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Category: workforce development

Looking 25 Years into the Future with Bryan Derreberry

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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Brandon Burton 1:02
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Our guest for this episode is Bryan Derreberry. As President and CEO of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce for 11 years, Bryan leads one of South Carolina’s largest chambers in its regional advancement work. Bryan has an established executive management track record, featuring more than 30 years in chamber leadership and advocacy roles. Prior to joining the Charleston Metro Chamber. Bryan was president and CEO of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce in Wichita, Kansas, where he directed the state’s largest Metro Chamber for seven and a half years. He also served as president and CEO of the Catawba County, North Carolina and Middleton Ohio Chambers of Commerce respectively. Bryan began his chamber career as a state lobbyist for the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, of course in Ohio. He holds holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Wittenberg University and is and has completed graduate coursework towards a combined MA and PhD in American politics, and international relations from the American University. Bryan, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast. And I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandon Burton 44:58
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Presenting Employment Opportunities to the Classroom with Bret Schanzenbach

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

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

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

Introduction

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

And now, your host. He worked for staples. Well in high school, he’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

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

Kris Johnson  

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

Brandon Burton  2:03  

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

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us today for episode 191 of Chamber Chat Podcast. We are getting up there in the episode numbers. But for this episode, we have Brett Johnson back with us and Brett is he’s served as the president and CEO of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce in California since January 2019. Brett is a native Californian and resident of San Diego’s North County since 1971. He came to the Carlsbad position from the VISTA Chamber of Commerce where he served as CEO for nine years is corporate background before the chamber was in residential real estate and the software industry. In 1992. He helped start the technical difference Inc, a human resource software company. before venturing into the corporate world. Brett spent seven years as a youth minister, Brett graduated from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio, earning a BA in psychology and a BA in theology. He earned his master’s in theological studies from the University of Dallas in 2001. He and his wife Jolene reside in Vista, California, and they’ve been blessed with six children and two grandchildren so far. Brett, I’m looking forward to having you with me on the podcast today. And and I want to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Bret Schanzenbach 3:07
Morning, Brandon, thank you so much for having me as a guest today. I’m excited to be here and have conversation. Something interesting. I mean, you read my bio, so that stole most of the stuff that’s actually interesting about me, I guess I would say one thing that’s interesting is, you know, like a lot of people like backed into the chamber career, I don’t know if anybody truly like goes to college and thinks, oh, I want to be a chamber executive when I grow up, you know, so, and the way I backed into my chamber career was through the real estate industry, I did real estate for eight years and found out that I hated it. And, you know, as you mentioned, my wife and I have six kids and you know, real estate, you have to obviously work on your client’s terms. And so they usually are available on nights, weekends, holidays, you know, things like that. And after a while, I just really did not enjoy that industry. And, but that’s the industry that got me super engaged with my local chamber. When I was a realtor, I had joined my chamber, joined a committee got invited to the board of directors and because of all that, you know, it’s how I got really familiar with the impact chambers could have in a in a community. And when the guy who was the executive of my local board there that I was part of, he decided to move back to the Midwest with his wife. You know, I’m like, Oh, this is great opportunity to get out of this because I’m so done with real estate and I didn’t really know exactly what I was getting into but you know, I so but I backed in. I had I remember having a conversation with him one day when we were talking about him leaving and me possibly applying for the job. And I said Um, I don’t actually know what you do on a day to day basis. What do you

Brandon Burton 5:07
board member? Yeah, what you do?

Bret Schanzenbach 5:10
So, but I threw my hat in the ring. And now I’ve been in the industry for 14 and a half years, I think it is or, or I’m in my 14th year, however that works and love it.

Brandon Burton 5:24
As I say, hopefully it’s going better for you than real estate. So yeah, I really do love it. And maybe that needs to be the question I ask people is how did you find your way into the chamber world? Because everybody has a unique story about how they are? Yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 5:38
that is so true. You know, one of my neighboring chamber execs. He is one of those guys that came right out of college and got a job at his local chamber and moved his way up and all that jazz. But that is so rare. It’s mostly people who have come from all kinds of different. You do find a lot of people who served at a chamber before they became an exec. But the stories are so different.

Brandon Burton 6:02
Right? Yeah, I always find it fascinating. So thank you for sharing your journey. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about the Carlsbad chamber just to give us an idea of size staff budget, kind of scope of work to give us an idea of what you guys do there.

Bret Schanzenbach 6:20
Sure. So we are located as you mentioned, in North San Diego County. We’re about 3530 35 miles from the city of San Diego itself. And we our community itself, is about 115,000 people in in our suburb here. But for our part of San Diego County, we’re kind of the economic hub. We have a robust tourism industry, but we also have robust industry in general, which is a nice combination, and at least in San Diego County is pretty rare besides the city of San Diego. We are we’re the number two generator and tourism dollars in our county behind the city of San Diego itself. And and I think we have the third largest industrial park in San Diego County. So both we have this great mix of both, you know, like biotech and high tech and that kind of stuff. And then the tourism side. So that’s great. Our chamber itself, we have right around 1000 members, little over 1000 members. San Diego County has 43 chambers of commerce, and we’re the second largest with the city of San Diego, the Regional Chamber in San Diego being the largest. So we’re the second largest chamber in the county, we have about a $1.3 million budget staff of nine. We do not our community has we have separate visitor Bureau, we have a separate Downtown Association. Our city has its own economic development department. So we don’t have any of those other add ons that some chambers do. But we obviously we work very closely with all of those entities matter of fact, we meet regularly have a great rapport with them. But but we don’t fulfill those, you know, those specific roles, like getting funding to be say a visitor center or a manage the downtown or any of those things. So So yeah, that’s a little bit about us. I have a very large board of directors. That was kind of the biggest, one of the biggest changes coming from my previous chamber where we we had what I thought was a big board at the time, like of 17. And, you know, I have 35 voting members and, you know, for other like, advisory members and then other emeritus members, we have a large board here.

Brandon Burton 8:56
Yeah, they work for a lot of people. That definitely helps paint the picture for sure kind of where you guys sit and the type of work I’m involved with.

Bret Schanzenbach 9:06
I do work for a lot of people. It’s very true.

Brandon Burton 9:11
Well, I’m excited to get into our topic for our discussion. Today we’re we’re going to be focusing our discussion around presenting employment opportunities to youth in the classroom. And we’ll dive more into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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All right, Bret, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about presenting employment opportunities to the classroom today. I know our our scheduling of recording this is being worked around both you and I both volunteering at at church youth camps and so forth. So I know for me, and I may be speaking for you as well, that the rising generation is important to me. And and I think for chambers in general to look at that future employment pipeline and creating a vibrant economy in your community. So I’m excited to have you tell us what the Carlsbad chamber has been doing to introduce these these students, these youth to what a future can look like in your community through the various employment opportunities.

Topic-Presenting Employment Opportunities to the Classroom

Bret Schanzenbach 13:05
Yeah, thank you for that lead in it is a very important topic for all chambers. And I feel like as we go to our conferences, and you know, you attend webinars, and you see this topic comes up more and more and more, because it’s a it’s not just a local issue. It’s a nationwide issue. And if I could, before I explain what we’re currently at, I want to paint a little bit of a picture of what we used to do. That led up to our current initiative and our chamber, like probably many others who are listening in, we’re very engaged at one point or another in trying to bring together the world of work and the classroom, you know, to bring those together as you as you alluded to, and what we had been doing before, we had this program called talent, cities, and we brought eighth graders out on field trips to actual businesses, like different manufacturing type businesses, et cetera, et cetera. And instead of just doing like a tour of the business, we specifically crafted a tour where they would stop strategically at different places at the company that they were visiting, and they would get a little interview with somebody. So a couple of those stops would be like, on a shop floor, for instance. And then a couple of stops would be more like in research and development and marketing and sales, things like that. So there’s always this mix, kind of a, the blue collar, the white collar type things, but we at each stop, they would hear from a staff member and employee who would talk about who they were, what they did, what they liked about it, what was challenging about it, and how they got to this point in their career. And our goal with that bringing those kids out on site was to just broaden their perspective. Have a little bit because what mostly we found is that most students know what their mom and their dad do if they have both parents. And sometimes they don’t even know what their parents do. Because sometimes what their parents do, they just, they just have no way of actually knowing what they do. But beyond that, they just know the big hero jobs like teacher, firefighter, policeman, military, you know, stuff like that. So our goal was to try to broaden their perspectives just a little on what kinds of jobs and career opportunities could be available to them. And when we started that program that we called Talent cities, it was we felt that was successful, like we would actually pull the kids before they would go through with this kind of a tour, field trip, etc. And then we would survey them again, after and we got some great comments, like one that really stuck out in my mind, one of the kids said, you know, I never thought I could use my love of art in, you know, a work setting or a job or a career or whatever. So things like that. That was exactly what we were hoping to do is help them to see a little bit bigger than they had had a chance to up to that point in their life. But we ran into challenges. So that program, when I was at the VISTA chamber, we ran 1,000/8 graders through in like an 18 month period of time. And at least out here in Southern California field trips are challenging for school districts, and all those logistics that they have to go through to make a field trip happen are not simple. And then secondly, I found that I was constantly going back to the same four or five different companies saying, Hey, I got another group of 38th graders or 20, you know, whatever, for you guys to host. And so, you know, it becomes challenging for businesses to interrupt their flow to do that on a regular basis. So all that being said, That was that was the precursor, when COVID hit, obviously, the whole world pivoted towards virtual learning, virtual interaction, et cetera, et cetera. And at the same time, our local hospital out here was working on some initiatives to help their career readiness workforce pipeline get developed. And so they were interested in, in creating some videos to help broaden people’s awareness of career opportunities within healthcare. Most people when they think of healthcare, all they think of as a nurse and a doctor. And obviously, when you have a big hospital, there’s usually something like, I think our hospital has, like 2200 employees. So there’s all kinds of careers, that all the way from marketing, you know, down to techs and an

Brandon Burton 18:00
average janitors, you know, everything Yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 18:03
you got it, you got it. So there’s, there’s so much diversity within just a company like that. So they approached us and and so what we ended up putting together and one of the things I love about this is, this was a collaboration with three different chambers of commerce here in my area. So we the Carlsbad chamber, our two neighbors directly nearest the Oceanside chamber and the VISTA chamber, the hospital that I just mentioned, and then our regional EDC edge, our Regional Economic Development Council for our area, the five of us together collaborated on this project. And we went out to our local county representative and said, Hey, we have this idea. And so luckily, he bought into the idea that I’m going to share and funded it because this stuff doesn’t happen without some money behind it. But we created a web portal. And it’s called SoCal. And that’s an acronym that I always forget, but it stands for student opportunities for career awareness and learning. SoCal, and the website is called SoCal workforce.org, SoCal workforce.org. And so we created this web portal. And what we did as we were starting to conceive it, and one of the pieces that was really important to us as we wanted to do this in conjunction with our schools, we didn’t, we didn’t want to do this in some silo by ourselves and just do what we thought made sense. So we worked with the three school districts in the three communities that I just mentioned, Carlsbad, Oceanside and VISTA. And we said, hey, here’s this idea we have, we want to make this evergreen portal of jobs and careers, a video library, if you will, that you can use in the cloud. last room to expose students to the real world of work. And they love the idea, we met with them like two or three times during the process of developing it. And, and when we unveiled it in January of this year 2022, they were ecstatic. And so what the web portal has, when you go there, and it’s open to anybody, so it could be like a teacher who’s navigating this or an individual student, or like, anybody who’s in a, looking to change directions in life, right? Anybody can use this, this website, but you can look up job or career opportunities, three different ways, by industry, by company name, or by a job itself. So like industry, you could look and say, oh, what kinds of things exist in my area in healthcare and tech, in, you know, in public safety, or whatever the case might be? Or, Hey, I’ve heard of, in our area that, you know, there’s some big name companies like ViaSat, or Nordson, or, you know, whatever the company is, I’ve heard of that company, what jobs might be, what careers do they even have, I don’t even know what they do. Or you could just go the path of, you know, like, I want to know more about being an engineer or want to know more about being a this or that. So whatever way you navigate, you eventually get down to these three minute videos. And what we did is we shot all the videos on location. At the site where the worker works, we wanted it really, in their workspace in their flow, like all the B roll, we didn’t use any third party just B roll that you can just purchase, you know, anywhere, everything is shot at the actual site where these people work. And we interview these these various workers. And it’s the same kind of interview that I mentioned earlier, who they are, what they do, what do they like about it? What’s challenging about it?

How do they get to this point in their career, if they were adding a staff member to their team, what would they be looking for. And so in these three minute videos, you get a really good snapshot of a real life, you know, place of work, job, career, etc. And, on our portal, another piece that I really like, because we were trying to think of it from the student perspective is, when you get down to the actual job, before you watch the video, there’s a description there, hey, here’s a little bit about the job. Here’s what the average person in San Diego County makes, who, who performs this job, here’s the job outlook for the next five to 10 years for that profession, in our area. And then if, you know, educational resources are like if you need a degree or a certificate or something to do that job, here’s a couple of links of local institutions who offer those certificates or degrees, etc. And so then with all that background, and they can watch the three minute you know, video and and get to know, that particular job, career, etc. And school districts, when we rolled it out in January, we’re over the moon, they love it. Now, it’s not that a school district can’t like if they wanted to bring, oh, let’s let’s look at a day in the life of the engineer. They can they have resources, they can find that that’s out there. But what our school districts really loved about this project was that it’s so localized. So these are companies that they’re, the students may have heard of, these are places that they’ve driven by, I mean, these are right here in their backyard. And it just the teachers were so excited about making it tangible to their students.

Brandon Burton 24:02
So I’m gonna circle back towards some of the beginning of your comments, and you mentioned that students often will only know what their parents have done it Yeah, just funny. When I was in third grade, I drew some attention from the school when I told them that my dad sold drugs because a pharmaceutical sales rep but I would hear him come home talking about the new drug that he’s marketing. So you know, naturally when we talk about what is your dad do for a living my dad sold drugs so that prompted a parent teacher conference and Oh, no that so that was interesting. But so with these, this web portal and video library I love this idea that I love being able to have the different angles being able to filter by industry company and job type. Are you primarily focusing on the bigger companies because they have so many different levels, different types of positions? Or do you have some of the smaller entrepreneurs even that are highlighting what a day in the life of their work is? Like?

Bret Schanzenbach 25:11
Yeah, good question. Um, it is it is intended to be a mix of both. But initially, it was, when we were at the conception phase and trying to get it off the ground, it was a little bit easier to go to some of the bigger companies who have a diversity of roles already, and say, hey, you know, we want to shoot three different, you know, jobs through different roles at your company. But, but we have both some, so we have some large companies, but we also have some, I would say, medium sized companies. And, and when we launched in January, our goal was to get, I think our goal was to have 60 videos on the portal at launch. And we ended up we met that goal. And currently there’s, there’s 80, I’m trying to think through the numbers. Yeah, currently, there’s 80. And our goal by the end of this calendar year is to get to 100. And then obviously, continue to grow it but but yeah, the so we’re trying to diverse, like to your point, we’re trying to diversify as we grow, and get a more industries be more diversity of size of companies and things. The county supervisor who really bought into this initially, he wanted us to have a healthy mix of things that did not require going to get a four year degree. Sure. And as you probably know, there’s, you know, obviously, there’s the big push in the schools for STEM, and, you know, that kind of stuff. So we wanted to have, obviously, that kind of stuff, too. So we worked really hard. So there’s like some, there’s some construction jobs, you know, what I mean, there’s welders and you know, that kind of stuff in the midst of off. So there’s engineers and you know, etc. So we’re worked hard to try to have that kind of diversity in there.

Brandon Burton 27:07
Yeah. And I can see this library just growing over time with expanding the different companies. But there’s always going to be the need for an accountant and a lawyer and a doctor in some of those staples. But then you see new careers popping up to you know, from I’m thinking when the smartphones came out, and you had app developers, and that wasn’t like you had software designers, but now specifically apps and now. So we see technology shifting with, you know, the metaverse and things like that. And, you know, what is the career going to look like 10 years from now, it might look very different. But exposing these students to those opportunities might help them avoid, you know, eight years in the real estate industry if they don’t like that, right.

Bret Schanzenbach 27:53
Yeah, no, you’re but you’re you’re spot on it. I mean, there’s people who have careers right now that five years ago, those things didn’t even exist. So you know, so theoretically, somebody entering college today, you know, might end up in a career a few years from now, that doesn’t even exist as they start college at least. And Title and name like you, like an app developer. At one point, there was no such thing, right? Or what exactly is an influencer again, but making a lot of money at it. I don’t know what that means. You know, so that is a challenge to, but the other thing that we’re doing is one of the challenges we had when, you know, when I was sharing that example, at my previous chamber, where we were working hard to bring the, the classroom world into the real world of work. We were doing it within our given community, you know, I was the VISTA chamber, and these were Vista businesses, and this was the Vista school district and, but at least in our area, and I know, every region could be, you know, have some differences here. But in our area where we are a suburban, you know, area, it doesn’t make sense to do it. siloed but community by community, which is why this regional approach we felt made a lot more sense. Like, I live in community a I work in community b I go to school and community see my churches in community D. I mean, that’s, that’s actually true for me what I just said, you know, so it was really important for us to take a broader perspective, here in Carlsbad. There. 80,000 people come to work every day, but only 20,000 of those actually live in Carlsbad. So that’s a lot of people coming to work from neighboring communities. And so we had that mindset. So now what where we’re at is, since we launched in January, we’ve now added three more communities to our portfolio, San Marcos Escondido Encinitas have all joined us and their school districts as well. So we’re growing it growing the footprint of it geographically. And then as you already were talking about the companies, the jobs, the those kind of operates, the industries are growing as well. And so we eventually see it hopefully being county wide, but that’s going to take a little while, but county wide, and, you know, just continuing to expand the diversity of opportunities to,

Brandon Burton 30:27
I think it goes to show, maybe the definition of community is changing to some degree, you know, between online communities got your physical communities, you’ve got cities that were established before transportation was as robust as it is now, and, and the world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. So as we silo and say, We are the Carlsbad community, you’re really discounting a lot of opportunity from the neighboring areas that, you know, your residents or employers employees are interacting in those cities anyway. So maybe just kind of a reset on what community actually means.

Bret Schanzenbach 31:02
Yeah, I think that’s a good point. You know, we’re, we’re very fluid in this area, and I believe, probably in a lot of areas, and as you pointed out, transportation being, you know, robust, but this, this portal has been, you know, a great collaboration, and I think, in our industry, you know, that’s really important, you know, in the chamber industry to collaborate together, look for me, you know, how can we create win wins, you know, and it, it’s a, it’s been a really great thing for us to collectively work together on and create value for all of our memberships in this in this region. And our, you know, our bigger members who have a tendency to be members of multiple chambers, they love seeing this to, you know, they love seeing our chambers all work together on on big, more enterprise level projects. So, so that’s been a positive, I think our biggest challenge, you know, as we, we initially got that grant, which was super helpful, but, you know, to grow it, there has to be funding so, videography, high quality videography, and editing doesn’t come free. And, and we have done it at a very high level. So we’re at the point where, okay, we’re looking for some more grants and streams of funding. But we’re also going straight to the companies and say, Hey, if you want your company, you know, featured here, we have a path for that. So we’ve created corporate pricing for those that want to be added. It was interesting when we launched some industries that we hadn’t really thought of jumped up and said, Oh, we want to be featured. And so you know, a municipality, their, their water division, they’re like, We need to promote career opportunities in this field. You know, people don’t think about this. And so they jumped on board and sponsored, you know, right away and got some video shot at, at their, whatever water division at their municipality. So there’s, you know, there’s different pockets that we hadn’t really anticipated. And right now I’m working. You know, I mentioned at the outset that we have a strong tourism in Carlsbad. But at the moment, there is no tourism or hospitality listed on our portal at all. So I’m currently in dialogue with them, they they’re really hurting for workforce right now, after the pandemic, it’s been a challenge getting getting staffed back up to the levels, both at restaurants and hotels, and but we just hosted a panel discussion on tourism about two weeks ago, and they were all talking about how they need to, you know, promote careers within tourism. So, so we had a discussion this week about how they could get into our portal. So we’re putting a proposal together for them to to get some video shot at their place. So, you know, I love that, that we have this tool to be able to help serve those who have that need right now.

Brandon Burton 34:05
Yeah, I love that. And thank you for touching on the funding part of it too, because I was going to ask that next about day, how do you make all this happen? And yeah, variety of sources and, and being creative as you go along to and looking for those new opportunities.

Bret Schanzenbach 34:19
Very true. I mean, obviously, there we all in our communities know of some, some go to little, you know, channels where we go after funding for this or that, but eventually, you know, we need business to step up. You know, we were looking regionally at funding sources. You know, our local congressman really liked the idea what so one of the things that’s been that’s come up though, is multiple people have said, hey, it would be great. If your portal could be like a one stop shop for internships, companies who want to host interns, you know, people who want to have an internship and it could be a one stop shop and You know, we’re dealing with all these different jurisdictions now different school districts, and you know, all this stuff. And they all have their own

Brandon Burton 35:08
parameters. And yeah,

Bret Schanzenbach 35:10
exactly. So it’s like, oh, boy, how do we do this? So that’s probably like version three of the portal. Not even version two. But so those are things we’re aspiring to, though and are on our radar to continue to evolve, how this portal can continue to serve the needs of our community now that it’s launched, and it’s getting on people’s radar.

Brandon Burton 35:33
Yeah, I really liked that. But as we start to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask you, for anybody listening? What tip or action item might you share with them to any chamber that’s looking to take their organization up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Bret Schanzenbach 35:51
Yeah, that’s, um, you know, it’s a great question we talked about here. And, and other people have heard in the industry, that we can’t, we can’t be our grandfather’s chamber. You know, the chamber, the days when you think of kind of like, there was a time where businesses join the chamber, and you can pick a variety of reasons, the chamber was the go to place for networking, that was probably the easiest chamber was the go to place for advocacy, you know, you know, things like that. And we don’t have the market cornered on any of those things anymore. I mean, there’s a million ways to network from meet up and you know, online tools to lead clubs and all that kind of stuff. There’s so many ways to network, besides even just social networking. And then advocacy, every industry has its own, you know, vehicle, you know, their own Association, that advocates just for their specific niche needs, and really watches their back. And I still think chambers are excellent at broad scale advocacy, and networking, and all that kind of stuff. But we don’t have the market cornered on any of those things that used to be kind of synonymous with why you need to join a chamber. So we’re constantly asking, asking ourselves, you know, what is our you know, value proposition? What are we bringing to the table that nobody else is bringing to the table, which is part and parcel with this, this discussion we just had today, this is one piece of it for us, you know. So we’re, we’re involved in workforce development in about five or six different fingers or different ways. This SoCal project was just one of them. But that’s, for us, it was like, nobody, when I left broad scape, broad scale, nobody’s involved in this, nobody can bring to the table what we can and workforce development, the relationship with the companies and the relationship with a schools which already we have, you know, we can we can be this bridge that nobody else can serve. So we’ve, that’s one of the stakes we put in the ground, this is going to be a value proposition that we have for our membership. But looking at those things, what do you bring to the table that not nobody else is, you know, Rotary can’t bring to the table or, you know, some nonprofit in your community can’t bring to the table or some Meetup group can’t bring to the table, you know, what, what is it that’s unique. And so we look for those things we and we have, you know, we’re constantly developing new initiatives, which is a little daunting, to be honest, we have to be careful, we don’t get out of a mission and, and go off on some tangent, but, but, and I think, and one other thing I want to, I want to point out 25 years ago, when people thought of economic development, they primarily thought of, let’s try to get Company X or company wide to come to our city. And they’ll bring good jobs, and that’ll be good for the community. And we even saw it like five or six years ago, like the whole country was tripping over themselves to try and get the next you know, Amazon headquarters, you know, and it was almost comical, but and there’s I’m not saying that’s not valid, but even before COVID We knew and now since COVID We really know that people can be from work from anywhere. Yeah, you know, they don’t you it doesn’t matter where their job is. It’s where do they want to be and so we have to create a community that attracts people that want to be there not because their company’s there. So what does that mean? Well, what attracts people you got to have, you know, low crime rate, great schools, affordable housing, amenities and parks and stuff that people want, you know, a good entrepreneurial environment, you know, business friendly, me all these factors together. There are what make places desirable for people to locate. And, and, and be. So we have to be about all of it. You know, we can’t just be siloed in, we’re a business organization, we are going to work with business. That’s long gone. And so we’re constantly looking at how can we make a positive impact in all those areas, so that we can make our community a great place to, you know, live workplace shop, dying vacation visit, you know, all of that. And so it’s it’s exciting, but it’s daunting. It’s a, the the ways you can engage that are never ending, which wakes me up and gets me excited. And also overwhelms me sometimes at two o’clock in the morning. But that’s what I love about the industry.

Brandon Burton 40:51
Now, and I think something you touched on is, it’s the shift of placemaking. Like it used to be, you’re attracting business, and now it’s attracting those employees, attracting those people that want to live in your community. And I think your response, it may answer my next question, but I like asking everybody I have on the show, as we look to the future chambers of commerce, how do you see their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Bret Schanzenbach 41:16
Yeah, I think that the role that we serve as a hub within the community is so vital and important, and valuable, so valuable, you know, we can pull together stakeholders from so many different things from from public safety, and government, to education and nonprofits and business and we can put them in the same room. And, and sometimes you don’t maybe only need two or three of those fingers for what your initiative is, but, but you can, we can pull together things that nobody else can and, and so we have to, we have to embrace that role. And you know, find the issues within our communities that are meaningful, and, and go after them and be the solution. We don’t have to have all the answers, but be the one that convenes everybody to help create the positive movement for the community. And I think if we wholeheartedly embrace that role will continue to be relevant, and will continue to have a reason to exist. But you know, if we just kind of bury our head, and like, we’re the business community, I think that’s too narrow. And I feel like most chambers have evolved beyond that. But, but I see going forward, just we have to take that up, you know, wholeheartedly and run with that mentality to be community leaders, not just business leaders.

Brandon Burton 42:42
Right. And being that that embracing being a convener is is so important, and you guys are setting a great example with the SoCal program. Because that’s exactly what you’re doing is you’re bringing those those right people to the table to help provide opportunities for the the youth coming up that are going to be the future workforce. Yeah. So Brad, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about the SoCal program or how you go through all the things in Carlsbad, what’s the best way for someone to reach out and connect?

Connect with Bret Schanzenbach

Bret Schanzenbach 43:18
Sure. I have the easiest email in the world. So one of my emails is ceo@carlsbad.org. And you can email me the if somebody wanted to check out that website I mentioned socalworkforce.org. And you can see more. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on all those different. I don’t know social media thing is, you know, I respond I actually check messages on LinkedIn. If anybody messages me on the other ones, I don’t check those but but you can connect with people all the time on LinkedIn, especially chamber pros. I love connecting with other chamber professionals. Because I value them and you know, there’s none of us has all the answers in this world of of what we do in the chamber. So I love learning and meeting other people and hearing what’s working in their communities and seeing if there’s any tidbits I can bring back to my community. So yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. Email me ceo@carlsbad.org. And yeah, love to connect.

Brandon Burton 44:28
Very good. I’ll make sure if we get all that in our show notes for this episode, which will be found at chamber chat. podcast.com/episode 191. But Brad, this has been great having you on the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and sharing this great example of what you guys and you know, in collaboration with your neighboring Chambers as well are doing and it’s a great template that others can look to and build upon themselves.

Bret Schanzenbach 44:55
Well, thank you so much for the invitation, Brandon, I really enjoyed it.

Brandon Burton 44:58
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Bowling Green Area Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Ron Bunch

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

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

Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now your host he believes it is important for chambers to produce digital content. He’s my dad Brandon Burton.

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

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Matt Morrow President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri to learn how the Holman Brothers provided value to his chamber.

Matt Morrow 0:46
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

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

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

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

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

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

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.

Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for our 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series. And our guest for this episode is Ron Bunch. Ron is here with us today representing the Bowling Green Area Chamber as their President and CEO in their bid for for chamber of the year. But Ron as he leads the Bowling Green Area Chamber they are a five star credited chamber, placing in the top 1% of all chambers in America. The Bowling Green Area Chamber has served the Bowling Green and Warren County area for more than 85 years. As the driving force for the business community in Bowling Green Warren County. The chamber also serves as the lead economic development organization for the region and is responsible for the South Central Kentucky Regional Economic Development Partnership. Since Ron joined the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, their community has announced over $6.1 billion in capital investment and more than 11,200 new jobs. Bowling Green has been ranked in the top six nationally by site selection magazine for the top 10 metros for new and expanding facilities for populations under 200,000 for nine consecutive years, including number one overall in 2018. The Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce has also won two consecutive Matt Conway awards from site selection magazine, which recognized the team as a top 20 economic development organization in the country for their performance in 2020 and 2021. Simultaneously, the Chamber has been invited to apply for chamber the year in the US by the by ACCE for five consecutive years and making it to the finalist stage for three of those years. Ron received the Kentucky Association for Economic Development’s 2014 James J. Coleman Community Economic professional of the year with nearly 30 years of professional economic development experience. Ron is a certified economic developer and his lead successful local and regional economic development efforts in Florida, Virginia and South Carolina before coming to Kentucky. Ron, welcome back to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m excited to have you with us today, especially under these conditions is at chamber the year finalist. Again, that is a great feat. But take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Ron Bunch 4:44
Well, I really appreciate you having me back on again. Let’s see something interesting about me. I went to West Point and one of the training opportunities I had while at West Point was to go to Northern warfare training in Alaska. So I got to do front spiking for bass rescue and all that other stuff while we lived on the glacier for a week as well, too. So it was a really great experience. So probably not many people know that.

Brandon Burton 5:11
That is pretty interesting and quite the experience to so

Ron Bunch 5:16
that was some of the best training I’ve ever done. And it was, it was really great.

Brandon Burton 5:20
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I’ll share it. A fun fact, too, is that Ron was a guest of ours back on Episode 24, which was the actually the very first chamber of the year finalist interview that I did on the podcast. So he, he helped pilot this series, originally back in 2019. So if anybody wants to go back and check that out, I think encourage you probably not to because I probably wasn’t as good then. And it wasn’t as well refined. But I’m excited that’s

Ron Bunch 5:51
still going on, considering I was the first guest.

Brandon Burton 5:56
That’s right, and we’re up to episode 182. Now on this one, so we’ve come a long ways from there. But Ron, take a minute and tell us about the bowling green area Chamber just to give us some perspective of size, staff budget, scope of work, that sort of thing to kind of give us

About the Bowling Green Area Chamber

Ron Bunch 6:12
some perspective. Sure, in our chambers, around 1300 partners or members, our annual budgets around 2.4 million. We’ve got a staff of approximately 16 full time, folks, we’re changing it up a little bit. Right now we do have some virtual employees that were contracted with reasonably we try that out. But probably the most unique part is that we run six different companies. So there’s five additional companies beyond the chamber, chamber houses, all the employees, but we have multiple development companies, foundations, so multiple pieces that we operate with one common management team.

Brandon Burton 6:50
Right. So those additional companies, are they primarily focused around economic development? And are the foundations, I guess, give us give us a little more sampling what that looks like. Yeah,

Ron Bunch 7:01
it’s sort of a balance. You know, two of them are development companies. So one of the public development company that owns and operates the trans Park was a private nonprofit development company that developed the south Industrial Park and own some buildings. And it’s been the tool that we use to build speculative building. Another entity is a public entity that we use to facilitate incentives and bond issues. We’ve got 2501 C threes. One is our foundation that we’ve used to raise money for what started out as Leader in Me that’s evolved into SC K launch, which is our K 12, comprehensive talent initiative, we’ve raised and invested about 2.6 million at this point. After that, we have another entity that’s a training Consortium. So we seek out and bid and deliver on Demand training for different groups of companies through it. And then there’s the chain province.

Brandon Burton 7:59
Yeah, you guys know how to stay busy and make it work. So

Ron Bunch 8:02
there’s no shortage of more money. So if anybody’s looking for a board meeting in DC, come on down here. We’ll set you up with one. That’s right.

Brandon Burton 8:09
But to put you in a room, right. Well, as I say, chamber, the year finalist series rolls out, what I like to do is focus primarily on the two programs that you guys submitted as your program synopsis on the chamber that your application. So I look forward to diving into what those programs are learning more about the impact you guys are making in your community. As soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

All right, Ron, we’re back. Why don’t you take us through what the two programs are that you guys submitted on your chamber the your application just first at a high level and then we’ll we’ll circle back and get into a little more

Ron Bunch 10:57
detail on each of them. Sure, the two different areas we highlight this time one is a follow on initiative in talent. So for the 11 plus years that I’ve been here, 10 plus of those 11 have been focused on talent. And what we build out with SDK launch our regional talent initiative that spans the K 12, system, city and county schools, as well as what we’ve done a public workforce. So one of those is minorities in engineering, and our goal there was to seek to engage more minorities in K 12, and help lead them to engineering occupations, and education through our university. And then the other initiative is in our role of managing, developing and growing the trans Park, which was a 900 acre business park when we got here. That initiative, we essentially added double the acreage in about a 24 month period. And then were able to win several different projects as a result of that, during the pandemic. So when not many people were investing in more product development, we were able to convince our city in Canada invest in that and it really produced a lot of dividend for

Brandon Burton 12:14
that is that is a pretty pretty large impact there on the growth of the transport Web. Say, let’s dive a little deeper into that one. How did you guys approach that? I know as we went into the pandemic, yeah, we all thought it was gonna be two weeks, right? A little longer, right?

Ron Bunch 12:35
In our programs, and

Brandon Burton 12:38
there’s a reflection there, right? So how did you guys go about kind of seeing through the mess of the pandemic and kind of seeing where the light is at the end of the tunnel and the need to continue building, especially in this trans Park area to be able to double the acreage and investment in that area? What was your selling points and to be able to have clarity through all that?

Ron Bunch 13:02
Now, let’s that’s awesome. The so obviously, we’ve been managing the trans park all along. And as you mentioned earlier, we’ve been very blessed to be nationally ranked and economic development for nine consecutive years now. And so we’ve built some success in the transport and developing that winning projects. In the even during the pandemic, we were able to win 20 different projects. And so we both saw an increase in activity and a reduction in available property. But we had been talking about growing the transport for some time. So what the the effects of the pandemic were that, you know, we saw more global companies. So when you look at global impact, we were talking with more global companies that were looking for available product so that they could change their supply chain. We also knew from a scarcity and abundance standpoint that those communities that had an abundant amount of property would be more successful, because we had a track record and working with companies successfully. And but we knew we had a scarcity both on utilities and property. And so when you look to the Horizon Report, I mean, those are two of the key factors in our analysis of the transport. So really a couple of things played into it, you know, one was attractive, we had a winning project. So we’ve had let’s see, prior to the recent wins about three of the top investments in Kentucky in a given year in the transparency and we have consistently performed so the Sydney county had confidence in us. And so we began a conversation with them about doubling their investment from around 25 million to 40 plus almost 50 million in the trans Park and they saw the wisdom in that during the pandemic. So they put together a bond issue issued $46 million in debt that allowed us to acquire almost 608 First, and that allowed us to win several projects. And then, as we were recording one of the major projects, we it turned out, we needed an additional 14 to 16 acres. So we went back to the city and the county, who went into reserves to then provide funds so that we could buy additional property this time about, I think it was close to 500 acres or so and all said and done in a 24 month period, we brought on 1100 acres, which is larger than the original trans Park. And we’ve now won several projects, including the Envision project, which is the state’s second largest investment in Kentucky history. So had we not had the advocacy and relationships with local government, have we not performed we would have never been able to make that case for them to invest in such a challenging time. And so like everybody, we were also dealing with the effects of the pandemic and reassuring business and clarifying things for business and evolving how we do business. But we felt it was very important to bring on this additional property. And we were very blessed that it turned out to be great, we were able to win a project with ball Corporation, which is a $300 million project. Tyson Foods, which was the largest job creation project up from that point. And then the Envision project is a $2 billion investment with 2000 jobs. It’ll build about 3 million square feet here for an easy project.

Brandon Burton 16:27
Wow. That is That is awesome. So did you already have some of this in motion before the pandemic hit kind of division that where you wanted to take the trans Park? Or did the pandemic really kind of accelerate the need to be able to move forward with this?

Ron Bunch 16:42
Yeah, we had some of the conversations already happening with the city in the county because the public entity we run has appointees from the city in the county, including the city manager and others. And so they were aware we needed to increase the size of transport, we hadn’t solidified how much. And so as we did that, and then as we began to court, some of the projects that started to respond, then we identify we need even more land than we originally thought. So just after the city, the county doubled their investment, which we they had not planned to do with the 46 million, we came back say oh, by the way, another 500 acres, but that acreage allowed us to win the Tyson project and Tyson announced with 455 employees, which at that time was our largest new job announcement ever in Warren County. So that was a very exciting project. But it was amazing. Because that additional property, we needed about 14 acres to make this light work, right. And we were able to secure another 500 or so acres, that if we had not had, we could not have even talked to the folks at Envision. And so we were very blessed to be able to work the Envision project. It was pretty unique and that that mega project, we ended up having to work directly with the legislature. So I met with the Senate and I met with the House leadership, they were under NDA. And between the governor and his team and the Cabinet for Economic Development and the legislature, we were able to put together a package that ultimately won the project. So I mean, tons of parties helped us to when we were just the quarterback on the team. But what a great project.

Brandon Burton 18:22
Yeah, and what a great investment for your community as well to be able to increase his number of jobs and increases the tax revenue base for the city and county to put the money in. It truly is an investment it’s going to pay back pretty quickly. It sounds like yeah, no,

Ron Bunch 18:37
I’m glad you share it like that. Because I mean, like like all of us experience. I mean, everyone that’s a chamber leader does all they can do to take care of their community. And that’s all we’ve ever done. And in this instance, you know, we had probably 3000 jobs already in the transit Park. So it was generating a really nice return on investment to the city and the county, very positive. We’ve had, you know, we’ve been very blessed with success annually for years. And this envision project with 2000 jobs, the economic impact of that is more than the cumulative transport before it. Wow. So it’s it’s really hard to wrap your head around some of the numbers that and so I really firmly believe that the city and the county having confidence in investing during the pandemic made a huge difference. But we’re also have really worked with our team on recruiting and in closing projects. We’ve been a leader in developing what we call a continuum of property so there’s always property in different stages ready for us to CT project. So there’s been a lot of foundation work that then allowed this investment by the Sydney can to pay such dividends so quickly and we also had a reputation with Site Location consultants. stuff of being on go to group, a group that delivers. And so all those things kind of came together. But

Brandon Burton 20:06
amazing. Yeah, that’s a great win. And I look forward to seeing that continued development and the stories that come out of that that investment. And we’ve got,

Ron Bunch 20:15
we’ve got about five other projects teed up in the next 60 days. So we’re pretty excited.

Brandon Burton 20:22
That’s awesome. No, no rest there at the chamber. No.

Ron Bunch 20:26
That’s the other thing that all my chamber peers know. I mean, the chase and the courtship and the announcement are all exciting. But that’s about 20% of the work. Now we’ve got the 80% of the work of, you know, building 60 $70 million worth of infrastructure, helping with permitting, helping with incentives, helping them find talent. So now the real work begins.

Brandon Burton 20:46
The work, right. I love that impact that you guys are having there with economic development. Let’s, let’s shift gears over to the first program that you talked about with around talent and the minorities in engineering and tell us more about how that program works. How you guys saw the need to focus there. And you know, who’s involved with that, that program to make it successful? Yeah,

Ron Bunch 21:12
thanks. So, um, maybe a little preamble again, just to tie it together. So, you know, for the last decade, here, we’ve focused on talent, and we built what’s called SDK launch. So SDK is a region. So it’s also the labor market, 10 County area. And a launch is learning about unique and new careers here. And so that facet, we run the demand projections every month, that then guides our work. It’s interesting, because the Envision project to tie those two things together is cited our investments and our relationships that were built in SCK launch. That’s one of the key reasons why they chose because talent is tight everywhere. They like the fact that we had a decade of investment, a decade of relationship building a decade of different tactics that built on that core framework. And so that was a big difference maker in our courtship with envision the $2 billion project, the 2000 jobs. But the minorities in engineering specifically, was an effort to get more minorities in our community, to the university and into career. And so in this instance, we had about 11 1200 engineers in occupations now in our economy. But as we ran that monthly projection, we could see that there were 900, plus engineering slots that were going to be available. And so we became aware that in schools, students really didn’t have visibility to the courses to take that lead to engineering. Nor was there really a poll to draw any students into engineering, but specifically minorities. And so one of the companies that we call on this here had two parents that were minority with a daughter that was in school, and they brought this topic to us. And you know, up until then, even though we’re so engaged, it’s because we didn’t realize that facet. And so we convened five different companies that were here who all excited to come to the table, we put together a cohort. And we’ve begun to align the pathways in the school that then both engage and set up a series of courses that one would take, that could lead in engineering, and then we took, I think, 60 or so students to the university had a variety of different speakers, I got to be there for a couple hours of it was pretty awesome, because you had successful engineers talking about the profession and talking about all the different places you can go with it. And you had these students engaging with everything from virtual reality to just seeing hands on equipment to do prototypes and stuff. But it was the students came away, just really very impressed with it. And so now our goal is to increase the number of students that can participate, and to really make much more transparent. The pathway, of course, as one would take in high school, and then work with a group of companies University and school leadership, develop the right marketing materials to engage parents and students to make sure they know about not just the careers and what they pay, but the companies that would employ them here because we are blessed to have you know about 18% manufacturing here. So quite a array of engineers needed and with the automation, robotics and AI that’s really taking place. There’s a higher demand for a very sophisticated engineering to support that.

Brandon Burton 24:41
I love you when you started telling about this program, kind of making that connection between the SC K long CK Central Kentucky Yeah. And how that ties in to specifically with envision and seeing, as you’re given that response, I’m thinking this is just, it’s not just a program that you guys do. But this is part of your chamber DNA to say, This is who we are, this is what we do. And it bleeds through here as you go about other projects. To see, the value is.

Ron Bunch 25:17
That’s great. I mean, because you know, we’re inside it. And so for you to see that is very honoring, very important. I appreciate that it is. So like, I had been an economic development leader in three states before this five other positions. And even when I got here, one of the things we discovered quickly was the need for talent. And so as we started running the data, we could see that there was going to be a shortfall in data in people through the data, the only thing that pandemic did was make a bad problem, much worse. And so the fact that we chose to invest strategically, you know, back to scarcity and abundance, we knew that talent was going to be scarce. But we also knew that because of that talent was going to be critically important to our companies growing. On top of everything else we’ve done, we spent quite a bit of time and money and so like, some of my peers would raise money for the operations. We raised money to invest in school that we’ve raised and invested 2.6, we’re getting ready to invest raising investment up to two and a half, that will help us build out actual operations and each of the schools so you can have like a hands on Academy. So right now we have a credit union school, we have two stores. So it is great. If you ever have a bad day, which happens from time to time, in shame world, we just go to the school and see the young people enjoying the fruits of our labor. And we’re like, Okay, this is what matters, what’s the deal, what, put our shoulder back to the grind on make it work.

Brandon Burton 26:51
That’s right. And I love how, whenever I hear of any chamber that’s showing what the opportunities are to the youth coming up in their community to say, there’s great jobs here. Here’s a sampling of what a career could look like, if you stay here in our community. So any anytime you can do that, and you guys are obviously focused on focusing on minorities, specifically in engineering, because there’s a need there, right. And so seeing where the need is and filling that void. So I think that’s a great focus, a great area focus.

Ron Bunch 27:25
And what’s interesting, I mean, you can see two, we built it for the right reason. And then even with that program, the Envision project we won, we had no idea the level of engineering they were going to require. And so it was great that we had already done that, because we could point to what we already done that what we might do what we couldn’t do, we could point to what we had done. And so they really love the overall program, because it is a k 12. But that wasn’t important to you, because there’s going to be quite a bit of engineering and technicians is a very highly automated process in 3 million square feet to produce electric batteries that they don’t produce.

Brandon Burton 28:05
That is That is awesome. I love seeing these intertwining of these these programs. Ron, I wanted to ask you as how do you see the role of the bowling green area Chamber in your community?

Ron Bunch 28:21
Yeah, the I hate to keep going back to Horizon Report. But really, we see our role under that catalytic leadership. I mean, it’s our job really to listen to the business community, and then advocate at whatever level with local government, state government, federal government, whoever we need to advocate with, or to bring groups together early to make sure our businesses have what they need, not just today, but going forward. And you know, I think you can see that what we’re doing with adding twice the acreage at the Trent Park, good thing. So for those not viewing lights just went up in the building. So sorry for the distraction, but you know, investing in the transport, doubling in size, investing, you know, millions of dollars in the K 12 talent development is that catalytic leadership. So we seek to fill roles of convening people and doing what the community is not just today but into the future.

Brandon Burton 29:20
I love that and it shows you know that it’s, as we look at these chamber, the year finalists, it’s those who’ve really embraced the Horizon Report and have kind of leaned into that as far as what the future is like in their community are the ones that are being recognized and, and staying ahead of the curve, as I would say it to see what those needs are in their community. So I couldn’t agree more. I like asking everyone I have on the show. If you might have a tip or an action item for chambers that are listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what would you suggest

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Ron Bunch 30:04
One would be to take risks. No, it’s easy to play it safe. It’s easy to stay within the bounds of what you think the board might be accepting, or volunteers might be accepting. But you if you find the right initiatives and take those on, it will work. And so take risks would be one thing I would say, especially now, because things are changing so quickly, you’re going to have to do things that maybe you hadn’t considered before done. So that would be one thing I would say, is to take risks.

Brandon Burton 30:38
Absolutely, I see a lot of chambers don’t want to be the first one to do something, right, you want to look around and see see what other colleagues have done, how’s it worked out, let’s test the waters. But to be able to be bold and take those risks, it takes some guts, but it can pay off big time.

Ron Bunch 30:54
Yeah, I’m gonna hate to keep going back to it. But I mean, had we not invested in building the relationships have we not invested in what we’ve done both in K 12, and public workforce, we would not have won the projects that we won over the last couple years, especially. Because in that time, everyone everywhere had talent constraints, even when we talked with international companies in Japan, they have the same talent constraints. And so companies that are looking now are finding the same thing everywhere, what has helped us is we could point to a decade of investments a decade of building. And so those things made a difference for us. But it was a risk at the time to to allocate that much of our organization and to fundraise, but that versus operation of the risk is paid off.

Brandon Burton 31:44
Right. In hindsight, it made sense to focus on the future, especially with, you know, the baby boomers that would be retiring and the need for talent, but then to have that exacerbated by a worldwide pandemic, and early retirements and layoffs and all these different things. Those who were looking ahead and preparing were much better positioned to be able to weather that storm. As we look to the future of chambers, speaking of future, how do you see the future of chambers and their role going forward?

Future of Chambers

Ron Bunch 32:18
Now, I think the other thing that we have thought we had sort of dabbled in and called different things solution based selling, we finally settled on spin that Neil Rackham put out and, you know, the wrong but short version of that is to truly have a heart for the person or the business. To ask the questions, you need to ask to truly understand what their needs are and what they value. And then to seek to meet those needs and values that they have. We don’t want to be a donation, we want to provide a return on investment. So looking forward, I think, whatever you call it, whatever sales methodology you look at, I would say chambers truly having that conversation, and we set a goal, to focus on spin as our methodology, and to have a conversation with every chamber investor at least once a year, to really understand in the coming year, have your value systems changed, what do you need from us. And I think that helps us to stay relevant to stay connected. And the partners see that we’re truly interested in them. We’re not selling at them, hey, we need money for this new program or event. It’s Hey, we’re doing this because we heard from many of you that this is in demand. And they it’s paid off for us and new partners joining without even talking to sales staff retention has increased, I think we’re tracking about 89% retention, which is higher than it has been in the past. I think, while the results are still fairly early, because I want to get you know, three to five years under our belt. I think it is paying off that spending compensation. I think that’s the kind of thing that would help chambers going forward not be what we think is the thing, but do what research and conversations have told us the thing that companies need in the area

Brandon Burton 34:14
like that it does show your relevancy it shows your interest in each of those investor businesses. I’d be curious how you and maybe it’s not an answer for now, but maybe in three to five years of as you gather that feedback and what their needs are and how they’ve changed. How you avoid trying to be everything to everyone. Yeah, because you can’t accommodate every need that’s presented to you, but how do you try to group them together to see the end goal of what their needs are?

Ron Bunch 34:45
Well, you know, those things have already happened. So I mean, you know, an example of that would be SC k one, South Central Kentucky, our region again, one and that was a network. It’s an umbrella delivery from the different entrepreneurship organizations. So as we heard from that was very confusing SBDC SBA accelerator, I mean, who does what? And who do I need to talk to? So we pulled them all together and created that new brand. And now you can go to any of them, and they’ll get you to the right resource. But we, because of conversations We’ve convened, and so we don’t try to be everything to everyone we do the things that we do well, we partner with others on those things that need to exist for our businesses and make referrals to those other resources. But then we have a conversation with them about the quality of delivery that we’re looking for. So there’s a consistent kind of quality and even chamber interaction or chamber affiliate interaction.

Brandon Burton 35:41
Right, that goes back to the connector and convener role of the chamber. So absolutely. Ron, this has been a great conversation that I’ve enjoyed having you back with me on the podcast, as I like to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who’d like to reach out and learn more about how you guys are doing things and Bowling Green and maybe compete for some of these projects from you. The best way for them to reach out

Connect with Ron Bunch

Ron Bunch 36:06
well, my competitions. We just want a fair shot at it. All. Right. Yeah, so it’s Ron Bunch. So it’s ron@bgchamber.com is the email and our main lines p 270-781- 3200. So yeah, we would look for we posted multiple communities, we’ve had a lot of conversations, we love sharing things we’re doing because we want our whole country to be stronger. So anything we can do to be of assistance to our peers. We’re happy to do

Brandon Burton 36:36
absolutely. I’ll get that in the show notes for this episode. So anyone who’s walking the dog or driving the car can can look it up and reach out and connect that way but this has been a great discussion. I’m impressed with the work you guys are doing and truly making an impact there in the bowling green area. And wish you and your team best of luck with chamber the year.

Ron Bunch 36:56
Thank you sir appreciate appreciate what you’re doing to to share these best practices there, but I think it really helps get the word out for each chamber can be better for their community.

Brandon Burton 37:05
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West Des Moines Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Katherine Harrington

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

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

Introduction

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

And now, your host, he can’t stand the sound of an art board being folded. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton. Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

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

Brandon Burton 1:02
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Guest Introduction

You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2022 ACC chamber the year finalist series and our guest for this episode is Katherine Harrington. Katherine is a ballerina turned executive as and as the President and CEO of the West Des Moines chamber in Iowa over the last two years in this role, she created an avid fan base and several new programs including the International black and brown Business Summit, the DEI Workplace Excellence Awards, Best of the West awards, Raccoon River rally, Fall Festival, W DM newsletter and more. Katherine has an extensive background in public speaking media sales, revenue stream creation, event development and leadership with organizations including US magazine and New York City, Crain’s Chicago Business San Diego Business Journal DSM magazine and the Des Moines business record. She also bootstrapped and ran her own glassy technology magazine events and digital news organization serving leaders in the booming tech and internet industries in San Diego called the tea sector at the Des Moines business record, she was Director of Innovation was the number one sales producer and started the lucrative innovation Iowa magazine, weekly news and a yearly awards event. Katherine has a passion for helping others and is on the board for several local organizations and foundations. Her early ballet career led to her Interlochen Arts Academy full time at the at 1415 Pacific Northwest Ballet School and Corniche Institute of Allied Arts and San Francisco Ballet School at 16 Tulsa Ballet Theatre at 17 and scholarship with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 18 in New York City, it was in New York that Arthur Mitchell of Dance Theatre of Harlem said Katherine Harrington dances with her heart and you can see love coming out of her pores. Katherine received the W dem chamber MLK Jr. Community Organization Leadership Award as a winner of the great outdoor foundation and most valuable Philanthropist Award. finalist for the inspiring women of Iowa award was voted one of the most likeable by CityView magazine. Katherine has three successful children. Allie who’s a lawyer with Mayor Brown in Chicago. Nick is a real estate executive with compass and a real estate investor in Milwaukee. And Caitlin is a leader in supply chain at Target in Minneapolis. She’s married to Craig Walter, his biology and chemistry teacher at Valley High School. Katherine and her two daughters also started a widely claimed podcast in 2022 called what the fam you can listen to them on Apple podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. But Katherine, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast. Congratulations for being selected as a chamber of the year finalist. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something else interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Katherine Harrington 4:59
Now Have allbranded I just first of all, thank you for doing this, thank you for hosting this really important venue to help share for others to grow and build their chambers and their communities. So this is great, what a great service you have just kudos to you for for ID ating. And doing this and putting it together and, and making it happen. Wow, you read my whole entire bio, so I’m a little embarrassed. So Wow. And it’s kind of fun to you know, it’s Gosh, I’ve done a lot in my years. I didn’t realize they’re gonna read the whole bio, but, but I don’t think I have any more thing.

Brandon Burton 5:37
I was gonna trim it up as I went through. There’s a lot of good stuff here.

Katherine Harrington 5:42
Embarrassed Oh, my gosh. But I don’t like to talk so much about me. I like to talk about others. So I’m a little blushing right here. But for that intro,

Brandon Burton 5:54
from? Well, why don’t you instead of focusing on yourself, tell us a little bit more about the West Des Moines chamber so we can get a better idea of the type of chamber you are the size, staff budget, the scope of work that you do, and that sort of thing to kind of set the tone for our discussion.

About the West Des Moines Chamber

Katherine Harrington 6:12
Yeah, well, that’s a topic I can talk all day and night on. So absolutely. I actually started this role on April Fool’s Day of 2020. So and I had had no prior chamber experience at all. So this is a new world for me. But I’m a big idea person, I love to build ideas. I can’t stop that idea brain. It is constantly going and growing.

Brandon Burton 6:40
Kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time isn’t

Katherine Harrington 6:43
exactly it. You’re right, Brandon, like if you love ideas, and if you love to see them grow and nurture and help others chamber life is for you. But you’re right. It’s a blessing and a curse, you have to understand what you can do, what capacity you and your team have, and what you can maybe scrap or or say, well, we’ll do that in five years. Right? So it’s just hard to say no to all the cool things that that we can do. But the chamber, West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, we will be 100 years old in 2024. So that’s pretty impressive. We’ve been around for a very long time. So it was certainly a I’m on the shoulder of giants, as they say when I joined a couple years ago. So it, it’s been a wonderful experience. The pandemic was right during that time as well. So I remember our former president training me and she said, Katherine, I think this pandemic is just going to last for about a week or so. And then I think we’re going to we’re gonna be through it at you know, and here we are, right. So I was I was, I loved her positivity. But you know, the facts bore out that it was much longer. But it was actually a really beautiful time to look at everything we were doing and understand, you know, how can we serve our community during this amazingly challenging time for humans and neighbors and our businesses? And, you know, what do they need. So, honestly, it was a gift to start during this really challenging time. Because we first of all, we had just one team member left, we have six team members, we’re hiring another team member, we’re growing. And we started with just one team member. So it was kind of nice, I could hire our own staff and build our own culture. We are huge culture advocates, we feel like that extends to not just the chamber, but to our city into our businesses. We’re trying to create the best culture in America, in our city. So it was really neat to onboard people that have the same loving acumen to help others. But we have 711 members and around almost 100 years. So now we’re gonna have seven team members and we really have a separate division which is our workforce division which is kind of unusual for some chambers so so that’s a little bit a little bit about

Brandon Burton 9:18
us. Yeah, that that will help as we get into our topic today is a chamber the year finalists but I what I like to do is focus the majority of our discussion on the the two programs you guys submitted on your chamber your application, and we’ll get into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

All right, Katherine, we’re back. So as I mentioned before, will will highlight the two programs synopsis on your chamber, the your application, if you would just talk to us a little bit at a high level what the two programs are, and then we’ll circle back into some more detail on each of them.

Katherine Harrington 12:01
Yeah, so one is we started a black and brown Business Summit. And this was really the motivation because of the murder of George Floyd and the uprising in our city as well as around the world. And we want our city to be the most welcoming city in the world. And how do we do that? So we are all about making big noise for our city, because it helps spotlight who we are, you know, we’re not, we’re not on a beach. We’re not on an ocean. We’re not on a mountain. So we have to think really unusual. And think big if we’re going to make some noise for our city. So we started through really a community saying how can we support black and brown businesses and see them grow and nurture and become billionaires? Not just, you know, 1000 air but a billionaire? So the Athene, it’s now called the Athene black and brown Business Summit, it is something that we’ve had 23 countries, people in 23 countries view we telecast it. So it’s it’s a hybrid event, but it’s extensive. So that’s, that’s number one. Okay, we love that event. And then our second program that we’re spotlighting is our 15th year, the Western Moines Leadership Academy, and it grows and builds every year, with leaders all ages, all companies that, that join that we have a pretty rigorous application process, but we have to narrowed it down which is hard to 33 people in the region. And it’s a little different than most leadership academies, but but those are our two that we highlighted in the application.

Brandon Burton 13:51
Very good. So let’s circle back to the first one, the Black and Brown Business Summit. As you launch that business summit, how did you structure it? How did you get the word out? How did you build up the hype for this? Building upon the the emotion really, that was going throughout the country?

Katherine Harrington 14:11
Yeah, it takes a team. It takes a community to support that. So our team, we started a dei committee, and that’s led by now our board chair Angela Jackson, and she’s an entrepreneur, small business owner, and she’s also in charge of the EI one of our largest employers here called a theme. And we created our dei Committee, which helped to start and grow that black and brown Business Summit. So that then spun into six different committees. So we have a lot of community members near 200 volunteers that help to support that event. Because that event is a is a two day conference, but within it are many smaller events all very meaningful To help build and grow and inspire the Black and Brown business community, so part of it is a pitch competition the first day, we have a pitch competition. First year, we gave out $10,000 to the winners. And this year, we gave out $42,000 to the winners, wow. So a lot of a lot of money, cash. And that’s all raised through sponsorship through sponsorships, and we do well with sponsorships, people want to be aligned with this brand, they want to be aligned, and they want to help these businesses grow. So it’s really a great forum to provide that connection for those sponsors. But so that’s day one, there’s lots of programming, education, learning, practicing your pitch, we bring in experts from around the world, to help these people, you know, figure out what is their pitch, and then on the main stage, they do their pitch on day one. And then day two is, oh, my gosh, lots and lots of sessions and breakouts with everything. You name it, like social media, how, you know, how do you run your social media marketing, branding, Bitcoin, you know, just different things. We’re trying to be on the cutting edge of knowledge for these folks to help them really achieve success. And then we have a keynote, we had Daymond John of ABC Shark Tank Shark Tank was our keynote this year. But it is a sincere pleasure. We also have a fundraising component to the summit and we fundraise for nonprofit organizations at the same time that support black and brown businesses. So so that’s pretty neat, too. And every year that that changes. So there’s a lot involved in all of this programming.

Brandon Burton 16:45
That is awesome. That is every follow up question I had for you, you are hitting right after

Katherine Harrington 16:52
I need to practice for the big interview, right?

Brandon Burton 16:54
That’s right, you’re covering all the great points. So I love the idea that pitch competition, and then having those breakout sessions and trainings really to how to be more effective and future thinking about your business. I think you’d mentioned Bitcoin. And I think that there’s, you know, in the crypto world and NF Ts and Bitcoin, like that’s going to be a big part of the future of business. And chambers and businesses alike need to get on board and realize what that impact can be. And you’re not holding back any punches with your keynote speakers either. John is awesome. Yeah,

Katherine Harrington 17:31
yeah. We, it’s neat. It’ll be fun to see where we go with our keynote this year. So yeah, yeah, fingers. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:39
Well, let’s, let’s shift gears, then over to the West Des Moines Leadership Academy, and talk to us about what that entails. And maybe what sets it apart from other leadership classes that other chambers might put on. Yeah,

Katherine Harrington 17:54
it’s really, really interesting what we do there some leadership academies, you learn more about the city, you might learn more about, like how the police is run, or how, you know, planning and zoning is run or city council, things like that. But we take the Leadership Academy, we kind of put it on its side a little bit. And we go deep into the humanity of you as a leader. What makes a good leader? And and that’s a complicated answer. And that’s multifaceted. So we have experts that come in are experts in their field, to really try to help those leaders know who they are, first of all, a lot of people we think we might be self aware, but only 10% of humans are really literally self aware. So you know, how self aware are you analyzing that understanding how you can become more self aware. And great leaders make great companies. So that’s what we want to train our great leaders so that they then as they’re leading their company, or soon to be leading their company, we’re trying to give them that incredible humanity, caring, loving, honest, open, transparent acumen that they can take to their companies. And, and it’s really, that they can also take to their personal lives, because we’re teaching them not only how to be a great leader, but a great human. So it’s, it is very intensive. And sometimes there’s crying in these, because you learn a lot about yourself that you did not see or you could not see or you didn’t want to see. So it is absolutely it’s like a therapy session. Right. So, so it’s it’s really neat, but another component of a Leadership Academy is nonprofit fundraising. We love to raise money for others in our town and most of our signature events have a component of nonprofit fundraising, based around sponsorship so so we the leadership can’t To me this year raised nearly $50,000, for the local community school district, for refugees that are coming into our city that don’t have the resources don’t have the means to find the housing, whatever that they’re looking for. So we raised $50,000, for a refugee program in our city, so impactful.

Brandon Burton 20:23
That is awesome. I know, just locally, I’m in the Dallas area. And my wife through our church was very involved with refugees, a couple of walls, I guess, was pre COVID. And they were allowed to, and some of the most humble people and great experiences working with them and hearing their stories and just life changing. So the fact that you guys are raising funds to help out those refugees, it changes lives. So that is a huge impact in your community.

Katherine Harrington 20:53
Is that need to be part of the chamber where you can change people’s lives. I mean, I’ve, I’ve worked for nonprofit organizations my whole life. And I should have started the chamber years ago for and I’ve only been involved for a little over two years. And I’m just like, Oh, I love it with all my heart. It’s amazing work.

Brandon Burton 21:10
Yes. So tell me a little bit more about the discovering the self awareness. So you mentioned now it’s like a therapy session. I as you’re talking about it, I’m picturing all the aha moments where people are like, oh, you know what, I’ve been living my whole life on somebody else’s agenda. You know, let me realize who I am and what I want. So is that kind of how you see things unfold? Or what are? What are some of the experiences that you’ve seen come out of that?

Katherine Harrington 21:38
Well, yeah, we literally have. So we have a number of expert speakers and book writers that are nationally published, that we do hire we pay, you have to audition to be one of our leadership academy trainers. And we do have a super high standard. So we built a great reputation for that. So there are a ha moments. I mean, I remember one woman in particular, you know, standing up saying, you’ve changed my life, this is life changing. And the fact that I know this now, you know, I can take this everywhere with me wherever I go, it was just something really personal. But that that is incredible. That’s so meaningful. So it’s just very fulfilling.

Brandon Burton 22:24
Yeah. And I mean, that’s the, for me, that’s the whole point of a chamber is to be able to, you know, improve your community. And to be able to start with changing individual lives, especially if those people are business owners, the refugees that are coming to the country and starting businesses starting a life here, all of it is going to play into a greater city, a greater community overall. So that kind of transitions into the next question I was going to ask you is, how do you view the role of the Western chamber? What what is your role in your community from your stance? Oh, goodness,

Katherine Harrington 23:02
well, we want to put Western Moines on the map worldwide, literally, and no idea is too, too big or too small to do that. And right now, our biggest need in our community is talent, attraction, workforce attraction. And so we are trying to do everything we can to bring more people to West Des Moines. Now, the way people choose their cities, and places they work is they choose the city first. And then they’ll choose where they want to work after they’ve mobilized and figure out what city do I want to live in. So we are trying along with our city of West Des Moines team, we work closely with them. We’re really trying to trying to create that best city in America to live work and play in every facet. But our job is to promote our city. Think of those big ideas that we can activate and make happen. Because we can we’ve got the means we’ve got the desire, we got the passion, and we can find the money, whatever it is. So we’ve got some really exciting ideas for the future. But we just published for instance, a magazine called 515 West and it is a talent attraction magazine. It is a showpiece. We are going to put it up for some awards, but it’s beautifully designed, captivating, you know, double page spreads that highlights our people or humanity or the beautiful parts of our city, or Parks and Recreation. And we’re gonna be advertising that magazine across the country and targeting key cities that may not have all of the great amenities like West Des Moines has, right? We have a safe, safe community. Our housing prices are low compared to some of your, you know, major cities, our traffic, we don’t have any traffic jams. It’s like 10 minutes to get everywhere. So that We have really, really, really friendly humans, like everybody here is for others. It’s not about me, it’s about how can I help you. And everybody has that acumen. And we’re continually trying to build that and model for others. So we’re huge model. And we’re modeling for the community, right? This is, how can I help you? So we are excited to advertise the 515, West magazine in LA, Denver, Boston, Hartford, Connecticut, because we are a financial and insurance center in the US. But we’re LA, Chicago. So cities like that where you know, it every thought of West Des Moines. style. Yeah, exactly. So we’re going to do a social media campaign in those cities promoting our city to hopefully cross our fingers build interest, awareness and attention and love for our city.

Brandon Burton 25:55
So hopefully, it doesn’t bring the traffic jams with it. Well,

Katherine Harrington 25:59
I know infrastructure is Uh huh. Our whole region has a march to a million theme, which, you know, we’re all we’re all trying to bring more people here to our beautiful city and more people from all over the world all over the country and world. So yeah, and you asked earlier, Brandon, our size of a chamber, we just reached a million dollars in revenue, which is we, that’s new for us. So a million dollar chamber, and even through the pandemic. So, we’ve, we’ve we’ve done really well with serving our community. So yeah, we’re strong chamber.

Brandon Burton 26:36
That is awesome. So as a chamber, the year finalists, I look at all the finalists as as they were kind of setting the benchmark in the chamber world, you guys are doing great things. And I’m curious to see if you have any tips or action items for chambers who are listening who might are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level? What suggestions would you have for them?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Katherine Harrington 27:00
I would say don’t be afraid to make bold decisions. Don’t compare yourselves to other chambers. Be unique. Be yourself. Go big. And, you know, I think that’s huge. And that’s just something that, that we challenge ourselves every day, how big can we think how big can we go. And then from a culture perspective, we live, eat and breathe positivity and loving others, and caring for others. So having that acumen I think will set you apart from other other organizations, other people, it is very, very important to keep that positive mindset and look at things on the positive side, chamber life is a lot as we all know, if you’re listening to this, you’re part of a chamber you know, you know, many people walk through your door every day, you get interesting phone calls you you know you have, you’re dealing with so many so many beautiful people in the world. But always see, the positive side always know it’s from comes from a place of good intent. Don’t you know, I’m just always about loving others, and you never know what somebody else is going through. So always give them love back, even if you might not be getting it right. Because sometimes people walk in the door, and they may not be happy about something, it rarely happens to us. But I’ve heard other chambers, you know, having difficulty and I’ve been reading the other blogs and the Facebook, you know, different pages and channels and stuff. But just charging through doing all you can to help others and love others and model for others I think is is just so important to us.

Brandon Burton 28:51
And that goodwill will come back to you as well. Even if they’re not in a mind frame of state of mind to return that love at some point, it always comes back around. So I like that advice. And I like the idea of being bold and going big. Because I think a lot of chambers might be a little scared to go too bold or too big because any fallout that may happen or risk that comes along with it. But you know, have those big dreams and it’s not so much for to make a risk. But to make a difference in your community. You have to dream big and and be bold. So I love that.

Katherine Harrington 29:33
It’s so true. And a lot of it too is imagining revenue streams that are new, unique, different that nobody else is maybe doing because to be a chamber you have to build revenue because you’ve got overhead. Of course you’ve got your staff, but thinking of new ways that you’ve never thought of before to monetize things. You know, we’re a business just like every other business. So treating it like a business is not like a nonprofit, but like a business. We partnered, for instance, our chamber has never done this before in the history of our chamber, we’re partnering with an organization, and we’re selling culture licenses. So we’re helping companies and humans understand what it means to create great culture at their organizations. And because culture is more than we’ve got a beanbag chair over here, and we, you know, we’ve got fabulous beer Fridays, and you get to get off at one o’clock, its culture is a lot more than that. It’s more than than a ping pong table that gets dusty in the middle of the, you know, break room, right? So. So there is a science behind it, there is a science around it. So we’re trying to help companies understand how they can create the best culture. And so we’re starting to launch a program called better culture brought to you by the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, and it’s a neat online program self paced, and very, very valuable information. So we’re really excited about that. So, you know, so think of revenue streams that you can build. They know how that helps you grow as a chamber. So that’s, that’s one thing I would say to

Brandon Burton 31:16
like that. And I would, I could sit here and pick your brain for the next hour or two about different revenue stream ideas. But maybe we save that for another conversation. Yes, yeah. So no chambers all over always looking towards the future. And you gave great advice of looking for those revenue streams and staying relevant. But how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Katherine Harrington 31:41
Wow. You know, as chambers become larger, it’s interesting in our in our region, we have 24 chambers in our city, which your eyes Brandon’s eyes got big right now. And it’s like, there’s a lot of choices, right. But chambers are in a very unique position to think innovatively creatively, to work with their cities to do the same. I see Chambers as really the leader that helps cities grow and flourish and become the city of the future. And that all depends upon your team, your team has to have that acumen. Right. They have to be that innovative, passionate, hard working mindset in order to do that, but I really see chambers being this, the leaders to help drive those cities for the future thinking of placemaking opportunities, you know, like, what can we do? Mayor, you know, what can we do a mayor city of West Des Moines to create placemaking opportunities that we don’t have here that helps attract the best talent. Maybe we have an indoor, I don’t know, an indoor downhill ski resort. You know, again, we don’t have mountains or an ocean and palm trees. But think big, like, what are the things that we don’t have that will attract and draw, and I listened to a podcast this morning. I love podcasting. It’s so fun. And they talked about small cities being Guinness book world record holders at on various things. One is the largest ball of twine. Okay, but it’s, but it’s a city attraction mechanism. It is, you know, it’s like this draws this ball of twine draws people to the city. So you know, so I see the Chamber’s as as real innovative hub to help cities build the city of the future. And if cities work together like we do, we have a really strong relationship with our city. And we work closely together because they are just incredible. We all have common goals, right. But I see us as the real innovators, that’s going to propel a city forward.

Brandon Burton 33:52
I love that great, great answer. Great response. I live podcast too. So clearly. Katherine, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you and learn more about how you guys are doing things there in West Des Moines. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Connect with Katherine Harrington

Katherine Harrington 34:13
Yeah, sure. My email katherine@wdmchamber.org. And you can see all of our contact information at wdmchamber.org. Our hashtag we’re using is #GoWestWDM and my cell phone number which never leaves my hip Much to my husband’s chagrin is 515-689-4447.

Brandon Burton 34:47
Right now, I’ll get that in the show notes for this episode as well. So anybody listening can go there to find that contact information. But Katherine, this has been great having you on the show. Great discussion, you guys. We’re making a huge impact in your city. And I wish you guys Best of luck as chamber the year.

Katherine Harrington 35:05
Thank you, Brandon. I just want to say, you know, I, I steer the ship, but I don’t you know, I don’t I don’t drive it. Well, I steer it but I don’t. I don’t I’m not the engine, right? Yeah engine of the ship as our team and they are incredible people. And they’re so smart, and they’re so intelligent, I learn something new from them every day. And our board. Our committees are, you know, I could go on and on and on hundreds of members, they’re just all in it together. And I love it so much. So it’s not about me, it’s about our village and our beautiful community and people that support it. So thank you to the chamber team.

Brandon Burton 35:47
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Your audience is waiting to hear from you as a convener of leaders and influencers champion for business and catalyst for change within your community.

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

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Mason City Chamber-ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalist with Robin Anderson

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

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

Introduction

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

Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host, he just launched a chamber podcasting course. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it is my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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

Kris Johnson 0:47
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:28
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

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

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

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

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

Get started with your own Chamber Podcast and shortcut your learning curve with the Chamber Podcast Course offered by Chamber Chat Podcast.

Guest Introduction

Our guests for this episode. This is a 2022 ACCE chamber the year finalist series that we’re putting out right now but our guests for this episode is Robin Anderson. Robin has served as president and CEO of the Mason City Chamber in Iowa since 2001. As a native of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, She’s a graduate of the University of Iowa and holds a master’s degree in servant leadership. prior to sending her role with the Chamber she spent 20 years in the banking industry serving as both a local bank president and as a regional executive overseeing operations for Bank of America’s 21 I will locations she earned both professional designations of IOM from the US Chamber and CCE from ACC. Rob Robin is a past chair of MIT American Chamber of Commerce executives, the Iowa chamber Alliance and the Iowa Chamber of Commerce executives. She was selected as a fellow with ACCE educational attainment division and is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100. Robin, I’m excited to have you back with me on chamber chat podcast, you were a guest last year if anybody wants to go back, it was episode 129 as the Mason City Chamber was a chamber, the year finalist last year as well. So this is exciting to have you back. But why don’t you take a minute to say hello to all the chamber champions and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Robin Anderson 4:01
Sure, well, hello, everybody. Um, as was mentioned, I’m a recovering banker. But now I have actually spent more time in the chamber industry than I did in banking. And I’m looking forward actually, I’m a little ambivalent that I’m going to be retiring at the end of 2022. So I’m looking forward to a new chapter in my life.

Brandon Burton 4:32
Yeah, I can imagine that. He’s saying that. There’s a little bit of looking forward to it. I know you’ve got plans, I’m sure. Well, tell us a little bit about the Mason City Chamber, size staff budget just to give us an idea before we get into our discussion.

About the Mason City Chamber

Robin Anderson 4:50
Sure. Um, we are a chamber of 4.5 FTE. We have four full timers one part Heimer and we frequently have an intern as often as we can attract one anyway. And we serve a nine county region in north central Iowa basin city, although we’re a small community of less than 30,000 people were that tally seat Trade Center sort of place for North Iowa and we have about 650 number of businesses from this region and our budget is around a half a million.

Brandon Burton 5:42
That really helps to kind of give us a perspective. As we get into our discussion today as a chamber the year finalist, I like to focus our discussions on the the two programs that were submitted on your chamber the year application, and we’ll dive into that discussion as soon as you get back from this quick break.

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Topic-Chamber of the Year Application Programs

All right, Robin, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’ll address the two programs that you guys put on your chamber your applications here. I’d like for you just to maybe just from a high level just mentioned what the two programs are and then we can dive in a little bit deeper on some of those details.

Robin Anderson 9:05
Sure. I think we are not unlike a lot of other chambers in that we are very much focused on workforce attraction and retention. So both of our programs have to do with that. The first one is called Building community with an emphasis on the unity and we have positioned our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative as a workforce attraction and retention strategy. And the other program is a chamber initiative also for workforce attraction to use historic, architecturally significant proper Eddie, as short term furnished housing for college intern.

Brandon Burton 10:08
Right, so maybe let’s let’s dive in a little bit deeper on that one, since that’s the one you just mentioned. So this historic property tell us the history of it, and how the chamber came about this and kind of the solution you guys did.

Robin Anderson 10:22
Well, Mason City has a growing reputation as a destination for architecture. We have the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in the world that was restored about 10 years ago. And we also have the largest collection of Prairie School homes that are unified by a common setting in the world. So as a result of those things, Conde Nast Traveler, has twice named Mason City, on its list of the world’s best cities for architectures. So that puts our teeny Mason City Iowa, alongside Dubai and Paris and Miami and Seattle, and Istanbul, and Tel Aviv. So it’s pretty remarkable. So when historic property was flooded, and was in the theme of buyout, there were a lot of people in the community saying, wow, you know, how could we let this home be demolished. And the reason that this house is not the primary school style that we’re famous for, it’s actually a combination of Art Moderne and international style. But what makes it really unique is, it’s the first architectural styles that place the garage at the front of the house. Previous to that time, garages were behind the houses, and you access them through an alleyway. And at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, they heralded this motor home as the house of the future. And it really sort of signifies the American middle classes growing love affair with the automobile where we put our garages right out front. And this house actually even had a double garage, which in 1939, was pretty remarkable. So anyway, this is the house that was flooded. And we just saw a need to find a way to save this house. But then how are you going to cashflow it long term. And one of the things that we’ve been hearing from our employers is that we have no residential hotels like a Residence Inn, within 100 miles of Mason City. And we have no apartments that were available for short term rentals. So when businesses wanted to attract a college intern, their pool was really limited to people who could arrange for their own housing with families, or friends. And so they’ve been we’ve been talking for a while about how do we get some short term furnished housing? Well, this house has five bedrooms and four bathrooms. And so we decided, you know, I wonder if we could rent out these room to interns or medic healthcare, students who are in town on rotations, and that we actually hired MBA cohort to do a study a feasibility study on this for us, and they found that yet, today’s students if they had access to short term furnished housing, at a nice price, would not object to sharing a laundry room sharing the kitchen and sharing bathroom. And so that is sort of what we put out there. Sadly, we received our occupancy permit on March 30 of 20. At that time, a lot of businesses stopped having in turn, a lot of medical school rotation sort of stopped. And so we had a period of time where just the caretaker was living in the lower level apartment, but now I’m happy to say we’re full and for the summer, we could have filled this house with interns several times, and we also since we were able to start accepting interns a little over a year ago, we’ve actually had several businesses who have hired their intern full time, because they had such a great experience living in the house, and also participating in our college Connections program, which we run in tandem to the housing project.

Brandon Burton 15:31
That’s awesome. I don’t know if enough time has passed it to really tell if if it really is a spike, obviously, it would be a spike in the summer for interns to come. But if it’s something that you can keep full throughout the year as well, do you have any kind of feedback yet, as far as the demand throughout the rest of yeah,

Robin Anderson 15:48
we’ve actually, we have one of the rooms that one employer has reserved through December of 2023. And we have other employers who are interested in just renting their room so that they have it there for insurance, because we had a lot of disappointed people who couldn’t get in the house. And we’re also looking, there’s another historic property in town that we’re looking at doing the same with the same thing with because this seems to be a model that works. And I think this could be a model that could work in other communities.

Brandon Burton 16:31
That was my next question is, if this isn’t, it sounds like a good business model that a chamber could adapt or even spin off, you know, onto another nonprofit at some point?

Robin Anderson 16:41
Well, exactly. Because, you know, a lot of communities get behind the saving historic homes. But the problem is, there’s not, you can’t just run them as a House Museum. You know, there’s just not enough revenue, you know, people might be interested in seeing one. But that is not enough revenue to keep something going. And so we really feel like, as long as you can get it done without debt, you should be able to generate enough revenue from rental of the rooms to pay utilities, taxes, and

Brandon Burton 17:28
on what a neat story to for those interns that stay there to be able to talk about their time doing an internship and staying in this historic house and Mason City, like they’re gonna remember that. And it’s a lot better than staying at a residence. And even if you guys have one in town,

Robin Anderson 17:41
well, exactly. And that was kind of what we thought to we thought. And we really prefer rather, you know, we could fill it with all med students and rotation, we could fill it probably with all student teachers, we could, you know, kick of engineering engineers, whatever, but we really feel like they’ll have a richer experience. If there’s a mix in the room or in the house. And that at least last summer, we had a really good mix. And then when we did as the students moved out, and we did exit interview, they really did enjoy not having everybody be exactly like them. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 18:27
That’s great. I love that, that that program. So let’s shift gears over to building community. I’d like to play on unity and community and tell us what how did that program come about? What’s it about? I know it’s workforce related. But let’s dive a little deeper into that program.

Robin Anderson 18:48
Well, it is I’ll start by giving you a quick demographic. And that 2010 census, Mason City was about 94.6% Caucasian, and in the 2020 census were 93%. Caucasian. Though we haven’t made a lot of progress in terms of diversity, we also 40.3% of our labor force in our county is age 55 to 64. And our population is shrinking. So when we look at our talent pipeline and our workforce for the future, it’s very worrisome. So the quickest way for us to deal with this is to recruit people to our community, who don’t look like that. And despite the fact that we don’t have much diversity, we really feel like we are a welcoming community. So we have positioned our DEI efforts as a workforce attraction strategy. And we’re doing diversity, equity and inclusion training with our employers, and actually certifying them as an inclusive employer. And then the trip chamber provides them with our building community. Little logo that they can we, we have door claims and or window claims, but also just a little bugs that they can use on their website or on their employment application material. And we have steps that businesses can take to be more inclusive no matter what size they are. And sort of another part of this strategy is we have a community concierge program. And that is led by the Chamber supported very heavily by our members, we give customized community tours, we provide lower pieces in the form of a video brochure that can be customized for one, applicant. And then we provide follow up services. So if somebody moves to our community, who’s that engineer, and they’re Lebanese, and they want to know where they can go to get this Lebanese ingredient, we know where they can go. And we provide that follow up as long as they needed until they get really integrated into the community. And so again, it’s sort of like the intern project. We’re not doing anything huge. We’re just trying to chip away at this workforce attraction problem, one person at a time.

Brandon Burton 22:20
So it helped me understand and maybe maybe I do understand, I just needed a little clarification. But so is the basis of this program to educate the employers about, you had mentioned the DEA and AI, training and everything, but for them to be more diverse in seeking talent, or are you doing that and then still, proactively looking for and trying to draw the diverse workforce into your community?

Robin Anderson 22:52
All of those things? Okay. You know, and I, and I think we’re, you know, just like everybody else, you know, workforce attraction, and retention is not one thing, it’s a million thing. And we really take the public position, that workforce attraction and retention is everybody’s job. Because if we can’t get the workforce that we need, we, you know, we’re short on physicians right now. Well, that’s a quality of life issue. You know, if you don’t have enough doctors in your community, that’s an issue for everyone. And

Brandon Burton 23:31
let’s be honest, with today’s workforce, it’s all a quality of life issue, right? If you can go to a restaurant and get served, it’s a quality of life issue.

Robin Anderson 23:41
Yeah, I mean, it’s everything. So we’re really that’s why. And our chamber is sort of known for using art to solve public problem. We’ve launched a sculptural walk public art program, we’ve done murals on the backs of ugly downtown buildings, too. And so what we’re doing what we decided to do to sort of launch this effort was do a community mural. And then also sort of reinforced that with billboards with a mural image, so that our whole community knows that we all need to be more welcoming not just employers, but neighborhoods and restaurants and schools and everybody this is everybody’s job and it really is a unity thing. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 24:45
I love that and it is such a unifying force to once you can get everybody on board with it. I love those. The videos you talked about to personalize these messages, this video brochures because that in If anybody listening if you’re not doing that, that is a almost becoming a standard in the in the industry as far as workforce and talent attraction is to be able to customize these packages to be able to say, Okay, you’re a Muslim, here’s the mosque in our community, here’s the, you know, grocery stores, what the, that you know, how you would fit in in our community, and really help them feel comfortable. So, Robin, go ahead.

Robin Anderson 25:27
Well, I was just gonna say in chambers, ours is so well positioned. Because all these businesses that provide all these services are our members. And so nobody knows where all these resources are better than chambers.

Brandon Burton 25:45
Right? Even better than Google. Oh,

Robin Anderson 25:50
better. We can give personal testimony.

Brandon Burton 25:53
That’s right. So Robin as a as a chamber, the year finalists, I see all the finalists is kind of setting a standard of sorts for chambers to look towards, and to kind of try to elevate their community, if you will. But I wanted to ask how do you view the role of your chamber in your community?

Robin Anderson 26:17
Well, we are sort of a poker and a broader I, and I think City Hall would say that too. You know, there’s a lot of people that kind of get hung up, and you can spend a lot of time wringing your hands and naming all the problems. And I think what we’re best known for, is actually doing something. And, you know, these Synopsys are examples of things that we do that might be small, but at least we’re moving forward and making a difference. And it can be paralyzing when sometimes, you know, we could look at our demographics, and be paralyzed and spend a lot of time talking about how terrible this is. But that’s not going to help us. And, you know, but it’s easy to get caught up in that, oh, this is terrible. This is terrible. And small towns like ours, across America, are facing these same issues. So we’re just trying to dig in. And, you know, we’ve really encouraged our city, when interest rates are low, this is the time to invest in infrastructure and invest in things, and down the road, you know, we’re going to be glad we did. And that really is a role of government. And now because of funding that’s been provided to government, this really, really is the time to position ourselves for the future. So I think the fact that we get the best business minds in the community, on our board, and we really utilize them, not for attending our golf outing, or networking events, or those kinds of things. When we get them around the board table, we really talk about what issue is facing, you know, what are the issues you’re facing as a business? And what can we collectively do to make it better, has really made a difference to us, and I think has really helped to muscle build our organization?

Brandon Burton 28:56
Yeah, I think that’s so key to use some of those more influential people in your community for things that really matter. And it not that a golf tournament doesn’t matter, but on a scale of importance in a community, there’s probably some heavier topics, some more impactful things that you can, you know, utilize those individuals in to leverage their influence and and people they know and everything else. So I think that is a great, a great piece of advice, which was going to be my next thing I was going to ask if you have any tips or action item, maybe that a chamber listening could do to help take their chamber up to the next level?

Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions

Robin Anderson 29:38
Um, well, I think the best advice that I have is I’ll leave you with a quote. The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But most of all the world needs dreamers who do and And I think chambers are in a great position to dream. But we’re also business people. And we do. And so that’s sort of what we try to live by around here. That’s great.

Brandon Burton 30:17
I love that. Very good, very good piece of advice. So thank you. So I like asking everyone I have on the show. And I don’t know if you remember your response last year when you’re on. But I’d like to ask how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Future of Chambers

Robin Anderson 30:34
Well, I think to stay relevant, we really do need to keep changing. And I am amazed when I look at the horizon initiative, at how clairvoyant, many of those items were, that I think one of the things that we learned coming out of COVID is customization, that our businesses, you know, the email blasts are in the past. And we really need to be customizing our messaging and directing it to the people who care about that particular thing. And that’s going to take investments in technology. And that’s going to take critical thinking, and it’s going to take change, we are going to be able to do things, the way we’ve always done them. And that’s one of the things as I look toward retirement. I think, you know, there’s probably a lot of things I’ve been doing the same way for, you know, the past 20 some years. And I think it’ll be really good for our chamber to have some new blood and some new ideas and some new eyes and ears that can take our chamber to the next level.

Brandon Burton 32:05
Sure, I think that is, it is always a good thing, I think to have a new perspective that that comes and and whether it’s a change in the chamber executive or or even just as your board turns over year to year that brings perspective as well. But it is important to keep changing and customize that messaging. So thank you. Robin, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who might want to reach out and connect with you, especially over the next six months before you go off into retirement. About anything that you’ve mentioned today or how you guys are doing things that Mason City Chamber what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you sure,

Connect with Robin Anderson

Robin Anderson 32:47
um, email is still the best way for me or if you’re at ACCE convention, you can hit me up there. But my email address is randerson@masoncityia.com.

Brandon Burton 33:07
Right and I will get that in our show notes for this episode as well. But Robin It’s been great having you back on chamber chat podcast, great circumstances to have you back as a chamber the year finalist again, and I wish you guys the best of luck this year as as chamber the year.

Robin Anderson 33:24
Thank you very much. We’re going to try hard.

Brandon Burton 33:27
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Lessons Learned to Start 2022

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes, 30 seconds.

As we are starting a new year, we are still in the midst of this worldwide COVID pandemic.  I thought it would be helpful to share some tips in the written form to help you shortcut the work at your Chamber by sharing some lessons learned over the past 3 years of producing the Chamber Chat Podcast.  

What Have We Learned?

Many Chambers are operating with fewer staff at the moment.  Many have shifted what their working environment looks like by allowing for more work from home opportunities.  Depending on where you are located, there may still be restrictions on the number of people who can gather at events.  Each of these challenges present unique obstacles but I believe they also provide opportunities for growth.  

Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, states that “Inside every problem lies an opportunity”.

Chambers have had to take a strong look at their value propositions and mission statements.  As Chambers have done this, they have found ways to prove and show their relevance more than ever.

I have now been working in the Chamber world for over 15 years in the Chamber publishing space and 3 years with Chamber Chat Podcast.  Over this time, I have learned a lot about what Chambers do, how they operate, the impact Chambers have in their communities, and I have also learned that many people in any given community don’t even know that their local Chamber exists or have any clue as to what a Chamber of Commerce does.  I am working on a new project that will address this, so stay tuned for more details to come on this front soon.

2019 Lesson Highlights

At the end of each year while producing Chamber Chat Podcast, I have recorded a summary episode that highlights some of the key lessons that I learned that year that relates to the Chamber industry.

In 2019, some of the key lessons were: 

  • A Chamber can and should be much more than a networking business community.
  • The importance of great community partnerships.
  • The need for talent & workforce development.
  • The importance of staying true to your strategic plan.
  • The future is bright for Chambers that stay relevant.

You can access this episode and it’s show notes and the other lessons learned at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode50.

2020 Lesson Highlights

In 2020, as the pandemic hit and Chambers were stressed in new and complicated ways. As a result, several new lessons rose up to the top.  In fact, I covered 20 lessons learned in 2020 for that year’s summary episode.  Some of those key lessons were:

  • Trim the fat by burning sacred cows.
  • Chambers need to be agile to make quick pivots.
  • Set aside reserves in your budget.
  • We learned how to go virtual and how to use new digital tools.
  • Many Chambers saw podcasting as a way to stay connected with their members and community.
  • Probably the number 1 lesson from 2020 was the need to be flexible!

Lessons from 2021

As the “new normal” sets in, additional lessons need to be applied, which should help to sustain Chambers moving forward.  Because of the timely relevance to these lessons, I will expand more than just a few highlighted bullet points.  You can also access my lessons from 2021 at chamberchatpodcast.com/episode153.

Finance & Membership Models

Many membership organizations have had to really evaluate their overall structure.  Everything from finances to membership models to strategic partnerships were on the table for discussion to keep their organizations in operation and to provide the needed service and value to their members.  Some organizations saw the value in merging with another similarly aligned organization, possibly a tourism or economic development organization.  Some Chambers even came together to create more of a county-wide or regional organization.  There is value and strength in coming together. However, going back to one of the lessons from 2019, a Chamber must stay true to their strategic plan.  

Some Chambers did not see the need to merge with another organization but they saw the need to create a triage for their business community whether or not a business was currently a dues paying member of their Chamber.  As recovery from the pandemic started to pick up steam, some Chambers saw value in creating a free membership offering.  I like the idea of how these Chambers are setting up these freemium models, but I would personally like to see the data from this model being implemented at other Chambers before applying it to my own.

In my opinion, Chambers are all about advancing their communities. This is accomplished through advocacy, networking, and connecting the right individuals for a stronger business environment.  Doing these things will help to strengthen all areas of their community.  

Online Communities

So, when more people are less involved in their communities, how does a Chamber go about doing this great work? 

Well, one answer might be through creating strong online communities as a starting point. Online communities might serve as an on ramp to get others involved which can then transition into more in-person relationships.  In today’s world, a Chamber would be doing a disservice to themselves if they are not utilizing the power and leverage of an online community. 

Keep in mind that with many generations living and working in your community, they each prefer different methods of communication. Some really like in person events. Some will never attend an event but they will engage and support the Chamber in big ways through their screens.

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Online communities can be set up on platforms such as Facebook.  My word of caution is that you create a strategic plan for your online community BEFORE you launch it.  This will help you in creating community guidelines and will guide you in the creation and frequency of content.  This strategic plan should also create a road map for the member experience.

Preparing for the Future

Futureproofing is the next lesson that I will address.  When COVID first reared its head, almost everyone caught off guard.  Consumers made panic purchases of obscene amounts of toilet paper, business owners who were solely brick and mortar didn’t know if or when they would be allowed to open their doors again.  Chambers adapted quickly to keep their business community apprised of government mandates and regulations, but at the same time were needing to cancel most of their non-dues revenue generators.  Chambers were not prepared for this major disruption.  

Moving forward, I would encourage Chambers to think and to prepare for worst case scenarios.  How will you continue to serve your members if you had to shut down again?  How will you bring in revenue if you are unable to gather and if businesses don’t know where their next dollar will come from?  This idea of futureproofing can be wrapped in with the previous point of creating a strong plan for an online community.  This can allow for you to pivot quickly and to deliver content and information to the people who need it the most.

Your Role as an Influencer

Casey Steinbacher’s e-book “From Relevant to Essential” laid out a great argument that shows why Chambers need to understand their role as influencers in their communities.  I would encourage everyone to read this book for the full effect, but in a nutshell, we live in a world that is very different than it was 20 or 30 years ago.  The newer generations engage in different ways and they tune into different voices.  One of the main points of her book is to urge Chambers to embrace their role as influencers.  

We don’t normally think of Chambers as influencers, but why are Chambers so great at conveening people and organizations for a greater cause…because they are influencers.  Why do businesses join their local Chamber and ask for input on staffing, marketing, accounting, etc…because they are influencers.  

Most Chambers turn to social media to flex their influence muscle.  I find that many people turn to social media to tune out and they are not usually in the mindset to engage with Chamber content as it comes across their feed.  Podcasts however, offer a much more intimate way to share information, and establish or reinforce your influence in the community.

Strategic Partnerships

This year as I did the Chamber of the Year Finalist interviews, each Chamber talked about their response to the COVID pandemic.  Almost every Chamber shared how they created a strategic partnership with either their local Small Business Association, local banks, or other similar organizations to help distribute financial resources and relief to the businesses in their communities.  

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These types of partnerships can open doors to new services and opportunities. These opportunities will help Chambers better serve their business community going forward.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We have seen people and organizations of all types recognize the need for more focus and attention on diversity, equity and inclusion.  Unfortunately it took the murder of George Floyd for the many of the racial injustices to rise to a higher level of importance.  On the positive side, this extra focus on racial equity also allowed for a greater focus on other areas of diversity.  It opened our minds to new ideas on how to be more inclusive to people who have traditionally been left out of our organizations for a variety of reasons.  We also realized the need to provide more equitable opportunities for everyone in our communities.  I believe we still have a long way to go with diversity, equity and inclusion, but we are going in the right direction.

Horseshoes vs. Chess

Anyone who listens to the Chamber Chat Podcast on a regular basis will know how much I love Dave Adkisson’s book “Horseshoes vs. Chess”.  This book is what I describe as the best portrayal of what a Chamber of Commerce is and should be as well as what a Chamber Exec is and should be.  

We are often asked what Chambers of Commerce do.  Horseshoes vs. Chess helps to answer that question in a way that ordinary (non-Chamber) people can understand.  

In the book, Dave shares an analogy about Chamber work compared to the games of horseshoes and chess.  Some people look at Chamber work the same way they look at a game of horseshoes at a picnic.  You don’t have to know much about the game, you can just toss your horseshoes towards your stake and if you get close you get a point.  

Dave shares how Chamber work is really much more like a game of chess.  You have different pieces that can do different things and you need to understand the role of each piece.  One piece may be education.  Another piece might be workforce development, and another tourism, and another economic development, etc.  The idea is that you must know what each piece is capable of doing while also understanding that you can’t move all of the pieces at the same time.  I think this analogy is perfect and it should resonate with most Chamber professionals.

Make Pivots

The final lesson that I will share from 2021 is that I need to make some pivots.  I am coming up on the third anniversary of Chamber Chat Podcast. While I still plan to continue with the podcast, I do have some other new and exciting opportunities and projects that I am working on that I hope to reveal very soon.  Hopefully you and your Chamber have noticed areas where you can grow and improve as well.  In the end, it is about providing the best value and the highest level of service possible.  

I wish you all a very successful 2022.  I am sure it will be full of new lessons that will help us move closer to our potential.  Keep up the great work!

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