Category: workforce development

Vail Valley Partnership-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Chris Romer

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Brandon Burton 0:00
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You’re joining us for a special episode and our 2024 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Chris Romer. Chris serves as the President and CEO of Vail Valley Partnership or the VVP. Vail Valley Partnership is a Regional Chamber of Commerce, destination sales organization and economic development organization representing Eagle County, Colorado and was named Chamber the Year by ACCE in 2016 and 2020. As CEO of the Vail Valley Partnership, he brings a wealth of experience in strategic planning, business development and partnership building to the organization. With a deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities facing Colorado’s mountain region. Chris is dedicated to driving innovation and collaboration to ensure the continued success and sustainability of local businesses and communities. Chris is a macroscopic thinker who believes in tackling big issues through localized solutions. He is a graduate of the US Chamber Foundation’s IOM program and is CCE certified chamber executive. He’s also been named a top 25 Mind in hospitality sales, marketing and revenue management by hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Chamber Executive of the Year by the Colorado Association Chamber of Commerce and Industry Colorado chamber executives, and was named a PEDDIT award winner by the Western Association of Chamber Executives. Chris is a respected voice in the chamber and economic development fields and is known for his ability to bring stakeholders together to achieve common goals. Chris has a is committed to making positive impact within the Vail Valley and on a broader scale, serving on advisory boards and participating in initiatives aimed at advancing community prosperity and enhancing quality of life. Chris, first of all, congratulations to you and your team on this great accomplishment of being named a ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist again, that’s a huge feat, but uh, welcome to the show, I’ll give you a chance to say hello to all the listeners out there and and I love to have you share something interesting about yourself as well as we kick this off.

Chris Romer 3:32
Yeah, Brandon, thank you so much. And you know, it is such a such an honor to be recognized by ACCE as a finalist for chamber of the year. It’s such a testament to the people and the board and the community that we represent. And it’s something that we never, ever take for for granted. You know, we really try to keep our foot on the proverbial gas pedal, to move things forward and to represent the interests of our business community. So, such a great opportunity to share a little bit of our story with you and to be recognized by ACCE for those community programs and community impact that we that we strive to make so thank you so much. I also certainly realized that an interesting thing about me is probably the fact that I can’t write a short bio, that bio was awfully long and awkward. So I would I would love to have a second crack at that and just keep it a whole lot shorter. So we could talk about the fun stuff because talking about me not so much fun talking about our chamber and our community and our programs. A whole lot more interesting to people.

Brandon Burton 4:49
I could agree with that it talking about the the great work you guys are doing is much more impactful and meaningful anyway but it is fun to get to know the background on yet and you I’ll share a fun fact I think you are the first three Pete chamber chat podcast so there should be I feel like there should be a trophy or something for you for being I’ll take a trophy

Chris Romer 5:14
I would love to take a trophy for being the first three time visitor or three time guests on the on the chamber chat podcast.

Brandon Burton 5:22
Yes, yes, you You deserve it. So well tell us about your great team, their the Vail Valley Partnership, the the work you guys are involved with the size of your staff budget, scope of work all that as we get into our discussion today.

Chris Romer 5:37
Yeah, we have. We’re really fortunate I have a great team. We have a team of eight full time and two part time. Employees We are located in Edwards, Colorado. That’s Eagle County, Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts, home to Vail, Beaver Creek ski resorts for those who might not know what Edward’s are or know where Eagle county might be. But we’re right in the heart of, of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We have you had asked about our budget and membership size, we have just under 800 members. And our community is about 55,000 people. And that represents nine nine towns and we’re a countywide regional organization, our annual budget is about $1.3 million per year. You know, and I think the last part of what you had asked for in regards to giving people a perspective, we are a we’re a program driven chamber. We are a program driven chamber we have we have multiple 501 C sixes, we have c threes. And we have these different initiatives and we branch them off. And we’ll talk a little bit about more more about this, I think as we go through the podcast, but very program driven. And it reflects in in how we approach problems. And if that leads to some of our retention and other components that we may or may not touch on but we are we are very program driven group and you know, we’re not afraid to take big swings we take we take some really big swings within our community and in sometimes we strike out and sometimes we hit a double and occasionally we hit a homerun Yeah,

Brandon Burton 7:29
I think chamber works should be about those big swings make an impact. If you’re not if you’re not swinging big, what kind of impact are you making right? So I am excited to dive into this. So on these chamber the are finalists series for those who may not be familiar with the format, I’d like to really focus on the two programs and being program driven will focus on the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application and dive into some detail around those and why they worked for Vail Valley and we’ll dive into this as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright Chris, we’re back. So let’s let’s dive into these programs you submitted on the chamber the your application, I know. It can be tough sometimes to kind of narrow down the focus and what you want to put on the application and really highlight the work that you guys are doing. But how did you land on these on these two programs? And what are they?

Chris Romer 10:08
Yeah, it’s, you know, how we landed on them is a little bit what I talked about earlier in the podcast, around taking big swings. And recognizing that big ideas require big solutions. Both of our both of our Synopsys, both of our case studies are around that idea that big ideas require big solutions. So our first Synopsys is the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority, where we lead the yes for transit ballot campaign to create a transportation authority, which is something that had been lacking in our community. Our second synopsis is the eagle county Collaborative for career pathways. That is a talent pipeline, Workforce Initiative, in partnership with our K to 12 school system to identify and train young people into the jobs that our community needs. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:12
So just from our background, and having on the show a couple times before, I guess I have a little bit of maybe added perspective, I think about your community and and why these, these two programs specifically would be of importance. But let’s dive in a little bit more on the Regional Transit Authority. Why? Why was that a hot topic? Why Why was that a big swing in your community? What was the need? And and how did you guys go about addressing that?

Chris Romer 11:41
Yeah, it’s so it’s so important for us. So we started this process. Actually, before the before the pandemic we had brought together, we recognized our population is growing, our ski resorts need to be world class destinations, our visitors are continuing to come. And yet our community growth, strained our housing and transportation systems, and our ability to move our workforce from one side of our valley to the other. We’re about a 40 mile wide, 40 mile long valley, and about a mile and a half wide, right, you’re surrounded by mountains and national forest on two sides. So we’re along linear Valley, and our housing prices, our median housing price is $1.3 million. So we really needed a transportation system that could effectively and efficiently move our workforce, up and down our valley or housing is a little bit less expensive, on the western end. So our basic premise is that improved transit supports workforce that helps our residents get to work home and school, it allows our visitors to better enjoy their experience. And this is a regional issue that required a regional solution. So we initiated the business community, we brought together our local municipalities and county, some of them run their own transit authorities. But there was nothing collaborative and nothing that was truly Valley wide. So we did focus groups, we did phone surveys of voters, we looked at what different models exist for funding transportation. We looked at 18 different models and governance structures, and landed on the Regional Transportation Authority as our best bet forward. Then we looked at how do you fund this thing. And we could have done property tax or a sales tax. And we made the decision. To move forward, we made the call in June of 2022, to go to the ballot in November. At the time for it’s hard to think about now. At the time, inflation was at 9.2%. So when we talk about having having courage and taking big swings, we said we’re gonna go to the ballot, and we’re going to ask people for a sales tax to fund this. And by the way, knowing inflation was over 9%. And we made that call, unfortunately, inflation dropped a little bit by the time we had the election. But we passed. We passed in November of 2022. Pretty overwhelmingly, I think, because we really helped to tell the story and identify the need and what this would create. As we sit here today. We have a complimentary free bus system that runs the length of our valley. Ridership for this past winter season was up 164% over the previous model, and it’s saving people time and money.

Brandon Burton 14:58
That’s amazing. It just it to be able to see it through to. So a lot of times when we’re talking about these programs and maybe leading a ballot initiative, you haven’t seen it all the way through to this point, but being that you’ve been able to lead that been able to collect the data, you know, have a successful ballot measure, and then to be able to see the results, the fruit of it right now happening throughout your Valley. That’s, that’s amazing. And I’m sure you’re seeing economic tickers, you know, the different indicators that you can measure to see the impact throughout the community as well. We are

Chris Romer 15:36
we’re able to see the increase in ridership, we’re able to see how many routes are are scheduled, how they’re completed. We did include funding for air service development in our ballot initiative. That’s a program that we’ve run for years at the chamber. And we always fundraised for. So we actually baked that into the ballot question to fund that. And we have two new flights this summer that we’re able to use that that funding to support two new Air Service flights. So we’re seeing the benefits on a local level, from a workforce standpoint, from a visitor standpoint. And we have long term enhancements that are baked into this as well, which included affordable workforce housing for transit employees, and included zero admissions, conversion, to help meet our climate goals for our region. So we’re really we’re really excited about not just the bus transportation, which is a big part of it. But the secondary components that were able to be part of that ballot initiative and more part of our storytelling around air service development and increasing opportunities for visitors to get here and locals to go on vacation. And to help achieve our climate goals. So we’re really, this one’s a was a big swing. For all the reasons we talked about, and a really nice success story that is helping make people’s lives easier. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:07
So with the bus system, it’s a it’s a free transit, right? So is there a way to track when people get on how long they’re on? Or is it just kind of hop on hop off as you go. And now there’s

Chris Romer 17:20
bus counters, there’s counters to know what the ridership is and how it increased. You know, in January, for example, of 2024, we had over 218,000 unique riders on the bus. And that’s an increase from 167,000, the year before, in the same timeframe in January. So we’re huge ridership increases. And we’re, we’re paying for it through the sales tax instead of having people pay a fare. And we have new routes because of the new authority and able to bridge a lot of what the individual communities were already doing to provide that connectivity.

Brandon Burton 18:01
Yeah. So as far as bringing workforce into the valley, is that are you able to see that direct tie in where they’re coming from the west side of the valley? Like you’d mentioned?

Chris Romer 18:10
Yeah, we are a route. Again, we saw a 64% increase in in transit ridership from the lower part of our Valley. So we can track that. The new authority tracks it, they share it with us, our work is kind of done on this one. But yes, it’s a it’s a huge success. And the community recognizes the role that the Chamber played in initiating leading and passing this ballot initiative to create the new authority.

Brandon Burton 18:42
That’s great. And it’s always nice when you can hand it off when it’s done. And you don’t have to keep ownership of it ongoing. Right.

Chris Romer 18:47
You know, we we at the chamber at the partnership, we might be experts on our community. And we’re certainly experts on on convening leaders in order to get things done. We’re certainly an expert on being a catalyst for for business growth. We are not an expert on how to run a transportation authority. Right. So we’re happy to have this one off.

Brandon Burton 19:11
Absolutely. Well, let’s switch gears to the second program that was submitted on the application around that building that talent pipeline and kind of again, the the origins of it and how it developed and in the impact that it’s making in the community. Yeah,

Chris Romer 19:27
so the second is synopsis was the eagle county Collaborative for career pathways. And that was a program that had had grown and morphed. We’ve been running a youth apprenticeship programs for a number of years. We have a very successful youth apprenticeship model. We’re involved with career exploration, in partnership with another local nonprofit in our school system. And this we really recognize that There are a handful of us doing great work. And there is still an opportunity gap at the end. So we work in sync to create viable, affordable alternative pathways to get people into high quality careers, with the idea that those need to be transparent about the outcomes and the cost, help young people obtain their relevant job skills, and ensure that employers value recognize and hire from the kids that we put through this pathway. So in Eagle County, specifically, Brandon, our businesses show an average 10% gap in securing and retaining young professionals across industry sector, with health care and education, are rising to near 30% levels of that gap. So working with our business community, our school district, youth serving nonprofit agencies, were able to target those key sectors and build the collaborative, we’re very fortunate to receive a million dollar grant by which to do this work with the idea to strengthen the systems that already support the career pathways, increase student readiness to pursue pathways and increase students exploration and experience in career exploration, and exploring those career opportunities. So it’s a really nice partnership. It’s a really meaningful program with very tangible results. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 21:43
I think that’s a struggle that a lot of chambers have is trying to retain the workforce that you put them through K through 12. And, and for whatever reason, it’s like these students graduate high school, and they want to move on to the bigger and brighter things outside of the community they grew up in, right? And, you know, what can we do to try to keep them local, show them how great this community is, and, and maybe they go away to school somewhere and you’re, you know, get some kind of education, but bring them back is such a key to be able to entice them, show them what there is in the community to bring them back why it’s a place for them. So having a program like this, I think really hits on those points of need. And I could see being something that and I know a lot of chambers have some sort of a workforce development, you know, pipeline or program with the school districts and whatnot. But to be able to draw that attention and keep them, keep them in the community is so key. So I think this is great work that you guys are involved with this program specifically. There’s anything else stand out to you with this program? As far as trying to retain this workforce here? Is there any any kind of secret sauce that you’re seeing that’s really been the AHA kind of moment, or they just with how the partnership has developed that is really made a big, big impact? I

Chris Romer 23:13
think so I think the secret sauce or the the aha moment is that this needs to be a program that is business centric, right? It can’t be a program that is just a feel good or a do good for the kids. It has to benefit the business. And it has to strengthen the systems that support not only the career pathways for students, but solves problems for the businesses. And I think that’s a that’s a big component that sometimes when we think about workforce, even in the chamber business, inherently, to serve the needs of our businesses. When we ask businesses to donate their time, we ask businesses to donate their expertise, instead of flipping that equation and saying, we’re going to do this for the business. And it happens to help the kids. We do it for the business. We do everything we do to build a stronger community and stronger businesses, the kids and the career pathway is a way to build stronger businesses. It’s not asking the businesses to help kids.

Brandon Burton 24:23
Yeah, I think that is that is a key. I’m glad you made that point, that distinction, because I think it’s easy to look at the kids and they Oh, we want to help give them a good career. And that’s noble. That’s

Chris Romer 24:35
Yes. But but that’s a that’s a that’s a secondary outcome. That’s not the primary purpose. Exactly.

Brandon Burton 24:40
Yeah. So you get the businesses on board by letting them know this is about you. This is about strengthening your business and providing good talent, you know, to keep the strong. I’m glad you made that distinction. That’s great. So I like it, especially as a as a chamber the year finalists? I think chambers can can look at you as kind of the top of the game right now, you know, as a chamber, they are finalists, and for a chamber listening who’s trying to elevate their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tips or strategies might you offer for listeners to try to accomplish that goal and to try to give that their organization that boost they’re looking for?

Chris Romer 25:24
Yeah, it’s it’s such a great if thought challenge for for chambers of commerce, to think, how do we what is that? What is that one tip? What’s the one thing you would share? And I’m going to answer that by suggesting and challenging chambers, to move away from thinking that what we do have it fixes technical challenges in our community. We don’t have technical challenges. Technical challenges are things that can be fixed by engineers, they can be fixed by surgeons and people with specific training. There’s not too many of us that came into this business, trained to run a chamber of commerce, right, we’re trained in a more of an adaptive way. So that’s my takeaway. Recognize that you have adaptive challenges, not technical challenges. And let me expand on that a little bit. Because I expect that doesn’t make much sense. Without context. When we think of adaptive challenges, the things that we face in our community, maybe it’s early childhood, transportation or workforce, maybe it’s homelessness, it could be any number of different things. We have the white. So then the question is, so what? Right, so what right that that’s a problem. And then it’s now what? How are we going to do that? So the framework, and the challenge to listeners thinking about adaptive challenges? is learning learning the what? Listening, taking action, I think we collectively do a great job of listening. Every chamber listening to this listens to their businesses listens to their community does surveys, they listen. It’s the question of taking action, how do we take action? How do I identify the steps to take action. The two last parts I’ll add on this is adaptive challenges have long term implications. They’re not transactional, they’re not, we’re going to do this, they have long term, community benefit, long term benefit to the chamber to the, to the community, to the businesses. And we’re really never ever going to fix quote, unquote, fix, and adaptive challenge. All the things I listed early childhood, workforce, housing, workforce development, talent pipeline. It’s homelessness, when we say fix what we mean is make better chambers have a very unique positioning and a position of trust within their communities, to tackle these adaptive challenges that are hard, they’re long term, and fixing the endzone always moves. So fixing these challenges really means making it better. And that that changes year after year, initiative after initiative, it never really goes away. And that creates stability. And that should hopefully create fundraising opportunities and grant funding and membership retention, and all the things. So that’s my one takeaway, and it was a really long answer. But I really want to share that if we can do that. And we can shift our thinking away from technical into adaptive, that chambers are going to fly, we’re going to thrive, because we’re going to be so uniquely positioned that no one can do what we do.

Brandon Burton 29:01
Yeah. So I like the idea that that adaptive challenges have long term implications. And I know you mentioned at the beginning of the episode about retention, and that kind of plays into here. Is there. Is there more you wanted to touch on with the aspect of retention before we wrap things up? Um,

Chris Romer 29:22
no, I don’t think so. I mean, I think that if anything, it’s really just when we talk about retention, there’s so many ways to spin that as retention of employees retention of people in our communities retention of business, retention of membership. I think if we as chambers, have had this mind frame of tackling big problems in our community and approaching it in an adaptive relationship driven manner. Then our work becomes central to the success of the community. And if we become central to the success of the community, we have solved retention at each of those levels that I talked about.

Brandon Burton 30:06
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So the question I asked everyone as they haven’t on the show is about the future of chambers, which I think you kind of touched on with your your tip there. But how do you see the future of chambers in their purpose going forward?

Chris Romer 30:21
Yeah, I did lead into this a little bit or leak into this, if you will. But the I think the future of chambers is really, really bright, with a caveat. And that caveat is if we roll up our sleeves and tackle the big problems, our purpose, our purpose needs to be around that, that problem solving. And again, when I say problem solving, I mean, making things better versus versus traditionally fixing things. But we can make things better. I think all the finalists that you’re going to be talking to throughout this series, probably have one, if not both of their synopsis, focusing on how they made their community better. And I think that’s a lesson for everybody within the chamber of business. And if we can focus on our purpose being problem solving, and how we do that, knowing that it’s really hard, knowing that it’s long term, knowing that it causes some sleepless nights, knowing that it’s probably not going to go over well with everybody in our community. And we’re going to have the courage to do those things. Boy, the future of chambers is so bright.

Brandon Burton 31:31
Yeah. encouraged as important in that, as you mentioned, so absolutely. Swing big and have courage. Chris, this has been fun to have you back on chamber chat podcast. I love the pieces of advice you share the experiences you have, and especially the impact you guys are making. They’re there in the Vail Valley. I’d like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and connect with you and learn more about what you guys are doing there at the VVP we’re what would be the best way to connect with you. Yeah,

Chris Romer 32:06
you can find all of my contact information on our website at VailValleyPartnership.com. That’s VailValleyPartnership.com. I can be reached at cromer@VailValleyPartnership.com. And you can find me on most of the social channels and my phone numbers on the website as well and all of that, but VailValleyPartnership.com is your best place to go.

Brandon Burton 32:31
Very good. So back from Episode 21, I think was your first appearance and we’re at episode 285 Now, but this has been a blast, Chris. Thanks for being with us. Again. Here. You’re on chamber chat podcast today and wish you and your team the best of luck.

Chris Romer 32:48
Thanks so much, Brandon.

Brandon Burton 32:51
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Chino Valley Chamber-2024 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Zeb Welborn

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

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

You’re joining us for a special episode and our 2024 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series and our guests for this episode is Zeb Welborn. Zeb is the President of the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce and Wellborn Social Media dedicated to promoting local businesses through growth and digital marketing. And award winning executives Zeb is passionate about connecting with driven individuals and fostering community development through initiatives like Upskill Chino Valley, recognized as the 2023, Executive of the Year by WACE, he continues to excel in leadership and service. Zeb, I want to welcome you to Chamber Chat Podcast are excited to have you with us today and say big congratulations to you and your team for being selected as a chamber the year finalists this year, wanted to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Zeb Welborn 2:09
Well, thank you so much. So we are very excited about that opportunity. Thank you for the opportunity to chat with you here today. Yeah, we’re our team is very excited about it. And then let’s see something interesting about myself. I was a national champion soccer player back in my younger days, and I bowled the 300. So those are the two things that I have on my resume that are not on my resume. Wow.

Brandon Burton 2:35
So you’re not competitive at all right?

Zeb Welborn 2:40
Yeah, there’s definitely a little competitive streak in me for sure. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 2:43
that’s awesome. Those are, those are two really cool facts. So tell us a little bit about the Chino Valley Chamber just to give us an idea of the scope of work size staff budget to kind of preface for our conversation today.

Zeb Welborn 2:57
Sure, so the Chino Valley Chamber represents two cities, we represent Chino and Chino Hills, both of them have a population of I think around 95,000 or so. So it’s almost 200,000 people. It’s a high growth area. So there’s like Chino was named one of the top 10 boom towns in the boom towns in the country, either last year or the year before. I have friends that come out from the military, they’ll be back in town every two or three years in the city looks totally different every time it comes out. So we’re we’re in the suburbs of LA and in Orange County. So all of the people that are working in those areas have kind of shifted out to where we live. Our budget is about $1.1 million. We have about eight staff members. When I started our budget was about $150,000. And we had three part time members including myself, so that was about six years ago. So we’ve grown a lot in the last six years as a as a community but also as the chamber. So that’s something that I am super proud of is kind of helping our chamber turnarounds and challenges they’re facing when I got brought in and now we’re kind of rocking and rolling. And I’m super proud of the work that that that I’ve done but also that our team has accomplished as well. Ya know, that

Brandon Burton 4:12
is something to be proud of for sure. That’s some some great growth. And I will say I I lived in South Orange County for a while and it seemed like everybody was moving out your direction. So I’ve seen the growth you know, almost firsthand I’ll say secondhand, you know, seeing a lot of people we knew moving out your direction. Yeah, lots of growth though. Lots of opportunity. So on these chamber, their finalist episodes we’d like to spend the majority of our conversation most of the time in this interview talking about the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the your application. So we’ll we’ll dive in deep on what those two those two programs are as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Alright, Zeb we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re going to spend some time talking about the two programs that were on your application for chamber the year. So introduce this with the first program is that you’d like to highlight with us today.

Zeb Welborn 7:01
So I’m hoping I can remember that too. We do a lot of different programs. But one of them for sure is our upskill Chino Valley program. So that is one that we initiated two or three years ago, and it was to address the needs of our workforce development shortage in our area. So right after COVID. I mean, when COVID happened, we’re very proactive to making sure that our business had access to resources have access to all of the things that they needed. And so we got a lot of recognition for the work that we did during that time. And a lot of businesses, you know, stayed in business because of the work that we were able to do at that point in time. But then immediately following, as you’re driving around town, you would see just help wanted signs everywhere. So our community had help wanted signs everywhere. Everybody was doing hiring. So you know, that was a big challenge facing our businesses. So then, concurrently, I was taking some classes with the US Chamber, and some other just other professional development learnings. And I came to realize that this workforce development shortage, and this is a stuff that they would teach us to the US Chamber is that this is going to be impacting communities for a while. There’s kind of this forecast of the 10 years of challenges, at least when it comes to workforce and finding good qualified workers. So that’s one of the things that we wanted to try to tackle for our community, how can we make sure that we were being better to better supportive of our businesses to help find their workforce needs. So we looked at it in the short term, but we also looked at in the long term, so trying to create solutions in the short term and long term. So we came up with four things that we thought that if we executed on these things, it would help not only solve the short term issues, but it would help solve the long term issues. So the short term issue is workforce development. So we started doing a lot of job fairs, a lot of one on one placements, we started partnering with our workforce, San Bernardino County Workforce Development, our local Chaffey College, our local school district. So we created these partnerships, we’re trying to build a pipeline of workers for our businesses. And so through that we’ve placed at least 350 job seekers in local jobs in our community, we have helped place at least 100 I want to say about 100 interns from the high school and college level with local businesses to help build the next generation of workforce in our businesses, and and build those connections between business owners and leaders and in the educational institutions that are around us. We did a lot of work with Chaffey College to help make sure that we’re building those strong connections. So that’s a short term solution, I think, or means short term and long term. But then the longer the more longer term. approaches were three things. So it was economic development. These are things that chambers normally do but economic development, leadership development and entrepreneurship development. So economic development, well we started doing was these roundtable discussions. So we’re doing two a month where we’re bringing in businesses from a specific sector or specific industry, or we’re bringing cross industries together, identifying pain points, and then creating action items and our chamber can take action on. So we’ve been doing that extensively for the last two years or so we’re about two years into our program. The next one is leadership development, we did not have a leadership program in our community. So we started one. So leadership developed, we have 25 leaders, we go and tour different business locations and sites around town connecting our businesses with business owners that are running some of the larger businesses in town and making sure that our leadership is strong. If you don’t have strong leaders, you’re gonna have employees that leave. So we want to make sure we develop strong leaders in our community. And then the last thing is entrepreneurship development, which is just enhancing the work that we do and are educating businesses on how to be better in business. So I think one of the gaps is where we’re making sure that we have business owners training, the business leaders that are coming up in our community and making sure that we’re having business owners training our up and coming entrepreneurs in our community.

Brandon Burton 11:03
So with that, the two that really stood out to me is the leadership development. So I know we have a leadership development and entrepreneur development. So with the leadership development, have you guys gotten to gotten through to full classes yet? Or where are you at in that, that process? And what does it look like at this point with the leadership development? Yeah, so

Zeb Welborn 11:26
we’re just about to finish year two, it’s been a great successful opportunity. Oh, and I didn’t mention this in the beginning. But that upskill Chino Valley program, we essentially pitched it to one of our legislators, and so they allocated a million dollars of state funding towards our programming. So that allows us to execute on this work. It’s a lot of work to do that stuff. And so I’m always like, how, how can we get the funding to actually execute on his work? So we pitched that, and that was something that they thought was needed for our community. So we were able to secure those which allowed us to do all this work. So this is our second year, we, our first year was highly successful, one of the things that we commit to doing as a community good project during that leadership program as well. So they do something good for the community. Last year, they bought AED machines to help in case somebody goes into cardiac arrest, we put them in three different businesses around town. So there’s a cost that was incurred that so we helped raise that those funds for that. This year, we’re doing helping our local community theater or children’s community theater. So we’re raising funds so that they can train more kids in the in the theatrical arts. And and it’s been, it’s been great. So yeah, you’re too we’re almost done. We got about two months left. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 12:40
And then with the entrepreneurial development, I’m always curious with entrepreneurs, and how to how chambers get connected with him in the first place to match them up with other business owners. And you know, a lot of times entrepreneurs have that bug of I’m going to do this by myself. Yeah, I can. I’m going to figure this out. And it tends to be the hard path, right? So what what are some of the ways you guys are connecting with entrepreneurs and helping to kind of bring them out and connect them with the right people.

Zeb Welborn 13:09
So I feel like I feel like I’m an entrepreneur, right. So I joined actually joined my chamber as a member back in like 2010, or 2011 or so. And when I joined, what I was looking for was mentors, I was I didn’t want to make those mistakes. I wanted to find people in my community that I could look up to that I could learn from. And there’s a couple of people that I thought of like there was a guy that ran our newspaper, there’s also the guy that ran the local golf course. So these are two guys that I was kind of hoping to connect with. And they were they were loosely connected to the chamber. So I joined the chamber not knowing when the chamber really was good. But I thought like, what I was really looking for was the business organization that I could turn to that I could get mentorship. And there wasn’t really anything in my community except for the Chamber of Commerce. So when I came across the chamber, and I kind of went into the first day, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. But there wasn’t anything else. And so my thought was was well either I could work like a you try to make that happen inside of the chamber community. Or I could try it like you said, do it on my own. So I obviously opted to get involved in my chamber and see if there are ways that I can help make this a system that worked out well for people like me, they get to come into business and get advice and mentorship from successful business owners. So that’s one of the things that I’ve had a passion for since I started and and now we’re, we’re we’re doing that. So we’re trying to there’s lots of different ways to go about doing that. I’ll share that we do a lot of business trainings and business development. So we do a business workshop. It used to be once a week, but we’re doing it once every other week. Right now, because we found that that cadence worked out better for our members, but we are trying to shift some strategies around to offer more. One of the exciting things that has happened for us and this is very new. So this was before I submitted our proposal was we just got accepted. So we submitted an appropriations request for an audit To bring an entrepreneurship center into our community that would be facilitated and managed by the chamber. So that’s something that we submitted for it’s been approved through the first phase of the process, we have no idea if it’s actually going to get funded or not. But at least it’s very exciting because that was a selected project out of, I think, 10, or 15, they’re able to choose every year. So we’re one of those 10 or 15. So we’re excited because we feel like that could be a good opportunity for our business, and business community. So that’s something we are excited about. And so we but we’re making ranking progress to try to develop more entrepreneurial programming, to making sure that we are have a space that we can do that stuff with, and that we’re bringing potential entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs and collaboration and connection with people who have made it happen and Bennett themselves here in the Inland Empire. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:47
Oh, that is great. And I’m sure along the way, you’re seeing you know, upticks in those different, you know, measurements to be able to see with with workforce, and hopefully seeing a few less help wanted signs and, and being able to fill some of those voids and needs throughout the community. As we kind of shift gears Do you would you like to introduce what the second program is that you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application?

Zeb Welborn 16:18
So if I had to guess I would say was the entrepreneur, the leadership program that we discussed already. So that was the part of it. So that leadership program is something that we are very proud of? It has, we have, we’re coming up on 50 graduates in the next two months, and I think it was just something that was missing in our community that we really needed. And that we wanted to. Yeah, it was just that there’s been a lot of things that have happened in our community that are kind of ostracized, ostracize people from one another. And when we bring people together, prior to those situations happening, solutions come together much more quickly, their people are able to collaborate much more better. And so building these relationships and connections with these different entities in town just plays a huge role in making sure that our community can stay connected, and looking at opportunities to focus on growth versus opportunities, where we’re looking for division amongst each other. So that’s something that we’re excited about the the collaborative work that we’ve been doing with our businesses, making sure they’re connected with our city and, and legislators and educational institutions, and all those things. When we do that. We feel like we’re doing really good work.

Brandon Burton 17:29
Yeah. So I love leadership programs and the whole purpose behind them. And I know every chamber has a little slightly different approach and how they go about it. But do you guys put a limit on how many, how many participants? How many students are involved with leadership programs? Is there an application process? Who reviews that? What? What’s it like to become part of the leadership class?

Zeb Welborn 17:52
Yeah, so we do, we do have like an interview process. So it’s, the number is 25 that we shoot for. And that’s because, you know, some of our touring locations have a restriction on how many people can go through it. So we found that 25 is a good number, because it’s manageable. And also, we’re able to tour the sites with one visit versus multiple visits. So that’s been a good number for us. They do do an interview. So they have to be interviewed and selected in and we actually went, I went through the corona leadership, the corona Chamber Leadership Program. So I kind of modeled a lot of what we do after them. And my understanding is, is that they model it after the Riverside chamber. So we still in use a lot of stuff from each other. But that’s, that’s what we do. And then we don’t really do any leadership training, we mostly build collaboration and connection and do tour visits. So we go visit different locations, give these business owners an opportunity to talk about their business and the work that they do. And then they provide a tour to our members, they get back behind the scenes look at what other organizations and businesses have to go through on a daily basis to make sure that their operation runs successfully. And so when you do that, there’s a lot of eye opening things that happen you realize how intricate and how much goes into these businesses and organizations. And so it gives gives people a bigger perspective. I mean, the biggest thing though, the biggest advantage is just the collaboration and connection is built because we’ve seen firsthand how many people get connected with each other for bigger projects that help support our community and a high one, which is we had somebody who was going through our program. She’s a leadership coach or professional business coach, and we toured our local so we have the California institution for men is located in our community. So we toured the prison and while we’re touring the prison, she got connected with somebody who was Aristotle I got in the I would love to speak to your your inmates to talk about you know, things that they can do to turn their life around and So she gets she came in and spoke to the I guess it was a large contingent was maybe like 100 200 inmates about leadership and challenges. And so that was a connection that was built through that. And because of that, I feel like it did good things for our community for the inmates that were there for the business owner. That was the business coach that was going through it. And so it’s just kind of like a win win win. That was a result of the work that we helped facilitate.

Brandon Burton 20:25
That’s really cool. So throughout the year, the leadership program, but how many visits site visits do you guys do? Or do you shoot for?

Zeb Welborn 20:34
Yeah, it’s what we go once a month, and it’s three site visits a day, so. So it’s one day, it’s about a full day. So they started around nine, and a three, so not not quite a full day, but nine to three, and we visit three different locations. So we’ll do one or two in the morning, and then we’ll have lunch, and then we’ll do one in the afternoon. And then we call it a day. Sometimes it’s fuck. It’ll move around based on the sites that we’re visiting. But that’s kind of the rough outline.

Brandon Burton 21:05
Yeah. And then just out of curiosity, how are you selecting the sites to go visit? Is it based on the applicants are just trying to figure out needs or what what goes into that thought process?

Zeb Welborn 21:17
So I’ll say it’s industry specific, we look, you know, we want to highlight each of the image industries that are represented in our community. So the first couple of days is with our city. So we go toward the behind the scenes of the cities. And then we have a healthcare day, there’s a Manufacturing Day, there’s a logistics day, there’s a small business day. What else do we do? Well, we visit public safety. So we have kind of a Public Safety Day. So I guess, those are the things that we do try to focus on. And we tried to make them days so that there’s a theme behind them, but sometimes just the way that the visits work out, we’ll move them around. But that’s the main gist. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 21:56
I like that idea, though, having a theme for for those visits each day. And kind of building the mindset around that about why is public safety important in our community. And as a developing leader, how does that play into my development and being able to make those connections going forward. So I see that across the board with the different themes that you guys tried to target. So I appreciate that. So I’d like asking everyone that I have on the podcast, especially as you guys are a chamber, the year finalist this year, kind of at the top of your game, so to speak. It, I’d like to see if there’s any kind of tip or action item that you might offer for chambers out there who were interested in taking their chamber to the next level.

Zeb Welborn 22:46
Well, when I saw when I joined the chamber that thing, as a as a member, I just remember thinking like this is not the hub of the business community. This is not what I was anticipating being like the business organization that represents business. And I don’t know if that’s the same case, for chambers across the place, I guess what how I would describe it is, when I showed up to different meetings and stuff, it was a lot of people that had retired from their careers. And we’re kind of doing a second career to make income on the side. So I was by like the youngest person by 30 years that was participating in those programs. It didn’t have the people that were running like big successful businesses in town participating in those programs. And so in my mind, I was saying like, like, this doesn’t make any sense to me, like there should be a way that business owners in a community can come together to support one another to grow the business community at large. So that’s kind of like, I guess, just my thought when I was coming into it. And so I’ve just worked really hard on trying to build that. So I think the thing that surprises me sometimes is the approach some of my colleagues make is, like, I looked at us as leaders of our business community. And so when I say leaders, one, we should not be operating the best business in our community. So we should have be running the most successful business in town, we shouldn’t be modeling that business behavior to our business owners, and then we should be compensated like successful business owners. And so when I started my role, like there was no way I could live in my community with the salary that they were offering. And so, but it’s not just like given to us, like we have to work for it. We have to be those leaders in business, we have to run a successful business. And then if we do run a successful business, we have to seek compensation for the work that we do in that regard. So I think that’s my one piece of advice is treat it like a business, be proactive and growing that business. And then if you focus on doing those two things, I think you’re gonna be putting yourself in a great position to lead your business community because you’re modeling what it is to be a successful business and your businesses will will learn from that more than they would if you’re just trying to help them and suffering at the expense of supporting your local businesses. I think it’s important to model successful business behavior to the members of the chamber. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 25:06
And I think yeah, at our heart, I think most people know that and believe that, but to hear it said, and to kind of reinvigorate that, yes, we do need to be that model that template to be able to show how to run a good business. So then businesses can look to you and trust what you have to say, if it builds trust in the within the business community. If you’re just a hot mess of a chamber, it’s really hard to, to get buy in as a business to think that this chamber knows what to do you know what to offer me any kind of advice or anything like that. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Zeb Welborn 25:55
So that’s a good question. I, I mean, I see it, and I’ll just speak for my community, right, I saw a lot of opportunity when I came in, like, I feel like I’m an entrepreneur, and then I kind of moved towards where the opportunities are most prevalent. I feel like there is a great opportunity for Chambers of Commerce right now. I think that everybody is trying to get connected with business owners. And there’s a lot of light, and I’ll just say like federal funding, but it’s not just federal funding, it’s even like, when you’re running your business getting connected with business owners, it’s not an easy thing to do. Businesses are more strapped than ever for time. And I’ll say that attribute that to the internet, social media, digital marketing, you’re on 24/7. Whereas in prior to the internet, you did not have to be on 24/7, you could work the normal workdays, and then you have the evenings and weekends off. And and now if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re you’re grinding it out 24/7. And that’s how I’ve been doing it for the last 10 years. So I just know how busy chambers have. I know how busy businesses are, but they do need people to speak up for them in these roles and capacities. And so we’ve been participating in these collaboratives, where there’s like this, this federal funding that is coming or the state funding that is coming for programs that are designed to help support businesses, yet there are zero businesses at the table in these conversations. So that’s where everybody is trying to talk to business owners, but business owners don’t have time to sit around and waste time in these meetings that seem really unproductive and don’t get anything accomplished. Even though there is going to be a strong outcome at the end, they don’t have the time to invest in that type of work. So they need a representative, those organizations that are looking to support business community, they need a representative. And so chambers are uniquely positioned in a way where we have immediate access to the businesses that are represented through our membership. And we can turn and talk to them. And we can pick up the phone and they will answer and they will respond to our emails, and they will get in touch with us. And that’s what is needed by a lot of these entities trying to get in touch with businesses. So I think I see a lot of opportunity, I still see a lot of opportunity for our chamber and the work that we’re doing. And I feel like other chambers have that same opportunity as well. Yeah, I like that.

Brandon Burton 28:07
I like that response was that I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners out there who may want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things there at the Chino Valley Chamber, what would be the best ways for them to reach out and connect with you.

Zeb Welborn 28:25
So my business got me involved in chamber was social media marketing. So I was fairly early on the social media marketing train, so you can find me very easily. My dad was a reporter for the Orange County Register. So I think he named me with the intention of that my name would make a great byline in a news story, you know, like the the article by Warren. So nobody has my name, Zeb Welborn, you can find me anywhere @zebwelborn, I am on all the socials. And I’d be happy to connect with you if anybody wants to chat or ask any questions. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 29:02
that was very kind of your father do give you a name that nobody else says. Well, it’s

Zeb Welborn 29:08
it’s good and bad. So if I if I if there’s something that comes up bad about me, it’s very easy to find. But if if I’m doing good work, then that’s also easy to find as well. So it’s a is that?

Brandon Burton 29:20
The right path? Right? Yeah, exactly. I

Zeb Welborn 29:22
don’t think it was thinking about the digital marketing age where you can search up, you do Google searches. That wasn’t a thing back then. But yeah, for sure.

Brandon Burton 29:30
That’s right. That was it. I appreciate it. It’s been fun having you on the podcast today and learning where you guys are doing there it’s Chino Valley Chamber and make an impact in your community. And I wish you and your team the best of luck is chamber the year.

Zeb Welborn 29:43
Awesome. Thank you very much.

Brandon Burton 29:46
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Workforce Training Center with Jeannie Hebert

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Jeannie Hiebert. Jeannie has been President and CEO the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts for 15 years. Under her leadership that BVCC has grown and developed into a chamber that works hard for business and the economic vitality of the region. often dubbed the queen of collaboration. Jeannie sits on several business and community boards and meets regularly with local state and federal legislators to make sure the valley voice is heard, and funding is appropriated to support their economic development and small businesses. Since her reign, the BVCC has become known as the go to place and resource for business owners and entrepreneurs to find assistance and funding to grow and develop their business. She has been honored with several awards, including the central Massachusetts outstanding woman in business power 50 manufacturing champion and Central Massachusetts economic development leader. Through her guidance, the Chamber secured over $1 million in funding to build the Blackstone Valley hub for workforce development. A Workforce Training Center located in the Chamber’s Linwood mill building, offering classes focused on advanced manufacturing. These certificate courses are offered to students of all ages throughout Central Massachusetts to help close the work skills gap and provide skilled workers to the region’s employers. Jeannie, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Jeannie Hebert 3:43
Here, Brandon, thank you. I’m excited to be here today. Hello to everyone, all of our chamber colleagues there. And I am also an animal rights activist and help with rescuing animals in need. I do have you know dogs of my own. But I did rescue for African elephants. And they lived with me for two years. And we were able to secure some good homes for them. One of them Willie my favorite. He was the largest working African elephant in North America. And we found him a great home at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So I used to go visit Willie there. So they were wonderful animals. It was a once in a lifetime experience. And I’m happy that we were able to find good homes for them because they had a terrible beginning.

Brandon Burton 4:41
So I have to say this is a first year the first guest on the podcast who’s rescued an elephant let alone for so. That is amazing. And I’m sure the stories about these elephants could go on for days. Lots of a unique experience. As a fan, I’m sure

Jeannie Hebert 5:01
they’re a unique experience they very intelligent, fun animals. One fun fact is I used to, you know, we used to wash them in the morning. And I would spray them with the hose. Use that big, big brush that you use when you wash your car, then grab the leaf blower to dry them before they would roll in the dirt and get dirty again. And invariably when I put the hose down, another one of the elephants would pick it up in their trunk, and they would spray me I thought that was a funny thing.

Brandon Burton 5:35
They got a sense of humor.

Jeannie Hebert 5:38
sensitive when we interacted very well, they were they were like my kids. So I missed them terribly. But they they needed to be in places where people who were better to take care of that could happen. So they had good lives. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 5:54
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about the Blackstone Valley Chamber. Just give us an idea of the size of the chamber scope of work, you guys are involved with staff budget, that sort of thing, just to kind of set the table for our discussion today.

Jeannie Hebert 6:09
Sure. Our chamber we have about 500 members. We were very active, we mean business and we listened well. We we listened to the needs of our members. And we’re very proactive in meeting their needs. That’s how the hub came about. We our service area is 13 towns from Worcester, Massachusetts, which is the second largest city in New England, to the Rhode Island border, just to kind of give you an idea of where we are central mass is kind of cow. It’s the belt to the middle of Massachusetts. And we work with everyone in Massachusetts. We collaborate a lot, you know, Queen of collaboration. But there is a field gap across the state and I think across the nation, really. And we found that a lot of the covenants of vocational schools because of a program we have here called the MKS. That funding is attached to it. So why are the MCAT scores on the more funding the schools are getting? So vocational schools have unfortunately changed their covenant and they are accepting more epidemic with superior students over vocational and superior students and the public schools. You have an influx of students who really want vocational training, they’re looking to go to work, and they’re not able to get it at public school level. So when we found this out and working with many of our manufacturers, the Blackstone Valley is the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, who Samuel Slater, who came here and started textile mills. And the mill is actually where we are, it’s a converted former textile mill of the whitened family. We’re in Waynesville named after that family, when we we would run the job fairs like everybody dies, and, you know, help them and it just wasn’t working. They weren’t getting skilled labor. And I was hearing, you know, I didn’t know this work, I have to turn it down. So when I found out that this was happening at the vocational level, I spoke with our legislators started doing some digging. And we were able to secure some funding from the Department of Education, and took on the legislation set the chamber, we take on the task to build a workforce training manager and said, yes, so long behold, we took over part of the middle, we didn’t build that out. And we have a design lab, we’ll hang on filling computers with CAD, and we have computer lab and we have a great fabrication laboratory. And it has 3d printers, augmented welding. We have mills and lane that start out with manual and it also has the coding, but the students learn how to use them manually. And they learn how to code. And we’ve recently just taken over the other end of the mill and put in a full electronics learn. And we’re building our robotics lab right now. So we’re meeting as the needs of our members change and evolve. We are meeting their needs well over now. million dollars in investment now.

Brandon Burton 10:02
And it’s typically for the hub,

Jeannie Hebert 10:04
specifically for the hub, but it helps us to grow our chamber. Because we’re training the workforce for many years, our members, and even those that are outside of our region support our chamber because of that constant with other chambers.

Brandon Burton 10:26
So I’m curious staff size, when you take on a project like this, just for all the chambers listening like this sounds great, but I’m sure she’s got like a huge staff to take this on. Right. So what is your staff size look like? The chamber

Jeannie Hebert 10:38
staff, there’s three of us. Okay, okay. And for a while. for probably a year when we were dealing with the billing, and so forth, there was no other staff. So I was doing two jobs, and it was exhausting. But it was very rewarding. But once the school was able to open, and we were ready to accept students, I hired an executive director, or the third Executive Director right now. She’s amazing. Um, I now have an operations director. He’s amazing. He’s, I’ve been tapping into retirement pool. He’s a retired engineer that worked in was head of Northeast for Thermo Fisher. So he’s got a wealth of information. And honestly, he can take anything from it to put a lock on a door for losing meeting diverged. In Bob ovens, our Executive Director, Ashley Bregman. She is a graduate of WPM, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. And she was also teaching robotics. She’s has an engineering degree, obviously, academic or teaching. So she’s perfect as an executive director. And we have several teachers, Instructor of some are retired vocational teachers. And some teach at night when we for the night courses, and they teach at the local vocational school. And one is an engineering teacher at one of our high schools. And we’re growing to the point where we’re building campuses in our high schools in the area, we’re up to 22 districts. So obviously, we’re working with high schools, but it’s not that we’re servicing. And we also teach incumbent workers. So some of the manufacturers who hire people with no skills, we listen to them, and we build a custom curriculum for them. And they will send their workers to us. And we do like a six or 12 week course for them. So when they go back, and they still work that you know, it’s worth studying. But when they finish their course and get their certifications, they’re more than an entry level here or mid level. Yeah, it really makes a big difference for them. So in the fall right now, because this year, Nast mass fire, who handles all the career, work with people who were looking for Jones, across the state awarded us the Youth Works grant, which means we’re now working with 16 to 23 year olds who are in a disadvantaged financial state, to their families. And we find them jobs and almost apprentice programs. We do have an apprentice program too. So we hired people to handle that under the umbrella. And we just received the connecting activities grant, which is K through 12. So now we’re working with elementary school students too. So we have at the hub 15 employees now running the hub, thank goodness, I would need to never ever sleep again. And we threes that work at the Chamber, but we interact all the time. So it’s, you know, it’s one big family, and we were growing so fast. At one point, someone would come in and like go Who is that? What is this name? What was this?

Brandon Burton 14:36
Do? Yeah, that’s great. Well, that definitely that helps to set the table for more of our discussion. I’ve got a lot of follow up questions for you about the hub and we’ll dive deeper into this in the whole topic of developing a workforce training center as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Donna Novitsky 16:40
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Brandon Burton 17:34
All right, we’re back. So let’s dive in deeper. I want to know more. So tell us your when did the idea get presented to you for developing the hub? How did things unfold to see the vision come to pass? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 17:52
we’ve been open and seeing students for five years now. But it took a good two years to get it going. Because we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do. We knew there was a huge problem, especially in our area. For our you know, manufacturers just couldn’t find any employees and we’re in, as I said, job fairs were not working at all. It just wasn’t working. And I went to a skills America conference at the vocational school. And the superintendent, there was bragging that 90% of his students were going to college. And then I went what’s going on here? And I spoke with one of the students who was given who had a display on being electrician and I said, Oh, why are you going to be electrician? Because that week I want a grid. I like to have an electrician in my office crying because he’s done pretty good in Okay, location of school that he wanted to pass. And, you know, they were telling us they had a waitlist of six months students. And I talked to that student and I said, Oh, you’re gonna be an electrician. Oh, I’m going to Cornell. I’m going into sports medicine. Oh my god. You took up four years that that gentleman son could have had to become an electrician. So you know, a light bulb went off and said we need we need an we need somewhere where these students that the public school system parents that can go for training because the superintendents were telling me they didn’t know what to do with these students that will be coming discipline problems. They didn’t have the vocational training that the students wanted. The dropout rate was going up. So we aligned ourselves in office and I went to the legislators told them the problem. We have great legislators very approachable in our area. And we put together a plan And they connected me with our patients Department of Education. We applied for a work skills grant. And our first one skills Grant was half a million dollars. And we, you know, put together a plan to do the build out. It takes it does take a village, it really does. I mean, I can say, Oh, I built a school. I didn’t do it alone, and had a lot of help. And it was a process and even the middle owner. You know, our landlord was very understanding, very cooperative. And we all work together, and everyone was looking forward to it. They came together, I had some naysayers. I have one very prominent business person, say to me, you’re a dreamer. It’s never gonna happen. This is not going to work. So when, when I got last year, I got the manufacturing Champion award. I said, you know, I told that story. And I actually have a little locket that, like, my significant other gave me that people say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. And I said that to, to the audience, it was all out there. Most of the manufacturers told them a dream or been looking at, you know, I can see. Yeah, you know, span, so that really fit in perfectly. But, you know, that’s how it started. And we’re growing like crazy. And it’s wonderful to see these students, they come to us dejected, because they couldn’t get into the school they wanted to get into. And when they learn the skill, then amazing picture. They just have that vocation. And the brain is wired, for whatever it might be the body aches or electronics or CNC machining or, you know, developing coding, CAD, and we even have a shop where they we have businesses come to us that want merchandise, personalized, we’ve believed a quarter and upstream we have I hate to say it, but our biggest customers in the cannabis industry distilleries and breweries, they went through classes to action, the cannabis industry, they want human doors with their logo on it. So the kids do that. And then they buy from us and the money goes back into school and help to, you know, pay for another student. So it’s terrific.

Brandon Burton 22:31
Face the mill, you had mentioned it is a previous manufacturing mill, before you guys moved in with the hub, was it actively being used before then had it sat vacant for a while, like what was the the revitalization of the the space? How did that look?

Jeannie Hebert 22:51
That was very interesting, because that bill was that mill was slated to be demolished. So ironically, we were located in the same town but a few streets over in another building. And we worked with the our landlord, now the mill owner to connect him with an amazing grant writer. And they were able to get a grant and start renovating. It was a cartel. Everybody else fell away except for these two people bill and Patti gianopolous, who believed in the project. And they partnered with another organization for over 55 subsidized housing. So above us three floors above us is over 55 subsidized housing. And I have an interesting story. They are how we interact with them. But it’s it came together over a period of I think two and a half years that they were able to renovate the mill. It’s beautiful. It has great architectural elements for big, huge wooden beams that have all been sanded so that they’re natural. Now, you know, they they were painted that hospital clean beautiful granite and brick in the windows of huge and it’s just really, really lovely. So they’re above us were below and we said why don’t we move in the mill and we moved into the new in 2016. And then 2018 We started the school. So a lot of history and had the elements or pictures of what it was. And there’s several mills in the town that were in northbridge and throughout the valley, and a lot of them were owned by the whitened family. And so our area of North there just called whiteness fell. So it’s really beautiful. It has a tower or any house out which is It’s a cute little shop now. So it’s, it’s, it’s bustling. We have. We’re there. We at the school, we have a physical therapy, we have a gym, we have a barbershop that’s run by naturalized citizens, former immigrants, and we’ve just helped them with their expanding. We have Girls on the Run. We have we were named the National Park by President Obama. So we have our rangers are there that national heritage corridor and the National Park is located there. So the national park rangers have a brewery in one of the other buildings because there’s a number of buildings usually. So it’s a pretty busy place. Oh, and beautiful woman owned business. That is a crepe or a company is another modern day Helsinki. And it’s a great little restaurant that’s been restored and invest. You know, it looks industrial. But it’s so it’s a unique place. And it’s a wonderful gathering place for the community interaction. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 26:16
that sounds awesome. So as you’re talking about how it came to be, it sounds like in the collaboration, I see where you get the title mokwena collaboration, but to be able to have, you know, somebody who’s familiar with grant writing, to be able to help see a vision and help bring things together to to see these things come, you know, kind of unfold and come together. Two of the things I wanted to ask you about, you’ve mentioned them, but I wanted to dig in just a little bit more. So there’s these certificate programs that the students come through, I imagine that there are varying lengths depending on what their focus of work is. So if you could touch on that, and then also touch on how you work with the schools, you had mentioned the K through 12. Now with these districts, what does that look like with those relationships and, and interacting with them?

Jeannie Hebert 27:06
Sure, well, the certificate programs are varied, some are custom that we utilize for incumbent workers. And some are standardized. Like we have, as I said, the Miller augmented augmented welding, that’s six to 12 week course, depending upon the type of welding, but it’s industry accepted, we would not have purchased them if our manufacturers didn’t try them out and say, oh, yeah, this is just like real world. And they do after they get their certificate, we bring them to one of our couple of our partners yr fab and package steel systems, who make metal buildings, all for all over the world. And invariably, they will say to the students are so come see me, you know that so they have great skills. So that’s one certificate we have. We have an OSHA, obviously, we do OSHA 10, everybody gets an OSHA 10. Everyone, we have a reentry program as well with the sheriff’s department. So we start teaching OSHA in the jail before they’re released. And when they’re released, they come to the school, and they get hands on training, that everybody gets OSHA training, we have what’s called Mecalac, which is a Massachusetts certificate, and it’s through mas MEP, which is manufacturing extension partnership. So this brings you through all of the steps of what manufacturing needs, like would have shot now. It would teach measurements, believe it or not, we’re finding graduates of high school have no idea how to use tape or read a tape measure or ruler. And they cannot even tell turn on the clock unless it’s digital. If you say to them, it’s quarter. They’ll go and they don’t know what that is. We had one guidance counselor say they had a disqualifying when they were monitoring the number six certificate examinations, because he pulled out his phone and I said, take out your phone. He said I wanted to see what time it was. They said there’s a clock on the wall. He said I can’t read it. No one ever taught me how to read. Like when we went to school first grade, they had the clock remember you

Brandon Burton 29:37
missing the mark somewhere, right? Yeah, I remember. I remember doing worksheets like that. Yeah. Don’t

Jeannie Hebert 29:42
do that. More than he is on job no more curse if they can’t. I was talking to a business that we were helping out. yesterday. She it’s called hair jewelry. She’s an archaeologist and she had an intern from one of the quality If he didn’t know how they couldn’t read the report from the patient because they didn’t know how to read cursive, so we’re really missing the mark in our schools. So these are the things that we try to address. But back to the certifications, we have those certifications with custom certifications. And then at some of the campuses that thought like Brookdale campus, which is one of our close up spirit campus, which is another one of our towns, their certifications. outsprinting is focusing on carpentry. Newbury is also property Hopedale, a cyber security. So we get certifications for those types of industries where the students are learning we even started, we help them get and I always say this wrong. And in a Tom baton, table, virtual. It’s almost like mines, US operations,

Brandon Burton 30:59
operators. That’s how I was gonna guess when you said that? Yeah, it’s a real body,

Jeannie Hebert 31:03
but they have a human meaning male, human woman, dog, cat, rather, Frog, which I love, because now they might have dissected me animals. But it’s very realistic. Students were showing me their skills. And I said, I was getting woozy and you’re doing a great job, right? I gotta go to the next. It’s like, Oh, yeah. That table alone costs $100,000. So we were able to help the school right grant, so that they have that. So Arginine is we helped a lot of the schools get DNS. So maybe you go to help deal, but you want to take manufactory. So you have to close the hub, or maybe your middle bring you to market sure you want to do you know, introduction to some kind of medical research. And that’s it helped. So we do is we’ll move the kids around. So they will take these courses together. The one principal said to me, it was hilarious. He goes, Yeah, these kids are all working together in class. And then on the weekend, they beat the heck out of each other on the football field. Because that’s great. So we put classes together, not necessarily by school, but on a subject. So the students get to even try it out, we’ll do a trial. You know, they’ll come and say, Oh, I think I want to do this. And they might try it and so on. That’s not Well, maybe you want to try that? Oh, yeah, that’s a better fit for me. So we do that, too. So that’s so it’s some of the certifications that we offer, I’m sure there’s a lot more that escapes me right now. But the K through 12 that we had the smaller kids, I think a good example would be rewarded grant kind of nothing for the energies that it was for younger kids to learn about engineering. So we had camp over the summer. And kids would come in the morning, and they’ll have a little bite to eat. And then they would learn about engineering and mechatronics and robotics and make make something. Mr. Evans, our engineer ran this program. So they’d make something and they put it all together, they do it on the computer, and they’d make it. And he would say to them, did you have fun? You know, you did you know what that was? Well, they have engineering. And the robotics is we have these really cute little robot, these, this is very key in first, and second graders, paying them. And they were like, they know, control robots, but they had to program them to make them work. And they were able to do that. And we have these little robots that look a little Michael Jackson, they had a damn thing. They were dancing with each other. And they were doing tasks and picking things out, handing them to each other. But it’s a natural for these kids. They blow me away. And it’s amazing. And then some of the middle school kids, we had codons, which are cooperatives are going to occur in an industry. They do the stuff where people say, Oh, robots are gonna take my job. Well, did you really want to keep ticking boxes and putting them here? You know, you don’t want to do that. You want to be the one telling the robots to do that. Use your brain. So what these students were doing, I went in after they kind of let a they taught them how to work, how to program them. They could like Legos out so they could build make the robots build. And then I they had free time. So I went in and they began to have the robots and they can like be stitched in Your hands. And I go, What are you doing the courts very proud of their sword fighting.

So I mean, this is a concept thing, maybe learn through having fun, but it’s part of what they would do in a job situation, they would have to program the robots to do a task. And some of them have 345 robots interacting with each other and completing a task. And that’s pretty complicated. For like, an eighth grader, too. So I just like I said, they blow me away. One of the older kids, it was a birthday, what’s what was like three of them, they came in, and they gave me these beautiful stainless steel shakers that had an unusual shape, then you throw them on the machine. And they gave her to me, it’s a birthday gift. And they said, Missmiss look, we even put pain on the top. So you can tell which is which. program that and have the drill press drill, drill it, and then had Christmas was just from a piece of aluminum or stainless steel that they had. And they design them themselves and made those, then it was just amazing that they did pocket some of the kids from shoestring High School, which is my hometown, they were making Christmas ornaments out of brought up some of the metal and like drill guns, and they were beautiful. And then they made dreidels to the trails are gorgeous, they were intricate, they were terrific. So it was, you know, it’s a fun, fun thing to learn. But while they’re learning there, we say to them, you’re an engineer, you just love

Brandon Burton 36:55
that. I love it, they have these opportunities, and they get that confidence and explore these these future career opportunities. This is such a invaluable resource for your community. So applaud and Pat, pat on the back to you guys and your team for for executing this and integrating it into the schools as well.

Jeannie Hebert 37:14
Thank you. We have a great team. We really do. I’m really fortunate really blessed. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Burton 37:19
So as we start to wrap up, I wanted to ask if, if you might have any tips or action items for chamber folks that are listening, who want to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you offer for them? Well,

Jeannie Hebert 37:34
I think you know, you need to listen to your members, which you know, most of my chamber colleagues do. Every region is different. What works for me might not work for you. But if you listen to what your members need, or what your municipalities are your region, we work very closely with all of our municipalities and our legislators in and listen and get advice on how to meet those needs. And then you know, collaborate with the great resources that you have in your region, we have wonderful educational institution, terrific educators, innovative people on and, you know, we’ve worked together and they’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work. So I think, you know, sometimes you look at a project and you think that’s really daunting. But when you you know, I hate this analogy, but how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Brandon Burton 38:37
Especially after your introduction today, no, no elephants on the table.

Jeannie Hebert 38:43
And your chamber will grow. We are gaining members inside and outside our region. Because of the services that we provide, and I’m not stealing numbers from anyone, what we do is, if I see that I’m getting a number of members, someone, you know, reaching out to me, I reach out to that chamber and say, You know what, I’ve got like five industry people that have come to me, why don’t we do a collaboration and we have an affiliation with like seven other chambers, and will offer a discount, but you have to be a member of the region’s chamber first. And then I’ll give you this note to join us. And we’ll provide everything but we do provide a lot of services without membership to and I know that I get criticized from some chambers for that, but it comes back, you know, comes around and it’s a pleasure for me to work with a number of people to help them and you know, it’s great to work together but no, just listen to your members or You read and see what the needs are and think about and seek out people with resources that I can drop in on how to develop focus to meet those who

Brandon Burton 40:11
have that so important. As we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Jeannie Hebert 40:22
I think we’re going to have to really prove that we are a worthy organization. And you know, we’re going to, to be a good resource for your members. It’s not, as we all know, already, I’m preaching to the choir here. It’s not like the inundating myself, the fog of news best attitude where Jimmy Anderson would say, I’m going to the chamber dinner, you know, like everyone already knew how to join the Chamber of Commerce. There’s too many people into the new organizations billing for the that dues that dues revenue, and I don’t think that dues revenue is going to be our is already isn’t our main revenue stream, we have to find other revenue streams. And it’s going to be to run instances

Brandon Burton 41:21
of it. Good advice. Jeanne, I want to do give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn a little bit more about the hub and how you guys went about this, this great big project, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Jeannie Hebert 41:44
Well, through email, which is jhebert@blackstonevalley.org. So that’s email. And if you want to learn about, you can go to our website, which is BlackstoneValley.org. And you can also check out The Hub at be thehub.org. And if you go to our website, there’s a tab and it’ll bring you right over to the hub. And I’m happy to share any information to help with anything, any resources and, you know, whatever we can do to help you with programs. And if you want to take on a project like this to go get them and we’ll help you every any way I can.

Brandon Burton 42:42
I love it. Thank you so much. So this has been great having you on the podcast today. I love getting these insights from chambers that have taken on a unique projects and have a neat approach to it. revitalizing a building that was set to be torn down and really changed the outlook of the community. I love it. But thank you for being with us today and sharing these experiences and insight and, and I’m hoping it gave you know a few people out there that drive to take on some of those big hairy audacious goals. Thank you for being with us today.

Jeannie Hebert 43:15
Thank you very much. Thanks Brandon for the opportunity we really appreciate you’ve ever thought my way I’d love to give me a tour.

Brandon Burton 43:22
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Next Level of Chamber with Donny Jones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Hey, this is Donna. Yiftee community cards are free for you, free for your members and they bring lots of new sales and foot traffic into your local shops and restaurants. But don’t take it from me. Here’s Siobhan from Truckee, California to tell you about her program.

Siobhan Kenney 10:25

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Donna Novitsky 10:56

Thanks Siobhan. If you’d like to join Truckee in supporting the shop local movement, check us out yiftee.com or send an email to sales@yiftee.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton
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Clean Energy & Chambers with Ryan Evans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit ChamberNation.com to learn more.

Donna Novitsky 9:33
Hi, everyone, Donna from Yiftee here with another fun fact about small businesses. Did you know that there are 77 million people working in small businesses in the US? That’s almost half of the entire civilian workforce. But I know that you already know the value of local businesses. That is why we created community cards. They bring revenue to your members’ businesses that today is leaving your community and going to national brands and e-commerce companies. In addition to consumers we see schools, hospitals, city governments and companies buying community cards in bulk instead of buying big box store and online gift cards. Community cards keep local dollars local. For more info come to a demo or email us at sales@yiftee.com. We look forward to meeting you back to you Brandon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 38:24
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Economic Mobility with Beth Rhinehart

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Beth Rhinehart. Beth is the president and CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce serving both Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. The Bristol Tennessee and Virginia Chamber is a five star accredited organization and has been a leader in economic advocacy since 1909. Prior to joining the chamber in 2015, Beth spent the previous 10 years as Director of Government Relations for wellmont health systems, building key relationships and oversight overseeing Virginia legislative processes as they applied to hospitals and health care. Beth currently serves on the boards for several or local organizations, also including the Virginia Association Chamber of Commerce executives. Beth is a native of Bristol, Virginia, and earned her BS degree from Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Masters of Arts in Teaching and Masters of Science in Counseling degrees from John Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and an MBA from King’s College in Bristol, Tennessee. She’s a 2010 graduate of the Sorenson Institute political leadership program and earned her IOM certification in 2018. She is currently a fellow of the ACCE foundation economic mobility cohort. She completed a fellowship in the ACCE education and talent development division in 2019. And recently completed a business leads fellowship with the US Chamber of Commerce in 2022. She’s a member of the US Chamber of Commerce distinguished committee of 100. And she recently earned her CCE being one of only 172 nationwide out of over 7000 chambers of commerce. Beth, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Beth Rhinehart 3:53
Good morning, Brandon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. The chamber world is an amazing world to work in and to find so many collaborative partners to work alongside. So it’s always an honor anytime we can work together. And this is a great platform to be able to do that.

Probably some that would say probably of most interest would be that have no background and what people would most often think of as a chamber leader. I don’t think any of us wake up or grow up thinking I’m gonna be president of a chamber one day, it’s not one of those sought after careers that most people even don’t always know what a chamber does. So it’s one of those evolution careers in my opinion, where I think the toolkit that you develop and the skills and relationships you build throughout your life lead you along this path and I encourage anybody who’s not a chamber employee to always consider that the the opportunities The exposure, the growth that you experience, because of all the places you touch, as a chamber organization, I highly encourage anybody to consider that.

Brandon Burton 5:09
Yeah, absolutely. So I know, you know, there’s some chamber leaders out there where you can look at him and say, Man, they were really born to be a chamber leader, you know, chamber executive or CEO. And I, and that may be the case, but usually it isn’t evolution and you kind of grow into it. So you might have been born for it, but you still have to grow into it. So good point well taken. Why don’t you share with us a little bit about the Bristol chamber. In your bio, we shared the uniqueness of you covering Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. So kind of having that literal border through your community. But um, tell us more about the chamber size staff budget scope of work, just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

Beth Rhinehart 5:53
Absolutely. So we are 114 years old this year, we were established in May of 1909. We our five star credited chamber, which we’re extremely proud of. If anyone’s gone through an accreditation process, you know how challenging and grueling that can be, but it’s certainly worth every minute of time you put into it. We’re the oldest accredited chamber in Tennessee and the second oldest in Virginia, we we serve to one community, we say it’s one Bristol, but across two state lines. So our downtown historic Main Street, which is called State Street, the yellow lines that run down the center of our community, that’s the actual state line. So businesses on one side, you can be eating in a restaurant on State Street looking at folks in our restaurant or bar on the other side of the street, and they’re in a different state. So pretty unique opportunity that has its challenges for sure. You can imagine we have two local governments to fire departments, to school systems, to police stations, all of the above. So as a chamber, we often become that convener and facilitator for issues that impact the entire community, whether it’s the community at large or our business members. But we you know, that convening role, and the collaborative nature that we bring is critically important, I think, for all chambers, but especially for a community like ours. We have our budgets around one and a quarter million if you include our foundation side. So we have our chamber side of the house, we also have a foundation that owns our facility, but also houses, our leadership and education programs to name just a few. We have seven full time staff and have about 525. Members. All

Brandon Burton 7:49
right. So I’m I’m curious, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked into it to see how many cities there are across the country where there’s literally have the state line going through the middle of the city? Have you ever looked into that? Or is Bristol one of a kind? And I think

Beth Rhinehart 8:04
we’re I think we are one of a kind in the respect that our our remain thoroughfare and our historic downtown that those center lines are the state line. I know there. Are there plenty of border communities and, for example, St. Louis and others that, you know, you you have on both sides of a state line. But I think for us that downtown uniqueness is unique to us.

Brandon Burton 8:32
Yeah, absolutely. It is very unique and intriguing. Just to see how that works with like you said, having to local governments and to fire departments and police it, it just is very interesting to say the least. I would

Beth Rhinehart 8:47
if I could add one quick thing. You know, talking about how times we’re doing COVID, which I hate going back to again, but I think it speaks to the uniqueness here. We had two governors, one in Virginia, one in Tennessee, who approached those safety measures and closures very differently. And so for our downtown and our business community that was very disruptive. And so we played a large role in in helping make sure that everyone could continue to be successful and thrive. When you’re looking out your window at somebody else who’s open till two in the morning and serving customers and their cash registers are ringing when you’re shut down. So it brings about some interesting dynamics.

Brandon Burton 9:33
Yeah, well, it puts you in a tough spot as a chamber leader to at trying to advocate for those businesses with two different governors and two different approaches, but definitely some choppy waters to navigate. So as we get ready to kind of dive into our topic for conversation today, we decided to focus our discussion around economic mobility And I know you guys were recently awarded a grant from ACCE to focus work around economic mobility. And I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 12:53
All right, Beth, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around economic mobility. And maybe before we get too deep into the conversation, I know there’s a lot of newcomers into the chamber world and specifically chamber staff who are listening. When we talk about economic mobility, what does that mean to you? What what is that covering in that scope of work before we go down that path and the discussion

Beth Rhinehart 13:21
started laying and my you know, very high level definition of that would be it’s allowing and supporting and finding ways to promote folks to greater, greater sustainability but personally, professionally for, you know, life stability, it’s it’s, for example, if you have low income workers who by by their own situational background and current situation, need to find a better way to sustain themselves and their families. economic mobility means that you’re supporting them moving from what I’ll call, not necessarily instability, but maybe a point that’s not sustainable to a point of greater grounding and funding and sense of self to where they’re able to live in a manner that that’s the quality of life for them and their families. Right.

Brandon Burton 14:26
So maybe tell us a little bit about the the application process for this grant that I mentioned, you guys were awarded from ACCE and kind of what went into that and know the the work is specifically around low income earners in the community. But what went into that application process and ultimately qualifying you for the grant.

Beth Rhinehart 14:48
Certainly. So a lot of the work that went into this was talking about what we do here from the chamber and in partnership with some Any new work in this field, because as we know, we don’t do this alone. We are a collaborator and a convener. And so we look to really partnering with a lot of folks, especially being that we serve two different states through the bristal lens. So I think it’s really working to find the data that’s available. So we had to do a lot of data mining to find, you know, what’s the average and median salaries, what programs are currently in existence? What are we doing as a chamber to really help folks find the skills they need to maybe to build that pipeline, find opportunities for people to upskill or rescale, and move to different jobs, what jobs are currently available in your community where the skills gaps needed to be supported? So a lot of the work was research and collaboration and finding who those best partners would be to help us throughout this grant process. So writing the grant, of course, describing all the demographics of our community in our greater region, and then goal setting for, you know, are we going to get be able to get people across that finish line and how we’re going to do that? So

Brandon Burton 16:14
you had mentioned goal setting? How do you set goals around this objective of economic mobility? What are some of those key indicators and and benchmarks to show that you’re succeeding in this work?

Beth Rhinehart 16:27
Force? And you’re asking the toughest questions? That is, the toughest question to answer really is, how do you put a number on how many people you’re actually going to get across that finish line? And what defines whether you have been successful? Maybe you don’t fully cross the finish line? If that’s a benchmark, or, you know, how do you get people moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of those, those those key performance indicators for us, included, you know, how many students are we able to fully engage, and I’ll call it graduate from some cohort programs, for example, our manufacturers Excellence Program, which is a boot camp for high school students to go through in partnership with all of our manufacturers, where they end up with at the end of that program, exposure to the manufacturing jobs in this community. And also to have a toolkit of things, they might need to start on the job once they graduate, for example, steel toed shoes, protective eyewear, and ear protection, things like that. So I think that’s one of the ways we look at it and successfully completing programs, how many students have done that, for us, you know, the, the cohort that I ended up in the grant itself is broken into several subgroups, the subgroup that I am in is actually creating a community wide strategy for how our community collectively and collaboratively finds a solution and a path forward. And that was really important, I was really pleased to be able to end up in that group, because for us across that state line, that collaborative necessity, is really at the top of what we need to be working on. So

Brandon Burton 18:18
let’s talk strategy. You had mentioned working with students and exposing them to some of those manufacturing jobs. And I know that would play a part into that strategy. And you’ve mentioned these partnerships and collaboration. But as you approach this work, I mean, are you identifying the individuals that you’re going after to try to help improve quality of life? Or are you presenting the program that hopefully attracts them and draws them into it? How do you approach it? And what does it look like?

Beth Rhinehart 18:50
And great question. And, you know, if we if we go back to the foundation of the group that I’m in, it’s really to create the strategy. So we’re rather than creating specific programs, the identification of programs, and the implementation of those programs is part of this. But the most important goal of the committee or the cohort that I’m in, is truly creating a strategy for how we as a greater community and region define the pathways for folks to move through economic mobility. So the really the goal of the work we will be doing is identifying what programs currently exist. Where are the skills gaps, or the the gaps in the programming for example, for those who are all the players that need to be to the table? As I mentioned earlier, we don’t necessarily do all the work. We are often the facilitator and collaborator for those who do the frontline work, for example, community colleges and four year higher education institutions. As our K 12, our workforce investment boards, our economic developers, all the folks that that have an impact on the population that we’re trying to serve, I think our goal is to create a strategy that has a defined pathway from beginning to success.

Brandon Burton 20:19
So, at what point did you guys jump in with both feet, so to speak, in this work of economic mobility? Is it a newer venture is that something that’s been on your mind, and then you’ve got more gas to throw on the fire? How’s that developed?

Beth Rhinehart 20:38
It’s a little bit of both of those. And I will say that this grant and fellowship application, it was, it was the sweet sauce we’ve been looking for, because it really gives us a focused approach to doing that with the funding attached. And, you know, all of us are resource limited to some degree, you know, we know what work gets done is the work that’s funded. So to have this opportunity of funding by ascending through a CCS Foundation, was really, it couldn’t have come at a better time, we’ve been focusing for a long time in our community on looking at generational poverty that exists. And for our youth, you know, if you have a lot of, of youth in your community, who are third and fourth generation, poverty, situational, they may grow up in a family where they’ve never seen an adult get up and go to work during the day versus living on public assistance. So the key to that mentorship and showing students that pathway, showing our youth that there is a different way, and the value of that and then how to achieve that is critically important. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece, we work very closely with our United Way here, and and they’re very focused, as I know, United Way’s across the country, if you partner with them, they talk a lot about Alice, families, which are asset limited income constrained, employed. And that breaks down to a lot of families who are living at or below the poverty line, are in that ballpark anyway. And very often they are working two to three part time jobs, to try to pay their bills. And the stress that that creates on families, the the inability to afford childcare, that’s quality childcare, you know, access to a lot of the things health care insurance. When you live in that Alice population, there are many challenges to overcome. And the choices that those families have to make are not choices any of us would want to have to make. So that that population of folks who have a lot of those struggles are also a target for folks that we want to try to move to that at average or above salary, which for our community, means you’re able to sustain your family. So there are going to be a lot of different approaches we look at. And I have to you know, give a little disclaimer too. We just started this. So we’re literally fresh on the heels, we just got our award letter. And the last month we’ve had our first kickoff meeting, as a cohort, there’s 11 of us from around the country who were selected for this project. And so it was beautiful to be able to receive that letter and to know that we get to participate in this. So it is very fresh on the front lines of this. So we have a lot of work to do. And I don’t have a lot of the details of what this will look like at the end. But I can tell you that we’re committed and excited to get to work.

Brandon Burton 23:53
Yeah. Now I’d love the idea of helping to create a vision, especially with these youth that don’t have that example to look to of what their real potential can be in what they can do is you know, career and to be able to support a family instead of you know, living off of assistance, like you mentioned, but I see it right now in my own son, you know, he’s finishing his junior year right now, as is looking to college and everything and, and just some of the limiting factors in a vision that an individual youth has for themselves. There’s so you know, bias really on what they’ve seen. And they they’ve lived a short life up to that point. And if they haven’t been exposed to different opportunities or know that some of these opportunities exist, they’re going to be in that same rut as as some of their predecessors. It still blows me away. Sometimes when you hear somebody being a first generation college graduate and their family. I mean, it makes me smile every time I hear it, but it blows me away that you still hear it as often as you do, and helping to grow Right, that vision, I think is, is instrumental in helping people realize their potential and moving forward. So hopefully you guys have some innovative ways that you can roll that out as the program develops. I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody out there listening who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or strategy might you offer for them?

Beth Rhinehart 25:27
I think you know, for us here, I can speak to my experiences here. One is, make sure that you have an extremely engaged and supportive board. I am so blessed here to have that opportunity. You know, we have that doesn’t mean we always agree 100% on everything we’re working on. But I think having your board engaged to where they understand what you’re trying to do, they can provide that fiscal oversight and that strategic vision to help you move your organization forward. So you’re creating the greatest benefit and value to those members. I think that’s a really key part. And that there’s a lot of intentionality around that it’s there’s intentionality around having diversity around the board table. There’s intentionality around how you as a director of your organization, how you engage them. And I think building a very strong trusting relationship is critically important. I over tell if there is such a thing, I always make sure that my board members know more than they need to know really, if there is such a thing, so that they’re never blindsided, but that they know the good, the bad and the ugly, because that’s how we all get better in what we’re doing. And when you feel like you have to hide something, it never leads to a good place. So I would just encourage you, if you have challenging things you’re working on, bring your board and let them help you. Right,

Brandon Burton 26:56
you’d never want your board to be surprised by anything you’re doing. Yes. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Beth Rhinehart 27:12
I would say and it’s something we’ve worked really hard on, moving from the traditional membership model into a tiered investment model, I think is critical. And the reason it’s critical, it’s not just about those investment dollars, it’s really being very mission focused, and how you are delivering benefit and value to your members. So I encourage you, if you haven’t looked at that, please do. So there are so many folks in the chamber world who have gone through it or working on it. There are consultants that are great partners, to chambers, who can help you navigate that, but also lean on each other. There are a lot of people, as I say, who who are happy to share and really help all of us become better at the end of the day. I think that’s important. But I think, you know, another important piece is advocacy. I firmly believe that government relations, advocacy as a business leader, focused community is also one of the greatest values you can provide to your members into the larger community and region. I think folks need to know how to do that. They need to know what the pressing issues are, how to resolve those, and they need that connectivity to the elected members at your local state and federal levels to help you so I encourage you to look to those areas is really your greatest resources and I think value to membership. Absolutely,

Brandon Burton 28:40
I think those are two great. Oh, I’m gonna say tips. But it’s part of that vision of the future of chambers is to if you haven’t already explored the idea of going over to a tiered use model for your membership. There’s, there’s a lot of businesses out there who are willing to pay more than what they are being asked to with the traditional membership model, because they see the work that you’re doing in areas such as advocacy, and they see the value that you provide to the business community and really just community building in general and they want to be a part of it. So I would agree with that part of the vision and and really having a focus there. But that as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and connect with you and learn more about things you’re doing in Bristol or about the discussion that we covered today with economic mobility, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Beth Rhinehart 29:34
Of course and I welcome any outreach and hope that whatever we do here if it can be a value to anyone, my door is always open my phone is always available to be answered. So I’ve been blessed with a lot of people who have done that for me so my email is, brhinehart@bristolchamber.org and and my phone number is 423-989-4850 and our mailing address is 20 Volunteer Parkway, Bristol, Tennessee 37620. And more importantly, come and visit us we are door’s always open. We would love to have anyone if you’re ever traveling through our area please stop and say hello.

Brandon Burton 30:23
Absolutely and I will get that in our show notes for this episode so listeners can go and check it out and connect with you. But I appreciate you being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and putting out there your experience so far around economic mobility and and the the work you’re venturing into with it. I think it is such an important topic and for every community to really see those areas to really uplift and bring everybody to a higher level in their community as far as their living standards and economic status goes. So thank you for for sharing that with us and being with us on the podcast today.

Beth Rhinehart 30:59
Thank you for the opportunity. Love what you’re doing.

Brandon Burton 31:04

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Attracting Remote Talent with Justin Harlan

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Justin Harlan. Justin is the managing director of Tulsa Remote, a program honored on Fast Company’s prestigious list of world’s most innovative companies for 2022, which recognize its unique approach to attracting remote workers to Tulsa and promoting economic development in the city. Under Justin’s leadership Tulsa remote, the largest relocation incentive program in the US has grown more grown to more than 2200 members. Justin has represented Tulsa remote at international conferences like Web Summit and collision conference, where he shared the power of the programs community building efforts and benefits of remote work. He previously served as the Senior Executive Director for Reading Partners Tulsa launched his career with Teach for America, Oklahoma, when it opened in Tulsa in 2009. and was a founding board member for collegiate Hall College Prep Charter School in Tulsa. Justin’s passion for promoting community growth and development extends to his personal life as well. He and his wife Megan run to fitness studios in Tulsa, pure bar, South Tulsa and row house, South Tulsa, Justin holds a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Tulsa

. Justin, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little bit better. Sure, wait,

Justin Harlan 3:31
it’s good to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the invite. And yeah, it’s a it’s a awesome opportunity just to be able to talk to chamber leaders because so much of our work overlaps with the chamber here. And I think it’s really a team effort as it relates to, you know, attracting people to a city. So this is great. I’m looking forward to the conversation. Let’s see a fun fact about myself, you know, you’ve you’ve rattled off most of what makes me interesting already. I was a music major in college. So that’s often a you know, maybe a fun fact that it doesn’t get read. I initially came to school down here in Tulsa as a singer. So as a vocal performance major and quickly learned that probably wasn’t going to be how I made a career. And so I also added a business degree and you know, kind of thought maybe I can mix the music with the with the business and go into the business side of the arts and got into the nonprofit world. And I’ve never looked back. So there you go. There’s a fun fact that oft often doesn’t make the bio. Yeah, that’s

Brandon Burton 4:30
good. I’m sure there’s more discussion there that can be had. Regardless, it’s always interesting to find how people find themselves in this world today. So I appreciate you sharing that that bit of your background. So I shared a little bit about what Tulsa remote is in the in your bio, but why don’t you take a few minutes and just tell us really what Tulsa remote is what the focus of the program is. Kind of how you go about your work and obviously we’ll get into much deeper calm realization about it throughout the episode, but give us kind of that high level of what is Tulsa remote?

Justin Harlan 5:06
Sure, Tulsa remote is the largest network of remote workers that have come through this incentive program that started in 2019, when we brought about 70 people, and obviously the world changed for all of us in the way that we are working in 2020. And we’ve grown substantially since then. About 380 People came in 2020, about 950 and 2021. We had just under 800. Last year. So yes, we’re up over 2300 people now that have moved to Tulsa and the $10,000 is often made, what makes the headline, because it’s a very unique approach to talent recruitment, but more than the $10,000, which at the end of the day really covers that the moving costs and somebody occurs for moving across the country. It’s the community that really attracts people, it’s the ability to plug into a new town quickly, leave a mark on a midsize city and get connected to remote workers in organic ways that maybe share different aspects of your background, but don’t work directly alongside you. And we’re really good at helping people get plugged into the community and, you know, contribute to Tulsa quickly, which I think is really what makes us stand out and what has led to 90% of people staying beyond that year commitment that they make when they accept that incentive to move to Tulsa.

Brandon Burton 6:23
All right, that definitely helps to kind of set the stage for our discussion today. I know chambers across the country are they’re battling this idea of being able to support businesses with remote workers and being able to attract remote workers to their community, especially if maybe a spouse takes a relocation to a certain community and and there’s that trailing spouse and and maybe you know, remote work may be an option for them as well. But I’m excited to get in deeper into that conversation. Some of the things you guys have seen and approaches taken as soon as they get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 9:09
All right, Justin, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, I’m excited to learn the approach. So first of all, I guess what I’d like to maybe address is oftentimes Chamber of Commerce will be presented with an idea of a new program to implement in a city and maybe they implement it. And then it spins off to become its own nonprofit and operates under its own power, but it was started and spun off by the chamber. From what I understand Tulsa remote kind of started a little bit differently, but you guys do work hand in hand oftentimes with the chamber. So tell us a little bit about the origin of Tulsa remote, how it came to be. And I want to hear it just for the benefit of listeners who you know, are trying to adapt for their community. how something like this might look? Yeah, the origin

Justin Harlan 10:05
story for Tulsa remote really was two different things we’re trying to tackle. And it started at the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and still continues to live there. But like you mentioned, we work hand in hand with the city and the chamber and a lot of different partners to really make this successful. But it really came to be for a couple of different reasons. First, you know, we in Tulsa, and really the state of Oklahoma have been reliant on the oil and gas industry, pretty much in our entire existence as a state. And even in the best of times, that’s a very volatile industry, that can be a roller coaster ride. And, you know, we have a lot of great talented knowledge workers here. But the reality is for us to keep up in the future, we need more. And that was one kind of lightbulb moment, I think early on, it’s how do we attract knowledge workers in a way that isn’t reliant on one company, but goes after the individual. And just so happens that a lot of knowledge workers have been working remotely for a while. And you know, we had obviously no idea pandemic was coming. But you know, in theory, if you can attract remote workers, chances are that’s going to be a knowledge worker. And that was one big thing that was attracted to us in creating the program. We also have learned from programs like Teach for America, which as you read was in my is in some of my career history, that it often takes people have an incentive to get to Tulsa. But once they’re here, they’re very likely to stay, it’s, it’s really easy to get plugged in, it’s really easy to put roots down. And once somebody is actually willing to give it a chance, you’re very likely to fall in love and make this home for a while. And so there was also, you know, in addition to the need for knowledge workers and trying to attract talent, there was also this belief that if we could just incentivize people to come that they would stay, they would stick around, they’d find a home. And that certainly has turned out to be true. But that’s really how the program started is a Talent Recruitment initiative that also knew that it’s going to take a little bit more to get people to get Tulsa chance. But if they do come, they’re going to stick around. All right.

Brandon Burton 12:13
So you guys are primarily identifying remote workers to bring to Tulsa and make Tulsa their home and then continue their current employment in most cases, it sounds like remotely from wherever they’re coming from. How are you approaching specific businesses? I mean, you mentioned you want to focus on the individual rather than businesses. But how do you focus in promote Tulsa to do that, that specific niche audience of somebody who’s able to remote work? And are you providing opportunities for them to remote work while making Tulsa home?

Justin Harlan 12:51
Yeah, you’re exactly right. We’re going after individuals here. And all of them have to have a full time remote job when they come to Tulsa through the program, they have to be over the age of 18 are eligible to work in the United States and have lived outside of the state of Oklahoma for at least a year. And in doing so our recruitment and marketing initiatives are all really pointed at the person. And what we found, especially over the last couple of years, as I believe people have really reassessed their priorities in life and tried to figure out what am I what am I actually looking to get out of life in general, and what’s the role that we want work to play in it? I think cities like Tulsa, midsize cities that are still really affordable, are going to rise to the top as places that people want to be, you know, to kind of give you my Tulsa sales pitch. We have an incredible outdoor amenity scene with the largest public park that is privately funded in the gathering place. It’s free to everybody and just amazing. Named USA, today’s best Park in 2021. We have an amazing food scene where this year we had seven James Beard Award nominations, which is more than Las Vegas, it’s more than the entire State of Kansas and the rest of Oklahoma combined. You know, we have amazing music. So I say all that to say it’s a really high quality of life that gives you everything you want in a city, but it’s at a low cost of living. So you’re paying about half the price for twice as much space as you would in New York or LA or San Francisco. And to me, especially as proximity in our work becomes less important to be able to get that high quality of life and a low cost of living when placed does not matter anymore as it relates to where we’re working. I just think that places like this places like Tulsa are really going to benefit from that. And Tulsa remote is certainly one way that people are coming to the city, but I believe there’s people coming on their own too. We’ve seen a huge positive net migration over the last 13 years and I believe that’ll continue.

Brandon Burton 14:51
Right. So maybe you mentioned this and I just missed it but as far as the $10,000 to grant to help people make the move. Where’s that grants being funded from is that the city itself is that the foundation where where’s the the funds coming from?

Justin Harlan 15:09
Yeah, as of now, I’ll expenses come from the foundation, the entire budget to date has been spent directly from the George Kaiser Family Foundation. We had some recent legislation that was passed in the state of Oklahoma that allows for Tulsa remote to qualify as a proxy organization that’s recruiting quality, remote jobs, we’ve had some legislation in the state since the late 90s, called the quality jobs act. And they actually expanded that to include remote workers in 2020. And then we can basically get reimbursed for the employer tax dollars that are coming to the state through the individual that we recruit up to $10,000. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of things that have to happen in order for us to get that full amount. But the long and short of it is if we continue to recruit the type of people that we are today, it will take us about two years to get that full $10,000 back for each individual. So pretty soon here, we’ll start seeing this program sustained and continued to, you know, pour in financially from the state for the first time, which will be a really great representation of that private and public partnership.

Brandon Burton 16:20
Right. So I know in your in your bios, I introduced you. It mentioned something about your passion for community building and economic development. And I believe I’d shared with you that Doug Griffiths actually recommended that I have you on the podcast and a lot of people listening know him as the author of 13 ways to kill your community. As you look at community building, how does Tulsa remote fit into building Tulsa? Obviously, you’re promoting Tulsa. But how do you see your role with Tulsa remote in in community building?

Justin Harlan 16:57
Yeah, I think first and foremost, it starts with the people that we’re selecting. And we look for people that have an eye for community and a track record that backs up their words, we look for people that have given back to the community that they’re coming from, and have been thoughtful about ways they hope to contribute to the city here. So I think first and foremost, it’s all about that selection process and knowing what you’re looking for, and then finding people that match up to that. And then we have people waiting, when you get here into town through Tulsa remote to get help you connect, we explicitly state on day one, that our goal for you as a member is that you do not need us as Tulsa remote to love the city of Tulsa, I think we’re really doing our job when we help somebody integrate into the community in a way that aligns to their values and passions and gives them real ways to contribute. And a lot of it, I think this is really just community in general, I think a lot of it has to do with how we as individuals enter into a space, what’s the posture that we take, when we’re sitting at a table of people that have been there their entire lives? And we’re entering in for the first time? How do you come in willing, and eager to help, ready to listen, and not coming in with a posture of I’m here to fix everything that might be broken? You know, and I think that a lot of that is also in the coaching and support that we give to our members. If you want to come in and make a difference, I think the very first thing you can do is listen and learn everything that’s already happening and integrate into that. And are there ways you can contribute and make things better? Absolutely. But if you come in guns blazing from the get go, you’re really not going to make a good first impression. And I think that’s incredibly important, as we all consider ways that we can help, you know, form a strong community.

Brandon Burton 18:41
Yeah, I think having that warm welcome. And that posture that you mentioned, I think Doug mentioned that in his book, that’s one of the ways to kill your community is to not welcome outsiders. So being able to be welcoming. Show them that there’s a place there in Tulsa for them and your community. As you’re seeking us, right.

Justin Harlan 18:59
I mean, I often say like we were all you know, we were all new to the city at one point. And if you’ve been here your entire life, you were still new at one point in your journey was a little different, but to you know, to kind of shun people or push them out simply because they’re new, I just think doesn’t pull out what we love about diversity of voice and diversity of thoughts and diversity of background. I just think that that is really what makes us stronger.

Brandon Burton 19:25
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. So as you’re seeking out purposefully, individuals to make the move, you’re making some sort of an approach or pitch to them. And then is there an application process as they go through to make sure that Tulsa is a good fit for them? Or what does that process look like as you try to nurture that relationship to help somebody make the move?

Justin Harlan 19:50
Yeah, the long and short of it is we move really quickly when you apply and then you have a while to decide and we help you along that way too. But once somebody applies to the program, you typically hear back within two to four weeks as to whether you got an interview, you have a quick 20 minute interview. That’s really I think just as much about you getting your questions answered as it is about us double checking that what you said in your application is true and accurate. And then if you get in, you have a year to make the move, you have to be physically present in Tulsa to start your year. And that’s kicks off with an orientation that we do. And then we offer to pay for you to come visit. So once you get in, and we say you’re invited to move to the city through Tulsa remote, we also pay for you to come and check it out kind of a try before you buy type situation. And we roll out the red carpet and make sure that you see all the city has to offer in a way that isn’t sugar coated or fake, but just kind of allows you to decide is this city the right place for you? And for some people the answer that’s going to be no, which we think is perfectly fine. I don’t think that any of us believe Tulsa is a good place for everybody. But we try to really kind of show the pros and cons and of all the different areas of town and really Tulsa as a whole, what are our strengths and weaknesses and then allow people to make the decision for themselves. And then as they move, you know, we provide ample resources to help find housing and get plugged in. And once you’re here on the ground, like I mentioned, you have somebody that’s ready to help you get integrated into the community. And we have a number of events that are happening every month. And really from there, it’s often running in a year it goes your year goes by really fast, often faster than you anticipate. So yeah, that’s a little bit about the process. It’s really straightforward. It’s we try to keep it very easy. And also just, you know, know that everybody’s making a very, very serious decision about their life. And we want to support with the right resources, but also want to empower them to do what’s best for them.

Brandon Burton 21:42
Yeah. So I’m just curious. And in this may be a question that’s out there in left field for you. But is there a some sort of a network of people that have made the move through Tulsa remote that where they can be connected with others who’ve made the move and realize, you know, we’re all in the same boat together? Or is it more anonymous, that as you come, you’re just integrated in the community? Or has that aspect work?

Justin Harlan 22:05
Oh, yeah, I mean, I’d say that’s the biggest value add is there’s 2300 people here, not including spouses and kids, right, when you get into the program, you actually have access to slack. And there’s some channels in there that we use for onboarding people that are onboarding or have not yet moved to Tulsa, but are kind of trying to decide. And there you can meet a number of people that can answer questions for you or tell you their perspective, you meet a lot of people when you come for that visit to and then once you’re here, it’s really just a matter of getting off your couch and getting out into the city to meet people. I mean, there’s stuff happening every week, whether it’s social in nature, or volunteering or professional development. And we also give access to a co working space where people can go and do their remote work. And there’s hundreds of people there as well that you can meet throughout the workday. So once you’re here, there’s honestly no better way to move across the country. You’re as long as you’re taking the initiative to kind of get out of your house and build community. There’s no shortage of opportunities to do so.

Brandon Burton 23:00
Right. So I know Tulsa is a great city. Got a great chamber there, Mike Neil, and he’s leading the great chamber there in Tulsa. Talk to us a little bit about how you go about working with the city and with the chamber to create that community and the warm welcome and any other way that you integrate with the city in the chamber throughout this program?

Justin Harlan 23:24
Yeah, well, I think, first and foremost, our program success is going to live and die by our city’s ability to market itself and brand itself across the country and across the world. And obviously, chambers play a huge role in that. There’s incredible work that the Chamber has done to bring in sporting events or musicians and really put Tulsa on the National Map. And all of that benefits our program where people, you know, have misconceptions that are maybe flipped upside down inside of its head to and maybe then that causes them to maybe get also shot or applied. It’s also remote. We’ve partnered on some close initiatives, for example, we have done South by Southwest the last couple of years, in partnership with the chamber, where we’re really showing off all that Tulsa has to offer for people that are willing to relocate. But at the heart of that at South by Southwest is music, and we’ve got a great, you know, music, film, music arts and culture department at the Chamber, that they’ve selected all the musicians, both years that we’ve been to South by, we’re constantly, you know, working with the city and the chamber as it relates to housing supply and ensuring that this net migration inbound is not impacting people that are already here, within systemic issues, you know, like housing. So yeah, we work really closely just to make sure that we’re all on the same page and that the things that were touting to the nation are aligned with the things that the chamber is also touting and that there’s other cities that we can often learn from through The chamber. So it really does feel like a great partnership where we all have a critical role to play to ensure that Tulsa is on the national scale viewed as a place that people want to be.

Brandon Burton 25:12
Awesome. I appreciate adding that that perspective, just how you you integrate with the with the chamber and leverage on their work, and glue that you’re able to integrate a little bit of your music background there at South by Southwest.

Justin Harlan 25:27
I haven’t been invited to play. So maybe this podcast will be my coming out party.

Brandon Burton 25:32
It’s putting it out there. Yeah, I feel that. Well, I’m curious, you know, as far as a chamber listening, who might be interested and trying to attract some remote workers to their community, I guess without giving away all the secrets, right, you got to hold some advantage. But what, what tips or action items might you share with the Chamber who maybe wants to explore getting into similar line of work?

Justin Harlan 26:02
I don’t think that what I have to share is necessarily rocket science. But what I think we’ve done really well and Tulsa remote is considered what makes our city unique and figured out who is it that we want to attract that we think would be a good fit for what makes our city unique, and then created marketing campaigns around that. And I think everybody’s got something that makes your state city standout. And there’s something about your place that other places do not have. And the more that you can lean into that rather trying to rather than trying to be something that you’re not, or being something that somebody else is that you really want to be, I just think the more that you can lift up, what makes you special, is only going to attract what other you know, the people that are belong and fit in your city are going to see and want to be a part of. And I think that, you know, the special twist that we’ve had on that at Tulsa remote, certainly was a lot about timing. And, you know, the success of the way that our work environment shifted drastically has caused our community to grow like crazy. But I think something that we were doing before Tulsa remote even existed, is leaning into what makes Tulsa a special place, leaning into why people would want to be here right now. And I think the more that cities and chambers could do that, the more successful you’ll be. And the more that you’ll see people coming aligned to the the type of folks that you want to attract. And to me that that’s really applicable across businesses, that’s applicable across cities. And I don’t think there’s, you know, anything in that statement that we didn’t already know, I think playing it out and making it happen in action is really the difficult

Brandon Burton 27:47
part. Yeah, sounds like placemaking is the big factor there and making your community attractive and really highlighting what makes you stand out. You’d mentioned that the marketing campaigns. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Is it purely social media? Is it are you do mailers? What what is the marketing campaign look like? Because he tried to attract these specific individuals.

Justin Harlan 28:12
Yeah, we’ve been really innovative throughout the years and tried a lot of different things early on, you know, the fact that a city was paying people $10,000 To move there and got us a lot of free media or media great. It’s a great headline. We also have paid for social ads or you know, done things on social our social media accounts are some of the best as it relates to just lifting up what’s going on in Tulsa. And I’d recommend folks to check those out and give us a follow, we often try to highlight the day in the life of a member, for example, on social media, where they take over the account and kind of show us everything they’re doing throughout the city, giving those real life kind of testimonials, I think builds perspective, where maybe it’s someone from New York, who’s watching and they’re seeing somebody who just moved here from New York actually love and enjoy what the city has to offer. And they’re taken aback and say, Oh, I didn’t realize that this place could be for me. And so I think that some of that relaxed exposure is important. We’ve also done some referral programs throughout the course of the program, which allows for folks to tell their friends and family and be rewarded if somebody comes to Tulsa and stays throughout the year. And that’s been really successful too. So So yeah, I’d say those are the big ones earned media, paid social and referral. And like I said, so much of our work really relies heavily on the way that Tulsa and Oklahoma are lifted up throughout the country and other ways to

Brandon Burton 29:36
Yeah, I can see in certain communities and maybe you don’t see it so much in Tulsa but I know certain communities may have a certain maybe a stigma or stereotype about their community that maybe they need to address with their marketing. Do you guys get any feedback from people that maybe it made the move and they’re like I was resistant because of this thing, but you helped me overcome that or or it may They don’t make the move because they’re resistant to one thing. Is there a way that you guys are found to gather that kind of data?

Justin Harlan 30:07
Oh, yeah, most definitely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it’s word of mouth. You know, when people do come and visit, telling us what they’re surprised by some of it is actually quantitative data that we have. If people don’t make the move, we ask them why. And so we actually know a lot of the reasons why. But I think the biggest misconceptions about Oklahoma probably won’t surprise you, you know, a lot of it is just the thought that it’s a bunch of cowboys roaming around and, you know, a big field. And that’s certainly not the case. I mean, there’s only 4 million people across the entire state, but a million of them are here in Tulsa, it’s a big city, we have professional sports, we get big music acts, we have a great food scene, it’s a really great place to live. And it’s a quarter of the state’s population. And, you know, it’s it’s a big city, it feels like a big city, there’s certainly places you can see a lot of land, but it takes a little bit to get there. That’s one I think politics is another big one, especially as of late, where folks on the coasts and often view their exposure to Oklahoma and the national media is often around very, very divisive and red, conservative policies. And so it’s almost like this misconception that everybody in Oklahoma believes the same thing. And and I think there’s often pause, as it relates to somebody that’s trying to decide where they want to move, and whether that aligns with their beliefs. You know, I think something that’s unique about Tulsa. And we really consider ourselves a purple city, the state of Oklahoma is undoubtedly red. But there’s a lot of differing viewpoints here in Tulsa, we can disagree in a healthy way, we can have dialogue and debate in a way that moves us forward. And that nature that I just think it’s unique, I think that there’s often especially in this day and age, it feels like you’re one or the other. And I think that when you can find places that really embrace both and talk through differences in a healthy way, I think that’s really going to be what sets it sets us apart in the country over the next decade or so like, these are places we should be tapping into more and learning from, as opposed to oftentimes we hear from our members, they were in a place where that said they really value diversity. But when they really step back and think about who they were surrounding themselves with those people that look just like them and thought just like them. And that’s not all that diverse, you know, when you can come to Oklahoma, or in Tulsa and have a neighbor that looks different from you, and thinks different from you. And you can learn how to actually have that dialogue. That’s a skill set that I think we’re losing. And that is true diversity. That’s how you actually figure out how to healthily disagree and work to a solution that actually benefits everybody.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Yeah, I love that perspective. That’s awesome. So I like asking everyone I have on the podcast, this question, and you’re gonna bring a unique perspective to it. But as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how would you imagine the future of chambers going forward and their purpose going forward?

Justin Harlan 33:14
Yeah, well, to me, right now, there’s more opportunity than ever, as people can be mobile, I think that, you know, as jobs increase within the tech world, proximity to the office is only going to become less of a thing, which will allow people to really go where they want and prioritize place and prioritize life over, you know, being required to be stuck somewhere because their job requires them to be. And I think that that really just, it’s a unique moment for chambers that are showcasing all that a city has to offer, because there’s just more opportunity than ever to attract an individual. And like I said earlier, I just think that creates awesome, awesome space and opportunity for folks to lean into what makes them different, and lift up what what makes them unique. And I think if you do that, well, in this day and age, and over the next couple of decades, I think we’re gonna see more and more remote workers. I just think there’s the cities that do that well are really going to gain and lean into where our country is taking us in this tech space and in this future of workspace, and lifting up what makes life good, and just allowing folks to then think about the fact that life looks good there and I can do my job anywhere. That sounds like a good place to be so that that would be my word of encouragement is just lean into what makes you unique and be open to you know, those those people that are willing to relocate and are assessing their priorities in life and be comfortable with work not coming first in that lift up what really makes your city great.

Brandon Burton 34:51
Yeah, I think that’s great, great perspective and, and something I think chambers need to get on board with quit too because that working environment is changing very rapid. We’re seeing from remote work to, you know, these glimpses of what Metaverse might look like, into the future. And it’s not so much the brick and mortar and needing people on Main Street, you know, with shops. So those will be there, too. Bye, bye. Oh, yeah, there’ll be there. But helping those individuals sell online, you know, that would be another way of just being able to think outside the box of what the traditional business structure look like. And I think having remote workers in your community and placemaking for that is a key aspect to it. So appreciate, I would say that

Justin Harlan 35:37
those places that you just mentioned, actually become even more important because remote work does not mean isolation, remote work does not mean that we’re just sitting in our house, and we’re comfortable staying in our pajamas all day and work. I think everybody wants community. I mean, there’s a recent study that showed that 65% of people wouldn’t have somebody to call if an emergency happened. That is like, an all time high for isolation, you know. So I think that those third spaces, whether they’re co working spaces, or gyms, or restaurants, or coffee shops, those actually all become increasingly more important in the world of remote work. Because it’s not that we’re saying we want to be alone. It’s not that we’re saying we want to close the office door and put our head down in our music on, we still need connections, we still need people. And I think that’s what has actually made Tulsa remote thrive is the fact that in the remote work conversation, we’ve also created space and community for people to connect. And there’s a lot of power in that. And the third spaces aren’t going anywhere. In fact, I think, you know, they become even more important to build and expand and make presence and promote, because those are the spots if remote work continues to increase. Those are the spots that people are going to build those connections and build community. Right?

Brandon Burton 36:47
You mentioned co working spaces, and I just a few weeks ago was visiting one and they’ve been completely full and have a waiting list, you know, for months out because people want their community as a as they do remote work. So you’re spot on. Yeah. anybody listening, wanting a good business model has a shared office spaces are huge. But Justin, as we wrap up here wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect you had mentioned following on social, what would be the best ways for them to do that and to be able to connect with you.

Justin Harlan 37:22
Yeah, following on social is great. If you want to add me on LinkedIn, that’s often a place that I do connect with folks. And then if you have any questions for, for us and our program, if you just email info inf o at Tulsa remote.com We’ve got a team of folks that are ready to respond. And if you specifically want to connect with me, you can request for that there as well. And I’d be happy to get in touch. So I appreciate everybody listening and we’re always happy to help from here.

Brandon Burton 37:51
That’s perfect. We’ll get that in our show notes too. So people can look it up and and follow in connect with you. But just it’s been a great conversation. Hopefully it’s opened the minds and perspective of those listening to just what they can do in their community to make them stand out and really showcase what their community is all about. So I appreciate you being with us today and sharing this great work you guys are doing there in Tulsa.

Justin Harlan 38:14
Thanks for having me.

Brandon Burton 38:16

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Gwinnett Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Nick Masino

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

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Our guest for this episode is Nick Masino. Nick is the first Gen X President and CEO of the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett. At the helm, Nick is known for a strong leadership commitment to Gwinnett and more than two decades of making an impact in the community and economic development arenas. As President and CEO Nick shepherded the most diverse board of directors and chamber history, reinvigorated its public policy focus, implemented new strategic plan and is currently overseeing a massive renovation of two Georgia’s largest Chamber of Commerce facility. He also led like Gwinnett Chamber to receive its first ever Five Star Accreditation rating from the US Chamber of Commerce in 2010. In 2022, the former Chief Economic Development Officer for partnership Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Chamber, Nick oversaw the business recruitment and retention efforts for Gwinnett and the implementation of partnership Gwinnett strategy. The chamber led initiative has since delivered roughly 357 company expansions or relocations, representing more than 28,000 new jobs and $4.1 billion in private capital investment. Prior to these achievements, Nick was an executive in the recruiting and staffing industry while serving as Georgia’s youngest mayor in the city of Suwanee. In addition to his day job, Nick serves on a plethora of boards including the Regional Business Coalition of Metro Atlanta, the Coalition for Quality Growth and the Georgia Chamber and the Water Tower Global Innovation Hub Aquanet. His influence in the greater Gwinnett region has earned him many accolades such as most named Most notable Georgians, power 100 Most Influential Atlantans, and 100 most influential Georgians. He holds a bachelor’s degree in interpersonal, interpersonal and organizational communication from The Ohio State University and resides with his wife Suzanne, in Suwanee, Georgia, and they’re the proud parents of three adult children. Nick, I’m excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. I’d love for you 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.

Nick Masino 4:29
Awesome. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. And I’m sorry, you had to bore everybody with my bio. But I appreciate you introducing me. Interesting thing about me I’m, as you mentioned in the bio married to Suzanne Masino. And we actually met in a swimming pool in eighth grade. And she went on to become my high school, college sweetheart and we got married about six months after college, and we’ve been married for 29 years. In two Sundays, so really excited about that.

Brandon Burton 5:03
That’s awesome. Congratulations, you must have been a mature eighth grader because usually those interactions at a swimming pool don’t turn out well. So

Nick Masino 5:13
I don’t know that I was, but he was also only in eighth grade too. So that helps. That helps. Yeah, I think he was forgiving.

Brandon Burton 5:22
Well, and tell us a little bit about the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership when and just to give us an idea of the type of chamber scope of work you do size, staff budget, that sort of thing to kind of set the stage for our discussion.

Nick Masino 5:35
Sure, absolutely. So the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce is located in Gwinnett. County, which most people have never heard of before. We’re situated directly northeast of Metro Atlanta. Gwinnett has a million residents. In 1987 8889, percentage wise was the fastest growing county in the United States. For three years, we’ve been in the top 100 fastest growing counties for the last three years, we average about in the last 10 years, I think we’ve averaged about 18. It’s probably 17 to 18,000 new residents, that’s births and relocations. I’m one of those. I graduated, as you mentioned, from the United State University. And about four weeks later, I moved to Gwinnett County, and I was in search of a job and a career and the Olympics were happening in Atlanta in 1996. This was two years before the Olympics, and there just seemed to be a lot of energy. And I don’t think I was alone. I think at one point, we were the the we had the most the highest percentage of Gen X’s of any metro area, the United States. And I just think it was a lot of people from the Northeast and Midwest. They were looking for something new and a little warmer. And apparently for about a 10 year period. We all moved to Atlanta. Some people moved, moved back home and some of those state. So I’m here in Gwinnett, lived here for 29 consecutive years. I live in the little hamlet the little city of Suwanee, Georgia, of which I was a mayor for eight years, and really, really enjoyed Gwinnett is made up of 16 municipalities, but the most of the counties unincorporated. But we have like every suburban area, we have jobs here we have about 24,000 companies 10,000 sole proprietors. And so we’re a really large suburban chamber, we have 32 to 34, based on the time, full time employees, we are in a 60,000 square foot chamber building, I do believe outside of the US Chamber. It’s the largest chamber building in the United States. We own the whole building, and we’re overseeing a massive 23 year update to the building and which is involving $4 million worth of construction. And hopefully in November, they’ll be delivering a million dollars worth of new furniture. And we’re really excited. With this reinvestment into this incredible building. We’re really unique. We’re right next to an arena and a convention center and to full service hotels. And we also have this is really unique. We have a first class steakhouse on the top floor of our building and a private club. The Chamber members the board members started the private club in the year 2000. The same year, the Chamber building was open. And we introduced in 2017. The Steakhouse and it is first class is the top five to top five revenue producing restaurant in Georgia. So it was really unique little hub of activity here in the middle of Gwinnett. County.

Brandon Burton 8:46
So does the chamber still operate the club and steakhouse or is that been going off?

Nick Masino 8:52
Well, we’ve never operated it. We just our board members started it. I mean, I’m the landlord. I’m a board member. I’m an executive board member of the private club. We have the lease agreement between the private club and the steakhouse. So it is like I had some guests up there for lunch yesterday. And they were like, Oh, this was really nice. And we’re like, yeah, we’re really that’s a really nice cafeteria bars.

Brandon Burton 9:18
That’s fantastic.

Nick Masino 9:19
It’s pretty awesome. It’s some of my peers at ACC. I was able to host I think it was in the summer of 21. I hosted a peer group of about 20 CEOs and I actually forgot to tell them we had a steakhouse. I just said, Oh, we’re going to dinner and I just told them where it was, but I did tell them it was on the third floor of the chamber. And they thought I was sandbagging, like as a show off. And I was like, Oh yeah, they were like Nick, you brag about everything. You didn’t brag about the steakhouse.

Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s awesome. I love it. Yeah, so you mentioned as far as the size of the building so had is it just like over the years hearing the size of a They’re chambers buildings, he kind of benchmark, you know, and where you guys kind of fall in there. It’s really

Nick Masino 10:05
interesting. I think in like 2007 or eight, we had that that years Chair of the US Chamber doing a road show. And he had been to like seven teen, like large suburban and Metro chambers. And he said, he said, I have been to almost every large chamber, you know, of a certain scale and above, he said, This is by far the biggest building. And so that just got us interested. So we’ve been kind of on the lookout for a building that might be bigger than ours. And we’ve yet well, we did find it, it was the US Chamber of Commerce. Yeah. We actually have two buildings in DC, which are both bigger than ours. qualify it?

Brandon Burton 10:47
Yeah. That’s good stuff, though. So you guys, obviously you’re involved with economic development, though? twos, as far as the chamber work goes?

Nick Masino 10:55
Yes, absolutely. i It’s funny, I failed to mention that, because you asked me. And I did lead our economic development initiative for almost 13 years, called partnership Gwinnett, which is a community collaboration between the county our municipalities or school system, or in community improvement districts, and then the private sector and the chamber. And we lead that effort. And it encompasses about 10 of our 34 employees. And they get up every day to recruit, retain and expand businesses, both domestically and internationally.

Brandon Burton 11:28
Awesome. Awesome. Well, what I the way I like to kind of structure these chamber, the or finalist interviews is to really focus on the two programs. So you guys submitted on your chamber, the your application, so if you could just tell us what those two programs are at a high level, and then we’ll circle back and go into more detail on each of them.

Nick Masino 11:49
Sure, absolutely. And so we really just set the stage for the one of the two, which it was our partnership with that initiative. And this is the community initiative. As I mentioned, it has three goal areas, recruit goal one, goal two, is to make sure we have the right workforce in place. And then goal three is all those it’s kind of that bucket that holds everything else from community development, to transportation to redevelopment. So it’s a three legged stool, economic development strategy, not uncommon to other large chambers. And then our second section that got us to where we are is our public policy initiative. And I think that that one probably is not super unique to large chambers. I think what was unique for us is, in our five US Chamber fivestar audit, for the previous audit we got, I don’t know that we got to zero, but I think we got to 20 out of Ardrey. So that’s pretty much a failing grade. And and then a few years later, when we really focused in the three years we were we went we’ve hired a full time public policy person put a lot of effort in initiative. And not only do we have the effort, and the action and activity, we have results, and we and then the US Chamber recognize that and gave us 100%. So we went from 20 I think it was 20% to 100%. So ACC the they recognized all of what I just mentioned. And I think we also did a really nice initiative this year with our state, House and Senate. I’ll talk more about that and follow up questions on on the Gwinnett day at the Georgia Capitol. And they went over really well. Yeah, no,

Brandon Burton 13:39
that’s great. So that that gives us a good idea what the two programs are. What we’ll do is we’ll take a short break, we’ll come back and we’ll dive in deeper on both of these programs and learn more how you guys structured them and maybe some of the origins of them as well.

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Donna Novitsky 16:09
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Brandon Burton 17:06
All right, Nick, we’re back. So before the break had mentioned what the two programs are, if you don’t mind, let’s let’s dive in a little deeper on the partnership when it and you had mentioned it has kind of the three legs to that program. And maybe just tell us a little bit more about the program, the evolution of the program, kind of how you got to where it is today to be recognized on national stage.

Nick Masino 17:32
Thank you so much. I’m really proud of it. Because I was hired as the first partnership with that chamber employee and Ay, ay ay, ay, took the strategy. And then I hired all the employees raised the funds. So it was really, it goes back to 2007 When I started here at the chamber, and it was kind of my baby for 13 years. So it started in 2006, where Gwinnett County government, again, one of the fastest growing counties in the 80s that continues in the 90s got to the point by 2006 that they said, Hey, we probably need to have an economic Recruitment Policy. So they created their first ever economic incentives. And it was basically crickets for six months. And they thought, well, if we create it, they will come. Well, they didn’t because there wasn’t someone getting up every day, beating the drum to say consultants, corporate consultants, doing recruitment real estate consultants. So they said, Okay, we need to do something. And in communicating with the chamber, and the private private sector industry, there was a there’s a company, which everyone’s heard of is called Cisco. They have a major presence here in metro Atlanta, and then a huge office here in Gwinnett at the time, and they said, Okay, we’ll write a $50,000 check to do an economic study. And then that was matched with another $90,000. And they hired a consultant, they did a nine month strategy. And out of it, we came partnership on it, which is as as mentioned, and 2007, we rolled out this, it was a five year strategy. It had a three legged stool, which was focused on we need people to get up every day and targeted industries to recruit. So goal one is to recruit, recruit, retain expand jobs in our targeted industries. Number two, make sure that we’re aligning all of the workforce efforts, from K through 12, to post secondary to retraining retooling into those five target industries. And then make sure that we have a safe, clean, vibrant community that is continually redeveloping and investing in itself with new roads and infrastructure. And those three things if we stay focused on that we should have economic success. And so we implemented that strategy in 2007 to 12 months later running into Great Recession. We’re like so ready to go. And that was a bit of a pitfall. And we retooled. And it actually brought Market Street back and we said, hey, just 16 months ago, you said we’re supposed to create. It was something like 40,000 new jobs in five years. And they were like, Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen now. So they gave us, they brought him in for a couple of months. And they re told us a little bit, and we got going again. And it was really awesome. Because right out of the gate, in our first five years, we ended up landing NCR fortune 500 headquarters. And then literally, four months later, we landed Asbury automotive, another fortune 500. And then two years later, we landed and retained the merger of two companies, which became rock 10, which was another fortune 500. So we started the recession with one fortune 500 company and ended it with fours. So people were like, Oh, my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Let me tell you, we’re really good. But a lot of it is happenstance and being at the right place at the right time. And it all just worked out for us. And we have a lot of success. And we continue to have lots of success. But we went from like the high of here we go in 2007, to the low of eight, nine, to end that first five years with having, in our time starting the recession, with one fortune 500, ending with four it was, it was an amazing rollercoaster ride. But we’ve continued on an every five years, we brought in a consultant to do a top to bottom soup to nuts review of our strategy and our community. And we roll out a five year strategy plan, we then do a fundraising campaign behind it, to raise the money to fund the strategy that we’ve done that now for almost 20 years. We’re in year, I guess, like 17 or 18.

Brandon Burton 22:00
Wow. So as you kind of talked about the origins of it back in 2006 2007 kind of timeframe. And thinking, nowadays, a lot of things, you know, rely on social media to help, you know, perpetuate a message or, you know, whatever messaging you’re putting out there to try to attract and retain and everything. So at that timeframe that was before, I mean, that’s still like MySpace days, right, like 2006. And so there has to be different strategies starting off and building that momentum. Right.

Nick Masino 22:33
Yeah, 100%. And I have to say, I’m gonna be very quick. So I want to I’m sure you’re familiar with IEDC, the International Economic Development Council. So I was very involved in that as an economic developer. And I went to my basic 101 training. It was actually right here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. And we had a session on social media. So the social media I knew was LinkedIn. Yeah. And, you know, we’ve all been on it, our resumes there. I was in the recruiting industry for 12 years. So I knew LinkedIn. Well, I left that session, and I was signed up for MySpace, and Facebook. We know how all that worked out. But it was funny is it 2008? Like, I’m doing all kinds of like, a posting stuff on Facebook, about the community. And my wife’s like, what are you doing? You’re wasting time. And she’s giving me such a hard time for being on Facebook. And then I could I love the like, two years later, she gets on it. And she’s like, Oh, okay, I was such a hater to Facebook. And I kind of didn’t understand what you were doing. Right. And of course, my face was completely creepy. And two weeks later, I turned the thing off. Never went back on it. Because of IDC, that course and we got super focused on creating Instagram. And we I think we maybe had one of the first Twitter economic development accounts. And we actually won an IDC award for like the best social media of a large IDI organization in the country. So like around 2010. So we’re really proud of that. But so yeah, there was really just that was just the beginning of social media. So I’m not kidding. We must have done a dozen a month of these community meetings that some like two people would come to and we were really pumped when we’d have double digits and people would come. And we had to just do it. I was I was at every rotary every cuantas club, every community HOA meeting, just tell them the story. This is what we’re doing. And not even I wasn’t really trying to raise money. I was just trying to get awareness out there. Yeah. It was really interesting. You know, people asking, you know, raising their hands. Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? And it was really awesome, because professional meanings people aren’t going to really put you on the spot, go to an HOA meeting. The hard questions and they’re like, they almost like revel in it. But it really helped me with my talking points and And after my first year of doing that, I was like I could take on any talking point I was. So I was like, excited to go out to public meetings.

Brandon Burton 25:06
That’s funny. Yeah. So with the three legs you talked about, the one that really stands out to me that I’d like to learn a little bit more about is how you approach the you’d mentioned aligning the workforce efforts from kindergarten on up to be able to keep and retain them in the community and have that workforce pipeline, what are some of those key things that you do to help align those workforce efforts?

Nick Masino 25:30
Absolutely. And I will tell you in 2008, to 10, really, up until almost it feels like the beginning of COVID. This was completely unique. People were barely talking about this. Now, every chamber in the United States, it’s their number one priority. And it’s very innovative to talk about the last three years. But in 2006, and seven, when we were kicking this off, it became very clear that we were pretty good at already doing this. But we had to create some formality around it, which was committees and goals and Task Force and action committees around getting the talent creators together with the employers. And so we literally started this, I guess, you know, 18 years ago, projecting, hey, we’re starting this new division. And we’re going to need this type of workforce. And we started at the same time creating career academies in our high school. And even now, it’s actually now all the way down to middle school. We that was one of the epitomises to start what we call the Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology. We went to go visit one on a peer tour outside of DC and Fairfax County. And we created it a year later in Gwinnett. And it’s been the number one academic school in Georgia, for the last 11 years. We’ve since because of this connection between the workforce, and in education, we now have four STEM schools, one focused on AI, and it’s actually a K through 12. Ai, integrated system. So a whole school cluster on AI. But we’re, we’re probably year five or four on our engineering STEM school. So if you want to be an engineer, mechanical, electrical, you have a specific engineering school. And then the last one is health, and it’s anywhere from EMT to a doctor, if you think you’re gonna go to medical school or become a nurse or a PT or an OT, you could go to this school. I also think it’s important to point out we have 183,000 students, and our K through 12 public school. And then we have a municipal school. And we have some very large private schools. So we have well over 200,000 students being educated K through 12, not including our college, and our 12 or two year technical school. So we have a lot of people like this past May, we grant we had we had 15,000 graduates in Gwinnett. County between all those school systems. So we don’t leave out the private schools or the city schools, the alignment, and we do the same with the technical college and the four year college.

Brandon Burton 28:12
Wow, I love how you refer to them as talent creators, instead of just schools, not just the school system and their talent creators. And I think if they can really adopt that, that title, it puts out that that talent and workforce with a specific focus on what they want to do and what they want to become when they grow up. Right?

Nick Masino 28:32
Yes. And in two weeks, I will be in front of 1500 new teachers, just because of turnover and our system is so large, it’s about 12 to 1500. And it’s the big orientation of all the new teachers. And I’ll go, they gave me five minutes as tamper CEO, and when I was Chief Economic Development Officer, and I just do five minute pitch on them. And they’re the future is on their shoulders, because the future workforce or Gwinnett. County is in your kindergarten class or is about to graduate in the next nine months. So that the talent creator, I’ve been using that for some time, and I give them I hopefully inspiring speech about what their impact is in the classroom, what it means to Gwinnett County’s future.

Brandon Burton 29:14
Absolutely. There’s so much focus these days on content creation. So to be a talent creator, that’s important. No, no pressure to those teachers, you know. But let’s shift gears a little bit over to the public policy initiative that you guys had on your your application for chamber the year and tell us about that. And, and what makes that stand out?

Nick Masino 29:36
Yeah, and just briefly, the standout is we were doing very little, and we started doing some stuff at a quick fast paced level. I always say whatever you put in your budget is what you do. And so we budgeted for a full time employee and we budgeted for them to have funds to invest. And right out of the gate, was it The first year of our first new leader in public policy. And almost seven years, we were up against a big community vote to for one cent sales tax to fund capital improvements for our cities in our county, which means police departments and 911 centers and parks and libraries, in roads and sidewalks and bridges. And so we said, we’ve got this, we’re going to take the take this on, we’re going to, we’re going to lead this effort through our newly staff position. And we raised monies and hired money and we hired consultants. And we actually at the end of that vote, we actually had that was the highest vote yes, in the previous three campaigns. And so that was huge. And then we said, well, we need to start doing one that Day at the Capitol again, and go down there. And we did one last year, which was pretty COVID centric. Last year spill, we’re very limited, but we were there. And we did it was within the rules of COVID. But this year, those rules were removed, and we’re all back to normal. And we’re trying to find the date that worked best for them. And for us. It actually ended up being Valentine’s Day. So our awesome marketing and communications graphics team came up with you remember in elementary school you gave Valentine’s out? Yeah, yeah, we created Quinn net loves Georgia, Valentine’s. And we’re giving it to all of our legislators with candy. It’s awesome. It is awesome. And I just say it’s cording, but apparently no one had ever done that before. And I was really shocked. Because our we have a state legislature that needs annually, and it meets from January to March. So Valentine’s Day is always there. Like, how are we the first I think it is, but we have a really, really creative marketing team. And they came up with it. And I thought it was 100% corny, but I didn’t want to do it. And they were like, no, no, we got to do it, we’re really gonna stand out. And I was like, I don’t know if we’re gonna stand out for good or bad. But well, we’ll go for it. And everyone loved it. I was wrong. They were right. It was it was super positive. And all the photos were super cool. And it was it was really memorable, which is what was important. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 32:21
it’s nice when you can have a little bit of humble pie when something really, you know, is well accepted. And it’s okay, you know, to accept that and give your team all the credit for their good ideas, right?

Nick Masino 32:34
Oh, yeah. If they would have listened to me, we would have would have not done it. And we would have not been a finalist in the ACC. I give all the credit other places? Absolutely not, I

Brandon Burton 32:45
think you hit on something important that you know, where you put the budget is what gets the attention, right. So being able to align your intentions, you know, fiscally towards public policy, you’re gonna see more focus and more attention and more results by doing so. So I think that’s a good leadership note right there for others to take note of that if you don’t budget for it, it’s not going to happen. So

Nick Masino 33:11
totally agree. That’s, that’s definitely one of my mantras.

Brandon Burton 33:15
Yes, for sure. Well, Nick, as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any tips or action items with listeners who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level. What piece of advice might you offer to them?

Nick Masino 33:33
Absolutely. I think this one’s actually I’ve read it. Like he first stopped me when it when you kind of gave me the heads up, I needed to answer that question. It but I think the answer is so obvious. Because this is what I’ve done for my entire career. When I was a mayor, I got involved in the Georgia Municipal Association, surrounded myself with peers learn best practices. And I think just as important is to avoid the mistakes that they shared with you that they made. Then I became an economic developer, and I joined the International Economic Development Council did the same thing. And it literally, I started on as the chamber CEO, July 1 of 2019. Two weeks later, I was in Huntington Beach at the annual conference, learning best practices. And I literally showed up like I took a flight really early, so I could go attend the board meeting of which one I was not allowed to attend because I wasn’t on the board. And I tried to play the well no one said I couldn’t do it. Let me sit in I just like I like if I’m going to do something I’m all in and they were like Well, sir, sorry, you cannot see. First of all welcome, but you’re not here. You can be here I need to be just not in this office. So So I went I you know, I went to the new member orientation and then I went to the big welcome ceremony, and it was all awesome. And the next day I got on a peer group I have which I’ve been on for four years, I’ve met some incredible chamber leaders from literally across the country across. There’s great folks from Canada as well in the Caribbean. And it’s been awesome. And I have learned so much. When anytime I dive into something, I want to hear what the people that have done it, what they what, like, we didn’t have a foundation at our chamber. So I’m sitting there in a room with 40 CEOs, me and one other CEO did not have a foundation, I immediately went back, why don’t we have a foundation sound out we did. And we had created our Community Foundation 20 years prior, we just found it out. And they were doing a really unique, important work of the community. But it wasn’t around business. So we actually created a chamber foundation focused on helping businesses that have owners that have been historically left out people of color women, veterans that haven’t been given their fair share of the pie. So we’re focused on that group, because nobody else was doing that work. And so that those peer groups are so important. You never know what you can learn. And also, just as importantly, what you can avoid. So sorry, that was a long drawn out answer is join, well join ACC, get on one of their peer groups in there based on the size and complexity of your chamber. So there’s a peer group for anybody, any chamber CEO,

Brandon Burton 36:23
right. And that’s one of the main reasons why this podcast became what it is, is to be able to share some of those best practices, get to know others in the peer group and learn from mistakes and successes of others. So do do all of the above as far as learning from your peers and those best practices to adopt those. I appreciate that. Nick, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Nick Masino 36:53
Well, I see a bright future for chambers. I do think that that’s a complex question, because it really depends on the community. Because not there is no cookie cutter chamber. They are as different as the individual communities. And I think it’s a great question every chamber leader needs to ask themselves. For us. We’re a very, we’re the fifth most diverse county in the United States, again, a million people, a quarter of them 250,000 People were born outside the United States of a million people on my community. And so we’ve been super intentional about inviting people into the chamber. Because if you don’t know a chamber, you’ve never been involved with one. A lot of people think chambers are government. And we find people that are first generation American, don’t have a lot of trust in government. And so we have to be super intentional about inviting people. That was what it was for us. And we knew that our physical structure of our chamber wasn’t super inviting. So we had to make it more open and bright and welcoming. So we’re doing a $4 million renovation right now. And that’s what it meant for us. But I think, you know, view as 10 chambers that question, you might get 10 different answers. But I think what’s important is you’ve got to think where is your community headed? And are you headed? Are you in a parallel direction, because if you’re going east and your community is going west, that’s that’s not good for your chamber. You’ve got to be mirroring your community have what they need. And that means thinking differently, as your community might be changing.

Brandon Burton 38:24
Right now, that is such a great answer. So every chamber is right yeah, every chamber every community is so unique. And you need to be able to listen to that community see what direction you need to go and, and it’ll kind of chart the course for you. But every every answer is slightly different. As I asked that, you know, now in 238 episodes, we get different answers from everybody. So I love it. Nick, I wanted 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 or when it would be the best way for them to reach out and connect.

Nick Masino 39:02
Sure you go to GwinnettChamber.org I will point out when that is two ends in two T’s by the way, Gwinnett you’ve never heard that name before. It is one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia. You’re gonna love this the guy’s name was button. Bu t t o n button good at

Brandon Burton 39:27
just don’t name their kids Button anymore.

Nick Masino 39:29
No, I know it’s such a classic thing. So what net chamber.org You can reach me at Nick@GwinnettChamber.org Pretty, pretty simple.

Brandon Burton 39:39
All right, we will get that in our show notes for this episode. Make it easy for people to find you but Nick, this has been great having you on the show and hearing about the exciting work you guys are involved with. I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber the year and it’s been great having you on the show.

Nick Masino 39:55
Thanks so much. It really was an honor. I appreciate it.

Brandon Burton 39:58
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Bowling Green Area Chamber-2023 Chamber of the Year Finalist with Ron Bunch

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

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

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Our guest for this episode is Ron Bunch. Ron is the President and CEO of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce a five star accredited chamber, which has been invited to apply for Chamber of the Year by ACCE for nine of the last 10 years, making it to the finalist stage five of those years. You can see so or listen to some of Ron’s past appearances on chamber chat podcast and episodes 24 and 182. But since Ron has joined the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, their community has announced over six and a half billion dollars in capital investment and more than 12,050 new jobs. Bowling Green has been ranked in the top six nationally by site selection magazine for the top 10 metros for new new and expanding facilities for populations under 200,000 for 10 consecutive years, including number one overall in 2018 and win three consecutive Matt Conway awards from site selection magazine, which recognize the team as a top 20 economic development organization in the country for their performance in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In 2022, the community announced its second largest project in the history of Kentucky, a $2 billion in 2000 jobs.

Ron, I’m excited to have you back with us today on Chamber Phat podcast. And first of all, congratulations to you and your team has been selected as a Chamber the Year finalist again, I’d love for you to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are listening and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Oh, great.

Ron Bunch 3:50
Thank you so much for allowing me to be on here. And I really do appreciate this opportunity. We’ve been very blessed as a chamber and a community. And so thank you for having us on and talk about that. But I’m not that interesting. So let me let me see if I can get a more current thing. So both of my daughters got married last year. So two and one year and then I became a grandfather. About a month ago now for my oldest daughter just had a little girl so I got to be a grandpa so I’m excited about that.

Brandon Burton 4:22
Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome. Just start calling your grandpa Ron right. That’s exciting. So will tell us all a little bit more about the bowling green area Chamber sizes, chambers scope of work staff budget, just give us that perspective before we get into the programs that we cover in this episode.

Ron Bunch 4:45
So we’re fairly complex chamber, we actually run six different companies, our chamber part of our businesses about a $2.4 million annual budget. Got her Around 1300 partners or members, as many would call them. And we do a VOD wide variety of things with other organizations that we also run. We have a staff of about 18 to 19 people with about how you look at contract work. But we do everything from land, securing land, designing land, preparing land, building speculative buildings to the traditional things you would understand where the chamber or networking events and other activities, so pretty broad range of things, and those six organizations with six different boards.

Brandon Burton 5:38
Yeah. So in your, between that explanation, and your bio, you guys are heavy in the economic development work, which is awesome, you guys are making a huge impact there. So just for the for the listeners out there, that kind of the format that I like to do with these chamber, the year finalist interviews is I like to focus on the two programs that you included in your chamber, the your application for 2023. Maybe at just at a high level, tell us what those two programs are. And then we can circle back and dig a little deeper in both of them.

Ron Bunch 6:14
Sure, you know, and and the two different programs. One was the trans Park, which is the industrial park that we develop through the intermodal transportation authority that we run, it’s about a 2000 acre park and we landed most recently, envision in that park. Envision ASC. That’s the $2 billion 2000 job project. So we’ve talked about how we expanded the park and landed the project. The second summary was about what we’re doing with SC K, which is our region South Central Kentucky launch, which is learning about unique and new careers here. The portion of that program that focuses on eighth graders when young people are really learning their interests and aptitudes we help bring a real detailed look at what’s in the economy, what types of jobs and careers are here so that we can match that up with our interests and aptitudes greening that happens at the school level.

Brandon Burton 7:15
Awesome. Yeah, so I’m excited to dig in a little deeper on both of these kind of learn the details and maybe the origins and how you guys got to where you are now. First of all, we’ll take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dive in a little bit deeper.

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Donna Novitsky 9:50
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Brandon Burton 10:44
All right, Ron, we’re back. So let’s let’s go in a little bit deeper about the this trans Park project and the Envision project. You don’t that you guys attracted there. Tell us what what is the scope of this project? What were some of the origins and evolution of it to get you to where we are today with this big economic development when?

Ron Bunch 11:09
No, I appreciate that. So, you know, the beginning story really is us continuing our engagement with the public sector. The ITA, the intermodal Transportation Authority that owns the park is funded by the city in the county and we operate that public entity. And we’ve thanks to the success we’ve had, we found ourselves in a place where there was a scarcity of land that needed to be developed. And although it was during COVID, we approached the city in the county to go ahead and issue bonds so that we could acquire more property to be ready for prospect activity during COVID. And they support us with a $46 million bond issue. As we began bringing that property on our pipeline for projects was very active. We’re actually meeting with four or five different evey battery projects at the time, shortly after we were acquiring the property. And we narrowed down to our conversations with Envision. And in those conversations, we determined we needed to buy some additional property. And so we had to go back to the city and the county to get almost another $12 million of investment just to acquire the property we were going to need cite the project.

Brandon Burton 12:30
Because it was fun to go back and ask for more. Right.

Ron Bunch 12:34
They first thought we needed 25 million and ended up being 46 million, then we came back for another 12. So we have an amazing relationship that we’ve built over the years with our city and county government. So they knew the kind of return they would get. So even during COVID, when not many people were bringing the property to the market. We had their competence, and we were able to do that. So I mean, we could do probably a whole show on that that conversation how we got there. But those kind of numbers. But so now we’ve acquired the property, we’re in deep conversations with Envision, we finally put together the package to get him get them here. But in that we determined we needed around almost 60 million and infrastructure improvement. So we got with our lobbyist, and then we went directly to the legislature met with Senate and House convinced them for about $15 million dollars in road improvements. And around 43 46 million in water and sewer improvements that would position us to land the project. And through all that collaboration, we’re able to pull a project together now instead with the governor and everybody else on stage. And at that time, it became the second largest investment in the entire history of Kentucky, obviously, our largest investment in the history of laundry in Warren County. So 2 billion in 2000 jobs. And the other great news is that the way we’ve configured this site, there can be further growth. So it’s entirely possible this could be much bigger than it even is today.

Brandon Burton 14:17
So it’s great to be able to make an announcement of this big win of the financing, being able to come in the infrastructure, the improvements, the attraction of corporations coming. What is the timeline look like from when when that’s announced to you know, the hopefulness I guess, I’ve seen I don’t want to say completion, but maybe completion to this part of the vision because there’s that room to grow and continue into the future. But what’s the timeline looking like from forget best estimates?

Ron Bunch 14:55
Excellent question. So I mean, we announced that around April of last year in April 22 and the 1.6 million square foot tad is developed, steel is up skins going on building, there’ll be soon delivering equipment will have on offer somewhere around 300 individuals that come here from another country to help install the equipment. So by, you know, the December timeframe, they ought to have equipment set and be well along in their hiring so is a very fast moving project. And that’s, you know, one of the things that we’ve prided ourselves on being able to move quickly from announcement implementation, which helped us win that project.

Brandon Burton 15:40
Yeah. So what are some of the maybe the, let’s say, the coattails of the project, or some of the maybe lagging indicators or, or secondary benefits of a big project like this coming? Like you mentioned, 300 employees from another country coming to help install it? I mean, that’s hotels and restaurants and everything else. What other impact are you seeing through this?

Ron Bunch 16:05
Yes, it’s a tremendous amount of activities on both of the things you’ve mentioned, you know, I’d say we probably have about 1000 contractors there. And then you have another 300 equipment, installers come in, you know, obviously, I’ve been there, you know, a little over a year now. And so the overall impact and all the shopping all the businesses happening at our local companies, food trucks that are coming out, you know, just a tremendous amount of chamber activity and other spillover benefits and multiplier effects. But then on the other side, this industry needs a whole supply chain with it. So we’ve been courting a number of other companies that would be in our market, in order to supply and interact with this particular major project. That’s awesome,

Brandon Burton 16:53
that it’s one of those things that every community dreams of having that that big, you know, economic windfall, so to speak, of having all the jobs the, you know, the infrastructure, everything that comes along with it is such a great thing for the community. And I guess in in our audience, yeah, who people were talking to and see it that way. Have you had any kind of pushback from anybody in the community of you know, we don’t need this kind of thing? And did and how do you address any any negativity that may come with it?

Ron Bunch 17:26
That’s an excellent question. So we also run what we call the plant managers roundtable. So I do our existing business calls myself, and we host that plant manager roundtable every two months. And with that kind of ramping up of manufacturing, hiring alone, there has been some concern among other companies and being able to find talent, because, you know, in the US right, now, you’ve got to open jobs for every individual position. And so that’s been, you know, a thing we’ve had to navigate through, and helping them understand. Because many of our companies that have been here a long time, are as aware of how we build a custom talent sourcing strategy. And so it’s given us an opportunity to go back with them and help walk them through all the different pieces and parts we’ve put together to help them find and develop talent. And so it’s led to a lot of good conversations. We really haven’t had any other pushback on the other than how do we help our existing companies retain their talent and find new talent. And, you know, through some convening we’ve done our city and county are vested in about a quarter million annually, and a talent recruitment campaign that’s been ongoing for two years now. And so we’ve got many of the parts put together. It’s just growing on that success now as what we’re working on.

Brandon Burton 18:43
Yeah, that is great. Because there’s usually those those NIMBY people, right that don’t right in their backyard, and, and it sounds like those relationships have been built. And in the timings, right, everything is just developed at a rate, you know, the right cadence for this 10 fold the way it has, so congratulate,

Ron Bunch 19:00
are really excited about it, too, because we’re, we’re about 18% manufacturing in our economy, that’s, you know, at least twice the national average. So manufacturing has really embraced here, and quite a bit of that as automotive related with Corvette being located here, Holly being headquartered here, and, and other suppliers. And so having this new generation of propulsion for vehicles here in our community was something that was very welcomed.

Brandon Burton 19:29
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I would imagine that some of that workforce kind of plays in well to your STS SC K launch program as well, if I’m not mistaken. Do you want to gears over into that and tell us maybe how the two are related?

Ron Bunch 19:47
Absolutely. And actually, SEK launch. That program was instrumental in us winning this project. So it was something they cited compared to other states that made a difference in their decision to come here and That program has been great for a number of years now, we’ve actually had a hiring event, I think for four or five years now a high school hiring event. And this year, it was phenomenal. So many direct hires right out of high school. We also started a kind of somewhat related, heavy equipment program over the last year. And those first students got hired. And we had 23 students in the initial class, and every one of them got hired, we had a signing event that was extraordinary. So SEK launch has been just instrumental and all that we’re doing in the community. And really, it’s given us a different brand image in the community, because of the amount of investment and how long and how deeply we’ve been engaged with the education, infrastructure, our community, we’ve been doing, you know, making investments, I’m working on SDK launch for about 11 years now. And I’ve been here a little over 13. So it’s been awesome. Our other summary related to just a portion of that. So SDK launches really detailed, go to career program that is all day every day in every school, K through 12, in Bowling Green, and Warren County. But the one we chose to focus on was the eighth grade portion. Okay. And so with the eighth grade portion, we’ve actually hired a curriculum developer some years ago, and who came from education help us build out modules for every core sector of our economy. So we run the data on what jobs are open every month. And we use that to inform how we look at our sectors. And so she’s developed a curriculum that’s shared with not just every eighth grader in Bowling Green, and Warren County, but every eighth grader in our whole labor market. So for the first time ever, when eighth graders get assessed on their interests, and aptitudes, every eighth grader and our regional labor market, we’ll learn about careers and manufacturing careers and healthcare careers and business professional services. And then they’ll come to what this year was a two day, hands on career fair. We’ve had so many students, we had to extend it to another day. So now we have two full days. We had about 35 30/608 graders go through the event. 45 businesses, hundreds of volunteer, so it’s a big event. And just the excitement around it is is amazing. As you see eighth graders, explore a career and then see that light turned on, they get excited about a job in a career that they never even knew existed.

Brandon Burton 22:48
Yeah. So I know a lot of eighth graders out there have no clue what they want to know what a high schoolers until they get into the later part of their senior year, and reality is hitting them in the face. And they’re needing to start making some decisions. Right? So how does that with the focus on the eighth graders? Had you talked about the aptitude test and everything? But what what sort of things are playing into this to really help them catch a glimpse of what their future could look like? And what direction they’d want to go?

Ron Bunch 23:19
Yeah, I mean, the curriculum for each sector is crucial. So we are looking at, you know, how many open jobs whether they pay, what’s the pathway, you know, what positions can you get into with just a certificate, so really maps all that out for me really well. So that’s their first glimpse into really how broad the economy is, as well as the educators teaching it. And so that prepares them for what they then see. And we broken the experience up into different worlds. So there’s a world that we would call it for each of the sectors, and then that you’d have equipment and employers and so like in the healthcare sector, every eighth grader in our labor market would be able to come in and see robotic surgical unit, and, and interact with it. And so it’s that kind of hands on, they get to see law enforcement and, you know, get into the vehicle and check that stuff out. So it’s it’s very hands on, and we create a competition among the sectors where the students would get to vote, which sector they liked best. So it creates a kind of competition among the companies each year to up their game. Things that are more and more engaging for the eighth graders, because again, we want them to be excited about what they can go to and we want to create more of a poll. And then those eighth graders after they do that, they begin selecting their career pathway for the whole high school experience. And so if you have discovered, oh, wow, I really think I want to be in healthcare, then you get in that career pathway starting in ninth grade. And we’ve invested in for example, having an ambulance in the classroom and so you’re taught On the actual equipment that you will see in the field, through your high school career at your home high school. And so that’s the second part of the money we’re gonna raise beyond the 2.6 million is to put more and more of those hands on Career Exploration things in each high school.

Brandon Burton 25:17
That is awesome. And just to be able to get that that hands on experience, like, you know, how often do you hear somebody who is committed, and they decided to go to law school, maybe and then they get into for a year of practicing law and realize they hate law. Right. And they never spent any time in a law office before they got, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars in debt. And now they’re, they’re committed. So providing some experience when they’re young, I think is so valuable.

Ron Bunch 25:43
And I think we can all relate, you know, if you’re doing something, you have an interest and an aptitude to do, you’re going to enjoy it more. We’ve all had to do some things that maybe didn’t fit her interests and aptitudes and our careers as professional, but to find out in eighth grade, sort of how you’re wired and then be had that opened up to you at that point. And then we do I mean, you touch on that other part, we do an externship program. So we take educators into business to inform them more so that they can reach the students and help them know. But we also do a hands on career exploration for the high schoolers. So we seek to and have every high school or be in a business engagement, career exploration, in addition to the what they’re gonna get in the classroom, so they’re physically in a business during their high school career.

Brandon Burton 26:38
So I guess a question that comes up for myself is as they go along this career exploration, if at some point, they realize this really is not what I want to do, right, are they able to make that shift and somehow within the program, kind of realign with their values, and their division is awesome. Yeah, that’s

Ron Bunch 26:54
the great part about it. We’ve, through our engagement with the schools, in addition to guidance counselor’s our school that prioritize and put in place career counselors are so much better to learn during high school when it’s not going to cost you anything to switch career pathways. Yeah. And so they they’re able to work with their schools and take the lessons they have the in the credits they have gained, and then shifted over into another pathway that can get them to graduation.

Brandon Burton 27:21
All right, that’s great. Well, right, as we begin to wrap things up here, obviously, you guys are making a huge impact in your community. And that’s what what every chamber should be doing. But I wanted to see for for those listening, who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tips or action items might you have to offer to help them accomplish that?

Ron Bunch 27:45
Yes. Now, when I read the Horizon Report, I think the focus on catalytic leadership is really that the thing while it may be risk, to be out front, and actually lead change that your community needs, and then finding a way for it to connect with your business plan, we’ve found that when we take that role, which we do quite a bit, in a lot of different activities, it’s really paid dividends for our community. And it’s changed the way the committee looks at the chamber and looks to the chamber. And then we’ve been able to find ways to make that work for us financially to so that we can have a growing prospering organization, and it’s, for me, personally, it’s very rewarding to be able to do those kinds of things to do things that have not yet been created that do in fact, solve a problem for groups of people and groups of businesses.

Brandon Burton 28:43
Step in there and be a leader for change for sure. How to use as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Ron Bunch 28:55
I think the core of what we just talked about is that the you know, for us the thing we’ve started using, because I wanted to have more of a specific approach for both chamber activities and non development activities. We use spin situation problem. And so when you interact with GE with each investor, and you’re really probing to understand, what drives your business, what do you need? What keeps you up at night? What things can we help solve, when you do it on an individual basis annually, and then you begin to aggregate those things. It’ll point out some opportunities for you. And so I think the more we do those sorts of things with our business communities in our area, then you apply that catalytic leadership to bring things to market that haven’t existed before. I think there’ll be a natural evolution to chambers and what we deliver how we look at programs and events, and that sort of thing, and it’s changed with us to our programs and events are shifting. The affinity program that we bring on are shifting and we’re getting More and more value to the investor so that they get a good return. So it’s it’s increased engagement, and it’s decreased appreciation because they know they’re gonna get something back in relation to what they’re investing in. They know that we’re going to be responsive.

Brandon Burton 30:14
Right? I think that I think that’s great. Ron, I wanted to to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to learn more about the things you guys do in there and the bowling green area Chamber or anything else you touched on today, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Ron Bunch 30:36
They’re sure the either myself or my executive vice president Meredith Rozanski. It will be ron@bgchamber.com or meredith@bgchamber.com. Anything that anybody liked to discuss that would help their organization we’d love to engage with them. So just shoot us an email. Our main line is 270-781-3200 if you want to call us, we love engaging. We’ve got some upcoming visits by other communities to look at different facets of what we’re doing here.

Brandon Burton 31:11
I’m sure you do. I’m sure that’s a you’d be a great location for a leadership trip, for sure.

Ron Bunch 31:17
Pretty nice, too. We got some Corvettes here and you can get on a track and make sure you don’t forget the visit. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 31:25
Well, Ron, I appreciate that. We’ll get your contact information in our show notes for this episode. But one I wish you and your team best of luck with chamber the year and congratulate you for all the great work that you guys were doing and really making an impact in your community. So appreciate all that.

Ron Bunch 31:42
Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing all these things so that we can all benefit from one another.

Brandon Burton 31:47
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