we had a community wide visioning plan again. And who would have thought I mean, who would have thought that that we can pull that together? It really sets the stage for all of us to do the work that we want to do. So now. We’re in the process of all the various economic development boards in our organization. Our boards have done kind of the dot exercise where they’ve gone through all of the goals and said this is what we should concentrate on. And so our FY our strategic plan comes directly from that. The city for instance, did a $35 million. One my I think it’s probably maybe $40 million community center with pickleball volleyball, indoor and outdoor aquatics and soccer Park proposal that went to voters in February. Well, that checks off more than half of the parks goals that were developed. So that went to voters in February and it passed with 80% of the vote. And so what we would tell people is working that process is the most important thing, because what happens in a lot of communities is, well, meaning people think that they know what everybody wants. And they just move forward with an idea. And then they end up getting hammered at the ballot box. And it’s not because the idea was bad. And it might not even be that people disagree with it, but you never asked them what they wanted,

Brandon Burton 35:32
right? Just is a huge, such a huge factor.

Brad Lacy 35:36
So with this, you know, 1800 people spoke. And it’s pretty clear what they want. Yeah. And so we’ll use that as a guide, you know, for the next several years,

Brandon Burton 35:50
when really to be able to get their input, when you’re in the midst of a pandemic, like that, I’m sure is what spurred so many more people to participate in the survey, because they had more opinions, because we’re fresh, and they you know, and they, I’m sure appreciated that you’re reaching out and asking for their opinion asking if they want to be involved with the process. So I think the timing, although it didn’t seem great, on the surface, probably couldn’t have been better to get that for sure. Feedback from your community.

Brad Lacy 36:17
Yep, for sure.

Brandon Burton 36:19
I think that transitions well into my next question for you is, how do you view the role of your chamber there in your community?

Brad Lacy 36:31
I think we are often the middle ground that people are looking for these days. You know, Conway is pretty purple town politically. There’s a section of it, that’s very blue, and there’s a section of it, that’s very red. And I think we tend to be this place where a lot of the different sides can come to agree on things. And so we do our best to stay there. I’ve never seen a liberal or conservative person who didn’t think that job creation was important, right? I’ve never seen a liberal or conservative person who didn’t think quality place and quality of life was important. So I think chambers have the opportunity to play this part of, of helping bring both ends to the middle. Now, the extremes you’re never going to bring, because they don’t want. They don’t want to come to the middle. But the reality is, I think most of us are not the extremes. And so I think what we do is we help remind the community as a whole. And you’ve seen this, I think with our annual meeting, the annual meeting is really about helping people remember what we can accomplish. When we work together, it’s helping people understand why we’re special, it’s seeing their friends and neighbors on screen who look different from each other, who think different from each other. But they’re still working toward this common goal of building a world class city in the middle of Arkansas. And so I think that that’s the role we play is, is just this middle ground. Let’s roll our sleeves up and get the work done. And stay out of the, you know, crappy stuff that seems to dominate the headlines

Brandon Burton 38:39
like that. And, you know, you mentioned where the the ultra conservative or liberal like they both can agree that job creations are important. And and it’s not the chambers are looking for topics to grasp on to that are not controversial. But it’s topics that matter. And that can move the needle in a community and both sides can see where you know, something like job creation, and that example can move the needle. And I think

Brad Lacy 39:04
if you do those things, well, if you have a history of doing those things, well, there are things that you can get into. So for instance, and I don’t think this should be controversial, but I think it is, you know, the DBI diversity, belonging, equity and inclusion. I mean, you heard us present on that. And that would that would be controversial for some people. But we felt very strongly that we need to plant a flag there. And, and we have and we did and have, did we take on a little bit of water with some people in the community? Yeah, probably. But for the majority. I don’t think so. I think that they want us to speak on things like that. Because if it’s important to the business community that it’s important to us.

Brandon Burton 40:04
Absolutely. So Brad, I wanted to ask you if there if you might have a tip or an action item for listeners to help take their organizations up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Brad Lacy 40:16
Well, I think being ambitious is the biggest one, the main expecting more. I think that that probably guides us more than anything is that we expect more from ourselves. And we always think that we can get better. And we compare ourselves to the best. Which is part of the reason you do things like chamber of the year, you need to compare yourself to the best people out there. And you’ll always learn something from that, you know,

Brandon Burton 40:50
even just a benchmarking survey itself, that whole process, yeah,

Brad Lacy 40:54
right. And we do that as a community really, like we compare ourselves to other cities that we think we can learn something from, and we do that in a really formal way. So I just think being ambitious is is big. I think it’s so easy to just get caught up in the day to day activities of of what you do, and you just lose sight of trying to have some vision and and be the force that helps push your community in that direction.

Brandon Burton 41:28
I like that answer. So I’d like for a so many of your responses just flow right into the next question. So good. I like asking, yeah, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Brad Lacy 41:43
I think they’re incredibly important. And I think as important as they’ve ever been simply because of what I said before on this, this middle ground, that chambers should be able to be for people. Because of the interesting nature of our work, I mean, we represent the business community. Well, what the business community has to say, should be very important to whatever community they’re in, because if the business community disappears or go somewhere else, then you don’t have a community anymore. And, and so I don’t think that you have to be apologetic for having an opinion. If your membership is backing you up on it. I mean, that’s what you’re there for. However, I do think that the majority of things that we work on should be something that the majority of the people in your community can gravitate toward. You, you know, I’ve often said, in the 23 years that I’ve worked here, I have boards that have some of the most liberal and some of the most conservative people in the community on them. I have never in 23 years heard them argue or fight about national hot button political issues. I’ve never heard them talk about Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Joe Biden. I’ve never heard them talk about abortion, or any other all of the issues like I’ve never heard that. And the reality is, we don’t do that. That’s not what grows, the city of Conway, and so confer a common goal. That’s right. I mean, the stuff that we worked on is something that almost always, both sides can agree on. And and when you when you win together, it makes those harder times a little bit easier, because you end up knowing this person. And when you know somebody, even if they think differently than you. You can’t vilify them because you know, that you, you know, you’ve had lunch with them, you know, their families, you just you just think about the world a little bit differently. And so I really think chambers have this ability to can, again, it’s what we’re best at convening people, why we convene people better if we’re doing our job, we convene people better than any other group or organization in our community. And there is a power in that. There’s a responsibility in that. And so I think the future’s bright for chambers.

Brandon Burton 44:45
Absolutely. So Brad, this has been great having you back on the podcast. I’ve really enjoyed it. I wanted to give you an opportunity to put any contact information out there. So if anyone wanted to reach out and connect and learn more about how you’re doing things there and Conway, how should they have? Should they reach out and connect with you?

Connect with Brad Lacy

Brad Lacy 45:03
Sure, I mean, emails probably the easiest. And then if we want to move into a phone conversation or bring some other staff members in, we’d be happy to and that’s just brad@conwayarkansas.org in Arkansas spelled out completely.

Brandon Burton 45:18
That’s perfect. Now I’ll get it in the show notes for this episode as well. So people can go there and find it and shoot you an email and learn more about Toad sick days, you know? Absolutely. Well, Brad, I really do appreciate you coming on here with me and I wish you and the Conway area Chamber Best of luck, this chamber the air.

Brad Lacy 45:37
Thank you, we appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 45:38
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Have you ever thought about creating a podcast for your chamber? We always hear about how chambers need to be storytellers. What better way is there to tell the stories of your members and the work of your chamber than through a podcast?

Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

I just launched a Chamber Podcast Course with the goal to get your very own podcast started within 30 days. Visit chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot. To learn more and to enroll in the chamber podcast course today. For a limited time as a launch promotion. This course is being offered at a 25% discount. Be sure to purchase the course today to lock in your savings before the price goes up., even if you’re not ready to start right away. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/pivot.

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!

How Member Feedback and Data Can Help Drive Every Decision

Directional Data

When it comes to driving the course for your chamber, you need to have clear direction.  Can you imagine going for a drive without knowing your final destination or how to get there?  You would end up wasting a lot of time and resources going in the wrong direction while you try to guess where you should be headed.  I heard a quote a while back that said “you can work at 100 mph but if you are not clear on your destination, you will end up 100 miles away from your goal.”  This is true when making business decisions or operating your chamber.  You need to have a clear vision of where your organization should be headed.  

Proof of Concept

About a year after starting Chamber Chat Podcast, I started having some chambers reach out to me about how to get started with their own podcast.  At first I was answering their questions one by one.  Then I thought it would be a good idea to launch an online course to take chambers through the steps to get started.  But, before I invested a lot of time into creating a course, I created a simple downloadable Chamber Podcasting Guide PDF that I gave away for free to interested chambers..  This allowed me to test the market to see if there were more chambers who wanted to start a podcast.  After I had about 150 downloads of this Chamber Podcasting Guide, then I proceeded to create the course and guess who I marketed it to first?  That’s right, those people who had already expressed an interest in podcasting.  This was almost a guarantee that I would get sales for the course.

essCert logo. Paperless certificates of origin.
Boost your Chamber’s efficiency & revenues with digital certification of origin and movement documents, powered by essCert – the leading choice for 400 Chambers & 50,000+ satisfied Chamber members.

When making decisions at your chamber, you should be collecting data along the way.  Collecting and evaluating data will allow you to create more relevant content, programming, and opportunities for involvement by catering to what is important to your member businesses.  Having a clear vision is important, but it also must align with your mission.  If you are collecting interest for programs that are outside of the scope of your mission, you might be better served by partnering with another organization or handing the program off all together.

Ways to Collect Data

Let’s brainstorm on some ways to gather data and member feedback to help you make better decisions.  

  • Understand what makes popular social media posts trend.
  • What are your most attended programs?  What is the content about?
  • Ask new members why they are joining the chamber and what their expectations are.
  • Provide surveys after each event to collect feedback.
  • Ask your members what they value most about their membership with your chamber.
  • Record common questions that members ask your chamber.
  • Post polls on social media for future programming.
  • Survey people who attend community events.

A note about surveys…it is important to be clear about the desired purpose for the event or program you are providing the survey for.  If the person being surveyed doesn’t understand what the intent for a program or event is, then their responses can lead you in the wrong direction.  You should clearly state the reason you put on your community festival for example, the impact it makes throughout the community, and then ask your questions.  This gives more context rather than having a person complaining about the festival because it was too hot that day.

I recently came across a chamber who surveyed their members about whether or not they should continue producing a community guide/directory or a map.  The feedback came back that the members did not want the chamber to produce either publication any more.  This chamber failed to mention the added value to each member of having their name listed in the directory and distributed throughout their community.  They also did not inform their members about the non-dues revenue the chamber receives for their budget from these publications and how having a tangible publication can help with branding your community to newcomers and visitors.  The expectations and reasoning was not properly laid out and for that reason, the members voted the way they did.  With more accurate information, the vote likely would have been much different.

Community Matters, Inc. logo. Chamber publisher.
Directories, magazines, maps, and digital…
Consider Community Matters, Inc. for your next chamber publication.

Interview with Aaron Nelson-Data Driven Decisions

In June of 2021, I had Aaron Nelson from the Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber on the podcast to discuss how he approaches data driven decision making.  He talked about how they go about collecting data after every event.  They gather data about the venue, the speakers, the food, just about every aspect of each event that you can think of.  This creates a very clear path going forward for their future events with the understanding that each event is a continual iteration.  

What to do with Data?

One of the tricky aspects about collecting data and gathering member feedback is what to do with it.  If you have a quality platform for your membership software, then this should be your hub for storing all of this data and feedback.  I am partial to the Chamber Nation platform as it is a robust platform with a ton of added value that you don’t find anywhere else. It is also very affordable for even smaller chambers to adopt this platform.  Many chambers even turn the Chamber Nation platform into a non-dues revenue generator within a few months.  As you collect data and input it into the Chamber Nation platform, you are also able to produce monthly activity reports for each member so they can see the ROI of their membership.  This is providing data to your members to help them make better decisions!

The key is to continually collect and record the data and feedback from your various sources so you can learn what is important to your members.  Once you know what is important to them, you will have better engagement with your programming because you are providing more targeted value to your members.


Please join our email list to receive new blog posts are they are released. You will stay in the loop with any announcements related to the podcast or the Chamber world in general.

Be sure you are subscribed to Chamber Chat Podcast in your favorite podcast app. Subscribers are the first to get episodes as new ones come out each week.

Community Building with Karen Riordan

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_0371.jpg

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Karen Riordan. 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.

Introduction

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.

And now your host she believes imagination brings the future into the present, he’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him. 

Kris Johnson  0:48  

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

Brandon Burton  1:29  

You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

Guest Introduction

Our guest for this episode is Karen Riordan. Karen serves as the President and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber in South Carolina, where she spends her time working with the business community and driving tourism. Karen brings 30 plus years of marketing and business management experience working as CEO for the greater Williamsburg chamber and Tourism Alliance, as well as at top marketing firms in Washington, DC and Boston. Over the course of her career, Karen has led marketing programs for leading brands and tourism including visit Williamsburg, the hub the Bahamas, Ministry of Tourism, Royal Caribbean International Amtrak Choice Hotels, international and Celebrity Cruises. Karen graduated from Boston College with a BA in speech communications and English. She was recognized in March 2021 is the first female president and CEO of the chamber at the city of Myrtle Beach’s celebration of Women’s History Month. In 2018, she was named chamber Executive of the Year by the Virginia association of Chamber of Commerce executives. She is the 2013 recipient of the American advertising Federation Silver Medal Award for service to the community and a 2012 honoree of the Washington Business Journal’s women who mean business when not working on branding Karen’s passions include traveling animal welfare, walking the beach, and all things made of chocolate. I think we could be best friends. No. I’m glad to have you with me today. Karen here on chamber tap podcast. I’d love for you to say hello to all the chamber champions and you hear something interesting?

Karen Riordan 3:18
Yeah. Hello to everyone and chamber world Chamber Champions. As you just heard, I do have a few core passions. I need to do all that walking on the beach to break even with all the chocolate that I eat. So that that other obsession right now and I feel like I absolutely have the dream job because it’s such a great honor to work in a tourism destination doing community work via the chamber. When I’ve had such a personal passion for travel my whole life. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always wanted to see the country and see the world and I’ve been very fortunate to take my grandmother’s sage advice when I was young and tried to do that every chance I get so to again get to do this for a living his dream. So I feel very very fortunate to be able to promote beautiful Myrtle Beach South Carolina and get paid to do that.

Brandon Burton 4:16
That’s right it it is beautiful. I love Myrtle Beach. It’s an awesome place. Share with us a little bit about the Myrtle Beach chamber and its size, the staff budget kind of scope of work just to set the table for our discussion. Yeah, so

About the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber

Karen Riordan 4:30
the reason we have area in our name is Myrtle Beach area is that we are considered a Regional Chamber we actually have a pretty large trading area all the way from the northern part of our state that need is just a setting there underneath the North Carolina border up in Little River all the way down to beautiful Pawleys Island and then the entire west of the waterway as we like to call it which is Conway into Loris and Aner which encompasses Our entire county or county, so it’s a large trading area, we have about 2300 businesses, the 78% of the businesses that are part of our chamber are small business with 50 or less employees. So people think of Myrtle Beach and they think of tourism and they think of big companies. And yes, we do have some of those big companies as our members. But they said most of them are small. And a lot of them really are mom and pop. We have a lot of independent companies. Here in Myrtle Beach, it’s kind of part of our DNA. To serve those 2300 members, we’ve got 39 full time employees. And then we have five part time employees that work in our visitor centers. So we have a visitor center out at our airport, we have another visitor center located at our chamber. And then we have a mobile Visitor Center, which is a really awesome van that travels around the whole trading area, especially during event season popping in and giving away great Myrtle Beach swag to tourists and residents alike. So it’s a, it’s again, it’s a big chamber, it is a hybrid, in that we are both at Chamber of Commerce, and we’re also the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. So with that we have a huge responsibility to spend the public money that we do receive from our state and our county and our city’s well to you know, bring folks here to come and visit. So our total budget is about $65 million this year. So we do have a large budget to work with, which is a blessing.

Brandon Burton 6:34
Yeah, that is uh, I had no idea your chamber was so large 35 full time or 39 full time employees in the five part time in the the mobile visitor center. That is that’s creative. That’s something I haven’t seen before. Very productive, I’m sure to getting out to these different events currently. So we’ll be focusing our our topic for discussion today around one of those topics that really is core, I believe, for chambers of commerce, which is around community building. And that’s really how chambers got their start and kind of the reason why chambers exists throughout the country and really throughout the world. But I’m excited to get in this discussion with you as soon as I get back from this quick break.

Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for Are you looking for a year round affordable and timely shop local campaign for your chamber or CVB Look no further build a custom each shop play mobile app with App My Community by visiting appmycommunity.com/chamberchat. App My Community mobile apps are not just simple membership directory listings. They provide many more capabilities to engage with your community. Provide your residents with a robust events calendar partner with a local fare festival or Farmers Market provide a schedule map and other resources to promote the event. Run a Small Business Saturday campaign any time of the year using built in scavenger hunts allow your membership to communicate directly to their customers via push notifications. Your app my community mobile app will be a unique member benefit allow you to generate non dues revenue with sponsorship opportunities and best of all provide a valuable resource to your community please visit appmycommunity.com/chamberchat now to receive 10% off your first year of an App My Community mobile app.

App My Community creates mobile apps that allow you to engage directly with your community. Enhance chamber membership by providing a unique advertising and communication channel to residents and visitors. Not just a member directory, App My Community has the tools to be useful to residents on a daily basis. Learn more at appmycommunity.com/chamberchat.

From frustrations trying to connect with decision makers to trouble demonstrating value to difficulties adjusting to an uncertain post COVID world who does your membership rep turn to for expert membership sales advice? Holman Brothers can help right now. They’re year round Next Level Coaching program supplies a total coaching and mentoring support system in a way that’s never been available for membership pros. Visit holmanbros.com/nextlevel to learn more and request a free trial of Next Level Coaching.

Click here for a FREE trial of Next Level Coaching from Holman Brothers.

Chamber Nation hears from its customers that they help make it fun again to present the value of membership. That’s because so much is provided to help each member promote their business and with monthly ROI reports from Chamber Nation, they know their membership is already working to help them succeed.

There are three words in Chamber of Commerce…. and Chamber Nation knows that their customers take care of the CHAMBER, but Chamber Nation takes care of the COMMERCE. This way both teams working side-by-side deliver a whole lot more in membership value. 

With Chamber Nation, not only will you have a membership management system but also a membership development system all in one terrific package. So, SAVE MONEY and be impressed by visiting www.RichardsCalendar.com to set up a demo with their CEO. Or learn more at  www.ChamberNation.com.

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

All right, Karen, we are back. So as far as community building is concerned, how is the Myrtle Beach area Chamber approaching the task of community building?

Topic-Community Building

Karen Riordan 10:13
Great question. We’ve done a couple of different things in the last few years that actually began during the pandemic, or a little bit before. And even though it was more challenging to do community building, when we were quarantining, I really think that it makes a lot of sense that we continue to be as engaged as we possibly can with all of our stakeholders. So we actually have an official committee of our chamber, that’s called community engagement. And we have a several board members, that chair and vice chair that committee, and then we have lots of volunteers. So in addition to sort of a classic role as an ambassador that many chambers have, we have these additional volunteers that do have name tags that identify them as community engagement Council folks, and we go to neighborhood meetings. So we go to Hoa meetings, we go to city meetings and county meetings and civic meetings, and are constantly trying to engage with the business community, but also the residents. And that’s really, really important in our minds, because we do have a number of people now that have moved to Myrtle Beach in the last 10 years or so, that are retirees. Many of them are great captains of industry that have a lot to offer through programs like score and mentorship. But they’re not actively working in the business community anymore. So many of them are not Chamber members anymore. And we feel it’s really important to stay connected to them and have them be really educated and informed about what we’re doing at the chamber. And just things that are happening because Myrtle Beach is changing rapidly. And it’s hard to keep up with it if you don’t, you know, have sort of some constant communication. So the community engagement Council has been really important for us, as have our strategic efforts in diversity, equity inclusion, so we’re really looking to be able to reach out to more members of our community to make sure that our chamber board or chamber staff, our chamber membership really reflects the diversity that is here in the Myrtle Beach area. So those are those are two sort of things that I think most chambers would agree are important, and that they’re working on. Where we really kind of taken it beyond though, is to launch a new Chamber of Commerce Foundation. And we are calling that foundation partnership Grand Strand. One of the reasons we chose partnership, no surprise is because when we started doing feasibility interviews and community needs assessment interviews, the number one word that kept coming up in our interviews was, you know, we need to be better partners, we need to collaborate more, we need to make sure that, again, our governmental entities, like our city council’s and our County Council’s, even our state delegation, is really connected to the private sector and what the business community is thinking and feeling, as well as the resident community. So this has been a year and a half in the making. Or as they said, we started with a lot of research in serving and interviewing and focus groups, then we decided that we needed to do a feasibility study to see, you know, is this really something that the Chamber of Commerce should take on? Or is this better done, and led, say, for instance, by our economic development corporation here in the county, and overwhelmingly, we saw last fall when the results came in that people trusted the Chamber of Commerce. They believe that we had the right group of individuals here on our board in our membership to really make a go of it. So our board of directors voted in the fall of 2021, to proceed. And then we immediately started working on marketing materials and prospect lists and all those kinds of things and embarked on a quiet phase of a capital campaign to fund that foundation. We’ve just come out of the quiet phase and on a big public kickoff, with our goal of raising $3 million to fund five years worth of activity in the foundation. So very, very exciting. This is new territory for our chamber, we really leaned into what other chambers across the country have been doing in this area, and really did see that some of the most cutting edge and progressive chambers in our country, we’re really starting to move in this direction, to raise funds to do some of those projects that don’t ever seem to quite get done on our chamber repertoire because we’re so busy doing educational seminars and networking and legislative advocacy. And so we’re super super excited about this new chapter of community building.

Brandon Burton 15:04
Yeah. So I love I’m gonna take a step back just a little bit there. I love how you talked about involving the retirees in your community, a lot of people moving to Myrtle Beach as they retire. And for anyone who’s read on if you’ve read the book 13 ways to kill your community. And it was popular among chamber professionals. But one of those ways that communities and killed themselves is they ignore their seniors. And in the book, it talks about, you know, these seniors, they often have the time to volunteer, they they have an interest in the community they have experienced, they often will have money that they can help contribute to some of the causes and things you have going on. So I’d love to hear that. I mean, a lot of chambers are doing the D and I work, but to have that focus on the the retiree segment of the population, I think is huge. So I didn’t want to didn’t want to brush that over.

Karen Riordan 15:58
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. And the last thing I would add to that is that they both are very committed to the political process, and they do vote. And so they really do have the power to start to shape who are elected leaders are at the city level, the county level and the statewide level, which is really important. We want to make sure that folks that are you know, voting for different candidates, that those candidates are business friendly, that they are pro business, they, again, growth is a big issue in our area, just like it is in so many parts of our country, or a county has been named the second fastest growing county in the US. So with that growth comes a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of challenges. And so we do need to be all looking at ways to work together to make sure that the growth we have is manageable, and that our infrastructure can keep up with the growth that we’re experiencing right now. So yes, we absolutely ignore seniors at our peril, because they can also be such a force multiplier here. As you said, our local SCORE chapter, helping entrepreneurs start new businesses, you know, their whole mission is to recruit retirees that have run their own businesses, and teach that next generation of entrepreneurs, how to write a business plan, how to you know, how to set up how to get incorporated, how to hire folks. So I think we need to lean into the expertise that is in that community,

Brandon Burton 17:33
for sure. So I also wanted to touch on when you were talking about the foundation, and coming up with the name, partnership Grand Strand, you had done these surveys and got feedback and everything. And I can tell you have a marketing background because you use the language right that they were using in the surveys to help them resonate. So as you roll out the foundation, partnership, Grand Strand, you’re using their language, so resonates with them. And I think that’s a good lesson for chambers, you know, whatever programs or initiatives you’re trying to roll out, get feedback from people and use their language, when you go about launching it, whether it’s officially part of the name or just part of the material marketing.

Karen Riordan 18:14
You’re absolutely right, because that’s a way for them to to understand that they’ve been listened to that we’ve heard them. And that we also agree in this particular case, that partnership is a critical component. We, our community in years past has been accused of not being unified in sometimes not being able to progress the way we want to because, you know, one city squabbling with, you know, with a neighboring city, and we really are 14 communities along the coast. Many people who’ve never been here are shocked that we actually have 60 miles of coastline. And again, those 14 communities, which means I have 14 mayors to get to know and 14 city councils to attend and so forth, in addition to a county council, so it is a lot of work. But putting the time into building those relationships and understanding where they’re coming from and what they’re looking to do, and then trying to convene. I’m just a huge believer that a critical role in Chamber Leadership is to be a convener, to be able to bring different people together who may not agree on much, but try to find common ground on something. Sometimes we start with just the love of the beach, right? We all live here at the beach, we love the beach. We may disagree on taxes, or we may agree, disagree on this bill or this program, but we can start there with our love for the beach, and then try to move on and find some more common ground.

Brandon Burton 19:37
You’re making the other 90% of the country that doesn’t live at the beach, very jealous, right.

Karen Riordan 19:45
It is a perfect place to live and work.

Brandon Burton 19:48
So the thought that came to me is we focus our discussion on community building. You know, you could argue we’re much more of a global community now the internet is kind of taken down A lot of those barriers that we had and communities of the past, we’re not divided so much, you know, by geography or anything like that. So why is it important for a chamber of commerce still to focus on building strong communities?

Karen Riordan 20:16
Again, I think it’s just so critical, I happen to also believe that, you know, all politics is local. And again, we can’t really be getting the kinds of things done in Washington, DC, or at our state houses, if we’re not first and foremost, paying attention to what the folks on the ground in our local communities care about. And so it’s just again, building from the inside out, I have that same philosophy when it comes to enacting any kind of program, I want to do it first, internally, like Dee and I, I want to make sure that our staff is all bought in that we’re all rowing in the rowboat in the same direction. And then of course, have our board of directors be aligned, and then it just makes the job so much easier to go out into the local community. And again, find those points where people are in agreement and work, you know, from that position of strength, instead of, I believe, too often people are focusing on what sets us apart, or what makes us different, or what we don’t agree on. And that’s a very, very short conversation. And, you know, once those happen, it’s very hard to move forward and get any progress. So I just think, again, doing that work, it’s not maybe glamorous, but it is really, really important to also be be in touch with the community. So part of my style here as CEO, is to walk the halls a lot in the building, but also be walking in the community. Today, we did an Artwalk. And we were downtown, seeing all the murals and the public art that’s out there. And talking about that, and using that for additional social media content that we’ll share out with the local community. So if the residents don’t know about a great new mural, they just went up on Ninth Ave. And, you know, part of our job is to make them aware of it and hopefully activate that and have them come down and check it out. So I just again, think working from the inside out, creating that alignment. Getting people on the same page is a big part of what chambers at their best are trying to do.

Brandon Burton 22:24
Absolutely. So I know you guys have a focus as you do your community building efforts and work. Take us through what those those four pillars are of your your area of work.

Karen Riordan 22:37
Yeah, well, not surprising. In the end, this won’t be unique. I’m sure there’s many communities and many chambers that are grappling with some of these, what gets unique is sort of the secret sauce of the the nuance of the community. But I mean, the first thing that we really saw here in our destination is that we have too many of our eggs in our tourism basket. And I can I can say that also running the DMO. And no, that may sound crazy for people to hear us say that. But right now we have 74% of our economy is somewhat tied to the tourism and hospitality industry. And we saw with a pandemic and also with Hurricane Florence, which we experienced in 2018. That we’re putting our economy at tremendous risk, having so many eggs in that tourism basket. And so we really believe that a first pillar in this community building effort is to use the strength of a chamber our chamber, to go out and try to help diversify the economy, we have target sectors that we want to go after. And we’re going to be talking to those micro businesses, we are not doing the economic development work that our authority does. That group is really going and you know, talking to site selectors and investors and bringing people into the Myrtle Beach area. Those tend to be you know, bigger projects that could bring in 200 or 300 jobs at a time, what we’re really talking about is going to talk to those amazing entrepreneurs maybe that are working out of their home right now. Because they can, they can do that remote work. But they aspire to be the next Google and they’ve got a business plan to do that. And they may only have two employees now. But in a year, they want to have five employees and five years from now they want to be 100 person, you know, technology company or whatever the the industry may be. So part of our job will be to really focus on working with those companies understanding what’s holding them back. Do they need better ordinances in town so that, you know business licenses are more affordable, or do they need resources to find space for their business to grow? Is it talent that is holding them back because they can’t find the right people for critical positions they need. So that’s the first pillar, of course, to diversify the economy I just mentioned we need talent. The whole A World Needs talent. Right now we’ve all talked about and read about, you know, not just the great resignation. But for us in our economy, too. We’re also seeing the great retirement, we’re seeing 55 year olds that, you know, bully for them have done amazing things in their, their career, and they’re ready to retire now, and they have the financial wherewithal to do that. And they decide to retire here in the Myrtle Beach area. Could we again, convince them to come and be a mentor to other entrepreneurs who want to start a business? Could we have the mentor talent that wants to move from middle management into senior management. So we’re going to get really, really creative on talent, working with the K through 12 system, but also our educational institutions, to grow the talent we need, but also, if necessary, recruit the talent outside of South Carolina to come here to the coast. So we can’t really accomplish everything that we want to do with our economy, if we don’t have those critical, you know, pipelines established in terms of talent, so, so that that’s another really, really big pillar for us.

Brandon Burton 26:09
Absolutely. And I know that’s a focus for a lot of chambers is growing and recruiting talent to their area. But I like the approach you again, tying in the seniors, the retirees, I’m thinking of a young entrepreneur in your area, how lucky are they to be able to have so many options for mentors in your community, and to be able to market that and show these people were successful, great careers, they’ve got their full of knowledge they can share with you. So I mean, for our whole discussion to focus on retirees, but there’s

Karen Riordan 26:46
a lot of it again, it’s using the assets we have, we do have a great four year institution here. You know, again, graduating wonderful people, but like so many other communities, we have brain drain, a lot of those folks think, well, I’ve got to go work in Atlanta, I’ve got to go work in Charlotte, I’ve got to go work in, you know, bright lights big city. And, you know, part of our job is to convince them that we do have great opportunities here for them to either work in an existing business and grow their career or start a business. And part of that too, and especially attracting that 20 Something group is we have to give them a great place to live if the quality of life is not here. If our downtown is not vibrant. If we don’t have new fun clubs and bars and restaurants and things for them to do, they are going to pass us by and choose, you know, other communities that they think are more vibrant. So we’ve been in a situation where we’ve really built to the west and to the north, in terms of entertainment complexes, sports complexes, things to do, and they’ve been really thriving for the last 10 years. But unfortunately, we’ve done that at the expense of our core downtown. And so it really has suffered from benign neglect, where so many businesses left that area and went to some of these other you know, quote unquote, cooler places in the Myrtle Beach area, like the market common or some of our other sectors. And so we really do need to work very hard to bring that downtown back, it is our front porch to the world. We do welcome close to 20 million visitors a year and they come downtown Myrtle Beach, they walk the boardwalk and we want to have the right assortment of shops and businesses and restaurants and retail there. So we are very fortunate that our city has just entered into a public private partnership with an entity that is called the Myrtle Beach downtown Alliance. And so the downtown Alliance, his job really is to completely revitalize downtown if that means new landscaping and lighting and, of course, economic development, attracting new investment there. So the Chamber’s job really is to get out of the way and not duplicate efforts there. But really once again, amplify and support what the downtown alliance is doing. A good example is last week, we had a new business that came decided to locate downtown. They have their corporate headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina, we’re all excited to welcome them here. And we did a joint grand opening and ribbon cutting and mixer with the downtown Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce and we had over 100 people come see this space, you know, meet the partners of the new firm. And not only were we showcasing that firm and welcoming them to the community, but we’re also showcasing downtown and sending a message through our media outlets that downtown is coming back and look at look at this wave of this is you know the fifth new company that’s that’s come in since the end of last year. So it’s it’s creating some momentum and that’s again where The chamber’s knowledge of the community, our relationships with the businesses already in downtown. And our marketing ability allows us to tell some of those stories and really help the downtown, hopefully go further faster. With this redevelopment, we’re hoping it’s going to be really, really quite robust in the next three to five years.

Brandon Burton 30:21
Yeah. That sounds great. Is there anything that we’re missing as far as community building wise that that you want to make sure you share?

Karen Riordan 30:32
Well, yeah, the last pillar that’s connected to these three is infrastructure. So I’ll just talk about that briefly. You know, we can’t attract great people to come to our community, we can’t diversify the economy. And we can’t create a great place to live unless we have the right infrastructure. And specifically, we need transportation infrastructure, we need to be advocating for the roads that we have to be repaired to be widened to be improved. We are advocating for new interstate, that would come from the beach and go all the way up to the North Carolina border. And then on Interstate 7374, actually goes through six states, all the way to the Canada Border. So that’s a big, big project we’re working on. But again, we’ve got to have the roads, the bridges, the walkability and bikeability, that makes a good place a great place. And so that’s the last pillar of community building that we’re working on.

Brandon Burton 31:27
Yeah. And I think the way it is, is that road comes from North Carolina down into the South Carolina beaches right now, right off the off, it doesn’t go out and comes in, right.

Karen Riordan 31:40
From Rockingham, but it’s a critical highway, because we don’t have it now. And with evacuation, should we get another bad storm on the Carolina coast, which, unfortunately, is one downside of living in the Carolinas. You know, on any given day in July, we could have literally hundreds of 1000s of people that we need to evacuate both residents as well as visitors. And so having something like that to speed up the evacuation route would be much needed and appreciated.

Brandon Burton 32:12
Yeah, I was I was out there and South Carolina for Hurricane Floyd in, I guess it was 1989. And that’s a real thing need to be able to get out of town in a hurry. So

Karen Riordan 32:25
clearly, when a governor makes that, that announcement and says you’ve got you know, 48 hours to evacuate, you really need to do it. And the last thing people want to do is sit in a traffic jam for six hours. Especially with the price of gas right now. Right? You know, it’s just the whole thing is a little scary. And so we as a chamber are always advocating for people to leave the coast and get to safety, stay with friends and family and so forth inland. So that’s another important reason that we get the transportation infrastructure that we need.

Brandon Burton 32:56
Yeah, for sure. Well, what would be maybe one tip or action item that you could share with Chamber Champions listening that they could do to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Karen Riordan 33:07
You know that that’s a great question, I would continue to say connect with the wider community. I know, we’ve touched on this already. And it does seem like an emerging theme, do not ignore your residents, particularly your seniors, but also your youth. Go out of your way to talk to people that are not members of your chamber right now. When I came into the chamber world, the best piece of advice I got from my mentor was that every business that you meet is a potential chamber member. So even if they’re not members today, if you treat them with kindness, and you show concern and interest in their business, chances are very good that as they get to know your chamber, and all the great things you’re doing for the community, they will want to be a part of that. So it’s like, you know, never met a stranger. It’s like, well, I’ve never met a non member right, at some point. Hopefully, they will, you know, they will join us. But that just being in the community like that hearing their issues is totally invaluable. If we understand what they need, what they’re looking for, we can be a better chamber. So I’m just very big on that and think that it can be hard to do because we’re all in our lane and our heads are down and we’re looking at the 50 things we’ve got to get done this week. And of course, we have to take care of our member investors. You know, they pay our dues, they pay our bills, but it is it’s kind of refreshing to lift your head up and and get to know some people that are not yet members and hear what their concerns are and also what their ideas are. They could have an amazing idea that we want to adopt. We just haven’t listened. So I think that’s really important right now.

Brandon Burton 34:52
Yeah, great tip. So I’d like asking everyone I have on the show as we look to the future of chambers of commerce how to use See the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Karen Riordan 35:02
You know, I think the chambers are more important than they’ve ever been. In my entire business life, I’ve always belonged to a chamber. But I have to say that particularly in the last two years, going through what we’ve all gone through with, with the pandemic, I believe our team, and I’ve heard this from so many other chambers here in South Carolina, we are more mission driven than ever before. Because when the business community is hurting, and they’re looking for information, and they’re concerned about whether their business is going to be viable, and all of these things really did happen in all of our communities, and 20 and 2021, you have a renewed sense of purpose to help because you realize, oh, my gosh, they’re turning to you at the chamber. And they do expect that if you don’t have the answer, you’re going to go call your congressman and get the answer or your get, you know, you’re going to find out about that bill, are you going to find out about why their PPP loan, you know, didn’t go through, and you know, and talk to folks in the banking community, whatever it may be, I mean, our phones rang off the hook during 2020 and 2021, with people saying Help, my business needs help. And I think as a result of that, we just feel such a strong sense of what we do matters, it really matters, it really helps a lot of businesses. And when we help a business community, we are lifting the tide for the entire community. So I think the future for chambers is very, very bright, as long as we stay very mission driven, and very focused and never forget, again, the businesses that we’re here to serve. So I feel very optimistic about that. Right.

Brandon Burton 36:42
I appreciate that, that response and that perspective, for sure. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information. So if there’s listeners out there who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about your efforts of community building and things you’ve shared with us today, what would be the best way for him to reach out and connect with

Connect with Karen Riordan

Karen Riordan 37:02
You can reach out to me at Karen.Riordan@VisitMyrtleBeach.com. And that’s my my email address. You can also check out our chamber website, MyrtleBeachAreaChamber.com. But I always welcome talking to other colleagues and hearing their stories. And if I can offer a bit of advice or fill in more detail as to what we’re doing in community building. I’m happy to do that.

Brandon Burton 37:36
Awesome. I appreciate that. I’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode171. But Karen, I appreciate you being with us today and sharing your examples and and perspective as to how you guys are going about community building and, and especially in those important segments that you touched on as well. So I think it provided a lot of value for our listeners. Thank you.

Karen Riordan 38:03
Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 38:07
If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.

Would you be interested in creating even more value from the processes that you’re already doing on a daily basis? Swypit has been one of my sponsors for Chamber Chat from the beginning. Swypit provides credit card payment solutions that will save your chamber up to 40% on your processing fees and Swypit can integrate your credit card processing seamlessly into your existing membership software. Swypit does not charge chambers to switch and they will make switching simple. In addition to these savings Swypit has an affinity program for Chambers of Commerce so you can earn more non-dues revenue to support your budget. Learn more about Swypit by requesting your free cost savings analysis and become more profitable today by visiting chamberchatpodcast.com/cc as in credit card. Again, that’s chamberchatpodcast.com/cc and you can join many other Chambers as you begin swiping with Swypit!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SwpitBanner-copy.jpg
Swypit can help you increase your non-dues revenue while also helping your members become more profitable by lowering their credit card processing fees. Click here to learn more about Swypit’s credit card affinity program. -P.S. Your members will love the savings you can offer them too!
Have you considered the many benefits of hosting a podcast for your Chamber? The options, leverage, and possibilities that a podcast offers are virtually endless. Download my FREE Chamber Podcasting Guide to learn how to start your own Chamber podcast!